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HR at the Center of AI Transformation - Live at Transform 2026
6th April 2026 • Future Proof HR • Thomas Kunjappu
00:00:00 00:11:45

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In this special live episode of the Future Proof HR podcast, recorded on the floor at Transform 2026 in Las Vegas, Thomas Kunjappu sat down with Jennifer Erfurth, Chief People Officer at OPSWAT, for a fast-moving conversation about what it actually looks like to lead AI adoption across a global, highly technical workforce.

OPSWAT is a $200 million cybersecurity company with 1,200 employees across the globe, protecting critical infrastructure like nuclear plants and water treatment facilities. With over 500 engineers on staff, Jennifer was tapped directly by her CEO to drive the company's AI adoption initiative, starting with the engineering organization.

They got into why AI adoption is fundamentally a change management problem, how Jennifer rallied her globally distributed HR leadership team around a challenge they initially found intimidating, and why the ERP rollout is the right mental model for thinking about AI transformation. Jennifer also made the case that HR is uniquely positioned to lead this work, and shared what it looks like to embed AI into every employee touchpoint, from talent acquisition to org design to performance.

Topics Discussed:

  • Why AI adoption is a change management effort, not a technical one
  • How Jennifer brought her global HR leadership team from nervous to bought-in
  • Comparing AI transformation to an ERP rollout, and why that framing holds up
  • Measuring adoption beyond lines of code, including acceptance rates and sprint velocity
  • The emerging model of embedding engineers directly into business functions to build AI-powered tools in-house
  • Why HR needs to take a seat at the table on AI strategy, not just support it

Additional Resources:

Transcripts

Thomas Kunjappu:

We're back with another micro episode here, live at Transform,

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talking about future proofing HR.

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And here I am with Jennifer Erfurth,

the Chief People Officer at OPSWAT.

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Tell us a little bit about

OPSWAT before we get started.

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Jennifer Erfurth: Yeah, so OPSWAT

is about a $200 million company with

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1,200 employees around the globe.

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We're very distributed.

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We only have 200 employees here in the US.

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We're cybersecurity and our mission

is to take care of the critical

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infrastructure of the business.

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So we're in 99% of nuclear plants.

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Oh, wow.

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We're really protecting our

way of life, whether it's water

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treatment plants, nuclear plants.

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Thomas Kunjappu: Fascinating

use cases across the board,

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and it's a very global company.

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Jennifer Erfurth: Yes.

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Thomas Kunjappu: I'm sure

there's a lot of different things

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that come across your desk.

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Where does the word AI

fit within all of that?

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Jennifer Erfurth: Yeah, so I just

love AI because we get to be the

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leaders in this journey in HR.

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And so my CEO tapped me on the

shoulder and said, Jennifer, I

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need you to drive this initiative.

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We've got over 500 engineers and

I want you to focus on them first.

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To me it isn't the technical part

of AI, it's that putting the human

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in the center of the business and

it's a change management effort.

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So I brought my HR leadership team

together from around the globe.

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Vietnam, Hungary, Romania,

here in the States.

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And we talked about this and they were

all nervous 'cause they're HR people

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and they go, this is too technical.

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How are we gonna manage this?

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Thomas Kunjappu: Much less

teach and enable engineers.

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Jennifer Erfurth: Yeah.

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And as we got through this conference

together as a leadership team,

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we recognized that this was all

the things we knew how to do.

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It's a change management effort and it's

all about how you upskill and re-skill

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and how you attract the right talent

and how you do learning and development.

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So it's all the things we know how to do.

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And so we need to be the

leaders in this journey.

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Thomas Kunjappu: So you are leading it and

then you're kind of tapped by your CEO.

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It's not in every company kind

of the journey starts that way.

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But as you did that, you focus in on the

engineering team and so what were some of

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the challenges along the way as you got to

these outcomes for the engineering team?

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Jennifer Erfurth: We wanna

drive AI adoption, so we've

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been measuring it for a while.

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And it's just change management because

if I'm an engineer, I like to code.

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Coding is really fun.

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I went into this field because I wanna

code and now you're telling me I'm

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not a coder anymore, I'm a prompter.

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I have to use my judgment, I have to use

my domain expertise in a different way.

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And I think that's

created some resistance.

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And there's always a lack of trust

because AI, two years ago isn't AI today.

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So if I tried it two years ago now

I'm like, oh, it wasn't good then.

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It can't be good now.

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So to me it's a journey

of trust and bringing that

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engineering team along with us.

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Thomas Kunjappu: So when you compare it

to other change management efforts or L&D

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efforts more broadly, is there anything

unique as far as either a challenge

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or on the execution side that you and

your team were going through with this?

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Or would you say, really it is like

we are trying to enable team X with

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software X or team Y with skill Z.

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And that's...

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and this is just put an AI in

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Jennifer Erfurth: I would

compare it to putting in an ERP.

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Because that's a pretty

disruptive process.

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And stock prices drop when they find

out that you're going through an ERP.

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'Cause it is a distraction.

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I'm not saying that this is a

distraction, but it is an upheaval.

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And it's a big shift and it touches

every part of the organization, right?

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So even though we're in engineering,

we're gonna be doing this with everyone

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and we're spending a lot of time on

making sure everyone has the right tools.

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Making sure that people have

the right communication and that

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they have the right training.

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So we're putting together

a whole academy on AI

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Thomas Kunjappu: And eventually

that's gonna go across the

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board for every function

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So before we get to that, so

what is with the engineering

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organization, which was the...

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So what's been the impact of this

work that you and your team has done?

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Jennifer Erfurth: At this point,

we're still measuring AI adoption.

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So we're looking at how many lines

of code are being done through AI.

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And then the acceptance rate

of that code into the product.

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Thomas Kunjappu: Ah, so it's the

quality metric as well, right?

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Because well, with software engineering,

it's not just about the lines of code,

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it's elegancy and also whether it's

useful as judged by other engineers.

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Jennifer Erfurth: And at the end of

the day, which we feel like we'll be

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through the journey in about a six

month timeframe, we wanna make sure

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we're delivering to the customer.

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And that those sprints are faster and that

we're getting the customer what they need

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For their business and to be

true partners with our customer.

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Thomas Kunjappu: So through this journey

with this specific project anyway, do

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you think there are some, like some

broader takeaways you would share for

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any other HR leaders out there who

are thinking about AI transformations?

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And a couple things that come to mind,

first of all is should you always

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start with the engineering team?

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Is enablement that's

one direction to go in.

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And yeah any other lessons about the

execution with the HR team itself to...

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Jennifer Erfurth: Yeah.

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But I think it's important to

get the hearts and minds of

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your HR leadership team first.

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So they don't see it as scary

and that they want to lead this.

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And they know they have

the skills to do it.

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I think that was a very

important part of this.

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And I think it depends on

your business where you start.

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I mean, over 500 of our 1100

employees are engineers.

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That's a big chunk.

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And it is the biggest impact.

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We're a product driven company.

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It's gonna have a big impact on

our products, which it's gonna

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drive that customer satisfaction.

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Thomas Kunjappu: So you

bring up a great point.

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I feel like I've sensed that.

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We're in 2026 now and I think most

people teams are trying to grit their

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teeth and get past that, I believe.

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But what were some of the strategies

you used and what really stood

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out to get the HR leadership team

together and saying let's go forward.

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Jennifer Erfurth: So we

came together in-person.

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So I think that is important.

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Because we're from all these

different countries, Romania,

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Hungary, Vietnam, Americas.

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So coming together and then

bringing the subject matter experts.

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So our Head of Engineering came

and gave us a presentation.

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Our CTO gave us a presentation.

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Our COO, CISO came in

and did a presentation.

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And so we got to hear what the

business needed and then that started

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clicking because they were like,

oh, we know how to do those things.

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We know how to do a

change management effort.

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We know how to help you hire the

right talent, onboard that talent,

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do performance, do compensation.

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And that's really what this whole thing is

about is having a new taxonomy of skills.

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Rather than the old like job

descriptions that we used to have.

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Thomas Kunjappu: So clear

partnerships with all of these

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folks across the C-suite.

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I feel like you've mentioned

like everyone at this point.

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yes.

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At CIO, CISO, obviously the

engineering leadership, et cetera.

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And they have a strategy

as well, of course.

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And you're fully aligned with them.

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That's what you're enabling.

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So like looking for that alignment.

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And then also then the HR

team gets aligned because of

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that or with their report.

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Jennifer Erfurth: And we've put

together from that meeting a good

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project plan of how are we gonna

think about talent acquisition?

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How are we gonna think about org design?

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How are we gonna think about culture?

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And how we embed this change with our

values and our leadership principles.

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So it's an all encompassing

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Thomas Kunjappu: project.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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So now I think you answered my

previous question as it's in

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some ways not a standard L&D.

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An L&D project isn't necessarily

changing your talent acquisition

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strategy or you are questioning your

core values, even like in that process.

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So it ends up becoming

something much bigger.

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Jennifer Erfurth: It touches every thing

that I call the moments that matter.

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Those times where you're having a touch

point with your employee as being touched.

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So you need to make sure that

you think through how you embed

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AI into all of those processes.

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Thomas Kunjappu: And so

now you're past that.

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. And well..

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Jennifer Erfurth: We're

still on the journey.

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Thomas Kunjappu: it's continuing, but

you're also looking at going beyond that

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particular function to the remaining

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Jennifer Erfurth: Rest

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Thomas Kunjappu: of the business

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rest of the business and as you go along.

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And are there like flavors

and nuances that you're trying

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to see as you go through each

function or you're imagining...

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Jennifer Erfurth: I think it's

thinking differently about it.

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And AI because Our CTO is saying, Hey

look, I wanna hire AI engineers to build

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applications for legal applications for

HR applications in-house for these people.

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Instead of just having AI agents,

but actually building apps.

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Because if you use the AI agents to build

the app, it's a much more powerful tool.

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So we're learning about dispersing

engineers into the business to support.

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The business not supporting the product.

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Which is a big shift for us.

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Thomas Kunjappu: And your scale can

start to kind of become a thing.

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It kind of reminds me of my back in the

day when I used to work at Twitter and we

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had an internal like a development team.

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It's fraught with its own

risk, but build versus buy.

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It's like kind of being

reintroduced now, right?

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In partnership with the IT team

because the calculus is shifting.

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Jennifer Erfurth: But I think from

an employee experience, if you can

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build it in-house because it's so much

easier to do and I can actually become

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a coder and use my HR expertise to

build something that fits OPSWAT that

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creates a better experience than if I

were to go out and buy an application.

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Thomas Kunjappu: And as long

as you get the team trained up

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and skilled in that direction.

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So you're actually doing agentic

orchestration, which would be amazing.

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And I personally see as a lot of

the future for anyone who's in like

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a people operations type of role.

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That's the skillset set that you

need to start to like get into.

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But that's fascinating about having

builders for different functions

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and like getting the expertise

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Jennifer Erfurth: Yeah.

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Actual engineers that are

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Thomas Kunjappu: building.

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Yeah.

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I've started seeing that as like

the cutting edge of like some trends

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here that's like really interesting.

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So then as you look ahead, over

the next like a couple years, when

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you look into the HR team itself?

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And we always love talking

about future proofing here.

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What are you looking at doing to

future proof the HR organization?

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Jennifer Erfurth: I think it's making

sure that you take that seat at the

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table with the executive team and

align all the talent strategies to the

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business outcomes that you wanna drive.

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And I think that if you build HR

that way, you're future proofing

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it because you're adding value.

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Thomas Kunjappu: And being tapped

by the CEO to take on such an

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important initiative is I think the

tail end of such trust being clearly

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having being as a signal of that.

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Yeah, I would almost translate that

as to yeah, you gotta be leading the

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AI transformation of the company.

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As now that future proofs you

and your entire like team just

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by being in the mix there.

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Jennifer Erfurth: Yeah.

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And being that leader and helping kind

of be the architect of what the business

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is gonna look like going forward.

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Thomas Kunjappu: I love that.

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Thank you so much for this conversation.

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So if folks wanna connect with you

Jennifer, how can they find you and can...

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Jennifer Erfurth: your work?

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I'm LinkedIn.

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Jennifer Erfurth LinkedIn.

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Okay.

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Thomas Kunjappu: Find

Jennifer on LinkedIn.

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This is again, Thomas

Kunjappu with Future Proof HR.

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Live here with a micro episode

on the show floor at Transform.

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Thanks for joining us on this

episode of Future Proof HR.

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