{"id":88727,"date":"2025-08-08T05:10:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T05:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=88727"},"modified":"2025-08-08T05:10:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T05:10:00","slug":"why-firms-are-merging-hr-and-it-departments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=88727","title":{"rendered":"Why firms are merging HR and IT departments"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>5 Minute, 35 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>
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Even if you have never worked for a big company, you will probably have an idea what the HR and IT departments do.<\/p>\n

Human resources (HR) deal with people, IT deal with the technology.<\/p>\n

It might seem like an obvious management division, but some companies are merging the responsibility for those departments under one leader.<\/p>\n

And a big part of that is to do with the introduction of AI.<\/p>\n

Some 64% of senior IT decision makers at large companies expect their HR and IT functions to merge within five years, according to\u00a0a survey by Nexthink, a firm that makes workplace software.<\/p>\n

Tracey Franklin is the chief people and digital technology officer at biotech company Moderna, which has more than 5,000 employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am responsible for the entire HR function and the entire IT function,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s both what you would think of as core IT for the company, as well as the digital technology required to do drug development, manufacturing and commercialisation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditionally, HR departments would say, \u2018we\u2019re going to do workforce planning, so we\u2019re going to count how many humans we need to get tasks done\u2019. And then the IT team would take requests [for] the systems that we need,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In contrast, she thinks of her role as being an architect of how work is done.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s [about] how work flows through the organisation, and what should be done with technology \u2013 whether that\u2019s hardware or software or AI \u2013 and where you complement human skills around that.<\/p>\n

Tracey Franklin at Moderna led HR and now leads IT too<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Moderna has a partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, and has trained all employees in using it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re saying, \u2018here are the tools to rewrite how work gets done,’\u201d she explains. \u201cHaving employees learn how to learn, be masters of AI, and recreate their own workflows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before taking on her current role in November 2024, Ms Franklin led HR at the company. She took some IT training for her new job, but she has two IT managers reporting to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the leader of this function has to be an expert in one area or the other, but what they have to do is set direction, provide vision, do capital allocation, remove obstacles, set culture, and do employee engagement,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Although the leadership structure has changed, the people within the HR and IT teams continue to do the work they are experts in. \u201cI haven\u2019t turned an HR person into an IT person or vice versa,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Covisian is developing IT and people together, Fabio Sattolo says<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Covisian provides software and services for customer care. Most of the company\u2019s 27,000 employees work in call centres, answering customer calls for Covisian\u2019s clients.<\/p>\n

The company merged its IT and HR teams in April 2023 under the leadership of Fabio Sattolo, chief people and technology officer. He was previously CTO.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about developing people on one side and developing IT on the other,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we bring these two together, we can have a common vision for how technology can have an impact on people and how people can adapt and evolve to leverage the new technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

One example is in the call centre, where AI will increasingly be used. People will still answer the calls and work out the customer\u2019s problem, Mr Sattolo says, but they will then delegate the process for fixing it to AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are developing AI considering that a human agent will use it,\u201d he says. \u201cBut you also need to develop the human agent to make sure that they are aware of how to use this technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previously, HR and IT departments might have butted heads over what HR wanted and what IT thought it could deliver.<\/p>\n

Now, there is one decision-maker in charge. \u201cThe effectiveness and speed of developing things is much higher,\u201d says Mr Sattolo.<\/p>\n

If there are technical barriers, Mr Sattolo can often adapt the HR process as a workaround.<\/p>\n

One success was an internal job postings tool, which gives call centre agents an opportunity to move into other roles in the company. The new tool, developed by the combined HR\/IT organisation, doubled responses to job adverts.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking people speak the same language was the hardest part, because IT and HR people are really different,\u201d Mr Sattolo says.<\/p>\n

While HR people are good at listening, IT people aren\u2019t always good at talking, he says. \u201cI remember many meetings where I was asking the questions because they were not talking to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

To help the HR and IT teams work together, he identified people who were not closely associated with either discipline to lead the multidisciplinary teams. \u201cIt\u2019s like a judge who makes them negotiate to find the proper solution,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

David D\u2019Souza is director of profession at the CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development.<\/p>\n

He sounds a note of caution about the trend: \u201cThe skillsets of the two professions are complementary, and don\u2019t have much overlap. Complex people issues require an understanding of organisational and situational factors, different to the specialist expertise required in IT.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreater collaboration between HR and IT makes sense, leaning into the strengths of each discipline, but merging the departments risks losing or diluting the specialist expertise organisations need to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI means people will work \u201cin a completely different way\u201d says Bianca Zwart<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bianca Zwart is chief strategy officer at online bank Bunq, where the IT and people team sit within the same bigger team.<\/p>\n

She says it makes sense to have them together because both IT and HR are building systems that support the rest of the business.<\/p>\n

Like many firms, Bunq is trying to work out how AI and humans will best work together.<\/p>\n

They are betting that a good way to do that is to have IT and HR working closer together.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that sense, it\u2019s like a natural merger.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one person is responsible for working out whether a task should be performed by a human or AI at Bunq.<\/p>\n

The company aims to make its 700-plus people self-sufficient, building the automations and AI processes they need themselves.<\/p>\n

Bunq is on track to automate 90% of its operations by the end of 2025, but has not made redundancies and continues to hire new employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn any company, people need to understand that they need to work in a completely different way moving forward,\u201d she says. \u201cAI will be taking away the repetitive tasks so they can focus on the more complex problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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