How to Build Trust with Employees in Times of Chaos
Constant tech shifts and viral noise are quietly exhausting your workforce and killing critical thinking.
In the latest HR Leaders Podcast episode, I spoke with Laura Maffucci , Head of HR at G-P. She explains why HR cannot rely on corporate spin, unvetted AI add-ons, or forced office returns during times of rapid change.
Most organizations do not lack technology tools. They lack transparent communication, psychological safety, and a clear process for building learning agility. And even when tools are enabled, a harder question remains:Are you actually solving an operational problem, or just adding tool overload?
5 things you’ll learn from this episode:
The unconventional quarterly award designed to celebrate smart operational failures
The quiet credibility trap behind performative return-to-office mandates
The hidden data flaw causing 70–80% of enterprise AI bots to give bad advice
The three core human traits rendering static technical skills obsolete
A simple peer-led initiative driving AI adoption far better than formal training
🧠 Your learning platform proves who finished. Can it prove who is ready to perform?
Most training takes weeks to build, gives everyone the same content and stops at completion. By the time it launches, the business may have already moved on.
Fluide starts with the outcome, adapts learning to each person and uses realistic practice to show who is improving, who needs reinforcement and who is ready to perform.
Learn how Fluide turns a skill gap into live adaptive learning today and see performance move by Friday
[01:00:00:10 - 01:00:07:24]
Laura, welcome to the show. How are you doing? Good, Chris. Thank you for having me. I'm doing well. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. What's, do you have any,
[01:00:09:03 - 01:00:35:02]
I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions because I feel like it should be a habit, but do you have any New Year goals and plans, let's say? New Year goals and plans. I try to think of like, what do I want the theme of the year to be? And I would just like- Oh, themes a good way, look at it. Yeah, or like, I know some people do a word, but I like to think of more like a theme, like I want to keep things as peaceful as possible. And I feel like that's a very lofty goal. That's a great one.
[01:00:36:13 - 01:00:55:20]
Not so sure that's realistic lately, but I just want to keep my sphere peaceful. Yeah. What would you say, someone asked me this recently and it kind of got me thinking for a while. What would you say gives you energy and reverse what drains you?
[01:00:57:03 - 01:01:15:12]
Probably the same thing. So this is going to sound strange. Keep the interaction with people. So when I'm working with my team, no matter how chaotic and crazy and busy it gets, no matter what we're working on, there's such a joy to work with. And that really brings me energy in working with them.
[01:01:16:18 - 01:01:17:22]
But at the same time,
[01:01:19:14 - 01:03:42:06]
I guess maybe I'm not going to, I guess I won't go with that. There's certain times that people on the flip side can be very draining. By the way, you should go with that. Everyone listening gets it. And it's not about-- It's people, but it's awesome. Of course, of course. It's people can be drained, but also right now, I think it's just the chaos of the world and that you can't tell what's real and what's not real anymore. I've been thinking about that a lot lately with AI. And I think we underestimate how exhausting it is for people mentally and emotionally to every time you see something, have to be unsure what's real. It's crazy, yeah. It's got to the point now where you're right. And platforms are trying to catch up where they have these sort of AI disclaimers and stuff, but it doesn't matter. No one looks at it. It doesn't matter. It's just like, you see, and the problem is with the speed of social media, it flies virally all over the world. Misinformation. No critical thinking. People just assume, because it validates their belief about something and then it just goes and you just don't know. Yeah, you brought up a really important word, which I've been thinking a lot about as well, which is how AI is diminishing critical thinking. Oh yeah. Like, when my daughter grows up, the idea of sitting down with a blank piece of paper and having to really thoughtfully assess and the creativity involved, the critical thinking, I really worry about that because now people are just putting an input into a system and most of the time, the output is a reflection of their own thoughts because it's been trained on their own content, thoughts and perspective. So it removes, like, I love chatting to people that I don't agree with. I love consuming content that challenges my thinking, but none of these systems-- No, they don't. I built that one. Yeah, that's a great idea. You're doing great. They just validate right back at you and I also feel like they're kind of getting dumber. Like, I feel like-- I agree. The output lately,
[01:03:43:06 - 01:04:00:20]
I actually have gotten in a couple fights with Chet GPT in the past month or so because I'm like, what are you even talking about? What are you doing? That's wrong. I just fundamentally know it's wrong. And I'm like, okay, what does my life come to? I'm fighting with a machine. I need to step away. I need to go to a grass. This isn't good.
[01:04:01:24 - 01:05:07:18]
One of my favorite prompts at the moment, or part of my prompts, is I end every prompt by asking a challenging question around what haven't I asked? Yes. That I should have and what are the opposing views, right? Like I intentionally do that and it just gives me the best responses. Yes. And things that I literally, I thought, oh wow, I didn't think about it. Oh, what an incredible way of, I guess, another way. You know, like, so you can't just feed in the input output. Otherwise you're just gonna, this is a mirror. It's an AI. And you have to tell it exactly. Like, please tell me what I'm missing. Please tell me, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, you should do that with every single, every single time you use it. Yeah, but I just wrote 90% of people just don't. No, because that's not what they want. Yeah, everyone likes to sound their own voice. I mean, and we know, well, they don't, but they like the sound of, you know, being right. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Before we go any further, tell everyone a little bit about your role
[01:05:08:22 - 01:06:08:17]
and maybe a bit about the organization for people that aren't aware of it. Sure. So I am the head of HR for Globalization Partners, GP, and I manage the, and lead the team that is responsible for our internal workforce because we are in one of our products as an employer record product. So we help companies hire anywhere around the globe. And so that means on paper, the employees hired for our customers are technically on paper, and they're not on paper, but they're on paper for our employees for all legal, by all legal intents and purposes. So there are certain things that my group is responsible for that does touch those employees as well, like benefits, we're responsible for benefits for not just the 1200 internal employees, but also the, I wanna say almost 13,000 EOR professionals around the globe. Oh, wow. Yeah, so, and it's kind of cool because usually in HR, you're not nowhere near generating function.
[01:06:09:21 - 01:07:01:15]
And it's kind of cool to be working, leading an HR team that has some revenue generating responsibilities and opportunities there. That's been really unique and also helping because our other product is Jia, which is a purpose built AI for global compliance and all things global employment. And as an HR team, we're the customer, and we also have knowledge that goes through that. So we get to help in build the product and help marketing with, what do HR professionals wanna see and how can you reach them better and what's gonna resonate with them. So it's a very unique HR experience, getting to be touching so much in the business as well as the HR stuff. Yes, it's a very unique role, right? Yeah, yeah.
[01:07:03:08 - 01:07:18:13]
Is that one of the things that attracted you? Is that one? Yeah, I mean, when I joined GP in 2021, I joined as the Senior Director of Global Total Rewards in HRIS, which is how I came up. I came up in the comp in HRIS total rewards space.
[01:07:19:18 - 01:07:38:23]
And I wanna say there was maybe 10 people on the HR department at that point. It was super small and we only have 400 something employees. So I was right away involved in the benefits because that fell into that sphere. And that was definitely one of the things that I thought, okay, that'll be an interesting challenge. That'll be unique.
[01:07:40:02 - 01:08:07:05]
And the other thing that drew me to it is I knew the build, I'm a builder. And I tend to get bored city-state. I either need to rip something apart and rebuild it or build it or constantly be transforming something or I get bored. So that is what drew me to it as well, as I knew there was a ton of growth and a ton of building to do as well. I think me and you definitely shared that in common. I think that's kind of why I chose, I suppose an extreme version of that, which is entrepreneurship, which is just a never ending.
[01:08:08:13 - 01:08:21:23]
Never ending, yeah. Never gonna get bored. Yeah, like I left my last job after 10 years because I felt like I stopped growing and entrepreneurship is the opposite. There's, you can never ever reach a level of mastery.
[01:08:23:01 - 01:08:56:08]
Exactly. And I think that's what's exciting, but also it's the most is stressful and (Laughs) I know it also comes along with it, but it is never a boring day. What's really top of mind for you right now? Like last year was kind of a whirlwind, right? The year before we were at some of the similar conferences, everyone was talking about AI. Last year, all of a sudden now, companies are now embedding AI. Obviously you've launched your own agent as well. But not saying we have to talk about AI, what's really top of mind for you right now? What are you most excited about? Or even maybe concerned.
[01:08:57:09 - 01:08:59:00]
About? Yeah, exactly.
[01:09:00:04 - 01:09:47:16]
I'm super excited to now, I think last year, everyone said, okay, everybody has to go out and use AI. And people are experimenting and trying all these things and learning how to use it. And I think as people try things, I think they can start to build it into their regular daily work in a more meaningful way, in a more confident way, in ways that make sense without so much fervor around it, hopefully, and without so much confusion and uncertainty. And they can feel a little more stable that way. So I'm really excited to see what we can do now that the hype is maybe settling down and the reality is sort of setting in. I think that's gonna be really interesting to see where it all goes and where it all lands and what we can do with that.
[01:09:48:22 - 01:10:10:03]
I think I'm just concerned. And this was my same concern last year, but it's grown. And again, it goes to the chaos in the world. I don't think anyone is okay. And there's so much going on out there and everyone's going to work and we're doing our jobs and everyone's doing the things and they're dealing with all of the things that life, excuse me, that life is throwing at them.
[01:10:11:12 - 01:11:40:14]
Everything is so expensive. They're juggling their families, they're juggling. They might be taking care of aging parents and children, plus keeping up with all of the things out in the world that's happening. And we're all just still doing it and acting like everything should be okay. And I think everyone is a little off balance and a little off kilter and nothing feels okay. And I worry about people. And I think it's really important that while we can't provide certainty, there is no such thing really as certainty. You can be transparent and authentic and human as an organization in how you're approaching your people and how you're working with your people. And if you can combine all of those things so that people at least do feel like they know what's going on in their job, they know what they're expected of, is expected of them. They know what they're supposed to be doing. They know what the goals for the company are. They know what the company's challenges are. They know what the achievements are. Just making sure that there's real communication, real transparency so that there's something tangible that people can wrap their minds around to try to function and get through day to day. Yeah, I completely agree with you. What do you think is gonna be the consequence if we don't do what you just described?
[01:11:43:16 - 01:11:48:11]
Well, I think we're in, I think no matter what, we're in for a massive mental health crisis
[01:11:49:11 - 01:12:49:23]
in this country. It's already there. I just don't think anyone's acknowledging that it's there, but I think it's only going to get worse. I think that you're gonna start to see people leave the workforce if they can find a way to support themselves by leaving corporate. There's a huge backlash against the corporate capitalism, all that backlash, especially the younger generations as they come up, they just expect different things. They want different things. And you know what? It's a lot healthier. I mean, some of it's a little too far gone, but some of it, they want to actually live their life and have a job that supports them to live their life and not the other way around. And I think we'll see a backlash with that and we will see good, talented people find other ways of making a living and we'll lose really good talent. Yeah, it's interesting when you reflect back on our careers, right? And we probably both came up in the era where you just accepted that that was just part of work.
[01:12:51:04 - 01:13:00:08]
And we shouldn't have, right? But it was just, this is what it is. And the new generation coming through are like, no,
[01:13:01:09 - 01:13:04:15]
I'm not gonna work for a company that doesn't prioritize my wellbeing.
[01:13:06:05 - 01:13:41:24]
I'm not gonna work for a company that I don't see a clear progression and that's not gonna invest in my development. And they're not gonna wait five years to do that. They want that from day one. And if they walk in the door, after you promising them the dream, like we do, like many companies do, I've been part of a view, I've joined, they'd be like, wait a minute, this is not what I was-- This is not what you said. Yeah, they will leave and they will go somewhere else. Or they will join the gig economy like you described and they'll do the wrong thing. They will.
[01:13:44:20 - 01:16:01:07]
They've also, I think the return to office mandates. And I know just even just because we have so many people's globally, there's definitely different perspectives on, there are many, many, many people, most people probably who prefer to work remote at least most of the time, if not all of the time. There are some cultures and countries where they don't want to do that and they do prefer having a space to go to. But we went through the pandemic, we saw that we can do our job without being in person in an office and the companies that are forcing people back into an office who are then just sitting in an office on Zoom. I know. It's just that people are just like, but you can't trick people into thinking that you're there for collaboration. Stop treating people like they're stupid, they're not. They know. Especially when they've been doing it already, especially when they're-- They've been doing it. Oh, it's the worst, yeah. And again, okay, no one wants the commercial real estate market to tank, but at the same time, we can't be making people go into the office just to keep back going, which is what it seems like. It is right. It's like, hey, we've got a five-year lease, everyone come in. Everyone come in, what are we gonna do? We have this space, you need to use it. Or it's an older generation that doesn't trust people to get their jobs done if they're not watching them. So there's just so many, we're at such a tipping point. Everything is changing so much and the old is still so prevalent in what they're able to control and the new and the young are just starting to push through. And we haven't seen it shift yet. I think we're at that shift, like that extinction burst. And it's a very unsettling time to be trying to do anything. So that's why I think that people just, they need support. They need authenticity and to be able to trust something. Yeah, yeah, I love it. And we've seen a lot of research last year, right? It blew my mind at the time, but a few months later, I was like, that makes complete sense where there was a lot of data around how employees look towards their organizations
[01:16:02:15 - 01:16:13:21]
more than their own government for guidance and support. And I thought, wow, like that's the level of responsibility, even in mind it was small business.
[01:16:15:15 - 01:17:02:06]
It's so true. It's a huge responsibility. And that data was just like really took me back that people would more likely trust their own organization and leader than their own government. No one trusts the government anymore, you know? And especially in the US where you're getting your healthcare and your benefits covered, your life insurance, your retirement, your 401k retirement, it's tied to your employer. It's not tied to the government. So it's definitely, it's a huge responsibility. Yeah, how do you talk about this with your team? And if you don't want me to ask you, what are some of the practical things that you are doing or you have planned this year to combat this?
[01:17:03:09 - 01:17:19:20]
So one thing I've always tried to stress with my team and the type of people I have on my team is where I think we are a little bit of an atypical HR department in that we do show up very authentically and we don't,
[01:17:21:12 - 01:18:22:04]
I think sometimes there's the expectation of, you know, the company line, so to speak, even if you think something, you know, might not be right or it doesn't make sense. And it's not that we don't uphold our responsibility to the organization, of course we do, but if there is something, if there's an ask or there's a policy or if there's a something that we agree like, yeah, that doesn't make sense, the way we coach people isn't to try to tell them that it does make sense, we agree with them. It doesn't make sense, but this is where you work. And this is what we're working with. So here's the ways to handle that. We're very real in how we try to coach people, coach leaders on how to deal with these things. And I just think that's really, really important. And it allows us to be way more effective with a very small team because we're trusted and we can cut right to the chase and we can get right to the issue and we can deal with things and resolve things quickly. Yeah.
[01:18:23:04 - 01:18:25:22]
So I think that that really, really helps.
[01:18:28:01 - 01:18:38:22]
One thing that I always try to do and protect as we look at benefits every year is make sure that everything around the mental health benefits that we offer is really strong.
[01:18:40:07 - 01:18:44:01]
And wherever we can put support and resources out there for people, we do.
[01:18:45:12 - 01:20:39:06]
And of course, we try to foster connection whenever we can because we are fully remote. Whether that's certain niche channels on Slack or when there are opportunities to get together in person, making sure that we take advantage of that and do help people to get together in person. We don't travel as expensive, so we don't do a lot of big gatherings. But we also have programs that do reimburse for a reasonable amount of expenses once a quarter if you want to get together with the people who you work with, who are in your area and a drivable distance to get together. So we try to foster connection that way. And then like I was talking about before, just doing everything I can to encourage the leadership and the organization to communicate transparently. Yeah. It doesn't mean the indiscriminate sharing of all information. Sure. But you should be transparent and give people credit for being smart and don't try to spend something or stay away from toxic positivity, all that sort of thing. Yeah. That's the quickest way to lose trust. It takes a long time to build trust, but you can lose it in an instant by doing the opposite of what you're describing, where at the moment you're being transparent and saying, hey, this is what we can do, but just quite frankly, this is what we can't. Exactly. I prefer that because a lot of times, especially something worse, for example, when people do surveys and they don't even get a response back sometimes. But even if they do, it's like, OK, be more transparent. These are the things we hear you. This is what we're going to do. This is what we're not going to do. And this is why we can't. And this is the reason people appreciate that.
[01:20:40:13 - 01:21:48:12]
Yeah, they just want to. And they know when you're giving them a real answer. And that's the success in what we're finding and approaching people that way. And what I mean about just being like this, this is where you work or this is the situation, they just want to hear the truth. Even if they don't like it, then they can just deal with it. Yeah. And then you can have a conversation about it. It doesn't end up being this sort of undertone of frustration or the bickering around the office or something or how many times have you been in exit interviews and someone's mentioned something where you're like, wow, we could have just had a conversation about that. Why didn't you let someone know? And we could have felt, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's not their fault. It's ours because we didn't because we didn't create a space that they felt that they could do that because we had never been transparent. I've lost people like that in the past. And then I've realized it's on me. I hadn't created that space. I thought I did. I thought I was open. I thought that we're doing that. And I'm like, wow, I could have like, it just, it was painful.
[01:21:49:15 - 01:21:52:13]
You learn a lot during those moments.
[01:21:54:05 - 01:22:10:09]
Why do you think the companies still are afraid to be vulnerable, even though we understand now the power, I see vulnerability now as a leader, as a superpower, as a, as when my younger career, I felt it was, it was, it was a weakness.
[01:22:11:23 - 01:25:52:06]
I agree with you. Um, if fear, I think it's all fear. I think, and again, I think it goes to, there's still, I think it's generational. There's still a tug there where the older generations are still mostly in the more powerful positions and they remember very different times and it is scary and it's scary to approach things and lead things in a different way. And, um, so I do think some of it's a lot of it is fear. Yeah. Now I get it. I mean, if I look at the leaders that my first leaders, you, you would never be, but they would never be vulnerable or admit that they don't know something. Cause the idea was that you're the leader. So you're expected to have the, all the answers. Right. And I, when I first started HR leaders, that's how I led it. The business didn't go so well. As you can imagine. And the moment I realized asking for help, or first of all, most I'm hiring these individuals because they're incredible, what they do. So why would I not? Why would you stop? Why would you try to? So I'm basically becoming the bottleneck in my own business and then getting frustrated by, by, by the lack of progress. And then, and then secondly, it builds such a great level of trust and the individual becomes so motivated. You don't need to tell them to do things. They're excited to do it. They're empowered. They're empowering them to take the lead, right? As well. And I'm like, wow. And then when they're not feeling great or they're having a challenge that they will come speak to you. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's, it's that psychological safety. I can remember when I first joined here, I had, um, there's someone who works on my team who has worked for me for the past, probably almost 10 years at this point, I take her with me everywhere I go. She's just, she's really good. And, um, I, she was, I think she was my first hire. And so I still was doing the whole, it was benefits, HRIS and comp, and I was building out a comp structure and doing all these things. And then the VP who had hired me left and I kind of had to step into an internal, um, and got really pulled off of things and we were rolling out some stuff for a comp cycle and she was fully capable of doing it. And I was so caught up. There was time she came to me with a question and instead of just answering her question, I probably would have dove in and maybe done a little of it for her or like done a little bit more of it than I needed to do, but I didn't have time to do that. And I was really nervous about it at first, but the reason I felt okay to do it and let her, and she did it and it was fine. I knew based on the person I was reporting to at that point, who was the CFO and had, um, you know, a little bit of a relationship at that point with the CEO, I knew that if something did go wrong, it wasn't going to be the end of the world and that I could go to him and I could be like, listen, this got screwed up. I'm really sorry. This is how we're fixing it. And it won't happen again. And it would be fine. So I had the psychological safety to just let go and let her do her thing and it worked out fine. And that is ultimately better for her because then she, she didn't have me over interfering. And if you've got to create that psychological safety for people to allow them to let go. And then it just has this trickle effect where everyone feels like safe in rising up, trying new things. You know, one thing we always tell our team, um, my leaders and I, for the HR team is there's literally nothing we can't fix. Yeah.
[01:25:53:18 - 01:27:08:21]
You know, and as long as you're using, you know, obviously we're not telling you go out there and do something stupid or don't do critical thinking or don't, but as long as we know that you're, and also things change really fast, the organization was really fast. So you could make a decision based on the information you have one minute and 20 minutes later, it's the wrong decision because something changed, but you didn't know it. You will never be penalized if that happens. As long as you're making the best decision and going with the best information that you have at that time, you're not, you're not going to get penalized for that. And so you've got to make people feel like it's, you're going to kill innovation. You're going to kill productivity. If people are paralyzed and afraid of making a mistake or something going wrong. Yeah. Yeah. It's something that you need to build over time though. Right. Because like we always talk about the concept here of like failing forward, fail forward. Exactly. Right. Yep. Fail forward. And, um, but, but, but many people we hire, I've come from organizations where that's so alien to the point where when they come in my office and say, Chris, you know, I have this challenge. What do I do? This is, and I'm like, what do you think we should do? They're like, what?
[01:27:10:02 - 01:29:58:10]
And I'm like, what would you do? What would you do? That's why you're here. Yeah. Like, what would you do? Right. And they're like, uh, this, and I'm like, cool. Go do it. And they're like, I'm finally getting to do something that I've wanted to do forever. Yeah. Which is implement a, um, a reward for risk, which is basically an award for failure. Yeah. Oh, I love it. It's a quarterly award where if you took a very smart risk to try something, do something and it didn't work out, you failed a hundred percent, but you learned from it and you can use that learning going forward. We're going to start doing an award for that within the company to really try to push that innovation. I've wanted to do that everywhere. I've worked for probably, I don't know, 10 years. So I'm very excited about that. It works. So one of my favorite ever interviews I've ever done was with the CEO and C.H. Ror. And actually that's another point, the chief learning officer of Novartis. And they talk a lot about their, uh, building a culture of curiosity. Yes. Curiosity. Right. And, but think about it, right. Building a culture of curiosity when lives are at stake, they're in pharma. Yeah, they are saving lives. All right. And the mark, there is no margin for error. So how do you create psychological safety and build that culture of curiosity? And they do exactly what you said. I don't remember. I, they have a really good name for it. And I kind of remember they have like an award every year of sort of like, and it's not the biggest failure. It's like the biggest, almost success, right? Like, like, like, like, like, yeah, exactly. Right. As well. And, and, and it's, it's equally rewarded as the biggest successes that they had in there, and it means that people, and they built that now in, and, and as part of the DNA of the culture, when we talk about what does culture mean? Like at Novartis, everyone will talk about we have a culture of curiosity here at Novartis, and this is what that means. Curiosity, that word. And it's so important because when you think about it, you can't do anything without curiosity, everything from what you were talking about, liking to hear contradictory views, like you, you can't be open to that unless you're curious. You really can't collaborate well, unless you're curious. That lack of curiosity will keep you just stuck in your own little way. And that's not a productive way of being curious. It is so, so, so important. I actually make time for it. Yeah. I scared you too. Like, because Shane and I have, my co-founder too, you know, he's managing operations, finance, production, all the things that, you know, for me, are, are, that's tough to take away my energy, actually, with all my energy.
[01:29:59:12 - 01:30:35:12]
And for me, I'm out there in, you know, blue sky thinking, deep ocean, moon shots, taking swings and just remaining curious because you need both to remain competitive, like we're a, we were a digital media, we're an, we're an events business that turned into a digital media and events business that now have launched, you know, an AI Atlas, our AI native adaptive learning platform. That's now being used by, you know, companies like Netflix and HelloFresh and Hyundai, like, like we did events.
[01:30:36:20 - 01:31:02:05]
And three years later, we're upskilling and reskilling thousands of leaders and across some of the world's best organizations. And it was through remaining curious, curious and trying things. And people were like, guys, what the hell are you doing building agents and building AI coaches? And I was like, but why not? Why not? So people are like, why? And I'm like, why not?
[01:31:03:17 - 01:31:12:15]
Exactly. Yeah. And they're like, but you don't know how to do that. I'm like, guess what? There's someone. Yes, there's an incredible. Someone does. I'll hire them. Yeah. I'll hire them.
[01:31:13:22 - 01:31:24:11]
How do you look at, in terms of skills as well, like when you think about talent quality and skills in, in 2026, how are you, how are you looking at that now?
[01:31:25:24 - 01:32:07:24]
You know, it's interesting. People think that everyone says, oh, you need these people who have such technical skill, they have to have technical skill because of the world of AI. And I do not think you need to have technical skill because of the world of AI. You need to be adaptable. You need to be learning agile. Yes, you need to be curious. And, you know, it's all of those soft skills, those, those non tangible things are so much more important than any one specific skill because everything is changing so fast. The minute you learn something, the next thing is coming out. And you've got to relearn or you've got to learn something completely new. So I think that that learning agility, that curiosity, that adaptability, all of that is so much more important than any one specific technical skill right now.
[01:32:09:06 - 01:32:16:06]
It's kind of like the reverse, right? People, I look at AI now is it can do all of the technical stuff.
[01:32:17:08 - 01:33:19:02]
You can build a net by just talking to AI and it will do all of the coding, right? So what becomes important then? All the things we just discussed, creativity. I mean, I suppose you have to be tech savvy if you're someone who like gets scared to even turn on your computer or still has a flip phone, like that sort of thing. There are a lot of people out there that are like completely not tech literally whatsoever. But I think that it's it's not about the technical skills. It's about it's about the things that allow you to dive in and learn something new. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a good point of view on that point then, like in terms of the sort of AI literacy piece, how are you approaching that right now? You know, if a lot last year everyone was on this sort of we need to get up to go or wear entire workforce and then get one AI literacy. What's been your approach? You know, what's what what hasn't what have you learned? You know, we have I love what we're doing and it's in it's my credit. Our chief technology officer,
[01:33:20:06 - 01:35:58:18]
Leila, for really spearheading it when you know that that surprise AI mandate comes out and everyone's like, oh, whoa, what does that mean? I have to use my job. And we already had an AI council, which was myself for some people on her team, a couple of people in legal and some people from our function because because we're a tech company and we're building an product, we're lucky enough to have some really great experts in house to, you know, design a policy for use and that that whole thing around chat, TPT and make sure that we had that and we were reviewing it every month because things change so quickly. We you know, we want to keep up with it. So we had that and that that very quickly shifted into being about enabling the organization. So we immediately started enablement things, you know, set up a process for people to get new AI tools approved because you've got to worry about security. You can't you can tell people go out there and find tools, but then you don't want a bunch of tools that aren't secure and people are putting your company data into. So we immediately set up a process for people to get those tools approved. We set up a select channel for people to share their ideas and they're sharing everything from stuff that they are doing for work to, oh, I was going to wedding this weekend and I needed to know what color nail polish to wear with this dress. So I uploaded a picture and it, you know, it told me what color nail polish to you know, everything is going in there. And we have an AI awesomeness awards every month and people can submit themselves or someone else. I love that. And submit how they've been using AI and what they're learning. And we go through and we select winners. So we're doing a lot around that. We do we do lunch and learn sessions where people from the AI team will come and like teach people how to prompt because the prompting we we we brought on an enterprise wide AI because we didn't people putting stuff out into chat GPT. We wanted to know that our data wasn't being used anywhere and people didn't like it at first. They kept saying, you know, chat GPT is better. And a lot of it was prompting issues. So we did a lot around teaching people how to prompt. So we've done a ton around that that enablement. And I think it's really important too, because it is so prevalent everywhere that the more you're learning at work, the better off you're going to be in your personal life, especially how to discern things, whether they're real or not. I think it's really helpful to people both at work and in their personal lives if you do a robust program on AI training for people. So yeah, that's what we've been doing. Yeah. One of the things that's been top of my mind with what you're describing is is
[01:36:01:14 - 01:43:45:04]
we've got unlimited access to the world's knowledge, which I think sometimes people just forget how lucky and at what incredible time that we're in that you could literally access the world's knowledge at your fingertips in your pocket. Right. But where I'm seeing disconnect, which is really the reason I started Atlas is how do you transfer consumption of knowledge into capability? Because there's one thing to sit there and watch a video, read an article, ask chat GPT a question. And there's another thing of do you then have the skills? That's the learning agility. And capability because now it's just consumption, consumption, consumption, consumption. Right. And it's like everyone's read a program about how to lose weight or go on a diet, you go to gym. But how do you build capability? So especially with the traditional LMS LXP approach of, you know, here's my LinkedIn learning library that's plugged in and watch a few videos and Chris is now an expert on X, right? It's just not a reality. It's not true. Like where's the practice? Where's the failure? Where's the where's the where's the reps? Learning in the flow of work that is so important. And that's it's the learning agility. It's anybody can learn something. The agility piece comes in where when you can actually take what you learn and apply it to your day to day. So how do you do that? That's what I'm interested in. So now you've got all these people in the organization, they've got all these incredible tools. There's no shortage. How are you measuring the ROI of that? That's transferring into capability to solving business problems? I don't think we have anything fully quantitative, but those are the AI awards are helping us because people are submitting what they're doing. And it's allowing us to see how people are using it and how they're bringing into the flow of work. And then we did add a question we have a check in model for performance quarterly check ins, which is for questions. And we actually added a question this year asking how are you using AI so that we could learn how people are using it or what their blockers are around using it. So we don't have a formal like checks and balance like oh, this percentage of people I mean, the AI Council, we do have stats on the number of people that are logging into tools and that sort of thing. But you know, I think in the way we've approached it, which is we encourage you to experiment and we encourage you to go out there and find tools that might help you. And I think that it's more effective than if we had run formal training programs on how to use AI and gave people, you know, one or two tools and that's it. And so this is what we expect you to do. You know, going out there saying we encourage you to experiment, go find the tools, try new things, that whole thing. I think that's pushing people to do that, to put that agility into practice. It's not just learn it. We're saying learn it, do it, do it all at the same time. And I think that that is working really well. Can't quantify it as much, but I'd trade that for people actually doing things. Yeah. Yeah. Is it not one of the concerns I'm hearing from your peers is right now it's kind of like overload. Like, you know, there's like, even in my sales team, for example, there's five different agents that people are using. And we talk about, you said it, like learning in the flow of work, right? At the moment, every single vendor and solution provider that you have, including yourselves, obviously, have your own agent. So now all of a sudden, the average employee, I saw something the other day, had like 30 different agents or communications tools. Because everybody has lapped an AI bought of some kind onto their existing product. And I think that's why it's so important for the senior leaders who might not really understand what they're saying when they're saying, oh, we need to use AI. And oh, great, this tool has an AI, let's use the AI. You've got to be discerning about what you're using. That's actually one of the things that, because I have my own concerns about AI. And one of the things that makes me actually proud of the AI that we've built is it's purpose driven. It's not, it is certainly using, you know, it's scraping government websites to make sure we're staying up to date on certain things. But that's not a foundation of GIA. GIA's foundation is that over a decade of experience that we have managing global employment and all of the different cases that we've managed, it's our legal team, it's our HR operations team, it's our internal HR team, putting the building that knowledge base that is backing GIA. Because if you go most of these agents out there that are scraping the internet, it's showing that 70 to 80% of the first responses you get are coming from Reddit. Yeah, if you have a compliance question, or a question that's specifically related to a specialty of any kind, whether it's HR or otherwise, the first place you're going for expert advice, isn't Reddit. Yeah, so that's actually what I that's, that's what I love about what we've built is certainly there's the there's the scraping aspect of it, but that's not what this is built on. And I think you've got to look hard at the tools that you're employing in your organization and say, well, where's it getting the information? What what makes this actually better? Is it does it actually have the probability that it's going to cause more problems than it's going to solve? Is it actually solving a problem that exists to begin with? Or is it just throwing it out there and there was no problem? Because I think a lot of the stuff that's getting put out there now, it's not even solving a problem. It's just there. It's creating problems. Yeah, we just talk about like, in our company is like, it's just every company's just throwing an AI sticker. It's a sticker. It doesn't mean anything. Yeah, I love that. And if that's all it is, don't turn it on. Yeah, just because it's the platform you're using offers it don't turn it on. Yeah, you're right. I think the first question is, what is the problem we're trying to solve and then work backwards from there and you end up turning off half the things you got turned on because and then just stay focused because it's hard to get caught up with all the shiny new objects and everything. And this is happening. I love that comment you made, by the way, about your that the data in Jia because that was similar with Atlas, right? We've got 20 years of content practitioner insights and perspectives and research and data that we've from HR leaders that we've trained the agent on. So it's not like, and also if you ask a question, it will take you directly to the source to the exact second in the video where you're hearing from AC HRO talking to you about how they did it, what went wrong, you know, and all the research, you know, with our research partners that we've connected with. And of course, if there is any gaps, it will go and scrape, but it will let you know that this is from this place. So you're getting the best of both, but the platform is built on, you know, real insights and perspective, not just read it. Yeah. And that's what you want. You just have to be careful because you're a smart job. What do you think, how do you think AI is going to affect sort of the entry level roles? There's sort of this big fear now that AI is going to replace some of those entry level roles,
[01:43:46:07 - 01:43:48:24]
you know, that we've had in the past. What are your thoughts on that?
[01:43:49:24 - 01:45:01:22]
I think that entry level roles are going to change. They might be more about really understanding how they use AI. They might, they might use AI more than more senior level roles. But I think every time there's a new technology, even if you go way, way, way back, you know, industrial revolution, things like that, jobs just change and the entry level jobs change. It doesn't mean entry level jobs go away. I just don't think we know what that looks like yet. And over the next couple of years, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to see what that means and what's what that looks like. But there will always be entry level roles. They'll just be different. Yeah. And I know we've been chatting for way longer than we should have. That's okay. I was going to get told off, but have you seen with, we're everything we discussed a more of an increase in demand for your services now, as companies want to be more flexible, as the pace of change, disruption, you name it. I suppose agility is the word I was trying to get to.
[01:45:03:12 - 01:47:07:07]
Is that something you're seeing and hearing from customers? Definitely. Definitely. I think, you know, you need the right talent and as bad as the market is, the job market is, it's still hard to find the right talent and whether you need to go into a country for very specific reasons or just because, you know, there's a wealth of talent outside of your home country. You need to be able to find the people that you need and hire the people that you need and the EOR services that we provide enable people to do that. In the United States with the uncertainty around the H-1Bs and the challenging and getting those visas, EOR is the perfect solution for that, from finding talent from other countries if you can't bring them here. So there certainly is huge need for us there. And then the compliance aspect of things, I mean, to keep up with the, even just if you're just a US employer and you're in all 50 states. It's crazy. I know. It's like 50 different countries, especially around pay equity and transparency and all of that. It's changing so quickly. So that's why something like a GIA that you can trust where the information is coming from and it will, you know, you can upload your policies and it will do a regular review of them for you if you want it to and tell you when you need to update something and it can alert you if something has changed so that you know you need to update your contracts and your policies. So it's more important than ever because the legislation is becoming so cumbersome and changing so frequently or you have those things where they announce it and you know it's out there, but like, wait, has it taken effect? Is it not taking effect for a year? Is it not taking effect for two years? How do I get ready for this? So I definitely think that now more than ever, you know, companies need tools like that. Yeah. Well, listen, I could talk to you forever. I know I won't let you go. Last question. As we look ahead for this year, what are you most excited about?
[01:47:11:03 - 01:47:15:10]
That's such a good question and I'm drawing such a blank. What am I most excited about?
[01:47:19:04 - 01:48:55:00]
I'm going to go back to the AI because I am really enjoying seeing what our employees are doing with AI and just the creativity and even on my own team, what we have one particular employee, she's a superstar and on the benefit side and responsible for like the benefits of a product. So the benefits and how we position them and make sure they're competitive for our customers and our professionals and some of the things that she has done with AI all on, she went and got certified and she's using all these tools and she's making all these comparison things. And every time I see something from her, it gets me so excited. So I am just so excited to see what else she does. And then throughout the company, people are doing just the most creative, most innovative and helpful things with AI. And it's just, it's cool to see what they're doing. So I'm excited about that. I have none of us have any idea where we're going to be a year from now. Right. It's going to be crazy. Face of change. It's never going to be a boring day. There is not. But listen, I appreciate you taking the time to come out. My first podcast of the year and I've really enjoyed it and getting to know you a bit more. And I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience without people like you. There is no show. We were doing this for a while. Thank you for having me. I always enjoy talking to you. Yeah. And I look forward to probably catching you one of the next events and seeing you. Definitely. Seeing you soon. I wish you all the best. Thanks. You too.
Laura Maffucci, VP and Head of HR at Globalization Partners