HR in a Black Mirror World: When the people profession gets... too evolved

Imagine this: It's 2035. Your manager doesn’t do your appraisal,  your AI-enabled mirror does.

It flashes red when you’re underperforming and delivers coaching tips in the voice of your former line manager (who was made redundant last year). Welcome to the dystopian corner of HR, brought to you by the Black Mirror episode that hasn’t aired yet. The people profession is changing...fast. We’re embracing tech, data, AI, and automation. We’re becoming more strategic, more visible, more embedded in the business than ever before. But with all this progress, there’s a question we don’t ask often enough: What happens if we evolve too far, too fast, without asking who all this change is actually for?

Inspired by the CIPD’s latest insight piece, The Evolution of the People Profession, this blog imagines an alternate (and slightly ridiculous) reality, a future where HR innovation loses its human edge. Think Black Mirror meets People Ops. It’s satire, yes. But sometimes exaggeration is the best way to see what’s really at stake.

Episode 1: Performance Reviewed In this imagined episode, performance conversations are gamified. Employees earn badges like Collaboration Queen and Data-Driven Dynamo, but anything under 4.2 stars puts you on a Watchlist. Peer feedback is real-time, automated, and brutally honest. Your development plan is now called your Streak, and your line manager gets a leaderboard update every Friday. It all sounds like progress... until your work life starts to feel like TripAdvisor meets The Hunger Games.  What if performance management kept the conversation but lost the humanity?

Episode 2: The Culture Algorithm Culture isn’t shaped by leaders anymore, it’s curated by an algorithm trained on Slack reactions, survey data, and tone-detection AI. Each quarter, it decides which values to amplify and auto-generates motivational posters featuring your dog’s name and your DISC profile. At first, it feels like magic. Then you realise it flagged you as “emotionally off-brand” because you used the word “meh” three times in a week. If culture becomes a content stream, do people still believe in it?

Episode 3: Recruit-Me CVs are filtered by AI for unapproved adjectives. Interviews are run by a hologram of the company founder, projected onto a swivel chair. Candidate scores are calculated using micro-expression tracking, eye-blink ratios, and your LinkedIn scroll history. It’s fast. It’s data-rich. It’s utterly terrifying. Are your recruitment systems helping you spot potential or just automating rejection?

Episode 4: PDP: Personalised Development, Predictively Learning has gone fully predictive. Before you even think about a new skill, your AI assistant has signed you up for “How to Lead with Authenticity in Hybrid Reality Environments.” You didn’t ask for it, but apparently your calendar had “low growth energy.” Your PDP updates itself based on passive listening during meetings. Coaching sessions are now pre-scripted. If your stress signals spike, a wellbeing GIF is instantly deployed. Growth is now mandatory, continuous, and conveniently sponsored by your wearable. When development becomes automated, do we risk removing the ‘personal’ from personal growth?

So, what’s the reflection?

The people profession is evolving, and that’s a good thing. But like any good Black Mirror storyline, this isn’t just a tale of tech and progress. It’s a reminder that not all innovation is equal and without care, even well-meaning changes can take us to places we didn’t intend to go. As someone who works in leadership, learning, and development, I’m all for using smarter tools and systems. But I’m even more interested in asking: What does this mean for the people inside the system? For me, the real evolution of the profession will be defined by our ability to stay human, even as we get more digital. To lead with judgement, not just metrics. To make space for people, not just performance.

HR’s future doesn’t have to be dystopian. With the right mix of curiosity, challenge, and conscience, we might just get this next chapter right. What decisions are you making today that shape the kind of people profession we’ll be proud to lead tomorrow?