Teach a man to fish: HR AI adoption strategy that sticks

Summary On The Human Element, Barb Bidan talks with Jennifer Erfurth, Global Head of HR at the cybersecurity company OPSWAT, about what it actually takes to run an AI-first people function rather than just talk about one. Jennifer canceled a planned Workday rollout, built AI agents on top of BambooHR, rewrote her employer value proposition to lead with AI, and kept her human HR team in place as the safety net. She breaks down the three bets behind the approach: what to build, who to hire, and how to drive adoption without forcing it. She is also candid about the parts that are still messy, including a chatbot that hallucinates an HR contact named "Aaron," and why 25 years of experience is the thing that keeps AI honest. The throughline: going AI-first is not about replacing the human function, it is about deciding what AI handles and what stays human. Built for CHROs, VPs of People, and anyone leading AI adoption in HR. Chapters 00:00 Meet Jennifer Erfurth and OPSWAT 02:30 Building an AI-first people function from scratch 04:30 Change management and what's in it for me 07:30 Running HR like a product, launch at 80% and iterate 08:00 The AI-first EVP and screening for AI fluency 12:30 Why they scrapped Workday and built on BambooHR 15:30 Tier zero AI and tier one human HR 17:00 The skills-inventory app built in an hour 21:00 Bringing an existing team along, learn, organize, recognize 23:30 The future of the CHRO role 25:00 Lightning round 27:30 Barb's takeaways and the last word Takeaways Build the knowledge base before the agents; OPSWAT spent six months on its before turning on a single agent. Build can beat buy. An engineer built a skills-inventory app in under an hour, replacing tools like Eightfold and Fuel50. An AI-first EVP attracts the talent you want and filters out the talent you don't. Drive adoption by teaching people to self-serve rather than forcing the tool on them. Keep a human in the loop; the AI can be right five times and wrong the sixth, and experience is what keeps it honest. Connect with the Guest LinkedIn:   / globalhrexecutive   Website: https://www.opswat.com/ Sponsor Wisq is the AI platform for HR. We built Harper, the world's first AI HR teammate — designed to handle the judgment-heavy work that has historically consumed HR teams: job changes, performance concerns, leaves of absence, onboarding, and employee relations issues. Where HCM bolt-ons and chatbots deflect the easiest questions, Harper resolves full cases, end-to-end. The result is an HR function with the capacity and strategic bandwidth to focus on the work that moves the business. Companies get Harper live in weeks, not quarters, with implementation support built on deep HR domain expertise. Wisq serves HR leaders at leading companies across industries, helping them raise the bar on employee experience and expand what their teams are capable of. For more information, visit wisq.com.