Peter: First of all, thank you for enriching this year's HR Innovation Day with a keynote. May I ask you to introduce yourself?
Kathi: I’m Kathi Enderes, SVP of Research and Global Industry Analyst at The Josh Bersin Company. We are a research and advisory company for HR. Together with our team, I provide insights on all aspects of HR, leadership, learning, talent, and HR technology. My background is from management consulting at EY, PwC, IBM, and Deloitte, as an HR executive at McKesson and Kaiser Permanente, and for the last five years, I’ve been working with Josh Bersin and our team to build our company to enable the HR profession. Originally from Austria, I’ve worked in Vienna, London, Malaga, and San Francisco, and I now live in Palo Alto, California.
Peter: The title of your keynote is „The Age of the Superworker“. What do you mean by the term „Superworker“?
Kathi: A superworker is an employee who uses AI to dramatically increase their contribution, performance, and productivity while also doing more meaningful and interesting work. Anybody can be a superworker, and it’s up to us in HR to enable the workforce to become superworkers and to build superworker organizations.
Peter: May I ask you to explain briefly the link between AI and HR?
Kathi: For the last 2.5 years (since ChatGPT became publicly available in November 2022), AI has been part of every conversation we are having with HR leaders and their teams. Indeed HR plays a massive role in AI adoption in two areas: 1) supporting enterprise AI transformation through redesign of roles and work, reskilling and development, organizational design, creating a culture of learning and growth, and enabling what we call “change agility”, and 2) embedding AI into HR and talent processes to create a better employee experience, increase performance and productivity of the workforce, and accomplish better people results. So AI transformation is not really about technology (because that is becoming commoditized quickly) but about the organizational and workforce adoption of these technologies into business practices to create value.
Peter: The motto of this year HR Innovation Day is „Making „HR better with AI?“. So here is my important question for HR Professionals: How can HR be better by means of AI?
Kathi: AI in HR plays a significant role for all areas of HR. It’s rapidly changing how we recruit, hire, onboard, develop, reward, manage, and deploy people. There are so many use cases in HR, from simple HR policy support through generative AI to AI-based skills insights for better candidate quality, from AI coaches to using AI for increased pay equity, and from AI-powered learning content development to AI-enabled succession management insights or performance reviews. All of these don’t just make HR more efficient and help save HR time, but they also create a much better, more personalized candidate and employee experience, increase the effectiveness of HR processes to hire better candidates or create more effective development plans, and eventually increase the performance and contribution for every employee. We’ve actually quantified these in one of our reports “Maximizing the Impact of AI in the Superworker Age” that we made publicly available: https://joshbersin.com/maximizing-the-impact-of-ai-in-the-age-of-the-superworker/
Peter: What needs to change therefore at HR?
Kathi: For HR to capture these benefits and significantly increase value and business impact, the HR function needs a new operating system. We call this Systemic HR® - it’s a much more integrated, less siloed, more business-oriented, data driven approach that requires new, “full-stack” HR capabilities. The legacy tiered service delivery model from 30 years ago just doesn’t work anymore. This is the next generation of HR transformation, reinventing the function towards this new model – because AI bridges gaps between HR domains and breaks down siloes.
Peter: Are there perhaps areas of personnel management that do not need to change? Or to put it another way, what things or activities should not be left to AI?
Kathi: AI will impact all areas of HR but it won’t take “over” most areas. Sure, it will support tasks and activities in any area but there are things that it can’t do (yet). For example, an HR business partner may use AI for data analysis, developing alternative scenarios for workforce plans, supporting organizational design and development, and maybe most importantly offloading administrative activities they currently perform on behalf of their business partners, but it will not replace the role of the HR business partner. On the contrary, it holds the promise to finally deliver on a much more value-added HRBP role. The same holds true for all other domains – roles will change, some of them significantly, but new roles and functions will be created. For example – who will maintain the corpus that powers the AI? Who controls and tunes the AI? Who oversees that the right AI agents are deployed and work together well? It’s a new world, and I’m excited for the potential.
Peter: Users of AI - especially in HR departments - report employees' fears. How can these be effectively countered?
Kathi: Fear of change is a big hurdle, and it’s nothing new. We’ve seen these fears in previous automations – when the ATMs were invented, bank tellers were afraid all their jobs would go away. The reason why AI seems scarier is because it’s moving so fast, and because we tend to personify it. But of course it’s not a person, it’s not sentient, it doesn’t have a will. The best way to overcome fear of AI is to start using it. Many people use it in their personal lives already – in fact, whenever we talk with HR teams about this, we hear that 90-95% of them already embed ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini (or other AI assistants) in their everyday lives, for vacation planning, finding recipes, writing better emails, improving their communication skills, and much more. Yet when it comes to work, there is a huge discrepancy between the 5-10% of AI superusers and the rest who are barely using these tools at all. Most companies provide secure AI tools to their employees and many foster hackathons, AI discussion groups, mentoring (or reverse mentoring where younger employees mentor more experienced ones in AI use), communication and celebration of AI successes, and more. We’ve studied these practices and what works in detail and collaborated with Microsoft on a whitepaper.
Peter: Without telling too much, what can the listeners expect from your Keynote in general?
Kathi: It’s a very optimistic, positive story that explains how we got to this place of supporting superworkers, what organizational requirements need to be in place to create superworker companies (we call this dynamic organizations), and what role we in HR can play. We’ll touch on creating talent density, fostering systemic HR, the new role of the CHRO, and provide a four-stage model for work redesign in the age of AI. For a teaser, watch this 3-minute video our team created to explain the concept of the superworker.
Peter: Finally, a question I'd like to ask all the speakers and workshop hosts. Why are you keynoting at the HR Innovation Day 2025?
Kathi: I’m thrilled about the opportunity! Because I am originally from Austria, it felt like a great fit to talk with a group in Germany and with such a forward-thinking leader like you, Peter. I wish I could do the keynote in German (I speak it at home), but my material and talk track are all in English. The topic of the HR Innovation Day 2025 fits perfectly with our focus for 2025 and for what’s on the mind of all business leaders. Thanks for inviting me!
Peter: Thank you very much today for your support of the HR Innovation Day. I look forward to listen to your keynote.
My interviewee, Kathi Enderes, is the Senior Vice President of Research and Global Industry Analyst at the The Josh Bersin Company; she leads research for all areas of HR, learning, talent and HR technology. Kathi has more than 20 years of experience in management consulting with IBM, PwC, and EY and as a talent leader at McKesson and Kaiser Permanente. Most recently, Kathi led talent and workforce research at Deloitte, where she led many research studies on various topics of HR and talent and frequently spoke at industry conferences. Originally from Austria, Kathi has worked in Vienna, London and Spain and now lives in Palo Alto/California. Kathi holds a doctoral degree and a masters degree in mathematics from the University of Vienna.
Peter: The title of your keynote is „The Age of the Superworker“. What do you mean by the term „Superworker“?
Kathi: A superworker is an employee who uses AI to dramatically increase their contribution, performance, and productivity while also doing more meaningful and interesting work. Anybody can be a superworker, and it’s up to us in HR to enable the workforce to become superworkers and to build superworker organizations.
Peter: May I ask you to explain briefly the link between AI and HR?
Kathi: For the last 2.5 years (since ChatGPT became publicly available in November 2022), AI has been part of every conversation we are having with HR leaders and their teams. Indeed HR plays a massive role in AI adoption in two areas: 1) supporting enterprise AI transformation through redesign of roles and work, reskilling and development, organizational design, creating a culture of learning and growth, and enabling what we call “change agility”, and 2) embedding AI into HR and talent processes to create a better employee experience, increase performance and productivity of the workforce, and accomplish better people results. So AI transformation is not really about technology (because that is becoming commoditized quickly) but about the organizational and workforce adoption of these technologies into business practices to create value.
Peter: The motto of this year HR Innovation Day is „Making „HR better with AI?“. So here is my important question for HR Professionals: How can HR be better by means of AI?
Kathi: AI in HR plays a significant role for all areas of HR. It’s rapidly changing how we recruit, hire, onboard, develop, reward, manage, and deploy people. There are so many use cases in HR, from simple HR policy support through generative AI to AI-based skills insights for better candidate quality, from AI coaches to using AI for increased pay equity, and from AI-powered learning content development to AI-enabled succession management insights or performance reviews. All of these don’t just make HR more efficient and help save HR time, but they also create a much better, more personalized candidate and employee experience, increase the effectiveness of HR processes to hire better candidates or create more effective development plans, and eventually increase the performance and contribution for every employee. We’ve actually quantified these in one of our reports “Maximizing the Impact of AI in the Superworker Age” that we made publicly available: https://joshbersin.com/maximizing-the-impact-of-ai-in-the-age-of-the-superworker/
Peter: What needs to change therefore at HR?
Kathi: For HR to capture these benefits and significantly increase value and business impact, the HR function needs a new operating system. We call this Systemic HR® - it’s a much more integrated, less siloed, more business-oriented, data driven approach that requires new, “full-stack” HR capabilities. The legacy tiered service delivery model from 30 years ago just doesn’t work anymore. This is the next generation of HR transformation, reinventing the function towards this new model – because AI bridges gaps between HR domains and breaks down siloes.
Peter: Are there perhaps areas of personnel management that do not need to change? Or to put it another way, what things or activities should not be left to AI?
Kathi: AI will impact all areas of HR but it won’t take “over” most areas. Sure, it will support tasks and activities in any area but there are things that it can’t do (yet). For example, an HR business partner may use AI for data analysis, developing alternative scenarios for workforce plans, supporting organizational design and development, and maybe most importantly offloading administrative activities they currently perform on behalf of their business partners, but it will not replace the role of the HR business partner. On the contrary, it holds the promise to finally deliver on a much more value-added HRBP role. The same holds true for all other domains – roles will change, some of them significantly, but new roles and functions will be created. For example – who will maintain the corpus that powers the AI? Who controls and tunes the AI? Who oversees that the right AI agents are deployed and work together well? It’s a new world, and I’m excited for the potential.
Peter: Users of AI - especially in HR departments - report employees' fears. How can these be effectively countered?
Kathi: Fear of change is a big hurdle, and it’s nothing new. We’ve seen these fears in previous automations – when the ATMs were invented, bank tellers were afraid all their jobs would go away. The reason why AI seems scarier is because it’s moving so fast, and because we tend to personify it. But of course it’s not a person, it’s not sentient, it doesn’t have a will. The best way to overcome fear of AI is to start using it. Many people use it in their personal lives already – in fact, whenever we talk with HR teams about this, we hear that 90-95% of them already embed ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini (or other AI assistants) in their everyday lives, for vacation planning, finding recipes, writing better emails, improving their communication skills, and much more. Yet when it comes to work, there is a huge discrepancy between the 5-10% of AI superusers and the rest who are barely using these tools at all. Most companies provide secure AI tools to their employees and many foster hackathons, AI discussion groups, mentoring (or reverse mentoring where younger employees mentor more experienced ones in AI use), communication and celebration of AI successes, and more. We’ve studied these practices and what works in detail and collaborated with Microsoft on a whitepaper.
Peter: Without telling too much, what can the listeners expect from your Keynote in general?
Kathi: It’s a very optimistic, positive story that explains how we got to this place of supporting superworkers, what organizational requirements need to be in place to create superworker companies (we call this dynamic organizations), and what role we in HR can play. We’ll touch on creating talent density, fostering systemic HR, the new role of the CHRO, and provide a four-stage model for work redesign in the age of AI. For a teaser, watch this 3-minute video our team created to explain the concept of the superworker.
Peter: Finally, a question I'd like to ask all the speakers and workshop hosts. Why are you keynoting at the HR Innovation Day 2025?
Kathi: I’m thrilled about the opportunity! Because I am originally from Austria, it felt like a great fit to talk with a group in Germany and with such a forward-thinking leader like you, Peter. I wish I could do the keynote in German (I speak it at home), but my material and talk track are all in English. The topic of the HR Innovation Day 2025 fits perfectly with our focus for 2025 and for what’s on the mind of all business leaders. Thanks for inviting me!
Peter: Thank you very much today for your support of the HR Innovation Day. I look forward to listen to your keynote.
My interviewee, Kathi Enderes, is the Senior Vice President of Research and Global Industry Analyst at the The Josh Bersin Company; she leads research for all areas of HR, learning, talent and HR technology. Kathi has more than 20 years of experience in management consulting with IBM, PwC, and EY and as a talent leader at McKesson and Kaiser Permanente. Most recently, Kathi led talent and workforce research at Deloitte, where she led many research studies on various topics of HR and talent and frequently spoke at industry conferences. Originally from Austria, Kathi has worked in Vienna, London and Spain and now lives in Palo Alto/California. Kathi holds a doctoral degree and a masters degree in mathematics from the University of Vienna.