Google’s AI-driven transformation changing the face of people operations

Google isn’t just adopting AI; it’s leveraging it to fundamentally reshape how HR operates from within.

As vice president and head of people products, Tracey Arnish sits at the center of this transformation, leading a team that’s involved in both building AI technologies and applying them across the company’s own people operations.

For Arnish, AI is the most important topic right now for CEOs and CHROs, and that recognition drives how Google prepares its HR strategy to support a global workforce of 180,000 plus employees in more than 60 markets.

A key aspect of this is AI integration. At Google, this is happening in tandem with a deliberate workforce strategy that upskills, retools and repositions employees.

“Organizations have to be thinking about their data and making sure it is clean, reliable and can be leveraged with a high degree of trust,” she explains. “They also need to ensure that their systems are designed together in such a way that they can layer AI on top and be able to extract real value out of it.”

“We’ve really been upskilling our teams, both within people operations and within the business, encouraging them to learn more about AI, experiment with it and really incorporate it into their everyday use,” Arnish says.

Rethinking HR roles through AI-driven collaboration and design

Integration and upskilling go beyond basic familiarity. HR professionals are being taught to think more like product managers, designers and engineers – not to replace technical experts, but to collaborate with them.

HR is borrowing the principles of product design and customer experience and applying them internally to employees, positioning them as users whose needs are constantly evolving.

“We’re thinking a lot recently about developing some new skills within our function, and it's developing expertise in areas like product management or UX design,” she says. “We’re also thinking a lot about looking to customer experience methodologies for how we think about user experiences and journey mapping.”

Ultimately, this integration is reshaping roles, saving time and changing the way employees engage with creativity in their work.

“We really see AI as a collaborative colleague, versus it coming in and replacing work,” Arnish says. “It's creating an opportunity to help me save time by taking things off of my plate that might normally take me hours to do.”

That efficiency boost creates space for HR to work strategically. A prime example of this is a scenario familiar to many HR leaders: a difficult question that typically requires multiple consultations, research and time. Arnish, however, was able to use a chatbot to give her an evidence-based answer in seconds.

“Just yesterday, I leveraged a particular chatbot that we had built within my team that helped me answer a question related to career development that I’d been deeply pondering for the last number of weeks,” she says. “The insights that the chatbot served up were absolutely astounding, and the outcomes from that really will play a critical role in how we think about shaping our future product roadmap around career development.”

Balancing speed, scale and responsibility in AI adoption

To experiment with AI safely and progressively, Google has launched an internal initiative known as the AI Garage.

“This garage, or our AI Lab, is there to test potential HR applications of AI quicker than we would have been able to previously,” Arnish says. “Right now, they are currently identifying processes and tasks that are unique to specific roles across HR that AI can actually supplement,” she says.

Recruiters, HR partners, benefits specialists – each function is looking for helpful ways AI can streamline tasks and enhance efficiency. A critical element, however, is ensuring that people remain at the helm. One area of impact is recruiting and internal operations where, amid hundreds of thousands of annual applications, AI helps to quickly identify strong candidates that a human alone might have missed. Yet, it's experienced professionals who make the final decisions.

Arnish acknowledges that all this innovation rests on a fragile condition: trust. Data privacy and algorithmic bias are front-of-mind, and that’s not by accident.

“Really making sure that when you are approaching AI in your HR workflows, you are recognizing concerns around the impact on roles,” she says. “Google has a set of long-standing AI principles designed to maximize the upside of AI but really safeguard against the risks.”

Part of safeguarding that upside is keeping the human in the loop.

“Even in a company like Google, we will always have the human in the loop,” Arnish says. “The relationship between the leader and the employee can become deeper, more connected, more insightful; AI doesn’t replace that.”

And AI’s impact isn’t limited to internal operations. Google is taking its workforce development philosophy to the public.

“In Canada, we just announced the $13 million AI Opportunity Fund from google.org that will help bring AI skills to more than 2 million Canadians,” Arnish says.

Shaping the future of work through AI

Looking ahead, Arnish sees HR playing a central role in defining what work becomes – not simply reacting to tech trends but setting the pace.

“Where I would aspire to be five years from now is to have Google be in a position where we have the deepest insight possible about the talents that we have today,” she says.

But regardless of the organization or its size, Arnish’s advice when it comes to AI is clear: a strong foundation is non-negotiable. Pilot programs, iteration and cross-functional collaboration are no longer optional—they’re core competencies.

“You want to start slow, make sure that you're using AI, with thoughtful intention,” she says. “Really make sure that those [data systems] are in order, because with AI, you have to be able to trust the information that it is interacting with.”

And as AI continues to accelerate, one relationship becomes critical: “The relationship between the CHRO and the CIO now is really, really crucial in this environment,” she says.