A new talent and culture intelligence platform enables talent leaders to unify fragmented talent data, benchmark practices against peers, and turn insights into action in minutes instead of months.
san francisco, March 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Paradigm, the talent and cultural intelligence company, today announced the launch of Surface, the industry’s first AI-native platform that uses agent AI to give talent and culture leaders a unified view of what makes their organizations tick, benchmark their efforts against their peers, and turn insights into action.
Paradigm surfacing
Unlike employee experience and engagement tools, traditional HR analytics platforms, or general-purpose AI assistants, Surface is the first platform designed to analyze the full range of people and culture signals across your organization. In most companies today, the signals and data that shape culture, such as hiring and turnover trends, engagement surveys, performance reviews, policies, leadership behaviors, employee feedback, and workplace norms, are scattered across systems that are not designed to work together. Talent leaders are increasingly being asked to connect culture to business outcomes with the same rigor as other functions, but they lack the modern tools needed to do so.
Surface was built to fill that gap.
“Culture is the most powerful predictor of an organization’s performance, but until now, talent leaders haven’t had the data-driven platform they need to prove it,” said Joel Emerson, CEO and co-founder of Paradigm. “For more than a decade, we’ve been doing that work through consulting: going into organizations, analyzing all the signals that shape culture, and translating them into business outcomes. Surface brings that entire process to life. For the first time, any organization can see the big picture and be able to act on it.”
Surface: A new layer of intelligence for talent and culture
Many organizations use a combination of engagement platforms, HR analytics tools, and AI assistants, but most of these systems only analyze one part of the talent ecosystem.
Surface brings together a complete system of people and culture data to provide a more comprehensive view.
Surface offers three core features that no other platform currently offers.
Unified intelligence across fragmented systems. Surface integrates data from HRIS systems, engagement platforms, performance management tools, surveys, policies, benefits, exit interviews, and other sources to create a single, searchable view of what’s shaping an organization’s culture and talent outcomes. Surface can ingest structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data from any source, giving you visibility into your entire talent ecosystem in ways that no individual tool in your stack can.
Benchmarking against real-world human resources practices. Using proprietary benchmarks built from over a decade of work with organizations of all sizes and across all industries, Surface allows companies to compare their people practices, benefits, and cultural norms not just on compensation, but also on practices that drive real results, such as performance management, parental leave, onboarding, manager effectiveness, and more.
AI-powered execution with Surface Agent. Surface Agent is the first agent AI built specifically for talent and culture leaders. Unlike general-purpose AI tools that only summarize information or answer questions, Surface Agent actively helps your team do their work.
Agents act as strategic advisors, data analysts, and execution partners, analyzing organizational data, identifying the drivers behind outcomes like engagement and attrition, and generating the outcomes talent teams need to run their businesses.
This can power dozens of workflows that typically consume hundreds of manual hours from talent teams, including:
Drafting competitive and compliant policies, including executive memos and rollout plans
Create board reports and executive narratives that connect talent metrics to business outcomes
Analyze turnover trends and recommend hiring priorities
Modeling organizational structure and workforce planning
Writing quarterly business reviews and executive briefs
Designing manager training programs based on patterns in organizational data
Surface integrates organizational data, real-world benchmarks, and paradigm expertise so the agent generates recommendations tailored to each company’s specific circumstances. Rather than creating general advice, we identify the most important factors shaping culture and suggest targeted actions leaders can take next.
How Surface speeds up tasks that once took months
In the past, uncovering the patterns that drive culture and talent outcomes often required months of consulting work and a variety of tools to analyze multiple datasets and organizational practices.
Surface automates much of that analysis, allowing leaders to generate insights and recommendations in minutes instead of months.
“The great talent leaders we work with know exactly how to spend their time: developing strategy, advising CEOs, and connecting company culture to business outcomes,” Emerson said. “Most of them would say that’s where they spend a fraction of their time because it’s buried in the operational work of getting data and creating deliverables. Surface changes that equation.”
Early adoption and availability
Surface is available today, and dozens of companies across a variety of industries are currently deploying the platform. Initial feedback from talent and culture leaders includes:
“I don’t know how long ago, but I’ve never seen a product this exciting. There are so many different ways that data can be used and I’m really excited about how it fits into my vision of how we’re going to change.”
“It feels like there’s so much information that you’re always having to interpret it yourself. Surface is just seamless. You click a button and a plan of action appears. I think you can make more progress faster.”
“This is exactly what we need. I was like God when you showed me how easy it was to do it. I spent hours doing this myself using GPT.”
To see Surface in action and sign up for a demo, visit: surface.ai
About Paradigm
Paradigm is a talent and cultural intelligence company that helps organizations create healthy, high-performing workplaces. Since 2014, the company has partnered with more than 2,000 organizations across industries to help leaders understand what’s driving performance within their companies and where to focus their efforts to strengthen culture and talent outcomes. Surface, Paradigm’s AI-native platform, is built on this foundation to help organizations analyze culture, benchmark talent practices, and turn insights into action.
Surface creates a unified intelligence layer for talent and culture leaders. The platform brings together fragmented signals across HR systems, research, performance data, policies, and organizational practices into a single, searchable view of what’s shaping an organization’s culture, people, and business outcomes.
Surface benchmarks an organization’s people and culture practices against proprietary data built from over a decade of working with companies across industries. Leaders can compare how their organizations approach practices such as performance management, onboarding, parental leave, and manager effectiveness to identify gaps and opportunities.
Surface Agent is the first agent AI built specifically for talent and culture leaders. Acting as a strategic advisor, data analyst, and execution partner, it analyzes organizational data, identifies the drivers behind outcomes like engagement and attrition, and generates insights, benchmarks, and action plans in minutes.
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