Five steps: How HR can pass the ‘Octopus Test’ before agentic AI gets its tentacles into everything

For the past couple of years, most workplace conversations about AI have focused on prompting: how to ask better questions, write a stronger first draft, summarise a document or save ten minutes on an email.Useful? Sometimes. Transformational? No.But connected, agentic tools such as Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work are changing the nature of the conversation. This is no longer simply about what somebody types into a chat box; it is about what the technology can access, connect, retrieve, analyse a