This article is a summary of a conversation with Loic Michel, CEO and Julie Asselin VP of Marketing from 365Talents and Pamela Stroko, HCM Thought Leader and HCM Principal Analyst affiliated with 3Sixty Insights. The Webinar recording was titled “What’s Behind the Fluff of AI in HR.”
Highlights of a recent review of AI in HR
AI in HR has been dominating the marketplace conversation since 2023—yet we see that there is significant disparity in understanding and adoption. For example, in the last year only 1 in 700 hires used AI in the talent acquisition process. Contrast that with the fact that since 2023, 81% of HR leaders have explored or implemented AI solutions to improve process efficiencies (Gartner). Exploring AI doesn’t mean that it has been translated easily into adoption. I think the more accurate interpretation here is explored as SHRM reports that only 25% of employers use AI to support HR-related activities.
In a recent report released by SHRM, a summary of key findings states, 64% HR professionals report using AI in the recruiting and hiring process, with 43% using AI for learning and 25% using it in performance management. (Note that the study was conducted over 19 days in January 2025 and 2,366 HR professionals participated in the survey). 9 in 10 professionals reported that their use of AI in recruiting increased their efficiency. Second most frequent use of AI was in Learning and Development, with the ability to individualize learning the key reason. In aggregate 1 in 4 organizations use AI to support HR work.
As helpful as AI for HR can be in recruiting and learning, there are still significant challenges around security. Also, many organizations lack knowledge about where to start and what tools would be appropriate to their use cases.
When it comes to utilization of AI capabilities more broadly, just 4% of companies use AI across functions to consistently generate value. (BCG, 2025)
We’re now in a BANI world
BANI—Brittle—Anxious—Nonlinear—Incomprehensible
How can you make sense out of chaos? There is little doubt that we live in a more chaotic world. Organizations are having to deal with wild swings in policy, global tariffs, and uncertainty brought on by pockets of instability on the global stage. BANI is often offered as a framework to bring understanding in times of upheaval and complexity.
Bani was first proposed by futurist James Cascio. “We’re in an age of chaos that rejects structure…this current moment of political mayhem, economic instability, see-saw decision-making, and climate disasters demonstrates the need for a way of making sense of the world.”
Let’s look at how this lens can offer a perspective:
Brittle
Characteristics of brittleness refer to having no flexibility—we think of things that are brittle as breaking easily—lacking adaptability. What’s brittle can crumble in an instant. Organization structures and practices need to be flexible enough to respond to changing market conditions. Think about job structure—its no longer about just filling a job, it’s about looking at how to get the work done. You have to begin by asking “what is the work?” and “what is needed to deliver the work?” To address brittleness in this case, look at flexible organization design—the composition of your workforce—full-time, fractional roles—hybrid ways of working, gig work. In the book “Future 2030,” Mauro Guillen talks about the Collaborative Economy—composed of digital collaborative platforms—workers can select their work from many organizations, choosing the work, the timing, the pay that suits their interests and needs. It is estimated that the collaborative economy will account for at least 30% of total work by 2030. (Future 2030, by Mauro Guillen)
So, to combat brittleness organizations need to become resilient, imagine focusing on the work and creatively drawing from multiple sources and ways of working to get the work done and produce results.
How will you address anxiety?
People fear the unknown, markets hate uncertainty. Fear can be paralyzing to an organization. It seems that the world is in a state of high anxiety today—facing the unknown with individuals wondering how it will all affect them. The best solution for anxiety is the truth and building trust.
In times of uncertainty, you have to listen to your workforce, communicate early and often—address employee concerns in the moment when they come up. You need to gain insight into what is happening in the organization. It is important to connect individuals to the work—how do they make a difference? How can they contribute to the organization’s success?
How to understand and respond to nonlinearity
When things are non-linear, they become less predictable. Crises seem to come out of nowhere. This is where organizations start talking about how to become more agile. While there are volumes written about agility, to simplify our discussion, I think it comes down to two things:
Organization Capability and Capacity
For organization capability you have to answer: What do you need to be able to do to deliver on your strategy and win in the marketplace? And, for capacity—you need to answer, “How do you increase your capacity to respond to market dynamics?” This is where skill building and upskilling play an important role—being agile means that you have to have the capacity to respond to any market fluctuation impacting your business. It’s about upskilling in advance of the challenges to be able to respond quickly.
Navigating nonlinearity requires the organization have the capacity to identify skills and upskill when needed. Having learning strategies in place coupled with talent development capacity increases the organization’s ability to respond.
Managing Incomprehensibility
This is perhaps my favorite area of BANI—think about how difficult it is to deal with what is incomprehensible. How do you approach something that you don’t understand? You first have to make some sense of what is happening. As directly and simply as possible begin by outlining the current reality—what do you think is going on and why?
Then, look for meaning—what are the organization and personal impacts of what is happening?
How can you equip people to be better prepared for what’s ahead?
What technology can help?
How can leaders adapt to support their people?
How will you support learning?
How can you address development?
What are the uncomfortable truths about skills-based transformation? (or, what holds people back?)
Like any organization shift, you have to account for culture and ability to manage change.
To begin with, skills-transformation is not an HR issue, it is about how the organization will function as a whole and how it will operate going forward. You need to go from something that would have previously happened as a siloed approach to a connected, integrated way forward where you can function as a skills-based organization.
Organizations will need to address new ways of working—how can you collaborate across the enterprise. How can you develop connections—peer-to-peer—across functions, shared accountabilities and shared success.
Perhaps the most important uncomfortable truth: it takes time. Don’t expect instant pudding. You have to look at organization growth and capability as happening over the arc of time—measuring movement and growth. You are in a different place today than you were yesterday.
And, this time it’s personal. This is where AI can be of great help. People are looking for individualized approaches to growth and development. AI can help you customize learning and development pathways that align with the interests, goals, values, and passion of your people.
Agentic AI as transformative technology
In our discussion, Loic talked about the transformative technology offered by using AI agents. While co-pilots are utilized by individuals to improve productivity, simplifying tasks, doing research, and writing documents, agentic AI can help reimagine work processes. An agent system plans, can allocate, and executes work (McKinsey, “What is an AI Agent?” March 2025) An AI agent system can break down workflow and use data to improve output.
Think of this as a multiplier of individual capacity. Using agents is the capability of the future of work. Bersin refers to this as “becoming a super worker.”
How do you succeed at AI adoption?
As we closed our discussion, we were asked to give advice on how organizations should approach AI adoption. First, Loic shared how 365Talents approaches this with their customers and partners. They look at three areas:
- Do you have a real business challenge to solve? If yes, turning into a skills-based organization and utilizing AI can help.
- Do you have governance in place to manage the transformation? If you don’t, you need a governance approach. You need to have a clear vision of how it is going to work—without that there might be wasted time and energy.
- Do you have data? GenAI can help you build your data set providing you with new ways to solve issues and improve productivity.
Second, Pamela had an opportunity to respond:
“I would start with a fundamental question: How can AI change (enhance) the employee experience.” This is a great place to begin to address practical solutions that will provide a great deal of value.
Make the employee experience the focus of how you would use AI for talent acquisition, on-boarding, learning, career management, etc.
As you migrate to a skills-based organization, what are the employee impacts? How will that change career pathing, development, or engagement?
Create clear messaging on what employee centric skills transformation means for your organization—give people a roadmap on how you will get there.
Highlight the new capabilities AI enables for your employees.
Provide support leaders as you work through the skills transformation—how will it change the way that they work?
365Talents offers excellent resources at 365Talents.com
View the Full Webinar Here: