The intelligence advantage: How data + AI help HR empower employees

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Powered by data. The market is saturated with AI-generated resumes, and regulations are changing overnight. HR’s plate is full. That’s why Equifax is helping teams automate manual tasks,—so people pros can get back to what they do best. Grounded in employee data, Equifax is supporting employers as they build teams for the long term. Learn more.

When you think of Equifax, you probably picture credit reports. But Equifax is more than just financing—and it’s planning new ways to support employees long term.

On April 21, HR Brew hosted The Talent 2030 Collective, featuring conversations about the future of the workforce and how it intersects with data, compliance, and more. Morning Brew Inc.’s own Kyle Hagge chatted with a panel of pros from Equifax, including Chris Johnson, SVP + general manager of employer services; Bart Lautenbach, SVP + general manager of talent solutions; and Stefani Steinway, SVP of HR.

They discussed how a company best known for credit reporting is using AI to innovate the hiring and employee experience. Here’s what you missed.

Building trust in an AI-driven marketplace

Hagge kicked off the conversation with a deep dive into trust among candidates, employees, and employers in the AI age.

“There’s this adage: ‘Trust but verify,’” Hagge said. “By 2030, people could be able to use AI to create work history that is inaccurate, perfect resumes, and we’re even seeing 'deepfaked' preliminary video interviews. I’m curious what you think about having a really good candidate experience that doesn’t feel like a forensic audit but still makes sure [their history] is true?”

“Gartner would say that by 2028, 1 in 4 job seekers will be completely fake,” Lautenbach said. “There’s another stat that says 71% of HR professionals have experienced some level of misleading resumes or background information. I was surprised it was that low.”

Lautenbach explained that AI creates both a security and productivity issue for HR teams. From issues verifying credentials to fake resumes jamming up the hiring process, AI leveraged in the wrong ways complicates HR’s job.

“[It’s important to] make sure that you’ve got something that can verify employment, identity, and education credentials,” Lautenbach said.

“When I think about how we’re going to fight deepfakes and how we’re going to handle difficult AI situations, we sit with our HR team as we do product development to talk to the practitioners,” Johnson said. “We ask them how they’d like us to build things, and we think it’s one of the benefits of our process.”

Equifax reports a 45% increase in the number of applications they’re receiving in the US.

“A lot of the time, the talent acquisition team is weeding through those bot applicants,” Steinway said. “Luckily, while [Lautenbach] is there verifying that data and [Johnson] is helping secure it from the compliance standpoint, this technology allows me to free up time and really think about the seamless experience for candidates, talent acquisition, and hiring managers.”

The compliance conundrum

As Johnson’s team works through its work authorization process and runs I-9s, it bumps into the same problem over and over again: fraudulent documents.

“There’s always been somebody who shows up with a fake ID,” Johnson said. “It’s just getting much more difficult to understand and process the nuances of those documents, particularly when they’re more complex documents. We’re thinking about how we can take that burden off of our HR clients, and how we can make it simple and easy to achieve compliance and also feel confident that [Equifax] is handling it well. To do that, we’re baking AI into our systems to detect AI coming in from our employees.”

“It’s AI versus AI all the way down,” Hagge joked.

Now, the team at Equifax is building an AI agent that understands everything about every work authorization document out there, with the goal of streamlining the process for hiring teams.

Boosting resilience among volatile regulations

AI isn’t HR’s only hurdle. People teams have to move quickly to keep up with laws and regulations that are changing almost as fast as AI itself.

“What we’re seeing is that clients broadly are thinking that they need to move from a reactive to a proactive stance,” Johnson said.

He asked the room of HR professionals if anyone was up all weekend looking at new temporary protective status revocations, and heads nodded across the room.

“Those administration rulings came down at 5 o’clock on a Friday afternoon,” Johnson said. “What we’ve seen [be effective] has been working with the folks that can pull that information, identify it for you, get ahead of the problem, and figure out how employers can put ourselves in a position where we know that we’re going to be able to continue to employ folks come Monday.”

Ever-changing regulations and the pressure to maintain compliance adds a burden for HR leaders looking to run a streamlined hiring process.

“I come from the IT world, so I always think of the adage ‘people, systems, data,’” Lautenbach said. “And that the stronger your systems and data are together makes it easier to adapt to other situations. Think of a single source of truth versus running all of your data in spreadsheets that are in a million different locations. Having one central place where you have your data becomes a big advantage.”

Keeping the human touch

The panelists wrapped up the conversation chatting about what happens when AI takes the manual administrative tasks off HR’s plate.

“I think when you take compliance, onboarding, and financial health burdens off of HR, it can now focus on things that are much higher order,” Johnson said. “Thinking about organizational strategy, creating a deep bench from a succession perspective, and how they can find the best talent. Those opportunities are within your grasp, but you’ve got to let go of the things that are taking up the day-to-day.”

The conversation then shifted to culture and how leaders can help HR get back to doing what they do best: transforming company culture and supporting employees.

“Having data as a prerequisite, [I think about] mindset,” Lautenbach said. “How are you growing the mindset and attitude of your organization as you look forward? Those softer things become super possible now that you’ve got some of the hard data underneath that to bring the two together.”

Steinway agreed, emphasizing how important company culture also is in creating a positive customer experience.

“[Without manual tasks on HR’s plate], you get to focus on helping employees continue to grow and bring in a really strong culture for the customers at the end of the day,” Steinway said. “Employee engagement becomes that much richer, which leads to a higher customer experience and greater return.”

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Sad to have missed the full event? Catch up with HR Brew here and learn more about Equifax.