Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Frontlines podcast with my best friend in the world, Madeline Lerano and myself, Tim Sackett. Madeline, we're in Boston.
Speaker: We are. Yeah. Boston, which is my hometown. so It's your hometown. We get to come do this live. We did the the Workday Horizons event today, frontline hiring event, which was fun. And we get to bring on a special guest, Vinod from PwC. Why don't you go ahead and introduce ourselves to the yeah thank you to the to the millions of Absolutely. No, thank you. Thanks for inviting me for this lovely pack podcast today.
Speaker: My name is Vinod Buntala. I'm a partner at PDBC. I basically focus on HR transformation and HR technology projects. So I've been in this ecosystem for 30 plus years. You know, all my career, I've kind of been an entrepreneur, I've been a consultant, and I've been a consultant. And last for 13 years, I've been leading our HR technology and transformation practice here at PwC. So I'm super excited to talk to you today and see where this conversation goes.
Speaker: Yeah, it's unique that we get somebody that's actually, like you know again, started a couple of HR technology companies, sold them, and now you're on the consulting side, which is really really good for us. yeah and And you shared a lot of research today at the event, which is very interesting. um We're going to get into a lot of that. But I want to kick off.
Speaker: talking about transformation because transformation means something completely different today than a than it used to mean. And I think for a long time we saw digital transformation as this big wave, sort of move beyond that for most organizations. How do you think about this transformation practice that you're running? Yeah, so it is interesting. I think you nailed it, right? I mean, the transformation today is very different from transformation 30 years ago or 20 years ago or even five years ago. um You know, we talk about transformation very broadly, right? I think, you know, what we have noticed is there are certain problems that as a society we're trying to solve, right? the companies, for the society, I mean, you know things are changing rapidly, whether it's generational changes, whether it's technology changes, these are all bringing you know kind of changes to the business that we are in, which is you know human resources. So the transformation today is going to be primarily um you know led by the AI, artificial intelligence. I mean, you know I think we talk about that all the time now. And also the generational changes that we talked about, the behaviors of Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha actually will be getting into the workforce very soon. So we have to take those changes into consideration in transforming the human resources as a business. So it's very rapid and I think as HR practitioners, you know us and our clients have to be ready in order to kind of embrace this challenge and rapidly transform. So a couple of examples, you know whether it's we when you know almost 30 years ago when we actually, when our clients were wanting to transform because there's an ERP solutions and HCM solutions in place, We were just talking about you know changing the processes, upskilling our people. So while those fundamentals are still same in this new AI world, but I think what changes is um the type of skill sets that you need to learn is different now. the How you kind of redesign your service deliver delivery model is very very very much different, right?
Speaker: You know, 10 years ago, we used to talk about self-services driving the changes. Now it's a self-service on steroids, right? You know, when your users are actually using AI tools. I don't want the answer. i want the action with it, right? 100%. 100%. think that's the the transformation change is so rapid. i think now we need to take a look take a look at this very differently from a different lens. That's kind of what's driving today's change in my mind.
Speaker: When you think about like macro level, like the things, like we know we're obviously talent acquisition, frontline hiring, at a macro level, like the things that a TA leader, when they think about this kind of AI transformation, big bucket wise, like how like how would you like advise somebody to start?
Speaker: What do they need to really focus on first? So if i have to you know give an advice to a TA a leader, let's say for large consumer markets client, okay? yeah um They need to look at this differently. Do not shy away from the technology, especially artificial intelligence. There's still a lot of myths around artificial intelligence, what it can do, what it cannot do. That's number one. Number two, understand the differences between a simple automation of an activity versus what AI can do for you, right? And number two. And three, be a leader. you know Within the organization, CEOs and CFOs are expecting to drive this change, to reduce the you know operational inefficiencies, and increase the productivity. So how do you embrace this challenge and be a leader? you know HR doesn't have to be a laggard or talent, a t
Speaker: TA needs to be a leader in this space because if you look at the technology, I mean, almost five years ago, six years ago, I would say TA is the space where AI was kind of a leveraged more actively than anywhere else. yeah So I think the products, the solutions that you have in the TA space, especially AI you know solutions in the TA space are a lot more mature than... the other areas. So I think embrace that, understand the you know aspects, like you know certain aspects including governance and you know legal aspects and and have those take those challenges and then drive the mandate forward, do not shy away. yeah I think that's my advice. And also look at this holistically, not just, you know i think I mentioned this in you know in some of our discussion you know just and before, you got to look at this holistically from a process perspective, change management perspective, and the technology perspective.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not just picking out a piece of technology, which I think people thought is like, AI is a point solution. Let's just pick this out, implement it. Correct. We're not thinking about the full impact it can have. Exactly. I think what's interesting to me is like you know we do a lot of research at my firm on just AI adoption and looking at maturity. And a few years ago, companies were so hesitant to even talk about AI. We even saw vendors not using AI in any of their language because just you know the the appetite wasn't there. Are you seeing that shift now that companies are fully embracing it? Do they have governance models or they you are they relying on you know other governance models within their organization?
Speaker: 100%, I'm seeing the shift. I'm seeing the intent. I still see that there's an opportunity to do this correctly. um I think where I'm seeing, I mean, this is just a spectrum, right? I think you know two years ago, people were completely, it was a taboo using AI, especially in human resources. From there now, actually, we are seeing a lot of intent, but I think they're still piecemealing it. I mean, I think people are kind of spending time to understand really different aspects of ai and how does that impact their business. I think we're seeing the change, but I think in my opinion, it might take six to 12 months before you know most ah HR organizations will start embracing this. as a viable solution.
Speaker: um And of course, i mean what's what's important actually you know for for a firm like us when we advise our clients is to make sure that you have governance in place, you have structure in place, you have framework in place. you know Do not put those bandage solutions which will actually help you to only solve one little problem, but not actually you're not addressing the problem holistically. So having that, taking a step back and creating that strategy and roadmap and put a governance in place, build a trust is the key. I think we're so we're seeing the shift towards that.
Speaker: Good. um It's interesting because i want to talk about the the other piece of transformation you talked about, which is the generational shift. And with frontline hiring, it's very different, I think, than other parts of hiring because there are so many people, at least we see in our research, and I know data supports this, a lot of people over the age of 50 in frontline hiring roles. i mean, it's a huge percentage of that workforce. So there's AI that an organization uses to attract talent, but there's also AI being used by candidates and how comfortable they are with it. How do you see that play out in that generational context? Great point. I think, again, this is, in my opinion, there's a little bit of a myth that when we talk about AI, people need to be technically savvy. It's actually opposite. In my mind, you know the AI is going to make life of people i mean yeah like easier, right? because You don't need to be at you know a programmer, a computer programmer, to use AI. It's the other way around. You need to be able to text.
Speaker: You need to be able to you know use a phone. So it's actually opposite. The AI is going to make reduce the friction, whether you're a 50-plus-year-old who grew up with pen and paper, or you're a 22-year-old where you be basically grew up with social media and your phone. I think the you know the It's a level playing field to the AI.
Speaker: Anybody can use AI. And that's the whole point of that. you know we're not We're not asking them to write a program here. Use these mobile tools actually to be able to apply and use the data that's in front of them in ah in a legible manner that for them to make a decision. It's going to help them to make the decisions quicker, faster, using the tools that they're very used to. They're not writing any new code or any new programs to get the most out of it.
Speaker: It should be simple enough that anyone at any age, regardless of technology, experience, should be comfortable using it. That's correct. It's funny because I think it seems like we're using this kind of AI technology, almost like how we all started using ChatGPT, which we were like, oh, it's a better version of Google. And we would put in almost like search queries, like we would. And then you go, oh, wait minute. I can actually do more. You have to actually build a prompt, right? That's right. And then you see these prompts, like I have a buddy of mine that built a prompt that was literally 10,000 words, right? And it does this amazing thing, like, oh wow, it blows your mind at the level of things you can actually do.
Speaker: But we're starting out in TA as like, oh well, here's this feature over here, it's conversational play. Oh, here's this feature over here, it's it's scheduling. Versus this full kind of like you know transformation. And I think, but as we get to, as it's it's almost how we start like getting comfortable with things, right? You turn this thing on here, you use this thing over here, and all of a sudden you go, oh, so this is kind of cool. Now we can go build all this other stuff out. Which is which is fine, right? i mean yeah just fine Which is fine. I mean, I think ah you know we should not shy away. I mean, the innovation has to be citizen-led, right? you know If you give them the tools and ask them to use the tools and actually lead with innovation, they will. at a ah the citizen level. But also as an organization, you have to take a step back and look at the big picture and say, now you have all this you know point solutions or you know people have actually come up with a different innovation bubbles. like How do you take them and actually make use of it and create that productivity gains? right yeah I think that's where ah my my suggestion to you know anybody who's going on this journey is
Speaker: eventually at some point of time, you yourself, it's okay to leave the innovation in there you know to your citizens, but also eventually you have to take a step back and look at the governance and put a roadmap together. Yeah. you You were leading a session today at the Workday Horizons event that we were at, and I was fascinated on a couple of things. The first one I want to talk about is forever we've done this kind of time to fill, and you kind of introduced this time to yield, which is about this kind of cost of early attrition.
Speaker: like share with the audience a little bit about like that concept of, you know, what's like why we it is but important to understand the time to fill, but the time to actually getting up to speed is so much more. Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think at the end of the day, you know, with all the solutions in place, you can absolutely increase the productivity, increase the the onboarding experience, actually improve the onboarding experience and reduce the time to fill significantly, right? We talked about potentially going from 15, 18 days to four days. yeah But then what, right? I mean, you remove this friction, yeah the people are onboarded, and then are when are they going to be productive? Are they going to productive at the 30 days mark, which is the normal now? Or do you want to actually, since that you're able to hire them in four days, not 15 days, you want to reduce the yield time to more like 10 days so that you know, the of the day, it has to have an impact on the bottom line. You reduce the cost of your recruiting process, but you also have to increase the productivity from the new hires, which actually is the you know the biggest impact that you're going to have. So for me, the time to yield is where the market is going towards, especially when we talk about frontline workers, sectors with the high population right but that's gaming and hospitality retail sectors where you know you have so many employees in these companies every minute matters every day matters you know when you have a 30,000 employees and you're hiring you know 8,000 employees every month and even being a once one day saving one day is a 8,000 day saved in productivity so that's that's huge I mean you think of these numbers I think it becomes ah much more important to get them in
Speaker: Product to quickly. Time to yield. Because I think that the workday data was 31.4 days to get from. 31.8 I think, yeah. Yeah, or from higher to actually being. in like And I always think it's, because I think every company has to determine what does it mean to be fully productive in role, right? 100%. And what does that definition look like? And that's an entire kind of piece of work to do you know yeah before. It's one thing to go, oh, well, how do you determine that? You could say, well, a manager says they're ready to go. Well, are they? like you know like you know do we have more advanced kind of stats to be able to kind of prove that? Because there is. like There's a huge money factor to that in terms of not only getting them hired quicker, but also getting them up to speed faster. Well, and then the opposite, too. like What wasn't shared was what is the cost of a new hire leaving or not being productive? Yeah. And you know if if they're getting up to speed 31.8 31.4 days,
Speaker: you know, what is the cause, what is the impact of that person leaving after day one? Exactly, exactly. So I think, you know, the KPIs are important, right? And how do you measure it is also important. Like to your point, I mean, not every sector, the KPIs will not be same. mean, you know, especially the type of job in the KPIs will change. Yeah, a front desk worker is going to be different than a server and like whatever. Yeah, it's going to be different. Yeah. So this is little data information. Like three years ago, I used to work with a client. They told us that actually their employees are getting productive after 60 days of them onboarding. This is not for the frontline workers. This is office workers. But 60 days, that's lot of money. I mean, if you look at the average amount of money. Especially if you lose any of those people a day. Any of the days, really. All of a sudden, day 55, they leave, and you're like, I get to waste in 55 days of training. And that's the average. So then you've got...
Speaker: lot of people are taking a lot longer than that. and then what is the manager's time associated with that too? Exactly. it's it's a I like that way of looking at it. We have um a good friend who's the head of HR technology at Marriott and Tyler Weeks. And Tim's heard me say this a million times, but he started measuring time to respond too. So it was not just time to fill a position, but also how are we responding and when are we responding to all the people that didn't get the job.
Speaker: And what does that impact on the brand? well Especially on the yeah and the customer side. yeah and they know he He was doing this at Intel, but it was 40 days to fill and 90 days to respond. Fantastic. Isn't that crazy? and we I think we we do. I mean, i know i know we talk about it, but it's almost forgotten in terms of, like especially on the frontline side, is almost every single frontline worker is going to be potentially a customer if you're in retail or restaurants or hospitality. I mean, there's I'm sure there's some that, you know, like in the manufacturing side, maybe they're not necessarily a direct line customer. But still, you know, the brand, you know, value is really important, you know, from that standpoint.
Speaker: um You shared a little bit about look the Chipotle story. and And I know that Madeline and I were talking about it because we remember we remember when it was either MSNBC or CNBC when the the CEO came out with the earnings. That's right. and mention Paradox directly about having a major impact, which might be the first time we've ever heard any CEO mention HR technology and having a but bottom line positive impact. avocasdo yeah yeah Yeah, can you share a little bit about like how that like came about?
Speaker: Yeah, so Chipotle is a client of course. We were fortunate enough to work with ah such a wonderful client. we had We were helping them with the implementation of workday recruiting. um you know they were Obviously, from a recruiting perspective, i mean we were redesigning their entire process, TA process, end-to-end. I think while Workday recruiting was actually addressing a lot of their challenges, but there's still the frontline workers issue was still you know there, right?
Speaker: So Paradox was not part of Workday at the time. you know So we helped the client, we helped Chipotle to kind of do some sort of a due diligence and pick Paradox as a solution that would nicely complement their you know Workday HR technology stack, including Workday recruiting. So they've selected work and a Paradox to you know implement Paradox.
Speaker: We at PwC helped them to actually you know redesign their processes for frontline workers as well as their their home office workers using paradox plus workday solution end to end. So going into this project, I mean, it was very clear to us that this is a very high profile project.
Speaker: There was a lot of focus from the C-level executives why this is an important transformation that they're going through. because um During COVID, I mean, coming out of COVID, 2022, 2023, their turnover rate pretty 195% was their turnover rate. organization of that size who growing, who has his global aspirations,
Speaker: hundred and ninety five percent was that turnover rate you know for an organization of that size who was growing yeah who has his global aspirations yeah That means like if you're hiring 100,000 people, you're are actually hiring 300,000 people because of the turnover. so you know It's like crazy. right So it became more important actually to kind of figure out how to address this problem, not only from a turnover perspective, but how do you fill these gaps? How do you fill the you know the positions, open in positions, and how do you retain them?
Speaker: So we help them to kind of you know really think through think this process through and through. So one of the challenges that we had was you know when you implement a solution like this, which made, they were approximately taking anywhere between 16 to 18 days to fill a position that reduced to four days. I think I mentioned that trick in my previous session as well.
Speaker: While when we remove this friction, um you know it could cause other challenges. Like, you know are you really attracting talent are not really interested? I mean, so you know when you can actually hire somebody in four days, i mean, are they really committed? Sometimes almost like you know test of patience is important. ven know If it takes 16 days and if I'm still wanting to apply for this job and go through the position, that means I'm really committed to this brand. So there were a lot of questions raised. I mean, if you remove friction so much, are you going to actually see more of turnover?
Speaker: After the implementation was done in 2025, actually, the turnover went up again. It came down after COVID from 195% to, think it went closer to 120, 110.
Speaker: Yeah, a lot people saw that retention. retention go down because, or increase, the turnover go down because people were fearful of the jobs, the whole COVID thing. Exactly. And then the jobs came back and the retention completely went back again. Went back up again, right? But then when the retention went up to 135%, the turnover went up to 135%, there were questions. I mean, did we remove the friction so much now is a causing problem.
Speaker: Is it a causation? Is it a correlation? So I think we're still, time will tell. But I think it's important. you know The lesson that we learned from it is like you know when you're removing the friction completely, you still need to keep in mind that you know the attracting the right talent yeah you know doesn't mean that you're not attracting. you know Attracting fast doesn't mean that you're attracting the right talent. they're two different things. You need to have the process in place. You need to have checks and balances in place to attract the right talent, even though you're removing the friction. yeah two different Completely different things. Yeah, I think, but like you talked talked about too, is like, you know, it's it's one thing to have the technology. It's the one thing. oh The other thing to have, you have the right process with it Because you could have the best technology, terrible process, it's not going to matter, right? Correct. And I agree with you. I think like when we start to think about this, it's it's kind of good friction, bad friction. Like I don't want bad friction. Like the bad friction is, oh, we're going to make them click through 25 screens to try to apply. And you're like, no, that's, no one's going to do that. It's another to go, hey, I'm going to make it super easy and almost frictionless to apply, but then I might send you a frontline kind of you know assessment or I might send you like some kind of cultural fit, you know whatever. like You're adding in little pieces because you saved so much time. And to me, that's the good friction part. If they really want to work here, then they'll do that, right? Exactly. but i don't want to But I want them to be able to show interest and apply without jumping through unnecessary hoops. Right, exactly. That's the key. exactly It has to be the balance of, yeah.
Speaker: And that's why I think it's very important when we talk about implementing any AI tools or any AI workflows. I mean, you need to look at the process impacts, right? And then the second thing I want to call out is, you know after doing all these things, there's still the service delivery model aspect, right? So you have agentified, let's say you take 120 HR processes out 120, you agentify 30 of the HR processes, but how does that impact your overall costs associated with the hr you know but HR business partners? So you need to really take a step back and say, no, we have automated this, we have agentified this. How do you redesign your service delivery model to get the most out of it? right I think you if you don't think that way, you're not going to see the value. And that's why we saw so many reports from Harvard Business Review saying that you know companies are not getting the full value from AI. They're investing millions and millions, but they're not getting the value from it. Because so far, the investments have been very technology-focused, not so much on the process and service delivery model. Right. Yeah. It has to go hand in hand. It has to go hand in hand. Yeah.
Speaker: Organizations get in trouble if they don't think about it that way. Exactly. Yeah. um I just want to talk about the retention piece for another minute. Josh Sechrest brings this up quite a bit. It's the retention moat concept. It's the moat, exactly. Yeah. So thinking about you know also you know what's good re ten you know what's good, what's bad. Seasonal hiring is a big you know factor in a lot of this. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I think. segment it when you think about retention? For sure, for sure. I think, ah you know again, it goes back to time to yield, right? And that's ah the next aspect of time to yield is, okay, now they're productive, now what, right? I mean, if they don't stay with the organization for long enough, you know the investment that you made in hiring the talent, training the talent, upskilling the talent, and actually making them productive, it's gone again, you're back to square one. So I think retention becomes very important after that, right?
Speaker: So people are motivated by different different aspects. I mean, it's no different from, you know, pre-AI world. I mean, the retention challenges are always there. So there's culture, i mean, which is important. And there's ah obviously, you know, some people are motivated by the financial rewards, you know, our total rewards, our culture, upskilling opportunities, leadership opportunities. I don't think any of that thing changed pre-COVID versus post-COVID.
Speaker: sorry, pre-AI versus post-AI. But what changes now is actually you can leverage the data to create the KPIs and measure and actually focus on the things that are important to them. I think we didn't have that ability, you know even though the data was there, we didn't have that ability to you know have the clarity. how to measure that you know and what are the things that we need to put in place. I think in AI world, I think we have that ability to do it now. So take advantage of the data that you have. We talked about exit interviews, we talked about patterns, you know pattern identification, and proactively identify your talent, right you know your high-performing talent, and put certain remediation plans in place to kind of retain them. you know and identify, it's almost with the AI, you can you can customize your retention plans almost by employee by employee.
Speaker: I mean, it's it feels like, I might be a little exaggerating here, but you know it's not persona anymore. yeah It's not like you need to have one retention plan for store employees versus home office employees. Now we're talking about within-store employees, if you live in 92078 area code or zip code, you know their motivation might be very different than someone you know living in New York. So you can customize the retention plans so uniquely by employee by employee almost and put those things in place. You have that ability to do it. to the age
Speaker: But I love the the challenge of the question you asked, which is what is your retention moat? It's a startup concept, right? Because from a product standpoint, you're like, hey, what's your moat? What are you differentiated from that nobody else can actually kind of build into your segment? And when you ask that, I think there's a lot of blank stares because they're just like, oh, gosh, I don't know if we have anything that's actually why we would retain. And yet, of course, you want to go, oh, well, we offer great pay and benefits. So does everybody, right? Oh, we offer a great culture to work at. Yeah, so does everybody. say that, but is it really truly the case? And when you really start to dig in, it's almost scary when you go, gosh, I don't know what our mode is. The room went silent. I mean, there were a couple comments, but most comments were bit motherhood and apple pie, to your point. But what is that, your secret sauce? I think this is where the opportunity for thought leaders and, you know, for people like us actually to go and talk to our clients and help them identify it. I think it was difficult because people would automatically go back to what's ingrained in their DNA, give them more money, or just give them leadership opportunities. It's just one size fits all. It's the one way that we look at it. It's only one way. I've done that. I call it safe strategy. Same thing. If there was a part of our business that we knew we had high turnover, we would go, hey,
Speaker: what do we need to create a safe strategy. How are we going to save these people? How are going to not let them leave? safe strategy And I just said, like, literally said, like, what if we didn't let them leave to, like, my team, and we would sit down and do, a like, a brainstorming exercise, right? You like well what do you mean? we yeah Like, we can't force them to stay. You know, we can't lock the doors. know, like, well, you know, Walmart did it one time. They got sued for it, but, like, you know. But, you know, like, and I mean, but like, change the mindset of saying, well, what could we do differently? And like, again, we've come up with things like, well, if we actually had like a senior leader come and meet with this person, and you're like, but that's silly, because like, that's an hourly worker, and why would a vice president come? You're like,
Speaker: Well, but maybe they don't have to meet with every one of them, but maybe if they meet with some, right? Like they start to hear like what's going on. They start to like whatever that might be. But you start to come up with ideas of like, oh, we actually can have like flexibility and shift. We actually can not make somebody feel bad when they have to like leave a shift. That was one of the things we talked about today, you know, with kind of like this AI scheduling, you know, and in how we make people feel bad when they have to lose a shift versus going, no, no, no, you take care of your life. We'll figure out the shift thing, right? Make them feel good about it. yeah Make them feel like they have options. And I just think as you as you really break down those walls and you start to figure out, maybe we can build some moat.
Speaker: 100%. I think, ah you know, you can collect this information, personalized information as part of the onboarding. If if I'm joining a company, what's important to me? What are the top three things? You know, is it training? Is it recognition from, you know, senior executives? Yeah.
Speaker: And it's not hard to capture this information and and put some sort of a plan in place to create that cultural you know stickiness. yeah I think, ah again, in this world, I mean, what's changed to your point? Like, you know, the actual human motivations did not change pre-AI versus post-AI. But how you can actually capture that information yeah and and leverage that information to create that mode is different now.
Speaker: And it's ongoing, right? Like what's important to me when I started a job in my 20s is very different to me now in my 40s. Exactly. And again, we have four generations of frontline workers, right? So that worker that is 50, 60 years old, that issue for their moat might be different than someone who's 18, you know, by far, right? So it's like you have to be able to kind of figure that out at every single level. Yeah. 100%. Awesome. But no, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very How can the audience find you?
Speaker: Well, you know, I have my phone number. i hear you yeah LinkedIn? Yes, I'm on LinkedIn. Vinod Bantala, I'm a partner at PwC. So if you look up, my name is not that common. So you should be able to find me.
Speaker: Awesome. Thank you so much. i appreciate it know i Appreciate it. All right, everybody. That's another episode of the Frontlines podcast. Thanks for joining. Thank you.
