The Future of Work Is Human (and Here’s Why)
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, Sam Schlimper, Managing Director at Randstad Enterprise, shares how to reimagine work and unlock human potential in the age of AI.
Sam explains why transformation shouldn’t start with systems or processes, but with people - their motivations, values, and sense of purpose. She discusses how AI can be a powerful catalyst for creativity and growth when designed with intention, and why the real challenge isn’t technology, but rediscovering what makes work meaningful for humans.
The conversation dives deep into how to redesign jobs, rethink emerging talent, and rebuild organizations around joy, curiosity, and connection - not just productivity.
🎓 In this episode, Sam discusses:
Why joy and curiosity drive real performance
What sustainable transformation really looks like
How AI can amplify, not replace, human creativity
How to rethink emerging talent for the next generation
Why work should start with people, not processes or tools
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Sam Schlimper 0:00
Do you know your talent and who they really are? So do you know what makes that person tick? If those two things don't come together, there's no sustainability of performance, and we see that a lot in organizations, and that's quite interesting, right? That people start on the when they start on skills, they start on those technical things. That's actually not what. What makes people get up in the morning and apply discretionary effort and really kind of go through walls. That's not what makes it happen when we work with organizations, and we start small off in an experiment, and how do you know your people from that lens? Then you add on what they learn and how they learn, and what skill set they have in the traditional sense, and then you add on what they aspire to Deuel, and when you have that beautiful infinity you can then point them to work that they really want to do you.
Chris Rainey 1:03
Sam, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm very good. Thank you. Nice to see you again. Yeah, you too. Was the last I mean, you saw me last week. We saw each hour in Vegas. You probably don't want to see me anymore. I need, I need a break from Chris. Sound like my wife? I think that's why she sends me to the end of the garden. I think since we built a little cabin, she's like, that's your house at the end of the garden, I want the whole house to myself. I think that's the rule. I've kind of just realized
Sam Schlimper 1:28
everyone should have something at the end of the garden, yeah, hopefully it's habitable, but yes, something at the end for those times when you just need a little bit of space, yeah.
Chris Rainey 1:38
I think after 20 years together. I can't blame her. We kind of she needs a bit of space. How are things? How's life?
Sam Schlimper 1:45
Life is good. Lots of traveling around, talking to amazing people about good things, lots of people with great intent and action to do things. So life
Chris Rainey 1:55
is good. I love that. Tell everyone a bit more about your your background, and then the journey into the current role that you were within. Because when we first met, I was pleasantly surprised about the work that you're doing, and I was really excited to have
Sam Schlimper 2:07
you on the show. Great. I mean, how far do you want to go back? I mean,
Chris Rainey 2:11
we won't take that. We won't take the whole episode doing it, but just let me
Sam Schlimper 2:16
tell you, where do you come from? This is a new, new section. Yeah, no. So I, like most people, well, I studied law Chris for no rhyme or reason other than I could I should have had no business doing that, and I didn't finish. And then I traveled, and I was like, What am I going to do? And I walked into, at that time, a recruitment agency, and then I ended up working for them. And then, so that's how I got into the world of talent, talent acquisition. And I was born in the UK, but pretty much grew up in South Africa, Chris and I was lucky to be there when when Mandela was released, and I had an amazing time in a country that had so much potential and hope that time and that had a lot to do. I think of crafting in me, taking action, leaning in definitely those things. Do they make you who you are? Yeah. And so I Yeah, started in talent acquisition, literally on a high street in Notting Hill, and then worked my way. I actually had part of my career in learning and really understanding what made people tick in the talent arena, and then consulting to organizations on talent and all that was involved. And then I worked for Barkers as head of talent acquisition. Had a great time. Got to do some such fun things because we had a CEO and HRD who really let us play. And again, that's actually one of the things that's really important to me, is work should feel like play some of the time. And if anyone's you know heard me, or see me, or listen to any of my LinkedIn posts, then you know that my thing is joy at work, yeah. And that has been throughout so leaning in taking action, play and having joy at work, that's really what I'm all about. Chris, I am now live in the south east of the UK. I chose it because it's the driest place in the UK.
Chris Rainey 4:15
That was my is it really? Is it? Is there a dry
Sam Schlimper 4:20
Is there a dry place? Yeah. So, yeah. And I now have such a fun job, because I get to travel talking to leaders about how they can make a difference and but in the talent arena, and that's what I that's what I love. I love understanding people and what makes them tick, and particularly what makes them tick in how they work, and then what they choose to do at work, and what motivates them makes them perform. So that's, that's, that's who I am, yeah,
Chris Rainey 4:54
so your managing director ransom enterprise, but break that down for everyone. I. What's that yeah, what's that mean? I don't mean it. I didn't mean that in a bad way. What's that mean? Because you do such interesting work that I wasn't aware of until we spoke.
Sam Schlimper 5:08
Yeah. So I am really lucky to look after our advisory business. So we have some really big enterprise clients around the world and big global clients who have lots of complex challenges and amazing aspirations. And what my team does is they work with heads of talent, or the CPO or CHRO, mostly, and they look at how those talent challenges and aspirations actually come to life. Practically, some of our most common work at the moment is work redesign, which is just fascinating around how AI has come to change things. What do we what should we give to AI? What can we all of those good things, and Where does humanity play a part in that? We talk a lot about skills with organizations and how they why are they thinking about skills, and what do they want to do with skills? And we do a lot with culture, employee brand. We have a talent intelligence team who help organizations make decisions well. And yeah, it's just a fun business because we get to solve some of the problems that don't have. Best
Chris Rainey 6:14
practice. Yeah, I was about to say what you're on the cutting edge? Yeah.
Sam Schlimper 6:18
So actually, one of my pet peeves all those lovely clients up there is when they go, Well, could you give me all the best practices? I was like, why would you want to do that? Why would you not want to do your own practice? So I do understand that organizations want to have a look at what others
Chris Rainey 6:32
are doing. There's no precedent for what we're looking at right now. That's exactly
Sam Schlimper 6:36
it. That's exactly it. So it's kind of like, how do you bring your uniquely human skills to solve some of the really difficult things that we're facing and some of the exciting opportunities? How do you lean into that? So that's what my team do. So sometimes, actually, Mike, my CEO, said to me the other day, sometimes, like, I wish I had your job.
Chris Rainey 6:59
It's exciting. Honestly, you're you're in the front, you're at the front, right? And the pay. I mean, I always say, I think I've been saying it's every year for the last 20 years, but I just feels like now the pace of change and transformation with AI is just exponential. I know we say that all the time, like for every period, but I just feel like now it's just a different it's something different about this.
Sam Schlimper 7:21
It is, I also think, because it's different, because it's not just a tool, right? It's, it's different to that, and you can use it differently to that. It can be a colleague, it can be all of those things that, and lots of people use it for that reason. And you've got such a spectrum, like you do when something's new, of terrifying fear, all the way to people doing amazing things in early adopters. And so part of that is the people element and the psychological journey of people in adopting it in that for the right reasons.
Chris Rainey 7:52
One of the things that stood out when we when we first met, that we very briefly discussed, that unleash in your work, which I think is really something I'm hearing as a challenge from our audience is, how do we reimagine work to prioritize human potential while still leveraging the efficiencies and capability of AI that's really one of the big everyone struggling right now? Right now? It's
Sam Schlimper 8:19
a really big, gnarly problem, and I think we've kind of tackled those things, sometimes in silos, like we often do, but now I think what we see, and certainly the work we do with our clients, is where that system comes together, and it is a system, right? So that systemic thinking, systemic design, and then bringing that together, and we have a model of human potential. And I often find it fascinating that I always say, Do you know your talent and who they really are? So do you know what makes that person tick? I mean, you and I often have conversations about and you ask me first, like, what makes them tick? If you don't know about me that I am a action orientated person who wants to understand what what makes things happen, and I really love the boundaries of things. And you then ask me to do a job where that isn't the core of the role, we're going to have a disaster, even though I might be skilled in talent and talent acquisition from a domain perspective, and I know how performance management works, and I like if those two things don't come together. There's no sustainability of performance. And we see that a lot in organizations, and that's quite interesting, right? That people start on the when they start on skills, they start on those technical things. But that's actually not what what makes people get up in the morning and apply discretionary effort and really wait, kind of go through walls. That's not what makes it happen. So when we work with organizations, and we start small off in an experiment, and how do you know your people from that lens, then you add on what they learn and how they learn, and what skill set they have in the traditional sense, and then you add on what they aspire to do. And when you have that beautiful infinity. Be you can then point them to work. They really want to do you again. You and I have spoken about, wouldn't it be great if people did their passions? You can apply your passions in so many different ways and inferences, but if you don't know what that is, you can't apply that. So our interesting system of having a box and then putting someone in it is just a weird concept in itself, right? As humans don't fit into boxes, so, so that's what we look at. We look at that, but you have to have the other side of the coin, where is, how do you break down work into so that people can see how they get involved. And I, when I was speaking to a group of I said, I don't know how you feel, but I'm not excited when I get a list of KPIs and metrics. It's not
Chris Rainey 10:42
what makes me go, can't wait. Yeah,
Sam Schlimper 10:44
exactly makes me like, Get up and go, Oh, what is, what's my KPI today, and me go and hit it right, like, so. So again, we kind of know what makes people behave, and yet we've designed systems exactly opposite to that. So we break down work into tasks and skills, and then look at what people can be doing in that, and then which people from a skill set would be would be doing that, and how you then get a sustainability of performance. And again, we're talking people yesterday, and the performance curve across the world in organizations is slowly dropping off and has been for a long time. We have got to do something different. So yeah, and AI is a great catalyst for
Chris Rainey 11:26
that, right? Yeah, but again, it's a catalyst for it. I love that. It's not you're leading with that first. People kind of do it the other way around, where they're getting it wrong on the other side. So you have to go through this process you describe first in order to then enhance that. You leverage and leveraging AI to do that at scale, personalize and you name it, I think people are missing the entire step to you just, yeah, yeah. I mean, we
Sam Schlimper 11:48
personally think it's and you've got to understand the work. You're understand the people from those lenses, put the two together and then figure out. And you know, of course, there's pressure at the moment for organizations do more with less cost saves. Of course there is, but if you keep doing that, that's a self fulfilling go down the drain, right? You have to create capacity for growth, yeah. And so capacity for growth comes from innovation and invention and imagination. You have to allow people to have that in order for them to create growth.
Chris Rainey 12:20
Yeah, I saw really random, but I saw a Tiktok, not Tiktok, and Instagram real yesterday that was viral and and there's a speaker on stage, and he was talking about finding you know, talking about your joy at work. And he said, Ask yourself this question, what comes easy to you that's that's hard for others, right? And I just kind of took me back for a second, like, like, you just keep, you know, just keep asking yourself, what, what comes easy to you, does half. And there is where you'll find, you know,
Sam Schlimper 12:58
we have a, we have like a list, and you don't have to ask them. We have, like, a list of 10 or 11 questions, which helps people get to that, a version of that being one of them, yeah. Another one is, where do you kind of, you know, when you lose yourself, not done a social media, but where you lose yourself, where time is gone because you're doing something, a flow state. When does it, yeah, when does that happen to you when you're in that and, like, do you notice that, because that's your stuff. And we actually go, like, what did you What did you like to do as a child? Like, what, where were the things that you went to? That takes you back to those are some of the things that you would build on. And when you add that picture together, you get a really good view of your call. We, in my team, we use characters to kind of bring that to life so that it's a quick and easy, like, I get who you are. So like, I'm Alice in Wonderland in my team.
Chris Rainey 13:48
Perfect character for you.
Sam Schlimper 13:51
Perfect it's exactly, and some of my team have made up. One's an apprentice Jedi, so they all have different but it tells it reminds us, ah, that's who you are, and that's what I should that's what I should be thinking about at work.
Chris Rainey 14:06
I love the idea of bringing it to life through the character. There's so much so like, years ago, I went to this sort of leading with purpose, sort of private workshop this guy called Nick Craig, who wrote a book, best in a book called leading with purpose. And he works with companies like Unilever and many others, and trains 1000s of leaders about how do you connect your why and your purpose of your work, basically. And we went through this sort of two day. Half the room were like CEOs of the biggest companies that you know, and the other half of the room were CHROs. It was quite interesting. And I was with the, sorry, not CEOs, founders of very large organizations, and the other side was CHROs, and I was with the founder group, and we went through the first exercise we did was like a crucible exercise, where you share kind of, like, with these strangers, like the toughest moments of your life, right? And like, Whoa, I haven't even shared this with my best friends. You know somebody, but I tell you that because I. One of the things that came out of it, which is exactly what you just said, was connecting what I did as a kid, as a child, and how that's now showing up in my in my life and my work. I didn't even know, and didn't even but other people kind of pointed that out to me, and was like, You do realize, Chris, what you're doing at HR leaders right now is what you did as a kid, in terms of me being lost in the moment painting, drawing and the crucible moment, for me, it's kind of obviously sad, but like my escape from the drug, alcohol and death domestic violence in the house was drawing and painting. So even though there was craziness going on in the house, I'd kind of just get lost in a painting, a drawing or sculpting, or just grabbing a few boxes and ripping them up and building something. And I realized that's kind of what I do now, like, in terms of the podcast, the content, building the different products that we have, it's just a different medium. And the last thing I'll say about the story is, at the end of it, we had to create a purpose statement. So mine was to be the unbreakable artist that dances you to life, right? So unbreakable artists, in terms of, I'm always trying to challenge the status quo, push, you know, always ask, but why my other previous employers did not enjoy it? But why do we do it that way? But why? And they never had an answer. And even in school, I was always that kid that did that, and then unbreakable artist who obviously was linking back to the art and then to dance as you to life. I was a dancer growing up, and my other things I'm most passionate about is developing talent, so dancing you to life, so kind of developing and helping others succeed. But what really did this, the disconnect for me at the end of the two days is that you had to write some bullet points about your plan for the next three to five years based on that. And I was like, that's kind of like boring, like, it's just like a list of bullet points. So what I did, I took a ripped a sheet off of the flip board, and I drew an entire landscape that represented my five year plan. And it was some mountains with a waterfall coming like the river, coming down the mountains and ending in a waterfall and in the trees. And every single element of the drawing represented my plan. So the trees that were growing represented the talent that I was going to develop. The journey down the river would and the different milestones along the way. So it kind of and I presented that to the to everyone in a room, and I still have that at home, and that that represents for me in the same way you mentioned, like Alice in Wonderland. I see that every day when I leave the house in the cabin, and it connects with me, you know, in a different way beyond like, here are some bullet points of my KPIs, like you said earlier, like, I'm not going to be excited about that,
Sam Schlimper 17:43
but you've just been able to articulate them in a way that's meaningful for you, that you will get up and you'll do whatever you need to in that day, because it's connected to you,
Chris Rainey 17:52
right? Yeah, it's great. What's the biggest challenge when we talk about connecting human potential with the efficiencies of AI and capability. What is the biggest challenge that companies, organizations are facing right now?
Sam Schlimper 18:05
I think the biggest challenge is we haven't wired and designed work in that way, right? So we've designed work in a industrial evolution, iteration way, right? Even our hierarchies look either like triangles or and they look like boxes of someone at the top. And so, so it goes, right, so and, and you kind of go, so humans, you're representing them as boxes underneath other boxes. But what we've just spoken about has got nothing to do with that's how humans behave. And so the unwiring of some of the things we've put together that are quite well embedded is probably the biggest challenge, and so I always say to clients, we're never going to unwire our whole organization, right? That's just not going to happen. But there will be places in organizations where either the pain is so great because they can't actually break through without doing something fundamentally different. And they are leaders going, I'm gonna have to do stuff, try something different, so let's go. So there are places where, in your organization, people want experimentation, and that's how we break through, but we have hardwired work. I at this session I was at the last two days. I took them through a story and said, Imagine you woke up on Monday and realized that we made up work and its construct, and therefore we could undo it. So we've made up meetings, we made up matrix, we made up job descriptions, right? So it's our construct. We are biological creatures that love so socializing, and we've made up the construct of work to make sense of that. That means you can make it up again. It doesn't mean you have to stay with it, right? It means you can make up something different. You have the capacity. And we do it often in other parts of life. But for some reason, we've kind of stuck with that. So it's the challenges getting people to. Believe that, know it can happen, and then get it just started in their organization, and then you see it grow and but it's a big challenge for people.
Chris Rainey 20:08
Yeah, let me tell you a fun story. My daughter, a few weeks ago, said to me, why do you go to work Monday to Friday?
Sam Schlimper 20:15
Yeah, you're like,
Chris Rainey 20:18
she because she didn't understand. And she was like, Why do you go to a place to do work? So think about that. I said, because she got the young curiosity shakes. Doesn't understand what like, why does it? Why do we do five days a week, two days off? Why do we go why? Why is a what? Why is work a place that you go to? Obviously, that's changed a lot now, but in the past, that was what it was, right? What was a place you go to to do to do work. And her young, six year old, mine was like, Why do you do that, dad? And I was like, I don't even have an answer for you. So into your point, like, imagine if you did wake up and we could rethink that and this,
Sam Schlimper 20:55
and go, we're not going to do that, right? And you can do that in small bubbles. It's actually interesting. Um, it's so wonderful that your daughter did that. I am one of the things we see organizations really battling with is given AI is going to do a lot of the doing, and we know that, and that's not a bad thing, but we have to be thoughtful about, when do we give it stuff, and how do we keep some of the things we want? So we need to keep our cognitive abilities, and you can, you can easily offload it, right? Yeah, don't, because you want to be able to keep that muscle, because you need to be able to think and work things out and validate but one of the things we hear organizations now is, so if AI is going to do a lot of doing, what are we doing with emerging talent? Because the model is that they would do but and they would do all the really, you know, for want of a better word, this is very professional crap stuff, right? Like you come along and you do this because you hear us and you and that's how you learn that won't be true anymore. So we have to redefine what an emerging talent, what that does in organization. And my colleague, Francesca, spoke about this, and we're kind of using the analogy of in a beehive, you have worker bees, and you have scouts, right? You have this, these group of bees who go out and find new things and train other bees and find new ways to do stuff and actually emerging talent. And you just gave a perfect example of your daughter. They don't have the learnt stuff that we do, so they ask the questions that we wouldn't think to ask anymore, yeah, because it's like, well, why are you doing that? Seems a bit odd, and maybe there's a great explanation, but a lot of times it's like, yeah, that is a bit odd. Why are we doing that? And so having emerging talent come in who are high levels of neuroplasticity into your organization, maybe they are learning, but we're learning from them, and we're doing some unlearning. That's the new model of emerging talent that's coming through. That's super exciting,
Chris Rainey 22:49
yeah, very exciting. What do you think? What's going to be the consequences for companies that don't take action?
Sam Schlimper 23:00
I'm just like, oh, let's declare my bias given I've said who I am. Say I am an action orientated person. But I don't think a wait and see is a strategy in this, because unless you're keeping pace, you're going to become so far behind that the catch up is going to be and we we've had this before, in different iterations, right? Like where you see it go, but this is, like you said, it's so Pacey that if you're not thinking about it, and you're not, you're not creating a literate AI environment for your talent, even if they're not in product, or they're not because sometimes I think we go, Well, what product? Or they have to all be literate. They all have to be able to use it and know why and what, and we all have to be learning that together. We see massive implications for I just think organizations are going to be so far beyond they'll be outpaced, out, priced, out, innovated, all of those things I think will be true. And I mean, that's not a mass panic. You should all but I just think they should just get going right? Like, I'm not a you know, the scaremongering, but I do think people should understand that this is going to change the very nature of what we do, and also how exciting that it can Yeah. So how do you want it to look, or are you just gonna let it run away with you so you have that choice? We use the choose or be used Choose, choose. That's, that's the path to go down.
Chris Rainey 24:30
Yeah? No, I agree. I mean, I was gonna say innovate or die, but I'm only joking. Oh, sorry. I've lost, I lost my headphones? Yeah, I think, I think you have done if you said it, but also you're gonna, you're gonna lose that talent, right? They're not gonna work for an organization that you're gonna lose talent very fast, and you're gonna be attracted to, attract and retain.
Sam Schlimper 24:53
Yeah, it was interesting. There was a panel of students at this conference. I am, I'm gonna say pro. Probably a slightly privileged panel of students, so, but parking that we the question was, so, what are you looking for, right? And what do you go and how do you go and look for organizations? And obviously, the organization I work for probably has got one of the biggest data sets in the world, given the amount of people we place and hire, but it's the things we know, and it's the things that they know on the website. So their answer was, all your websites look exactly the same, flexibility, inclusive, what have you. They now go and use AI to do a bit more digging, and then they validate that with people who work there. Then they plug that back in. So they are doing a very iterative human connection AI, how do I really find out what's going on in this organization and then make an informed decision about who I want to work for?
Chris Rainey 25:49
Yeah, I was making a joke to a friend the other day. I was like, no one cares about your glass door, because there's other ways now, the way you can just leverage AI and things like LinkedIn, you could throw in a profile into AI, ask questions, and within seconds be like, Oh, Deuel, are you really living those cultures and values?
Sam Schlimper 26:12
And absolutely, it was really interesting to see how they were doing a future that we see. So, you know, we use, we use the extremes to kind of get people to see and we want this middle where we using humans for the very best they can be, and then AI for the very best it can be. And they gave an example of how they were doing that. So, yeah, it was, it was great. What would
Chris Rainey 26:35
you say the human skills that are becoming most critical, especially as we navigate to a future where AI is going to play a growing role in more of the technical capability.
Sam Schlimper 26:46
Yeah. I mean, everyone asked this question, right? God knows if I'll be wrong. All right, in 10 years time, we can look at this and go, Well, Sam,
Chris Rainey 26:52
that was pound do part two.
Sam Schlimper 26:55
But I do think, and I think, you know, we see this so critical thinking comes up all the time, and also because the data that we have and AI is going to be able to synthesize that much better than we are, but us being able to understand and use that and be critical about that and figure out what that has got to be. And so we were saying, you know, as we were saying earlier, that Be careful what you offload. First. You might want to do some of the hard work first. So critical thinking, certainly true creativity. Chris, so it absolutely AI, can be creative in a particular way, but human creativity comes from a place of biological inputs that can't be explained. And so there's something magical around the creativity that humans have that an AI, maybe it will, but right now certainly is not that way. I mean, AI can collaborate, but again, the human connectivity and collaboration becomes super important also, because if AI is doing, how are you connecting with others? Because the individual contributor, I think, will be probably challenged more and more and more, because we'll have to come together to create, yeah. And so when I say creativity, it's also creation of things. And so we see those things being and then, you know, solving problems. Yeah, that's it. We've all got to be that's that probably, if I was get like, what problem is this? How are we going to solve it? What do I do in terms of bringing people together, the collaboration? How do we get creative around it? Because best practice, and then, how do we be critical in our thinking around that? I think that will probably be a set of things that we see, yeah, yeah,
Chris Rainey 28:44
no, I agree with everyone. And my last podcast I just did with the healthcare theater was pretty much the exact list when asked him the same question that you went through. I think, yeah, I think one of the things I'm seeing that critical thinking is always my first one. No, I say, and I do worry about that, because I can tell, even sometimes in my own teams work, when they send me stuff, I can tell that that was just an AI job, and you didn't really take the time, like, we know, the hard days of starting with a blank piece of paper, and you really have to think through everything, and you learn so much during that exploration. Right? That's it, right? Whereas you don't have to do that with AI, it does it for you. And then are you, then even looking at the output and thinking at looking at the output, and looking at the output of what it served you, and what lens are you looking at through? So I'm kind of concerned about what that means for the next generation coming through who are just going to be able to ask the question to get it all and don't, don't have to go that whole through the process? Yeah, I mean,
Sam Schlimper 29:49
you and I have spoken a little bit about education. That's a separate conversation, but I do think that is a change that's then required, because content won't be you can access. Content, but the curation understanding to your point, that hard piece, it's interesting. We, when we do work redesign, to be honest, we could very, very easily get an LLM to do the methodology for us, like it's built there, right? It can it, can do it. And there's lots of tech out there that does that. What's really important for us, and we think important organizations, is they understand it first. So when we are thinking about jobs, and I will say, Chris, I'm going to use some very technical terms here, not this is how we explain work redesign, right? So we have kind of three ways we look at it. One is what we call traditional pixelation, because what all we're doing is we're pulling something apart into its pixels and putting it back together in a different way. Right? When we design work we call traditional pixelation. We do that. We look at what role it is and how and then what AI should do, what humans should do, and which humans are best. And that's actually what we've seen other organizations do. And start to do more and more. We have two other steps, and I'll go to the furthest one just to give you, which we call gooing.
Chris Rainey 31:04
Gooing. I love pixelation, going
Sam Schlimper 31:07
highly technical gooing, but it comes from. It comes from, and this is, this is probably the only thing you remember from this. When a caterpillar turns caterpillar turns into a butterfly. It's called hysteresis, right? But it doesn't go into its its chrysalis and grow wings. It goes into its chrysalis and it literally dissolves into the very base DNA, and then it grows back up. And so when we do work redesign, we ask people to go it's a really hard thing. So we say to them, can you take away whatever job description you had in your mind, and start with a clean slate, because we are going to get you to unlearn and relearn through cognitive work. How you would want to build this? What do you want it to look like? How? Why do you want it to look like that? And then build it back from there and its component parts that gets us a very different outcome. And then we bring in AI to AI meant the thinking, but we don't just bring in AI and go, could you reconfigure this and do because it can. But we take people through that process, that process, they understand, they unlearn, and they can then think about things differently. And it's so important that we don't go straight to the other
Chris Rainey 32:23
piece. I love that so much. I think that if there's one thing I think I want everyone's away from this conversation is that, because there's such a temptation just to go straight to the AI tool, ask a question, getting up and move on, but you don't like, you don't even you don't even understand what you've just been given. You don't truly understand like. And I've done this as a team, and I've walked through it. What does this mean? Well, you just, and they're like, oh, it means I'm like, you don't really know. You're just basically pulled this all together, but you don't actually understand it. And I think that's the thing that AI is going to take a while to get to, is it doesn't, it doesn't understand context, right? So you it may be able to give you the answers and pull data together, but does it understand the context of the environment of that organization, that office, that the cultural nuance, the relationship dynamics, all of those things, is where we're going to be spending our time, as opposed to the other part, which we can just throw in an AI model and get the I
Sam Schlimper 33:19
agree, And that's why I think it's so lovely, if we think about it, and are really do that well, because that's the stuff we're great at as humans.
Chris Rainey 33:29
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. This is an interesting one, where, how do you when you work with clients, how do you define where they should focus on the human touch, versus where to apply AI, the AI touch, as it were,
Sam Schlimper 33:53
you know, and we you literally just led me here. So it's an interesting one, in that context matters. So that's really important. So if we are looking at work and how they do, how people do work, as I say, you could actually give quite a lot of tasks to AI. Our question set is, should you and what are you losing and what are you gaining? And we think that's really important before you make that decision. And and there's some question set that sits under there and say, and who is in the room making that decision? So as an example, let's say I'm making this up. Let's say you've got five people and one, AI, could do that work, right? Great. I'm no longer needing those five people. I need one, and everything else is gonna go to AI, great. You could do that, and you probably be super efficient and cost effective and all of those things. But what diverse perspectives are you losing when you take out those other four? Now you've got a single track person working with a single. Will track AI, and in the short term, that might be really great. In the medium and long term, that is a disaster for you and your organization,
Chris Rainey 35:09
yeah, because you're going to have that unconscious bias and sort of that backpack of beliefs are going to be and the thing about AI is it just amplifies that
Sam Schlimper 35:17
totally it will take that. So that's why we're really like before you just hand it over. What voices have you got in the room? If you take that out, how are you bringing that perspective back that is going to give you that dynamism that you know ultimately you're going to get better outcome. So those kind of things are super important in the the lens. And the other thing Chris, that you know I am the way work gets done. Sometimes you want to what we've been talking about is what I call self automate. There are some things that I do. Just go, AI, please do that. Thanks. Give it back. I'm going to check it away. We go, great. There are some things where that's absolutely true, and then the concept that is out there is Centaur and Cyborg, right? There are some things where actually I want to be. I'm going to do this bit because I'm the human in this and you're going to do that bit, and then we're going to hand it back, and then cyborg is all we're going to do this together. I don't think we have got yet, Chris, because it's too early into how we think and are thoughtful about those. I don't see organizations looking at that. I see them just being quite linear and blunt with things. Yeah, and some of those nuances are really quite important in terms of quality, output, sustainable output, sustainable performance. What do you want your humans to be doing purposefully? How do you want to give them time back for boredom and thinking, right? I said I did my LinkedIn post the other day. My daughter's between a levels and uni, and it's one of the only times in your life where you don't actually have to be preparing for anything really, right? It's like you can actually be on holiday. And she was like, I'm really bored. And in that boredom comes creativity and innovation.
Chris Rainey 37:00
That's when that and that's and that's what AI is gonna allow us to do, right? It's gonna free up the time
Sam Schlimper 37:05
if we let it do that, if we take it back and give people more.
Chris Rainey 37:11
I know, I know that's my worry, and I see that happening all the time. I mean, it's like, that's such a that annoys me so so so much, because you're just like, oh, okay, now we've bringing this AI. That means that that person output can be, you know, we, we, I think Josh person talks about the sort of the 10x employee, right? If one is the thing that he's been talking about. But what is the 10x is it the 10x of doing more same mundane tasks at work, because you have aI now, or is it the 10x employee, because now they have time for critical thinking, to be more creative, to build relationships, to really, you know, be more like focus on the human side, like so yeah,
Sam Schlimper 37:54
and, and we also know, as we move on in life and get more mature, actually moving creates more creativity. So getting up and having the walk with the dog, cat, whatever you got, just by yourself. Yeah, that's actually, that is work. I also think the this definition of work will change, because at the moment, we have work, and then we have, let's try and put in some learning. Could you set aside an hour on a Friday please to make sure that you develop yourself
Chris Rainey 38:21
having that conversation, come on.
Sam Schlimper 38:24
So I am actually very hopeful again, if we're thoughtful, that actually learning becomes work. Yeah, doing, the doing is actually very little, and so actually we spend our time learning, and that that, though, creates a different measure of value, rather than productivity, right? So you have to measure value in output rather than productivity of the KPI, and that will be, we will spend our time work. We'll be learning. And that, again, could be a wonderful way to to allow us to do that.
Chris Rainey 38:59
You've got my brain going, that's incredible. Like looking at work as learning and then leveraging AI as to doing it could lead. I mean, that completely changes everything.
Sam Schlimper 39:12
And I think we have the ability to get there. We've just got to make the right decisions as we go and be thoughtful, not to be stuck in the short term. And I think you asked me earlier, what's a challenge so many leaders I see very pressurized and stuck in, stuck in that short term. And listen, I get it right. Like, you know, you have to go up and go, my results are, um, but all the great leaders that you look back in the past overcame that and went, Yeah, but actually, this is the stuff I'm looking at, right? And that's, I think, what we've got to get people into, is it's okay. This is where, this is where we move
Chris Rainey 39:47
forward, yeah. And also, like, the I, I still remember, like, all my events when we, you know, earlier in the years of what we did, you had, like, leaders coming in. Here's my five year plan, you know, here's, here's my. Whatever. I mean, there's no such thing as a five year plan. Now you, if you, if you know where you are, if you, if that, if you know where, if you have any idea where you're going to be in five years, I want to, I want to know about it, because the pace of change and transformation is, you know, you're, you're is, there's no such thing as a three to five year plan. I mean, you can have like, you know, this is where we want to go in terms of a mission, but in terms of, like, specifically here we're going, like, you mean, things are changing too far. That's why, that's why I drew it. But oh, my God, that's exactly my river. My River was like that. It was, it was winding. It wasn't a straight line. I can tell you, as an entrepreneur, that definitely doesn't work that way, right? What HR leaders was going in where me and Shane thought about this eight years ago. Looks now we've launched. We've gone from a podcast and digital media and events business to and a SAS. I won't even call a SAS anymore. I won't even say Atlas is a SAS solution, because SAS is also, in my mind, almost a dying model to a generative AI solution, you know, to upskill and risk all HR leaders, and actually now moving into managers. So like, I never thought we'd be here where we are people, you're in an AI, you're a CEO of an AI business. I'm like, Yeah, but you don't even know, yeah. You don't even know to code Chris. Like, you know you grew up break dancing, playing ice hockey, and like, you don't know that, right? But to your point, like, it's I, my biggest passion is just constantly learning, but my superpower is execution. And like, like, what you said, like, Shane, poor Shane, my co founder, he has to bring my crazy ideas to life. That's why we're a good partnership, right? I'm out there always trying to break things and challenge the status quo and in marketing and selling it. And Shane's like, how do I bring that to life and execute on that?
Sam Schlimper 41:46
And that's why I was saying, I think that, of course, there will be roles for individual contributors, but I think more and more less so that's why it works, because you you bring that together, yeah, to make it happen, right? That that is how it always works? Yeah, there's very little that is purely individual contract, 100%
Chris Rainey 42:04
Team of Teams. What are some of the considerations that are really important for people listening when they think about integrating AI into work like what?
Sam Schlimper 42:13
So I think you've got to start with your end North Star in mind, to your point. So what are you trying to achieve? And if cost saving is your thing and there's nothing else, it is a sad, sad day. And I asked this group of people, and I realized this is but when you sit at your dining room or kitchen table with your children or children that you're close to, and they say to you, What decision did you make to create a world of work that I'm going to go into that you are happy that I enter? That is what you need to be thinking about. Your children are going to enter into this construct of work that you have allowed or created, choose or be used. Right? What would you like them to? Would you like them to come into a world of work where they spend their time learning, discovering, doing what's great is them with individuals where their passions are and they can really excel. Or would you like them to be a box of in KPIs where that's what they are managed to and they are more, you know, more widgets, more. Yeah, like, it's a no brainer, but we so that's the consideration that you start with, start with that, and then ask yourself the question, therefore, where should I put AI in? Where should I keep humanity? What would humanity feel like? Ask yourself, we're an emotional bunch. That's what we are, right? So ask, what would it feel like here? What would it look like here? What would that promise be? What would does performance look like in that context? What does value mean versus the metric we have today? And then think about what you are designing when you do that. And in HR, we have perfect examples. I always pick on the poor performance management conversation or performance like it's it's dire. No one likes it. Everyone hates it. It was meant to be your development where you talk really,
Chris Rainey 44:07
everyone's dreading it. Every year, the managers dreading it, the employees dreading it.
Sam Schlimper 44:12
AI is gonna dread it. Asked the most it gets asked the most. Please create this. It's gonna be like, I'm so bored with this, right? So, yeah, I just, I It's so I say that grandiose, but when? But you can actually practically do that and go. So when we are creating a process, which, you know, thrilling, what do you do for living? Create proof. But when you're creating a process or a workflow or work, really, really spend time thinking about what you want that to be, and then work it back, rather than, Oh, we've got this thing here. And these are the seven steps. So if we take up step four, five and three, that means five lifts, FTE, and the jobs, a good one. Yeah, come on. Actually, when we look at the research and data and this actually. Actually, one of our clients does this in manufacturing. So this isn't just like, you know, wherever it's all through. Actually, one of the roles that makes a difference in organizations is HR interesting on the manufacturing plant. And I was like, oh, that's why is that. But it's when HR does a particular thing. It's when HR does belonging, learning and helping people be who they should be. We spoke about your your teacher, they become that person, right? Not when they're doing exits, cost cutting, then they actually don't become important, but that the change in production and output comes when they're doing that work. And I think that's, that's the work,
Chris Rainey 45:45
and that's what technology can free them up to do more of exactly and remove all that is anything we missed that we should have spoke about,
Sam Schlimper 45:54
Lord, so many things, Chris, but you know, I mean, I we need to do
Chris Rainey 45:58
series together. Yeah, I
Sam Schlimper 46:00
am super passionate about this. I all the work that we do is based on if people have more joy at work and you see them for who they are, your organizational performance will be sustainable. All our research tells us that. So I just want people to be able to think about that. And when they are doing whatever they doing in their day, where they feel like I'm the rat on the treadmill, you can actually step off. You have the opportunity, with AI to really step off and do this. And so that I just think is, is the most important thing right
Chris Rainey 46:35
now, listen before I let you go. For those HR executives and leaders listening, if they want to reach out to you and say hi, where can they reach you? And then we'll say goodbye.
Sam Schlimper 46:44
Yeah, my LinkedIn is Sam schimper, they can reach out there. Otherwise, my email is that's the great thing about having a surname that's like mine, because I wouldn't give
Chris Rainey 46:55
the email. I'll just put you in your warning right now,
Sam Schlimper 47:00
having my my surname, you can find me pretty easily. Yeah, my surname, you can find me pretty easily.
Chris Rainey 47:06
Yeah, no. Well, if everyone listen as always, the link will be below, so you can find wherever you're listening or watching right now, put a link to connect with Sam on LinkedIn and connect there. And I know you, I know you've also got some cool research coming up soon, which I'm excited to share with everyone, so whether it's released for the podcast, we'll reconnect and share that with the audience. But I appreciate you taking that I am a little bit jealous of what you do, and I love that you clearly finding joy in your work where we started the conversation, and I wish you all the best until we next
Sam Schlimper 47:38
week. Thank you, and I'm jealous of the Kevin, yeah.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Sam Schlimper, Managing Director at Randstad Enterprise.