There is a quiet but very real shift happening across human resources, people and culture, and learning and development. It is not just about new tools, tighter budgets, or another round of workplace buzzwords. It is about relevance.
Sarah Stone has spent years working across corporate learning and development, sales, service, startups, and now co-founding both linkABLE and ThriveABLE AI. Her perspective is practical, commercial, and refreshingly blunt. If HR and L&D want to stay influential, they cannot afford to be seen as “fluffy”, reactive, or disconnected from business outcomes.
That central idea runs through everything. The future of HR is not about doing more activity. It is about being intentional, measuring impact, and helping organisations make smarter decisions about people, capability, leadership, and AI.
Learning and development is not training for training’s sake
One of the strongest points Sarah makes is that learning and development has too often been treated like a band-aid. A workshop gets delivered, a training session happens, everyone moves on, and very little actually changes.
That is not real L&D.
From her perspective, learning and development should be an intentional framework to grow both the business and its people. That means asking harder questions upfront:
- What business problem is being solved?
- What capability gap is underneath it?
- How will success be measured?
- How will the behaviour change actually stick?
This is where many organisations still get it wrong. They focus on the event rather than the embed. Sarah’s view is that the best learning programs are never one-off interventions. Workshops matter, and coaching matters, but the real value comes from what happens after the session ends.
That is also why executives often dismiss HR or L&D initiatives as soft. In many cases, they have only ever seen those functions presented without clear commercial logic. If the work is not linked to business outcomes, it becomes easy for others to undervalue it.
For readers interested in building stronger HR credibility at the leadership table, this piece on HR leadership credibility connects closely with that challenge.
The strongest people initiatives solve business problems
Sarah’s approach is deeply commercial. She is not interested in capability building that looks good on paper but changes nothing in practice.
One example she shares is a 10-month leadership program designed for 26 leaders. The impact was not left to opinion. It was measured. The program generated an attributed value of $1.2 million for the organisation, supported by data gathered at the start, midpoint and endpoint.
Even more telling was the way impact was tracked. Around 200 leadership actions were linked back to business outcomes, including:
- articulating stronger business cases
- having courageous conversations
- improving delegation
- developing team members more effectively
That matters because leadership capability is often discussed in abstract terms. Sarah’s position is that it does not need to be. If better delegation creates more capacity for higher value work, that can be quantified. If stronger management reduces attrition, that can be measured. If capability lifts performance, that can be tied to revenue, productivity, retention, or risk reduction.
This is where HR and L&D can stop apologising for people work and start speaking the language of return on investment.
Why HR professionals must get better at articulating value
Perhaps the most important lesson from the conversation is this: creating value is not enough if nobody understands the value being created.
Sarah points out that many professionals wait until the end of a project to think about outcomes, or they attempt to justify the work after the fact. By then, it is often too late. In a cost-pressured environment, functions that cannot clearly explain their contribution become vulnerable.
Her advice is simple and sharp. Start with the business problem. Define what success looks like before the work begins. Track progress as the initiative rolls out. Then communicate that contribution in terms the rest of the business understands.
That could apply to almost any HR initiative:
- leadership development
- talent programs
- wellbeing initiatives
- employee relations capability
- workforce planning
If HR cannot explain how a program contributes to productivity, capability, retention, risk reduction or strategic goals, others may wrongly assume the contribution is minor.
That challenge becomes even more important in a legal and regulatory environment where HR teams are expected to carry significant operational and compliance risk. Australian employers tracking workplace obligations may also find it useful to review practical topics such as the Right to Disconnect, which shows how quickly people issues can become strategic business issues.
Is HR facing a burnout problem and possible exodus?
Sarah also raises an uncomfortable issue. There are signs that many HR professionals are considering leaving the field altogether, particularly in the United States, with lower but still notable movement in Australia.
Her view is that this is not random. It reflects a build-up of pressure.
HR often becomes the landing zone for problems others avoid. Leaders fail to have straightforward conversations. Teams are not equipped to manage performance or support employees well. Restructures and redundancies fall heavily onto HR. Cost-of-living pressure and workforce stress increase complexity. Then HR is left managing the human fallout.
This creates a dangerous pattern. The business relies on HR in a crisis, but may still fail to treat the function as strategic. Over time, that gap contributes to burnout and disengagement.
Sarah’s answer is not to remove accountability from leaders. It is the opposite. Leaders need to be better equipped to lead. If managers are capable of handling difficult conversations, coaching performance, and supporting their teams effectively, fewer issues escalate unnecessarily into HR.
That is a people capability issue, not just a policy issue.
The future of HR and AI strategy will be deliberate, not scattergun
AI is the other major force reshaping the conversation, and Sarah’s take is more useful than the usual hype.
Too many organisations, in her view, are taking a scattergun approach. They know they need to “do something” with AI, so they buy tools, run pilots, or encourage teams to experiment, but without a clear strategy. The result is often wasted investment, low adoption, and confusion.
That is one of the reasons she launched ThriveABLE AI. The focus is not on being a tech vendor. It is on helping leaders and organisations build the right mindset, identify high-value use cases, and connect AI decisions to business and people outcomes.
That distinction matters.
AI is not just ChatGPT or Copilot. It is a broader landscape of automation, workflows, decision support and intelligent systems. The key question is not whether to use AI. The key question is where AI creates measurable value, and what people should do with the time and capacity it frees up.
That is where HR and AI strategy intersect directly. If repetitive work is automated, the organisation still needs human capability in areas like:
- judgement
- empathy
- coaching
- ethical decision-making
- communication
- change leadership
Those are not side issues. They are the core skills that become more valuable as automation increases.
Australian organisations looking at AI governance and workplace readiness should also keep an eye on public guidance from agencies such as the Digital Transformation Agency and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, especially where privacy, accountability and data use are involved.
AI adoption is still a mixed bag across the HR profession
One of the more interesting observations Sarah shares is just how varied the HR response to AI still is.
Some professionals are already using tools like ChatGPT and seeing practical gains. Others are deeply sceptical. Some are openly fearful. And many are somewhere in the middle, curious but unsure.
Meanwhile, executive teams are moving fast. Budgets are being allocated. New systems are being purchased. Expectations are shifting.
That creates a mismatch. The speed of technology is increasing faster than the comfort level of many teams. Sarah believes that if people bury their heads in the sand, the risk is not simply being left behind. The risk is waking up to a role that has already changed without being ready for it.
Her advice is practical:
- research how AI may affect your role
- identify useful use cases in your function
- experiment safely and thoughtfully
- start conversations with leaders and IT teams
- stay relevant by learning before you are forced to
She can already see a near future where AI agents, automated workflows and people work side by side. In some cases, humans will effectively manage AI components of the work. For HR, that could have major implications in people operations and other highly repetitive processes.
Capability frameworks may matter more than ever
Another practical area Sarah says organisations are increasingly focusing on is capability frameworks.
This sounds technical, but the idea is straightforward. Start with the business strategy over the next one to two years. Identify the top organisational objectives. Then define the technical, leadership and interpersonal skills needed to achieve them.
From there, those capabilities can be linked down into roles, development pathways and career progression.
This approach does two things at once:
- It aligns people capability with business priorities.
- It gives employees a clearer picture of how they can grow.
That second point is critical for attraction and retention. A strong employee value proposition is no longer just about benefits, brand or title. Increasingly, people want to know what kind of development, contribution and purpose an employer can offer.
Sarah also suggests that EVP will continue to evolve as workforce expectations change across generations. Career progression may still matter, but social impact, flexibility, values, and meaningful development may carry growing weight.
Two leadership lessons worth keeping
Sarah’s early-career reflections are also worth noting because they are so relatable.
She stepped into leadership at 19 and, by her own admission, was not very good at it. One moment stood out. A team member resigned, and she took it personally, to the point of not speaking to them for three days.
What she learned from that still holds up:
- Do not take everything personally. Leadership is not about centring your own reaction.
- Use the 24-hour rule when possible. If something deeply frustrates or upsets you, sit on it before reacting.
Those are simple lessons, but they are enduring. In a noisy, fast workplace, restraint and perspective are leadership advantages.
The real opportunity for HR
The thread linking all of this together is intentionality.
Intentional learning strategy. Intentional people capability. Intentional value measurement. Intentional AI adoption. Intentional leadership.
HR does not need to become louder to be more influential. But it does need to become clearer. Clearer about what it is solving. Clearer about why it matters. Clearer about the return it creates. And clearer about what work must remain deeply human even as technology advances.
Sarah Stone’s perspective is a timely reminder that the future will not be kind to passive functions. But it will reward those who can connect people, strategy and technology in a way that is measurable, commercial and human.
That is not fluff. That is the job.
