The Josh Bersin Company

This week ServiceNow launched a massive set of new products to establish itself as the system that manages every AI agent in the enterprise.  It’s a bold set of new products, including Otto (Moveworks), the Agent Fabric, the Context Engine, and the Autonomous AI Specialists. In reality the strategy is an expanded view of what Workday (Agent System of Record and Sana) and Microsoft (Agent 365 and Work IQ) are doing, but with a much deeper set of tools. Not only is this a bold move to accelerate Agentic HR and Agentic business systems, it now explains why enterprise software companies are far from dead. In fact, the monetization model here is for you to pay for AI credits (ServiceNow has different levels of usage) and that revenue, which helps ServiceNow grow, is offset by your reduction in labor cost. It’s all explained in this article and the podcast, and the implications are big for IT, HR software companies, and all of you trying to build AI solutions for your team. Additional Information (Note that all our research and podcasts are at your fingertips in Galileo) The Reinvention of Workday: From System of Record to Platform of Agents Could Microsoft Win The War For Enterprise AI? The AI vs. Labor Economy, Why Benefits Are Being Cut, The Role of Legacy Systems The Context Layer (Semantic Layer) In Enterprise AI (And Where Business Rules Go) The Superagent for HR: Galileo Mars Release

I had an uplifting conversation with Jen Morgan, the CEO of UKG, a $5 billion global AI platform for HR, pay, and workforce management. In addition to talking about the company and her role as CEO, she actually has another mission: to put Frontline Workers first in our economy. Frontline workers, the people who deliver groceries and food, care for patients in the hospital, work in hospitality, or maintain public safety, make up 72% of the US workforce and almost 80% of employees worldwide. These often hourly or shift workers form the backbone of our economy: making our lives better, putting out fires, and keeping our streets safe. UKG’s mission is to make their work lives better through better scheduling, pay, benefits, hiring, and training systems – all in an integrated offering called “The Workforce Operating Platform.” Built through the merger of Kronos with Ultimate Software in 2020, UKG has pioneered this groundbreaking integrated solution. UKG has more than 80,000 customers and serves more than 65 million workers every day. And its software and tools support and monitor much of their daily lives at work, so Jen knows a lot about what it takes to run what we call a “Frontline First” company. I know you’ll enjoy this conversation, and stay tuned for our new research on the Dynamics Of The Frontline, coming this month. Additional Information UKG Stakes Out Leadership Position In $6.5 Trillion Market For Frontline Work Powering the Frontline Workforce: How Frontline-First Companies Thrive Josh Bersin Company Highlights Cost of Neglecting Frontline Workers Get Galileo, The AI Superagent for HR

This week we saw some astounding GDP numbers, a modest 2% growth with an astounding 70% attributed to AI capital spending. The US economy is heavily AI centric, starving spending on housing which ultimately contributes to income inequality. At the same time companies are now reducing employee benefits, halting a two decade steady increase. It’s all about the shift from labor to machines, I guess. I also talk about the role of legacy systems in the new world of Agentic HR, Agentic Finance, and Agentic ERP. Lots going on, I hope this gives you some perspective on the massive AI economic transformation we’re living in. It’s all good and one of the most exciting times in our careers. Additional Information Why AI Is A Massive Job-Creation Technology, Despite What You Think Introducing HR 2030: A Vision For Agentic Human Resources The Reinvention of Workday: From System of Record to Platform of Agents The Superagent for HR: Galileo Mars Release Irresistible 2026: The Global Conference for HR Leaders and their Teams (June 8-10, USC)

What does it take to bridge one of the most persistent translation problems in talent acquisition – getting a Fortune 500 recruiter to see why a Little Bird attack helicopter pilot from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment is the perfect candidate for their open role? Tim Best, CEO of RecruitMilitary and former active duty Army officer, gives us a mission-driven and practical answer: go beyond the resume. Resumes and job descriptions flatten people. And for veterans, who enter the civilian workforce carrying hundreds of thousands of skills and attributes that don’t map to corporate job architectures, that flatness is the enemy. The technology RecruitMilitary built with Findem, the Veteran Talent Source, solves this by giving recruiters a three-dimensional view of who a candidate actually is: not just what they did, but what they’ve continuously become. Because profiles are enriched in real time, the candidate in someone’s ATS today is not the candidate from 25 years ago – and the AI knows the difference. The results are outstanding. In 2025, RecruitMilitary created over 600,000 connections between employers and military community job seekers. The hyper-personalized outreach campaigns powered by the Veteran Talent Source are generating email open rates of 80–90% and click-through rates five times higher than industry norms. These aren’t just efficiency gains but create a fundamentally better experience for veterans, who have long lived with the frustration of applying and never hearing back. Tim’s vision is for veterans inundated with recruiters who understand them, not spam from algorithms that don’t. But Tim’s ambitions go further than better sourcing. He wants veteran hiring to stop being a special project that lives in a corner of the TA function and instead become a normal part of a recruiter’s everyday workflow, all made possible by AI. Looking ahead to the agentic AI era, Tim sees the next leap: intelligent job posting and agent-driven delivery that reduces friction between “here’s my job description” and “here are the right people to talk to” to (almost) nothing. This conversation is essential listening for anyone in talent acquisition who wants to understand how AI creates new business value, not just faster versions of the old model. Related resources Podcast: Why AI Is A Massive Job Creation Technology. Automated Integration. Findem. And Thank You. Research: Insights-First AI: Better and Explainable People Decisions Research: The Talent Acquisition Revolution: How AI is Transforming Recruiting

This week I discuss Workday’s new AI announcements described at the Innovation Summit last week. These are sweeping new product, leadership, and organizational changes that effectively reposition from a “system of record” to a “platform of agents.” As you’ll hear, not only is Workday clearly articulating their strategy to support and enable Agentic HR and Agentic Finance, the company has changed its organization, culture, and financial model. There’s a lot to unpack here, and I know all Workday customers, partners, and competitors will have opinions. In this podcast I try to explain this whole story and why it marks the beginning of a very new chapter for Workday as a business. Additional Information Experience Sana for Yourself: Galileo Mars Release Irresistible 2026: The Global Conference for HR Leaders and their Teams (June 8-10, USC) HR 2030: The Agentic Future of HR (detailed handbook coming!) Detailed Article on Workday