The More AI Evolves, the More Your Humanity Matters

The More AI Evolves, the More Your Humanity Matters

Summary What happens when a compliance-minded HR veteran who has seen the inside of more than 50 companies takes on workforce planning for an almost entirely frontline, cross-border workforce right as AI rewrites the rules? In this episode of The Human Element, host Barb Bidan sits down with Dawn Stastny, Chief Human Resources Officer at BelPak, the packaging company formed when Coregistics, Proven Partners Group, and Belvika combined into one organization with more than two dozen facilities across the US and Canada. Dawn shares why she refuses to call them soft skills, how AI screening unlocked a pool of candidates her recruiters could never reach, the governance guardrails she applies to every AI decision, and why she has a calendar reminder set for the middle management crisis she predicts in 2031. This conversation is for HR and people leaders navigating AI adoption with frontline and deskless teams. Chapters 00:00 Introduction 02:30 From consultant to operator at BelPak 05:45 There's nothing soft about humanity skills 07:30 Merging three legacy companies into One BelPak 11:15 AI recruiting and the third shift problem 15:30 AI governance and compliance guardrails 18:30 Give the time back to your people 24:00 The 2031 middle management crisis 28:30 Developing talent through community partnerships 32:00 Lightning round and final advice Takeaways -Humanity skills like empathy, judgment, and discernment become more valuable as AI advances, not less. -AI screening lets recruiting reach candidates the traditional process never could, like third shift mechanics, while removing unintentional bias from the first pass. -AI gives you information; humans are still responsible for verifying it and making the final decision. -Entry level jobs cut by AI in 2026 and 2027 could create a middle management shortage by 2031, so leaders need to protect their pipeline now. -Instead of consuming talent, develop it: community college partnerships can build the skilled workforce you cannot hire off the market. Connect with the Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-stastny-sphr-shrm-scp-/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-stastny-sphr-shrm-scp-/] Website: https://belpak.com [https://belpak.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  https://www.wisq.com [https://www.wisq.com/]

HR in the age of AI: Eliminate, then elevate

Summary Jens Hovgaard Jensen, Vice President of People and Culture at ECCO Americas, joins host Barb Bidan on The Human Element for a candid conversation about HR's future in the age of AI. Drawing on a career built from turnarounds and carve-outs at Maersk, Girteka Logistics, and ECCO, plus ten years as an officer in the Royal Danish Life Guards, Jens makes a provocative case: HR should actively eliminate its own transactional work with AI before someone else does it, treat restructuring as a chance to lead with humanity, and stop over-planning the workforce in favor of higher-value analytics. It is a practical, occasionally uncomfortable listen for HR and people leaders who want to move from administrative function to true business partner. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and Jens's path from the Royal Danish Life Guards 02:35 The military through line: plan, then pivot 06:35 Closing 75 stores across three countries 07:45 Why ECCO gave people notice in November 10:45 HR sawing the branch it sits on 16:15 From transactional HR to true business peer 19:55 Where AI is already quietly removing HR work 23:00 Plan less, elevate the workforce analytics 29:25 The broken benefits model and vendor AI roadmaps 32:35 Lightning round and the final word Takeaways * Treating people with dignity during a restructuring is also good business. ECCO told staff in November about January store closures and saw low turnover, not a wave of early exits. * "Working yourself out of a job" is a career accelerator, not a risk. Eliminating your own repetitive work tends to get you promoted into bigger problems, not pushed out. * HR should drive its own AI adoption before someone else does. The transactional, administrative identity is exactly the work AI should absorb. * Never spend more than 20 to 30 percent of your time planning. You need the other 70 percent for execution, and over-granular workforce plans rarely survive contact with reality. * The real AI prize in HR is the analytics humans could never do well before, from predicting attrition to running M&A due diligence to challenging your own assumptions. Connect with the Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jensjensen42/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jensjensen42/] Website: https://us.ecco.com [https://us.ecco.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 [http://wisq.com].

AI is an accelerant, not destination

Summary RJ Jadhav, Vice President of Human Resources at Lumen Technologies, joins host Barb Bidan to reframe how HR leaders should think about AI, transformation, and the role of their function. RJ has spent his career inside the most transformative companies in tech — fifteen years at Microsoft, the hypergrowth years at Google Cloud, and now at Lumen, where he's helping rewire a legacy network company into a digital services company built for the AI economy. In this conversation he unpacks why AI is 70% culture and 30% tools, why business impact has to be the goal long before AI, and why HR has earned the right to lead the AI charter inside the enterprise. Takeaways * Transformation needs three things at once — leadership behaviors, designed systems instead of interventions, and a real business anchor. Pull one lever in isolation and the other two drift. * AI is not the destination. Business impact is. Start with where the business is going, then let AI accelerate moonshots you'd otherwise rule out as too slow or too expensive. * AI is 70% culture and 30% tools. AI amplifies whatever culture already exists — good or bad. Treat it as a tool rollout and it will surface every cultural weakness you have. * The most underestimated AI metric in the C-suite is protected leadership capacity — the space to think, reflect, and produce ideas muscle memory cannot. * Stop using AI as a productivity hack. Start using it as a leadership system that coaches your judgment in real time. Chapters 00:00 Cold open and welcome 00:55 Meet RJ Jadhav, VP of HR at Lumen Technologies 02:00 The through-line across Microsoft, Google Cloud, and Lumen 04:30 Microsoft's established engine vs Lumen's existential rewire 05:50 One year in — moments that prove the transformation is real 08:30 AI as accelerant, not destination 09:10 Lumen's three-year people strategy and the business-first sequence 11:00 The most underestimated AI unlock — protecting leadership capacity 13:00 From productivity hack to leadership system 15:30 AI as a 24/7 coach 16:30 AI fluency as the only new HR skill 18:00 Why HR should lead the AI charter 20:30 The Chief AI Enablement Officer role 21:30 Three focus areas — redesign, talent, culture 22:30 The work-design framework — automate, agentify, human 24:00 Skills for the next generation of HR leaders 26:00 AI is 70% culture and 30% tools 27:00 Goal Pro — 70,000 goals aligned to the North Star 31:00 Barb's recap of the conversation 32:00 Lightning round 34:00 Top takeaways 36:00 RJ's parting words — the judgment test Connect with the Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rj-jadhav/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rj-jadhav/] Website: https://www.lumen.com/en-us/home.html [https://www.lumen.com/en-us/home.html]  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  https://www.wisq.com [https://www.wisq.com/]

AI Governance is a relationship, not a document

Summary On The Human Element, Barb Bidan sits down with Joshua Horenstein, who runs both the HR and legal functions at Innophos. Joshua argues that AI governance fails on the org chart, not in the policy document. He walks through his manufacturing-pilot mindset for rolling out AI, names the two reasonable worst cases most HR leaders aren't watching for, and explains why the friction between the CHRO and the GC is the engine of good policy, not a problem to fix. For HR leaders, CHROs, and the chief legal officers who work alongside them. Chapters 00:00 Introduction 00:45 Joshua's dual hat: CHRO and chief legal officer at Innophos 03:15 The first governance question, what type of AI are you deploying 04:45 The pilot-to-policy mindset from manufacturing 05:45 AI governance as the rules of the road 07:30 Two reasonable worst cases: productivity backfire and dormant data leak 10:45 Sandboxing AI in an industrial company 13:45 The CHRO and CLO tension as the policy engine 16:45 Curiosity beats the playbook in HR leadership 23:15 AI as your shadow partner, the two-year forecast 26:15 The biggest flaw in current AI governance models Takeaways * AI governance is the rules of the road, not a 50-subpart document. Flexible top-level rules outlast rigid policies that age before they're signed. * The internal AI data leak (a dormant folder permission surfaced by an AI tool) is almost as dangerous as the external one, and almost nobody is auditing for it. * The friction between CHRO and CLO is the engine of good AI policy. Siloed functions produce one-sided answers. * Sandbox the AI like a chemical pilot. Cordon off the data, open the spigots gradually, watch for leaks. * Never let AI make a termination, promotion, or compensation decision. Humans own the outcome. Connect with the Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshhorenstein/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshhorenstein/] Website: https://innophos.com [https://innophos.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 https://www.wisq.com [https://www.wisq.com] * (00:00) - Introduction * (00:45) - Joshua's dual hat: CHRO and chief legal officer at Innophos * (03:15) - The first governance question, what type of AI are you deploying * (04:45) - The pilot-to-policy mindset from manufacturing * (05:45) - AI governance as the rules of the road * (07:30) - Two reasonable worst cases: productivity backfire and dormant data leak * (10:45) - Sandboxing AI in an industrial company * (13:45) - The CHRO and CLO tension as the policy engine * (16:45) - Curiosity beats the playbook in HR leadership * (23:15) - AI as your shadow partner, the two-year forecast * (26:15) - The biggest flaw in current AI governance models

AI Can Fake Identity. It Can't Fake Humanity

Description In December 2024, Christine Aldrich's recruiting team caught their first deepfake candidate. Twelve months later, nearly 1 in 6 applicants at Pindrop shows signs of data manipulation — and every HR leader Christine knows has a story. In this episode of The Human Element, host Barb Bidan sits down with Christine Aldrich, Chief People Officer at Pindrop (the company building identity verification and deepfake detection technology), to talk about what hiring really looks like when you can no longer assume the person on the other end of the camera is who they say they are. They cover the velocity of the deepfake hiring problem, why the two reflex responses (ban AI / go back in-person) are both wrong, the lightweight tactic any recruiting team can deploy on Monday morning, and why the future of recruiting belongs to the people who let technology verify identity so humans can focus on what only humans can do. Takeaways * Why December 2024 was the inflection point for deepfake candidates in hiring * The Pindrop data behind the "1 in 6" stat — and what it really means for your funnel * Why banning AI in your application process filters out your best candidates while letting fraudsters through * How recruiter bias training collides with deepfake detection — and how to resolve the conflict * The three-minute consistency check any recruiter can start using on Monday * How to run identity verification in the background so candidate experience doesn't suffer * Why "AI fluency" is now a behavioral attribute at Pindrop * The most overrated tool in fighting candidate fraud (hint: you've been on it today) * What recruiting looks like when AI takes the bottom of the skill stack Christine's closing reframe for every HR leader on the drive home Chapters (00:00) Cold open and intro (01:15) Christine's path: Michigan, Ford, Dunkin' Brands, and four startups (04:00) The first fraudulent candidate (December 2024) and the velocity of the problem (05:45) The 1-in-6 stat and what data manipulation actually looks like (06:30) What a deepfake candidate looks like in a real interview (09:00) AI usage vs. AI fabrication — where Pindrop draws the line (11:00) Why this isn't just a tech industry problem (12:30) The collision between recruiter bias training and fraud detection (16:00) The lightweight tactics any team can start using Monday morning (18:00) Verification in the background — preserving candidate experience (21:30) AI as both threat and defense — and why treating it as only one is the mistake (23:30) How Pindrop's own team uses AI in the recruiting process (25:30) The candidate side of the verification conversation (28:00) Lightning round: first red flag, the recruiter tactic, the most overrated tool (29:30) "AI can fake identity. It can't fake humanity." (31:00) Barb's takeaways and Christine's final word Connect with the Guest * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriskaszubski/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriskaszubski/] * Pindrop: https://www.pindrop.com [https://www.pindrop.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  https://www.wisq.com [https://www.wisq.com/]