Most leaders are planning for jobs that won't exist.
AI, automation, and geopolitics are not just changing who does the work, they are changing the work itself. I help boards and senior leaders see that clearly, so they can make better decisions about what comes next.
in practice
- Schneider Electric
- Orgvue
- AIA Group
- HSBC
I show the mirror.
You decide what to build.
I'm Arun Murali, a practitioner in Strategic Workforce Planning and Future of Work with over 20 years spent across some of the world's most complex organisations. I currently lead a global Strategic Workforce Planning function at a Fortune 500 energy company, where I've spent the last four years building the capability that helps senior leaders understand how their workforce needs to change before their strategy demands it.
Before that, I advised more than 20 organisations across Asia Pacific and North America on workforce planning, HR analytics, and organisation redesign, at companies including HSBC, AIA, and clients of orgvue, where I led the APAC consulting portfolio.
My job is not to hand you a ten-step plan. It is to make the problem visible clearly enough that the company can act on it with confidence. That is a different kind of engagement and it tends to produce more durable results.
Start with work.
Not jobs.
Most workforce plans begin with the wrong question. They ask how many people are needed in today's roles. The right question is: how is work itself changing and what does that mean for how we design the human, machine, and location configuration around it?
- Starts from existing job families and org charts
- Assumes job content is stable, only volume changes
- Produces headcount scenarios, not workforce strategy
- Misses how AI is reshaping the activities inside roles
- Starts from critical value streams and business activities
- Models how AI, regulation, and geopolitics reshape each activity
- Designs the human–machine–location configuration first
- Derives roles, skills, and headcount from the redesigned work
Identify the business processes where value is created and risk is concentrated. These are your planning anchors, not org charts.
Break each value stream into the specific activities that comprise it. Use activity maps and process intelligence to see how work actually flows today.
For each activity, ask how AI, automation, regulation, geopolitics, and climate will reshape it over 3–7 years. Which parts get automated? Which become more human and more valuable?
Design the optimal human–machine–location configuration for the redesigned work. Only then define the roles, skills, and headcount you need.
Three ways to engage.
.svg)
Speaking
Keynotes and workshops for CHRO forums, board strategy sessions, future of work conferences, and executive leadership programmes. Built around The Work [re]design Framework applied to a specific challenge your audience is facing right now.
- How AI is actually redesigning work, the activity-level view
- Why your workforce plan is answering the wrong question
- From headcount planning to work architecture
- The human–machine–location decision your strategy is missing
Advisory
Pro bono advisory engagements for leaders and HR functions building a strategic workforce planning capability or pressure-testing an existing one against AI's real impact on their work.
- Applying The Work [re]design Framework to your context
- Building an internal SWP capability, ground up
- Assessing AI's impact on your specific workforce
- Redesigning roles and workflows around human–machine boundaries
.svg)
Media & Research
Available for media commentary, podcast conversations, research collaboration, and guest contributions on AI and the future of work, strategic workforce planning, people analytics, and organisation design.
- AI's impact on work, the practitioner perspective
- Why workforce planning needs to start over
- The skills-based organisation: hype vs. reality
- What boards are missing about workforce risk
Original thinking on
AI, work, and what
comes next.
A publication for senior leaders who want depth, not hype. Every piece applies The Work [re]design Framework to something specific and current, so you leave with a clearer view of a problem you are actually facing.
Flagship piece · 12 min read
Why Your Workforce Plan Is Answering the Wrong Question
Most strategic workforce plans start from job families, headcount scenarios, and skills gaps. That is the wrong architecture. AI and automation are not changing how many people you need, they are changing the work itself. Here is a different way to see the problem.
Read the full piece →4 Minutes
Running an Augmentation-First Future of Work Programme
A FoW program should not be a one-off report that ranks jobs by AI exposure. It should be a repeatable way of learning how work is changing, where to intervene, helping people move with change.
Read →5 Minutes
One Activity Substrate for Automation, AI, and Workforce Planning
In many organisations, automation, AI adoption, process improvement, workforce planning, and learning operate as separate programmes, with limited visibility on what it means for people.
Read →5 Minutes
Careers When the Contents of Jobs Keep Changing
Traditional career frameworks are built around jobs: analyst to senior analyst, manager to senior manager, specialist to leader. These structures remain useful, but assume a lot.
Read →4 Minutes
Skills for an Augmented Workforce
The standard response to AI is often “we need to re-skill”. It is correct but incomplete. Reskilling becomes meaningful only when we can explain what work is changing and why people need new skills.
Read →6 Minutes
From Exposure to Potential Gains: The Maths Leaders Can Trust
AI exposure is an important signal, but leaders eventually need to ask: what might this mean for capacity, workload, and investment? The answer should be more rigorous than “AI will save 30%”.
Read →5 Minutes
Measuring AI Exposure Without Pretending to Predict the Future
Every leader wants an answer to a simple question: which jobs will AI affect? The honest answer is that no model can provide certainty. That uncertainty is not a reason to avoid analysis.
Read →4 Minutes
Use External Taxonomies, But Do Not Let Them Define Your Work
Organisations often face a false choice: either build a bespoke activity taxonomy from scratch or adopt an external standard wholesale. The answer is to use external data as a start and make it real.
Read →4 Minutes
From Job Descriptions to Activity Maps
An activity-led future-of-work strategy begins with a deceptively simple question: what do people actually do? Job descriptions are useful, but they are not enough.
Read →4 Minutes
Why Activities Beat Workflows as the Starting Point
Workflow maps are indispensable. They show how work moves across systems and people, where approvals occur, and where delays or controls sit. They are not, however, a complete picture of work.
Read →3 Minutes
Automation and Augmentation Are Not the Same Strategy
Organisations often use “AI automation” as shorthand for every technology-enabled improvement. Automation and augmentation may use similar technologies, but they operate differently.
Read →3 Minutes
Augmentation Arrives Before Automation
When leaders hear “AI”, many immediately ask which processes can be automated. It is a reasonable question, but it is not the whole question—and in knowledge work it is rarely the first one.
Read →3 Minutes
The Future of Work Is Happening Inside Jobs
Most organisations still discuss the future of work through the language of job titles: which roles will grow, which will shrink, and which are most exposed to AI.
Read →3 min read
AI Is Not Replacing Jobs. It Is Decomposing Them.
The dominant narrative around AI and work is still framed in terms of jobs—jobs lost, jobs created, jobs augmented.This framing is misleading. AI decomposes jobs rathar than replacing them.
Read →3 min read
What Boards Are Not Seeing About Workforce Risk
Workforce risk has quietly crossed a threshold. It is no longer an operational concern—it is a fiduciary one. Yet most boards are not equipped to engage with it at that level.
Read →2 min read
The Skills-Based Organisation: What the Hype Is Missing
The shift toward skills-based organisations is being framed as a structural evolution. In reality, most implementations are still operating as overlays on legacy job architectures.
Read →5 min read
Why Your Workforce Plan Is Starting From the Wrong Question
Every workforce plan I have ever reviewed starts from the same place. Org charts. Job families. Headcount ratios by function. Span of control benchmarks lifted from industry surveys.
Read →Let's make the
problem visible.
Whether you are facing a workforce challenge AI has made more complex, building an SWP capability, or looking for a keynote that will reframe how your audience thinks about the future of work, I'd like to hear what you're working on.
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
I reply to every message personally, typically within 48 hours.
