SAP executives this week sought to calm fears about artificial intelligence eliminating jobs during the organization’s Connect conference in Las Vegas. SAP leaders painted an alternative picture of AI as a collaborative partner that will support how HR professionals work while keeping people at the center with the evolving technology.
“The future of work is about humans and AI together,” said Gina Vargiu-Breuer, SAP’s chief people officer and labor director. AI innovations underscore the fundamental need to redesign how people work in the future, she said.
Vargiu-Breuer introduced a striking metaphor for the modern workforce challenge: “Skills are the new supply chain. Just like energy or raw materials fuel the industrial age, AI fuels the digital age, and this is powered and shaped by skills.”
The urgency around skills-based work is even more apparent in the AI age. Ian Beacraft, CEO of consulting firm Signal and Cipher, told attendees that the average shelf life of a technical skill now lasts only about 18 to 36 months, citing estimates from both the OECD and World Economic Forum.
Beacraft added that the global workforce is shifting from valuing what employees know to prioritizing how quickly they can learn and adapt.
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Rethinking jobs as tasks, not titles
The speakers agreed that AI won’t eliminate entire jobs but will instead automate specific tasks while creating new opportunities.
“AI is breaking apart and bridging job descriptions, so that tasks, not whole jobs, are being automated, while new opportunities are merging around these places,” Beacraft said. “AI lets people stretch into adjacent territories and skills that scale on top of the foundation of the expertise they already have.”
He cited an example of how roles will evolve: “Recruiters can start looking beyond talent sourcing and into workforce planning.”
Research presented at the conference shows employees already recognize this shift, estimating “that 42% of their tasks could be done by AI today.”
Skills-first approach required
Vargiu-Breuer outlined SAP’s vision for adapting to rapid change through a “skills-first approach,” which she described as a “paradigm shift that revolutionizes how organizations handle workforce planning, hiring job architectures, learning and development.
“This approach actually accelerates adaptability growth by effectively responding to external disruptions in real time,” she said, describing how SAP uses its SuccessFactors platform to “strategically plan and also dynamically adjust skill requirements, also offering hyper-personalized AI and assisted up and through scaling.”
Culture as the determining factor
Technology alone won’t determine success—organizational culture will, speakers emphasized. “While technology tries to [make] change, it’s actually culture that describes the outcome,” Vargiu-Breuer said. “Only organizations that foster growth, resilience and inclusion will be the ones to turn AI into a real competitive advantage.”
Citing SAP’s 110,000 employees worldwide, Vargiu-Breuer said, “AI is no longer optional at SAP. It’s pivotal to our success.”
The company operates under what it calls a “growth culture,” which Vargiu-Breuer described as “our operating system and actually a bold and long-term workforce vision.”
Preparing for the next decade
Looking ahead, Beacraft outlined what HR leaders should prioritize: “Work will be less about the toil and more about orchestration and delegation. We’re moving from doing the work to designing the work.
“The most valuable skill of the next decade will be the ability to unlearn, relearn and break old digital habits to build new ones,” he said.
He urged organizations to “invest in new cultures that are about experimentation” and to “be encouraging our leaders to think like organizational architects, designing systems that keep humans and AI in sync.”
Productivity gains already visible
Meanwhile, the business case for AI adoption is strengthening. Jan Gilg, SAP’s chief revenue officer for the Americas, referenced research showing that “industries most exposed to AI are achieving a fourfold increase in productivity growth.” In addition, he said, the numbers show that 66% of those who have adopted them are seeing measurable value from higher productivity.
For HR leaders specifically, the productivity gains translate into strategic value. As Gilg noted, “business partners can devote more of their time to designing incentives and building a culture that attracts and retains the best talent.”
The message to HR leaders was that AI will reshape people management, but success depends on viewing it as a partnership tool rather than a replacement threat, and acting quickly to build the skills and culture needed to thrive in that new reality.
SAP offers AI assistants for every role
SAP also announced a comprehensive rollout of role-specific AI assistants designed to handle administrative burdens, freeing HR leaders for strategic work. The company demonstrated assistants for workforce planning, recruiting, HR operations and other functions.
Muhammad Alam, a member of SAP’s executive board, leading product and engineering, emphasized the personalized approach for Joule, SAP’s AI co-pilot: “We are making Joule deeply aware of the person it’s partnering with, their role and the business process context in which they operate,” he said. “There is an AI assistant for every role; an AI assistant for you.”
In a live demonstration, the company showed how a manager preparing for performance reviews could use an AI assistant to automatically assess employee performance, generate personalized development plans and create succession planning strategies—tasks that traditionally consumed hours of manual work.
“Every leader can now have their own Joule assistant that takes the administrative work off of their shoulders,” SAP AI product leader Priyanka Kaitanya said during the demonstration. “So they can focus on what truly matters: coaching, mentoring and leadership.”
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