Two of the standout sessions at this year’s SHRM Florida Conference tackled AI from complementary angles — one focused on practical application in hiring, the other on the change management reality that determines whether any new tool actually sticks. Together, they painted a clear picture of what responsible, people-first HR leadership looks like in practice.

Session 1: AI in Hiring — Use It to Filter, Not to Decide

Pamela McGee opened with a challenge: hiring fast using AI sounds like a win, but it depends entirely on how you use it. Her recommendation was to treat AI as a filtering tool — use it to weed out candidates who clearly don’t meet baseline criteria, and then put human judgment to work on the remaining pool. Letting AI surface the ‘top’ resumes and running with those means missing context, nuance, and the candidates who don’t fit a standard profile but bring exactly what your organization needs.

She also addressed the bias question that comes up in nearly every AI and hiring conversation. Her take: before you examine the algorithm, examine the starting pool. If you didn’t have a diverse candidate pipeline to begin with, that’s the problem to solve first.

For HR professionals who aren’t yet in the room when AI systems are being built, McGee’s message was clear: get there. Ongoing feedback to developers and internal teams is essential — not a one-time input, but a continuous relationship that ensures the systems reflect organizational values. Her practical guidance wrapped around a 30-day framework: assess AI-related risks, communicate proactively, pilot with a defined group, train leaders first, and measure actual impact rather than assuming adoption has happened because the tool was deployed.

Session 2: Why Transformations Fail — and What HR Can Do About It

If the first session was about getting AI right in hiring, Wendy Carter’s session was about why even the right tools fail when change management is treated as an afterthought.

She opened with a simple activity: share a change initiative that looked strong on paper but didn’t land. Attendees quickly surfaced familiar stories — tools deployed without HR input, changes communicated to one department but not another, employees who showed up one day to find their workflow completely altered.

Carter’s diagnosis: organizations consistently invest in tools, train on tools, and expect adoption — in that order. The problem is that the order is completely backwards. The starting point should be building trust and readiness, and that has to happen before training begins. The barriers she identified go deeper than process: fear of job loss, loss of professional identity, distrust of leadership, and emotional unreadiness. These aren’t soft concerns — they’re the documented reasons 70% of transformations fail and 60% of employees feel unprepared when change arrives.

Her three-part framework for adoption success — Clarity, Inclusion, and Support — gives HR a concrete place to start. Employees need to understand what’s changing and why before they’re asked to learn a new tool. They need a voice in the process, even without a vote. And they need real backing — the skills and confidence to actually begin. Her call to action: listen, find your change agents, offer varied training formats, and address the emotional dimension of change upfront.

What Both Sessions Share

Both Pamela McGee and Wendy Carter arrived at the same place from different directions: the technology is not the obstacle. The human experience is. Whether you’re building an AI-assisted hiring process or rolling out a new platform org-wide, the organizations that get it right are the ones who invest in people first — building trust, ensuring clarity, and treating adoption as a human journey, not a technical deployment.

MillsonJames supports organizations in building the HR strategy, change readiness, and people-first processes that make real transformation possible. Let’s connect.