人力资源的新经济学：智能体式AI如何重新定义人力资源效率

HR is at an EconomicCrossroads HRhaslongbeencaughtinacycleof lineargrowth-morepeople,moreproblems,morepressure. Businessgrowthmeansmoreemployees.AndmoreemployeeshashistoricallymeantmoreHRheadcount HROperatingCosts-2025 Deliver superior HRoperations at a fractionof the cost with Al Need to support 100 new hires? AddanotherHRprofessional.Openinganewoffice? Budget for additional HR staff. Thislinearscalingmodelworkedwhentheworkforce'sneedsweresimplerandadministrativeburdenslighter.But today,it's breaking. This transformation? It goes beyond the simpleautomation of yesterday's HR software.Alagents are rewriting the economics of peopleoperations,turning HR's biggest constraint-finite human capacityinto a scalableadvantage.When an Alagent can resolve 80% ofemployee queries near-instantly, 24/7, withoutadding headcount,the traditional math of HR nolonger applies. 90% of today's HR managers report spendingmore than a quarter of their time onadministrative tasks: answering the samebenefitsquestions,processing routinepaperwork, managing endless email back-and-forth about policies. Nearly eight in 10organizations now use Al in at least one businessfunction, streamlining those kinds of time-consuming manual processes. The business leaders championing Alinvestments see what's coming: a fundamentalshift in how HRwhen empowered with the righttoolscreates value. Consider what this means for your organization. Every HR professional freed from manuallyprocessing leave requests, tracking down policyexceptions, and reconciling time-off balancesacross systems becomesavailableforstrategicwork, like building culture, developing leadersand designing the employee experiences thatactuallydriveretentionandperformanceAdditionally, Al makes possible entirely newworkflows possible and will introduce the needfor new roles across the business.Every instantanswer replaces days of emails or eliminatesanotherbottleneck. For HR, the transformation is already underway.But this moment is criticalwhile someorganizations race ahead with Al-powered HR,others cling to the old model. The gap betweenthe two approaches will only widen. Companiesthat embrace Agentic Al for HR will operate withfundamentally different cost structures, servicelevels, and strategic capabilities than thosethat don't. ThisebookexploreshowAlagentsarecreating aneweconomicmodelfor HR-andwhythe choicefacing HRleadersisn'twhethertoadoptAl,buthow quickly they can make the shift. In his keynote speech at UNLEASH America2025, Josh Bersin perfectly captured this shift: "Alisthe onlytechnologyI'veeverseenthatactuallycompletelytransformsthewaythecompanyoperates." The New EconomicModelfor HR AGENTICHROPERATINGMODEL ThetraditionalHRplaybookissimple,witharatiothat'sbarelybudgedindecades:Forevery~1ooemployees,hireoneHRprofessional AccordingtoBloomberg'sHRDepartmentBenchmarksand Analysisreport,themedianHR-to-employeeratioreachedanall-timehighin2024:1.4full-timeHRprofessionalsper100employees. The Academy to Innovate HR reports that smallcompanies average 3.4 HR staff per100employees, while large enterprises hover around0.4 per 100. But regardless of company size, onething has stayed consistent: As employeeheadcount increases, so does the size of theHRteam. The function stays trapped in a cost modelwhere growth is a burden. Deloitte research shows that HR professionalsspend 57% of their time on administrative tasks.Think about that. More than half of HR'scapacity vanishes into repetitive questions,manual processes, and administrative overhead.No matter how talented your team, they'refundamentally constrained unless you canremove the administrative work fromtheir plates. Linear scaling has made sense for as long asHR's primary tools have been email,spreadsheets, and face-to-face meetings. Butit's created an impossible tension: As businessesdemand more from HRbetter employeeexperiences, strategic workforce planning,while alsofacing pressure to become leanerand more efficient. And that's where Agentic Al comes in. Unlike previous HR technology that simplydigitized existing processes, Al agentsfundamentally change the equation. These aren't efficiency tweaks. They'reorder-of-magnitude changes that redefinewhat's possible. What makes Al agents different? They createwhat economists call 'zero marginal cost'forroutine HR work, meaning every additionalemployee served costs virtually nothing oncethe system is in place. Once deployed, an Alagent can handle its millionth employee query aseasily as its first with no burnout, no overtime, noadditional headcount or training new staff. Thisshifts part of HR from a variable cost that scaleswith growth to a fixed infrastructure investmentwith near-limitless capacity. They don't just make tasks faster; they eliminatethe need for human involvement entirely inroutine interactions, making them the firsttechnology capable of breaking the linear modelof scale in HR. While the technology is new andrapidly evolving, we already have case st