How AI Can Make Work More Human, Not Less

A conversation with Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice, on navigating the AI transformation while keeping people at the centre

We're living through one of the most significant workplace transformations in decades. Artificial intelligence isn't coming, it's here. And whilst the headlines focus on job displacement and technological disruption, the real conversation should be about something far more fundamental: how we preserve and enhance our humanity at work.

Felix Mitchell recently sat down with Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice, on an episode of We Need To Talk About HR to explore this challenge. As the leader of a company that helps organisations manage performance, development, and the employee experience, Sarah has a unique perspective on how AI is reshaping not just what we do at work, but how we relate to each other.

The Human Anxiety Behind the AI Revolution

"It's on everyone's mind," Sarah explains when asked about AI-related workplace anxiety. "Agnostic of where you live or what your occupation is or your age. It's very interesting - you think how ageism was a thing, like 'oh well, you'll age out of the career.' Well, now the youth is coming into the world thinking, 'what opportunity is there for me if AI is taking my entry level jobs?'"

This isn't just baseline anxiety, it's existential concern about the future of work itself. But rather than retreat into fear, Sarah advocates for something bolder: embracing the unknown with courage and intentionality.

"We're kind of at a fork in the road," she explains. "We can steer ourselves towards a more dystopian future, or we can take the reins, embrace it, understand it, go into it with courage, knowing that we don't have all the answers, and do our best to steer ourselves more to a utopian outcome."

Managing Digital Workers: The New Frontier

One of Lattice's most forward-thinking innovations has been allowing organisations to include AI agents, what they call "digital workers", directly in their organisational charts. When they first introduced this feature in July 2024, the reaction was sceptical.

"People were like, 'That is crazy bananas. What are you talking about? Are you saying the AI is human? Why are you saying that we would manage an AI?'" Sarah recalls. "But now you fast forward to today and people are like, 'Oh my gosh, we need to understand all of these things.'"

The insight here isn't just about organisational structure, it's about accountability and transparency. If AI agents are making decisions, interacting with customers, and performing work within your organisation, someone needs to be responsible for their performance, their objectives, and their impact.

"When this digital worker or agent is interacting with your systems, interacting with your customers, interacting with your employees, without you knowing with 100% certainty what it is going to say or do, it's important that you have that accountability, that transparency, and those audit controls."

What Does It Mean to Be Human at Work?

As AI becomes more capable, the question becomes more pressing: what uniquely human value do we bring to work? Sarah's answer is refreshingly direct:

"Being human at work is being raw, is being real. It's caring, it's having emotion. AI can perhaps emulate what an emotional response may be, but it is not emotional. Humans are unpredictable. Humans are interesting and dynamic. When you're a human at work, you are real, you are passionate, and you're a team player."

But it goes deeper than that. Sarah talks about the human capacity for imagination, for defying assumptions, for creative problem-solving that thinks beyond established rules. "That's what it is to be human," she says, "to be able to defy the rules."

The promise of AI isn't to replace these human qualities, it's to free us from the drudgery that prevents us from fully expressing them. When we're not drowning in repetitive tasks, we have space for the meaningful conversations, strategic thinking, and creative collaboration that drive real value.

The Promise of Conversational Technology

One of the most exciting aspects of AI in the workplace is how it's changing our relationship with technology itself. For years, we've been overwhelmed by software - notifications, dashboards, applications that require us to learn their language rather than speaking ours.

"AI is this incredible opportunity for us to just talk to the software," Sarah explains. "We're asking it real questions. We're talking real meaning, like in a human way of conversing. We're not having to learn SQL or make a dashboard and a report so that I can interpret the bar graph and understand the trend. I can ask it a question of 'who are my top performers?' And the HR software will then give me the answer back."

This shift toward conversational interfaces isn't just about convenience, it's about removing barriers between human intention and technological capability.

Why HR Should Lead the AI Transformation

Whilst many organisations struggle with who should own their AI strategy, Sarah has a clear perspective: it should be HR.

"The goal of AI should be to make people better," she argues. "HR has an incredible opportunity and responsibility to lead here because you are the one that is squarely responsible for people. You're the ones that are going to own the education. You're the ones that are going to own the workforce planning. You're the ones that are going to own the job architectures, they all need to be rewritten."

This isn't about HR becoming more technical, it's about recognising that AI transformation is fundamentally a people challenge. The technology will evolve rapidly, but the human elements - training, change management, cultural adaptation - require the skills that HR professionals already possess.

Learning from Past Mistakes

Sarah draws a powerful parallel with social media and mobile technology. These transformative technologies were introduced with tremendous promise, but we failed to anticipate their negative consequences until years later.

"We didn't ask ourselves the questions of what could be hurtful. We saw how it could be helpful, but how could it be hurtful? And it wasn't until, like a decade later, when we suffer from addiction to our phones and anxiety from social media, that solutions were put in place."

With AI, we don't have the luxury of waiting a decade to course-correct. The transformation is happening too quickly, and the stakes are too high.

Practical Steps for Getting Started

Despite the philosophical implications, the practical advice for organisations is refreshingly straightforward:

1. Start simple: Don't try to boil the ocean. Pick one area where AI can reduce routine work and begin there.
2. Invest in training: People need to understand how to work with AI effectively. This isn't just about access to tools, it's about developing new skills like effective prompting and AI collaboration.
3. Provide templates: Give people concrete starting points rather than blank slates.
4. Embrace the learning process: Accept that there will be fumbles along the way, but the cost of inaction is greater than the risk of imperfect implementation.

The Choice Ahead

As their conversation concluded, Sarah returned to a theme that resonated throughout: choice. We have a choice in how we respond to AI transformation. We can let it happen to us, or we can actively shape it.

"We have to stay in control of the AI, not let it be in control of us," she emphasised.

This isn't about resisting change, it's about leading it. It's about ensuring that as we integrate these powerful new capabilities into our organisations, we do so in ways that amplify rather than diminish our humanity.

The future of work won't be defined by the sophistication of our AI systems, but by how thoughtfully we integrate them into human-centred organisations. The companies that get this right will find that AI doesn't make work less human, it makes the human elements of work more valuable than ever.

Want to learn more? Reach out to us for a chat.