Close Menu
Human Resources Mag
  • Home
  • News
  • Management
  • Guides
  • Law
  • Talents
  • Benfits
  • Technology
  • More
    • Web Stories
    • Editor’s Picks
    • Press Release
What's On

Nova Scotia updates severance rules for non-union public workers

July 3, 2025

Worker challenges temporary layoff provision as part of unenforceable termination provision

July 3, 2025

Menopause ‘penalty’ pushing women out of workplace: study

July 3, 2025
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Human Resources Mag
Subscribe
  • Home
  • News
  • Management
  • Guides
  • Law
  • Talents
  • Benfits
  • Technology
  • More
    • Web Stories
    • Editor’s Picks
    • Press Release
Human Resources Mag
Home » AI strategy can be built on sand, and in this case, it’s a good thing
Benfits

AI strategy can be built on sand, and in this case, it’s a good thing

staffBy staffJune 19, 20255 Mins Read
Share Facebook Twitter Pinterest Copy Link LinkedIn Tumblr Email Telegram WhatsApp
Follow Us
Google News Flipboard
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email Copy Link

Growing up the sandbox was full of treasure: weird shaped rocks, pillbugs, coins, tiny plastic toys left and forgotten by a previous visitor. It’s a place of wonder for children, provided the neighborhood alley cat doesn’t also bury treasure there.

Sandboxes are small plots dedicated to play, creation, and sometimes destruction, especially in service of building something greater. It’s an apt analogy for a space created for employees to play with AI at work.

Rather than rely solely on IT departments or outside consultants to implement AI tools across the organization, some companies are creating internal ‘sandboxes’ of sorts that provide employees with the space to experiment, tinker, and even build their own applications, and are finding it’s a great way to center an AI strategy.

Thinking about AI from the ground up rather than top down helps with adoption inside the organization. It can ease anxieties about AI’s place at work and how humans fit into the new paradigm. It also can further innovation from inside the company, with the aid of the people who actually do the work: your employees.

“Organizations, if they want their company to survive through this transformation and thrive…they need to be providing employees the opportunity to use these tools and understand how they can evolve, how it will evolve business models,” said Mary Alice Vuicic, CPO at Thomson Reuters.

Playpen. Vuicic and her colleague from the technology team recognized the transformation potential early after the launch of ChatGPT, and set out to articulate a strategy focusing not only on the global news and professional services firm’s approach to adopting the technology but also its talent strategy amid this AI transformation.

At Thomson Reuters, the people strategy centered around “Four Ts” to prepare its workforce for AI: tone from the top, training, tools, and time.

“You have to get hands-on experience to understand,” she said of “tools” and “time.” “We’ve seen a huge shift when that happens.”

Thomson Reuters first launched Open Arena in 2023. The secure internal “sandbox” offers the entire Thomson Reuters workforce, all 27,000 employees, access to leading large language models to explore AI in the workplace and gain hands-on experience interacting with the tech to foster a culture of experimentation, as well as trial and error.

“Everybody can use it, and it is secure,” Vuicic said. “We encourage people to go in [and] start their work in that sandbox.”

More than half of Thomson Reuters employees are now using Open Arena regularly, and the company is starting to track usage and report its findings back to employees and their managers to foster transparency about AI use at the company.

Open Arena also helped facilitate the company’s AI champions program. Some 400 Thomson Reuters employees are AI super-users and are helping to coach peers and design use cases on how to better use it at work, she said.

“Innovation and problem solving can come from anywhere in the organization,” Vuicic said. “That’s very different from how a traditional organization structure works.”

Quick-to-read HR news & insights

From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.

Homegrown experts. Other global companies are also seeing that employee involvement is critical to scaling AI. At collaboration and team-based project management software company Atlassian, non-technical employees aren’t just end-users, they’re also AI builders.

Atlassian uses its customer-facing generative AI tool, Rovo, internally. Atlassian’s strategy includes engaging teams across the company to build tools tailored specifically to their workflows.

CPO Avani Prabhakar told HR Brew that this results in both faster adoption and deeper ownership over how AI shapes work for Atlassian employees, pointing to widely used agents built out by her HR team.

“We have Rovo agent, that’s the tool that you get,” Prabhakar said. “Our team has been able to build an onboarding agent on top of it. That agent is called Nora…It is built by [the] HR team, so I don’t have to worry about adoption.”

Because HR leaders involved in onboarding at Atlassian helped ideate how AI could improve or impact the experience for new hires, Nora acts more like an “onboarding buddy” for new hires, answering “dumb” questions like those a new hire may be too embarrassed to ask a supervisor or colleague and to walk employees through their early days. This tool, built by actual HR professionals, is used by 70% of new hires, according to Prabhakar.

“The good thing with non-tech users like HR is like, ‘Oh, I can create my own agent, it’s not being done by the IT team and then given to me to work with,’” she said. “ It’s just a very different notion.”

Atlassian’s most popular AI agent lives inside its performance management system, APEX, Prabhakar adds. It can assist in drafting talking points, and also help employees create written content or feedback. The tool also helps managers consolidate information from 360-degree feedback, peer feedback, and other places into a coherent assessment.

“Because you are letting employees tinker with the technology, then there is more buy-in, but also it eradicates all the fear that sits around it,” Prabhakar said.

Vuicic and Prabhakar agree that letting workers explore the tools for themselves—and not simply participate in training—creates a shift in mindset and eases adoption and fear. Adopting the new technology becomes less about enforcement and box checking and more about learning, engagement, and career transformation.

“They get past anxiety or fear about, ‘What is this technology’ and, ‘What’s it going to do to my job,’” Vuicic said. “But then it becomes a delight, because it’s so accessible,” adding that she imagines a future wherein the remaining work—what’s not modified or impacted by AI—actually becomes more human.

And that unexpected employee delight is a business advantage too, Vuicic said, adding that top talent expects access to AI now.

“They want to be future-proofed, and so they will leave and go to companies, or they won’t join companies that don’t give them that access,” she said.

Follow on Google News Follow on Flipboard
Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email Copy Link

Related Articles

What Is Global Human Resource Management (GHRM)?

July 3, 2025 Benfits

AI agent adoption is lagging. Experts explain what HR can do

July 3, 2025 Benfits

A Look at the Future of Hiring

July 2, 2025 Benfits

Record high reached for workplace discrimination, harassment and retaliation claims

July 2, 2025 Benfits

Top companies prioritize skill velocity over depth as AI technology evolves rapidly and changes workplaces along the way

July 1, 2025 Benfits

As July 4 boosts PTO requests, how tech can assist

July 1, 2025 Benfits
Top Articles

Accused of fraud, murder, fired exec awarded $500,000, 24 months’ notice

January 9, 202498 Views

5 Best Learning Management Systems in 2025

February 11, 202591 Views

Canadian Tire store under investigation for alleged exploitation of temporary foreign workers

October 2, 202491 Views
Stay In Touch
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • TikTok
  • WhatsApp
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
Latest News

AI agent adoption is lagging. Experts explain what HR can do

staffJuly 3, 2025

Woman employee at Infosys exposes harassment attempt, leads to arrest and internal review —

staffJuly 3, 2025

How to avoid constructive dismissal claims with temporary layoffs

staffJuly 2, 2025
Most Popular

Nova Scotia updates severance rules for non-union public workers

July 3, 20250 Views

Worker challenges temporary layoff provision as part of unenforceable termination provision

July 3, 20250 Views

Menopause ‘penalty’ pushing women out of workplace: study

July 3, 20250 Views
Our Picks

AI agent adoption is lagging. Experts explain what HR can do

July 3, 2025

Woman employee at Infosys exposes harassment attempt, leads to arrest and internal review —

July 3, 2025

How to avoid constructive dismissal claims with temporary layoffs

July 2, 2025

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest human resources news and updates directly to your inbox.

Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
© 2025 Human Resources Mag. All Rights Reserved.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.