Most people functions are built for the last decade.
The companies getting ahead aren't running better HR programmes.
They're rethinking the Office of the CHRO: built for a world where managers lead
and technology does the rest.
The Future of Work is not a buzzword. It's the biggest leadership opportunity of the decade.
The problem
Most companies still run people decisions through HR. Managers don't hire. They approve.
They don't develop their teams. They complete reviews.
The system was built to protect the company, not to help managers lead.
What's making it urgent
AI is moving faster than any HR transformation programme can keep up with.
The tools now exist to automate most of what HR does administratively.
What's left (building and developing teams) has to sit with managers.
The companies that figure this out first will have a structural advantage that compounds.
What we do about it
The Coalyard works with investors and leadership teams who want to get ahead of this shift.
Not build another HR programme. Build the people infrastructure that wins.
The Office of the CHRO
We call the destination the Office of the CHRO for the 2030s: the strategic
people function sitting at the centre of the business, not the edge of it.
Leaner than traditional HR. Technology-enabled at the core.
Built around manager capability rather than HR process.
The companies building this now will have an advantage that's hard to close.
239%
Rise in average applications per job since ChatGPT launched, via The Economist
1 in 4
Candidate profiles estimated to be AI-generated by 2028, via Gartner
70%
Of employees say their direct manager has more impact on their wellbeing than their therapist, via Gallup
Services
We work with investors and companies building for what comes next.
For investors: PE & VC
Understand where the value is being created.
The Future of Work is reshaping every sector in your portfolio. We help PE and VC firms
map what this means: for valuations, for hiring markets, for where competitive advantage
is being built, and where it's quietly being lost.
Future of Work landscape analysis for investment decisions
Talent and people due diligence on target companies
Identifying early-stage businesses building the infrastructure the market needs
For portfolio companies
Build the people infrastructure that actually works.
Your people strategy is a competitive advantage. Or it isn't. We work with leadership
teams to build people infrastructure for the next decade: manager-led, technology-enabled,
with as little administrative HR in the middle as possible.
People strategy for high-growth companies post-acquisition
Manager capability (hiring, development, feedback) without the HR overhead
AI and technology strategy for people functions
Office of the CHRO
Strategic people leadership, without building a full HR function.
Not every company needs a full-time CHRO. All of them need the thinking.
We act as the strategic people leadership layer for companies navigating growth,
transformation, or a change in ownership: providing CHRO-level advisory when you need it,
without the overhead.
Fractional CHRO advisory for companies in transition
People strategy design for the next phase of growth
Leadership team coaching on people decisions
Thinking
Ideas on the future of work, talent, and technology.
Featured
Job applicants have already won the AI arms race.
Future of Work
Job applicants have already won the AI arms race. Recruiters just don't want to admit it yet.
Since ChatGPT launched, average applications per job are up 239%. Paid bots now apply to hundreds
of roles while candidates sleep. Most recruiting teams responded with better filters. That was the
wrong move. The smartest companies have shifted entirely: from waiting for inbound applications
to proactive sourcing. AI didn't break recruiting. It exposed where the signal was always weak.
Classic change management is not built for AI. Your next 90 days will prove it.
AI forces two things at once: a shift from activity to outcomes, plus a culture of
curiosity your organisation has never formally required. The old change playbook was
not built for both at the same time.
AI is failing in your business. The reason is not the technology.
The enterprises seeing real ROI from AI are not asking how to deploy more of it.
They are asking which parts of the process should not exist at all.
That is a leadership problem. Not a technology one.
"I could just build this myself with ChatGPT." No, you couldn't.
The argument sounds right: generic AI is cheaper, more flexible, already paid for.
But context beats intelligence every time. Workflow beats features. Outcomes beat optionality.
Vertical AI is not about convenience. It's about fixing the systems people are stuck working around.
Only 15% of companies expect to reduce their sales teams because of AI. Here is what they understand.
Technology does not replace great salespeople. It removes the reasons they underperform.
The companies winning with AI in sales are not cutting headcount. They are removing friction
so the people they have can actually sell.
We spent 30 years building HR systems to protect companies from bad managers.
The next decade is about equipping good managers to not need HR at all.
That shift is already underway. Most companies just haven't named it yet.
Every portfolio company you own has a people function built for the last decade.
That is not a talent problem. It is a structural risk to your returns.
The PE firms getting ahead are mapping this now, before it shows up in the numbers.
Twenty-five years building, advising, and backing the Future of Work.
I'm the Founder of The Coalyard, an advisory business
focused on shaping and fuelling the Future of Work. I advise investors
and companies across the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific on where this shift
is going and how to position ahead of it.
The Coalyard works with worktech startups at every stage: coaching
founders on strategic focus, helping leadership teams scale their commercial operations,
and building the narrative that gets them funded. Current mandates range from
pre-seed ventures to a Series E unicorn.
We also work with mid-sized to Fortune 50 corporates on Future of Work
and innovation challenges: what this shift means for their talent model, their
technology stack, and the people function they need to build.
My background is in Professional Services: Consulting, M&A, HR Services.
I'm also co-founder of Finder, a recruiting technology provider supporting HR Services Firms and Talent Acquisition to radically speed up and simplify talent sourcing.
Whether you're a fund looking at Future of Work as an investment theme,
a portfolio company building your people strategy, or a founder who wants
a sharper go-to-market: tell me what you're working on.
Job applicants have already won the AI arms race. Recruiters just don't want to admit it yet.
The Economist had a great piece last week on what many recruiting teams are quietly experiencing:
Since ChatGPT launched, the average number of applications per candidate is up 239%
Paid bots now apply to hundreds of jobs while candidates sleep
By 2028, 1 in 4 candidate profiles could be fake (Gartner)
So what's happening in practice? Recruiters hoped AI would write job ads, screen CVs, speed things up. Instead, it multiplied the noise. Candidates can use AI instantly, without legal, DEI, data-privacy or IT constraints. Recruiters can't.
As one expert put it: "In the arms race between recruiter and candidate, the recruiter will lose."
The uncomfortable truth: the problem isn't too many applications. The problem is that applications are now a broken signal. Perfectly tailored CVs, all looking the same. Polished cover letters. Very hard to differentiate intent, capability or fit.
Which is why the smartest companies are shifting their entire recruiting from inbound applications to proactive sourcing.
This is exactly why we built Finder. Finder doesn't help recruiters read more CVs faster. It helps them stop relying on CVs altogether.
Instead:
Finder searches the market before candidates apply
Real profiles, real career signals, real experience
Fewer candidates, but dramatically higher signal
In an AI-saturated market, the advantage isn't better screening. It's starting upstream. The future of hiring won't be: "Let's automate applications." It will be: "Why do job applications exist at all?"
AI didn't break recruiting. It just exposed where the signal and process were always weak.
I had a really good conversation recently with Jeroen Wels that crystallised something we've been seeing across almost every AI discussion lately.
Classic change management is struggling with AI. Most organisations haven't caught up yet.
The real problem isn't the tech
At the top of the house, boards and CEOs see AI as the next S-curve. Productivity. Cost-out. Competitive advantage. Speed.
Broad parts of the organisation: fear, confusion, resistance. People don't know how to use AI, or they know exactly that it's going to impact their role. That gap between expectations and reality is where "AI programmes" don't work.
Why this is different from changes before
This isn't SAP, "digital transformation" or "roll out a tool plus training".
AI forces two shifts at the same time:
A move from activity to outcomes
A requirement for curiosity, experimentation, learning in-flight
If you don't actively design for those capabilities, you won't get returns.
This is consistent with what Boston Consulting Group describes as the 10-20-70 challenge: 10% of value from the tech itself, 20% from data and architecture, 70% from people, processes, ways of working. Tech is the easy part. Most of the value sits elsewhere.
The bit we are avoiding
In many AI use cases, especially efficiency-driven ones, people know immediately: "This will reduce headcount." If you handle that passively (vague comms, generic reskilling language, decisions pushed into the future) you don't calm the organisation. You entrench resistance.
The teams that move faster are very concrete:
Explicit about which roles will change and when
Ringfence time for real redeployment, not just courses
Pair AI rollout with internal mobility pipelines, not exit packages
Treat workforce transition as a delivery workstream, not a comms exercise.
If you're a CHRO, the next 90 days matter
What we're seeing work in practice:
Map AI impact at the role level, not at the job family level
Pick 2 to 3 workflows where outcomes can clearly improve, not just cost
Stand up a small, dedicated AI change squad across HR, IT, and the business
AI won't fail in the enterprise because the models aren't good enough. It will fail because we're still applying old change playbooks to a fundamentally new kind of shift. This isn't about tools. It's about outcomes, people, and honest transitions.
Most companies are still massively underestimating this.
One uncomfortable lesson from running our first Finder enterprise pilots: AI doesn't fail because the models aren't good enough. It fails because enterprises apply it to broken workflows.
Most AI tools optimise one step. Enterprises operate end-to-end systems. That mismatch matters.
What we see on the ground
Faster sourcing leads to slower validation
Better matches lead to overwhelmed hiring managers
Automation creates more handovers, more exceptions
The constraints you're solving for don't disappear. They just move, creating new bottlenecks.
A flawed workflow doesn't get better by adding AI. It gets broken faster, at a higher cost. This is the part enterprise leaders rarely plan for.
AI forces you to confront how work actually gets done
In our Finder pilots, the hard work isn't the AI. We are learning to redesign entire workflows, remove steps that exist only for legacy reasons, and figure out what humans should stop doing.
The enterprises seeing real ROI aren't asking: "How do we deploy more AI?" They're asking: "Which parts of this process shouldn't exist anymore?"
That's the real AI bottleneck. And it's a leadership problem, not a technology one.
"But I could just build this myself with ChatGPT."
I hear this all the time.
Honestly? At a surface level, it's true. If all you want is a prompt, an agent, a bit of automation, you probably can hack something together. But that's not the case for domain-specific AI that you want to implement within large organisations. That's where the confusion starts.
What we keep running into in practice
The model is not really the problem. What breaks is everything around it: fragmented workflows, legacy tools, handovers, exceptions, approvals. Drop even a very good AI into that, and all you've done is create a new bottleneck somewhere else.
Horizontal AI tools are great at tasks. Vertical AI systems are built for outcomes. The difference matters.
In building Finder, the real work isn't "using GPT"
It is encoding domain logic that lives in recruiters' heads. Handling edge cases that only show up at scale. Integrating cleanly into ATS, CRM, compliance, client processes. That's not a prompt problem. That's a product, data and workflow problem.
Why vertical AI wins
Context beats intelligence. A generic agent doesn't know what "good" looks like in your domain.
Workflow beats features. Saving minutes on a task doesn't matter if the process still takes weeks.
Outcomes beat optionality. Enterprises don't buy tools they could use. They buy systems that reliably deliver results.
Yes, you can build something impressive in a weekend. No, you cannot casually recreate years of domain learning, integrations, and operational experience.
Vertical AI isn't about replacing humans. It's about fixing the systems humans are stuck working around.
Despite the AI revolution in sales tech, only 15% of organisations expect to reduce their sales teams. This isn't surprising.
At Finder, we've always believed that technology enhances great salespeople rather than replacing them. The data confirms this. AI is most effective when it handles the administrative burden and surfaces insights, allowing talented sales professionals to do what they excel at: building relationships and solving complex problems.
People buy from people.
Three trends worth watching
Sales teams using AI report spending nearly 80% more time on actual selling activities
Companies embracing AI often scale their sales organisations more aggressively
The highest performers combine technological advantages with genuine human connection
The most successful sales professionals aren't afraid of AI. They use it to become more effective while doubling down on their uniquely human skills.
The question isn't whether AI will change sales. It already has. The question is whether your team is using it to sell more, or just to do admin faster.
We spent 30 years building HR systems to protect companies from bad managers. The result: managers stopped owning people decisions.
Think about what a typical manager has to go through to hire someone. They raise a requisition. HR reviews it. A recruiter sources. The manager gets a shortlist. Then interviews are booked through HR. The offer is made through HR. Onboarding is HR. At every step, someone else is doing what the manager should own.
The system was not designed to be obstructive. It was designed to ensure consistency, compliance, fairness. Those things matter. But the side effect was a generation of managers who have never learned to lead on people.
Now the tools have changed
Managers can source candidates in hours, not weeks. They can run structured feedback loops without a performance review cycle. They can develop their teams without sending them through an LMS. Technology has removed the admin that HR used to handle.
The question is: will organisations let managers use it?
Most won't. Not because of a policy decision. Because the structure is still built around HR as the intermediary. Job approvals. Compensation bands. Hiring sign-offs. Interview frameworks. All still routed through a function that is already overwhelmed.
What the companies moving ahead are doing differently
They are treating managers as the people function. HR shifts from doing to enabling. The tools go to the people closest to the work. Decisions that used to take weeks take days.
This is not about cutting HR. It is about redirecting it. Less process management. More capability building.
The manager as the centre of the people function is not a new idea. What is new is the technology to make it real. The companies building this now will find it very hard to close the gap.
Every portfolio company you own has a people function built for the last decade. That is not a talent problem. It is a structural risk to your returns.
Here is what it looks like in practice
You buy a business. The commercial engine looks right. The market position is solid. The leadership team is credible. You model out the upside.
What you do not model is the people function.
You do not ask how hiring decisions are made, or whether managers own them. You do not look at whether the technology stack is five years out of date. You do not check if the CHRO is operating as a strategic partner or as a senior admin function.
Then 18 months in, you see it. Key hires take too long. Attrition goes up in the wrong places. The management team is spending time on people admin instead of growth. These things were always there. You just did not map them.
The Future of Work shift is making this gap more expensive
Managers who cannot make fast hiring decisions lose candidates to competitors who can. Companies still running annual performance cycles cannot course-correct at the speed the market demands. Organisations running HR as a compliance function will not attract or retain the people who have choices.
The best PE and VC firms are starting to map this earlier. Not as part of the 100-day plan. As part of diligence.
Three questions that should be standard
Who owns people decisions in this business, and how fast do they move?
What does the current people tech stack look like, and what is it costing?
Is the people function built to scale with the business, or just to maintain it?
You do not need a transformation programme. You need a clear picture of where the gap is, and a plan to close it before it shows up in the numbers.
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