Smart Tools, Smarter Hiring: Using AI to Elevate Hiring Decisions
BY Ade Akin March 19, 2026Employees at BNY are not just learning to work with AI, they’re building with it. Johanna Bazos, the company’s head of executive recruitment, corporate and talent research engine, recently became “Eliza certified,” meaning she can now create autonomous agents on the firm’s proprietary AI platform.Since then, Bazos has built agents that assist with interview briefings, competency development, and feedback collection, all without writing a single line of code. “I am not, by any extent of the imagination, a techie or a coder at all,” Bazos said during an executive panel discussion at From Day One's NYC Half-Day talent acquisition conference. “But the tools that the company has provided all employees—and 98% of all employees have taken advantage of this—are really showing how leadership has democratized AI.”This grassroots adoption of generative AI was a recurring theme among the talent acquisition leaders gathered for the panel discussion titled “Smart Tools, Smarter Hiring: Using AI to Elevate Hiring Decisions,” moderated by Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop.Redefining the Recruitment Process as a Human-Centric JourneyFor many organizations, the shift to AI-powered recruiting has prompted a fundamental rethinking of how talent acquisition teams operate. At BNY, this has meant moving away from viewing recruiting as a series of transactional steps and toward seeing it as a continuous candidate journey that prioritizes human connection.“The most important transformation at BNY has been around mindset,” Bazos said. “It’s thinking about talent acquisition as a journey, rather than specifically as a process where you’re filling roles.”Using a journey-based approach allows recruiters at BNY to identify the “moments that matter” in the candidate experience, such as the first conversation, the offer presentation, and the onboarding process, and deliberately inject human emotion into these touchpoints.“Many of us have the same available tools through AI like Copilot, ChatGPT,” Bazos added. “It’s going to be about that differentiating factor of how human-centric you can be.”Panelist shared insights on the topic "Smart Tools, Smarter Hiring: Using AI to Elevate Hiring Decisions" at the NYC TA conference At Macquarie Group, that human-centric focus means using technology to free recruiters to focus on what matters most: conversations with potential candidates. “The most important thing that they can be doing is talking to candidates and having an advisory conversation with hiring managers,” Marjie Howie, the head of talent acquisition for the Americas at the financial services firm, elaborated. “The more time that they can spend on the phones with candidates, the better.”To help achieve that goal, Macquarie has developed internal chatbots that answer basic recruiting questions for hiring managers, such as how to open a job or obtain headcount approval, so recruiters don’t have to. The company also created a prompt library with dozens of detailed prompts that help to reduce the administrative load on recruiters, such as drafting call notes or synthesizing market intelligence.AI Adoption Starts With Leadership AlignmentLeigh Miller, senior customer talent advisor at Gem, says a sense of ownership is vital for the successful adoption of AI. She has seen what happens when such ownership is missing in her work as she helps companies implement new technology. It turns change management into an uphill battle.“When implementing Gem with customers, we’ve actually slowed down the implementation because recruiters weren’t bought in,” Miller said. “If they’re not excited, they don’t know why they’re getting it, they don’t see a problem in the first place; they are absolutely not going to adopt it.”At Macquarie, Howie’s team has avoided pitfalls by creating working groups that give recruiters a stake in the hiring process, ensuring leadership alignment extends beyond members of senior management to the people doing the work required daily. “The team feels like they own the process. It’s not happening to them. They’re part of it,” she said. “And I feel like that’s exciting for them. It’s not scary.”Navigating Compliance and Regulatory Risks in a Global TA FunctionOrganizations in heavily regulated industries require a more measured approach for AI adoption. Cassandre Joseph, the global head of TA and R&D at Novartis, oversees a team of over 200 people across multiple countries, each with its own compliance requirements. “There are just so many different regulatory risks in every one of the countries,” Joseph said. “Data privacy, particularly in Europe, is huge.”This reality has forced Novartis to take what Joseph calls a more thoughtful approach to AI adoption, slowing things down as others speed up, asking thorough questions about what each tool achieves, and bringing leaders from legal, compliance, and global data privacy into every decision."We want to understand: What are the algorithms that went into it? How were the algorithms built?" Joseph added. "We're really [focused] on layering and ensuring that we can peel back the layers to truly understand: Will this tool, yes, it might make us move a little bit faster, but will it create further regulatory risks for the organization from a legal standpoint?"The cautious approach to AI integration at Novartis hasn't prevented innovation. The company has deployed an AI coach that is available to the entire HR team, helping members to become better advisors by practicing different scenarios and asking better questions. The AI coach allows recruiters to work through challenging situations, without inputting identifying candidate information, to refine their approach.Bridging the Candidate Experience Gap Through Technology IntegrationOne of the most pressing challenges facing talent acquisition teams today is the perception gap between what employees think they’re providing and what candidates actually experience. Social media is filled with candidate complaints about being “ghosted” by employers or sending applications into what feels like a black hole. These are clear indicators of poor candidate engagement.Contrary to popular belief, AI isn’t automatically screening out most candidates. “We screen every application,” Joseph said. “There are a lot of legal reasons why we don’t adopt that technology just yet.” For now, every resume is reviewed by a human at Novartis.The real challenge is the volume of applications coming in. “Last year, we saw a 20% increase in applications, and I know it’s probably going to continue to rise,” Joseph said. “So what do you actually do?” She says her team is now exploring how AI tools can help create more human-centric messages and deploy them at the right time in hopes of avoiding situations where candidates receive rejection letters a few hours after applying.At Macquarie, the applicant tracking system (ATS) doesn’t auto-disqualify any candidates. “There is a human in the loop for the entire process,” Howie said. The organization works closely with its employer brand team to craft thoughtful rejection messages and invites candidates to join its customer relationship management (CRM) system, where they receive content about upcoming events and other company news. “We’re hoping that we’re using AI to bridge this communication gap, not strengthen it,” she added, demonstrating intentional technology integration that's aimed at enhancing the candidate experience.Workflow Optimization Through a Human-Centric LensAll four panelists agreed that the fundamentals of talent acquisition remain intact despite the rapid technological changes unfolding. Joseph warns against simply layering tech stacks upon each other without closely examining whether the underlying processes are sound.“We really need to get back to the basics,” she said. “At the end of the day, as folks within talent acquisition, it is: How do we help leaders make the right decisions to bring the right people into the organization? How do we help candidates find the right opportunities that work for them?”Miller framed it as the interplay of people, processes, and technology. “AI in recruiting is having a moment, rightly so,” she said. Miller says effective workflow optimization requires balancing all three elements.For Bazos, it comes down to remembering that behind every application is a person. “These are individuals with careers, families, trying to pay for mortgages and schools,” she said. “Carry that [idea] through the entire talent acquisition journey, keeping it human-centric at every step.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.
From Organizational Values to Employee Experience: Making Culture Tangible
BY Jessica Swenson March 18, 2026Creating an experience that your customers want begins with your employees, says Marc Paulenich, CEO at Hart, and it’s necessary to build a strategy that connects the two. Misaligned company values and broken policy promises can erode employee trust—a rising issue in today’s workplace, he says.“If you’re going to move an employee along this continuum from apathy to advocacy, you have to demonstrate with real proof, real evidence, those values being lived and ultimately shown, rather than told.” Paulenich said during a panel discussion at From Day One’s Washington D.C. conference moderated by Morning Brew HR reporter Kristen Parisi.Flexibility and Care for EmployeesSome may have the impression that organizational empathy and flexibility so popular during the pandemic has declined in recent years, but panelists agree that those values aren’t gone, they’ve just shifted in response to evolving business needs.Dr. LaTricia Frederick, global head of executive talent management at Cisco, says that earlier-career employees might not have inherent connection with their peers. Because of this, empathy for these employees needs shows up as intentional connection that rebuilds in-person relationships. “We actually want people to be connected to each other, to know each other, to be able to rely on one another.” When economic changes force adjustments in business models and financial realities, it can impact established programs and options. So, “what may look like a decrease in empathy is a change in business models,” said Cari Bohley, VP of talent management at Peraton.This introduces a new question. “Given that’s what is driving organizational behavior, how do we maintain the empathy? How do we meet our employees where they are?” One way that Peraton executed on this value was changing its EAP provider; utilization skyrocketed after the change.Leaders spoke about "From Organizational Values to Employee Experience: Making Culture Tangible" during the executive panel discussion Another key way to demonstrate company values is through flexibility for employees’ unique needs. Carlee Wolfe, AVP of leader development and organizational effectiveness for Hyatt, acknowledged that flexibility options vary based on role and emphasized localized care policies. “How are you understanding your employees differently and meeting them where their needs are? Maybe you have things already at the system level, but also—where can people lean in at the local level?”Paulenich recommends stewarding your employer brand as you would your external brand. Continued care and consistency during times of employee adversity is one way to do that. “Employees oftentimes aren’t looking for an ideology, they’re just looking for some coherence and consistency between what you say you’re going to do and what you actually did,” he said. “So ground yourself in what those values are going to be, hold true to them, and then reinforce that consistently across the organization.”Workforce Enablement With AIAI-generated job insecurity can add a new anxiety for employees, but Hyatt frames AI as a human-centered skill development experience rather than a play for workforce reduction. “AI is a piece of our commitment to care around developing skills, leveraging and inserting it where your role is,” said Wolfe.Cisco seeks to build AI fluency across the organization so everyone can understand its relevance and build skills. “We wanted to create a curriculum that allowed people to become fluent in AI, to understand what it is and what it offers,” Frederick said. To that end, the company has rolled out a multi-module companywide e-learning that includes baseline AI education along with a prompt library, low-stakes challenges, and function-specific prompt practice opportunities.Peraton also runs AI literacy academies, one for baseline knowledge and one for advanced technical team members, says Bohley. “We needed to give them access to training so they can understand how AI can enable the work that they do, how it can make their lives easier, and what some of the ethical AI guardrails are.”Paulenich sees AI training as a values test. To demonstrate investment in AI and commitment to innovation, companies need to make time for employees to learn. “This is a moment to say, are we going to stand behind that? Are we going to carve out the time for people to learn it? Are we going to take away some of the barriers to learning?”While many companies have structured standalone programs for broader experimentation, like Cisco’s sandbox days and quarterly planned learning time, others integrate AI through short, accessible learning moments that impact daily interactions. Wolfe suggests inserting AI into real workflows, providing ready-to-use prompts, and modeling AI use in live settings. Resistance to ChangeBohley reframes AI resistance as helpful data. “Resistance is the signal, not the problem. The problem is that we haven’t effectively communicated what the change is, what the value is associated with the change, how the change can improve, what you do.”Conducting listening sessions and asking real questions can reduce change fatigue by giving employees a sense of co-creating the process, says Paulenich. “By having that dialogue early on, people take ownership; it feels less like something that’s being put on them, and more like something they’re part of.”Grassroots structures like AI committees and champions can also help neutralize resistance. Cisco leverages early adopters and champions to generate excitement and engagement among team members. Peraton’s Community of Practice provides a place for interested employees to learn via speakers and other programming, and bring that information back to their teams.Looking forward, Frederick sees AI as a tool to create capacity for greater investment in relationships. “Trust and connection are going to be that much more important, and we have to use AI to help us build capacity so that we have more opportunity to build on the trust and connection that we have.”Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Designing Leadership Development for a Rapidly Changing Industry
BY Ade Akin March 18, 2026For Mark Monaghan, the future is something he’s eagerly awaited since he was a child, bonding with his father while watching Star Trek. The popular science-fiction show painted a positive picture of what a technologically advanced future could look like, and Mark couldn’t wait to be a part of it. “I remember even my mom, growing up one day, told me, ‘Mark, stop wishing your days away,’” Monaghan said during a fireside chat at From Day One’s February virtual conference. “And now it’s here. The future is here, and it’s happening so fast.”Monaghan, now the VP of global organizational development at iQor, a global customer experience company with 47,000 employees across 11 countries, is uniquely positioned to help shape that future. He detailed how his lifelong passion for science fiction has informed his real-world mission to use technology to deepen human connections through innovative leadership development during the session. The Data-Driven Foundation of CoachingiQor’s journey with advanced technology isn’t a recent pivot. Monaghan says the company purchased a big-data firm called Key Metrics about 12 years ago, long before artificial intelligence (AI) became a boardroom buzzword. This early adoption allowed them to begin analyzing the massive amounts of data generated in their 50-plus call centers, transitioning voice calls into digital data to identify patterns and coaching opportunities.Mark Monaghan, the VP of organizational development at iQor, spoke with From Day One's editor in chief, Steve Koepp (photo by From Day One)This data-centric approach became the bedrock of their internal coaching systems. iQor’s technology team built a proprietary coaching database called SCAN, with a new AI-integrated version, Coach IQ, on the horizon. One tool, dubbed “coach to coach,” uses AI to audit recorded coaching sessions between managers and supervisors, pinpointing specific areas for improvement. “We also learned a lot about AI, learned how the different models learned,” Monaghan said. “It’s just kind of soaked into us. We can use this.”The iLead Program: Measuring the ImmeasurableThe core of Monaghan’s work is the award-winning iLead mentoring program, which has earned 49 learning and development awards, including a gold Brandon Hall Award and a silver Stevie Award. The program operates on a leadership competency model that categorizes leaders from “leading oneself” to “leading a vision.” Each level is tied to five key competencies.iLead’s ability to measure development makes it revolutionary. Monaghan partnered with Fidello to build a system where mentors and mentees complete competency assessments. If a mentee rates themselves a five on “managerial courage” but their mentor gives them a two, a dashboard highlights the delta. The mentor can then assign a curated learning journey from iQor’s Skillsoft library that’s tied directly to that competency.“In Trinidad five years ago, we were able to identify that resolving conflict was the number one competency for our supervisors,” Monaghan elaborated. “We were actually able to move the needle from ‘needs development’ to ‘developed.’ That’s actually the first time I’ve ever been able to measure learning within the work environment that was measurable.”iQor uses a tool called “iTrack” to ensure these mentoring relationships are productive. iTrack allows mentees to confidentially rate each session. If scores dip, Monaghan’s team can investigate trends and offer gentle course corrections, ensuring conversations remain focused on career growth, instead of solely focusing on daily performance metrics.The Next Frontier: AI Mentors and Second Nature SimulationsAlways looking ahead, Monaghan is now introducing an AI mentor bot into the iLead system. The bot analyzes past session notes, assessment gaps, and learning assets to generate a tailored, 30-minute discussion agenda for mentor-mentee meetings. “As far as I can tell, this platform doesn’t exist anywhere else,” he added.Similarly, iQor is leveraging a simulation tool called Second Nature to train supervisors. Instead of just listening to calls, new hires can now practice complex conversations with realistic avatars. After the simulation, they receive complete feedback on what they could have done better, which can also be reviewed by trainers. “It’s a completely different level,” Monaghan said.Despite his passion for technology, Monaghan’s philosophy is firmly rooted in servant leadership. He worries about the loneliness epidemic and the role recent tech advancements have played in pushing people apart. His motivation now, in what he calls the “fourth quarter of his career,” is about legacy.“If I can help my leaders become servant leaders, help them remove barriers from their own lives, give them the confidence, recognition, and support that they need, you can really, really help people,” he said. “Every few months, I’ll get somebody from somewhere in my career that reaches out, and thanks me for a conversation. I think about that. That’s really what motivates me.” For Monaghan, the future of work isn’t just about using technology like artificial intelligence to build more efficient systems; it’s about using these tools to build more connected, capable, and confident people.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by PeopleImages/iStock)
The Competitive Advantage of Unlearning: Why Workforce Development Fails Without It
BY Kristen Kwiatkowski March 17, 2026Continual learning is a necessity, but you can’t adequately learn the new things you need without unlearning the things you don’t. When you fail to unlearn, workforce development will fail.Stephanie Shuler, chief people officer at LifeLabs Learning, discussed this topic during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s February virtual conference. She shared insights on the topic, “The Competitive Advantage of Unlearning: Why Workforce Development Fails Without It.”“This concept of unlearning is really interesting and important to me, because underneath all of our L&D and workforce investments, there’s this quiet failure that we really don’t talk enough about,” said Shuler. “We’re in this age right now where we’ve maybe never had as much learning coming at us at one time, more platforms, more certifications, leadership programs, sprints and academies, and yet, the behavior inside a lot of our organizations does not appear to be changing or having lasting, meaningful change at the same speed that our strategy expects or demands.”Additional pressures result from the influx of AI offerings and learning and development become more skill-based with little regard for behavioral conditions that are important to make these skills stick. “In order to have transformation, you need not just for skills to be learned, but for them to stick and be adopted,” she said. “The issue is not whether people know how to do it, or whether there’s enough training, it’s about whether we’re able to recognize the skills and norms that we’re not training on, and those are the skills and norms that no longer serve us as an organization,” she said. “Do we have the courage to stop doing what once worked, even if it creates friction?”Additions and Subtractions in L&DProblems arise when strategies are revised faster than the systems and norms that support them. New learning often builds on old foundations, optimized for the past rather than the future. Learning alone adds knowledge, but true transformation requires both addition and subtraction.Stephanie Shuler, CPO at LifeLabs Learning, led the virual session (company photo)A company can deliver an engaging, informative workshop, yet if the results don’t materialize or fail to create impact, the training may be judged ineffective. In reality, the old learning wasn’t unlearned, preventing the new knowledge from taking hold. “Unlearning is not just simply a mindset, it’s really a system skill,” said Shuler. “You can learn new skills, but you can’t translate those new skills into sustained behavior until you’ve acknowledged what is no longer going to serve you,” she said. There must be performance expectations up front along with feedback systems and recognitions for a managed transition. Additionally, traditional training can stall because the behaviors and systems are contradicting themselves. In addition to training, there must be transformation. Shuler used the example of AI. Companies are training their teams on AI concepts, but even though the training is completed, there must be additional layers to ensure the best possible outcome of the training completion. “Teams are using AI and they’re drafting faster, but then they’re going back to the same processes and the same workflows and standards, so you don’t really get any fundamental shifts from that.”Before launching a learning and development program, it’s crucial to examine the metrics that matter. Ask what drives career growth and what motivates performance so your programs align with real impact. Focus on what will actually stick. “The goal is going to be whether or not the skills are going to show up in how people work, especially when pressure hits,” said Shuler. “If it’s not repeatable, then it’s not going to stick, and if it doesn’t stick, it's not going to drive change.”Workshops are going to help reinforce new ideas, but it’s the systems that decide if the new ideas succeed and are put into motion. “It goes beyond training and the workshops, it goes toward design and culture questions that L&D absolutely should be a part of.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, LifeLabs Learning, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Kristen Kwiatkowski is a professional freelance writer covering a wide array of industries, with a focus on food and beverage and business. Her work has been featured in the Bucks County Herald, Eater Philly, Edible Lehigh Valley, Cider Culture, and The Town Dish. (Photo by BeritK/iStock)
How a Culture of Learning Equips the Workforce for What’s Next
BY Katie Chambers March 16, 2026When the pandemic hit, the hospitality industry lost many workers. At Soho House, the impact was dramatic, with roughly 80% of the workforce disappearing either temporarily or permanently. Rebuilding meant more than simply re-hiring. It offered an opportunity to rethink how people learn on the job. During an executive panel discussion at From Day One’s February virtual conference, Lauren Goodman, senior director of learning and professional development at Soho House, shared how the company redesigned its learning and development approach from the ground up, creating role-specific onboarding guides and self-paced training that allow employees to build skills while working rather than racing through rigid certification timelines. The results were striking. Turnover dropped about 25% year over year from 2022 to 2023, and the company now averages around 32% turnover, below the hospitality industry standard, says Goodman. The shift showed how personalized, flexible learning programs can play a direct role in retention.What Employees Want to Learn TodayBecause the modern workplace is changing rapidly, employees are looking for programs to help them keep up. “One of the big things that is top of mind for so many organizations now is agility and learning and how to be more adaptable and resilient,” said Priscila Bala, vice chair at LifeLabs Learning. “The half-life of many of the skills that we have is about 18 months. Cycles are compressing so much.” So, faster and shorter are better. “We don’t have people asking for those large, generic programs anymore. They want short, practical learning tied to the job, real-time feedback from their boss,” said Marcus Cazier, head of L&D, Americas, bioMérieux. This is also due to shrinking patience and attention spans, Goodman says. Plus, they are looking to the future: “They’re also looking for us not just to train them on their job, but that growth mindset as well.”Of course, AI is one of the factors driving rapid change, so employees are hoping to stay abreast of the latest technology. “At Autodesk, it’s primarily around upskilling and AI, also the impact that AI is having on both teams, individuals, and the organization, in addition to specific workflows and how workflows are changing as a result of AI integration and building an AI native mindset,” said Michel Riyad Nabti, senior director of learning & development at Autodesk. Panelists spoke about "How a Culture of Learning Equips the Workforce for What’s Next" during the virtual session (photo by From Day One)Employees are also preferring less structured programs, opting for self-directed opportunities instead. “We’ve also noticed that when we do optional micro trainings, we get a more positive response and a larger response than when we have a formalized, mandatory two-hour training,” Goodman said. “To me, it’s helpful to know we might still do the full two hours, but we’re going to do it in a ‘micro’ setting, so that way it’s more appealing to our team, and hopefully they retain it better, too.” But Bala emphasizes that L&D shouldn’t feel too optional or separate from other business initiatives—otherwise, it will fall by the wayside in favor of what feels like more pressing work priorities. “The folks that are really successful are the ones that actually make it as part of an execution strategy, instead of treating learning as if it’s a separate thing that happens outside of business,” she said. “When people learn individually, you don’t get their colleagues to recognize what’s happening. They don’t have a shared language, it becomes so much harder to reinforce what are really the norms that are going to help us be more efficient and effective.”Building an Effective L&D Program AI can be an important partner in providing up-to-date, personalized learning plans to employees. “We’re making a transformation from L&D being a content provider, Content Manager, to being a strategic partner across the enterprise, and part of that transformation is building a learning ecosystem,” Nabti said. Autodesk has “internally designed learning programs in addition to external vendor provider programs that can provide that kind of personalization and an impact to each individual when meeting them, where their needs are.” Launching a one-size-fits-all program can be tricky among corporations with a variety of roles, from front-of-house hourly workers to designers, executives, and beyond. “How do you ensure that L&D is consistent among all those employees?” asked session moderator Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder, the Off-Site Writing Workshop. Cazier shares that his organization, which does business all over the world, offers peer-to-peer review and training sessions where participants can practice customer conversations with each other and give real-time feedback, which becomes especially important when educating each other on cultural and linguistic nuances. “It’s allowing us to immediately embed what they’re learning into conversations. And then we are also connecting these behaviors to their bonuses and to their merit. We have begun holding leaders accountable for how they accomplish things and to ensure that they’re doing it in the way that the organization wants things done,” Cazier said. “We have aggressive growth goals, but we also have a high ethical standard, and we have a very deep, humanistic approach that we’re proud of, and we don’t want to lose as we try to evolve the organization.” Soho House, which employs everyone from dishwashers to graphic designers, feels this acutely. “Making sure that everyone feels really valued throughout that training process is critical,” Goodman said. “Getting buy-in from several key stakeholders [is also crucial], because it’s not just one aspect of the business, but it’s really what makes the whole business successful.” Corporate brand, values, and identities should be embedded in all L&D programs, including how those values “trickle down” across the team. Then, you can demonstrate how different skills contribute to and uphold those values during day-to-day work. Skills assessments should ideally be paired with L&D programs to establish a baseline of current skills and assess whether training has been effective. “What are the skills and competencies that we are mapping so that the learning can be intentional? People want their capability-building to be purposeful,” Bala said. Panelists agree that providing L&D opportunities is also important to building a culture of psychological safety and freedom, allowing workers to feel comfortable experimenting, growing, and forging their own path. “That’s so crucial in this inflection point that we’re currently in,” Nabti said. “Having a culture of experimentation and agility that’s aligned to the company’s culture is crucial for our success, and also detaching us from this expectation that every initiative has to be successful. That culture of experimentation frees us up to explore areas where we may have really big performance goals.” Asking employees what they want to learn is key to building a healthy, sustainable, and attractive L&D program. Soho House includes a question about learning goals in its performance reviews at all levels. “What is it that they want to learn so that we can help support their learning objectives as a human and as an individual? Having that as a requirement has helped to create that culture of learning and development,” Goodman said. “None of us knows it all. Let’s ask you, on a formalized basis, what [do] you want to learn at the end of the year? Did we commit to that as the employer? Did we help support you there? If not, how do we do better next year?”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by kasto80/iStock)
How Schneider Electric Is Powering a Skills-First Future
BY Grace Turney March 12, 2026Dina Yorke almost didn’t apply for the job that would help define her career. The role, a finance business partner position, was a perfect fit—except for one puzzling line in the job description: this person will manage HR. “What finance person manages HR?” she remembered thinking. It was her husband who finally pushed her to take the leap. “Put your name in. What do you have to lose?”Nearly 20 years later, Yorke is the VP of learning excellence at Schneider Electric, a 190-year-old global energy technology company. The unconventional path she took, crossing from finance to operations to global HR, reflects the very argument she now makes for why companies must stop organizing talent around rigid job titles and start building everything around skills.That philosophy took center stage during a fireside chat at a From Day One’s February virtual conference, where Yorke spoke with Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, a business reporter at the Seattle Times. Together they explored how AI and skills-based talent strategies are reshaping the future of work, from the shop floor to the executive suite.Skills as the FoundationSchneider Electric has made a strategic decision that most companies haven’t yet: skills are no longer just a component of HR; they are the organizing principle for everything the company does with its people, from hiring and development to internal mobility and, eventually, compensation. “We’ve made the decision strategically to put skills as the foundation of everything we’re doing in HR,” Yorke said.Yorke of Schneider Electric spoke with journalist Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton during the virtual session (photo by From Day One)Part of what makes this shift consequential is its scale. Schneider is in the process of expanding its global career architecture from 800 job codes to more than 3,000. This granularity allows the company to see, for instance, that a learning experience architect with two years of experience and one with twenty shouldn’t share the same code. They have different proficiency levels across the same critical skills, and the company needs to be able to track that gap.Across those 3,000 roles, Schneider has identified approximately 1,150 critical skills. Some, like digital fluency and AI literacy, cut across nearly every job in the company. Others are specific to engineering, sales, or learning and development. The goal is to give both employees and managers a clear map: here is where you are, here is where the business needs you to go, and here is how to get there.The Urgency Behind the StrategyWhy now? Yorke pointed to data from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 to frame the stakes. One-third of current skills will be obsolete by 2030. More than 60% of business leaders say the shortage of talent and skills is among their most pressing concerns. And nearly 60% of the global workforce will need to be reskilled or upskilled in the coming years.“We know we’re not going to be able to buy ourselves out of this,” Yorke said. “We’re not going to be able to go hire all the people out there. We have to invest in our people.” The calculus is straightforward: build, don’t just buy. That means creating the internal pathways, tools, and culture that help employees grow into the roles the business will need, before those roles become vacant or critical.AI as a Career Development ToolAt Schneider, AI is not an abstract future concern; it’s already embedded in the systems employees use every day to manage their careers. The company’s internal talent marketplace, called the Career Hub, allows employees to assess their own skills against their job code, identify gaps, and receive personalized recommendations for jobs, projects, mentors, or learning opportunities.A newer feature, the coffee chat function, offers something more casual than formal mentorship—a way for an employee to simply connect with someone at a different level or function to understand their career path. Soon, the platform will also generate learning recommendations directly tied to individual skill gaps, meeting employees wherever they are in their development journey.The company has also piloted and is preparing to roll out an AI coaching tool called Nadia, trained on Schneider’s own HR and management philosophy. Yorke described using it herself to prepare for high-stakes conversations, work through performance management processes, and rehearse presentations, all by talking out loud rather than typing. “I used to say, could I put a USB into my brain?” she said. “Now I just talk to Copilot or I talk to Nadia. They transcribe, and then I can edit.”Shop Floor to Top FloorOne of the session’s most striking points was Yorke’s insistence that AI capability-building isn’t just for knowledge workers. Schneider operates a global supply chain and manufactures its own products, which means it has to think about AI literacy across an extraordinarily wide range of roles and education levels.“Think about it: we go from the shop floor, because we do have our own global supply chain, all the way up to the top floors,” she said. The company has set up computer rooms in its manufacturing plants so that shop floor employees can access digital and compliance training. More pointedly, Schneider has built AI governance and ethics into its company-wide compliance curriculum. This training flows from executive leadership down to production workers every year.Yorke noted that many frontline workers have been using AI in the form of automation for years. “A lot of our employees have been working with AI for years,” she said. “Maybe when some people think AI, they automatically think generative AI. AI is machine learning. It’s automation.”Enthusiasm for AI at Schneider is matched by a structured approach to managing its risks. The company’s AI strategy is anchored in the National Institute of Standards and Technology AI Risk Management Framework, a set of principles that Yorke said shapes the company’s entire approach. Layered on top of that framework is a global committee overseeing AI strategy, an internal hub of AI experts who consult on both internal and external applications, and an ongoing risk management process.The company has also updated its trust charter (an internal governance document) to explicitly address data privacy and intellectual property in the context of AI. “We need to make sure it’s well protected,” Yorke said, noting that employees sharing content with AI tools must understand what protections are in place.For employees who feel nervous about the technology, Yorke’s approach is transparency over pressure. The key, she said, is being clear about what a tool is designed to do and, just as importantly, what it is not for. “We have to recognize that employees are going to be at different stages of comfort.” The company’s response is not to mandate adoption but to build a culture where curiosity is rewarded, experimentation is safe, and the resources to learn are widely available.The Human Skills Still Matter MostFor all the emphasis on technology, Yorke returned repeatedly to a simpler message: human intelligence is the anchor. The skills she credits most for her own career, critical thinking, communication, empathy, stakeholder management, are the same ones she believes will matter most in a world where AI handles data synthesis and routine tasks.“It’s our brains that are going to be the ones that help drive the decisions,” she said. The role of a person in an AI-augmented workplace isn’t to compete with the machine, but to apply judgment, context, and interpersonal skill to what the machine surfaces.Her parting advice to the audience was characteristically direct: invest in your human skills. Build robust governance before rolling out AI tools. Be transparent with employees about why and how the tools are being used. And above all, stay curious. “You don’t have to be the early adopter,” she said, “but get out there and try.”The internal barriers, she added, are almost always the most dangerous ones. After all, she nearly talked herself out of the job that changed everything.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by Barks_japan/iStock)
The Illusion of Choice: The Steps CHROs Must Take Before AI Decides for Them
BY Christopher O'Keeffe March 11, 2026Cliff Jurkiewicz opened his session with a simple image: two doors at an airport gate. One reads “Pilot On Board.” The other reads “AI Pilot.” “I want to know what door you’re walking through,” he said during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Washington, D.C. conference. For Jurkiewicz, the VP of global strategy and executive evangelist at Phenom, the scenario is more than a metaphor. He’s a longtime pilot himself, and aviation analogies come naturally. But the thought experiment illustrates a deeper point: many organizations still believe they have time to decide whether artificial intelligence belongs in their HR strategy. In reality, he said, that decision is already being made.“We think we have unlimited choice. We have time,” Jurkiewicz said. “We really don’t right now.”Flying With Outdated InstrumentsThroughout his talk, Jurkiewicz returned to the parallels between aviation and enterprise technology. Modern aircrafts are heavily automated, he says. Pilots today spend less time manually operating controls and more time monitoring systems and making high-level decisions. Enterprise organizations, however, often operate with far less modern infrastructure.Many HR technology environments have grown through years of mergers, acquisitions, and incremental upgrades. The result is a stack of disconnected tools layered on top of aging systems. Jurkiewicz described one hiring workflow where a candidate’s journey—from job search to onboarding—moves through multiple separate platforms, each requiring its own integrations. “So that was one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different systems and twenty different integrations,” he said. “And you haven’t even added your third-party software yet.”Cliff Jurkiewicz, the VP of global strategy & executive evangelist at Phenom, led the thought leadership spotlight The problem, he says, is not that any individual tool is flawed. It’s that organizations are trying to modernize old infrastructures instead of redesigning them. “What we’re talking about now is really slapping iPads on old cockpits and calling it a modern infrastructure,” he said. “And it’s not.”Amplifying the Human Value of WorkDespite the anxiety surrounding AI, Jurkiewicz emphasized that its role in HR is not about eliminating human work. Instead, AI should remove repetitive tasks so people can focus on more meaningful responsibilities.“How do we amplify the human value of work?” he asked. “How do we get rid of the busy work, the things that we shouldn’t be doing?”Tasks like interview scheduling, applicant ranking, and document processing can increasingly be handled by AI-driven systems. But removing administrative work does not eliminate the need for people. Instead, Jurkiewicz sees a shift in how HR functions are structured.“What is happening is a realignment of work,” he said.In that realignment, areas such as talent strategy, learning and development, and compensation planning will likely grow. These functions rely heavily on human judgment, insight, and relationship-building—areas where technology can assist but not replace people.Technology alone will not determine whether AI adoption succeeds. According to Jurkiewicz, the most important factor is culture. “The first thing we start with is culture,” he said. “Culture is the one driver of AI fluency that guarantees its success.”Organizations that successfully build AI capability typically start small, experimenting with tools across teams and measuring the outcomes. Often, high-performing teams are paired with struggling teams so both groups can test and learn from new workflows. These bottom-up experiments frequently reveal a surprising pattern. “Leadership happens to be the biggest blocker to building AI fluency,” he said. Managers and individual contributors often adopt AI tools more quickly because they see immediate benefits in their daily work.Another shift Jurkiewicz believes will accelerate is closer collaboration between HR and IT. As AI becomes embedded across enterprise workflows, workforce strategy and technology infrastructure can no longer operate independently. “People plus technology is going to be what drives outcomes in your organization,” he said.Some companies have already begun restructuring around this idea. Moderna recently combined HR and IT under a single leadership role focused on productivity and transformation. Even when formal restructuring isn’t possible, Jurkiewicz encourages organizations to align the two departments around shared success metrics.Looking Beyond EfficiencyWhen discussing AI adoption, many companies still frame the business case around efficiency. Automating administrative tasks can certainly reduce workload, but Jurkiewicz says that efficiency is only part of the story. “Efficiency is finite,” he said. “Revenue is infinite.”When organizations free employees from routine work, new opportunities often emerge—new markets to explore, new products to develop, and new ways to deliver value. Those opportunities, he said, often represent the real return on investment.Jurkiewicz closed his session by revisiting the language commonly used to describe human involvement in AI systems. Many technology leaders talk about keeping a “human in the loop,” meaning that people remain responsible for reviewing automated outputs. “You’re going to hear this term ‘human in the loop’ a lot,” he said. “It is wrong.”Instead, he prefers a different phrase.“The term they should be using is human in the lead,” Jurkiewicz said. “When you say human in the lead, it means I’m putting you in charge of the outcomes.”In aviation, pilots follow a simple rule: aviate, navigate, communicate—fly the plane first. For Jurkiewicz, the same principle applies to organizations navigating the AI era. Technology may provide powerful new instruments, but it is still people who determine where the journey goes.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Phenom, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Chris O’Keeffe is a freelance writer with experience across industries. As the founder and creative director of OK Creative: The Language Agency, he has led strategy and storytelling for organizations like MIT, Amazon, and Cirque du Soleil, bringing their stories to life through established and emerging media.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Rethinking Recognition and Rewards: New Strategies for Across-the-Board Encouragement
BY Katie Chambers March 11, 2026“We all know the data on the benefits of recognition: when you feel recognized, you feel great, your engagement goes up,” said Naomi Dishington, director of consulting at Workhuman. But did you know: “The giver also experiences that same lift in engagement, that same bump in productivity, that same likelihood to become a brand ambassador.” By ingraining recognition into organizational culture, leaders can help all employees feel a boost in morale, says Dishington, who spoke on an executive panel at From Day One’s Washington, D.C. conference. Panelists spoke about “Rethinking Recognition and Rewards: New Strategies for Across-the-Board Encouragement.”Why Recognition Matters“The stakes are really high, because if you get it right or wrong, recognition is deeply personal,” said Sheila Muhl, SVP of HR talent & total rewards at Viatris, noting that it touches on both employee and corporate values. “It’s incredibly important to have a far-reaching strategy around recognition, so that you can touch people in multiple different ways, so that people are feeling a sense of accomplishment and achievement and a deep connection to your purpose.” At her organization, achievements are tied not only to standard business objectives but also to cultural values such as fostering well-being and inclusion. “In big organizations, you have so many people making outstanding contributions all the time,” moderator Taylor Telford said. “How can employers ensure folks’ contributions aren’t going under the radar?” Muhl advises making recognition not just about end results, but about the entire employee journey, so that it is always top of mind. “Maybe someone learned something. Maybe something got messed up and we had to pivot—those are also important moments,” she said. Kimberly Young, SVP of total rewards at Amentum, agrees that employees “want to be recognized in real time,” even with a simple “thank you.”Panelists shared strategies on the topic of "Rethinking Recognition and Rewards" in D.C.“Recognition is one of the most strategic, powerful tools a leader has, because it’s how you signal what you value,” said Wendy Jolly, VP of total rewards and team member experience at Inova. Every recognition reinforces what you are looking for. She sees recognition as “a counter to feedback,” a quick positive repetitive reinforcement, leaving “rounding out the picture” for a deeper performance discussion. A good recognition and rewards program is “well-designed, well-communicated, and well-funded,” Dishington said, “as well as specific, timely, and meaningful. That doesn’t mean giant amounts, it means little bits dispersed throughout the year with that pop of spontaneity.” Panelists recommend surveying and employee listening to get a sense of what types of rewards and recognitions mean the most to your constituents as you build out your strategy. “Recognition is where the human shows up at work,” Jolly said. “They have to actually feel seen.” Creative methods of rewards include community-building activities like group volunteer opportunities, as well as “redemption store experiences” that can allow for uniquely personal prize selections. In terms of engagement, Muhl notes that recognition is a way to continue courting employees both immediately after and long after they are hired. “Woo your people as if you’re onboarding them continuously to keep that excitement and energy alive. Your strong employer brand and your strong employer proposition need to continue throughout recognition. It has to be nourished over time.” Making an Impact The most meaningful recognition programs, says Dishington, encourage involvement from the entire organization, not just leaders. “When you can empower everyone to use their voice to call out what’s going well in a colleague late at night, on the tarmac or in the hospital on the floor after a 14-hour shift, in the moment on [their] mobile [phone] in two minutes, you’ve done something to energize your culture that managers alone just can’t carry, even with the best intentions,” she said. Dishington notes that AI tools can help identify business benchmarks, flag language from employee skills profiles, and identify opportunities for real-time positive reinforcement. But it’s imperative to not take AI too far, and ensure the human voice is still there. “The challenge with AI is that it can be so impersonal for a lot of people,” said moderator Telford.The implementation of AI across other areas of the workplace means leaders will begin valuing employees’ human innovation and risk-taking as they adopt the technology. “I’m more likely to lean into that risk and that innovative state of mind, if I feel safe psychologically,” Young said. And that’s where recognition comes back in. “You can really do a lot with psychological safety in your environments, when you have a culture built on recognition and appreciation of each other.” AI is not the only way technology is impacting rewards. “Another great thing about technology or platform is the opportunity to put a bigger spotlight on a great moment,” Jolly said, not only to give the celebrated employee added positive attention, but also to educate others about corporate values. “You take it just a step further and say why that was a good moment for our company or our culture that we’re trying to create.” Recognition should come from the top-down. “Helping leaders incorporate a recognition focus as part of their day-to-day leadership is really important,” Muhl said. This includes not just executives but also front-line team leaders and managers. HR can help provide language, strategies, and reminders to help them incorporate it into their management style. Securing buy-in from organizational leaders means aligning your rewards program with their values. “It has to be authentic to your culture and to your leaders. What are the words they use, what are the things they naturally say in a town hall or in leadership messages?” Jolly said. “If you weave those in your recognition program, it will really land in a very genuine way in your workforce.” Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Thriving Through Change: Mindsets for the Future of Work
BY Jessica Swenson March 10, 2026“Regardless of what kind of change processes you have in place, an organization’s culture needs the right mindset for change in order for any of them to be effective,” said Carissa Romero, PhD, the co-founder of Paradigm. “Specifically, an organization needs a mindset focused on learning, innovation and growth, known in research as a growth mindset.”In a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s February virtual conference, Romero discussed how companies can embrace a growth mindset to improve their ability to adapt, perform, and thrive during rapid change.The “change muscle” of an organization, as Romero calls it, represents how people feel about change and how that influences employee engagement and productivity. This can be a broader reflection of the company’s readiness to learn, adapt, and thrive through uncertainty.In today’s business environment, with ongoing economic shifts, multigenerational workforces, and rapid AI adoption reshaping how work is done, the pace and volume of change is not likely to slow down. Romero says that this reality “forces [talent and culture leaders] to reexamine two things: the type of talent and the type of culture that is going to enable high performance.”Referencing a World Economic Forum report on key workforce skills, Romero says the abilities to adapt and to leverage interpersonal and leadership skills are increasingly critical as companies globalize and become more diverse. Capabilities like resilience, flexibility, agility, empathy, social influence, and active listening ensure that people can adapt and collaborate during ongoing shifts in the workplace.Carissa Romero, co-founder of Paradigm, led the session (company photo)Even more important than individual skills, says Romero, is organizational culture. This is where a growth mindset comes in—embedding this mindset into an organization helps employees learn and embody “the belief that change is possible, the idea that people, teams, and organizations can adapt and get better.” She cited research from the 1980s and 1990s showing that “when people approach work with a growth mindset, they perform better.” This happens because rather than focusing on proving themselves, she says, people with this mindset tend to focus on continuous learning. They see challenge and change as “essential parts of the learning process” rather than signs of failure or inability.Early mindset research assumed that a person’s mindset was an internal trait that they carried with them; it influenced their approach to work across environments and organizations. More recent research challenges that assumption by showing that workplace culture can influence the individual’s mindset. “I think the fact that cultures bring out these mindsets is really good news for organizations,” said Romero, “Because that means the goal is not to identify every single individual’s mindset and try to shift them to be more growth or to try to hire a bunch of growth mindset folks. The goal is to really then create an environment that helps people show up and lead with that growth mindset.”When employees know that their leaders believe people can improve and grow, it gives them a sense of psychological safety that promotes innovation, collaboration, and experimentation, driving learning and long-term performance. “Companies that are able to successfully shift their culture to be a bit more growth-oriented, you are going to see more of these benefits unlocked.”Romero offers four key strategies for leaders looking to make this shift in their organizations. First, embrace humility. Leadership behavior sets the tone, and leaders who exhibit humility about their challenges or mistakes can help employees be more open to risk-taking and experimentation.Next, reinforce growth behaviors like new decision strategies, learning processes, research, or experimentation through feedback and recognition. She shared the story of an oil rig experiencing significant financial loss and safety incidents. Leaders sought a shift from a culture of machismo to one where employees could admit and learn from their mistakes.“What they did is start giving out rewards and celebrating really big failures.” she said. This change in culture led to an 84% decline in accident rates while increasing productivity, efficiency, and reliability. “Adapting to failure is not something that happens despite high performance. It is actually a critical driver of being able to innovate and achieve high performance.”Effective mentorship is another key approach. “What do the best mentors do differently than everyone else? They do two things simultaneously. They set very high standards because they believe it is possible for people to meet those standards, but they give people the support to actually meet those standards.”By setting high expectations, even in times of rapid change, and then offering coaching and resources that help people meet those expectations, you provide tangible support that “can help teams see challenges not as risks to avoid, but really as opportunities to grow.”Lastly, to create a culture of continuous learning, shift beyond training programs and skill-building to system-level change. This type of change “happens when organizations pair growth-oriented leadership behaviors with the right infrastructure.”By building environments where culture, leadership, and systems work together to reinforce growth mindset behaviors, companies can boost their organizational resiliency and give employees the freedom to grow through innovation and collaboration.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Paradigm, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photo by Pakorn Supajitsoontorn/iStock)
How AI Is Reshaping Talent Acquisition Without Replacing Human Judgment
BY Ade Akin March 09, 2026Meghan Rhatigan and her team at Marriott International discovered that candidates didn’t mind getting a text message to book their interviews after automating interview scheduling. In fact, many candidates barely noticed.“We’ve scheduled over 300,000 interviews through an automated process and saved thousands and countless hours,” Rhatigan, VP of global talent acquisition experience at Marriott International, said during a panel discussion at From Day One’s Washington D.C.conference. The impact of that decision has been substantial: the interview process that once took ten days from start to finish now takes only three. Rhatigan’s findings challenged a common assumption in HR spaces, such as the belief that high-touch hospitality recruiting required human coordination at every step. Instead, automation freed Marriott International’s recruiters to focus on building relationships with candidates and hiring managers.Rhatigan shared her insights during a panel discussion with three other HR leaders titled “Modernizing Talent Acquisition: Enhancing Efficiency, Outreach, and the Applicant Experience,” as part of a wider discussion on how artificial intelligence is redefining the recruitment process. Adam DeRose, a senior reporter at Morning Brew’s HR Brew, moderated the conversation.The Case for Keeping Humans in ChargeThe panelists agreed there is a firm line between automation and decision-making. Rhatigan says Marriott made an early philosophical decision early on as it started to integrate AI into its system: AI would never get to select which candidates move forward or get hired. “We’re a hospitality company. We have a business around human connection and travel and experiences, and the last thing that we want is for candidates to go through a hiring process where they never actually talk to a human,” Rhatigan said. “There are companies that are moving in that direction, and that’s fine, but we’re not that company.”Panelists spoke about "Modernizing Talent Acquisition: Enhancing Efficiency, Outreach, and the Applicant Experience"Shabrina Davis, head of manager enablement and inclusive hiring learning at Amazon, offered a counterpoint. She says AI can help identify and reduce bias. It can intervene when recruiters develop unconscious preferences, such as favoring graduates from their alma mater. “From a learning and development perspective, we can have a pop-up that says, ‘Hey recruiter, we see you have a preference for Arizona State, but have you looked at Utah, or Florida State, or Howard University?’” Davis said. “Instead of 30 days later looking at a report and saying, ‘Oh, these recruiters are only looking here,’ we can do it immediately and have an intervention that rewires the thinking.”Data-Driven RecruitingFor Bert Hensley, chairman and CEO of Morgan Samuels, AI’s most valuable contribution has been transparency. His firm conducts executive searches with unusual intensity, typically speaking with more than 250 candidates per engagement, and up to 500 for sales roles. The research required to identify the right people once took 20 minutes per company. Now, AI accomplishes the same task in about 25 seconds.Using AI tools to aggregate data gives recruiters an honest view of their own performances. Hensley cited his wife, a therapist, who observes that “everyone is just hardwired to believe better about themselves than they really are. We live in that myth until you have the data that you’re getting every single day that tells you, no, you’re not quite doing what you thought you were doing.”Hensley says that reality check has improved performance across the organization while reducing anxiety. “They’re living in reality, and they don’t have to worry about what’s happening. They know what’s happening every single morning,” Hensley said.Jason Long, senior HRIS analyst at G-P, framed the broader challenge as one of trust. His company encourages employees to experiment with AI tools, and some of those innovations have made their way into G-P’s employer-of-record platform, helping connect professionals with international opportunities.Long drew a parallel to the early internet. “Pets.com didn’t fail because they didn’t have a good idea. They failed because nobody wanted to put their credit card on the internet in 2000,” he said. “Now we have HTTPS and PayPal and a million ways to do that. So what is that key that will unlock trust and help people actually believe that what they're getting from AI is useful?”Doing More With LessExternal pressures are also reshaping how companies approach the hiring process. Layoffs remain in the headlines, and candidates are asking harder questions. Davis acknowledged that Amazon’s recent workforce reductions come up in conversations.“We’re transparent,” she said. “Candidates ask about it, and it’s the reality of the industry that we’re in.” For new hires, a mindset of adaptability is essential. “The role that you’re hired for today may not be the role that you’re doing in 30 days. With that mindset, when you walk in the door, that hopefully will allow you to weather the storms.”Hensley has observed the same trend, noting that search firms now evaluate candidates on agility quotient (AQ), alongside intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ). “If they’re afraid of AI, I can’t present them to a client,” he said. “They don’t have to be the master of it, but they need to be embracing it.”For Rhatigan, the pressure is more immediate. Talent acquisition teams are being asked to do more with less. Marriott recently brought its frontline hiring in-house after two decades of relying on a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) model. The company hired 50,000 U.S. frontline associates last year, despite having a team of only 20 people. “We would have never been able to do that without AI, ever,” Rhatigan said. “No one is going to be given a pot of money to add people anymore. But we’re all being asked to hire more. So the answer is technology.”Perhaps the most unexpected win came from Amazon’s learning and development team. Davis says AI has eliminated language barriers in training. A year ago, her team could only produce materials in seven languages due to translation costs. Now there’s effectively no limit. “If you’re in a small country on the continent of Africa, and your language is definitely not in the top seven, you’ll have the same experience as someone who’s in Italy,” she said. “It levels the playing field and makes it fair.”The lesson, panelists agreed, isn’t to chase grand transformations, but to find the small, repetitive tasks where automation can deliver meaningful impact while allowing humans to do what they do best.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Learning and Development, Powered by AI: How Innovations Are Bringing the Next Wave
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza March 06, 2026“Already, I can’t go back to not having AI,” said Stephanie Smith-Ejnes, the VP of people and organization at Sony Pictures. “It is so ingrained in my day-to-day work and how efficient I am and how efficient my team is. The path forward is seeing AI as a force-multiplier and not a replacement for learning professionals.”Given the number of creatives employed by Sony, the will-it-or-won’t-it replace-me conversation is one Smith-Ejnes has been having a lot lately. And while she can’t imagine her working life without it, she’s sympathetic to those who still see it as a threat to their livelihood. It’s up to leaders like her, she explained, to lead the way with AI adoption, making the case for it as an enabler, and not a threat.During a panel discussion on how L&D teams are innovating with artificial intelligence at From Day One’s February virtual, Smith-Ejnes and her fellow panelists outlined how they’re pioneering AI in their organizations, setting the standard for adoption and responsible use.Building an AI-Native OrganizationDespite its widespread adoption, many companies and teams are far from proficient in AI. Talent development platform Infopro Learning uses a three-stage maturity model when helping clients advance. The first—and necessary—step is the “bolt-on” stage in which teams are curious and exploring with tools by adding them to existing processes, said CEO Sriraj Malick.The second is when teams are learning how to use AI to save time and money, creating new work capacity. Companies enter the third stage—that is, the AI-native stage—when teams can work within an AI infrastructure. “The infrastructure is learning as your team members are doing, so the knowledge and the intelligence compounds for the organization, for the team, and for every team member,” Mallick said.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the virtual session (photo by From Day One)Companies advance at different speeds, of course, and even the most innovative are still experimenting. For instance, customer-service platform Qualfon has developed its own AI-powered roleplay simulator to help employees master customer conversations. Learners have always asked for more practice, said the company’s VP of learning and development Marvie Wright, and now they can get it. Not only are these sessions measurable (tracking how quickly someone speaks or whether they over-use vocalized pauses like ums and ahs), “it also allows us to individualize and personalize the learning, and it gives immediate feedback,” she said. Personalization is something L&D teams have long talked about, “but finally, it’s a reality.”As AI promises to automate rote tasks that have previously occupied inordinate amounts of time, human skills are becoming the most necessary and coveted, says Brittany Dougan, senior director of L&D at government services contractor Maximus. The good news is, “we’re really good at them, and we know how to develop them in the organization, so it puts [L&D teams] in a position to be true business partners.”The Problem of ComplianceSome leaders in tightly regulated industries, like defense and healthcare, are finding AI adoption a challenge. “Compliance cultures are built on control and documentation, but really meaningful AI adoption requires iteration and failure and learning—it’s structured freedom,” said Heather Lambert, the VP of learning and development at healthcare provider Wellpath.To afford workers with as much freedom as possible, Wellpath uses sandbox environments in which users are given access to tiered permission zones based on clearance and need, with guardrails to prevent users from mishandling data. “When people understand that there is a boundary and why it exists—whether it’s HIPAA or data privacy—they’re more likely to respect it,” said Lambert. “If they know why, they won’t try to work around it.”“L&D teams will be the ones to set the standard for AI use within an organization,” said Smith-Ejnes. “If I sit back and I say, ‘let’s just wait and see what this is going to be,’ then the decisions are going to be made for me. But if we jump in as a strategic partner, then we become decision-makers with the business.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Kosamtu/iStock)
Finally, Leadership Development at Scale: Equipping Every Manager With an AI Personal Trainer
BY Kristen Kwiatkowski March 06, 2026Fostering team engagement and a positive work culture starts with empowering managers. Standard training often falls short, which is why personalized AI-driven programs for each manager are key to driving real impact in employee engagement and team development.Jennifer Dulski, CEO and founder of Rising Team, highlighted how personalized AI training can help managers and their teams during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Washington, D.C. conference. “The great news is that with AI, we now can finally do this,” said Dulski. “We can give every single manager a personalized plan that’s targeted to their own needs and context. We can give them consistent practice over time.”This is what Rising Team’s training accomplishes with its AI personal leadership trainer, aRTi. “It essentially takes every manager, gives them a personal leadership trainer, creates a plan based on intake of what they need, which is also customizable,” Dulski said. The training features a wide array of activities, such as one-on-one practice and skill learning as well as team building that’s personalized to fit the needs of each manager.aRTi starts the training by asking a variety of intake questions involving topics such as number of direct reports, years as a manager, managing duty that is easiest to perform, and overall goal of employee training, says Dulski. The manager is then asked how much training time is requested and the AI trainer creates a growth plan that the manager can follow exactly or alter if they choose to do so.Jennifer Dulski, CEO and founder of Rising Team, led the session in D.C.Over time, the AI gets to know the manager and the training preferences. The training sessions can be added to the manager’s calendar, and aRTi will even practice training scenarios with the manager. “So the scenario I picked is I need to tell Ted that I’m giving him a lower rating on his performance review than he gave in his self-rating, involving all kinds of hard situations, like I need to tell him he’s not getting promoted when he expected a promotion, or if I’m managing up and I want to ask my manager how do I get on track for a promotion,” said Dulski. “All of these conversations can be practiced here.”Dulski practiced the scenario with the AI system for the audience and showed how the role play session can help managers practice their conversation before putting it into motion. aRTi will prompt the user to improve their conversation, if needed, and provide a score and tips on how to improve in future conversations. The score is based on effectiveness of achieving the objective, clarity in doing so, and empathy used along the way. aRTi then recommends phrasing to use and a plan for future conversations.The next step is putting aRTi to work with your team via live practice sessions. “That’s another part of this process, and it gets all kinds of insights about the team that managers just wouldn’t get on their own because they don’t know what questions to ask,” Dulski said. “We get everyone’s strengths and we know what makes people want to jump out of bed in the morning,” she said. “I know how to put people on projects, and we know exactly how each person likes to receive feedback.”With the help of aRTi, going through these training sessions provides managers with insights as to how employees want to receive feedback, encouragement, and appreciation.“All of this comes together into giving every single manager a personalized leadership trainer, coach, role play partner, and team building facilitator and the amazing thing is it works,” stated Dulski. “The data is super clear on this and within six months, you’re getting massive, statistically significant lifts on manager effectiveness.”And when a manager is effective their team members feel valued and heard, which can lead to improved productivity and retention within an organization.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Rising Team, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Kristen Kwiatkowski is a professional freelance writer covering a wide array of industries, with a focus on food and beverage and business. Her work has been featured in the Bucks County Herald, Eater Philly, Edible Lehigh Valley, Cider Culture, and The Town Dish. (Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Building Trust in Hiring: Creating an Exceptional Candidate Experience
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza March 05, 2026“Ninety-one percent of recruiters and hiring managers have spotted or suspected candidate deception at some point,” said Will Leahy, VP of customer success at applicant tracking platform Greenhouse, citing the company’s 2026 AI in Hiring Report. That deception can be as little as fudging skill proficiency to falsifying references to adopting a deepfake likeness or false persona.This presents a challenge to today’s good-faith job seekers, who aren’t only competing against other qualified applicants, they’re now going head to head against bad actors willing to game the system and lie. The challenge for recruiters is remaining vigilant without treating sincere candidates with undue suspicion.This problem—and new solutions—was the topic of conversation during a From Day One webinar on how employers are building trust in hiring while also improving the candidate experience.The ‘AI Doom Loop’Candidates are using AI to apply for more roles, while at the same time employers are using AI to manage the swell of applications. “It’s not uncommon for a recruiter to post a role and, within 48 hours, have over 900 applications,” said Leahy’s co-panelist Erin Walsh-Beguin, senior director of global recruiting operations at GoDaddy. Employers are struggling to sort through the slop without losing great candidates along the way.Will Leahy, VP of people success at Greenhouse, spoke during the session (company photo)The result is an “AI doom loop.” “Candidates are leveraging AI to get themselves out there at an exponentially higher rate, which is causing an extraordinary amount of application influx, and quite a bit of it is spam,” Leahy said. “On the other side of the house are recruiters trying to navigate that and leveraging AI to the best of their ability to try and cut through that noise.”With each side trying to stay several steps ahead of the other, “it creates a doom loop, and no one’s happy, no one’s having a good time, and no one’s satisfied,” he said.To find the best candidates—who are actually real people—recruiters are trying things like identity verification. “Eighteen percent of recruiters that we talk to have had an experience where there was a deep fake in the room,” Leahy said. Greenhouse’s new partnership with CLEAR lets employers verify a candidate’s identity at whatever point they choose. Once that’s out of the way, “you can bypass suspicion and have a real human conversation,” he said.Real human conversations and sincere interactions are invaluable in this moment, when employers and candidates are becoming increasingly distrustful of one another. Walsh-Beguin likes to hold onto those moments by “sending notes, emails, and touching base,” she said. And a lot of that can be aided with automation. But avoid the temptation to over-automate and send blast-emails or status updates that are impersonal or uninformative. “It doesn’t take that long to send out a check-in and say, ‘Hey, thank you for hanging in there. We’re doing our best,’” she said. Transparency matters: Telling candidates upfront what they can expect in the hiring process, how AI will or won’t be used, and when they might hear from you again—these things don’t take much time or technical know-how. Behind the scenes, new applicant tracking tech is helping employers surface the best, most qualified, and most-likely-to-be-real candidates. Greenhouse’s new Talent Mapping feature works like an email inbox’s spam filter, sorting through suspicious applications to find strong matches and those most likely to be irrelevant or fraudulent. And like a spam filter, red-flagged candidates aren’t thrown out, but set aside for human review.The recruiter sets the parameters and reviews the results. “You are going to continuously teach the AI that the parameters that you used did yield the correct match, and you can override it again,” Walsh-Beguin said. That human intervention is key. “Ethical utilization of AI is something everybody has to ensure they’re following through on.”“Any amount of automation that allows more humanness to enter the conversation” is worthwhile, said Leahy. This goes for sophisticated talent mapping as well as simple transcription and summarization features, which lets him focus on the candidate rather than note-taking. “That’s automation making my life easier but also making it more human.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Greenhouse, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Ridofranz/iStock)
Change Fatigue Is Real: How Leaders Can Keep Teams Adapting
BY Ade Akin March 04, 2026Jennifer Vardeman kicked off the panel discussion at From Day One’s Houston conference by asking the audience about their sentiments when asked to adopt something new, like a tool, system, or policy, and to rate their feelings by raising one, two, or three fingers. One finger signified excitement, two meant exhaustion, and three represented pretending to be excited while feeling exhausted.“I see a few ones, that’s good, but mostly threes and twos,” Vardeman, Ph.D., professor and director at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston, said. “So we’re in the right place at the right time.” The panel discussion moderated by Vardeman brought together HR leaders from four major organizations to diagnose the symptoms of change fatigue and discuss remedies. The Many Faces of FatigueFor Anand Mudunuru, global head of HR for software engineering at Stellantis, change fatigue looks less like resistance and more like weariness born of perpetual motion. Stellantis, the world’s third-largest automaker with over 250,000 employees, has undergone decades of acquisitions, leadership changes, and headquarters relocations.“What I see is that people are used to change,” Mudunuru said. “What happens is that people are exhausted. There is a never-ending story.” He says his teams are open to new things but crave “clarity of thought, focus, and clear timelines.”Clelia Cayama, the senior HR director at Vytl Controls Group, described a similar dynamic in her organization, which is built on continuous improvement and operational excellence. “Everybody over coffee is talking about what we can do better,” she said. “But then it comes, always a joke about, ‘Oh, new implementation, a new project. Who’s going to volunteer for that? Who’s going to lead it?”Panelists spoke on the topic, "Change Fatigue Is Real: How Leaders Can Keep Teams Adapting"Mindy Fitzgerald, the head of HR operational excellence at Air Products, offered a more visceral description. “I see a quiet depletion,” she said. “Discretionary energy into things. A sense of languishing, maybe the joy they got in a job, a task, or an activity. It just seems to be missing.”Brea May, head of HR for the Americas at Mahindra, painted a picture of organizational chaos. With three new product launches, two ERP systems to reconcile, and a host of strategic projects, the same “best and brightest” employees are tapped for every initiative. “It causes a lot of anxiety,” May said. “It causes a lot of burnout.”Communication Across Cultures and Time ZonesCommunication often breaks down first when employees are overwhelmed. Language barriers, cultural differences, and asynchronous work compound the challenge global organizations face.Mahindra, headquartered in Mumbai with over 200,000 employees across 100 countries, is familiar with this problem. Misunderstandings in written communication were once frequent, as only 10% of its employees speak English as a first language.“Somebody is taking in information, they’re translating it into English, and they’re putting it into a written form or speaking it out loud,” May said. “It caused a lot of tension for years.” Employees often interpreted direct, bullet-point emails as aggressive, while softer messages were seen as indecisive.The solution to that problem emerged organically. Employees began using a proprietary AI tool, Mahindra AI, to draft and refine cross-cultural communications. “Since everybody started doing it, it’s become this sort of adoption,” May said. “Hey, I’m not going to take offense to the email. I know that Mahindra AI wrote it.” Some employees even tag messages with disclaimers like “AI drafted this.”Stellantis took a different approach. Mudunuru, who built a 7,000-person software team across 30 countries during the pandemic, instituted monthly town halls as the single source of truth for major announcements. To ensure psychological safety, he introduced Mentimeter, an anonymous question-and-answer tool. “They’re able to bring out their concerns without being judged,” he said. “And most importantly, they’re being heard.”For Cayama, the key is intentional, empathetic leadership. “Our leaders are not afraid to say when they don’t have the answer,” she said. “To be there with people, to be empathetic, to relate themselves to what we’re going through.”The Leadership Behaviors That MatterAs the panel shifted from identifying the problem to addressing it, a clear picture emerged of the leadership habits that matter most: transparency, empowerment, and humanity.Cayama highlighted two of Vytl Controls Group's values: “trust to act” and “make it fun.” Trust to act means empowering people to make decisions and execute their work with the confidence that the organization has their back. Making it fun, she says, is about knowing when to pause. “Sometimes in the middle of a business review, to take the time to have some time to decompress, to make fun, not to talk about the work and the topic of the meeting, but to spend time together, connecting,” she added.Mudunuru emphasized customer centricity, passion, and a global mindset with regional execution. He also offered a more tactical tip that has been adopted at Stellantis: no meeting may exceed seven people, and every employee has the right to decline an invitation. “If you are invited, there’s a tendency just to add people,” he said. “Every employee has a right to reject the meeting.”Fitzgerald introduced the concept of “narrowing the field of focus.” She says leaders can create stability by establishing predictable rhythms when everything feels urgent. She stresses the little things, such as no-meeting Fridays, standing check-ins, or simply focusing on one thing during one-on-ones. “You’re creating a level of stabilization amongst all the churn,” she said.She also offered a mantra for leaders: “Our job as leaders is to prioritize the work for our people and our organization ruthlessly. It’s not to prioritize. It is to prioritize ruthlessly. Remember, all that work that you are unable to prioritize creates change fatigue and unsettledness for your employees.”AI as a PartnerThe panelists all agree that how artificial intelligence tools are introduced matters tremendously as they become ubiquitous. When used correctly, AI reduces overload instead of adding to it.Artificial intelligence is already reshaping the workforce at Stellantis. Mudunuru notes that the company has stopped hiring entry-level software engineers because AI systems now write much of the code needed. Experienced engineers are needed to validate and enhance the code, but the shift has forced a rethink of the talent strategy.Mudunuru created a chatbot trained on two years of town hall recordings for HR purposes. Employees in Poland can request vacation days using the system, while those in Brazil can contact their HR representative. “You don’t need to ask these questions,” he said. “Seventy to eighty percent of the questions are just for HR. They are not strategic questions.”Cayama’s organization uses AI to automate non-value-added tasks, freeing employees to focus on more meaningful work. Inside sales teams, for example, use AI to pull prior quotes, accelerating pricing and freeing up more time with clients. “It’s leveraging technology to do the non-value-added task so we can have more people-to-people interaction,” she said.At Mahindra, AI adoption is supported by monthly lunch-and-learn sessions. “It’s about getting them comfortable with using AI and showing how it could reduce the workload,” May said. “This is your partner. This is your assistant.”Learning From Failure to Keep Moving ForwardNo change initiative unfolds perfectly, and the panelists were candid about their missteps. May introduced a more unusual response to failure, the “smart failure award.” When a project fails despite meeting all deliverables, due to factors beyond the team’s control, the team presents lessons learned and receives recognition for the effort. “At first, people were saying, ‘I failed. This is hard,’” May said. But the award reframes failure as a learning opportunity and acknowledges the work that went into the attempt.As the panel concluded, Vardeman recapped the many strategies shared: clarity of thought, careful planning, listening, standing meetings, cultural onboarding, anonymous Q&A tools, values-based leadership, and ruthless prioritization. She highlighted the importance of seeing employees' lived reality, positioning AI as a partner, and creating space for fun.“Everything cannot be planned,” said Mudunuru. “Everything cannot be super structured. The best part is being on top of the list, prioritizing the list, and just keep executing.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Scaling Marketing With AI
BY Ade Akin March 03, 2026Carrie Teegardin kicked off an executive panel discussion at From Day One's Atlanta marketing conference with an iconic line from the original Spider-Man movie: “With great power comes great responsibility.” It was the perfect metaphor to kick off the panel about artificial intelligence and its impact across industries, particularly the marketing world. “There’s a lot of stuff you can do, but really, should we be doing that now at this time?” Teegardin, a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who moderated the conversation, asked, setting the tone for the discussion. The panel, titled “AI in Marketing: Scaling Personalization Without Losing the Human Touch,” brought together marketing leaders who are actively trying to find a balance between innovation and ethics. Allison Conrad, the managing director of technology at Accenture, immediately seized on Teegardin's Spider-Man analogy. “It really hits on one of the key things around leveraging AI,” Conrad said. She cited the results of a recent Accenture collaboration with Amazon Web Services that surveyed 1,000 C-suite leaders. About 72% reported they had halted an AI pilot or program because of responsible AI concerns.Conrad encouraged marketers to engage in the governance conversation early on. “Marketers need to be at the table,” she added. “Responsible AI gets real when you turn it to customers. And who knows the customers better than the people in this room? If you’re invited to that, I encourage you to go. If you’re not invited, I encourage you to invite yourself.”When Trust Requires Moving Slow to Go FastChristopher Merrill, the chief marketing officer for the digital platform at Synchrony Financial, shared how his company built a fence around the metaphorical AI playground before opening up access.“In financial services, just like any bank, [we] have your social security number and your bank accounts, and so you would probably not like that information to go out outside of my walls," Merrill said. “The beauty and also the danger of AI is once you submit things to ChatGPT, you ask things, you upload documents, it’s gone forever.”Synchrony initially blocked access to public artificial intelligence tools entirely. Instead, the tech team at Synchrony Financial built its own private ecosystem using open-source AI and dubbed it "SYF-GPT" after the company’s stock ticker. “So, yes, did it take longer? Obviously, you know, it took time,” Merrill said, “We were a little bit behind versus some of the folks that didn’t have that same kind of data constraints. But now it’s allowing us to go faster,” he said. The secure environment Merrill's team built now allows employees to upload sensitive documents and draft copies without fear of data leaks. Keeping the Human in the LoopThe panel unanimously agreed that human judgment remains more valuable than ever despite the rush toward automation. Aniket Maindarkar, the chief marketing officer at business process services company Firstsource, shared a cautionary tale about chasing AI hype.After receiving a provocative email from leadership about a competitor producing an ad video for a fraction of the cost, Maindarkar's team raced to produce its own AI-generated video. The quality wasn’t up to par, he admitted. The team eventually partnered with an agency to refine the story and ensure it resonated emotionally with viewers. “For marketers, the only moat that you have is authenticity. That’s it. That’s the only moat that we are left with,” Maindarkar said. “So tech does stuff, but in today’s environment, I think for marketers, the people aspect becomes so important, because without that, you’re probably lost.”Panelists spoke about "AI in Marketing: Scaling Personalization Without Losing the Human Touch" Conrad built on this, distinguishing between AI’s ability to drive efficiency versus its inability to create true distinctiveness. “The LLMs [large language models] that are out there, unless you’re very sophisticated in doing a lot of native work, they’re learning. They’re learning off of everyone else’s data and your data,” she said. “It’s going to be really hard to be distinctive if you rely too heavily on that. What is the human doing? The humans are the people in this room, making sure that you don’t lose your distinctiveness. AI is not really good at that. That emotional connection that you have been investing in your brand, that’s another thing that AI is not going to give you.”From A/B to Multivariate TestingThe panelists agreed that one of AI’s most impressive capabilities is the ability to optimize performance. “We all do some sort of A/B testing,” Merrill said. “Digital, for a long time, has made that so much easier with tools like AI. You can test not just three, four, or five multivariate models, but literally hundreds at the same time. It is an extremely powerful tool, if done correctly.”Maindarkar says AI is now helping dismantle internal silos, bringing together teams that previously worked in isolation and unifying the content-creation process. Now, teams collaborate on a single platform using shared briefs and templates, giving marketing leaders a direct line of sight into what really drives pipeline and brand perception.The Evolving Skill Set: What Happens to the Grunt Work?Teegardin posed a provocative question to the group: If AI eliminates menial tasks, how will junior employees learn the fundamentals?“How, as young employees, did we learn menial tasks?” she noted, reflecting on her days as a young reporter covering local government meetings. “If our people aren’t doing menial tasks, is that a problem?”Merrill suggested the skill set is simply shifting. “The real skill becomes, well, how do you take full advantage of these capabilities? Do I ask it just one very simple question, or am I asking 100 questions to get deeper at the source to figure it out?” He elaborated. “You can’t just take it and say, okay, this is what the answer is. I’m going to run with it.”Conrad acknowledged this is one of the biggest challenges she’s facing. “That apprenticeship, that mentorship, how do we cultivate that sixth sense? If you don’t have that experience, how do you get it?” All three panelists emphasized that AI adoption is as much about culture as it is about technology. Merrill’s team runs internal campaigns asking employees how they’re using AI, from writing code to creating bedtime stories for their kids. Maindarkar recently held an offsite event where 80 employees formed pods and were challenged to create a campaign ad in 20 minutes using only free tools. “It creates magic within the enterprise,” he added. “In an organization, you often have certain people whom AI is forced upon, but certain people who are experimenting and who are trying and are just waiting for the opportunity to showcase that.”As the session concluded, Teegardin circled back to the villains in the Spider-Man universe. What should marketers watch out forMaindarkar warned that CMOs must now think like a Chief Information Security Officer for their brand. “There is nobody else in the company who’s looking at that in terms of what parts of your brand are being leaked out,” he said. Merrill kept it simple. “I’'ll say just trust but verify,” he added. “AI is an awesome set of tools. But you can’t just take it at whatever it says. You’ve got to have the human in the loop.”Conrad’s final word was a call for robust infrastructure. “You can’t do point solutions,” she elaborated. “Laws are changing. You’re going to need an integrated platform that is constantly monitoring these programs. If you’re going to fight the bad guys, you need to be armed with a lot of automation and a lot of data.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.
Rebuilding a Brand From the Inside Out: How Tech and Team Engagement Drive a New Strategy
BY Carrie Snider March 02, 2026As a 116-year-old company, ABM Industries looks very different today than it did in over a century ago. Recently, the company set out to redefine itself—but how it approached that reinvention was critical.Founded in 1909 as a window-washing business, ABM Industries has grown far beyond commercial cleaning into integrated facilities management, serving airports, universities, and complex infrastructures across 14,000 client sites with 100,000 frontline employees.Three years ago, leadership realized the company’s story hadn’t kept pace with its transformation. Cary Bainbridge, chief marketing officer at ABM Industries, spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Atlanta marketing event about how technology and internal alignment drove ABM’s brand evolution.“When you think about our evolution, and what I’ve been fortunate to be part of over the last 20 years, it’s continuing to see that evolution and tell a new story,” Bainbridge told session moderator Stephen Koepp, From Day One’s editor in chief and co-founder. In recent years, ABM has expanded its capabilities, integrating soft and hard services under single contracts and modernizing its operating model. The shift wasn’t cosmetic. It was strategic, says Bainbridge. The company invested heavily in upskilling its workforce and embedding technology into daily operations. Today, frontline employees use mobile devices that direct workflows in real time, while managers and clients gain visibility into building operations through centralized digital platforms.Reflecting the Inside ChangeThe brand refresh, anchored in the theme “Driving Possibility, Together,” needed to reflect those internal changes.“It all started with alignment to our business strategy,” Bainbridge said. “We were going through a system transformation internally. The brand needed to match who we’ve become.” That transformation included modernizing enterprise systems and introducing new tools across the workforce. Leadership was intentional about pacing the change.“How much change can our teams consume at any given time?” Bainbridge recalled asking. “We wanted people to feel the change and see that it was happening—so when we empowered them with a new story, it was something they could believe in.”Cary Bainbridge, CMO at ABM Industries, spoke during the fireside chat Rather than leading with marketing, ABM focused first on operational credibility. Employees needed to see proof before they could authentically champion the new brand.The transformation began internally. ABM pressure-tested messaging with employees, launched the brand inside the organization first, and positioned team members as its primary storytellers before rolling out targeted external campaigns. “We knew we had to start on the inside,” Bainbridge said.Smart Growth, Not Just More GrowthAs ABM expanded into electrical infrastructure, microgrids, and mission-critical environments like data centers, its ambitions began to outpace public perception.“We had an alignment problem,” Bainbridge said. “Customers would say, ‘I didn’t know you did that.’ And internally, our team members would say, ‘I don’t know all that we do.’”Closing that gap required discipline. Rather than chasing volume, ABM intentionally targeted higher-value integrated solutions in sectors such as airports, higher education, semiconductors, and data centers.To support that strategy, the marketing team deployed AI-powered lead scoring and machine learning tools to prioritize quality over quantity—resulting in a 4% improvement in lead conversion rates in the first year.AI also expanded access to performance insights. By layering generative AI into marketing dashboards, ABM enabled more employees to query data directly, freeing analysts to focus on advanced modeling and strategic insights.Bainbridge emphasized that marketing’s credibility depends on measurable contribution to growth. At ABM, sales and marketing operate under shared leadership, with aligned KPIs tied directly to revenue in priority segments. “When I stand in front of our leadership team or our board, it’s about our contribution to new sales growth,” she said.Brand as a Cultural StrategyFor Bainbridge, the evolution of the CMO role requires both culture and ROI. ABM’s CEO is invested in internal culture, reinforcing the idea that the brand begins with employees.Employees represent the company to customers, recruits, and their communities. Internal alignment, therefore, becomes a business driver—not just a communications effort. By modernizing systems, upskilling employees, aligning leadership, and embedding technology into operations, ABM ensured its brand transformation reflected real change.Marketing’s role, Bainbridge said, is to connect those dots—so growth strategy, culture, and customer experience move in the same direction.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
From Claims to Connections: Driving Value Through Proactive Member Engagement
BY Grace Turney February 26, 2026When Marissa Bloomer talks about a Spanish-speaking client receiving a $78,000-a-month cancer injection administered in a hospital, she pauses for effect. That same medication could be administered by a culturally appropriate oncologist at a nearby office—for just $5,000 a month. “We said, let’s hold the phone here,” recalled Bloomer, VP of population health at Curative. “We’re not paying $78,000 a month for a shot. Where can we find the same drug at a different provider?”That story captures everything wrong, and everything fixable, about the way most American employers design health benefits. At From Day One’s Washington, D.C. conference, Bloomer led a thought leadership spotlight on a deceptively simple idea: coverage is not the same thing as care, and the gap between the two is costing employers billions of dollars and costing workers their health.The Trap of the High-Deductible PlanMarissa Bloomer, VP of population health at Curative, led the sessionThe numbers Bloomer opened with were familiar to most HR leaders in the room, but their implications were stark. Some 27% of covered workers are now enrolled in a high-deductible health plan, and the average deductible for single coverage on an employer-sponsored plan has increased by 47% over the last decade. “These really are not benefits,” Bloomer said. “These are barriers.”The downstream effects compound fast. Preventable conditions now represent a $1.34 trillion burden in untreated illness, with $55 billion lost annually from missed preventive screenings alone, she says. Workers on high-deductible plans face a 25% higher risk of diabetes complications, not because their plan doesn’t technically cover screenings, but because they can’t afford the initial out-of-pocket cost to find out they need one. “I’ve seen it,” said Bloomer, a registered nurse with 25 years in the health insurance industry. “Missed preventive screenings are the number one cause of people crashing into diabetes.”The cycle is self-reinforcing: confusion and unaffordability lead to deferred care, deferred care leads to worsened health, worsened health leads to lower productivity and higher costs. And employers respond by raising deductibles again. “We set ourselves up to fail,” Bloomer said. “High-deductible health plans were designed to manage expenses. But we ended up creating the most expensive outcomes, and we’re not treating employees as a whole.”The $0 Model as a Clinical StrategyCurative’s answer is structural. Its plan eliminates copays and deductibles entirely for in-network services, and Bloomer emphasized that this isn’t a generous perk; it’s a clinical tool. “A $0 copay and $0 deductible is a clinical strategy intended to keep employees healthy,” she said. Remove the financial hurdle, and utilization rises. Utilization rises, and conditions get caught earlier. Conditions caught earlier cost a fraction of what they cost when they reach the crisis stage.But Curative’s model adds a layer that most zero-cost plans skip: health literacy. “I truly believe if you teach people how to use their plan in plain language, they get it,” Bloomer said. Her team operationalizes this through what the company calls the baseline visit: a one-hour onboarding appointment every new member completes at the start of their plan year.The baseline visit unfolds in two back-to-back 30-minute sessions. The first, with a care navigator, is essentially Benefits 101: how to use the member portal, how to find a doctor, how to order a colorectal cancer screening directly through the app. The second is with a clinician (a physician, nurse practitioner, or physician’s assistant) who reviews the member’s health history, flags overdue screenings, and makes personalized recommendations. A member turning 45 with a family history of colon cancer, for instance, gets steered toward a colonoscopy rather than a Cologuard test.“We’re able to actually physically show and put in the member portal: this is what we want you to do this year,” Bloomer said. That roadmap then drives ongoing outreach, such as calls during Breast Cancer Awareness Month to members who haven’t completed mammograms, or emails during Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month to those who haven’t been screened.The outcomes are striking. Curative reports a 98% completion rate for the baseline visit. It identifies 94% of chronic conditions during that initial appointment. And in a controlled study, members who engaged with a registered nurse after the baseline visit saw their medical cost spend reduced by 62.5%. “I’ve never seen that in my 25 years in the healthcare industry,” Bloomer said.Connections, Not ClaimsBloomer was pointedly critical of traditional case management, which she called “dialing for dollars.” Predictive analytics flags a high-risk member; a call center employee asks if they want to enroll in a disease management program. “Those things don’t work,” she said. What works is intervening at the moment of need, with a real clinician who already knows the member’s history.That philosophy shapes how Curative deploys AI as well. As of November, its care navigation team uses an AI tool to handle first-response emails—currently resolving about 60% of inbound messages, sometimes within minutes. The system is trained to recognize frustration signals (all-caps text, profanity, etc.) and hold those for human review. Thanks to this use of technology, care navigators spend less time on routine queries and more time on the outbound, proactive outreach that actually changes health outcomes.Bloomer closed with a framework she calls the five principles of a person-first health plan: data-driven decision making, proactive and predictive (rather than reactive) support, scalable innovation and personalization, a human-centric experience, and integrated healthcare ecosystems. The throughline is that benefits should be built around the full human being: financially, clinically, and emotionally.For HR leaders evaluating their own plans, she offered questions worth sitting with. Does your plan design create financial stress for the employees who need care most? How are people actually engaging with their primary care physicians and chronic care programs? And is your vendor teaching health literacy, or just providing a card?“Coverage doesn’t equal access,” Bloomer said, returning to where she started. “Connection is really the best ROI.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Curative, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.
Marketing Strategy is MIA: Why Leaders Feel out of Control & How AI Could Bury Your Plans in 2026
BY Paul Kersey February 26, 2026George Huff says that it was a simple question from an executive at Nike in 2012 that made him understand one of the biggest problems in marketing: “What’s going on with the São Paulo Marathon?”Huff, CEO of Opal, outlined the challenge of keeping marketing output aligned during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Atlanta marketing conference. He shared some of the many reasons executives struggle to keep their marketing efforts on track.Huff, then a consultant in Portland, noticed that the sheer volume of corporate marketing content makes it hard for companies to track what is being published in their name or how it impacts their brands and relationships with customers. Nike, for example, had 650 social media accounts producing content daily but struggled to monitor just one tied to a road race in Brazil. Even then, tracking all accounts in detail and understanding how they aligned with the company’s broader identity and strategy was nearly impossible. Nike is not alone and the challenge is only set to grow.Part of the challenge is the culture. Creative people who produce content are independent and self-directed and do not automatically follow instructions. They are often organized into small teams, each focused on its own projects. Nike’s 650 social media accounts may be an extreme case, but large companies often have multiple teams working on different aspects of marketing, including product lines, advertising, events, and brand identity. It is easy for these activities to fall into siloes, says Huff. George Huff, CEO of Opal, led the session (company photo)Even if your various teams are communicating with each other, plans still tend to get muddier as they filter through a large organization. Strategic directives come from top executives and filter down through middle management, but content comes from individual workers who may not understand the assumptions and nuances behind the overall strategy—assuming they were fully briefed on it or bought into it in the first place. “Your strategy dilutes as it goes through your organization. Control disappears with it. And then what’s played back to you often doesn’t look like what you set it out to be,” said Huff.The control problem appears to be common among marketing executives. When Huff asked his audience whether they would prefer more content or better control, almost everyone raised their hands for better control. “Well, the bad news is, you’re probably all going to get more content, whether you like it or not,” Huff said.AI can produce a flood of text, images, and audio in minutes with a well-crafted prompt. It makes creating material for all types of media easier, and smart marketing executives will not want to suppress that output, he says. More content gives more opportunities for customers to hear about a company and its products. The challenge is ensuring every message aligns with the company’s identity and supports its overall marketing strategy.Using traditional tools, tracking all the content is a high-friction activity, involving meetings, emails, and presentations. The right toolset can turn this into a low-friction activity, collecting and organizing content as it is created and quickly producing summaries for managers to review. And even better, it can put the strategic plan front and center while content creators work, rather than being a slideshow sitting on a server that employees may or may not review periodically.Opal creates tools that will tame that creative torrent and foster connected planning between executives and the many content-creating teams, says Huff. These tools can make it easy for them to coordinate with each other and work within the overall strategic plans. The applications are designed to track and generate valuable reports: strategic plans, week-by-week calendars, content approvals, workflows, and general project management and process reports. “We have to build really, really good, world-class experiences that people want to use for this whole thing to work,” he said. Ultimately, marketing is about the customer experience, but creating compelling experiences requires marketing executives to guide their creative teams efficiently. Time spent monitoring and managing countless teams—like figuring out what is happening with the São Paulo Marathon—is time that executives cannot devote to focusing on customers.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Opal, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Paul Kersey is a former attorney and freelance writer who has covered events for Bloomberg News and other outlets. Paul is based in Chicago, IL.(Photo by andresr/iStock)
Employer Listening With Intent: From Feedback to Follow Through
BY Grace Turney February 25, 2026Around 2009, a few years into his career at CarMax, Craig Cronheim had a habit he now describes with a mix of nostalgia and self-awareness. After visiting a store, he’d board a plane home to Richmond with a mental list of every question and suggestion he’d heard from associates that day, and he’d stay up working to resolve each one. “I thought I was the feedback loop,” he said. It worked, for a while. But as his responsibilities grew, Cronheim learned something that has shaped CarMax’s entire approach to employee listening: personal accountability can only scale so far. The infrastructure has to carry the weight.Cronheim, SVP and chief HR officer at CarMax, shared that progression during a fireside chat during From Day One’s Washington, D.C. conference. Moderated by journalist Krissah Thompson, the conversation explored how CarMax has built a disciplined, trust-generating feedback system across a workforce of more than 28,000 associates.Cronheim was careful to make an important distinction: “Listening is the beginning, but not the end,” he said. At CarMax, the process follows three steps: understand, act, and close the loop. Each stage matters, but the third is where trust is either built or broken.“You can collect the feedback. You can actually do something with it. But if your teams don’t know what you’re doing with it, and they don’t know why, you’re really missing out,” Cronheim said. “They’re not going to trust you, because they’re going to see some action, but they’re not going to be able to connect the dots.”A Well-Oiled Feedback MachineTwice a year, CarMax surveys every associate, says Cronheim. The response rate hovers around 90% – a figure Thompson found remarkable for an organization its size. Cronheim credits the consistency of follow-through, rather than traditional incentives. “What we incentivize with is taking action on the feedback,” he said. After each survey cycle, two tracks run in parallel. Managers at all CarMax locations receive their team’s results and are required to submit an action plan. An astounding 87% did so in the most recent cycle, he says. Meanwhile, centralized HR home office teams receive aggregated feedback sorted by topic and develop their enterprise-wide action plan. The whole picture is then packaged into an all-associate communication CarMax calls “Your Feedback in Action,” which outlines major themes of associate feedback, and what the company is doing to respond to it. CarMax has also begun using AI to analyze open-ended survey comments, helping teams identify sentiment patterns across thousands of responses. Cronheim noted the company is deliberate about boundaries: “We’re using AI on feedback that’s already been offered. We’re not using broader AI sensing tools to understand what our teams are doing or saying unless they’re giving us that feedback directly.”Maintaining the Routine in Rough PatchesThompson, who referenced her own experience navigating difficult workforce decisions during her time at the Washington Post, asked how CarMax keeps its feedback commitments when times get hard. Cronheim didn’t sidestep the question. “We’re in a tough stretch right now,” he said, noting the company is between CEOs and has had a couple of difficult sales quarters. “We have a survey going out on March 16, and we will run the same exact play that we do when times are good.” Craig Cronheim, CHRO at CarMax, spoke about "Employer Listening With Intent: From Feedback to Follow Through" at the D.C. conferenceThat consistency, he says, is precisely what protects trust. When the company can’t deliver on what associates ask for, it says so, and explains why. “At least acknowledging that, and saying, ‘You told us this, we can’t do that right now, here’s why, but here’s what we will do’ – that helps build trust even when you’re not able to deliver on the immediate request.”Feedback That Changed the CompanyOne of the clearest examples of the system working came from the shop floor. Store associates had long complained about the time-consuming daily process of scanning inventory—sometimes as many as 400 to 500 cars, and often in extreme weather conditions. CarMax heard the feedback, spent several years researching solutions, and ultimately implemented a GPS-based system that handles real-time inventory tracking automatically. “It’s been one of the most popular things we’ve done in my nearly 19 years at the company,” Cronheim said.The approach to storytelling around that change mattered just as much as the technology itself. Cronheim now uses specific associate suggestions as teaching moments, naming the person and idea when sharing updates with broader groups. “I’m signaling to a much larger audience: we want feedback, we listen to feedback, and we take action,” he said. “That gives a broader group a sense of how important it is, and how it’s the expectation of every last leader.”Other feedback-driven changes at CarMax include the introduction of parental leave, revisions to time-and-attendance policies, and updated uniform guidelines. The expectations employees bring to surveys have shifted too. “It used to be primarily about pay or schedule,” Cronheim said. Increasingly, associates want to know how the organization will support them through personal and community struggles, which has been the impetus for CarMax to expand its benefits and equip managers for a more complex role.For leaders looking to start somewhere, Cronheim’s advice was simple: audit your own listening. “If you’re not actively asking your team, your customers, and your fellow leaders how you and your function can be doing more and better, you’re missing an opportunity.”Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
From Recruiting to Communication: How HR Leaders Can Leverage AI to Transform Their Work
BY Jessica Swenson February 24, 2026“Automation has disrupted work for decades,” said Elise Furlan, president and chief people & legal officer, North America, for SICK Sensor Intelligence. However, with the rapid advent of AI tools in the modern workplace, she says companies need to be aware of them to avoid obsolescence.How can HR leaders engage with these technologies and use them to shift focus to higher-value tasks? That was the topic of an executive panel moderated by former KHOU-TV news anchor Shern-Min Chow at From Day One’s Houston conference.Furlan says that AI transforms the workplace by freeing people from tedious and dangerous tasks—though it can, and likely will, cause turnover.Good employers will pivot and help elevate their employees through structured development opportunities, but employees also have to engage in the process. “In my opinion, humans are brilliant and sensitive and creative and will not be replaced by AI. But if your job is highly redundant or administrative, you have to upskill, and you have to own it,” she said. Erinn McMahon, VP of career transition & mobility at LHH, also thinks that individuals need to own their career advancement, with mobility and upskilling support from their employers. Throughout the employee’s lifecycle, she says, companies need to “give them the opportunity to learn new skills, to be able to take what they’ve done and maybe pivot it into something new that will be valuable to the organization.” While AI-powered robots may reduce issues inherent to human workers in manufacturing, Chris DeVault, VP of HR for Daikin Comfort Technologies, doesn’t believe that they can match human nimbleness and discernment. Employers have a social imperative to “eliminate repetitive jobs and get [employees] to the point where they are doing things that are far more rewarding,” he said. Governance ProtocolsJill Zhang, global head of total rewards for SLB, spoke about the company’s very deliberate approach to AI adoption, which focuses on protecting employee and client data. All AI tools are pre-trained models connected only to approved data sources and trained on internal databases.“We want to increase AI literacy across the organization. But we are also quite intentional about doing this responsibly and ethically. So right now, we rely on enterprise-approved tools that are deployed within controlled internal environments for people to use as efficiency tools,” she said. Journalist Shern-Min Chow moderated the session about "How HR Leaders Can Leverage AI to Make Their Work More Effective and Fulfilling"Echoing the need for proactive AI policies and governance, Lynn Moffett, VP of HR at BMC, cautions that without approved tools, employees may use external tools like ChatGPT. “You need to have your policies in place, and you should also be providing the tools to your employees to be able to utilize your AI,” she said. “It is really important that companies help guide it in the way that they want for that governance structure to hold true.”Recruiting and Hiring Moffett’s team uses AI for candidate sourcing, assessment, and interview scheduling. She also partnered with BMC’s IT team to build an in-house tool that detects AI-generated resume content. “It helps with ensuring we’ve got additional authenticity and consistency,” she said.If a candidate’s resume is flagged for high AI usage, managers can query the company’s interview question banks to help them dig deeper into the candidate’s experience or request guidance on customized interview structures. Using these question banks, Moffett says, allows the company to “know that we’ve got our consistent corporate principles being applied, in terms of our overall leveling from a job perspective.”Daikin’s new cloud-based ATS easily integrates with AI tools to analyze and process a high volume of resumes, says DeVault, and AI-driven bot interviews are increasingly realistic. However, his staffing teams are not concerned about job loss due to these systems.“This is just the gateway to get the right people to them, so that they can get the right people to the hiring managers. And it’s really simplified their day.”Internal CommunicationCompanies use AI tools to streamline internal communication as well, such as analyzing employee survey comments and translating team-to-team language.“Using AI to help filter and sort through and understand comments, especially when you’ve got a lot of comments coming at you, is a wonderful use of the tool,” said Moffett. HR business partners at BMC use AI search tools to analyze thousands of survey comments, enabling them to better support their partner teams.With employees across more than 100 countries, Daikin’s use of AI translation tools has transformed internal communications, DeVault says. Not only have these tools helped teams communicate meaningfully, but they have also boosted frontline engagement by allowing Daikin’s interpretation team to “go on the shop floor and actually work hand-in-hand with folks versus sitting on endless [video] calls.” The Future of WorkDeVault says “We are in a machine learning era, and we have to be better than the machine.” He tries to ensure that his team is upskilled and ready for the next challenge, aided in part by Daikin’s continuous internal development programs and advanced skills training. “There are things that will never be able to be done by machines, even from a machine logic perspective. And for those employees that have an interest, there is an infinite amount of training that we're giving them every day.”While we don’t yet know precisely how workplaces will change and what the jobs of the future will be, McMahon says it’s essential to promote curiosity and confidence while offering psychological safety. She urges leaders to “create an environment where people are curious enough to want to try something new and feel strong enough about their capabilities to try new things.” Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
