WPP executive urges companies to redesign jobs before scaling AI

WPP has created a senior role focused on how employees and AI systems should work together as companies race to adopt the technology. Dr. Laura Weis, the advertising group’s head of human-AI strategy and transformation, told Fortune that businesses risk missing AI’s value if they add tools without changing how work is designed.

Weis said many companies treat AI planning and workforce planning as separate efforts. In her view, that split leaves executives with faster processes but little advantage, because the technology is being placed on top of old structures.

Her argument centers on a broader definition of the workforce. Weis told Fortune that leaders should account for both employees and agentic AI systems, then design organizations around how each can contribute.

AI strategy and people strategy need to meet

According to Weis, most companies already have plans for talent and for AI technology, but those plans often do not connect. She said that limits the payoff from both.

Weis said the issue should not sit only with human resources leaders. She told Fortune that the full executive team needs visibility into how people strategy changes when AI becomes part of day-to-day work.

She also rejected broad claims that AI either weakens or improves people on its own. Weis said the more useful question is what the technology can do, what it cannot do, and how work should be structured around those limits.

Efficiency alone is not the prize

Weis warned against making speed and cost-cutting the main goals of AI adoption. She told Fortune that faster output may be useful, but it is unlikely to create a lasting edge if competitors are doing the same work more quickly.

Instead, she said companies should ask how AI can support new forms of growth, better quality and fresh sources of revenue. That requires dropping assumptions about how tasks have traditionally been done, Weis said.

She also said companies should decide in advance what to do with the time AI frees up. Weis told Fortune that AI gives organizations room to experiment, connect ideas and bring people together, but that space can disappear if leaders only use it to compress workloads.

Roles should be rebuilt around human skills

Some companies have responded to AI gains by cutting jobs, but Weis urged leaders to redesign roles before removing them. She told Fortune that judgment, discernment, decision-making and emotional intelligence remain human strengths that AI does not possess.

That shift also changes how managers should define strong performance, according to Weis. She said employees who move fastest are not necessarily creating the most value; creative workers who can rethink problems, coordinate others and bring coherence to plans may matter more in an AI-enabled workplace.

Weis said AI-people strategies should help those employees spend less time on routine work and more time on the tasks where they add the most value.

Teams and boundaries come first

Weis also told Fortune that AI can magnify existing team dynamics. In healthy teams with clear decisions, relevant skills and psychological safety, she said, AI can increase value; in strained teams, it can add confusion and frustration.

For that reason, she advised companies to improve team culture and decision-making before rolling out AI broadly. She said leaders should encourage different types of thinking and different ways of working before expecting new tools to deliver results.

Weis also said companies need clear limits on automation. She told Fortune that organizations can damage employee engagement if they automate the creative or identity-forming parts of work, including tasks such as creative briefs, articles, brainstorming and design.

Her conclusion was that AI is not a business transformation by itself. Weis told Fortune that the companies most likely to benefit will be those that rethink work, not those that adopt the technology the fastest.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.