Smart Tools, Smarter Hiring: How TA Leaders Can Leverage Their Human Judgement
BY Grace Turney April 09, 2026Soha Kadam-Masudi recently sat down for a series of senior-level reference checks; and she barely picked up a pen. Microsoft Copilot recorded the calls, summarized the conversations, and handed her back something she hadn’t had in years of recruiting: her full attention. “It was such a meaningful conversation because I was focusing on the questions and what was actually coming back as a reference,” said Kadam-Masudi, director of talent acquisition for Aramark Canada.That shift from administrative executor to thoughtful evaluator is exactly the evolution talent acquisition leaders are chasing right now. AI tools have moved well beyond the novelty stage and into the daily rhythms of recruiting, automating the repetitive and liberating the human. But the technology still can’t do the most important things: read a room, sense reluctance in a team, or vouch for a candidate with conviction.This was the topic at hand during a panel discussion at From Day One’s March virtual conference. Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop, moderated the conversation with five talent acquisition leaders from companies spanning multiple continents and industries.Streamlining the MachineryFor many TA teams, AI’s first and most visible contribution has been streamlining daily functions. Angie Lombardo, VP, global director of operations for talent acquisition at Arcadis, described layering an AI system on top of her company’s applicant tracking system to compensate for its clunkiness. The tool automates workflow steps, surfaces qualified candidates from a database of a million people, and handles interview scheduling; a task that used to eat hours. “It saves the recruiters a lot of admin time and helps them focus on finding the right person,” she said.Leaders spoke on an executive panel during From Day One's March talent acquisition virtual conference (photo by From Day One)Kadam-Masudi echoed that—at Aramark (where the team recruits roughly 2,000 to 3,000 employees annually in Canada alone), AI screening tools and chatbots help manage the volume by answering candidate questions around the clock, routing applications, and reducing the administrative burden on frontline managers who would otherwise be doing a great deal of recruiting themselves. “Qualified candidates just go into the system, get interviewed, and then really the attention span for managers is: do a good job at the interview and get them hired,” she said.Pradeep Nair, AVP, global head of TA and talent center at Collabera, summed it up neatly: “AI should remove repetition, not the responsibility.”What’s Genuinely Useful, and What Isn’tNot every AI tool earns its place. The panel largely agreed that the clearest value comes from tools that handle high-volume, low-complexity tasks: screening questions, scheduling, workflow analytics, candidate matching. Skill-based assessment tools—which evaluate a candidate's capacity to keep learning rather than just their resume—generated real enthusiasm, with Nair flagging them as a strong emerging category for frontline and retail roles.Natalia Botero Penagos, senior director of talent acquisition at Publicis Sapient, pointed to an agent her team built that helps recruiters with interview preparation and candidate communications. The agent drafts messages calibrated to the company’s employer brand, at the right moment in the hiring process, and then hands them to a recruiter for a final human touch before sending. “The recruiter is the one that needs to review and add the personal touch,” she said. “It creates a more structured way of communication, a better candidate experience.”She also highlighted Claude as a tool gaining ground, particularly for teams outside highly structured corporate environments, pointing to its ability to help build replicable skills and scale the expertise of a strong individual recruiter across an entire global team.What the panel agreed hasn’t worked: giving AI the final say. Several leaders described experiments with fully automated decision-making for junior roles and pulling back quickly. “We were trying to get away with having AI do everything for very basic, very junior roles, and I don’t think we were comfortable to give that decision-making just yet,” Kadam-Masudi said.Lombardo was direct about the legal and ethical stakes: “We don’t have AI making decisions. We have AI automating and making recommendations, but it definitely doesn’t make decisions, because then you get into touchy territory.”Botero Penagos raised a point the group returned to several times: even well-designed AI agents can carry bias. The concern isn’t just about whether to hire a person, but how candidates are evaluated throughout the process. “The human in the loop is 100% needed,” she said.That oversight isn’t just an ethical stance; it’s a structural requirement. As AI begins to shape which candidates get seen, which get screened out, and how they’re communicated with, TA leaders are increasingly responsible for auditing the system’s outputs, not just its inputs.Early Careers in the Age of AIOne of the sharpest conversations of the session came when the topic turned to early career professionals. Chantha Nhem, global lead, new professionals, early careers global TA & development at Nokia, described a growing concern she hears from young workers: will AI take their entry-level jobs before they’ve had a chance to build the judgment those jobs are meant to develop?Her answer was neither dismissive nor falsely reassuring. Nhem referenced Gartner research suggesting AI won’t eliminate jobs so much as reshape them; but she was candid about what that reshaping means. “There’s a loss of natural progression that’s going to happen for early professionals, where you’re going to have to have a higher starting point of complexity in your role, and the learning curve is definitely going to be steeper,” she said.Nokia’s response has been to redesign early career programming from the ground up: shifting the emphasis from purely technical skills to adaptability, critical thinking, and decision-making, and aligning those programs directly to organizational strategy. “We have to make sure that they’re ready for this adoption and give them the confidence they need to contribute faster and integrate faster into our teams,” Nhem said. The talent acquisition and development functions at Nokia were united into a single team last April, a signal of how tightly linked the two have become.The Judgment Calls AI Can't MakeIn the session’s final stretch, Lestch asked each panelist for a recent example of a moment that required human judgment—something AI simply could not have handled.Nhem described looking at a project status dashboard for her early careers initiative and seeing everything marked green. AI would have called it fine. She knew better: team members were quietly anxious about their shifting workloads and new skill requirements. “AI did not flag that, nor could it accommodate the needs of our team,” she said. She organized a collaborative document to surface those concerns and keep the project on track.Nair described introducing AI tools into a recruiting workflow that had operated on Boolean searches and LinkedIn for years. The technology worked, but the people didn’t adopt it without help. “AI could analyze resumes or recommend candidates, but it couldn’t assess the readiness of people to change how they work,” he said. His team redesigned the rollout, leading with training, transparency, and success stories before asking anyone to change their habits.Botero Penagos recalled a talent search across five Latin American countries for creative roles supporting a European team. AI helped compile data and build dashboards. What it couldn’t do was interpret the ambiguity in a creative portfolio, navigate the language and cultural nuances across six countries, or explain the complexity of the landscape to skeptical stakeholders. “All of that comes from experience and from our team,” she said.Kadam-Masudi put it simply: even when AI hands you excellent talking points, you can’t just read them aloud. “It needs the element of you. It needs to be your kind of personality in those words. I’m still me.”Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by Ridofranz/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)
Rethinking Early Career Talent in a Changing Hiring Landscape
BY Ade Akin April 06, 2026The challenge of preparing the next generation of employees has been a personal mission for Monica Green, the global head of early careers and talent pipelines at State Street. She doesn't just worry about the thousands of applicants her team vets annually; she also thinks about her son, a college freshman who is navigating the same competitive landscape.“I tell him all the time: You need to start working on an internship for this summer,” Green said during a fireside chat at From Day One's March virtual conference “It’s a tough market right now,” she said.The conversation, moderated by Paige McGlauflin, a reporter at Morning Brew, explored how one of the world’s oldest financial institutions is approaching early-career recruiting with an open and inclusive lens while adapting to a rapidly changing market that's now being reshaped by artificial intelligence.The Human Element in a High-Tech Job HuntOne of the main themes of the discussion was the dual role AI plays in the modern recruiting landscape. Green acknowledges that the “application waves” have become application tsunamis as candidates use AI to instantly apply to hundreds of positions. This forces recruiters to become more efficient with leveraging their own technological tools to filter the increasing influx of applications.Green emphasizes that efficiency cannot come at the cost of losing the human connection. While AI helps to manage high volumes, human touch is still required to evaluate each candidate. “Recruiters are still looking at resumes. They’re providing that insight and having interviews with candidates directly,” Green said. “We want to make sure that we’re leveraging the tools to support us, to be as efficient as we can be, but really enabling the recruiters to play the role that they do in assessing the talent.”This human dynamic has shifted in the era of virtual recruitment. Green notes a growing trend of returning to in-person interviews among her peers as candidates become increasingly “savvy with the use of technology to be able to answer questions in the midst of an interview.” This has created a troubling gap between a candidate’s virtual prowess and their in-person reality.“You can go through an interview process virtually, and that talent may seem great, and then you get them in the door, and it’s like, ‘Wait, we’re not talking to the same person,’” Green said. This challenge has led to a resurgence of on-site interviews and campus events to ensure authenticity.Beyond the Campus QuadBuilding sustainable talent pipelines means looking beyond traditional four-year universities for global firms like State Street. Green detailed a strategy that combines strong relationships with target schools and innovative partnerships with community organizations to reach underrepresented and non-traditional candidates.Monica Green of State Street was interviewed by Paige McGlauflin of Morning Brew (photo by From Day One)“Partnerships with schools are our bread and butter,” she said. State Street also places significant emphasis on local engagement. Green highlighted a partnership with the Boston PIC, an organization that connects Boston Public School students with real-world workplace experiences. A group of high school students in the program even pitched a nonprofit idea to State Street leaders a year ago and secured funding for it.Another one of State Street’s key partnerships is with My HBCU Matters, which connects students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities with corporate leaders for mentorship and mock interviews. These initiatives help enrich communities while creating a more diverse and robust pool of future applicants. “It’s an opportunity for us to just have more interaction with some HBCU students, but also to help support them as they navigate what areas they seek to pursue,” Green said. A Global Philosophy With Local NuanceOverseeing early careers globally means balancing an organization’s philosophy with on-the-ground realities. While the core goal of building a future workforce remains the same, the execution varies wildly from market to market.“In some markets, the focus is on scale and operational readiness,” Green said. “There are others where it’s more niche skills and regulatory requirements.” Cultural expectations around hiring also differ.Green described one market where students have come to expect full-time job offers after internships. While State Street doesn’t guarantee job offers solely based on that expectation, recognizing the dynamic allows the company to manage the recruitment process transparently, helping the firm to maintain its status as a top employer in the region.“We definitely allow for that flexibility to take place, while still keeping that consistency and that philosophy across, no matter the location,” she added.Advice for All SidesGreen advises human resources and talent acquisition professionals to invest in manager readiness. She says the success of early-career hires often depends less on programs and more on the daily environment they enter. “A lot of that is really dependent on the environment that the early career talent is a part of,” she said. Green’s message for students and job seekers confronting a competitive landscape was to be relentless but purposeful with their efforts. Network, persist, and do your homework. “Every role is imperfect,” she cautioned, as she urged job seekers to focus on roles that are aligned with their skills. “Just applying to a job isn’t good enough anymore. You have to take your time to network.”Green practices what she encourages, crediting her own career progression to networks she created, including one that started with a message on LinkedIn. Whether it’s a high school student in Boston, a college sophomore, or a seasoned professional, the common thread, Green argues, is the power of meaningful human connection—a force that no algorithm can replace.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by nd3000/iStock)
How AI Can Help Identify the Right Skills and Build Stronger Teams
BY Kristen Kwiatkowski March 30, 2026Building a strong business starts with assembling the right team and delivering a thoughtful, effective hiring process. As AI and related technologies rapidly evolve, they are becoming an increasingly common part of how companies approach talent acquisition.Tim Wesson, SVP of global talent acquisition at IQVIA, spoke with moderator Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, business reporter at the Seattle Times, about AI and how it can be used to create strong, long-lasting teams in the workforce during a fireside chat at From Day One’s March virtual conference. With a background in sales and sales management, Wesson eventually found his way to the talent acquisition field. Now, with eight years at IQVIA, Wesson has firmly settled into his role at the corporation that provides many vital services.“Our mission really is to accelerate innovation for a healthier world, and we do so by leveraging our domain expertise, our tech, our data and analytics, bringing it all together to innovate,” said Wesson.How the Pandemic Changed HiringWhen discussing how Covid reshaped hiring, Wesson noted that the virtual hiring practices that emerged during the pandemic are still widely used today. He also pointed to greater flexibility in career paths and the expanded use of technology, including AI, as lasting shifts that continue to shape hiring.Tim Wesson of IQVIA shared insights on TA during the session (photo by From Day One)When asked what challenges exist today, Wesson stated that having to do more or even the same with less is often a challenging feat. Budgets are usually tight and that has been amplified throughout the past years, which puts pressure on talent acquisition. There’s also a large increase in applicants for the various roles. “I think, primarily because there’s not as many roles, but also AI is certainly helping facilitate people to apply to roles,” said Wesson. “And so you just have this massive amount of applicants that are coming in on a day-to-day basis.”Some of the applications coming in aren’t from actual candidates and this leads to an increase in the number of applications the talent acquisition team has to go through to find the right person to hire for the job role, he says. How a Company Can Attract TalentAs for how a company can remain attractive to talent, “I wouldn’t say there’s this new playbook that you have to write in order to remain attractive. I think it’s still about knowing what’s important to the people in the various talent pools that we recruit in and then taking a tailored approach to that individual.”There are more than 2,000 different job profiles at IQVIA, ranging from clinical roles to tech roles, and everything in between, he says. Therefore, the approach must be tailored to reach those individuals in all the different job roles. The recruiters need to be well-versed in the roles that they’re hiring for, know how to provide meaningful information to the candidate, and run a well-constructed interview process. Most importantly, they must have good communication with the candidate throughout the hiring process. In addition to offering a competitive salary and attractive benefits, Wesson said that it’s also important to provide flexibility, learning and development, and career growth opportunities. Overall, it’s vital to know what’s important to the candidate and focus on those areas, which will help increase the attractiveness of the job opportunity. The needs of potential hires also vary from a generational standpoint. “Certainly, stability is very important, and flexibility is important for Gen Z and millennials. I would also say meaningful work is very important. Probably more important, I think, to the Gen Z group than the others.” For IQVIA, which has a global presence, Wesson says the fundamentals of talent acquisition don’t really change. However, you have to be aware of certain factors, such as cultural nuances, laws and regulations, and social platforms. When recruiting in different countries, you should be knowledgeable of the various cultures. Some companies have recruiters all over the globe, which makes it easier to hire with this type of consideration in mind.With that said, hiring managers do sometimes have to interact with candidates outside of their country. “What we’re running into is hiring managers, say, in the US, having to interview and interact with candidates in other countries, and they’re not used to how you go about interacting, interviewing, etc. So, in the last year or so, we had to put together playbooks for hiring managers, educating them on those cultural nuances and kind of setting their expectations as it relates to interviewing people in other parts of the world.”AI and Hiring DecisionsAI plays a role at multiple stages of the hiring process, Wesson says, particularly in the early phases of recruitment, where it helps shape messaging that attracts candidates.“In regard to finding talent, creating those talent pools, we’re also using it to assist us in assessing a candidate’s experience or level of skills. So that’s where it’s primarily being used,” said Wesson.Wesson continued that AI is also used to review the skills that currently exist with their employee base for internal mobility purposes.Looking ahead, Wesson said he’s watching how organizations will evolve in allowing talent acquisition teams to use AI, and to what extent. With recent lawsuits involving AI tools making headlines, the path forward may depend in part on how those cases are resolved and how companies use the outcomes to guide their approach.There may also be some employees who are resistant to using AI and other similar technology tools. “I think the change management piece is really important, as far as really helping people understand the reasoning behind the tool, whether it’s AI or not AI, or why you decided to use it, how it fits the expectations around using it, the training and support after it gets rolled out, and understanding that people are going to be somewhat resistant to change,” he said. “You have to account for that.”Kristen Kwiatkowski is a professional freelance writer covering a wide array of industries, with a focus on food and beverage and business. Her work has been featured in the Bucks County Herald, Eater Philly, Edible Lehigh Valley, Cider Culture, and The Town Dish. (Photo by NongAsimo/iStock)
Designing Leadership Development for a Rapidly Changing Industry
BY Ade Akin March 18, 2026For Mark Monaghan, the future is something he’s eagerly awaited since he was a child, bonding with his father while watching Star Trek. The popular science-fiction show painted a positive picture of what a technologically advanced future could look like, and Mark couldn’t wait to be a part of it. “I remember even my mom, growing up one day, told me, ‘Mark, stop wishing your days away,’” Monaghan said during a fireside chat at From Day One’s February virtual conference. “And now it’s here. The future is here, and it’s happening so fast.”Monaghan, now the VP of global organizational development at iQor, a global customer experience company with 47,000 employees across 11 countries, is uniquely positioned to help shape that future. He detailed how his lifelong passion for science fiction has informed his real-world mission to use technology to deepen human connections through innovative leadership development during the session. The Data-Driven Foundation of CoachingiQor’s journey with advanced technology isn’t a recent pivot. Monaghan says the company purchased a big-data firm called Key Metrics about 12 years ago, long before artificial intelligence (AI) became a boardroom buzzword. This early adoption allowed them to begin analyzing the massive amounts of data generated in their 50-plus call centers, transitioning voice calls into digital data to identify patterns and coaching opportunities.Mark Monaghan, the VP of organizational development at iQor, spoke with From Day One's editor in chief, Steve Koepp (photo by From Day One)This data-centric approach became the bedrock of their internal coaching systems. iQor’s technology team built a proprietary coaching database called SCAN, with a new AI-integrated version, Coach IQ, on the horizon. One tool, dubbed “coach to coach,” uses AI to audit recorded coaching sessions between managers and supervisors, pinpointing specific areas for improvement. “We also learned a lot about AI, learned how the different models learned,” Monaghan said. “It’s just kind of soaked into us. We can use this.”The iLead Program: Measuring the ImmeasurableThe core of Monaghan’s work is the award-winning iLead mentoring program, which has earned 49 learning and development awards, including a gold Brandon Hall Award and a silver Stevie Award. The program operates on a leadership competency model that categorizes leaders from “leading oneself” to “leading a vision.” Each level is tied to five key competencies.iLead’s ability to measure development makes it revolutionary. Monaghan partnered with Fidello to build a system where mentors and mentees complete competency assessments. If a mentee rates themselves a five on “managerial courage” but their mentor gives them a two, a dashboard highlights the delta. The mentor can then assign a curated learning journey from iQor’s Skillsoft library that’s tied directly to that competency.“In Trinidad five years ago, we were able to identify that resolving conflict was the number one competency for our supervisors,” Monaghan elaborated. “We were actually able to move the needle from ‘needs development’ to ‘developed.’ That’s actually the first time I’ve ever been able to measure learning within the work environment that was measurable.”iQor uses a tool called “iTrack” to ensure these mentoring relationships are productive. iTrack allows mentees to confidentially rate each session. If scores dip, Monaghan’s team can investigate trends and offer gentle course corrections, ensuring conversations remain focused on career growth, instead of solely focusing on daily performance metrics.The Next Frontier: AI Mentors and Second Nature SimulationsAlways looking ahead, Monaghan is now introducing an AI mentor bot into the iLead system. The bot analyzes past session notes, assessment gaps, and learning assets to generate a tailored, 30-minute discussion agenda for mentor-mentee meetings. “As far as I can tell, this platform doesn’t exist anywhere else,” he added.Similarly, iQor is leveraging a simulation tool called Second Nature to train supervisors. Instead of just listening to calls, new hires can now practice complex conversations with realistic avatars. After the simulation, they receive complete feedback on what they could have done better, which can also be reviewed by trainers. “It’s a completely different level,” Monaghan said.Despite his passion for technology, Monaghan’s philosophy is firmly rooted in servant leadership. He worries about the loneliness epidemic and the role recent tech advancements have played in pushing people apart. His motivation now, in what he calls the “fourth quarter of his career,” is about legacy.“If I can help my leaders become servant leaders, help them remove barriers from their own lives, give them the confidence, recognition, and support that they need, you can really, really help people,” he said. “Every few months, I’ll get somebody from somewhere in my career that reaches out, and thanks me for a conversation. I think about that. That’s really what motivates me.” For Monaghan, the future of work isn’t just about using technology like artificial intelligence to build more efficient systems; it’s about using these tools to build more connected, capable, and confident people.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by PeopleImages/iStock)
How a Culture of Learning Equips the Workforce for What’s Next
BY Katie Chambers March 16, 2026When the pandemic hit, the hospitality industry lost many workers. At Soho House, the impact was dramatic, with roughly 80% of the workforce disappearing either temporarily or permanently. Rebuilding meant more than simply re-hiring. It offered an opportunity to rethink how people learn on the job. During an executive panel discussion at From Day One’s February virtual conference, Lauren Goodman, regional head of people and development at Soho House, shared how the company redesigned its learning and development approach from the ground up, creating role-specific onboarding guides and self-paced training that allow employees to build skills while working rather than racing through rigid certification timelines. The results were striking. Turnover dropped about 25% year over year from 2022 to 2023, and the company now averages around 32% turnover, below the hospitality industry standard, says Goodman. The shift showed how personalized, flexible learning programs can play a direct role in retention.What Employees Want to Learn TodayBecause the modern workplace is changing rapidly, employees are looking for programs to help them keep up. “One of the big things that is top of mind for so many organizations now is agility and learning and how to be more adaptable and resilient,” said Priscila Bala, vice chair at LifeLabs Learning. “The half-life of many of the skills that we have is about 18 months. Cycles are compressing so much.” So, faster and shorter are better. “We don’t have people asking for those large, generic programs anymore. They want short, practical learning tied to the job, real-time feedback from their boss,” said Marcus Cazier, head of L&D, Americas, bioMérieux. This is also due to shrinking patience and attention spans, Goodman says. Plus, they are looking to the future: “They’re also looking for us not just to train them on their job, but that growth mindset as well.”Of course, AI is one of the factors driving rapid change, so employees are hoping to stay abreast of the latest technology. “At Autodesk, it’s primarily around upskilling and AI, also the impact that AI is having on both teams, individuals, and the organization, in addition to specific workflows and how workflows are changing as a result of AI integration and building an AI native mindset,” said Michel Riyad Nabti, senior director of learning & development at Autodesk. Panelists spoke about "How a Culture of Learning Equips the Workforce for What’s Next" during the virtual session (photo by From Day One)Employees are also preferring less structured programs, opting for self-directed opportunities instead. “We’ve also noticed that when we do optional micro trainings, we get a more positive response and a larger response than when we have a formalized, mandatory two-hour training,” Goodman said. “To me, it’s helpful to know we might still do the full two hours, but we’re going to do it in a ‘micro’ setting, so that way it’s more appealing to our team, and hopefully they retain it better, too.” But Bala emphasizes that L&D shouldn’t feel too optional or separate from other business initiatives—otherwise, it will fall by the wayside in favor of what feels like more pressing work priorities. “The folks that are really successful are the ones that actually make it as part of an execution strategy, instead of treating learning as if it’s a separate thing that happens outside of business,” she said. “When people learn individually, you don’t get their colleagues to recognize what’s happening. They don’t have a shared language, it becomes so much harder to reinforce what are really the norms that are going to help us be more efficient and effective.”Building an Effective L&D Program AI can be an important partner in providing up-to-date, personalized learning plans to employees. “We’re making a transformation from L&D being a content provider, Content Manager, to being a strategic partner across the enterprise, and part of that transformation is building a learning ecosystem,” Nabti said. Autodesk has “internally designed learning programs in addition to external vendor provider programs that can provide that kind of personalization and an impact to each individual when meeting them, where their needs are.” Launching a one-size-fits-all program can be tricky among corporations with a variety of roles, from front-of-house hourly workers to designers, executives, and beyond. “How do you ensure that L&D is consistent among all those employees?” asked session moderator Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder, the Off-Site Writing Workshop. Cazier shares that his organization, which does business all over the world, offers peer-to-peer review and training sessions where participants can practice customer conversations with each other and give real-time feedback, which becomes especially important when educating each other on cultural and linguistic nuances. “It’s allowing us to immediately embed what they’re learning into conversations. And then we are also connecting these behaviors to their bonuses and to their merit. We have begun holding leaders accountable for how they accomplish things and to ensure that they’re doing it in the way that the organization wants things done,” Cazier said. “We have aggressive growth goals, but we also have a high ethical standard, and we have a very deep, humanistic approach that we’re proud of, and we don’t want to lose as we try to evolve the organization.” Soho House, which employs everyone from dishwashers to graphic designers, feels this acutely. “Making sure that everyone feels really valued throughout that training process is critical,” Goodman said. “Getting buy-in from several key stakeholders [is also crucial], because it’s not just one aspect of the business, but it’s really what makes the whole business successful.” Corporate brand, values, and identities should be embedded in all L&D programs, including how those values “trickle down” across the team. Then, you can demonstrate how different skills contribute to and uphold those values during day-to-day work. Skills assessments should ideally be paired with L&D programs to establish a baseline of current skills and assess whether training has been effective. “What are the skills and competencies that we are mapping so that the learning can be intentional? People want their capability-building to be purposeful,” Bala said. Panelists agree that providing L&D opportunities is also important to building a culture of psychological safety and freedom, allowing workers to feel comfortable experimenting, growing, and forging their own path. “That’s so crucial in this inflection point that we’re currently in,” Nabti said. “Having a culture of experimentation and agility that’s aligned to the company’s culture is crucial for our success, and also detaching us from this expectation that every initiative has to be successful. That culture of experimentation frees us up to explore areas where we may have really big performance goals.” Asking employees what they want to learn is key to building a healthy, sustainable, and attractive L&D program. Soho House includes a question about learning goals in its performance reviews at all levels. “What is it that they want to learn so that we can help support their learning objectives as a human and as an individual? Having that as a requirement has helped to create that culture of learning and development,” Goodman said. “None of us knows it all. Let’s ask you, on a formalized basis, what [do] you want to learn at the end of the year? Did we commit to that as the employer? Did we help support you there? If not, how do we do better next year?”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by kasto80/iStock)
How Schneider Electric Is Powering a Skills-First Future
BY Grace Turney March 12, 2026Dina Yorke almost didn’t apply for the job that would help define her career. The role, a finance business partner position, was a perfect fit—except for one puzzling line in the job description: this person will manage HR. “What finance person manages HR?” she remembered thinking. It was her husband who finally pushed her to take the leap. “Put your name in. What do you have to lose?”Nearly 20 years later, Yorke is the VP of learning excellence at Schneider Electric, a 190-year-old global energy technology company. The unconventional path she took, crossing from finance to operations to global HR, reflects the very argument she now makes for why companies must stop organizing talent around rigid job titles and start building everything around skills.That philosophy took center stage during a fireside chat at a From Day One’s February virtual conference, where Yorke spoke with Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, a business reporter at the Seattle Times. Together they explored how AI and skills-based talent strategies are reshaping the future of work, from the shop floor to the executive suite.Skills as the FoundationSchneider Electric has made a strategic decision that most companies haven’t yet: skills are no longer just a component of HR; they are the organizing principle for everything the company does with its people, from hiring and development to internal mobility and, eventually, compensation. “We’ve made the decision strategically to put skills as the foundation of everything we’re doing in HR,” Yorke said.Yorke of Schneider Electric spoke with journalist Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton during the virtual session (photo by From Day One)Part of what makes this shift consequential is its scale. Schneider is in the process of expanding its global career architecture from 800 job codes to more than 3,000. This granularity allows the company to see, for instance, that a learning experience architect with two years of experience and one with twenty shouldn’t share the same code. They have different proficiency levels across the same critical skills, and the company needs to be able to track that gap.Across those 3,000 roles, Schneider has identified approximately 1,150 critical skills. Some, like digital fluency and AI literacy, cut across nearly every job in the company. Others are specific to engineering, sales, or learning and development. The goal is to give both employees and managers a clear map: here is where you are, here is where the business needs you to go, and here is how to get there.The Urgency Behind the StrategyWhy now? Yorke pointed to data from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 to frame the stakes. One-third of current skills will be obsolete by 2030. More than 60% of business leaders say the shortage of talent and skills is among their most pressing concerns. And nearly 60% of the global workforce will need to be reskilled or upskilled in the coming years.“We know we’re not going to be able to buy ourselves out of this,” Yorke said. “We’re not going to be able to go hire all the people out there. We have to invest in our people.” The calculus is straightforward: build, don’t just buy. That means creating the internal pathways, tools, and culture that help employees grow into the roles the business will need, before those roles become vacant or critical.AI as a Career Development ToolAt Schneider, AI is not an abstract future concern; it’s already embedded in the systems employees use every day to manage their careers. The company’s internal talent marketplace, called the Career Hub, allows employees to assess their own skills against their job code, identify gaps, and receive personalized recommendations for jobs, projects, mentors, or learning opportunities.A newer feature, the coffee chat function, offers something more casual than formal mentorship—a way for an employee to simply connect with someone at a different level or function to understand their career path. Soon, the platform will also generate learning recommendations directly tied to individual skill gaps, meeting employees wherever they are in their development journey.The company has also piloted and is preparing to roll out an AI coaching tool called Nadia, trained on Schneider’s own HR and management philosophy. Yorke described using it herself to prepare for high-stakes conversations, work through performance management processes, and rehearse presentations, all by talking out loud rather than typing. “I used to say, could I put a USB into my brain?” she said. “Now I just talk to Copilot or I talk to Nadia. They transcribe, and then I can edit.”Shop Floor to Top FloorOne of the session’s most striking points was Yorke’s insistence that AI capability-building isn’t just for knowledge workers. Schneider operates a global supply chain and manufactures its own products, which means it has to think about AI literacy across an extraordinarily wide range of roles and education levels.“Think about it: we go from the shop floor, because we do have our own global supply chain, all the way up to the top floors,” she said. The company has set up computer rooms in its manufacturing plants so that shop floor employees can access digital and compliance training. More pointedly, Schneider has built AI governance and ethics into its company-wide compliance curriculum. This training flows from executive leadership down to production workers every year.Yorke noted that many frontline workers have been using AI in the form of automation for years. “A lot of our employees have been working with AI for years,” she said. “Maybe when some people think AI, they automatically think generative AI. AI is machine learning. It’s automation.”Enthusiasm for AI at Schneider is matched by a structured approach to managing its risks. The company’s AI strategy is anchored in the National Institute of Standards and Technology AI Risk Management Framework, a set of principles that Yorke said shapes the company’s entire approach. Layered on top of that framework is a global committee overseeing AI strategy, an internal hub of AI experts who consult on both internal and external applications, and an ongoing risk management process.The company has also updated its trust charter (an internal governance document) to explicitly address data privacy and intellectual property in the context of AI. “We need to make sure it’s well protected,” Yorke said, noting that employees sharing content with AI tools must understand what protections are in place.For employees who feel nervous about the technology, Yorke’s approach is transparency over pressure. The key, she said, is being clear about what a tool is designed to do and, just as importantly, what it is not for. “We have to recognize that employees are going to be at different stages of comfort.” The company’s response is not to mandate adoption but to build a culture where curiosity is rewarded, experimentation is safe, and the resources to learn are widely available.The Human Skills Still Matter MostFor all the emphasis on technology, Yorke returned repeatedly to a simpler message: human intelligence is the anchor. The skills she credits most for her own career, critical thinking, communication, empathy, stakeholder management, are the same ones she believes will matter most in a world where AI handles data synthesis and routine tasks.“It’s our brains that are going to be the ones that help drive the decisions,” she said. The role of a person in an AI-augmented workplace isn’t to compete with the machine, but to apply judgment, context, and interpersonal skill to what the machine surfaces.Her parting advice to the audience was characteristically direct: invest in your human skills. Build robust governance before rolling out AI tools. Be transparent with employees about why and how the tools are being used. And above all, stay curious. “You don’t have to be the early adopter,” she said, “but get out there and try.”The internal barriers, she added, are almost always the most dangerous ones. After all, she nearly talked herself out of the job that changed everything.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by Barks_japan/iStock)
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)
Using Technology to Fill the Gaps in Your Marketing Funnel
BY Katie Chambers February 05, 2026“I’ve always looked at data and patterns to solve customer and business problems and marketing problems,” said Shana Sood, chief marketing and communications officer at Prudential. She has always leveraged her background as a data analyst in her current role, which focuses on customer marketing and technology, she said during a fireside chat at From Day One’s January virtual conference. When reaching the customer requires a multi-layered approach, analytics can help fill the gaps, she says.Sood envisions Prudential’s technology as serving two layers of customers: B-to-B-to-C, from the tech team to the financial advisors to the clients. She analyzes both existing technology stacks and new models to determine the best approach to “collect the breadcrumbs all the way from the start,” identifying client needs and simplifying financial jargon so end users can better understand it. “For me, how technology bridges this gap is: first, tell us how the customer is speaking about these products, how the customer is thinking about these products, [and] how they shop. What are their journeys?” she said. “And then, how do I then prop up my advisor with the right tools and the right education to be able to [provide] the right product based on whatever the customer needs at that point.”The key, she says, is “data-driven personalization,” which integrates with the content management system, Adobe website interaction insights, and the Salesforce marketing cloud. Prudential’s platform includes a feedback loop that shows the customer journey: what they searched for on the website and where it led them. It then uses that info to identify the best emails to send the customer based on their current needs. It also helps determine the next best action, such as a phone call from an advisor to help the customer with their financial decisions. “All of this is made possible with data pipelines between multiple systems,” Sood said. Because financial decisions impact many areas of a person’s life, they can be highly emotional moments. Sood sees retirement planning and life insurance selection as major emotional hurdles. “These things very quickly and very vehemently trigger avoidance from the customer, because as humans, we don’t want to see ourselves old. We want to avoid the topic of not being here,” she said. No matter how simple or complex the product, the customer must be emotionally ready for the conversation. And of course, an already fraught discussion can easily become bogged down by financial compliance language and daunting legalese.It’s Sood’s job to bridge the gap between emotional need and financial product being sold: “When you have a kid, you’re going on Google and you’re searching for, ‘How do I finance their education?’ You’re not searching for, ‘How do I open a 529?’” When the average consumer doesn’t know what “529” means, including that phrase in all your financial messaging may not help. But bidding on keywords like “confused about kid’s education” will. “You’re almost translating,” said moderator Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, business reporter at the Seattle Times. Incorporating Emerging Technologies Sood sees AI as the latest step in a much longer evolution of data-driven marketing. For decades, teams have used statistics and manual analysis to predict customer behavior. AI “has removed a lot of those manual gymnastics.” Rather than replacing human judgment, AI is accelerating it, especially through generative and agentic use cases that help scale content and decision-making.At Prudential, that means empowering advisors with AI tools that synthesize complex product information into clear, conversation-ready guidance. Instead of navigating a “labyrinth of pages and microsites,” advisors can prompt an AI agent to surface the most relevant products for a client’s needs, streamlining preparation while leaving the final judgment firmly in human hands. Sood says AI reduces friction and manual labor, but “it is [ultimately] the judgment of the advisor on what packet to use and what to say.” AI’s greatest gift to the industry has been streamlining a process that has long existed. Shana Sood, chief marketing and communications officer at Prudential Financial, was interviewed during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)Sood cautions that AI should be used sparingly in the financial services industry because it involves taking risks with people’s money. Identifying fraudulent behavior is a serious concern possibly best left to human critical thinking. She also warns that website personalization techniques have to be carefully employed so that they are compliant with FINRA and SEC regulations, subtleties that sometimes AI does not understand. That is my biggest challenge [with AI],” Sood said. “I have to be very mindful, and I have to adopt the regulatory framework in using and scaling a new tool.” The implementation of AI tools, she says, should involve a thorough exploration of customers’ needs, many rounds of testing and case studies, consultations with legal and regulatory experts, and an intentional measurement plan that notes both financial successes and harms. Sood sees herself as a “realist” when it comes to technology. I’ve worked in the data grind so much that I am always aware of the 100 ways we can fail in adopting a new technology,” she said. “You can adopt a new shiny tool, but then if your processes and people are not structured to use it, then it’s going to fail.” And she emphasizes that less is more: KPI’s need to be consolidated at a business level. “If a company has multiple product teams or multiple business divisions, and each of them is incentivized to sort of make their email program deliver more click-throughs and more engagement, they will keep bombarding their customers with their next best message without realizing that ultimately it’s the same customer that is being reached out [to] by all three of them.” Sood says strong vendor partnerships help organizations strike the right balance between healthy skepticism and falling behind, especially as competitors adopt new technologies. She emphasized the importance of digging beyond headline success stories to understand how and why a tool delivered results, and whether those conditions actually apply in a financial services environment. Once relevance and adaptability are established through due diligence, the goal is to move quickly into testing, embracing early adoption without skipping the hard questions.A Legacy Company Looks to the Future As Prudential enters its 151st year, the corporate culture continues to innovate and grow. “At Prudential, there is a very intentional strategy to carve out innovation centers. Not blunt-force tools to disrupt everything. There is a very careful balance,” she said. “We carve out a very intentional sort of audience, a test case [for a specific] environment, we will try a new tool, and we will see how it does.” Progress is not just about chasing new technologies but also refining the ones already in place. To better reach their audiences, Sood says companies should start by maximizing the value of their existing technology and data, “milking the cash cow” of the current tech stack. Most organizations already hold rich customer, behavioral, and churn data, but it lives in siloed systems that prevent teams from spotting patterns or delivering timely, personalized experiences. Simply connecting those systems isn’t enough. Without cross-channel orchestration, aligned content, and clear next-best-action strategies, even unified data won’t translate into meaningful customer engagement.Looking ahead, Prudential anticipates a major wealth transfer from Baby Boomers to Millennials. Don’t assume that the wealth transfer will keep your paradigm the same. “Don’t assume you can use the same language [and] tactics to be able to resonate with who the wealth is being transferred to. If it is more women, if it is more young customers, then you have to change how you’re staggering on the digitization spectrum,” she said. The organization is currently researching future customer needs, motivations, behaviors, and communication styles to refine how it presents itself to them. “Anything that can simplify and unify—that is what is most needed in the financial services landscape.” Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by ArtemisDiana/iStock)
How Does Your Brand Show Up in the New Era of GEO?
BY Ade Akin February 04, 2026Damien Slattery couldn’t help but notice how fast culture around him had changed during a recent commute on the F train in Brooklyn. The subway car he rode in would have been filled with people reading newspapers or magazines decades ago, but everyone now stared at electronic screens. For Slattery, the SVP of strategic growth and partnerships at Inc. and Fast Company, this observation highlighted the tremendous shift facing marketers today. The blueprint has been completely rewired, and AI is now directing its future. Slattery, a media veteran who has led marketing campaigns for major brands like Time and Sports Illustrated, discussed this technological shift and more during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s January virtual conference. We’ve now moved past the era of search engine optimization (SEO) into a new chapter that’s defined by answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO), he says. “The AI universe has just re-engineered and reimagined what search prioritizes,” Slattery told session moderator, Steve Koepp, From Day One’s editor in chief and co-founder. “Brand leaders today have to be thinking about these AI models working behind the scenes to cite, summarize, and trust your narrative, your product, your service.”The Rise of the Answer EngineThe transition from keyword-focused SEO to AI-prioritized AEO represents a fundamental change in how brands must approach content. Slattery recalls the early days of digital search, where the marketing goal was to rank high for specific search queries. Today, AI-powered search engines prioritize providing the best, most concise answer rather than simply listing links to potential answers. “I had CNBC on early this morning, and they had the OpenAI CFO on from Davos, and she said something that really kind of crystallized our conversations today,” Slattery said. “The best answer is no longer or not necessarily the paid answer, right? The best answer is going to be served.”Today’s marketing teams should aim to be selected as an authoritative source by AI. “It’s a new muscle we all have to build,” he said. “And it’s going to make us better marketers, better storytellers, and [help] leverage the power and might of AI more strategically.”Koepp noted this new landscape is fragmented among several competing AI platforms, unlike the Google-dominated era of SEO, where marketers mostly focused on learning the rules to rank high on Google’s search engine. Slaterry says brands must now ensure that their core narratives and data are trustworthy enough to be recognized as the best source of information across multiple “answer engines.”Building Trust in an AI-Driven WorldThe age-old concept of trust remains vital as AI transforms the marketing landscape. Slattery points to the Edelman Trust Barometer, which found in 2023 that businesses are more trusted than governments and institutions. That trust has gone local. “We have to be super rigorous,” Slattery said regarding building trust with targeted audiences. He emphasizes what he calls “trust signals,” which include verifiable reviews, professional credentials, detailed FAQs, and accurate product descriptions. Damian Slattery, the SVP of Strategic Growth & Partnerships and Inc. and Fast Company (Mansueto Ventures), spoke during the virtual session (photo by From Day One)In keeping and building trust, Slattery warns against losing the human element that makes up the core of branding as organizations rush to adopt AI. He referenced a new campaign from Equinox titled “Question Everything But Yourself,” which uses absurd, AI-generated imagery, like a woman biting a dog that’s really a cake to deliver its messaging. For him, it’s an example of how an organization can brilliantly leverage AI’s capabilities to deliver a profoundly human message.“Brands need to keep it real,” Slattery said. “That can become the thing that makes AI surmountable for those who feel like, where do I start? You start by keeping your brand human and then chipping away at these things that will make your brand discoverable and trusted.”This human focus connects directly to its customers, the ultimate targets of a company’s branding. “It’s customers who infuse the meaning into the brand,” Slattery said, recalling a colleague who was turned off by a poorly personalized message on her Starbucks cup. Every touchpoint, from social media to customer service, shapes that personal relationship, and a single misstep can alter perception.The Impatient, Agentic FutureSlattery also explored the near-future implications of AI and marketing, describing an “impatience economy,” where AI shortens the consumer journey from consideration to purchase into mere seconds. This raises a potentially disintermediating puzzle.“Once an agent knows the consumer well, the trust follows in the agent, not the brand,” Slattery said. “The agent is winning the relationship and the trust, as this intermediary with the brand.” The risk is that customer loyalty shifts to the AI assistant that knows their preferences, rather than the brand itself.For chief marketing officers, the mandate is clear. Brands must lean into the new reality of generative engine optimization by ensuring their content is structured for AI discovery, their data is impeccable, and their narrative is both grand and granular.The journey from the folded newspapers on the F train to the glowing screens of today took a few decades. The next leap will be into a world where AI agents do our searching and synthesize our choices at the speed of light, and that’s coming in the next several years.“What got you here won’t get you there,” Slattery concluded, echoing management guru Marshall Goldsmith. The work of adapting to the answer engine economy starts now for brands that wish to matter in the future.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by Sandwish/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)
Matching Employee Expectations to Economic Realities: Where Leaders Should Focus
BY Kristen Kwiatkowski January 07, 2026From expanded mental health support to virtual healthcare access, employers have adapted to employees’ evolving needs since Covid. But those offerings are only part of the picture. Many workers are also asking for more affordable healthcare benefits. How can employers respond to these requests, and what other forms of economic support do employees expect from company leaders?These concerns were addressed during an executive panel discussion moderated by Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, business reporter with The Seattle Times, at From Day One’s December virtual conference. Ulu-Lani Boyanton started off the session by asking what the panel guests often hear from their employees regarding healthcare wants and needs. “Employees want comprehensive benefits that make showing up to work easier as they grow and raise their families and care for their personal health,” said Gianna Cruz, director of client success at Maven Clinic.“In our latest State of Women’s and Family Health Report, 69% of those who were surveyed said that they would take or have considered taking a new role or a new job because it offers better reproductive and family benefits to them and their families,” said Cruz.“I think what we’re really seeing now is a push to personalization,” said John Von Arb, VP of total rewards for Essentia Health. Expanding voluntary benefit strategies in addition to the core benefits offered is what people are now looking for, he says. “Generational differences within the workforce today do drive a lot of the conversation around what the needs are because one size does not fit all anymore,” he said.Kimberly Young, SVP of total rewards at Amentum, a global leader in innovative technology solutions and advanced engineering, highlighted the importance of affordability and a work-life balance as benefits sought after by employees. “Obviously affordability is the number one priority, so a lot of the feedback is targeted towards the escalating costs,” said Young. “From a premium perspective they want turnkey care for a much lower cost.” “And they want something that covers a work-life balance,” added Young. “We find ourselves today trying to balance all of that.” How Employee Needs Changed Post-CovidThe needs of employees and their economic concerns have also changed since Covid. For healthcare industry professional Von Arb, it’s undeniable that Covid played a big part in changes within his organization. It was a “game-changer” for the industry, he said. Mental health support became a focal point, with about 150 employees trained in peer-to-peer support, he said.Since Covid, clients now view Maven’s benefits as a core part of a strong, effective benefits package rather than a nice-to-have, says Cruz. There’s also more of a focus on overall access to care, and specifically access that might have been limited during Covid. In general, there’s a push for equitable access in a virtual setting at a global scale. Post-Covid, there’s been a greater emphasis on mental health and wellness, Young says, along with increased focus on activity and flexibility as many employees continue transitioning back to work. Meeting Employee Expectations Regarding BenefitsThe panelists shared a range of approaches to meeting employee expectations, from offering greater choice and flexibility in plans to providing holistic support, chronic disease management, and tools that support lifestyle changes.Panelists spoke about "Matching Employee Expectations to Economic Realities: Where Leaders Should Focus" during the virtual panel session (photo by From Day One)Essentia Health strives to handle much of its benefits in house from the health plan perspective, Von Arb says, while identifying gaps where additional support is needed. The organization continues to focus on chronic disease management, covering weight loss medications such as GLP-1s, and exploring options that support lifestyle and life management changes.The organization also “built out a more robust value-based design strategy,” he said. This is done by getting groups of leaders together from the various departments. Doing so helps to answer the question, “How do we get members to engage with their own health journey?”Young stated that choice and flexibility based on different plan designs along with a robust mental health program were some solutions her company has offered to employees. “We’ve tried to introduce a variety of benefits that touch all aspects of the employee experience,” said Young. Cruz added that employers are expanding women’s and family health benefits and that employees increasingly expect more holistic support. She is especially enthusiastic about Maven’s maternity program, which helps employees in rural or underserved areas access care and supports them throughout pregnancy and the post-pregnancy period.How Technology Plays a RoleTechnology is also changing workers’ support in a major way. “Technology extends the ability for individuals to access, not just care, but high quality care if they live in an area where access is limited for whatever reason,” said Cruz. “Clients really utilize Maven’s round-the-clock virtual support.” “We’re focused on data-driven personalized coordinated care and helping employers deliver that to their employees and we’re also really focused on offering a seamless patient experience,” said Cruz. Technology and AI can really help members with their journey. When AI is used, it can help employees navigate all the options from a healthcare perspective, says Young. Personalization is vital because everyone’s journey is different. But to be effective, it has to be employee friendly, Von Arb said. From an HR perspective, many AI tools have made progress in this area, though some payroll, benefits, and HR systems still lag in using AI to support the employee experience.Ultimately, the discussion underscored that effective benefits strategies are no longer about adding more offerings, but about designing systems that are accessible, affordable, and responsive to employees’ real lives. As expectations continue to evolve post-Covid, employers face growing pressure to listen closely, personalize thoughtfully, and leverage technology in ways that genuinely support health, well-being, and long-term economic security.Kristen Kwiatkowski is a professional freelance writer covering a wide array of industries, with a focus on food and beverage and business. Her work has been featured in Eater Philly, Edible Lehigh Valley, Cider Culture, and The Town Dish. (Photo by Benjamas Deekam/iStock)
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)
How AI Can Work as a Partner to Augment Human Capabilities, Rather than Replace Workers
BY Ade Akin December 16, 2025Imagine having a new team member who shadows your best salesperson to fetch data and learn unspoken rules, like why one client is more responsive to a direct approach while pitches have to be carefully framed for another. This apprentice never forgets a lesson and shares their nuanced understanding with colleagues. That’s the vision of AI that Ari Lehavi, the head of applied AI at Moody’s, is bringing to life, shifting the focus from task automation to capturing and scaling the institutional wisdom that companies are built on. Lehavi shared this idea and more during a fireside chat at From Day One’s December virtual conferenceThe transformative potential of AI lies in human-AI collaboration based on a continuous, two-way learning street that’s designed to augment human judgment rather than replace it, he told moderator Rebecca Knight, contributing writer at Harvard Business Review. Shifting From Automation to AugmentationAI-doomers often frame the technology as the worst thing that’s happened to job security in human history, but Lehavi sees it more as a collaborative tool that enhances human performance and encourages organizations to do the same. Ari Lehavi, general manager, head of applied AI at Moody’s, spoke during the fireside chat (company photo)“I do think that there’s been some orientation around thinking about AI as a way to generate efficiencies and automation, and I don’t think that’s the best use of AI,” he said. “Increasingly, I’m seeing a shift in the way that companies are thinking about it as an accelerant of performance, rather than as a way to generate efficiencies.”The central question then becomes how to increase productivity and work quality with AI. Lehavi says one of the ways that organizations can accomplish this is by using AI to handle simple, repetitive tasks, freeing up employees to focus on work that requires uniquely human skills, such as judgment, empathy, and innovation. “The hard cases, the edge cases, the complex areas, the mentoring of other people, the management, the development of skills in other individuals, the expansion of what’s possible in their role,” Lehavi added, pointing out what humans excel at. The Importance of Bi-directional DesignLehavi says “bi-directional design” is necessary to optimize human-AI collaboration. Most AI tools used today have a single directional design. You ask questions, and it answers. True partnership requires a feedback loop where humans teach AI context and nuance, he says. “AI has information that it can pick up from documents, from data that can help you assemble research faster,” Lehavi said. “But that has a very limited kind of lift that it creates.” The exponential gain happens when AI begins to understand how and why you make decisions. “It has to kind of almost get into your head.”AI provides value, like summarizing key points from a large text library, in a bi-directionally designed system, but it also identifies gaps in its understanding. It learns to ask questions such as “Why did you make that decision?” This leads to humans working with AI, explaining the nuanced instincts that come with experience. Capturing the reasoning behind human decision-making enriches the AI model's understanding, allowing it to provide more insightful recommendations in the future. The information learned by the AI can be packaged and shared, creating a “collective organizational wisdom” that other employees can access. A Concrete Case: Augmenting the Sales ProfessionalLehavi shared an example of how bi-directional communication between humans and AI works in the real world from within Moody’s sales department. A standard CRM stores data, but misses the subtleties that define a veteran sales rep’s success. Insights like the unspoken politics of a client company, the specific pain points a key decision-maker is sensitive to, or the historical context of a relationship. Moody’s built a system that starts by giving sales team members AI-generated leads, matching market pain points to the solutions it provides. The AI responds with questions such as. “Tell us what we don’t know, tell us, you know this person,” Lehavi said. “We know the general profile, but we don’t know this particular relationship in this particular instance, and what exactly is the dynamic that would make this deal move faster and closer.”The seller feeds the nuance context back to the AI, which then refines its recommended messaging and value propositions. The system also identifies patterns in these seller-client relationships and provides recommendations such as: “What you’ve told us about this individual and this company seems a lot like three others that we’ve encountered, and this framing of this message really resonated.” The sales team member tests the hypothesis, and the result, positive or negative, is fed back into the AI model, expanding its institutional knowledge. Lehavi views AI more as an apprentice than an intern. “Initially, the apprentice gets more value from you than you get from the apprentice,” he said. You invest time teaching the algorithm your ways, then the dynamic eventually flips. “You’re starting to get that much more value. And then you know that you have a true partner, so you can move up to the next level in your career.”With AI managing more of the administrative burden and research, sellers have more time and mental space to focus on the irreplaceably human aspects of their role: deepening relationships with clients and crafting persuasive value propositions. For leaders, it means scaling the impact of top performers, so other employees benefit from the institutional knowledge they help build. The Undocumented Layer of Human JudgmentThe critical insight Lehavi stressed throughout the conversation is appreciating the vast, often invisible complexity of most professional roles. He points to what he calls “the undocumented layer of human judgment” that exists in every position, from customer service to legal departments. Studies suggest that around 10% to 40% of what knowledge workers do is based on this tacit understanding.“Whenever I see enterprise implementations that end up where people kind of feel like they didn’t accomplish what they were supposed to accomplish, I often link that to the underappreciation of how much of the work that gets done is unwritten, and is based on judgment and experience,” Lehavi said.The routine portions of a job that knowledge workers spend 60% of their time on might be automatable. But the high-value edge duties, where crucial relationships depend on nuanced judgment, are where human-AI collaboration must focus. The goal is to design systems that bring the right information and context to the surface to help their human counterparts make faster, more-informed decisions. Lehavi advises companies to build systems that ask “why.” AI models that learn from human experience and improve the performance of their human collaborators. This allows organizations to move beyond simply automating tasks with AI, and start codifying, scaling, and institutionalizing their collective knowledge–their most valuable asset. Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by KTStock/iStock)
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)
How Technology Can Enhance the Full HR Spectrum, from Recruiting to Retirement
BY Katie Chambers December 02, 2025Love it or fear it, AI is here to stay. In implementing AI and other new tech, leaders need to bring along the entire organization and drive a mindset shift, which includes an appreciation of how agentic AI will boost efficiency and productivity. Organizations must also consider the importance of anticipating risks and concerns about bias while utilizing these tools. During a fireside chat at From Day One’s November virtual conference, Kim Shockley, the VP of HR technology & automation at HP, shared how her organization is making the most of emerging technologies. The Evolution of HR TechnologyDuring her 12 years working in HR technology, Shockley has witnessed rapid changes. Most companies had HR solutions “on prem” (meaning on a server on the premises) but now work mostly with cloud-based technologies. “HCM [human capital management] software vendors [have] become the standard, and companies [are] moving to really focus on an implementation of that across all capabilities” she said. “This huge explosion in the HR tech marketplace [is] focused on innovation and delivering best of breed technologies and really encouraging us to think outside of the box of what can I do beyond the standard of HR deliverables.”Many workplace software companies like Workday and Success Factors are acquiring and merging with others to provide all-in-one solutions, she says. “What’s happening now has the potential to leapfrog us and shift us significantly in a different direction, and that we in five years may look completely different than what we look today in our technology environments.” Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, business reporter at the Seattle Times, moderated the session with Kim Shockley of HP (photo by From Day One)The myriad of options can be overwhelming, so Shockley advises focusing on impact. Many HR tasks are “foundational [and] transactional, it’s the things that we have to do to help to run the business,” she said, referring to tasks like payroll and PTO. “And then there are other things in a business that HR delivers that have potential to deliver competitive advantage or strategic differentiation. A lot of these are in the talent space. They may be related to your employee value proposition,” she said. This is where technology beyond the core HCM can be beneficial in terms of talent support and development. Implementing Technologies That Promote Growth “Who do we want to be? We want to be an organization where talent is attracted to come to us, and then we are developing them, providing them the tools and opportunities to learn and grow so that they have choices in the future,” Shockley said. HP has implemented a talent intelligence platform that helped it become a skills-first organization and allowed employees to find new roles within the organization based on their skill-set, boosting talent retention. The tech also provides career pathing to help employees see how they can grow within HP. “I may see that I can switch functions where I may not have ever considered that before, because I have the skills to go there,” she said. Mentoring matches and stretch projects have all been optimized with AI technology. The software doesn’t just boost retention. “That same platform serves us on the recruiting side too, and helps us to find the right talent externally. It’s a skills platform. It allows us to find candidates based on AI algorithms and an AI model that does map candidate matching that has been a game changer for us in terms of us finding the right people, finding folks with the right skills, and moving them through the process,” Shockley said. While AI can certainly help HR leaders, they must be sure to use it responsibly, making sure systems “are designed and deployed in a fair, safe, and aligned manner with human values,” Shockley said. “HP as an enterprise has AI governance principles around trust, safety, security, and accountability. We have, on top of that, commitments for our people organization that take that a step further because of our responsibilities.” One of these is “human in the loop,” ensuring that a human is always involved and that AI is not solely making decisions related to humans. HR partners with employment attorneys and compliance departments to understand and define best use, high risk, and forbidden use cases. Encouraging the Mindset ShiftAgentic AI offers opportunities to transform and automate business processes. “I can create an end-to-end workflow that drives more productivity into our processes, for both HR and for our employees and it also can impact the employee experience,” Shockley said. This rapid evolution is both exciting and challenging. “I have to be in the mode of executing, because I can’t wait for everything to be perfect. I need to be moving forward and learning and taking advantage… I have a bigger risk in not acting than in acting today,” she said. The information overload can be significant. Leaders need to encourage teams to be ready for AI, which Shockley calls a “mindset shift.” “With your average person, there’s still a lot of unknowns around AI—a lot of questions, maybe some anxieties and fears,” said moderator Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, business reporter at the Seattle Times. Shockley says encouraging experimentation is the best way to get employees comfortable with emerging technologies. “You have to actually put the tools in the hands of your people. It doesn’t have to be complex,” she said. Starting small with simple tools like Microsoft Copilot can help workers understand the value of AI. From there, you can expand into more complex company-wide technologies, like HP’s career mapping tool that lets employees dream and aspire to an exciting future. AI implementation is most effective when approached with purpose and clear intent, Shockley says. “It’s easy to say, ‘That’s cool. I want that.’ But if you start going at it that way, you often don’t get the outcome that you were after because you didn’t really define the outcome. And so, we always come back to, ‘What are we trying to accomplish?’ And let’s start there and then let’s figure out what’s the right technology to deliver on that.” Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by Summit Art Creations/Shutterstock)
How to Be a Thoughtful Adopter of HR Technology in an Age of AI
BY Ade Akin November 26, 2025The pressure for HR teams to be first adopters as new software and AI tools are launched is intense. However, for Dibyendu Sharma Mondal, the head of people analytics, HR technology, strategy, and operations at Unisys, the key to successfully integrating new technology into existing systems isn’t quick adaptation, but being a “thoughtful adopter.”Mondal outlined his people-centric philosophy to minimize fatigue and maximize impact when new technologies are rolled out at From Day One’s November virtual conference, in a fireside chat moderated by Nicole Smith, the editorial audience director at Harvard Business Review. “We want to take the technology which makes sense for our business, not just each and everything that comes in,” Mondal said. “We are a very, very people-centric organization. We listen to the end users. We talk to them. We invest in enabling and supporting those users.”Managing Transformation Overload and Building TrustMondal calls one of the significant hurdles leaders face regarding integrating new technologies “transformation overload.” It’s the fatigue teams feel from constant change. He says the antidote for transformation overload is to demonstrate the value new systems bring from the start. “If you show that what you’re building is going to be beneficial for them, then you see the engagement happening,” Mondal said. The goal of embracing new tools should be to empower employees to work more efficiently. This turns the adoption of new technologies into a collaborative endeavor rather than a top-down push for change. Dibyendu Sharma Mondal, head of people analytics, HR technology, strategy & ops at Unisys, shared his insights during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)“Building trust is the biggest element,” he said. New systems must be reliable if their insights will be considered when executives make decisions. Trust is built through data quality and effective governance, and it’s reinforced when the technology’s scope expands to answering critical business questions beyond the HR silo, connecting people data to other functions. Measuring What Matters: Beyond Login RatesMondal says that HR departments must move beyond superficial metrics, such as login rates, when measuring adoption success. “The most obvious [metric] people look [at] is how many people logged into the system, and what’s my login ratio,” he said. He says the benchmark technology adoption should be measured by its business impact, and proposes three additional metrics to monitor. First, has the adoption of this new technology moved a critical business metric, like reducing time-to-fill for open roles? How much time are people spending on the system, and what kind of questions are they asking? And is the system becoming the unified source of truth for organizational discussions? Leaders should “go back, redesign, rethink” if over 60% of the targeted users aren’t actively using the tool after 60 to 90 days. “Every technology comes with a cognitive cost,” Mondal said. “The question is whether the user sees the payoff that justifies this cost to them.”For example, an employee tasked with learning how to use a complex analytics platform will only endure the high cognitive cost if the payoff, like better insights, time savings, increased conversions, outweighs it. Therefore, the role of technology implementers is to minimize this unnecessary cognitive burden by improving user interfaces, reducing onboarding time, and enabling intuitive navigation.AI and the People-Centric FutureThe conversation turned to artificial intelligence, and Mondal sees synergy between people analytics and AI, opening up possibilities ranging from predicting attrition risks to personalizing career development paths. Unisys has been an early adopter of generative AI tools within its people analytics systems, significantly boosting adoption rates by satisfying employee curiosity with a conventional interface. However, Mondal remains cautious about AI. “What keeps me awake at times is how do you really eliminate the issue about bias and how do you build trust?” he said. Mondal redirected the focus from flashy solutions to core problems when asked about the next big technology to cause significant disruption. “You have to be able to build a real-time analytics system that allows you to answer real HR problems,” he advised. The goal is a consolidated, self-service system that helps HR leaders solve business problems, whether that involves AI, augmented reality, or more foundational data architecture.The Leadership Behaviors That Drive AdoptionLeadership must set the tone when pushing their teams to embrace new technology. He highlights three behaviors leaders should embrace. First, lead by example: “Use the tool yourself and talk about what they are enabling today,” Mondal said. Adoption increases when teams see their leaders using a new technology. He also encourages creating a safe space to experiment. Innovation requires trying new things, and leaders must create psychological safety for this experimentation.His last tip is to show the connection. Help people see how learning a new tool benefits them personally and contributes to the team and company’s goals.Ade Akin covers workplace wellness, AI, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by pixdeluxe/iStock)
Strategies for Effective Global Workforce Collaboration
BY Carrie Snider November 13, 2025In today’s global economy, collaboration is measured by an organization’s ability to bridge borders. As companies expand across continents, effective global workforce collaboration has become both a business necessity and a competitive advantage.At From Day One’s October virtual conference, HR leaders from global organizations shared the lessons they’ve learned leading diverse, distributed teams—offering a roadmap for turning global complexity into global strength. For global organizations, the success of an international assignment often hinges less on logistics and more on people. Ranjith Menon, senior VP of corporate HR at HGS, says that one of the most overlooked factors in global mobility is the well-being of the employee’s family. “The number one predictor for a failure of such an international assignment, according to me, is also the spouse or the partner’s adjustment in the country,” he said. “Most of the time we need to keep in mind that it’s a dual-career challenge.”While HR teams often focus on visas, compliance, and tax equalization, Menon believes the key to long-term success lies in supporting the full family experience. Employees may face isolation, culture shock, or challenges accessing healthcare and education for their children—factors that can quickly erode engagement. “No matter how much cross-cultural training or other support we provide to spouses and children, there is still a challenge that needs to happen,” he says. Creating “a home away from home” becomes essential for retaining both the talent and their commitment.Subadhra Sriram, founder of Workforce Observer, moderated the discussion among leaders (photo by From Day One)Repatriation, also known as the return home, is an equally critical phase that requires careful planning. Too often, employees worry they’ll be “out of sight, out of mind,” unsure how their new skills will be applied. “Our job doesn’t stop at sending someone successfully and helping them assimilate in the foreign country,” Menon says. “It also involves bringing them back successfully and making sure all those experiences are properly utilized in the home country organization.”At HGS, that process starts early. Employees are paired with a mentor in their home country who stays in touch during the assignment, ensuring a smooth reintegration that brings both global insight and renewed engagement to the team. Building Psychological Safety Across CulturesFor global teams to thrive, collaboration depends not only on structure and technology but on trust—something that can look very different across regions and cultures. Jennifer Cone, director of process, experience & analytics for talent acquisition at Intel, says the key is listening deeply and responding with cultural sensitivity. “We overcome psychological safety challenges by not just listening, but hearing and reacting to what employees in each of the regions are saying,” she said. “What feels like growth and opportunity in one culture can feel very different in another.”At Intel, the emphasis is on creating practices that foster inclusion and mutual respect, regardless of geography. Cone observed that after the pandemic pushed teams to remote work, many initially faced “meeting overload.” But over time, teams discovered better rhythms of communication. “It’s more about the practices—the cadence and regularity that builds trust,” she said. “You have to create predictability in how people connect.”Part of that trust comes from designing structures that support global employees. Cone advised organizations in the audience to be thoughtful and intentional about their org design. When expanding internationally, it helps to co-locate at least two employees together, rather than leaving a single person to work alone across borders. “Two people in a location have more of a sense of connection and belonging,” she said.She also emphasized that compliance and transparency are foundational to safety. “Compliance should be built into the process and tools, not treated as an add-on,” she said. By integrating global standards with local flexibility, Intel creates consistency without sacrificing regional authenticity.Ultimately, Cone believes psychological safety is a discipline. “It’s about creating the space where people can bring their full selves to work,” she said, “and know that their perspectives, no matter where they sit in the world, are valued.”Leveraging Technology and Local ExpertiseAs global workforces become increasingly distributed, organizations must bridge not only time zones but also cultural and regulatory divides. Roberta Richards, HR director at Netcracker Technology, oversees HR strategy for more than 12,000 employees working on telecommunications software projects worldwide. What makes the company unique is that many of the employee teams are sitting at customer sites in different countries, rather than centralized in one office, Richards says. This decentralized model demands both technological agility and cultural intelligence.Technology plays a vital role in keeping these far-flung teams connected. “We have different WebEx IM chats, multiple group chats, and tools to send messages to entire teams or the entire company,” she said. The organization has also leaned on Zoom recordings and AI-powered transcription to make global communication more inclusive. “I think people are still trying to figure out how to adopt AI as a tool in their company,” she said, “but it’s going to be a major influence in how we collaborate moving forward.”Still, even the most advanced technology can’t replace local knowledge. When Netcracker enters a new country, Richards said the company relies on in-country partners to navigate compliance and cultural nuances. “It’s okay to rely on local experts,” she emphasized. “They’re going to know the law inside and out, what confidentiality covenants you can include in contracts, and so on.”Ultimately, success comes from balancing global consistency with local adaptability. “We have multiple cultures working on projects in new countries that no one’s ever worked in before,” she said. “So trying to determine those cross-cultural collaborations between the teams and communication is essential.” By pairing smart technology with trusted local expertise, Netcracker builds stronger, more resilient global teams.As global workforces continue to evolve, one truth remains: collaboration begins with connection. Whether that connection comes from helping an employee’s family adjust abroad, building psychological safety across cultures, or combining digital tools with local expertise, the heart of collaboration is understanding.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.(Photo by VectorMine/Shutterstock)
Building a Borderless Workforce With Creativity, Culture, and AI
BY Katie Chambers November 11, 2025Marketing and advertising firm Ogilvy is careful never to refer to itself as a “legacy” organization, despite its storied history. “It feels a little stodgy,” Maria O'Keeffe, global chief people officer, Ogilvy, said during a fireside chat at From Day One’s October virtual conference. “We are a founder culture. There was one individual [David Ogilvy] who created Ogilvy. We believe in being a legendary brand.” The organization’s legendary status is rooted in its work's ability to transcend geography and culture. And it does this not only through its products, but within its corporate culture as well. During the session moderated by Nicole Smith, editorial audience director at Harvard Business Review, O’Keeffe shared how the firm builds a borderless workforce by integrating talent across regions while honoring local identities. Borderless Creativity Ogilvy’s workforce is spread across 120 offices in 90 countries, with major clients including the Coca-Cola Company, IBM, Nestle, Unilever, and PWC, to name just a few. “We have breadth and depth pretty much in every corner of the world that you can possibly imagine,” O’Keeffe said.The organization’s “borderless creativity”" approach shapes its business. “It defines both how we work and what our end product should look like,” she said. The client’s ad campaign is always the priority, then internal talent is matched to it regardless of their location. And the end product is just as “borderless” as the talent that creates it. “We want to ensure that our campaigns are multifaceted and not single output, so they can be interpreted culturally very differently from market to market,” O’Keeffe said. Nicole Smith of Harvard Business Review interviewed Maria O'Keeffe of Ogilvy during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)One of Ogilvy’s most iconic examples of this approach, O’Keeffe says, is its work for longtime global client Dove. Ogilvy’s “borderless creativity” has kept Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign alive and relevant for decades across diverse markets. For example, Ogilvy is helping Dove get the Crown Act passed in the United States, to help combat racial discrimination against Black women in the workplace due to cultural hair styles. Meanwhile in London, Ogilvy and Dove launched the “Turn Your Back” campaign, encouraging young women not to use filters on social media to alter their true appearance, but instead to turn their back to the camera. While the elements of both campaigns are country-specific, the themes and goals are universal. “Those are examples of [how] we try to find the issue in the local market and then create a campaign that can be borderless and applicable across the board,” O’Keeffe said. Building Culture Across BordersDespite its global spread, Ogilvy maintains a cohesive culture among all its employees from the moment they join the team. “Every single new employee goes through a global onboarding that is consistent in every market. We have it translated into multiple languages to make it something that people truly understand,” O’Keeffe said. “Our values are global, and we don’t deviate from those values. Those are disseminated, they’re on walls, they’re on documents, they’re in communications.” But the organization also recognizes that naturally, there will be cultural differences from office to office and country to country, and that diversity should be embraced. “There’s certain tenets of the agency, like borderless creativity, that drill down into every single employee's experience,” she said. “But from there, we recognize that every region and every market has different cultures, and so we rely upon the leaders and team members in those markets to create a culture that is complementary to the global one, but very personal to the local one.” This is accomplished by having the company’s inclusion and impact teams create employee resources groups that respect the needs of each market. “Our expectation is that we meet people where they are through local leadership and regional leadership.” Technology is the key to building this culture quickly and effectively, O’Keeffe says. Ogilvy broadcasts local, regional, and global town halls to encourage ongoing and open communications that feel “conversational.” Employee surveys can help drive data, but rather than a cold email detailing the results, O’Keeffe and her team will create a video sharing the stats to make it more personal. Quick and efficient communications have also been integral in tackling recent political turmoil that can affect employees. The changes to H1B visas, which now cost $100K as opposed to the previous cost of just a few thousand dollars, “impact the decisions that you make around your workforce globally [including] talent acquisition and workforce planning,” said Smith. For HR, O’Keeffe says, knowledge is power. Stay on top of the latest news, find out how other organizations are navigating the changes, and rely on partnerships with governments and agencies to help you understand best practices. Tackling Changing TechnologiesAdvancements in AI are changing the way employees do business at Ogilvy. But it’s also inspiring some trepidation in workers who fear being replaced by machines. O’Keeffe and her team have stayed on top of the messaging and encouraged early adoption. “We pride ourselves on the human brain, and the creative product that comes out of that,” she said. Employees are encouraged to use Ogilvy’s proprietary AI tool WPP Open each day. “It gives us AI as a creative partner. It helps us mock-up ideas quickly,” she said. AI can also provide feedback on cultural nuance, letting employees know whether an idea that works in one region could have a negative connotation in another. And workers in administrative roles use AI to create outlines and summarize meetings, saving them time and boosting efficiency. Organizations must embrace AI to stay relevant, O’Keeffe says. “I don’t know a company that will survive without doing that.” AI adoption hasn’t been formally written into the organization’s strategy and KPI’s yet, she says, because “we wanted it to be a voluntary, comfortable, safe space for people.” For now, Ogilvy is monitoring AI usage on employee laptops to better understand how it’s used, whether it’s effective, and if additional training is needed. O’Keeffe says Ogilvy embraces a notion of “divine discontent.” “We never want to be too comfortable. This is an industry that is made up of diverse perspectives and diverse ideas, and so ‘divine discontent’ for us means hearing different perspectives in uncomfortable ways. We debate and we disagree and we poke holes in the work deliberately, because it’s important that the work that we do is culturally relevant,” she said. All of this comes down to a willingness to learn and grow, which has been a core tenet of O’Keeffe’s own career. She encourages anyone working in HR who wants to move into a global position to adopt an inquisitive attitude. Earlier in her career, she actively sought out opportunities that allowed her to travel and meet workers from around the world, far outside her home base of Chicago, and has now been in global leadership positions for nearly 10 years. “You have to be curious. You have to be open to new experiences, new ways of doing things, new points of view,” she said. “Listen. Ask a lot of questions. Be uncomfortable. Raise your hand for the things that you’ve never done before with people you’ve never done it with.”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by Noko LTD/iStock)
Empathy at Scale: Leading a Global Workforce With Cultural Intelligence
BY Ade Akin November 07, 2025Courtney White didn’t have a foolproof playbook to guide him when he started his two-decade career in global leadership. What he had was a set of assumptions that included a belief that organizational culture could be scaled like a process and that clarity was a universal concept. “What I found out over my time is that I was wrong,” White said during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s October virtual conference. “Global workforce leadership isn’t just about strategy. It’s about stewardship. It really doesn’t require an individual to be everywhere. It just requires you to be deeply somewhere.”White, the head of HR for agricultural solutions, North America at BASF, was interviewed by Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, a business reporter at The Seattle Times, to discuss the nuances of managing international teams. He shared many hard-earned lessons, framing them as “tuition” paid for the masterclass in empathy, adaptability, and context that his experience in global leadership has given him. White says his first global project didn’t go to plan, primarily because he assumed the strategies he had successfully used in the U.S. would work for Latin America until a colleague gently pulled him aside to say, “We don’t do business before we do people.”“That was a moment that really resonated with me,” White said. “It cracked open my understanding that it really wasn’t about mastering geography. It was about mastering empathy, adaptability, and context.”The Three Pillars of Global LeadershipWhite turned his experience managing international teams into a core leadership philosophy that’s built on three strategies. First, elevate cultural intelligence by treating it as a critical leadership skill rather than a soft skill.Second, practice time zone empathy by using calendars thoughtfully to create a more inclusive environment and ensure team members aren’t consistently burdened by inconvenient hours.And lastly, champion local autonomy while maintaining global alignment—a balance that, as White notes, drives innovation and keeps teams accountable.White discussed a transformation project involving a Canadian team that was given the freedom to localize the rollout. “They didn’t just deliver it. They reimagined what could be done,” White said. Their version was so effective that it was adopted globally. “When you give people the room to lead, they don’t just often meet expectations, they redefine them.”The Pitfall of the "One-Size-Fits-All" PlaybookWhite notes that one of the most common traps for global leaders is the belief that “your way is the right way.” He recalled a time when he had to defend a global rollout that had failed in two of five regions. His choice was to double down or own the failure. He chose the latter.This mindset also impacts career development. A high-potential employee in Mexico was once passed over because she didn’t self-promote, as it conflicted with her cultural norms. “If you’re using the same playbook for career growth in Tokyo, Toronto, or Texas, you’re not advocating,” White said. “You’re assuming.”Courtney White of BASF spoke with Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton of the Seattle Times on the subject "Empathy at Scale: Fostering Global Collaboration" (photo by From Day One)This realization led White and his team at BASF to implement a “broad banding” system for careers that’s designed to honor local norms while operating within the organization’s global framework. “Talent shouldn’t be limited to geography or even cultural biases,” he said.White also learned the importance of time zone empathy the hard way, after scheduling a recurring meeting that was perfect for him, but required his colleague to join him at midnight. When he realized his error when the person missed his call, he apologized. “Inclusion has to be a practice, and time zone empathy is bigger than logistics,” White said. He and his team now rotate meeting times and rely more on asynchronous tools. “It’s another sign of leadership when the systems are designed such that they respect the fact that people have lives and not just output. You can’t build trust in a time zone you ignore.”The Secret Ingredient: Nuance in CommunicationCommunication is everything in a world where companies are increasingly made up of globally dispersed teams. White says nuance is the “secret ingredient” that makes conversations productive. He learned this lesson after telling a colleague at BASF’s German headquarters he needed something “ASAP.” They delivered it in 24 hours, though he had just meant sometime that week. The tone, timing, and translation of words all matter enormously. Now, White makes a habit of asking, “How did that land?” instead of assuming his message was understood.“Words travel fast,” White said. “What I’ve also learned, though, is that meaning doesn’t. And so as intentional as we are with the words, we have to be as intentional with the meaning.”Ade Akin covers workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(NanoStockk/iStock)