Ligia Zamora (00:05):
Welcome to The New Talent Code, a podcast from Eightfold that provides practical, actionable advice for HR. We’ll interview today’s thought leaders and those already using best practices in HR to share their advice and get your workforce ready for anything. I’m your co-host, Ligia Zamora.

Jason Cerrato (00:22):
And I’m Jason Cerrato. Each episode will feature change makers in the talent space to talk about how they’re using cutting edge technologies like AI to transform processes and rethink old constructs. To solve today’s most pressing issues in HR, while also designing the workforce of the future. It’s what we call The New Talent Code.

Ligia Zamora (00:38):
Hello everyone, and welcome to The New Talent Code. Joining us today is Noel Brown, the global head of enterprise talent at HSBC. In 2024, Noel led a project to help the banking leaders recruiting and talent teams adapt more quickly to change. Noel, welcome to The New Talent Code.

Noel Brown (01:15):
Hi guys, delighted to be here.

Ligia Zamora (01:18):
Well, we enjoy talking with people for trying something new, whether that’s following a new career path, helping others grow. So to help our listeners get to know you better, what is the last new step you’ve taken in your career, whether this was a lateral move, an advancement, a learning experience, and how did it benefit you?

Noel Brown (01:35):
Yeah, so it’s pretty recent. As of April’s first I’ve taken on the remit of enterprise talent, which is in effect bringing talent acquisition and talent management together for HSBC. So April one auspicious date, but brand new and still bringing teams together. But yeah, it’s a great opportunity.

Ligia Zamora (01:55):
Congrats.

Jason Cerrato (01:56):
You joined HSBC in 2022 and in a very short time you were already starting to take on projects around re-imagining how the teams would start to work together and think about doing this work in the future. And for someone who’s been tasked with thinking about change and helping the organization address change faster, since you’ve joined, those things have only happened faster and faster. Can you give us a snapshot of what the HR team you inherited look like and what were some of those challenges, maybe internal and external that prompted this need for change?

Noel Brown (02:31):
Yeah, and you’re right, but I don’t think that’s going to change. I think just this continuous evolution is on a roll at the moment. So what I inherited was a decentralized approach to talent acquisition, and my remit was to transform our talent acquisition capability for HSBC. Obviously since April that’s changed a little bit to take on a broader talent scope, but that decentralization meant duplication of processes, duplication of teams, a lack of consistency, all of those things. And we know the pendulum swings back and forward on centralized, decentralized and proximity to the business. But the big driving force was to make sure that what we had was going to be ready for the next turn and be able to address the ever changing needs and have enough agility and flexibility in the model to do that. Great opportunity. I’m new to banking, joined as I say a couple of years ago, but prior to that in life sciences, which moves very fast, but also has to and has had to deal with supply issues over time for very niche scientific requirements. So it’s bringing that skillset to a new environment is why I joined.

Jason Cerrato (03:45):
Now, I’ve heard you say in the past that thinking about it the way TA and TM have often been organized and measured in the past, sometimes they’re even at odds. So you’ve talked about how driving change, you really need to look at what you’re measuring, how you’re measuring it, but you need to drive this change from the top down and thinking about driving agility and how this work will be done going forward. Can you talk a little bit about kind discovering how these functions may have been at odds?

Noel Brown (04:17):
Yeah, and it’s funny because if you talk to business leaders, they just assume that this stuff happens behind the curtain and it is one team that is driving in and it is one approach and process. So I think the fact that we’ve lasted this long working behind the curtain to get it together for the business, it’s just now the natural evolution is to be more joined up and have a holistic solution for the organization. And again, if you think about what that means, it means different processes. Somewhere along the way, you’re going to miss an opportunity if it’s entirely separate. So the idea here is that you’re bringing the insights together, you’re bringing the data together, you’re bringing the teams together and just having a sharper set of solutions for where we’re headed and linking it back to prioritization. So I think that’s the key is we’re going to focus in on what matters most.

Ligia Zamora (05:10):
And how ready was the HR team for this change? What skills did you have? What skills did you need in order to drive this transformation? And were any of these AI related?

Noel Brown (05:21):
It’s interesting on the skills piece within HR. So we have grace talent acquisition colleagues and capabilities, and likewise on the talent management side, what was called people capability, great experience there around skills development, around the deployment of succession, et cetera, et cetera. But they tended to be distinct and inevitably as you bring the two worlds together, you’re going to have folks that spike in certain areas but that are going to need development in others and vice versa. I guess the evolutions will be within the business partner, HR business partner side, really focusing in on talent as well so that it is a joined up approach and it’s not the talent team sitting to the side doing talent stuff. This has to be across the zone as well and making sure that all of the business facing HR roles are leaning into the talent agenda and are really clear on our talent because without that knowledge that you can then bring solutions to bear on, that’s where we will, I think really drive the value for this.

Ligia Zamora (06:29):
Can you talk to us, give us an example of some of these changes where the teams working in silos maybe not working together, particularly around TA and TM, and then how they’re working better together now and the impact it’s actually having on the business, just as an example for our listeners.

Noel Brown (06:47):
Sure. Yeah. So probably a good example is maybe succession plans. So we have three lots of succession. So we have enterprise critical roles, business critical roles and local critical roles out in markets, out in business and at an enterprise view. And that was done with good intention, but often in isolation. So what we started last year was at an executive and leadership level is bringing the ECR enterprise critical role and bringing the talent management and talents acquisition teams together in a regular forum that we are talking about the talent that we’ve got that’s ready now and then at a career band level below that, that could be an interesting proposition for certain roles that we know as the chess board moves around. So we took that and that started to be very, very effective for our business, but it wasn’t happening everywhere and it was happening, and if it was happening through good partnership and good practice from colleagues versus consistent, measurable, all the good stuff we would want it to be, and it was more of an ad hoc fashion, we knew we needed to change that.

Noel Brown (07:59):
So the strategy of hope moved away and we became more consistent in how we think about it. And that’s helped us a little bit where relatively new off the blocks in terms of the combined, but what we do know is we’re going to start to look at different metrics. So the metrics won’t just feed the operational components. So we want to make sure obviously we have enough diversity, enough inclusion in the talent and understanding the skills we need. All of that good stuff will continue. But we also then need to understand the concept of talent density. So mapping talent to value, understanding the impact that the position will have, they will be some of the different measurements that we’ll put in place to prove and the thesis that this is going to work. So we’re said we’re going to place a bet, bring ’em together. Now we’ve got to prove that it works and that’s the next step and that’s happening right now as well as we start to bring the worlds to love

Jason Cerrato (08:54):
With the more unified talent function. Is there any specific capability or new kind of delivery that you’re providing to managers? And then conversely, is there any immediate reaction that’s coming from the business as a result of some of this change?
Noel Brown (09:11):
Yeah, no surprise. Jason probably say data is one of the big things. So I think the trick historically that’s been missed is we have lots of information, but it’s bringing it into some bite-sized chunks on how we can do something with that information. And we have a very good partnership with my counterpart in what we call workforce strategy and insights. So they’re looking at the skills that we have today in the organization, and then my role will be to understand what’s around the corner from a skills planning perspective, that capability planning point of view. But what we already know is bringing some of that information to life to say, here’s what we have and here’s what we can do with it. So the example that’s often cited is on the link between finance and tech and accounting colleague, that direct accounting role has an 80% fit for cybersecurity.

Noel Brown (10:10):
So if you think about the analytical mind, all the rest of us, hey, that’s transferable. So we have some good examples in HSBC where we’re looking at the data on our colleagues and the skills they have today, mapping that to roles that they could be potentially helpful to plug a gap where we know we have demand in a growth market. So it’s bringing the two together, but I think that’s where already we’re starting to see the advantage of that in small pockets, but we’ve gone in with what matters most right now. So we’re already going after the priority areas, and then as we scale with technology, and I can talk a bit about our tech stack is helpful, but within that, that will just give us more scale and be able to do that on a consistent basis as we’re changing tech, we’re also changing process and the way that we think about by persona, some of the stuff that we’re doing.

Ligia Zamora (11:08):
Let’s talk a little bit about setting expectations. As you sold this project internally and as you came into this role, how long between initial assessment, initial project kickoff to actually being able to see or surface some of the fruit of this initiative? Like in succession planning?

Noel Brown (11:26):
Historically that has been done on an ad hoc basis. By bringing them together, it’s almost immediate because you’re having proper qualitative conversations. You’re just talking about the individuals that are known. And at that, certainly at a leadership level, we’ve got very good insight. The trick now will be to do that at scale, but almost immediately when we have looking at the opportunities for colleagues, you can quickly add value there because you are surfacing people that maybe weren’t even on consideration by bringing the right individuals together to have those conversations. So where we now need to go is doing that in a, and that’ll be where the tech plays is bringing that together at scale for us to help. But a good example of where we’ve seen that kind of skills mapping piece was what we call accelerated wealth. So example would be in Hong Kong, the market for relationship managers and wealth is about 5,000, about half of them work for us already.

Noel Brown (12:24):
A large number have worked for us and the rest we know already through the market and are probably interviewed for. So we’ve got a good map of the available talent supply there and what we know is the demand is significant. We’re beside the greater Bay Area and in China there and 86 million people living. We offer an opportunity to grow that business. So we then have to think about what are those transferable skills externally and internally. So internally we’re looking at that and have seen some good transferable skills coming out of our branch network in retail and upskilling people, and then externally, colleagues that have worked in the hospitality industry where very good customer orientation, attention to detail, high quality. So some of those areas and skills have mapped very well to fix a real business problem, which was a nil supplied problem almost, and creating a new funnel that we can leverage. But then internally it’s colleagues we know in areas that may have less demand, we can then transfer them to other parts of the business. So that was one pilot program that we rolled out last year, and we’re starting to roll that out to other countries now because it’s pretty successful internally for us.

Ligia Zamora (13:41):
What has been the reception, particularly from employees to these pilots?

Noel Brown (13:45):
Yeah, I think it’s twofold. I think it’s managers as well because we also have to change some of the behaviors, how they feel about folks from other sectors, how they think about, so you’re challenging some of the norms on that, and that’s never easy, but you need some of the, it starts with strong leadership and we’ve got some great leaders that could see the benefit of doing this, and then it requires bravery from some to just take that step across, but then you have proof points and people see it working, they become believers, but you have to do that in small pilots, prove it works, get support, go again internally. It’s great because it’s folks in certain roles can see that over time that some of those jobs will demise. So it’s the sunset sun rising piece, and if you’re in a role that you know is going to sunset, they’re very motivated to see where they can reskill and get into something that’s high growth. And so that was probably an easier pathway. Then the managers who had to think about how they could see that practically work and it’s thinking of the speed to productivity dip that you’ll inevitably get because they’re new. But then over time you start to see, well actually they’re bringing a whole set of skills, all the things we know, but you have to prove it. And as I said, you get one or two that are more on the cutting edge of that and willing to take a risk and you go from there.

Jason Cerrato (15:05):
So we hear a lot from leaders that talk about the need to overemphasize change management, whatever you think change management is going to be plan for more. And then the importance of getting visibility and emphasizing leadership communications and driving awareness and the cultural component of this change. It sounds like that rings true for you at HSBC as well.

Noel Brown (15:29):
The key part here is just to over communicate. Tell ’em again, tell ’em what you told them. The old adage is you’ve got to keep reinforcing those messages, and part of our change is to help people understand some of those macro shifts in the world that are going to impact supply. So all the labor market participation stuff we know, but then the positive stuff, which is if we embrace this and get ahead of that wave, it gives us a better chance, I should say, to solve the problems before they become problems. But you’ve got to, from a change program, we have to be very, very thoughtful in terms of who then the approach that we’ll take and some proof points along the way, prove success early when we see it. But equally, when stuff goes wrong, which inevitably it does go wrong, we have to then learn from that and share that too. So we have retrospective regularly. You can move along quickly if you’re doing it, but accepting it’s going to be imperfect and we’re trying new stuff and get comfortable with that as well as part of it.

Ligia Zamora (16:31):
Given what you’ve learned, if you were now placed in a brand new company, roughly the same size, geographic expansion or location and complexity of HSBC, what advice would you give listeners in terms of, okay, here’s how you approach the problem. Here’s how you prioritize, and to some extent, given what you’ve learned along the journey, what are some ahas that you would say, Hey, don’t miss this portion?

Noel Brown (16:57):
There’s probably loads, but I think the prioritization’s a key one is if you can dial in quickly to what matters most to your organization, because not everything is equal. So there’s going to be whatever it is, whatever the industry is, there’ll be one or two things in that business. Have all of the leadership energy out of board energy that are pointing towards if whatever that is, focus in on them. So if you can help solve one or two of those things or come with some solutions, you’re going to have the right level of support to vacuum on it. Because inevitably, if it’s a tricky jigsaw to solve, then the more people with creative ideas around it, there’ll be openness to that. If it’s something that’s going to run rate, working okay is not a major priority, you’re just not going to guess enough. So try and solve something that needs to be solved.

Noel Brown (17:46):
That sounds obvious, but I think that’s what I’ve learned is if you go there first and prove it there, then you’re going to get borrow or sponsorship for the agenda anyway. So I think that’s a kind of a key piece. And have the courage of your convictions on this as well. Within your career, you’ll have learned an awful lot. Bring those points of view to the table because you’ve got, within your business, you’re dealing with people that are great at running their business, but you’re a talent expert, so don’t forget that and have that point of view backed by data. And in the same way that they would set up a business case backed by data, take that approach. I think that’s what I’ve learned now is clearly we’re dialing into what the business needs, but focus on what they need to solve and then have a good plan based on your experience and be ambitious with that. I think it’s take on the stuff that is a bit trickier on the periphery as well, because nobody else is going to, there’s an expectation you will. And that then I think if you’re bringing a team with you on it, that energizes them around what you’re trying to do.

Ligia Zamora (18:54):
And along with that question, what kind of team did you build initially to drive this transformation? How many stakeholders did you bring in? Were the regions participating, executive sponsorship, et cetera?

Noel Brown (19:06):
Yeah, I’ve been very fortunate to join on a mandate to transform, and on the TA side, it was tech and process, but it was also our operating model. It was the employer brand, but also what we call human hiring. So the experience piece. So it’s bringing those four strands together and inherited a team, some with experience of doing that and others I brought in from other sectors as well, outside finance as well as specialists within banking that understand the landscape. But across those four areas or pillars of the transformation. And then we have a program of work that’s ongoing to put in tech, to put the human into hiring and to look at behavioral science in the same way you do with customers. You apply that thinking and logic to how we think about candidates. So for us, we say no to about 2 million candidates a year.

Noel Brown (20:00):
Many of them are potential customers of ours or are customers. So even if you don’t get the job, you want to them to walk away and have positive sentiment towards us. And equally the folks that join us, we want to celebrate that. So using just tweaking language, and I’ll give you an example. The onboarding process was, it was almost you go through a lengthy process, you win the job, you get the job, but instantly we’re then saying, okay, we now need you to fill in these 20 things, do these tasks without saying time out, congratulations. You’re one of a few that I’ve got a job in this process, pause and celebrate that and then we’ll get into the other stuff. Versus it’s almost like it just becomes some kind of endurance test. And that shouldn’t be, we are trying to be more human in that process.

Noel Brown (20:49):
Equally, we want to recognize folks that have put in a lot of effort that weren’t successful and with some meaningful feedback, talk to them, assess some of the next steps for them if there’s other roles that are available. Just again, just being more human in that process, which at scale is hard to do, but we’ve got to do it. And other sectors, other industries do that really well. We have to learn from that in ta. So the program of transformation there is ongoing making good progress on all those factors, but it requires, yeah, few external folks join and bringing that team with us to make it happen.

Jason Cerrato (21:26):
Well, in the spirit of ongoing transformation as if you already didn’t have enough on your plate, how are you and your organization thinking about agentic AI?

Noel Brown (21:35):
Yeah, it is the topic of the day, isn’t it? I’m thinking of it in a couple of ways. So we are going to put that into, from an operating model, we’re thinking about agentic in terms of the areas where we know we can leverage. There are tools on the market already, so administrative tasks, sourcing some of those areas that we know we can benefit from that we’re going to start to apply that. So where we know there’s an opportunity to do it, we will. That said, we are a bank, so we are clearly from a risk parameter perspective, have to be very, very clear. And we have an approach called Four Q, which is you look at is it simple, is it agile, is it customer centric, is it sustainable, and is it within our risk threshold? And if the answer to any of them is no, but we don’t do it.

Noel Brown (22:24):
It’s the same with this.  Agentic is here, it’s been here for a while, it’s going to be omnipresent soon. I have a point of view from an emerging talent point of view and that I think we should hire more. And as a lot of organizations are backing off emerging talents, the reason organizations are backing off is they’re saying, well, actually AG agentic is going to do the stuff that they used to do, but actually that work is just going to change. So we have to help with changing that work. And it could be get ’em ready for be client ready faster. And there’s some good data points on, I think it’s 16 to 24 year olds, native agentic users. And I heard some examples last week where folks are starting ag only businesses and all sorts of weird and wonderful places that are 16, 17 year olds.

Noel Brown (23:16):
How about getting them into the organization and then they will help with our process development. They will naturally be using this anyway. So I think that’s where we’ll start to see the big shift happening. But then within the organization, our business has to be ready to enable that to happen within that four questions that we always ask. And the risk is a clear one in this type of business, but if there’s a way to do it on the simpler processes, which are more straightforward, we can, and then that’ll evolve over time. But it’s a really interesting one that on the work work or workforce piece for AgTech, if we don’t do it, then I don’t know who’s going to do it for the organization. Business lines will do bits and pieces, but if we don’t think of it across the field, then we’re missing a trick. So it’s super exciting. It’s a great time to be in this space where this is a big shift for organizations.

Jason Cerrato (24:14):
Teenagers starting all age agentic businesses. We’ve come a long way since paper routes and mowing lawns, I guess.

Noel Brown (24:20):
All agentic businesses in Minecraft apparently. Which again blows your mind. That’s the platform. They’re going to use it for an all agent e-commerce shop that’s leveraging offshore supply chain. And these are 16 year olds. How about we get more of them into our organizations and help us figure some of this stuff out too.

Jason Cerrato (24:41):
You make a lot of sense. You’ve already shared some of the goals that you’ve set forth with the team, but can you kind of with an eye towards what’s next, think about what’s on the horizon, what are the next goals for the team? What’s over the next kind of wave of transformation for HSBC and for you and your team?

Noel Brown (25:01):
Yeah, it’ll be further on the leadership group that we have on this, continue with the work around talent acquisition because that technology that we’re putting in will allow us to infer skills. It’ll allow us to have data. We have a broader middleware technology and tech wolf that helps us look at what we have today with eightfold that’ll do the skills inferencing. We have success factors, so it’s important with all of these bits of tech, we start to bring that together for insight. So I think that for me will be the key way that we’ll win this. We’ll be having the right level of information to the colleagues today. And even last week I probably met three or four colleagues and I was curious about what they’ve done before, what kind of jobs they have. Through those conversations, you realize they’re only using a small percentage of their overall skillset.

Noel Brown (25:55):
Often in roles, if we start to at scale, help them develop and use more of that, there’s something in that they talk about unlocking the value of the focus on the balance sheet. That’s probably a good way to do it. So data and insights on the current workforce on what we do with them, but also a believer in doing a handful of things, but doing them really, really well. And I think if we try and do it all, we’ll do a pretty average job. The in front or the reverse of that is also true. If we try and do a couple of things but really nail them, I think that can have outsized impact.

Ligia Zamora (26:32):
And then to end the episode, Noel, question around, if you look back on this journey, anything that was a complete surprise to you? Anything that you did not expect and how did you handle it, overcome it, go along for the journey?

Noel Brown (26:47):
I think anybody listening to this podcast that’s in the world of talent or TA already has resilience in built because inevitably, you’re going to come across people that don’t think you’re bright. Ideas are quite as bright as you think they are and quite rightly will challenge. So you have to be able to ensure when you come across inevitable challenges on that, that you’ve got the right data to back it up, that you’ve got courage of your conviction and you’ve got a good story to tell on it. Because I framed this and I presented our various different boards on this, is the macros for most organizations are against this labor market participation, aging workforces, the demographic shift, the skills piece, all of the stuff we know. You’ve got to bring that to life in the context of the place you work. So I think starting with that and being resilient has got to be one of the three pieces, but also being on your toes.

Noel Brown (27:42):
Because when you start this, as you were saying earlier on, inevitably stuff will change. So what was even valid a year ago probably isn’t anymore. And we have to just constantly just our assumptions be agile enough to go, okay, yep, we got that one wrong. We got that one right. But the Broad’s vision stays the same. We know where we’re headed and we’ll figure other stuff out as it evolves, but that for me is something that isn’t going to change. So we should just embrace that and just be part of how we operate. But yeah, I think the prioritization piece as well is one that I would say if you’re coming in to an organization, it’s figuring out where the pain points are and helping. And I think if you’re doing that, and you’ll get a few like-minded people that will be willing to back.

Jason Cerrato (28:33):
Have the courage of your convictions and as long as you’re within that risk framework, could be stubborn on vision, but flexible on details. That’s great advice, Noel.

Ligia Zamora (28:42):
Great. And with that, thanks so much Noel. Thanks for listening to The New Talent Code. This is a podcast produced by Eightfold AI and edited by Resonate Recordings. If you’d like to learn more, please visit www.eightfold.ai and find us on all your favorite social media sites, especially LinkedIn, where Jason and I share more advice on strengthening your HR strategies. We’d love to connect and continue the conversation.