This week I discuss Workday’s new AI announcements described at the Innovation Summit last week. These are sweeping new product, leadership, and organizational changes that effectively reposition from a “system of record” to a “platform of agents.”

As you’ll hear, not only is Workday clearly articulating their strategy to support and enable Agentic HR and Agentic Finance, the company has changed its organization, culture, and financial model. There’s a lot to unpack here, and I know all Workday customers, partners, and competitors will have opinions. In this podcast I try to explain this whole story and why it marks the beginning of a very new chapter for Workday as a business.

Additional Information

Experience Sana for Yourself: Galileo Mars Release

Irresistible 2026: The Global Conference for HR Leaders and their Teams (June 8-10, USC)

HR 2030: The Agentic Future of HR (detailed handbook coming!)

Detailed Article on Workday

This week I recap a busy week including corporate AI stories, Workday’s AI reinvention, more on tech Layoffs, and fears of AI-driven surveillance. The important story is that Enterprise AI is much more complex than most imagine yet the AI vendors like Anthropic and OpenAI make it sound deceptively simple.

In reality, as I explain, we are one year into the total reinvention of all business functions, with HR top on the list. And as I explain, the vision of enterprise success is now clear, but the vendor market is incredibly insecure. I think you’ll find Workday’s story compelling, but it’s not the only option out there.

On the news side, we saw the “pre-layoffs” of 10% of all Meta employees, elimination of family benefits at Deloitte and Zoom, and some amazingly creepy surveillance at Meta’s AI group. I review all this and try to give you some context.

As you listen I encourage you to read our 2026 Enterprise AI Imperatives and the preview of HR 2030, our in-depth look at where AI in HR is going. An in-depth review of Workday’s new AI strategy is coming this next week.

Additional Resources

Meta Employees React to Massive Layoffs to Come

Deloitte and Zoom Take the Lead in Slashing the Most Coveted Benefits

The week that Meta employees became training data

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

Workday and Sana Unveil A Bold New Strategy For AI

• (00:00:00) - Enterprise AI: Where we are?
• (00:02:10) - Workday's AI push with Sana
• (00:09:53) - WSJD Live: The Workday World
• (00:11:10) - Agent Companies: What to Avoid
• (00:13:36) - Microsoft's Layoffs, and More
• (00:18:07) - Facebook's Surveillance of Employees

In this episode, Kathi Enderes sits down with Rob McAuslan, Vice President for Artificial Intelligence at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), one of the world’s largest and most innovative online universities with more than 200,000 students.

Before leading SNHU’s AI strategy, Rob taught, worked, and volunteered across Africa, the Mediterranean, and East Asia, working with populations ranging from K-12 students to refugees to graduate scholars. That lived experience shapes everything about how SNHU thinks about AI: not as a tool for automation, but as a means of expanding access, amplifying human potential, and meeting learners exactly where they are.

SNHU is no ordinary university. As one of the largest and most innovative higher education institutions in the United States, it has built its reputation on making education accessible to learners who the traditional system has often left behind: working adults, career changers, veterans, and underserved communities. Rob’s role as VP for AI sits squarely at the intersection of that mission and the most consequential technological shift of our time.

Rob and Kathi discuss what it really means to deploy AI with humans at the center, and what that demands of institutions, leaders, and learners alike. The conversation moves through the practical and the philosophical: How do you design AI experiences that honor the dignity and complexity of every individual? What does skills-based, AI-enabled learning look like for someone who has never had access to it before? And what can higher education teach the corporate world about building AI that actually serves people rather than simply processing them?

If you’re a CHRO, CIO, learning leader, or business executive wondering how to move beyond pilots and hype, this conversation will show you what responsible, scalable AI adoption really looks like—and how to get started in your own organization.

Related resources

Podcast: The Rise Of The Supermanager – JOSH BERSIN

Research: AI Pacesetters: Six Secrets Of The Superworker Company – JOSH BERSIN

New Certificate Course in Galileo Learn: AI in L&D

Get Galileo: The AI Superagent for You

• (00:00:03) - What Works in the Future of Work
• (00:00:40) - How Southern New Hampshire University Is Taking a Human Approach to AI
• (00:02:58) - How to Apply AI at Southern New Hampshire University
• (00:07:49) - Southern New Hampshire University's 4-Stage AI Adoption Model
• (00:14:16) - One of the issues around AI governance
• (00:19:13) - Employee Experience and AI in the People Team
• (00:21:43) - WSJD Live: The AI Policy
• (00:23:32) - In the Elevator With Provost Rob Ferguson
• (00:24:06) - What Works In Education? With Rob McAuslan