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: https://www.linkedin.com/in/globalhrexecutive/
Website: https://www.opswat.com/

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