AI Awards Finalist: Takeda and the HR Digital Partner that works for people

Among this year’s AI Awards finalists is Takeda, a global biopharmaceutical leader with a 245-year legacy headquartered in Japan, focused on research and development of highly innovative medicines that change patients’ lives. Takeda pushes the boundaries of new treatment possibilities and is guided by its commitment to patients, people, and the planet. In April 2022, it opened its first innovation hub in Bratislava within a global network of interconnected innovation centres, whose key role is the successful management of Takeda’s digital transformation. These centres offer unique career opportunities for IT experts, technical talents, and university students who can fundamentally shape the future of Takeda. We spoke with Vladimír Pavlík, who serves at Takeda as Global Chapter Lead AI & Custom Engineering.

Our “HR Digital Partner” is an AI-driven digital agent built on AI technologies that functions as an extended member of the HR team, providing support to more than 50 000 employees globally. It addresses key challenges related to limited information availability and inefficient business processes by enabling instant access to HR knowledge, automating administrative tasks (e.g. ticketing, Workday operations), and supporting the execution of multi-step workflows. The result is higher productivity, faster decision-making, and an improved employee experience across HR, finance, procurement, and digital functions.

The biggest challenge was balancing AI autonomy with maintaining full human oversight, particularly in the context of HR decisions that directly affect employees’ careers, benefits, and personal data. As the system gradually transitions from an information tool to an agentic solution capable of executing tasks, risks emerge around over-reliance on AI, as well as the need to clearly communicate the system’s limitations, reliability, and way of working within a global environment with varying cultural expectations.

The system is designed with a strong emphasis on the human-in-the-loop principle and includes several control mechanisms: mandatory user confirmation and a draft mode before any action is executed, delegation of decisions to HR specialists who retain final authority, and role-based access control to protect data and limit access. Security and trustworthiness are further reinforced by generating responses exclusively from internal knowledge bases with no external data leakage, transparency through source citations and disclaimers, and a continuous feedback loop with full auditability. These mechanisms ensure the system remains under human control and operates safely even as it scales.

We see the biggest challenge as building trust in AI when working with sensitive data and decisions that affect people, particularly in healthcare and HR. Takeda is positioning itself as a leader in the responsible use of AI through a robust governance framework (Responsible AI, AI Governance Network), ethical principles, and transparent compliance processes. Our ambition is to actively contribute to AI that strengthens human capabilities rather than replacing them, and that is implemented in a way that respects user privacy, security, and trust.

The future of HR Digital Partner points toward a fully agentic system capable of independently and orchestrally executing complex HR processes, while maintaining transparency and human control. The system will deepen personalised employee support across the entire work lifecycle, increase the automation of routine tasks to free up capacity for strategic work, and expand the explainability and fairness of decision-making. The key principle remains a partnership between AI and people, where AI acts as a digital co-pilot supporting decision-making, while final responsibility and judgement remain with humans.