There’s a famous saying you’ve probably heard about building the plane while flying it, but for AI governance pros, there’s no hanger in sight. It seems like building AI(rplane) governance systems will continue to occur on the fly.

As AI tools inside the workplace evolve from experimentation and beta testing to a core part of everyday infrastructure, an ongoing challenge faces the pros charged with guiding deployment and use, and managing the technology’s risk. While organizations push forward with AI tools and new processes, the legal and regulatory environment remains laggart, fragmented, and often fluid, making governance a complicated task.

“What our clients are dealing with is—in some ways—very similar to what they’ve been dealing with for the past three years, which is uncertainty,” said Proceptual founder and CEO John Rood, who helps companies with AI governance and compliance efforts. “Not only do we not know what government, at what level, will pass what legislation with any reasonable certainty, we also don’t know if legislation is passed, it will actually be put into effect.”

For more on the ways in which the evolving compliance landscape has complicated AI governance, keep reading here.—AD

Big changes are happening within Microsoft’s HR team. The tech giant announced sweeping changes to its HR function last month via an employee memo sent by its chief people officer, Amy Coleman, and subsequently obtained and leaked by Business Insider.

The memo announced the departures of several top HR executives, including its chief diversity officer, Lindsay-Rae McIntyre (who was then named Alaska Airlines’ CPO on Mar. 30), as well as a restructuring to better support the development and deployment of AI within HR and Microsoft broadly. It indicated that the goal of the shakeup was to keep the HR function’s processes up to date in an AI era.

“We’re in a time when technology, the way we work, and our org structures are all evolving. The pace of change is exceeding what our current operating model and decision rhythms were built for,” Coleman wrote in the memo.

Zoom out. Later that same day, Coleman spoke at the Wall Street Journal’s CPO Council Summit, where she shared how AI is transforming the HR function. While she did not acknowledge the changes to her team, she said AI has helped HR better support other parts of the business. As an example, she said that in tandem with AI, the HR function is practicing the business framework of continuous improvement, focusing on ongoing efforts to improve their processes or services.

For more on how AI is transforming HR at Microsoft, keep reading here.—PM

Benjamin Granger is the chief workplace psychologist at cloud-based experience management platform Qualtrics, where he leads the intersection between employee and customer experience. He’s set to speak at HR Brew’s upcoming summit, Talent 2030 Collective: Recruit, Retain, Repeat, on April 21 about how workforce analytics can better support employee development and performance. Before then, we had a chance to catch up with him about the “employment situationship,” and why onboarding is one of the worst places to cut corners.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

If you zoom out, what’s the biggest shift happening in the talent landscape right now that HR leaders can’t afford to ignore?

The “Employment Situationship” is an arrangement that has real stakes but in which neither employees nor employers fully commit to each other. For a long time, the employee-employer relationship was built on loyalty and reciprocity. But today, we’re seeing many organizations move toward transactional work models (gig work, contractor work, part-time work) and underinvest in their new hires, part-time workers, and customer-facing workers. Meanwhile, employees are stacking jobs, moonlighting, and putting away savings because they realize the stakes and worry they’re viewed as dispensable.

For more from our conversation with Granger, keep reading here.—JK

While most workers tolerate their commute, satisfaction drops as travel time rises. Here’s how HR leaders can “earn the commute” by improving flexibility, office experience, and in-person engagement.