"By focusing on what surrounds work, we’ve forgotten work itself."

According to the opinion piece by Benoît Serre in Le Monde (September 2025).

A statement that chilled the HR community

This statement can be summarized in one line, and it sent a chill through the French HR community in September 2025. Benoît Serre, deputy president of the ANDRH and co-president of Cercle Humania, published an opinion piece in Le Monde with a striking title: "By focusing on what surrounds work, we’ve forgotten it as such.

To understand the significance, one must grasp what he is addressing: fifteen years during which organizations have talked about employer branding, QVCT, well-being, open offices, happiness officers, and fresh fruit on Tuesdays, and have almost never referred back to work itself. To the actual content of the days. To the quality of what is being done. To the meaning of the effort produced.

Benoît Serre's diagnosis

The central thesis is clear. While the HR function focused on the "periphery" of work (conditions, rituals, employer narrative), the "core" of work silently impoverished: fragmentation of tasks, loss of autonomy on the "how," multiplication of reporting and processes, loss of "pride in doing."

The result: employees do not suffer so much from the "conditions" as from the actual content of their work. Engagement surveys show this: one can have a nice office, an apparent good manager, and a growing mental fatigue because fundamentally, what we do no longer holds together.

Why this opinion piece resonates with AI in 2026

And this is where the current relevance of artificial intelligence comes into play. If we've spent fifteen years addressing the periphery and arrive in 2026 with an HR function disarmed regarding the very content of work, then AI does not enter a prepared terrain. It arrives in a landscape where no one in the management chain can precisely articulate what constitutes "good work," or what should remain human and why.

Immediate consequence: we automate by default. The tasks that go to AI are not chosen; they are relinquished. And those that remain for humans are not redesigned; they are the "leftovers" of automation. This is exactly the scenario in which human work loses its coherence, and therefore its meaning.

The quote to remember

"The best AI will never replace the ability of managerial transformation."

Serre has been repeating this phrase for several years. It carries particular weight today. If managerial transformation is what AI does not replace, then not addressing it means being exposed at the very moment we should be prepared.

Four practical implications for HR departments

1. Redefine “good work,” job by job. This is not an HR issue. It is a COMEX issue. As long as management doesn't know how to articulate what constitutes quality work in each of their jobs, AI will arbitrate in their place.

2. Actively choose what we keep human, and explain it. Passivity in the face of automation is a decision in itself. And it's never the right one because no one assumes it has been made.

3. Reinvest in the “pride in doing.” This is a term Serre often uses. It is also the one that has most diluted in processed organizations. Restoring it requires precise managerial work, not a communication campaign.

4. Move beyond training theater. E-learning training for AI does not restore meaning. Only short managerial cohorts, with practical application and internal certification, can achieve that.

The Mauritian and African trap

In markets like Mauritius, the trap is inverted but symmetrical. Many companies have never even started to "address the periphery" of work. They risk jumping straight from "nothing" to "AI," without ever structuring the very content of work.

The consequence is the same: an unprepared terrain where AI arrives like a wave that erases rather than rebuilds.

The link with the MOOOVE doctrine

The MOOOVE doctrine ("Building a system of opportunities, mobility & growth") stems exactly from this intuition of Benoît Serre: we do not help an organization by piling on peripheral offerings (events, training, communications). We help it by equipping the real decisions: who we recruit, how we decide, which managers we equip, what skills we build.

Signed Claudine, for MeetYourJob.