The decisions leaders make today will shape the success of their organizations tomorrow. With hybrid work and AI rewriting the rules, IT leaders are expected to move beyond managing technology and take the lead in driving transformation.
In a recent conversation Faisal Masud, division president of HP Digital and Lifecycle Services, sat down with Brian Elliott, CEO of Work Forward and cofounder of Future Forum, to discuss why CIOs must take a leadership role in shaping the future of work.
Their conversation emphasized that AI is transforming nearly every enterprise workflow and that CIOs must move beyond cost control and vendor management to become strategic leaders who drive productivity, employee experience, and growth. Below are three key takeaways from the discussion.
1. From vendor manager to experience leader
The CIO role has undergone a fundamental shift. The transition to hybrid work forced IT leaders to partner more closely with HR and workplace teams, rethink how hardware and collaboration tools are provisioned, and ensure that employees remain productive from anywhere. Once viewed as procurement experts and vendor managers, CIOs are now tasked with managing and optimizing the digital employee experience (DEX). As Elliott explained:
“The job kind of shifted underneath a lot of CIOs’ feet. It was once the procurement officer, the chief negotiator, and deal maker, then it became chief vendor manager, and then it turned into: How do I think about digital experience?”
Importantly, when leaders lead by example, organizations follow. Research by BCG found that managers who actively use AI set the tone for their teams, who adopt the technology at four times the rate of their peers. Today CIOs must embrace DEX and demonstrate how better tools and workflows translate into productivity and engagement.
2. Stop monitoring, start measuring outcomes
Another key takeaway is the need to move beyond productivity paranoia. This term describes leaders’ fears that hybrid and remote employees aren’t working hard enough, which leads them to track employee activity.
However, this approach is flawed and often counterproductive. Masud and Elliott agreed that productivity comes from aligning teams around clear outcomes and holding them accountable. According to Masud:
“It comes back to calibrating talent with what they’re capable of… I do believe that there’s going to be a pretty big transition here in thinking about what exactly employment looks like five years from now.”
If employees consistently deliver results across roles, maybe the issue lies in how success is defined. CIOs have an opportunity to shift organizations away from surveillance and toward frameworks like objectives and key results (OKRs) that drive measurable impact.
3. DEX is a pillar, along with ERP and CRM
First came enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, then customer relationship management (CRM) software. Now DEX has emerged as the third foundational pillar in the enterprise technology stack.
As Elliott noted, hybrid work has made it impossible to separate employee experience from business performance. Organizations need visibility into whether devices, applications, and networks are working as intended and whether employees can actually be productive with the tools provided. Much like ERP and CRM systems, DEX platforms are becoming indispensable for managing how work gets done every day.
The HP Workforce Experience Platform (WXP) is a DEX solution that brings together device management, endpoint security, employee surveys, collaboration experience management, and digital workspaces. With advanced capabilities, CIOs can diagnose and resolve issues before they impact work and they can also drive down IT costs and boost productivity and engagement.
Looking ahead, Masud believes teams will soon move beyond dashboards and toward self-healing and proactive systems that make IT invisible to the user. Also, the CIO of tomorrow will sit at the strategy table and link IT investments directly to employee engagement, business growth, and ROI.
The path forward
The future of work demands a new kind of CIO who can navigate uncertainty, harness AI, and put employee experience at the center of IT strategy. By leading the charge, such CIOs can transform IT from a cost center into a growth engine that drives long-term business value.