Author and HR analyst Ben Eubanks, SHRM-SCP, discussed with SHRM the real-world HR applications of agentic AI and the hidden risks organizations face as AI reshapes how people work.
Eubanks, the principal analyst and chief research officer at Lighthouse Research and Advisory in Huntsville, Ala., and author of Artificial Intelligence for HR, (Kogan Page, 2025) also highlighted the human capabilities that will grow in value as AI becomes more embedded in HR practice.
SHRM: What are the applications for agentic AI in benefits, compensation, recruiting, talent management, learning, and other aspects of workforce management?
Eubanks: The easiest way to think about agentic AI is to think about what you’d have a junior team member doing in different areas. The most useful agents right now are narrowly defined and focused on a specific task.
In benefits, the agent might be confirming that payroll is reconciled to benefits and that proper deductions are being taken out. A more strategic use would be a benefits communications agent that looks at the position and type of work that’s being done and adjusts the level of depth around how the benefits are communicated.
For instance, I worked with a company recently that had a large number of workers who had graduated high school or gotten their GED in the automotive space. They used AI tools to tailor the benefits communications to that workforce, including metaphors relevant to the automotive industry. For the first time ever, many of those people were able to understand their benefits in a way that they had not in the past because it was written at their level and in their language. But the way you’d do that for a group of software engineers might be very different, and an agent could do that better than a human could.
On the recruiting front, one example of an agent could be reference checking. It would look at someone’s application for references and automatically send out messages to those references to confirm the person’s employment or their suitability for hire. Another recruiting task could be scheduling and having an agent that only looks at calendars, evaluates them for options, and sets up candidate interviews.
Learning agents can look at a person’s performance ratings for any gaps and then recommend training, coaching, or other development options to fill those gaps. Or it could monitor training progress and automatically ping workers or their leaders when a required class isn’t complete by a deadline.
Compensation agents could continuously monitor pay data for any parity issues and flag them as they arise — allowing for immediate action instead of waiting for an annual process to roll up and find all the problems after the fact.
SHRM: There are many hurdles to overcome when implementing AI into HR, including system bias, data privacy, and ethical concerns. One area that interests me is the impact that the growing reliance on AI could have on human cognitive skills and creativity.
Eubanks: Yes, in my work with HR and business leaders around the world, one concern keeps rising to the surface: What happens when the very tools meant to make us more productive actually weaken our ability to think? As AI becomes woven into daily work, a growing body of research suggests that overreliance on these systems can chip away at foundational skills, creativity, and judgment. And that has real implications for our people, our teams, and our long-term organizational capabilities.
For years, those of us in HR learned the craft from the ground up. We started by observing how decisions were made and how information flowed. Those early experiences became the scaffolding we rely on today to ask better questions and make smarter choices. But if early-career workers skip those foundational steps because AI handles everything, are they building the skills they’ll need when the job gets more complex? The evidence suggests they may not be.
Interestingly, this creates an unexpected advantage for experienced workers. While we often assume younger employees will be the AI-savvy ones, the truth is that expertise — not age — determines how much value someone can get from these tools. Knowing the right questions to ask still matters.
New research from the University of Toronto brings an even sharper warning. Their study shows that using generative AI can dampen both divergent and convergent thinking, producing more homogeneous ideas and reducing true creativity. Even more concerning, this drop in creativity persists after people stop using the tools, much like a muscle that atrophies without use.
And it’s not just creativity. Harvard Business School research finds that when recruiters believe an algorithm is highly accurate, they stop engaging their own judgment. They effectively “fall asleep at the wheel,” trusting the tool instead of partnering with it.
AI isn’t going away, and it shouldn’t. But as we continue adopting these systems inside our organizations, we must be honest about the cognitive and cultural risks. Our goal shouldn’t just be efficiency today — it should be protecting the capabilities we’ll rely on tomorrow.
SHRM: Which human skills will become more valuable in the AI era and why?
Eubanks: The evidence coming out of different research institutions show that AI has a whole range of applications across social, political, and workplace environments. But AI has a critical gap that it can’t bridge. A CHRO recently told me that AI is the biggest sociopath of all, because it says a lot of things but means none of them. AI can’t feel and hope. AI can’t build relationships and trust. AI can’t take ownership when things go wrong.
In nearly a decade of research on this topic I have come back again and again to the key human capabilities that make us distinctly unique:
- Compassion. This is arguably more important for HR than any other role in the business. This is about caring and concern and seeing humans as individuals to serve, not numbers to be calculated.
- Creativity. The world is moving quickly, and the ones who succeed will be those who dream up new and innovative approaches to the problems that exist.
- Collaboration. Querying or prompting an AI tool is very different from sitting with a team and brainstorming together, taking ownership of tasks, and working towards a common goal.
- Curiosity. AI doesn’t ask “why?” The best leaders push the boundaries of the possible by asking this question and exploring the “why” behind relationships, problems, and other daily interactions.
- Critical thinking. AI is designed to proceed down a logical path toward a mathematically calculated answer. Humans have tenacity, grit, and a degree of perseverance to think around corners and pursue answers that aren’t readily available. One of HR’s superpowers is figuring things out.
These skills can’t easily be replicated by AI, and they give us an edge in a world that often prioritizes speed over connection, efficiency over humanity, and productivity over creativity
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