Reejig Blog

6 AI realities Josh Bersin and Siobhan Savage say leaders must face

Written by Reejig | May 6, 2025 2:15:04 AM

Live broadcast recap on reinventing work, rewriting job architecture, and getting AI-ready.

The job architecture you've relied on for years is officially obsolete. In our latest live broadcast, "Work Intelligence is Here: Redesign or be Left Behind," Reejig CEO and Co-Founder Siobhan Savage and industry analyst Josh Bersin laid it bare. If you're still organizing work around static job descriptions, you're already behind.

AI is forcing a total rethink of how work gets done. HR leaders are at the center of this shift.

Together, Siobhan and Josh unpacked:

  • Why 92% of CEOs are betting on AI, but only 23% believe their people can adapt
  • What a task-based view of work reveals that a job-based view never could
  • The fatal flaws in "BYO AI" strategies
  • How to rewire workforce design for speed, scale, and transformation

Missed the session? Want to send key takeaways to your CEO or transformation lead? Here's what you need to know.

1. Job architecture is the Achilles' heel of workforce redesign

The systems we use to structure work were built for a slower, more predictable world. Today, they're not just outdated. They're actively getting in the way.

Job architecture was broken long before AI showed up. It was designed for industrial-era factories. Not dynamic, task-based work. Now, AI is simply exposing the cracks:

  • Generic job descriptions that say nothing about actual work
  • Roles that bear no resemblance to what people do
  • Structures that collapse under real-time change

"This isn't like buying Workday and hoping everyone becomes more productive. This is a full business reinvention."

Josh Bersin

"Forget AI for a second. Job architecture was already broken. Whoever designed that was building for the dinosaur era."

Siobhan Savage

If I automate chaos, I just scale the chaos.

If you keep plugging AI into broken foundations, you'll keep getting broken results.

2. Redesign work at the task level, not the job level

Jobs are too broad and too static to support AI deployment. If you want to identify automation opportunities, assign AI agents, or support reskilling, you need task-level data.

"People have skills. Jobs and work have tasks. If you want to deploy AI strategically, you need task-level data."

Siobhan Savage

"We found a company with 100,000 employees and 65,000 job titles. That's insanity. In reality, they had about 3,000 jobs, just labeled 60,000 different ways."

Josh Bersin

3. The AI gold rush is causing chaos

Too many companies adopt a "BYO AI" approach. Individual teams pick up AI agents in silos. Everything slows down. Without enterprise-level orchestration, these efforts create more inefficiency than innovation.

"Everyone's out buying agents because the CEO said 'Go do AI.' But that kind of strategy is breaking the machine."

Siobhan Savage

"Most of the value won't come from what you buy. It'll come from how you redesign the way work gets done."

Josh Bersin

4. From experimentation to engineering: the four stages of AI adoption

Josh Bersin introduced a practical model for AI maturity. It moves from personal productivity gains to full-scale organizational reinvention:

  • Level 1: Make existing work easier. Same job, better AI.
  • Level 2: Major steps eliminated. Same job, AI removes work.
  • Level 3: Re-engineered work, partnered with agents. New job, redesigned process, agents automate work.
  • Level 4: Autonomous intelligent agents. People train and manage the AI. New job, redesigned process, people "manage" the agents.

"Level four is where you get 100 to 300% returns. That's where Reejig comes in, to make it easy and scalable."

Josh Bersin

5. AI transformation needs a new role: the chief work officer

To succeed, organizations need someone responsible for orchestrating people, AI, and work design. Not just job titles or headcount.

"HR is not driving this. It's coming from CEOs and Chief AI Officers. But they don't understand work. That's your opportunity to lead."

Siobhan Savage

"This discipline, true work design, hasn't existed until now. It's time to let go of old job titles and build something better."

Josh Bersin

6. Learning will shift from training to real-time support

As work evolves weekly, L&D must keep up. That means shifting from career ladders to real-time support. Based on emerging tasks and AI-augmented roles.

"We're entering a world of just-in-time learning. You're not just removing tasks. You're creating new ones no one's ever done before."

Siobhan Savage

"The L&D playbook needs to be rewritten. We're moving from linear learning paths to continuous support."

Josh Bersin

Keep the conversation going

Whether you're leading HR, transformation, or AI strategy, the message is clear. Reinvention is not optional. It's essential. We'll need to work together on this.

Book a demo to see how Reejig's Work Intelligence redesigns work responsibly at the task level.

Apply to join our Work Design Collaborative Virtual Program. We educate pioneering HR leaders on how to architect work in the AI era.

Looking to dive deeper? Catch the replay of our live session with Josh Bersin and Josh Newman from WPP. They shared how WPP drives AI transformation through job architecture redesign, capacity building, and task-level playbooks powered by Work Intelligence.

Looking to dive deeper into topics like this?

Catch the replay of our live session with Josh Bersin and Josh Newman from WPP, where they shared how WPP is driving AI transformation through job architecture, capacity building, and task-level playbooks powered by Work Intelligence.