How Employers Are Using LSAs to Support Business Goals
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza April 09, 2026“We make a point to design our benefits programs to be dynamic and inclusive,” said Zach Mann, the senior benefits program manager at Zillow. “This allows us to meet the needs of our employees, regardless of where they live or what chapter of life they’re in.”Of course, this is often easier said than done. Flexible and adaptive programs are made difficult by the pressures of inflation, shrinking budgets, and by old systems that don’t keep up with employee needs.So, Zillow sought out a new program that can flex with the times. Mann shared this story during a From Day One webinar on how employers are using lifestyle savings accounts, or LSAs, to affect business goals. The discussion, which included insights about LSA platform Forma, was moderated by the company’s own senior customer success manager, Kate Deeny.Mann found a flexible solution in an LSA—a flexible, employer-funded benefit that allocates a specific amount of money employees can use within a defined list of expenses. The employer identifies the amount and the boundaries.At the time, Mann was hearing about other companies cutting their well-being benefits in half, and Mann knew he would likely face similar pressure at Zillow. Leaders spoke about "2026 Global Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark: Insights to Design High-impact Benefits" during the webinar (photo by From Day One)To get buy-in from leaders for the switch from an old reimbursement system to an LSA for well-being benefits, he would have to make a data-driven case. It was easy to see how the old way was taxing the workforce: “Managers were spending almost 3,000 hours trying to approve or understand our policy to approve those expenses,” he said. “On top of that, our HR operations and benefits teams were trying to answer all those questions.”So, the company moved from a gym membership and equipment reimbursement to a $1,000 lifestyle spending account. Employees could then use a single Forma card to cover their gym memberships—no more filing monthly reimbursements, no more filling inboxes with process and coverage questions. Mann likes the flexibility and the option to change the program as-needed, expanding it to cover things like gym clothes or meal subscriptions. The LSA is now one of Zillow’s most utilized benefits, says Mann. “Employers are really getting sophisticated and strategic by thinking of LSAs not just as a perk, but as a strategic benefits infrastructure,” said Danielle Ross, Forma’s head of marketing and the author of the company’s 2026 global lifestyle benefits benchmark report.Many are dealing with the same obstacles that Mann did at Zillow—stipends that get lost in the payroll shuffle, programs that demand a lot of time and input from managers and benefits leaders, and lack of visibility into how those reimbursements are being used. Benefits teams also struggle to juggle the number of point solutions that comprise their benefits ecosystem.As an alternative to traditional reimbursement programs, LSAs are “an efficient structure to help direct benefit budgets toward programs that matter for you, with the built-in flexibility that employees are looking for,” Ross said.LSAs have global capabilities too. Around 50% of employers offering LSAs do so in more than one country, according to Forma’s report. Some employers use them to provide healthcare in countries where they don’t yet have a relationship with carriers, others use it to extend financial support for childcare needs, and in markets with high commuting costs, employers can offer commuter assistance.It’s a common misconception that LSAs are just a nice-to-have tack-on perk, Ross said. “The magic happens when you’re able to ladder-up toward a C-suite priority.” Funds can even be directed toward upskilling, return-to-office incentives, cost-savings, employee well-being, and more. So when leaders knock on the door asking the benefits team how they’re supporting a specific business priority, Ross says, benefits teams can point to their LSA.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Forma, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Milan Markovic/iStock)
From Jobs to Skills: Inside the Shift Transforming Talent Strategy
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza April 07, 2026At eBay, which employs 12,000 people globally, senior director of global talent Zeenath Khan is using a pilot based approach to defining skills, which will support hiring and talent mobility—a newer alternative to traditional notions of hiring people for rigidly structured jobs with narrow and singular paths for growth. Influencing an enterprise of that size to rethink its talent strategy, and then actually execute that change, is a massive undertaking. “So what we wanted to do was start quite small,” she said, focusing on teams already motivated to embrace a skills-based strategy in support of career development or AI transformation.Khan was part of an executive panel on how HR leaders are adopting and experimenting with skills-based thinking, during From Day One’s March virtual conference on talent acquisition. Her team works as consultants to business units, running workshops and helping leaders identify the skills their segments will need now and in the years ahead. “With all of the fabulous AI tools, we’ve also created research projects on those topics to support those leaders in their thinking.”As the capabilities of artificial intelligence grow rapidly, some business leaders may be tempted to skip the foundational work and jump straight to replacing roles with AI agents. But Kathryn Withycomb, a senior learning strategist at Thinkhuman, recommends a different approach, starting with business goals, not headcount reduction. Framing the change this way helps keep expectations realistic and ensures that early pilots are focused on measurable, testable outcomes rather than sweeping assumptions about automation.Panelists spoke during a session titled, "Next-Gen Talent: Spotting Skills and Potential Before They’re Visible" (photo by From Day One)Skills-based thinking has been discussed in HR for several years now, but outside the field, the concept is still unfamiliar to most. To help employees understand the shift, Alorica’s senior director of talent acquisition, Danielle McCaffrey, encourages people to reverse-engineer their roles, asking questions like: What job do you have, and what skills do you bring to the table?“The key is making it clear that this approach creates more opportunity for them and not less,” she said. Where traditional, job-based organizations prescribe singular paths from the bottom to the top of an organization with little room for detours, skills-based organizations open up lateral and nonlinear routes—an approach that resonates with a workforce interested in flexibility and adaptability.“A lot of our positions are entry-level customer service roles, but if they demonstrate, say, analytical skills or training ability or a potential around leadership, we know that we can move them into workforce management, operations, training or even recruiting,” McCaffrey said. “When people realize that their skills are portable and visible across the organization, they start to see a much broader career path than the one that they were hired into.”The skills-based transformation doesn’t just appeal to the newest arrivals to the workforce. While the pace of change is accelerating, more experienced employees have already navigated major technological transitions. “There wasn’t Google when I started working,” eBay’s Khan noted. “That combination of folks who have lived experience of dramatic technological change plus emerging talent who bring in a fresh mindset and a completely different set of skills remains really important for us.”Some companies are taking their very first steps toward skills-based planning. Jay Park, the senior director of talent acquisition at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, is focused on building strong relationships with business leaders.“We’re setting up that foundation as a broader people team,” he said, positioning his function as a strategic partner and building credibility so his team can better understand the skills leaders are missing today and what they’ll need in the future. He’s keen on thinking differently about hiring, moving from traditional ideas of what a resume should include and instead welcoming unconventional candidates who appear equipped for a nonlinear career path.Finding the skills that don’t always show up on a resume is “where recruiting becomes both an art and a science, said McCaffrey at Alorica. “Resumes tend to show experience, but they really rarely capture the candidate's actual capability or potential.”To uncover qualities like empathy, resilience, and critical thinking, her team uses behavioral interview questions and situational assessments that require candidates to demonstrate how they would handle real-world scenarios. Yet human judgment remains essential. “A candidate might score a little bit lower on an assessment, but then demonstrates exceptional problem solving and conversation,” she said. “That would be a signal to a recruiter to see if their career path could take a different turn.”As AI gets smarter, Park added, “it’s going to be that much more important for us to assess candidates for mindset, growth, orientation, adaptability—those things that aren’t obvious on paper are going to require a recruiter.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Vadym Pastukh/iStock)
How Leading Employers Turn Financial Stress into Measurable Engagement
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza April 01, 2026HR leaders have long relied on engagement surveys to monitor workforce health, but when it comes to financial matters, many are still figuring out the best ways to measure the need, and the impact.“Financial wellness is still a topic many of us are trying to get comfortable talking about,” said Julia Fearn, director of channel partnerships at SoFi at Work, during a From Day One webinar on how employers are tuning financial stress into measurable engagement.Contrast this with growing demand from the workforce. “Employees are more and more asking for their employer to help them,” she said. “But employers aren’t yet comfortable with that.” While 66% employees want some sort of financial well-being support from their companies, only 23% of employers offer it.Even without direct conversations, financial strain leaves a trail. It shows up in increased 401(k) hardship loans, low retirement plan participation, and sometimes in direct deposits, whether into checking or savings.At the same time, benefits leaders are doing everything they can to stretch a dollar. Rising healthcare costs are consuming a larger share of the benefits budget, limiting the ability to expand and experiment with new offerings.Julia Fearn, director of channel partnerships at SoFi at Work, led the session (company photo)“What we’re hearing this year is that the vast majority of benefits leaders are looking to reallocate or maximize efficiency of what they’re spending,” Fearn said. “What can I squeeze out of the ecosystems that I already have to make sure we’re maximizing what’s already there?”Some employers are offering emergency savings programs, which can help employees cover unexpected expenses, like a $2,500 car repair, without borrowing against their retirement savings. And employers are also experimenting with how to drive participation too. Incentives, Fearn said, can be effective if they’re designed for long-term behavior change.“Providing incentives and checkpoints does drive behavior,” Fearn said. Short-term rewards, like winning a FitBit or a gift card do work, but only for a short period of time. Longer-lasting incentives, like employee matching, are more effective because they reinforce ongoing behavior, not just one-time actions. “It doesn’t have to be a huge dollar amount to have a very meaningful impact,” she said, noting that even a $100 match on a $500 contribution can meaningfully shift behavior.For employers, the payoff of financial well-being programs can extend beyond the individual to broader workforce shifts. The key question, Fearn said, is: What are you trying to achieve, and how many people can you impact? In some cases, financial wellness benefits have led to measurable reductions in turnover. According to Fearn, one healthcare organization saw a 21% drop in turnover within the first year of launching a student loan contribution program. A consumer goods company reduced turnover from 13% to 6% after introducing a similar benefit. Notably, even though only 9% of employees enrolled, the impact was felt across the broader workforce.“From a benefits perspective, there’s been a lot happening in the last few years, when it comes to supporting physical and emotional well-being,” Fearn said. “Though there’s a lot of alignment in terms of what employers are doing and what employees expect, we’re seeing one of the biggest disconnects around financial well-being.”Closing the financial wellness gap requires employers getting comfortable with a topic many still feel is taboo, but the payoff is there, what begins as stability in one person’s retirement account can affect the stability of the whole workforce.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SoFi at Work, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Nanci Santos/iStock)
Learning and Development, Powered by AI: How Innovations Are Bringing the Next Wave
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza March 06, 2026“Already, I can’t go back to not having AI,” said Stephanie Smith-Ejnes, the VP of people and organization at Sony Pictures. “It is so ingrained in my day-to-day work and how efficient I am and how efficient my team is. The path forward is seeing AI as a force-multiplier and not a replacement for learning professionals.”Given the number of creatives employed by Sony, the will-it-or-won’t-it replace-me conversation is one Smith-Ejnes has been having a lot lately. And while she can’t imagine her working life without it, she’s sympathetic to those who still see it as a threat to their livelihood. It’s up to leaders like her, she explained, to lead the way with AI adoption, making the case for it as an enabler, and not a threat.During a panel discussion on how L&D teams are innovating with artificial intelligence at From Day One’s February virtual, Smith-Ejnes and her fellow panelists outlined how they’re pioneering AI in their organizations, setting the standard for adoption and responsible use.Building an AI-Native OrganizationDespite its widespread adoption, many companies and teams are far from proficient in AI. Talent development platform Infopro Learning uses a three-stage maturity model when helping clients advance. The first—and necessary—step is the “bolt-on” stage in which teams are curious and exploring with tools by adding them to existing processes, said CEO Sriraj Malick.The second is when teams are learning how to use AI to save time and money, creating new work capacity. Companies enter the third stage—that is, the AI-native stage—when teams can work within an AI infrastructure. “The infrastructure is learning as your team members are doing, so the knowledge and the intelligence compounds for the organization, for the team, and for every team member,” Mallick said.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the virtual session (photo by From Day One)Companies advance at different speeds, of course, and even the most innovative are still experimenting. For instance, customer-service platform Qualfon has developed its own AI-powered roleplay simulator to help employees master customer conversations. Learners have always asked for more practice, said the company’s VP of learning and development Marvie Wright, and now they can get it. Not only are these sessions measurable (tracking how quickly someone speaks or whether they over-use vocalized pauses like ums and ahs), “it also allows us to individualize and personalize the learning, and it gives immediate feedback,” she said. Personalization is something L&D teams have long talked about, “but finally, it’s a reality.”As AI promises to automate rote tasks that have previously occupied inordinate amounts of time, human skills are becoming the most necessary and coveted, says Brittany Dougan, senior director of L&D at government services contractor Maximus. The good news is, “we’re really good at them, and we know how to develop them in the organization, so it puts [L&D teams] in a position to be true business partners.”The Problem of ComplianceSome leaders in tightly regulated industries, like defense and healthcare, are finding AI adoption a challenge. “Compliance cultures are built on control and documentation, but really meaningful AI adoption requires iteration and failure and learning—it’s structured freedom,” said Heather Lambert, the VP of learning and development at healthcare provider Wellpath.To afford workers with as much freedom as possible, Wellpath uses sandbox environments in which users are given access to tiered permission zones based on clearance and need, with guardrails to prevent users from mishandling data. “When people understand that there is a boundary and why it exists—whether it’s HIPAA or data privacy—they’re more likely to respect it,” said Lambert. “If they know why, they won’t try to work around it.”“L&D teams will be the ones to set the standard for AI use within an organization,” said Smith-Ejnes. “If I sit back and I say, ‘let’s just wait and see what this is going to be,’ then the decisions are going to be made for me. But if we jump in as a strategic partner, then we become decision-makers with the business.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Kosamtu/iStock)
Building Trust in Hiring: Creating an Exceptional Candidate Experience
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza March 05, 2026“Ninety-one percent of recruiters and hiring managers have spotted or suspected candidate deception at some point,” said Will Leahy, VP of customer success at applicant tracking platform Greenhouse, citing the company’s 2026 AI in Hiring Report. That deception can be as little as fudging skill proficiency to falsifying references to adopting a deepfake likeness or false persona.This presents a challenge to today’s good-faith job seekers, who aren’t only competing against other qualified applicants, they’re now going head to head against bad actors willing to game the system and lie. The challenge for recruiters is remaining vigilant without treating sincere candidates with undue suspicion.This problem—and new solutions—was the topic of conversation during a From Day One webinar on how employers are building trust in hiring while also improving the candidate experience.The ‘AI Doom Loop’Candidates are using AI to apply for more roles, while at the same time employers are using AI to manage the swell of applications. “It’s not uncommon for a recruiter to post a role and, within 48 hours, have over 900 applications,” said Leahy’s co-panelist Erin Walsh-Beguin, senior director of global recruiting operations at GoDaddy. Employers are struggling to sort through the slop without losing great candidates along the way.Will Leahy, VP of people success at Greenhouse, spoke during the session (company photo)The result is an “AI doom loop.” “Candidates are leveraging AI to get themselves out there at an exponentially higher rate, which is causing an extraordinary amount of application influx, and quite a bit of it is spam,” Leahy said. “On the other side of the house are recruiters trying to navigate that and leveraging AI to the best of their ability to try and cut through that noise.”With each side trying to stay several steps ahead of the other, “it creates a doom loop, and no one’s happy, no one’s having a good time, and no one’s satisfied,” he said.To find the best candidates—who are actually real people—recruiters are trying things like identity verification. “Eighteen percent of recruiters that we talk to have had an experience where there was a deep fake in the room,” Leahy said. Greenhouse’s new partnership with CLEAR lets employers verify a candidate’s identity at whatever point they choose. Once that’s out of the way, “you can bypass suspicion and have a real human conversation,” he said.Real human conversations and sincere interactions are invaluable in this moment, when employers and candidates are becoming increasingly distrustful of one another. Walsh-Beguin likes to hold onto those moments by “sending notes, emails, and touching base,” she said. And a lot of that can be aided with automation. But avoid the temptation to over-automate and send blast-emails or status updates that are impersonal or uninformative. “It doesn’t take that long to send out a check-in and say, ‘Hey, thank you for hanging in there. We’re doing our best,’” she said. Transparency matters: Telling candidates upfront what they can expect in the hiring process, how AI will or won’t be used, and when they might hear from you again—these things don’t take much time or technical know-how. Behind the scenes, new applicant tracking tech is helping employers surface the best, most qualified, and most-likely-to-be-real candidates. Greenhouse’s new Talent Mapping feature works like an email inbox’s spam filter, sorting through suspicious applications to find strong matches and those most likely to be irrelevant or fraudulent. And like a spam filter, red-flagged candidates aren’t thrown out, but set aside for human review.The recruiter sets the parameters and reviews the results. “You are going to continuously teach the AI that the parameters that you used did yield the correct match, and you can override it again,” Walsh-Beguin said. That human intervention is key. “Ethical utilization of AI is something everybody has to ensure they’re following through on.”“Any amount of automation that allows more humanness to enter the conversation” is worthwhile, said Leahy. This goes for sophisticated talent mapping as well as simple transcription and summarization features, which lets him focus on the candidate rather than note-taking. “That’s automation making my life easier but also making it more human.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Greenhouse, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Ridofranz/iStock)
More Than Efficiency: How Marketers Are Using AI to Deliver the Most Value
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza February 02, 2026Marketers have graduated from the experimental phase in marketing, moving beyond simple efficiency plays and content generation to embed the tech in processes and cross-departmental collaboration, reinventing the way campaigns are designed, funded, executed, and measured. The question facing marketers in 2026 isn’t whether to use AI, but where it delivers the most value. During From Day One’s January virtual conference on AI and marketing tech, four marketing leaders discussed ways they’re using AI to transform marketing strategies and outcomes.The most natural entry point into AI for marketers is content creation, says Honora Handley, VP of global marketing and AI strategy at Thomson Reuters. Drafting emails and crafting messaging are the low-hanging fruit many teams reach for first. But, she said, “a lot of the impact is really around creativity with workflows.” Routine tasks like approvals and ad-buys are all being rebuilt with AI agents that make the process more efficient and effective, especially across departments. While marketing might have workflow for budget requests, accounting and finance has another to approve requests and disburse funds. Good workflows mean those teams can communicate through their processes without inventing a whole new process. On a daily basis, Handley said, “it’s about carving out the time to think differently about how we’re using AI with the plethora of tools that the company has provided.”Tailoring campaigns has never been easier and more precise. This is a coup for account-based marketing. “Now there’s really no excuse not to have specific assets for individual people,” said Jeff Coyle, the head of strategy at Siteimprove and co-founder of MarketMuse. “We went from what was a scarce resource to infinite ability. Now it’s all about making sure everything you do is of the highest quality and editorial integrity.”Panelists spoke on the topic "From Insight to Execution: Using AI to Transform Marketing Strategies and Outcomes" during the virtual conference (photo by From Day One)Panelists agreed that AI has helped them make better, faster decisions. They can now spot underperforming ads and reallocate budget, sort leads, and pick the best calls to action, subject lines, and headlines in record time and with laser precision. There’s no shortage of AI-powered tools for marketers to accomplish these things, but whether a tool is worth the cost is down to business requirements, said Apoorva Shah, who leads marketing at Tata Consultancy Services. The first litmus test is comparing the tool’s capabilities to marketing goals. “Are we trying to improve our pipeline or demand gen? Are we trying to improve our content velocity? Do I want to improve my return on ad spend?”It also depends on whether the tools can connect to other systems and achieve that cross-departmental flow. “Efficiency and time savings alone aren’t as important as also making sure that we’re getting something meaningful from it,” said Michelle Kelly, the VP of digital marketing at Ecolab. Though marketing teams are adopting AI tools with increasing speed—and making great use of them—some are still under the impression that being AI ready means starting over. The most common misunderstanding about AI readiness is that marketers have to build something entirely new, says Coyle. A better strategy is to enrich what you already have, including processes for developing marketing assets and updating them.But make no mistake, every page of the website matters, he says. This is true both substantively (PR content affects product content) and technically (AI engines have to be able to read and interpret your content).As AI becomes infrastructure rather than novelty, the advantage will go to marketing teams that treat it as a connective tissue, not just a content engine. Panelists agreed: the real value comes from improving workflows across systems and teams. AI isn’t replacing marketing fundamentals. It’s raising the bar for how they’re executed.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by pixdeluxe/iStock)
Evolving HR Systems into Engines of Action: How to Build a More Connected User Experience
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza January 08, 2026HR teams are under immense pressure to deliver a great employee experience, often with tools and processes that haven’t meaningfully evolved in years. The challenge of improving the employee experiences is not a lack of data on their employees. In fact, HR has access to more information than ever before, from engagement surveys and performance reviews to benefits uptake and attendance records. The problem is that this information is scattered across incompatible systems. When connections can’t be made, HR leaders miss the patterns forming right in front of them, like the early signs of burnout and disengagement or escalating turnover that could be stopped.During a From Day One webinar, HR leaders explored how employers are finally beginning to turn their HR systems into engines of action–tools that don’t just store information, but actively connect workers and improve the employee experience in real time.“We’ve inflicted an awful lot of digital friction on ourselves,” said Miriam Connaughton, chief people and experience officer at Simpplr. Employees must wade through disparate platforms, multiple log-ins, and poorly designed interfaces to find the information and tools they need to carry out basic tasks. “How do you make that user experience more seamless–more simplified–so you’re not forcing them to search through the tech morass to find what they need?” At the same time, some HR teams try to layer antiquated processes into outdated software, said Julie Develin, a senior partner at UKG. Too often, organizations digitize outdated workflows instead of rethinking how work should actually be done.If HR were to do one thing in 2026, Connaughton suggested that it should be a radical simplification of the employee tech experience. That means fewer clicks, clearer pathways, and systems that anticipate needs instead of requiring employees to hunt for answers.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, journalist and From Day One contributing editor, moderated the discussion (photo by From Day One)Talent acquisition and onboarding have been the most obvious places for HR to focus on process improvement, followed by basic employee fact-finding (like FAQ chatbots), but AI-powered HR tech is now mature enough for the complex task of what Connaughton and Develin call “performance enablement.” This means helping managers become better coaches and employees set goals that align with the company’s. “It’s the whole performance cycle and everything that goes with it.”This matters because HR technology has long lagged behind consumer technology. Employees aren’t using the same smartphone they had 10 years ago, yet many HR systems feel frozen in time. HR has grown accustomed to stability and wary of experimentation, so instead of trying a new process or new tech, they do nothing at all. “The cost of doing nothing has weighed on a lot of organizations,” Develin said. When HR tech systems don’t work, low adoption is often blamed on employee aptitude or even obstinance, but low usage is seldom a skills problem–it’s usually a design problem. “You know your tech is not good when your HR team is using the gum-and-duct-tape method to make it work,” Connaughton said.But artificial intelligence is changing HR’s habits. Today, AI has already proved it can automate routine tasks and reduce administrative burden, and leaders are quickly warming to its use. But, the panelists said, we should be thinking bigger: Its greater promise is employee personalization. Great consumer brands learn their customers and tailor the experience accordingly, so why can’t HR tech do the same? For a frontline worker, that might mean opening an app to instantly see their schedule, request a change, or receive a notification that PTO has been approved. For a manager, it could mean timely nudges about performance management or insights into team workload before burnout sets in. As Develin put it, when the experience works and employees feel cared for, they don’t just do the work–they engage.Done well, modern HR systems become the engine of the employee experience. Employees don’t have to think about where to go or whom to ask, like the best consumer tech, the experience just works.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Simpplr, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by A9 STUDIO/Shutterstock)
Technology and Talent: How HR Leaders Are Future-Proofing the Workforce
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza December 22, 2025What does it take to turn a workplace into a learning machine? During a panel discussion at From Day One’s December virtual conference on the future of work, executives made one thing clear: it’s not about programs or policies, it’s about empowering employees to take charge of their growth.First, organizations that support continuous learning make it easy to access training for both technical and durable skills, especially for what Becky Karsh, VP of talent and growth at F5, calls critical roles. That means personal development plans, plus the ability for employees to nominate themselves for learning and development opportunities.Second, they embrace internal mobility. “Now that you have employees learning new skills, it’s going to make them more marketable for more open roles in the company,” said Melanie Stave, SVP, NA career development & mobility practice leader, at LHH. “Ensuring that that is an avenue for movement is key.” And finally, when it comes time to fill open roles, those companies look at internal talent first. “I really think it falls to senior leadership,” Stave added. “They really need to champion this mindset.”HCSC’s VP of talent solutions Shannon Fuller backs what he calls a “train-your-replacement” culture. “When you have a replacement and successor in place, it’s much easier to move talent across the organization,” he said. At HCSC, employees are encouraged to lead their own development, thinking not only of who will take their place, but also where they will go next. “Oftentimes, we’re waiting on our manager and we’re waiting on goals,” he said. “I encourage people to drive their own car.”Giselle Battley, global head of emerging talent & learning at Yahoo, suggests that organizations host internal career weeks where employees can meet with recruiters about open roles within the company. “Especially in large organizations, you often don’t know what opportunities are available,” said Battley. Events like this give employees the chance to move fluidly throughout the organization, building their skills while strengthening the company’s overall talent base.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, journalist and From Day One contributing editor, moderated the session about "Technology and Talent: How HR Leaders Are Future-Proofing the Workforce" (photo by From Day One)Future-proofing doesn’t always require changing roles. It can also mean short-term projects in different departments, which satisfy curiosity, strengthen employee networks, and add cross-functional skills to the organization’s reserves.Of course, such programs demand time and attention from HR. To make them sustainable, Stave recommended offering plenty of self-serve resources, setting clear goals and timeframes for temporary projects, and making it clear where completing these projects and acquiring new skills can lead.Skill development isn’t limited to technical capabilities like AI proficiency or data engineering–it also includes durable skills, like how to lead a team. “I don’t think we’re moving away from the fundamentals,” said Karsh at F5. “In fact, I think we need to double down on them. Leadership is an art that needs to be honed like a craft.”Panelists noted that building skill-based programs requires knowing what skills already exist within the organization. “The problem in doing this kind of infrastructure work is that the right hand often doesn’t talk to the left,” said Kason Morris, global director of skills-based organization strategy at Merck. “If we’re democratizing access to opportunities, we need to speak in a language of experiences and skills,” he said. That means, for example, not letting a university degree stand in for actual abilities.In fact, HCSC is in the process of removing degree requirements, focusing instead on the skills people have–whether built up in school, on the job, or elsewhere, says Fuller. Morris says we’re moving toward a time when conversational AIs will help not only develop skills, but identify them as well. “That’s intelligence for the employee and intelligence for the business,” he said.Continuous learning isn’t just a strategy, it’s a mindset and a culture. By empowering employees to own their growth, embrace new challenges, and share knowledge across the organization, companies can not only keep pace with change but lead their industries.“We all started this journey right by being scared of AI,” Stave said. “But after all the research and the personal benefits we’ve seen–it’s just so nice to hear all the good stuff that’s coming.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by EyeEm Mobile GmbH/iStock)
Talent in Motion: How HR Is Using Tech to Align People, Skills, and Opportunity
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza December 18, 2025Thanks to the explosive changes in the workplace brought on by the arrival of AI, employees are being asked to learn new skills all the time–often on top of already overfull plates. That leaves HR leaders facing a difficult question: How do you build skills at the pace the business demands without burning people out? Some HR leaders say the answer lies in shorter, more flexible learning experiences, paired with clear pathways that give employees ownership over their growth.“We have to have learning experiences that are easily adaptable,” said Nate Beck, SVP of learning and experience at Zions Bancorporation, during a From Day One webinar on how HR is using tech to align people, skills, and opportunity. The company has moved away from eight-hour, weeklong training programs in favor of lighter, more flexible approaches. Targeted development plans now begin with e-learning to cover the basics, followed by a 90-minute discussion focused on behaviors.“This allows people to leave the classroom with confidence and a plan of action immediately, instead of a full day of theory,” Beck said. The focus is now squarely on specific skills and the behaviors that support them. “It allows us to be quicker at meeting the needs of the organization when things change. If a skill is no longer relevant, that’s no big deal–we can adjust, because we’re not working on three days of content, we’re working on 90 minutes of content.”“When I started in learning and development, it used to take us months to develop multi-day programs,” said Nikki Slowinski, EVP of talent experience and development at Publicis Digital Experience. “We just don’t have that luxury anymore.”Journalist and From Day One Contributing Editor, Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, moderated the session (photo by From Day One)Publicis is now using Microsoft Copilot to help build training programs faster and more responsively, informed by data. “We’re able to meet needs before they become obsolete,” Slowinski said. “There’s still a lot of critical thinking involved to make it effective and high-quality, but I don’t think we couldn’t move at this pace without AI.”At the same time, leaders emphasized that durable skills–like critical thinking, systems thinking, and problem-solving–remain essential, and may be “even more critical now,” said Veronika Lantseva, SVP of workplace performance at U.S. Bank. “AI is a transformer of the way that we do work. Those skills come into play for a human to be able to say, ‘Here’s how I can connect the dots and leverage AI to drive business outcomes.”“Adaptability is the foundation for every other growth mindset,” Beck added. The most valuable capabilities remain human ones: “critical thinking, relationship-building, communication—those are things that AI cannot outperform us on.”With so much change underway, fatigue is a real risk. To embed learning into the culture, companies need to incentivize it, said Marcus Cazier, director of learning and development at bioMérieux. “Make learning a part of core duties. Tie it to performance bonuses.”Giving employees agency over what they learn helps too. “This starts with a conversation with leaders around long-term goals and the skills needed to get there,” said Lantseva. “Let’s say I’m a project manager in HR, and I’m aspiring to work in finance. The skills-based ecosystem gives me the language to say, ‘Here’s the delta between the skills I have today and what I need in the future.’ Then I can work with my manager to say, ‘How do I close that gap?’”Internal skills frameworks clarify the skills and proficiency levels required for different roles, giving employees a clear target to aim for. “That gives people leaders and HR language to use when they have future-focused conversations,” Lantseva said.That clarity can also break down barriers among departments, said Beck. “You get more cross-functional work. People are happier when they can see opportunities that are available. Maybe they don’t leave HR, but they get to participate in something with accounting. It’s such a good and healthy practice to have transparent skill and role frameworks so people can try new things.”SHL, for example, developed a skills taxonomy of 96 discrete behavioral skills that companies can use to evaluate their talent. Employees can better understand their own capabilities, while the organization can identify internal candidates ready to take on new jobs rather than hiring externally. When a new role opens or a team needs support, leaders can see who already has the relevant skills.Sukhmani Grewal, a solutions architect at SHL, described working with a client whose senior HR leader wanted to move into a business role–an unusual step in that organization. “We were able to show they have the right skills to be an effective business leader for the opening,” she said. “We were able to connect the dots, and the person is thriving.”Skills can also be transferred person to person, outside of structured training programs. At bioMérieux, mentorship has been a vital mechanism for skills-sharing, but only when it’s treated as more than a goodwill exercise. The mentorship is short-term and skill-based, says Cazier. It’s distinct from coaching or sponsorship, and sets the expectation that leaders will mentor, supported by systems and tools.“Adaptability is our foundation, and digital fluency keeps us relevant,” Beck said. “But human skills are what keep us irreplaceable. That’s what people need to remember–focus on how humans interact, and how we can use AI to augment our capacity.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, SHL, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by courtneyk/iStock)
AI in HR: How Work, Skills, and Leadership Evolve in a New Tech Era
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza December 17, 2025A year ago, HR leaders approached artificial intelligence with trepidation, afraid to jump in first, lest they also be the first to make a mistake. “That really changed overnight,” said Adam Vassar, head of talent science and learning design at skills evaluation platform CodeSignal. Early adopters follow a familiar pattern: automating the top of the recruiting funnel or using AI to assess technical skills like coding. Today, the use cases are broader and more varied. Vassar now works with clients to evaluate employees–technical and non-technical alike–on generative AI literacy, role-specific AI proficiency, and understanding of the technology’s limitations.Vassar and his fellow panelists discussed how AI is reshaping jobs, and how HR is helping to manage that shift, during a From Day One webinar on how work, skills, and leadership are evolving in the age of AI.“But before we can evaluate candidates on the AI skills they need or target the skills employees need to develop, we have to redefine skills taxonomies and job architecture,” Vassar said.That’s the work currently underway at data engineering firm Innodata, says Charlie Tañala, head of talent, capability development, and employee experience. “The foundation is clarity,” Tañala said. “You need a skills taxonomy that reflects the work your organization actually does.” The project, launched less than a year ago, will undergird Innodata’s internal skills marketplace, enabling the company respond more quickly to client needs and employees to move fluidly within the organization.Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the session (photo by From Day One)Innodata accelerated its focus on AI skills as it gained a wave of AI-proficient clients, and their existing client base was quickly catching up. “We started supporting customers who build and refine generative AI models, and the expectations moved to a different level,” Tañala said. “The skills required in generative AI workflows are more specialized and more judgment-heavy. We had to rethink almost everything–how we attract talent, how we design roles, and how we structure teams.”What AI skills a workforce needs will vary by company and function, says Marvie Wright, the VP of HR at customer service provider Qualfon. “Spend time in discovery to understand what’s out there,” she said. “Then tailor that to your organizational needs, being aware of what gaps you have, and how would you like for an AI to fulfill those.”AI is being applied differently in finance than in, say, communications or IT, prompting employers to think more deliberately about how skills are developed across functions. At Qualfon, a cross-functional task force evaluates and sets expectations for AI skills by department. “We know this is leading to a more enhanced future,” Wright said. “It’s really exciting, and it’s going to change the educational forefront of the workplace as well.”Identifying and measuring skills is only part of the equation. Training is another. “You want hands-on experience to see what’s possible, explore the edges, and understand where the logic breaks down,” said Ari Lehavi, head of applied AI at credit ratings institution Moody’s. He favors group workshops that demonstrate what’s so satisfying about AI, which is the ability to go from zero to prototype in hours.Participants collaborate–bolstered by AI–to solve real problems, moving from concept to execution. “I like to see how different people come up with ideas,” Lehavi said. “You help when they struggle, and, typically, you end up with some great ideas,” he said. “Everybody builds something, and they get very proud. That whole element of fear and the unknown dissipates, and they can venture into new ways of operating.”Wright advocates for as personalized an approach as possible. “We look at their individual needs, their gaps, and their progressions, then tailor individual approaches for each one very quickly and very accurately,” she said. As Qualfon has intensified its efforts, the returns have come faster. “We love it. We’re obsessed with it right now.”For Tañala, it all comes back to adaptability. “The skills we rely on today can change quickly,” he said. “Our people need the confidence to adjust without feeling lost. AI readiness is about understanding how to work with AI—and how to make good decisions with what it produces.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, CodeSignal, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Harsa Maduranga/iStock)
Training for AI: Six Ways HR Leaders Are Getting Their Teams Up to Speed
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza December 15, 2025As corporate America operationalizes AI at an ever-increasing rate, “HR is going to be the one figuring out how to connect the dots,” declares Dan Kaplan, managing partner and co-head of the CHRO practice at ZRG Partners. Company-wide AI rollouts are ultimately an HR matter, he argues, since they affect productivity, headcount, culture, and revenue. A new report from McLean & Company found that while 68% of companies are using AI, just 14% have a formal strategy. To get a handle on the new tech, some HR teams, like the one at New York Life, are taking the lead on adoption. The insurance firm launched its enterprise-wide AI training program in April, but HR had already been part of early pilots in 2023, testing internal systems that later scaled across the company.“Because of our early experiences with AI, HR became an essential voice for the broader rollout,” said Elliot Steelman, head of employee relations and leader of the HR department’s AI initiative. His team built fluency in prompt engineering, skills intelligence for talent mapping, analytics for long-term planning, and GPT creation. That is, generative pre-trained transformers, the large language models underlying today’s tools.Approaches to training up the HR team on the latest in AI tech vary by organization, but many combine classroom sessions, company-wide knowledge-sharing meetings, messaging channels for swapping tips, and virtual sandboxes where employees can play and experiment. Here are six ways HR leaders are training their teams to use–and lead–with artificial intelligence.HackathonsAt New York Life, AI hackathons–intensive, collaborative workshops focused on solving specific problems–have become one of the most effective ways to build HR’s proficiency. “Of the thousands of GPTs created at New York Life, many of the most-used were developed by HR,” said Steelman. “To date, employees in our HR department have collectively built more than 100.”The company’s CEO, Craig DeSanto, made AI a company priority. By starting with learning and exploration, the company made adoption less intimidating. “Employees felt like they were driving the change, not chasing it,” Steelman said.S&P Global was also an early adopter. After acquiring AI and analytics company Kensho in 2018, the company began training employees almost immediately. During a From Day One webinar, the global head of people solutions, Tiffany Clark, noted that S&P hosts quarterly hackathons to help employees experiment with AI and solve real problems.Internal Tool Development and TestingSome HR teams are co-designing their own AI productivity tools. The people-operations team at Nextdoor, the hyperlocal social network, began experimenting with ChatGPT in 2022. The head of compensation and talent, Tony Castellanos, said that their early willingness to tinker with a tool that was still clunky, and adapt it to their needs, helped build lasting proficiency.“You need curiosity. You also need resilience and perseverance,” he said. His team has developed their own AI tools to automate common workflows and answer employees’ questions about things like open enrollment and immigration.In 2024, S&P Global rolled out an AI assistant to handle common questions for the people-operations team. In partnership with the AI strategy team, Clark’s team helped develop the framework and conduct testing, a move that’s been instrumental not only in how employees leverage the assistant, but in building the HR team’s literacy, she said.Some people-operations experts, like Janine Yancey, founder and CEO of Emtrain, want the department to take the initiative when it comes to AI use. “I’d love to see HR leaders be the first to the table,” she said at From Day One’s Midtown Manhattan conference in October.Secure Sandbox Environments Training needn’t be too structured, or even goal-oriented. Many companies simply invite employees to experiment with sanctioned tools in “sandbox” environments, where applications and code can be tested safely.At biotech firm Genentech, all employees are trained on AI principles, ethics, and responsible use. The company encourages experimentation within sandboxes, coupled with live sessions and peer-learning events where colleagues show off what they’ve built.These safe, low-stakes spaces where employees are free to make mistakes, take risks, and “learn out loud,” are essential to adoption, said Amelia Rosenman, director of programs at the Experience Institute, during a From Day One webinar. “Share both your successes and your failures. That’s what creates that safe environment, that risk-free sandbox,” she said.Messaging Channels for Trading TipsAt fintech company Stripe, the people operations team set up a Slack channel where employees share how they’re using AI for little productivity boosts. “We make a point of being transparent about how we’re thinking about the future,” said Róisín Daly, head of people solutions, during a panel on how innovative companies are using advanced HR tech. The same was done at Aspen Dental, which created a Microsoft Teams group dedicated to sharing ideas for responsible AI use. This went a long way to quelling concerns that using AI was in some way cheating, said VP of learning and development Katie Stangel during a virtual panel. “People are starting to celebrate and call out when they’ve used it, saying, ‘I use ChatGPT to help me with this outline,’ or ‘I used Articulate AI to help me with the design and development of the course.’ We celebrate that.”Peer-Led Demos and WebinarsPeer-to-peer learning has become one of the most widely used ways to get employees comfortable experimenting with AI. New York Life hosts live workshops where staff demo their own AI use cases for colleagues. These sessions are often led by what initiative leader Steelman calls “internal evangelists” and “AI influencers.” These champions normalize experimentation, model best practices, and accelerate adoption by showing what’s possible.Every department requires different AI training, said Marvie Wright, VP of HR at Qualfon, during a From Day One virtual panel discussion on AI in HR. To meet those varied needs, the company created a cross-functional task force to evaluate tools and department-specific use cases, weighing factors like budget and compliance requirements. As adoption has grown, Wright has even added an AI programmer to her HR team. “The possibilities are endless, and my company is excited to invest because we know this is leading to a more enhanced future,” she said.Fellow panelist Ari Levahi of Moody’s Global agreed, noting that while training formats needn’t differ by function, “it’s all about the unique use cases associated with the HR role.”Traditional Training Environments, Both Classroom and Virtual More traditional forms of learning still play an important role in ensuring consistent, baseline AI literacy across HR and the enterprise at large. Nextdoor trains its team in a virtual classroom, where employees spend one hour a week for five weeks learning how AI works and then experimenting with it in their daily tasks. “One of the things that we're excited about is just the broad range of opportunities,” said Castellanos. “We don’t want to be prescriptive about what people do because we want to tap into the creativity and ingenuity of everybody here.”That openness has already paid off. One recruiter trained an AI-powered voice interviewer to help her team practice candidate interviews, something that previously had no real-world, low-stakes equivalent. “She really embodies curiosity, creativity, and the desire to improve,” Castellanos said. “She has continuously experimented with very specific use cases, and when this opportunity came along, she was one of the first to recognize its potential.”Rote reporting and paper pushing “erode energy and deplete people’s reserves,” he added. With a more AI-literate workforce, “you see an elevation of conversation. We’re not talking about how to push a task forward–we’re talking about strategic objectives. And that’s a lot more fun.”Stripe’s L&D team created a course that employees can access on demand, while New York Life supplements hands-on hackathons with on-demand modules. These structured offerings give employees shared language and technical grounding, making experimentation, and safe use, easier across teams. They also brought in the experts to teach AI skills, inviting leaders from Microsoft and OpenAI as well as Conor Grennan, chief AI architect at New York University’s Stern School of Business.While only a small fraction of companies have formal AI strategies, those that do are already reaping the rewards. At New York Life, an internal survey conducted in June found that 90% of HR employees’ say that they are confident in using AI in their day-to-day work, with 92% of employees reporting they actively look for new ways to integrate the technology into their daily work. “That speaks volumes about our shared enthusiasm, growing confidence, and the trust we’ve built together,” Steelman said.For HR leaders, that may be the lesson: AI adoption isn’t just about deploying new tools, it’s about building a workforce that feels empowered, curious, and capable of shaping the future of work itself–and that can begin with HR itself.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Featured photo by FG Trade/iStock by Getty Images)
How Innovative Companies Put Advanced Technology to Work
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza December 10, 2025HR leaders are on the front lines of AI adoption in the workplace. They’re responsible not just for finding ways to make their own departments more productive and efficient, but for ensuring that it can be smoothly applied throughout the organization. At a panel discussion at From Day One’s November virtual conference about how innovative companies are putting advanced tech to work, leaders shared how AI is reshaping their organizations, from hiring to data privacy.How AI Is Saving One Company Thousands of Hours At Vail Resorts, one major success has been in taming application volume, an enormous relief for a company that employs 50,000 workers, roughly 80% of whom are seasonal. “Our first attempt with leveraging AI is around modernizing the talent-acquisition process,” said Shiv Akumala, senior director of HR and finance. The hospitality company launched a mobile-friendly UI interface where candidates can apply for jobs that match their skill sets and their experience.Behind the scenes, the platform analyzes applications and automatically schedules screening calls and interviews. For a team accustomed to manually sorting through seasonal hiring surges, the impact has been dramatic. This first attempt at AI has saved the talent acquisition team thousands of hours, Akumala says.Vail’s use of AI doesn’t stop at hiring. The company is also using tools that forecast labor needs in real time, factoring in guest bookings and weather conditions to help managers schedule workers more accurately. Instead of relying on instinct or static staffing plans, managers can use dynamic models to understand exactly when demand at resorts will spike.Training a Modern Workforce on AIAt S&P Global, leaders saw the promise of AI early. The data and intelligence firm began training its workforce on artificial intelligence in 2018, well before the 2022 release of ChatGPT created the current AI boom.All new hires get exposure to AI tools and principles, regular hackathons challenge teams to develop their skills, and employees are incentivized to solve their problems with AI. Journalist and From Day One contributing editor, Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the session (photo by From Day One)Executives model this behavior. CEO Martina Cheung and CPO Girish Ganesan have spoken at company all-hands meetings about how they use AI, both in and outside the office. That openness matters, says Tiffany Clark, S&P’s global head of people solutions and well-being. “That’s what really encourages and incentivizes our employees to leverage AI.”Making AI Simple and PersonalFor some, the AI learning curve is steep, and a slower introduction is needed, said Tyson Foods’ HR tech leader Devina Desai. The challenge is ensuring the tools are accessible enough for everyone to participate. “We need to make the experience for our team members basic,” she said.So, Tyson created a simplified, one-stop user experience within its HR administration system. Instead of navigating multiple portals with discrete credentials, employees can log in to a single platform to review dental insurance, submit medical claims, or learn about financial benefits. When everyday tasks like these become easier, Desai says, employees are more likely to use their benefits. Line managers get their own tailored dashboards with analytics, attendance records, and tardiness data–and each user sees exactly what they need.Ensuring Data Privacy Amid a Surge of AIIf efficiency is one side of AI adoption, data protection is the other. “We have very important internal employee data, so I always think about the possibility of leakage,” said Róisín Daly, head of people solutions at fintech company Stripe.As HR tech vendors began adding AI features, Daly’s team scrutinized the fine print. “We were suddenly faced with this problem: They’re processing our data and the lawyers don’t exactly know how to handle this, because it’s very new.”Daly must handle HR data–which includes troves of personally identifiable information, or PII–differently than her counterparts in other functions handle their data. While non-PII employee information may sit safely in the cloud, sensitive personal data requires iron-clad protections. The slightest bit of leakage is problematic at best, and catastrophic at worst.“That’s how leaders in the HR space tell me that they lose sleep, so I’m very focused on the experience, both from an internal data storage perspective and a vendor relationship perspective.”Clark agreed: “HR data is not the same as other forms of data. The biggest part is getting people to understand that difference, and then making sure we have firm data governance and data safeguards.”At pharmaceutical company McKesson, rigorous review is standard for every AI-enabled initiative. Ajeeth Anand Viswanath, senior director of HR tech services, says the company uses a three-tier approval model. First, legal reviews the use case. If it passes, it’s on to a senior specialist or data architect. Only after clearing those hurdles does it go to an executive-level board that assesses risk, exposure, and alignment with company priorities. “It’s a long process, as there are multiple questions,” he said. “Even the attorneys are present.”As the rate of change accelerates workplace transformation, HR leaders will have to contend with the way AI both simplifies and complicates the discipline. Whether it’s speeding up hiring, simplifying frontline tools, or tightening data protections, each organization is reckoning with how to deploy AI in ways that serve both the business and its people.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by JLco - Julia Amaral/iStock)
New Year, New Recruiting: Trends and Tech in 2026 to Optimize Hiring, Screening, and Beyond
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza December 02, 2025The HR tech industry continues to introduce new innovations to make hiring smarter, faster, and easier. Yet even as the number of applications per position grows, some talent leaders are rethinking how, and how much, they want to rely on this technology alone.During a From Day One webinar on recruiting trends and technology heading into 2026, talent leaders debated the ways in which tech will automate and augment the hiring process, and how to strike the right balance between human and artificial intelligence. They agreed on this: AI is here to stay, but so is the human touch. What Is Responsible AI?For Kim Stevens, director of talent acquisition at recruiting platform Employ, responsible AI can be defined simply: “It’s technology that supports people. It doesn’t replace them.” In practice, that means AI never overrides human judgment, and a person always makes the final call. It also means the technology can explain itself. When Employ’s AI screening tool flags standout candidates, it provides a clear rationale. This information helps keep the company audit-ready, a legal necessity–and some argue, a moral one.Mike Rockwell, VP of account management at Verified Fist, which conducts employee background checks, added that responsibility also includes security. “If you think about the most popular AI tools people are using, like ChatGPT, if you put something in there, everyone has it,” he said. Sensitive hiring information can’t be treated casually. Employers need to ensure the tools they adopt have the infrastructure to keep candidate data protected.Transparency with candidates is part of responsible AI use. If a company is relying on AI tools for recruiting, they should be upfront about it, Rockwell says. Job seekers who feel misled or entirely cut off from real human interaction aren’t likely to walk away with a positive view of the employer.Journalist and From Day One contributing editor, Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, moderated the session (photo by From Day One)Erica Wallace, senior talent acquisition manager at HR management software BambooHR, says that some organizations still struggle to formalize internal guidelines. “We can’t say people are breaking the rules if we haven’t established what those rules are,” she said. At BambooHR, guardrails are built directly into internal tools. Even if a recruiter tries to ask the AI who they should hire, the system is designed to decline.Clarity also extends to the candidate experience. Some job seekers assume recruiters haven’t looked at resumes in years, Wallace joked. To counter that perception, her team tells candidates upfront if AI will be used in the interview process and gives them the option to opt out. Every AI-generated decision, from whether to advance a resume to the next round to any ranking of applicants, is still audited by a human.The panelists agreed that it’s always worth questioning whether technology is saving time or quietly creating more work. “That’s something we’re asking all the time,” said Wallace. Her rule of thumb: AI should only be introduced to solve a clearly named problem. Too many vendors, she said, are inventing products for problems that they don’t face. Adopting tech for tech’s sake is a reliable way to burn hours, not reduce them.Some tasks require a combination of the human touch and tech power. Fraud prevention, for instance, has pushed BambooHR back toward more in-person interviews to verify a candidate’s identity. Employ has also increased the amount of screening done by human recruiters. And Stevens cautioned against “over-engineering” the process by letting AI handle too much candidate messaging, especially deeper in the funnel where a personal touch matters most.What Employers Should Focus on in 2026As hiring teams plan for the new year, Stevens encourages leaders to think about candidate communication as a baseline requirement. With so many applicants across industries, it’s common for job seekers to hear nothing or receive only canned responses. “It is our responsibility as humans to treat other humans as such,” she said. AI can help clear the noise and reduce administrative work, but it shouldn’t replace meaningful interaction.That means reinvesting time in the humans doing the hiring. Spend more time with your recruiters, Stevens says. Help them become better interviewers, better communicators, and more empathetic guides in a challenging job market. AI can accelerate workflows, but it can’t build trust or make someone feel valued.Technology should enhance the human element, not erode it, panelists agreed. “We have an obligation to try the best we can to remain human and keep that human element, even with the advancements in technology and AI,” said Stevens. “One way to differentiate is to lead with kindness and empathy in everything you do,” Rockwell said. “There’s someone on the other end that’s trying to get a job because they need to pay bills, they need to feed their kids, they need to be sitting in a seat so they have a career. It’s really easy to forget about that when everything’s happening through a computer.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Employ, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Take Production Studios/Shutterstock)
Hiring Reimagined: Driving Trust and Compliance in the Age of AI
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza December 01, 2025Companies are increasingly feeling a kind of FOMO (that is, fear of missing out) when it comes to artificial intelligence in hiring, says Adam Vassar, head of talent science and learning design at CodeSignal, the AI-driven skills assessment platform. Just six months ago, many employers were still taking a wait-and-see approach to AI adoption, and some were playing defense against job seekers who were using AI to complete assessments and interviews.Not anymore. Vassar says his clients are asking to pilot new programs. “They’re less afraid about being the first one to make a mistake, and more concerned about the fear of missing out and being left behind,” he said. “It’s been exciting to implement these products, see what problems we can solve, and get real data behind it. The possibilities are limitless.”Vassar joined California-based employment attorney Heather Bussing for a From Day One webinar about fostering trust and ensuring compliance in the age of AI. Together, they outlined how the technology is being deployed, and the risks employers should be aware of. Artificial Intelligence Enters the Recruiting Workflow Companies are deploying AI at three key points in the hiring process, says Vassar.First, top-of-funnel screening. Recruiters are overwhelmed by hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of applications per role and are automating early phone-screen interviews to manage the largest end of the funnel. Second are skills simulations. Companies are building high-fidelity simulations to test on-the-job abilities, giving hiring managers stronger signals about candidate fit.Adam Vassar, head of talent science & learning design at CodeSignal, spoke with moderator Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza during the webinar (company photo)And finally: interview training. AI is being used to train human interviewers by enforcing consistent, structured practices. “We’ve been teaching humans for years,” Vassar said. “Now we’re prompting AI to follow those rules–and they’re much better at it.” And together, they’re getting pretty good.Vassar is adamant that none of this is designed to, nor could it, replace recruiters. Rather, it gives recruiters a team of AIs they can delegate to, freeing recruiters for the higher-order work of decision-making, judgment, and relationship-building. Recruiters are overworked and under-resourced. New tools help them move faster and potentially improve hiring quality.The Legal Questions, and What MattersMany employers still hesitate to adopt AI because they worry about legal exposure. But the risks aren’t new, Bussing says. They’re the same ones that apply to humans: bias and discrimination.“All the data used to train these systems is based on what humans have done, and it is going to be biased too,” she said. “We just need to keep holding AI to the same high standard.”That means employers must regularly audit hiring outcomes–job offers, promotions, and retention rates–through a human and an AI lens. Do your outcomes reflect your applicant pool? Are certain groups over- or under-represented? Some jurisdictions, like New York City, require regular audits; Illinois requires notifying candidates when AI is used; Maryland requires notice and consent before using video analysis.But disclosure requirements have limitations, and employers should be aware, lest they consider it a box-checking exercise with no impact to the candidate. “If you look at the power dynamics in hiring, it’s not a real choice,” Bussing said. A candidate can refuse AI screening, but that may mean giving up the chance at the job.Ensuring Fairness With AI in RecruitmentEmployers can take steps to create more equitable processes. Asking for diverse candidate slates is one step, and assembling diverse interview panels is another. “We are naturally designed to prefer people who look like us and feel like us,” Bussing said. If employers want better diversity, or simply a more diverse skill set, they need recruiters and hiring managers who know how to look for it. Beyond legal compliance, Vassar added, there’s a moral obligation.In this spirit, CodeSignal has adopted its own rigorous fairness standards regardless of jurisdiction. To test itself, the company asks candidates to voluntarily disclose demographic data so it can evaluate outcomes by gender and other factors. “We want that data. We starve for that data,” Vassar said.CodeSignal created its own version of the “Pepsi Challenge”: a blind comparison of AI interview outcomes versus human interview outcomes using the same rubric. Vassar expected wide gaps. “But we found alignment,” said Vassar. In some cases, the overlap between humans and AI was about 85%. This is a good sign, he says.“Humans still need to be in the loop,” Bussing said. “And we have to call out the reality of the situation, not pretend we can come up with a magic formula, and presto: change.” The future of hiring will hinge on disciplined oversight: humans checking the machines, machines checking the humans, and both held to the same rigorous standards. The goal isn’t to make hiring perfect, but to make it fairer and more consistent. A better outcome for both employer and candidate.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, CodeSignal, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by SmileStudioAP/iStock)
Corporate America’s Retreat from the ‘Whole Self’ Era
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza November 20, 2025Remember the time when workers were invited to “bring their whole selves to work”? When they were welcomed to zones of psychological safety and encouraged to speak freely? When they were given highly flexible work arrangements to suit their lifestyles? When dogs and cats roamed through Zoom meetings?Those days are over. While no company will exactly say, “return to the office, and please leave your whole self at home,” corporate expectations have changed. The breezy notion of colorful individuality now feels risky. But where exactly are we now?“The pendulum is swinging. This goes back and forth through the decades,” said Janine Yancey, founder and CEO of Emtrain, which creates workplace compliance and culture training. At the moment, Emtrain’s customers are focused on productivity, cost savings, and efficiency. “It’s really about the bottom line right now,” Yancey said. The employee experience and company culture has receded in importance. “That’s less of a priority.”The “whole self” concept became HR gospel during the first half of the decade, propelled in different ways by three events: the pandemic, the surge of support for DEI, and the Great Resignation. (One of the first explicit references came a few years earlier in a TED talk.) During the pandemic, when remote work offered glimpses into our colleagues’ homes and lives, and widely shared stress revealed new parts of ourselves. With schools and childcare centers closed, companies granted unprecedented flexibility for workers to care for family members. The social justice movement of 2020 also opened the door for self-sharing at work. Employers spun up employee resource groups (ERGs) and some invited employees to share their feelings in all-hands meetings. Some, like Walmart, even trained staff in mental health first aid to better recognize distress among coworkers.The Definition Is TrickyBut what exactly does it mean to bring one’s whole self to work? It depends, and that may be the challenge as the bar is reset. Some may feel that it’s a license to dissolve healthy boundaries. Want to pitch a fit in a meeting? Go right ahead. That’s your whole self. Others may feel relief that they can talk openly about being on the autism spectrum without fear of discrimination. Like most trendy terms, its definition is nebulous. While individual companies may have taken the time to define the term, there’s been no broader consensus.It’s unlikely that any employer ever wanted employees to bring everything to work. Insubordination was never welcome, even if it comes naturally. “Authenticity at work is guarded authenticity,” said John Higgins, who studies and writes about activism in the workplace. “Because at work, you can be fired. That’s the reality.” What really undermined the “whole self” movement was the backlash against DEI. Some companies and universities have scrapped their DEI plans, closed diversity offices, and laid off chief diversity officers—once a fast-growing C-suite position. Following President Trump’s executive order to end all federal DEI programs, there have been state-level bans, lawsuits, and corporate roll-backs.The skirmishes are often public. Some federal employees were fired or put on leave for participating in DEI programs recommended by the first Trump administration. More recently, some employers fired or disciplined workers for social posts they made about the murder of right-wing political figure Charlie Kirk. According to a special report from Reuters, more than 600 Americans were “fired, suspended, placed under investigation or disciplined by employers for comments about Kirk’s September 10 assassination.” Several of those workers have since filed lawsuits against their employers.Where Should the Line Be Drawn Now?Especially for leaders, the idea of unfiltered authenticity is misguided, according to management expert Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, writing in Harvard Business Review. “Decades of psychological research studies show that power diminishes inhibition, weakens empathy, reduces self-control and any sense of obligation to others, and amplifies the toxic traits leaders already possess,” asserts Chamorro-Premuzic, author of the new book Don’t Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead). Instead, leaders should model values instead of performing them, protect their personal lives, and choose empathy over ego.Even the term “psychological safety” needs to be revisited. Amy Edmonson, the Harvard management professor who popularized the term, argues that bringing one’s whole self is precisely what we shouldn’t be doing. “Your ‘authentic’ or ‘whole’ self also includes the undesirable, unprofessional, and dark side dimensions of your character,” she wrote in a recent article for Fast Company.Venture capitalist Marc Andressen, a vocal critic of DEI, wrote on X in late 2024: “The one thing you should never, ever, ever do is bring your full self. Leave your full self at home where it belongs and act like a professional and a grownup at work and in public.”It’s arguable that “whole self” was never what workers needed. In a New York Times opinion piece, University of Pennsylvania economist Corinne Low wrote that “women, and especially mothers, don’t necessarily need remote work. We don’t need so-called flexible work schedules. What we need are plain old boundaries–jobs where work stops at a set time and allows other parts of life to exist without interruption.”But employers reach outside the workplace, where our whole selves live. In many cases, the comments about Charlie Kirk that resulted in terminations were made on personal social media accounts. It’s not the first time this has happened. A private-sector employee was fired from her job in 2020 after she called the Black Lives Matter “racist, claiming it caused segregation and alleging Black people were ‘killing themselves,’” according to the New Jersey Monitor. The employee sued, but a judge upheld the termination. While some may decry unprofessionalism in the workplace, others may be pushing back on expressions of personal identity that don’t align with with their ideological camp. For instance, the Trump administration wanted to ban transgender people from changing the sex marker on their passports, and the Supreme Court upheld the ban. We might ask, Is it that we don’t want people to behave unprofessionally, or that we don’t want people to feel safe and comfortable disclosing politicized aspects of their identity?When employers invite authenticity at work, Higgins said, what’s usually welcome are the traits that benefit the business. At its most mercenary, the message is really, “bring a socially acceptable version of yourself so I can use you.” Of course, what’s socially acceptable changes. What will be the next cycle? “Employers will overreach a little bit, and then employees will start to mobilize because that’s the only way you can achieve some leverage and power,” said Emtrain’s Yancey. Sometimes unions are formed or sit-ins are held. Who does the rabble-rousing has a great deal to do with who has the upper hand in the job market—or what ideology is in vogue. But the pendulum will one day swing again, she said. “It always does.” Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Featured illustrated by Dave Long Media/iStock by Getty Images)
Unified by Innovation: Tech’s Role in Global Workforce Management
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza November 06, 2025Artificial intelligence may be the most exciting new hire, but it’s not ready to make tighter-knit teams. As companies race to automate recruiting, performance reviews, and even written feedback, some HR leaders are asking a different question: Can technology actually make people feel more connected at work?That question is top of mind for Claude Silver, chief heart officer at global marketing firm VaynerX. Her team is experimenting with AI to generate personalized, quarterly feedback for employees—part of an effort to give people more consistent check-ins with their managers. But she’s yet to find something AI-powered that really facilitates interpersonal relationships. “I really want some AI tools that strengthen human relationships,” she said. “Bottom line: belonging and trust. I want to find a way that AI can help us with the connection moments.”Until AI can do it, companies are finding other ways to use technology to foster interaction, especially as teams become bigger and more global. That was the topic discussion among a panel of HR leaders during From Day One’s October virtual conference on smart strategies for collaborating across borders.At fintech company NCR Atleos, global executive director of talent and learning, Curtis Brooks is using tech to create learning communities where employees exchange leadership lessons and self-reflect. “People are starting to comment, and when one person comments, it creates the space for the next person,” he said. That kind of engagement, while modest, can spark a ripple effect of connection across teams.Too Many Tools, Not Enough ConnectionBut as companies add tools, they risk overwhelming the very people they’re trying to connect. HR tech stacks have grown taller–and unwieldy. Information and data are stored across disparate systems, team communications are fragmented, and unvetted tools can introduce security risks.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, journalist and From Day One contributing editor, moderated the session (photo by From Day One)The first test of whether a tool is worth using is whether it creates connection or friction, says Carol Cochran, senior director of HR at BOLD. Cochran recalled a team that relied on a pulse-check tool for frequent feedback. When that platform was retired, the team tried to recreate it on their own, adding so many new questions that it became a miniature engagement survey. “Suddenly it shifted right from being a pulse check useful for line managers to a mini-engagement survey where they were asking questions that, frankly, line managers aren’t in a position to really address,” Cochran said. “That was going to create more friction than connection.”Picking and ChoosingAt Google, global HR leader Jasmine Dolfus uses a four-part rubric to decide whether new tools are worth adding. Step one: assess needs and local compliance requirements. Step two: compare against standardized business criteria to ensure equity and consistency. Step three: make sure the change won’t disrupt or disadvantage other teams or regions. And finally, monitor the impact once the tool is in use.At NCR Atleos, Brooks applies an 80/20 rule. About 80% of technology and processes should be universal to the company, while 20% should be unique to specific teams or geographies. “It’s employee-driven, business-directed, and organizationally enabled,” he said.Cochran says that at BOLD, which recently acquired CareerBuilder and Monster, the challenge has been integration. Each company brought its own HR systems, workflows, tools, and habits. “At least in the beginning, you have to save a lot more than you can cut to keep business continuity,” she said. “There’s so much change hitting people that you don’t want to pull away the tools they need to stay functional and operating–even if it’s just a communication platform, because that’s what they’re used to.”That cautious approach may be what keeps these HR leaders grounded amid all the AI hype. For all the promise of automation, the real opportunity lies in designing systems that strengthen, not replace, human relationships.“We all need to understand AI, to use AI, and to not be afraid of it,” said Silver. “But at the end of the day, when I put my hand on your shoulder and say, ‘I got you,’ AI is not going to do that.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Jacob Wackerhausen/iStock)
Maintaining Employee Experience at Scale—Without Losing Personalization
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza November 04, 2025There are two parts to the HR field, says Sarah Rose Hattem: the administrative work of ticking boxes, sending emails, and ensuring compliance, and the creative work of designing better processes, developing a workforce, and improving the employee experience. “That’s the more important work,” she said during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s September virtual conference.Hattem is now a senior solutions consultant at HR tech company Rippling, but she spent her early career in HR. As the first HR hire at a company with just 50 employees, and plans to double headcount in a year, she faced a challenge familiar to many HR teams: doing a lot with very little. Tracking applicants, sending offers, and onboarding dozens of new hires each month quickly became overwhelming. But with Rippling’s platform, which worked like an operating system with its own taxonomy and native apps, “it was really like having an extra set of hands,” she said.Sarah Rose Hattem, senior solutions consultant at Rippling, spoke with journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza during the session (company photo)The paper-pushing side of HR work meant that Hattem, like so many other HR professionals, risked being an admin rather than a strategic contributor. This familiar problem has only grown as companies navigate big changes like layoffs, restructurings to return-to-office mandates, and the arrival of AI “coworkers.” HR teams are managing increasingly complex work while trying to preserve the human side of their role.Much of HR’s daily frustration, Hattem says, comes down to fragmented systems. Most organizations rely on a patchwork of tools that don’t easily communicate–one for payroll, another for benefits, and another still for performance reviews. They’re scattered and disconnected, and that slows the most basic processes. Technology should enhance the human side of HR, not replace it, Hattem says. The “human component” is the one thing she didn’t want to lose. “Does someone feel warm and welcome? Do they feel like we’ve given attention to them on a personal level? That’s really hard to do when you have to do all the other administrative things,” she said. The fix, Hattem argued, isn’t more software, but a smarter system. If employee data such as role, location, or manager could automatically sync across systems, if performance reviews could be connected with payroll, and work anniversaries with PTO balances, then HR teams could spend less time chasing paperwork and more time on what makes the job meaningful: creative problem-solving, process refinement, and building real connections. This, she says, is where HR professionals deserve to work.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Rippling, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Jacob Wackerhausen/iStock)
AI as a Corporate Earthquake: How Big Changes Can Make or Break Company Culture
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza November 04, 2025The embedding of AI in business operations represents the most significant disruption to our working lives since the internet, and for the majority of the workforce—who aren’t old enough to remember how the internet upended not only day-to-day work but entire career trajectories—it’s the most tectonic change in their lifetime.In the race to operationalize AI, employers are destabilizing company culture. Long-proven processes are being overturned, responsibilities reorganized, tasks eliminated, knowledge re-oriented, and jobs replaced. What once required a team to accomplish can be done with just one or two people. Some solopreneurs are able to mount wildly profitable companies with no team members at all.As the workplace morphs into something entirely new, leaders must consider the effects on culture. The trouble is that many “companies often have a hard time understanding how quickly their organization changes,” said Miles Overholt, founder and CEO of Strategia Analytics.From Day One contributing editor Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza spoke with Miles Overholt, above, founder and CEO of Strategia, about how to effectively integrate AI into the workplace (company photo)An expert in organizational transformation and change with advanced degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton School, Overholt has watched as companies fail to consider the working environment during major overhauls, only to have communication break down, distrust spread, and changes ultimately fail. A company may start a new project, he said, “but by the time you’re into it, the company has already changed and the implementation strategy has to be adjusted.” Initiatives can easily fail unless leaders account for how changes will affect what Overholt calls “organizational DNA,” or the ways an organization interacts with internal and external environments. Organizational DNA is always evolving, but it is especially fragile during major shocks such as mergers, acquisitions, or operational overhauls, including the introduction of AI.To preserve a healthy culture, leaders must know what the company is today, and have a clear picture of what it should be in the future. The Rush to Adopt AI, While Failing to Account for Cultural ChangeMany companies have already gotten ahead of themselves with AI. An analysis found that while major U.S. companies talk often about AI, “other than the ‘fear of missing out,’ few appear to be able to describe how technology is changing their businesses for the better.” This raises the question: If companies can’t clearly state the impact of AI on the business, do they know anything at all about its impact on culture?AI is shocking many companies because leaders failed to consider its effects on mentality, relationships, and behavior of the workforce, said Dave Lopez, Strategia Analytics’ SVP of systems research. “When AI is introduced, employees en masse believe, rightly or wrongly, that they’re out the door. If you’re introducing an AI system and your workforce is now concerned that they are about to be made redundant and lose their job, how does that impact how your organization is functioning?”Without clear communication about purpose, application, and goals, huge operational overhauls create distrust between workers fearful for their job security and leaders frustrated by slow adoption or outright resistance. How workers feel about operationalized AI depends on the industry and the role. Heavily routined industries such as manufacturing are seeing heightened anxiety, says Lopez. While in others, like financial services, “AI is seen more as a tool that can help you better perform your job, but your job is not necessarily at risk.” That’s not to say its effects on culture are smaller, only different.When Change Overlooks DNA, Culture CracksCompanies that fail to consider how AI will disrupt the way an organization interacts with both internal and external environments will face three critical problems.First, a breakdown in communication that engenders distrust can occur. If AI rollouts are framed as efficiency plays without transparency, employees—especially those in highly vulnerable roles like customer service and software engineering—may suspect ulterior motives. Unless your people know where you’re going and why, they won’t follow you there.In a From Day One webinar, Overholt recalled one spectacular breakdown in communication that left leaders and workers at aggressive odds. One of his early clients was a CEO who was certain that a fire on the machine floor was deliberately set and executive cars vandalized by employees. After investigating, Overholt discovered that while workers loved pleasing customers, they hated the work environment. “I’m listening to all these people in pain,” he recalled. “I’m watching supervisors trying to make things better, but they’re caught in the crunch between top management and employees, and nobody’s talking.” This gulf was widened when leadership built an executive parking lot fortified by a wall. Rather than take the time to understand what employees were feeling, the leaders drew battle lines and prepared for a fight.“If you want to understand behavior,” he said, “you have to understand the individual and context that individual happens to be in.”Next comes a disengagement from work.Managers and supervisors are employees’ most crucial point of connection to the company. Gallup found that upwards of 70% of variance in team engagement can be chalked up to the manager alone.If line managers who work directly with rank and file aren’t incorporated in AI rollouts early and eagerly, buy-in from the broader organization will suffer. Engaging managers will prevent leaders from seeing the organization as homogenous and unmoving—they are your key to understanding team dynamics, day-to-day operations, and likely roadblocks. Few leaders truly know why things don’t get done and why changes don’t land. But your managers do.The last problem Overholt sees is changes that don’t stick. Without trust and engagement, work suffers. “Behavior is a function of the person and the environment,” Overholt said. If a company’s culture doesn’t actively support and reward the behaviors it wants to see, meaningful change simply won’t stick.Some leaders are prone to see change as a zero-sum game: It’s good for business or it’s good for employees. But that’s not true, says Frances Almstrom, Strategia’s VP of systems research. “You can do what’s good for your company and what’s good for your people at the same time.” When you do, operations can change, quite successfully.Practical Steps for Preserving Culture Amid AI DisruptionResisting the urge to simply keep up with the Joneses is the first step. While benchmarking your competitors is useful, imitation is not an operational strategy. Success comes from understanding what truly fits your organization’s unique DNA and long-term goals, says Overholt. Before and after any AI rollout, leaders should take stock of how changes affect the organization across four dimensions: strategy, leadership, culture, and execution. By regularly measuring the root causes of underperformance, say, every six months, they can catch small problems before they metastasize into larger ones.Managers play a pivotal role in guiding employees through transitions. Well-prepared leaders don’t just enforce new systems, they help employees understand the changes, address concerns, and model behaviors that reinforce the desired culture.Communication strategies, too, must be thoughtful and nuanced. Employees will perceive AI differently depending on their roles, experiences, and industry context. Effective messaging anticipates these varied perspectives, highlighting both opportunities and challenges so that employees feel part of the process rather than casualties of change.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Strategia Analytics, for supporting this sponsor spotlight. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by FG Trade/iStock)
Recruiting Rebuilt: How to Streamline Your Hiring Pipeline, Data, and Workflow
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza November 03, 2025Recruiters are busier than ever, though not necessarily more productive. “We’re seeing three times more applications per recruiter today than just a few years ago,” said Meredith Johnson, chief product officer at Greenhouse, during a From Day One webinar on streamlining the hiring process. At small companies, that influx could mean 100 applications for a single job, and at larger companies–thousands.“Today’s job seeker can use AI to mass apply for hundreds of roles in just a few clicks, and they’re customizing their resumes instantly,” she said. Recruiters’ inboxes are flooded with fraudulent, unqualified, or disingenuous applications, “and it’s creating a lot of false signals.”Greenhouse tracked 300 million applications in a single year, which means that there could be 200 times more applications than roles filled in a given quarter. “Recruiters are spending upwards of 80% of their time sifting through this noise,” Johnson said. Meanwhile, the teams doing that work are shrinking. “The average number of recruiters per team has dropped by 24%,” she said, and each recruiter is now handling triple the workload of a few years ago. Sorting candidates, especially at the top of the funnel, is getting harder.Candidates, meanwhile, expect more: faster responses, transparent processes, and personalized communication. In short, Johnson said: “Recruiters are stuck with quite a bit of chaos.”‘From Requisition Takers to Talent Strategists’Johnson says that recruiters can break this cycle not only with automation, but with strategy. For reactive hiring teams, work starts when a role opens. For proactive hiring teams, the work is building the workforce at all times. Johnson wants to help recruiters go from “requisition takers to talent strategists,” continuously building relationships and pipelines.Meredith Johnson, chief product officer at Greenhouse, pictured, spoke with journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza during the webinar (company photo)That requires structure and consistency. Johnson described one client whose hiring process varied wildly–each manager had their own way of evaluating candidates, and no candidate’s experience was like the next. By standardizing the process and criteria, the company created a more equitable and more predictable system. The new structure also allowed recruiters to act as advisors, not just box-tickers.Johnson emphasized that AI isn’t meant to replace recruiters–it will help them work efficiently. The recruiter remains in charge of the process and rubrics, while the tech can handle things like candidate sentiment analysis and flagging potentially fraudulent applications. With smarter tech, recruiters can then prioritize real candidates who express genuine enthusiasm for the role, without removing human judgement or sacrificing the candidate experience.AI makes it easy for good-faith candidates to apply easily, and makes it easier for bad actors to do the same. Greenhouse has found that nearly one percent of resumes contain some kind of trick like inflated skills or falsified experience. One percent may sound like a small figure, but when a company receives 2,000 applications for a single role, those numbers add up.To address this, Johnson pointed to Greenhouse’s partnership with Clear, which allows recruiters to confirm a candidate’s identity at any point in the hiring process they choose. “It’s as simple as taking a selfie photo and uploading the government ID.” As the pressure on recruiters to do more with less continues, the next phase of talent acquisition will depend on how effectively teams can balance automation with human judgment, using AI to find the signal in the noise. “Recruiters are being forced to spend a lot of critical time and energy manually sifting through hundreds or thousands of resumes,” Johnson said. “What they really want to do, and what they’re skilled at, is building relationships with truly qualified talent and moving those candidates through the process.” And that’s what she wants to give them.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Greenhouse, for sponsoring this webinar. Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by Pakin Jarerndee/iStock)
Improving Financial Wellness for Your Employees at a Modest Cost
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza October 28, 2025As inflation squeezes paychecks, student debt looms over graduates, and the cost of childcare keeps climbing, companies are under mounting pressure to help employees make the most of their money. But offering financial wellness programs isn’t just a nice-to-have. Employees now expected it–and it’s a strategic business move. The problem, however, is doing so cost-efficiently.The first challenge is often getting executives, who make six- or seven-figure incomes, to understand the financial plights of salaried, and especially hourly, employees. At MGM Resorts–famous for its gaming, hospitality, and entertainment venues–many leaders are what DJ Rao, the company’s head of total rewards, calls “homegrown.” They started with modest means. “They’ve grown from the front desk upwards into the C-suite. Our leadership appreciates and understands what $400 is,” he said during a recent From Day One webinar about improving employee financial wellness at a modest cost.If your leaders don’t have this kind of appreciation, Rao emphasized that presenting programs as a moral imperative won’t be enough. HR leaders must benchmark against competitors in terms of ROI, reduced absenteeism, and increased productivity. Your leaders are concerned about the business, so translate it into dollars and cents. “It just cannot be, ‘Let’s do this because it’s good.’ You have to show the money.”But how do you know if you’re delivering what your employees really need? Trade-off surveys are a helpful tool. Devin Miller, co-founder and CEO of emergency-savings platform SecureSave, recommends asking employees which benefits they actually want, rather than assuming the standard offerings will work. Expert speakers joined From Day One contributing editor Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza for a conversation on improving employee financial wellness at a modest cost“Everything’s costing more, and you want to add more, but do they really still need all of these things? And which one do they prefer over others?” Miller said. Some employees might prioritize emergency-savings accounts over health savings accounts or other perks entirely. Understanding these preferences ensures programs make a meaningful impact.Financial resources don’t have to be expensive, and some don’t cost a thing. Damilola Akinduro, global head of benefits at the data-center company Equinix, points out that, without extra cash, employees often struggle to save. To help, Equinix helps its workers with tax efficiency and brings in volunteer experts for financial education. “You’d be surprised at how much employees appreciate these things,” she said.First United Bank also leans on its internal resources. They invite specialists from within the bank to host talks about budgeting, and have their 401(k) provider give free seminars, said Christina Escobar, a senior financial well-being specialist at First United. “We really try to leverage our vendors and our internal resources.” These resources are especially helpful for their new grads (they hire 100 to 200 every year), who may have never followed a budget or set up a retirement account.Vendors themselves are evolving to make financial benefits more cost-effective. Dave Kirby, SVP of total rewards at marketing data company Epsilon, noted that platform-style solutions now allow companies to consolidate things like charitable giving, wellness programs, and financial literacy offerings in one place, making it easier to scale benefits efficiently. “There are now vendors that are bringing all this together under one platform,” he said.Over time, employers may need to reevaluate their offerings. “It’s surprising how few employers take the time to go through these programs, ask the hard questions, and pull that money back,” Miller said. Many companies can fund improvements by reallocating underused benefits rather than increasing budgets.Rao warned against chasing wellness trends. “Everyone wants to do something new, but be very careful what you offer your employees,” lest you have to roll it back. He recommends investing fully in a few initiatives and communicating widely—through word of mouth, employee resource groups (ERGs), signage, and internal websites. “Do few things,” Rao said, “but do them well.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs. (Featured photo by LordHenryVoton/iStock by Getty Images)