Reaching the Frontier: What Agentic AI Changes in HR
Reaching the Frontier: What Agentic AI Changes in HR
Design choices leaders must make as AI begins to act
AI in HR is moving from assistive tools to systems that can initiate actions, route work and trigger decisions within defined bounds. This shift exposes weaknesses in existing governance, productivity measures and decision rights that many organisations are unprepared for. This practitioner-led session focuses on the real design consequences of agentic AI: where control must be redesigned, which metrics become misleading, and why delaying decisions increases rather than reduces risk.
This session explores
- What distinguishes agentic AI from assistive automation in HR workflows.
- Where decision rights and accountability models break down first.
- Why existing governance and control mechanisms no longer map cleanly.
- How productivity metrics distort once AI initiates actions.
- The leadership decisions required before adoption scales.
Learning outcomes
- Recognise where agentic AI creates new organisational risk and opportunity.
- Identify which HR workflows can tolerate agentic behaviour today.
- Redesign governance and controls to preserve trust and auditability.
- Replace misleading productivity metrics with decision-relevant signals.
- Clarify near-term leadership decisions that cannot be postponed.
26 February 2026
10:50-11:20 CET
Ralf Buechsenschuss
AI Workforce & Transformation Lead
Value
Lens
Learning Pathways
Why this matters
Organisations are under pressure to extract productivity and capacity gains from AI while remaining compliant, auditable and trusted. As early agentic capabilities appear inside HR workflows, leaders face immediate design choices around accountability, governance and measurement that cannot be deferred without creating operational and regulatory risk.