‘I used to care about how many emails I had’: Reframing priorities is crucial for HR 

A top chief people officer has recently discussed the importance of reframing priorities and streamlining AI processes for HR leaders.

HR Leader recently spoke to Prospa chief people officer Elise Ward, who touched on how HR teams can juggle the numerous roles that rest on their shoulders in 2025. Ward also spoke on the importance of streamlining AI as a collective process instead of treating it as an entirely different tool.

Speaking on the top challenges that HR leaders face in the modern-day workplace, Ward touched on the variety of conversations that can occur within a short time frame.

“I think one of the greatest challenges we have is context switching and having to very quickly dive from a strategic conversation to an operational conversation to a tactical conversation and go between them in the space of an hour. So, that is definitely an ongoing challenge for us,” Ward said.

“The other challenge is how do you do more with less? How do you think about effectiveness and efficiency within your teams? So, I think that remains a challenge.

“Equally so, as I’ve sort of progressed my career, what I’ve also learned to do is prioritise differently and better, and it’s less about tasks and more about outcomes. So, outcomes and impact is actually what I spend much more time focused on.”

Ward offered an example of how her priorities in the HR space have shifted since the beginning of her career to where she is now.

“The rudest example I can give you is [that] I used to care about my inbox. I used to care how many emails I had unread. Now, I could not even tell you. And I do not live in my inbox at all. I could not even tell you how many I have read,” Ward said.

“Sometimes, it’s hundreds. That doesn’t matter. Because that’s not actually an indication of how on top of my role or how I’m performing. What matters so much more is how I am impacting our organisation’s health and performance, how I’m tracking against the goals that I have set with our exec team and our CEO, the feedback and how I’m impacting on other people at work, my peers, my leader, my team.

“Hopefully, I’m having an impact in terms of building capability across the organisation. So, it’s much less, it’s a different reframe on the limited time that we have.”

As AI integration becomes another job thrust onto HR teams, Wards gave insight into how that rollout can be best delivered to ensure that workers can optimise its potential.

“It’s not a separate tool or a separate thing that we’re focusing on. We’re trying to embed it as part of how we do business and how we live our values. That is the point of difference and making sure that we start with our values and we start with what we want to achieve.

“So, for us, it’s been important to not have [it] as a separate thing. It’s not like we’re all going to stop our work and then just focus on AI over here,” Ward said.

When it comes to implementation, Ward claimed that HR teams should be the example for workers as to what proper integration and streamlining of AI looks like.

“I think it starts with us. So, often, we can say technology stuff is with the technology team, but I don’t see that. When it comes to AI, I see usage and adoption very much a part of the executive team, but also in our team and people and culture and in enterprise risk, because it will help us deliver value faster,” she said.

“It can be a superpower if you use the right tooling and if it gets you the right outcome. But again, that comes back to two schools of thought. You can either look at AI and go, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s terrifying, I don’t, I don’t want to engage in that’. Or you can look at it like all the technology changes that we’ve had over the course of our lifetime.

“We’ve had the introduction of a computer, we’ve had a smartphone, we’ve had the internet. These have all been pivotal moments where we’ve had human beings interacting with technology to make their lives easier and to make their work better and their work lives better and easier.

“So, AI is really all about making employees’ lives easier and making the experience better. I think helping people understand it and helping people start with education, I think, is the really important part.”