AI leadership gap in HR is bigger than most realise

Angsuwat said Culture Amp has approached its own AI rollout in stages rather than setting productivity targets from the outset.

“We set aside six weeks to drive confidence in AI, and we did that. So, 84 per cent of our organisation became confident using AI, and in fact only 4 per cent had negative sentiment around that,” he said.

Rather than pushing for immediate output gains, Angsuwat said the company deliberately avoided “kind of systemic work shift as a result of that” in the early phase, instead giving staff room to experiment before expecting behavioural change.

He linked that caution to a wider concern about how AI reshapes trust at work, noting that senior staff often built their careers on skills that AI is now starting to automate. “People who are successful today were successful in the old way of doing things,” he said, “and we need people to let go of that part of their identity to shift to a new way of doing things.”

Governance first, enthusiasm secondA hard line on employment decisions

Angsuwat was clear that governance, not enthusiasm, has to carry the weight of managing that risk. Culture Amp runs a cross-functional AI governance committee spanning legal, risk, security, finance and engineering, but he said the goal isn’t to default to the most cautious option on every issue.