Rebecca Warren hosted the October 2025 Talent Table, featuring guests Kristin Petitjean and David Forry. The discussion centered on the impact of AI on HR and learning, emphasizing the shift from automation to agentic AI. Kristin highlighted Bristol Myers Squibb’s skills-forward approach, using AI to personalize development pathways and enhance employee engagement. David stressed the importance of understanding business drivers and leveraging AI to enhance productivity. They also discussed the need for curiosity, continuous learning, and the role of AI in identifying high-potential employees. Metrics for measuring success included employee engagement, internal mobility, and development plan usage.

Introduction

• Rebecca Warren welcomes everyone to the October 2025 Talent Table, hosted from Spain, and mentions the Spanish background.
• Rebecca introduces the guests: Kristin Petitjean from Bristol Myers Squibb and David Forry from Brandon Hall Group.
• Kristin introduces herself as an HR business partner for drug development at Bristol Myers Squibb, focusing on skills development and change.
• David introduces himself as a Senior Vice President at Brandon Hall Group, with 15 years of experience in HR, talent, and learning.

Cereal Discussion and Initial Thoughts on AI

• Rebecca initiates a light-hearted discussion about eating cereal at any time of the day.
• David Forry shares his experience with sugary cereal for his kids and how it’s a late-night snack in his household.
• Rebecca shares a story about her cats finding and eating her husband’s cereal during a trip.
• The conversation transitions to the main topic: AI, HR, and learning, focusing on agentic AI and its impact on work and growth mindsets.

Defining AI terms and their impact

• Rebecca defines automation as a rules-based system without decision-making intelligence.
• David Forry explains the difference between generative AI (Gen AI) and other AI models, emphasizing the importance of understanding these distinctions.
• Kristin discusses the initial reactions at Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) to agentic AI, highlighting the need to explain its differences and benefits.
• Rebecca and David discuss the creative potential of generative AI and its role as a thought partner.
• The conversation explores the concept of agentic AI performing entire workflows without human intervention, contrasting it with automation.

Transitioning to AI and addressing resistance

• Rebecca asks why organizations need to transition to AI now rather than waiting.
• David Forry highlights pressures from top management, financial implications, and the need to be more creative with AI.
• Kristin discusses the importance of understanding employee aspirations beyond mind-numbing tasks and the potential for career development.
• Rebecca emphasizes the shift from structured job roles to dynamic, skills-based approaches.
• The discussion touches on the need for curious and resilient teams and the biggest blind spots in AI readiness.

Change management and business drivers

• Kristin identifies the urgency of understanding AI’s impact as a blind spot for many organizations.
• David Forry discusses the importance of change management and linking AI to business drivers.
• Rebecca and Kristin talk about the need to tie AI initiatives to organizational goals and revenue.
• The conversation explores the role of learning organizations in becoming growth architects and culture shapers.
• Kristin shares her experience at Bristol Myers Squibb in transforming the organization into a skills-forward approach.

Personalizing development pathways with AI

• Rebecca asks how agentic AI can personalize development pathways at scale.
• Kristin explains the importance of identifying skills and bridging gaps between current and future skills.
• The discussion covers the use of AI to create personalized development plans and surface internal opportunities.
• Kristin highlights the need for a phased change approach to avoid disengaging employees.
• The conversation emphasizes the importance of user experience and feedback loops in building trust and transparency.

Measuring the impact of AI transformation

• Rebecca inquires about measuring the ROI and impact of AI transformation.
• Kristin shares metrics such as employee engagement, internal mobility, and development plan usage.
• David Forry discusses the importance of continuous listening and predictive engagement.
• The conversation explores the role of AI in identifying high potential employees and the need for data-driven approaches.
• Kristin and David emphasize the importance of understanding the workforce and tailoring AI initiatives accordingly.

Final thoughts on mindset shifts

• Rebecca asks about the most important mindset shift for leaders to embrace AI.
• Kristin highlights the importance of curiosity in fostering agility and resilience.
• David Forry emphasizes the need to focus on people, process, and technology.
• The conversation concludes with a call to action for leaders to be comfortable with change and embrace AI as a tool for growth and development.

Rebecca Warren 00:06

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Talent Table. This is our October edition. I’m coming to you live from Spain, so hopefully all the internet connections work and there won’t be too much background noise. We’re excited to have two great guests with us today to talk about HR, AI, and everything in between. I’ll have our guests introduce themselves. Kristen, let’s start with you, then David, and then we’ll do our question of the month.

Kristen Petitjean 01:29

Thanks, Rebecca. Hi everyone, I’m Kristen Petitjean with Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) in the people organization. My role is HR business partner for our drug development organization — these are the people doing clinical trials and similar work. It’s a lot of scientists. I came into this role from a skills-based position where I was working in the talent function, focusing on skills development and change. I’m happy to talk more about that later.

Rebecca Warren 01:59

David?

David Forry 02:02

Hello, I’m David Forry, Senior Vice President with Brandon Hall Group. I’ve been in the HR, talent, and learning space for 15 years and as an analyst with Brandon Hall Group for the last nine years. We recently produced an AI progression model and have an AI summit next week, so that’s top of mind for me. I look forward to being part of this conversation.

Rebecca Warren 02:33

I’m your host, Rebecca Warren. I’m part of the talent center transformation practice here at Eightfold, where we help people think about talent through the lens of people, as opposed to jobs or org charts.

Before we jump into AI, I have a question: Is cereal legitimate to eat at any time of the day, or is it only acceptable at breakfast before 9am? Who wants to start?

Kristen Petitjean 03:11

Can I give a contentious opinion on that one?

Rebecca Warren 03:15

Please, absolutely. We love spicy takes.

Kristen Petitjean 03:19

Cereal is a dessert, and if you want dessert for breakfast, more power to you. But it’s dessert any time of day.

Rebecca Warren 03:27

I have never heard cereal called dessert. I absolutely love that.

David Forry 03:31

It’s true. It’s amazing that we synced up. I have three kids, and we have sugary cereal. Yes, we’re healthy—they do triathlons and things—but there’s no way I’m eating that before 9am. That’s a late-night snack. After the kids go to bed, I pull out the Fruity Pebbles, Froot Loops, those types of things.

Rebecca Warren 04:07

Funny story—and the reason this question came up: I typically don’t eat in the morning. I fast until around lunchtime, 12 or 1pm. But my husband and I were catching a really early flight, and he grabbed some snack bags of cereal—Quaker Oats squares and that kind of stuff. We were snacking on it on the plane, and I forgot how good cereal is for snacking. I don’t normally eat it with milk, just as a snack.

I ate some of mine, left it in my bag, and then traveled to another location while my husband was home. At 3am he hears noises. Two of our cats had found the closed bag, clearly smelled the sugary goodness, shredded the bag open, and were diving into my Quaker Oat squares and Peanut Butter Captain Crunch in the middle of the bedroom. My husband was really happy with me about that. Clearly, cats feel it’s a treat at any time of day or night as well.

David Forry 05:19

Well, they also view “closed” as a recommendation and not a fact—something that doesn’t have to stay closed.

Rebecca Warren 05:25

This was a challenge. The zipper on the bag was a challenge. They thought, “Oh, that girl thinks we can’t get in there. She is so wrong.”

Alright, cereal is a snack that provides goodness anytime, day or night, especially as dessert, a late-night movie snack, or a 3am cat treat.

We’re going to dive into our topic for today: AI, HR, and learning. We’re looking at how agentic AI is reshaping how we work, how we think, and how we grow. We have to think differently as we move through this and consider how we’re supporting, engaging, and equipping our teams to move to this new growth mindset around AI.

My first question is actually a statement: we need to define what this looks like. We talk about automation, generative AI, and agentic AI. I’ll give a definition of automation, and then I’d love to hear your definitions of Gen AI and agentic AI.

When we think about automation, that’s a rules-based way of getting things done. We set the rules. It’s an “if-then” scenario. There’s no decision-making other than the rules, no intelligence. It’s a spreadsheet way of looking at things.

How should we be thinking about Gen AI?

Kristen Petitjean 07:25

Gen AI has brought out an alphabet soup for us. We’ve been using terms for years—ML (machine learning) or LLM (large language models). Those were the AI go-tos that everybody was used to. Then generative AI came on and expanded things, and people are still using “AI” as a general term. But AI is so different depending on the application.

When I hear AI or generative AI, I ask questions. I think the big difference for what many people are looking at is: Is it more of a RAG model where they’re just retrieving information? Is it an AI assistant helping you do something? Or is it an AI agent acting on your behalf?

I think for some people—maybe the layperson—they don’t quite understand those different layers. I’m sure everybody listening today does, but they may have to explain that to their business partners or people on their team. That’s definitely something that’s come up a lot.

Rebecca Warren 08:49

Kristen, how do you think about that inside of BMS? Do you have definitions? Have you worked to define that? Or are folks still figuring it out and using it independently in different departments?

Kristen Petitjean 09:01

Absolutely figuring it out in different departments. What I think is interesting is when we talk about agentic AI, the immediate reaction you hear—because this is fairly recent for many people at BMS—is “Wait, there’s more? And how is it different?”

We have demos illustrating how it’s different. What’s really cool is exactly what you said, David—it’s the difference between assisting you with something internal to that tool versus an agent crossing tool boundaries, helping you take actual actions versus just being an assistant and thought partner.

Rebecca Warren 09:45

I think about Gen AI as my thought partner. It creates new things. It looks at tons of different data and puts it together, sometimes in new ways we haven’t thought about. When it hallucinates, sometimes we think that’s terrible—it just made something up. But I read a futurist who said, “I love the hallucinations because it’s something new that hasn’t existed.” Let’s be critical of that in the flow of what we were thinking about, but also take those hallucinations and say, “Where do we go?” I look at Gen AI as being that creative thought partner. How do I think about things differently? How can it put things together in different ways?

When you take that and think about agentic AI, you’ve got agents performing functions. If you have an agentic AI workflow, they don’t need your input. There are still guidelines, but they don’t need you to weigh in to make a decision or take an action. They’re able to complete an entire workflow without human intervention.

Unlike automation—where you have to set the automation for scheduling, for instance—you can automate a scheduling process. But if someone says they’re available this day, you can put it on the calendar. What if they say they’re only available the next day? Automation doesn’t help with that. That’s where agents that can actually reason make such a difference in how work gets done.

David, you mentioned that many folks are still figuring this out. Maybe some folks on this webinar have already dialed in, but I’m guessing we’ve got some folks still in that questioning phase: Should we use it? How do we use it? What does that look like?

We have to think about these changes now because the old way of working—what got us here—won’t get us there. When we think about the old way of working, the structures, org charts, the way work gets done—you have an entry-level person who comes in and moves through the stages, and that’s how promotions and career paths used to go. We’re talking about something a little wild, something we don’t always have all the answers for.

David, tell me: Why do we need to transition right now? Why can’t we just wait and see what happens?

David Forry 12:27

There are a lot of pressures for us to move quicker as an HR community. We’re hearing it from the top that we need to utilize more. Some of us are being pressured from the top or have fewer employees than they’re used to within their department, needing to do more with less. When you’re a publicly traded organization, there are certain measures for keeping costs down. Those are the pressures, and we also need to produce better things.

One thing we’ve seen is people have been able to be more creative with the use of AI. Like you said about the hallucination—they’re imagining things that don’t exist. When you’re in an organization for 10 or 20 years, it’s wonderful because you build up a lot of knowledge. But at the same time, you don’t have those different entry points that you used to when you were more junior, because you came in with other ideas.

This gives you an incredible opportunity to think about things you’ve never thought of within your organization. You’re getting pressures on both sides. Newer employees coming in can utilize this generative AI and agents to really get more out of their work and themselves. One thing I always emphasize for HR professionals is that it’s not replacing you—it’s making you your own super agent, your own super employee.

Rebecca Warren 14:19

Kristen, your thoughts?

Kristen Petitjean 14:22

David, I appreciate that because it reflects the conversations we were having 10 years ago when we were talking about automation. Someone would say, “But this is what I do. Where will I go? What job will I have?” You could have individuals react pretty negatively. Maybe they don’t want to tell you their process because they’re worried that unveiling the mystery behind how we do something means you can automate it and remove them from the process.

What’s really interesting from a talent standpoint, an HR standpoint, is when you ask those employees—those same employees—”What would you want to be doing with your time? Let’s have a different conversation, that career development conversation. Do you want to punch numbers and keys all day, or what kind of thinking, what kind of development do you want?”

Almost always, it was never “I want to be doing this time-consuming, mind-numbing task as a process.” That’s not usually where people want to be spending their time. I think those are packaged messages. Yes, there are financial implications and resourcing considerations helping drive this—those external pieces that come to us regardless of whether we plan for them or not.

If we can plan for them, how can we upskill our employees to understand how to use AI, how to think with it, and pair that with the development conversation? What would you do if you had more time? You’d be surprised—a lot of people are very creative about how they would spend that time. Humans have such an amazing capacity for thought, and I don’t see that being replaced.

Rebecca Warren 15:59

I love what you said there—maybe we’re not asking the right questions. Maybe folks in the roles just assume it’s going to always look like this. They don’t know what that next step looks like. Where could they go? As you said, what if we ask the question: “What would you want to do?” Folks all of a sudden are like, “Oh wait, I have a choice. I may have options. How do I think about this differently?” I love flipping that to give folks that understanding that there is more.

What that shift also indicates is that we’re moving away from “this is your job, you do this until you retire” to shifting because of AI and the ability to move and learn new things more quickly. Whether we’re adding productivity or effectiveness—or, David, as you talked about, doing more with less—I always think about adding AI as doing more with more because there’s so much more capacity.

As we think about doing this now, we’re moving away from a very structured way of doing things—polished processes—to building curious and resilient teams. What’s around the corner? We don’t have all the answers. How do we help folks get there?

What’s the biggest blind spot you think organizations have when they think about getting their folks AI-ready?

Kristen Petitjean 17:53

I could start on that one. For me, a blind spot is failing to realize the urgency, whether due to an inability to understand what’s happening or a lack of desire to. I think the result is the same. You have a workforce that’s going to be dealing with these changes—whether internally or externally—on the way the job works, on the way the company performs, on the way the company interacts outside of the company. Not having your leader understand what’s coming, choosing that head-in-the-sand approach—it’s a disservice to their own staff and to their own careers as well.

You don’t need to be an expert. You at least need to have awareness and open-mindedness to consider what’s coming.

Rebecca Warren 18:39

Absolutely agree.

David Forry 18:41

There are two things I typically see. One is what you mentioned, Rebecca—the change management approach you need to take, making or allowing the employees to see how valuable it is. Don’t be scared. It’s not here to take your job. It’s here to enhance your role and allow you to do more things better.

The other thing I see is not being able to really define how AI, how agentic AI, is going to help the business—making sure it’s part of the business drivers. The more mature organizations can link agentic AI to helping the business and, more importantly, allow the employee to see how it’s assisting the business and that it’s part of our strategy.

Rebecca Warren 19:40

When we think about it that way, it’s not an HR problem to solve workforce readiness. It’s a business problem that we need to solve together. How are we tying the things we’re trying to impart to folks—whether it’s a new curriculum or a different way of thinking or a new course—to organizational goals? How are we tying that to revenue? How are we tying that to something bigger than just sitting inside of HR?

I think it’s difficult sometimes because it’s not just change management, it’s transformation. And now the new buzzword is disruption. I mean, it’s all of it happening at the same time.

How do we get—if you think about our learning organizations, and Kristen, maybe this is where you tap into what you did to transform your organization into a skills-forward approach—but how do we get content managers or learning folks to change that mindset to growth architects and culture shapers? How do we get out of “here, take this course and then you’re going to be ready” or “take this training, let’s impart a piece of content to you and then all will be well in the world”? How do you start getting people to think differently about shaping a bigger picture?

Kristen Petitjean 21:21

Part of it is what you just described—tying it back to those business objectives. I see our training content developers as business strategists as well. I’m not giving a training to get you a skill. I’m helping build an organization that can achieve our company’s objectives. It’s in that framing. It’s also recognizing we’re not necessarily just giving a training—it’s part of a growth path, a development path. What we’re going to do with that is bring people from where they are today and make sure they still have a relevant shelf life of skills for the roles that are going to exist tomorrow. We don’t always know what those are going to be, but I think that’s really important.

What is really cool—and this is something I’m excited about—when we think of training historically, you spend hours and hours developing content, then you work with the business and validate that content, then you deliver the content over again. By the time you’ve gotten the content to the employees, there’s a good chance that some of those pieces feel a little outdated, maybe a little obsolete, especially in this unprecedentedly fast era we’re moving in.

What I like is this idea that because we have AI to assist us with the development part, our people can really think about how we want to move forward, how we want to plan for the training that we need versus just the training that we have.

The second piece I find really cool—and David, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this—we have unimaginably large datasets for how people interact, how they do their work, how they interact with and respond to the training. Since we can cut the time for content building, we can get that immediate user feedback, that user experience, and adapt what we’re providing. We’ve shortened the time so that everything you get is what you need, nuanced and adaptable based on what you’re saying you continue to need. I just find that really cool.

David Forry 23:25

I think it goes back to how we felt a little bit about the internet. We were worried that people were going to start to Google things instead of asking their HR, learning, and talent colleagues how to do something. There’s an entire generation, especially the digital natives, who feel more comfortable going to Google and asking how to do something, how to learn a new skill. Maybe I go and learn Excel through YouTube instead of going to my learning platform.

We’ve really changed things. Now we have that generative AI, and everybody has some type of generative AI on their phone or computer. Maybe they’re using their own subscription. They can go out and ask it questions. It’s much more pointed. Google’s integrated to allow you to have that generative capability right there. If people are a Microsoft shop, they have those options.

I think it’s very similar, and it’s going to be even more with the skills base. If somebody needs to learn a new skill, are we providing it as a learning department—the ability for them to get the best knowledge at their fingertips at the right time when they need it? That’s one thing we can certainly learn.

Also, how do we provide upskilling opportunities that are going to help them in the long run? What type of things? We obviously have competencies aligned to our organization’s goals. But how do we build more durable skills that I can translate into whatever career I have within the organization three months from now or nine years from now? Those are some things we can really work with our employees on.

Because they do have that generative AI, they have the agents, they have all kinds of different tools at their disposal. Maybe they don’t need to know Excel anymore because I have a friend, an agent that can build it a lot better than I can. I used to be really good at Excel. I used to be certified, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Instead, if you teach people how they can apply it, then all of a sudden they know what to go out with. Maybe we just start with teaching people how to prompt properly.

Rebecca Warren 25:59

It’s a shift in how you think. It’s a very different way of coming at a problem. It’s turning it upside down, looking at it differently. The other thing is we have to be comfortable knowing that this isn’t going to be a set-in-stone process. It’s not going to look like this every day, henceforth, forever, in perpetuity. We have to say this is what we’re going to do for now. We’re going to test it, we’re going to try it, we’re going to see how we feel about it.

There was a comment from one of our listeners that said, “To be honest, AI isn’t going to make everybody feel like their world is getting better, their jobs are getting easier, they’re learning more.” I think that’s a fair point. How are we helping people see the value in it, but also offering that ability to change for now? It’s going to feel weird, it’s going to feel uncomfortable, it’s going to be challenging. How do we share that we’re all in it together, thinking about working through this together as an organization, as opposed to maybe somebody feeling left out in a particular department, or maybe it’s a more automated role? We need to help people get there, whether it’s just-in-time training, courses, or giving them free time to think.

Maybe organizations can do—there are a lot that do this already—”Hey, you get 15 minutes a day or you get two hours a week, and we want you to think and research and come up with new ideas.” I could keep on that track, but I think it’s probably time for us to shift to another aspect: helping people feel engaged in their organization, comfortable using AI.

Let’s talk about pathways, career development. Kristen, I want to come to you because of the skills work you’ve done at BMS. And then David, I want your opinion. How can agentic AI, how can moving to a system that uses dynamic AI as a core, personalize development pathways at scale—individual growth patterns for everyone in your organization without having an entire department made up of just coaches and career strategists?

Kristen Petitjean 28:28

Absolutely. This is what we’ve been doing for the last few years at BMS. We recognized the need to identify the skills of our organization. That was going to be very important to do a gap analysis: What skills do we have today? What skills do we need in the future? How do we bridge those gaps? We recognized there’s a need to actually know what skills do we have in the first place. What’s that common language?

When you realize that—and I’m coming to the part of how this gets to the development plan pieces—you need that data for this too. You need it both for employees’ individual development and for the company. When you think of what a company needs or what an employee wants to develop, it’s often tied to “What’s my next job? What’s my next role going to be in this company?”

We talk about how there used to be this structured, laddered approach. It was very simple. People liked it because you didn’t have to think about what came next. You just went to the next step, and it was usually embedded as what was going to come. We’re kind of beyond that now. Roles don’t necessarily work in that structured path in a lot of places in our organization.

Recognizing that, we found a system where we could have employees feed in the structured data around what skills they have, what skills they want to have. We can say what are the jobs we have in this company, what are the skills required for those jobs, and then add in layers of validation. Then let the AI do some magic and say, if this is who you are today, and this is what you’re interested in—maybe this was the role you have—what roles do you want?

Let’s not make the assumption of what roles you want, which is just the next level of where you are. Let’s let the AI do that magic. Let it surface for you what skills you need to be ready for the roles you’ve indicated you’re interested in. What skills do you need to be even better at your current job? Then let’s go a step further and show you how you can build those skills. Maybe that’s going to be through courses. Maybe that’s going to be through projects and assignments where you actually get hands-on experience. Let’s surface those opportunities as well. Let’s surface internal opportunities for you to build these different skill capabilities so you can train yourself, upskill yourself, and get that next job.

For a lot of employees, we’re in this new space where the job I do today isn’t necessarily the job I will do for the next 30 or 40 years. I may only be able to think three or four years into the future because the job that I have in five years may not exist today. Thinking about skills, transferable skills—what do you like doing? What are you good at doing? What can you learn how to do that will be important?

Thinking differently—and this is a huge mindset shift, I’m phrasing it very lightly—to teach people who have for generations viewed this differently takes a lot of time. But what really helps is a fun user experience and a structured change approach, a phased change approach.

As we’re talking about this, there are probably some individuals super excited: “Tell me more. Let me get in there. I want to give you all of my data. Show me what I can do, show me the opportunities. Let me try.” Then you’re going to have the other side. David, I think you mentioned earlier it scares some people. They don’t want to do this. They don’t want any part of it. It’s like the internet—”It doesn’t exist, and I never have to use it.” Well, we know that’s not true. You probably will have to use it at some point.

If we try to move at the speed of either of those, we’re going to completely disengage the opposite group. If we try to move in the middle, sure we get a bulk majority, but again, disengaging those opposite groups. What’s really cool is when you have those really excited people—and that’s what we did here—we had people knocking down our door saying, “Can you let me have your tool first?”

That’s what we did. We generated excitement. We said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could have your own personalized development plan that shows you what roles you’re good for, what skills you need to develop, and how to develop them?” Some people found that incredible. The people organization was one. Some of our science groups were very excited.

Getting them the chance to get in there first—what was really cool, we talk about this “flying the plane while we’re still building it” concept—nothing’s perfect yet. Transparency was huge. Making sure people knew, “Look, it’s not perfect. It’s not the final stage. Are you sure you still want to see it?” Usually, yes, absolutely, they wanted to see it. Then you had some self-aware folks who said, “Honestly, can you give it to me when it’s a lot more solid? I’d rather wait.”

Then you have some who maybe took a year before they finally created a profile, before they finally said, “Okay, let me go in the system and see what’s happening.” Those happen just through normal course of business because now these really cool development opportunities come up and they all feed into that same system. Employees who say, “I never got in there, but I want that opportunity”—well, now they’re joining the system. Now they’re gaining those benefits just tangentially through it being a course of normal business.

That was a two-year approach all the way from “I’m excited, let me in. It’s not perfect, but I still want to play with it” to your normal adopters who say, “Cool, this is how we do it now. We’re going to talk about it” all the way to now. These are the last 10-15% who are saying, “I think I’m interested now because it has something in it for me.”

Rebecca Warren 33:55

They see what it can do for them. That’s important. I think that’s great. One thing I wanted to ask: I’m assuming, especially for those early adopters, because what you started in the beginning is not what your last 10-15% is looking at. I’m assuming you’ve got feedback loops that you’re building in. You’re not just saying, “Oh, we’re just going to create and the heck with you all.” I’m assuming you’re going through saying what kind of feedback is coming in, and then that also builds that trust and transparency because people feel a part of it. They understand not only what it looked like, but that their feedback got us to the next level. I’m assuming you built that in. Can you tell us a little bit about those feedback loops?

Kristen Petitjean 34:39

Absolutely. There were several. In fact, one that I really enjoyed working with—we have a change champion network called Working Smarter. These are people who love testing new AI, new tools, new ways of working. These are people who want to see it and they want to try to break it. They are so excited for this. I am part of that group. It is so much fun when they say, “This tool is ready yet, but tell me what you think.” I would happily love to tell you what I think.

That was one of those groups of early super users. These are people who understand ML and LLM and other techie abbreviations that the average population probably has never heard. You’ve got that one group that’s one of your early user groups.

For the others, it’s partnering with business leaders, getting them in line, getting them to buy in: “I see how this works for my group.” Because what you can notice—let’s say you have various job banks where all sorts of opportunities are surfaced in many disparate places. If you don’t have the business coming in with you, feeding that information for opportunities, your system is not going to have all of the information. What a lot of people find frustrating is if it’s not all in one place, they’re not going to go to multiple places. They’re going to go to the easiest place.

Making this the easiest solution meant asking a lot of questions of both employees, managers, HR business partners, and business leaders: What do your people value? What’s easy? Then having user experience sessions—How many clicks did it take you to get there? Was that too many? Do we need to change where things are so that you just have a user experience that’s easy, seamless, and gives you what you need when you need it?

Rebecca Warren 36:17

That’s wonderful.

David Forry 36:20

I like how you started as well. We’ve moved from the career ladder to the career lattice, creating all of those different opportunities for people. All of a sudden, HR was responsible for all of these different items. But then you add in the rate of change, and it’s like if you printed this out when I did my performance review at the beginning of the year, it’s no longer useful because things are changing so fast. Literally, the skills are changing by the minute.

Then, as you said, that feedback loop of learning and reiterating at the same time—you’re really developing an ecosystem where the whole job progression is changing. I really love that.

Rebecca Warren 37:11

Funny that you say that, David. I’ve also thought about what you said as well, Kristen. When we talk about jobs that continue to grow—the role I’m in right now, our group, which is talent center transformation—when we put it together, Jason Serrato, who was leading the team, put together “Here’s what I think this team should do.” We had some goals and things we were supposed to do. We went back and revisited after a year—it’s significantly different. We’re still doing some of the same things, different flavors. We’re like, “Well, that felt like a good idea on paper. In real life, nope, that actually wasn’t very helpful.”

Our roles are continuing to change. If you had asked me a year ago if I would be talking about agentic AI and some of the other things we’re talking about—not even just my role, the things on the job description, but the things we’re talking about and we’re building and we’re doing—significantly different.

My thought on what you said, Kristen, too, because I think this is really important when we think about a skills transformation and AI transformation and understanding where people are and what they want to do: I think, especially when you’re building that trust and transparency, making it okay for folks to break—David, as you said—that career ladder, even that career lattice. We have to make it okay to say a lateral move will build my experience way faster than sometimes going directly from individual contributor to leadership. Or I was in leadership for a while, and maybe the role changed, or maybe I said, “I don’t really want to lead people anymore. I want to dig into the science, I want to dig into something else” and moving into an individual contributor role.

I think we have to normalize that the roles and the titles are less important than the work you’re actually doing. If you say, “I want to move here,” and that means you’re no longer leading a team, that’s not a demotion. We have to talk about the things that are happening in the business differently. I don’t know if either of you have a point of view on that?

Kristen Petitjean 39:26

I do actually, because in my business partner space, this is actually a common conversation that I have with my leaders: How are we developing people? The common thing they come to is, “Well, the employee wants to be promoted.”

Rebecca Warren 39:40

Don’t we all? Maybe every day we want to be promoted.

Kristen Petitjean 39:45

Asking that deeper question, it’s the next question: “Well, what do they want to do? What work makes them excited to come to work?” Normally when I would ask that question, they didn’t have an answer. They’d say, “Huh, well, I don’t know. The next logical step was promoted here.” It’s like, “Okay, well, if that’s not open today, what is? Where else could they go? Where else could they have skills that are useful to other parts of the business?”

It’s asking questions to help shift that mindset. Sometimes it’s as simple as that—the conversation moves forward, and we identify opportunities. But we need to have the mindset as leaders and coming from HR, and we need our business to build that capability, to have that mindset.

Rebecca Warren 40:35

Agree. David, any last thoughts before we move to the Action section of the webinar?

David Forry 40:42

I would love to hear the Action section. I have some ideas, but I think I’ll save that for another Talent Table.

Rebecca Warren 40:49

David, you’re coming back. Take a note, our producing team.

Alright, so let’s talk about action. We have all kinds of great thoughts, and we can say all kinds of things, but if people aren’t able to do them, it’s really just talking into the air. We want to give folks that are joining us some ways to think differently. What could a baby step look like? How do you start the conversation?

When we’re thinking about especially changing the way we train or the way that we impart information, what would be a step for folks, especially if they’re stuck more in that checkbox “took this training, done” mentality? What would be a step for them to take to move from checkbox training to impact? Where do people start?

David Forry 41:42

I would say the first thing they can do is really understand the business drivers. If you want to get out of that checkbox mentality, understand the business, have those conversations. Kristen, you have that new role, and you’re seeing it so much more. I’d love to hear from you. That’s the number one thing for me. I wanted to jump in and say that. Kristen, I’d love you to unpack it in a practical sense.

Kristen Petitjean 42:10

Yeah, absolutely fair. When we think from a change approach and we think, where do you even start? Know your workforce. There’s not going to be the same answer for every company because the mix of employees, the business objectives you have, where your business is in its cycle of doing things—it’s going to be different.

I think the first thing is know who your workforce is because it will be different. Maybe you have an entire workforce of early adopters or people who barely use computers. We have an entire segment of our workforce that works in a lab. They very rarely have access to a computer. If they do, it’s 10 minutes for email at the start of the day. That’s a very different population. I’m probably not going to approach them first, and I’m certainly not going to approach them the same way. I’m going to have to have a different strategy for that.

That’s where I would say pilots, betas—get comfortable saying, “This is not my formal HR approach that I’m rolling out and everything is perfect,” which I think we’ve often expected from HR. By the time it gets to the business, it is as perfect as it’s going to get. The reality today is a lot of our stuff’s not done, it’s just due. The deadline is whatever business driver you have, David, to your point.

Really, to me, the takeaway is be transparent that it may not be perfect. Just start. Put something out there, but know who they are and know how it’s relevant for them. If you aren’t able to explain why something is relevant to those employees, to that business, why should they spend their time on it? Time is a very precious commodity. We talked about that. I think I’ve seen that theme throughout this conversation: If I have more time, how am I spending it? We want them to choose to spend it here, not tell them they have to spend it here and then see it as another thing they have to do.

Rebecca Warren 43:59

Kristen, I love what you said: “It’s not done, it’s just due.” I’m adding “for now.” It’s just due for now. I really like that idea of it’s not baked, it’s baking. Something’s due, and whatever it looks like, that final product could be down the road. If you don’t mind, I’m just going to shamelessly steal that: It’s not done, it’s just due for now.

Kristen Petitjean 44:26

I’ll let my old art teacher know that you would like to use it. Think about it—when you’re doing an art project, are you ever really done? There’s always something else you can do to that art piece. Maybe our careers are kind of like that too. A lot of the processes you roll out—there’s always more we can do, there’s always some other little thing we can be changing on it. At some point, it’s just due though.

Rebecca Warren 44:49

I like that. One more question for you, and then David, I wanted to get your feedback. There was also a question that came in: When you did your skills transformation and you put in all of these new pieces and worked to get people moving forward, how did you measure the ROI or the impact of that? I’m sure you’re still in the middle of that. Are you looking at number of people changing jobs? Are you looking at promotions? Are you looking at retention? What kind of things are you evaluating to determine the impact of this transformation?

Kristen Petitjean 45:22

We’re looking at a lot of things, and I can share a few. One of the easiest indicators that you can see of engagement is: Are people even building profiles in the tool that shows their skills and shows their development?

A secondary piece—we had a prior system for development planning, which was in our employee workforce data tool, and I want to say that was a very low percentage. We had a goal—we wanted to at least match that percentage. We not only matched it, we exceeded it. So people are not only in the tool, they’re using the tool.

We could also check things like: Are you going back? Historically, we could tell in the previous development planning system you maybe touched it once a year, if you touched it once a year. As you mentioned with your business objectives, your role—in a year, things change so much. That was another metric that we could look at.

Then also seeing how many people are taking things like those projects, those out-of-role assignments, those things that are above and beyond your day job. Is that in your function? Is that out of your function? Are you changing jobs? Are you promoting into new jobs? Did you identify them through our platform? Did talent acquisition identify you?

Because our talent acquisition team is able to proactively identify candidates. I think you’ve heard this before, but a common thing that’s been said in the business world is “LinkedIn knows our people better than we do.” That’s astonishing for me. I want to know my people well. These are amazing people. I want to believe I hired them for a reason, and I’m assuming it’s the skills that they bring to the table. So where else can they use those skills that benefits them and benefits us?

There are a lot of metrics around internal mobility: Are you moving? Where are you moving? Did you identify it through our tool? Did we identify you proactively? These are things we weren’t necessarily looking at before. We might have wondered how many people are moving and tracked that. We had development plan metrics, but this whole ecosystem where we’re looking across that employee life cycle from the moment you join us to the moment you continue changing and exiting—what have you done? Have we identified you for other opportunities? That’s a much better way to phrase that.

Rebecca Warren 47:34

I love that. David, thoughts on any of that?

David Forry 47:39

Absolutely. I think just talking a little bit about that employee engagement piece—if you look at just an employee engagement survey, you have that entry level: “Hey, we’re going to do an annual paper-based form that goes out, and not a lot happens afterwards.” Then you get a little bit better, and maybe you have that online pulse assessment that has some machine learning—going back to some of our alphabet soup—that really identifies some sentiment analysis within your entire organization.

But I think where most people want to get is to that continuous listening, where AI might help intervene in certain areas. Looking out to the future, there are some futuristic organizations that are doing more AI engagement—really proactive management based on what they’re seeing their employees do. Really, I think we’re a couple years potentially from that predictive engagement—that prevention focus of getting ahead of the curve, knowing things like, as you said, LinkedIn knows before I do that somebody’s going to leave, really understanding where that comes from.

So there are lots of different tiers. I think understanding where you are and where your organization is—I think that’s one thing organizations miss. They need that pulse of the organization. What is the AI readiness within my organization? Make sure either I’m within those certain levels that’s going to be comfortable—I want to push the boundaries a little bit, but I don’t want to break anything.

Rebecca Warren 49:17

Go ahead, Kristen.

Kristen Petitjean 49:19

David, you said something that I was just thinking about in our own organization that got us really excited. Historically, training has been centered around compliance-based training. Anything that was required was compliance-based. What we’ve done very recently—and I think this is a positive indication of where we’re going and how we view learning—is that for the first time we’re having required AI training.

Now, part of that is some compliance base in terms of responsible use of AI. We want to make sure you’re using it appropriately. But it’s not exclusively about how do you use it appropriately. It’s how do you use it to make your job better? That’s become a required training. I just think it’s so encouraging to see non-compliance-based training become a requirement as part of your job. The idea that we don’t take you in as a static individual, we take you in as a growing individual, and we continue to aid that growth. When you said that, it really got me excited.

Rebecca Warren 50:18

No apologies. That was great. One thing I want to tack on here—a question came in about: How are we thinking about high-pro talent? We used to call them high-pro and high-po—thinking about those folks that are on that fast track, and then those folks who are broadening out their high-pros. They’re going to be in a role maybe for a long time but really have wide experience.

My take on this—and I’d love to have you both weigh in—is that when we have learning at scale and when we shift our organization from a reactive “take the checkbox training” to proactive curiosity that invades our culture, it becomes less about us having to identify a high-pro or a high-po. We won’t have to have those specific training classes.

It always felt a little strange—especially being in HR for as long as I was prior to coming over to Eightfold—it always felt strange to say we have selected somebody, you are now in the high-potential group. It always felt exclusionary. But now I think we have the opportunity to equalize that. We’re looking at different factors. We’re looking at curiosity, we’re looking at the ability to grow.

I always talk about my résumé as a list of things I never want to do again. I think we also now have the ability to equalize that because maybe somebody didn’t have the opportunity to showcase something that wasn’t on their résumé, so they were identified as a steady Eddie or not a high potential. But maybe they just didn’t have a chance to show that.

My thought is thinking about from a skills-based approach and an opportunity to do that at scale, we may identify a whole bunch of people who have skill sets or abilities that we didn’t see. Maybe that eliminates a high-po program because we’re moving people around in a bunch of different ways. I don’t know, I’m just making stuff up. What do you all think about that? David, what are your thoughts?

David Forry 52:30

Well, I think one thing you said is often the scariest: usually it’s the manager that says this person’s high-potential. It’s very biased based on the manager selecting. What if there’s somebody that’s really doing a great job and maybe might not be best friends with the manager?

Now we have all of this data—and we have for a while, but we didn’t know how to use it. Now all of a sudden we’re understanding better how to use that data and look at certain things that the employee is doing. Depending on your comfortability with AI, you can really identify people based on their activities. Are they doing things like giving other people kudos in Slack or whatever internal platform you have? Things like that only come from people that are more high-potential because they just think differently.

Identifying little things like that that a manager might not have said “This person’s high-potential,” but that’s one little checkbox, and then these little checkboxes add up. All of a sudden you’re identifying people that maybe would have been overlooked and allowing them to have those opportunities to be part of an upskilling program.

Rebecca Warren 53:51

Kristen, what are your thoughts?

Kristen Petitjean 53:55

When I think of high potentials, what I’m hearing from David, and what I agree with, is that it’s a collection of data points that tell us if that person is high-potential. But it’s also the pull-through. If this person is high-potential but never leaves this role, what does that potentially equate to? Does it go anywhere, or was it just a biased indicator?

I think pulling through—not only what are those precursors, but what are the outcomes—and using skill as the common language to help explain those things. Because you’re right, David, a lot of times there’s bias baked in, and there’s bias in skills as well. I mean, we’re human, there’s going to be. But giving that language, making it a little more clear: If you’re going to say someone’s high-potential, what skills do they have? What do you mean when you say they are high-potential? Do you mean they are well-connected? Are they sociable? Or do they have certain leadership qualities? What does leadership mean? Defining those down makes it a lot easier to quantify and a lot easier to build as well, because in a lot of cases, someone could be a high-potential if they just knew what they needed to learn. A lot of those skills are learnable if they know what they are.

Rebecca Warren 55:05

When I think about the high-potential programs that I know of from the companies I’ve been a part of, they haven’t necessarily been tied, as we talked about, to that organizational impact. We have just arbitrarily identified people to put into a program that we think are going to be able to do X, Y, and Z. But when we start tying it to organizational objectives, then we can identify anybody in the organization, no matter what their title, their role, or level, to say they can help us drive that impact.

So it becomes less of an exclusive club and more about what are we trying to do? Everybody can be at different levels, and that’s okay. Your title shouldn’t just determine if you’re part of this or that you went to a particular school, or David, as you said, if you’re better friends and you go out drinking with the manager. That shouldn’t define it. It should be about the skills you bring to the table and the impact it brings to the organization.

We’re coming like—we’re past the home stretch, we’re in the home stretch. We’re three minutes from ending here. I’m going to ditch a couple of questions, but one thing I really do want to make sure we end on is we talked a lot about tactical things. We’ve talked about how do we measure impact, how are we looking at ROI, how are we looking at the outcomes? But I think it all comes back to, in my opinion, it comes back to that mindset. We have to be willing to be uncomfortable. We have to be willing to change. We have to be willing, potentially maybe, to blow up structures that feel really comfortable and challenge and say, “We’ve got to turn this on its head because if we continue to do things the same way, we are going to get stuck.”

What I’d like to know from both of you is: What is the single most important mindset shift that leaders need to put into place to think about what success looks like in a new way of working? Kristen, we’ll go with you, and then David will wrap up with you.

Kristen Petitjean 57:20

There’s a lot of things I could say. I know we’re at time, so I’ll keep it brief. Curiosity, truthfully. At the end of the day, if you are curious, it will make you more agile, it’ll make you more resilient, it’ll make you more learner-focused. It comes down to that curiosity, that willingness to be interested in something new.

David Forry 57:37

I think my approach is also simple, and I think we’re overthinking things sometimes with AI. Particularly at the end of the day, it’s still about people, process, and technology. You need to understand your people, you need to build a strong process, and you need technology that supports that. At the end of the day, that’s still what it boils down to.

Rebecca Warren 58:04

Totally agree with that overcomplication. Sometimes we just feel like, “Oh, we’re never going to get there.” You just have to start. And that curiosity—what you talked about, Kristen—that curiosity not just of leadership level but encouraging everybody in the organization to ask questions, to learn, to think differently, to be okay with it.

As you said, David, instead of making it over complicated, let’s dip our toe in the water. Let’s figure it out. Let’s make sure that it honors people. Let’s make sure that it’s a fair process, and let’s make sure that we’ve got the right tech in place.

You all have been awesome. I have many notes and many things that we’re going to carry over into some kind of future session with all of the things that you’ve shared and the things that we didn’t even get to. Thanks for your time, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Looking forward to our next Talent Table in November. Take a look in that Resources section or maybe some widgets, but take a look to see about signing up for next month.

With that, we are out. Have yourself a great day, all. Thank you. Bye.