How SHRM Is Reimagining HR in the AI Era
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we speak with Andy Biladeau, Chief Transformation Officer at SHRM , about how structured agility is redefining transformation in today’s AI-driven workplace.
Andy shares how SHRM is building future-proof systems, why the silos between HR, IT, and business are breaking down, and what it takes to lead through constant change without burning people out.
🎓 In this episode, Andy discusses:
How to avoid burnout while driving innovation
Why transformation must be agile, but structured
What real-time change management looks like today
Why silos between HR, IT, and business must disappear
How AI is disrupting org design, workforce planning, and skills
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Andy Biladeau 0:00
Andy, welcome to the show. How are you, my friend? Yeah, doing really well. Friday here when we're recording. So got the weekend coming up, but doing really well. Yeah, in a good spot right now. Wait any plans the weekend? Yeah. So I've got two kiddos. I've got a six year old and a four year old, and so we're at that point in life where your schedule is a little bit more dictated by your family than yourself, but good stuff, soccer games, birthday parties, nice. Um, probably try to, try to take them to a park, go for a hike. So, yeah, try to get outdoors as much as possible with them.
Chris Rainey 0:29
Amazing. So I got one six year old, and I can barely keep up. So what's, what's the, what's the key to manage more a four year old, damn it. Six year old, you
Andy Biladeau 0:37
gotta, you gotta let go a little bit. I think, you know, I'm a little bit of a control freak sometimes, and I think you got to be okay with with the mess and things being unplanned or going unscheduled. You got to let them lead. And so I think with two of them, the highs are higher in terms of when it's going really well. It's like, hey, they're getting along. Everything's smooth, hunky dory. And then you know when, when the lows are low, it's like, hey, they're fighting, they're fighting. They're not getting along. Like you gotta play referee and break them apart. But yeah, it's really neat to watch them grow up and have each other. I think that that's really special watching that relationship form and Bud, and it's something that, yeah, they're two sisters, and I grew up in a family with two boys, and I have a sister. It's just neat that special bond that sisters form, and watching that start to come to life. A little bit is pretty special, nice,
Chris Rainey 1:22
by the way. The entire analogy you just said is like the perfect analogy for you as a chief transformation officer, I think about that, right? Change a little bit day to day. Yeah, things change day to day. They fight a little bit. Sometimes there's a lot of change. You got to let go a little bit. Yeah, some good advice for everyone.
Andy Biladeau 1:41
I think sometimes, Chris, you know this, like sometimes the hardest thing is trying to isolate what you control versus what you don't. Where you get yourself into a spot is assuming you've got control over something that you don't and burn an energy there, burning calories there, versus maybe there is something that you've got control over that you're ignoring, you're not prioritizing. And I think that that's a major part of, well, this job, and almost any job out there right now, because there's just so many externalities and internal realities that people are dealing with that ability to separate what you can control for, for versus kind of what's just noise in the outside that you gotta you gotta put the blinders on. I think that's a real challenge for leaders and employees today. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 2:18
I mentioned obviously to you, you're the chief transformation officer for Sham. When people ask you, Hey, AI, what do you do? How do you describe your role
Andy Biladeau 2:31
to people? Not a title that, you know, I think, has historically shown up everywhere. But I would say, I'll give you some context, right? So about two and a half years ago, the SHRM board and our CEO, John A C Taylor, sat down and they looked at where they were in a position of strength in a lot of ways. Also recognize that the world is changing really quickly, and there's a lot going on, you know, both in business and society and also in HR. And they made the strategic decision to make a significant investment into transforming Sherm. And a lot of ways, it's extending on what we're really good at and building on what we do really well. And in a lot of other ways, it's Hey, there's some spots and opportunities that we see is if we don't put these in place or make these investments, those external kind of factors are going to start to become internal realities. And we want to get ahead of that and make some investments in our people processes and technology. And so, you know, I came in and got to meet with Johnny and the board, and had a lot of conversations about the future of Sherm and where we wanted to go, and found that we were all hyper aligned. And so I've been enrolled for just over a year now, and we've implemented a lot of change, a lot of investment, and we're just starting to set up a foundation so that we've been around for 76 years, and trying to put things in place so that we're around another 76 years. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 3:49
no, there's a reason you've been around that long, right? And that's for innovation and change and transformation.
Andy Biladeau 3:56
Yeah, I think, I think innovation and change are like two hallmarks of Sherm. I think we've made a lot of progress in driving innovation and change, specifically over the past five or seven years, I would say, and more to come there. But I think underlying the the innovation and change is when we talk about it internally at Sherm, and also, you know, when Johnny talks about it, you know, externally, it's a lot of it's predicated on trust, right? Sherm occupies this really unique position where we are kind of the objective resource for what's going on in the profession. Where do we see emerging trends? How are we equipping HR professionals with tools and skills to be ready for those changes as best they can? You know, the other thing that we do is we do a lot of advocacy, work around work, workers and workplace and so constantly, you know, in DC and other nation national capitals around the world, advocating for for policies. And so I think we really occupy this space where we're not necessarily driven by commercial interest, but really around what's the best thing for elevating HR, which is our. This, yeah,
Chris Rainey 5:00
there's so much of like now, more than ever, there's so much disruption and change coming out, coming at us, especially the HR profession, in every single direction. What does sort of modern transformation look like for companies right now? How much time do we have to talk
Andy Biladeau 5:19
about, yeah, yeah. You and I have spoken a number of times, Chris and I think, like, this is one where, you know, we used to isolate, like, HR transformation from business transformation or operational transformation or culture transformation, like the lines are just gone now, right between all those different, different types of transformation. And so I think what you're watching happen in real time is businesses completely reinvent themselves in a digital, AI enabled age, and that's having knocked down impacts on again, people and process. And you know, HR no longer can kind of just look internally in terms of, how are we advancing our HR tactics or strategies or approaches. It's really a function of the blurring between business and HR coming together in a completely integrated way, and HR, frankly, taking the driver's seat. And a lot of these technology changes that are hitting the business and having a perspective on, you know, one, how is this technology going to affect workforce planning? You know, what are we going to do, from an org design perspective to set our companies up to be able to adopt this technology and utilize it, and what does that mean for capabilities and head count, those are no longer just isolated to HR. And now, I think business leaders have a real keen interest in understanding, like, How do I look six months down the road and know what my org structure is going to look like, my reporting relationships, the type of skills I need, and so they're asking all the questions that HR traditionally asked of them, except, you know, they're coming to the table with a pretty, pretty strong point of view, because it's impacting their business.
Chris Rainey 6:51
What does this mean for the modern day HR leaders
Andy Biladeau 6:58
adaptability? You know, I think, incredibly adaptable in terms of, you don't know what's going to hit your desk day to day. You don't know what is going to be on the other side of the phone when you pick it up. And it could range anywhere from, hey, there's a new technology that's completely disrupted the business model. And you have to help us figure out how we go recruit for the skills or build the skills internally to respond to that, and I need you to hire faster. I need you to hire higher quality candidates. And by the way, they need to have skills that we haven't necessarily recruited for so you don't have talent pipelines for those. So I think that that's one space where HR, just the variety of challenges that are coming their way is going to be really overwhelming, and adaptability is going to be essential. But two, I think they're going to have to be subject matter experts on this technology. Now, I say this technology, I'm referring primarily to AI like they need to have a very mature, sophisticated perspective on what that's going to do, not only to the people side of the ledger, but to the business side of the ledger, and proactively come to the table with solutions about, hey, look, here's the business problem that you're describing. We have an alternative perspective on that in terms of what that means from a skills and capabilities lens, and be able to engage in that strategic conversation. And you know, we've talked about strategic HR for decades, yeah. And I think technology is, is kind of bringing it off the sidelines and putting it front and center and saying, like, you're going to have to come to the table with a really strong point of view and an educated opinion and recommendation about what the business should do as we think about implementing the the new technologies,
Chris Rainey 8:36
with the pace of change moving so quickly. I remember some of the stuff we're doing with AI. We spoke about this a couple of years ago that we thought were going to take 1020, years is already here, right? How do you and the team at SHRM or ensure that you stay ahead and help prepare the HR leaders and HR professionals for this ever evolving future of work. I don't even like, Don't even say the word future work, because the future is already here for now of work. Yeah, it doesn't sound as good, but for now of work,
Andy Biladeau 9:15
yeah. So I grew up my career in management consulting, and my primary focus when I started my career was in change management, and so led a lot of system implementation programs, and in the in those projects, it was very formulaic in terms of the approach to change management, right? It was, hey, go live is in six months, we got to get the company ready for go live. We're going to build the training out, we're going to build the training out, we're going to build the communication out, we're going to build a stakeholder engagement plan out. And it was all like, you could look at it on a calendar, and then it was like this checklist approach to change management. I'm sure you know, you've lived that life as well, and I think that it's really helpful, because you learn the fundamentals and the mechanics of change management, of what actually drives behavior change. And. So you get some experience with, like, these are the different tactics you can deploy. But that was in a world where, like, we could see the change coming in a lot of ways. I think, like that all just completely that script got flipped right when, when chat GPT got released for general availability to everybody. And, like, there was virtually no change management associated with the deployment of that tool. And so now, like there is no calendar for change management, right? There is no formulaic Change plan. And so how do you respond to that as a company at Sherm, it's really about building in change agility, and I think it's getting really crystal clear on our strategy. Who are the audiences that we serve, right? And what do we owe them, and what are we trying to drive in terms of behavior change or supporting them? So like getting hyper crisp on our audiences, I think step two is getting our company to be really mature when it comes to data and making data driven decisions. That doesn't always mean that, like the data is the answer, but it's your starting point to say, if this is the audience that SHRM serves, what data do we know about them in terms of what they want, what they don't know they want, and then how do we build product services, solutions to be able to support them in that and building those or capabilities and those muscles internally that actually allows you to be really dynamic and flexible. So I think instead of, you know me showing the company, hey, here's when you're going to get this email, here's when you're going to attend this lunch and learn, or this brown bag session or fireside chat, right? Like, all the things that we would have historically associated with change management that's happening dynamically week to week of like, what does the company need right now? What are we seeing in terms of the employee engagement data, where they have questions or they need answers? And it's a mindset. It's a complete mindset shift, right? So I'll give you an example. Last week, we internally released a generative AI tool, Sherm, GPT, internally to our employees. And what we did was we used it as an opportunity to drive that change agility, to say, look, this tool is not perfect, right? Be really honest out of the gate, like this is the worst this tool will be. But in order for it to get better, we need your feedback and input, and we're going to iteratively, continuously improve it over time. And I think going through that experience and actually having them like first hand, share feedback, see us respond in the roadmap, deliver that functionality that is the lived experience that's going to change behavior, versus just talking about these org capabilities at a high level in a meeting of we need you to be audience centric. We need you to be data driven decision makers, like actually allowing them to see what that looks like in practice, and modeling that and recognizing it. We're seeing a lot of traction there, and it's changing the culture, and it's changing the mindset within the organization. Yeah, part
Chris Rainey 12:40
part of that is, I like the idea of what you said the beginning around, sort of Agile transformation, yeah? Like, when people talk to me about, oh, I've got my three year plan, or my five year plan, I'm like, if you, if you know that far ahead, tell me something. Because I didn't, I didn't know you could, you could see that far
Andy Biladeau 12:58
he's a lot of courage to put a five year plan on the board. I mean, you kind
Chris Rainey 13:03
of have to put a direction. I get that but, I mean, but there needs to be, you know, it's like building a startup, like I started here, I go here, but the journey has been up and down, up and down, like, right, up, down, left, right and set later. It's not a, it's not a straight journey to where you need to be. So having an agile mindset to be able to adapt to those constantly opposing forces that are coming at every direction. You have to be able to have that. And then I think,
Andy Biladeau 13:28
like you and I are wired very similarly, I think on this, which is, you know, too much agility is chaos, right? Because you can't just be in a full reaction mode. And so I like to call it, or we call it internally structured agility, which is like, what it, what is the decision framework as things come our way that we're going to use to filter against like? Because we could do a lot of different things, right? We could, we could launch new products, services, right? And I think companies get into this trap of being overly agile, and what happens is then prioritization becomes a challenge, because you've got all these competing things that you're trying to do, and it just spreads you too thin. And so we talk a lot about internally of like, structured agility, where, hey, a lot of good ideas on the table, we got to radically prioritize them, so that we don't diffuse the energy of our resources and time and investments. And to your point, like you've got to have guiding principles that sit underneath where you're going. And use those to be that decision filter, versus, hey, anything that comes our way, we're going to consider it on a case by case basis, and you can start running in place pretty quickly.
Chris Rainey 14:28
Yeah, we talk about it internally. Is like having the foundation that, like the foundation is our principles. Within that framework, we can make decisions. Because even when you have a lot of uncertainty and change, like the pandemic, when we were like, you know, we've lost 100% of our revenue because we did face to mainly as face to face event revenue. Like, how do we digitize rather than, like, reacting to the news and our government and everything's going on, we kind of looked at our core principles and just ignore. All the chaos, because if you kind of get caught up in that, then you get lost, and then we made a decision based on that, and that's like, constantly keep us grounded and doesn't, because if you go too far off, then you kind of lose the essence of what made your business special in the first place. And yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Andy Biladeau 15:17
Also, like, when things start going well, you don't necessarily know what's working. But then when, conversely, like, things start to get on the rumble strips, you don't know what's broken and how to fix it, because you've made all these independent, reactive decisions. And I think that that's where you can get yourself into a tough spot. Is like, if you're chasing the headlines and that you're using that as, like, your planning mechanism, you know you're gonna really struggle, and you may see short term wins or short term gains. But to your point, longevity wise, like, if you don't have that foundation set up that you can always refer back to, of like, what makes you unique and special, you kind of become identityless.
Chris Rainey 15:56
Yeah? Like, we always one of, one of the things we always come back to is like, are we doing the basics to a higher standard consistently. I forget, like, forget about all of the new shiny objects, new tools and technologies. Like, let's start there. We can add, we can, we can, we can add on top, maybe from there, but like, at a very minimum, like, are we doing the basics to a higher standard consistently? Honestly, if most people just took that and focus on that every day within whatever industry they or whatever product they sell, that will take you a long way. I heard that. It's funny. I heard that at a conference when I was like, 17, yeah. 20 years later, I remember the guy. I remember the guy on stage, and he was like, if you're an entrepreneur here, I want you just all I want you to take away from my presentation is, are you ask yourself every day, am I doing the basics to a higher standard consistently? And 20 years later, it stuck with me. I literally was ingrained. I was like, wow. And I always say that to the team. And you look at everything a product, marketing, sales editing, you know, are we doing like we just look at it just, it's incredible, what you can achieve if you just do that,
Andy Biladeau 17:02
very underrated organizational capability is sustained focus. How good is your organization at sustaining focus on the priorities and guiding principles and I, yes, Tom is a very underrated capability.
Chris Rainey 17:16
Yeah, it's tough because it's so easy to so it's so easy to be pulled in different directions and react to the new trend and buzz words completely
Andy Biladeau 17:23
takes a lot of discipline. I think that's another one is just, do you have the discipline to stick to your guiding principles? You know, when things get a little bit tough, and I think it really challenges organizations and the environment that we're in right now, I think is going to only amplify if there's cracks in the dam. It's only going to amplify some of those because if you don't have that foundation built, you're going to be, you know, in constant reaction mode. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 17:47
The other thing my boss used to say to me all the time is, I used to run in her office when I was younger, of all these amazing ideas, and I thought I was going to play like I was like, so excited. No one was really wanting to impress my CEO at the time, and she was like, Chris, like, you know, she appreciated the enthusiasm. She was like, Chris, ask yourself this. And it was something along the lines of, like, is what you're doing, saying, thinking right now, getting you close to achieving the goal precisely. And if the answer is no, get back to work. And she said it pretty bluntly to me, so I don't about you. I was like, I was like, whoa. I was like, so now I asked myself, like it, and that even comes down to like, even if I'm negatively talking about negative, negative self talk, or like, yeah, am I sleep? I'm not sleeping well. Like, I take that to every facet of my life. Like, is what I'm doing, saying, thinking, getting me closer to my goal, if not, stop talking negatively yourself. Stop blaming the world, you know, like, you know, make that higher you can control. Yeah, exactly. That was really empowering at the time. I was like, Oh, I just got shot down. But then probably a couple of years later, I was like, that was really good advice I got in that meeting.
Andy Biladeau 18:57
Yeah, those leadership principles, yeah, they don't make sense until 10 or 15 years later, when you've been through the rep to realize that there was a lot of wisdom packed into some of those things you caught early in your career. And I think a question I have for you is, you know, you live in the Gen AI space? Like, yeah, you want to talk about an idea generation machine. Like, I think it's going to be really interesting how companies handle employees, being able to generate ideas really quickly and build business plans and, you know, build new concepts or innovative solutions to things, and the volume that's going to come through the organization of new ideas. Are you all seeing that? I mean, is that something that you Yeah,
Chris Rainey 19:37
I don't think there's a member of my team who's not using chat GPT or Atlas, in our case, because we have lucky to have our own AI copilot that we built, we're using it in the production team to help build the content for our events. So what would take, what would take, typically, months, to research and. And build a program you could do literally, in a matter of minutes, because you can draw from 1000s of pieces of research and content, and within seconds, saying, hey, draw this up into some key themes for the program. And actually, who are the companies that are doing incredible work in this space? And then within minutes, you've got another list of, like, here, all the companies that are doing amazing work in people analytics, or, you know, whatever, so things that would normally take months. You know, in our in our editing team, we can use AI to generate, you know, anything at this point, like, in terms of video, graphics, like, you can use AI to edit. So like, I feel like you got to create a sandbox. Yeah, don't go completely, completely free range. So we have a sandbox that they can play in. And then we just in our Monday calls, you know, we just have make space for people to share. Like, you know, like there was a manual task that I was that was taking the team a couple of hours recently that we figured out how to write a correct script that could do what was taking, probably, like eight, nine hours a week that just now does it in seconds, because someone was, like, internally on that
Andy Biladeau 21:16
is amazing. And it's super powerful to grab those efficiencies, and then, you know, you get this time give back. And I think out of some of that time, give back new ideas, I really like that concept you're talking about, of an idea sandbox, almost, of, yeah, hey, great. Generate idea generation space, but we've got to be really disciplined about what comes into the system. But again,
Chris Rainey 21:37
that's what we said before, though, is it getting Is it, is it aligned with first the question, right? Is it aligned with our principles, and is it getting us close to achieving our goal? If the answer is no, if the answer is no, then it could. It could be really cool and really exciting, but we can't get distracted. And I've literally had whole entire other business ideas that I've generated that I could put into action and make and generate revenue within weeks. And that's not no exaggerating. And I'm like, Oh, that's so tempting and so exciting. It's very tempting to run down that new rabbit hole, and Shane will reel me back in. My co founder, like, all right, Chris, you know, like, I'm like, oh, because that's kind of what part of my side of the business is. I'm product, and I get really excited, but you just can't, like people, respect HR leaders, because we've consistently put out two podcasts a week for eight years, right? One and a half 1000 episodes, yeah, like, you know, consistent, and we can't. And what do you see? It started in my bedroom, and now we're in the studio. And why is that? Because we're doing the basics to a higher standard consistently and constantly in reinvesting into the product, which is, in our sense, content and events. And in many ways, we share that a lot in common with show in that sense. So we're always like people. Why did you guys build a TV studio? And why do you, you know, put so much effort into putting together your events around the world in the way you do. I'm like, because we want to, it's the experience, and we're constantly taking feedback from our community and reinvesting it into to what we do. And there's loads of other things that we could have done, but I've, like, just doubled down on making this the best podcast I can and every if I can, constantly improve it as well. That's
Andy Biladeau 23:18
probably, you know, a key secret, active ingredient of the success you've had, right is just your ability to stay focused and disciplined and do really hard, incredibly it's really hard, and it's only going to get harder. Chris, I think that's where we consult with a lot of organizations. And I think HR, you were asking earlier about like, what does that future role look like, or what is HR leader? I think prioritization is going to be a real key, and also leadership development of do we have leaders within the organization who are able to be disciplined and stick to the strategy, the guiding principles, so that we don't diffuse our resources? Because, you know, we talk a lot about the labor shortage and we talk about access to skills and talent, and I think if you accept that premise that, yeah, you're going to have just fewer humans by numbers, the reality is, AI can do a lot, but where all these ideas gonna go if you don't have enough people to execute upon them, and if the system is already somewhat constrained by the resources you have, depending on how soon you think agents are going to get here, you know, how is that work going to get executed and done, and what is that going to do in terms of all the enabling functions? How are you going to market it? How are you going to, you know, do the finance associated with it, the technology associated with all these ideas that are coming through the org? I think HR is going to have to be a bit of a prioritization leader in terms of what is important to the organization, culturally and guiding, what are our guiding principles and what's our strategy? And that's where I say it is just totally, you know, wiped out the silos between all these different enabling functions, core operations and HR. It legal. It's all coming together in a in a very integrated way.
Chris Rainey 25:04
Yeah, with everything we just said, we can't be we can't forget that the impact now that what and what that's going to mean for employee experience, yeah, because we're fundamentally the way in which we work has changed more in the last three, four years than it has in the last 100 Right? Like I was laughing, we'll continue to yeah, like I was saying to my wife, when Robin's older, my daughter and your kids are older, they made laugh at the idea that you had to go to an office to do your work. So wait a minute. Daddy used to go five days a week into this place to open a laptop and do work that you could have done in the house. Like, why did you why did people do that? Dad, like, you know, the idea
Andy Biladeau 25:48
of taking your briefcase, right? Yeah, yellow legal pad that you're working off of, yeah, they're gonna
Chris Rainey 25:53
be like, they're gonna be so confused, right? And I can only imagine where we'll be when they're older in terms of how and where, how and well, where work gets done. So what do you think this means for employee experience? So
Andy Biladeau 26:05
I think that agility piece, like, you know, I think that's critical, right? You've gotta, you gotta build agility into your organization, from a mindset perspective. But I also think it's going to be, you know, managing workload for employees, where AI will absolutely unlock efficiencies for people, right? And we talk a lot about, you know, removing the administrative work and creating more the more percentage of your time that you're going to spend on things that you like doing, that engage you, that actually tap into the skills you uniquely have or possess. But I think then the question becomes, is, how, how do you direct those resources so that you are giving them a reasonable workload that's achievable without burning them out. And I think that you're going to see burnout start. Ironically, you're going to start to see burnout numbers creep up
Chris Rainey 26:49
because people like instead of replacing that time, those saved hours into spending more time with your people, your customers, they're adding more work, right? No, no. That's no. That's we kind of defied the point, like we wanted, AI, yeah, yeah. Like, no, we want to. We've created these, sort of, what's the word, sort of the rise of the super worker. I've kind of seen, yeah, people put that out there. I think Josh Burson put that out there, and it's like, great, but you have to be intentional about now what we're doing and how we're leveraging that, like extra time. Because if I've saved eight hours, like I said on that process, what am I doing with that saved eight hours, if I'm just jumping back into some more manual work side, defies the point of that, right as well. So that's gonna and I think most companies this is a brand new we've never had this before, yeah. So I think people are still figuring that bit out,
Andy Biladeau 27:48
is that, like, with great power comes great responsibility, right? And so like, if you can give your employees tools that allow them to do more faster, you got to be really careful that if you stack too many priorities and too many initiatives on them. And I think one thing that's really interesting that we really try to stay true to at SHRM, which is always being conscientious of, in a lot of ways, the customer experience is really a reflection of the internal operations of an organization 100% right? And I think that that's pretty self evident. And so if you think about a world where employees have a lot of competing priorities, or they have a lot of initiatives they're trying to pursue at once. How is that going to come through to the customer, both from a marketing perspective and from an experience perspective. And when you talked earlier about what's the nature of transformation look like today and what's it going to look like tomorrow, I think a lot of it is going to be companies who are able to figure out this balance between maximizing the power of integrating their functions and teams using technology to create a better customer experience, whatever your audience or customer is, versus those who are going to overwhelm their internal employees and functions, and that's going to come through in, you know, potentially a chaotic experience on the other side for customers. Yeah, and so I think that that is you'll start to see it show up in customer experience numbers first, and then when you trace it backward, it's really the internal complexity that we've created within these companies by giving these tools to employees without enough structured agility to kind of keep them between the lines.
Chris Rainey 29:17
Do you it's bit of a bit of a strange question, but maybe, do you feel a responsibility? You know, given Sherm is the world's largest association for HR professionals, yeah, kind of carrying that, right? That's that shared responsibility.
Andy Biladeau 29:37
Yeah, we talk about it a lot, right? Is the future of the profession where it's going what are the skills that are needed today versus what are the skills that are going to be required tomorrow? And I think in a lot of ways, you see the services that we provide or to our members, giving them access to it's not so much necessarily. How do you use AI better as an HR professional, but how do you get smart on AI so that you can enable. Able to business, and how do you lead the charge in terms of implementing AI within your organization and doing it in a structured, intelligently designed way? So I was telling you about SHRM GPT that we launched internally. So I lead our technology function at SHRM. I worked day in and day out with our CHRO on the design, development and deployment of that tool, because the it's all people implications in terms of adoption, usage, employee experience you hit on, right? And so, you know, his ability to be really smart on the technology, think through the people implications of that, and then I can come to the table with sort of these technology impacts that I foresee and our team is looking down the road at but I didn't even think of him as working in HR, right? He's just a business leader that we're thinking about the impact on the organization, yeah, and I think that that's really where it's going to go. And so as Sherm, how do we scale that for our members? How do we make the HR professionals and HR leaders in organizations really feel like they are embedded within the business? Yeah?
Chris Rainey 31:02
Well, you have the perfect opportunity to role model that internally, like you said, and test that with a team, get everyone's feedback, and then roll that out. What are some of the I mean, of course, AI, but what some of the other things that you're hearing from customers and showing members as some of the key priorities or challenges that they're facing.
Andy Biladeau 31:23
Well, obviously, you know, there's a lot of compliance questions coming in, right? We've had executive orders that have kind of changed the nature of some of the historical ways that we've operated, and so that's certainly an area that we're staying really focused on. I think, again, to your point about how you operate internally is reflected in the customer experience. For us, we're getting more real time in terms of providing member only webinars, providing up to date resources, day in, day out, content that we're generating, research that we're doing, moving it much closer to real time, right? So we do have 340,000 members around the world, and how are we harvesting all of the information they're telling us about their experience, translating that really rapidly into research and thought leadership and content so that we can get out into the market? Here's what's going on in the front lines of the profession. Here's our perspective on it. Here's what you can do about it, sharing those case studies, sharing those actual lived experiences of those individuals, whether that be in again, content research webinars, because that is the pulse of HR, right? I mean, and we have a perspective on where the profession is going, but you also have to live in like we were talking about earlier. You can't get too far ahead of yourself. People need help today, right now, and so we've changed our operating model to operate in a much more real time, agile fashion, and so you'll continue to see that over time. And the Wisdom of Crowds is really powerful, right? And again, like you get 340,000 perspectives on the table, and you run the analysis on that data, you start to see trends in terms of where the direction of the profession is headed. And yeah, it's, it's a fun time to be in this, in this space,
Chris Rainey 33:02
yeah? No, no, definitely. That's why I always say it's tough, right? You know, like, but there's never a better time I feel like to be in this space is, it's a really exciting time, and a time where HR is really leading the charge, not in HR, but in the business. Yeah, you know, there is no HR. Like, you know, like, I look at HR is the business and the business is HR, right? There is one in the same. They're one in the same. I'm tired of people talking about as a separate if, if the pandemic didn't show you that nothing will Right? Like, everyone looked at HR and was like, what do we do? You know, during that and that's continued, right with all of the all of the other disruption and change that we've been we've been facing HR has truly been elevated. I don't think it. I think it already was there, but I feel like it kind of China spotlight more more than ever. And I love the fact that that you've recognized that show, and both internally and externally, you become more agile, to be more real time in how you're helping your members, because you can't give them a research or an event two months later, right? And
Andy Biladeau 34:14
then you probably remember, like I do, the old model of, like, once a year a company would release their 50 page white paper too late. Yeah, you got your highlighter and you're making notes in the margin and that, again, you were talking about our kids perception of our work today. I mean, I kind of think back even to my own experiences five years ago, and that was how I consumed information and how I made decisions as an HR leader, was I print out the report and be manually going through it and thinking through the implications. And now we're as soon as that published, that report, you know, is published, it's obsolete to some extent, and the half life on it is accelerated. And so you just, if that's the old model of research and thought leadership, it's just not sustainable or applicable or relevant in today's modern world. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 34:59
to. Yeah, listen before, before I let you go. What would be your parting advice for HR leaders listening? And also, where can they connect with you if they want to reach out and say hi? And obviously, kind of they, I don't really to tell them where to go for Sham, because they already know on that side,
Andy Biladeau 35:18
yeah, when it comes to the future of the profession, this is our moment, right? I mean, this is the next three to five years will be the most important in the history of the profession. And so I think, you know, the spotlight is on, and all the information and resources and training, everything you need is, is there and available for you. And it's, it's going to require a mindset of leading through adaptability and show demonstrating that to the organization that you lead and remembering that you own or you control, so many of the levers that have an impact in terms of recruit the people you bring into the organization, how you develop people, how you reward people, how you promote people, how you engage in leadership development, all of those are within our control. And I think those are really, really powerful tools to shape the modern organization and future proof your companies. And so when you think about deciphering what you control versus what you don't, you're in a position of strength and tremendous opportunity that you control a lot of the pieces that will set your organization up for success.
Chris Rainey 36:21
I love that. Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on the show, and I wish you all the best until next week. Thanks a lot. Chris,
Unknown Speaker 36:29
thanks so much. I appreciate it. Love the work you're doing. Thank you.
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Andy Biladeau, Chief Transformation Officer at SHRM.