The demands on today’s HR teams are intense. Leaders are constantly asked to do more with less, all while keeping pace with technology, economic, and regulatory changes. It’s an impossible burden that keeps your teams in a constant state of firefighting.
HR leaders are turning to AI to lighten the load. At HR Tech, Laura Maffucci, vice president and head of HR at G-P, sat down with Scott Guinn, product marketing director at Workday, for a fireside chat on how AI can change the role of HR from admin-centered to strategy leader.
Let’s look at the top five takeaways from their discussion.
#1: Conquering the compliance nightmare
“Employment compliance is the perfect use case for AI,” said Maffucci. “And not just for global compliance. Right now, in the United States, every state is implementing new regulations that differ from other states that you have to stay on top of. So even if you're just in the U.S., even in one state, those regulations are constantly changing. Never mind when you wind up being in multiple countries.”
This is where agentic AI solutions like G-P Gia™ become your best ally. Gia is a first-of-its-kind agentic AI that acts on your behalf and gives you instant answers to all your HR compliance questions across 50 countries and all 50 U.S. states. It’s built on more than a decade of G-P’s proprietary global employment expertise and vetted by in-house legal experts to give you guidance you can trust.
#2: Using AI as your strategic advisor
Beyond HR compliance, AI can also help with the confidential and sensitive parts of HR. “HR can be really lonely. We can't always talk through something that we're working on with someone else because it's confidential,” said Maffucci. “But you have this little AI agent who can become your thought partner that can talk it through with you. A lot of the time, Gia either finds something that we didn't think of, or it points out something about it in a different way.”
AI can also be used to improve managerial effectiveness. It can provide leaders with coaching notes, performance review templates, as well as scripts for difficult employee conversations.
Guinn also highlighted a similar trend in talent acquisition: “When you look at recruiters, for example, as they're compressing the time spent on administrative tasks, AI is freeing them to have more meaningful conversations with candidates,” he said.
#3: Letting AI digest your data to make faster decisions
AI agents like Gia, or Workday AI agents available through Ask Workday, have conversational capabilities that can analyze your company’s data. Guinn explained that Workday processes a high volume of data transactions annually. Ask Workday, which serves as the primary user interface in Workday to interact with AI agents like Workday Payroll Agent or Talent Mobility Agent, uses conversational AI to help users retrieve information and complete tasks that analyze this vast data in natural, conversational language. This allows users to eliminate manual navigation and cross-reference multiple systems to gather the data they need.
With agentic AI, you no longer have to check multiple systems to gather information. You get a holistic view in a fraction of the time, leading to faster, better decision-making.
#4: Building trust in AI by keeping humans in the loop
Building trust in AI is key to breaking down adoption barriers. Guinn called this “responsible AI.” Workday instills this initiative into their products and makes sure humans are always in the loop. Workday also has an AI tool that acts as a business process optimization agent. The tool simplifies business processes and provides sources so employees can clearly understand its logic. This helps build trust with employees.
Trust is also built into Gia through G-P Verified Sources. Some AI tools scrape the internet for answers. Gia has a proprietary knowledge base of over 100,000+ legally vetted articles and 1,500+ government sources to give HR leaders answers they can trust.
Maffucci explained how this is different from other AI tools like ChatGPT: “Over 70% of those [ChatGPT] answers are coming from Reddit, Quora, and Wikipedia,” said Maffucci. “If you've got a legal question or a global employment compliance question, your first thought isn't, ‘You know what? I'm going to see what Reddit says I should do about this.’ That's probably not the best thing to do.” In fact, ChatGPT announced in November 2025 that it would stop giving legal and medical advice over liability concerns.
#5: HR’s unique position to lead AI adoption
HR leaders are uniquely positioned to spearhead AI adoption. Nearly three-fourths of U.S. HR leaders believe their department is ahead of other functions when it comes to adapting to AI initiatives. As HR is already established as the central function responsible for managing organizational change, Maffucci sees this moment as a prime opportunity to lead employee engagement. “You have to get in front of AI. I think it's a unique opportunity for HR to actually be leading something,” she said. “The way to ensure your organization is successful with adopting and using AI is to make sure your employees are coming along. And HR is uniquely positioned to do that.”
For more insights into how companies are using AI to succeed in the new era of HR, watch the full fireside chat with Laura Maffucci and Scott Guinn on-demand.
How G-P can help
As the recognized leader in global employment, G-P helps companies of all sizes hire, onboard, and manage global teams in 180+ countries, regardless of entity status. Our AI-powered global employment platform provides a seamless integration with Workday. So you can sync and automatic your workforce data, including demographic details, salary and payslip information, and invoices. Any updates to global employee details made in Workday will be automatically reflected in G-P.
How Workday can help
Workday uses the power of AI to elevate humans and supercharge work, moving businesses forward. Visit www.workday.com for more information.