Put AI in next year's headcount plan. AI rarely causes immediate mass layoffs; the likelier effect is slower hiring.
Hire fewer where AI covers the work. The likelier pattern: the plan hires 50 instead of 100, and the staff you already have are upskilled.
Keep hiring where output is the limit. When engineering becomes more efficient and drives more revenue, boards can justify more R&D spending, not less.
Leave lines for brand-new roles. AI's third effect is entirely new jobs, so say where each one lands.
Write both options into the plan. Three columns: augmentation, automation, new work.
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AI lands in the hiring plan
Next year's hiring plan is where AI meets your headcount. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's August 2026 surveys asked service firms in the New York–Northern New Jersey region about AI and hiring. Among the service firms using AI, about 15 percent said they had hired fewer workers than they would have otherwise. Layoffs traced to AI were rarer still. The effect arrives as jobs not filled. Your plan either hires fewer or aims higher.
Option one: hire fewer
The likelier pattern: the plan hires 50 instead of 100, because AI covers the rest of the work. The existing team is upskilled, and the 50 never hired are the medium-term losses. A year earlier, the same surveys found the reduced hiring concentrated among jobs that require a college degree. Start your review there.
Growth on a shrinking headcount is possible. In the three and a half years since ChatGPT launched, a US insurer roughly tripled revenue and finished with fewer employees than it started with. Its founder held headcount flat with no layoff rounds: "fired thousands of people that we didn't hire." If growth lets you hold headcount flat, name the roles your plan stops filling.
Option two: keep hiring, aim higher
Where output is the limit, hold headcount. Raise what each hire delivers. In 2024, chief information officers adopting coding assistants typically aimed to get more done, not to fire staff. Many small businesses go without legal services because of cost, so cheaper, faster legal work may expand the market rather than shrink the profession. And when engineering becomes more efficient and drives more revenue, boards can justify more R&D spending, not less.
Run the 50-instead-of-100 version
Take the function with 100 hires in next year's plan: support agents, contract reviewers, whichever is largest. Three lines:
The plan calls for 100 new hires.
AI covers half the need.
The plan hires 50 instead, and the existing team is upskilled.
Lay both options against the three effects AI has on work:
Augmentation: existing jobs, faster and better
Automation: some jobs offloaded to AI
New economies: entirely new jobs
Hire 50
Upskill the existing team
AI covers the work of the 50 not hired
Add lines for jobs that don't exist yet
Hire 100, aim higher
Aim to get more done, not fire staff
Some work still offloads to AI
Engineering that drives more revenue can justify more R&D spend
Count all three columns, not just automation. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 has employers planning on both sides. By 2030, 77% of surveyed employers plan to reskill and upskill the existing workforce to work alongside AI. And 41% expect to downsize their workforce as AI's ability to replicate roles grows. The two are not exclusive. Where the volume of work is fixed, write option one. Where cheaper work would win customers priced out today, write option two.
Exercise (20 minutes): run both options for one function
Take the function with the largest planned intake in next year's hiring plan and run it through the card. Fill in what you know; you won't know every line yourself, and some numbers sit with HR or finance. Every line you can't fill gets an owner and a date before you close the card. The card download includes a filled-in example of a plan that isn't ready in two places, and why.
Next year's hiring-plan card (PDF)
A blank card and a filled-in example, one page each.
These three prompts go into your company's approved AI assistant. Use the first to fill in the card one row at a time; it won't guess a number for you. Use the second when the card is done, to hear the case against settling on either option yet. The third asks about your industry and your function and turns the lesson into a 30-day plan, with a checklist, rubric or brief for your boss if you want one. Use placeholders for company, system and people names; the help doesn't depend on them.
Prompt 1: Fill in my card with me
Paste this, then add your function in one or two sentences and the card below.
Prompt
Prompt from The AI Decision Course by Dr. Tony Hoang, host of The Artificial Intelligence Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts): tonyphoang.com/learn
Before you start: use your company's approved AI assistant, not a personal account. Replace company, system, supplier and people names with placeholders (Company A, System X) and round any figures. The help you get does not depend on them.
You are helping me fill in a next-year hiring-plan card for one function. The card is pasted at the end.
Rules:
- Ask me about one row at a time, in order, and wait for my answer before moving on.
- Write down only what I tell you. Never suggest, estimate or invent a number, a name, a yes/no answer or a decision for me, even if I ask you to guess. If I ask, say that this row needs a real answer and ask who could give it.
- If I don't know an answer, write "Not known" and ask who should find out and by when. Put that in the Owner / by when column.
- After the last row, show the whole card as a table with three columns: Question, Answer, Owner / by when. Then list every row marked "Not known" with its owner, and remind me that any unanswered row means this function's plan is not ready to go into next year's headcount plan.
My function in one or two sentences: [DESCRIBE THE FUNCTION AND ITS PLANNED INTAKE]
The card:
[PASTE THE CARD]
Prompt 2: Stress-test my card
Paste this, then your filled card.
Prompt
Prompt from The AI Decision Course by Dr. Tony Hoang, host of The Artificial Intelligence Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts): tonyphoang.com/learn
Before you start: use your company's approved AI assistant, not a personal account. Replace company, system, supplier and people names with placeholders (Company A, System X) and round any figures. The review does not depend on them.
Below is a hiring-plan card I filled in for one function. Act as a sceptical reviewer at the planning review and argue the case against committing to either option.
For each row:
- Say whether the answer is specific enough to act on (a number, a named role, a date) or too vague.
- Point out where answers contradict each other, for example the share of the work AI covers against the smaller hire count, or the upskilling dates against the date the intake starts.
- Say what evidence you would ask for before accepting it.
Do not rewrite my answers and do not invent facts about my function. If a row is blank or says "Not known", treat it as not ready.
Finish with: your recommendation (HIRE FEWER, KEEP HIRING, AIM HIGHER, or CARRY BOTH, DECIDE BY with a date), the three rows that most need work, and one question I should ask my team on Monday.
My card:
[PASTE YOUR FILLED CARD]
To paste the card into prompt 1, copy its rows from the PDF.
Prompt 3: Make it yours
Paste this and answer its four questions.
Prompt
Prompt from The AI Decision Course by Dr. Tony Hoang, host of The Artificial Intelligence Podcast (Spotify, Apple Podcasts): tonyphoang.com/learn
Before you start: use your company's approved AI assistant, not a personal account. Replace company, system, supplier and people names with placeholders (Company A, System X, Supplier B).
You are helping a leader apply one lesson to their own situation. The lesson's five decisions are below. Use only them and what I tell you. Never invent facts, numbers, vendors, laws or results about my organization or my industry. Where a number is needed and I have not given one, say what to measure and who should measure it, instead of guessing.
First, ask me these four questions, one at a time, and wait for each answer:
1. My industry, and roughly how many people work in my organization.
2. The function with the largest planned intake next year, in one or two sentences.
3. Where the planning stands today: nothing drafted yet, a headcount number already set, or the review about to close.
4. What worries me most about it.
Then give me the following. Keep it short and practical:
A. My plan. For each of the five decisions: one action written for my function, the role that should own it (a role, not a name), and what should be done within 30 days. If my industry makes a decision harder, for example regulated roles, union agreements on headcount, or customers priced out of the market today, say which decision and why in one sentence.
B. Three questions to ask my team on Monday, specific to my function.
C. Ask me which one I want: a checklist for the hiring-plan review, a rubric to score which option fits each function, or a one-page brief for my boss. Then write it, and finish with a prompt I can paste later to update it.
Mark anything that rests on an assumption with "(check)".
The five decisions:
1. Put AI into next year's headcount plan: AI's likelier effect is jobs not filled, so the plan either hires fewer or aims higher.
2. Hire fewer where AI covers the work: the plan hires 50 instead of 100, the existing team is upskilled, and you name the roles the plan stops filling.
3. Keep hiring where output is the limit: hold headcount and raise what each hire delivers; engineering that drives more revenue can justify more R&D spending, not less.
4. Leave lines for brand-new roles: AI also creates entirely new jobs, and the plan says where each one lands.
5. Write both options in, in three columns: augmentation (existing jobs, faster and better), automation (work offloaded to AI) and new economies (entirely new jobs). Where the volume of work is fixed, write option one; where cheaper work would win customers priced out today, write option two.
Your company's assistant may answer differently, so read what it writes before you use it.
Check yourself
Support wants a bigger team; a pilot now drafts most of the replies. Which plan do you write?
Show the answer
Option one, unless cheaper support would win customers we lose today. Then the bigger intake is the bet.
No. Keep the intake, raise the target, and take the case for more R&D budget to the board.
One training line: reskill your people or hire AI-skilled talent?
Show the answer
Both. Upskill the staff you keep; leave lines for the new roles.
Your CFO wants a headcount cut out of AI savings. What do you bring back?
Show the answer
The two-option plan: where we hire fewer, where we keep hiring for output, and the lines for new roles.
Sources
The advice draws on interviews with the founder of a customer-support AI platform, the head of a coding-assistant company, and the CEO of a legal-analytics company; all three sell AI.
World Economic Forum, "The Future of Jobs Report 2025," 7 January 2025, chapter 4, "Workforce strategies." (https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/in-full/4-workforce-strategies/) Stated plans for 2025–2030 from the Future of Jobs Survey 2024: 1,043 unique responses from large global employers representing more than 14.1 million employees across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies, surveyed May to September 2024. Plans, not actions; respondents came through WEF's networks, not a random sample; the 77% and 41% are not exclusive, and the digest rounds the 41% to 40%.
Jaison R. Abel, Richard Deitz, Natalia Emanuel, Ben Hyman and Nick Montalbano, "Are Businesses Scaling Back Hiring Due to AI?," Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Liberty Street Economics, 4 September 2025. (https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025/09/are-businesses-scaling-back-hiring-due-to-ai/) August 2025 surveys of service firms and manufacturers in the New York–Northern New Jersey region; shares are of AI-using firms, and the prior year's expected layoffs mostly did not happen.
Jaison R. Abel, Richard Deitz, Natalia Emanuel, Ben Hyman and Nick Montalbano, "Businesses Are Using AI to Transform Work, Not Cut Jobs," Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Liberty Street Economics, 1 September 2026. (https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/09/businesses-are-using-ai-to-transform-work-not-cut-jobs/) Same region and survey design; among AI-using service firms, 4 percent had laid workers off in response to AI over the past six months and about 15 percent had hired fewer workers than they would have if not for AI use.
Firewall with Bradley Tusk, "Fear Is Not Going to Save Us From AI," first released 11 June 2026; speaker Daniel Schreiber, co-founder and CEO of Lemonade. (https://www.firewall.media/episodes) His figures are his own, not audited: in the three and a half years since ChatGPT launched, roughly tripled revenue, gross profit up more than tenfold, about 1.5 million customers added, and fewer employees than when ChatGPT appeared, with no layoff rounds. Lemonade markets itself as built for AI.
A board member expects AI-driven layoffs next year and wants the hiring plan built around them. What do you tell them is likelier?
Your largest planned intake is 100 contract reviewers and AI covers half the need. You write the hire-fewer option. What else goes in?
Invoice processing has a fixed volume of work. Cheaper legal work would win small customers priced out today. Which function gets the keep-hiring option?
Your draft plan counts only the jobs AI will take over next year. What does the lesson say is missing?