Rebecca Warren 00:02
Hello everyone, and welcome to this month’s Talent Table, where we are going to be talking about elevating talent with AI from first steps to the finish line. Got a couple of fantastic presenters with us today, Nico from Coca-Cola, Europacific Partners, and Kathy from The Josh Bersin Company. I’ll have them introduce themselves in just a moment, as we’ll be talking about ways to identify and nurture the right talent using AI and probably a whole lot of other things. So before we get started, a few things on housekeeping. If you look towards the bottom of your screen, you’ll see some widgets that you can use during this event. There’s also further related reading in the resources section, so don’t forget to check that out. And you can ask us questions using the Q and A function. And if we can’t get to your questions during the webinar, we may answer it after the session ends in a follow up message. So that’s all done. Let’s go ahead and get started. So first of all, I am Rebecca Warren, your host for this session. I have been at Eightfold coming up on four years now, and I work in the talent transformation team, helping folks understand what transformation looks like, moving from a job centered approach to more of a skill centered transformation, focusing on people. And now for the most interesting folks of the day, I am going to throw this on over to our guests to introduce themselves. I’ll send it to Nico first, and then to Kathy, and then after they do that, well actually, I’ll throw out the question now, okay, so in your introduction, tell us a little bit about who you are and why you’re excited to be on this this chat today, and then for the question of the month that I ask our folks, August is a month of transition. So tell me what you’re most looking forward to this fall. All right, I’ll send it on over to Nico.

Nico Orie 02:04
Thank you very much. Rebecca, is it this type of webinar that have to start answering all kinds of questions like this? I will. I will do my best. So hi, hi everybody. My name is Nico Orie. I’m a VP of people and culture at Coca Cola, Euro Pacific partners. I’m responsible, among many things, for the operations, including our digital strategy, everything we do around the marketplace. I’ll share a bit more about that later on. I’m also the business partner for Northern Europe, so it’s quite an interesting combination. I’m living in the Netherlands, but my team is very much global. Coca Cola, Euro Pacific partners. We are the biggest bottler of coke in the world. Coca-Cola products in the world, operating in 33 countries, 42,000 employees, and 20 billion euro in revenue. Very much looking forward for a dialog. So I hope for a lot of questions and challenges to come, to come my way, and I would love to share a bit more on what we’re doing at Coca Cola, Pacific partners in this space. Yes, as you refer to Rebecca, August is sort of the month you’re starting up again, and you realize how much still has to be done in this year, right? So actually, I’m looking forward to just being able this year to take off some of those big bets that we still have to deliver upon. We have a very exciting leadership program with the London Business School, which is very exciting, which we hopefully can close, but in the fall of this year, it’s also a lot of other topics, which I will not not bother you with. On a personal front, I’m very much looking forward. I bought a summer home in Spain, and we will finally be able to sign, sign, finally sign and get the keys for that home. So I’m really looking forward to that. That’s a big, big thing to look forward to. Thank you.

Rebecca Warren 03:53
And do you have it set up for visitors yet? Do you have your guest book ready for

Nico Orie 03:59
us? Website with prices and everything included. No, it’s obviously everyone is invited. That may take a while. Thank you. All right,

Rebecca Warren 04:08
we’ve just invited ourselves to your house in Spain. All right, Kathy, on over to you. Thanks for that. Nico,

Kathi Enderes 04:15
right. And Nico, we need to talk about Spain, because I just came back from our house in Spain, like a little bit more than a week ago. So we need to talk about Spain. Your house is to visit in Spain. Absolutely, absolutely. So Kathy Enderes, Senior Vice President of Research and global industry analyst at The Josh Bersin Company, I have the privilege and the the fun opportunity to learn and talk with many companies, including and inspiring leaders like Nico. I’ve been connected with Nico for quite some time, and we finally had the opportunity to do a case study to get on all the great things Nico and his team are doing at Coca Cola. Euro Pacific partner, so check this out. I think it’s in resource section, and it’s really fantastic. And I’m just excited to share all that we’ve learned about this topic, working with many different clients and many different companies on using AI for transforming talent. I know it’s a hot topic. Everybody wants to talk about AI and everybody wants to talk about what it means for talent and how we’ve been the people side of things. So I can’t, I can’t wait for this discussion a little bit about myself. I’m based in Palo Alto, California. I’ve been with the Josh business company for about four years too. So, Rebecca, same same thing as you have been with April, and my background is actually, I have a consulting background with the Big Four consulting firms, but then I also worked as a practitioner for about 10 years, leading talent in very large companies, and then for the last few years, have been An analyst and researcher. So that’s my my background, August as a transition month. Rebecca, what a great question. Well, I feel it’s still summer. I’m really a summer lover, so I don’t like that question all that much. People, with all their pumpkin spice lattes and all that can stay away for a little bit longer, I don’t think it’s fall quite yet. It’s still 95 degrees here in California, so it’s still nice and sunny. We’re still using the pool and but I do look forward to two things, one professional and one personal, one for fall. Professionally, I’m really looking forward to the conference season, where we get to go to many different places and work and and talk with many different companies. So that’s kicking off. Actually, I’m starting next week, and then it’s a sprint to the finish line to the to Thanksgiving here every week, probably somewhere else. So I’m really looking forward to that. And on the personal side, I’m a big runner, and I love that the weather is going to be a little bit cooler for running. So that’s, that’s what I’m I’m looking forward to.

Rebecca Warren 07:08
I love that. Yes, speaking of cooler weather, right? That is around the corner for us. I am based in Phoenix, and so we’re now hovering right around that 100 mark, maybe going under a little so that feels amazing. And we’re starting our guest season. So folks tend to visit when it’s not so hot. So we have some friends coming in from Scotland. They were very clear about when they were timing their visit. We are not coming in before the end of September, so they’re going to be here in about a month, and it’ll probably still be too hot for them. So we’ll see how they got I promise.

Kathi Enderes 07:43
I don’t try to avoid Phoenix.

Rebecca Warren 07:49
Yes, we get great deals on the resorts, though. So just say, All right, well, so let’s talk a little bit about elevating talent with AI. So if we think about over the last 10 years, and especially accelerated in the last four, HR, is undergoing a significant transition. Right? The function has shifted from compliance to service delivery to a strategic partner in business. In many cases, it’s now called people operations or people experience. We’ve gone from selection to recruiting to talent acquisition to talent experience. And talent management now has come out as a completely separate function. And then tying all this together, we have AI and talent intelligence, which we’re talking about, automating routine tasks, providing data driven insights and enable eyes and enabling personalized employee experience. That’s a lot going on right now, right so let’s jump in here, and let’s start by discussing how talent management has evolved as a function. So I’m going to send this to Kathy first. My question is around, how has the employee ask of the people team, HR team changed in recent years, and in doing so, what opportunities and challenges has that opened up for the people team?

Kathi Enderes 09:17
Yeah, what a great question. And I think just starting out with a little bit of history of where talent management has been and where I think it’s going. So talent management is really not a new concept, of course, at all, and at this point, I feel it’s almost a little bit dated concept that we can manage talent in this way. I think employees knew he done this. Rebecca, employees are really much more in the driver’s seat now than that we can just manage them like we can manage kind of assets or resources. It used to be that we thought about talent management kind of like in the your kind of how you manage your parts, or how you manage your your kind of product. And where you ship them and off that. But of course, the employee ask, and the employee expectations have changed a lot in the last few years. Target like treated by the labor shortage. I think every every employer, is trying to find the right people, trying to write the plan, to write skills, and employees really in the driver’s seat now. So employees are really looking for more. We call this concept employee activation, where we’re saying employees don’t just want to kind of put their head down and do their job, but they want to have a say in everything from how they do that job to how they how the company makes money, to how they satisfy the customers, to what strategy the company has to location, strategy and everything else. And if employers don’t respond to that, ask, I think they’re going to be left behind. So that’s really going on, and we in HR have to respond to that. We really have to address that. And I think what’s what’s really going on, and what we in HR need to do, and in talent need to do. And Nico has some great stories on how they do it is empower employees so that the power balance has really shifted in how we manage talent, that we really enable employees to drive their own career understand what their skills are and how they relate to what the organization needs and really like basically set their own path. And all of this also is underscored by DEI, but by sense of belonging. We just had a big round table discussion on DEI with about 40 HR leaders, and that’s another big topic that I think there’s lots of noise in in at least in the US, there’s lots of noise about inclusion. Is it going away? Some companies saying we’re not doing this anymore, but all we are hearing is we have to pay attention to them. Not all that, not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s also the good business thing to do, because without the innovation that we get from diverse teams that bring the best selves to work, that bring their skills and capabilities to work, we won’t be able to compete in this new like overall business marketplace, and If we’re not paying attention that we can’t pay we can’t attract and retain the right people and the right talent. So all of this, of course, has to be underscored by analytics. You can’t really do any of this stuff, attracting the right people, understanding what skills people have, matching them to the company, opportunities, giving them these insights, without analytics, without insight. So that’s what talent intelligence come in, comes in. So now I talk a lot about many, many different topics. That was awesome. So

Rebecca Warren 12:51
two things, and I want to get Nico’s opinion on this as well. So that’s one thing that we talk a lot here at Eightfold, is about moving from a hierarchy of way of doing work to a more fluid way of doing work. So you called that out, and Diversity is our talent table topic for next month. So I wanted to throw those two things out there, because you did a great job setting it up. We’re going to talk about all of those things and more next month. So Nico, what are your thoughts about talent management and what’s happening in the space, especially when it comes to employees.

Nico Orie 13:21
I really echo the words of Kathy. So it’s clear that the environment is much more dynamic, right? So, so and you see, if you then go to a lot of HR departments in our processes, our ways of working, a lot of it is still based on a different world. So for instance, if you look at our systems, they are often transactional based, right? So they have a part of the picture, but not fully. Also, we lack a bit this dynamic view on work and the dynamic view on worker. There’s much more change. People are changing more. So we definitely have to overhaul how we have organized our processes and our approaches towards talent, right? And then the magic, of course, of digital is that you start in a completely different space. So you start with data, you start with AI, and then you build more impactful experiences, right, where people really can adapt to and that then sort of drive this more continuous process of gaining data and then feeding back to people in the organization insights and actions, and on the other hand, also defining work and worker on a more granular level, so you can follow up more in a more dynamic way, is absolutely key. It creates a more visibility for the for the worker, for the talent and for the organization. And it’s obviously, it’s not the full solution, right? There was a very interesting study of Gallup present, I think, published last week. 42% of the people that leave jobs could have stayed if they just would have had the conversation with their people manager. So I. So I think whatever we do in the technology space, in it’s always in combination with, I would say, still, the very powerful people to people connection. So in that sense, you have to play on both, you know, in both spaces, people to people contact gets really important is this high based world. So we should absolutely, you know, support this, this people manager to employee relationship, and train those people managers to support their teams and to have those career conversations. But then we have to enable it in a much bigger scale, with much more easier to access and consume digital solutions. And that’s where, for instance, yet for platform coming into play.

Rebecca Warren 15:43
Well, I think that’s that’s such a great call out, right? Kathy, I loved what you said was taking notes as both of you were talking right, employee activation. I love that. Were we talking about the balance of power shifted and talking about analytics and Nico, what you’re talking about as well is, how do we find that common ground? What does that look like to understand what employees want, how managers can enable and empower and so that’s that shift of businesses. Instead of being a rigid organizational structure, we have to now focus on what our talent is looking for. So instead of a jobs focus to a talent focus, which feels like that common denominator, is that skills based approach, right? What do people bring to the table? Nico, you said that in that study, right, that folks are leaving because they didn’t know about opportunities to stay. So let’s talk about that. How is the skills based approach foundational, first of all, and also looking at changing that relationship, because there’s a different foundation. What do you think about that? Nico,

Nico Orie 16:51
I think we should, my view, we should have a very realistic view on it. So there used to be, certainly two, three years ago, everyone was saying, you know, skill based. I spoke with some other people in the market recently, they called out, like, skill centric. So it is, for me, clear that for the next decade or more, we will still have jobs, right? Because the alternative is very difficult to imagine in companies. Just imagine that for for a moment that you would have no jobs and companies only skill based really. I mean, most companies would just implode on that change. They would be completely deviating from the focus on their customers and driving their business. So it’s an end world. But we do need to do is create more clarity on what is necessary in the work now and in the future. So you have to go granular on a more skill basis, and then also toward the individual. You have to have a better view, and give the individual better view on his or her own skills, ambitions and opportunities. And that’s, I think, the opportunity we have to create this visibility on both sides, and then you know, you will get a much more efficient demand supply matching. And let’s face it, at the moment, in most companies, it’s it just feels it’s not really working right. You’re joining a company, and after half a year, your job description, if you have one, you can probably already throw it out of the window, because it doesn’t reflect and ignore the reality of your work. So we still need jobs that we need a much more dynamic way of defining the work and the worker, and then skill is the is that language, and then you need some you need platforms, and you need, let’s say, a data approach to to enable that across your organization, and really having people adopting, adopting to it, right? The risk is, sorry for my long answer, but the risk is that as HR we are again, we’re getting where we were with the competency models. You remember that in the past, competency frameworks, a lot of us just confuse the business they it was not a lot of people. Was very sophisticated, but it was not something that activated people for action. So whatever we do now with skills, and that’s also our approach, activate people. Make clear for people what is in it for them, because that isn’t gigantic power you can drive in your organization, but don’t make it too sophisticated, but people get into that later. Probably does it answer your question a bit. Rebecca,

Rebecca Warren 19:14
yeah, that was amazing. And so Kathy, I wanted, I wanted to understand when we when we do all those things, what does that do to our culture? Right? That was part of what we had, I think, with the competency models, was driving that culture. It was culture based. What does this shift due to a culture of an organization, and how do we make sure that that gets embedded as well?

Kathi Enderes 19:35
Yeah, I think it’s, it’s a huge shift, honestly, and the I want to first accurate. Nico talked about because many organizations have jumped on this skills wagon where they’re saying, well, we need to first inventorize all of the skills that we have. And we just talked with a large telecommunications company and this idea, we’ve done it. We’ve taken three years. We’ve been inventorized. Is all 30,000 skills that we have in the organization. And I said, Great, what have you done with them? And I said, we haven’t gotten there yet. We haven’t done anything with it. Well, that’s not what you want to do. I think, what organizations right? Of course, the ones that are started with three years ago already, still, because skills are changing so fast. And who has those skills is changing so fast too, because people learn something every day, and if you don’t apply the skills, they kind of get, get stale, and they get all but if you use them on the project, and it’s amplified so, so I think it’s it’s a big culture to shift to think about from this rigid kind of job model is that you’re in this job, and all we know about you is what you do in this job. And we have many examples where people, for example, have talents or skills or experiences that they’re not using in their current job, or not using the way that in their current job that they could use in another area, a marketing person, for example, in a tech company, was able to go into data science role because they have certain skills that they might not have applied in the same way in the marketing role. Well, what does it mean, from a culture perspective, are we going to reward the person with double the salary, because marketing is less compensated, maybe, than that data science and tech company. So from a culture perspective, it really asks the question, who you are, how you’re rewarding people, how you’re managing people. Are you like removing that cap on pay, for example, for people moving around in the organization in the skill based way, it’s a huge question, of course, because that has real implication for financial, for your financial kind of, for your PNL and everything. But the best companies do, right when we talk, for example, with a very large tech company, they were, they said, We have completely removed the cap on, on when people move around in the organization, when they get a different job, there’s no cap. So if they move from marketing to data science, and that’s the market, would pay twice the salary, we’d pay twice the salary too. And it’s not just 10% or 15% that they can get an increase. So it really touches not just the talent area, the careers area, but pay and culture, quite frankly, and and how, how, also, how leaders think about the talent they have in the organization, not just like bucketing them into like you’re doing this job now, and that’s where you’re going to stay. Healthcare Organizations, for example, they’re moving people from receptionist area into news jobs, huge difference, right? And needs lots of education and lots of training and lots of different things, but, but very different job, but not just bucketing people into who they who they wear when you hire them, not just thinking of them on who they know, right? That’s another big kind of maybe also DEI area too. If you don’t have those connections when you’re the marketing person, you don’t have the connections to the tech area, you probably won’t get there without support from kind of skills platforms or something like that. So it’s really democratizing access to careers, to pay, to to development, and all of those kind of getting into the hands of the employees, not just held by the manager of HR, right?

Rebecca Warren 23:31
I love that thought about, what does that do for compensation? What does that do for for career paths? Right? It opens up so many more opportunities when you take away that cap on pay, or you take away an org chart from where you can move. So let’s jump into that, talking about, and you mentioned that as well, about using technology now, right? And so understanding analytics and knowing where people are at. What should we be thinking about when it comes to technology and how that impacts the people team, right? HR is very focused on those relationships, and so I think it’s probably a little scary for folks to say, hey, we’re going to bring in this technology. Is that? And of course, this is the question I think on a lot of people’s minds, which we’ve already said, is not going to really, you know, happen. It is, is technology going to take our jobs? And the answer is no, but how and why? So, Nico, how have you thought about adding technology into your organization that still feels like you are empowering people and activating them?

Nico Orie 24:38
First of all, we we just, we are very clear what is the business issue that we’re trying to resolve, right? And, and we really fall in love with the problem and not the solution. To be honest, the solution can be anything, right? So, and, and what are some of the the challenges we have? We already discussed this. This is so this higher pace of change. So we need deeper data and. To to support a more a more efficient matching of worker with worker. That’s one another one is that at least in our company, we saw a lower score on the engagement question around opportunity for growth. So there is a much more higher demand coming from the workers on, you know, I want to grow, I want to develop myself. And sometimes very difficult for people to find that out in companies, right? So, and then you find out that in a lot of companies, it’s still who you know, right? So we have invested millions in HR systems. But then really the conversations, in terms of talent conversation, succession plan conversations, there is actually surprisingly little data that is driving that. So we have a lot of transactional data on the HR system, but we don’t really have a lot of data on what is your ambition, what are your skills? Where are you good at? What is your aspiration? And as long as you make that clear to people, so if we we are able to collect that data, and we are able to use that data, and you have to be very transparent around that. Then for stakeholders, including HR colleagues, they see the opportunity for themselves, you know, to to become this more strategic partner and to work with more with data, and they have the conversations with unions who understand that this is not just some sort of project of, you know, some sort of big product project, but a project to actually empower people to take the development in their own hands. So you need to be very transparent, but you need to connect it to real business issues and also drive it to real outcome, and then people will understand it, and then that then drives to change. Of course, it means stepping up certain skills, certain data skills, and having, you know, storytelling and using data or installments, everything, most of it you can learn as a business partner. So to be honest, we have very little challenges in that space, because it’s clear for everyone what is the the business challenges that we’re trying to resolve, not saying it’s it’s easy, but at least from it, from an adaption perspective, it’s going really well in our company.

Rebecca Warren 27:11
Yeah, so thinking about the change management process, thinking about the clarity, making sure that everybody’s on the same page, and I loved what you said about falling in love with the problem, not the solution, because that’s where you’re going to find, like, I love that, where you’re going to find more

Nico Orie 27:25
opportunities. Talk about the tech, Rebecca, we never talk about AI. Why should we? I don’t. I’m not interested in AI. I’m only interested in the outcomes, so that we know about the AI in the back that something we understand, it’s there, but I’m not gonna, you know, we’re not gonna put it in the forefront. It’s not interesting, and it just puts people off. And you know what’s gonna and we just say, and sorry to one element in this change management, we also visualize it for people in a way that people because sometimes for people, is difficult. How does it look? And we say, just compared with an internal LinkedIn, you know, everyone knows LinkedIn. Everyone goes there, everyone shares tons of data. LinkedIn has everyone, everything about you, your network. When are you? Were you applying for, etc? Oh, it’s something like a net LinkedIn, yeah, it’s like anything, but we’re not going to do it internally, so we can kind of support you and give you that opportunity and that just then, you know, see people just making the switch. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay, so, so I think it’s not super difficult. Change Management, Business, you know, business problem, and then visualize it in a way that people can relate to it and say, that makes sense?

Rebecca Warren 28:30
Yeah? Well, I think what you’re doing is you’re putting the whole person in the center, right? You’re allowing folks to bring their whole self to work where they can put their passions, their interests, the things that they’ve done, maybe it’s extracurricular activities, but that plays into their skill sets, allowing them to showcase who they are in a way that also allows them to grow,

Nico Orie 28:55
right? And we downplay a bit, you know, that is, this is also official. I mean, why do people go to LinkedIn and then they just share their whole life on LinkedIn, you know? Just so I we, I think you have to approach it with a lightness like, you know, this is if you don’t know you, if you don’t know your skills, if you don’t know Yes, but we cannot give you the opportunity. So if you give us that, then we give you something back, and then you get this flying wheel. It’s, you know, then it propels forward, and you create this data engine where the more and more you have, the intelligence you give, can give people back in the front experience in the back, you have deeper analysis. So, but you have to be clear about that, and don’t make it too heavy. It’s just just a system, you know, just going to help you.

Kathi Enderes 29:35
I love that, because I think we used to have these talent profiles before, like early on, right, where we said, everybody has to fill out your time profile or else, right? And it was like this big HR project that everybody it was more like a compliant thing. And people said, Why should I take the time? I don’t want to do it. And you got lots of pushback. And I think if you’re approaching it like, what you do to say, well, I. If you want additional opportunities, you just have to, like, basically, put, put your information in. Because otherwise we can, we can help you on that. We can’t match you, and we can show you the path to move from marketing to to, like, data science or wherever, right, we don’t know what you’re interested in and that way, I think employees really love it. That’s, that’s kind of what we hear from every company that we talk with. It’s not a big push. It’s not if you don’t approach it from all, how many people have complied with feeling maybe you’re not interested in a career? Well, that’s, I think it’s going to be probably not that great for you then as an employee, but it’s not a compliance thing that you though, shall fill it out by certain time, just telling people what’s there, right? And that way, I think there’s lots of demand, actually, for kind of the talent marketplace, internal talent marketplace are those kind of opportunities for employees because they say, Oh, wow, this is for me, and it’s going to tell me something that I don’t know, where the organization actually needs me, where I can build my career, where I can find a mentor, where I can kind of move into a different direction that works for me. It’s, it’s really much more about them, not for Oh, you got to do it, because otherwise the employee that company can build their mission. Employees really don’t care so much about that, right? They care much more about their own career. But if you show them how valuable it is for them, and they’re like, Oh, this is for me. It’s not, actually, not that hard to use, actually, it’s cool. And then,

Rebecca Warren 31:37
yeah, from your your, go ahead. No, go ahead. Nico,

Nico Orie 31:41
no, it’s just doesn’t throw out the number, because numbers speak right. So in our old HR system, HRIS system, global HRIS system, we had 13% one, three of the talent profiles field, and you don’t want to know how much effort. And every time we ask them, fill it and fill it and fill it. Now in the new setup, where we have 81% coverage across the organization, including supply chain, which is we were, we were just blown away by that, because we it’s actually too good. So we now have a problem that we have to continue to bring, sort of because we like little slow start and but just from the get go, it was like, bam, because it does step into a need of people to be visible, you know, to connect, but you have to take out this heaviness, right? So no one asks you to come to LinkedIn. No one sends you a process like this. How you you just do it because there’s something in it for you, and I think that’s you have to come and bring it back to what’s in it for you, and be transparent and honest about it, and then it just goes on, like, off, like magic. It’s really amazing. Still high, very high usage, every, every, every week, even in the vacation period. Well,

Kathi Enderes 32:52
it spreads like wildfire, right? When you try to roll it out as usually, as a pilot, then people hear about it and say, when does it come to us? And that never happens with other HR systems, right? Usually it’s like, oh my god. Like, do we have to tell them they don’t get paid if they don’t do it? Like, how do we get transactional

Nico Orie 33:16
machine? The machine said telling you that you need to do something, and that’s HR for the last 40 years in terms of systems, that’s right. This is putting it the power in the hands of the employee. It’s empowering you. So it’s very interesting how this will develop in the future. And I think this is not developed into something we cannot even foresee, perhaps,

Rebecca Warren 33:34
and making it proactive instead of reactive, right? It’s not a compliance thing, but it allows them to learn and to grow and to drive so it puts the power, as you said, in their hand, but it makes it proactive, and learning becomes part of the culture, as opposed to, Oh, dang, I got to take this class. Blah, blah, blah,

Nico Orie 33:53
yeah, it’s about you, and it’s about, you know, sort of being positive, positively surprised about the opportunities the system is nurturing to you. And that’s, I think, the thing that all the social media platforms are doing to us all the time. So in that sense, that mechanism is very powerful

Kathi Enderes 34:15
from a user perspective. It’s so much easier to use than like these old school talent profiles, right? It’s not like, and I gotta click all these different boxes and check off all the different things and all that, and it takes forever, but it’s like, it’s gonna suggest things that it probably already knows about you. And so then it’s gonna be, oh no, stuff about me that I didn’t even think about. That’s like a study that I think we did with with Eightfolders, like was done at eight fold. For every five skills that you think about, there’s another seven that you didn’t think about, that you have, that the system can then say, Oh, I didn’t, of course, I’m using those skills, but I don’t even know I have them. I’m not thinking about them because they’ve become so second nature. So it’s that’s kind of the fun self discovery too. I think, like, oh. Wow, I didn’t even know that I had this, this built in.

Nico Orie 35:04
But it’s not about the technology at all, right, only, right. So, so this is very important, but, but this is just an enabler, because, like I said, you still have to also work on, you know, this is people, manager, employee, you know, relationship, having conversations. It’s still as important, but at least you enable it, and you have a much more up to date source to go to, also as a people manager to know what your team you know what the skills in your team are, what are the gaps. You can have much better conversations with people because they know you. You have better data. Also as a people manager to your present to your position.

Kathi Enderes 35:42
Position to actually feed something in. And also, first, here’s like, share something that we’ve learned. And also here Nico your perspective about it. And I saw the question about that too, which is, the employees all love it, but managers sometimes are pushing back on that, and we do it, there’s a lot of time, like, yeah, like, with a very large manufacturing company, and they said, well, all the employees wanted to do it. And the manager said, Great, yes, everybody should share resources and move people around and do projects and all that. That’s great, but not for me, because my people are too busy. My people are so important, they’re working on like the most important thing. So everybody else should, of course, give me their resources, but I’m not going to send anybody, because talent who are doing is talent hoarding, exactly. So I think that’s that’s too Nico, what do you think about that?

Nico Orie 36:38
No, it’s there. So again, that’s why you know you have to drive the change right. So you have to make clear to managers what is at stake, right? You have to tell them, hey, listen, you know the the world is moving so fast that, you know, we said to a certain moment to our leadership. LinkedIn knows more about the people than we do. Do you think that is a good thing? And people are that was this. Gallup studio just said, right? That? Yeah, I think half of the US workforce is considering to actively looking for another job. 42% who leaves it if just somebody would. So I think we should think differently about talent and around the careers of people, and in that sense, we should open up and it should be as easy internally to move around as it is to move outside, because that’s often very, very easy, right? So we’re trying to take away the barriers, but we also know this is a journey, right? So you have to, you have to time, over time, show the value of it, but it has to be that’s agree on that much easier to move around internally than to move to another shop outside the company. But in some companies, there’s still too many barriers for people to then internally move because managers indeed they want to work, or people are seen as non loyal. There’s a fantastic research about it. I don’t know. I have to look it up again about some of those internal barriers. So yes, that cultural aspect had to be addressed. But also there, you have to take it step by step and just consistently feed facts into the organization around why this is important, and show them what’s in for the managers. Because what that research also shows is that the best talent wants to work with those managers who develop talent, right? So there’s also, I think, something needed for them to not be shown as the order of talent, because people don’t want to work for them, for managers like that?

Kathi Enderes 38:21
absolutely, and I think from an organizational perspective, you’re going to remove first requirement to tell your manager, right, when you’re interested in working in another I mean, I mean you’re not going to tell the manager if you’re applying outside of the company, right? Why would you have to ask the approval of the manager when you’re applying internally, right? That seems like, again, you make it harder to to move around internally than find a job externally. And what message does it send to employees? They’re like, Okay, well, if my manager doesn’t approve that, then I’m just gonna go elsewhere, right? I’m gonna just go to the one of the competitors and take my skills there. So I think that’s from an organization perspective, plus to back to your question, what it means for culture, lots of culture change, lots of exactly

Rebecca Warren 39:05
you tied it together just the way I was thinking and and so to to forward the conversation around that, you know, Kathy, you talked about organizations that take a full three years to Create a skills taxonomy, and then by the time they, you know, get to the end, they have to do it all over again. It’s a never ending cycle. That’s not helpful. So as we think about making this and Nico, you said this, it’s got to be easy. It can’t be super complicated. It has to be really clear about the strategy, what we’re doing, why we’re doing it. So, so my question is twofold, and I’ll throw it on either one of you feel free to jump in first. So the question is, what’s the best way to start? And then the second part is, is there a right way to start? Right like we think about it, it is defining your outcomes, assessing your current state, developing a strategy. But does it have to start? There, right? Does it have to start with the skills ontology, or can it start someplace else to really make that shift? And I’ll just throw that out there, and love to hear what you all think on that.

Kathi Enderes 40:11
Well, yeah, I mean, I can get started, and I’d love to get your thoughts, and you could too, of course, but I think you shouldn’t start with the skills inventory. You should start with the business problem, right? Nico said it too, like, start with what we are trying to accomplish, right? That’s what we asked. Also, this company that had the 30,000 skills, why did you do this? And they’re like, well, because everybody’s doing it, or we hear that skill based is the future. That’s not a good reason, right? The managers won’t pay if you call it skills or competencies or capabilities. Managers really say, Well, we have a problem of finding right talent. And this, this particular business area. So start in one business area where you have a problem. Don’t try to do it for everybody. And I think that’s so key. And how you you got started, Nico too, and how you very pragmatic about it, like be very pragmatic about it, not trying to say, well, we need to capture everybody’s skills and the entire organization. Because why do you have a problem in all the jobs in all the locations? Probably not right. So start with the most business critical talent group, business like Job group, a location, or wherever you have a problem, and start to kind of narrow down the problem. Don’t say, well, we need all the skills. What are the critical skills? And then I think, very pragmatically, thinking about, how do we get the right skills in? And it can’t be just a recruiting play. Of course, it also has to do with retention, with re Skilling and with redesign. So that’s kind of our for our framework that we have that’s really resonating when we talk about it, because lots of times when you say we have a skill shortage, Oh, great. Recruiting people are going to hire all these people. The recruiting people, of course, are pulling their hair out and they’re saying, well, the people don’t exist, right? And where do we find them? So looking that, then you get to think about, well, if it’s not just the recruiting plate, of course we need to continue hiring people. How do we retain the people that we already have and maybe have like associated or like skills or adjacent skills? How do we reskill and develop the people that might want to go into the direction of where we have the skills to reduce, and then how do we redesign kind of jobs or work opportunities or organizational structures to make it much more agile and much more kind of dynamic? So that’s kind of the way that I’m thinking about it.

Nico Orie 42:40
Yeah, I fully echo those words, right? So in the end of the day, it’s about action, right? So the risk, if you make it really comprehensive and big, is that you just you, you make it you make it very difficult to activate the stakeholders, employees in the company, to start that action, which often means, you know, scaling, rescaling, taking opportunities to grow in the company. So how we approach it? We we first of all defined critical capability Academy. So we have an academy for leadership, the way we lead, an academy for commercial, the way we sell, for supply chain, the way we serve. And what we what we did is bottom up, top down. So what we did bottom up, we say to people, just declare all the skills you have in our platform, you know, like you’ve done in LinkedIn, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re fluent in Spanish, fantastic. Just just, you know, not know, just give us the skills. And top down, we said, okay, what are critical skills at the moment from a business perspective, and so what will make the boat go faster? And we focused specifically on our commercial skills, because a lot of companies certainly we continuously want to grow and grow more than our competitors and be better than our competitors. So we, we more or less defined a critical skill catalog of 100 skills, and we signed more or less five to plus five to employees to really focus them, because it’s about action. It’s not about the sophistication that we sometimes in the past had in HR. Look at the competency framework all the orders in the in the cabinet. You remember that one? And this is what like? What is this? I don’t understand it, but if you So, that’s why we also don’t you know the lingo skills. We keep it very simple, but then you drive action, and you make the people, okay, this is the gap. This is where you have the opportunity. Hey, we have a great training course for you. Hey, there is a gig here. That’s something that can really train you on this. Or, Hey, this is actually a new job. So, so for me, that is key. But of course, it depends on the context of the company, but I deeply believe that this is the way to do it, make activate people and keep it something that people can oversee and manage, right? Can you oversee 30,000 skills as people, HR, professional, I would not. How does it look? Just and then you have the discussion, what is the skill and what is the definition? If three people in HR. Right? You have five, five opinions, and, yes, just make it super complex. You’re deviating from what you have to do, and then supporting the individual business to grow and to, you know, drive higher performance, make it simple.

Kathi Enderes 45:10
I love that so much that you’re like, basically saying it’s only 100 skills, and they’re only about five skills that every employee can have, because we can’t do more than that, right? I think that’s where everybody fails, because sometimes people have 50 skills and well, aid and I develop all 50 of them as an individual. Probably not. Are they all critical to what the company needs to do? Probably not, right? So like really focusing to drive action. I think that’s so key. I just love that story, how pragmatic and how business oriented you are.

Rebecca Warren 45:43
I love that actionable piece. And, and, and then, then where AI comes in is helping to do a lot of network on the back end, right? I think Nico, what you’re saying is, right? We’re not calling it out in front of the company like, we’re using AI like, Duh, right? So how do we take that behind the scenes? Make it easier for employees to get the things out there right that are important, the skills that they have, using AI to help. Kathy, you mentioned that like pre fill, right? Hey, we’ve seen your LinkedIn profile. We’re going to go ahead and pre fill those skills for you, and then you get to approve them, as opposed to feeling like it’s overwhelming to create it from scratch, like I don’t know, right? So using AI and using tech to make it easier, is that underpinning, allowing folks to do more strategic work, right? No,

Kathi Enderes 46:34
no, absolutely. Yeah, showing people that the career path that they could take, the connections that you could make in the organization, right? How they can find somebody who could tell them about that job, or tell them about that project plan, like, like, every time I think AI works, well, it’s people say, Oh, wow, it’s like magic. When it feels like magic, I think that’s very cool. And then you don’t have to tell them it’s AI, basically, wow. How did it know these things? I think that’s what you want to have happen, right? Like, oh, magically it showed me all these different paths that I could take, and all these learning opportunities and all these connections. It knows me exactly. And so I think that’s the reaction you want to have.

Nico Orie 47:17
And the AI is learning, right? So from a change perspective, you know, we also always played it a bit down, and we said just, you know, the AI is learning, and, you know, sometimes you may see funny results. And then always say, Do you remember when you entered for the first time your your profile on LinkedIn? Yeah, the next day, like, perfect recommendations. Actually still today, sometimes I get recommendations. And then you’re talking a platform of 1 billion users and probably the most sophisticated algorithms in the world. So it’s also not absolute. It’s just a direction. It just helps you point you to something. And you know, it isn’t always 100% accurate, but at least a lot better than in the past, where you didn’t really know where to go in a big organization. And how can I find those opportunities? But now it’s coming to you. So I think from a change perspective, that’s also important to lighten up again a bit and say, you know, it’s just the direction. And sometimes we had funny cases. Just to tell an anecdote, my boss, the chief people culture officers, got the recommendation for health and safety job in supply chain. And I said to my boss, this, the AI is so sophisticated that it knows you you really care about health and safety.

Nico Orie 48:32
But you know, just AI is just learning so it, you know, those are makeups that will get out of this. So you have to take it a bit light and don’t make it like it’s 100% now it’s, a direction.

Kathi Enderes 48:43
I think you hit right down and Nico, because the AI is not making decisions for you, right? It’s just giving you input. Yeah, it’s not deciding on anything, it’s not deciding on your career, it’s not deciding on your page, not deciding on what you take action on. And sometimes it’s wrong, right? We see this all the time, right? And like, it’s your judgment call. And if it says you have those skills, and I’ve gotten this too, and it says I have certain skills, I’m like, I’ve never done this. I don’t know why I’ve never done this. Like, I don’t know health science or something like that. Oh, my God, I don’t, I wouldn’t, of course, go there. But, yeah, it just makes connections. And then you say, well, you give it a thumbs down, or you just disregard it, and it’s as you say, Nico, it’s not that heavy. It’s not that as my teenagers would say, it’s not that deep.

Rebecca Warren 49:34
That’s where you both have said this. This is where we talk about AI isn’t taking over the world, right? And you think about those skills, if I say and we all have this, right, I may think that I’m fabulous at something, and my managers, like you’re really not all that fabulous at that five you have potential, right? Or I may not give myself enough credit for something that my manager may say that that is one of your core strengths. So that’s where that communication comes in, even though. So I may list all of my skills. That’s that conversation with your manager where your manager says, let’s talk about this, right? And whether it’s this job needs you to be at x proficiency to say that you’re excelling at everything. So let’s get you there, or saying, hey, let’s make sure that maybe this isn’t the right gig for you. Let’s find the right place, right? That’s that conversation. That’s that, that human element that comes in. So it’s not just someone checking a box and and the employees just off running around doing their own things, right? I mean, it’s that conversation and that development and that that connection to help somebody get to that next level. It’s that partnership.

Kathi Enderes 50:37
I totally agree. And I think I’d add that in an agile, more agile world that we all live in, it’s not just your manager, right? It could be a colleagues. It could be a project manager. Project that you work on could be a mentor that you’re working with. Because nowadays, like your manager is not the only person that knows your work. A lot of times, like other people know your work even better, right? And they know you better. So I think it’s this all around feedback into that, like the broader connection, which I think makes it actually less biased and more more impactful for employees too smart.

Rebecca Warren 51:10
I love that. All right, so we’re coming in. I’m watching the time. We’ve got time, I think, for two more questions. And so I’m going to throw this one out here. And Nico, why don’t you go ahead and start with this one. So I have, I heard this the other day from someone on my team. You can’t incrementally work your way into transformation. So that might feel a little bit different than what we were just talking about, right the bite sized pieces. But with that in mind as we think about transformation, whether it’s all in rip the band aid off, or whether it’s small, bite sized pieces that that take some time to get into play. Are there any tips that you would share around avoidable mistakes that you’ve seen or heard of that we can caution some leaders on to take into consideration as they’re thinking about making a big change, like transformation towards a skills based approach using technology.

Nico Orie 52:08
Yeah. So if I look at our our approach, it’s not that we don’t have a very ambitious end state, very ambitious, but this future back, right? So, so, so we have that end state clearly defined, which will be next level, uh, agile, real time, workforce planning, almost on an incredible scale, total workforce, including, you know, flex workers, and what have you. But then we bring it back to today, what is the step we can take today, right? So, so, in that sense, I think you have that future back vision. You have to create that vision and say, This is where we heading, right in a couple of years, and this is, I we think, how the technology will develop, how we will develop, in terms of our cultural, culture around it. So I wouldn’t, so I wouldn’t say it’s incremental, but it’s, it’s, it’s the journey towards this end state. But we don’t think there’s all the value in already fully publishing that outside of the leadership to all the employees that this, this is probably the end state we’re heading because obviously that is also, you know, dynamic, and it will develop. But I, in that sense, for me, the incremental part is more that, you know, we’re coming from a world which, let’s face it, you know, it hasn’t fundamentally changed a lot of our processes since the last industrial revolution, right? A lot of our processes are transactional. A lot of our thinking is transactional. HR, in companies, we have an hierarchy which is also often under the 50 year old in terms of concept. So the change is gigantic. So you have to bring people on that path. But again, that end state is super agile, super super focused on creating value for our customers, and then we bring it back to what can we do today and tomorrow? Right? So I think that’s the way to do it. You have to have that vision, but bring it back. You know, cannot change the world in a day. And I agree, by the remarkable way you did about a transformation, incremental that’s that will not happen, but we have that infusion.

Rebecca Warren 54:06
And I love what you said about that, Kathy. I want to hear your your points to the piece that I took away from that is big vision, small steps, right? Big Vision with the leaders, small steps with employees. You don’t want to try to boil the ocean. You don’t want to overwhelm but making sure you’ve got that large plan that you’re continuing to execute against, that’s awesome.

Kathi Enderes 54:27
Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly the way that I’m thinking about that, too. I think you need to know where you’re going, so you need to really have that vision on, like, where’s the journey leading you, but then you start with one step, right? I mean, if you’re, I’m, I said before, I’m a runner, I’m a marathon runner. I don’t think about all 42 kilometers or 26 miles, right? I think about the next mile and the next mile, although I know it’s going to be 26 miles, and I think that’s, that’s the way you’re going to break it down, and getting I think the other thing, and you could. You said that too, is it has to start with the business. It can’t be just an HR thing, right? If it’s just like, oh, we want to do skill based organization stuff, because everybody else is doing this and manage to stay on leadership. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t care about this. It has to start with the business. It has to start with the business problem. Like Niko, you said it, are we beating the competition? Are we making more money? Are we better every day? Are we creating more value for the organization? Because in the end of the day, that’s what an organization is about to get a can’t lose sight of kind of the commercial impact and the business and the financial impact of of doing this. So I think that’s, that’s the other thing. It’s, it has to be business driven. It can’t be HR driven. It has to be business driven, HR supported, not the other way around.

Rebecca Warren 55:49
I think that’s great. Okay, so one last question. I’m looking for your best piece of advice. Nico, tell me what’s one piece of advice you would give to HR leaders rolling out AI technology?

Nico Orie 56:10
Well, just a quick introduction to the answer. So we know one thing for certain, right? I don’t know the exact number for the HR technology market. Kathy knows, but for all technology in the world, we invest on annually, probably 1.5 trillion US dollar every year, what we have seen in the last decade, it doesn’t, hasn’t created a lot of a lot more productivity, improved productivity, and there’s some science now that they die so but actually, a lot of our investment hasn’t, haven’t delivered on the expectations, and also, a lot of people are not happier as a result of it. So all that enormous technology investment in in HR that we’re now in for decades, right? Let’s go and haven’t really brought us, really brought us to a place where, you know, we are that more strategic as a result, as a or more productive as a function, or that we are happier, or that our stakeholders are happier. So, long story short, we really need to do it differently. So we really need to start again with what is the business problem? Really the business problem, and then move much more into a digital space, because those new digital solutions don’t go over the transactional process access. They start with big data, artificial intelligence and employee experience. So they create much more flexibility to then deliver on the business and to create a solution for the business problem. So really understand the business problem. It sounds like a no brainer, but I still see this around me, that, you know, people choose technology and they deploy it, and then it’s just not what they expected. Again, you know, makes sense. So really think about the business problem, because the technology that is coming out down the line can do it all. Don’t worry.

Rebecca Warren 57:55
Right? All right. I know we need to have more sessions. We bring this home?

Kathi Enderes 58:04
Well, I mean, we said it all. But I think the other piece of advice, it can’t, can’t agree more than with Nico, to say, well, we need to focus on the business problem. I think the other thing is, focus, focus, focus. Don’t get distracted. There’s so many shiny new tools out there, so many shiny new things, so many things that you could be doing, but be really clear about cutting down. Don’t get distracted, and keep at it. Because I see this all the time, people saying, well, oh, we stopped this journey, but then we never quite side school, because in the beginning we didn’t quite get the traction we needed. Oh, we’re pivoting somewhere else. We are going somewhere else with AI that’s even more so, like shiny new object. Oh, that’s nice and this is so many things you could be doing. So find the answer to your business problems. Focus on it, stick with it, and you’ll get results. That’s that’s

Rebecca Warren 58:53
that. Well, we absolutely could talk for more time, but I know we are out of hours right now. So thank you all for participating, great insights that you’ve had. There’s been a lot of questions and dialog that which we didn’t get to. And so as a talent table team, we will look at those questions. We’ll do a follow up email and potentially answer some of those in our email. So thank you all looking forward to seeing our next talent table, webinar on diversity. Kathy, thanks for setting that up so well, Nico and Kathy, you’ve been fabulous guest. We appreciate you. And the two little pieces of information that I took away there, right is, well, three, it’s not that deep, activate and do do step changes, right? Consumable changes. So three little takeaways. Appreciate you all, and we’re out. Have a good week, everyone.

Kathi Enderes 59:46
Thank you. Bye bye.