August Newsletter: AI + HR = Transformation (And Friction). HR Edition.

More and more these days, AI is the undisputed future of HR.

Just as it has in other critical business areas, however, AI has brought to HR not only the promise of increased productivity and efficiency, but a fair amount of disruption as well. That’s to be expected with transformative technology. But what does it mean going forward?

For HR leaders, the goal should be to deliver more value for internal customers at lower cost while leveraging the full potential of AI. And that means reducing friction in three key areas:

• HR's internal Customers Workflows
• Employees Workflows
• People Leaders and Business Leaders Workflows

Use AI to remove the barriers that keep people from doing their work efficiently and effectively, and you’ll unlock new value and opportunity. But you can’t reduce friction if you can’t see it. That’s why reliable friction data is such a key piece of the AI puzzle for HR leaders.

The bottom line: AI’s impact on HR can be immense. For example, research from FOUNT Global, Inc. partner TI People found the potential for 29% average efficiency across all HR roles using AI. For some organizations, it could be much higher.

If you’d like to learn how to thoroughly examine the impact of AI on your HR role in just 48 hours, TI People’s AI Impact Assessment can help.

Number of the Month: Confronting Tech Friction

Thinking about AI? Then you’d better be thinking about friction, too.

Article of the month:

Reducing friction and giving time back to people leaders ($$$)

Stephanie Denino is bringing numbers to a question HR and People Experience leaders often wrestle with: How do you prove the business value of a better employee experience?

She shows that even modest friction improvements can translate into staggering returns. In one modeled enterprise, simply cutting wasted time in people leader workflows by 15% freed up nearly $16 million worth of hours for leaders to spend on higher-value activities. That’s the kind of data-backed story every HR leader can take to their CFO - clear evidence that fighting friction isn’t just about employee satisfaction, it’s about unlocking measurable business value.

Read full article here

What we are reading:

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📖Beyond the Buzz: Why a “Careful Pace” on AI Adoption Can Scale HR’s Impact

Most conversations about AI tend to focus on job disruption and operational efficiency. But HR’s role in this rollout should be both more expansive and more careful – namely, to champion AI’s potential to transform business and workforce outcomes positively and sustainably.

Get the full story

📖 Employees Are Avoiding AI – HR Can Help Them Embrace It

Looking to boost AI enthusiasm in your organization? HR can help by providing not only education, but also clarity and transparency around how the technology fits into the company’s strategy.

Get the full story

📖Report: Most AI Business Investments Fail

New research from MIT shows that 95% of enterprise AI investments aren't ROI-positive. One bright spot? Back-office projects (like HR), which tend to be among the best-performing use cases.

Get the full story

📖 Which Missing Skills are Holding Back AI Adoption?

Deficits in areas such as cognitive skills, AI responsibility, self-management skills, and communication may be hindering the adoption of AI tools in the workplace according to researchers.

Get the full story

Until next time,

The FOUNT Team

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It’s easy to think the transformation led by your Shared Services team is on track. SLAs are met, NPS is green, and all your outstanding tickets are closed. Mission accomplished, right?

Not necessarily. What if your supposedly tried-and-true metrics are only telling you part of the story?

As one presenter shared during our recent SSON webinar: “We measure what’s easy to measure, not what’s right to measure. And we realize very soon that we really don’t have a clue what is going on for the employee.”

The rest of the story is in the friction your workers experience - and most companies don’t see it. Why? Because today’s traditional feedback tools (siloed surveys, usage data etc.) are missing the big picture:

• They focus on transactions instead of journeys.

• They measure just sentiment rather than friction.

• They show tool usage, not workflow breakdowns.

It all adds up to a lot of useful, but ultimately deficient, information. And it leads to misdiagnosed problems and wasted investments.

Don’t gamble the success of your transformation initiatives on incomplete insights. Friction data from FOUNT eliminates your blind spots and connects experience in their workflow by quantifying the obstacles that prevent your employees from working productively and efficiently.

It’s the missing half of the story to get your GBS transformation across the finish line.

Captions are auto generated

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Stephanie Denino on seeing the bigger picture. Clip from the SSON Webinar

FOUNT in Action: From Tool Performance to Employee Experience

As part of a digitization initiative to wholly transform its IT, HR, and finance services, a US-based company rolled out a new employee portal and a virtual agent to support across all core employee workflows. However, as employees began using these new features, one thing became clear – the tools were working, but the experience was failing.

Case in point: Vanessa, a longtime accounting admin, was working through the multi-step journey of requesting medical leave using the new tools, as well as old standbys like her manager, the employee contact center, and her doctor’s office. And while the request was ultimately processed and approved, not everything went smoothly – in fact, some of it was downright maddening.

In measuring success by SLA and CSAT, however, the company saw feedback that mostly looked great. The systems were in place, the portals worked, and the tickets were tracked. But this was only a partial picture. While many of the back-end services and processes underlying her journey worked well, others left Vanessa feeling frustrated and confused.

The company partnered with FOUNT to find out which specific aspects of the medical leave request and approval process, such as unclear policies and complex paperwork, were causing employees like Vanessa friction.

Curious how this case was developed? Watch our recent SSON webinar.

This is just one example.

View More Use Cases → How Customers Use FOUNT: Accelerate AI Adoption, Reduce Waste, and Measure ROI Sooner  - FOUNT

Number of the Month: The Growing Role of Gen AI in Global Business Services

In 2024, 42% of GBS organizations piloted Gen AI. How are things working out? 63% reported measurable gains in productivity, cost savings, and service quality. – The Hackett Group

The Latest Guest Post:

📖3 Signs Your GBS Is Creating Friction Instead of Flow (And How to Fix It)

By Isabella Kosch, freelance business consultant, ex-Head of GBS Service Management at SWAROVSKI, regular contributor to SSON.

Discover hidden friction points in your GBS operations that quietly undermine employee trust and efficiency. Plus: get actionable advice on how to fix them. Get the full story

What we are Reading:

📖 Understanding AI ≠ Using It

The relationship between AI literacy and receptivity may surprise you. Research shows that people with lower AI literacy are more likely to embrace it, while those with higher AI literacy tend to lose interest quickly. Get the full story

📖 Agile Leadership in GBS: Leading Through Uncertainty and Change

GBS is evolving from a cost-saving function to a strategic enabler. To keep pace, GBS leaders must shift their focus from operational (or basic) efficiency to driving value. Get the full story

📖 Breaking the False Tradeoff in GBS: Efficiency vs. Experience

Ever wonder why modern leaders are measuring friction and using experience data to drive productivity, reduce costs, and transform service quality? Find out here. Get the full story

📖 The Data Race: Global Business Services’ Advantageous Positioning with Gen AI

How can Gen AI help GBS leaders forge a strategic path forward? Start with a shift in focus, from basic processing to enhanced data-driven insights. Get the full story

Come Out and Meet FOUNT:

Engage 2025, organized by Everest Group

Where: Dallas, TX

When: September 8 – 10

Engage — Dallas 2025 - Everest Group

Shared Services & Outsourcing Week Conference, organized by SSON

Where: Houston, TX

When: September 15 – 18

Shared Services & Outsourcing Week 2025

Want to learn how FOUNT can reduce friction in your transformation? Let’s talk.

Until next time,

The FOUNT Team

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Commitment to employee experience is growing. With commitment comes expectation, and EX Leaders find themselves in a crucial performance window.

Commitment to employee experience is growing. In our recent Human Experience of Work study, 90% of employee experience Leaders indicate increased organizational intent around understanding and improving people’s experiences of work. CEO and board attention; defined employee experience roles and responsibilities; and budget allocation have been on the rise.

With commitment comes expectation, and employee experience Leaders find themselves in a crucial performance window. Employees expect consistent activity that delivers improved experience quality.

Executive stakeholders need to see quantified impact against their specific business or functional objectives. CEOs and Boards want evidence of progress quickly as proof that investments are yielding. Moreover, the world of work continues to shift and experience leaders must keep pace.

Working with the business 

One critical element to maintaining momentum in EX is to what extent EX Leaders can fully engage and work with the business. Leaders with EX responsibility will more convincingly engage business stakeholders in EX when they can point to precise improvement opportunities – with evidence. Also, talk about ROI cannot be a generic conversation. It needs to be aligned to business leaders’ specific objectives and value conveyed through their business KPIs.

Yet only 24% of organizations surveyed report having the requisite qualitative and quantitative experience data in place to inform experience decision-making with business partners. Many studies, for example, have explored the ROI of internal customer experience and its link to external customer experience and resulting revenue growth, but the ROI exploration often stops there. 90% of organizations believe calculating the ROI of internal customer experience and its linkage to outcomes for their organization is essential, but they have not yet reached this stage.

Meeting executives where they are

Purposeful dialogue starts with meeting executives “where they are” by showing EX’s relevance to their business objectives. It should be defined by value delivered to people and business in the form of observable, measurable outcomes. The ‘Business Value tree’ pictured, for example, shows how one customer facing organization visualized how experience drives business results. They used this approach to support more effective conversations specifically with senior customer facing leaders.

Essential inputs

It is important to note that one ‘business value story’ does not fit the needs of all leaders, nor fully conveys the potential scope of impact. As with employees, appropriate context is essential to understand needs. For example, a functional executive serving internal customers such as a CIO will work with a partially different set of KPIs from a customer-facing leader referenced above, such as UX, internal customer satisfaction, or cost.

In addition, without access to the right (first-hand, interaction level) data, people’s experience expectations of the business will not be fully understood at scale. EX teams need new, experience-centric data inputs to pinpoint opportunities for meaningful experience improvement that are truly relevant to people and business outcomes.

Through our Experience Intelligence solutions, we continue to support EX Leaders and their teams on the activities and capabilities required to drive EX impact — and connect it back to business objectives. We invite you to join in our latest research efforts by participating in our short survey.

Our latest research aims to identify the activities and capabilities EX teams need to better demonstrate business impact.

This survey will result in a robust understanding of how well EX teams demonstrate business impact today, so that you can compare your team’s approach to leading examples around the world. It will also provide a set of clear recommendations and guidance for demonstrating business impact to business leaders, in order to gain long-term engagement and investment.

Participate in the research and be among the first to view the findings and access detailed recommendations for demonstrating business value to business leaders, in order to gain long-term engagement and investment.