The Infusion Therapy Cost Employers Can’t See, and How to Find It
BY Ade Akin November 04, 2026A self-funded health plan paid about $9,000 for one employee’s infusion therapy treatment. Eight weeks later, the patient returned for the same infusion, and the claim came back at $97,000. The drug never changed. The billing did.Price swings like this hide inside many employer health plans. Specialty medications now make up more than half of medical benefit spending, yet more than 61% of employers haven’t fully addressed site of care, one of their biggest levers for cost management, according to research by Local Infusion. That gap framed a From Day One’s webinar about “The Infusion Therapy Cost Hiding in Your Health Plan, and What to Do About It.” Neil Kennish and Renee Lizotte, both directors of growth and employer partnerships at Local Infusion, a specialty infusion provider, walked benefits and HR leaders through how to identify hidden costs in their own claims data.A Small Group Drives Outsized SpendSpecialty infusion refers to medications, mostly biologics, that patients receive through an intravenous (IV) line or injection in a clinical setting, usually on a recurring schedule. Site of care means where that infusion happens: most often a hospital outpatient department or an ambulatory center built for infusions. “The drug is the same in either place. What changes is the setting,” Kennish said.Neil Kennish, director of growth and employer partnerships at Local Infusion, spoke during the webinar (company photo)Infusion therapy costs have risen about 26% year after year, says Kennish. A handful of plan members drives an outsized share of that spending. Across a typical population, about 1.5% of members account for 42% of total spend, while about 80% account for just 15%. “One or two members can dramatically move your entire year,” Kennish said.He estimates that a health plan with about 5,000 members could save as much as $1.5 million by managing where its members receive specialty infusions.Why the Cost Stays HiddenEmployers see the claim, but not the drug’s actual cost. Each claim rolls the drug’s purchase price, the provider’s margin, and any margin from third-party navigators into one figure. Under the “buy and bill” model, the provider buys the drug and bills the plan, and each layer adds margin.“That’s not an accusation. That’s just how the system is built, but it means two plans can pay very different amounts for the exact same drug in the exact same dose, and neither can easily see why that is,” Kennish said.He points to a few reasons the cost goes unnoticed. Infusion affects fewer than 2% of members, so it never triggers a population-wide alert. Some bills read like visits and services, which steers the conversation toward utilization instead of price and place. The category compounds quickly while other medical expenses draw attention. And most employers never check for site-of-care gaps. “Nobody was told to check, so nobody did,” Kennish said.A live poll conducted during the webinar backed up his point: roughly three-quarters of attendees said they weren’t sure what share of their plan’s spending goes to specialty infusion.Lower Prices Does Not Mean Lesser CareRenee Lizotte, director of growth and partnerships at Local Infusion, spoke with Kennish during the webinar (company photo)Lizotte rejects the assumption that a cheaper setting means weaker care. “There are no significant differences in the quality between the hospital outpatient setting and alternative sites,” she said.Patients managing chronic conditions want shorter visits, a dedicated team, and a calmer setting, Lizotte adds. Conversely, delays and fragmented care can worsen symptoms and increase absenteeism.She read a testimonial from a Local Infusion patient. “What I love most is that it feels like a little retreat where I can relax, get my treatment, and feel completely comfortable,” the patient wrote.Where a Provider Model FitsKennish describes Local Infusion, which pairs healthcare technology with clinical care, as a provider rather than a vendor or navigator. The company owns scheduling and prior authorization and employs its own nurses. “We are where the care happens, not the company you call when care isn’t happening,” Kennish said.Local Infusion schedules members within three days of a referral, compared with the industry average of three weeks or more. That speed shapes patient outcomes: a missed infusion for someone with multiple sclerosis or Crohn’s disease often means a flare, which could lead to an emergency room visit.“The cost goes down because the care is better, not in spite of it,” Kennish added. Local Infusion operates roughly 75 clinics across 15 states, along the East Coast and into the Midwest and Texas, and coordinates nationwide home infusion for members outside its clinic areas. Kennish suggests lowering member cost share at alternate sites, even to $0, to give employees a reason to switch without a mandate.Steps to Take This QuarterKennish laid out steps employers can take without a vendor. First, request the data. Ask your third-party administrator or carrier for a report on what the plan spent on drugs under its medical benefit over the last 12 to 24 months. Ask for it broken down by J code, which identifies each drug, and by place of service, which shows where patients received it. “You don’t need member-level data to see a really strong pattern,” Kennish emphasized.Then, vet your options. Evaluate vendors using the five questions Lizotte suggests asking any site-of-care provider: Who owns the execution? What are the quality standards? Who is covered? How long before you go live? What changes to my plan are required?When a third-party administrator or carrier is slow to hand over claims data, Lizotte says employers have a strong case for insisting on it. “All self-funded employers are fiduciaries of their plan, and they have responsibility to do what’s best for the plan assets,” she said. At minimum, she says, a list of J codes gives a provider enough to start a savings analysis.As for Kennish’s $1.5 million estimate, he offered it with a caveat. “That number isn’t a promise, but it is a reason to look,” he said.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Local Infusion, for sponsoring this webinar. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by OlenaMykhaylova/iStock)
Recent Job Cuts Show Tech Layoffs Don’t Need an AI Story
BY Ade Akin October 22, 2026Netflix is cutting about 1,000 jobs, roughly 6% of its workforce, in its largest round of layoff in recent years. Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced the Netflix layoffs in an Oct. 14 memo to employees. Variety reported that the cuts hit the product, technology, legal, and HR teams hardest.Netflix’s announcement doesn’t cite AI as a reason for the cuts. Instead, the co-CEOs framed the workforce reduction as a matter of focus. “Our business is strong and growing, and we remain on track to deliver our full year forecast,” Sarandos and Peters wrote. The company needs to be “disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources,” they added, reports Variety.Netflix’s explanation stands apart from much of this year’s layoff data. Employers have cited AI in 120,136 announced U.S. job cuts through September, about 21% of the total and the most common reason given so far this year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas data reported by Fast Company.Tech layoffs make up a large share of that total. Technology companies announced 165,925 job cuts through September, up 54% from the same period in 2025, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Older explanations haven’t gone away, though. In September alone, employers most often cited market and economic conditions for cuts, while AI ranked fifth.For HR leaders, these cuts carry a second twist. HR is one of the hardest-hit departments, which can stretch the remaining people tasked with guiding employees through the transition. While many employers point to AI, Netflix’s memo explained the cuts in plain business terms. As more companies cut staff for similar reasons, how clearly and quickly leaders explain those decisions may shape employee trust among the people who stay.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by peterhowell/iStock)
Building a Resilient Immigration Program: What Every HR Leader Needs to Know
BY Ade Akin October 21, 2026A recruiter spends weeks courting a promising candidate. Interviews go well, the hiring manager signs off, and the offer goes out. Then the candidate mentions one detail no one asked about.“You get all the way to an offer, and the person says, ‘I need immigration sponsorship,’ and then everything stops, and you have to bring in counsel,” Matthew Hellrung, the co-founder and managing partner at Meltzer Hellrung, said. Hellrung often watches this scenario play out, and he says companies can avoid it by planning ahead. Employers that hire foreign national workers need more than a lawyer who files paperwork. They need a strategic immigration program that covers every stage of the employee lifecycle, from recruiting to offboarding.Hellrung and his fellow co-founder and managing partner, Matt Meltzer, made that case during a From Day One webinar about “Building a Resilient Immigration Program: What Every HR Leader Needs to Know.”Start With a Clear Sponsorship PolicyA written sponsorship policy sits at the center of any strong immigration program. Hellrung recommends a three- to five-page document that covers which visas the company sponsors, who qualifies, how the company splits costs with employees, and who approves exceptions.Meltzer takes a lighter approach for smaller teams. “If you’re a company of fewer than five sponsored employees, it’s not usually worth the effort to write a policy at all,” he said. Even at larger companies, a first policy can fill a single page. “There’s no reason a policy has to be long,” Meltzer added.Both partners favor sharing the policy with foreign national employees. Hellrung says that transparency signals care for a group whose visa status shapes nearly every career decision. “The most important thing that you’re offering them besides salary is their immigration sponsorship, and they want to know that you’ve got your act together as an employer,” he said.A written policy can also protect the company during an investigation. If a former employee files a complaint with the Department of Labor or the Department of Justice, Hellrung says, the company can show that it followed its documented policy. Hellrung now urges clients to review that policy more often because immigration rules keep changing. “I would have said once a year, but now I’m saying at least once a quarter,” he said.Bring Immigration Into Recruiting EarlyMeltzer encourages companies to decide where sponsorship widens their talent pool. Many new graduates qualify for Optional Practical Training (OPT), which provides 1 to 3 years of work authorization without employer sponsorship. In Meltzer’s view, ignoring these candidates is costly because he estimates that half of students in U.S. science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) master’s and PhD programs are foreign nationals.“If you are recruiting right out of school, and you’re not considering any foreign candidates, you have nixed 50% of the qualified applicants,” Meltzer said.Meltzer cautions that recruiters may ask only two screening questions about immigration status. “Do you have work authorization today? Will you now or in the future need sponsorship?” he said. Employers can also choose which visas they support. A company might decline to sponsor an H-1B for a role but sponsor a TN visa, a category reserved for candidates from Canada and Mexico.Avoid Costly Compliance MistakesSome shortcuts create serious liability. Employers must pay most H-1B costs, and pushing those costs onto workers can backfire. Meltzer warned that a company in that position is “only one complaint to the Department of Labor away from an unpleasant investigation.”Hellrung estimates that the mistake ends up costing about three times the original sum once back pay, fines, and legal fees add up. “Just pay the person what they’re owed,” he said.Job postings carry risk as well. Unless a role involves defense work or falls under International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) restrictions, Meltzer advises employers to never state that a job requires U.S. citizenship. Hellrung notes that a citizens-only requirement discriminates against lawful permanent residents, a protected class.Rising filing fees are driving up immigration costs. Hellrung’s team has cut client spending by using premium processing, which he pegs at about $3,000 per case, only when timing truly matters.Plan for Travel and Offboarding Risks“Travel is without a doubt the biggest hiccup in immigration right now,” Meltzer stated. “It is harder to get appointments than ever before.”Hellrung estimates that the share of visa holders pulled into secondary inspection has climbed from about 0.1% to roughly 1%. He stresses that most travelers still cross without trouble, but employers need a plan for workers stranded abroad for weeks or months, including pay, leave, and system access.Offboarding demands the same foresight. Meltzer notes that employers must offer to cover return travel for departing H-1B and O-1 workers who don’t stay in the U.S.Use Green Cards to Build TenureHellrung treats green card sponsorship as a retention tool rather than a hiring incentive. Most of the firm’s clients start the process about a year after a worker joins. “If you don’t do this, this employee will almost certainly leave at some point,” he said.Meltzer sees a recruiting edge, too. If competitors sponsor green cards at 18 months, a company that commits to nine months may win stronger candidates. “Someone may take a reduction in salary for more guarantee of green card sponsorship within a specific timeline,” he said.That loyalty gives HR leaders a way to measure return on investment (ROI). Hellrung suggests comparing the average tenure of sponsored workers with that of the rest of the workforce. “An immigration program structured properly, you can manufacture tenure.”Prepare for Audits and Rule ChangesImmigration enforcement keeps expanding. Meltzer describes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as the largest police force and best-funded agency in the federal government today, and he warns that a single disgruntled employee’s tip can prompt a Form I-9 audit. I-9 compliance errors are common. “Of all the I-9 audits we’ve done, I’ve never seen any employer that’s done them perfectly,” Hellrung said.Meltzer advocates naming one internal point person to manage the program. When several HR business partners share the work, he explained, “Those programs are inherently more inefficient. They move slower. They give worse employee experiences.”Hellrung expects new prevailing wage rules to make permanent labor certification harder, so he urges clients to start eligible green card cases now.Still, Meltzer sees openings for employers willing to stay the course. He says the proposed $100,000 H-1B fee drove many employers out of this year’s lottery, which lifted his clients’ selection rate to 50%, up from roughly a third. Sponsored workers are staying longer, too. “Some of these challenges also create opportunities,” Meltzer concluded.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Meltzer Hellrung, for sponsoring this webinar.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by belterz/iStock)
Creative Halloween Marketing Turns Local Traditions Into Brand Experiences
BY Ade Akin October 21, 2026Two of this season’s Halloween marketing campaigns have a street address. Dunkin’ turned a shop in Salem, Massachusetts, into a haunted house run by its spider-shaped mascot. Reese’s is running a nationwide search to find the best street in America for trick-or-treating, and the winning street gets a block party.Neither brand built its campaign around a traditional ad. Each one centers on bringing people together in a real place, then letting social media carry the story.The timing makes sense. Consumers plan to spend $13.5 billion on Halloween this year, $400 million more than last year’s record of $13.1 billion, according to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual Halloween survey of 7,889 consumers.A Social Media Mascot Moves Into a Real StoreIn early October, Dunkin’ opened Spidey D’s Horror House at a location in Salem. The store takeover features the décor of Spidey D, Dunkin’s viral Halloween mascot, exclusive Halloween merchandise, and a Zoltar fortune-telling machine the character has “possessed.” Visitors don’t need a ticket or reservation to join the fun, which runs through the end of October.The Spidey D character began online. The character first appeared on Dunkin’s social accounts in October 2024 as the face of the chain’s purple Spider Donut. In one week, its chaotic posts earned more than 2.5 million engagements and 100,000 new followers, The Boston Globe reported. The buzz reached the counter, too. Dunkin’ sold 13 million Munchkins and doughnuts on Halloween 2024, a record for the holiday, according to the Globe.Last year, Spidey D took over the same Salem shop, covering it inside and out in purple slime and webs. That store went on to post one of the highest single-day sales the brand has ever recorded, the Globe reports. Jill McVicar Nelson, who was Dunkin’s CMO at the time, explained to the Globe that the team “wanted to see what happens when you take Spidey D off the phone and into the real world.”This year’s Horror House builds on that playbook, turning a social media character into an experiential marketing destination fans can walk into.Reese’s Puts Neighborhoods in the SpotlightReese’s launched its Trick-or-Treatiest Street in America search on Oct. 1. To narrow the field to 150 contenders, the Hershey-owned brand surveyed 15,000 Americans and weighed factors such as decorations, community participation, and walkability, Marketing Dive reported.Today, the first-ever Halloween Council named the winner: East Dudley Avenue in Westfield, New Jersey. The winning street receives a Reese’s block party in partnership with Zillow.“The best Halloween streets aren’t just the ones that decorate or have the biggest budgets,” Halloween council-member Christina Ricci asserted in Reese’s announcement. “Instead, they are the ones that create an atmosphere where trick-or-treaters keep coming back, and the entire community becomes part of the experience.”The approach doubles as community marketing: Instead of telling people what makes Halloween special, Reese’s asks neighborhoods to show it.Why Physical Promotions Fit This MomentBoth campaigns give fans something to do, not just something to watch or read.The brand’s hand over part of that conversation by design. Spidey D’s following grew in comment sections, a form of user-generated content that topped 30,000 comments in 2024. Reese’s makes each participating neighborhood’s own Halloween traditions the story. In both cases, the brands give people a reason to participate, turning a seasonal campaign into something they can help shape and share.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by Svetlana Popova/iStock)
The AI Trust Gap: Why Consumers Are Tuning Out and How to Win Them Back
BY Ade Akin October 15, 2026Conversations in marketing rarely stray away from AI lately. Marketers feel pressure to deliver on the promise of content scaling “in hours rather than weeks or days,” said Meg Moss, head of global agency partnerships at Canva. Generative AI makes that speed possible, yet speed without a point of view carries a hidden cost.“The risk isn’t just wasted budget; it’s lost trust with a direct line to revenue,” Moss said during a thought leadership spotlight about “The AI Trust Gap: Why Consumers Are Tuning Out and How to Win Them Back,” at From Day One’s Chicago marketing conference. In an age of creative velocity, speed alone no longer sets a brand apart. The brands that pull ahead back that speed with human direction, consumer trust, and strong governance, she says. Marketers and Consumers Split on AITo measure the distance between how marketers feel about AI and how audiences respond to it, Canva commissioned The Harris Poll to survey 1,415 marketing leaders and 3,547 consumers across seven markets for its 2026 State of Marketing and AI Report.The results point in opposite directions. Ninety-seven percent of marketing leaders use AI in their daily creative work, and nearly all plan to increase their investment in it, according to the report. Consumers, meanwhile, are evaluating, judging, and pushing back on content that doesn’t feel earned. For Moss, that leaves marketers with one central tension: “how fast versus how well.”The consumer numbers make the point. Sixty-five percent say AI-generated ads are so obvious they’re laughable, 70% say those ads lack soul, and 87% say the best advertising still requires a human touch.When speed and volume push human direction aside, Moss says, teams end up with AI slop. “It’s polished, but it’s hollow. It doesn’t say anything to your customers, and we’re obviously in a sea of sameness,” Moss observed. “This is the cost that doesn’t show up in your AI budget line, but it shows up in your brand sentiment.”Moss stressed that the backlash targets how brands use the technology, not the technology itself. “I promise this isn’t an anti-AI story. Canva is an AI company, but it is conditional,” she said. Sixty-eight percent of consumers don’t mind AI in ads if the ads are helpful or relevant, yet 78% would still rather see ads made by people, according to Canva’s report. “They aren’t rejecting AI; they’re rejecting laziness,” Moss said.In her view, AI has lowered production costs while raising the value of taste. “AI collapses the cost of execution, not judgment,” she said. That shift changes the question teams should ask. “When AI makes almost every idea possible, the question is no longer, ‘Can we make this?’ It’s ‘Should we make this?’” Moss said.Marketing leaders seem to agree. Asked what AI can never replicate, 42% named empathy and emotional intelligence, while 41% cited brand intuition and creative judgment, according to the report. Three-quarters expect creative roles to grow over the next five years. The irony, Moss said, is that creativity “has become more strategic, not less.”Direction, Velocity, and TrustMoss outlined three principles that, working together, turn AI into a growth engine rather than a tool stack. Direction differentiates, velocity gets a team in the game, and trust sustains it.“AI raises the floor of execution, but your point of view is what makes the work unforgettable,” she explained. “High volume without direction just creates noise. High volume with direction creates a competitive advantage.”Trust depends on transparency, especially as AI-made ads become harder to detect. Seventy percent of consumers believe they’ll eventually be impossible to tell apart without disclosure, Canva’s 2026 State of Marketing and AI Report shows.Responsible AI governance needs a strategic approach. “It requires clear guardrails, defined standards, and intentional design,” she said. Make AI Integration IntentionalMany teams still treat AI as a generic layer on top of their old processes. “Generic AI produces generic results, and existing workflows don’t optimize for the new capabilities,” she said. Her answer is workflow optimization by design. Teams need to map where AI steps in, where humans step in, and where AI steps out. “There’s almost no way to accidentally get meaningful impact from AI agents. You have to be intentional,” Moss said.Rebuilding long-standing workflows is a change management challenge, Moss acknowledges, and Canva had to do it, too. The company built a culture around AI use, even asking in internal surveys, “Did you use AI for this, and how did you use it?” It also asked teams to treat AI “less like a tool and more like a teammate.”Canva’s marketing team integrates AI into each campaign. During planning, it uses Canva’s AI-powered search to surface insights and files from the previous year’s campaign, Moss says. For content creation, the team prompts AI to brainstorm visual directions, and the outputs stay fully editable. It also used Canva Code to build an interactive checklist of human-led checks for AI-powered content.Brand kits keep the output on brand. By attaching a brand kit to Canva AI, the team applies its fonts, colors, and tone of voice to every design which has eliminated much of the back-and-forth in production.Data analytics tools inside the platform made it easier to pull data for campaign check-ins and reviews. Automation handles the heavy lifting of localization: the team uses Bulk Create to produce batches of copy for paid campaigns and adapt headlines, text, and graphics for different regions. “This used to take weeks, and actually is one of those times where we now can say it actually takes us hours,” Moss said.How eXp Realty Removed BottlenecksMoss pointed to eXp Realty, a global real estate brokerage with more than 82,000 agents, as a customer that scaled without losing its brand. The brokerage integrated Canva Enterprise with its internal systems, allowing agents to pull listing details directly into brand-controlled marketing materials.With design tools such as Bulk Create, agents in every market can generate campaigns without having to file design requests. The result: eXp has quadrupled its approval speed, according to Canva’s case study.Moss closed by reframing consumer trust as a leadership issue. “AI trust is not a content problem; it’s an operating model problem,” she declared. Chief marketing officers must decide where AI can move fast, where humans stay accountable, and how trust gets measured. Canva took three steps: auditing every customer touchpoint to identify where AI was involved, classifying each by trust risk to determine the level of review and executive oversight needed, and defining who would own judgment, taste, claims, disclosures, and final approval.The winners of this current wave of AI-powered digital transformation will be the organizations that invest in human judgment, not just infrastructure. “As AI becomes standard, how will your brand stand out?” Moss posited. Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Canva, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Building Resilience Amid Workplace Change
BY Ade Akin October 13, 2026Norah Larke sees an opportunity for Wintrust Financial Corporation to prepare thoughtfully for AI before its effects reach the broader workforce. Larke, the company’s EVP and chief HR officer, began by building a risk framework and governance structure to guide the technology’s adoption.With a workforce that has already navigated years of change and growth through mergers and acquisitions, Larke has focused on getting the organization ready for what comes next. “We know it’s coming and it’s coming like a freight train,” she said. “So we’re just trying to get ready,” she said during an executive panel discussion about navigating change fatigue at From Day One’s Chicago HR conference. The four panelists, in a conversation moderated by Kim Quillen, business editor at the Chicago Tribune, explored how people leaders can keep teams grounded as AI adoption adds another layer of change to the workplace.Living Inside Constant ChangeWhat sets this moment apart is the missing finish line, says Laura Cheesewright, global principal consultant at Unmind. Organizations once managed people from point A to point B. Now there is no point B, and employees are asked to keep working through change without knowing where it leads. “There’s a tremendous amount of ambiguity around what the future of work is going to look like,” Cheesewright said.The psychological impact is outpacing the operational impact across Unmind’s client base. Anxiety and burnout are up, and people are struggling to stay connected to purpose and meaning, says Cheesewright. Cheesewright describes burnout as “a chronic imbalance between job demand and job support.” Demand keeps climbing, and much of that pressure can’t be removed, so she encourages organizations to raise the support side of the equation.Leading Without All the AnswersEmployees often look to their leaders for answers, and this time leaders won’t have them all. “This is truly a leadership moment, and leadership capability is going to become crucial,” she said. The skills she expects leaders to need most are “clarity, transparency, communication, and the ability to just build confidence in people.”Candor is part of that confidence. Cheesewright says the most trustworthy thing a leader can do is sometimes say they don’t know. Leaders can still offer certainty about processes when they can’t guarantee outcomes. Resilience is “the ability to stay connected to your capabilities when you’re under pressure,” she said.Executive panelists shared insights during the session, "Change Fatigue Is Real: How Leaders Can Keep Teams Adapting"David Loiselle, managing partner at the Leadership Pipeline Institute, encourages organizations to change the question they ask leaders about AI. “The question should start with how are you enabling your team to do their work with these tools and changes,” he said. Faster tools make an old trap more tempting, he says: leaders stepping down to do their team’s work.Austin Mace, VP, and change catalyst at Dentsu, works within teams like a player-coach. “There’s a big difference between mandating and educating folks on how to use these tools,” Mace said. His group shadows employees on the job and shows them where AI can lift tasks off their plates. “I really don’t think it’s an efficiency conversation,” he said. “It’s a new capability.”Hiring for Human SkillsQuillen then turned to talent acquisition and what employers should look for now. Wintrust is working toward a skills-based hiring framework, a multi-year effort that Larke wants to accelerate as AI reshapes jobs. Culture fit will stay in the equation, she says, because the community-based organization needs people who live its values.Which skills matter is the harder question. “I think it’s human skills,” Loiselle said. The question is personal for him, with a 5-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter growing up alongside AI. He lists learning agility, judgment, decision-making, and curiosity, and rejects the idea that AI allows companies to hire only generalists. “The specialist is more important today than ever because they’re the ones that hold judgment,” he said.Mace tested that thinking this summer when he hired four interns. Some applicants knew programming languages and how to build agentic systems, he says, but what really impressed him was how candidates carried themselves in interviews and where curiosity had taken them outside the classroom.AI is also reshaping both candidate selection and the hiring process. With applicants using AI to strengthen their applications and employers using it to evaluate candidates, one-on-one conversations are becoming increasingly important for getting to know candidates beyond what their applications reveal.Larke also sees an opening for current employees. “This is probably a huge opportunity for internal mobility,” she said. Employers know far more about their own people than about outside applicants, yet often second-guess insiders and gamble on outsiders. “Look at the data you have internally and make the decision there,” said Loiselle. “Your predictability is much better.”Spending on Tools, Not PeopleAt a time when budgets are tight and companies are investing more in technology, investing in the people expected to use it is just as important. Without the right support and training, even the most advanced tools may fall short of their potential.“I almost think we’re over-investing in the tools at the moment and under-investing in the people that need to use those tools,” said Cheesewright. Returns are lagging as well. Only 37% of respondents say AI has contributed to their organization's Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT), according to McKinsey's 2026 survey on the state of AI. Loiselle sees the gap as a sign that executives need to explain why the organization is using AI, whether for better customer service or faster turnaround.Asked who owns the return on AI, Loiselle separates responsibility from accountability. Accountability for a business decision probably rolls to the top, he says. Responsibility differs at each level, and the people using the tools probably drive the value in the end.Make Change Less ScaryAsked how well-being strategies can keep people engaged and away from burnout, Mace says his team deliberately gives employees room to step away from daily work and learn the tools, often at in-person “makeathons” built on fun and community.Quillen closed by asking each panelist for one practice that protects productivity during rapid change. Mace recommends a workplace that’s safe for failure and experimentation. Cheesewright advises leaders to “create certainty where you can” by spelling out the process and exactly what they're asking people to do. “It’ll ground people,” she said.Larke’s answer was to simplify. “One of the things that’s really important when it comes to change is to make it less scary,” she said. “Don’t try to teach everything at once.”Loiselle translated simplicity into a single action: “put the right work with the right people.” When work lands with whoever grabs it first, he says, everyone else is left wondering what their role is. “Don’t let the work get absorbed by people just for the sake of speed,” he said.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Power Moves: The People Side of Transformation
BY Ade Akin October 12, 2026A drone equipped with AI-powered facial recognition technology flies over a utility pole to detect rot. If the pole is sound, the crew stays on the ground, the truck stays parked, nobody loses power, and the pole gets another look in six months. At Exelon, some of the people writing business cases for that kind of technology are interns.Jaclyn Trovato, the head of employee experience and analytics at Exelon, shared the example to make a point about AI adoption: it depends on people. “If people don’t adopt AI, the technology is useless,” she said.Trovato spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Chicago HR conference, in a session titled, “Power Moves: The People Side of Transformation,” moderated by Patricia Garland, adjunct instructor at Loyola University Chicago. Trovato shared insights from her role that combines traditional data sets, AI and analytics, and change management for the energy company’s 20,000 employees, who range from timekeepers and overhead electricians to executives and lawyers. “Putting the human in human resources is something that we try to prioritize at Exelon,” she said.Use Cases From the Office to the FieldExelon’s AI use cases include the familiar ones, such as an employee chatbot that answers questions about vacation days and lifts administrative work off HR. “But some of the most exciting use cases are for our employees in the field and for our customers,” Trovato said. Skipping an unnecessary pole replacement pays off three ways. “We’ve been more efficient in the use of our employees. We’ve made people safer, and we’ve reduced the costs that we have to pass along to our customers,” she said.Jaclyn Trovato, Head of Employee Experience and Analytics at Exelon, right, spoke with moderator Patricia Garland, Adjunct Instructor, Loyola University ChicagoSmall gains in operational efficiency add up at a regulated utility. Exelon distributes power but doesn’t control its price, Trovato says. Saving a minute or two of an outage, or a few dollars on a repair, multiplies across the millions of customers Exelon serves in Illinois and the millions more served by its five East Coast utilities.A Chatbot Built on Bad DataTrovato’s biggest early lesson regarding AI is that bad data turns a time-saver into a liability. When a model pulls from a policy library cluttered with outdated versions, an employee can act on a rule that changed years ago, and a tool meant to speed things up ends up producing an investigation instead. “And that was not the point. The point was to get the information to someone more quickly,” she said.“One of the biggest mistakes we had in HR was that we launched a chatbot, but we launched it without ensuring that it was guardrailed within the most recent policies and procedures, the most accurate information, and then also that all of the user personas were correct,” Trovato added.Exelon’s answer was to pause and launch another data governance initiative. “We’re not building anything more until we can tell you the source of all the data, what systems every piece of data feeds in or out of, and what exactly this model is going to pull,” she said. The audit is complicated because Exelon grew through mergers and acquisitions, leaving legacy systems and benefit rules that vary by hire date.The relaunched chatbot will also route information according to who is logged in, and employees must ask questions for themselves, which Trovato says can take the burden off HR and managers. “Everyone’s information can be personalized based on their persona, and so everyone has to become a user,” she said.Training for Skills That StickExelon’s AI training borrows from its apprenticeship programs, which qualify construction workers for overhead or underground electrician work. Those programs pushed the company to study adult learning. “If an adult doesn’t use a skill very quickly after learning it, they will not have the ability to retain that information nearly as well as a child will,” Trovato said.Training is therefore timed to real work. During a current organizational optimization initiative, HR staff were trained on the tools they would be using to support their clients just ahead of the meetings. For dangerous field work, virtual reality offers a rehearsal. “We’ve used a lot of virtual reality training in order to put people in a position where before they do something dangerous, they are in a sandbox where they can do that thing a lot more safely,” Trovato said.For workers who worry the technology will take their jobs, the simulations make the opposite case. “This is going to make you better at your job and safer at your job. And then you show them that, and that’s how you gain trust,” she said.Peer learning does its own trust-building. For a couple of hours a week, employees can drop into a virtual room to trade methods for stubborn tasks. Trovato likes the community practice model because attendance is voluntary. “It’s your peers. You’ve all chosen to come together. No one’s made you come to this room,” she said.Safety as Step ZeroExelon’s safety priority shapes how employees respond to AI guidance. “We come from a place of safety is step zero. Nothing happens unless we feel we can execute on it safely,” Trovato said.Exelon once ran the largest fleet of nuclear power plants in the U.S., she says, and crews there learned a three-part communication protocol: one person gives an instruction, the other repeats it back, and the first confirms before anyone acts. That habit now applies to AI output. “When a system gives you a piece of information, you have to gut check it. You have to make sure it’s right,” she said.The same rigor makes field employees slower to trust a new tool, while corporate employees are more willing to take risks. Trovato values the tension, with field-based workers reminding office-based colleagues that “job one is still always safety.”Trust Your Own CultureAsked what she would tell HR leaders who are just starting out, Trovato cautions against buying tools out of fear of falling behind. “Take a minute to decide what works for your organization,” she said. “As HR practitioners, we know our culture. We know what works for our employees.”A sound foundation, Trovato says, comes down to “good data governance, employees who understand why you’re investing in this technology, and then responsible guardrails.” Garland added a fourth element: existing trust with employees. Trovato agreed, noting that people won’t embrace a technology pitched as a way to halve the staff. Employees need to understand that “this is an investment in them, not so that you need fewer of them, but so that they can be doing the more interesting work,” she said.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
AI Tools Continue to Change the Hiring Landscape
BY Ade Akin October 12, 2026LinkedIn’s AI recruiting agent will soon tailor its candidate recommendations to each recruiter’s own hiring history. The company announced LinkedIn Hiring Assistant 2, a new version of its AI agent for recruiters that remembers how individual recruiters and their companies hire and applies those preferences to future searches.In LinkedIn’s example, a recruiter who asked the first version for a product management candidate got exactly that. The new version would also look for someone close to the office, in the retail industry, with mid-level experience, if that is what the recruiter has hired for before.Dan Reid, the VP of product at LinkedIn Talent Solutions, told customers at the company’s Talent Connect event in New York City that the agent learns "not how everybody hires, but how you hire," HR Brew reported.LinkedIn is pitching the upgrade as an answer to a crowded market. Global hiring is down 30%, and applications per applicant are up 30% compared with pre-pandemic levels, the company says. LinkedIn says more than 20,000 companies now use its agentic hiring products, including AMD, Cisco, and Zillow. The company reports that recruiters are four times more likely to contact candidates sourced by Hiring Assistant than those found through traditional methods, and 27% more likely than they were six months ago.But recruiters still keep the controls. They can switch individual steps on or off, override recommendations, and review what the agent has done, HR Brew reported.That boundary matches what practitioners have said about AI in hiring. During a panel at From Day One’s March virtual conference, titled "Smart Tools, Smarter Hiring: How TA Leaders Can Leverage Their Human Judgment," speakers noted that AI recruiting tools prove most useful for high-volume tasks such as screening questions, scheduling, and candidate matching.But the panel also agreed that giving AI the final say doesn’t work. “We don’t have AI making decisions," Angie Lombardo, the VP, global director of operations for talent acquisition at Arcadis, said. As agentic AI becomes more involved in the recruiting process, HR leaders who use these new tools have to decide which steps the agent should run, who reviews its recommendations, and how often someone checks its work.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by gmast3r/iStock)
How AI Is Changing the Work Behind the Work
BY Ade Akin October 06, 2026When nominations for EPAM Systems’ special pay program reach Larry Solomon’s desk, the case for each name tends to sound the same: this person holds the certifications, that one finished the training.Solomon, the SVP and chief people officer at EPAM Systems, answers with a question of his own. “Okay, how many hours have they billed to a client?” His question captures how AI is changing EPAM, a company many know for IT outsourcing. EPAM, a software engineering and IT services firm, employs more than 60,000 people, and its clients now ask for more than code. They want process redesign, with AI embedded in how their people work and learn.“AI is not only about technology,” Solomon said. “You can’t just open up an AI box, and everything works.” Solomon discussed how those changes are affecting everything from recruiting and pricing to the future of HR itself during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Philadelphia conference, in conversation with Joseph DiStefano, a staff writer covering business news at the Philadelphia Inquirer.The Forward-Deployed Engineer BoomFew job titles in technology are growing faster than the forward-deployed engineer. Postings for the role rose by more than 1,000% between January and August 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to data from Lightcast, as reported by Fortune.Solomon describes the position as, in most cases, a senior engineer embedded in the customer’s processes, someone who understands technology, knows the client’s industry in depth, has solid change management and strong relationship skills, and “understands how to accelerate transformational solutions for their client to deliver transformational outcomes.” “It’s a hybrid role,” he said.“You’re really describing people who are pretty close to managers,” DiStefano added. Solomon agreed. EPAM competes with Microsoft, Anthropic, and Google for them, he says, and candidates generally want pay packages well above the norm. The company pairs recruiting with upskilling because “there’s no better source of talent than taking your own raw material and trying to upskill the people that we have.”Titles inflate easily, however. The real test, he says, is time spent working with clients. “If they’re not actively working with a client, delivering value on a day-to-day basis, then to me that’s not a real forward-deployed engineer. That could be a forward-deployed engineer in the making.”The standard flows from a principle EPAM calls client centricity. “When you wake up in the morning, you need to focus on your client,” he said. The client may be a paying customer or, for a recruiter, the hiring manager. Solomon wants HR built the same way, with forward-deployed HR leaders who understand technology and the industry they serve.From Hourly Billing to Shared OutcomesAI is changing how EPAM charges its clients, and whom it hires. Solomon pointed to “tokenomics,” a term he says is spreading quickly. “What it refers to is keeping track of and accounting for the cost of the tokens that run the LLMs and the AI technology, and those costs are starting to become a big, big issue with companies,” he said.Larry Solomon, SVP & Chief People Officer at EPAM Systems, spoke during the fireside chat in PhiladelphiaEPAM built much of its business on staff augmentation, billing on a time-and-materials basis. It is now moving toward different pricing models: fixed price, fixed price with an incentive, or a shared return.In a hypothetical Solomon offered, the client pays a third to cover EPAM’s fixed costs, a third on milestones, and a final third tied to results that may take one to three years to materialize. “That’s a type of gain sharing, which is the proverbial win-win because we’re able to cover our fixed costs, and then we’re delivering based on outcomes,” he said.The same arithmetic applies inside the company. “AI allows an organization to scale without increasing the expenses at the same rate of growth,” Solomon added. As EPAM begins budgeting for next year, he’s challenging its leaders to support the company’s growth while keeping costs flat or near flat.No Opting Out for HRSolomon, who is responsible for about 3,000 people, put his global people team through an AI boot camp that he has also completed. Using these AI tools is “not optional,” he said. “AI is not an add-on. It doesn’t mean doing your normal work the way you were doing it years ago, and then doing an hour or two at the end of the day of training or experimentation or something like that.”Solomon says he is not a technical person, yet he prepared for his fireside chat with DiStefano with EPAM’s Copilot and Claude, which produced outlines and topics “in 10 minutes instead of 10 hours.”When he asked who was losing sleep over AI replacing HR jobs, a few hands in the audience went up. “I do not think AI will replace HR roles,” he asserted. However, he sees the risk for those who refuse to experiment with artificial intelligence. AI is a threat only “if you’re not willing to embrace it and you’re not willing to work some extra hours and learn it, and play with it in a little sandbox and experiment and fail and force yourself to get out of your comfort zone.”The reward is time. For decades, HR teams have asked to do less operational work and more business partnering. Solomon says AI tools finally make it possible, taking over routine tasks to “allow HR professionals to spend more time with their people doing those more value-added, personalized experiences” in recruiting, compensation, performance management, and succession planning.Training as a Permanent FunctionWhen asked by DiStefano whether the surge in training is temporary, Solomon says he expects the function to keep growing. He defines the company by that habit more than by its services.“I refer to it as a learning organization because that’s what it’s all about. It’s about learning. It’s about sponging up everything you possibly can,” Solomon said. “And at the end of the day, if you can take away one thing that you’ve learned, or at the end of the week, then you’ve been successful in your role.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
ChatGPT’s New Ad Format Skips the Website and Goes Straight to the Chat
BY Ade Akin October 05, 2026OpenAI is testing a new advertising format that turns an ad click into a conversation with a brand’s AI agent, rather than sending users to an external website. The format allows advertisers to attach branded business agents directly to ads in ChatGPT. When a user clicks the call-to-action button that reads something like “Chat with us,” they are taken to a branded chat in ChatGPT, where they can interact with the seller’s AI agent, according to Digiday. The move represents OpenAI’s first real attempt at what it calls AI-native advertising: ads designed around how people actually interact with AI assistants, rather than funneling leads from search engines or social media.Wayfair is among the first advertisers testing ChatGPT’s click-to-chat advertisements. Morgan Brown, the company’s director of paid media, told Digiday the retailer is participating in what OpenAI calls its “Sponsored Agent” pilot.The launch of OpenAI’s sponsored agent pilot comes as advertisers are still determining whether ChatGPT’s new advertising model is worth investing in. The consensus among participating advertisers remains that the platform is promising but unproven months after ads first appeared in the chatbot. The development raises a question that From Day One has explored in its coverage of AI in marketing: As brands hand more of the customer conversation to AI agents, what happens to the human touch?For brands considering experimenting with click-to-chat ads, the opportunity is substantial, and the stakes are high. The format promises something current ad models don’t: a conversation that keeps consumers engaged rather than sending them away. Whether that exchange feels authentic or automated will determine if it becomes the next popular ad format or just another experiment that never scales.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by Isasoulart/iStock)
Decoding What Moves People: A New Model for Engagement in the Age of AI
BY Ade Akin October 02, 2026David Kristal grew up in Minnesota, and he’s all too familiar with what water can become. “At 32 degrees, it’s a solid block of ice. At room temperature, it flows through our hands, and above 212 degrees, it’s vapor in the air, invisible,” he said. People change states too, Kristal says. The same employee who shows up energized on Monday can be distracted on Tuesday by a new baby, a rough commute, or a boss they don’t get along with. Traditional employee engagement initiatives have historically operated under the assumption of a static environment, ignoring changing circumstances. “The future of workplace engagement enables us to tailor every response, not just to the individual employee, but to the temperature, to the moment. Context changes the game,” Kristal, the founder and CEO of Augeo, said. Kristal spoke with Katie Cunningham, the director of product at Augeo, about this during a thought leadership spotlight titled “Decoding What Moves People: A New Model for Engagement in the Age of AI” at From Day One’s Austin conference.When Intelligence Becomes a UtilityKristal started the conversation by acknowledging real fears companies and their employees have, from data leakage to the commoditization of intelligence. He contends that these two priorities are not mutually exclusive: organizational leaders can actively champion regulation and transparency while simultaneously driving AI adoption forward at full speed.He notes that every few centuries, civilization’s operating system undergoes a complete rewrite, moving from the printing press to the industrial engine, and later to the internet. “Intelligence itself has become an accessible utility,” he said.Engagement programs have always relied on personalization and data signals, according to Kristal. What’s new is the ability to pull those signals from many more sources and process them almost instantly. “For the first time, we can decode what will move millions of people millions at a time and one by one in real time,” he said.Augeo, which Kristal says has built engagement solutions for almost three decades and serves about 100 Fortune 500 companies, has put money behind that belief. The company sold its card-linking subsidiary Figg to JPMorgan Chase in 2022, and Kristal says Augeo has never invested more than it does now. In early September, it announced a collaboration with SpaceXAI to integrate Grok’s reasoning into THEO. While Kristal notes that the company maintains a platform-agnostic approach, it continues to explore strategic technology partnerships.One Operating System, Many ProgramsKristal’s ambitions extend beyond HR. He asked the audience to imagine AT&T, not an Augeo client, trying to sell more accessories in its stores. Today, that goal might spawn three efforts: an incentive program for store employees, a customer loyalty program, and a vendor program, each in its own silo.David Kristal, CEO of Augeo and Katie Cunningham, Director of Product at Augeo, shared the stage in Austin“Our north star vision is to be the engagement operating system for the enterprise, meaning the full company,” Kristal said. For that model, a single shared intelligence layer serves HR, customer loyalty, brand advocacy, and customer support simultaneously. He hedged the bet candidly: “If we’re wrong, and each of our programs remain siloed, that works too.”Signals That Used to Be InvisibleContext is what makes orchestration matter to people leaders. “Maybe an employee has a new baby. Maybe their route to work is disrupted. Maybe a friend got a promotion, and they didn’t. These are all previously invisible elements that affect how people might react in the workplace.”THEO reads those signals throughout an enterprise and acts on them. Kristal describes it as humanizing technology rather than a replacement for people. “We’re leveraging AI tech to actually humanize the workplace experience because it recognizes humans are always changing, evolving,” he added.Augeo is building two architectures around THEO. The first is what Kristal called the world’s first commerce engine: a conversational, fully personalized interface for redeeming rewards. It draws on data that companies already share with Augeo from their Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS). “There’s no creepy data effect,” he said. The second architecture connects THEO to the tools where people already work, such as Slack, Teams, CRM platforms, and HRIS systems.From Systems of Record to ActionTHEO, Cunningham says, is meant to “shift the experience from systems of record to systems of action.” Legacy platforms wait for someone to enter data; THEO continuously analyzes signals and recommends next steps.Cunningham’s demo followed three people at a grocery chain. Maria, a regional director overseeing 30 stores, gets a Teams message as her day starts: her peak-season program sits at 83% of target, but Store 412 in Riverside is at 62% and has lost momentum for 10 days. THEO recommends that John, the store’s manager, launch a weeklong sales incentive sprint. It flags another store that has held pace all quarter and drafts a note recognizing its manager, which Maria tweaks and sends. This is automation in service of judgment: Maria still makes the call.“Where it might have taken Maria days to notice this performance dip at one of her stores, THEO sees this signal immediately, understands the context, and helps her act,” Cunningham elaborated.John, who manages 80 associates, receives the sprint and has THEO personalize the announcement for each associate using their individual performance and profile data. “Without THEO’s analysis of individual performance data and knowledge of what motivates each team member, John would have had to deploy a one-size-fits-all incentive across his 80 associates,” she said.Cunningham’s demo ended with Alex, a checkout associate who works mostly from a handheld device. His challenge: convert four more loyalty perk signups at the register to earn 500 points. THEO knows he loves music and movies, so it suggests concert tickets or a movie night bundle. By day’s end, Alex redeems his points for the movie night because his kids will love it.“This is where personalization moves beyond a segment or just a campaign,” Cunningham said. “That is a system that brings intelligence into the flow of work every single day, helping people make better decisions and act in the moment.”Moving Fast Without Giving GroundKristal closed by sharing the mindset Augeo has held for nearly 30 years: “What got us to where we are today will not get us to our next collectively. This is not the next, literally, but a quantum leap forward.”Speed in decision-making currently outweighs any individual choice, says Kristal. For the engagement sector, he identifies two lasting competitive edges: deep domain expertise and robust underlying infrastructure. The first is know-how: “We have decades of proprietary engagement expertise that off-the-shelf agents can’t crawl and will never be able to crawl,” Kristal said. The second is infrastructure, the systems for recognition, badging, and redemption that the agent world lacks. Leaders shouldn’t give those away, he says. Instead, they should work side by side with AI agents while preserving the human element of the workforce experience.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Augeo, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
When AI Becomes Part of Everyone’s Job: How HR Can Help Workers Use It
BY Ade Akin October 02, 2026Before talking about artificial intelligence, Melissa Garza asked an audience full of HR executives to relax their shoulders.“If you are wearing your shoulders as earrings, let’s go ahead and bring those down,” she said. Then she turned to another familiar source of tension: the smartphone. “If you’ve got your chin down on your chest as a necklace, let’s bring that up so we can start stress-free today.”The exercise was more than an icebreaker. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in everyday work, HR leaders are being asked to manage a new source of workplace tension while helping their organizations adopt the technology. For Garza, chief HR officer at Powerfleet, those two jobs are inseparable: HR can’t help organizations embrace AI without also addressing what it asks of the people using it. Garza explored this topic during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Austin’s conference; the session was moderated by Courtney Sebesta, the editor-in-chief of the Austin American-Statesman.Start by Naming the FearGarza says AI adoption differs from most workplace changes because it can threaten how people see themselves. “AI can absolutely trigger identity-level resistance,” she said. That makes psychological safety the first consideration in any rollout. She recommends asking employees a direct question: “What are you worried about that you haven’t said out loud yet?”Her second principle is fluency before scale. Powerfleet is rolling out a companywide AI 101 course that covers large language models, hallucinations, and the company’s guardrails. After that, she advises piloting on a small scale and making the results visible, because in change management, “co-creation with people is always better than a decree.”Executives have homework to do as well. “Leaders who are asking their employees to use AI kind of need to use it themselves,” Garza added. She urges companies to build feedback loops, even anonymous ones.Melissa Garza, Chief HR Officer at PowerFleet, was interiewed by Courtney Sebesta, Editor-in-Chief of the Austin American-Statesman, during the fireside chat in AustinSebesta pointed out that public anxiety about AI has grown from fears about job loss to fears about humanity itself, and Garza takes those worries seriously. “I’d be super skeptical of any leader or, quite frankly, any person who tells me that there’s nothing to worry about with AI because that simply just isn’t true,” she said.She recommends watching The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, a 2026 documentary featuring interviews with experts regarding both the potential hazards and benefits of artificial intelligence. No single company can settle the existential debate, but every organization controls its own practices. Her first rule is to keep a human in the loop. Her second is to give employees clear guidelines and a way to ensure they follow them. That kind of risk mitigation doesn’t have to wait for governments or industry groups to agree on a unified framework.HR as Co-ArchitectWho should decide how AI changes work? That depends on the ambition, Garza says. An AI-first strategy changes hiring, the org chart, and career paths. In that case, “HR needs to be a co-architect at the beginning of that initiative, not just the department that finds out last and implements it,” she said. “We know the employees, we know the career paths, right? We know where the problems are.”A narrower tool rollout calls for a different role. “Procurement and IT are going to take care of which tool to buy. Our job then is: how does it impact the people?” she added.Garza’s career traces HR’s digital transformation, starting in a compliance department full of paper files. At USAA, long before anyone called it AI, a team of statisticians practiced early predictive analytics. “We didn’t have AI, but what we did have was a group of statisticians that could tell me if someone left in one department where I could expect a vacancy in another,” she said. Subsequent work at Freescale (now part of NXP) involved using data analytics and metrics frameworks to assess employee engagement and inform strategic organizational decisions.AI adds new responsibilities, but it can’t replace judgment about values and organizational culture. “AI can tell you what’s happened in the past. AI can tell you what could potentially happen in the future, but it can’t tell you what you want to do,” she said.Skills to PrioritizeWhen it comes to recruitment and expanding skill sets, Garza advocates for a T-shaped candidate model: combining specialized knowledge to meet immediate requirements with the versatile breadth needed to adapt as organizational roles evolve. At the top of her list is a growth mindset, the idea, developed by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, PhD, that people can improve their abilities through effort. Recruiters can test for it by asking, “Has this person ever started over in a completely different way?”Comfort with uncertainty comes next: “Can I say I don’t know without perceiving it as a weakness?” Sebesta called that a lesson for all leaders, urging them to “be vulnerable, show them [employees] that you don’t have all those answers.” Garza agreed and suggested leaders tell their teams, “We’re building this capability. We’re on this journey together, and we don’t have an end state for you guys.”Why Humans Still Check the WorkJudgment matters because employees are increasingly reviewing what machines produce. “So we’re now quality checking what’s coming out of AI,” Garza elaborated. She has seen AI mangle formulas, names, and dates. “It just makes things up sometimes, and that’s why you always need a human in the loop to make sure that you’re getting what you bargained for,” she said.Better prompts help, and Garza compares prompting to giving feedback. “If I tell you to be nicer, what does that even mean?” she asked. Instead, she suggests providing a role, context, and details: “I’m a senior recruiter,” followed by specifics such as “three paragraphs, 150 words, warm but professional.”Watching for SmokeWhat worries Garza most are “effectively irreversible decisions,” such as hiring or firing the wrong person. “Did our AI software inadvertently discriminate against some group of employees?” she asked.What excites her is prevention. HR used to rush in after the fire started. Now, “we can see a little bit of smoke,” she said, because AI can flag which employees are likely to leave and which managers need training. “It’s proactive HR versus reactive HR.” Automation also pulls practitioners out of “administrivia” and frees them for the human work, “which is coaching, which is building relationships with your leaders, which is having conversations with employees.”Her parting advice to HR leadership amid workforce changes came full circle. “Never take the human out of the loop,” she said, and make sure your teams check everything AI produces. HR professionals, she reminded the audience, “are the stewards of the entire company,” so AI adoption should never come at the cost of care: “Don’t forget about empathy and psychological safety because everybody is at different levels and a different pace.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Open Enrollment at a Time of Rising Costs and New Technology
BY Ade Akin September 15, 2026Kim Duck spent most of her time opening mail and processing papers when she started her career as a benefits analyst at Dow Jones in 2021. Twenty-five years later, she now oversees benefits for a global media empire operating in 44 countries. What set Duck apart was her curiosity. She asked questions nobody else wanted to ask. “If you have that question, someone else on your team also probably has that question,” Duck said. “There’s no bad question you can ask other than the one that you don’t ask.”Duck, now the VP of global benefits at News Corp, shared her career-long philosophy during a fireside chat at From Day One's September virtual conference. The session, “Open Enrollment at a Time of Rising Costs and New Technology,” was moderated by Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, a business reporter at The Seattle Times.A Portfolio of Brands, a Universe of Benefits ChallengesNews Corp may not be a household name, but many of its brands are. The company owns The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins Publishing, the New York Post, Barron's, and Realtor.com, among others. Duck says she leads with three words that define the company’s ethos: passionate, principled, and purposeful. “You have to be passionate,” she said. “You have to love the ability to jump in with two feet and to help someone. You’re going to get on a call, or you’re going to get an email, and you don’t know what it’s about, but you have to be able to be excited about what you do every day.” For Duck, being principled means "doing the right thing all the time," especially when benefits teams must fix mistakes that affect employees' lives. For her, being purposeful means having a long-term strategy, such as planning benefits three to five years out with CFOs or entering union negotiations with a clear vision.The Hardest Renewal Season in YearsThis year, News Corp is conducting its first active enrollment in 10 to 12 years. The shift matters because employees have grown accustomed to benefits rolling over automatically. Duck’s team plans to spend weeks educating workers on their options, combating the misconception that paying more always means getting better coverage.Technology is central to that effort. “The experience you have from a benefits perspective and the experience you have in your shopping and the whole rest of your life; they shouldn’t be different,” she said. That means jargon-free communication.Kim Duck of News Corp spoke with journalist Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton during the virtual conference (photo by From Day One)Additionally, Duck’s long-range planning ability is now colliding with the worst cost cycle she has seen in years. “This is the hardest year that we’ve had in many years,” she said. “Many of us are facing double-digit increases, which wasn’t necessarily the case in the last two to three to five years.”The increases she’s referring to are the cost of health coverage for employees. Three main forces are driving costs up: employees are using more care benefits post-Covid, healthcare services are more expensive, and new, pricier treatments are entering the market. Boyanton provided data illustrating the national trend. She cited an Aon projection that U.S. employers will pay almost 10% more per employee for health coverage next year, pushing the average annual cost of covering one worker above $19,000. Facing these rising costs, benefits teams are reassessing their benefits plans. “We’ve all started looking at our plan designs and reassessing: is this fit for purpose going forward?” Duck added.Any answer lands on employees in one of two ways. Raising what workers contribute from each paycheck spreads the increase across the whole workforce because everyone pays it. Tightening plan design by raising deductibles, raising copays, and dropping covered services falls mainly on people who actually use care. That tension is the job. “How does this impact us as a company? But what does this actually mean to our employees?”GLP-1s and Emerging Benefits: Balancing Cost and CareNo conversation about rising costs is complete without addressing GLP-1 medications. Duck acknowledges that the topic is top of mind for every benefits professional. The challenge is twofold: the drugs themselves are expensive, and the eligible population is expanding.“Employers, for the first time, are having to take a really hard look at whether they can even consider continuing the coverage,” she said. Those that do are exploring lowest net unit pricing, BMI thresholds, and wraparound wellness programs that address nutrition and behavior change.The numbers tell a story of rapid retreat. The share of employers covering GLP-1 drugs for weight management fell from 72% in 2025 to 60% in 2026, according to Business Group on Health. Just under 15% of employers have already dropped coverage or plan to do so by 2027, up from 10% earlier this year. Pharmacy now accounts for roughly 25% of employers' total healthcare spending, with drug costs projected to rise by 12%.Like in the case of GLP-1s, employers have often raced to adopt point solutions. Duck loves the innovation of these vendors, working to solve specific health challenges, but foresees a correction coming. Duck describes the shift as a pivot toward intentionality: “If we’re going to spend the money, we want to know that it's the right product at the right time. It’s going to hit the right people.”Innovations in Health PlansNews Corp has embraced two structural alternatives. The first is Centivo, an alternative healthcare plan that focuses on primary care within hospital systems. Duck compared it to an old-school health maintenance organization (HMO), but with expansive networks such as Mount Sinai in New York and RWJBarnabas in New Jersey.“Employees really struggle with that,” she said. “They think it must be a worse plan because I can only see these doctors.” But the trade-off includes no deductible, low copays, and some free services, all at a reduced payroll contribution. “It’s kind of a win-win, but it’s a slow burn,” Duck added.The second innovation involves transparent pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). News Corp issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for its prescription carrier, hoping to move from one of the “big three” to a smaller, more transparent option. The numbers didn’t work out this time, but Duck believes the direction is inevitable.“The black box of prescription coverage and how it determines what your payment is—I think that’s going to be a thing of the past,” she said. New Tech in BenefitsAI is already transforming Duck’s daily work. She uses Gemini to locate lost emails in seconds rather than spending 15 to 20 minutes digging through her inbox. However, the far greater potential lies in aggregation.With nearly 20 point solutions under management, Duck’s team conducts dozens of annual reviews. AI can synthesize those conversations and highlight relevant themes.“The human brain can’t comprehend that and pull it together,” she said. “AI is going to help us have succinct conversations, to bring it to the forefront and be very pointed.” The result, Duck believes, is a more articulate benefits professional walking into leadership meetings.When asked for a go-to tool she can't work without, Duck didn’t hesitate to mention Slack. News Corp’s brands operate on different technologies, and Slack provides a common channel for benefits teams across Dow Jones, HarperCollins, the New York Post, and News UK.A Look AheadDespite cost pressures, Duck remains optimistic. She compared this moment in time to the Affordable Care Act era, when many predicted benefits would cease to exist. Instead, the profession adapted. In Duck’s view, artificial intelligence will strengthen decision-making and foster greater vendor accountability. “If you care enough about this and you’re intentional about what you’re doing, you can weather those tough years and still position yourselves as being the employer of choice,” she said. At their core, benefits continue to fulfill two essential roles: attracting top talent and retaining key employees, making distinct offerings critical. News Corp’s partnership with DoorDash, for example, gives employees a break from cooking on busy days. And GLP-1 coverage itself could become a recruitment tool, Duck suggests, for companies willing to keep it.“You weather the storm,” she added. “Do it smartly, and do it with heart.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by paripat niyantang/iStock)
The Personality Traits That Can Help Workers Move Ahead
BY Ade Akin September 08, 2026For decades, candidates have suspected there’s more to acing interviews than their resume alone. Hiring managers have known it, and the data now supports it. Informal behaviors such as casual conversations, email communication, and rapport with administrative staff may carry more weight than an applicant’s qualifications.According to a recent survey conducted by The Harris Poll for Express Employment Professionals, 91% of U.S. hiring managers say a candidate’s personality is as important as their qualifications, while 86% say preferable personal attributes can compensate for a lack of specific skills. These findings highlight an evolving approach to talent acquisition. Foundational personality traits, like reliability, integrity, and adaptability, are becoming central to recruitment strategies as technical expertise becomes easier to teach and AI tools automate routine responsibilities. The First Conversation Is the Real InterviewThe research shows that initial interactions can significantly influence hiring outcomes. According to the study, around 87% of hiring managers say they decide whether an applicant will thrive at their organization based on their first discussion. Meanwhile, 61% of employers use informal touchpoints, such as pre- or post-interview small talk, messaging tone, and interactions with support staff, to evaluate candidates’ soft skills.Today’s job applicants are aware of this heightened focus on their personality traits. 61% of job seekers express concern regarding how their personal demeanor is perceived, and 94% report having their personalities assessed during the recruitment process through:Informal conversations (47%)Situational inquiry (46%)Behavioral questions (45%)Reference verification (43%)Structured personality assessments (37%)The Traits Employers Value MostHiring managers and job seekers largely agree on the personality traits employers value most. Reliability ranks first, followed by honesty, adaptability, flexibility, self-motivation, and work ethic.The survey cites that 94% of hiring managers and 91% of job seekers say personality shapes how performance is perceived once hired, additionally 99% of hiring managers believe a positive or approachable personality can directly accelerate career advancement, a view shared by job seekers. “Every employee has an effect on the workplace beyond the responsibilities listed in a job description,” Bob Funk Jr., the CEO, president, and chairman of Express Employment International, said. “The right personality can build trust, make change easier to navigate, and raise the standard for how a team works together.” At a time when skill demands are changing rapidly, this can be a positive development for job seekers. While technical skills may become outdated, qualities like reliability, adaptability, and strong work ethic remain valuable, giving candidates an opportunity to stand out by showing employers what they can bring beyond their resumes.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by PixelsEffect/iStock)
Companies That Kept DEI Policies Have Fared Well, New Research Finds
BY Ade Akin August 26, 2026Following President Donald Trump’s executive orders ending DEI programs within the federal government, some of the country’s largest companies, including Google and Target, quickly scaled back or scrapped their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments amid threats of federal scrutiny. Others, including Costco, Apple, and Delta Air Lines, stood their ground and maintained their commitments.New research shared with The Guardian reveals that companies that maintained commitments to DEI didn’t see a direct financial penalty. The study found that S&P 500 companies that kept their DEI policies intact performed about as well financially as companies that rolled them back, reports The Guardian.Jacob Grumbach, an associate professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, analyzed how firms performed after President Trump’s executive order, using what economists call “abnormal returns,” a metric that represents the variance between a stock’s projected performance and its actual market outcome. Grumbach’s analysis found no measurable difference in financial performance between companies that retained their diversity and inclusion programs and firms that eliminated them. His findings challenge the “go woke, go broke” narrative that gained momentum in 2023 following conservative boycotts of Bud Light and Target for its Pride merchandise. Grumbach tracked corporate DEI initiatives by analyzing news coverage, anti‑DEI shareholder proposals and votes, and data from DEI Watch, a corporate accountability tracker. “No matter how we measure DEI in companies, we find the same answer,” Grumbach said. Holding on to DEI promises had no measurable impact on financial performance, according to the study. The broader implication extends beyond DEI. Grumbach says the findings show how organizations fare when they resist political pressure. “This shows that large U.S. corporations really do have leeway and the ability to sort of do non-compliance to executive branch pressure and end up fine,” he told The Guardian. While some executives may still fear regulatory retaliation, such as less favorable treatment from the executive branch, delayed merger approvals, or aggressive tax auditing, the market itself does not appear to punish firms that stay the course. Changing course on DEI in response to political pressure can carry its own risks. When Target dropped its DEI programs in January 2025 amid backlash, for example, the retailer faced renewed calls for a boycott from shoppers. The episode illustrates the broader challenge companies face when navigating competing pressures. As former Medtronic CEO and author Bill George said during a fireside chat at From Day One's Minneapolis conference, “It’s easy to follow your true north, follow your values, your purpose, until you get under pressure, and you have to decide between two options. And that’s the real test. Where there may be sacrifices you have to make, do you have the moral courage to step up and follow what you believe, or do you back down?” George noted that leaders who stand firm, like Costco CEO Ron Vachris, whose company saw shareholders reject an anti-DEI proposal by an overwhelming 98% margin, suggest that “having a moral center is actually good for business.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by ZenSaBi/iStock)
Building a Brand That Earns Trust and Loyalty Across Every Channel
BY Ade Akin July 20, 2026A stop outside an Ashley Home Store during a 90-day tour of U.S. markets crystallized a troubling trend for John Mask: lower-income shoppers were no longer showing up in furniture stores.Mask, the EVP of sales and marketing at Ashley Furniture, shared that the solution to that problem is a two-step process that starts with building trust with customers before selling the product. He spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s July virtual conference, in conversation with Seattle Times business reporter, Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton. Mask shared how Ashley Furniture navigates a crowded marketplace, evolving consumer expectations, and the transformative role of AI in marketing. The fireside chat covered everything from global expansion to the return of traditional mailers. Yet, the central theme remained clear: cultivating brand loyalty today requires building trust, sharing stories, and engaging with consumers wherever they are; across all channels.A Saturated Landscape and the Shift to ValueMask started the conversation by identifying the greatest challenge facing today’s marketers: saturation. Thanks to the democratization of marketing tools such as social media, anyone can now reach customers on a one-to-one basis. “It’s become more crowded because more people can actually talk to that consumer,” he said. Consequently, standing out becomes essential within such crowded marketplaces.A fundamental shift in consumer behavior compounds this new reality. Mask says he has observed customers moving from a price-based mindset to a value-based approach when making purchases. “What can I get for the cost, as opposed to what’s the lowest cost that I can find out there?” he elaborated. This is particularly pronounced in a K-shaped economy, where lower-income consumers are short on cash and middle-to-high-income shoppers, the “five to eight consumer” on an income scale, drive the market. These potential customers have disposable income but expect quality, story, and a clear value proposition from the companies they shop with.Marketing Across ChannelsAshley Furniture’s staggering reach includes running operations in 23 countries, over 1,000 branded stores, and partnerships with over 24,000 retailers, he says. Operating on this scale demands a more nuanced approach to omnichannel marketing. John Mask, EVP of sales & marketing at Ashley Furniture, spoke during the virtual session (company photo)“We have a saying that we like to have our feet in many canoes,” Mask said as he described the company’s strategy of serving consumers wherever they may be. The company utilizes brick-and-mortar stores, e-retail platforms like Amazon and Wayfair, big-box partners, rental channels, and international markets. Importantly, tailored content drives each specific marketing channel. Although big-box locations emphasize pricing above all else, the company’s dedicated showrooms prioritize aesthetics, atmosphere, and narrative. Additionally, traditional advertising avenues like print media and billboards are undergoing a notable resurgence, offering fresh opportunities to capture consumer attention amidst increasingly crowded digital spaces.Storytelling and the Customer LifecycleA layered approach to storytelling is at the heart of Ashley Furniture’s marketing strategy. Mask outlined their strategy for constructing brand narratives that look past simple product characteristics and pricing to focus instead on the deeper emotional connections people form with furniture; how it makes them feel, how it fits into their homes, and whether it meets their functional needs. This is especially important when appealing to different customer demographics. Younger consumers, for example, are increasingly interested in sustainability and what a company stands for.This storytelling is woven into what Mask calls life cycle marketing. Furniture purchases are tied to major life events such as having a baby, transitioning a child to a “big kid” bedroom, getting married, or buying a house. Ashley aims to build a relationship that spans generations by engaging consumers across these milestones. “We want a consumer to know at every touchpoint they’re going to get the best service from Ashley,” he added. The payoff is clear: loyal patrons become returning customers and bring in their children, creating a multigenerational brand loyalty that dramatically lowers acquisition costs.AI in Marketing: From Content Creation to Agentic SearchMask also shared how AI is changing the marketing landscape. “We can truly create campaigns that are foundational, and then use AI to create customizations in the individuals that are in the ads, in the backgrounds of those rooms,” he said. This enables the company to tailor messaging for different geographies, showing the same product in a rural setting versus an urban one, without needing a massive marketing team.The bigger shift is how consumers now discover products, he says. He pointed to the rise of agentic engine optimization (AEO), the AI-powered successor to traditional SEO. “We’ve seen a 45% increase over the last month alone in terms of traffic based on searches started with some sort of an agent via Perplexity, ChatGPT, or any of the other services that are out there,” he said.With personalized AI agents increasingly serving as the primary tool for consumer search, brands must organize their data to feed these engines and shape the sources they reference for recommendations. Mask cautioned that if your brand is not visible to AI, “they just may never find you.”Building Trust in a Two-Step ProcessDespite all the talk about technology and marketing channels, Mask returned repeatedly to the foundational importance of trust. He described a two-step process: “Do I trust you, and then what do you have to offer me as a result of the fact that I trust you?” Consumers need to know who a company is, how it engages with communities, and what it stands for before considering product features. This applies especially to the younger demographic, who place greater emphasis on the principles a business stands for and its commitment to eco-friendly practices.Mask’s advice to other marketing leaders was hands-on: “Go out and test.” He highlights the value of conducting A/B tests on emerging platforms, listening more than talking, and actively engaging in forums to discover what consumers truly desire. In an interest-based economy where consumers are constantly bombarded with choices, the brands that succeed will be those that earn trust, tell compelling stories, and meet customers where they are; whether that’s in a store, on a social platform, or through an AI agent.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by ismagilov/iStock)
Building an AI-Ready Workforce: Culture, Skills, and the Human Side of Transformation
BY Ade Akin July 09, 2026When LexisNexis rolled out its first AI skills assessment, HR leaders expected pushback. The voluntary program, offered to about half the workforce with no mandates, KPIs, or pressure, simply invited employees to gauge their AI skills. Instead of resistance, participation far exceeded expectations, with 91% of employees completing the assessment. The surprise challenge came from an unexpected group: managers.“We had to chase our managers,” Amy Liedke, EVP of HR at LexisNexis, said during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Manhattan conference. “Employees were coming forward in very, very high numbers. Managers were coming forward organically at about 40%,” she said. The gap revealed something deeper than a simple scheduling conflict. Liedke unpacked what the data exposed about leadership culture, psychological safety, and the surprising resistance from the very people expected to guide others through transformation during the fireside chat moderated by Jessi Hempel, senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. The Assessment That Became a MirrorThe introduction of the AI skills matrix at LexisNexis occurred within a broader strategic framework. The company released its first customer-facing AI product called “Lexis+ AI” in early 2023, and its CEO had been discussing AI adoption consistently for three years. The skills assessment was part of an approach to driving AI culture and fluency within the organization. It was paired with a tiered learning program—Explorer, Accelerator, and Transformer—that gave employees a clear path forward.The true revelation for Liedke wasn’t in the technology’s capabilities; rather, the insight lay in the surprising demographic patterns of its uptake. Employees embraced the opportunity to understand their current AI skills and create a plan for growth. Managers, however, were slower to participate, often pointing to packed schedules and competing strategic priorities that made it difficult to find the time. “It has a lot more to do with their own comfort and embracing of the tools, and how to change. Some of them, I think, are hanging on to certain old ways of working, and a discomfort with how they play a role in developing others on a skill that they might not yet have fully developed in themselves,” she said.Amy Liedke, EVP, HR, LexisNexis, right, spoke with Jessi Hempel, Senior Editor-at-Large, LinkedIn, during the fireside chatBuilding an AI-ready workforce requires a lot more than training programs. It requires confronting employee fear head-on. Liedke acknowledges that the constant barrage of headlines, such as job cuts and apocalyptic predictions about AI eliminating roles, makes the role of HR significantly harder.Liedke’s response has been to reframe the narrative entirely. Rather than positioning AI as a tool that replaces workers, LexisNexis emphasizes augmentation. The company has increased employee headcount steadily over the past year, using productivity gains from integrating artificial intelligence with existing systems to fund new work that was previously out of reach.The Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary, ShiftWhile headlines create fear that AI will upend the job market, Liedke sees a more gradual transformation. Rather than eliminating roles overnight, she expects AI to steadily reshape the tasks that make up individual jobs. To prepare for those changes, LexisNexis has formed a fifth “tiger team” focused on workforce engineering, developing a repeatable process for identifying how roles are evolving and the new skills employees will need.“A lot of the new skills are competency-based, right? It’s a lot of the more strategic work, it’s a lot of the more human, interpersonal, judgment-based work,” she said.The old model, writing a job description and leaving it untouched for a decade, no longer works. Liedke now advocates for reviewing job architectures at least once a year, preferably twice. The nature of work is shifting incrementally, and HR teams need a process to track those changes in real time.Liedke’s experience leading AI initiatives has revealed an unexpected lesson: hiring a single AI-savvy employee rarely changes an organization because the existing culture quickly absorbs them. Instead, she recommends hiring groups of AI talent who can reinforce one another and help sustain change. The AI assessment also gave employees a shared understanding of their skills and ownership of their development, but she says leadership must evolve alongside them.“Leaders have to be willing to make different types of decisions to move at a different pace and to challenge constantly,” Liedke said. “You can’t just do it with your CEO, and you can’t just do it with the workforce alone.”Don’t Wait to Be InvitedLiedke advises HR leaders to invite themselves to the table. In her case, she recognized her opening when LexisNexis’s CEO started asking for more AI natives. “I asked him, ‘Okay, I have my own idea around that, but what do you mean when you say AI native? What does that look like for you? What’s the definition of that for you?’” she said. That moment became the catalyst for the AI skills assessment rollout. Liedke understood that somewhere between a science experiment and “you know it when you see it” lies a space where HR can design practical frameworks that are simple, development-oriented, and safe for honest self-assessment.Now, she deliberately avoids using the term AI native because it suggests a closed club reserved for people who happened to be at OpenAI or Anthropic five years ago. Instead, she promotes “AI first” as a growth mindset. Everyone has a starting point. Everyone can gain fluency. “We can all have a starting point and say, ‘I’m here today, and I know how to experiment, and I’ve had new technology presented to me before, and that’s what I’m going to do,” she said.Liedke also points out an unexpected demographic twist: Gen Z and Gen Alpha are some of the most resistant to the AI technology revolution. It’s the first tech evolution where the youngest workers aren’t the early adopters. That’s another invitation for HR to step in to understand the why behind their reluctance, to increase participation, and to keep the conversation surrounding AI integration developmental rather than judgmental. “We have a role to keep this positive and developmental, and that’s one that we can definitely play,” Liedke said.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Aligning Scale and Flexibility in Global Benefits
BY Ade Akin July 08, 2026Akamai shuts down five times a year. Not the internet infrastructure that serves as one of the backbones of global connectivity—the company itself.The company’s culture embraces occasional shutdowns that give employees three day weekends to rest and recharge, says Ken Wechsler, VP of global total rewards. He spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s June virtual conference, moderated by Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop.Akamai also offers five dedicated wellness days each year, deliberately scheduled around U.S. holidays such as Memorial Day and Labor Day, says Wechsler. Akamai’s commitment to mental health and recharging is part of a deliberate, global philosophy that balances scale with flexibility.Meeting People Where They Live and WorkThe company employs 12,000 people across 35 countries, spanning regions as varied as India, Poland, and Costa Rica. Designing global benefits that resonate across that many cultures and the life stages of each employee is no small job. “We recognize that employees’ needs, legal requirements, and cultural expectations vary across all the regions,” Wechsler said.The company relies heavily on employee feedback, demographics, and utilization data to determine which benefits to retain and which to discontinue. For example, the wellness allowance Akamai offers is available to all employees regardless of the region they work in, but the dollar amount varies. “We try to say, ‘What is the market average around there, and how can we meet people there at that same level?’”That sensitivity to local norms extends to benefits like family planning. For example, employees in India, where multigenerational households are common, increasingly want to include their parents on medical plans. However, those parents make up about 62% of the company’s healthcare costs in India. Akamai is now exploring cost-sharing adjustments to keep the benefit sustainable while remaining competitive. “Our benefit programs help us recruit and retain our employees,” he said. Remote Work as a Strategic AdvantageAkamai has doubled down on providing flexible work options at a time many CEOs are ordering workers back to their desks. Akamai’s employees can work remotely 100% of the time if they choose. “It allows us to differentiate ourselves,” he said. The numbers support Wechsler’s assessment. Attrition rates in the tech industry typically hover around 10 to 14%, but Akamai’s attrition rate is about half of that. Recruiters lead with policy, and tenure is longer. Ken Wechsler of Akamai Technologies spoke with journalist Corinne Lestch (photo by From Day One)Wechsler recognizes that remote work doesn’t work for everyone, though. “We may not be the right place for the right young people who actually really need to be in an office,” he said. His own son works at a financial firm and loves the commute and water‑cooler chats. For Akamai’s more mature workforce, though, the ability to integrate work with family is invaluable. “We always talk about work‑life balance; we really think it's work‑life integration,” he said.Holistic Total RewardsAkamai’s total rewards philosophy doesn’t stop at employee salaries. The company recently introduced a financial fitness center through LearnLux that offers sessions on budgeting, housing costs, retirement planning, stock administration, 401(k) education, and tax planning twice monthly. “We’ve received incredibly high satisfaction from that,” Wechsler said. It has also made family benefits a cornerstone of its global offering. With Carrot, employees have access to fertility treatments, surrogacy, adoption support, and even menopause or low‑T care. The program is inclusive across life stages for anyone building a family in whatever form that takes. Akamai has an aging workforce, so the company ensures that older employees, including those who are eligible for Medicare, can stay on its health plan if they choose to return from retirement, he says.Akamai’s most distinctive innovation is its network of mental health first aiders, says Wechsler. These are 100 trained employees who aren’t professional counselors, but serve as compassionate first-line listeners. The program was launched five years ago and has since expanded to every region of the company. “It’s no longer taboo, but people didn’t know where to get help,” Wechsler said. The first aiders can have that initial conversation and point colleagues to professional resources.Trust in the mental health first aiders has grown organically. Staff members gladly showcase their first aider badges in their email signatures, while word of mouth keeps the program prominent. “We have ongoing seminars a couple times a year just to let people know it exists,” Wechsler said.Additionally, while many employers are scaling back coverage for GLP‑1 drugs, Akamai refuses to budge. “We’re not reducing anything,” Wechsler said. The company covers the drugs for both medically necessary and lifestyle purposes. Akamai’s healthcare costs haven’t spiked as badly as some of its competitors. Wechsler partly credits the company’s wellness culture, which includes gym memberships, wellness days, and a holistic approach to health care, for keeping costs down. Advice for Benefits LeadersModerator Corinne Lestch asked Wechsler for his top advice as the fireside chat came to a close. “Know who you are, focus on your demographics, listen to your employees, try to figure out how to meet people where they are,” he said. He warned against blindly following benchmarks. “Just because everybody else is doing it doesn’t mean it’s right for your culture.”Wechsler also says building a long‑term plan is essential. Akamai is already mapping out 2027 through 2029. “It takes time to get there,” he added. “It’s okay to be different. It’s okay to say this is right for us because here’s how we'll help this population.” That human-first philosophy might be the most consequential product of a company that handles 30% of internet traffic. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by Parradee Kietsirikul/iStock)
How to Hire for the Agentic Era
BY Ade Akin July 06, 2026The role of software developers has been fundamentally transformed in the agentic era. What was once a linear path from requirements to deployment has evolved into an active process of agent orchestration, in which AI agents handle the heavy lifting of coding, testing, and maintenance. This shift has forced a complete rethinking of how companies identify and hire talent that thrives in this new landscape. Vivek Ravinsankar, the co-founder and CEO of HackerRank, delivered a thought leadership spotlight on this new challenge facing organizations at From Day One’s Manhattan conference. His session, “How to Hire for the Agentic Era,” laid out a roadmap for HR and talent leaders navigating a world where AI fluency is as vital as code correctness; a world where it has become more challenging than ever to maintain integrity in the hiring process.The Orchestrator's New RoleRavinsankar started his presentation by acknowledging the pervasive anxiety surrounding AI. Addressing the widespread concern regarding AI, he noted that anxieties about technology replacing workers have deep roots, citing a 1928 news report that linked rising unemployment to the advent of new machinery. Vivek Ravinsankar, co-founder and CEO of HackerRank, led the session titled, "Hire for the Agentic Era," in Manhattan Adapting to the AI revolution requires a fundamental shift in perspective. The software developer’s profession has transcended the boundaries of the conventional development cycle. “Today, AI agents can do all of this in a much better way than humans,” he said. “The job of a developer has now become an orchestrator of agents.” This evolution extends beyond the field of software engineering; Ravinsankar notes that a customer support person’s role today is to “build an agent that can respond to tickets as good or better than they can.”Rethinking the InterviewThe method used to evaluate candidates must evolve if the job has changed. Ravinsankar detailed a three-dimensional shift in how HackerRank’s customers, over 3,000 companies ranging from garage startups to Fortune 500 enterprises, are adapting their hiring processes.First, the type of questions asked has evolved. Companies are moving away from standard algorithmic puzzles toward “tasks on code repositories that mirror real-world work.” This gives candidates a tangible sense of the company’s work environment and allows employers to assess their skills.Second, the criteria evaluated have expanded. Historically, the focus was on a candidate’s ability to write correct code. In the current landscape, that is merely the baseline expectation. Ravinsankar says evaluation has shifted from code correctness to critical thinking, judgment, and AI fluency.Third, the candidate experience is also changing. Developers used to operate in an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), a space where programming code served as the primary focal point. That is evolving into what Ravinsankar calls an ADE, or Agentic Developer Environment, “where the agents are the spotlight.”The technical assessment candidates go through is also undergoing a paradigm shift. Ravinsankar mapped the historical progression from the abstract brain teasers of the 1990s to the algorithmic focus of the 2000s, followed by the adoption of online testing and collaborative pair programming. Ravinsankar notes that the current environment is defined by a clear move toward AI-driven interviews supported by a human-led screening process.The Integrity Challenge in an AI WorldRavinsankar also addressed the rising tide of integrity issues during his presentation. Trusting that a candidate is who they say they are—and that their work is their own—has become a paramount concern due to the proliferation of suspicious tools and the ease of impersonation.He identified three primary issues that compromise the integrity of the hiring process: leaked questions, the use of cheating tools, and impersonation. To combat question leaks, HackerRank scours the web, sending DMCA notices and providing alternate questions to its customers. He notes that the most popular site for leaked questions in the last three months was a website called Study X, highlighting the ever-changing nature of the threat.Ravinsankar spoke candidly about the use of questionable tools, asserting that integrity hinges on adherence to established guidelines rather than the simple presence or absence of AI. “Integrity is not about whether you use AI or not. Integrity is about whether you follow the rules,” he said. To support this, HackerRank’s platform provides employers with full visibility into a candidate’s session, including alerts if they navigate to third-party sites like ChatGPT.Lastly, Ravinsankar provided several striking metrics regarding candidate impersonation. According to Ravinsankar, analytics on flagged suspicious activity reveal that approximately 77% of cases involve video streams being toggled on and off, likely indicating that a candidate is searching for answers. Furthermore, multiple individuals appear in the frame in about 20% of these instances, while the candidate's identity changes entirely during the session in roughly 2% of interviews.“It’s like watching Benjamin Button,” he said, “the person completely changes.” Ravinsankar further observed that patterns in webcam use differ notably across various geographic regions and career levels, highlighting the necessity for a flexible, rather than uniform, strategy for maintaining hiring integrity.HackerRank has launched a new product called Chakra to address the twin challenges of evolving skills and rising integrity concerns. The name, which means “superpower,” reflects its mission. “It’s an AI interviewer that tries to find the superpower in every candidate,” Ravinsankar said. It marries the search for next-gen skills with a high-integrity process, representing what he believes is the new form of AI-led screen.Ravinsankar concluded on an optimistic note, reinforcing his belief that “the more capable AI becomes, the more valuable human labor will be.” Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, HackerRank, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)
Earned Wage Access: Innovative Strategies for Worker Well-Being and Organizational Cost-Effectiveness
BY Ade Akin June 17, 2026There’s an invisible tax draining the budgets of companies that still rely on the traditional two-week pay cycle. The question is, what are these organizations going to do about it? That was the challenge posed by Steve Davis, the national sales manager at FIS, during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Chicago half-day benefits conference. Davis didn’t mince words during his presentation, pointing out that a staggering 62% of American workers live paycheck to paycheck. He says that this sobering reality isn’t just a personal hardship for employees, but rather a performance, leadership, and budget issue that’s hiding in plain sight. Davis says more than $300 billion is wasted annually replacing workers who left, in part, because an outdated payroll cycle failed to meet their financial needs. The Hidden Crisis in Your Break RoomThe unprecedented number of employees living paycheck to paycheck isn’t the result of bad choices. “Rent didn’t stop going up, fuel costs haven’t stopped going up, groceries haven’t stopped going up, and child care costs today are astronomical,” he said. Wages haven’t kept pace with rising costs of living, leaving two-thirds of the workforce in financial stress. Around 56% of these workers say their financial stress directly hurts their performance at work. And the problem isn’t restricted to lower-wage employees, with 44% of workers who earn over $100,000 annually having little to no money left after paying for their monthly expenses. “Tell me how many of your managers are in that number,” Davis challenged the room.Not a Loan, Not a Payday SchemeSteve Davis, national sales manager at FIS, led the session in Chicago Davis dismantled some of the misconceptions that have hindered the adoption of earned wage access (EWA) for years before exploring solutions. Earned wage access isn’t a loan or payday product, and it isn’t a compliance nightmare to roll out. It’s simply giving employees access to the money they’ve already earned.The mechanics that power EWA are simple: Wages accrue in real time against your payroll system. An employee requests access to a portion, typically capped at 50% of what they’ve earned during that pay period. The funds hit their account, often within minutes. The amount taken is automatically deducted on the next scheduled payday. “No manual work, no HR involvement, no cash flow exposure,” Davis said. The Hard Numbers That Win Over a CFODavis presented a slide he recommends putting in front of any CFO when making a case for EWA. Employers report a 10 to 29% reduction in employee turnover with EWA. He walked through a concrete example using a company with 1,000 employees and 35% annual turnover. With an average replacement cost of $3,500 per hourly worker, that’s $1.225 million in annual turnover costs. A documented 20% reduction saves the company $245,000 at no additional cost to the company, since the benefit itself costs nothing.The savings extend beyond higher retention rates. Employers see a 40% reduction in payroll inquiry calls and emails, significantly slashing the administrative burden of answering questions like, “When do I get paid?” Also, 96% of employers who offer EWA say it helps attract talent, transforming it from a nice-to-have into a competitive necessity.The Human Side of the SpreadsheetDavis also discussed what EWA looks like for employees. Without EWA, a worker who needs $200 before payday has limited options: a payday loan with an APR that can exceed 400%, a high-interest credit card cash advance, or simply missing the bill and incurring a late fee. All of these choices add financial worry to the employee’s mental load while they’re expected to focus on serving customers.With EWA, that same employee opens an app, accesses their own money, and handles the crisis without any debt, interest, or shame. “When an employee looks at their benefits package and sees earned wage access, they see an employer that trusts them with their own money,” Davis said. “That’s not a transactional signal, that’s a relational signal.”Davis also offered practical guidance for evaluating earned wage access vendors. With the market growing at an annual rate of 34.8% and projected to reach $23.6 billion by 2030, he argued that employers should look for four essential qualities. First, the solution should come at no cost to the employer. “In 2026, if a vendor is charging you a per-employee fee, ask them why their competitor isn’t,” he said. Second, it should integrate seamlessly with payroll and human capital management systems, operating behind the scenes without creating additional work for payroll teams while automatically handling deductions. Third, employers should expect measurable outcomes, including dashboards that track adoption rates, indicators of financial stress, and correlations with retention. “If a vendor can’t measure outcomes, they can’t prove value,” Davis noted. Finally, vendors should take full responsibility for compliance, particularly as earned wage access legislation is pending or already enacted in more than 16 states.Davis concluded with a direct challenge for the audience: “Before you leave this conference, identify one person on your leadership team and schedule a 30-minute conversation on EWA. Bring the ROI scenario. The data is in, the technology is mature, and the cost is zero. The only thing standing between your workforce and this benefit is the decision to move.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, FIS, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)