human resources

Our timing is particularly interesting because HiBob has also just announced a one hundred and sixty-six million dollar investment round led by Salesforce.

Ronni gives us an early inside perspective on what sits behind that investment and why it represents an important next chapter for HiBob, its evolution from a modern HR platform towards an organizational intelligence layer built on trusted workforce context.

We get into what HiBob learned when widespread AI usage wasn't consistently translating into workflow change, the role managers play in transformation, and how they are moving from measuring adoption towards measuring business impact.

Ronni is also candid about what he has had to change in his own behavior as CEO, and we learn about Ronni's digital twin.

We also learn about what HiBob now understands about transformation that it couldn't have learned simply from building technology for HR.

We have lots to cover, so without further ado, let's get into it.

[upbeat music] Ronni, welcome back to the Digital HR Leaders podcast.

Can you believe it's been almost four years since you were last on the show?

You

know, HR leaders are being asked to help everyone

navigate AI at work, but many are still figuring out what it means for their own roles.

I mean, how do you guide an organization through a change that you haven't been trained for yourself? And what happens to the future talent pipeline if the work that once helped people start their careers begins to change? Well, my special guest today is Amy Dufresne, CEO of HRCI, and she's simplifying how to future-proof HR in the age of AI.

We're going to talk about why HR professionals feel vulnerable, what leaders need to learn now, and why job design and succession planning cannot wait.

We'll also explore the part each of us plays in staying relevant as work changes.

But before we dive in, my book, Squash the Sunday Scaries, is out now.

It's a practical playbook for HR leaders and people managers who want to rebuild trust, drive performance, and improve the employee experience.

And that, by the way, alone was like a multi-month project.

HR systems companies have all these different parts of their HR tech staff.

We'd get all the data.

We would analyze it.

And you're right, it resonates with them on very personal and different reasons on what their challenge or their problem is, is what they're focused on.

But I tie this because we were talking before we hit record that I've worked with a ton of people.

And the thing that I've seen in my 20 years over and over and over again is that HR is could have a seat at the table, should have a seat at the table, but depending on how they're set up and how overwhelmed they are, how operationally efficient they are, is going to kind of predict how they're seen.

Meaning that, can they tell the story from their data? Can they get influence for having a seat at the table with a point of view? And I had the exceptional Stella Hogan.

I'm told it is.

Michelle Parry Slater very kindly dubbed it as the blueprint for AI in HR.

So I will take that all day long.

But I was writing blogs and reading blogs and there was lots of information, but nothing that kind of really... would support people's confidence and competence in people, tech, strategy, operations, practicality, thinking, a bit of everything really.

I hope so.

Now, I'd love to get into the research in the book and why you were doing so, Erica.

Did you notice there were any patterns or habits in HR professionals when it came to, I suppose, both their perception and their usage of AI? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that, you know, that alone is a huge amount of money from the university's reserves.

Um, one of the results is the university had to centralize HR operations because It had HR, your HR file would be in three or four different locations because of all these different departments and offices.

And so this new president, Carol full comes in and says, we're going to centralize this.

But of course the powers that be the various deans under her and a chase at any sort of effort to take away their authority, their autonomy, and created something of an internal revolt.

Um, it was really one of the first battles that this new president faced and.

And that's something that kind of makes sense.

The federal government had more or less said you need to centralize and bone up your HR operations.

And there was a huge conflict over it.

Without dating.

All of HR, disclaimer, please don't date your staff.

It is a bad thing to do.

HR people, don't come at me.

But if we take that mentality of doing things out of love, respect, and kindness, and want to see the very best out of people, like ideally we should be doing in our relationship.

Like my wife, she's got my back and she calls me on my BS.

If we think of that in some of our companies that we have here, 20 years is a very long time to lose someone of that skill level too.

Yeah.

A TEDx speaker and a TechRound Top 50 Women in Tech and Startups of 2026 honoree, her forensic tools, including Validate, are now drawing interest from NHS...

Sorry, drawing interest from NHS trusts, domestic abuse charities, and HR organizations.

Welcome, Lisa.

I'm so excited to have you here with me today.

Okay, just the people that don't know.

Yes, she's doing HR stuff, and she just moved into she's doing the designing stuff fully.

So we're doing that.

We actually, you know, I mean, she was doing payroll, everything.