CHROs must move past efficiency to rethink HR, using AI to reinvest saved time, build continuous talent systems, and drive business growth.
Sara Braun
Editorial Strategist, HR
Workday
At Workday Rising this week in Las Vegas, HR leaders agree: it’s time to stop thinking about AI as just a tool for checking off tasks faster. For decades, HR has been stuck under a mountain of administrative grind, leaving little room to focus on the big picture. Now that technology is finally taking that heavy lifting off practitioners' plates, the real question isn't how much time we can save—it's what we're going to do with that saved capacity.
“We’ve got administrative burdens. We have operational backlogs that just keep coming and tedious manual processes,” said Workday Chief People Officer Ashley Goldsmith during her keynote. “AI has made the impossible possible. As HR leaders, we have a once in a generation, once in a lifetime opportunity to completely reimagine how work gets done within our organisations.”
“AI has made the impossible possible. As HR leaders, we have a once in a generation, once in a lifetime opportunity to completely reimagine how work gets done within our organisations.”
—Ashley Goldsmith, Chief People Officer, Workday
Agentic HR isn't an IT upgrade or a feature demo; it’s a total reset of how HR operates. CHROs have a rare opportunity to step into the boardroom with a much bigger agenda: reshaping organisational structure, building real trust around automation, and turning workforce design into a direct driver of business growth.
To do so, leaders need to focus on five core strategic shifts:
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AI's primary value is removing administrative burden, but efficiency alone isn't the endgame. The hours and cost savings generated by automation present what Bill Onisick, vice president of HR transformation and people operations at GE Vernova, calls an “agentic time dividend.”
While the natural impulse for a CFO might be to hand those savings right back to shareholders, the real competitive advantage comes from consciously reinvesting that capacity—giving employees the time and resources to reskill and innovate.
CHROs need to reframe the AI conversation from a cost-cutting pitch into a strategic decision about where to redirect human potential. “We're not going to rise to the next level just through efficiency,” said Onisick. “We're going to rise to the next level through innovation.”
“We're not going to rise to the next level just through efficiency. We're going to rise to the next level through innovation.”
—Bill Onisick, Vice President of HR Transformation and People Operations, GE Vernova
Onisick was direct about what's slowing AI adoption: people and structure, not technology. He framed HR's job as an "enterprise enabler"—driving readiness through education and culture, and redesigning work around end-to-end value streams rather than siloed hand-offs.
Accenture put a human face on the culture challenge. Jillian Snavely, the company's global head of recruiting and onboarding, openly admitted to once being a "Workday hater" before coming around to the platform. That mindset shift mattered at scale: Accenture hires roughly 190,000 people a year from about 9.5 million applications, using a "frictionless recruiting" model built on Paradox, Hired Score, and Workday Recruiting. The model is designed so a recruiter stays "over the process, but not necessarily in the process." Snavely’s takeaway: the biggest wins came from recruiters being open to changing how they worked, not from the technology alone.
Nordstrom illustrated the structural side. Across 53,000+ employees and 350+ stores, Arthi Sankrithi, director of supply chain, noted that before Workday, schedules lived with managers only—employees had to call in to learn their own hours. Putting schedules directly into workers' hands drove retention up and attrition down. Stephani Edmunds, senior HR director at the retail giant, added that mobile adoption grew from about 43% to over 70%. Both leaders credited the results to a mix of technology plus intentional training. Specifically, Nordstrom invested in manager onboarding and intentional training of employees across roles and banners to handle predictable hiring spikes.
The shared lesson: technology enabled the outcome, but deliberate change management and learning and development are what converted it into real retention and efficiency gains.
Scaling AI agents across a company requires smart guardrails. Teams need to align autonomous actions with meaningful business outcomes, backed by strong governance once systems are live.
But just as importantly, leaders have to decide where machines should stop. High-stakes, highly sensitive touch points—such as handling bereavement benefits, conducting layoff conversations, or delivering performance reviews—must remain human-led by design. Onisick argued CHROs need to set these "purposely human" boundaries proactively because AI won’t set them for us.
CHROs need to set "purposely human" boundaries proactively because AI won’t set them for us.
Traditional HR breaks down because performance, learning, and engagement are treated as separate, once-a-year events. Leaders like Nikki Helmer, vice president of talent management and insights at Workday, argue that it’s time for a change.
“Talent is going to become a connected, continuous system that understands work and people and business outcomes,” she said during a session on talent development strategy and vision. But getting there requires a leap.
“There are so many talent processes that still need to evolve if we want to move from a talent process that is documenting what happens to something that is proactively advising for the future,” Helmer added. “That is what we are going to bring with new capabilities when agents can anticipate, advise, and act.”
She emphasised this idea of AI anticipating what HR leaders need to act on, serving as a guide or coach to reduce the human cognitive load. The goal, she said, is for leaders to act on real-time signals about engagement, attrition risk, or skills gaps—instead of waiting for an annual survey or review cycle to surface problems after the fact.
For CHROs, the call-to-action is simple: it’s time to retire the annual review ritual and start using AI to proactively advise for the future. That’s how we’ll address burnout, skills gaps, and retention risk before they become major problems.
“Talent is going to become a connected, continuous system that understands work and people and business outcomes.”
—Nikki Helmer, Vice President, Talent Management & Insights, Workday
Increasing speed and reducing friction in both talent acquisition and frontline management translate directly into topline revenue, not just efficiency gains.
Cory Smith, who leads talent acquisition products at Workday, made the business case clear: "We’re trying to make talent acquisition not just a cost centre for the business, but a revenue driver."
An overlooked reality is that understaffed shifts directly cause lost sales and degraded customer service. Josh Secrest, head of marketing for Paradox at Workday, cited National Restaurant Association data, saying not having one frontline employee on shift can cost a location "between $500 and $1,200 per day" in lost revenue. He then flipped the script: “Instead of having 100 candidates apply to a job to make a hire, what if we only needed 10?"
Using automation, companies have seen average time-to-hire drop to 3.5 days compared to industry averages of 16-21 days. For example, Chipotle reduced their hiring timeline from 12 to 4 days using a recruiting assistant.
Adam Godson, general manager of talent acquisition at Workday, highlighted the underlying philosophy behind this shift: "The point isn't to automate the people part. The point is to automate the transactional part to enable the people part."
In practice, this means stripping out "the boring stuff"—interview scheduling, status reports, administrative sourcing—so recruiters can spend time on the relationship-building that drew them to the profession in the first place.
"The point isn't to automate the people part. The point is to automate the transactional part to enable the people part."
—Adam Godson, GM, Talent Acquisition, Workday
CHROs must evaluate workforce experience with the same financial rigor as any revenue-protecting investment, proving that modern talent strategy directly powers the bottom line.
Ultimately, AI gives HR a rare chance to hit the reset button. The goal isn't just to automate administrative tasks; it's to turn all that saved time into better decisions, stronger teams, and real business growth.
The CHROs who embrace this mindset today will be the ones shaping the future of work tomorrow.
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