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Welcome to this special Best of September issue of Talent Edge Weekly!

First, a shout-out to Jaime Lynn Hendrix, Sr. Director Global Talent and Leadership Development Strategy and Programs at Medtronic, for referring new subscribers to Talent Edge Weekly. Thank you, Jaime Lynn, for your support of this newsletter!

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THIS MONTH’S CONTENT

The Best of September includes 14 of the most popular resources from the September issues of Talent Edge Weekly. They're organized into three sections:  

1. 🤖 AI in the Workplace: Strategies and Impact. Playbook for building an AI-enabled workforce; prioritizing HR use cases; deploying agentic AI; AI’s impact on work tasks, talent needs, and team structures; measuring the ROI of AI; and navigating demographic change alongside AI adoption.
   

2. 🛠️ Talent Practices: Using one-pagers to advance talent initiatives; ensuring top talent occupies critical roles; cultivating talent champions; defining whether performance management emphasizes performance or learning; and building employee change-readiness.
   

3. 🔭 Chief HR & People Officer Insights. CHRO and CPO priorities for the year ahead; evaluating whether to merge CHRO and Chief Tech Officer roles; and tactics HR leaders can use to help build a change-ready organization.

This issue has many bonus resources.

✏️ Last, I invite you to participate in this short survey we’re conducting with Draup on the use of AI agents in HR. Participants can immediately download Draup’s Navigating the Skills Reinvention Cycle Report and opt in to receive the Agentic Intelligence for Talent Report once it is available.

✂️ If this email gets cut off, click ‘Read Online’ 

AI STRATEGY & IMPLEMENTATION

Empowering Organizations with AI: A Playbook for Skilling, Strategy, and Success | AI Workforce Consortium

A 135-page playbook outlines practical strategies, frameworks, and tools to help organizations build, assess, and strengthen AI-related workforce capabilities.

This 135-page playbook provides organizations with strategies and tactics for acquiring AI skills, including the “Build, Buy, Borrow, Bot” framework, as well as methodologies for assessing workforce capabilities and identifying AI-related skill gaps. Developed by the AI Workforce Consortium—led by Cisco and includes companies such as IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Google—the playbook offers tools to support AI workforce readiness. The Consortium was established to address the broader impact of AI on jobs and to help the workforce adapt by promoting strategies and training programs that enable reskilling and upskilling for an AI-enabled future. While the playbook contains too many insights to capture fully here, its five sections provide a useful roadmap: 1) Targeted Upskilling & Reskilling Programs—focused learning aligned with strategy and workforce priorities; 2) Data Quality & Integrity Foundations—practices for data quality, integrity, and metadata management to support AI implementation; 3) AI Interaction Skills—cultivating skills employees need to effectively work with AI tools; 4) Framework for Assessing AI Adoption & Skilling Progress—structured approaches to evaluate adoption and workforce development; and 5) Change Management & Governance—robust change management, communication, and governance to guide transformation and drive engagement. This playbook thoroughly covers the many aspects of preparing the workforce for an AI-enabled future.

Access playbook

AI IN HR

Prioritizing AI-Enabled HR Use Cases Based on the Business Value They Create | Brian Heger

My new one-page worksheet to evaluate and prioritize AI-enabled HR use cases by linking business needs, potential impact, and execution feasibility.

With the HR Tech Conference taking place earlier this month, many HR practitioners explored the latest advancements in HR technology, including AI-enabled platforms that can unlock capacity and deliver greater value to stakeholders. But with so many choices, it’s critical to focus on what matters most; otherwise, efforts get spread too thin and decision-making suffers. To help, I’ve created a one-page editable worksheet that guides HR teams through questions for identifying which AI-enabled use cases are most likely to generate business value in their organization. It begins with business-first questions: What problem, pain point, or opportunity are we addressing? Which stakeholders are most impacted? What evidence shows this is worth solving now? What’s at stake if we don’t act? Only after clarifying the business need does the framework move into solutions: What HR-based AI capabilities could address this most effectively? Why is this the right solution, and what supporting data exist? It then shifts to business impact: What outcomes (e.g., revenue, efficiency) would be most affected, and what ROI can be estimated? When would the ROI be achieved? Finally, it considers execution: What resources are required? What resource gaps must be filled? What risks could arise, and how will they be managed? The tool also provides space to capture a narrative for each area and identify next steps—helping teams move from ideas to action. If you find value in resources like this, learn more about my private community for internal HR practitioners—Talent Edge Circle.

Access my worksheet

DEPLOYING AGENTIC AI

One Year of Agentic AI: Six Lessons from The People Doing the Work | Quantum Black AI by McKinsey

Shares six lessons for deploying agentic AI, emphasizing that true success comes from redesigning workflows, using agents selectively, and fostering effective collaboration between people and AI.

Agentic AI—AI agents built on generative AI foundation models that can act in the real world and carry out multistep processes—offers the potential for major productivity gains. Some organizations are starting to see benefits, but others are still struggling to capture value and, in some cases, have pulled back after unsuccessful deployments. To help reduce risks and increase success, McKinsey shares six lessons for implementing agentic AI. While all are useful, two that stand out are: focus on workflows, not just agents, since lasting value comes from redesigning end-to-end workflows (people, processes, and tools) rather than building agents that look impressive but don’t improve the work; and recognizing that agents aren’t always the answer, as simpler approaches like automation, rules, or analytics can sometimes be more effective, particularly in standardized, low-variance workflows (e.g., regulatory disclosures). The broader point is that deploying agentic AI is less about the technology itself and more about designing systems that enable effective collaboration between people and agents. 👉 In connection with this topic, Talent Edge Weekly, along with one of its sponsors, Draup, is conducting a short survey on the most valuable agentic AI use cases in HR; participants will immediately receive Draup’s report Navigating the Skills Reinvention Cycle and can also request an advance copy of the survey findings. Take the survey here.

Read article

AI AND WORKFORCE STRATEGY

AI Is Moving Faster Than Your Workforce Strategy. Are You Ready? | BCG

Explores how AI adoption is reshaping work tasks, talent needs, and team structures, offering HR leaders insights and tools to plan effectively.

As organizations continue to implement AI tools within the workforce—from general-purpose platforms to specialized solutions—HR leaders play a critical role in helping their organizations understand the impact on work tasks, talent needs, and team coordination. For HR teams seeking to understand these implications and plan effectively, this new article offers valuable insights to consider. One tool highlighted is the AI Talent Horizon Framework, which helps organizations navigate transformation across two dimensions. The first is AI Maturity, which progresses from tool-based adoption by individuals, to workflow transformation, and ultimately to full agent-led orchestration—where autonomous AI agents handle complex tasks with human oversight. The second is Workforce Impact, which considers how each maturity phase affects tasks (how work is done and processes evolve), talent (the skills, roles, and capabilities required), and teams (the structures, culture, and models that shape how work is delivered). Together, these dimensions highlight how shifts in tasks, talent, and teams can be significant. To illustrate how the framework can help leaders segment workforce implications, the article includes an example of how a software engineering role, in addition to other roles, evolves across maturity stages. Additional insights are shared, including seven trends that are reshaping how work gets done, who does it, and how teams are structured.

Read article

AI AND ROI

The ROI of AI 2025: How Agents Are Unlocking the Next Wave of AI-Driven Business Value | Google Cloud

A new 48-page report highlights ROI examples of AI in the workplace and shows how aligning initiatives to clear business goals strengthens adoption and C-suite sponsorship.

As leaders increasingly move from debating whether to use AI to identifying which use cases create the most value, the focus is on scaling capabilities—especially through AI agents—with a strong emphasis on ROI. The second annual report by Google Cloud and the National Research Group, based on a survey of 3,466 senior leaders at global enterprises ($10M+ revenue), provides timely insights on this shift. While there are several insights, one key point (p. 42) is that the greatest returns come when AI initiatives are tied to clear business goals; in turn, this alignment strengthens C-suite sponsorship and fuels adoption. While this may sound obvious, it is often overshadowed by “bright and shiny” AI projects that attract attention but lack a solid business foundation. To avoid this trap, here are six questions I recommend asking: 1) What business problem or opportunity are we addressing? 2) Why is it essential, and who are the key stakeholders that will benefit? 3) What evidence shows an AI-based solution can address the issue? 4) What alternatives were considered, and why are they less impactful than AI? 5) What risks come with implementation, and how will we mitigate them? 6) What are the risks if we do not act now? (e.g., lost market share, delayed launches)? These questions can help assess which AI initiatives are most likely to deliver both the strongest ROI and the greatest executive sponsorship.

Read report

AI AND THE WORKFORCE

AI, Demographic Shifts, and Agility: Preparing for the Next Workforce Evolution | Deloitte Insights

Outlines four opportunities—and practical recommendations—for HR leaders to navigate demographic shifts and AI adoption.

Organizations continue to explore how AI—and especially AI agents—can redefine teams, with AI serving as a “teammate” rather than simply a tool. At the same time, aging workforces and declining labor participation are shrinking talent pools, creating urgency for HR leaders to rethink how people and machines collaborate. Deloitte projects that by 2027, 50% of firms currently using generative AI will have at least piloted agentic AI, which could boost productivity but also raises questions about how to optimize human and machine teams. Based on a survey of 11,000 workers across 17 countries, Deloitte highlights four opportunities for integrating AI and human capital. One in particular—human oversight still matters, but AI wins on speed—examines how organizations can determine which tasks are best delegated to AI and which require deliberate oversight. Deloitte suggests shifting from keeping humans “in the loop” to “on the loop,” treating AI like a junior team member that can be monitored, guided, and corrected. This approach enables organizations to capture efficiency gains without compromising accountability, quality, or trust. To help organizations explore AI’s impact on specific tasks and processes, I am re-sharing my one-page template as a starting point. While not a scalable solution, it can spark conversations on which tasks are best performed by AI, which by humans, and which through collaboration between both.

Read article

HR EFFECTIVENESS + WORKFORCE PLANNING

From Business Case to Action: Using One-Pagers to Advance HR Initiatives | Brian Heger

My cheat sheet showing how using a one-page phased implementation plan—illustrated with a workforce planning example—can make HR initiatives easier to support and faster to move into action.

I recently shared my one-page cheat sheet for framing HR initiatives in terms of the business problems they address. It included space to define the business problem or pain point we’re trying to solve, highlight supporting data, recommend a high-level talent solution (in my example, workforce planning), and outline the negative impact of waiting or not acting. The resource enables us to critically evaluate the business impact of HR initiatives and strengthen the case for executive sponsorship. I’ve found it useful to pair that first one-pager with a second focused on implementation. While the first anchors us in the “why,” the second shows the “how.” By breaking initiatives into clear phases—each with a label, description, and sample deliverables—we can make proposals more concrete and less overwhelming. To illustrate, I’m sharing an example of how workforce planning might be structured across three phases. This is just a starting point that you can adapt to your organization or any initiative. Sometimes, pairing a concise business case with a phased plan is enough to create clarity, build support, and reduce unnecessary complexity—helping us take the first steps toward action rather than waiting for the “perfect” plan or conditions.

Access my one-pager

CRITICAL ROLES & TOP TALENT

Are Your Most Critical Roles Occupied by Your Top Talent? | Brian Heger

Five of my slides to help leaders evaluate whether their organization’s top talent is occupying its most critical roles.

One key aspect of talent management is identifying an organization’s most critical roles. But identification alone isn’t enough. The real value lies in understanding why these roles are important and ensuring that top talent is assigned to them. The rationale is straightforward: since these roles disproportionately influence business outcomes, deploying top talent in them can provide a performance advantage. To help determine if your critical roles are filled by top talent, I’ve shared five excerpt slides from my private community, Talent Edge Circle. Each slide highlights one area with a primary question, why it matters, probing questions to dive deeper, and indicators to consider. For example, the internal benchmarking component asks: Could someone inside the organization realistically perform this role significantly better within the next 12 months? Why it matters: helps determine if higher potential talent already exists internally and whether the incumbent is the best fit moving forward. Probing questions: Have we benchmarked the incumbent against peers in similar roles? Are we keeping the incumbent in this role due to familiarity rather than capability? Indicators to look out for: internal employees in similar roles are outperforming the incumbent, and high-potential talent in the organization is being underutilized. Use this resource as a starting point to identify opportunities to upgrade talent in your most critical roles.

Access my slides

TALENT MANAGEMENT

How to Foster Talent Management Champions | MIT Sloan Management Review

A new article outlining four manager approaches to talent management and five tactics organizations can use to cultivate more enterprise-wide talent champions.

This article introduces a framework that illustrates how managers vary in their commitment to talent management across two dimensions: strategic depth (short-term, task-focused vs. long-term, enterprise-focused) and scope of impact (limited to their own team vs. extending across the organization). Together, these dimensions highlight four levels of commitment: 1) Bystanders—who show little commitment to the organization’s talent strategy and may lack the resources to engage in talent identification, development, and sharing; 2) Protectors—who develop people but hoard them within their own teams (i.e., they don’t share talent); 3) Connectors—who facilitate moves but treat talent management as HR’s job; and 4) Captains—who champion talent as an enterprise asset aligned with business priorities. To shift more leaders into the Captain role, the authors recommend five tactics: aligning business and talent strategies, co-designing practices with leaders, clearly communicating priorities and resources, embedding talent management into leadership roles, and recognizing champions. The “Protector” type directly relates to my previous posts on talent hoarding—when managers restrict the movement of their team members, especially top talent, to other parts of the business. Against this backdrop, I’m resharing my one-page diagnostic, which includes 10 reflection statements, to help managers assess whether they may be blocking internal talent sharing.

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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Teams That Prioritize Either Learning or Performance Perform Better | Harvard Business Review

A new article highlights research showing that PM is more effective when organizations clarify whether they are measuring learning or performance.

Performance management (PM) is a critical talent practice for driving individual, team, and organizational performance. Despite being long-standing, many organizations continue to adjust their PM processes—either due to dissatisfaction with current approaches or a belief that more can be done to improve effectiveness. While PM has many components, this new article (and the academic version it is based on) highlights how providing teams with greater clarity on what matters most and how they are measured can drive improvement. A study of 109 teams in a North American mortgage company found that those required to pursue both learning (experimentation, innovation) and performance (precision, flawless delivery) simultaneously were the least effective, as the dual emphasis created confusion about evaluation criteria. By contrast, teams with a clear primary orientation—either learning or performance—reported stronger purpose, higher morale, and better results. The findings suggest that PM can unintentionally send mixed signals when processes attempt to evaluate employees on both learning and performance; while connected, assessing them together can create ambiguity about what is truly valued, if not managed effectively. For organizations, a good starting point is clarifying their PM philosophy and defining its primary purpose. Once that foundation is set, goal-setting, coaching, evaluations, and incentives can be aligned to reinforce it consistently—helping teams focus, understand how they will be evaluated, and ultimately perform at a higher level.

Read HBR article

LEADERSHIP & CHANGE CAPABILITIES

Help Leaders Build Employees’ Change Reflexes to Create a Change-Ready Workforce | Gartner HR Leaders Quarterly - Third Quarter 2025

Highlights how leaders can help employees build their change capabilities through micromoments—low-stakes opportunities in daily workflows.

Leaders must often help teams navigate multiple changes simultaneously—from new technology launches and strategic shifts to restructurings, cultural transformations, and evolving policies, such as remote work. Each change is significant, but together they can strain the organization and put outcomes at risk. While change management has long been an essential leadership capability, today’s environment requires even greater support. A recent Gartner article introduces the concept of change reflexes—core change skills practiced until they become second nature. Employees with well-developed reflexes are 3.5x more likely to achieve healthy change adoption and 2.2x more likely to report high well-being. Unlike formal training sessions or high-stakes change events, micromoments—everyday opportunities in regular workflows—give employees frequent, low-risk chances to practice until these reflexes become intuitive. At fintech company Jack Henry, leaders embed this by having employees monitor external triggers, such as AI, and lead team discussions—helping them anticipate and prepare for future changes—and by using project debriefs to reflect on how emotions were managed, thereby strengthening emotional regulation skills. Since it’s also critical to help leaders gain a clear view of all changes underway, I am resharing my one-page template, which helps review current and proposed changes, their timing, and their impact across groups.

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CHIEF HR OFFICER OUTLOOK

Chief People Officers Outlook 2025 | World Economic Forum

A new 21-page report highlighting Chief People Officers’ priorities for the next 6–12 months, with a focus on AI adoption and risk management.

The World Economic Forum published its inaugural Chief People Officers Outlook 2025—a 21-page report based on a mid-2025 survey of over 130 Chief People Officers (CPOs) across industries and regions. It identifies three imperatives shaping talent strategy: 1) redesigning organizational structures and roles, 2) strengthening culture and purpose, and 3) advancing responsible workforce AI. Section 2 (page 10) highlights CPO priorities for workforce AI and automation over the next 6–12 months: collaborating with technical teams on AI tools and policies, mapping AI’s impact on jobs, tasks, and processes, and proactively redesigning jobs and workflows. As the report notes, “As AI tools become more embedded in daily operations, CPOs emphasize the importance of evolving traditional job structures.” This underscores that AI is not just a tool but a catalyst for workforce transformation. Alongside these priorities, CPOs flagged near-term AI risks, including employees not adopting or learning quickly enough, career stagnation or skill erosion from over-reliance on AI, and ethical or data privacy concerns—especially around data use in hiring or evaluations. To help organizations explore AI’s impact on specific tasks and processes, I am re-sharing my one-page template as a starting point. I’m also resharing a recent 28-minute podcast by The Conference Board, which outlines CHRO priorities for the remainder of 2025, with priority number one being HR’s role in leading AI and technology transformation.

Read report

THE CHIEF HR OFFICER ROLE

Should Your Company Merge Its CHRO and CTO Roles? | Harvard Business Review

Examines whether companies should combine the CHRO and CTO roles to better align talent and technology strategies in the AI era.

This new article examines whether companies should merge the CHRO and CTO roles to better align talent and technology in the AI era, drawing on the perspectives of three experts on this issue. Keith Ferrazzi argues against merging, emphasizing “teamship”—cross-functional co-leadership grounded in shared purpose and accountability—citing examples such as the Gap and Cisco, where collaboration drove transformation. Peter Cappelli suggests that combining roles could be beneficial, but only if a leader understands both HR and AI deeply; otherwise, small HR–tech teams may be more effective, as AI adoption is less about plug-and-play and more about organizational change. Kalifa Oliver stresses that leaders shouldn’t start with org charts but with clarity of priorities, which in turn informs decisions. To help Chief HR Officers and their organizations with these decisions, the article includes eight guiding questions for leaders, starting with: What problem are we trying to solve? Is the goal efficiency, employee experience, or innovation? Would merging leadership accelerate those outcomes, or create new bottlenecks? Do we have the governance, data infrastructure, and expertise to combine functions effectively? Would a joint leader have the bandwidth and vision to steward both well? Questions like these can help leaders make thoughtful choices that weigh the risks and benefits of different models and determine which are more likely to achieve the desired outcomes.

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HR ENABLING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

How CHROs Can Prevent Common Change Missteps | Gartner

Highlights three areas where misconceptions about change often arise and offers tactics HR leaders can use to build a change-ready culture.

According to a recent survey by The Conference Board, driving organizational change and building culture remains a top priority for Chief People Officers for the remainder of 2025. This raises the question: what tactics can best help HR leaders and their teams create a change culture that enables leaders and employees to meet the continuous demands of today’s business environment? A new Gartner article highlights three areas where misconceptions often arise: 1) Change messaging (defined as the communications and signals leaders and the organization give about change), 2) Change feelings (defined as employees’ emotional reaction and how they feel when asked to implement change), and 3) Change implementation (defined as the things employees need to do to implement a change). Taking change messaging as one example, 78% of HR leaders assume employees need to fully understand why a change is happening or that transparency alone will build trust. Similarly, 56% of business leaders believe they must share as much information as possible for employees to adopt change. Yet the change failure rate remains steady at around 21%, regardless of whether leaders report providing details around the changes. As noted in the article, rather than focusing heavily on the details of the change, the focus can be more on the need to make progress and giving employees the information they need to act on the change. Other tactics are shared for each of the three areas. As a bonus, I’m re-sharing my one-page cheat sheet to help leaders map and pace organizational changes according to capacity.

Read article

JOB CUTS AND LAYOFF TRACKER

Here is my tracker, which includes announcements from a segment of organizations that have announced job cuts and layoffs since the start of 2023.

A few firms that announced job cuts in September include:

• Bosch. (NSE: BOSCHLTD). The engineering giant said it will cut 13,000 jobs in Germany — about 10% of its domestic workforce and 3% globally — as part of a restructuring plan aimed at saving €2.5

• ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP). The Houston-based oil and gas giant said it plans to cut 20–25% of its global workforce—up to 3,250 jobs—as part of a broad restructuring effort aimed at streamlining operations.

• Fiverr (NYSE: FVRR). The freelance marketplace said it will cut about 250 jobs, or 25% of its workforce, as part of a transformation into an “AI-first” business. 

• Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO). The drugmaker announced plans to cut about 9,000 jobs—roughly 11% of its global workforce, including 5,000 in Denmark—as part of a restructuring plan intended to streamline operations and focus on diabetes and obesity therapies.

• Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX). The coffee chain said it will lay off about 900 non-retail employees and close underperforming stores in the US and Canada as part of a turnaround plan, reducing its North American footprint by 124 stores to 18,300 by year-end.

• Salesforce (NYSE: CRM). The cloud-based software company has announced plans to cut over 4,000 jobs, reducing its workforce from 9,000 to 5,000, which is a nearly 45% reduction. However, it has been described more as a “rebalance” rather than a direct layoff, as hundreds have already been redeployed into sales and other parts of the business. The decision comes as AI agents now handle half of all customer interactions.

Access all announcements

CHIEF HR OFFICER MOVEMENT

During September, 62 new announcements were posted on CHROs on the Go, my subscription-based platform tracking movement in and out of the CHRO role. Subscriptions are for monthly or yearly plans. A few headlines are below:

• Compass Minerals (OVERLAND PARK, KANSAS) [NYSE: CMP]— a leading global provider of essential minerals—has named Amy Tills as its Chief Human Resources Officer, effective September 15. She joins from Fluke Corporation, where she served as Global VP of HR since April 2024. Prior to her role at Fluke, she served as VP of Global HR at SPX Technologies.

• Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Inc. (ENGLEWOOD, COLORADO) [NASDAQ: RRGB]—a full-service restaurant chain—announced the appointment of Humera Kassem as Chief People Officer, effective September 15. She joins from Dave & Buster's—a restaurant and entertainment business headquartered in Dallas—where she served as Chief People Officer since December 2023.

• PG&E (OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA) [NYSE: PCG]—a combined natural gas and electric utility —announced that  Alejandro "Alex" Vallejo  has been named EVP, Chief People Officer of PG&E Corporation and its subsidiary, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, effective Sept. 30. Vallejo has been a leader at PG&E for the past 15 years, most recently serving as Chief Risk Officer and SVP, Ethics & Compliance. ​

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