HR’s journey with AI is a real thrill ride, full of excitement about its potential to transform work but also tinged with anxiety about moving too fast or too slow. Finding the right pace is a delicate balance with every twist and turn bringing both opportunity and risk. At the From Day One’s Manhattan conference, industry experts discussed how AI is already shaping HR workflows, and how leaders can harness its power thoughtfully and effectively.

For many HR leaders, AI is part of the daily workflow. But integration doesn’t equate to the end of experimentation. “We’re far along in using it, but there’s definitely a lot of experimentation to figure out how far we can push it,” said panelist Courtney McMahon, head of global people analytics at Colgate-Palmolive.

At Colgate-Palmolive, employees across the company have access to Gemini, Google’s AI tool. Adoption is high and cross-functional, with active conversations happening every day, says McMahon. “We’re a Google shop, so Gemini right now is the hot thing, and we’re talking about it on a company-wide chat every day,” she said. This regular exchange allows teams to share how they’re using the tool, what’s working, and where it still falls short.

Still, McMahon emphasized the need for caution. “This is changing every day, right? We see different articles about what’s going on with AI every day,” she said. That pace of change requires thoughtful oversight. For example, when Gemini is used to summarize employee survey comments, it often pulls from only the first few hundred responses. Without the right prompting, deeper insights may be missed.

“You have to keep iterating on the prompt in order to get it to look at more and more comments,” McMahon said. With the right approach, AI can enhance the work, while still requiring human judgment.

Watch for AI Security and Policy 

As organizations adopt AI tools more broadly, balancing innovation with security is proving to be a complex task. Panelist Anita Jivani, global head of innovation at Avanade, highlighted a growing concern: employees using generative AI tools like Gemini or Perplexity on their personal devices when corporate guidelines feel too restrictive. 

“There’s a huge security risk with the guidelines and policies,” she said. “What we’re seeing in the market is the guidelines need to be structured in such a way that they’re encouraged to be used, but not so tight that what I call the black market of AI is being used.”

When access is limited or unclear, employees may turn to their private browsers to get around internal controls, posing serious risks to data privacy and organizational trust. The challenge, according to Jivani, is designing governance that enables use without driving it underground. “You actually don’t want people to then go into personal devices to do things from a security play,” she said.

HR leaders must strike the right balance between freedom and control. Guidelines should be specific enough to protect sensitive data while still encouraging experimentation within safe boundaries. “How do you encourage it while making sure there’s guidelines, while making sure everything’s on the computer, on the company’s cloud?” she asked. “Really way, way harder to do in practice.”

HR Must Advocate for People Amid Change

As AI adoption accelerates, HR leaders have a critical role to play in implementing new technologies and in protecting the people impacted by them. Panelist Annalyn Jacob, EVP of talent analytics and HR operations at IPG, emphasized the growing tension between innovation and humanity. “The business is seeing this as an opportunity to cut costs and save money,” she said. “That knee-jerk reaction is starting to accelerate.”

Jacob warned that without thoughtful intervention, organizations risk leaving people behind in the pursuit of efficiency. “As AI reshapes industries and eliminates certain roles, especially entry-level jobs in areas like marketing and media, HR must help define new pathways for workforce development.

HR’s voice matters now more than ever. As Jacob pointed out, we may be witnessing a shift as disruptive as the industrial revolution, and the choices made today will shape the future of work for years to come. “I think as HR professionals, it’s important for us that when we are in the rooms, when these conversations are happening, that we are able to help bring in that context,” Jacob said.

Human-Crafted Input Remains Critical

As AI tools become more integrated into performance management and employee recognition, it’s tempting to let automation take the lead. But panelist Omar Pradhan, employee engagement and HR technology strategist at Workhuman, cautions against relying too heavily on generative AI for content that should reflect genuine human insight.

“We originally were thinking about creating some sort of a writer’s block tool,” Pradhan said, referring to a tool that could generate recognition or performance review comments. “But then we kind of backed away from that as a company, because we knew that on the back end that those descriptors, those adjectives, those things might not be actual behaviors.”

Instead, Workhuman is investing in tools that support rather than replace human input. Their approach encourages authenticity and specificity by coaching users to reflect more deeply. “Almost like you’re creating a password on a website. It’s a little progress bar of ‘keep building into it, lean into that, you’re almost there,’” Pradhan said. 

This attention to quality matters when those comments are later used to surface talent, assess team fit, or identify potential leaders. AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. “If a recognition message was written by AI 50% or more,” Pradhan said, “it might not map to a skills profile” in a meaningful or accurate way.

In an era when data drives so many talent decisions, preserving the human voice, especially in moments of recognition or performance feedback, is essential.

What of Entry-Level Employees?

Already, AI is actively transforming how companies assess and hire entry-level technical talent. Panelist Catherine Hill, VP of marketing at CoderPad, says that AI is deeply embedded in their product to help employers identify the very best engineers right from the start. “We help companies to assess technical talent and to really help with hiring the very, very best engineers,” she said. 

This integration allows hiring teams to streamline what has traditionally been a time-consuming process, making it easier to evaluate candidates’ real-world skills through interactive coding challenges rather than relying solely on resumes or interviews. There’s a natural synergy between AI and talent assessment platforms, Hill says.

As AI tools continue to evolve, they are setting new standards for entry-level hiring. Instead of relying solely on traditional qualifications, companies now leverage AI-powered assessments to gauge candidates’ problem-solving abilities and adaptability in real time. This shift is reshaping expectations for new graduates and junior engineers entering the workforce, who must be prepared to demonstrate their skills through AI-driven platforms.

As they view how engineers use the platform, that gives recruiters insight into candidates’ actual capabilities rather than just theoretical knowledge, says Hill. The result is a more meritocratic, data-driven hiring process that better matches candidates to roles where they can thrive. 

Ultimately, AI is not replacing entry-level jobs, Hill emphasized. Rather, it is redefining how talent is discovered and evaluated, ensuring the workforce of tomorrow is prepared for the demands of an increasingly digital world.

Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.

(Photos by Hason Castell for From Day One)