What does it look like when a 116-year-old technology company goes all-in on agentic AI? Nickle LaMoreaux, one of the world’s leading CHROs at IBM and an executive on our association’s Center on Workplace AI, sat down with Tim Richmond and Tim Bartl in our Q2 Chair’s Forum to answer exactly that.
IBM has been a major player throughout the computing evolution: mainframe, PC, cloud, and now AI. Now, Nickle said, the task is transforming the enterprise during unprecedented change. “How do I tell my organization what skills to prepare for when we don't know what the future will be?” It’s a million-dollar question.
“This is uncharted territory and it creates a lot of uncertainty.” She recommends talking candidly with teams, department heads and fellow c-suite about what skills are needed now (then revisit in 3, 6, 12 months), share that out to employees, offer context, lay the groundwork and then pivot as needed.
Here are a few key insights from the discussion:
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Productivity is not the end game; growth is. IBM leaders conducted a thought experiment, assuming that 50% of its current work could be done with AI in the next 2-3 years, but it kept its headcount flat. “We asked ourselves what new markets and opportunities does that create?”
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A growing headcount. Answering that question led IBM to triple their entry-level hiring for 2026 but reframing the jobs for current needs. “We are onboarding a class of entry-level hires this summer to do all new work. But I think those same entry-level jobs, we will rewrite in 2027.”
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An augmented workforce (not an artificial one). "I wish we could call this augmented (not artificial) intelligence" because there are very few situations where AI replaces an entire job. It takes away some of the work or lets people do their existing work faster. But without that reframe, employees think, why would I contribute to building an agent if it's going to take my job? Nickle said CHROs should develop a talent strategy for what happens to those specific roles.
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Measuring real ROI. The company has realized significant ROI from AI that it has been able to then focus on growth. For instance, an employee transfer that used to take a manager 15 minutes to complete now takes one minute through an NLP agent. On an individual level, this isn’t significant but across the workflow bigger savings add up.
AI will soon be the single most expensive line item in most companies. AI tokens are expensive. Leaders need to prioritize where AI will be deployed. Do leaders want to spend money on AI to write emails faster or focus on more productive uses? What’s the backlog of work that you’re not getting to that you need to get to?
Tying compensation to new skills. “Everyone says continuous learning matters. But do you pay, train, assess, and promote based on learning agility?” Nickle said too often the answer is no. IBM has decided to tie its base pay and equity compensation for employees based on whether/how they master new skills to incentivize the workforce. Business results drive the annual bonus.
A New Mandate for CHROs. The CHRO role is becoming the "AND" role: set talent strategy AND facilitate operations; work with the technology AND architect the enterprise transformation; work with the CEO AND the board. "You are all business leaders with a point of view. So, lean in.”
