Beyond the Chatbot: Agentic AI Is Here and Employee-Owned Companies Can't Afford to Wait
Tuesday, April 7, 2026
2:45 PM - 3:45 PM CDT
Location: 104
CE: 1
CE Type: SHRM Education Level: For All Levels
Many employee-owned companies are still figuring out chatbots, but AI has already moved on. The next wave, agentic AI, doesn't just answer questions. It takes action: researching, drafting, scheduling, analyzing data, and executing multi-step workflows with minimal human oversight. This shift is happening fast, and it will reshape how many companies operate within the next two to three years.
Employee-owned companies, built on shared ownership, transparency, and distributed decision-making, are better positioned than conventional firms to adopt agentic AI in ways that amplify rather than replace their people. But that advantage only holds if leadership acts now to build the knowledge, culture, and guardrails needed to adopt these tools responsibly.
In this session, you'll learn what agentic AI actually is (and isn't), see real-world demonstrations of AI agents performing meaningful business tasks, and walk away with a clear picture of where this technology is headed and what your company should be doing today to prepare. Whether you're an AI skeptic or an early adopter, you'll leave with practical next steps and a sharper sense of urgency about the biggest technological shift since the internet.
Learning Objectives:
Understand the leap from generative to agentic AI — Attendees will be able to clearly distinguish between traditional chatbot-style AI and the new generation of agentic AI systems that can autonomously plan, reason, and execute complex tasks, and explain why this distinction matters for their business.
Recognize the unique competitive advantage employee-owned firms hold in AI adoption — Attendees will understand how the structural strengths of employee ownership — aligned incentives, high-trust cultures, and distributed decision-making — create a natural foundation for adopting agentic AI in ways that empower people rather than displace them.
Identify concrete first steps to prepare their organization for the agentic AI era — Attendees will leave with a practical framework for assessing their company's AI readiness and prioritizing near-term actions, from building internal AI literacy to establishing governance guardrails, so they can move from awareness to action.
