HR’s Evolving Identity with John Singleton

In episode 265, Coffey talks with John Singleton about HR's long-standing identity crisis, the strategic skills the profession must develop to stay relevant, and how AI is reshaping both the work of HR and the way work itself gets done.

They discuss HR's decades-long reputation as a bureaucratic gatekeeper — from the 1996 Fortune critique through the 2025 revisit of "Why We Hate HR" — and what it means to function instead as a strategic confidant and ethical agent; the DEI whiplash as a case study in HR failing to provide compliant, data-grounded counsel when it mattered most; using PESTEL and SWOT analysis to advise on business expansion decisions including workforce availability and market fit; financial literacy as a critical and underdeveloped skill for HR professionals, including reading P&L statements and linking people decisions to EBITDA; the dangers of AI-powered auto-application tools flooding recruiting pipelines with unvetted, uninterested candidates; why AI should not replace human judgment in interviewing, candidate evaluation, and culture-fit assessment; the growing requirement for HR practitioners to understand AI governance, prompt literacy, output verification, and state-level AI employment legislation; the individual responsibility of HR professionals to own their own continuous learning when employers won't fund it; HR's emerging role as architect of human-AI workflow integration in partnership with IT and operations; and HR's internal identity crisis as the profession's biggest obstacle to earning the strategic credibility it seeks.

For HR teams who discuss this podcast in their team meetings, we've created a discussion starter PDF to help guide your conversation. Download it here https://goodmorninghr.com/EP265

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About our Guest:

John Singleton, SHRM-CP, is a fractional HR partner based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, working 1-on-1 with Texas founders, business owners, and leadership teams on the people side of building and scaling. With 16+ years of HR leadership experience — including