HR leaders are embracing agentic AI. They want their employees to do the same.

It’s fair to say HR professionals have been slower to fully embrace agentic AI than their peers in other functions.

The human resources function is still largely centered around humans, after all. It’s no surprise, then, that a majority of HR departments (82%) weren’t using AI agents last year, according to a Nov. 2025 McKinsey survey.

But some chief people officers are all-in on agentic AI, particularly if their organizations are serious about deploying the technology throughout their workforce. This shift is as much cultural as it is technological, HR leaders told us, as agentic AI requires less human intervention than chatbots.

For some HR executives, AI agents are now akin to coworkers, assisting them with everything from preparing for board meetings to prioritizing items in a daily agenda. In modeling this adoption, the HR execs we spoke to said they hope the rank-and-file will come along for the ride.

Staying organized with AI. Agentic tools can be useful for staying on top of day-to-day tasks, according to people leaders who spoke with HR Brew.

Copilot Cowork, an AI agent that Microsoft launched in March, is “the closest thing I have to a chief of staff in software form,” Nathalie D’Hers, the company’s CVP of employee experience, said via email.

D’Hers said she runs a recurring task on Cowork each morning that briefs her on her schedule, flags items that need attention, and shares documents and other information she needs to prepare for meetings.

“By the time I’m at my desk, I have a single, structured view of my day ready for me instead of stitching it together from Outlook, Teams, and a stack of pre-reads,” she said.

Katya Laviolette, the chief people officer of 1Password, said she prefers to manage her own schedule, rather than have an assistant do it for her. But an agent helps her stay on top of things, she told us. Each morning, it will say things like, “You should prioritize these things, you haven’t answered this. Your meetings are back to back. You should take a bit of a break. It’s like your personal assistant,” she said.

“It’s just validating,” Laviolette added. “I just want to make sure that I haven’t missed responding to you.”

Boardroom buddies. Agents aren’t just acting like administrative assistants, though, as some HR leaders are also using the technology for higher-level tasks.

Preparing to present to the board is one task agents are well-positioned to help with, Brandon Roberts, SVP of talent strategy and workforce transformation at ServiceNow, said. He’s designed agents to act as different members of ServiceNow’s board and executive leadership team, prompting him with questions as if they were the CEO, for example, or chief product officer.

Roberts got the idea for this “AI boardroom” from Allie K. Miller, an AI leader who advises companies like Samsung and Salesforce. To build the agents, he drew upon reams of strategy documents where executives and board members clearly lay out their priorities for ServiceNow, coupled with information about their background, past roles, and companies.

“It’s really good at…having you think about strategic questions that are going to be top of mind for them, that are outside your normal scope,” he said.

Ana White, EVP and chief people and AI enablement officer at Lumen Technologies, told us agentic AI helps her feel more prepared ahead of high-stakes meetings.

“I like to say, ‘Okay, this is my audience. What are the hardest possible questions they’re going to ask me?’” she explained. From there, she’ll offer additional context until she feels properly prepared to present in front of a large audience.

“Continual iteration” is key to getting the kind of answers she wants from agents, White said. “The more you give it guidance, and you continue to have a dialogue…the more you’ll get the information you need.”

Culture > tools. Some workers are, understandably, reluctant to adopt technology that could ultimately replace them. But increasingly, the expectation at some companies is that employees get onboard with AI or risk losing their jobs anyway.

Amid uncertainty about AI adoption and job loss, White tries to keep in mind Brené Brown’s mantra of “clear is kind.”

“AI is changing quickly. It creates a level of uncertainty for people. So we want to reduce the noise and provide as much clarity as we possibly can, sharing what we can when we can, and really being clear,” White said. “Leaning into AI” is now part of Lumen employees’ goals in the performance review process, though she said the company hasn’t set specific usage targets.

At companies where AI is heavily embedded into the business model, “you have to bring your workforce along,” Laviolette said. In addition to using the tool in her day-to-day job, she’s also encouraging employees to build their own agents with user-friendly software such as Dust.

“At the executive level, you can’t just be telling people you should adopt it and you don’t. So you have to walk the talk.”

AI represents “a human shift more than a technical one,” Roberts said. HR plays a key role in facilitating that shift, he continued. “It’s our job to make sure that leaders across the organization are using the technology that’s available to them and building those mindsets…so that people are really changing what they’re doing, instead of just talking about AI.”