Ex-H&M and Tia HR Chief: AI Cuts Are Creating Cost Tradeoffs

Laura Hammond watched a headcount triple from 67 to nearly 400 at women's health company Tia — and says the lesson stuck: "speed amplifies whatever leadership habits already exist, good or bad." After two decades leading people functions across the Canadian public service, retail giants H&M and Aritzia, and a fast-scaling health tech firm, Hammond now runs her own consultancy, The People People, advising leaders on the people decisions that shape growth.

Her core argument cuts against the workplace-change narrative: the fundamentals of leadership haven't moved nearly as much as the workplace itself has.

What do people actually need from leaders?

Government, retail and high-growth tech look nothing alike on the surface. Yet Hammond says employee needs have been "remarkably consistent": recognition, clear goals and expectations, autonomy, a safe and predictable work environment, and a sense of fairness.

Each environment taught her something distinct. The public service showed her the value of consistency and process. Retail, leading HR for H&M, delivered a blunt truth: "for an hourly employee, their store manager is the company." And Tia's growth spurt exposed how scale stress-tests existing habits.

Her diagnosis of why people quit is equally direct. "People rarely leave because of work. They leave because they don't know where they stand, don't trust that decisions are fair, or feel invisible."

What does 'heart-centred' leadership mean when decisions get hard?

Hammond, who brands her approach as heart-centred leadership, rejects the idea that it means being soft. "It means holding care and candour at the same time," she said. In practice: tell people the truth early, explain the "why" behind decisions, and treat them like adults.

She also warns against confusing kindness with avoidance. Letting a performance issue drift for six months, she argues, "isn't kind to anyone." The hard moments — restructures, exits, feedback conversations — are where leaders can't always change the outcome but control how people experience it. Trust built in those moments, she says, is what secures commitment during challenge or change.

Where are leaders getting AI wrong?

Hammond credits leaders for their willingness to experiment — testing AI tools, rethinking how work gets done, and treating flexibility as a matter of autonomy and trust rather than just location.

The failure mode is sequencing. Leaders lead with the tool instead of the people, framing AI as an efficiency or headcount story before discussing what it means for roles, skills and careers. The result, she says, is fear, uncertainty and stalled adoption.

She points to a pattern already visible in the market: companies cutting headcount only to add it back, while "the cost of AI tools and tokens mount and create situations of real tradeoffs for organizations." Return-to-office mandates show the same flaw — the decision gets announced, the reasoning doesn't, and employees end up sitting at office desks on virtual meetings.

Her sharpest warning concerns early-career talent. "The entry-level work where people used to learn the job is exactly what's being automated," she said. Organizations that don't redesign how people grow will face a talent gap in five years.

What breaks first when companies scale?

Two things, in Hammond's experience. First, the manager layer: companies promote their best individual contributors into leadership and give them no support, turning new managers into bottlenecks for engagement, performance and retention.

Second, the unwritten culture. At 30 people, culture lives in the founder's head and in daily access to them. At 300, it has to live in how decisions get made, which behaviors get rewarded, and how people are hired, paid and promoted. She tells leaders to protect three things: manager capability, fairness in people practices, and clear communication about where the company is going.

What has founding her own firm taught her?

"As an executive, I advised on risk. As a founder, I own it," Hammond said. That shift, she says, changed how she shows up for clients — she now understands from the inside what CEOs mean when they say every decision is both a business decision and a people decision.

Entrepreneurship has also forced discipline: saying no to work that isn't the right fit and no to growth that would compromise quality. The biggest change? She's no longer just an HR advisor. "I'm a fellow founder who knows how lonely that seat can be."

For operators, the practical takeaway is a checklist: fix the three quit-drivers first, support your new managers before they bottleneck, and design AI adoption around roles and careers — not headcount math.