How Mastercard Uses AI in Talent Management
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we welcome Lucrecia Borgonovo, Chief Talent and Organizational Effectiveness Officer at Mastercard, to explore how AI and a skills-first approach are transforming talent management and workforce agility.
Lucrecia discusses how AI-powered talent marketplaces are driving internal mobility, how focusing on skills over roles expands talent opportunities, and the importance of preparing employees for emerging roles. She also emphasizes the role of AI in enhancing performance management and supporting employee wellbeing through personalized development strategies.
🎓 In this episode, Lucrecia discusses:
AI's role in performance management and wellbeing support
How focusing on skills helps expand talent pools and drive agility
Preparing for new roles and skills through scalable learning paths
How changing employee expectations shape modern talent strategies
Mastercard’s success with its AI-powered talent marketplace, "Unlocked."
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Lucrecia Borgonovo 0:00
We had a new role that emerged within the business, and we call like growth hacker. Okay, this is sort of like a combination of like digital marketing automation. CRM, yeah, if you go out in the marketplace and look for a growth hacker, you're not gonna find it, because it's a newly crafted role. And of that, we're gonna see many more, right? We're gonna see jobs going away, new jobs coming in. So if you focus on, you know, looking for people that have experience in a particular job, you're not going to find them you're doing from the very beginning. But if you're focusing on skills, or relevant skills, right or adjacent skills, you're really going to make sure that you're really kind of like expanding your talent pool, and then you're able to respond to the business suits much faster.
Chris Rainey 0:49
Chris, you welcome to the show. How are you
Lucrecia Borgonovo 0:50
good? Great to see you. Chris, thank you.
Chris Rainey 0:54
I thought you. I thought you avoiding me. It's been so long now since the city shower.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 0:58
I was waiting. I was really hoping to be sort of like your first episode of like 2025 I don't know you
Chris Rainey 1:05
are, am I? Yeah, because I was on holiday, I remember I told you, so is that? Oh, so that's what he was waiting for. Is that what you're telling me you wanted to be waiting for? Yeah. Well, the other ones, we have released some in 2025 but they were recorded last year, so technically, you're the first one recorded this year, first
Lucrecia Borgonovo 1:20
officially recorded of 2025, like I can take that off my bucket list.
Chris Rainey 1:26
Yeah, no, secretly, though, for everyone else you, was actually away playing golf, so that's kind of so you talk about that for a second. So let's talk about that for a second. What led you tell everyone a little bit about that, because I think it's pretty cool.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 1:45
Yes, I was during this, during this holiday season, instead of doing what I usually do, which is sort of like go back home, which is Argentina, yeah, to spend Christmas and the holidays with my family, I was a little bit selfish, and I really focused on myself and and I went to the Dominican Republic to to learn how to play golf. So it was one of those things that I really, I was always really curious about it, but never really took it on very seriously. So I wanted to make, I just wanted to check, was this something that, you know, I could really pick up and really focus on being good at and and, you know, eight days later, I'm like, I think this is it for me. I think I really like it. I think 2025, is the year of golf.
Chris Rainey 2:30
New career path,
Lucrecia Borgonovo 2:34
PGA Tour,
Chris Rainey 2:36
yeah, initially we're gonna, well, we're gonna talk about upskilling and re skilling that maybe that may be a bit too much of a reach to go. By the way, you're not selfish. You're some reason. In my head, I said, when you said selfish, I said, in my head, I said, self first, ah, I don't know if someone said that before. I must have read that somewhere. But like, I think sometimes we think we're being selfish by prioritizing others, but we have to prioritize ourselves first 100% and in order for us to be the best you know, person on ourselves, yeah, exactly, to be able to do it. So I'm happy that you took the time to invest in you and do something that you're really passionate about, because so many of us make excuses of why we shouldn't do those things as well. So I'm glad you know
Lucrecia Borgonovo 3:22
so funny that you say that, because I you know what I also discovered, and part of the result that I also really enjoyed this newly found sport is like the ability to focus and the mental clarity. It's just incredible that, to your point, it really helps you, sort of, like, become a better version of yourself, like both personally, because also it gives me the opportunity to spend some really quality time with my partner, but I think also, sort of like, then you, when you come back to work, you're so, like, much more focused, and you have so much more clarity of like purpose. So I am. I'm just, you know, really excited of what this can do for me, like physically and also, kind of, like mentally,
Chris Rainey 4:06
by the way, I'm doing this new series, right what called out of office, where I spend the day with different CHRO CTOs and we do a hobby that they're passionate about. We definitely need to do that. I'll come we'll do a little interview, we'll play some golf. We'll film it AI. I'm all over it. I don't know how to play, by the way, so you got to coach me.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 4:24
Oh, I'm not ready.
Chris Rainey 4:29
No, what would you we will get a coach. So then, during whilst we're playing, someone coaches us. Then maybe just love that. Yeah, the first part of the series, I can't announce who the CHROs are. We're doing a churro Bake Off. So it's actually six CHROs. We've got a kitchen in London. We've hired out, and we're doing a bake off as episode one. That is so genius. Yeah, it's gonna be super fun. Like, I can't announce yet, big, some amazing companies. You know, all the CHROs already, but it's the. Year, we're trying to do way more fun, kind of cool content around that. And there's one of the citros I'm going to play tennis against. We're gonna play tennis and we're gonna film a cool interview and sit down after so that's kind of like one of the things that I've been wanting to do on my bucket list that I was like, I'm gonna do it this year. And it's kind
Lucrecia Borgonovo 5:17
of like your version of these, card pool karaoke. Yes,
Chris Rainey 5:23
yeah, I still love it. If you
Lucrecia Borgonovo 5:25
do decide to do a cargo karaoke version for HR, karaoke school is also one of my passions.
Chris Rainey 5:34
Your go to song? Oh, that's the question they
Lucrecia Borgonovo 5:40
I kind of I will survive is definitely,
Chris Rainey 5:47
is that secretly, deep down your HR trauma, speaking all the HR leaders saying I will survive is the national anthem of HR that'll be pretty fit in for the group. But to remember, yeah, exactly before we're going to forward, tell everyone a little bit more about your background you shared a little bit and your journey to where we are now in the role, sure,
Lucrecia Borgonovo 6:16
the so, you know, I think that how I found my way into, into HR, I think is probably grounded on, you know, where I'm where I'm coming from, right? So I'm comma come from a country where unemployment rate is pretty high, especially, you know, with sort of, like, new entrants into the into the workplace, in particular the youth so very, you know, very early on, I became, like, really interested in this sort of like dynamics between the world of education and the world of labor and and how to sort of, like, how can we better bridge those gaps and and, you know, that kind of like led me to really Understand what sort of like companies were hiring for and that sort of like led me to HR, so, you know, so I think about, you know, my professional career, I really grew up in, sort of like three global companies all based in the US, so across the, like three different industries, and, you know, Taking on, sort of like, HR business partner and COE type of roles in, like change management and OT talent. So I would say that professionally, I grew up, you know, I pursue Microsoft, in the pharmaceutical industry, at MasterCard twice, so I'm a boomerang, so forget about that. Yeah, and, and then also at Nike. So you know, really great opportunity to work across, you know, pharma, sort of like retail, apparel and and technology, obviously, with a very important focus on, on payment. So three really great, you know, very different, sort of, like industries and companies where I think I sort of like, acquired a lot of incredible, know how, in this space, and 20 plus years later, right? I found myself in sort of, like the second chapter of my MasterCard career, and now, you know, leading the talent and organizational effectiveness team, which is sort of like an incredible, you know, platform which, which really connects me back to, you know, what led me to AI into the first place? Because I have just an incredible platform where I can really, you know, sort of like future proof MasterCard, right? Really make sure that we have the town that we need in support of the future of the company. So, so really excited to to be here and share a little bit more about the journey with you
Chris Rainey 8:34
of that. And is it right? You rejoin during COVID, right?
Lucrecia Borgonovo 8:39
So I, I, we joined MasterCard before, before COVID. So, so I rejoined MasterCard and partner right? And then from an HR business partner role, I transitioned into the COE role, leading talent and early activities, and that happened during COVID. Yes, yeah,
Chris Rainey 8:59
that's a big, big, big. What a time to move into that role? How? How did you find that
Lucrecia Borgonovo 9:05
really interesting time to change, right, in terms of like, not being able to meet your team, obviously, for a very long period of time. So definitely, you know, thinking about, how do you establish yourself? How do you transition into the space in a in terms of like, meeting all of the different key stakeholders, whether inside, outside of your team, incredibly, virtually, right, but also, sort of, like, contextually, right, what was happening outside of the company and also inside of the company definitely shaped quite a bit the areas that I decided that we need to focus on as a talent. And I know a COE, but you know, if you think about externally, obviously, what was happening to your boy, like COVID, the great resignation, like this incredibly crazy, you know, work for talent, everybody, sort of going after the same talent and the same skills. And then internally, we. Had equal number of, you know, changes that were going on. So, you know, the expectations of our employees were changing. You know, the makeup of our employees was changing, which obviously meant that the expectations were changing as well our customers had some very increased expectations of us as an organization, in terms of how we were going to help them respond to some new needs that they had, that they had never experienced before. And then at the same time, you know, the company was growing incredibly fast, both organically and inorganically. And on top of that, we also had a new CEO during that time that also articulated kind of like a new vision and new strategic priorities for us as an organization. So if you look internally, externally, tons of changes, but at the same time, you know, change is a huge opportunity, right? It's a huge opportunity to reimagine. And I think what obviously, COVID, you know, provided us, to all of us, was just an incredible opportunity to to evolve any and reimagine many of our practices, right, and really challenge the Bau and and give us sort of like permission to be to be bold, yeah? So I definitely took advantage of that, yeah.
Chris Rainey 11:16
Why am I not surprised? I mean, that was one of the silver linings, right? Of the pandemic gave us that opportunity to reimagine both not just not just work, but also our personal lives, you know, like it made me completely rethink how I want to live, and I completely changed the way I work now so I could spend more time with my daughter, be more present, be, you know, not, not try and conform to this box that, you know, this nine to five in the office corporate box, that I sort of created the structure for myself, even though I own the company, which is kind of crazy to think about, because it's my choice whether we work that way. And obviously, after spending that quality time with the family, yes, it was hard, of course, for everyone during the pandemic, but I was like, I don't want to go back. I love going to the park with my daughter during lunch and going to feed the ducks and and the quality time and fun and memories that I get to spend with her, you know. And I want to pick her up from nursery at 3pm when I can. So I think going then to say, hey, no, we're going back now, and we're seeing, obviously the reaction from people right now, and obviously companies making decisions around that as well. But I know for you in the team, one of the things that you spoke about is through the lens of recoding your culture and making it resonate more employees, could you talk more to that and how you approach that
Lucrecia Borgonovo 12:41
100% No, I think that's not super, super, I mean, and I think your example really talks about, you know, the changing expectations that that everybody had, that we all had, right and and for us it was, you know, during the pandemic, to your point, really thinking through in this context, how do we make sure that we have the right culture? How do we make sure that we have the right leaders? How do we make sure that we have the right talent in support of, you know, running and transforming the business? So the culture piece to your point, incredibly important. So I think during all of these transitions, right we were really making we needed to make sure that the culture was going to help, you know, attract the talent that we needed, retain the talent that we needed, but then also, at the same time, like be a huge enabler of the newly, you know, of the newly articulated vision and strategic priorities process for the CEO. So so I think it was, and then also help respond right to the different needs of our of our stakeholders as well. So we did. We spent quite a bit of time recording our culture. And, you know, at MasterCard, we we think that, you know, culture like I think a lot of many companies do that, right? I think that we all found that how cultures are, you know, an important lever for us, an important sort of, like, business level, an important differentiator. And, you know, for us, we talk quite a bit about, you know, the culture being sort of like our super power. And the good news is, you know, we started this work being in a in a position of strength, you know, we have, we work for a company that people are incredibly proud to work, to work at MasterCard, and, you know, recommend other people to come and join the company. And so I think our recording of our culture really was kind of like in a much more proactive approach, if I may say, right? It's like how we wanted to make sure that we were really building what was the MasterCard, but at the same time how we were make sure that the culture was really going to help us, you know, position us for the future, right? Helping us, sort of like build the company, you know, for the future, and sort of like faster and so we, we took a very much sort of like a leader led approach, right? We all know how important it is to have sort of like sponsorship and support from the leaders from the. Team versus this being seen as something that is sort of like created or owned by HR. We wanted to make sure that really ownership and leadership was coming sort of like from the top of the house. So we engage a cross functional group of leaders to really help us think through, you know, how do we recall the culture? Right? So we asked them the question about, what were some of the things that you know, that they were they thought that we need to preserve about, you know, the current state of our company, that we know, that we're source of pride of our employees, that we wanted to retain, that were sort of like uniquely MasterCard. But then, what were some of the things that we thought that there were important shifts that we had to make if we really wanted to to move the company, sort of like faster and in support of the of the success of the business, right? What were some of the things that, if we didn't, sort of like address right now, right? They could hold us back from from the future. So it was sort of like a labor of love, you know, that obviously was sort of like championed and led by by by the HR team, but in huge, huge support and partnership from from the business. So, you know, we're articulating our cultures called, like our MasterCard way, you know, we follow principles of, you know, we believe in the power of threes, because we think that when you articulate things in, in, in sort of like in, using a framework of like trees. You people have the opportunity to sort of like, recall them much, much faster. So, so that's how we did like. Our MasterCard way is, you know, framed on three principles of creating value, growing together and moving past, you know, supported by by by different, by nine different behaviors. So, so that's what we call the MasterCard way, and then our focus is like, how do you really embed this in the organization? So we went to the leadership team and we said, you know, how can we really make sure that we're going to make our MasterCard way, our way and and they basically told us two things, I'm happy to go further if you're interested in but they basically said it has to start with us. And the other thing they said was, you have to make it matter.
Chris Rainey 17:05
Now, these are employees, by the way, who are you referring to on that this was
Lucrecia Borgonovo 17:10
sort of like the management team, the management team of the company, right? So we went to the Management Committee, and we said, hey, we embarked on this journey you guys and you know, and all different key stakeholders have been incredibly critical in sort of like helping articulate what we wanted the culture to be. But now we're at this point where to make this happen, right, and make sure that these are just not posters that we put on the walls of the office, right? How do you really make sure that it really comes to life, right, and that people can sort of like feel and see us operating and modeling these behaviors for one another. So their answer to our question was, to make this you have to make sure that, you know, to make this stick. Not only is really important how you articulate this in, like a super, you know, catchy and sort of like memorable way, but the other piece that they said was, it has to start with us, kind of like us as top leaders of the company. We have to role model this for our employees. And then the other piece was, you have to make it matter so they have to be sort of like consequences, you know what?
Chris Rainey 18:14
I mean? Yeah, how people are rewarded, compensated, etc, to generate the right behaviors. Otherwise, you could have like, you could say, Hey, these are the behaviors we want, but you've got a system that's designed to promote the opposite right companies. I see a lot of companies get that wrong. Many, many times I've seen that girl. I love to ask you, though, like, what you've gone through that process? What would you say was some of the initiative, initiatives or projects that you did that had the biggest impact?
Lucrecia Borgonovo 18:47
Yeah, I think to your point exactly, was definitely sort of like hard wiring the MasterCard way across, kind of like key people processes, and probably the most critical one. So not only how you make sort of like hiring decisions, that promotion decisions, but definitely how you make performance and rewards decisions. So I think to your point exactly, we kind of like reimagine our core performance management and reward system in partnership with our total rewards partners. And we basically, we, we basically, you know, said that you know at MasterCard, it's not only what you do, but also how you do it, and then they're going to be equally important in determining, you know, your year end rating and your year end compensation, like your bonus. So So I think by doing that, that was probably a very, very strong way to really,
Chris Rainey 19:41
super fantastic. We seriously matter. Yeah, yeah. 100% like, and yeah. Again, like, you're, you're rewarding the right behaviors, but you also, you have to have the accountability piece in How was that received? Because that's quite a big culture shift. 100%
Lucrecia Borgonovo 19:59
And, you know, and it's really interesting because we spent quite a bit of time thinking through, I think there was sort of, like, no debates, you know what? I mean, that we need to have, like, the two ratings, or the two ratings to be sort of, like, equally weighted. But we debated a little bit about, like, how do you roll this out? You know, like, I've been in companies where maybe they would take this, if they would want to make this change, they would take, sort of like a bit of like a staggered Wale approach. They would start first from the top of the house, then they would go to middle management, and then eventually go to all of the employees. So we kind of like weigh all the pluses and minuses from all of the different scenarios. But I think you know, going back to our point about being bold, I think we took the approach of saying, No, we're like one team. We're like one master part. We all need to experience this together. And if we wanted to, you know, this behavioral change to happen faster, we can't wait to take sort of, like a layered approach. So we went across and basically we took we rolled this out across our 30,000 plus employees, sort of globally, at the same time. So I think we all felt as one team as we were going through this transformation. And I think what was incredibly critical was that, yes, while everybody was going through the experience at the same time, the leaders were incredibly critical. I mean, they've got to role model the behaviors for their teams, right? So, you know, for us, it was incredibly important that we, again, we hardwired the MasterCard away across all of our people leadership, sort of like training and type of initiatives to make sure that they knew how to model this from from the top, I would say that, you know, that was probably a really important part of, sort of like our lessons learned. It really had to start with us, and they had to demonstrate that this really mattered.
Chris Rainey 21:52
Yeah, I think that's good advice for everyone listening. I'm sure people listen also. What? It couldn't have been easy. So What? What? What advice would you give to anyone listening who's considering going on a similar journey, having gone on a journey, I get you're still on a journey. This is no end destination to this work. But what advice would you give, or, or, What did you wish you had known when you started that journey?
Lucrecia Borgonovo 22:20
Oh, um, I I think the context in which you, you do it is so important. Like, I think sometimes in HR we, we can fall in love with, kind of, like the solution without really, and the solution, I mean, kind of like the practice that we want to put in place, or like the program, without really understanding the context in which we want to do the work, or why do we need to actually do it? You know, sometimes we do things because they're just, like, trendy, or because, hey, other people are doing like, also transformation. We should be doing this as well. So for me, making making sure that is really grounded on a true business need, critically important, and that you have the support from the top of the house to embark on that journey, and then they see the business value of doing that, that's invaluable, and that they're willing to put in, you know, the time and work kind of like side by side with you in going through the journey. Yeah, you know, we had the board involved. We had like our executive leadership team. We had, like our management community, top of the house, cross functional team, like different sort of, like employee resource groups, you know, employees at different levels. So, so I would say, like, start with a true business, and then have also clarity as it relates to, how are you going to measure the impact? How will you know, kind of,
Chris Rainey 23:50
like, yeah, yes, yeah. I love that you said those two things. Like, start with why. Like you hear the whole Simon Sinek TED Talk, yeah, start with the why, right? Because everyone, and like you said, it's so tempted to get caught up with the new shiny object or technology or tool or new trend, but just focus on specific business case. You know, because that that's specific to your organization and your culture. You know there's no one size fits all. And if you, if you do that, like you said, and you have the bar, you don't even need to get the buy in. They're already bought in because they're part of it. They're part of the process. Don't bring the bring them on as early as possible, like you did. It's not something you came to them later and said, Hey, this is what we're doing, right as well. So I love that. I think that's talk us how talk us through, like how that translated into reshaping how you work and how work gets done.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 24:42
Sure thing the other pizza you just said to spilled up on your comment about how you articulated. It has to be anchored on your it has to feel like uniquely your company, like it has to when people see it, it has to scream, hey, this is uniquely X. Y, Z, yeah. This is not something that, again, you can copy from somebody else and say, Hey, this behavior like really resonated with employees in x, y, z, company. It has to feel uniquely yours.
Chris Rainey 25:12
Yeah. What were some of the behaviors, by the way, I should have asked that earlier. What were some of the behaviors that were identifying create
Lucrecia Borgonovo 25:17
value, grow together, grow fast. Yeah. Or
Chris Rainey 25:21
did you mention the seven competencies? Or maybe, maybe I mix that up.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 25:24
So then you have, like, those seven behavior, those three principles, and then each of them is anchored by three behaviors, so things like, you know, prioritizing what matters, you know, creating scalable solutions, saying, What do you mean, helping each other be great. So a lot of these different things really speak to things that we wanted to build on, and then things that we definitely need to work on, like saying, what you mean, prioritizing what matters right? We wanted to really call out those, those behaviors that we thought were going to make the biggest difference if we got them right. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 26:00
and I love the fact that you obviously built it's a really important step that many companies Miss of building the brand around it, the MasterCard way, right? 100% create a common and it also creates a common language in which people can have discussion like, What do you mean by that? Well, it's this, right, and you've simplified it with those three top layers and the three categories below, three by three by three. Keep you said it earlier, right? Keep it keep it simple. We're gonna remember. So, yeah, I love that it could they like anchors to everything. Can kind of attach to,
Lucrecia Borgonovo 26:35
yeah, and I think to your point about, you know, people also, we talk a lot about making the master card away your way. So we spend quite a bit of time not only just embedding them as part of the performance management, but then also helping people leaders think through. You know, how can you also embed the master code way in how your team works? Yeah, so we spend a lot of time helping them think through. Hey, how do you also make sure that you're also linking the master, the how and the what, right. How do you also linking what are some of those behaviors that are going to be really critical in support of delivering your business results? So we were very intentional about this very strong connection between the how really makes a difference in the what,
Chris Rainey 27:17
yeah, yeah. Also, I feel like it helps your managers open up a dialog with their their team through those different lenses, conversations. And I think
Lucrecia Borgonovo 27:27
to your question about, you know, how it helped the way, the different ways of working? To your point, there's obviously we, we work incredibly closely with my partner in crime that you had in one of your podcast, Angel, yes, right? So definitely, as part of our employee listening efforts, we we make sure that, you know, employees are seeing the MasterCard way, sort of like being demonstrated in all of our different interactions as well as and they're also seeing the impact right of the MasterCard way on the business and also the voice of the customer. So we also, you know, want to make sure that this is also making a difference in terms of how we show up as an organization with our customers as well, right? In terms of, like creating innovation, making it easy, right, for them to do business with us as an organization, that they really see us as showing up as, sort of like one MasterCard team, right? Visa be them. And then the other piece, I would probably say it's about, you know, kind of like, individually, how, how employees also really think about, you know, how, going back to a little bit about, you know, the the topic of, you know, customer expectations, how, how, also, employees show up, in terms of how they how they think about growing and developing their career, and how people leaders also think about, you know, developing and growing their teams. So big part of, you know, you know, the MasterCard way, it's about, you know, kind of like owning the outcome. Is about learning and pivoting. It's about owning your career. It's about, you know, people leaders, also having sort of, like this enterprise mindset when they're thinking about the growth and development of their career. So going back to one of the questions that you asked me about what was happening, you know, in the context of of my coming into this role, one of the things that we were getting a lot of, you know, there was a lot of kind of like needs from our customers that we needed to also help solve for, but they were not necessarily fitting within the construct of our organizational structure. And, you know, so we, we started, we did this call to action to our employees. You may have heard it from, you know, other things that we have posted out there, but, you know, we call that project possible, which was basically our call to action now to our employees, to say, we would love for you to lean in and put your skills at work in support of the greatest needs of our of our. Customers. And so that was also like, a really, like, big demonstration of our culture and of our ways of working. And we got incredible, you know, incredibly positive feedback from our employees, from the customers, and also from the people leaders inside of the company that really benefited from, you know, the skill set and the capacity from across the organization. So that really helped, kind of like, get, kind of like start a movement in terms of, how do we think you know differently about how we work in a much more, kind of like, adaptable and sort of like agile way. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 30:35
I love that. And something that MasterCard is very well known for, that I've been following, is obviously your work around the talent marketplace. You know, when you talk about empowering in people to take charge of their careers and upskill, and could talk a little bit, a little bit to that
Lucrecia Borgonovo 30:50
100% 100% grace. And I think that, you know, I think the talent marketplace, or we call it unlocked, right, is a really great testament, if you think about it, is kind of like a really great example of, like the MasterCard way, right? It is about, you know, one of our MasterCard way behaviors is helping each other be great so and, and sort of like owning the outcome, which is part of also owning your career beyond, yeah. So I think, you know this, this kind of like project possible, really, sort of like kick started, unlocked, and which was sort of like our talent marketplace that is AI enabled, yeah, which kind of like people lend the skills they have, and they also sort of like pick up the skills that they want, that they want to develop. So it really helps, you know, sort of like drive this agility that we're talking about, both at the at the individual, sort of like employee level, but then at the same time from an organizational standpoint. So we're almost three years in in our unlocked our unlocked journey.
Chris Rainey 31:56
How many? Yeah,
Lucrecia Borgonovo 31:59
so we have like 90% of our workforce, wow, sort of like registered, which is pretty amazing, you know, wow. 35 plus percent of our employees are actively engaged in the platform. Wow. We have also found that, you know, a third of the people that are actively engaged, whether it's their gig, kind of like a project, mentoring, learning, or the different types of experiences that you will connect to in the platform they have, they have gotten a career change right, either they have taken a role in other parts of the organization, they have gotten promoted. So so we're definitely seeing a lot of like, really good, good benefits in the context of that, but I think to the conversation we were having earlier about what got it started was a business need, right? So going back to the change in, like, the culture, the recording of the culture. So, you know, yes, today is pretty trendy to have, like a talent marketplace, but I think for us, honestly, was it was a matter of, we needed it to really be able to respond to the emerging and means of our business. We just had to find a way to respond very differently. But, you know, it's so I definitely think that, you know, as we sort of, like, embark in 2025 kind of like skills AI, are definitely very much top of mind for me, for the team and for our team, but no, but I think, you know, the work that we have done in unlocked is definitely helping us, kind of, like set the groundwork for for the work that we need to
Chris Rainey 33:36
continue doing, the foundation first to that point, right? And you know, honestly, like many companies that are just still early on that journey of the talent marketplace that I speak to, there's only a few companies like yourselves in a couple of hours that are really kind of quite far ahead, in advance on that so for those listening that are earlier on on the journey, you know, what are some of the things that they should be thinking about? What are some of the questions that they should be asking. What advice would you give to them when they think about kind of marketplace specifically? Because that's something as they move to skills based organizations, that is really top of mind for people right now.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 34:11
100% 100% the thing going back to making sure that what is the business problem that you're trying to solve for I think I would start from that. The again, we all get enamored on the concept, but if it's not really going to help address a business need, I would say, don't do it. I think we often talk about this being a pretty challenging Technology Initiative. And I would agree, right? Kind of like, really making sure that, you know, technology enables a very seamless, sort of, like integrated, simple employee experience, I think, is incredibly important. But mostly, I would say, is, it's a change management effort, right? I think we spend quite a bit of time in. You know, changing mindsets. Like, how do you really make sure that going back to like, the people leaders, right? People leaders have to think a little bit differently about how they manage talent, how they manage work, and employees have to think, you know, differently about how they think about their careers. You know, for us, kind of like going back to the expectations of people, leaders, like, it's really critical that they're thinking with like, you know, an enterprise mindset, like, the talent doesn't belong to them.
Chris Rainey 35:26
Yeah, your talent. But
Lucrecia Borgonovo 35:31
you're not only just a talent exporter, right? You're like, Italian importer as well, right? You need to think about the talent wise marketplaces as, like, you know, not only that you're losing, but you're also like, winning right, and also you're not losing right, you're really helping contribute to the greater good of the company. And that's why, you know, making sure that some of these movements are really anchored on your culture, because the strength of your culture really comes through in all of these different initiatives. You know, like, if you don't have people really thinking about the greater good of the organization. Maybe they're not going to be willing, right, to give up some of their time of some other people, and then for employees, I think you nicely said it, like, really think about how you want your career. I mean, what the beautiful thing about these marketplaces is like, kind of like, is the key to your car? Like, then you kind of like you sit in the driver's seat of your car and you can decide how fast you want to drive it and in what direction you want to drive it. So it's like we're totally empowering people, right? I mean employees, going back to the point about changing expectations, everybody wants greater personalization, right? Yeah, everybody wants to be able to access what they need when they need it. Well, this is what the marketplace give them, right? It's like it gives you an opportunity to incredibly hyper personalized opportunities based on the skills you have and the skills that you want to build. So I think that the impact that this can create, you know, in terms of the agility of the workforce is incredible, but again, it has to start grounded on the needs of the business. And also, I think you have to have support from the business in terms of how you how you think about, you know, managing, managing talent and managing the workforce.
Chris Rainey 37:18
Yeah, as we look ahead to 2025 is Time is flying way too fast that we're in 2025 already. What are the some of the focus areas now for you in the team, obviously, what you described is always ongoing work that never ends. But you know, we can't have a conversation these days about talking about AI, about talking about, as as we mentioned, skills based organizations, which are already doing some great work about what were the key focuses for you in the team,
Lucrecia Borgonovo 37:47
skills to your point, exactly, building on the successes that we had with unlocked and, and really, how do we make sure that we continue to leverage skills to drive agility in the organization, you know, and and, and in our employees paramount. Changes constant, and we really need to make sure that we know when we take a skills first approach to be much more agile in how we respond to, you know, emerging needs of our employees, our customers, our business, you name it like you and I know that we don't know what they need. Maybe tomorrow, yeah. So when you anchor it on skills, I think you can have much more flexibility in terms of, you know, attracting, sort of like retaining and, and, and, most importantly, really, making sure that you have the talent that you need, sort of like when you need it being, I can tell you, like, a really fun story on that is we had, we had a new role that emerged within the business, and we call like work growth hacker. Okay, this is sort of like a combination of like digital marketing automation. CRM, yeah. If you go out in the marketplace and look for a growth hacker, you're not going to find any, because it's a newly crafted role. And of that, we're going to see many more, right? We're going to see jobs going away, new jobs coming in. So if you focus on, you know, looking for people that have experience in a particular job, you're not gonna find them you're doing from the very beginning. But if you're focusing on skills, you're really going to be or relevant skills, right? Or adjacent skills, you're really going to make sure that you're really kind of like, expanding your talent pool, and then you're able to respond to the businesses much faster. And then the other ones, your point, Chris is totally AI, right? It's like, how do you really make sure that leverage AI to power the workforce, the employee experience that we just talked about? So we're spending, we're spending quite a bit of time on, on really making sure that we have, that we have the talent that we need. Obviously, AI is going to be really important to really help enable the skills based approach that we talked about right in terms of, like, how do you really, how do you really embed AI across the employee life cycle, from like, attraction, development, management, you know, retention of the talent, you name it. And we can talk about some of those. Use cases that we have, but that are like this piece about really super charging the employee experience end to end, really important. And then the other piece is like the AI workforce. So how do we really make sure that that we have the skills that we have to deliver on on the needs of our business? So that means both, you know, being attractive enough to attract AI talent, because you and I and everybody listening will know that one of the most competitive skills right now. So how do you really make sure that you have a really good, compelling value proposition to attract these individuals? And then the other piece is, what are you doing to really develop this skill set
Chris Rainey 40:41
in house. There's not enough skills out there.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 40:44
There's not enough. There's not enough. So for us, it's about, you know, making sure that every employee has, you know, the AI foundations, kind of like the general knowledge everybody has to have them. Then we're doing some things that are more like role specific, right? Depending on whether you're like a software engineer, you're a consultant, your sales person, right? So what are the different, the different type of learning that you will need, depending on how AI is really impacting your job? And then I think that the ultimate goal, right with with this journey, is to make it to really make sure that that we can re skill for new roles, right as we get much more intelligence, as he relates to newly created roles, emerging skills like, how do we start really making sure that, that we can, you know, start build those, those emerging skills in our employees, and also be really transparent with them right as it relates to, How do we see the the market dynamics really changing. I mean, the spirit of them owning their career and continue to become like, continue to become incredibly relevant, right, in this changing environment, what are the skills that we think that they would benefit? You know? I mean, from picking up in support of becoming relevant is incredibly, you know, highly, highly changing environment,
Chris Rainey 42:04
and you're already a step ahead on that, right, because you already have taught the talent marketplace to help nurture that. And people can add new skills that maybe you didn't even aware that employees even had. They can see what skills are in demand. You can provide the resources, the training. So you kind of got that part, because it almost feels like, if you're a hybrid company that and you don't have something like that in place, you're kind of operating in the dark. He's like, you don't have a map or, you know, and it just, it just doesn't work right in this economy, especially as we're moving to more sort of gig work, sort of lean, like it's agile working. You have to have a technology base to help support that work, because the way work is being done is fundamentally change, and will continue to change as well. But I want to go back to your point about the AI, because it's a bit overwhelming right now, as you can imagine, for many leaders, where do you see AI having the biggest impact? What's a specific HR use case? A specific use case where you're saying you and the team are saying, these are maybe one or two areas that we really want to we feel we can have significant value by leveraging AI.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 43:17
I love your question. So we talked about performance management before, in terms of reimagining performance management, I think performance management is definitely a really great use case that could have significant impact. There is, there's a lot of data, right, but as an as a people leader, you have to put together in support of, you know, giving ongoing feedback to your employees, right? Kind of, like, a lot of data, whether it is like multi source feedback, your own observations, the employee self assessment, feedback from other individuals. Like, for us, our an area that we're really trying to prioritize is, how do you how do we help these leaders, sort of like, synthesize and summarize, like the themes that are coming up from all of these different sources of feedback that is not necessarily going to make the rating decision for you, because ultimately that is your decision as a people leader, and that is not going to go away. But how can we help you? You know what I mean? Sort of like, make sense of all of these data so that you can spend more quality time as a people leader in your coaching and developing your team, right, versus making sense of all of these data. So I think performance management, performance feedback, in my mind, is a really great, a great use case. So, so, so that's something that we're exploring, and together with that, is also providing our our people leaders, an AI enabled coach. So again, as you're like freeing up yourself, right? You're getting more time being freed up. How can we really make sure that we're giving you this code where you know we. And actually role play different types of conversations that you're going to have. So that really helps you increase your effectiveness as a people leader and increase the impact of the conversations that you're going to have, in particular when it comes to feedback and coaching conversations that Chris, you and I know, those are not easy to have no so I think performance management is probably like, like, a big one. And I think the other one, you know, that we're pretty bullish about is it's probably well being this is something that, you know, it's really very much top of mind for everybody and and I think that, you know, some of the things that we're definitely doing it, you know, how do we make sure that we're nudging our employees when we see that there have been, like, on this marathon day, your marathon day,
Chris Rainey 45:50
five hours of zoom,
Lucrecia Borgonovo 45:53
you would probably benefit from, you know, maybe every step re energizing, like saying taking Some
Chris Rainey 45:59
folks time, sort of like, yeah, mindfulness, 100% so something like
Lucrecia Borgonovo 46:04
that. Or, you know, when we're, like, sending emails to one another, like, how do you really make sure that you're sending an email in your time or the other person is not necessarily, you know, you know, taking some time off, right? So, sort of, like, within their working hours. So I think that probably wellness is an area where I think that that we can actually help, sort of like employees, yeah, find, you know, be much more productive, you know, much more engaged by, honestly, going back toward the beginning of our conversation, really taking care of prioritizing themselves,
Chris Rainey 46:37
too. Yeah, I love those, those three use cases. There's so much opportunity and so many data points to connect that with that you need generative AI to be able to make sense of what about I think what I'm most excited about, which is always been a challenge for organizations, is creating sort of the customized learning experiences at scale you know in the past is kind of you had, like you just said, actually, with your coaching example, you had a coaching which was only for the few, right? But now we can offer that at scale, and now unlock a whole another level of potential. Meet people where they're at. It's more inclusive. It can be in your own language. You can you want video content, great. You want to read great, you know, and now, and even with our own Atlas copilot, our own HR co pilot that we launched, being able to create those customized learning pathways, it's just almost like we just unlocked a different level that, and people are like, Wow, it really meets them where they're at, and we just couldn't do that. That was manual. L, D teams were manually creating these things before. So that's stuff. I think it's one that I'm most excited about, because all the way throughout the business, everyone can have a coach, everyone can have the opportunity to grow and learn and develop. And that was in the past only for the few things I love,
Lucrecia Borgonovo 47:53
what you said that, you know, and I think it's, it's, again, it's incredible. It's super fascinating, because we have been able to achieve two things that in the past, people thought that were contradictory, yeah, scale and personalization, you know what? And now we can do them both, right? Yeah, and, and I think that is definitely the name, the name of the game, right? So it's like all of this that is, that is the beauty, right, of AI is really, really helping us drive democratize access to opportunities, exactly to personalize opportunities at scale. So it's like, that's why it's, you know, for people, leaders, for employees, for HR, like we gotta lean in, right? We gotta, we gotta unlock the power. But don't double these different
Chris Rainey 48:38
AI made the name of our new LinkedIn article that we're going to do together, democratize, personalize, like it's a good title.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 48:47
It's incredible. But, I mean, we have honestly, like, you think about, you know, all of the change that we have experienced, like in HR over the last couple of years is transformational. So are we also transforming at the same pace of these technologies? That's
Chris Rainey 49:07
exactly why, that's exactly why we built Atlas copilot. Like, you know, it's a shameless plug, but that's the whole point. We were like, in order for HR to lead away, we built our co pilot to upskill and reskill HR leaders in their team so they could lead away on this work. Because we realized that, we realized that, you know, we want, we want the HR functions to be Trailblazers of this new technology and this new this is the future, whether you like it or not, this is it's not going away 100%
Lucrecia Borgonovo 49:35
and think about, you know, how it's really going to help us in the in the HR team, whether you're like a recruiter, where you're like an HR business partner, like the time, like the time that this is going to create for you to be able to focus on, you know, higher value, add activities, yeah, just unlocking that and create value, like, in a different way, like I remember being. An HR business partner. How many times you have an employee or a people leader to say, Hey, do you have any ideas for me in terms of how I can develop myself? What training courses could I be taking? I'm like, hello. You can now go to your point, whether like whatever telemarket place, whatever platform you have where people can access personalized opportunities and do that. You know, in their own time. You know, hopefully all of this time that we're also freeing up for them. You know what I mean in the context of automating some of their activities, they can also spend time working on, you know, on, on, up, skilling themselves for the future of the organization. So it's like we've got an incredible power, an incredible tool, incredible power in our hands. So I'm excited about the future. We die.
Chris Rainey 50:42
Yeah, well, listen, I feel like I talk to you forever, but I let you go at some point. So I'm so happy. I'm so happy we managed to make this happen. And appreciate you taking the time out to share your your experience, to journey. This is why we created the show, so there isn't no show without guests that like you. So appreciate you taking the time out to share and for having me. I wish you the best. Until we next week, hopefully, hopefully next time we speak, we plan some golf.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 51:07
Well, I think we're gonna, I think we're gonna do this podcast that you're talking about. We're gonna do it on the golf course, and we're gonna talk about the part the parallelism is between golfing and HR. We'll talk about
Chris Rainey 51:16
the fact that you have to put a lot of reps in together, right, right? Like, there's a lot of analogies that we're going to come up with there as well. So
Lucrecia Borgonovo 51:25
the up skilling and re skilling on the golf course, we're gonna do it. I can't
Chris Rainey 51:29
wait. Well, listen, I wish all the best of each week, but thanks a lot.
Lucrecia Borgonovo 51:33
That was great. Thank you. You.
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Donovan Mattole, CHRO at Langan.