How 'Believe Chicago' Connected AT&T With Its Neighbors

BY emilyludolph | March 04, 2019

In the city of Chicago, the twin plagues of gun violence and unemployment determine the experience of many who live and work in neighborhoods far from the sparkling high rises of downtown. In this other part of the shining city, gun violence is so high that the Wall Street Journal reported last year that Navy medics are prepared for tours of duty by training at the trauma unit at Cook County’s Stroger Hospital. The number of homicides has dropped over the last three years, down from 771 in 2016 to 561 last year. But that positive trend—shaped by nonprofit groups, religious congregations, local activists and government programs—can use all the help it can get. Now it’s getting it from a new source: AT&T.

Eileen Mitchell, president of AT&T Illinois

The world’s largest telecom company (2018 revenues: $170.8 billion) launched a new program last October called Believe Chicago to focus on injecting opportunity into 19 Chicago neighborhoods with the highest rates of unemployment and violence. It’s not a random selection—many of AT&T’s local employees live or work in those very neighborhoods. “When we did the research and saw how many employees and retirees we had living in these neighborhoods, how many stores we had, we determined that we had an obligation to step forward,” says Eileen Mitchell, president of AT&T Illinois, one of the state’s largest private-sector employers.

AT&T has a history of volunteerism and community service within its workforce, but at a time when the relationship between big companies and big cities can be contentious, AT&T wanted to build a sustainable, employee-driven program in partnership with Chicago's neighborhoods.

So AT&T's managers fanned out. Across the city, headquarters staff met with employees in stores, call centers, and equipment garages. “The magic started to happen when we went out and talked to our employees,” recalls Mitchell. “They were very close to the issue and there was an extreme amount of enthusiasm for the idea that we needed to get involved. The conversations that we had informed and inspired the work that we did and the program that we built.”

One of the program's initiatives is Learn Chicago, which provides skills training for young people, including in retail stores

From there, AT&T went even deeper into the communities, convening organizers and activists, and asking them to gather residents who could share their perspective of what was happening around them and where there were gaps in services and support. One of the biggest gaps? Economic opportunity.

Well, Mitchell reasoned, one of the most powerful opportunities a large company can leverage is hiring. This led to one of the pillars of the Believe Chicago program: skills training and connection to job openings. Last month, AT&T hired their 500th employee from the 19 neighborhoods who came up through the Believe Chicago program.

The programs milestones will be celebrated on March 15 with the debut of a documentary entitled, Beacons of Hope: Stories of Strength from Chicago, launching on the AT&T Audience Network. With early support from company executives including John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communications, the Believe initiative has grown in just a year into a national program with offshoots in New York City, Dallas, Atlanta and Detroit. More than a dozen additional cities are planning to launch their own Believe efforts later this year. The Believe program joins a variety of job-skills programs that AT&T supports, including Girls Who Code and All Star Code.

Eileen Mitchell’s passion for Believe Chicago is built from her three-pronged background: 12 years as an AT&T executive, a stint as Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s chief of staff, where she became familiar with the challenges facing neighborhoods, and a year volunteering for the archdiocese of Chicago to develop an office of violence prevention.

“All institutions have different assets that they can bring to bear,” Mitchell says on the role that corporations should fill in local communities. “The violence issue in Chicago is not one person’s to solve. Government can’t do it alone. Private enterprise can’t do it alone. And the faith community can’t do it alone. The real power comes when government, the private sector and the faith community can all come together with one goal in mind: to lift these neighborhoods, to invest in them, and to create opportunity that doesn’t exist.”

That corporations are just one integral piece of the health of local communities in which their employees and customers live and work points to a key tenet of the program: sustainability. The program may still be young, but by focusing on community partnerships, job growth, and training, Believe Chicago has its eyes on a commitment to the Windy City that will extend many years into the future.

Emily Ludolph is a senior editor at 99U and an alum of TED Conferences and Vassar College. She has published in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Narratively, Artsy, 99U, Quartz, and Design Observer

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Calm Amid Chaos: How to Talk to Your Team About Uncertainty

Life can be unpredictable, and we don’t like it that way.Our brains were designed for certainty. Humans look for patterns in our surroundings to form useful habits and conserve mental energy. Always have: Hunting buffalo in the winter when the animals’ coats are thick. Sowing seeds in the spring before the rains. Buying our lattes from the same reliable coffee shop week after week.These days, a lot feels unsettled: Tariffs on or off? Financial markets up or down?  Recession is possible, but who knows? The Trump administration’s disdain for DEI and ESG has upended workplace culture and hiring practices, leaving many employees confused or upset about their company’s values and practices.All this comes at a time when employee engagement is at a ten-year low. Just 31% of workers report feeling engaged, according to a Gallup survey released in January, well before the current administration began its rapid-fire changes. “Economic uncertainty remains a significant drag on the sentiment of workers as tariffs, federal funding and workforce cuts, and general business uncertainty disrupt investment and hiring plans,” wrote Glassdoor’s lead economist, Daniel Zhao in an April report.No kidding. And it could get worse. This just in from the Editorial Board at Bloomberg: “A financial crisis isn’t out of the question.”How can HR leaders and other managers respond? The first thing is to appreciate the physiology. Uncertainty rattles our nervous system. It creates a sense of ambiguity that our minds struggle with. “The stress of uncertainty, especially when prolonged, is among the most insidious stressors we experience as human beings,” said Aiofe O’Donovan, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, back in 2020, when the pandemic was our biggest problem. Now impacting our psyches are the upending of global alliances, accepted health practices, and predictable weather patterns.Some workers are literally cracking their teeth from stress, dentists in Washington, D.C., have discovered recently. Even Slackmojis have taken a very dark turn.When our prediction-seeking brains are challenged with too many plot twists, we tend to feel threatened, scared, and overwhelmed. But there are proactive steps that leaders can take to restore some calm, promote needed focus on work, and reduce the long-term, unhealthy effects. Among them:Validate and EmpathizeHumans need to feel understood. If your workers are quietly panicking and seeking reassurance, let them know that their concerns are normal and understandable. Give them space to talk about their fears and listen to their perspective. You might see more tears during meetings or meltdowns over minor mishaps. When appropriate, remind workers about the resources the company offers, such as EAPs, employee resource groups (ERGs), mental health therapy of all kinds, and even subsidized gym memberships that might give them places to feel supported or just sweat out their anxiety. While being a careful listener may require extra effort, there’s a substantial upside: research finds that workplaces that promote candid communication tend to be more collaborative, have higher morale, and react to layoffs with more resilience.Communicate Regularly, With EmpathyKeep your workers well-informed. During uncertain times, “employees most want information about their job and the organization,” according to research by Kristine W. Powers and Jessica B.B. Diaz, academics at Claremont Graduate University. “They want psychological and instrumental support from their manager and clear, fast, and accurate communication.” If you’re making changes to programs, like DEI, explain why, as candidly as possible. If you’re keeping everything the same, tell them that, too. If your company is using silence to the outside as a strategy, then keeping your internal communications robust is even more important, writes Paul Klein, author of Change for Good: An Action-Oriented Approach for Businesses to Benefit From Solving Social Problems, in a recent Forbes article. “Use this as an opportunity to deepen your team’s understanding of the company’s purpose and impact. Develop internal newsletters, Q&As, and leadership briefings that reinforce your values. Employees are your most credible messengers. They need to know what you stand for, even if the world outside doesn’t hear as much as before.”Be prepared for pushback. Some employees might be upset that you are bending to the current political winds and may quit, rebel, or confront, as the Washington Post reported last week. Think honestly about the impact that might have on morale and staffing issues.Celebrate the ControllablesA powerful antidote to anxiety is agency. Help your workers focus on what is squarely within their control. Praise the value of their work and guide them to new projects or tasks that will give them a sense of mastery. Be clear about what they need to do and let them figure out how they can do it.  And don’t be shy about asking for feedback on matters ranging from office layout, meeting scheduling, even party planning. If you have the resources, send out a survey soliciting advice on how a specific system might be improved. When workers feel trusted and see that their feedback matters, they’ll feel like significant members of a team rather than cogs in a wheel.Fact-Check Your Own FearsTo be a good leader, you need to have a grip on your sense of uncertainty. When faced with conflicting and frightening news, it’s common to panic or catastrophize. First, ask yourself, How likely is this to happen or How real is this threat? If your honest answer is likely, then turn to trusted sources. Talk to a good friend, colleague, or manager to gain perspective.  If the threat is about the world order, consult well-reported, professional news sites for information rather than random posts on IG, X, or TikTok. One resource to help spot misinformation is Rumor Guard from the News Literacy Project, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching Americans how to discern fact from fiction and dispelling viral rumors.Take Ten—and Commend It to Your Team“Most of us are working with tired brains,” says Amit Sood, M.D., author of The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living. If you're getting caught up in the rapidly changing political rhetoric, take ten-minute breaks during your workday. Treat yourself to micro naps, mini nature walks, or a sound bath on Spotify—anything that will give your tired mind some time to rest and recharge. And please, don’t scrimp on sleep. This is no time to be running on empty. You need to be in good mental shape for yourself and your workers.Model Self-compassion and CuriosityWhile this might sound self-indulgent, research proves that workers who treat themselves with grace rather than punishment perform at a higher level, have less workplace stress, and are better team players. How does this look? Instead of tearing yourself down, ask: “What do I need to overcome this challenge? How can I grow from this experience? What support would help me move forward?” This is the advice of Kristin Neff, associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin's department of educational psychology, and the author of  Mindful Self-Compassion for Burnout. And apply the same level of curiosity and kindness to workers who are struggling with uncertainty, burnout, or any type of work challenge.Admit Your Mistakes and Clear the AirLeaders will make mistakes navigating the current unpredictability and they should admit their vulnerability, says Bill George, the former CEO of Medtronic and author of the classic True North leadership books. “Harvard is acknowledging it didn’t control the antisemitism on campus,” he told the Minnesota Star Tribune last week. “So let’s put that one out there. Harvard leader Alan Garber is clearly doing that. I think clearly [CEO] Mary Barra at General Motors, who was trapped with the tariffs, right now is acknowledging some of the mistakes that they made, and they’re trying to adapt to that. So I think we do see many leaders now being more vulnerable. Some are not. They’re afraid of being vulnerable. But I think when you do that, then you kind of clear the air. You have to admit your mistakes. Any leader that won’t admit their mistakes is not a real leader.Keep Track of the Good and the GreatEven during difficult times, one can find positive events and ideas to appreciate. Focus on your accomplishments and help your employees do the same. Robert Waldinger, M.D., author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, shared a humbling story in a recent blog post: “During the An Lushan Rebellion [a major uprising against the Tang Dynasty in China, 755-763 A.D.], amid so much death and destruction, there was a poet who was trapped in a town that was being destroyed. He wrote a poem called ‘The View This Spring.’ The poem is just two lines.” It goes: The nation is destroyed, mountains and rivers remain. When you find yourself consumed by worry, zoom out to the bigger picture. Take stock of your wins and the beauty in your life and world. And help your workers do the same.Lesley Alderman, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. She writes about mental health topics for the Washington Post and has been an editor at Money and Real Simple magazines and a health columnist for the New York Times.(Featured photo by iStock by Getty Images)

Lesley Alderman, LCSW April 22, 2025

Corporate Empathy: Where It Went and Why It Matters

It certainly seems like a bleak moment to be a worker in America. Scroll the news or social media and a picture forms of an uncaring, turbulent, and miserly workplace.Why is this so striking? Empathy, or the ability to understand and be sensitive to others’ feelings and experiences, became a fashionable trait in business just a few years ago. For a while, employers were getting really good at responding to the needs of the workforce. Some companies even traded on it. Empathy, as well as its more active cousin, compassion, took many forms. As more attention focused on how some demographic groups were often left on the sidelines, employers said OK, let’s find ways to level the playing field, and they set hiring goals and stood up mentorship programs. When Covid lockdown closed schools and day-care centers and quarantined babysitters, companies told workers to take care of their families and welcomed Zoom cameos from kids. When employees needed a reprieve from expensive cities and long commutes, companies converted to remote work and hybrid work. When burnout and loneliness pressed on our minds, employers started footing the bill for therapy.The year 2025 feels really different. Much of change in the weather has to do with what the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are doing to the federal workforce, gutting it haphazardly and villainizing the civil service—and how companies in the private sector are playing follow-the-leader. Meta appeared to ingratiate itself to the incoming administration by axing its DEI programs. And when President Trump ended federal DEI programs, Google and Amazon ended some of theirs. When Elon Musk fired “low performers” from the federal government, so did Meta and Microsoft. Public sector followed private sector in ending remote and hybrid work. First Amazon, AT&T, and Boeing called workers back to the office in late 2024, and the president did the same on inauguration day. Underscoring the dramatic shift: All of this is happening as we arrive at the fifth anniversary of Covid lockdowns in the U.S. In some ways, all those revolutionary changes to the way we work seem to be dissolving. To be sure, many employers insist that employee well-being is still a priority, but surveys show that most workers aren’t feeling it. According to Gallup, the percentage of employees who believe their organization cares about their well-being plunged to 21% in early 2024. At its peak in May 2020, that figure was 49%.These stories and statistics certainly make it seem like employers are pulling the plug on empathy. But while the big tech and banking companies that have toughened up their workplace policies employ a lot of people, as does the federal government, they don’t employ everyone. Do these stories really reflect what it’s like to be a worker in 2025? Is corporate empathy dead? I started asking around.When the Reality Doesn't Match the MessageAs I was working on this story, Lauren Branston, CEO of the UK-based nonprofit Institute of Business Ethics, sent me an email. “I have been hearing people I trust saying they are seeing more and more ‘campaigns’ saying empathy is bad, etc. Which I find worrying,” she wrote. “People are campaigning against a core human value. We aren’t ready for this as an institution or in society because we have assumed these topics to be settled.”For decades, she later told me in an interview, people have operated with the belief that undergirds much of Western political democracy: that those with power can largely be trusted to use that power for good, and if they don’t use it for good, then accountability, in the form of ethics or regulations, will come for them. Now, it’s not clear whether either of those things is enough to stop the rolling tide.“It’s fundamentally challenging, she said. “It’s a moment where your values and beliefs are shaken, and it’s a moment where you have to sit and recalibrate what’s going on. What you see when people’s values are challenged is engagement and collaboration and connection. People organize and get organized. And I think that might happen.”As a reporter, I talk to senior HR leaders and executives every day, and some of them I know well. It’s clear to me that a lot of these people who work in HR are, as individuals, genuinely concerned about the well-being of their colleagues. And some are really pushing for change.In February, I moderated a From Day One panel of senior talent-acquisition leaders, and all of them were insistent on providing a good candidate experience even as they introduce AI into their hiring process and navigate an unwelcoming labor marketplace. In fact, they were most concerned with finding ways to provide feedback to individual applicants, even those who don’t get the job. Comcast, which might get a thousand applications for a given role, learned that what applicants want most is feedback, so its TA team is finding ways to provide that.But when what the company says is not what the company does, a lot of HR leaders are really troubled by this. Lori Osborne is one of them. She has spent her 20-year career in HR, mostly working for corporations and startups, plus a brief stint with a non-profit organization, before leaving in 2024 to be a fractional CHRO for startups. Hypocrisy is why she left corporate HR, after finding that values and behavior just didn’t add up. Publicly, leadership would say, “‘We want you to go on a run at lunch. We want you to go to your kids’ school play. We want you to do this thing that you have a personal passion for, even though it’s during work hours,’” Osborne told me. But behind closed doors, the same leaders debated whether to promote employees who went on lunchtime runs or left early to make the school play. Taking them at their word was a trap. But this didn’t happen in the new, colder environment, it happened years ago, when it was in vogue to be a support-everyone kind of company. Which tends to confirm the worker suspicion that many companies never believed in empathy at all.What It Feels Like When the Vibe ShiftsEven so, I found employees who wanted me to know that they don’t believe corporate empathy is dead. One of them works in product development at a large, U.S.-based tech company. He wanted me to use a pseudonym—we’ll call him Terry—so he could speak candidly.Terry likes his work, which he says is creative and challenging. He also likes that expectations are clear and good work is rewarded. There have been two rounds of layoffs and a reorganization since he arrived, but Terry believes the matters were handled as well as they could have been.Primarily, he told me, empathy is evident in the fact that executives are so accessible. For two years, and especially lately, employees have asked executives during town hall meetings whether they’ll stick with DEI. The answer has always been yes. They ask whether workers will be called back to the office. The answer is no, remote and hybrid work will stay in place. As far as ratcheting up productivity expectations, the company now attaches bonuses to performance, but Terry doesn’t believe that’s meant to hector workers. It’s just what happens when revenue flattens out.But something weird happened. Recently, Terry’s new boss told him to provide weekly status updates, a requirement that sounds suspiciously close to Elon Musk’s ominous email to federal employees, ordering them to list five accomplishments for the week. I asked Terry, does that give you pause? It does, so he’s going to ask his manager why. Is he not trusted? Many workers may be harboring the same concerns, but aren’t confident enough to speak up. “Senior leadership can’t make people ask questions,” Terry told me, “but they can create an atmosphere where you can ask questions in front of everyone, or silently Slack the leadership.” So that’s what he’s going to do.What Does Empathy Have to Do With Business?It may be worth asking ourselves where we expect empathy in the workplace to come from: the executives in the C-suite who represent the business, or the colleagues we interact with on a daily basis?One employee who was recently let go from the Department of Education wrote on LinkedIn about how her colleagues went out of their way to help when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. One tech worker told me how much their manager was a mentor. Federal workers at the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce have told me how they’re banding together to share resources and support. Go looking for empathy, and you’ll find it.What some employees are getting from their employers cannot be dismissed: bullying and badgering, threats and ultimatums. Really big sticks and no carrots to speak of. People are really angry about layoffs. Most people would agree this is really bad humanity. Some would argue really bad business too.Business Insider’s Aki Ito reported on how Meta’s harsh performance reviews may backfire and damage productivity rather than improve performance. “CEOs may think they’re creating a meritocracy,” Ito writes. “but in reality they’re marching their companies straight into a trap of sunken morale, high turnover, depressed profits, and reduced innovation.”There’s evidence that corporate empathy really does affect dollars and cents. Among my favorite examples is a study by a group of researchers in Switzerland and the UK. They examined 510 CEO conference calls by 448 U.S.-based companies on the Russell 3000 stock index that took place in the earliest stages of the pandemic. They found that the more CEOs made statements, even vague ones, that signaled their human concern for employees, customers, or clients, the better those companies’ stock prices fared when overall share prices plunged in March 2020. The researchers call them “human care statements.”We’ve seen the opposite happen in 2025. Tesla’s stock price has been dropping precipitously, for nine straight weeks. Much of that may be politically inspired, but Musk’s gleeful lack of empathy for workers hit by DOGE cutbacks, with references to wood chippers and chain saws, gained viral infamy.The opposite kind of behavior appears to be demonstrably beneficial and stabilizing. “Follow-up explorations unveiled a negative association between CEO human care statements and stock volatility, meaning that market participants discounted these companies’ future earnings less,” the study reads. “Our explorations suggest that it pays off for CEOs to go beyond mere financial information and show some humanity.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Featured photo by Miniseries/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza March 19, 2025

A New Use Case for AI: Succession Planning in an Era of ‘Squiggly Careers’

Careers are more non-linear than they’ve ever been. This trend puts workers who can flex with the times, moving fluidly across roles and departments, in high demand. This is true not only among early-career workers finding their way, but at every level of the organization.At the top, companies are expanding the responsibilities of executives and adding new seats to the C-suite. Traditional paths to the top are being overwritten by “squiggly” careers. Take, for instance, the role of chief financial officer. Fewer CFOs are coming from purely finance backgrounds, with operational resumes becoming a popular pedigree. Some executives are pulling double duty. Salesforce appointed its first dual CFO-COO in 2025, as did PayPal and outdoor-apparel company Cotopaxi. Chief financial officer is now officially a route to the CEO’s job.As careers become more circuitous than straight, succession planning gets harder. Old paradigms are less relevant. It’s now the skills that matter—and the assessment of them.Workforce demographics further complicate succession planning. During the span of 2024-27, more than 11,200 Americans will turn 65 every day. Retiring Baby Boomers are vacating a record number of senior positions. Identifying and preparing the next generation of leaders is a key exercise for HR.Artificial intelligence may be the answer. Overloaded HR teams are already employing generative AI agents to write the first draft of job descriptions and benefits newsletters, but the tasks AI can complete for HR are getting increasingly complex, like identifying attrition risks. Why not succession planning?Succession Planning for a Skills-Based WorkforceArtificial intelligence is a promising solution because it helps identify employees who have the skills necessary for the role, not only the right career history. HR is already using artificial intelligence to identify skills within an organization, typically to match current employees to open roles or new projects, but “you could easily extend that to succession planning,” says Chris Pinc, the director of product management at consulting firm WTW.Firms like WTW and other industry experts are spinning up their own AI-backed agents. For instance, the Josh Bersin Company launched its new AI platform for HR, called Galileo, in 2024. It looks a lot like ChatGPT; users type a query into a search bar and the tool returns an answer. Galileo can suggest prompts or help you find specific content related to HR expertise.Chris Pinc, the director of product management at consulting firm WTW (company photo)WTW released its own AI assistant, Expert, last month, while HR tech firm Visier has Vee, an AI agent specifically for people analytics. Google is working on its own AI-powered instance for its HR team. Like Bersin’s Galileo, the interfaces of Expert and Vee will be familiar to anyone who has used a generative AI tool. Why use tools like Galileo or Expert instead of ChatGPT? First, these platforms are closed environments, which means that the information employers enter about their workforce stays only within their ecosystem; it doesn’t feed the larger corpus underlying the tool. And second, these platforms are trained on data, research, and thought leadership from respected HR firms. Galileo pulls from the Bersin company’s own collection plus others, like research from Heidrick & Struggles. WTW’s Expert is similarly constructed, with the entirety of the WTW library backing the tool. Users can load in their own proprietary resources, like survey results, skills assessments, projects, plans, frameworks, processes, and original research. Amy Farner, Bersin’s SVP of product and member experience, said, “We’re not letting it go out there and troll the web.” These companies tell the AI what content to trust.Where AI Can Supercharge Succession PlanningLet’s say it’s time to start looking for a successor to your chief marketing officer, who’s likely to retire in the next three years. Let’s use generative AI to find a good fit. You might ask your tool: I need to find employees who have taken on several major, client-facing projects in the last year. Ideally, with the marketing team. They need to score high on our leadership assessment for innovation and creativity. They also need eight to 10 years of people-management experience.The tool returns a list of leaders matching the criteria. You’re surprised to see Kelly Kapoor, a senior manager from business development, on the list. You learn that last year she worked on a successful product launch and still attends regular meetings with the tech and marketing teams. Not only that, Kelly’s name appears on several proposals for new product features and she has created detailed presentations on original competitive research. Plus, her performance reviews are excellent.Amy Farner, SVP of product and member experience for the Josh Bersin Company (Company photo)It looks like she might be a promising candidate, but under the company’s traditional framework, she never would have crossed your radar. So you load the CMO job description into the AI tool and tell it to map a three-year development plan to prep Kelly for the seat. You learn that she hasn’t yet completed a few key leadership-training courses, and she has very little experience working with creative teams. Plus, she’s had only two or three direct reports at a time. Looks like Kelly has a ways to go before she’s ready, but now you have a new candidate and a plan.What Other Talent Have We Been Overlooking?This is a fictional example, but there’s real-world precedent. Pinc has seen it happen. Recently, one of his colleagues in IT was promoted to a senior finance role. “She took on a special project to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of our overall software-development function,” he said. “She learned a lot about finance, then became a logical person to be the finance director for the IT function. She understood the finance work from that project and she understood the IT from her previous role.” Use AI to fill a role like this, and it can be scaled for an entire organization. The success of so many nonlinear careers raises the question: What other great talent have employers been overlooking?AI can lower the cost of succession planning too, said Pinc, who worked closely on the creation of Expert. Companies have long used leadership assessments for succession planning to find people who are capable of climbing the ladder, but it’s expensive to interpret the results, present them to leadership, then work with HR to write development plans. “That’s human time that I think will be able to be taken over by AI,” he said.AI is still relatively new to HR professionals. This is due, in part, to privacy concerns. Companies can’t just throw employee data into a gen-AI chatbot, even if it is a closed system. And HR is not historically a tech-forward department, but that’s changing. For now, HR is primarily using AI for time-saving, says Farner, but that will expand over time. Organizations are beginning to move past tapping AI as an assistant completing admin tasks to tapping AI as a consultant that operates like a colleague.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Featured illustration by Photoman/iStock by Getty Images) 

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza March 19, 2025