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Leadership & ChatGPT with Chief HR Scientist Dr. Veldsman
102 Plays9 months ago
What is the potential of AI in HR? CPO PLABOOK's Felicia turns to Dr. Dieter Veldsman, Chief HR Scientist at the Academy to Innovate HR. Dr. Veldsman delves into the impact of ChatGPT, sustainability, and macroeconomic factors on the evolution of leadership in today’s dynamic landscape. He emphasizes the necessity for intentional skill development in leadership, highlighting the importance of upskilling* and cultivating a holistic skill set for effective leadership. Listeners will gain insights into the leadership trends shaping the future of work, the role of technology in HR transformation, and how to create personalized employee experiences. Tune in for valuable strategies on adapting to the demands of modern leadership and fostering a culture of continuous learning!
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Transcript
Introduction to CPO Playbook and HR's Role
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Felicia Shakiba, and this is CPO Playbook, where we solve a business challenge in every episode.
00:00:14
Speaker
Where technology and sustainability are gaining momentum in reshaping organizations, the human resources function emerges as the architects of a future-ready workforce.
ChatGPT's Growth and AI's Impact on HR
00:00:25
Speaker
Forbes reports that ChatGPT garnered 1 million users in its first five days, with 64% of businesses anticipating increased productivity through AI, redefining the concept of work.
00:00:38
Speaker
Sustainability and climate considerations influence how companies align values to attract top talent as remote work is shown to reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 600,000 cars. For executive teams, ensuring HR's value requires foresight, strategic alignment, and a commitment to continual evolution. This is pivotal in navigating talent
00:01:01
Speaker
and business strategy. Joining us from the Netherlands is Dr.
Dr. Dieter Beldsman on HR Innovation
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Speaker
Dieter Beldsman, Chief HR Scientist at AIHR, the Academy to Innovate HR, envisioning a new era that prioritizes adaptability and innovation. Dieter, thank you so much for joining me today. Lovely to be here with you Felicia. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
00:01:24
Speaker
Peter, can you start by sharing a little bit about you and your role? What does a chief HR scientist do?
00:01:32
Speaker
That's great. I know it's a bit of a strange title for a lot of people. So on the one side, they see this crazy individual with wild hair that does experiments down in the lab. But unfortunately, it's not quite as colorful as that. So as the chief HR scientist at the Academy to innovate HR, I've got three main responsibilities. And the first one is I need to drive applied thought leadership, so working with our clients on their biggest HR challenges and trying to see how can we guide them into what their next is going to look like.
00:02:01
Speaker
My second responsibility is also driving a lot of our regional research insights into our product development, which is all about developing HR professionals. How do we make sure that we contribute towards that public narrative? And then lastly, really a passion about how can we prepare HR professionals and individuals with the skill sets that they require to be ready for the massive amount of changes that we are seeing in the world of work. So practically my day to day, it's all about engaging with HR communities around the world.
00:02:30
Speaker
It's about doing original research about what's happening in the world of work in HR and it's about how can we make that practical and applied and convert that into things that people can use in everyday life that's going to be helpful for them on their HR journey. And so essentially you are the perfect interviewee for this subject. So we're so happy to have you. And if you could tell me how are trends like the launch of chat GPT or sustainability impacting businesses currently?
Generative AI and Future of Work Discussion
00:03:00
Speaker
I think we first need to acknowledge that it's a really interesting time at the moment in terms of some of the global shifts that we are seeing. And I'm also a firm believer that we are on the cusp of entering almost the next chapter of work and what work is going to look like. And I think we're seeing things like generative AI
00:03:17
Speaker
really awakening that conversation to say, what does the jobs of the future look like? How are organizations going to engage with them as well? But maybe Felicia, two key points that jumps to mind. I think the first one, when we think about generative AI, we first need to acknowledge that AI has been here for a very long period of time. And then the question we need to ask is, why is this different now? Why all of a sudden has generative AI taken the world by storm?
00:03:41
Speaker
And in my view, it's all about the fact that for the very first time, non-technical people have the ability to also access AI and start utilizing it in their personal and in their professional lives. Why is this significant? And we see that with all sorts of statistics around how quickly something like chat GPT was adopted, I think,
00:04:00
Speaker
Take about five days to reach one million users. We're also seeing quick adoption within some of the organizational settings. And I think it's really all about, but what does personal productivity look like in future? It is all about how can we start thinking about AI, not only as technology, but as a companion to work as part of the workforce. And I think that is significant because it's starting to change the way that we think about what work is.
00:04:24
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where work happens and who does the work. And I think that's going to be really, really interesting. On the other side, we also need to think about that there is definitely a dark side to this issue.
AI Ethical Concerns and Privacy Issues
00:04:34
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And there's still a lot of things that we do need to resolve. So if we think about things like privacy, we think about things like intellectual property rights. I think most recently, we've seen some lawsuits that the New York Times have taken on open AI and Microsoft about the utilization of the content to train some of their large language models.
00:04:52
Speaker
As well as on the other side, the ethical concern around how do we actually deal with AI and how do we make sure that the future of AI brings people together as opposed to creating even more inequality within the world pertaining to access to jobs and access to opportunities. So I think these things are changing the way that business leaders are thinking about their organizations, changing the way that the public sector is thinking about how are we going to grow this economy to account for some of the opportunity on the horizon.
00:05:17
Speaker
And I think for individuals, it's also asking the question, do we actually know what your career is going to look like in the future? What are some of those skills that is going to prepare and make sure that you are relevant in terms of where you need
Sustainability as Core Organizational Strategy
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to go? So on the Gen AI side, I think.
00:05:35
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Definitely dominating the conversation at the moment. On the other side, maybe just a quick mention, you've also spoken about sustainability for me and I'm just to get on my soapbox for a moment and I'm extremely, extremely passionate about the topic. And I think what we've seen beyond reporting and beyond being responsible and conscious businesses, I think sustainability has really become ingrained into the DNA of the organization because everybody has started to realize that we are seeing significant shifts and starting to feel the pain of us not addressing issues pertaining to sustainability.
00:06:05
Speaker
To make that practical, think about examples such as climate adaptive practices. All of a sudden, we're starting to see organizations having to think differently about labor that happens in extreme heat waves. They have to start thinking very differently about talent, having to migrate to other parts of the world just due to the fact that due to the impact of climate change, they can no longer survive where they used to be.
00:06:25
Speaker
And I think it's starting to enter the realm now that it's not that big thing that's far away. It's a question that we need to resolve today. And it's a question that organizations need to ask not only around how do they act in a responsible way, but on the other side, how does sustainability not become something we do, but really become something that we are as an organization and the way that we engage. So I think two big things that's happening, but it's a really interesting time. I think from a mega-trim perspective on how that's going to shape the next chapter of work.
00:06:52
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And what challenges are these trends creating for businesses? Is there a type of business or industry that's particularly being impacted more than others? I think let's continue with the theme around sustainability. And I think definitely there's been some more focus on some particular industry. So here what jumps to mind is energy, I think manufacturing, I think aviation.
00:07:17
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We've seen a lot of conversation and a lot of scrutiny in those particular industries pertaining to their current business practices. And what is the impact that they have on the environment? What's the impact that they have broader from a societal point of view? I think having said that though, in some other abstract way, sustainability has been impacting all industries in different ways, because ultimately it's impacting the end consumer, which is impacting our ability to create services and products, which is impacting our ability to operate.
00:07:44
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And I think what we've started to see is organizations are realizing that it's that old parallel that we sometimes talk about air pollution is everybody's problem because you are also breathing the air. And I think that's something that we are starting to see ingrained a lot more in how organizations think about their future and what that's going to look like. What is interesting for me though, is we're starting to see this rise of employee activism where they start holding organizations a lot more accountable for their stance and for their impact that they have in the environment.
00:08:12
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And here I'm not talking about corporate social responsibility. I'm really talking here about the fact that our organizations living up to the promises and to the claims that they make around being socially responsible citizens. And that ranges from things like greenwashing. It ranges from things like from a diversity washing point of view, organizations saying that they look very different than what they really are internally.
00:08:33
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That for me is a healthy movement because I think it's bringing more transparency into the employment relationship in terms of what we'll find. Bringing it back just to your question on generative AI, again, I think there's a strong impact across all industries. I do think we are starting to see the impact faster in certain industries. Here for me, good examples are insurance.
00:08:54
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Financial services, I think we're already starting to see a lot of the impact of AI resulting in new types of processes, new ways of engaging with clients and with customers. There's been some significant research and case studies on things like call centers and client service centers and how
00:09:10
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the introduction of generative AIs actually increase the quality of outputs, the number of queries that can be resolved, and the personalization that we can bring into the client experience. And I think we're going to start to see that a lot more. The biggest challenge I believe at this stage is also that there's just so much we still don't know about generative AI. And, you know, it's a little bit
00:09:30
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like the metaphor of the dog running off to the bus and now it's called the bus and now all of a sudden doesn't quite know what to do with it. And I think there's some real questions at the moment that we're asking to say, it is fantastic that we have it, but how is it useful and how do we adopt it responsibly? And that's the challenge for organizations. How do you experiment within the confines of making sure that you still manage the risk that comes with introducing something new into the environment, especially something as significant as generative AI?
00:09:58
Speaker
And so that ambiguity in itself is a challenge for businesses to try and make sense of. Most definitely. And I think that ambiguity, and here I blame public media a little bit. If you look at what some of the headlines are, 14 million jobs will be lost by 2030 through AI. It's not telling the full picture. And I think it's driving a culture and an understanding of fear, as opposed to giving a holistic picture to say,
00:10:24
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14 million jobs will look very different by 2030. Yes, some of them will no longer be there, but nobody's talking about that there will also be new opportunities and that work will look very, very different. So I think we need to start helping the public understand that it's a holistic narrative that they need to be able to consume. And it's not nitpicking and taking certain shock statements and then igniting this culture of fear, which will lead towards the fact that people don't want to adopt it.
00:10:50
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which will lead towards the fact that I believe a lot of people will be left behind because it is here and it's not going away.
Reskilling for AI and Workforce Development
00:10:56
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It's a lot more about saying, how can we adopt it responsibly and how can we prepare people for that shift? Great organizations. There's an organization in Belgium at the moment, a telecommunications company.
00:11:07
Speaker
that have acknowledged the need that AI is going to change their business significantly, and they've got a great need for people with that particular skill set in three, four, five years from now. The market that they're in is not going to be able to provide that for them. So they've implemented a fantastic reskinning opportunity, giving everybody in a certain part of their business for the next year, 20% of their time back, so one day a week, to actually invest in training that they provide. And by the end of the year, if you kind of pass that proficiency threshold,
00:11:35
Speaker
you're eligible to actually start shifting your career into a new domain to meet some of those needs and those requirements. For me, that's proactive thinking. That's about helping people understand that, yes, change needs to happen, but here's a path for you if you're willing to put up your hand and say, this is something that I want to do. So that's about creating a different future and not about, I think, lamenting about the things that we are going to lose, if I can call it that, out of these changes that we will experience. And that's really important because this fear-driven culture is not serving
00:12:04
Speaker
anyone and I think it's going to be to the detriment of everyone if we don't treat that in a responsible manner. Which brings me to my next question because it sounds like there is some career development, professional growth, reskilling, upskilling that organizations are going to need to start thinking about. So what new skills and capabilities do leaders need to develop to help businesses adapt? I think that's a fantastic question because I'm a firm believer
00:12:34
Speaker
that leadership in organizations is the root cause of all good and all evil in an organization that takes place, due to the impact on culture, due to the impact on just the way that the organization thinks about who they are. Now, first, it's a tough time to be a leader. I think there's a lot of things that's being expected from
Leadership Challenges in Complexity
00:12:50
Speaker
leaders and they are facing increasingly complex situations which they need to make sense of. But for me, really, when you ask the question around
00:12:57
Speaker
What capabilities and skills would a leader need in future? For me, there's six that really stand out, and there's a lot of research studies that kind of showcase and accentuate a lot of these. Then the first one for me is the ability to deal with complexity and the ability to balance conflicting priorities. Now, I know that sounds like something that executives have been doing for a very long period of time, and that might be true.
00:13:18
Speaker
But the level of complexity that we're dealing with today and the extent to which the impact of the complex that we face, that is very, very different. Because all of a sudden we have to make fast decisions that's going to have ramifications for the organization for a number of years to come in terms of our positioning. So I firmly believe the leader of the future needs that ability to say, how am I going to deal with the complexity and not become so overwhelmed that I actually lead towards inaction? That I actually just do nothing and I don't know what is going to be that next step. So that for me definitely is the first one.
00:13:48
Speaker
The second one, and I firmly believe this is an underappreciated skill in a leader, is your ability to really take strategy and translate that into tangible action that inspires people to movement. And what I mean by that is strategy execution is really underappreciated in organizations because we all look up towards the big direction setting and we don't spend enough time with leaders that says, but this is the roadmap and this is how we are going to get there.
00:14:12
Speaker
And for today's leader and tomorrow's leader, I think that is important because people can see the future, but they want to understand what is the next steps we need to take today because it is so uncertain and because it's so new and the extent and the amount of change that we are seeing. Leads me a little bit towards my third one, which is still on the kind of thinking side of leadership. So it's really around how do you
00:14:32
Speaker
make sure that you can apply abstract thinking. How do I connect patterns around what is happening in the world and make sense of that for people? How am I able to see through all the noise that we are currently experiencing and get to the crux of what the issue is and what the matter is? So that abstract thinking around seeing the patterns through the noise is going to be quite important. A little bit more on the skill set side again for me is how do you leverage technology in digital?
00:14:56
Speaker
You know, I come out of the HR domain, so unfortunately all our studies still tell us that a lot of HR professionals and other leaders still lag very much with the adoption of new technologies and to leverage that to improve their personal productivity around the way and the manner in which they work.
00:15:12
Speaker
So I think to be a successful leader and to be able to really get and free up your own time, leveraging technology and digital as part of how you work is going to be really, really important. And with that, I don't mean you learn how to use social media, right? Which is what a lot of people default to. I really think it's about ingraining and saying, how does technology become an extension of how I work when I work on what I do?
00:15:34
Speaker
And how can I actually bring that on board in terms of how I approach work? For me, the fifth one is very much behavioral. So resilience, grit, tenacity. Leaders of the future are going to still be faced with a lot of challenges that they are going to have to overcome. It's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of uncertain situations. And that's tenacity and resilience to say, but let's move through this. And yes, we've been knocked down, but you're going to get back up again. And this is how we are going to tackle that and really to approach what that next step is going to be.
00:16:02
Speaker
I think people are going to follow leaders that they believe can get them through the good and the difficult times. And we've seen that in a lot of organizations where people will stay for great leaders that they trust and that they believe are authentic in terms of how they deal with them and are a lot more human centric in their approach. My last one is around self-awareness. And I know this is probably the age old one that everybody always talks about when we think about leadership, but really for me,
00:16:28
Speaker
Self-awareness for me is around who am I as a leader and acknowledging that leadership is a privilege, especially in the type of world and environment that we are going into and understanding why would people follow me and understanding who I am as the leader.
00:16:42
Speaker
Something that's been really interesting for me over the last couple of years, if you look at the Forbes city under city list, there was some real interesting research being done to look at a lot of those people later in life who were celebrated as young upcoming leaders, actually had a lot of criminal charges for things like fraud, et cetera, brought against them later on in their careers.
00:17:02
Speaker
The point I want to make out of this is I believe that we've been celebrating the innovators, the disruptors, the people that throw out the applecots and try something new. And yes, that is important. We need innovation, but we also need responsible leadership that understands that they're dealing with the real human beings.
00:17:19
Speaker
that there are dealing with people that they need to guide towards what this next future is going to look like. And, you know, maybe if I might put it so bluntly, maybe that's the slightly more boring leader that's a little bit more predictable. It's a little bit more stable, a little bit more considered in some of the decisions that they make. And then we can only develop that if people are self-aware around who they are, and we can kind of guide them as part of that journey.
00:17:41
Speaker
So for me, those are kind of the six things that really stand out when I think about what a good leader would look like in the future. There are a number of other subsets and skills that each other, we can also talk about, but they roll for me up into some of these different themes around who I am, what I do, and where I do it.
00:17:57
Speaker
And that's the six capabilities that I'm talking about. That's fantastic to hear because you've outlined these core competencies of what the future leaders who will be successful might look like. And so now the thought is, how do we help those leaders get there? And historically, the human resources function
00:18:20
Speaker
is that ownership of development in the business?
HR's Role in Leadership and Strategy
00:18:24
Speaker
And so how does the human resources function evolve to address the challenges that businesses face from these trends? First off there, I need to start with saying that I believe there's never been a better time to be in HR than today and for a variety of reasons. I think HR has been in the spotlight over the last couple of years around our contribution and what that means and what that looks like.
00:18:47
Speaker
I think there's been some positive movements also around the real role that we do play around things like leadership development, the strategy of the business, et cetera. So taking that aside, there's a couple of things, I think real challenges that HR still faces in order to really be able to step into this role of developing leaders of the future playing that kind of strategic role. And the first one for me is.
00:19:08
Speaker
And this might sound a little bit strange, but I think HR has got a PR problem. And what I mean by that is the baggage that comes with HR and the misunderstanding that people have about what the function is and why it exists, I think that's a real challenge for HR professionals to have to overcome if we are going to be able to step into those different roles. Something that is happening at the moment is anything that happens internally is immediately broadcasted out there. And it's not about containment, but it's about being very comfortable with the fact that what you do in HR
00:19:37
Speaker
and how you treat employees and the experience that you create and the fairness of the practices that you've got in place, you need to be able to defend that in the public court of debate. And I think that's an interesting thing around also what role HR plays around business reputation, what role HR plays also around being that protector of good practice within the organization. I think that's a really, really important. The second one, we do need to acknowledge that businesses have changed, and I think HR models then also need to change to accommodate that.
00:20:04
Speaker
In a lot of instances, I still see organizations setting HR up as operational service centers and then expecting something completely different. If you're not going to invest in HR the same way that you would invest in any other business function, it's not going to deliver to you the expectations that you have.
00:20:22
Speaker
We've just done some research around L&D, investment within HR, and it's really disappointing and shocking to see that HR is always kind of at the bottom end of the totem pole around the investment that we actually get into succession planning with an HR itself as a function, preparing the next level of HR leaders, and then even just the basic reskilling that we see in those environments. I think that we create so much about the business and getting them ready that people forget that we are also an organization in our own right.
00:20:49
Speaker
within the context of the broader organization. I think there's also then, and we've touched a little bit on the changes that technology is bringing, but I do believe, and this is something that really excites me, that we've been talking about strategic business partnership and BP models for years and self-service centers and self-driven kind of employee services. I think finally, for the very, very first time, we've got the technology in place that can actually provide that experience to employees at an affordable and an accessible way.
00:21:16
Speaker
And I want to use an example out of my previous life. You know, I was a CHRO for a multinational organization and 70% of our employees were actually based in the field sales employees. And we realized that 90% of our HR offering actually never reached it because it was location bound. They had to be in the office or they had very, very basic access towards some of the HR technology solutions that we had.
00:21:37
Speaker
So I finally believe, you know, when I talk about something like LND, how do I meet you where you are at in the flow of work in terms of what you are doing? Because HR is not something you go and do. HR is something that happens as part of when and how and where we work. And I think that if we can nail that as an HR.
00:21:53
Speaker
you know, profession going forward, I think there's some really, really significant changes there for us. So L and D in the flow of work, other HR services in the flow of work as well, but meet employees where they're at, because HR is not something that I go and do. You know, HR is something that just has to be part of how I manage my relationship with my employer, with my manager, with my leader. And I think that's a really important thing to change in the perception of when is it that I deal with HR and why do I need to deal with HR?
00:22:21
Speaker
And the last point I want to make here, you asked about challenges and we've just released a report that talks about what is the state of HR currently. And one of our biggest insights, which was really interesting for me to see was the manner in which we think about HR as a career for a lot of people is not actually building the type of talent capacity that we want in
Upskilling HR for Future Challenges
00:22:41
Speaker
an HR.
00:22:41
Speaker
functioning in an HR domain. So what I mean by that, we hear these words often, I stumbled into HR. I just happened to move into HR because it was an available opportunity. And there's nothing wrong with that because we also need to provide people with opportunities, but we also, they need to make HR a lot more attractive in future so that people actually also choose it as a profession within the realistic view of what HR work actually looks like. And I think that's a very, very big shift that we are going to have to make and a big challenge for us to overcome.
00:23:11
Speaker
that's so interesting. I do hear that a lot. And sometimes I'm beside myself because I think, gosh, you stumbling into HR, it's like saying, do you stumble into engineering? Like, there's no work that needs to be done in order to, you know, make that role successful. I guess it could be a cultural thing, depending on the type of company that
00:23:36
Speaker
brings people into that role. But it's a very interesting moment when hearing someone say that, I would say. I want to talk a little bit about in response to how we see leaders and managers developing to address these challenges.
00:23:52
Speaker
How can human resource professionals intentionally craft their skills and capabilities to support the business? So I think we've already touched on, you know, upskilling as a priority and not only in terms of, you know, innovation from an organizational point of view, I think there's also
00:24:07
Speaker
a personal connection that an agile professional needs to make to say, I'm actually going to invest in myself. We are the profession that is guilty of busyness by far the most because you're always fighting fires and sometimes rightfully so. Or on the other side, you know, it's just that there's just no resources that somebody can take a step back and say, I now need to think about myself, my career, what that's going to look like, because it's the benefit of me as an individual, but also the organization.
00:24:33
Speaker
The second thing I think we do need to do is we need to acknowledge and realize that we have to take a step back and a holistic skill around what is the actual skill set of the HR professional going forward because that's very misunderstood. Now there's the big movement at the moment around data driven evidence based HR.
00:24:48
Speaker
been talking about that for a number of years as well. But if you then really go and dial down into what are we writing to an HR job description at the moment, there's very little of that in there. The very big mismatch when we start saying, this is what we want the profession to be. And then this is the skillset that people have already, how are we going to build that roadmap and that bridge for them to be able to get there.
00:25:07
Speaker
And something that I am afraid of that I think is going to start happening more and more is we keep on talking so much about what HR needs to be. We forget that there's a whole bunch of people already within HR that is already there that we also need to develop and take forward into that next step. Because we are forgetting that we should never ever alienate the current function at the expense of creating something else.
00:25:28
Speaker
So when we talk about analytics is the future, that's definitely the right way to go. But how do we get the people that have never had exposure to that to really start understanding the value that it has, getting interested in it and to bring them along that particular curve, as opposed to creating the sense of insecurity that I'm not good enough as an HR professional. I'm never going to be there. I'm never going to be able to step into something different. And I think that's really, really important that we also think about the identity of the HR professional and how we really go to get them there.
00:25:58
Speaker
For me, the other one is also in this, I as a fellow HR professional, I say with a lot of love and respect, we need to get out there from an exposure point of view. Our latest research report that I referenced earlier, what was so interesting is HR is one of the functions that once we in the HR family, very few people move out into business.
00:26:17
Speaker
Very few people rotate into other projects that is not kind of with an HR flavor to it. So we keep on talking about we want to be multidisciplinary in nature. We keep on talking about the fact that we want to multi-skill and cross-skill, but we are not putting ourselves into those positions to actually learn from others in a very, very different way and start gaining new business type of skill sets that make us more impactful as HR professionals.
00:26:41
Speaker
So things like rotations in the HR domain, I think that's incredibly important. I don't know how you can be an HR leader if you haven't done your stint in technology or in finance or in operations, because I think it gives you a very different flavor and view and perspective of how you can add value wearing your HR at once you've understood what it looks like on, can I call it that side of the table as well.
00:27:01
Speaker
I couldn't agree more with you. I feel like I have a very interesting background where I've had my own HR tech company and I've stood up a couple of startups and have learned about marketing and design and finance and leadership in multiple ways and it only makes me
00:27:20
Speaker
a greater HR professional and I really have a full sense of the business, especially when I'm helping or supporting a leader or coaching a leader in finance or in design and understanding, oh, you probably need to collaborate cross-functionally because in order to execute your responsibilities in your role, I know that design needs to speak to engineering and engineering needs to
00:27:45
Speaker
have that open communication with the sales team otherwise the sales team doesn't know what they're selling so i couldn't agree more with you that rotation piece i think is so critical and very impactful completely agree it also gives you context right and i think what i mean by context it gives you real context i think back about a project that i was on in an organization where
00:28:04
Speaker
was a media company, major sports broadcaster. And I spent a couple of weeks job shadowing what the people actually did. And what I mean by that is, you know, hauling cameras, sitting in little production bands, driving around towards these different sport events. Now as an HR professional, when I went back to the office and had to start thinking about, okay, how are we going to drive
00:28:25
Speaker
a very different way of working for these individuals. I had all the contexts, I had all the networks there to actually provide a solution that was tangible and practical and something that could work as opposed to just being something that sits on paper. I think as well to your point there's other rotations it gives you then a much more holistic understanding also of
00:28:41
Speaker
Some of the symptoms that we see, you know, we often hear HR doesn't speak the language of the business or we don't connect it to tangible outcomes. Those things change when you start understanding what it is that people are looking for on that side. And it's really, you have to kind of live with it a little bit more and sit in it and get out strong. Now, I think our traditional
00:28:58
Speaker
comfort zones and barriers. I can remember I did a stint in information technology at some point. And after my very first meeting, I had a list of probably 25 terms that I had no idea what they meant. And I just started working through all the different acronyms to start understanding at least what were people saying, you know, that they were sitting around me at the table at the time.
00:29:17
Speaker
Six months later, you almost have adopted that same language. So when I went back to HR, whenever somebody then started talking about, we need this type of skillset that is able to do X, Y, and Z, way better understanding of what it was that they were actually looking for. And I think, you know, that's silly level examples, which we think is obvious, but in practice it doesn't happen. People get into the function, they stay there and then they become very isolated actually from where a lot of other things happen within the organization. And I think it's to our own detriment. I think there's some real, real good opportunities there for us.
00:29:47
Speaker
Can you provide any examples of how businesses have been successful at addressing specific trends like sustainability or the chat GPT adoption wave through the support of the human resources function or other?
00:30:04
Speaker
Most definitely, and I want to split it into two camps. I think on the one side, let's first look at the organizations that have absolutely crossed the opportunities that generative AI has brought to them as a core business, and human capital has definitely helped with that.
00:30:19
Speaker
So for example, it is a company that's utilizing some of the AI that they had before to build a new product line around recognition pertaining to things like traffic fines and where public services are required. And the AI there actually utilizes the technology to be able to understand, oh, this is a street lamp that needs to be changed and then monitors that over a period of time to make sure that happens.
00:30:40
Speaker
That's a very silly example, but what I love about that is they took an existing business and then they said, but we already have the technology now that it's a little bit smarter. How else can we apply it, for example? And I think that's a very interesting thing to say. It's not only about opening up new opportunities. Sometimes it's just about opening up that incremental opportunity that you find within the business there. And I think that's really, really interesting.
00:31:03
Speaker
I've already spoken about, you know, in call centers, I think there's been some really significant things. I think there are so many chatbots out there at the moment, some of them great, some of them not, some of them learning and making all sorts of mistakes. What I do like about that experimentation in a lot of businesses, and there's a financial services business that I think has done it really, really well.
00:31:22
Speaker
It provides this complete personalized experience and they're very transparent that you're speaking to an AI kind of agent on the other side. But it is a very different experience that you get a lot more personalized that can help a lot more people, a lot more reduction in terms of people not being kept waiting, feels a lot more responsive from their side.
00:31:42
Speaker
The other camp, let's talk about HR internally, because I'm very excited about the changes that we're seeing there. Some fantastic applications at the moment in terms of things like content curation in L&D, real personalized recommendations, and there's a company
00:31:57
Speaker
implemented that on top of their LMS and their content library, where the AI actually learns with employees in terms of collecting a whole bunch of data, obviously in a transparent way, and helping that to actually influence career paths for them and recommending content. Now, that has been done before, there's nothing new, but what I really like about this, it's starting to get a lot more specific and taking into account people's personal ambitions, personal interests, now the projects that I've worked on, how are those skills evolving and developing?
00:32:24
Speaker
Something else I've seen which is interesting is for me where it's been applied to things like AI based coaching. Now for a lot of people on the one end, they say, well, I don't want to do that at all. You know, I still want that human interaction, which I think is fair. On the other side, it's also opening up an avenue for people that would have never been able to access coaching at lower levels of the organization because that's not necessarily where that's being implemented.
00:32:47
Speaker
So when you then have to start thinking about the fact that the AI is getting good enough that we are able to give 80% of people, for example, access to a coach that can guide them on their career journey versus only kind of sticking to the top echelon because that's typically where executive coaching would take place or business coaching would happen. I think that's a fantastic opportunity, opening up, you know, a lot of new ways for people to actually gain access to developmental opportunities. And for me, that's exciting in the HR space because we're not only scaling
00:33:16
Speaker
our efficiency, but we are actually scaling the impact and the effectiveness of some of the practices that previously have been constrained by some previous boundaries. That for me is a really exciting time in HR.
Professional Development in HR Careers
00:33:28
Speaker
What does the future of human resource careers look like, given these changes in the business environment? So I mentioned earlier that we still have this notion of a lot of people have stumbled into HR, and that is the same with other professions as well. We are not unique in that HR.
00:33:44
Speaker
However, I think there's a couple of changes that will happen in terms of the future of HR careers. So I think on the one side, you made the point to say, you know, you don't just stumble into engineering. So I think there is a part of professionalization and structure that needs to come into how we develop HR professionals at different levels and what that needs to look like.
00:34:01
Speaker
as well as then also to create consistency in when somebody operates at a particular level. And we can talk for days about what a title implies, but that there's a certain expectation around what that individual is able to do and the type of way that they operate. So I think there will be some professionalization, formalization, with regards to that. The second one for me there is I think we're going to also start thinking a lot broader about the career patterns that we find within HR.
00:34:27
Speaker
At the moment, most progression in HR works in one of two ways. It's still upward progression based on what I've seen before, the very traditional way of developing my career, or I move upwards and then at some point I decide I want to leave the profession. And what's interesting in some of our studies is we find people almost don't stick with HR for their entire career. They get to a point and we call it kind of the mid-career outflux, where they then say, you know, the organizational environment is not allowing me to really do what I want to,
00:34:54
Speaker
I'm going to leave and I'm going to do something else. You know, I will consult, I will coach, I will do something else where I can see the impact that I'm making. And I'm a little bit released out of this environment where I have to fight for my existence all the time, don't have budgets for the things that I want to do. And I think that needs to change. If we really want good solid sound HR leaders in future, we need to create an environment that will produce them over time and make it attractive for people and make it viable for people to stay in the profession and within the career.
00:35:22
Speaker
So for me, there's a couple of real practical ways we can do that.
00:35:26
Speaker
We recently launched an HR career map, which is a free tool if anybody wants to play with it, just to help people understand that there's not just one or two opportunities in HR because for a lot of people, they're getting to HR, stumble into it. Now I'm working in a small team of three, four, five. I think that's what the future looks like. I don't realize that, and this is kind of by our calculations, just on our little career map, there's more than a hundred possible career paths that you can take into different parts and specializations of HR over time.
00:35:54
Speaker
But people don't know that and they don't realize that and you can't plan for something that you can't see that you don't believe is possible. We need to raise that consciousness around what an HR career can become and how meaningful it can be for you if you make certain decisions and develop certain elements. And then maybe the last thing I want to mention here is then we have to change the way we describe HR jobs and the labels that we attach to that.
00:36:18
Speaker
When you run a search today on LinkedIn and say, what's the most common skill listed in an HR job? You're going to get something like Microsoft Office skills. You're going to get something like planning and all that stuff that we still find to a large extent. And then the question is, but why can't we start really thinking about what the crux is of our contribution? And why can't we then start really developing people and getting them passionate about that? Because that's the reason that people want to wake up from an HR point.
00:36:46
Speaker
So I think there's a lot of work there to be done. I think also, HR careers have been neglected a bit. I think there is some really interesting things that we can do there. But for me, it's just about educate people about the possibilities, show them what the future can look like, and connect people in a global community, which is one of the things we try to do, so that HR professionals find out that they can speak to other people and start seeing what else is possible in another industry, or what is possible in a larger organization, or what's the benefits of being an HR professional in a smaller organization.
00:37:14
Speaker
So they can find their place and they can find something that's aligned to their ambitions and their goals and where they can feel they make a meaningful contribution. And I think those are some of the changes that I hope we see in the next couple of years. I hope so too. I'm right there with you. I'm crossing my fingers. Hoping more people listen to this particular episode on my show.
00:37:35
Speaker
And so I have one more question for you. And I know that a lot of our listeners might be in the human resources profession, but many of our listeners are executive team leaders. And so as we think about these macroeconomics and how their human resource departments might evolve to best support the business, what advice do you have for executive teams that are looking to
00:38:03
Speaker
ensure that their HR function continues to add value to the business in the future. My first comment might sound a little bit contradicting here, but I think expect more from HR if you are a business leader. So be comfortable to expect that HR is there to help you solve your biggest challenges within the organization because they tend to be people challenges.
HR's Strategic Integration in Business
00:38:23
Speaker
Having said that, the caveat is that enable them to be able to do so. And that comes with a whole bunch of things that I think business leaders need to think about.
00:38:30
Speaker
You know, boardroom dynamics, unfortunately, in a lot of organizations still kind of pushes HR a little bit towards the side. And if you don't believe me, go and check where HR is on the agenda in an executive meeting.
00:38:40
Speaker
We helped the client the other day. Nowhere near close to important on the agenda. I know. Exactly. Spot on. So change some of those types of elements so that we can really start ingraining the contribution that we make in the core business issues in a very different way. The second one is that we have to then change our language the way we talk about HR. I'm not a big supporter of the HR is a support function. HR is a partner to, HR is there to enable.
00:39:05
Speaker
HR is core business. If it wasn't core business, it wouldn't be there. It's an important part of that. And for us to change the perception about the function, we have to change the language and the way we speak about the function and the time and the credibility that we provide to it.
00:39:18
Speaker
And then lastly, the one that I've mentioned earlier is don't be afraid to invest in HR and then expect a return on investment over time. I think that's perfectly okay, but if you want a particular type of HR function, you're going to have to build that type of HR organization with the right skills, technologies, et cetera. Because like any business, HR is an organization that needs to be set up in a particular way and needs to operate with discipline according to certain business principles.
00:39:43
Speaker
And that's what I think we should try, how business executive leaders understand that HR also has to adhere to certain things, same way that you would run another business within a broader organization. But then we have to make sure that those people are equipped to be able to do that. Now, whether that's through skills, technology, the resources that they require, it's worth it. But you have to make sure that we also invest in it.
00:40:05
Speaker
Absolutely. And I just want to add to that because you said something about technology, and I was at the HR Tech Conference in Vegas earlier last year. And there is an abundance of technology out there for this profession, for the HR Human Resources profession and function.
00:40:27
Speaker
All I kept hearing at the conference was, we're a vendor and we're entering this space because HR is the least tooled function in the business. And I just thought to myself, gosh, is that really true? And I said, yes, I guess it is. Marketing has all of these tools, engineering, a number of tools, their product and R&D.
00:40:49
Speaker
Why haven't I bumped into HR professionals that are talking more openly about technology and leveraging technology to make great choices and build relationships and strategic decision making? And I've always been a really big fan, but I think that as a function really need to tap into
00:41:12
Speaker
what that technology is and looks like, what it does for the business, and then be able to get investment for those technologies and really bring that to the forefront to strengthen our influence and our abilities to make a difference.
00:41:28
Speaker
Completely agree. And I think the change that we have seen is I think HR technology 10, 15 years ago, you either had nothing or you had an ERP, very expensive. You know, so by the time you got there, there was so many things that you had to fix in the organization to be able to get. I think what is really interesting, and I think it's a fantastic shift in movement is
00:41:46
Speaker
There's all of these hybrid type of solutions that you can now start stringing together from an HR point of view to actually have a very realistic, cost-effective, affordable way of bringing technology into the business, regardless of the size that you're at. And I think that's a real opportunity, but it does require us to also start thinking in a way because tech is not going to solve everything, right? It has to start thinking in a way. And for example, I often ask some of our clients we work with, I say, who takes care of your HR technology architecture?
00:42:15
Speaker
And they say, oh, no, that sits in IT, but we partner really well with them and they support us. If you want to own the relationship and the experience, you need to own the tool set that's going to drive that. So bring that skill on board, a point ahead of HR tech. Point somebody that brings the technological savviness that sits on your executive team that brings that conversation into the room.
00:42:36
Speaker
The same way that you want to bring the people conversation to the executive boardroom as an HR exec, you want somebody to bring the tech conversation into your executive meeting as well if you're going to start making very different decisions about that.
00:42:47
Speaker
So I think we are at a point where a lot of new tooling is also coming. And I think a lot of fantastic SaaS type of technologies is also there. And beyond that, it is more about how do we string that together, remembering that there is one end user, there's one experience, and we don't want that to be fragmented. So I think an exciting time in the tech space, but yes, invest in it. Otherwise, you're not going to get anything else than what you've got currently.
00:43:10
Speaker
Dider, this has been such an amazing conversation. Your knowledge is incredible and so on point with everything that I've experienced and others have experienced. So thank you so much for being part of this incredible episode. And I hope so many people hear what you've shared today. Thank you very much for hosting me and keep on doing the good work. It was lovely to be here with you.
00:43:39
Speaker
From the Netherlands, that's Dr. Dieter Veldsman, Chief HR Scientist at the Academy to Innovate HR. If today's episode captured your interest, please consider sharing it with a friend or visit cpoplaybook.com to read the episode or learn more about leadership and talent management. We greatly appreciate your rating, review, and support as a subscriber. I'm Felicia Shakiba. See you next Wednesday and thanks for listening.