AI-Ready HR: Zapier’s CPO on 80% Ticket Deflection, AI Fluency, and the Triple Win

Описание: Summary

How do you turn AI from buzzword to business value inside HR—without losing the human?

Brandon Sammut, Chief People Officer at Zapier and former educator, shares a practical blueprint for AI-enabled people operations. He explains how his team now auto-resolves over 80% of frontline HR inquiries with high CSAT, freeing talent for higher-impact work while improving speed and quality.

Brandon breaks down the non-technical foundations that actually determine AI success clear mission, crisp goals, psychological safety for experimentation, and trusted leadership and opens up Zapier’s AI Fluency Framework as a tool any org can use to build skills, set expectations, and reward curiosity.

He also unpacks what makes a strong CPO–CEO partnership with Wade Foster (including a memorable culture moment), why early-career talent is a competitive advantage in the AI era, and why leaders must get hands-on to model the change.

Expect concrete, adaptable ideas for building an AI-ready people org that delivers a genuine triple win: for the business, for end users, and for employees.


Key Timestamps
[00:58] – Guest intro: education roots, people ops as the “human potential” business
[03:50] – Matching potential to opportunity with AI—and the “triple win” (business, end user, employees)
[07:15] – HR ticketing automation: 80% deflection with high CSAT; freeing people ops for higher-impact work
[13:45] – Culture before tooling: mission, goals, safety to experiment, and trusted management
[17:30] – Zapier’s AI Fluency Framework: open-sourced levels, curiosity as the baseline
[18:42] – CPO–CEO partnership: mutual empathy for the craft and a decisive culture moment
[21:28] – Early-career talent in the AI era: accelerating judgment and cross-mentoring with veterans
[25:37] – Lightning round: build a weekly AI digest agent, start with HR Q&A automation, lead with a “sense of possibility,” and choose data (broadly defined) over intuition


Takeaways
Automate frontline HR Q&A to deflect ~80% of inquiries, measure CSAT, and redeploy talent to higher-impact work.
Anchor AI efforts in clear mission, strategy, and goals; create psychological safety for experimentation and learning.
Adopt an AI fluency framework to set expectations, reward curiosity, and grow capability progressively across roles.
Strengthen the CPO–CEO pact around business outcomes and culture stewardship—and act decisively in moments that matter.
Bet on early-career, AI-native talent and pair them with experienced leaders in cross-mentoring to speed judgment development.
Lead from the front: set up personal AI agents (e.g., a weekly AI+talen t digest) and model hands-on experimentation for your team.


Sponsor

Wisq introduces Harper, your AI-powered HR service bot designed to act like a virtual HR generalist for every employee. No more waiting on emails or digging through policies—Harper gives your team instant answers to HR questions, helps them navigate benefits and policies, and even routes more complex cases to the right person.

By handling the repetitive requests, Harper frees up your HR team to focus on strategy and people, while ensuring employees always feel supported. It’s a smarter, more consistent way to deliver HR services at scale.

See Harper in action at https://www.wisq.com/