[00:00:00] Ligia: Welcome to the New Talent Code, a podcast with practical insights dedicated to empowering change agents in HR to push the envelope in their talent functions. We’re your hosts. I’m Ligia Zamora. 

[00:00:18] Jason: And I’m Jason Cerrato. We’re bringing you the best thought leaders in the talent space to share stories about how they are designing the workforce of the future, transforming processes, rethinking old constructs, and leveraging cutting-edge technology to solve today’s pressing talent issues.

It’s what we call the New Talent Code. So if you’re looking for practical, actionable advice to get your workforce moving forward, You’ve come to the right place.

Welcome back to the new talent code today. We’re closing out our second season with a look back at some of our favorite moments with our guests. This season, we learned so much about creating change in HR to drive overall success in a variety of organizations. 

[00:01:01] Ligia: From making talent decisions based on your employee skills to best practices in deploying the right methods and technologies to facilitate that change.

Everyone who visited us on this podcast was filled with actionable advice and real world stories that left us feeling motivated and inspired. We have a lot to share from this season. So let’s get started. 

[00:01:23] Jason: We kicked off this season with a two-part episode from Jason Averbrook, a senior partner with Mercer, who gave us a lot to think about when it comes to transformation.

In our talk with him, we discussed how the role of HR has changed, what you need to do to stay relevant, and the benchmarks you should set for your business. But one of our favorite takeaways from Jason was the idea of learning to unlearn. 

[00:01:45] Jason Averbrook: One of the things that’s so challenging, yet so fun, about the opportunity that, in what I do, is transformation means change.

Okay, trans means change. And in order to truly change, like I said, A, you have to understand where you’re, where you came from, but B, you can’t just do the same thing going forward, which means you have to unlearn the way you have thought. And that’s really hard. Well, that’s not just really hard in this little tiny microcosm of HR, that’s really hard in life.

So, as a parent of two boys who are 19 and 16, how might I learn how to raise my kids? Based on how I was raised. Is that the way I wanted to raise my kids? In some cases, yes, my parents did a good job raising me. In other cases, I chose a different path. But in order to choose that different path, I had to unlearn some of those things.

And when we think about the fact the world changes so fast, and the world is changing around us, if we don’t change how we do things, All of a sudden we become outdated, or old, or not relevant. And in many organizations where we’re working with organizations today, they will say that the HR function is not relevant.

And there’s nothing worse than not being on that island of relevancy. 

[00:03:17] Ligia: The thing that stood out most for me from Jason was his enthusiasm for change. When he said learning to unlearn, it blew my mind. I mean, what a term, the fear of becoming obsolete is so real for many HR teams. And I think it’s essential to have that willingness to learn and try new things, right?

It’s difficult. It’s hard to unstick yourself, learn new things, risk. Yeah. New things like talent intelligence. It’s how HR will stay relevant and not just adapt to thrive in the future. 

[00:03:46] Jason: Yeah, I really enjoyed starting the season off with this episode from Jason. I’m always happy to hear how a leader like him really challenges people in the HR space and is genuinely enthusiastic to really challenge people to leave outdated ideas and methodologies behind and really push people on this journey.

I think one of the things that I really enjoyed and really thought about even throughout the season as we talked to the other guests was when Jason was talking about designing for change and building it into the process. So that way it wasn’t just going live and kicking off the journey. It was building change into the process.

So people got comfortable with it and ready for it. And it just became part of the journey and really designing for transformation. Yeah.

[00:04:35] Ligia: Yeah. Becoming comfortable with change during the season. We also had the chance to talk with many organizations that have already started their talent intelligence journeys.

These folks were excited to share their experiences and learnings with others. One of those organizations was Vodafone. Many of you know, a global telecoms company based in Based in Europe, group head of talent acquisition. Sophie Clifford talked about how using talent intelligence has allowed Vodafone to grow its talent game with a unique mindset.

[00:05:08] Sophie Clifford: We were being seen internally as an inefficient function. So actually there’s your case for change. We were seen as one of the most important processes in HR, but we weren’t delivering to their expectations. And I think that’s. On all fronts, that would be from the speed of which you’re bringing talent into the organization, but also from a candidate perspective, that candidate experience was poor.

We were so inundated with applications, which I know is a good problem to have, but when you’re operating in a very manual way. To be able to get back to all of those candidates in a timely manner that still gives them a good experience of our brand. Because most of the time we talk a lot about candidates are customers and are probably our actual customers as well.

Hence why they affiliate to our brand. And if we can’t give them that good experience, we’re potentially hitting our bottom line. We could be losing a customer and guess what? They’re going to go and tell all their friends and family about this really poor recruitment experience they had. And all of their family and friends that are customers of ours, we could lose those as well.

So we really saw, as I said, this kind of case for change. I think as well, the other piece for us is around diversity. We are really championing bringing in more diverse people into the organization. And we needed intelligent ways of doing that. Ways that we hadn’t been thinking of before. 

[00:06:33] Ligia: So, yeah, treating your current and potential employees like customers seems so basic, but it’s such a smart move, and it’s a really about a mindset that stuck out to me.

I remember when Sophie was on, she talked about how they use this to align to their adoption of AI to the CEO’s strategic priorities. She talked about their strategic priorities, if I remember correctly, were customers, simplicity, and growth. I think those are three things every organization can benefit from focusing on to meet their goals and drive their business forward.

[00:07:07] Jason: Yeah, I agree. And this was another conversation that I really enjoyed. And it was great to meet Sophie at the Cultivate conference in person and talk about what she’s working on with her team. One of the things that stuck out was we talked frequently about thinking differently, managing and measure differently.

That really came through in this conversation. She was talking about how they’ve been on this journey now for a while, and they’re a little ahead of other companies. And she was saying how it’s continuous and they’re still learning. And they’re learning from other companies. They’re learning from Eightfold.

They’re learning from each other. And one of the things that came up was this. Talk around adoption, and I remember she used the phrase that’s another kettle of fish, but she was saying how even on this journey, she wouldn’t say that they’ve cracked that code, and they still were achieving incredible results that they had reduced time to fill and that they were realigning their strategies around.

Talent attraction and being more predictive and proactive. So how thinking around what this does for your strategy and how this changes your approach and really gives you new ways to think and manage. I really came through in this conversation. It was one of the highlights for the season for me.

[00:08:26] Ligia: Another great example of rethinking how you do things is Amdocs. Victoria Myers, their global head of talent attraction, shared how the organization changed its approach to find better talent. They actually started looking internally. To do this, they launched a program called Harmony. Which opened the door for employees to create profiles, to find career aspirations, and find new roles designed to meet business needs.

All of this required transitioning to skills based roles. And sometimes, that isn’t an easy transition to make. 

[00:09:00] Victoria Myers: One of the things that’s really been difficult, and we talked about it from the very beginning, is when you are role based is the mindset of shifting to skill based. The roles are still there, so it’s not like they go away because you have your hierarchy of jobs, your comp is related to that.

So none of those things actually just disappear because you’re skill based. So how do you get the manager to understand that, that now we’re looking at the skills and yes, the person will still be hired to a role, but the role is less significant as to what the skills of the person are. That’s a challenge and take, it takes quite a bit of conversation and really getting everyone on board to the same level and helping them to understand that someone’s experience and skills are actually more relevant than potentially their education or.

The job title that they had before. 

[00:09:51] Ligia: I know they were just launching Harmony at Amdocs when we had Victoria on. It’d be great to have her on again and hear more about where they are on this journey now and what else they’ve learned. But one of the things that really impressed me about their story was how they were able to fill 48 percent of their open roles with internal talent.

Just from using talent intelligence. I mean, we’re talking about an organization of 30, 000 people. Let’s put that in context, 48 percent of open roles in an organization of 30, 000 people. Not a small feat to me. That really speaks to the value of looking into a skills based transformation, right? And the impact it can have on finding qualified talent.

[00:10:32] Jason: And it’s exciting to see how HR teams are taking these platforms, customizing them and making them work for their organization. One of the things that came through in the conversation with Victoria was how, you know, they started with talent acquisition, and then they worked over to talent management, and then they were looking to applying this to even other areas.

And when she introduced us to the Harmony program, this was something that I referenced even in my conversations at other conferences and on other podcasts. So it stuck with me around aligning talent strategies with business strategy and keeping these things in true harmony. And as we talked about, you know, building sustainability in an uncertain world and driving the ability to operate at the speed of business and using insights and intelligence to move faster, but also move.

In line of sight to the needs and desires and dreams of your people. I just love the story of what Amdocs was doing with town intelligence and tying it all together with this branded initiative around Harmony. 

[00:11:33] Ligia: Such an innovative company and I think when we had her on too, they had just won awards in HR for using AI internally.

An executive leader and data and policy expert for Puerto Rico, Arnaldo Cruz, was another guest who delivered remarkable findings about moving to a skills based approach. Arnaldo showed us that using a skills based approach fills jobs and can work for everyone in the private and the public sector. In Arnaldo’s case, this transition allowed the government to identify misalignments in skills versus roles, and then redeploy their workforce with the use of talent intelligence.

[00:12:10] Arnaldo Cruz: But one of the things that we found out right away is that two thirds of the employees that we were serving and matching skill set that they needed versus skill sets that they had was that they actually didn’t have them. And then we started seeing. That a lot of agencies were contracting for advisors and private firms.

There was a direct correlation between the amount of contractors that an agency had and the skill gap of incumbent employees. And that’s when we felt that we need to bring the right talent, but we need to make sure that our incumbents, our existing employees have the right skills as well, and that’s what blew our minds that even people that have been in the same role for that long.

Didn’t have the skills required for the role that they had. 

[00:12:59] Ligia: Wow, what a story. This one just really warms my heart. Puerto Rico has done some amazing and incredible things using talent intelligence to date. And the funny thing is they’ve experienced real results very quickly. I think one of the most impressive things that Arnaldo shared was how they not only saw results from their skills inventory, but the fact that they were able to scale.

And then I think he mentioned how they saw value in using AI to enable that work. I just love it. I think it’s incredible to think they started that journey Trying to do everything manually. That blows my mind. 

[00:13:32] Jason: Yeah. I loved hearing from Arnaldo on the journey and building the use case and trying to do this themselves to build out the proof point, but then also what it means for their organization and for their talent, because I They really focused on key roles.

They talked about coming out of bankruptcy and focusing on positions dealing with financial management. But then another use case was, you know, we often think about positions that are high turnover and dealing with retention in their scenario, they had people that had worked for the government for 20 years.

Yeah, and it wasn’t about retention. In that case, it was around, um, the makeup of skills related to the market and how do they look at, um, what skills people had versus what skills people had in the market and how do they upskill and reskill people to be competitive with what was needed for the demands of the work.

So this was something where Arnaldo brought a variety of use cases for how they’re using skills, intelligence to keep up with the needs of reshaping The workforce for Puerto Rico. 

[00:14:35] Ligia: Yeah, no, I agreed. And think about what they’ve done for their employer brand. M and M group HR director, Ava Edelmuller showed us why having a specific use case is crucial when getting started.

If I was challenged with finding a way to onboard thousands of new employees across multiple countries during an acquisition and use talent intelligence to accomplish this momentous task. 

[00:14:59] Ava Edelmuller: This was a really specific business case because when we planned to implement the new HR software, we went for SAP SuccessFactors and Eightfold in recruiting.

We haven’t not yet known that we will acquire a new part of a company. And so the setup, the objectives has been actually different than it turned out in the end. So out of a sudden, when the deal was closed, we needed to integrate around 3, 500 new colleagues, which we did not know, above 20 sites, more languages than we intended to do, because of course, with the transitional service agreements you have, you need to give them systems after they have been acquired after a couple of months.

So we had A fixed deadline for the implementation of the systems. And we needed to get to know new colleagues and see how do they work? What do they need? What is their environment regarding employer branding, candidate experience, processes, knowledge, and so on and so forth. So this was quite a big challenge.

[00:16:04] Ligia: Eva’s use case was really compelling, and I think another impressive example of how you can scale quickly with Talents Intelligence. I mean, from this clip, Eva talked about what a lofty goal they had to achieve, but I gotta tell you, I loved hearing her talk about done being better than perfect. I love that mantra.

I’ve got to adopt it in my own, in my own work. I think sometimes we get so caught up in technology changes needing to be perfect that we wait too long to launch rather than just trusting the technology and our employees. And that these together will help us figure out those finishing touches to make it perfect.

Perhaps we just get moving sooner. 

[00:16:41] Jason: And I was just going to say that about one of the themes that came out of the conversation with Ava was just get started and get moving. We know M& M group was able to have a lot of success with onboarding those new employees in this process, which is exactly what we want for organizations on their talent intelligence journey.

But also, you know, she talked about the initial scope and then the quick expansion. With news of this acquisition, right? So it was, she didn’t have a choice. She had to get moving and had to just jump in and get started. So one of the themes that we heard from a lot of people was there is no perfect time.

And like you said, done is better than perfect. You need to jump in and start learning how the technology works and learning from the data. Um, and that was a key theme. She was someone who was pioneering this for the organization and leading with courage and also shared how she was powering this with some chocolate and some energy drinks and I can always appreciate that as well.

[00:17:35] Ligia: Start small, get going. So by now we’ve made the case for why talent intelligence should be part of your HR strategy, but what about compliance and regulations? Top of mind, we know that one of the biggest stressors for HR professionals today is ensuring that what they adopt technology wise is compliant with all and any local and federal regulations.

So we invited Craig Lean, the former director of the office of federal contract compliance programs, and a member of our very own ethics council to join the podcast and share that federal guidance will be needed to ensure the longterm stability and ethical use of AI. 

[00:18:12] Craig Lean: You’re going to see the federal government moving into AI big time.

You’re seeing a lot of companies already using AI. So none of these laws really seek to restrict it or stop it. But what they do is they try to put guardrails in place, particularly to address the potential of algorithmic bias or to address adverse impact based on protected class. There’s been a lot of scrutiny in that area, understandably.

And I think the top AI companies welcome that because. They really embrace having AI ethics councils and trying to make sure that they’re acting in a way that’s non discriminatory, of course, and not with bias after all, if what they’re telling you is they’re picking the best people, there’s a strong business case that you don’t want then bias to come in because then you’re not.

Picking the best people, but they also recognize there’s a legal case too. And that compliance is really important and needs to be a top priority. 

[00:19:09] Ligia: We learn so much every time Craig joins. I love it. It was exciting to hear how AI regulations are evolving. New York city, Colorado, and Illinois all have notable AI acts today that are relevant to HR teams and can provide guidance at the moment.

Craig also emphasized the importance of finding vendors that put a large focus on research. Responsible and ethical use of ai, but more importantly, can clearly demonstrate that. I think it’s important for our listeners and HR leaders just getting started with AI to think about that and really look into it, make sure they are being supported on this front.

[00:19:46] Jason: Uh, for sure. And we always learn a lot from Craig because he’s so passionate about this space. And there’s still so much more to come in this space. One of the things that he shared in his episode was how there really is a need for federal regulation. And he kind of welcomes it, you know, as do we, because it’s so hard to keep up with what’s happening in the States.

Because if the States take different approaches, then organizations have to make sense of it. And what ends up happening is you end up responding to the ones that are the most stringent. So then different than having a federal approach, one state can lead the way. And that ends up becoming a quasi federal approach.

So we might as well take a federal approach anyway. So I think it was a very enlightening discussion. We’re very happy to have access to Craig, his advice and his guidance. We welcome everyone to listen to the episode. He was a repeat guest and we welcome him back anytime with his passion and his insight.

[00:20:41] Ligia: Always a pleasure. And finally, we rounded out our session with Forrester analyst, Betsy Summers, who was here to make the case for HR being the team that can lead organizations into the world of artificial intelligence. 

[00:20:55] Betsy Summers: In 2021, only 28 percent of HR leaders said that AI was a priority for them. The good news is that now, having rerun the survey this year, we see that AI and machine learning is now maybe 50 percent of people say it’s a priority.

So that’s at least an increase. Some good news. But then when we asked them about confidence level in 2021, only 19 percent of HR leaders were confident in their teams abilities around AI in 2024. So the number actually slightly went down. In terms of the ways that they are prioritizing investment in skills development for HR in 2021, 32 percent of HR leaders were investing in AI skills for HR and now in 2024, so we’ve only seen it go up just a little bit for me.

It’s not enough because HR is at the crux. They are the linchpin organization. It’s Because they are the ones who have to help other leaders navigate what these changes will bring.

[00:22:05] Ligia: You know, I think HR leaders still have room to grow when it comes to getting excited about AI, but chatting with Betsy again, just give me a lot of hope that in another year, even more HR teams will get on board with it.

Um, everyone’s chatting about it. Everyone’s talking about it. It’s definitely top of mind. Everyone’s looking to adopt it. She brings our conversation on recapping the season full circle by reiterating two important things. One is that her research is showing that a skills based approach to hiring and retaining your talent works.

And two, that to overcome AI skepticism, you really need to embrace a mindset shift from how you approach the work of HR. 

[00:22:45] Jason: Yeah. The attention to shifting to a skills based mindset is exciting to see. And I agree with Betsy here. You know, I think HR is poised to do a lot of great work within organizations when it comes to adopting AI and they really have to, the time is now.

And they can be a driving force for doing it. Well, one of the things that she highlighted was this AI HR paradox research that she’s been working on at Forrester. And I really think she talked about, they had done this research in years past and now had done it again. And she’s seeing some movement in the data.

But as we’ve talked about on this season through talent leaders, the time is now, it’s always wonderful to talk with Betsy and think about the way transformation is really starting to occur. And people are driving outcomes and seeing the benefits of AI and skills based approaches. And I really think, like she said, there’s a need for AI to be a leader in this space.

And it was great to have her kind of be the summation of the season, because it really brought a lot of the topics and conversations we were having home, wrapped up with a bow, just of her insights and the way she phrases a lot of these topics, she’s very insightful. 

[00:23:57] Ligia: And that wraps up our recap of some of our favorite moments from this season of the new talent code.

This was only a brief sampling of our many incredible conversations with top talent leaders from industry leading organizations around the world. You can revisit. Any one of these episodes, which are on our website and available wherever you listen to podcasts. 

[00:24:17] Jason: We’re excited to announce that we’ll be back for season three of The New Talent Code in 2025.

And you’ll want to be sure to join us for more conversations with talent leaders on how to create the change you need in HR. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next season. 

[00:24:30] Ligia: Thanks for listening to The New Talent Code. This is a podcast produced by Eightfold AI. If you’d like to learn more about us, please visit us at www.eightfold.ai. You can find us on all your favorite social media sites. We’d love to connect and continue the conversation.