How Mastercard is Training Employees for the AI Era
Anshul Sheopuri, EVP of People Operations & Insights at Mastercard. Discover how empathy and digital innovation can reshape company culture and drive efficiency. Anshul shares strategic insights on leveraging AI in HR and the importance of continuous learning. Learn personal strategies for maintaining a growth mindset in the evolving HR landscape.
In today's episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we are joined by Anshul Sheopuri, Executive Vice President, People Operations & Insights at Mastercard.
Anshul shares how empathy and digital innovation can transform company culture, and provides insights on strategic HR management to enhance efficiency and reduce costs.
Anshul also delves into the importance of organizational development and the personal strategies he uses to maintain a growth mindset and continuous learning.
🎓 In this episode, Anshul discusses:
The transformative power of AI in HR
The impact of empathy and digital innovation on company culture
Strategies to enhance efficiency and reduce costs in HR
The significance of continuous learning and a growth mindset
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Anshul Sheopuri 0:00
fewer people leader, you get a better pulse of Omni if your employees got clarity and commitment, and that's much more tangible in the moment sort of feedback for the people leader as part of this transparency, wanting employees to have and multiple leaders to have those conversations. People either share results with the employees, talk about them, you know, what went well? What can we do better as a collective team?
Chris Rainey 0:29
Anshul welcome to the show. How are you my friend?
Anshul Sheopuri 0:31
I'm wonderful, Chris. So nice to speak with you.
Chris Rainey 0:34
Nice to see you. Congratulations on neuro.
Anshul Sheopuri 0:38
Thank you. And congratulations to you as well. I know you have a lot of excitement happening with your launches.
Chris Rainey 0:44
Yeah, no, yes, crazy times. Right. But we I'm sure we both wouldn't change it for anything. Right. It's chaotic is a lot of work. But I think that's the exciting part, right?
Anshul Sheopuri 0:53
It's such an exciting time to be in HR with all the changes that are occurring with AI and digital infrastructure. So we all love it. And there's so much opportunity. So we should dive 100%
Chris Rainey 1:07
Before we jump in, tell everyone a little bit more about your background, and and also the new role that you you're in now as well.
Anshul Sheopuri 1:16
Yeah, maybe I'll start with my role, and then talk a little bit about my background. So I head up people operations and insights at MasterCard. It's such an exciting time to be in this space. And the way to think about operations is really about thinking about all the last mile consumption points of people processes, all the way from how we hire employees to learn, develop, grow, promote, pay, and then then being alumni. And it all boils down to delivering a delightful employee experience. And can you do that with the right quality in a timely way, in a cost effective way. But more importantly, at scale, I think many companies and many organization steward Well, when you have crises, we come together to solve problems, proactively at scale, and that's what I think of operational operational excellence to be. So that's a little bit about the role. In terms of my background, I'm actually not a career HR professional. I did my engineering degree went on to do a PhD in optimization. In the days before AI was popular. We were doing machine learning and optimization work. And then worked in a bunch of different industries, financial services, retail, healthcare, digital marketing, and HR, but all in the common area of operations, tech and data. And then about seven, eight years ago, I jumped into the HR space and have been learning and evolving since then.
Chris Rainey 2:55
Amazing. Now, you couldn't have chose a better time?
Anshul Sheopuri 3:00
I know. Yeah, it's it really is an exciting time. And I actually do think about HR, in a sort of battle with the retail industry. And I do think the evolution and the transformation that retail has seen will sort of be paralleled with HR. And so now that we've gone through all of that in retail, think about your consumer digital experiences when buying products. I think we're gonna see a lot of that in the HR space as well.
Chris Rainey 3:27
Yeah. And our people expect that from us now, right?
Anshul Sheopuri 3:32
100%? I mean, just think about everything you do from buying your diapers, if you're a young dad or mom or hailing a cab. That's what we all expect.
Chris Rainey 3:41
At work as well. Yeah, it's no longer a nice to have
Anshul Sheopuri 3:47
more laundry is a nice to have. And, you know, from everything, like think about if you want to get a mortgage or want to get a visa you want, you need an employment verification letter. Do you want to really be waiting for several days to get that? Or do you expect that at the click of a button? And what does that do to responsiveness to employee experience? And to digital self serve? Swiping example of many Yeah.
Chris Rainey 4:14
And I know part of your role was looking after global employee insights, what's been your team's strategy in terms of getting actionable insights? And how are you supposed driving a culture of feedback? Yeah,
Anshul Sheopuri 4:27
maybe I'll do a little bit of a sidebar on this. Plus, before I get into culture feedback, I attended my daughter's softball game yesterday. She's 10 years old. And she's super excited about softball. And they're in the playoffs and the group of 10 girls there and what I loved about seeing them playing is they were obviously cheering each other on at these key moments of stress and you know of anxiety, but if also giving each other constructive feedback when a new player came in who they thought he'd hit really hard, they would say, Sarah, can you go back a little bit because the ball might come come back a bit. And so in the moment, they were giving feedback to each other and helping each other develop. And that's a little bit about the employee listening strategy. As we've evolved it in the way we think about it in the moment, quick, timely feedback to drive actionable insights. So just an example around that is we just had a meteor and and a few conversations designed a few conversations around performance and salary increases, and the media ones are coming out. And we running surveys, short pulses right after them in the moment, a week after those conversations occur. So we get a better policy to have the right quality of the conversations did employees leave with clarity of goals and actions that they need to take. And that's a really quick way of driving actionable insights, as opposed to big annual surveys that you might run at the end of the right, where you might have actually forgotten what the conversation was, or, or how it went. And so that's the way we think about our culture feedback. And at the enterprise level, we have something called the culture Health Index, which is what we use to understand and track our culture. And it has four components. First leadership, do we have the right pipelines for our senior leaders? Overall, do we feel good about our leadership, retention? Inclusion? Do we really feel good about everybody bringing their whole selves to work on brand, not just the employee brand on sites like Glassdoor, but also the customer brand as it shows up in voice a customer service? Because that's an important part of culture? We show up in front of our customers, right? And then finally, innovation, do we have the right product pipelines? How are we perceived as innovators in the marketplace, bringing these four elements together is what drives our cultural health index. And that's the way we think about culture feedback, I
Chris Rainey 7:02
love that you shared so much to start from the beginning, when you get that feedback. How are you translating it from the data, you're getting into the actions? Because a lot of times we get a lot of this? Do we get a feedback but turning those into actionable insights? That's the challenging part, I see.
Anshul Sheopuri 7:24
100%. And I would break it into three different buckets bucket. One is, are we sharing back with our employees, what we're hearing from them, and the context of actions that we're taking not just the data that we're hearing or the actions that we're taking. And this will take the form of even all employee broadcasts, or are blogs that we might write where we share back the data, put it in the context of the marketplace? How is the marketplace evolving? And the action that we're taking, whether they're programmatic actions in terms of improving our programs? Or they could be as another example, if some, and these are very common themes that occur in terms of operating efficiency? And how do we move more quickly? What are processes that we're transforming in order to drive that right, so concerted top enterprise wide actions? The second bucket would be targeted interventions, they might be certain geography or a business unit where we might see not as great results as we might like, there might be other areas. And this is the other important part where we might see excellent results, can we get those individuals to serve as influences and change agents to tell the story updated? And so they're as change agents who go around sharing, how are they driving better clarity of goals, and those best practices is what others are helping to learn and imbibe in them, right. And then finding the people leader level, if you're a people leader, you get a better pulse of company if your employees got clarity, and in the end, and that's much more tangible in the moment sort of feedback for the people leader. And as part of this transparency, wanting employees to have and multiple leaders to have those conversations. People either share their results with the employees, talk about them, you know, what worked? Well, what can we do better as a collective team?
Chris Rainey 9:12
I love that. I love the fact that you said we're also finding the things that are going well, and also replicating votes, right isn't getting feedback on the things that you need to improve. But here are the things that are working, can we replicate that maybe in another region, in a team in another department? And then where are the champions that exist in order to be able to do that, right? So 100%
Anshul Sheopuri 9:35
and it drives a much greater force multiplier when you have positive change and how what works in the system really driving out at scale?
Chris Rainey 9:44
Yeah, I know you love a good model. So what's your model and system in terms of how you choose what to spend your time on? So you get all this feedback? You know, how do you in the team then decide where to prioritize your Energy and Resources?
Anshul Sheopuri 10:02
Great question. I think there's a few elements that we use to sort of distill our thoughts. One is, it's always good practice to go with your external and market benchmarks, what really is happening in the industry? Because those inform the way we should be thinking, as you think you're very well, no, Chris, three years ago, during COVID, wellbeing was a huge area of focus. Yes. So that's an example of using the external insights, what's happening and trends in the industry to inform where we want to go after. But like with all other things, you want to think about things that you can inform and influence. And so think about it your to write to write value versus complexity. So we map out all the different interventions that we could possibly do by value in terms of how much impact we can have, and complexity, are they going to be long drawn initiatives that may not have value immediately versus some could be, and then you should prioritize on this to buy to value versus complexity, what's worth going after? And we can't do everything. So we should prioritize and focus on what you could do.
Chris Rainey 11:05
Trust us to give me such an easy, simple answer. I love it. It was a really great, succinct way of doing it. Like I've asked that question many times before, and I've got really complicated answers. But I love the way you just broke that down into the external factors, which you mentioned, you know, the pandemic and well being, and then having a simple framework versus, hey, here's, here's a complexity. And here's also where we can have the most value. And in between those, you can come to a decision, super practical
Anshul Sheopuri 11:35
for everyone. And on that note, if I could chime in further in terms of what my Northstar was in the space, obviously, there's a lot of opportunity, but where I see the space going, and I'm really excited about the potential and the space is not just thinking about people data and people insights in isolation, but really married with business insights and business value. So I really see our space evolving. And that the pattern that I just talked about not being an isolated one off, but being something we do at scale. And maybe I'll give you a couple of examples around that. So when we ask hiring managers to open a position before, a couple of years ago, we would ask them to enter the target hire date of the employee that they're opening the position for. And the reason we did that is that's helpful information to do budget forecasting and financial planning. And all companies need to do that and need to do that. Well. What we've done since then, is can we use predictive analytics, and we've done predictive analytics around the target hire date, and that's 20 to 60% more accurate, but that's just one example of tying people process to financial processes, to other areas, employee experience and customer experiences, a lot of market research out there that talks to employee experience drives customer experience, can you convert it into actionable insights around capacity capability, coverage, incentives, to really tie people and customer data together to make more meaningful actions and insights? So I just I'm so excited about the space because we've not the potential of connecting the dots across the ecosystem enough. And if you can do that again, and again, we can drive really significant value. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 13:27
this like, there's so much great work to be done. And you mentioned a good point to as well in terms of when I asked you about where to prioritize your time, well, you need to prioritize your time to meet the business objectives and goals. So a lot I'm sure when you're getting that feedback, if you're looking at Hey, you know, this is where the business is going. Here. Oh isn't our objectives, obviously, that's going to be a very simple tool for you to decide with where to prioritize time on as well. Really random, but you mentioned external factors. And you mentioned, for example, well being during the pandemic being one, what are you seeing is the current external factors that are at play.
Anshul Sheopuri 14:11
There are a lot. So, you know, the engagement bumps that we saw for several years, we're beginning to see them externally in the marketplace engagement beginning to show some signs of softening. And that's coming from a number of different reasons. One is there's a strong, evolving macroeconomic the geopolitical situation and that's a criminal in lots of different places and dance, a lot of stress in employees lives. Obviously. The other factor that's occurring is return to office. A lot of companies are now introducing return to Office policies. And obviously the final factor which is as, as the macroeconomic situation globally begins to show signs of softening that is putting, you know, some degree of caution in hiring plans of a number of different employers, all of these different factors are in forming employee sentiment in the in the external labor market. And that's influencing the way even companies are hiring and thinking about their brand and how they show up.
Chris Rainey 15:22
Yeah, there's a lot of play. Right. Right now, it's a challenging time, both for employees or managers and organizations. There's a lot of things.
Anshul Sheopuri 15:33
And there is, and there's a lot of opportunity in that as well, with a with AI coming, you know, having this sort of renewed resurgence, what does that mean in terms of the impact on the workforce, but also how the companies respond to that? Yeah,
Chris Rainey 15:46
I know, part of your role is after MasterCard is a global diversified organization, and you're leading the operations. Part of that is obviously simplifying the complex. And I noticed something you're really passionate about. Could you talk about how you're doing now, you know, simplifying the complex and easing the everyday experience for the employee? Is that some huge part of what your role right?
Anshul Sheopuri 16:10
Yeah, no, absolutely, it is. And maybe I'll just start with, you know, for most operations roles, and in HR organizations, what are some of the metrics that we look at and drive towards? And a little nothing that would surprise anybody think like, employee experience, or NPS, your tier zero in terms of self serve adoption, that you're won in terms of caseload reduction and quality of the process? Right? That's what most HR functions think about in terms of operational processes? And then how do you get to that is, is the question. So maybe I'll start even with you, Chris, you you run a business? And if you do, if I was to ask you, what are some of the things that you need to do in order to make sure your business runs smoothly? Even in our interactions together, I noticed you have a calendar of events which you manage quite effectively, you prioritize back and forth, you were very agile and nimble in moving certain things forward, or moving certain things back in order to get there. So prioritization calendar of events, you're abreast with latest technology, you're trying to push the envelope for your own digital content, but also, you know, push the Avenue with a with an innovation portfolio, in terms of other avenues that you're trying so tech roadmaps being the third, the KPIs for the business that we managed, so not for not for the company, but for the HR function as a whole, or in your business. In this example, what are the KPIs that you shouldn't be driving towards? These are all what I call building blocks of scalable operational excellence. This is what you need to keep the rhythms and the hygiene of, you know, a organization running. So that's one huge element of the role. The other element of the role, I would say, is really transforming our operations. And the three big bets for me in the way I think about our future state. The first being really rethinking, tier 012. And we've talked about this before is the retail experience the guide, sharing tab experience, in the way people interact, you're being able to do omni channel having a bot at the front end. So the small, just simple, small, but powerful things we can do to drive to 012 experience leading us to this Northstar of of a retail experience. The other thing I gave this example around integrated processes like financial and people, but that applies in so many different places think around benefits and payroll, how do you deliver great quality payroll, but tie that back to the size complexity and fit for purpose of the benefit programs that you have? The HR teams were also the finance teams for for opening a position but also the time to actually begin the recruitment process. We can combine those two steps and made them one and that reduced the hiring time by half. And so like that, you know really simplifying the trick is you make it fit for purpose things were designed at a certain time to be fit for purpose at a certain time. You just need to process and simplify to make them fit for purpose. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 19:44
Now what what does your team looked like around you? This accuracy because you are looking after a number of different roles that in many companies are separate roles but are under your umbrella? How can you just give us an overview of what that looks likes us.
Anshul Sheopuri 20:00
Sure, absolutely. And you know, I really try to think more about capabilities, Chris then then rolls and talk about cube. And then tied back to organization structure. In terms of capability, I think of it as in the inside space, I'll break into insights and operations. It's all about insights and data quality at the foundation. So Insights is what a lot of what we talked about listening external internal time people data to business data, having the right dashboards drive, actionable insights, that's what's that, that's what that is about, enabled by the right data quality and foundation. And this is really important thing, which I think we don't pay as much attention to sometimes I'll give you an a stat for interest. Every organization does, organization changes every now and then right like a reorg reorganization, that sometimes leads to cost centers not being accurately tagged, or an employee, for a brief duration maybe tagged in the wrong place in your HR S system, the reporting line and the budget lines. And these are all very nuanced Points, points, that could erode data quality by one to two percentage points for a few weeks. And that can have implications. So if you're launching a media development process, the employee data may then need to be recalibrated and manually sort of solved for reactively. So thinking through the data quality in a proactive way, as opposed to reactive way, having an enterprise program around that and driving that in a very focused way. I think the operative phrase, I would say there is proactive as opposed to reactive. So insights, internal and external, people and business enable my data quality that is proactive, not reactive. That's the way I think about the capabilities on the inside space. So we are teams that are focused on these two things. On the operation side, I would position it in the context of people process and technology. So for your processes, you need to have a team which is focused on process redesign. And this is not just a SWAT team that comes in and focuses on one or two processes. It's teaching how you do process redesign to your theories, right, your development, learning team, your talent, acquisition team, etc. So process redesign. And, and mapping is one competency area. Second is technology, technology roadmaps, technology, delivery and optimization that your second competency area. And then the third is service delivery. This is about thinking about risk, delivery experience, time to respond to employees, those kinds of elements, and really managing to that I think of these three is trade offs that you're making. When you do better technology, you improve service delivery, when you do better process mapping, then you have fewer misses, you don't forget that certain steps, just fell off the track or something like that, when you have better process mapping that leads to fewer surprises with delivery quality. So I really see these three legs of a stool together in a thoughtful and integrated manner. And that's I think, the journey, we are on these three capabilities driving the straight offs. I call it one system of work.
Chris Rainey 23:47
I love that because in other companies I speak to they sit separately and then then there becomes a challenge. Because you need to do we need to be working together. That makes sense. Have you experienced that? Have you talked to colleagues where they're sitting in different parts of the business? And you're wondering why it's not working?
Anshul Sheopuri 24:08
Look, I think that's super fair. And I've seen that in other places as well. What I would say is, you know, I think the two different things, one is do have a clear vision and strategy around how to manage this as one system of work. And then second, how is the organization set up to enable that one system of work? And the answer can be, you know, one organization that can be multiple organization enabled by governance, but I guess the more important thing we sometimes don't pay as much attention to is how do we lay out an operating model and a way of managing this as one system of work? Yeah. And that's, you know, I think, important as well. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 24:50
When I say when I see companies that having the most success is when all of those things are under one roof as it were talking together so I think more and more companies are going to move towards that. You mentioned earlier near your North Star. And one of the data points that you you said before was that 90% of interactions will be via a bot. How far away do you think we are from? From that?
Anshul Sheopuri 25:25
You know, that is my Northstar, you're absolutely right. 90% of interactions will be with a bot. I think we are no more than a few years away. I think it all boils, the technology is there. It's certainly there. Right now. And this is very different from five to seven years ago, I would say five to seven years ago, everyone was in a lot more experimental mode, you yourself are seeing this, Chris, the technology now is mature. Yeah, market here. The trick, though, I think is the right? Prioritization and use cases configuration and change management, and really driving this in the context of processes where you can drive the right ROI and value. This can't be just for the, you know, I'll share an anecdote, I was doing a bit of a little small keynote at a conference where there were maybe 200 People in the in the audience. And I asked the group, how many of you have used, you know, I charged GPT. And I think maybe 95% of the people put up their hand. And then I asked the group, how many of you have used GPT, to drive an action to take an action, which is different from what you would do normally? And no more than 5% of people raise their hands? That's the best, I think the key, can you drive actions out of it, because when you can drive actions, you're gonna see stickiness, and you're gonna see value coming out at the backend. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 27:00
I'm so happy. You said that. Because me and the co founder team of Atlas co pilot, that's exactly what lens we're looking here for. It's like, because otherwise people are going to come in and they're going to, you know, ask you a question, get an answer. And if they're not taking an action for it, they're not going to use it again. They're not gonna it's not they're not going to, whereas that's one of the reasons I use CBT. And Atlas every day is I am using it in the flow of work, I am changing my behavior and my decisions based on the tool, and therefore, it's now a very sticky experience. So it's everywhere I go. I use it all the time. That's right.
Anshul Sheopuri 27:38
That's right. Yeah. And those are all other digital interactions as well. There's no good reason why it should be different for an AI interaction.
Chris Rainey 27:47
Yeah. Are you not worried about the losing the human element? You know, a lot of people say, oh, like, you know, it's just, you know, what if you know, the bots, if I'm having a comment, I heard someone recently who use this, as a friend used an internal bot to ask for some help, because they were struggling with their mental health. And let's just say the answers weren't great. Because I can't remember the specific context, but it wasn't great whatsoever. And it also took, it didn't sign posts correctly. And you know, that person felt that it wasn't heard. And it took them actually weeks to get a reply, even though they went through the bot. So is that a concern to you?
Anshul Sheopuri 28:30
It is an area of focus. And we should be thoughtful around that. And I'll share a few few points around this one is, this is why it's so important to have the right use cases that drive value, right. And so Redis drives a lot of value is for transactional activities like you want access to your payslip or you want to know what the 401 K match is, or you want to know where your ticket is, because you've wanted access to your laptop, but the password is not working, or something to that effect those transactional repeatable high volume activities is where the focus should be assessed. That's one right second, having a set of ethical AI guidelines and governance around that. And that should be something that's embedded in the DNA. It's something which you got to have the right learning sessions around, co creating with users not just doing this in a vacuum, but doing this in a way that the organization understands what they are and practical ways around do's and don'ts. So people know what to do, going from there. And then finally, AI especially an example like what you just gave is just an enabler. It shouldn't be the decision maker on any of these key experiences. And I think that's an important element to just think about upfront in the design process. It's not something you do at the back end, all your training upfront in the design process. It's an enabler. It's not a decision maker. Great
Chris Rainey 30:00
point. Well, obviously we couldn't, of course, we couldn't go too long in a conversation without talking about AI. We already know there was something that what are some of the ways that MasterCard is bringing AI to its employees? You mentioned a use case there. But what's the money other ways that you're bringing AI?
Anshul Sheopuri 30:20
Sure, absolutely. Certainly, one that we take a lot of pride in is our internal talent marketplace use case, we call it unlocked. It's, it's one that recommends potential mentorship opportunities to employees and other job opportunities. 90% of our population is on that platform, half a million, you know, project as done through the platform. And it's really important in an environment where, you know, you're you're talking about a large company, where people need to be able to navigate to mark the talent market within the company and find the right opportunity for themselves. And so as if it can serve as jobs that are based on the skills that you have, and the skills that you're interested in, that that's a huge force multiplier for us. So that's, that's an example that, that I would share. And then, you know, sometimes we talk about these examples, which are, you know, I would say, more, more popular externally, like talent marketplace, they have a lot of brand recognition, but we forget the simple ones in the moment, and I call them the work in the workflow assistance. So simple things like, you know, Chris, you want to take a vacation, or you may not have a boss, you're the boss? How is that going to be approved in the system? And who approves it when you when you and I, you know, schedule this meeting? Can we have an automated scheduling agent that does that for us. These are simple activities that we do day to day, that we should focus and prioritize as well, because it can drive significant value. In our case, we saw the automated scheduling, as an example, drive 90% faster times to schedule interviews as a result of that. So those are just simple examples. That I think tell the story of where we are headed that space,
Chris Rainey 32:24
I want to go back to the Senate marketplace for a second that sort of you because I think that's such an exciting area. And it's so far away from when I started in my career, right? Where you've kind of felt like you had to work your way up the ladder. For a system, right? And sometimes you can feel pretty powerless, right? You didn't really feel like you're in charge of your career, and you own it, right. And with ton of marketplaces that opens up a whole new opportunity for people to really take charge of their career and feel empowered and engaged. Could you talk about, you know, what, as Alan, how long have you had that in place? What somebody's kind of what's the feedback you're getting from employees, but also what the impact has been? Or some of the numbers from the business perspective? Yeah,
Anshul Sheopuri 33:06
absolutely. So I've been at the company just for a year at MasterCard, and this is well below before my time, I think it's we've been going on this journey for three to five years. Actually, it's funny, you mentioned the phrase on your career, that's actually something that we do around here with your conversation, okay? That human element that complements the digital experience, but we get different leaders coming in and sharing their story, because it's one thing to have a digital agent that recommends certain things, it's another to understand, how do you build the behaviors in order to be a leader? What works well? How do you build enterprise mindset? How do you operate quickly? But do that at scale? These are important tension points in the system, that as employees, we all need to understand what works well. And how do we replicate those behaviors, or we have the right external experts come in and talk about that, right. And so we have that on your career programming that complements a digital experience. And that's some digital experience, I would say. What's also interesting is because I've seen this over the last decade, and how the HR landscape has evolved, it's also getting a lot more integrated between talent acquisition and talent development. So you see a lot more connectivity between talent acquisition, onboarding, and talent development. And that's the journey that we're all also in the space around terminal mobility, and then thinking of it more holistically I think, from just jobs to mentoring, to short term projects to gigs. And I know that's how we all learn like if I want to learn something new, something new. It's not going to be through like a huge formula learning to your program. Now. It's going great but it's not it's not always is and this opportunity for experiential learning on the fly through these digital capabilities is a powerful enabler for us. Yeah, and what most people who use these platforms, they see 1/3 1/3 of them have been surfing career advancement. So it's a significant sort of enabler for us in terms of outcomes.
Chris Rainey 35:21
Wow. And it's exciting, like you said earlier, because it's now given us the capability to do things like you've just described at scale that we just couldn't do before. And also be able to see, especially as we move towards becoming more of a skills based organization, to be able to see skills that exist within the business, as well, and the transferability of those regardless of function, or job title, etc. And that opens up a whole new world of opportunities,
Anshul Sheopuri 35:55
as well spend 100%. And, you know, that's the way the world is headed. So we've got to really accelerate and embark on that journey. So if you're out there listening to this and feel like this is all, you know, a huge opportunity, but how do you get started, I would just say get started, you know, take the small steps, and embark on the journey, because this is clearly the way the industry is headed.
Chris Rainey 36:21
Yeah. And I know for everyone. Now, I wanted to point this out, because it's really cool when you co authored a blog on AI and HR recently, right? And what you included in there some use cases and some benefits for employees, anyone who's listening right now, there's a link below in the chat, so you can have a read is fascinating. Thank you for that sending it over, as well. Is there anything that we haven't spoken about onshore that we should have that we've missed?
Anshul Sheopuri 36:50
Yeah, one use case I might call out, that is near and dear to my heart is around wellbeing. And how AI can enable that? And I would say it also sort of personal journey for me. I, you know, we I use our AI tools to understand my productivity. So simple things like how often do I schedule last minute meetings? Do I start my meetings on time. And that's always interesting to see, you know, you can see the differences by by month, when you're, you know, were more organized and certain months, you may not be as well organized. Things like that well being? How often are you? You know, finishing your work on time, you know, during your workday? And how often are you perhaps sending emails in the evening? It that's another reflection moment in that in that journey of collaboration? How are you collaborating within the organization within your business unit across business units? Yeah. Are you engaging by different channels, you know, your chat versus email, and just having those reflection moments to reflect on your own productivity while being in collaboration, I think can be really powerful.
Chris Rainey 38:08
Yeah. And when you bring all of those data points together, I can create a very interesting picture, right, because I track my sleep as well, at the moment, I have like a special sort of mattress that tracks my sleep. And that also connects to my watch. And my watch also connects to my to my weight scales. And that also connects to my calendar. It's my Work calendar. So I also can see, you know, the sleep I'm getting now as I'm working versus the rest. And to your point, like, how many hours have I spent today actually being productive? You know, like, and when you put that all together, it's really, really interesting. You only need to look at your mobile phone, actually. And you can go to the Data page to see how how often you're on your phone and how much time you spend on certain apps. That in itself can tell you a lot. For sure. Yeah, someone gifted me a little box recently that when you go home, you kind of just put your phone in the box, and it's like an RFID shield. And you can set a timer. And, and so for example, if if I wanted to spend time on my door, I put it in there and set a timer and you can't unlock it until the time ends. And it kind of forces you to be in the moment and be productive. I know this may sound extreme, but it's just sort of being intentional about just turning off. Okay, this is what I'm doing right now and then block everything else out which is really hard to do when you've got a Slack message here and email here a team's message here. A phone call here is really difficult to be able to do that. I
Anshul Sheopuri 39:53
think the word you used is so important being intentional and thoughtful about this. That's what it boils down to And how do you do that? Yeah,
Chris Rainey 40:01
listen, enjoy. It's always been a pleasure as always a pleasure having you on the show. And I hope you get to Northstar I know you will get to your Northstar soon as well and I always appreciate your insights whenever you come on the show. So thanks so much. I appreciate and forward to doing it again soon.
Anshul Sheopuri 40:19
One wonderful, I totally enjoyed the conversation with you, Chris, as I always do. I love the energy that you bring here and the opportunity so thank you. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 40:27
keep keep up the amazing work. Thanks so much.
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