Strategic HR

What AI means for productivity and careers: Autodesk HR leader shares tips

|5 September 2025

AI is changing a lot of things about the way we work - but that's a good thing, says Autodesk global talent acquisition lead Jinhee Kuhl.

AI and automation used to be a niche technical area, one reserved for people with highly specific digital and tech skills. But today, AI is for every role, says Jinhee Kuhl, VP of global talent acquisition at software maker Autodesk.

"AI literacy has gone beyond just coding and development," she said in a conversation with People Matters during a visit to Singapore. "Now, it is for every role. For all employees, it's become so important for productivity - helping with the repetitive tasks that everyone has."

"For managers, it's important to think critically around the where and the how of using AI - how can it have the most impact in the organisation? And at the next level up, for senior leaders and executives, long-term strategic thinking becomes the focus. Where can we make investments? Are we continuing to do the right thing if we make certain investments?"

How to look at AI through a productivity lens

Using AI effectively requires us to look at what the company values and what is needed for the work, Kuhl feels - and that can be an entire project in itself. She used the example of Autodesk being a software developer catering to industries that often have technically complicated requirements: a lot of emphasis is placed on creativity, innovation, and being ingenious. All of these things are notoriously difficult to measure, but we have to start somewhere.

"I think that productivity with AI begins with finding out how we can use it in our daily workflows to help ourselves be more creative and more innovative."

Autodesk, she shared, has set up a task force within its people organisation specifically to look into how to identify metrics and measure productivity. And uniquely, it's led by someone from the data and insights team who can bring additional perspective into best practices and industry benchmarking.

In addition, Autodesk is actually conducting micro-pilots for internal training around AI literacy and productivity: a large selection of hour-long training sessions on various AI-related topics that every employee can access. Although this is still a work in progress, the uptake has been encouraging, she said.

And as an extra value-add to the broader community, Autodesk is doing its part as a big industry player to push literacy in AI skills: offering free software to educators and students so that the early-career population can get a head start in familiarising themselves with the tool.

"I think that's a wonderful thing we're doing for that early-career population," Kuhl said, and then added frankly: "It helps us too, because we want to get their feedback on the AI parts of our tool, and we want to make sure that they're early adopters so that when they're out of school, they're going to be continue being our advocates."

Where will that early career population stand when AI is widespread?

A common concern emerging now is how fresh graduates and early-career jobseekers can stand out in the market, especially with AI capable of replacing workers at their skill level. Kuhl is tentatively optimistic, however. A recent report that Autodesk released on the interaction of AI and jobs found, interestingly, that the design skillset is surpassing technical skills, and that, she feels, is somewhere that humans will always have an edge.

"It's always been about coding and software engineering, but now our report shows that design is the most important," she said.

"To share my personal experience, I have a son who graduated from university last year with a major in illustration and a minor in game arts. And he would love nothing more to be a content artist. But guess what he's doing? The company that he is interning for is having him do design. He's had to pivot, because the company needs him to use his skills to do UX, UI, video editing. I love that this internship is exposing him to collaboration and tough decision making and human centric skills."

Her advice to other fresh graduates in the same boat:

"What you thought your career path would be is going to change. It's imperative to stay on top of technology and be a little bit more broad in your thinking as well."

Measuring performance when AI enters the picture

Autodesk is now embarking on a journey to reshape how performance management is done with AI as a factor - the total rewards function, Kuhl shared, recently hired a domain expert to review the way performance is assessed, including AI fluency and proficiency.

"When you think about the different roles that emerged in our AI job report, the roles like prompt engineers or AI content creators, managers are going to now have to assess how this employee is using AI for different tasks. It's not going to be just directly what that person is doing, but how they are leveraging and prompting AI to have that impact," she predicted.

Evaluating how people do things rather than just their output is not a new concept, and Autodesk is in fact already incorporating this in the hiring process, Kuhl explained: several years ago, the company launched a cultural transformation that has since culminated in a Culture Code with new values. Assessing for and interviewing against those values is now a company-wide part of hiring, and any AI-driven changes to performance management will be treated similarly.

The prospect of so much change in so many areas seems daunting, but Kuhl has some thoughts about how to handle it - especially for the HR function, which needs to pivot very quickly in response to market shifts and business needs. "I've been at Autodesk almost three years, and my goodness, there's been so much of change - good change," she said.

"A lot of times people think change is a negative word. But I think of change as a sign that we're flexing. Change means that we are adapting to the external environment. Our CPO has set the tone that we as an organisation need to be flexible and always be thinking business first. A lot of our strategies in the HR organisation are tied and aligned to the business, and that helps us understand the why. Because, when it comes to change, understanding the why is really important."

Some final tips for business and HR leaders alike

To the business leaders:

"Be open and transparent, and especially for the HR function. Bring us in early. If we are at the front end, we can bring in the necessary data, we can help influence, we can create impact, we can advise and guide. That's the most critical thing. Form that strong partnership early and often, and be transparent."

To the HR leaders:

"I think that there are times when we need to have more backbone and give the business leader a friendly reminder that we can be a good partner in this. Words matter. And so the way that you show up to a business leader, the way that you talk about being a partner instead of being a support, those things make a difference over time. So don't be shy, use your backbone, use your voice to say, hey business leader, I'm your partner. I can help in this. Let's have a conversation."

Topics

#Artificial Intelligence

Author

Mint Kang