What HR, IT, and Comms leaders really think about AI at work

You get "Sin Filtro" - and honestly, it ‘s the session you didn't know you needed.

I'm joining three amazing practitioners at VOICES on May 12 for a conversation that's a little different than your typical AI conversation. No roadmaps. No polished case studies where everything worked perfectly. Just real talk about what actually happens when AI hits the workplace.

A Harvard Business Review study tracked AI adoption at a US tech company for eight months and found something most AI roadmaps don't mention: employees didn't work less. They worked faster, took on more tasks, and extended their hours WITHOUT anyone asking them to.

More output, more cognitive load, more burnout risk. That's the gap between what leaders plan and what employees experience. It's why a conversation between IT, HR, and comms needs to happen in the same room, not in three separate sessions where everyone agrees with themselves.

Sixty-four percent of IT leaders predicted a complete HR-IT merger within five years. That may or may not happen. But the pressure behind that prediction is real: AI decisions that used to belong to one function now affect all three, and most organizations still make them in separate rooms.

The result shows up in the data. ActivTrak's 2026 State of the Workplace report found disengagement risk at nearly one in four employees (up 21% in a year) during the same period AI adoption was accelerating. The tools got rolled out but the workforce didn't necessarily come with them. Strategic communications change that. Research shows they improve employee trust metrics by 16%. That's the difference between an AI initiative employees use and one they route around.

The conversation this panel is having at VOICESis the one most organizations are having in fragments. IT in one meeting. HR in another. Comms somewhere near the end, drafting the announcement after the decisions are made.

That's what we're fixing on May 12.

And the people I’m sharing the “stage” with will make the conversation worth having. Plus, they aren’t hear to agree with each other either.

• Russell Evans is SVP at M&T Bank and Head of Commercial Banking Communications, so he's seen the comms side of AI deployments from inside a major financial institution.

• Alison Wagner is VP of Talent & Culture at Mission Fed Credit Union. She's dealing with the human side of these decisions daily - talent, trust, and what employees actually feel when AI shows up in their work

• Anusha Khan is VP of Workplace Technology at MSCI. She's the one who has to implement this stuff and watch what happens when theory meets reality.

That mix is the whole point. These conversations are typically siloed. IT talks to IT. HR talks to HR. Comms gets looped in somewhere near the end. This group is what happens when those three rooms have an honest conversation in the same space.

We'll cover what's overhyped, what's breaking, and what the hard-earned lessons look like from each corner of the org. The session description says "nothing is off limits," and I'm taking that seriously.

If you're attending VOICES, come find us at 3:45 p.m. ET.

If you haven't registered yet, here's the link to sign up. The event is virtual on May 12.

Written by Chuck Gose, founder of ICology.