How is AI helping HR boost efficiency, innovation, and engagement
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we speak with Ben Frost, Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry, and Zoë Cannings FCIPD, Strategic HR Transformation Director at Oracle. Together, they explore how organizations must evolve their reward strategies to meet the needs of a changing workforce, balancing personalization, equity, and performance.
From skills-based pay models to the strategic use of AI, Ben and Zoe reveal how HR can lead the charge in building fair, flexible, and future-ready reward systems.
🎓 In this episode, Ben and Zoe discuss:
Why traditional job architecture needs a major upgrade
How AI and data are transforming reward design and delivery
The growing role of personalization and transparency in employee pay
How reward strategies are shifting in a post-pandemic, skills-driven market
The strategic role of HR in building sustainable, future-ready reward systems
Achieve efficiencies, boost effectiveness and enhance employee experience with AI!
Equip your prospective and current workforce with AI-powered tools to reduce time spent on straightforward tasks, and leverage AI to generate insights for strategic decision making on people practices and measuring the value of HR.
AI can help with a range of HR activity from creating personalized development plans and suggesting career options to answering queries on benefits and summarizing 360 feedback.
With a single user experience and secure data model, seamless HR processes and an AI-embedded infrastructure, Oracle Cloud HCM can help you redefine what best feels like for your people.
Chris Rainey 0:00
Recording record. Yeah, cool. All right, nice. So, so you've done something else before, right or not? We just spoke before. I thought you have done something. We've
Zoë Cannings 0:11
we've spoke before. I helped prep for the skills panel, but I wasn't on it. Actually spoken on anything. I felt like we
Chris Rainey 0:17
just spoke. I feel like I want to. I felt like you've already been on a show for some reason as well. But okay, well, just to set the set the landscape, it's conversation right back and forth. And I really would love you to both bounce off each other as well. So, you know, don't wait for me. I don't want to ask every question to each of you individually. Doesn't come across the most authentic, engaging conversation. So I'm going to ask the first question, which is, you know, where are we today, with AI and HR, you know, are you seeing impact? Are we still early days? I'm going to come to you first on on that, Zoe, and then if you want to just jump in after Ben, then we can just keep it fluid. But if either of you say something that comes to mind, please just chime in and we'll keep it conversational, sometimes difficult on Zoom. You know how it is, like social cues are a bit awkward? Yeah, I think one and a half 1000 episodes later, I should be good at it at this point, but I realize not every guest is used to that. So just keep yourself unmuted, so you can just jump in whenever. And that's it, really. We'll go for like half an hour, which sounds long, but it really isn't. It will go very, very fast. Any questions, you got a drink? You got a drink? You got some water? Yeah, coffee, yeah. Amazing. All right, cool. I feel like ready to jump in. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, the way we actually do the intro is I record it off camera and do like a little recap of the episode for the audience. So for the sake of us jumping in, I'm just gonna say, hey, Zoe, Hey Ben, welcome to the show. But I would have done a introduction beforehand that the audience would hear before the episode. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. It just saves us a lot of time doing intros, basically that way. So all right, let's do it. Let's do it. Ben Zoe, welcome to the show. How are you?
Ben Frost 2:10
Hi, Chris, good. Thank you very good. Good to be here. So,
Chris Rainey 2:14
so you're typically helped preparing for some episodes in the past. Now you're in a hot seat. How does it feel
Zoë Cannings 2:20
different? Yeah, pressure.
Chris Rainey 2:23
I didn't mean it to feel pressure. That wasn't the intention as well, but good to see you both. I am really excited about the topic we were talking about today. Of course, we couldn't have a conversation without talking about AI crazy. Well, that would be if we don't talk about AI so, but I want to jump in with a level setting question. You know, where are we today? You know what you're seeing, what you're both seeing with AI and HR? Are you seeing real impact, or is it still early days? You want to kick us off? Zoe,
Zoë Cannings 2:54
sure. Yeah. I think yes, of course. AI is the topic of the century of things like so far, what I've really found, personally, and I'm not just talking more broadly, instead of about HR for a second, is that the sheer progress that has been made in the past 12 months from if I'm thinking some of the conferences I attended last year, where it was all very much hyped, lots of you know, come and Learn about AI, but then it was all super theoretical, not really any use cases that were in anger live. But now actually hearing some of the examples that organizations have is actually astonishing with the rate of change. So as you know, I work for Oracle, and we work with a lot of customers globally, and we recently did a survey of some of our customers to see what are you actually taking up. Because sometimes it feels like we're very arms length providing the AI features, but then I want to know what you're actually doing with them, right? And we found that 75% of the customers that we surveyed were at least investigating and considering actually putting things into production. And of those, around a third of the total people polled. So you know, roughly, roughly half of those that were investigating were actually using, using AI in pilots, or actually, you know, live with all of their employees. And so we're seeing a lot of traction. I think something to temper that with slightly is in terms of the impact, is what we actually using it for, because I'm sure we'll get on to this. But huge variety of use cases, from the very transactional, menial processing all the way up to genuine impact on the way we work. And I think just another observation before maybe Ben might want to come in, is I'm hearing a lot anecdotally about the confidence levels among HR leaders and HR professionals. And I think that's a really interesting topic. Because on the one hand, I've been on. Are, you know, panels and events where some consultancies, for example, have suggested that HR is very much in the back seat and not taking a leading role, and actually is has less confidence compared to, you know, IT leaders other functions. And yet, then I've been in other forums where actually HR leaders have quite rightly stood up and said, actually, that's that's doing us a bit of a disservice. And I think clearly there's an element of individual competence, confidence, whether you're using it yourself in your private life, and then how that translates into work. So I think we're definitely seeing widespread impact progress. Now there's still a lot to unpick. So yeah, really excited to get into the conversation.
Ben Frost 5:46
So yeah, yeah, I mostly agree. And I think if we, if we go back to the question of, sort of, are people dabbling, or are they starting to do something kind of meaningful with AI, I think it's a bit of both. I mean, when I speak to big groups about AI, about a year or so ago, I would start with a show of hands to say who has played with chat GPT. And most hands would go up, right? I think, you know, we saw those stats that it took Instagram a couple of years to get to 100 million users took chat GPT something like three weeks to get to the same sort of point. So I think lots of people have have, most people have played with the technology, but then we start to bifurcate a little bit. Some people had an initial play a couple of years ago and haven't really gone back. And they had it, you know, generate a song, or draw a picture of a dog or whatever it might be, but haven't really gone back. And then you have the people that have really sort of started to use this and embed it as part of their daily lives. I think, when we think about companies, and we've got research as part of Korn Ferry's research, with with fortune on the world's most admired, about 50% of the world's most admired have launched something meaningful as part of their business, whether that's a customer service chat bot or they're starting to use AI to make, you know, make insurance decisions or lending decisions, depending on their business, about 50% of the world's most admired have started to release almost product, as it were, that really sort of embeds AI. So, I mean, that's not an insignificant percentage, right? No,
Chris Rainey 7:18
just to be clear for the audience, what is the world's most admired like, as in, literally, the top companies in the world.
Ben Frost 7:24
Yeah. It's a survey. Yeah. It's a survey that we at Korn Ferry run each year with Fortune. So we survey 1000s of executives on who they think the world's most admired companies are in a range of different industries. So, you know, you can imagine, you can imagine those that come out on top apple and yeah, various songs,
Zoë Cannings 7:41
yeah? The trailblazers. Yes,
Ben Frost 7:43
absolutely.
Chris Rainey 7:44
Trailblazers actually the name of our new AI series. Oh, well, there's a nice AI. The AI and the I in Trailblazers is highlighted. So, yeah, yeah, we're very creative on that one. That was a very obvious one, wasn't it? So thanks for setting level setting. What are some examples that you're seeing in terms of how AI is helping HR boost efficiency, innovation, engagement is a big piece is being focused on right now. What are some of the examples that you're both seeing? Ben, do you want
Ben Frost 8:15
to start? Yeah, so I think I mean the first, I mean the first thing that obviously everyone can do is start to empower employees with these power tools, right? That, you know, we've, we've now got the ability that means we can, we can draft things much more quickly. We can, you know, we've got the tools that can do some of the, well, what we would have called the boring work, or actually the real heavy lifting to get to a first draft. So I think, sort of equipping our employees, whether that's in HR, or whether, whether it's in the business more broadly, with some of those power tools, is, yeah, a huge step forward. Within five minutes, you can have five first drafts, and you're the expert that sort of says, Actually, I like that one the best. And that's here's how I want to shape that from here, instead of that horrible, sort of opening a Word document, just having a blank sheet of paper with the cursor blinking at you, and writer's block to write from there. So obviously there's a huge sort of productivity gain. The other thing we see, HR, fun. I mean, there's obviously a big thing in recruitment when it comes to finding candidates, for example, going out and, I mean, there's an enormous amount of information out there about candidates, their experiences, their skills. No human being can cover all of that. And so what AI really does change the game on is you can send AI out to go and look at LinkedIn profiles, look at job postings, and synthesize that information and bring it back just at a scale that a human being would not have a hope of being able to do. So I think, yeah, there's, that's a really obvious sort of use case in recruitment. And then I think one other thing, I mean, I see a lot of organizations starting to dabble with sort of chat bots, essentially. How do we provide our H. Service to employees. Almost everyone has an HR manual, right? Usually runs to sort of 100 150 pages. Tells you everything you would need to know, and all the answers are in there. Nobody wants to read the HR manual. That's not a great that's not a sort of employee focused service that you get from HR. So why not train a chat bot on the on all of that text, that 150 pages of text, make that available to employees, and when they want to know, I don't know who to change, how to change the beneficiary on their death benefit. Instead of having to age, ask HR, HR, say it's in the manual, go and read the manual. You can just interact with the chat bot that's trained on that and start to get the answers to the questions that you actually have, rather than Yeah, rather than having to swallow a big book. So yeah. So I say a few different things, let's empower our workers with the power tool. We see really obvious impact in recruitment and then, and then in HR service delivery as well.
Zoë Cannings 10:59
Yeah. And I totally agree. I think very similar example was that I was thinking of from an efficiency standpoint. I think absolutely it's about just getting those tasks out of the way of employees so they even need to know they're even happening in some cases. I mean, you mentioned beneficiaries there that. I mean the autonomous agents, and as we're coming on to the multi step agents as well, it's not just about finding the answer to something or the knowledge around something or the policy. It's actually about, okay, well, thanks. But now go and instigate that on my behalf. Go and complete that task for me, so I don't have to even worry about it. I actually used one of the benefits specialist agents that we've just turned on internally. And you know how it is? Got to January, I signed up for my benefit elections, promptly forgot about all of it, and then I got a form through from one of our benefit providers. Had no idea what was talking about, had no idea what I was eligible for, didn't know where to find information, and lo and behold, go into the system, talk to the agent, and it came up with the answers. And honestly, that would have been a 30 page document that I was very glad to not have had to have read. So yeah, absolutely agree that being one example recruitment, totally agree. I mean, there's a fairly established history in recruitment of using machine learning capabilities, so things like matching candidates to roles, matching skills to jobs, etc. So the organizations that have embedded those features, and you know that's not everybody, either, clearly, but I think the organizations that were already on the front foot with those types of capabilities are now really primed for some of the next wave of autonomous agents and things like I said, I mean, we've got one organization that I met with recently that have halved their time to hire just by using the machine learning features in combination and now looking at things like agent capabilities for answering candidate queries out of hours and things like that, and really helping with the responsiveness of the HR and recruitment team, but also that candidate satisfaction and being able to pre empt those those questions and things like that. And then I think on top of that, Chris, I think you mentioned kind of innovation, and I would totally agree again, the opportunity now to create completely overhaul, actually, the HR service delivery model, but in an AI enabled way. But really, and I think the key learning from all digital transformations, right? The AI is just a subset of technology, of course, and this is really about, let's not just design in the image of the existing processes. Let's really try and rethink what does it actually mean to be a modern HR function and service delivery, customer service. I know that's a bit of a contentious word, but we are effectively there too, as you said, as well, Chris, the employee engagement side of it, and I think just lastly, from me, engagement has always been a tricky term for me, to be honest, and I prefer to break it down into, okay, well, what do we actually need employees to be engaged for? And there's an element of it, which is compliance, frankly, from a policing and a very traditional view, but that angle and making sure that things are as accurate, removing rework, removing error as much as possible. Then moving into the I'd say what the bulk of it is, which is actually participation. You know, HR is contingent. HR success is largely contingent on the participation of employees. And as Ben was alluding to, employees don't get out of bed in the morning to do HR tasks. So how do we make work and those tasks as frictionless as possible, I think, is one, one element. And then the other angle, when it comes to engagement is, I think, where your mind naturally goes to, which is enjoyment at work and the OP. Opportunity there to use AI for a career coach or to connect with like minded individuals across the organization so that we can get employees to start, you know, finding their purpose, finding their belonging in a way that's a bit more, you know, organic, through using the technology to help them navigate the organization in a way that isn't possible at scale in some organizations. So I think the possibilities are endless. Really, it's about working out what's relevant for particular businesses and what's going to resonate.
Chris Rainey 15:28
Yeah, I agree. I agree with everything where you both said, and I'll add a couple of things, and you said at the end about the scalability, one of the things that I'm most excited about is the ability to now personalize a lot of what we just spoke about, right? So if you think about most of the companies I'm talking to right now who are deploying AI, firstly, one of the first considerations it has to be within the flow of work, right? So if that tool doesn't, is not able to show up and connect with teams, to connect with Slack, so that when I ask a question to the, you know, HR handbook, I have to be able to ask that in the existing communication tools that I have in the organization, right through slack, through teams, etc, draw that information. There's not another app that I need to to go through. And the other thing is, it then knows who you are, so it can provide feedback. It could be based on, you know, where you are in your career. It could be based on cultural nuances and context of where you are in the world. Because if it's asking feedback around, how do I have a hard conversation and give feedback? That's going to be very different depending on what country you're in as well, saying, with the benefits, right, the benefits, needs to understand where you are in the world and then how that that in the past, you used to have to go through hundreds of documents to your point to be able to do that. My only worry about the ability to draft documents and speed up. What that efficiency is, what is the impact that you're having in terms of the critical thinking element? Because we all has, we all have to, we've all, we've all had to go through the pain of sitting there with a blank piece of paper, and the skills that you learn through the critical thinking you have to do. What happens to that when you can just draft without actually really having to have a thought for be thoughtful about it? Does that make sense? It
Ben Frost 17:18
does. Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, I think there's a big challenge for HR in terms of, well, you know, one of the things that a lot of HR functions are trying to get their arms around now is, you know, what does this have the potential to change? And so you think, my job is some boring admin stuff, and it's some also, it's also some more creative thinking stuff. Okay, so there's the potential for AI to take away or to or to accelerate some of the boring admin stuff. Hopefully that gives me more time. So almost, how do we, how do we pull my job apart and put it back together again in in the world of AI? What does that mean for how many of me we need? We might need, we might need a couple fewer, but we might, you know, we might sort of take some of the work that I'm doing and sort of have that taken care of by AI. So that's HR trying to get their arms around that what is done by humans, what's done, what will be done by AI agents, and what will still be done by humans, but just with this kind of power tool of generative AI, to mean that they can do things sort of much, much quicker and much better, and a big concern when we are when we talk to CEOs and other senior leaders on sort of, what keeps them awake at night when it comes to AI is the capability. It's the digital essentially, the digital literacy, digital fluency of you know, do our people have the skills that they will need to be able to harness these new tools. And obviously this is moving very fast, much faster than we can build those skills, necessarily, build those skills at scale. So almost for a lot of senior leaders, that feels like the bottleneck, that there's a huge opportunity here. Technology can do a hell of a lot of things, but I'm a little bit worried about actually, do I do my people have the right skills to be able to harness that? And then, Chris, I think to what you were saying just now, I mean, I complete, I completely agree there's a really big concern in a profession where, you know, you go through your five years as a graduate, sort of doing the, you know, cleaning the data or whatever, and doing that learning the hard way, by having sort of been there and done it in the trenches, as it were, that's what that's what builds your expertise, that makes you the sort of the strategic expert 20 years later. So how do you almost, you know, how do you replace that really important learning that you do in your 20s, which actually is quite boring, is quite routine work. That is probably quite right for being taken over by AI. Now that might mean we don't need a load of associates anymore, but where are our future? You know, where our future sort of senior professionals, and how are they learning on the job to be able to do that? Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that is, how do we replace that is, I don't know.
Zoë Cannings 20:03
And how do you, how do you mitigate that in the meantime, because I agree, you've got two ends of the spectrum here. We've got an existing workforce that may have limited ability, in some areas, to flex. I mean, we're hearing feedback already about that whole cliche. I don't know if it's cliche of you're going to end up doing more strategic work because you're going to have to do less drudgery work. But actually, we're getting feedback from employees. Well, actually, I don't want a strategic role. Thank you. I'm quite happy doing what I'm doing for everyone.
Chris Rainey 20:31
You're right, exactly.
Zoë Cannings 20:32
So then does it become a Okay? Well, let's ramp up the value of, sorry, the volume of what you are doing, you know, checking the outputs, looking at error, things like that. So accelerating the volume and outputs of the more menial work that you were describing, or is it about re skilling up skilling, recomposition of workforce, blended roles, and then at the other end, as you said, Ben, you've got people entering the workforce, potentially leapfrogging, because there's not any need for them to be doing that drudgery work, so to speak. But then how on earth do you propel them for for that, those roles and the the nuance and the context and the
Chris Rainey 21:12
experience, right? And that all exactly that's all built for the hard way. Yeah, it's hard. Sorry. It's
Zoë Cannings 21:19
fine, and it's something that I was thinking about quite recently, and I don't have an answer yet. If anybody does let us know, but is, how do we start looking at people approaching retirement, and start a much more deliberate approach to knowledge transfer than probably we've ever done, because you don't have the luxury of time anymore, as you said, because you're going to have to accelerate through that initial five to 10 year period. So
Chris Rainey 21:48
what we've been doing around that, we built Atlas, our AI agent, just to help our audience access our content. So Right? It's purely a content play, like, how do we leverage AI that I can ask a question based on one and a half 1000 episodes of this podcast and say, what are the skills you need to be a chro in seconds? Atlas can go through, you know, one, one for one and a half 1000 hours of content to be able to do but what we also built into the agent is it was brought specific agent experts to actually retain the information that is being received. So if you imagine you had a sales agent right in your business that is being trained by your top sales executives for you know for a year, when they leave, we still retain that information inside the platform. So now you can ask questions and still have that retention of knowledge. So we're trying to reimagine how we retain knowledge in organizations through training the agents on an entire population of managers within this particular segment. So if you any question you have, you've sort of got that collective experience of all of those leaders in there. So that's kind of how we are approaching it, and it's really cool. Now you've got the experience of the questions and information being input, combined with the business strategy, combined with the information around your product, all of that in one there's context and a lot of what we're talking about. A lot of these tools, they're missing context. They may be able to read a document and provide information back or write you a email, but is it within the context of your business, right? And that,
Zoë Cannings 23:24
in itself, is a sorry, just a quick point, that's really key for the business acumen among HR professionals and HR leaders as well. Because, again, that's something we've been talking about for years. But if we're now talking about AI sorry, HR content and knowledge itself being automated in a fashion, and it's being the business context, so it's actually a differentiator. Then HR itself is then in competition with other business leaders, potentially, yeah, so having to be on the front foot there. Sorry, Chris, no,
Chris Rainey 23:53
I agree you just 100% and we had no we haven't figured that out yet. Everyone listening is like, Oh, my God, what we're going to do? I think,
Ben Frost 24:04
as I say, I think there's also, I mean, as well as that, I think there's also a role for HR here to sort of say, actually, you know, well, almost to be in the lead to sort of say, you know, obviously it will be it that might develop some of the guardrails. How do we safeguard our data? What, you know, which things can we sort of turn over to AI. What data are we going to feed that? Ai? How do we protect our sort of secrets and that sort of thing, but I do think there's AI. Mean, there's obviously a lot of there's concern out there about what AI is going to do for people's jobs. There was a World Economic Forum report, sort of earlier this year saying 90 million jobs will be sort of lost, mostly because of AI between now and 2030 what that report also said was that about 170 million will be created again, mostly because of AI now. Yeah, I think it's really easy to see what the 90 million might be. Things like legal discovery, where you've got lots of contracts and you can just put an AI on that to go and sort of choose. Through that data and bring back the key points. Okay, we're not going to need humans to do that soon, because we'll be able to put AI onto that job. It's much harder to see what 170 million, you know, new jobs that might be created and the opportunity that might be created because of this. So I think, I mean, there is a lot of concern out there about is AI coming for my job, and I do think HR has a huge role to play. To say, actually, this is, this is a big opportunity as well. If you know, you are able to learn, if you're, if you're sort of digitally fluent, and you're, you know, open to these new concepts and bringing them into your work, there's a huge opportunity. Now, you know, it's a bit more complicated than just sort of saying, trust us. You know, trust us. There's a big opportunity. You have to build that as a culture, and that takes a long time. If that's not the job of HR, then I don't know what is to sort of build that, that kind of open. Actually, we're going to change the way that we work. We're going to be open to new things. We're going to be digitally literate. We're going to we're going to learn new tools and techniques, because our work will be evolving. Our work will be changing. How do you build a culture where that is kind of second nature? Because, you know, because that helps to allay a lot of the sort of fear that might be out there about, Yeah, is this coming from my job? Um, HR has to be at the forefront of that. Surely.
Chris Rainey 26:24
That's why we have to get rid of the focus on jobs and start focusing on skills, because this is evolving so quickly that we can't, you know, let me a perfect example I use the other day in a conversation a couple of my friends. Do we all remember when we said, oh my god, the next big job is prompt engineer, and millions of prompt engineer roles, they no longer exist. That was the shortest lifespan of a job I've ever seen, because the technology evolved within a year to your point. Zoe, in the beginning of this call, within a year, we went from talking about it to being a reality, and now my head of AI engineering, Marvin is like, No, we don't need pop engineers, because the AI is now smart enough that whatever you write in, yeah, it can give you a good answer. And so my worry is, those skills that you mentioned that will be created, sorry, those jobs that you mentioned that we created, the technology is rapid, rapidly evolving so fast that they're going to go away as well. So we need to focus more on skills as organization as opposed to jobs.
Ben Frost 27:25
Yeah, well, I mean, then let's talk about skills. Because I think, you know, actually a lot of some of the, some of the more detailed, you know, yeah, prompt engineering is a really good example. You could go around chasing your tail on whatever the latest sort of technology is, and you could be forever chasing your tail on those sorts of things. I see a lot of organizations. I mean, actually, this isn't necessarily new, but telecoms companies are a good example, where you know the standards, the protocols, the really specific technologies, change quite fast. Telecoms companies almost have to have a sort of a twin track approach to say, yes, we do need to go after some of those really specific technology protocols, and of course, we'll need people with those skills. But there's a limit. You could drive yourself crazy chasing that forever and still and still never sort of be on top. So actually, the other track has to be let's focus on some of the, actually, the core things that don't change, that we want to hire people, you know. So it might sound old fashioned, let's hire smart people with with good learning, agility, resilience, adaptability, you know, openness to openness to change, openness to learning. I mean, those core skills and quite innate sort of things. If we can hire people that have those, we're probably going to be okay. And, you know, it might sound old fashioned, hire smart people that you can teach new things to, yeah? And actually, that's going to be, that's going to be quite a good thing. So I think yeah, for you, for a number of years now, companies like telecoms, where where technology has been changing quite fast. They've almost had to follow that twin track approach, like, what's the enduring stuff? Yeah. And then actually, how do, how do we train for some of the, like, more perishable stuff that is hot now, but it might not be around in two years time.
Zoë Cannings 29:17
Yeah. I think it links back again to that art and the science kind of spectrum of skills, because, as you say, soft, soft skills, as they're known, you know, they are going to be absolutely key, being adaptable, being versatile, etc. But as we've also said in this school, is having that digital aptitude and the more hard element, or albeit, you know that will evolve and continue to change depending on the technology at hand, but just the ability to turn your hand to those things, or at least in a very sort of product ownership, business partnering sense, at least, understand what questions to ask, understand what kind of tools to leverage, which is a skill and it's. Yourself, you could argue as well that HR needs to lean into and I think this is really where, and we've talked about the rapid pace of change with all of this stuff, and HR leaders, people listening, might be thinking, Where on earth should I start? And I think one of the key points is it's not all on you either. There should be an absolute requirement for everyone in HR now, every single SME, whether they're a policy specialist or they're, you know, HR operations leader, they need to be have their eye on the ball. What kind of AI enablement is, is there potentially for their area of work? How can that be harnessed? And then let's start a conversation, and let's start co creating. What this future of work, future of HR, you know, the dual role of HR? What does it mean for my organization? But what does it mean for me and my team? And let's get going on that and make sure everybody feels accountable for chipping in to what that looks like. Yeah. And
Chris Rainey 30:59
if you haven't already done so, you know, all of the HR executives that I'm chat to who are really leading this charge, they went to the business and assembled their team, they went to it, they went to operations, they went to finance and created that AI Council, they lead it, and they took the initiative to do that. So if you haven't already got that in place, where it's an AI Ethics Council, etc, bringing in the stakeholders. And when I'm having conversations with them about embedding AI, they're like, Well, of course, they're my partners in the business. We had Kendra's Chief People Officer do a session with their CIO, and we speak every week, Chris and our CHRO audience was so surprised that What do you mean? You speak to mean? You speak to your CIO every week? Yeah, of course. What do you mean? I have to speak to my CEO every week. We need to be, you know, completely side by side on this as well. And and they have hard conversations, and they don't always agree, and it's tough sometimes as well. And they're now combining their budgets, actually, interestingly, as well, to achieve more as well. So you need that. You need those strong relationships in the business and make sure you go, go, reach out and make that happen. I'd
Ben Frost 32:10
say one thing, actually. I mean, you know, one of the, one of the other things that Korn Ferry does, obviously, is executive search. And where we're I talk to our sort of people who place senior HR people, obviously. And two trends, obviously. Firstly, you know, we had the transition from personnel to HR. Now we have the transition from HR to people. But almost, almost all the time that we're placing a chief people officer, it's almost always a chief people and something officer might be people and culture, but very often people and transformation and so, and, you know, so, how do you and so, yeah, it's very, it's very clear that the, you know, the accountability for that, how do we transform as a business, you know, who is expected to sort of drive that is this. It's the new version of the CHRO. I mean, they have other, yeah, could be cheap people and culture cheap people. And certainly internal comms is a big one. But yeah, cheap people and transformation officers, and that's, that's a really big growth area. And so yeah, absolutely, if the, if the transformation is tech transformation HR is leading. But yeah, clearly there's a handshake with, with the it part of the business there as well.
Chris Rainey 33:20
You need that experience, right? Like, and you're seeing a lack of that in the profession. So many of the most recently appointed CPOs from those lists that you described earlier, most of them have never worked in HR, right? So, like, if you look at L'Oreal's new CHRO Stephanie, Her background was in marketing, marketing. Yeah, right. Orange is new CEO. He was in finance his whole career, first time. CPO. I can keep going like the list goes on. And this is not a dig against HR, but when I, when I asked those leaders and those company CEOs that I've had a chance to check, like, why? And they say they bring that transformation, the experience, the they really not they don't just understand the business, how the business makes money. They truly understand how the business operates, and they're bringing that. And they just surround themselves with those HR experts. So and the ones that have a HR background you look at most of them have spent time outside of the function. So they have worked in HR, but they've taken a detour into different parts of the organization, and come back to the CHRO role, and they bring that, and they're like, I've worked in every asset service. Now I really get it as well. So that's also very important. Yeah, we mentioned Zoe, obviously stakeholders and getting him involved. How do you get buy in from stakeholders? What would be some of your advice?
Zoë Cannings 34:52
Yeah, I mean, clearly, with something that's so prevailing, like the topic of AI, everybody you would expect. Expect everyone to at least have an opinion on it, so hopefully it's not something that you should be going knocking on too many doors about. But I think the difficulty is probably cutting through with something that's a lot more HR centric, because we've talked a lot around the role of, you know, cio collaboration with HR, absolutely key. Totally agree. But there's also something about HR developing for itself a complimentary but independent vision for what it looks like within HR, not within the business, of course, because something that no doubt most organizations will have and their CIO or a counterpart will develop, is a kind of digital experience strategy or something similar. So a business architecture plan, you know, those kinds of artifacts should be in development, if not available to the average HR leader, but then starting to look at how HR necessarily needs to differentiate itself. And of course, that comes ultimately back to the processing of employee data, and not everybody in the organization will be aware or you know, knowledgeable enough about where those guardrails need to necessarily sit. And so I've seen a lot of conceptual models, business models around the front face the front, front end platform for employee engagement, and the principle of having a single source, and I think Chris you were alluding to it earlier, not having too many apps, and not clicking around every single different tool. Having said all of that, though, looking at where the data is inputted, what the data is, what level of sensitivity it is, what category of data it is, all those types of things, aside from maybe your more sensitive business operational financial information, employee data, is obviously up there with your highest risk category information and so and that's both from a perspective of external threat and also internal threat as well. So I think HR absolutely needs to have a perspective some guiding principles. You need your own, you know, policy on how to approach this stuff, but I would be encouraging all HR leaders to really investigate that side of things and work out what your perspective is, and then have that complimentary but independent view, so that when you are collaborating with your IT leaders, you'll most know where your backstop needs to be and where you need to kind of hold up the sort of red flag and say, Hang on. Let's pause. Let's rethink that. Let's make sure that we're doing this right.
Chris Rainey 37:40
You're nodding away. There Ben, something to add there. I sort of nodding away. I was like,
Ben Frost 37:48
you, yeah, no, yeah, no, agree generally. I mean, I think yeah, there's clearly, yeah, I think there's, there's clearly. And I think this separates, sort of the companies that are actually doing something meaningful from those that are sort of dabbling. I think there has been a little bit of a, you know, from some organizations, a little bit of a head in the sand. Yeah, this is, we're going to need to see something about this. But the, but the ramifications and the implications on data are a little bit scary. And so, yeah, you know, let's, let's park that for a little while. I think, I mean, I don't think that does stop sort of some of the no regret moves around, sort of empowering employees with, I mean, we can give employees copilot, for example, as a fairly, sort of no regret thing to essentially, sort of enhance the productivity without, you know, without necessarily needing answers on all of the on all the big questions about, yeah, what do we want to be when we grow up? How do we keep our data safe, all of that kind of stuff? So, you know, it doesn't mean that we don't, we don't have to do anything until we've resolved all of those big questions. There are some, there are some obvious, no regret boost. I think companies can make quite Yeah, sort of
Zoë Cannings 39:03
quick, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, there's a risk profile, risk assessment element to all of this. There will be, you know, I hate to say, the low hanging fruit. There will be examples of either HR business processes that are much more low risk comparatively, particularly areas that are not making decisions on behalf life outcomes or career outcomes, that's always where it needs to have a bit more evaluation behind it. I think what's really interesting engaging with a lot of customers recently is there are actually fewer queries being raised about things like data security than I would have expected. And that could be one of two reasons. It could be no if we've looked into it, we're assured it's fine. We have policies. We know what we're doing, and now we're into the you know, how do we implement? Or it could be still a little bit about head in the sand element, I think, compared to the data hosting, data security. You know, what Cloud Am I resident in? All of that kind of stuff. How are the models trained? What I'm finding a lot more queries on is the actual accuracy of the models. So how accurate is it actually going to be, rather than how secure is it? And I think emphasis clearly needs to be on both. And hopefully, you know, organizations have already thought through that. Yeah. So, lots of opportunity, but need to make sure that we're covering the right bases. I think, I think we're
Ben Frost 40:29
also in a bit of a boom, right that, you know, we can be, we can use AI see all sorts of amusing things, and that's a lot of that's powered by all my, you know, below cost kind of computing credit that that, you know, is sort of floating around to allow people to experiment. I mean, I saw, I saw really, I saw a really good sort of talk from, from someone at meta about a year or so ago that sort of said, actually, you know, I think we talked about it a little bit earlier, if we just, if we just replicate the old ways of working, just with AI. I mean, it's a bit like saying, you know, if we replace 20 million petrol cars with 20 million electric cars, that's a bit of a missed opportunity to rethink sort of mobility, to rethink sort of shared ownership, and all those kinds of things. And I think the same here, you know, if we replicate our old business processes just with AI, that's a bit of a missed opportunity. When when AI is really sort of working, and it's really good a lot of people, for a lot of people, you just don't notice it. It's working in the background. And if you think about using things like Facebook, where there's all kinds of AI embedded below the surface, and for the most part, you don't know that it's aI kind of doing that. So, yeah, so I think there's a lot of experimentation we'll see. Yeah, the really meaningful things that actually start to sort of change, literally change, the way that people do work, is the is the exciting stuff, not just, how do I take my same work and add a bit of AI,
Chris Rainey 42:03
yeah, no, there's a lot to talk about. And I mean, you mentioned head in the sand, but I feel like the reality is you also need to create a sandbox for your employees to play in. So like, if you think, yeah, if you think, like companies that aren't doing that and having, you know, there are some companies to speak to have, like, a ban on using certain tools. I'm like, if you think that your employees are not using that outside of your organization, you're, you know, delusional, quite frankly. So it create a sandbox. And then what they found, and I had a couple of I was in Vegas, unleashed recently, had 37 citros Come on the podcast over the three days talking about AI, and they're saying, Chris, we've created these sandboxes for our employees to play in, and some of our biggest innovations and breakthroughs are coming from these, from our employees that are coming up really cool things, and because we've created a sandbox for them to play in, We're benefiting from that. So one, they're upskilling them with the AI literacy that they need. Two, they've created a psychological safety where employees can bring ideas to the table and things that have created, and most of the time, it's been the context of their business and to their products and what they serve their customers right as well. So that's like the bare minimum. Every single member of my team, and every function here, even our small business, is leveraging AI in their role without a shadow of doubt to be able to do that, but we've created a safe space for them to do that. And you also want them to be able to upload some of your internal documents and content, and you can't do that unless you have your own secure AI instance to be able to do that. That's also
Ben Frost 43:41
the culture, though, right? That's the culture of experiment. I think, you know, you create a safe space to be able to do it, but you also create the you also create the culture and the sort of the safety and all, almost the permission that to be able to do it, or even the expectation that people will sort of experiment on some of those things. When I think, yeah, the bands, yeah, my wife works for a company that have banned AI. And you think that's not really very, I mean, it's a bit, it's a Latter Day equivalent of 1015, years ago, you see companies that, you know, they get new laptops. They had USB ports, and they were terrified that, you know, people are going to plug memory sticks in, they're going to plug other things into these USB ports and sort of, you know, introduce viruses or whatever. So what do you do? You glue up the USB ports. I mean, that's not very, that's not very sustainable, and that's what, you know, you think, where are we going to be in 10 years time? We're not going to be there with glued up USB ports. Are we? So let's just get on and think about what the, what the ultimate solution to that is going to be,
Chris Rainey 44:40
yeah, I think there's
Zoë Cannings 44:42
a, there's a generational point potentially to this as well. You know, I've been reading earlier today about shadow AI. You know individuals are not going to ask sorry. They're not going to wait for you to ask them. Do ask them? Um, but just be prepared for them to be using all sorts of tools in the background. I mean, from a generational standpoint, we've, yeah, we've already seen the research. So questioning, why do we need to work nine to five? Why do we need an eight hour day if I could do it in two hours? These are entrepreneurial spirits coming into the organization, and they are primed to be using these tools in ways that we haven't thought of yet to hopefully meet the outcome that we've set, but we need to be rethinking that and engaging them. I mean, I gave feedback to a conference last week where we had a really engaging, don't get me wrong, really engaging keynote about generational differences in the workplace the individual that was giving the talk was probably late 50s, absolutely fine, but my feedback was, can we sort of hear some of this from the horse's mouth? Can we do a bit of reverse mentoring and that kind
Chris Rainey 45:57
of stuff that would be really interesting to do some reverse mentoring. Have a like, I can't remember what company it was. I did speak to a company who brought in like, 20 teenagers to share how they were using AI and share with the executive team. And they were, like, blown away some of the ways that they were using it. I think that's a good opportunity to my six year old uses AI like she uses it at all, don't it has restrictions. Everyone listening, but she uses it to create, like, fuse it to create, like, pictures and stuff. And then she draws the pictures that she's created using AI. And she gets a piece of paper and draws it, and she's she writes what she wants the picture to be created. And she's six, and she's, like, thinking about new ways of leveraging AI for her creativity, and I love that, because then she goes and draws and paints. So he kind of mixes technology with creativity, which is quite a nice blend as well. But the reality is, they're going to be using these tools regardless, so you want to empower them. I feel like this is less of a technology challenge, and like what we just said is more of a transformational and cultural change that's going to be the biggest challenge of everything we I know we just spoke a lot about AI, but the biggest challenge is going to be the cultural, trans and transformational piece, like anything, because the technology is going to continue to evolve, so that can't always just be the focus. The actual the transformation and change piece is going to be the tough part of this. That's
Zoë Cannings 47:26
first as humans in general, isn't it? Exactly we're going to go through a lot of change over the next 10 to 20 years, for sure, and
Chris Rainey 47:32
we've been hit by a lot in the last three years, like if, from every direction, AI, social politics, pandemics, you name it, it's quite, you know, we have to have a bit of empathy right now for everyone, it's a lot to take on board right now, yeah, before we go, we were never, this was never going to be half an hour, was it? We were like, listen, yeah, we don't know how we doubled it in that an hour, which is, which is good, and we didn't even get through all the questions before I let you both go. What would be your parting advice to everyone listening? And where can they follow each of you and connect with you if they want to reach out and say
Ben Frost 48:15
Hi, sorry, John, go first. Sure.
Zoë Cannings 48:17
Yeah. I think just, just quickly, then I would definitely recommend that everybody listening. If you feel that you need it, you seek internal and external support. So we've talked a lot about internal support, getting your collaborative networks in place, having those blended teams, assigning an AI product owner of some type, and also making sure that you're co creating with employees and bringing those networks together, but then externally as well, I would say, just from a vendor perspective, you know, providing these technological features to businesses, there is very little point us developing these features if everybody is sitting, wondering, struggling, how to actually use them and leverage them effectively. So please do lean on your technology partners. They will have a perspective, and they will be able to come in and help you. Embed some of this, and I think in the newsletter that you'll all get with the podcast, there's going to be an embracing generative AI paper in there. Check that out. It's got some Oracle contact details in there. But Do feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well. I'd be more than happy to have a chat with anybody listening
Ben Frost 49:24
good. I agree with a lot of that. I think I'd give a final thought. I mean, I think, you know, there's a lot of change here. Change is scary. New things are scary, but there's also a lot of opportunity. I do think, you know, and probably the other thing I'd say is, I mean, you know, a conversation about AI, well, it's about tech, right? But, but how we use that in our business also, also that there has to be a really strong, you know, element to of people in that as well. What does that do to people's to people's roles, to the way that people show up at work, what people actually do at work? There's a big opportunity here. Year, but we do have to sort of make this work for us. And I think, you know, instead of, yeah, instead of us all being slaves to AI, let's make the let's make the AI sort of work for us, there's opportunity, I think, to make people's jobs much more interesting, that hopefully we take away some of the we take away some of the boring stuff, and actually free people to do some more of the creative thinking that hopefully is a thing that we're actually paying our sort of well educated, intelligent employees to do. It's not to do their admin. So let's say, you know, let's hopefully, hopefully use AI to sort of free people to do more creative thinking. And in that, hopefully there's a big opportunity. So I'm sort of optimistic about that. Yeah, change is scary, but I'm optimistic about the opportunities here and then, yeah, if you want to, if you want to talk, if you want to talk in more detail, as with Zoe, you can find me on LinkedIn pretty, pretty easily.
Chris Rainey 50:55
Thanks so much. Appreciate you both joining. The link to the report that Zoe mentioned will be in the description. So wherever you're listening, watching right now, the link will be below, and also there'll be links to connect with Ben and Zoe on LinkedIn. Their LinkedIn profiles will also be below. Make it very easy for you all, but thanks so much. Really enjoyed the conversation, and we'll wait a year and do a part two and see, see if our our predictions.
Ben Frost 51:22
I won't be here. I'll be replying
Chris Rainey 51:24
replaced with AI. I'll be chatting with your agent. Basically, I'll just bring both your agents on the show, and then we'll just have a chat and my agent, our free agent, so we'll just have a conversation on there. But enjoy the rest today, guys. Thanks so much for coming on the show. I appreciate you. No worries. Thank you very much. Hey, that was great. That's so fun. We never were going to do half an hour. I was like, literally, we.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Alex Nicolaus, CPO at Paysend and author of Startup Culture.