Learn how AI can help HR teams navigate three critical stages of performance to elevate their decision-making impact. From boosting productivity in basic tasks to orchestrating collaboration in teams — and finally breaking through to reinvent strategies for the future — each step empowers HR to lead with confidence. Guillermo Miranda, co-founder of Atlas Copilot, emphasizes, “The role of HR is to collaborate differently, to show up differently. You can be the pilot driving this change, or you can be a passenger watching it happen.
Learn how AI can help HR teams navigate three critical stages of performance to elevate their decision-making impact. From boosting productivity in basic tasks to orchestrating collaboration in teams — and finally breaking through to reinvent strategies for the future — each step empowers HR to lead with confidence. Guillermo Miranda, co-founder of Atlas Copilot, emphasizes, “The role of HR is to collaborate differently, to show up differently. You can be the pilot driving this change, or you can be a passenger watching it happen.
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Nichol: Hello, I'm Nichol Bradford SHRM's, executive in residence for AI Plus. Hi for this episode. We are coming to you live from the A IHI project 2025 in San Francisco. Thanks for joining us. Today, we're exploring how generative AI is reshaping the HR profession from real time learning and knowledge access to intelligent automation.
Our guest this week is Guillermo Miranda, co-founder of Atlas Co-Pilot and one of the speakers at. At our event this year, Welcome to the A IHI Project. Guillermo or g.
Guillermo: G. Yeah, that's easier. Thank you. Thank you very much, Nicole. Very pleased to be here.
Nichol: So I love to start podcasts with just a little bit of background in your career.
You've led major learning and leadership initiatives at Boeing and IBM. What led you to step into the startup space and build an AI [00:01:00] platform for HR professionals?
Guillermo: Curiosity the opportunity to build something yourself and the ability to be close to the leading age. So I started my professional life as a lawyer.
as a lawyer,
But I work as a lawyer. Then I did an MBA, then I evolved more in talent management, business development, marketing communications back in Boeing, I, I was the talent person and then we said, let's do something different. And, and AI startup is, is a good thing to learn and to create opportunities for HR, I think,
Nichol: So you've worked at the intersection of people development and digital transformation for years. How has that shaped your perspective on how HR needs to evolve in the age of ai?
Guillermo: Well, very clearly we have to solve the people [00:02:00] equation in, in how we are going to look into the future, how we are going to recreate the future. Uh, generative AI is basically a general purpose technology. So what is starting to happen is business models are changing, ways of working are changing.
Expectations of outcome are changing. The human. Of the equation needs to take a different responsibility, a different role, evolve the way that we manage the workplace. So having the opportunity to be part of that evolution, be part of that is important and. Coming from the software side with a heavy HR background helps because you are not relying on the technology.
Technology is fantastic, but you are relying on your knowledge of what is needed.
Nichol: that's a good segue into [00:03:00] the idea of a co-pilot for HR, and especially since you're coming from that deep understanding of what is needed. How would you describe for our audience the concept of like, what is a co-pilot for HR and what does it change about how people are going to do their work in an HR function today?
Guillermo: Well, AI can help us to do many things. Let, let's start with basics of. What it means, performance. Performance. There is basic performance and it's all about focus and productivity. There is collaborative performance and it is about how you interact and how you orchestrate a team, and there is innovative performance.
There is breakthrough performances. How you
reinvent
the future. The role of HR and the role of a copilot can help us in these three stages. First. Improving productivity, helping us to do the
boring,
repetitive things [00:04:00] better, faster with less, uh, errors, uh, and liberating time for us to be on the business side of adding value.
On the collaborative side, what we
need to do is to rethink. Who is doing what and how We orchestrate the collaboration, as I mentioned, in that sense, AI will help us to give us insights, will inform with data, our decision will collaborate as a probably one more digital worker that is part of a team. Uh, and
then
the third side is how we can reimagine what we have been doing.
Uh, this morning in the conversation we said, okay. Think about academia, think about universities how you are going to assess people in the new world. And my comment is, maybe that's the wrong answer because probably you don't need to assess people [00:05:00] anymore the way that you thought. Now, what we need to think, this is not about knowledge transfer.
This is about building knowledge. So you become a builder of knowledge as part of your university experience. Then there is no need for assessment. There is need for.
Testing, there is need for deploying what you have built. Uh,
so
I think that's the copilot in HR will do all these things and it will do it in different speeds.
Probably. D context is very important. Different industries is very important. Highly regulated, less regulated. We'll see the change. It's, it's already happening. We, we are seeing that in the marketplace today.
Nichol: One of the things that I think is important about what you just broke down is that a lot of times when people think about ai, they think it's all one thing, and so they think that.
You know, GPTs are the same as an as an l, LM is the same as a rag. Like they think it's all the same thing. [00:06:00] And also I think, you know, now that you know all of humanity, especially all of you know, people who work in organizations are learning to use AI, is that there's different ways that AI can support different tasks and there's different ais for different tasks.
We're about to get into a level of granularity. On things. And I, I think you kind of spoke to that between, with these three baskets Yes. Of how one might use ai.
Guillermo: Exactly, exactly. Uh, it, it depends on the context. It depends on what you want to accomplish.
And it also. It's very important the human in annuity behind to be sure that you are not painting everything Blue say,
oh, let's put ai,
well, that's not the right statement. You have to think of how we do this thing in a better way, how we increase our performance stage by stage, [00:07:00] and when is the right moment to do it.
Nichol: And I also lo really love the third bucket, which is about that very revolutionary thing. So it's like the first bucket is just how do you do the work that you have to do anyway in a better way?
That second bucket is more evolutionary. So, you know, how do you do things in a, in, in a better way? But then that last bucket is, it feels like it's revolutionary doing things completely different because AI gives you a new insight. Could you speak to that a little bit?
Guillermo: Yes. Uh,
Nichol: Our
Guillermo: models are based on the output that we want. So the role of human resources is precisely to understand how people will make these things happen. Okay. And let's say that we are in a, in the business, in a retail business, um, the role of a retail clerk [00:08:00] has evolved.
Really dramatically, even if you don't perceive it, because the role
role
10 years ago was to showcase the product. Is, this is what this does, this is what it can do for you, et cetera. And this is the pricing. And we can do this offer. Now, when somebody comes to a face-to-face situation, you know everything about the product 'cause you already did your research or the company targeted this specific person with the information.
So the, the role of the retail is not to convince you, is not to explain you. It's to help you to make a decision. Ideally in the moment is to help you to understand what else is needed to make the buying decision, right? So that means you need to hire people that is probably more assertive. You need to hire people that is able to understand and have this sense of, um.[00:09:00]
Which is the right button to start pushing with different buyers. And this can be applicable in any kind of retail. Uh, we, I am part of the science board of Better App and we working with Chanel and Chanel is a very high-end retail. You can spend thousand dollars with a couple of
items. easy, Easy, probably.
More than that. But then the value of how you facilitate the decision making is very high. So you need to enable your people different and you need to give them the tools
of what is happening around.
So I think that's
the breakthrough of how we reinvent things.
Mm-hmm.
Nichol: And that leads to my next question, which is about, you know, so in the case of Atlas copilot, it combines expert insights and personalized learning and intelligent automation.[00:10:00]
And you just gave a case where, what. An organization needs from a particular type of employee is changing. So could you speak to how sort of a hybrid approach of these three things improves decision making for HR as their staffing different functions?
Guillermo: Yes, So
look. When we see things like a process, which has been the traditional way to work in HR, we drive processes, we ensure compliance, we ensure fairness, and, but basically sequential. Okay, so when you have a tool like Atlas or. Any other intelligent generative AI tool as part of the workflow of human resources, what you are doing is actually to run in parallel several of the steps that traditionally have been sequential.
So I will get the insights, I will get the [00:11:00] proposal, I will get
the
market comparison all at the same time. I can do the deep research, so I don't need to have this sequential and then. I can get also the facilitation of what is happening around me to make that decision. Okay.
So
you shortcut the research part, accelerate the research part.
You get insights from. What is happening around in a way that is easy to digest. You understand what is the business consequence of that decision. You can even do a, a little of simulation and say, please help me to run this simulation. And it will not require a, a big investment on an actuary to do a personal simulation of something. Uh, so. Atlas is alone. You is an advisor that enhance your capability to make decisions, providing the [00:12:00] information, the data, the comparisons, and with a quick component of productivity. You can upload, upload a file,
and
as to be refined, you can upload a CV and say, help me to create an interview guide.
Those little things that immediately add value to your day to day. And then you are working differently, and that's the piece that is more important. It's not the tooling, but it's how you are doing the role differently and how you are getting a broader understanding
of what happened
in a process world.
You do one by one in a generative AI environment. You can do simultaneous things. I.
Nichol: I just started working with a tool called Clay, which is sort of like a database builder, and the workflow is entirely different than how you would do [00:13:00] it before, and it takes a minute to, to realize that it's different and to really use it. But it's one of those things that it's like mind blowing because it, you know, normally if you wanted to build a a list, you would.
You know, build a list and then you would slowly fill in pieces of it. But with this, you sort of start with an intention and it builds out from there. Like it grows like that, as opposed to in.
In
columns and it's very different way of doing things. So what about the people who are scared or resistant to this?
I've heard that you have a, an amazing story about someone who is presented with change and, and, and how they approach it. Would you share that story with our
Guillermo: Absolutely.
Look let, let's do
the following exercise.
We are going to translate ourselves
to a, a small town in the south of Italy, Calabria [00:14:00] specifically, and we will see a family house on vacation where grandma is the.
Master
coffee maker in the mornings and she uses the traditional way of doing coffee. She has this French press machine. She has the Italian coffee maker, depending on the audience, and she
enjoys
being the center of the attention. And you get amazing coffee, by the way, to start your day in front of the beach.
Uh, and
then there is Christmas and there is one
of these.
Sons of the,
of grandma, a high power executive from Milan that has no better idea than
go and acquire
the latest version of a
big
coffee machine that is fully automated
and shows up on
Christmas and say,
mama, here is your future.
So Grandma gets really disappointed because you are taking my job out and you are bringing this complicated machine [00:15:00] into the equation.
But
grandma
has a
granddaughter that
says, don't worry, grandma, look, it's not that difficult, and let's, let's
work step
by step first. The machine will not choose the coffee, so you still need to be sure that you have the best combination of the grains and the to be
Nichol: Uh,
Guillermo: transformed into amazing coffee.
Second, the machine will not choose the milk and, and the experience. And by the way, instead of just restretos, you can do not flat whites. You can do
cappuccinos, double
cappuccinos. You can do many things. Try it.
Mama's reluctant.
Grandma is reluctant. But then she realized that actually, yes, it helps, it creates it open opportunities.
And
so now
we move forward to the following summer and we find
grandma being the center of attention for the family
breakfast again because she can prepare all this variety of [00:16:00] drinks.
And by the way, she's now dead. Town barista because all the girlfriends come for coffee and she can
demonstrate
the ability of manage this big machine.
Uh,
so it's how you perceive change
instead of a threat
as an opportunity and how you have to reinvent yourself to enjoy
the opportunity.
Nichol: Were you the one who bought the coffee machine?
Guillermo: No.
Well, in
that scenario, I may be one of the
potential people
that will create a disruption, but no, Well, what I, what I love about this story is that Grandma's ultimate, um, you know, her ultimate enjoyment of being able to, to create an experience for her family, that all stays the same. It's just the tools change a bit. And what you said about how we perceive change and reinvent ourself.
Nichol: That leads me to the next question, which is, you know, [00:17:00] we know that HR. Is going to change. And so looking ahead, how do you see AI transforming HR into a more strategic function? You know, beyond operations and compliance, which, you know, many people think of HR as towards business leadership in in more ways.
What do you see
Guillermo: happening?
Well, I see happening, this is an opportunity for HR to collaborate differently.
Okay.
And again, it depends on the context, it depends on the industry, depends on. The cultural norm, but in generally, it is clearly an opportunity for HR to collaborate different and show up differently.
First, because the component of success to reinvent a business model
requires
the right leadership. And HR is at the core of how we create leaders, how we develop leaders, [00:18:00] how we work on the mindset. It requires the right cultural environment. It requires this operating system that nobody knows, but it works.
Um, and HR is right there helping to create the culture, the ingredients. Tweaking different ingredients, moving compensation, moving the incentives. All of that creates culture. So you have the leadership, you have the culture, and then what you need is a workforce that is
open
to change, that is agile, that has this.
Brain plasticity
to accept that there is gonna be uncertainty, that I can accept that, that I would run risk, that will be controlled, that I may fail. So there is a piece of workforce engagement and, and workforce active to that mindset. And HR is right there as well.
So
the role of
Orchestrator of the new world is in front of
us. We
[00:19:00] can take it or we can sit, so you can be the
pilot
driving this change, or you can be a passenger, a victim of how all of these things happen.
I
think
that HR
is ready to take the role of Pilot is ready to take the role of orchestrating this change with the business leadership. Now, it requires also a deeper understanding of the business because.
Tweaking with the
business models, you need to understand what are the levers that you have to move on the business equation to
Improve
performance,
to improve
profitability. So HR needs to understand that and be behind.
It's an opportunity.
Nichol: Yeah. One of the ways I've heard it described that builds on what you said is that. And for all of us, whether it, you know, we're, whatever function we're in, it's basically going from, you know, playing the violin to being a [00:20:00] conductor.
You know, we're all gonna be moving from playing instruments to conducting orchestras and to, to understand that and see that. So is that what most excites you about what an HR or enabled HR, AI enabled organization should become? Like, what's,
Guillermo: Like, what's,
Nichol: what's the most exciting
Guillermo: part
to you?
Well, I think the most exciting part is how we are recreating a very, a core part of society. So in a society that is
market driven,
organizations are the core of how we create value. Okay. And if we are able to influence how value is created in these organizations. For-profit, non-for-profit, public sector.
At the end, these are organizations that are part of a society. So
we spent hours and
hours of our life in the core of organizations where we work. [00:21:00] So if we are able to influence that and help to recreate the future of society, that's what excites me and that's what made me choose to have more of a portfolio life and be in the places that make impact.
So.
F, rethinking the cultural part, reimagine the technology support, having the right furnace comparison rewards a strategy.
Nichol: You know, that is exactly the reason why I'm working with SHRM. Exactly that because organizations are representative of society and what's happening right now is all of humanity is learning how we work and live and evolve and co-pilot with these tools and organizations because of market forces and a variety competition, a variety of other things.
They're forced to explore. So it's like these, you know, our companies today are really [00:22:00] laboratories for all of humanity. And I believe, you know, and we're gonna see lots of different versions because there's going to be different types of organizations. On one side you'll have the Klarna of the world where the CEO says, well, I might even be replaceable.
And then on the other hand, you'll have the Nvidia of the world where Jensen Hong says. You know, I'm not replacing any of my people. We are going to completely enable everyone with agents. So we can do more. We can do more. We have so much more to do. And so, you know, we're gonna see all different types, but I think that's going to be the, that's how society is going to learn.
Humanity is going to learn what are the ways to do this. And so, I, I agree with you. So we're, we're.
Guillermo: we're
Nichol: Motivated in the exact same way. So we hear a lot about AI helping HR teams do more with less, but how do we ensure that it helps [00:23:00] them do things better, not just faster? And what does that look like for coaching or
Guillermo: learning?
Well, first is a tricky question because I think it's not just about coaching and learning. I think that you have to see the full lifecycle of an, the employee lifecycle, the talent management lifecycle.
Uh, one one of the things that I mentioned this morning as well is if we embrace this opportunity. Coming from the traditional lenses of HR, of functional expertise and say, this is talent acquisition. This is talent development. This is total rewards, this is benefits, this is employee relations. We are going to miss the boat.
Instead, I think we need to swap and say, what is the perception of the, the user, the employee, the
workforce?
So how I improve engagement, how I facilitate. Achievement [00:24:00] how I create opportunities and career because that's what the workforce perceives. They don't perceive the departments of HR, they perceive how this
Nichol: influenced you.
Yeah. They never say, oh, today is my day to talk to talent or learning and development. They're just like, how do I get to the
Guillermo: next level?
Nichol: Exactly.
What do I, how do I learn what
Guillermo: I
need To do?
Yes.
And the business as well. They don't see this as, as processes of sequential things. What they see is how do I get the right talent at the right moment, at the right price, in the right place,
right?
So I think that
the opportunity for HR with AI is to have a reshaping of how we do
things
is the
catalyzer. let, let's do a very simple example
to understand what that means. For years, the business of having a circus was [00:25:00] based on the clouds, the animals, and what you bring to the crowds.
And then you have a
Canadian crazy guy that says, no, I'm going to do this around music and stories. No, no, that's not circus. Yeah. Yeah. This is circus and it's called Circus de Sole,
the most
successful
Nichol: circus in the
Guillermo: of the world.
Exactly. Uh, because it was brave enough to say, no, this is not, we will do it differently because at the end, what we want is to create a sensation.
The people, we don't need the lions or the elephants to create that, or the clouds only. You need to orchestrate differently. Mm-hmm.
Nichol: And so keeping with that,
Guillermo: that.
Nichol: when we're thinking about these deeply human moments, so you know, grandma being the creating.
Experiences for her family or a circus where it's really about awe and no elephants required.
Yeah, exactly. [00:26:00] So when we're thinking about scalable AI and these deeply human moments, um, how do we balance between that, especially in talent development or leadership support? How do we know, what do we, what do we use AI for and what do we keep
Guillermo: human?
I think that what we need to to evaluate is what is the outcome that we want?
Okay? And based on that outcome, outcome that we are looking for, we need to see, okay, how we create that outcome.
These are the toolings that we have, how we combine these tools in order to create that outcome in a, not just better, faster, but in a smarter way. And that is where you make the decision and says, look, in order to create this outcome, this is the best way to combine the
the different components.
And then you go very convinced and you fail. [00:27:00] And you treat again,
try
it again. Okay.
So I think
this is the mindset of iteration, the mindset of what is the final outcome that we want instead of the mindset of process and sequential building that is much more monolithic and,
oh no, I already
have the policy.
Don't change it. And say, well, maybe you don't need a policy. Uh, so what is the, the policy for going to the office? There are companies that said, there is no policy. It's your common sense. So start treating our workforce as adults. Uh, and in other context, yes, if you are in a context of retail and you're in a context of of different things, you need to have a little bit more
of guard rails around.
Hmm.
Nichol: Mm-hmm. So, um, since launching Atlas Copilot,
Guillermo: what
Nichol: have you learned about what HR professionals actually need when using AI that [00:28:00] surprised
Guillermo: you? Uh, they need encouragement. I, think that the, thing that surprised me the most is we need to have this little push, this little
nudging. This little, okay, let's do it.
It's not that hard. It's Like, again,
I think that most of the people knows how to ride a bike and all of us starting to ride a bike have accidents. You have to be careful. you have to do it in a controlled environment, but we have to be willing to have that initial little glitch, little failure.
Learn from that. Try again. So I think that the most important part is encouragement, empowerment, and a safe space to make some mistakes and, learn from those mistakes. Trying and retrying
and learning
is what creates the best potential outcome [00:29:00] later, and that's what we need as, as HR professionals.
That encouragement?
Nichol: Yeah. One of the things that excites me the most about ai, especially for HR professionals is that, you know, often what I find, um, I tell people at our events and our audience is that there are no experts.
So, so there's AI experts who are doing the, you know, who are doing algorithms and that kind of thing, but as it relates to a specific company, what. Is appropriate for that company, that culture, that customer, and you know, and, and you, someone's particular department and team is very specialized. And so when people talk about, you know.
AI wrapper organizations and things like that, it's basically, it doesn't become valuable until it gets applied. And the people outside the organization, you know, who [00:30:00] are at the, you know, the, the big companies, the really large companies that are doing the general models, they might be experts there, but they're not experts on your company, your culture, your strategy, your department.
And so.
The
whole world is learning what that means. And so on that level there really there, there, there are no experts. It might as well be you, like it could be you. You could be the expert, just lean in and you start working on it. Try the different tools. Get the Atlas copilot, get this copilot, do that, and, and it's the individual, that individual HR leader who's going to understand in this culture, this company, this context, this department, here's how we can create.
Value and experimenting, and it's kind of exciting. It feels very freeing and, and often when I have this conversation, there's this moment where you see people realize
like,
oh, it might as well be me. And, and you know, because there's a a [00:31:00] sense sometimes I think where people feel like they, they don't know enough and that they own that they don't have the credentials to do it, but because we're all learning
it together.
The, all the credentials you need are that you know the company, you know the culture, you know the context, and if you know the business outcomes and the strategy like you talked about at the top of the, our conversation, then you
Guillermo: know
Nichol: you
can
be the one.
Guillermo: Exactly. Exactly. No, I love
that
positioning because it goes to the core of what we are saying. We should not expect to be recipients of knowledge to do something.
We should expect us to build the knowledge because we have all the bases and because everything is new here.
Nichol: Yeah. Okay. Final question. We love to leave our audience with practical advice when they're listening to [00:32:00] our conversation the next Monday, what do they do?
What is your advice to them? What is the practical starting point for someone who is just getting started? What
should
they
do?
do
Guillermo: I think that you need to build very small little habits that we are working with different companies, much bigger global, and one of the things that we realize when we work with our clients at Atlas is not about a big boon, is about the little habits. So for instance, next Monday, instead of starting your day, just.
trying
to deal with the email. Have a 15 minute break, review your agenda of the day, and review what generative AI would give you as insights to go through your day. And that requires a 15 minutes. It does not require more to pause and reflect and have this [00:33:00] knowledge in front of you that you are going to build for your meetings for.
The activities that you have to do, do a little exploration with any of the tools that are in your uh within your toolkit. Ideally, something more that is tuned for HR. But in general, the tools are good if you just have the co-pilot in your Microsoft teams. If you have charge GPT, they open. If you have deep seek, just ask.
I need to go to a relocation meeting for a new software team. I. Okay, what are the latest strengths on relocation for software teams in global companies? And be prepared for that meeting with something else that you will not do. So start building small habits that will
Nichol: create
a
change.
That's great. Tiny habits. Tiny habits, yes.
Wonderful.
And that's going to do it for this week's episode.
A big thank you to Guillermo for sharing his expertise and deep insights with us and to our audience. We hope you'll [00:34:00] join us at the A IHI Project in 2026 till then sign up for our weekly newsletter at SHRM dot org slash a IHI and see you
next
week.