#1 - Welcome AI curious HR and People Leaders 🙋‍♀️ 🦾

Let's be honest - most AI content out there is either so broad it's useless "AI will transform everything!" or so technical it feels irrelevant to People Ops "here's how to fine-tune your LLM using PyTorch!"

As someone working in People for a long time, I've felt the frustration of trying to piece together how all these developments actually apply to our field. Sure, AI is exciting, but what does it mean for talent acquisition? Employee engagement? L&D? And how do we implement it without a team of data scientists?

That's exactly why I started this newsletter. I’ve spent the last couple of years curious and exploring the world of AI. Then I had the last 6 months to really deep dive, and now I want to share my insights!

Who Am I?

For those who don’t know me, I’m Matt Bradburn. I was VP People at Peakon, built and sold the DBR community to Talentful, built and sold People Collective to Scede and now working on several “small bets”.

1. Atlas Partners - providing fractional platform expertise to VCs and PE funds
2. People x Robots - providing insights and training to People leaders in practical AI
3. COMING SOON - Scale Advisory - providing consulting projects and fractional expertise

I have been using AI in my work for the last 2 years, starting from nothing and now able to build agents and small apps, or provide deep research to clients to solve their challenges.

Now I want to share my learnings with you all.

My focus: Combining the People with the Robot - it’s the best way!

An aside, I live in Whitstable in a little 🏠 on the seafront, I have two wonderful children and I love making friends in the People space - come say hi!

🎯 Deep Dive of the Week

Each week I will bring you a Deep Dive on a problem, and the ways I went about solving it with AI. This week, it’s all about training materials for managers, and although normally I would go deeper, this week i’ll keep it practical so you get a chance to read the other sections!

Challenge:

My friend wanted to find a more engaging way of presenting training materials to their team, specifically around career development and difficult conversations.

Typically, folks might read a notion page, but they might also miss some crucial elements.

Having spoken to the managers across the business, they wanted:

1. More interactivity

2. Multi modal ways of learning

3. A way to ensure new managers got up to speed.

So, I decided I would help them set this up by working through the potential options and creating some ways to solve the actual challenges. 

Tools used:

Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google Notebook, Notion

Et voila, Claude came up with a very nice and simple checklist to help managers hold their first levelling conversation - this allows us to move from a guide to a simple step by step tick list - both interactive, simple and a change in thinking approach:

Link to checklist asset for you all here!

Next, I wanted to see if I could turn it into a learning app to focus on specific scenarios. Turns out, Claude is great for this!

Now we went back and forth a lot… as you can see by a further prompt here: 

“The text is still disappearing in the buttons on both the question screen and the confirmation screen on mobile, please ensure the app is mobile responsive. Also, please ensure you create at least 10 different scenarios based on holding crucial conversations.”

But, I am very pleased to say that we got there, check it out:

Now in order for the client to make use of this, I had to move it to Notion, and for this I needed to have the application launched. I am still in the process of doing this with Replit and will share the outcome with you all next week, so you can have it too!

So we now have: A simple checklist, a nice tool for new managers in particular to test themselves against the materials, but what about if you really really love podcasts?

I mean, who doesn’t love a podcast? It’s a much more engaging way of understanding materials. For this, I needed their slides, their training transcripts and Google Notebook LM.

Then, quite simply, I followed the instructions on screen, ensuring all the materials they had were included and making sure it emphasised the right parts. I was then AMAZED. Literally mind blown by what it came up with 🤯

Now, to protect my client privacy, I have not included the whole thing, but I’m pretty happy with the outcome (PS, audio quality is much better when you’re not recording off tinny speakers)

So to sum up, we wanted:

1. More interactivity

2. Multi modal ways of learning

3. A way to ensure new managers got up to speed.
   

Now we have a checklist, a small learning app and a whole 24 minute podcast instead of the same old training session materials.

I don’t know about you, but I thought this was pretty freaking neat 💪🥳

🧠 Quick Learn: AI Model Types for HR

Let's demystify different AI model types and when to use them in HR. Of course, I’m getting an AI model to explain models…

So let’s get it to explain the differences between OpenAI o3 reasoning model and Gemini 2.0, but using DeepSeek (also a reasoning model).

Yes, of course DeepSeek could, and the explanation is great, but it was far too generic:

 1. Purpose & Focus 

- O3: Think of it as a detail-oriented problem solver.  

  - Designed for structured, step-by-step reasoning.  

  - Excels at breaking down complex questions (e.g., math problems, logic puzzles) into smaller, manageable steps.  

  - Ideal for tasks requiring deep analysis or precise answers.  

- Gemini 2.0: Picture a creative multitasker.  

  - Built to handle multiple types of data (text, images, code, etc.) at once.  

  - Great for open-ended, creative tasks or answering questions that mix different formats (e.g., explaining a concept with both text and visuals).  

It continued in this vein until I got it to change it up!

Here is where the magic happens:

Understanding O3 vs. Gemini 2.0 for HR Leaders 

Simplified breakdown for day-to-day tasks and strategic projects, with examples: 

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O3: The Analytical HR Advisor 

Strengths: Structured problem-solving, compliance checks, data-driven decisions. 

Day-to-Day HR Tasks 

Example: Resolving Employee Policy Conflicts 

 Scenario: An employee disputes a PTO denial based on conflicting interpretations of the policy.  

  - O3 in Action:  

•     Breaks down the policy language step by step.  

•     Cross-references historical precedents and compliance guidelines.  

•     Generates a clear, legally sound explanation for the HR manager to communicate.  

Strategic HR Projects 

Example: Designing a Fair Promotion Framework 

Scenario: Building a transparent system to reduce bias in promotions.  

O3 in Action:  

•     Analyses performance metrics, tenure, and skill gaps across teams.  

•     Identifies patterns (e.g., departments with low promotion rates).  

•     Proposes a step-by-step evaluation rubric aligned with company goals.  

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Gemini 2.0: The Creative HR Partner 

Strengths: Multimodal tasks, engaging content creation, big-picture brainstorming. 

Day-to-Day HR Tasks 

- Example: Revamping a Job Posting 

  - Scenario: A role has low applicant engagement.  

  - Gemini in Action:  

•     Drafts inclusive, compelling job descriptions.  

•     Generates visuals (e.g., infographics showcasing company culture).  

•     Suggests platforms (e.g., LinkedIn vs. TikTok) based on target candidates.  

Strategic HR Projects 

- Example: Launching a DEI Initiative 

  - Scenario: Improving diversity in leadership.  

  - Gemini in Action:  

•     Researches best practices and competitor strategies.  

•     Creates training materials (videos, quizzes, discussion guides).  

•     Simulates scenarios (e.g., "How would this policy impact retention of underrepresented groups?").  

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Key Takeaway for HR Leaders 

Use O3 when:  

You need accuracy, compliance, or data-heavy analysis (e.g., audits, policy updates, compensation benchmarking).  

Use Gemini 2.0 when:  

You want creativity, engagement, or cross-functional insights (e.g., employer branding, L&D programs, culture-building campaigns).  

Pro tip: Most HR tasks benefit from reasoning models (like ChatGPT) for day-to-day work, while strategic projects often need a combination of model types.

📰 News That Matters for HR

Free AI Agents Course from Hugging Face 🎓

Hugging Face just launched a free course on AI agents - this is huge for HR pros wanting to understand automation possibilities. The course teaches you how to build AI agents that can perform tasks automatically. Think of it as your gateway to understanding how to automate repetitive HR processes or create AI-powered assistants for employee support.

STORM: Stanford's New Research Tool ⚡

Stanford just released STORM, a free research tool that automatically searches hundreds of websites to create comprehensive summaries on any topic. For HR, this is a game-changer for:

• Quickly researching best practices

• Staying updated on industry trends

• Creating evidence-based HR policies

• Developing training materials with well-researched content

The best part? It's free and available to everyone! No more spending hours manually compiling research.

👋 Let's Connect!

Finding this valuable? There's more where this came from!

✨ Share this newsletter with your HR network in communities or Linkedin
🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattbradburn/
💌 Have questions? Just hit reply!

Remember: AI in HR doesn't have to be complicated. Let's figure it out together, one practical step at a time.