How Kantar’s Chief People and Agent Officer Is Leading an Enterprise AI Transformation

Andy Doyle, Chief People and Agent Officer at Kantar, explains how the market research company moved from a small Copilot pilot to an organization-wide AI transformation with more agents than employees. He shares the practical steps, challenges, and lessons from building an “agent factory” and combining people and agent management into one role.

■ AI Transformation at Kantar
- Rolling out Copilot to all 12,000 employees and reaching an 85% daily usage rate
- Moving from individual experimentation to enterprise-wide agent adoption
- Saving an average of two hours per person per week in the first year

■ The Agent Factory and Governance
- Managing 15,000 agents, with about 150 enterprise-level agents
- Categorizing agents into no-code, low-code, and pro-code tiers
- Centralizing successful agents while preserving grassroots innovation

■ People, Change, and Adoption
- Addressing employee anxiety and the fear of failure with AI
- Using internal influencers and “citizen agent builders” to drive adoption
- Redesigning HR work, including a people agent that handles 40% of queries without human intervention

■ Advice for Leaders
- Going all in on AI while focusing on human-centered change
- Building skills for experimentation and iteration rather than perfection
- Measuring ROI through productivity, engagement, and quality metrics

This episode is valuable for HR leaders, executives, and change managers who want a realistic, example-rich look at how a non-tech company is integrating AI agents into its workforce and what it takes to bring people along.