Fireside Chat On "The AI Revolution: What Does It Mean For Your EX Strategy?" At #TechHRSG

Very good morning to all of you. Trust your coffee is still hot and your appetizers are tasting delicious. We'll hope to give you a delicious session, of course, talking, talking about one of the hot topics, which is AI, artificial intelligence, and its impact on employee experience.

Experience.

I think by all, we all know that AI is no longer a futuristic concept. It is actually a transformative force which is reshaping the business strategies, organization design, job architecture, and of course employee experience. It is transforming onboarding, personalizing learning and development, and always available assistance are truly revolutionizing how employees interact with their work, their peers, and their organizations. So in today's panel, we are going to be discussing how AI is influencing and shaping the employee experience strategy, exploring both the opportunities that it presents and the challenges that come along with that. We are going to look at some real-world AI implementation examples. Of course, touch upon the ethical considerations around it and get some real tactical advice from our esteemed panelists that we can take back to get ready for the future of work. So I do want to take another minute to extend a very warm welcome to Dr. Cj Meadows, Jess and Evangeline. Can we have another big round of applause for them, please? Thank you. I do have a list of questions. How would you like to go with them? Tough or easy? Did I hear tough? Tough? Okay. Are you ready for some tough questions? Good.

All right.

So let's start with the first one, and here is what I have on mind today. We all know that AI is automating a lot of tasks across jobs and processes. How can we take this revolution a step forward and deploy AI in more meaningful ways to create work experiences that are not just efficient, but more purposeful and fulfilling for employees? Would you like to kick us off?

Sure. So let me start this off. I see that AI does play a very important role in terms of the entire employee experience journey, right? Right from the get-go, from onboarding all the way to offboarding. I just want to pick on just one segment, which is, you know, the career lifecycle of an employee within an organization. If you look at AI in terms of how we can actually deploy it in this whole experience, it starts from the skills assessments, the skills inventory, how you deploy that, how does the system actually enable us to pick up some of these skills, all the way through to career pathing as well as identifying training needs, you know, to address the training development of the employee, and how do we grow and develop them within an organisation. It is really fascinating in terms of how AI can be actually deployed throughout this lifecycle, but it's by no means easy because, you know, in terms of— there is a human element to all this because if you look at, you know, even assessment alone, AI would not be able to do it. The human intervention has to come in. Certain level of judgment has to come into the picture. How do we ensure that we marry human element as well as automation to bring the perfection to skills assessment as well as skills development? I think it's evolving. To me, it's how HR we are being human-centric about our processes and how we addresses the needs of the organization and how we adapt over time.

Yeah.

Thank you, Evangeline. Dr. Cj Meadows?

Yeah, to build on that, AI can be so useful in personalizing not only learning but also work itself. What we're looking at is not only automation of some of what we do, but also augmenting some of what we do. And eventually, and there's research out on this, already, what we're going to be seeing is that jobs will go away, but work will not. Jobs will be decomposed into tasks that then AI can help to manage and coordinate, because the complexity of managing tasks as opposed to jobs is just huge. We can't have our existing HR teams do that. You know, and People then would be able to do the parts of a job that they want to do, that are fulfilling, that are meaningful, and let some of the tasks go to somebody else more fluidly. AI and technology can also map us more personally, our future skills, our— we can take neuro readings, we can take bio readings, and use these to develop people. We can use digital twins as coaches as you're doing your work, and there are also companies out there like Netform and TrustSphere that would help— that help us do social network analysis, so we don't just reward and keep people based on their KPIs, but on the positive influence they have on the social system. As experts that other people consult constantly, as people who connect other people to get stuff done. If you lose your connectors and your experts, you're stuffed. And AI can help with all of this kind of personalization and understanding and valuing the human workforce.

I would just add, uh, The— there are a couple of phases to technological innovation, and I think we're still at the tail end of the first phase, which is jumping to the lowest hanging fruit. Uh, and the most immediate opportunity we saw and are seeing today with AI and automation are to do faster the work that's already being done. In fact, with AI, we almost thought of this as the same way that we think about offshoring or outsourcing. Can the same work we're doing today be done cheaper in any other way? And, and unfortunately, or unfortunately, I mean, I certainly understand we look for efficiency gains, uh, and that's still a little bit where we are with AI, but the most exciting part of AI is yet to come. And I think we're we're on the verge of the next wave, which is thinking about the work that isn't getting done today. So before I was an analyst and advisor at Mercer, early, early in my career, I started in this space as a recruiter. And it's still true today, 2 decades later, the vast majority of a recruiter's job is working with job descriptions, interviewing candidates, both coordinating the logistics of interviews and conducting the interviews, compiling assessments and feedback, making recommendations to the hiring manager. So even a job like that, the first thing we did was think about— and, and all everything I just said can be automated. Every part of a recruiter's job can be automated, but what a good recruiter really wants to wants to do is act as an advisor to the business, a talent advisor to the business. The same is true for every other role. You could be a comp planner. What a comp planner really wants to do is not work with spreadsheets and run comp cycles. That's sort of the necessary evil of the job, but they really want to act as an advisor to the business. So I think we're starting to get to the, the next wave of this technological innovation, which is thinking about the work that we're not getting to today because we're mired in inefficiencies.

Thank you, Jess. And I think it's wonderful to hear that actually AI revolution is happening in steps. Efficiency and automation is being taken care of, but as we move up, Dr. Cj Meadows mentioned beautifully, there are elements to distinguish what are the tasks in the job and what is the whole job. And in the whole job, what are the things employees, your customers, your stakeholders find meaningful, and how do we as HR retain that as a part of the design to continue to unlock AI yet keep the job essence in place? And what I heard was The key elements there would be strategy, connecting the dots, advising, and all of us as humans crave connection. I'm sure you wouldn't be excited if a chatbot reached out to you offering a job in one of the best companies in the world. You would like a person to actually reach out to you who is possibly assisted by the best technology and has everything at their fingertip about you and about the organization. Sounds exciting. We keep moving and look at some of the other questions around this one. And my next question, maybe Dr. Cj Meadows, you would like to kick us off with this one. How can we as HR leaders ensure that this technology is augmenting human well-being and not just becoming the driving force behind it. What are some of the pitfalls and challenges we should watch out for?

Good question, and she was nice enough to tell me earlier. So I actually, I had some stats on this. I had some figures and looked them up and brought them in for you. Because my first question is, should HR or a business care about its employee well-being? Does it make any difference to the business? Stress and burnout apparently cost companies $500 billion US a year. That's huge. US employers lose $44 billion a year in productivity due to depression. Stress causes $150 to $300 billion in lost workdays and $125 to $190 billion in extra healthcare costs.

It's huge.

So yes, we should be using AI and every other tool at our disposal to promote employee well-being. You know, some companies are using, for example, using or experimenting with facial recognition to gauge employee well-being and take steps to encourage it, promote it, like Fujitsu, Hitachi, Ping An Insurance. TCS. One company that comes to mind is called Restoration Vacation, and that sounds like an odd combination. Aren't all vacations restorative? Well, first of all, employees don't take their vacation days because they're afraid. So, all right, you need to do something about the fear culture. And what it does is ensure that employees take time off and that it's actually restorative, so they come back to work fresh. It started off that way, and then it evolved into an AI coaching platform for every individual employee to make their lives better. Read work life, home life, actually it's all just one life, and the company was founded by one of the world's top 100 executive coaches. So, you know, we need to be using AI to do smart things like encouraging well-being, like figuring out who's really making an impact in our work social system, and stop using facial recognition. For example, when I was looking for stuff, I Googled up facial recognition, well-being in companies, and it gave me pages of facial recognition attendance software. All right, this is a dumb use unless our auditors say we have to, but what are the smart uses to get to the real work and the real fulfillment of our employees and our customers?

I just want to add on to that that sometimes we are our worst enemy. You know, even though there are tools on the table, we tend to want AI to replicate the processes that we are currently deploying. You know, do it as it is. And there's no innovation at all because you want AI to behave like a human and do exactly what it is, whereas there are a lot of best practices out there that has already been wired into the AI tool that we should just plug and play. Play, right? So as HR professionals and business leaders and all that, I think there's a paradigm shift, and it continues to be whereby we have to be very open to adoption, what's out there in the market, and try to minimize customization because all the SaaS system and all that would have already been proven somewhat, you know. So it's us getting used to it and being able to be agile and adapt to do it. I think that's important because otherwise we are our worst enemy, and you will find that you start to hate AI, though it's supposed to help you to relieve your stress, you know, and manual work.

Yeah.

Jess, what's your take?

The reason we like AI so much is because it manages data at scale, if you really think about it. And that's something that's been very difficult for humans to do well up into, up until this point. And what data allows us to do is provide personalized, relevant experiences that are intelligent. In other words, the experience acts like you know me. And when we talk about employee experience, culture, well-being, how people work and how they experience their your workplace, personalization and relevance is everything. You can't have an impact on my employee experience, let alone my overall sense of well-being, unless you're delivering something to me that's meaningful, relevant, and at the time that I need it. And that's, that's the real opportunity of AI, is to use vast amounts of data points to finally, once and for all, act like you know your workforce and give them what they need when they need it. I think about wellbeing solutions. I don't know if this is an American expression. We throw the kitchen sink at people. We think that technology and lots of it, lots of solutions are going to be what people need. We say, well, this is in your benefits We have a wellness program, or we have an employee assistance program, or we offer this. And so often, too often, the response is, I didn't even know we had that. I don't know it exists. I don't know how to use it. I don't know how to find it when I need it. And that's really the biggest opportunity of AI, is to make solutions right-sized and right-time for people so that they can get the value they need when they need it.

Yeah, thank you, Dr. Jess. I think as Cj Meadows started— sorry, as Cj Meadows started with that amount of money, it's a no-brainer that employee well-being is at the heart of every organization, particularly given the world that we are all operating in today. I do want to call out, I think we as HR practitioners have a huge role to take every technology with a bit of due diligence and make sure it is integrating the employee well-being into it as we unfold it. Technology for the sake of technology is no good unless you are actually solving something for your employees, for your customers, or for the people who are going to interact with that technology. Don't put it in place. It doesn't help anyone. So just a quick call out and plug as we continue to focus on the human-centered and well-being part of this. Moving on to the next question, would love to hear from the three of you. If you were to call out one of the most critical factors that HR leaders should prioritize when they are implementing AI into employee experience, what's that one big factor? Factor we should look at?

I'll be happy to start. At Mercer, we just completed our first-ever research studying the impact of HR technology on the workforce. When we talk about the impact of tech, we tend to talk about ROI and business impact, as we should, but we conducted a pretty significant body of research, US only for now. We'll going around the world asking workers themselves, what is all of this tech doing for you? And, and it— the reason— and of course AI was, was part of the response. And the resounding feedback around AI is that of all leaders in business, of any executive, any leader in the business, HR has the most impact. When they talk about AI. That's not the CTO or the CIO or a technical executive or even the CEO. An HR leader has the most impact when they talk about AI because they're more trusted. And, and when HR talks about AI, it extends a sense of safety because people understand there will be impact to their jobs, and a sense of permission to self-educate, to start experimenting. 35% of people use external digital assistance already. We're already using this stuff. Raise your hand if you've tried ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity or name your favorite tool. Of course, we're all curious. We're experimenting. Raise your hand if Anyone in your, anyone in your workforce, anyone within your place of employment has proactively educated you and is training you on tools within the workplace? 10 or 12 hands. So when HR talks about AI, it has the most impact, and 7 in 10 people start experimenting to find new ways to become higher performing at their jobs using AI. I'll repeat that. When HR talks about AI, 7 in 10 will start figuring out how to use it to be better employees. Good for business, right? When HR doesn't talk about it, 1 in 10, they don't know they can, should, how to, and they're kind of sitting in this place of fear, uncertainty, and doubt wondering how AI is going to impact impact their job. There's not a sense of safety or security when HR is silent. And so the big one is building a sense of trust. The very first thing we need to do is build a sense of trust, and that's so easy. Just start talking about it. Encourage people to educate and experiment themselves, and don't ban it at work. Like, we're putting firewalls around this, so I'm not going to get into data security and privacy. Of course, there are measures we need to take, but we're not giving people a sense of permission to understand that this is a good thing for everyone, and here's why and how we're going to get value as a business.

That's great to hear. I just want to call out from Mercer's research— give a pat on your back— it says that HR's voice Matters. And when we say something, it drives adoption. We do have a seat at the table. If anybody was questioning that, it's time to play an active role in charting this conversation. Over to you, Evangeline, to build on that one.

Yeah, and I fully agree with what, uh, Dr. Jess has just mentioned, you know, building, um, the level of trust within the organization and the level of transparency with your workforce, right? Um, AI is not gonna replace replace all jobs, maybe some jobs, you know, as we value-add. You know, once that job relinquished, we step up and we value-add better to the organization, playing advisory role, more strategic role, and all that. So helping the organization and workforce to see light, you know, at the end of the tunnel. It's not the end of the world when we automate, you know, it's actually to help them. To what Cj Meadows has actually you mentioned, right? I think that's one, helping our organization to conquer the fear of AI adoption. And second piece is, as HR, despite the fact that we have a seat at the table, you know, people listen to us, I think we also owe it to the organization that we are not trigger-happy, like earning badges, going for every single tools that you find in the market to show that we are very fashionable We are on top of things, we are adopting the best and all that. You realise that at the end of the day, when you look at all the tools that you have adopted or you have purchased, if your company has all the investment dollar, that is the if, they are not fully integrated. You are creating a monster and buying a lot of white elephant. It's something that HR has to take into account what is really required by the organisation, and it's a strategy on its own in terms of AI adoption. So being very— taking a very concerted effort and very deliberate and analytical, you know, in terms of what the organisation needs, how you want to help the workforce to relieve some of this manual function and task, and how we help our organisation and workforce to elevate themselves, are very— has to be very concerted, you know, and very considerate in terms of your people strategy.

Absolutely. And to build on that, you know, I totally agree with what you were saying. Number one, communicate safety. We're not going to automate your work away, we're going to augment your work. And, and all right, then personalization of your career paths, your learning, your work itself, and the employees themselves, design thinking style, need to be part of designing their work. I would also, a third thing I would challenge all of you to do is put technology on the org chart. There's a wonderful TED Talk by Nadia Yousaf pretty much saying just that, and she said, you know, who pays a million bucks for an employee and does not introduce them to their team, have an onboarding process, have regular 360-degree reviews. And also on the issue of data security and whether you're allowed at work to use ChatGPT— yeah, that's a large language model, OpenAI. Well, get yourself some digital twins, small language language model, closed AI, and that you're— matter of fact, there's a company, Soul Machines, which has been making quote unquote digital people, that's a trademark thing, since 2016. This is not new. And these digital workforces help people in healthcare, help customers in financial services, all this kind of stuff. So, Who is the best person to train and manage a digital workforce? Sounds like the human resources guys, and oops, I think maybe you need a rename.

You know, interestingly on that point, has anybody heard of Lattice? Yeah, so Lattice is a performance management software vendor, and just last week, I think it was, they made an announcement. Did anybody catch the press release? AI gets an employee record in your HRMS, in your system of record. AI gets an employee record. Huge backlash, right or wrong, and they rolled that back because people thought, so AI deserves culture and employee experience? They are equal to the the real people in our workforce, I don't know if they mismanaged the message. We don't know what we're doing with this. It's clear. We're all experimenting together. And it's really, really important to be proactive, not reactive, to create that safety of experimentation to say, what do we do with these digital assistants, twins in the workforce? Do they need an employee record so we can introduce introduce them to their team members. Who knows? The important thing is to talk about this together and to bring everybody on the journey.

And Isabelle, if I can just tag on to that for just a moment. Digital twins used to be decades in the future. It is here now, commercially available. Even I've got one. So, you know, HR leaders, how about you make a digital twin of yourself and everybody can go to your twin and ask anything 24/7. And, you know, like my twin is cj2.personal.ai. It gives a percentage similarity score, how similar is this answer to your question similar to the original, and if it's below 50%, check with the original, Cj Meadows. Yeah, and how do I know she works? My husband fights with her.

It's great.

I've outsourced that. So, and whoa, wait a minute, why would it be only the HR leaders that make digital twins? How about making digital twins of some of your key people, and they make the twin themselves? They feed her, him, it meeting transcripts, things that have been written, videos, etc., and the twins can learn on an ongoing basis by being part of ongoing meetings and interaction with other people. So if we democratize that a little bit, maybe people would accept it better.

Thank you. I think we got answer to many critical factors that HR has to think about with great examples and experiences that different organizations are having. If I were to just sum the three things that I heard, I would love to use the ABC framework. What our esteemed panelists said is: A, adoption. Be the champion and drive the adoption for AI. B, be the bridge. Connect AI to org chart, to skilling, to IT department, to other conversations. We don't have to do everything, but we definitely have a role to play as bridge. And C, and the most important one, conquer the fear of AI. We are operating in an era which is no longer about humanity versus technology. It is about harnessing the power of both to truly build the future workplaces. One last thing, and we are at time, I would like to leave the audience with is one thing we should all start doing as HR practitioners. Not just focus on the question, what can AI do for HR? We have to focus and flip the question also to say, what can HR do for AI? We have a huge role to answer some of the key questions the implementation of AI is raising around human centricity at workplace. So on that note, let's raise a toast to a beautiful future of the work, which is transforming and opening up new dimensions which we can't even imagine today. And perhaps there will be a world where AI may be moderating some of the panel conversations in future. It did help me with a couple of things as I prepared for this. So wishing you all a good day and thank you for listening to us.