SAP has been in the news recently. A few weeks ago, its CEO Christian Klein gave an interview in which he said that the software provider is aiming to reinvent jobs rather than eliminate them in favour of AI. Reporting that the German company was encouraging employees to cultivate new functions for themselves, and that its headcount had actually grown by 3,500 since 2023, Klein’s remarks went against the grain of much catastrophising about AI. They also mirrored earlier remarks from SAP’s COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser, who went on record in May to suggest that fears of an AI jobs-apocalypse are overblown.
If nothing else, these comments suggest that SAP holds its employees in high esteem. This is the impression also given by its Head of People and Culture in the UK, Meredith Van Eeuwen, who tells Raconteur that its staff remain the pivotal centre around which it adopts and develops new technologies. This is particularly evident in its career pathways, for example, where AI has actually enabled new hires to focus more on learning and using higher level skills.
Firms no longer need to assign routine administrative tasks to junior staff
“With SAP’s focus on ethical AI and ensuring the human is always in the loop, early career talent can build those professional foundations such as attention to detail and critical thinking by reviewing and improving AI outputs,” she says, explaining that the ability of AI to handle routine tasks means that SAP has been increasingly able to develop its new recruits – and more experienced workers – in more valuable ways.
As SAP UK’s Head of People, Van Eeuwan is responsible for adapting the company’s workforce to the changing technological landscape. And change has certainly become a regular feature at SAP, which launched its unified enterprise AI platform, the Autonomous Enterprise, in May, building on the preexisting SAP Business AI Platform and SAP Autonomous Suite. Yet she affirms that her role is likely to remain fundamentally the same for the foreseeable future, shaping SAP’s people strategy in a way that fosters a culture of innovation, inclusivity and high performance.
A mediator between high-level corporate strategy and employee development
Van Eeuwan has over 20 years of experience in HR leadership. She secured her first role with SAP in late 2008, when she joined SAP SuccessFactors as a regional account manager tasked with helping enterprise clients implement HR systems that harnessed data and digital tech to improve workforce planning. From there, she joined Dow Jones in 2009, first as a HR manager in its New York City office, and then relocating to its London subsidiary to become Director of HR EMEA in August 2010, and then VP of HR EMEA in 2017.
Early career talent can build strong foundations by reviewing and refining AI outputs
She says, “Most of my career has been spent in technology-driven businesses where transformation is constant and culture and skill development becomes a defining differentiator of success.”
After Dow Jones, she served as VP of People & Culture at the IT services firm Sterling between 2019 and 2025. She then enjoyed a one-year stint as an independent HR and strategy consultant, before joining SAP UK as its Chief People Officer in April of this year. Despite the variety of these roles, she affirms that they overlap in important ways. “Each of these experiences were invaluable in showing how leadership, culture and talent strategy intersect — whether that’s navigating complex, multi-market HR agendas across regions, or supporting fast-paced, high-growth environments,” she says.
Similarly, her new role at SAP UK is focused on being the mediator between high-level corporate strategy and employee development, engagement and productivity. As she explains, “What continues to motivate me is the opportunity to translate strategy into something meaningful for employees day to day, helping them to grow, succeed and feel connected to SAP’s wider purpose.”
In addition to attracting the best available talent, Van Eeuwen is responsible for developing and upskilling SAP’s workforce. Given the growing importance of AI, much of this work unsurprisingly revolves around training employees to use LLMs effectively. “A core focus is ensuring our people are appropriately skilled for an AI-powered future,” she says. “This includes building enterprise-wide fluency and responsible AI, deploying role-based learning journeys, enabling teams with secure, governed AI tools and copilots, and embedding coaching, mentorship, and communities of practice so colleagues can apply AI confidently and ethically in real work.”
How recruitment is changing in an age of AI
While much of the narrative surrounding AI has focused on how it might deprive graduates and younger people of jobs, Van Eeuwen affirms that SAP UK runs several talent programmes aimed at securing a steady supply of future employees. These cover secondary school and university students, as well as people at the beginning of their careers. “Our University Alliance programme with partnerships with the likes of Nottingham, Sheffield Hallam and Portsmouth universities also help align curriculum development with evolving employer needs,” she says.
And once new hires walk through SAP’s doors, AI is helping to make their jobs more engaging and rewarding, according to Van Eeuwen. “Organisations no longer need to assign administrative tasks such as notetaking and minutes preparation to junior staff,” she says. “There is a shared understanding that we can engage new starters in a much more valued way, enabling them to contribute to higher value, more strategic outputs from the outset — while still developing strong professional foundations.”
Leaders must show where technology adds genuine value and give teams the confidence to use it
Because AI is already changing how people work at SAP, the company’s demand for AI-fluent candidates has been accelerating, even at entry level. Van Eeuwen points out that SAP’s own research found that, in the US, 87% of CHRO’s expect new employees to be comfortable with AI from the outset of their employment, while 88% believe that AI helps recruits to adapt to their roles more quickly. “AI is also reshaping how early talent finds work in the first place, with 52% of current job seekers already using AI to support their job search,” she adds.
In terms of how AI and other technologies will shape work in the future, Van Eeuwen predicts that the speed of business could accelerate markedly. This is not only because AI enables organisations to work faster, but also because it enables them to transition from merely reacting to change to actively anticipating it. “Businesses can now sense signals earlier, understand their impact, and take action with the right context and confidence, while keeping people at the heart of critical decisions,” she explains. “That means less time navigating systems and coordinating work, and more time on the strategic thinking that moves the business forward.”
HR helps translate technological innovation into greater productivity
As for HR, AI will have the crucial role of reducing operational friction, enabling teams to focus more on providing targeted learning and career development, as well as pastoral care to employees. Van Eeuwen adds, “It will automate repetitive processes like administrative onboarding tasks, routine HR queries and data entry, while enabling faster access to workforce insights and more consistent, data-led decision making across the employee lifecycle.”
HR plays a key role in making the deployment of AI possible, not just in terms of providing training, but in communicating the benefits of new tools. “A successful AI strategy means bringing people with you,” she explains, adding that HR and other leaders must convey where AI can add value and must provide the confidence to use it.
“At SAP, we launched our Let’s Work the AI Way campaign in October 2025, which is an internal adoption and enablement programme,” she says. “This coincided with SAP defining its full agentic AI roadmap, enabling employees to see and feel what AI agents do within their day-to-day workflows.”
By facilitating cultural change, HR departments ultimately enable technological changes to be more effective and more lasting. And if the future brings another generation of innovations that supersede LLMs, Van Eeuwen and her team will be ready to deliver the organisational changes needed to translate them into greater productivity.
SAP has been in the news recently. A few weeks ago, its CEO Christian Klein gave an interview in which he said that the software provider is aiming to reinvent jobs rather than eliminate them in favour of AI. Reporting that the German company was encouraging employees to cultivate new functions for themselves, and that its headcount had actually grown by 3,500 since 2023, Klein’s remarks went against the grain of much catastrophising about AI. They also mirrored earlier remarks from SAP’s COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser, who went on record in May to suggest that fears of an AI jobs-apocalypse are overblown.
If nothing else, these comments suggest that SAP holds its employees in high esteem. This is the impression also given by its Head of People and Culture in the UK, Meredith Van Eeuwen, who tells Raconteur that its staff remain the pivotal centre around which it adopts and develops new technologies. This is particularly evident in its career pathways, for example, where AI has actually enabled new hires to focus more on learning and using higher level skills.
Firms no longer need to assign routine administrative tasks to junior staff
