HR Leadership Summit

AI and the future of work

How will AI shape the future of work? Our inaugural HR Leadership Summit gathered some of today’s most cutting-edge workplace leaders to discuss just that — here’s what we learned during this day of insightful, innovative conversations.

Key takeaways from our HR Leadership Summit

Focus on augmenting — not replacing

AI’s role in the workplace isn’t to replace jobs — it’s to augment productivity and unlock new potential.

Think outside of the box

A savvy AI strategy is one that leverages tooling across all HR functions — and goes beyond just streamlining workflows and automating communications.

AI can transform benefit utilization

With the right AI tooling, HR leaders can — finally — close the gap between employees’ needs and benefit engagement to maximize impact and ROI.

HR is at the heart of the AI revolution

As AI continues to redefine how we work, people leaders are mission-critical in driving transformation and empowering an agile, future-proofed workforce.

What we learned: Session summaries

AI Will Make My Award-Winning Book Obsolete — And I Couldn’t Be More Excited

Jonathan Raymond | Founder and CEO, Ren and Author, Good Authority

The manager model is broken — and expectations are unsustainable. Organizations continue piling emotional and developmental responsibilities onto managers without equipping them to succeed. From coaching to accountability to mental health support, these demands exceed most managers’ training and capacity. The result isn’t better leadership: it’s burnout, disengagement, and lost productivity across the board.
AI can offload routine tasks and elevate human leadership. AI is well-suited to handle repeatable elements of people development — identifying patterns, surfacing insights, and prompting reflection. Used effectively, it frees managers to focus on high-value human interactions instead of drowning in tasks they’re neither good at nor energized by. The future isn’t AI replacing managers; it’s AI supporting them.
Employees seek safe, judgment-free spaces to process workplace challenges. Traditional feedback channels feel risky and performative, causing employees to withhold critical concerns. AI offers a private, always-available outlet for venting, reflection, and preparation — especially when psychological safety is low. When thoughtfully designed, AI can meet employees where they are without the friction of interpersonal politics.
Ethical implementation is non-negotiable. AI in people development introduces serious risks if not governed carefully. From biased recommendations to unintended surveillance, poorly implemented tools can erode trust and do real harm. Organizations must embed human oversight, privacy safeguards, and clear guardrails into every layer of AI deployment — or risk compromising the very people they’re trying to support.

Beyond Efficiency: How AI is Reimagining Talent Acquisition and Creating Unexpected Benefits

Frank Cebek | Senior Director, People, SeatGeek

Jason Chen | VP of Talent Acquisition, Grow Therapy

Sarah Koo | Head of Product, Gem

When it comes to AI tools for recruiters, think beyond just automating communications. AI-powered resume review tools can slash screening time in half. Interview intelligence platforms can accelerate interviewer training time and expedite scorecard completion to enable a more consistent, calibrated interview process. Intelligent, automated scheduling can enable coordination staff to shift to recruiting operations rules, who can provide analytical support to the broader team.
Establish AI usage policies for candidates. When and how are candidates allowed to use AI during interviews and assessments? Develop clear organizational standards that take into consideration how your employees actually use AI in their day-to-day work.
Maintain human oversight. Human judgement is critical at all steps of the talent acquisition process. This includes flagging fraudulent, AI-generated candidates (an increasingly common occurrence across all industries), ensuring AI tools are used to rank and prioritize candidates rather than filtering or rejecting them, and making final hiring decisions.

Unlocking Your Benefits Investment: How AI Assistants Will Transform Employee Engagement and Utilization

Matt Bahl | VP, Head of Workplace Financial Health, Financial Health Network

Deirdre Bertrand | COO, Candidly

Laurel Taylor | Founder and CEO, Candidly

Utilization trends reveal a disconnect. Even at large employers with the most robust benefit programs, employee engagement remains critically low. Why? Organizations continue adding benefits without empirical evidence of their effectiveness, creating a costly disconnect between what’s offered and what employees actually need or use.
Financial stress creates measurable workplace impacts with quantifiable ROI. Research demonstrates that financial wellness programs deliver concrete returns, providing clear justification for comprehensive financial wellness investments.
AI assistants can transform benefits navigation through holistic guidance. These conversational interfaces help employees understand their entire benefits ecosystem rather than navigating siloed systems, providing personalized analysis that connects multiple benefits (like student loan assistance with retirement matching) in ways employees struggle to do independently.
Success metrics must evolve beyond basic utilization rates. HR leaders need frameworks that measure actual financial health impact across the workforce, evaluating benefits through interconnected financial wellness rather than isolated program performance.

Navigating the AI Era: Salesforce’s Guide to Workforce Innovation

Ruth Hickin | VP of Workforce Innovation and Transformation, Salesforce

AI is transforming roles—not eliminating them. At Salesforce, AI is being used to reimagine work — not replace workers. By automating repetitive, low-value tasks, employees are freed to focus on higher-impact responsibilities, like problem-solving, stakeholder engagement, and innovation. For HR leaders, this means rethinking job architecture, anticipating new skill requirements, and supporting employees as they adapt to fundamentally different roles.
Internal mobility is the engine of workforce agility. Salesforce has developed smart internal tooling to enable large-scale redeployment by identifying adjacent skills and guiding employees toward future-ready roles. HR teams are using real-time talent data to match displaced workers with growth opportunities — often in functions they hadn’t previously considered. This strategy doesn’t just protect jobs: it builds loyalty, lowers recruiting costs, and keeps institutional knowledge in-house.
Strategic upskilling starts with skills intelligence. Salesforce has gone beyond generic training programs to map every task in its job architecture and identify where automation and reskilling will hit hardest. HR is now leading efforts to develop human, business, and AI collaboration skills across the workforce—with a focus on adaptability, data fluency, and emotional intelligence. Personalized, just-in-time skilling is replacing one-size-fits-all learning models — and redefining what it means to be “career-ready.”

New, now, and next

Introducing Cait

HR Leadership Summit attendees were given an exclusive first look at Cait, our new Conversational AI Technology designed to transform benefits engagement through intuitive, approachable financial wellness guidance from within the workplace.

Get to know Cait