Making the Future of HR Real: Reflections from Our SAP Roundtable with Dr. Christian Schmeichel

Together with Dr. Christian Schmeichel, SVP and Global Head of People & Culture Services at SAP SE, the ChapmanCG team brought together HR leaders for an intensive discussion around a question that has moved well beyond theory:

How do we make the future of HR a reality, starting today?

After a morning of conversation, collaboration, and focused exploration, one message became clear. The future of work is no longer a distant concept. It is unfolding now in successive waves that are transforming our expectations of leaders, employees, and the HR function itself.

Christian put it plainly:

The world is changing at pace, and organisations that want to remain competitive must approach their evolution holistically across technology, culture, leadership, and the employee experience.

From Flex Work to Intelligent Work

SAP’s Flex Work approach illustrates how physical and digital environments must complement one another. Workplace design, technology infrastructure, and ways of working have become strategic tools that determine how organisations collaborate and perform.

Guided by the “4Cs”: Collaboration, Communication, Community, and Concentration, SAP has redefined workplaces as purposeful ecosystems. The model reflects a reality many organisations still overlook: employee expectations have fundamentally shifted. Autonomy only works when clarity and structure rise alongside it.

Three Dimensions Shaping the Future

SAP views the future of work across three interconnected dimensions:

Future of Workforce: Workforce planning now extends beyond headcount. Human–machine collaboration is already a lived reality, with AI agents joining teams as active contributors.

Future of Work Practices: Skills evolve and expire faster than ever. Traditional talent processes cannot keep pace. Development has become a shared responsibility: employees have a vested interest in keeping their skills current, while organisations must enable continuous learning at scale.

Future of the HR Function: GenAI is accelerating HR’s reinvention. Transaction-heavy work is being automated, allowing HR to operate as a dual engine: strategic business partner and transactional excellence, both augmented by intelligent systems. AI co-pilots will increasingly support recruitment, language quality, policy interpretation, and employee communication.

Christian was clear:

AI elevates HR when it reduces friction rather than adding complexity.

Leadership: Capabilities for a New Era

Throughout the group discussions, one theme repeatedly emerged: leadership capability must evolve as rapidly as technology. The vocabulary is familiar, but the urgency is new.

Resilience, strategic mindset, AI literacy, emotional intelligence, ethical judgment, and mindful communication now determine whether leaders can navigate uncertainty while keeping teams aligned, motivated, and psychologically safe.

As one participant put it: “We need leaders who can guide organisations through the unknown and not just operate existing systems.”

The Future Of Talent: From Baseline to Differentiation

Looking ahead, modern organisations’ perspective on talent reframes today’s employer value proposition. Competitive salaries, recognisable brands, and good workplaces have become baseline expectations.

Differentiation now comes from the opportunity for personal growth and skills building, meaning, support for mental well-being, and flexible work models that genuinely work. These factors increasingly shape where employees believe they can thrive.

Group Discussion: Start. Stop. Accelerate.

In the workshop exercise, participants explored the shifts organisations need to prioritise:

Start:

• More adaptive, responsive talent development
• Stronger alignment between business and people strategies
• Decision-making that is faster and cleaner

Stop:

• Hiring bottlenecks
• Micromanagement
• The stigma around acknowledging struggle or failure

Accelerate:

• Skills-based workforce planning
• End-to-end modernisation of talent acquisition
• Empowerment, trust, and transparent communication

Together, these themes highlight a core insight: cultural innovation must keep pace with technological innovation.

Human–Machine Collaboration: The Emerging Reality

As AI systems mature, mixed teams, people working alongside intelligent agents, will become standard. This change demands new methods for task distribution, collaboration, governance, and ethics. Most importantly, it calls for an employee experience that seamlessly incorporates technology without compromising the human element of work.

A Moment of Opportunity

The roundtable underscored a simple conclusion: the future of HR is something to build and not to predict.

With AI opening up and accelerating new possibilities and employees seeking growth, purpose, and agency, HR leaders have a unique opportunity to shape organisations that are more agile, more human, and more technologically empowered.

Execution is now the differentiator. Organisations that succeed will be those that align technology, culture, leadership, and people strategy into one coherent, human-centred whole.