[00:00:00] LIGIA: Welcome to the New Talent Code, a podcast with practical insights, dedicated to empowering change agents in HR to push the envelope in their talent functions. We’re your hosts. I’m Ligia Zamora.
[00:00:19] JASON: And I’m Jason Cerrato. We’re bringing you the best thought leaders in the talent space to share stories about how they are designing the workforce of the future, transforming processes, rethinking old constructs, and leveraging cutting-edge technology to solve today’s pressing talent issues.
[00:00:34] It’s what we call the New Talent Code.
[00:00:38] LIGIA: So if you’re looking for practical actionable advice to get your workforce future ready, you’ve come to the right place.
[00:00:49] Well, hello, Christophe and welcome. Thanks so much for joining us today. Let’s, let’s jump right in. You know, as a way of introduction, we are actually fascinated at Eightfold with non-linear career paths. We really feel that people should be hired and promoted based on their potential rather than their credentials.
[00:01:07] So I’m curious, tell us a little bit about your career path. Is this what five year old Christoph thought about doing, joining Deloitte, doing some consulting?
[00:01:16] CHRISTOPH: Hi, Licia. Hi, Jason. I’m really happy to be here. Thanks for, for having me. Interesting question. And I think Honestly speaking, like for a long time, I wanted to be consultant, but definitely not as a child or as like growing up.
[00:01:29] And I also did quite different things. So I, I worked, I think, as all young people needing money next to the studies I worked in as a waiter, as a barkeeper, but I also worked in a brickyard once and in a restaurant as dishwasher. So I, I did it all, I would say. And what I find out, found out during that time that it’s really all about being curious about.
[00:01:50] new things and really also being open for new things, because then it’s much easier for you to also have fun and have passion for things you’re doing. And I’m really happy that I collected all these experiences because I think at the end of the day, we are all what we’re living, right? So what we experienced, people we met, we are like a mixture out of all of that.
[00:02:09] So, and, and becoming a consultant or an entrepreneur, as it was before was like founded in my early twenties, I would say. So when I started my studies, I do know that I wanted to do economics because consultant was one of the Professions I would think of and also find interesting because it’s definitely not boring.
[00:02:29] You get so many insights in different companies, industry, et cetera. So that’s, that’s what I really like about this. And I think that’s also what we all should look for nowadays. We as also as employers, because it’s much more important. And that quote is not from me, unfortunately, to hire for attitude instead of for like whatever experience, because we all know that experience not necessarily is in place yet for what we need in future.
[00:02:54] Plus we also know that what we know now, we potentially don’t need to know any more in a couple of years of time.
[00:03:00] JASON: A big part of what we’re going to talk about today is the human capital trends report coming out of Deloitte, but some themes that you already mentioned in your background, themes of curiosity and fun and imagination were a big part of the research that came out of the trends report.
[00:03:16] But on the new talent code, you know, we’re here to talk about how leaders need to think differently and operate differently to manage and measure success differently. And as someone who is in this space, thinking about workforce and organizational transformation, what are you seeing around some of the challenges at the feet of leaders today, trying to do this for this organization, and especially on the cusp of what’s happening, uh, in in these organizations with AI.
[00:03:44] How is all of this coming together to think about kind of the trends you are seeing, especially as it relates to the research?
[00:03:51] CHRISTOPH: There is a dramatic change going on in the world, not only in companies and then the economy, but also like geopolitically. So everything is moving, right? And everything is becoming.
[00:04:02] More and more boundaryless and that’s making it more complex. And I think that lots of the old concepts, processes, models, however you would like to call it, are not working anymore. And in my opinion, that’s now the time where people and companies and also leaders, as, as you mentioned, really see that it’s not going to work out like that anymore, and they are trying to understand.
[00:04:25] What they need to change and just a very simple example. But if we think about companies, 30, 40 years ago, we really had low attrition rates and we had employees doing our work nowadays, we have high attrition rates. We don’t only have to speak about the employees, but we talk about the workforce. We’re talking about geek workers.
[00:04:46] We are talking about other people, temporary workers that are joining our company. So it’s more complex and it’s not like that black and white anymore. So. That’s one side of the metal. The other one is that I think that we as entrepreneurs, we as employers need to think much more of what do we. On one hand, ask from our employees.
[00:05:09] What can we ask? What are the bringing to the table? And on the other hand, what do we need to offer them in order to keep them attracted to attract them in general, but also to keep them in the company? Because measuring people. And their work based on, we call it old proxies in our research, like on things like increased productivity, numbers of calls you’re doing, number of units you’re producing is not working out anymore.
[00:05:35] So I think measuring, I would even say humans or people’s performance, not employee employees, because I mentioned that differential before is not able to do this with like metrics you would use for machine. Like with regards to productivity. So we are asking ourselves, what are humans bringing to the table?
[00:05:56] And I think reflecting to the social skills that you mentioned before, and I also did. So I think that’s the real assets that people bring on the table, like being curious, being passionate, being empathetic, being innovative, being creative. I think that’s the real value that people can bring on the table.
[00:06:11] And it would only work if. People also have the feeling that this is worth it and also being respected, being appreciated by the company or the employer. And I think that’s exactly what we see nowadays, that companies are starting to struggle because we have this war for talent. We can’t get people on board.
[00:06:30] If we get them on board, we can’t keep them. Topics, knowledge, skills are changing all the time faster and faster and faster. So it’s really the question of putting more human sustainability into the game at the end of the day.
[00:06:45] LIGIA: So as this evolution happens, or this awareness of boundary lists, what is HR’s role?
[00:06:52] How does HR need to evolve so that they can continue to be potentially more strategic to the business?
[00:06:58] CHRISTOPH: Nowadays, still lots of HR departments are providing the payroll. That’s nothing to really win, right? So certainly it needs to be in place. It has to work, but that’s not making the difference. And when you ask business leaders, CEOs, the management, what they would, we expect from HR is to tell them, well, we expect from HR that they understand our business, that they understand our challenges.
[00:07:23] These challenges are mainly or very often human challenges, like finding the right people, training the right people, developing the people, et cetera, et cetera, keeping them attracted, keeping them passionate about everything. And that’s what HR in many cases is not able to provide at the very moment. And this is not because HR is not interested in these topics, but they are simply.
[00:07:46] Not able to provide these services because they don’t have time for it. They are stuck with manual processes. They are stuck with administrative work and burden of tons of work. It’s, it’s really incredible sometimes where the time in HR spent for. And it’s no matter like referring to the payroll that I did before, but also like, if you talk about absence training, et cetera, if this is all taking so much effort in doing manually, and we’re talking about multinational companies, we’re talking about 10, 000, hundreds of thousands of employees.
[00:08:19] This cannot be done manual anymore. And this is also Jason, where this AI topic comes into the game or into place, because I think we need to make sure that we think of technology. We think of AI Transcribed by https: otter. ai That can support us with this repetitive, annoying, but still necessary work in order to get some free time back to really deal with strategically important topics.
[00:08:44] And just let me name a skill based organization, strategic workforce planning, an employee experience as three topics that should be really the high prior topics for HR departments and also for, for the companies themselves at the end of the day. So I think that’s really. Where HR needs to also rethink how can I become a boundary less organization and how do I have the justification to be on or at the C level table and to really make an impact that matters.
[00:09:15] This is really important, like contributing to the company’s success and not saying, well, we need to do this list. We need to now do so many things with compliance, digital ethics. We will touch all these topics later, but it’s really Currently not possible for them to do that, and that’s why where they need to rethink how they’re doing their daily work at the end of the day.
[00:09:36] JASON: So is it this mixture of human and machine working together and this redesigning of work and potentially removing some of the toil of work, as it’s been described, that’s actually emphasizing some of the human characteristics of work and now the need for increased imagination, increased creativity.
[00:09:58] CHRISTOPH: It’s definitely one part of it. The second part of it would be to provide a framework where people are not afraid and scared of working together with these machines or AI. I think that’s also one aspect that we shouldn’t forget. Change is not always easy and it’s not like a self driven thing. At the very beginning, everyone is skeptic about change and dependent on what you Provide as a framework, also potentially as, as, as trust or as safety, I would say, even it will work better or not so good.
[00:10:29] And I think HR on one hand certainly needs to use technology to get more time for these more important topics. And also they are more interesting. So I think that people will be much more happy with their jobs at the end of the day. And second, they need to really make sure that they understand. The concerns, the challenges of their employees, and also have some solutions and answers for that, or even programs like we do see in our trend studies that nearly 90 percent of all asked what it was over 14, 000 people were asked and confirming that they said, well, yeah, we need to deal with AI.
[00:11:05] So we do know this is gonna to come. There is no way back. There is like, this is for sure, but only at the same time, 10 percent of the companies. We’re investing anything in AI last year. So it’s like this discrepancy of we know that it’s important. We know that we should deal with it, but we’re not doing anything for it.
[00:11:27] LIGIA: What do you think is holding up the other 90 percent?
[00:11:29] CHRISTOPH: Coming back to these fears, that could be one. I think the other one could be that they really don’t see the use case, the area of application for it. The other one is that they somehow treat it as like another trend and like, it’s nice, it’s cool stuff.
[00:11:45] Everyone needs to deal with AI. But it’s just like not taken seriously and that’s also and potentially we’ll come to this question, but I probably already elaborate on that one. I think it’s really important also to support this topic and we call it as one trend imagination deficit to say, well, Even like in Deloitte, if we think about consulting, how would AI be a part of it?
[00:12:11] How would it change the nature of consulting we are providing today? This is nothing that can be changed overnight. This is nothing that I by myself can sort out. So we need to have A framework again, a culture that allows us and that provides us with time and also the ability to rethink in our area consulting or to rethink production or to rethink service or to rethink retail, for example, and only if we do this and not like in a siloed way, not in a very small way, but really like.
[00:12:46] Think big way disruptive and I really don’t like this word, but I think it’s a good way to use it in that in in that moment because otherwise we wouldn’t get an idea of what kind of potentially I will bring and I’m sure it will, but on the other hand, we need to be sure and to be aware. how to get there, what we would like to see, what we potentially would like to avoid and not see AI in.
[00:13:08] And at the end of the day, we are the humans. So it’s our decision.
[00:13:12] LIGIA: What is your advice for those who might be in our audience listening that may fall in that 90 percent category, whether it’s fear, whether it’s, you know, okay, we need to establish a culture, be more creative. Can you give them a little advice on how to get started and overcoming this fear, maybe getting educated?
[00:13:29] CHRISTOPH: The advice I would give is to say, well, take One or two little use cases and just. Get started. It’s not like that. You either invest a hundred million of euros or dollars or do nothing. It’s not that you either restructure or rethink the entire workforce or just a department. So the question really is where is your biggest pain points or where’s your comfort zones currently where I say, well, this business is really going well.
[00:13:56] So we potentially could also Afford spending some weeks, sorry, some people of this team to think how we are currently doing, how AI can play into it, what we could change, because at the end of the day, this could be your future competitive advantage, right? So you are in the, in the position of, of a strong leader or strong employer or strong company to say, well, we have the chance to do that.
[00:14:20] So that’s one thing. The other thing is we recommend our clients that they should. somehow provide digital playgrounds. So not to keep it as a game only or not taking it seriously, but to give again, our humans or people says psychological safety and also the room to try out things to say, well, I can do this.
[00:14:42] And still I would not harm any of our clients. I could try this out. And if it works, I can introduce it to my client and say, well, this is the way we could also could do it for you. And the last thing, and I think that’s the most important one for people who are always questioning. Whether it’s just a nice trend and everyone is now cool if he or she’s playing around with AI and they say, well, they are doubting that the real business impact of it to say, well, let’s go for realistic and real time use cases.
[00:15:11] So not just play around, but for example, in my case. I’m asking all my consultants to say, well, and we have cool AI products in within Deloitte already, and we have lots of our resources available in AI so we can prompt our own resources. And it’s much more convenient and easier than looking through all these documents.
[00:15:27] So I tell them, well, think of your daily work and try to imagine where it would make sense to use AI and whether it’s chat GPT or it’s something else, I don’t care. But make sure to integrate it in your daily work, that’s making the difference. And certainly you need to be aware of the fact that you need to proofread things that you do with AI, that it’s a topic of intellectual property that we have in the year or the topic, the entire topic about the AI act, et cetera, but it’s not wrong to use it and familiarize yourself with it.
[00:16:02] And honestly speaking, when I did my first prompts a year ago, I think they were pretty. Pretty weak. Pretty basic.
[00:16:09] LIGIA: Yeah.
[00:16:10] CHRISTOPH: Pretty basic. Yeah. But that was my way to get going. Right. And I understood how to move on. I learned my lessons, which is working, which is not working. And today, sometimes I’m just using.
[00:16:22] AI in order to get some inputs for my thinking. So I’m not saying, well, this is my problem. I prompt AI and then I’m providing the solution and sell it as my own, but I’m saying, well, this is the topic and potentially I’m not a specialist in every topic. And then I prompt the AI in order to understand.
[00:16:41] The industry, the sector, the company, whatever. And that’s like white collar work. I know this, but not talking about later on. Probably potentially we talk about the internet of things as well. And then I’m just seeing, ah, okay. That’s interesting. What AI brings me. And then I’m cross checking potentially also using a normal Google search to verify is this true or not, or I say, well, Honestly speaking, dear customer, I also used AI in the preparations for my meeting, and I brought like four hypotheses, and this is simply what AI brought me.
[00:17:09] But I’m now asking you, are we agreeing to all four? You with your expert experience, do you say, well, the second one is not good, but then let’s focus on one and three, for example. And this is like how you get it either on one time in your daily work, and second, really creating an impact. That makes a difference.
[00:17:25] LIGIA: I love that. So use it, learn about it, figure out where it fits in your daily work. So you get over the fear. And I love your other point about companies need to establish psychological safety. I would add to that probably also keep in mind incentives goals and performance, right? So that it’s actually included and actually gets prioritized.
[00:17:44] I love that.
[00:17:46] JASON: Christoph, one of the themes we’ve had from leaders we’ve been talking to on this podcast was this concept of just get started, right? You need to figure out a way to find those use cases, even if they’re small, to get small wins and to build, but to allow both you and the technology and the organization chances to learn.
[00:18:08] But one of the themes that’s come out of the Deloitte research building off of last year’s report and into this year’s report is going down this road and starting this journey and incorporating AI. A lot of the change and the transformation is that these processes become continuous. Right. We’re moving from, especially in the world of HR, a lot of processes that used to be annual or cyclical to things that now increasingly become continuous.
[00:18:35] And part of that is, you’re aided by AI as a tool, but also they continue to evolve. Is that a key part of kind of the mindset shift that leaders need to make for why, number one, it’s important just to start, but number two, why this is different?
[00:18:52] CHRISTOPH: Absolutely. And and it’s really a transformation process, which is obviously not happening overnight.
[00:18:58] And as you just mentioned, LLMs are trained, they are learning, they’re getting better and better, like the content that we have available below these LLMs is growing bigger and bigger. So today, it’s not a restriction about data storage performance anymore. It’s really about like, how to digest this enormous amount of data right at the end of the day.
[00:19:17] And if we are not Learning how to adopt and for me, that’s closely linked to either putting it into the goal. So I incentivize it as Julia just mentioned it. Second is if I’m not seeing a clear benefit for me, I won’t do it like this very famous questions. What’s in it for me? And if I see that this is helping me, I would do it.
[00:19:39] If not not and making it continues also. needs to address the fact that it’s not taken as a nice fashionable trend. And like in two years time, we were talking about something different. It’s really to adopt it into something where we say, well, this is as important from now on 10 years time as well, maybe also 20 years in time.
[00:20:02] And then it’s working. And this brings us back to the human sustainability topic or like how we work as humans. Plus the leadership to really make sure that this is happening. And this requires lots of ongoing effort. This requires lots of putting the right framework in place, putting incentives in place, but also like telling people, well, this is how your work will become.
[00:20:26] Better, more interesting, more purposeful, et cetera, et cetera. And that’s also something where we see the challenge that many of our clients are saying, well, we are not sure if we have the right people in leadership roles anymore, because they are more managers than leaders. And we all know that this is a big difference, right?
[00:20:45] So they’re measuring, they’re controlling, they’re doing all these KPIs, but they are not developing people. They are not coaching people. They are not helping people to grow. Guiding them also providing them the safe space we’re talking about psychologically safe before or psychological safety and I think that’s like also the real challenge and also a real prerequisite for companies in order to make that transformation successful and therefore in me coming out of HRT so HR transformation and lots of like technology implementations in the past I think especially with AI related systems systems.
[00:21:23] It’s even more becoming important that it’s not only about the system implementation, but it’s about all this change management around. So it’s, it’s a business transformation, which is tech enabled instead of a tech implementation that supports business. That’s not what we’re talking about. So it’s really important to shift the mindset.
[00:21:50] Create this attitude that I was talking to at the very beginning and then saying, well, how do we measure success? If we have implemented successfully and set life successfully, eightfold, I would say no from a like project perspective. Yes, that’s a success, but I would say this transformation has been successful.
[00:22:11] If it has been adopted by people. So if it’s used, then we have done the right thing. Otherwise, any investment, any software we are questioning with our API prompts is not making any sense because it’s not creating value.
[00:22:24] LIGIA: I love that distinction that it’s not about going live with a piece of software. It really is about the engagement and the adoption internally, just to set expectations in your experience.
[00:22:34] How long does this actually take? I
[00:22:36] CHRISTOPH: think the most important topic is really to understand that it’s a journey. So it’s a journey. I definitely would say it’s a multi year journey. The other thing, and that’s also really important. And I luckily never ever did any like on premise implementations in my life.
[00:22:50] I was starting in the cloud. I’m really happy that it’s the case like that. It’s not that you’re. Doing this transformation, meaning starting it and then transforming, transforming, transforming, and then you have to go live and finally it’s there. But within that journey and within AI and within the speed of the change we’re currently seeing, we can have so many quick wins and so many steps on our journey that already can pay into the company success that already can bring successful projects, et cetera.
[00:23:18] So it’s again about start anywhere. But have your big vision in mind, be ready to adapt your vision and also the path towards fulfilling the vision. Because honestly speaking, I’m in HR IT business for over 25 years now, and the longer I’m in there, I say we can plan whatever we want. But if we are not keeping ourselves the flexibility to adapt our plans, at least on a yearly basis, we’re doing something wrong because things are changing so rapidly nowadays.
[00:23:51] That we need to be able to react on the business needs, right? And if we say, well, we are now doing this, it can make sense, but it also like priorities can shift. And I think that’s also the nice thing about it. And that has nothing to do with not taking over responsibility, not delivering successful projects, but it’s about again, being important, strategically important, or strategically contributing to the success of a company and not saying, well, we agreed on this project and now in HR, we’re doing this for five years.
[00:24:19] Yes and no. Certainly we need a strategy. We need the target picture all clear. The way towards it can vary based on, on business needs.
[00:24:27] JASON: We also wanted to ask you a little bit around what are some of the biggest challenges that organizations and HR is facing trying to integrate AI into their company. And one of the things that you touched on earlier is using traditional proxies.
[00:24:42] to potentially measure or to evaluate. How do organizations think differently about this or potentially break away from viewing this through some of those traditional lenses? Can you give us an example or share what you mean by that?
[00:24:57] CHRISTOPH: We are organized in such a structured, over administered way, right? So we have jobs and we have pay grades and we pay based on all these.
[00:25:05] So we are quite inflexible today. And this is not what the business and the global economy is needing anymore. So people say, well, even if we know that, even if we’re aware of that and we want to change it, it’s not that easy because we have, well, come to Germany, we have our workers council and we can’t do anything.
[00:25:21] Right. So they say no. Yeah. Even if we want to develop people and nothing against workers council, I really appreciate that they are in place, but it’s not that easy and not that fast. Actually. So what we have seen is two things. One is again, to say, well, If we have understood that it’s going away from jobs to skills and it’s going to what task needs to be done, we potentially also create more flexibility in our workforce.
[00:25:48] Certainly we need to find out the capabilities or skills of our people. We also need to know what the future required skills are, and then we can start becoming more flexible. And if it’s like really important at the very same time to say, no, we have no jobs anymore, we have no pay grades. I would doubt that.
[00:26:07] And it’s not necessary. You can keep that structure. At least midterm, because there’s nothing that’s going away overnight, but you can start transforming a company and whether this is based on like doing it just in a specific department or division, where the mindset of the people is ready, etc. Whether it’s more like in a carve out situation.
[00:26:28] Or like founding a separate company for a new business area or field you want to go into this creates you and brings much more flexibility, right? So you can say, well, this is my company. This is where I’m present. I would say that’s the other playground again, where I can go into and do all that in a different way.
[00:26:46] The second topic is that we also need again, to see how. This positively affects our employees. And that’s why I said, I’m really not against the workers council, but I think that we really have the obligation to include them in our thoughts and discussions, and also to make them part of it, because I think no workers council would object when you say, well, it’s about.
[00:27:11] Empowering developing our people, because this is like also the guarantee for long term retention for future competitiveness, etc. So we again need to make this human sustainability side of the game. Real in order to say, well, we are not taking our humans as a resource only. And if they don’t fit, we take someone else or we take it over or hand it over to machines.
[00:27:36] But we say, well, that’s our obligation to be able to say, well, this is what we need today. This is what we need tomorrow. And we are taking our employees with us. And that might be like. Sounding super shiny and glossy. I know it’s not that easy. On the other hand, you cannot tell that the workforce is not willing to transform themselves.
[00:27:56] It’s not that easy. It’s not applicable to all, to the entire workforce, all clear. It’s also potentially necessary to bring in fresh skills, fresh minds, fresh attitude from outside, but it’s not a black or white story. And I think that’s the way where we see that our clients and companies really understand how this is changing.
[00:28:15] And they are just taking the steps into that direction. On the other hand, we sometimes find companies, and there’s lots of them out there, who don’t have a fully elaborated job architecture in place. Fair enough, but take this as a chance to say, well, okay, now instead of building this, like, hierarchical old org structure plus job architecture, et cetera, let’s do it differently.
[00:28:36] Let’s do it more agile. Let’s have skills in place. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And here we see not only high demand, but also good progress. And again, it’s about people that are visionary and saying, well, I do see this coming with no fear, but I’m making sure that everyone who is affected is also included and able to participate in this change and transformation.
[00:29:00] JASON: As organizations are getting their hands around this and trying to implement this, they’re also faced with changing regulations. So you’ve mentioned things like works councils and doing this. In Europe, we just had the EU AI Act and a lot of organizations are trying to figure out what this means. How are you advising organizations that are dealing with that?
[00:29:21] Or what are some of these regulations meaning for organizations that are trying to prepare for those?
[00:29:28] CHRISTOPH: Even if it’s like Reduces the speed of how these transformations happen. I think it’s important that we have these things in place. The question is, are they elaborated enough? Are they over elaborated?
[00:29:40] I wouldn’t comment on that one because this is just as it is. So based on the fact that this is in place, it needs to be considered. We definitely will see that this will change over time a lot. So again, another thing, which is bound relates, which is complex, which is not like defined once and then never touched anymore.
[00:29:58] And we have the really. comfortable and nice situation that we took over a small company in Germany last year. It’s now part of my team and they are doing nothing else and nothing else than digital ethics experts, which is really great. So they are consulting companies for a long time and also like European union, et cetera, programs from the EU with this respect.
[00:30:19] And what they are mainly doing in the very first and early stage with our clients is that they are doing kind of a. AI readiness check workshop or digital ethics workshop to create awareness for this topic to also tell, well, this is what you’re dealing with. This is what the EU AI act is all about.
[00:30:40] This is where you’re standing. And this is then also like based on your gaps or your current majority level, the steps we would recommend. And this is. Usually integrated in all of our transformation projects in the meantime, I would say. So it’s not like that these are lots of really digital ethics standalone projects.
[00:30:58] It’s always part of a huge transformation or implementation of an AI based system or whatever. And. Based on that, they are just supporting customers either with knowledge and documents or with setting up a governance structure around digital ethics, writing all this like documents. In German we would call it Betriebsvereinbarung, so all like the rules and rights employees have, etc.
[00:31:22] Worker contracts, all, all these things actually, and this is really appreciated because it’s so new and it’s, it’s an untouched area. I do see many things in parallel to the GDPR. We had a couple of years already. This was also something that dramatically affected the daily business. And, and firsthand, everyone was saying, well, that’s really difficult because it has nothing to do with our business.
[00:31:43] It. Doesn’t grow our business, but we need to do it. And then there is like heavy penalties involved. So congrats. Yeah. It’s not the easiest one. And I think it’s the same with AI act. And, and again, it’s about also protecting our workers, our people. It’s also making sure that we, we find a good balance of how humans and machines interact.
[00:32:06] Who is doing what, et cetera. And therefore I think it’s, it’s important to have it in place and also to deal with it. Yeah.
[00:32:12] LIGIA: We’ve had a few customers on the podcast and, you know, again, the spectrum, it varies, but we’ve had quite a few say as well that they’ve developed or put together centers of excellence or ethics councils in house for those who are listening and may not have thought about this.
[00:32:27] What are the typical backgrounds? Are they all lawyers or just, are they data scientists typically?
[00:32:34] CHRISTOPH: Actually both, honestly speaking, and you really need to take into consideration all aspects. So there is lawyers, there’s also people with a psychological background. There is the old topic in regard data, data analytics, et cetera, storage of data.
[00:32:48] Certainly also lawyers. Yeah. Because this is all about like the legal stuff. So it’s various backgrounds they are having. And again, they are working, not isolated, but together with our people that are implementation experts on a product, but also like with change experts that are just really making sure that we ensure actually the adoption at the long, at the longterm and therefore the digital enablement at the beginning.
[00:33:09] To say again, this is don’t be afraid of the new software. It’s a piece of software and you’re sure we’ll learn it. But again, we all know this new piece of software is not self explaining. It should be. And luckily, especially AI related products are getting much more easy to use and self explaining.
[00:33:26] That’s really what I like because I think it’s erasing that difficulty to read, for example, and understand difficult legally formulated text, or if it’s about working instructions. If you prompt in a chat GPT’s tool, and you have all this working instruction documents in the background, you can get your answers in the way you understand it without being able or being necessary to talk with someone, right?
[00:33:51] And that’s the biggest advantage, in my opinion, that things become so much easier. And therefore, again, it’s like the digital ethics people, it’s implementing people, it’s changed people, it’s training people, it’s communication, lots of communications also going on. And again, at the end of the day, it only counts if people see a benefit of it.
[00:34:10] JASON: So Christoph, we’ve really enjoyed the human capital trends report this year and last year and partnering with Deloitte on this. And we’ve had a number of conversations about it. But we also know that a ton of work. goes into this. And I think this year’s report was something like three plus years in the making.
[00:34:28] So I’m sure you’re already the team at Deloitte’s already fast at work on what’s, what’s happening for next year’s report and the years ahead. Can you kind of give us a little preview of what emerging trends you are seeing or what, what’s happening next that you’re already kind of thinking about based on what we’ve seen this year?
[00:34:49] CHRISTOPH: Which all topics around this boundary, less topic and human sustainability, I think that it’s much more going into the depth of all these topics like this move from how you treat and what you expect and also what you provide for your workforce, except of just saying, well, that’s productivity. That’s the one we haven’t touched the topic about microcultures, for example, workplace microcultures, to be exact.
[00:35:16] I think that’s also a very interesting one where I see so much more research going on throughout the next years as we don’t have this company anymore. And if we go to the very beginning of this interview saying, well, it’s not about employees, but it’s about the workforce and geek workers and temp workers, et cetera, or contingent workforce, even like within a company and within employees, we do encounter more and more microcultures.
[00:35:42] And the question is, how do we make sure that. microcultures are able to work in their way of working, which is the basis for really achieving great things and for making the difference without contradicting the company’s culture, right? So that’s a topic which I find quite important because I, I always think that you can’t do leadership like all in one.
[00:36:09] So if you’re a good leader, you need to be very close to your people and you can’t treat people like each other. Everyone is different. This is, in my opinion, one thing that’s definitely trending and to be elaborated further and into more detail. Another topic that I’m seeing is when we talk about AI and this was also, I think, the flavor that I shared today in this interview.
[00:36:31] It was lots about data and it was about white collar worker and knowledge, etc. Um, We didn’t even touch the entire topic that you did touch it. Sorry, Jason, with a human machine topic. Like what about internet of things and the coexistence next to our people? What about digital clones? And again, this is nothing new.
[00:36:51] So digital clones, I think I heard the first time 10, 12 years ago, but it’s now getting. More and more real. And again, it’s getting faster and faster that they are in place. And this will really have a direct impact again, on our daily work. If I think of a service technician who is now planning his route and he’s visiting all those plants or facilities and doing either checks or, or maintenance or whatever, more It’s affecting in, in many different ways.
[00:37:18] So if we think about internet of things and we have all this like predictive analytics, et cetera, et cetera, we don’t plan our route based on geography, but about like, when is the next part to be substituted, for example, on the other hand, if we talk about people, we are not sure whether we really need to be on site to change that part.
[00:37:38] And if yes, we can, for example, train this virtually in a virtual room or wearing VR goggles on the digital clone up front, and we are then faster and quicker again on site. And this faster and quicker leads us to the productivity. And then I say, well, no, no, stop, stop. It’s yes, it’s increasing productivity, but hopefully these people then have time to talk.
[00:37:59] At the facility at the subsidiary to say, then, okay, I did everything up front or remotely. But now let’s talk about what is your plans for the future development or innovation on your, in your plant? And I think really considering in what potential luxurious position we can be to have more time to interact with social beings, humans, right?
[00:38:21] This is so great. I’m like so happy about this and hopefully this is where it all leads to and not saying, well, now we do everything remotely and then no one needs to travel and no one needs to talk to each other. In my opinion, this really would be sad if this is the case. It’s about social interaction and social interaction creates conversations and conversations include creativity and creativity includes innovation and so on and so forth.
[00:38:44] And we are in the middle of. growing our businesses. Yeah.
[00:38:47] JASON: We’re back to amplifying the human and creating creativity and curiosity. Yeah. Yeah. As we look to kind of close out the conversation today, is there any practical advice you’d give organizations kind of still unsure about AI or starting their transformation journey?
[00:39:04] CHRISTOPH: Just do it again. I think that’s really the first advice I would give. Second, don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. There’s no need to it. It’s still like digital playground time and never forget to closely align it to your business. And even if you’re not like HR and suddenly then you need to be aligned with your business and also not think about the solutions yourself, but make sure to include them also like within the business, try to.
[00:39:31] Break boundaries. We’re talking about boundary less. And in so many companies, we are in so strict silos and we do have all these boundaries. And I think that’s exactly what we should try to overcome with AI because it goes far beyond what we can think of today. And therefore. It closes with the imagination deficit, which we need to overcome, because I think at the end of the day, opportunities are unlimited, right?
[00:39:55] It’s really on us, what we make out of it. And that’s the nice thing because it’s on us humans. It’s the technology we use. It’s the use cases we define. and therefore we don’t have to be scared of. I’m loving also watching science fiction movies, but still I’m not believing in the fact that machines will take over, luckily.
[00:40:15] Maybe I’m too optimistic or idealistic, but I think that’s the way. So it’s in our hand and let’s make sure that it’s not restricting and excluding people, but let’s make sure to include the human factor and really take the benefits out of it. Like we haven’t talked about any disabilities yet. And imagine what AI can help.
[00:40:35] And this is like, so amazing, but it’s on us to get the best out of it. That’s really like our mission. And we not only should feel about having rights all the time. Everyone is talking about what rights we have. Yes, that’s true. And we are lucky enough that especially in our economies, we have lots of rights, but this also comes with responsibilities.
[00:40:55] LIGIA: Thank you so much, Christoph. This was an amazing podcast.
[00:40:59] CHRISTOPH: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for the question and the nice atmosphere, and I am definitely open to follow-up.
[00:41:07] LIGIA: Thanks for listening to The New Talent Code. This is a podcast produced by Eightfold AI. If you’d like to learn more about us, please visit us at www.eightfold.ai.
[00:41:16] ai And, you can find us on all your favorite social media sites. We’d love to connect and continue the conversation.
