Company
June 4, 2025
The AI Agent Debate | Josh Bersin & Maki People on the Future of Work
Recorded on June 4 2025, 5:00 – 5:45 pm CET
TL;DR
• 2025 ushers in the “super-worker.” Generative AI agents will multiply every employee’s output instead of merely automating drudge work.
• From systems to swarms. HR platforms are morphing into orchestrations of autonomous agents that learn, talk, and act in context—no multi-year “implementation” necessary.
• Skills are the new currency. Agentic systems continuously map what people can do, what the business needs, and where the gaps lie—fueling internal talent marketplaces that refresh in real time.
• ROI that lands with the CFO. Faster hiring funnels, sharper retention, and a step-change in revenue per employee make the business case too obvious to ignore.
• Move fast, learn faster. Bersin’s advice: pilot now, build your proprietary data flywheel, and give HR permission to experiment—or risk a strategic dead end.
Meet the Oracle of HR Tech
“Every time technology reinvents business, HR stands at the epicenter.” — Josh Bersin
Josh Bersin has been the industry’s compass for two decades, tracking HR’s evolution from on-prem suites to cloud SaaS and now to generative-AI agents. In a fireside chat with Maxime Legardez Coquin, CEO of Maki People, he set the tone early: the question is no longer if AI will reshape HR, but how fast that reshaping will arrive. His message was disarmingly direct—ignore the shift and HR risks becoming yesterday’s back-office function.
2025: The Birth of the Super-Worker
“All of that is changing right now because of AI.” — Bersin
ChatGPT showed the world that large language models can reason in plain language; enterprise-grade agents are now strapping that intelligence to everyday jobs. Bersin predicts that recruiters, plant managers—even entry-level analysts—will soon wield copilots that draft, analyse and decide alongside them. Far from cutting head-count, these agents create leverage: faster growth, richer roles, and brand-new jobs we haven’t yet named.
From Static Systems to Autonomous Agents
“We’re moving from systems of record to systems of action.” — Bersin
Yesterday’s HR stack was a maze of modules—ATS here, LMS there, HCM everywhere. The future, Bersin argues, is an “agent-native fabric”: specialised AI workers that share context, learn on every interaction and trigger downstream tasks without a single drop-down menu. Ask, “Who in EMEA can lead our GenAI rollout?” and the agent surfaces candidates, models costs and drafts an offer letter—before your coffee cools.
Skills Intelligence: Building a Living Marketplace
“Skills are the new currency of growth.” — Maxime Legardez Coquin
Rigid job codes freeze people in place; agents maintain a living skills graph that evolves daily. Employees receive Netflix-style career recommendations, HR and Finance share a dynamic workforce plan, and recruiters tap a searchable memory of past interviews to spot success patterns. The upshot? Talent moves inside the company as fluidly as capital does on the balance sheet.
ROI That Makes the CFO Lean In
“When 70 percent of a recruiter’s day is admin, freeing that time is an EBITDA lever.” — Bersin
Bersin has seen every buying cycle, and he insists AI finally gives HR a spreadsheet-ready business case: time-to-hire collapses from weeks to days, first-year attrition falls by high-single digits, and revenue per employee climbs by 40-60 percent. When people are your biggest P&L line, even small percentage gains turn into millions.
What HR Leaders Should Do Right Now
“If you’re not adding value on top of AI, you’re going to get left behind.” — Bersin
Bersin’s call to action is blunt:
• Pilot fast, measure hard. Pick a micro-workflow—say, interview summarisation—and track the impact on metrics your CFO already cares about.
• Build a proprietary data flywheel. The sooner your agents ingest unique talent data, the quicker they out-learn generic models.
• Upskill the people team. Recruiters and HRBPs must learn prompt-craft and AI oversight as core skills, not side hobbies.
• Govern for trust. Pair every experiment with clear guardrails on privacy, bias and human sign-off.
Closing Note
“AI won’t replace HR; HR leaders who master AI will replace those who don’t.” — Bersin
The next three years, Bersin says, are HR’s build-phase. Companies that start now will enter the 2030s with an ever-learning talent engine; laggards will be racing on someone else’s track.
Curious about your own agent-native future? Let’s talk.
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