If you subscribed after the Microsoft post, you already know the headline.

HR is being redesigned around AI-era capabilities. The senior people leadership layer at Microsoft is gone. Oracle just told 30,000 people they were fired via a 6am email - with no HR conversation, no manager call, no human involved in the process at all.

But the question I keep getting asked privately is not about Microsoft or Oracle.

It is: what does this actually mean for my function, in my company, right now?

So let me give you the numbers.

For a 2,500-person US company, the compression model looks like this across the core functions:

HR compresses 51%. Five layers to three. Nearly half the function.

Read that again - not because it should create panic, but because it should create clarity.

The transactional layer - scheduling, case routing, policy Q&A, onboarding admin, compliance tracking - is largely automatable right now. That is where the compression lands. The judgment layer - hiring, performance, employee relations, culture, and the decisions that carry legal and human consequence - has a hard floor that other functions do not.

What remains after compression is a smaller, more strategic, harder-to-fill HR function.

That is not a threat. It is a description of where the function is going. The CHROs who understand this now are the ones who will shape what that smaller, more strategic function looks like - rather than having it shaped for them.

The pattern across every function is the same

The compression is not random. It follows a consistent logic across every department.

The coordination middle - the people whose primary job is moving information up, down, and sideways - compresses everywhere. The people who make judgments, build relationships, and own accountability are largely protected.

The question every CHRO needs to answer is not how many people to cut. It is which layer in each function is actually creating value, and which layer exists because the organisation never had a better way to move information.

AI is now a better way to move information. That changes the answer.

The dimension that does not show up in the compression model

There is something the numbers do not capture that I think about more than the headcount figures.

How a company handles this transition will be remembered.

Oracle sent a 6am email. No warning. No human conversation. Access cut the moment the email arrived. That will be remembered by the people who left, the people who stayed, and every candidate who looks at Oracle for the next decade.

The CHROs who define this period will be judged on two things: whether they had a workforce strategy before the pressure arrived, and whether they treated people as humans during the transition.

That means active outplacement. Real transition support. Helping people redesign their careers - not just offboarding them efficiently.

Those are not HR programs. They are leadership decisions. And they start long before the pressure arrives.

The question worth taking into your next leadership meeting

If you rebuilt your HR function from scratch around AI-era capabilities - not made it more efficient, but rebuilt the logic of how it operates - what would you keep, what would you remove, and what would not exist at all?

Most organisations are not asking that question yet.

The ones that are will look very different by 2028.

Daniel Käfer is a global futurist and strategic advisor. He works with senior leadership teams on AI strategy, organisational redesign, and the human dimensions of the coming decade. If this is relevant to a conversation your leadership team is navigating, reach out directly.

www.danielkafer.com