Andreas Welsch: 0:31

Hey, it's the end of 2025 and things are getting real. What actually changes when you bring agents into a business? How do teams need to be set up and what do HR and business leaders need to get we'll talk about all that. So let's jump right in. Welcome to What's the BUZZ?, where leaders share how they have turned hype into outcome. Today, we'll talk about how to design your workforce for agentic AI and who better to talk about it than someone who's actively working in this space. Todd, Raphael. Todd, thank you so much for joining.

Todd Raphael: 1:02

Thanks for having me.

Andreas Welsch: 1:03

Hey, Todd, maybe not everybody in the audience is familiar with you or has come across your content. I certainly have, and I've been a big fan of the things that you put out for a long time. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are and what you do?

Todd Raphael: 1:15

No problem. I spent more than a couple decades at a couple organizations Cranes and then ERE on conferences and publications for recruiters, HR professionals and others. And then went to a HR technology company called Eightfold fairly early on and helped grow that marketing department, grow the organization dramatically over three years. And then was recruited to go to a competing organization called Sky Hive, which sold to Cornerstone. Cornerstone on demand. About a couple years ago, and I've been working as a helping HR tech companies, talent acquisition technology companies and related companies, staffing companies and so on over the last couple years, help figure out how to differentiate themselves, how to communicate what they do, how to explain what they do communicate, create content, work with influencers and that kind of thing. Help them figure themselves out and how to find themselves and communicate who they are.

Andreas Welsch: 2:12

Thank you for sharing. I feel a lot of times marketing gets a bit of a bad reputation and I've previously been in, in marketing myself is in my career. But I feel you also, get a very good grasp on what's actually happening in, in the market. What are different vendors doing, what do buyers actually look for, which is why I'm so excited to have you on the show and learn from your perspective as, as well what you're seeing. Todd, it's the end of 2025. It feels like we've talked about AI agents as an industry for, I don't know a year or so. It feels like it's already been a decade in AI years. And it feels like now we're really at this point where we're seeing more and more organizations, more and more leaders, more and more HR leaders also come to the table and say what do we do? We're spinning up individual proofs of concepts and pilots and we're working with different vendors to try things out, and I think that's great. Finally we're moving to towards action, but when I talk to leaders, when I attend vendor conferences and it's probably similar for you as well, it seems that everybody just talks about the building part of agents, but there's not a lot of talk about what actually happens afterward. What happens when you bring them to the organization? What happens when they are in production? I'm curious with all this talk about did your human employees get agent employees? Do we now need to draw parallels to how we manage humans as well? Can we apply some of that to agents? What are you seeing?

Todd Raphael: 3:39

Yeah, I've been to a bunch of conferences this last couple years and including two recently. And there was all kinds of booths having to do with agents and buying agents. And one of'em, you get to build your own agents right at the booth there on a little iPad, and then after five minutes you're done, you got your agent. But yeah, there was not a whole lot of explanation exactly. What does your day look like? What is it? How is this agent kind of work in your workflow? Like you get up, you have a job, you find out there's someone quit, so you have an open job. How do you fill that job using an agent? What do you do? Like step A, step B, step C, step D and E. Like, where's the agent fitting in and what do they do and what do they not do? And then once that agent's part of your workflow, your hiring process. What then do you do? How do you know in six months if it's biased or how do you know if it's accurate? It may be perfectly fair, but not very accurate. You may be not really an imp, maybe not be an improvement over how things were without an agent or maybe there's some personalization with the agent that's no longer working very effectively or something. But, so those are, I think, open questions, but certainly there's not a lot of information exactly. About how do you spend a day or spend a week or a month. With agents, what exactly, how does that work in your life, your work life, your job?

Andreas Welsch: 4:52

Yeah. I mean I've been creating some courses with LinkedIn Learning on the topic what happens when you bring agents to business. And some of them came out at the end of last year. So even very early in, in their wave. But I'm sure things have been evolving and especially as you and your businesses are thinking about this too. My, my recommendation would be, think about it. How, yeah. How do we use these things once, once they're in our business in that sense. And I feel with all that focus on building, to your point, there's not enough conversation about what happens afterwards. Yeah. And that, that opens, many parallels in my point of view to how do we work with people, right? We wanna make sure that depending on the role or the company that we run, background checks are you who you say you are. Permissions for your role. You get certain permissions to certain systems, but not more extensive than what you really need to guidelines. Codes of conduct. I want you to behave in a certain way. I'm thinking about what if technology teams build agents in every different department or every user builds it slightly differently. Do we need to ground them in some sort of code of conduct, for example? What do you think?

Todd Raphael: 6:00

I think that there's this idea that, so a lot of companies I work with are working on talent intelligence or skills intelligence, and they're taking AI and they're taking jobs and trying to figure out what tasks and skills are involved in each job. That by breaking a job up into tasks and skills, you can help predict the future. You can say, oh, this job, half of it may no longer be necessary to be done by a human, or these two jobs could be melded together in the human in the future. So that's good. That's like a great, interesting and useful thing. However, the one thing that I think is missing is a lot of things that humans don't really show up on a job description on a list of tasks, they're not always even apparent. Like I've had the experience and I'm sure most of our listeners have had this experience, I'm sure you have had where someone leaves and you don't realize what they were doing until they're gone. One recent company I worked at eliminated about 35% of the folk, the people there. And there was a lot of chatter among those of us who were remaining where we would say to each other did they know what everyone was? They know what some of these people were doing. And over the subsequent weeks, we found out, no, the company was shocked to find out each time something would happen. It was a task done or something done by someone who's no longer there? Why is that happening? Because it's very abstract. It's very intangible. A customer likes an employee a lot, who's the customer service person doesn't really show up anywhere. A customer hears, Andreas or Todd on a podcast or a prospective customer. Here's Andreas, or Todd on a podcast and becomes the customer that happened to be at Eightfold someone from the military, the Army, heard me on a webinar, contacted me, I got'em in touch with sales folks. And eightfold ended up getting this big thing called a Gig Eagle, this big contract for Army reservists technology that helps find work for Army reservists. These are things that are like not always on a list of a job description or a list of tasks, and they're just these kind of intangible things that happen over time where someone takes these. It takes on things that are human to human relationships that are very hard to quantify. I would think that's a very important thing to consider as you're breaking down jobs and people into tasks and roles using AI.

Andreas Welsch: 8:29

I think that's a really important reminder, right? In this climate when you see layoffs, restructuring left and right in many different industries, certainly tech is leading from what I'm seeing. You do get the feeling that it's numbers on a balance sheet in some cases, right? But there's a lot more, to your point, than the sum of tasks or line items in a job description. Bob and Jane and Sarah do a lot more than these five or 10 bullets here.

Todd Raphael: 8:56

Think about someone getting their hair done. Could a robot eventually get someone's hair cut? I'm sure. Is that really why someone gets their hair done? Probably not. They do it to talk to gossip, to pour out their feelings, whatever. Some senior citizens get their hair done every week or every three weeks or whatever to get out of a senior citizen home and get, take a little field trip, get just, it's something they look forward to. In that example, it's very, it's unlikely that's on the job description of the person. Yes, there are many other jobs that. The human contact is much less important.

Andreas Welsch: 9:30

So a couple of weeks I was on a podcast hosted by a successful CEO of midsize business, and we were talking about agents as well. And I said we're looking at this right now in business a lot of times as a cost exercise, can I take out cost, move out people. We no longer need them. We have agents that can do the work, but what I feel we're missing a lot of times is actually this enablement, this multiplication type aspect. What if we had the same amount of people, but with the help of technology, they became more productive or more efficient, or they had 10 times better insights and could help us grow the business faster. Yeah. Because they know our industry, they know our customers, they know our products. Why is nobody thinking about that? And the answer that I got really surprised me because he said, if I don't need more people, why should I hire them? I don't hire more than I need. And I said that's not the point, right? The point is, you have people in your business, you've already invested in them, so why not give them better tools and better technology to help them be more successful and help your company be more successful? That still baffles me that a lot of times this is the prevailing mindset.

Todd Raphael: 10:34

Yeah. Said.

Andreas Welsch: 10:36

Yeah. Now, we've already talked about a few gaps, I would say in this vision of agents that we see right now. Another one that I'm seeing is, hey, there's not really an org chart, right? If we do compare agents and humans or digital workers and human workers in our human world, we have an art chart. We know who reports to whom. We know what the roles, what the job functions are, we know what the job descriptions are. And yes, there are even more tasks between the lines that employees do, but for agents in theory, anyone can spin up their agent or their team of agent. So what do you feel the org chart looks like or is going to look like as organizations bring more agents into their business?

Todd Raphael: 11:20

Short answer. I don't know. As Peter Capelli, USC professor I talked to recently, reminded me every prediction about business is almost always wrong because people just can't, you just don't dunno what's gonna happen in the future. He gave an example of when people predicted that truck drivers would be obsolete and we've already passed the date. But if I had to predict, which I will, when we think about an org chart, we think about most of us would visualize boxes and lines, and it's like a pyramid. It's like a hierarchy. And I don't know if that hierarchy really is gonna make sense anymore because what we're hearing or what's been talked about is that in this new AI world people's knowledge, their experience, their insight, their connections, those four things I think I listed were. Those are gonna be super important. In the current or old world it was how many people do you manage? If you manage some people, you can get a raise and then you can manage some people with a higher title. Then you can maybe manage some more people with a lofty title. Then you get another raise or something like that's, and somehow you're more important'cause you've managed people, but. What I'm hearing and reading is your importance is partly gonna be based on your knowledge, your experience, your network, your connections, your understanding of an industry and the company. That kind of stuff is not necessarily about how many people you manage when with what titles, which tells me that maybe the hierarchical boxes with lines org chart maybe will not be as valuable. Maybe it'll be more like a sports team or something where like. The manager, the coach, and the dugout, the sidelines of the, in case of basketball or football, is not necessarily the most high paid, or not necessarily the most famous or the most valuable. It's the individual contributors, the players with their skills and their knowledge or whatever. In the case of sports, I guess it would be skills, but the case of corporate life, it might be your knowledge and your connections that might make you more valuable than say, a manager perhaps.

Andreas Welsch: 13:16

So a couple different thoughts there in, things running through my mind as I'm listening to you say this, and one is I wonder how do you acquire that knowledge when. People, when you as an individual maybe do a bit more of that cognitive offloading, relying on AI more and more, and maybe a little too much, how do you gain experience? How do you become more experienced in your role and eventually even if it's a flatter hierarchy, how do you have opportunities and get opportunities to advance when you work with AI as a co thinker or as a, co-pilot in, in, in that sense? That's one. A couple more, but

Todd Raphael: 14:15

I imagine it might depend on the industry. If you were a, an expert in medicine or restaurants or retail or whatever it might be, and you came from some background, whether as a nurse or a physician or a consultant or a retail store manager and you took on a job at some company. Your background might vary, but the key here is that you have a network, you have connections, and you have knowledge, you have expertise. You understand the field, the challenges of it, and that kind of stuff. It's not so much that you are coming to the company to manage a certain number of people with a certain title or anything like that. It's what's in your head that's harder to offload to a computer.

Andreas Welsch: 14:57

So basically what I think I'm hearing, despite all of that technological support at our fingertips and at our availability, prioritize the human connection, prioritize the real world experiences because you can take those from task to task, from job to job in eventually from company to company too, right? That's what makes you valuable. Your knowledge, your unique combination of skills and network.

Todd Raphael: 15:22

I said again. Yeah.

Andreas Welsch: 15:23

So one thing I'm wondering too, right? I used to be a manager. At one point I, I was managing managers who are managing teams. When I read about flatter hierarchies, I put myself back into those shoes from a couple years ago and I'd be pretty afraid Hey, I've worked so hard to, claw my way up the org chart and the hierarchy to get to this position, mid-level, senior level leadership, and now you're telling me the company no longer needs me because there are fewer people that manage more agents. Where is that going? Especially when we talk about org chart and flatter hierarchies is that the reality that you see that leaders need to warm up to or get more comfortable with?

Todd Raphael: 16:06

Yes. I feel that when I see I see a lot of people out there who are. Valuable because of their connections, they're valuable because on social media or on the media or otherwise, they can have an influence. I see a lot of individual contributors with a lot of powerful value that maybe is going getting hidden because they're not managing 14 people. They don't have a lofty title or whatever, but it's those super connectors or those super knowledge folks, or those kind of people who are hidden connectors, hidden sources of knowledge hidden sources of institutional knowledge of an organization who are so often underused, underpaid, and underappreciated.

Andreas Welsch: 16:55

So it sounds like we need to shift again to impact as opposed to just being there and doing the work that you're assigned, but what is the impact you're actually having? Who are you influencing? What are you influencing? More on, on that side when agents can take over some of the tasks that we've been doing.

Todd Raphael: 17:11

And so often it's off the radar screen. I got a note. I'd say it was a few months ago from someone at Eightfold asking me a bunch of questions about some work that I was doing there that they were now assigned to. I haven't been there in since 2022. I left to go to Sky Hive. Been there in three years and no one knew that I was doing this work that I had taken on in my own interest. And, a lot, and that's a very tangible example, but there's a lot of relationships and other kinds of things that just fly under the radar that are very hard to quantify and put your finger on till someone leaves. Yeah.

Andreas Welsch: 17:49

Yeah. Reminds me of some of the things that, that I remember when I was in, in corporate, things that I've done or that I had done 10 years ago or put in place or in practice were still being used. By the time I was leaving with little updates or a little maintenance even though, other people were taking it over so you it all the time. It's a good point. Yeah.

Todd Raphael: 18:08

Just a reminder of this story and if you've been to like a lot of human resources and talent and workforce conferences. You've heard this story and it's probably getting really old, and if you haven't been, it's probably interesting. But so I've heard this story a few times, but Disney, the company did this study where they were trying to figure out they decided they could only put so much eggs in one basket as far as hiring and managing people. They can't, like not every single person in the company is. The most important person in the country company by definition. So they try, they set out to try to figure out, what are the most important jobs in this company that we really need to focus on? Where a slightly better employee is gonna be so much different than a slightly worse employee as opposed to just, it doesn't make a ton of difference if someone's a little better, worse at something. It is it the animators? Is it the people whose check safety on amusement park rides? Is it an actor? Although I guess that was a bad example.'cause the safety checkers are probably important. Who can deny that? But anyhow, they came out with the people at Disneyland or Disney World who are dressed as. Mickey Mouse or Goofy or something in the, and the reason they came out with that being the most important job is that those people are the ones who are most often asked, where's the bathroom? Where's the shortest line? Where's the, when's the sun gonna go down on this ride? It's too hot. Or, we're gonna get a water fountain and like that. Customer experience is like super hugely everything. It's gonna make or break someone's day, the bathroom, the lines, the water, but yet the people's job is to dress up as Mickey and run around, do whatever you do as Mickey. A really powerful example of how these things are intangible and offshoots of our regular day jobs.

Andreas Welsch: 19:54

That's a great example. So I guess I haven't been to enough HR conferences yet. I didn't my assumption was, yeah it's the experience. You wouldn't want to have Mickey or Pluto or any of the other characters be in a bad mood. That's why it's important. But certainly that the tangible things, where can I get water or Yeah. Things matter. Absolutely. Now, to me it feels like the industry has to stick with the ride in an amusement park example, right? Shot through the rollercoaster of the AI hype and the agent AI hype. And we've quickly accelerated to, to get to the peak where I think we're right now, just before the peak, over the last 12 months or so. But I also see a lot of the conversation is actually driven by te. You have vendors that whisper in your CIO's ear, Hey, come build here, build on my platform. Or we've built something into our applications that you can use. But a lot of times who I'm missing and who I feel is not part of those conversations, actually HR leaders, right? So I think as an HR leader, you don't just need to be in the building. You need to actually have a seat at the table when these conversations are taking place. How do you recommend HR leaders get involved when it's a lot of times the IT or technology department leading these agenda AI initiatives? What do HR leaders need to do?

Todd Raphael: 21:12

For one thing in the future, these may become one and the same as has been talked about. You're managing. Work. You're not managing people, you're not managing computers, you're managing work. And so a, it might be that in some companies IT and HR kind of become highly intertwined. You're managing work, whether a person does it or whether a computer does it, or whether a combination of a person or a computer does. So I guess one answer to your question would be there may not be this distinction at some point in the future, But ultimately I think that human resources people may be able to see the big picture better than some other people.'cause they might be able to see on the entire lifecycle of a person. You know what I'm saying? If we use. Ai and it's part of the process. Let's say that we are using artificial intelligence to hire people better based on their skills, not based on where they went to college or whe or whether they even went to college. Let's say that they're gonna try to do that and use AI to find skilled people who maybe didn't go to college or did but right. But make sure they particularly don't ignore those who didn't go to college. So if that's. What is going on? The HR folks might be the ones who best understand how to look at the entire public, entire employee life cycle and say, okay, what kind of skills do we need? Not just for hiring, but once these people are on the staff, how might people be upskilled or reskilled? How do we keep these people from leaving? How do we, design an organization that make people really engaged and motivated?'cause it's a two-way street. You can find the best employee ever and they just are gonna lose interest if you're, if it's a, poor environment. So there's all kinds of aspects to the workplace that from soup to nuts, from start to finish, from identifying a candidate to the time they're. Interviewed, assessed, selected, hired, motivated, stay managed, skilled, re-skilled, moved into other jobs, take on gigs, taking on mentors in-house learning from a coach in-house. There's so many parts of that perhaps human resources folks are well situated to see that big picture. And they also, a bit of a long-winded answer, but they also are probably well situated to have data that show some of these things. So they might be able to show how recruiting connects to retention. They might be able to go, Hey, look, our data show that if you hire this person that you're saying is great, that person's likely to leave in two and a half months. So let's hire someone who would be a great employee, meaning they're going to be great and want to stay. So they might have that kind of data that someone else might not have at their disposal.'cause again, they might have a lot of workforce related insights from their technology.

Andreas Welsch: 23:53

Fantastic. That ties it together so nicely, especially mentioning all the different functions and processes that HR supports. All of them being critical from hire to retire and talent development and succession planning and everything. Wonderful. Todd I've really been looking forward to our conversation. I've been looking for someone to have a conversation like this with in the HR space for quite some time. And it's been a real challenge finding people who are knowledgeable, who have a perspective on this. So I'm super excited that we got to chat today. Me too. Before we close it, I was wondering if you can summarize the key three takeaways for our audience from today. We covered a lot of ground over the last 25 minutes. What would you say are the key three things that our audience members should know?

Todd Raphael: 24:37

Learn from learn more about your people and what they truly, what truly they're, what these true human qualities that they have are not vagaries like empathy, but what truly are they doing for customers or for bringing in customers or other things could be related to technology. What is it they're doing that's maybe not apparent or not on the. On the stat sheet, on their job description or something like, really learn deeply about your people best. You can use technology to help plan for the future to see what can computers do in the future. What can people do in the future? How might we plan our workforce around that? Some jobs may be combined with other jobs. Some jobs can be partially automated. How will that change the job once it's partially automated? So that is number two, to use, your workforce. Planning to think about the relationship between how AI is gonna affect computers and people. In the future. And then I'm thinking on the spot here, but so bear with me. But number three is just the two-way street really. That the, or really the employee lifecycle being not just something that you can't take a sliver and say, we're gonna now hire people based on their, based on skills, not based on their pedigree. You need to look at the entire employee life cycle. Hiring, learning, retention, turnover, re-skilling, mentors, internal talent marketplaces. So people taking on gigs internally. Look at that entire marketplace and think about all of how AI can holistically change and improve everything you do from soup to nuts with with employees.

Andreas Welsch: 26:13

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Todd. Thanks for joining and for sharing your expertise with us. Like I said, it was a real pleasure having you on and learning from you, especially as this space is so nascent and emerging yet moving so quickly. So really appreciate having you on today.

Todd Raphael: 26:28

Thanks.