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AI is reshaping leadership, strategy, and the very role of HR. In each episode, the host Barb Bidan explores how AI drives innovation and leadership in HR with actionable insights for the future of work.
The Human Element is brought to you by Harper, Wisq’s always-on AI HR Generalist transforming how work gets done. Powered by deep HR intelligence, Harper delivers instant, accurate, and empathetic support—from policy questions to performance coaching—so your people get answers fast and your teams stay focused.
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Jennifer Erfurth & Barb Bidan | May 22 V2
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Welcome to The Human Element, presented by Whisk. I'm your host, Barb Biden, and in each episode, I sit down with CHROs and senior HR leaders to explore how AI, innovation, and human insight are reshaping the future of HR. We'll explore how technology is reshaping leadership, strategy, and the role of HR by sharing candid stories, practical ideas, and strategic perspectives to help you shape the future.
The Human Element is brought to you by Whisk, the leader in agentic HR and creator of Harper, the world's first AI HR generalist. Learn how Harper can resolve up to 80% of routine HR tasks autonomously. Learn more about Whisk at whisk.com.
Speaker 2: My guest today is Jennifer Erfurth, Global Head of Human Resources at OPSWAT. OPSWAT is a cybersecurity company that is protecting the world's most critical infrastructure. energy [00:01:00] grids, defense systems, financial networks, so some important things. And Jennifer is the person building the people function that keeps all of those things running. she's built HR organizations at ServiceNow, at Roku, Cradlepoint ZeroAvia, and Align Technology. She knows what it looks like when a tech company is actually transforming and not just talking about transformation. And what she's doing at OPSWAT right now is one of the most concrete examples that I've seen of an HR leader who isn't waiting for AI to arrive.
She's already deploying it. So I am super excited to have this conversation. We're gonna talk about AI agents running HR workflows, a new EVP built around AI a shared services model launching imminently that's AI first by design and perhaps most unusually she hired an AI engineer whose job it is to build apps specifically for the HR team. So I am very excited to have you on the show today. Jennifer, thanks for joining me.
Speaker: [00:02:00] Thanks for having me, Barb. I'm looking forward to our conversation
Speaker 2: I am as well. So I always like to help listeners get a bit of a feel for the guest background in, in your own words. So tell me a little bit more about Opswat, but also the path that brought you there
Speaker: Yeah. So I describe my superpower or my secret sauce is taking businesses from 200 million to multi-billion. And you mentioned some of those companies, , that have-- are multi-multi-billion now, but I took them from their cradle of 200 million to, to multi-billion. And so OPSWAT, when I joined, was 150 million.
, Our CAGR is thirty-nine percent year over year for the last five years. And so, , I'm looking to take this very important cybersecurity company, , to that multi-billion level. And, and I'm really excited because all the companies I worked for had really powerful missions. , At, you know, Align Technology is Invisalign.
It's all [00:03:00] about transforming smiles and not putting metal in your mouth. , ServiceNow is all about digital transformation. Roku transformed the way that we watch television. , So I like those disruptive companies, and so that's why I joined OPSWAT. And I'm really proud to say our mission is to protect our daily lives, whether it's nuclear plants, water treatment plants, the things that are really important that we don't want bad actors to attack.
Bar Bidan - Host: We absolutely do not. And I know Jennifer that we talk a lot about pilots on the show, but you, are moving beyond pilots and building an actual AI-first people function scratch, and I would love you to share sort of what that means from your perspective and how you've approached that
Speaker: Yeah, so I think it's being in cybersecurity that's given me the edge. My CEO, uh, Benny Charney, is very, very, cutting edge and very focused on building everything in-house. [00:04:00] So we have a data lake, which I think is really important when you think about building AI , is that you have one place where you can train or educate your AI to get all of the answers.
And so the infrastructure exists at Opswat to make us successful. so I, I'm really excited about building it from scratch, like you said. I, I think that if you got down to the bare bones, like what success looked like for us, it was all about building the knowledge center to be able to educate AI. So we always have policies and different things like that in HR, but actually going through those policies and bringing them alive and is what that success looks like.
And so it took us about six months to build up our knowledge base and then to go through and test it with the AI agents to make sure that there were no hallucinations, , and that their-- the policies read the right way
Speaker 2: [00:05:00] Completely, right? If you anyone who is sitting on data that is not clean or policies that are not accurate is gonna have a hard time implementing AI. Like, it's just going to, you know, amplify , where that doesn't exist. So it sounds like you started with that foundation. When you think about how AI is actually gonna change the way that your HR team operates, like your operating model what are some of the, the biggest impacts day to day by being AI first?
Speaker: Well, we're still in the middle of that process., It's a change management process. And so we're helping the business understand what AI first means from an HR perspective. So they're used to, And we're very globally dispersed, but our employees are used to going to their HR person on site and having that conversation.
And so it's, "Oh, I'm happy to have the conversation with you, but let's also go on Connect," which is where our AI agent is, "and let's [00:06:00] look it up," because you can see how much easier this is. So we did a huge change management campaign and education around what's in it for me. You got questions, get answers 24/7.
AI comes to you. You don't have to think about things like "I'm having a baby." You can just type, "I'm having a baby," and all the information will come to you instead of, the way HR thinks about it, like, oh, you have a family, life status change, and, and looking it up the way that HR thinks about it, that AI will interpret that and let it come to the employee and overall improve the employee experience
Speaker 2: This is a conversation that we've been having within my team as well, right? Is thinking like the end user but also setting up our systems so that they're accessible in the way that the team thinks about things. You also, shared that you've got a workforce that is used to coming to their HR partner on site. And I love that approach of like equipping them to get back to [00:07:00] the resources that you would like them to use and showing them , that it's easy. how has that been received by team members, employees who are used to going to a human? What's been their reaction to some of the tools that they have access to now?
Speaker: It's been like, "Oh, this is easy. Thank you." And so it, it's been very positive because I think we approached it the right way in that we didn't just say, "You can't go to your HR person." That HR person is still there. We didn't eliminate any jobs as a part of our AI. , What we're doing is we're using our growth.
We, we're growing at 39%, uh, year over year, and so instead of adding additional HR staff to deal with that, we're scaling at the same level and just lifting up what HR interactions and the value that we bring to the business instead of doing the transactional work. So it's, it's been - received really well
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I hear from a lot of folks that, "Oh, like our teams don't wanna self-serve," et [00:08:00] cetera. and my reaction is usually, maybe it's not easy enough yet, right? Like going to a ticketing system or looking something up on self-serve in sort of the old way of doing things actually wasn't easy for them, right?
So if you're truly AI first, and you can make it as easy or easier and more like on demand for them to go to your AI-based solution than to go to a human, they're, I think, gonna show us that they're very willing to do that, and it sounds like that's really what you are, are seeing in your world.
Speaker: So far, I mean, there's alwa- uh, to me, the biggest word is iterate. So just like a product, HR is a product to the business. We need to listen to the voice of the customer and iterate and iterate and get better, but you can't wait until it's perfect. So we launched at 80% and then learned and made changes
Speaker 2: Love it. I love it. So you're also not just using AI inside of HR. You are making AI a core part of what it means to work at Opswat. how do you [00:09:00] rebuild an EVP around that idea and what is your EVP actually saying to your candidates?
Speaker: Yeah, so it, it's a very simple EVP. It's we embrace AI, we protect the world, come do both. So, uh, it's, it's taking that powerful mission that we have to protect critical infrastructure around the world, and then-- But the first forward is we embrace AI. We wanna make sure that we're attracting talent that wants to be in a fast-moving AI environment.
, So we've done the EVP. We've also built some screening tools around AI fluency. We've built career paths around AI fluency, so, , what the different levels are of your skill. And now we're building training and development paths that tie into that AI fluency to help people get to the, the next level
Speaker 2: And I haven't-- I mean, not that I'm out [00:10:00] like looking at companies' EVPs in the thousands or anything, but I have not seen an EVP yet that's really like placed AI in I mean, save probably some of the AI companies, right? The the hyperscalers. But what actually transpired to have AI land as such a core component to your EVP?
Because that is actually unique and not something we're seeing out there.
Speaker: Yeah, I, I think it's because we wanna attract that talent. Talented AI professionals wanna be in a company that's cutting edge. If we look back 10 years at technology, every engineer that we were fighting for was looking at what's your tech stack? I wanna work for the, the best tech stack that's out there.
And so we wanna show our employees and also the candidates that we're attracting that AI is the center, and it's part of our culture, and it's who we are. And, and even just this week, we're [00:11:00] doing a la- a summit in our Vietnam office all around transformation of AI. Mm-hmm. And we're doing that so that we can change the culture
Speaker 2: Got it. And when it comes to recruiting conversations, right the, the value of a good strong EVP is it it, it, it drives who is drawn in, right? Who is magnetized by that, who self-selects out. And I'm curious whether it's having that sort of intended effect, right? You've been very forward with the AI portion.
recruiting conversations? Like, are you finding that there are people , in recruiting conversations that maybe are not ready to be as AI forward as you're gonna want them to be to work at Opswat right now?
Speaker: We are. And so it, not necessarily the EVP that helps us with that, but specifically the screening that we have. And we're doing that using AI. There- a lot of the questions up front before they actually talk to a human is really screening out for AI fluency. Because there are some people that just aren't [00:12:00] embracing it, and, and unfortunately, we've ti- we, we found people in our existing workforce that we've given all the tools, but they just want to go and code instead of being an AI orchestrator.
And so we're gonna have to part ways and, and we've been very upfront that this is where we're going. We want you to come on our journey, but there's just some people that that's not where they wanna be. They've, they've been an engineer their whole life. They love coding. They don't wanna orchestrate AI agents.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm a big advocate for building this into your recruiting process, so I could not be more aligned with you, right? We've got , the biggest change management effort in our working lifetime happening right now, and we have folks who internally already who are needing to be helped along.
Like, certainly you don't wanna go to market and add more folks to the mix who are gonna need to be helped along. You want folks who are gonna maybe be of the [00:13:00] change and able to help you drive things forward. So I, I get that and love that you're building it in , on the recruiting front. I would love to, like, dive even a level , deeper if you're open to it into some of the mechanics of the agents and things that your team is building. What are some of the things that you- you've got agents doing inside of HR operations today?
Speaker: So we're like relooking at HRIS and other applications to build them, , ourselves, which I thought was crazy. So when I joined a year ago, Opswat I was told that I could implement Workday because we have BambooHR, and we grew from five hundred to eleven hundred employees, and we're very global. So we only have two hundred employees here in the US.
And so I was like, BambooHR is not the system for us. We're gonna do Workday. And then I joined, and my CEO was like, "I don't think we're gonna implement Workday. You're gonna have to figure out an [00:14:00] AI-first solution." And so we've built these AI agents on top of BambooHR to manage the processes that BambooHR isn't capable of doing.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: and so that was kind of our first step. Long term, we're hiring an AI engineer. We're in the process of interviewing right now different candidates, and their job is gonna be to build our applications. So when we talk about what is our performance story at Opswat, that's gonna be an app that we build, and we're gonna place it right in Connect so that the only employee experience will be in this Connect world.
And so if you want anything, you go into Connect. You don't have to go into a Lattice or into a BambooHR or any of those things. We're gonna create this employee experience that feels like Opswat.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it 'cause I remember building something like this back in the day when it was, like, way harder to do. So the stuff that we can enable, we used to call it, like, [00:15:00] skinning an app, right, for our company. And we would, you know, sort of do that, but it was, like, way more complicated pre-AI than it needed to be.
So being able to deliver that cohesive experience is so critical to the, the team member experience. What sort of surprises have you had as you're deploying some of the agents on HR work so far?
Speaker: Yeah, I, I, I think it's just the-- there's still that hallucination is what I'm gonna call it. There's still like - So you go into Connect and you say, "Who's my HR person?" And they all of a sudden, every time it says Mary, and then the sixth time it says Aaron. It's like, where did Aaron come from? So it's, , really just like cleaning the data, getting the chatbot to be where it needs to be.
That's been my biggest issue is that it, it doesn't make sense why it's not... It has all of the knowledge base. It's set up the right way. Why does it hallucinate? And so it's working through those issues.
Speaker 2: Totally. Does that impact how [00:16:00] you're thinking about the places where you need someone on your team in that loop given that,
you know, you can have five right answers and then the sixth time it's a wrong answer? how are you kind of thinking about that human and AI balance to, like, catch that one time
Speaker: Great question, Barb. What we've built 'cause I got to build the HR team from scratch basically, and so we have different roles than a traditional HR team. And so I have what we call HR people operations leaders, and if you think about a call center, they would be considered tier one.
So tier zero is the AI first, and they're tier one, and I have five of them, , covering each of the regions. So one in America, one in Middle East, one in, , Europe, , and one in APJ. And so they are right now monitoring everything that's happening, and eventually, , when they feel more comfortable, they'll be moving into, into [00:17:00] different roles.
But they're the ones that built the knowledge base, they're the ones that done the testing, and they're the ones that if AI fails, they're the first responders
Speaker 2: Completely. And what great training ground for other areas in your team, right? When you're answering the equivalent of, like, tier one questions there is no greater learning territory in an HR department, in my opinion, and sounds like probably in, in yours, too. And such great career pathing for, for your team. So , I'm curious Jennifer, whether there are workflows where you are seeing AI performing at sort of, like, peak, where you've been r- the most impressed by , the sort of uplift you've gotten by injecting AI into that workflow
Speaker: Yeah, I, I would say we're still at the beginning stages, but I, I see the, the application piece that I talked about earlier as being the real ad- competitive advantage that we're building. And let me give you an example. I went to, uh, one of my [00:18:00] engineers and said we gotta move to a skills inventory architecture in order to do this transformation.
We can't do job specifications anymore. We gotta focus on what skills do we need and, and then we need to assess our staff on those skills, and then we have to put development plans to create the skills we want, and where we have gaps in skills, we've gotta go out and recruit for. And so I, I just had this conversation with him, and he's like, "Well, let me build you an app for that."
And I was like, "What?" The... 'Cause I'm thinking of Eightfold and Fuel50 and other, other applications that I would need to put in. And within an hour, we had a, an application that scraped all of our job specs, , and then created the top three hard skills and the top three soft skills for every role in the company.
And so, to me, , that is that competitive advantage that I don't have to go and implement a system and teach the system because the AI [00:19:00] agent scraped everything that was Opswat. Now, it's not perfect, but it gives me something to go validate, right? So now I can go to every leader and say, "Are these six skills the right skills for this job?"
And it just moves us much further down the path
Speaker 2: that is such a great example to share. And I would love to dive in on particular tension that I want to name. So you're the global head of HR and you are building , a function where AI agents are, as you're sharing, right, handling more and more. How are you holding on to those human pieces that, like, you believe will remain necessarily human over time?
Speaker: Yeah, that, that's a great question. We are definitely doing a human-first approach. We're trying to take away all the transactional, low-value, low-hanging fruit away from my teams so that they can really drive business [00:20:00] outcomes. , And driving business outcomes is all about having the best talent and workforce.
And so the human side is us working with employees, creating that employee experience, driving those business outcomes. , And that's that, that people-first side of it. But the questions that we get over and over again, and this is something, 'cause I've been a head of HR, I'm dating myself, but over 25 years, and in, , in this top position, and I remember rolling out the first shared service model, , back in the 2000s, and it was all, all the same thing.
"Get rid of the transactional, get rid of the transactional." But now it is so much easier to do that because, like you mentioned earlier, Barb, it's easy for the, the employee to embrace it because it comes to... it meets them at their level and how they think, and that's what the changing, , motion is. So the human insight is that at the...
[00:21:00] I tell my team, "The reason we exist is to drive business outcomes," and you do that by building relationships, understanding the business, and then adding value around the talent strategy to help each leader be the best that they can be
Speaker 2: , and I think may- this might be a little different because you've had the opportunity to build your team from scratch. But I'm curious i- maybe even philosophically how you're thinking about this, if you haven't had to address it within your own team is to bring an existing HR team along, right?
You've worked your whole career, right, with HR professionals and sometimes, you know, folks can be set in their ways, right? Not everyone who joined an HR team, maybe everyone who joined your current HR team, but not, some of the teams that the, the rest of us are working with, not everyone has joined to, you know, thinking, "I wanna work alongside agents," right? And some of them are really uncomfortable with it. How are you, thinking about the ways in which we can help those people [00:22:00] along and get them more comfortable and more open to really embracing AI in a deeper way?
Speaker: Yeah. So to be fair, I, I didn't get to create it totally from scratch. I got to kind of, I got to kind of organize it. So I have a lot of people that have been here five, six years,
On my HR team. Uh, and I, I have a very global team, so I have employees in Romania and Hungary, in Vietnam, uh, in the UK, and then in the US.
And, uh, when I came on board a year ago, they were like, "You know a lot about AI. I'm curious." And so to me, it's all about education. So on our first HR leadership summit, I brought in an expert, , Theresa Wolke, and she came and talked about how do you use AI. So we had a one-day seminar just around AI, and we explored Claude and Perplexity and, and real specific things around, , HR use cases.
, And then, , I kinda got [00:23:00] them bought into it, and then we started challenging each other on our weekly meetings of who used AI this week , and what was the hero story around what was created. And then we built e-learning in-house, , that had a leaderboard for who was the best at doing the e-learning, where they were actually writing prompts.
And then we worked with Claude, and we made 10 modules of training that every HR person... And again, it didn't all happen. It's happened over the last year. , And now we've just come out with a new, , e-learning. And we're very blessed 'cause we have a training academy, so we have experts to help us with e-learning.
And we're, we're leveraging that a lot. And so we just did a new e-learning around how to manage the, uh, ticketing system behind the scenes of our AI. So, , to me, it's all about learning and then exploring and then recognizing. So, , when I have my monthly HR all hands meeting, [00:24:00] we have someone every time that gets up and shares with the rest of the team something they did with AI that made their job easier.
Speaker 2: I love it. And it sounds like what I'm definitely hearing is that it's a progression, right? And, and that you approached it in a way that you created some enthusiasm along that progression where folks were intrigued, interested, curious wanted to engage were asked to engage, right?
Like, you had a, a lot of hands-on things that you described there as well. So what about your role, right? The CHRO. If the trajectory we are on continues, what is, what are your sort of big thoughts on what the CHRO role looks like in the future? And, and do you think that's exciting or terrifying?
Speaker: Well, I'm excited about it 'cause I like disruption, and I like transformation 'cause that's, , what gets me going. So I, I think that we are in the best position we've ever been as HR professionals to have a true seat at the table. And , if I'm [00:25:00] talking to any of my peers, I would say grab this.
This is exciting. I love that my CEO tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Let's go transform the business and be an AI-first company." , Because I think that's where we should sit. We should own all of the resources in the business, whether it's human or it's AI agents because it is all about creating efficiency within our workforce, and we own the workforce.
And so you can actually, like, feel like you've driven some true business outcomes by what you've done. So I'm excited
Speaker 2: Me too. So I could talk all day. I love this, the work that you're doing Jennifer. I'm gonna move us on to the lightning round. So just some quick hit questions we like to do as we wind to a close here. So first one is, what is one AI tool that you think every CHRO should try this quarter?
So not talk about, actually go try
Speaker: I would definitely go into Claude and [00:26:00] build some dashboards. HR analytics, like, , I've always been a data-driven executive, and I ca- I have it at my fingertips now with Claude. So go in there and play , and create some real live, uh, dashboards
Speaker 2: Yeah, go in there. You will amaze yourself if you have not tried it, I agree. So next one, what is the biggest myth about AI replacing the HR function?
Speaker: , That human touch. We're so important, building the relationships. The future of a workforce is gonna be built on trust, and success is gonna be built on trust, and that's a human impact. And so we'll never be replaced because , we're really the caretakers of the culture and building the trust that will allow human potential to succeed
Speaker 2: Completely. What is the thing that you see HR leaders doing out there when adopting AI that you think almost always backfires?
Speaker: trusting that AI is accurate all the time. I think it goes back to those hallucinations.[00:27:00]
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: , And I worry about people earlier in their career, like going in and saying, "Oh, create me a skills inventory," or, "Create some, uh, training program," and they just take it, whatever Claude distributes or ChatGPT distributes.
, I've got that 25 years of experience. I let it create it for me, but I'm spending hours going through it and making it. But this is a project that maybe would've taken two months to do. I can get it down to eight hours. But I, I would just be careful not to just take what is given to you. You've gotta comb through it and make it your own
Speaker 2: Yeah. I say to, to my team, an answer that looks good isn't always good. and if you don't have those years of experience to gut check it you might be like, you might be at a loss there as well. So last one finish this sentence for me. The HR leaders who thrive in an AI era are the ones who blank
Speaker: Are agile. Y- y- you've gotta be,
Speaker 2: along with
Speaker: you gotta be moving, you've gotta [00:28:00] be, , able- to change and shift. And, and if you don't like transformation and you don't like change management, it's gonna be a rough road for the next few years
Speaker 2: I agree. So I try to Jennifer summarize for listeners a few of my takeaways to kinda get us started, but there was so much in this episode. Um, But one thing that I wanna pull us back to is when I asked you about what AI first really means the note that I took down is that you are really doing the teach a man to fish strategy, right?
So in places where your team or where the employees in your team are used to going to a person they may still go to that person, and when they do, that person's gonna lead them back to the AI solution, show 'em how easy it is to use, give 'em a good experience in the hopes that they do that next time which I think is a really excellent adoption strategy. I also when we talked about the EVP and how strong your AI position was EVP, and just kind of reinforcing for folks that the purpose of your EVP [00:29:00] is to attract the folks that you want, to come to your company 'cause they're aligned with your vision and where you're headed and how you're headed there. But also it does help you in evaluating the talent that is not right and ready for the mission that you are on. and something we've talked about a lot on the show, but you've added a, a different spin to in talking about getting rid of the transactional within your team. That's something we're hearing a lot.
But I liked the learn, organize and recognize that you talked about. So you really talked about educating the team getting them to embrace AI. There, it was obvious how you're implanting like enthusiasm and like ex- just excitement around where you're headed, lots of hands-on learning, and then recognizing your AI heroes and making sure that you're rewarding that behavior that you seek.
So lots of great insights from you today, but I always, always give our guests the last word. So what is one thing that you want every HR leader who listened to our chat today to think [00:30:00] about on the rest of their drive home?
Speaker: great. I would just say jump in. Jump in, the water's fine. embrace it, play with it, figure out how it works for you. I think it's, Y- you're gonna miss the boat if you don't jump in, so embrace
Speaker 2: Yeah, like jump in, be agile. You will figure it out. We're all in there figuring it out with you, getting used to the water, right?
Speaker: I was gonna say we did COVID. You know, no one knew what that pandemic was about, and we were the leaders. We jumped in, we figured it out. We, we wrote at nights to solve everything. And so , let's be the leaders again around this transformation
Speaker 2: Totally. Thank you for reminding a group who shouldn't need the reminder that we are, like, capable of figuring out anything. If we figured out 2020, can figure this out too. So I have so enjoyed getting to talk to you today, Jennifer. Thank you so much for taking time to come on the show
Speaker: Thanks for having me, Barbara. It was a great conversation
Thank you for joining us on The Human Element, [00:31:00] presented by Wisk. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow The Human Element wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Barb Biden. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time