AI in the Workplace: Beyond the Hype
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
When I studied computer science at university 25 years ago, artificial intelligence (AI) was already part of the curriculum. Yet for most of that time, it lived on the fringes of industry conversations. Only in the past few years has it gained mainstream acceptance.
Today’s breakthroughs in large language models and machine learning explain why AI suddenly feels everywhere. But what we’re seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. A big part of this story is how AI is fundamentally reshaping the way humans and machines work together. On one hand, it’s fundamentally changing and accelerating how work is achieved, while on the other hand, it's threatening job security and workplace trust.
At ELMO Software, we’re uniquely positioned to examine this dual impact. We’re both a technology company and a HR solutions provider, giving us a front-row seat to how AI is changing organisations and employees alike. This combination gives ELMO an important role in helping businesses cut through the hype, understand where AI delivers real value, and adopt it in ways that empowers, rather than displaces, their people.
AI at the core: differentiation through design
AI shouldn’t be a bolt-on. The real opportunity is to create product lines that are centred around AI, rather than decorated by it.
That’s where I believe ELMO differentiates itself. We challenge the status quo by developing product lines that are truly AI-centric, unlocking new capabilities that simply weren’t possible before. Take our Salary Intelligence product, launching in Australia in the first half of 2026. Traditional salary benchmarking reports are out of date almost the moment they’re published. By harnessing AI, we can generate real-time insights that reflect the market at the point of use. Beyond that, we can overlay statistical pay data for customers, offering a position-in-range (PIR) to allow for data to be adjusted at an employee, team, or organisational level.
Our recently piloted Insights product uses advanced AI to remove barriers for HR professionals who lack data science skills. It allows users to simply ask questions of their data in natural language and drive powerful insights, visualisations and dashboards. By lowering the barrier to entry, Insights makes data more accessible and actionable for HR leaders, democratising insights that were once limited to specialists.
These are practical examples of what happens when AI sits at the heart of design. They’re not just incremental features; they’re step changes in what technology can do for our customers.
Balancing innovation and responsibility
Designing AI-centric products comes with responsibility. For ELMO, that means several things.
Guardrails come first. We adhere to legal and ethical frameworks such as the EU AI Act and are paying close attention to the Australian Government’s inquiry into the digital transformation of workplaces. We anticipate similar regulation here and want to be ahead of the curve.
Second, we keep humans in the loop. AI is non-deterministic, and while 60% accuracy may look good at face value, 90% is what is needed to meet our commercial benchmark. In HR technology, especially, AI doesn’t make decisions – it makes recommendations. Our role is to make both employees' and employers' lives easier, but it’s ultimately up to humans to accept or reject AI’s outputs. Transparency and human oversight are central to our AI policy because they are both regulatory requirements and trust imperatives.
Third, we follow a buy vs. build philosophy. We invest in building proprietary models where we can add unique value – our secret sauce – while buying commodity technologies where the type of functionality is table stakes.
Finally, we’re committed to piloting and learning. We run pilots with clear benchmarks and aren’t afraid to pull the plug if a product doesn’t meet the standard. Innovation should be ambitious, but always within the boundaries of trust, compliance, and real customer value.
Psychological safety and the future of roles
AI brings with it a natural level of fear. Ironically, some software engineers were among the slowest to adopt AI coding tools, worried they might automate them out of a job. But the reality we see at ELMO is different: we have more work than our teams can deliver, and AI simply expands our capacity to ship more products and features.
History suggests that technology rarely eliminates jobs in aggregate; instead, it spawns new demand. Economists call this Jevons’ Paradox, where efficiency often drives more consumption, not less.
For organisations, this pattern underscores a responsibility that goes beyond merely adopting new technologies. Rather than resisting change, they need to actively support their workforce, through reskilling, cross-training, and guiding employees through transitions. The jobs we see today will not be the jobs of tomorrow, but there will absolutely be opportunities. Our role is to ensure people can move into them with confidence.
The future of work with AI
The pace of change is unlike anything we’ve seen before. To remain competitive, businesses must run at least as fast – ideally faster – than their peers. AI gives organisations the chance to move at a pace we’ve never seen. If you don’t get on board, someone faster will.
Used well and responsibly, AI can make life easier. But it’s a shortcut that still requires discipline and critical thinking. It shouldn’t make us lazy. That’s how I see the future of AI in the workplace: not as hype, not as a threat, but as a transformative tool. With the right guardrails, human oversight and focus on people, AI won’t just change how we work. It will change what we can achieve together.
