Workday Rising: How HR Leaders Turn AI Explorations Into Business Value
diginomica, Thursday, October 15th, 2026
HR technology leaders from Chipotle and others share how they moved AI from experiments to production value.
At Workday Rising, a panel of HR leaders discussed laying groundwork for AI projects and scaling them.
Chipotle, which hires about 5,000 people a week, rethought its recruiting process end to end around an always-on recruiting agent called Ava that candidates reach via in-store QR codes.
Chipotle says application volume rose, time-to-hire for restaurant roles fell by up to 75%, and it saves about $1 million a year in manager time.
Tapestry's Jen Houck said moving global HR onto one platform and fixing data hygiene had to come before AI innovation in recruiting and HR service delivery.