The Josh Bersin Company

As we prepare to launch the HR 2030 Initiative next week, I pose an important question. What IS the real role of Human Resources in a world of AI, automation, and business acceleration?

As you’ll hear, we believe HR is no longer the policy police, recruiting, training, or pay department. In a world of Agents, a new role has emerged: Dynamic Enablement for Growth.

Today I discuss the historic role HR has played over the years, why many people distrust or misunderstand HR, and how HR emerges with an even more important role in the future. And in a world where CEOs believe automation will eliminate many of their workers, HR’s job is not to fight the trend, but rather accelerate it. And the result will be business growth, new career opportunities, and plenty of new jobs.

This coming week at Irresistible 2026 we launch HR 2030 and also The Josh Bersin Institute, a new education and credentialing business to prepare every HR professional, HR leader, consultant, and HR vendor to learn and thrive in this new world. All the details are coming this week.

I welcome your comments on this topic and I look forward to seeing our 450+ attendees at Irresistible on Monday at USC in Los Angeles.

Additional Information

HR 2030: Program Details (video)

HR 2030: Explained

Why AI Is A Massive Job-Creation Technology, Despite What You Think

The HR-Ification Of The Democratic Party (The Atlantic)

This week was pretty exciting: Microsoft unveiled its Frontier Fine Tuning along with a new hardware stack and developer tools, while NVIDIA launched its foray into PC powered AI. Two big themes here: first is reducing computing cost as data centers start driving up all our AI cost, and second to make AI ever more personal for you and your company.

You’ll also see that we’ve optimized Galileo into the Microsoft Copilot and you can get early access below, with GA coming later this summer.

Even if you’re not an AI or PC geek this information is important because the way you focus your attention on AI has to change. We launch HR 2030 and the Josh Bersin Institute next week, stay tuned!

Additional Information

AI Prices Are Going Up, Up, Up – And What This Means For Enterprise AI

Satya Nadella Keynote at Build (go to 1:45 for Frontier Fine Tuning announcement)

Jensen Huang DTC Keynote in Taiwan

More on Microsoft Frontier Fine Tuning for Copilot

 

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - AI Token Maxing and the High Cost of AI
(00:05:03) - Microsoft's Edge computing and fine-tuning the
(00:09:11) - How Nvidia Went From Graphics to AI

I’ve decided that the biggest challenge we have in AI is now keeping track of the new words being created. Words like harness, layer, mesh, vector, orchestrator, tools, surface, memory – they all mean very special things. And engineers and marketing people keep dreaming up new ones (spine? pattern? control plane? MCP? LangChain? headless? MCP? mesh? ontology?).

In this podcast I do my best to explain what these words mean, and give you a non-technical understanding of how all this stuff works. If people like this I’ll keep you up to date on all these new words.

Additional Information (Note that all our research and podcasts are in Galileo)

AI Prices Are Going Up, Up, Up – And What This Means For Enterprise AI

The Reinvention of Workday: From System of Record to Platform of Agents

Could Microsoft Win The War For Enterprise AI?

The AI vs. Labor Economy, Why Benefits Are Being Cut, The Role of Legacy Systems

The Context Layer (Semantic Layer) In Enterprise AI (And Where Business Rules Go)

Jensen Huang’s Taipei Speech (filled with this jargon)

The Superagent for HR: Galileo Mars Release

Chapters

(00:00:00) - The Trouble With Words in the AI Era
(00:07:28) - Three Words of the Real-World Model (RAG, M
(00:10:16) - Hiring with a Neural Network
(00:16:27) - What is the Microsoft SQL Server Fabric or Mesh?
(00:18:07) - The issue of governance in the HCM
(00:19:36) - A Little More About Machine Learning

Here’s an update on Google’s Gemini Flash 3.5 (bad name) and how it impacts the enterprise market, an update on Google AI in Search, and an update on the HR 2030 architecture coming out at Irresistible. I also want to thank you as a listener, we discovered that this podcast now reaches 4 million HR and business professionals around the world.

I take that responsibility very seriously and we all work very hard to avoid advertisements or any kind of “blind opinions” in this format. You do get all my and our perspectives of course and I encourage you to get Galileo, our amazing AI platform, which serves as “me” – you can ask it any question and it answers, guides you, and helps you learn and solve problems.

By the way we’re going to be demonstrating some groundbreaking new Galileo capabilities at Irresistible, including the ability to load your entire company model. This means you can model a reorganization, redeployment, upskilling, flattening, or AI transformation for your team, business, or company – even looking at pay inequities and more. Those of you coming will see this in action. (Galileo Suite is only $79 a month or $795 a year.)

The “bag of doorknobs” phrase is one I learned as a software guy, it refers to the mess we create when we buy 140 employee systems and then add 500 new agents without an architectural strategy.

Additional Information

AI Prices Are Going Up, Up, Up – And What This Means For Enterprise AI

HR 2030: The Vision for Agentic HR Hits Reality

Get Galileo, The Everything HR AI Ready For You

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Google Conference 2017: A Preview
(00:00:28) - Google's AI Moves to the Enterprise
(00:03:33) - Galileo HR 2030: The Future of Learning Machines
(00:05:05) - How to Prepare for HR 2030 with the New Technology
(00:10:38) - The IT Infrastructure of AI
(00:12:23) - App Store Integration: Real or a Scam?
(00:13:58) - Will AI Make Your Life Easier?

What if the biggest mistake companies make with AI transformation is treating it as a technology problem? Laurent Aufils, Chief People Officer at Orange Business, knows that it’s all about people.

In this episode, Kathi Enderes sits down with Laurent to explore how one of the world’s leading digital services companies transformed its entire 30,000-people workforce through a people-first approach to generative AI.

The results are concrete and striking. Orange Business’s AI-powered contract management tool slashed what previously took teams weeks of painstaking analysis to under three hours — fundamentally disrupting not just how people work, but how they understand the value they bring.  Rather than letting 30,000 people go and rehiring AI specialists, Laurent and his team made a bold choice: there will always be a human in the loop. That principle became the foundation of everything — the cultural compass that kept employees from fearing the future and turned anxiety into engagement.

The numbers tell the story. Among employees who went through Orange Business’s reskilling and upskilling programs, employee Net Promoter Scores shot from a modest +8 to a remarkable +41. Over 90% of the company’s workforce is now trained in generative AI, and more than 60% use it as a regular part of their daily work.  AI certifications became a business objective on par with financial targets, and the company won contracts specifically because clients knew their teams had the credentials to back up their pitch.

But perhaps the most powerful insight Laurent shares is about learning. In the AI era, learning is no longer a one-time investment or a classroom event; it is a continuous business capability, and it must be embedded into the rhythm of everyday work.

Orange Business’s YouTime initiative — dedicating three hours per month per employee to learning — changed the entire mindset of the organization. Paired with an 11,000-member internal generative AI community, it created the kind of grassroots momentum that no top-down mandate ever could. Laurent’s advice to CHROs and HR leaders: stay humble, keep experimenting, and never let technology outpace your people.

Related resources

Podcast: Why AI Is A Massive Job Creation Technology. Automated Integration. Findem. And Thank You. 

The Superworker Organization: AI Goes Enterprise

AI Pacesetters: Six Secrets Of The Superworker Company 

The Age of the Superworker (and Supermanager)

Get Galileo: The AI Superagent for HR

 

Chapters

(00:00:03) - What Works: Changing the Way People Work
(00:00:44) - Orange Business's AI Transformation
(00:05:40) - How GE Prepared for the Generative AI Transformation
(00:12:16) - How did the learning function change with the introduction of generative AI
(00:15:09) - How Has Cognizant is evolving its culture
(00:18:49) - Culture and the AI journey
(00:22:02) - Top Executives: The AI Transformation
(00:24:39) - What Works: Chief People Officer at Orange Business