Charlotte plays a key role in building Omny’s HR capacity, managing office operations, and fostering a strong company culture. She is part of Omny's mission to protect industrial companies against cybersecurity threats by providing holistic visibility into Operational Technology (OT) environments. Omny is the result of a cybersecurity project that grew into a larger collaboration with the enterprises Cognite, Telenor, and Aker.
Mari Wachelke: Thank you for taking the time for this interview. Let’s go straight to it. In your role as HR at Omny, how have AI and digital technology tools impacted your daily work?
Charlotte Governtsen: AI has been an extraordinary asset for Omny, especially as a startup. It's inextricably linked to our success and the ability to save valuable time, which is crucial when you have a smaller FTE base (full-time employees). This is particularly important for startups’ internal support functions like HR, finance, and recruitment — the areas I focus on.
AI provides a significant edge, allowing for the rapid establishment of the fundamentals a company needs to operate. It accelerates organizational maturity in a way that hasn’t been possible before. For example, it helps generate documentation, employee handbooks, and drafts policies, while also handling a lot of the heavy lifting, such as analyzing large amounts of data on best practices and industry standards.
In startups, development and sales are critical — you need to generate cash flow. So, that’s where the money goes, while internal support functions are often down-prioritized before cash flow is secured.
At Omny, we've built our own Omny GPT, which has been crucial for getting foundational elements in place. It’s been a valuable tool for developing support frameworks and documentation, inspiring some of our processes, and helping us scale our operations. This quick establishment of foundational elements enables HR to focus on strategic growth initiatives, prioritizing culture and talent attraction activities.
This is where HR can shine and become valuable to the company. When HR is strategically focused from the beginning on building a strong, united culture, it creates a resilient organization — a huge competitive advantage during the bumpy journey of scaling up.
The Omny GPT, built by our data science team, has been used across the company — it’s not just an HR tool.
Mari: Can you give examples of how workflows have been streamlined at Omny using this tool?
Charlotte: There are a few examples. First, I’d like to talk about Hibob, which is the HR system. We launched it just before the summer, but we’d been building it since November 2023. It has been invaluable for streamlining task flows, automation, and creating huge efficiencies within the organization.
One great example is our onboarding process. We built a task flow that gets automated and anchored to the start date of a new employee. For example, if someone starts on the 5th of August, tasks are backdated from that time and sent out to managers, buddies, finance, HR, and the team responsible for hardware procurement. Managers are prompted to prepare for the onboarding, while buddies and HR receive instructions to ensure a smooth experience.
This approach has drastically improved the employee experience, culture and brand. It’s no longer just HR trying to make everything happen manually — the whole team understands their responsibilities and are prompted at the right time. Ownership can be tracked, and I can see which tasks have fallen behind, allowing me to follow up more effectively.
This streamlining means that the time to value for new hires has improved significantly. Data is collected and distributed quickly, and relevant stakeholders receive automated tasks. They’re much more engaged in the process, rather than just getting emails or Slack messages like, “remember to do this.” Instead, they get formal tasks they have to tick off, which can be tracked. Despite concerns about automation or AI potentially being dehumanizing, it actually allows for more human connection because we’re more organized, engaged, and prepared. This consistency across the board improves wellbeing, organizational alignment, efficiency, and team connection.
Also, automation has added significant value in our journey toward ISO 27001 certification. We can track and monitor hardware, information access, and security training completion, and generate reports. This has helped with both ISO certification and GDPR compliance.
Mari: Do you see any threats, given how positive these tools have been for Omny so far?
Charlotte: We're still figuring out the balance between over-automation and what’s actually valuable. Knowing what to keep manual and what to automate takes time and trial and error. But when you get it right, the time savings are significant, and you get consistency.
Automating repetitive tasks frees up HR to focus more on training managers to be empathetic leaders who care for their teams. AI gives us the capacity to invest in these areas, but it must be used wisely.
One personal observation: while AI has many advantages, it can also mean that people, especially those starting out in their careers, miss out on the valuable learning experiences that come from wrestling with a problem. AI has helped me in many ways - when I need to create something, like slides or deliverables, AI can quickly suggest things, which means I don’t always take the time to learn the subject deeply, so one threat I’ve noticed is that it sometimes cuts corners in the learning process.
Mari: How does this relate to ethical concerns and potential data privacy issues?
Charlotte: AI should not be fed private or personal data by companies, especially without proper consent. We have a strong internal security culture, so we’re well aware and regularly trained about where data shouldn’t go. Breaching GDPR regulations is possible, and if a company is not careful about how it uses AI and monitors its application, it could run into problems; so, ensuring compliance with regulatory standards and maintaining data integrity are key.
Additionally, we must remain vigilant on the problem of embedded biases in AI, which aren’t always considered by users. These biases can be perpetuated over time, and we need to mitigate them to ensure fair and balanced decision-making.
Mari: Overall, how do you evaluate AI for the future of work in HR?
Charlotte: AI has to remain a tool, not a strategic decision-maker. AI decisions can help summarise information and learnings but HR cannot rely on it for actions and decisions. It’s crucial to understand the inputs, processes, and priorities of the business, and not just rely on AI recommendations.
“Despite concerns about automation or AI potentially being dehumanizing, it actually allows for more human connection because we’re more organized, engaged, and prepared.”
— Charlotte Govertsen
