What Every Leader Must Know about AI in HR
Bill Agostini, Senior Advisor, discusses the evolution of HR from administrative roles to strategic business partnerships. He highlights the importance of leveraging AI to reduce administrative burdens and enhance employee well-being. Bill also explores global perspectives on HR practices and advocates for moving beyond outdated processes to create a more agile and impactful HR function.
In today's episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we welcome Bill Agostini, Senior Advisor. Bill shares insights from his 25-year career in HR and corporate communications, spanning continents and industries.
He explores how HR's role has evolved from personnel management to becoming a strategic business partner. Bill also discusses the future of HR, focusing on how organizations can leverage AI and technology to drive efficiency and better support employee well-being.
🎓 In this episode, Bill discusses:
How AI is transforming HR and reducing admin work
Global HR insights from the Middle East, Europe, and the US
Why HR must shift from transactional tasks to focus on engagement
The evolution of HR from personnel management to strategic partners
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Chris Rainey 0:00
Do you think there's such thing as a job for life anymore,
Bill Agostini 0:02
not in most industries, but, you know, you can have a vocation for life, right? You could grow and develop, let's say, in HR, but it doesn't have to be in one company. And there's so much value about moving around, you know, really focus on that curiosity and what you can learn and what you can bring back, as we think about people moving through an organization. Part of any job is leaving that job bill.
Chris Rainey 0:31
Welcome to the show. How are you? My friend,
Bill Agostini 0:33
good, good. How are you, Chris, I
Chris Rainey 0:35
love it. I love it. Love the artwork behind you. By the way, the ship looks super cool.
Bill Agostini 0:39
Yeah, my wife is an undue underwater archeologist by Wow training, yes. So she did a lot of work with 17th century warships, Viking warships. She's from Sweden, so she doesn't do that. Now it's hard to find work in that area
Chris Rainey 1:01
like she should be making documentaries. Should you go, I'm, like, a big, like, treasure documentary kind of guy. Like, I watch all the movies, all the documentaries when it comes to, like, treasure and stuff like, I'm obsessed with stuff like that. What an incredible job. Yeah, she found anything cool, like,
Bill Agostini 1:25
we were on vacation in the south of Turkey once, and see, then she went into the beach, into the water, and she pulled out something. And I'm like, come on, stop taking garbage out of the water. Yeah? It's like, no, it's an artifact. And I'm like, No, it's garbage. So I brought it to the museum there, and it was a piece of fifth century pottery. No, right? Yeah, I do not lie, wow. And it's me, I just would have tossed it in the bin. But she's like, No, no. We got to thank the museum. We have to make sure it's preserved.
Chris Rainey 1:55
Wow. So, so she gets, she gets to do that, and we get to talk about HR,
Bill Agostini 1:59
yeah. People win, some people lose. Before we jump in,
Chris Rainey 2:05
tell everyone a little bit more about yourself, your background, and then the role that you're currently in now, and then we'll jump in.
Bill Agostini 2:12
Okay, so, you know, obviously a lot of experience with 25 years in both corporate communications and HR, worked with major consultancies and worked everywhere. Just thinking about it, I haven't worked in Antarctica, but other than that, I've been working in every continent, lived and worked in the Middle East, Europe, US, and spent considerable time in Asia and major transformations, major projects, usually of a global nature. But have also done everything from transitioning a family business into, you know, regional firm versus, you know, Fortune 500 companies, right? So the full, the full breadth of it right now, working with SABIC as a senior advisor strategic HR, and doing a lot of different projects, and that a lot of focus now on engagement and well being as the hot topics for for the new workforce, especially with The change in generations.
Chris Rainey 3:20
Love it. Wow. When you were saying that, I was thinking, what continent Have you worked in? Not working lot worked in. That's fine. Have you done all of them now? What are you missing? You've pretty much done most Antarctica.
Bill Agostini 3:32
Oh, you know, I've heard that penguins are resistant to coaching, so I avoid Antarctica. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 3:40
you and their resistance to change, otherwise they wouldn't live in such a cold place all the time. Love it. I know that one of the things that I want to start with is that you're really passionate about, sort of the the journey of HR right, of where we started to where we are now, I've only been doing this for 20 years, since I was 17, but even in my time, I've seen not to age you, by the way, but it's just almost like unbelievable, the transformation that we've been on from where we started to where we are now, it's almost unrecognizable. And the skills, competencies, the frameworks everything has shifted. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on your experience when you first joined the profession, and what you've seen as the major changes that are going to shape the future of HR and therefore the future of work. Fantastic.
Bill Agostini 4:36
And just start off with since we're in HR, we're not old, we're a season. Okay, so we'll just start. Is
Chris Rainey 4:45
that what you say? Okay, okay, I'll stick to that.
Bill Agostini 4:50
Yeah, very seasoned with my salt there, but no, but if we think about HR, you know, really, from, from the beginning, you know, late 1800s early 1900s It's it started as personnel departments really helping the ebb and flow of the supply of employees for companies because of war efforts, right? They really needed a way to think about how to ensure we can keep producing even when there's fluxes in the workforce and changes in workforce, and the focus was really around hygiene factors, right? How do you get people in roles? How do you fill those roles? How do you get people paid, you know, all those type of things that you know as as you know, beings that we're most concerned about, right? You know, you want to do a good job. You want to get paid for it. You want to be safe and, you know, be good at what you do, as we got to, let's say, the 1950s HR started adding pieces around, you know, much more around the HR management. So looking at job evaluation, you know, Ed hay did in the mid 40s, 43 around banks to be able to compare jobs. You had organizational design come in and people really thinking about, okay, how should the organization be structured? And then when you started moving into the 80s, that's when psychology started to become more of a factor. So a lot of work by McClelland out of Harvard, and then also, you know, people like Albrecht for the Star model and other things, for example. And
Chris Rainey 6:32
a lot of people, people studied that during the time there were a lot of universities and colleges and introduced that, yeah,
Bill Agostini 6:39
it was a hot topic. I mean, you know, especially if you think about Stanford and Harvard being two, you know, the two powerhouses and psychological research, some of it, which today would not be allowed. It was a bit dodgy. But, you know, really trying to dig deeper into people, and thinking about how people work. And then, as you started moving the 90s, you had more thinking about, okay, what are the different impact factors impacting the business, like, you know, Bert Litwin model, looking at external, strategic, operational, individual factors, right? How did it impact business and others drive it? And then we had Ulrich with, okay, how do we transition HR for this? And he had this flow where HR would evolve into this business partner. And if you think about the time, it was quite it was quite inspirational, but it was also aspirational. And so just wondering if that really happened, or, you know, where, where are we right now? And if we take a step back and say, Okay, if we were to ask a CEO at the top of the house or a line manager that are really at the very core of the work, you know, how would they rate HR today? How do they think HR has helped them? How are they used data? You know, where are we? And as I look at it, HR really wanted to help. And by trying to help, they focus so much on the how, like, oh, they need this. How are we going to do it? How do we drive this? How do we get there? And maybe didn't spend enough time asking. So, why do you want to
Chris Rainey 8:26
do this? Kind of indirectly became, inadvertently, became order takers Exactly.
Bill Agostini 8:33
And it became like the service industry exactly that, right? And we try to get better and better. And that impacted that HR business partner model, there wasn't a lot of pushback, or isn't a lot of pushback, and it's really about driving that. So, you know, we've gotten better at those core things, better tools, but it's the same processes and procedures, right? It's kind of stayed there since the 80s. And before
Chris Rainey 8:59
we skip on to the next part, how did, how did the Oric business partner model change our HR forever?
Bill Agostini 9:10
Well, it was really thinking about less focus on just the operational pieces, the transactional pieces that personnel did very well. Again, I'm seasoned enough to in Europe, have had a personnel department, which I love. Got paid it on time every every two weeks. But it was looking at, how should they work better with the business? How should they think more with business acumen, and how do they work together as partners, in with the with the business itself, and as I feel, I don't think that partnership ever really evolved. And going back to what you said about order takers, now if you're going to be partners, it takes two willing parties to be
Chris Rainey 9:58
partners. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly,
Bill Agostini 10:00
and so, you know, I don't know how that really, really, it never developed, and it was not enough pushback. And that that has a lot of reasons. You know, there was a lot of stress in the in the 80s and 90s, in terms of deliverables, a lot of situations with, you know, situations, layoffs, recessions and other things, and I put a lot of pressure on HR to deliver. But again, we still, and even today, you're thinking about this kind of industrial mindset of we're talking about hours, we're talking about days, we're talking about being in an office where we're talking about things that are very boxy and not fluid like they need to be. And then also with that happened in terms of that partnership, the way the partnership has worked is it seems that HR has taken over more and more of a line manager's responsibility towards their people. And it's almost like they're saying, Oh well, it's a people thing. It's HR. It's not that they're my people. I need to take care of them. I need to develop them.
Chris Rainey 11:13
On that point once, I'll add on that point. It was a controversial interview that happened in the UK a few years back with the CEO of octopus energy, big energy provider. And he said on the BBC, on the he has no HR because that's the role of his managers, and therefore he doesn't have a HR department. And it was, like, really controversial. He's like, and he said, you know, it was a bit, you know, we don't need HR. We should have managers and leaders take the responsibility. So in some instances, he is correct to your point, but he went a bit too far on the other side. But, but what he a lot of what he said is true, like many companies now are leaning way too heavy on their HR team, as opposed to really creating a culture of accountability and ensuring and developing and hiring leaders that can deliver really because they're the ones working directly with our employees every single day. They're the contacts, right? They're also the reason people leave companies have seen in the research, the leaders and managers as well. So I love that point that you made,
Bill Agostini 12:12
yeah, and one thing we also have to remember, right? It's not one size fits all. So depending on the company and depending on the place. And depending on the culture, you know that that ratio of HR that to land manager will be different. And there are different situations, you know, especially if you're working in a plant or something else, whether you're working in office. But what happened is, because of that, is HR was starting to be seen as the police, right? Oh, you have to follow these policies. You have to follow these procedures. You have to be at work. And then when something went wrong, they also became the scapegoat, right? So they got, got it from both ends. It's like, oh, let's run hrs cup.
Chris Rainey 12:56
Do you think Trevino is a mistake in branding or like, positioning that we called it a HR policy, as opposed to being the business policy. And that's a really random statement, but because then you kind of put, we put HR in a position to be the police, if that makes sense, by calling it the HR policy. Oh say, HR. Like, imagine if we actually just took it back and said, Well, this is just a business. This is part of our culture. This is how we operate as an organization, as opposed to the HR policy. Does that make sense? Yeah,
Bill Agostini 13:27
no, definitely. And it's like in any company. And again, you know, thinking back more, when I worked in Europe, there are policies, procedures and guidelines for the company, yeah, they didn't. They were, they were written by somebody because, because they had the expertise to do it. But, you know, any policy was signed off by the CEO for the company, right? It wasn't, oh, you know, it's HR, so you don't really have to worry about it. Or, well, I'm not in finance, so I don't care about the policy. It's the company's policy, right? And again, it's, it's really about, we have ownership and responsibility to create these things, but it's the company who really drives them, not HR. And then, you know, the the other thing is, we started to add a lot of things, a lot of different models, a lot of thinking around different things. You know, one of the things is, is psychological safety, right? You know, Amy edmondson's work really, really interesting stuff. And, you know, is very applicable when it's a life or death situation, you know, things like pilots, nurses and doctors and other things. But when it comes into the, you know, the actual business, into the office, into the plant, it's like, what does it really mean? And I think people are really confused, and it's kind of like, well, HR, are telling us we were psychologically safe to share our opinions, but if we say something wrong, and. They can nail it for it, right? And so I think the terminology, what it means, really hasn't been explained and shown in the sense of, you know, we always have to be respectful to people. We have to be respectful to our colleagues, and we have to be mindful of what we say. But if it's something about the work itself, or a process or something else, it is our responsibility to speak up as ages of change, and also for the best of our company, and this is infinitely more so when it comes to safety, right? Being quiet about an unsafe situation at work is, you know, is you have to say something. You always have to be careful to say something, right? And then I think also one of the situations as HR expanded and blew up, because, again, thinking back to the older models,
Chris Rainey 15:56
yeah, talking about that got, like the eight box model. You've got the HR value chain model. You've now got Josh burson's systemic HR model. Harvard, how Harvard has their own model. There's this, like, you know the what? There's a Warwick model I came across recently, the Oric model, of course, yeah, it's kind of a minefield for companies.
Bill Agostini 16:26
And that's the thing is, you know, we had, we had a large personnel department in the old days, and a small HR department was focused on development. Now we have a lot of HR, and those hygiene factors that people care most about seem to take in, you know, be pushed to the back, and everything is focused about whatever comes out, right? You know, now we have to be a skills based company. We have to have a double matrix organization. We have to focus on the value chain. And people have really gotten away from, what are we trying to do? And how do we impact the bottom line of the business, the top and the bottom line of the business, and so that that's, you know, as we think about moving forward, and I know people are trying to do this and working on different aspects, right? It's, it's, it's not that we're sitting around and staring at each other, but we're really what we, you know, we have this opportunity right now, and as you, you know, you even work with the, the pilot tool that you've come up with, yeah, AI, is giving us an opportunity to really make the hygiene factors efficient and help Our organizations and tech taking over a lot of that admin data, you know, from the from HR, a lot of that, that remedial work, and really focus on, what do we need to do? What do we need to do in terms of skill and capacity to drive impact right, and then reduce that everyday work friction for an employee, right? Remove that bureaucracy. So, you know, thinking more in economic terms versus HR terms is having that zero based approach, right? You know, what do we need to do and what's the value of doing that? Does the cost benefit make sense? And where does it make sense? So again, not thinking about one size fits all, even within an organization, because I know in the past, you know, people have tried to do things that worked in manufacturing and then drag them into the office environment. And it doesn't really vice versa, exactly, exactly and, and this is thinking about fit for purpose and fit for place as well. So just thinking about HR as a business enabler driving that continuous development and deployment, and thinking of itself really about as a playmaker in the organization. So going back and saying, okay, you've come to me, you say, oh, I need X amount of people with these X amount of titles, all right. So stop there and go back and say, Okay, tell me what you need to achieve, right? What are you doing? Why are you doing it, and what's the value of doing and this actually comes from an IT situation I had in my past when I was building a global internet for a company 110,000 employees and 140 countries. And, you know, I had HR and the communications teams coming to me, and I was talking to the CIO, and we're saying, Oh, we want this. We want this. We want this. And it's like, Stop. Don't tell me you want X server, or you want this or that. What do you need it to do? Who do you need it to do it for? You know, and, and what's the value? And how fast does that be? You know, just give me the requirement specifications, and then I'll come back and say, Hey, we can do it A, B or C way. There's different costs, there's different value, and some of these things we we really can't do right now, right? So give us that requirement specification, and we'll provide what you need, as
Chris Rainey 20:21
opposed to what you said that we said earlier, about taking just take it being order takers, right? So you're like, hey, actually, let's start with the problem we're trying to solve first, and then work backwards from there. And let us come back to you and be you know, as strategic partners with some solutions, and then we can go from there, whereas in the past, we're kind of just like taking orders from everyone, everyone across the business, and we're completely misaligned as well. I want to move on to your thoughts around you know, what do CEOs and line managers think of HR?
Bill Agostini 20:56
So again, it's, it's and this is why I think the HR business partners have been put in a bad situation because we say, hey, you know your business partners, you have to push back on the business, but the business is the one who rates them, right? And quite often, with line managers, it's like you're not doing it fast enough. You're not doing good enough. You know, especially around talent acquisition, right? I asked you for these people, where are these people? And you know, they give, give the town acquisition people, this laundry list of things, you know. And you know, you read things on LinkedIn, and you're waiting to see a bullet point for, you know, we need a left handed cat juggler, right? You know, as part of the task of this role, instead of thinking about, what do you really need, and then again, working with that HR business partner. So I think HR has lost a little bit of impact based on the challenges of the business, and creating more work for the business and more policies and procedures. I think there's, there's an opportunity there to go back and have this conversation be but create this and demonstrate the value that can be brought by having those conversations. And if you're going to turn things over to HR and turn them over, right, you can't have one hand in it and then say, but it's hrs responsibility, right? It is really about having a true partnership with the business and saying, Okay, this is your Accountability Responsibility. This is my Accountability Responsibility. This is how I'm going to make this work. This is what I need from you. And that's, that's a shifting of that, of that feeling. But again, I, you know, when I often talk to colleagues, it's about, well, they're complaining about this, and we didn't do this quick enough, and then it really wasn't what they wanted. And and, you know, some of that's on us, right? Because if we haven't asked the question and really understood their their needs and wants, fine, but if they continually change that based on, oh, now I want this, and now I want that, it became, you know, this endless cycle, and
Chris Rainey 23:15
that's why, and that's what you said earlier. You know, at some point you do need to push back
Bill Agostini 23:19
exactly but, but it's difficult, right? You need that support. And I would say, in the past, the best and most successful business partners I've seen have been ones that report directly into the EVP or the VP of a business and are their advisor, right? So there, the the senior leader is coming to and say, Hey, we have to do this. How are we going to do it? And the the actual business partner would say, Well, you know, there isn't really a lot of those type of people in the market. If you want something like, you have to pay more. Or the option is, we can upscale some of the people we have, but there's a time horizon, right? But having that conversation is what, how HR brings value to the business, right? And it's having that opportunity to have the business now, as we push business partners everywhere, into the into the organization, they're dealing with managers that really don't have a lot of bandwidth to have discussions
Chris Rainey 24:21
like you're adding more to me, I'm already drowning, exactly. I'm drowning right now. And you want to do more of this? Yeah. And
Bill Agostini 24:29
again, you understand it from both sides, right? It's not about laying blame. It's just about taking that step forward and having those conversations. And again, if you're having those conversations and can be a little bit more of that playmaker of distributing talent where it's needed. You're solving a lot of a lot of different issues, and it's really understanding about how the talent life cycles kind of disappear, right? You know, looking at. The doing, looking around, around generations. And not to be hard and fast, around generational information, but in the US last year, I think for people younger, Gen Y engine and Gen Gen X, Gen Z enemy, 35 and under the average time in a job is less than 18 months. Yeah, it's
Chris Rainey 25:25
like, yeah, two years, 18 months, yeah, it's crazy. And
Bill Agostini 25:29
you know, you see, when you get into the Gen Z pop, it's, it's really like at most a year, right? So we're not talking about a life cycle. We're talking about a flood. When
Chris Rainey 25:38
I first died, like I read on about you, it was like five years plus, you know, especially some of the companies like the IBM's and the Unilever's, etc, it was like 1015, 20 years that you rotated in different roles. For you hardly see that anymore,
Bill Agostini 25:56
yeah, and I, you know, and people would say, oh, you know, you're only there two, two or three years. Why were you job hunting? What went wrong? Yeah, made it through six months. Well
Chris Rainey 26:10
done. Yeah. Do you think there's such thing as a job for life anymore?
Bill Agostini 26:17
Not not in most industries, but you know, you can have a vocation for life, right? You could grow and develop in, let's say, in HR, right? But it doesn't have to be in one company. And there's so much value about moving around and and really learning. You know, really focus on in that curiosity and what you can learn and what you can bring back. And that also goes into as we think about people moving through an organization. Right part of any job is leaving that job, and that should be a natural part of of that talent flow as anything else, as well as joining a company, and people say, Yeah, you know, time for you to move on. You time for you to learn something else. Maybe you can't do it here. It's great that you're going to do someplace else. You know, would be great if someday you come back to this, right? You know, talking about those boomerangs,
Chris Rainey 27:12
oh, literally, you sort of words out my mouth. I'd say the companies that, well, they have the boomerang employees, right? And a lot of times they do come back to the organization, and they bring a wealth of knowledge with them, plus the fact they all they understand the business and when they weren't there before. So you actually gain a lot of value by celebrating them, moving on, in a way, and creating, what's the word I'm looking for, where you create the cohorts of people that left. They call them Yeah, so alumni. Yeah. So, yeah, the alumni, yeah, that's pretty, pretty like it worked. But we kind of company just stopped doing it. But it was actually quite, really effective. You know, in the past, from what I saw anyway, now
Bill Agostini 27:52
there was a Fast Company article from in the 90s, hired today, gone tomorrow. I think it was. And they talked about how these alumni networks really helped companies, both in terms of their branding for talent acquisition, saying that, you know, hey, I worked at Company X, and they were really good to me, or left, I'm still part of the distribution network for information, you know, you should go there, versus somebody saying, you know, they kicked me out the door, they gave me a box. Don't go work there, right? So those detractors, but especially those people that were boomerangs, where they were there to part in the time in their life, they went out, they did something else, and they said, You know what, I'm still a connection. Maybe I should go back and talk to these people and see if there's something for me now, 100% now that they've learned more and do more and bring value back to Yeah,
Chris Rainey 28:44
I tell you, a company done that does that very well. We did an event years back at Johnson and Johnson's HQ in New Jersey, and I remember they had, like an alumni meeting, and all the latest hundreds of previous employees at their office at like an alumni meeting. And I was like, This is amazing. Like, they don't even work here, but they're all here. And I don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure that j and j also opened their facilities to the alumni to be able to use their work areas and the cafeteria. And I was like, wow. Like, this is incredible. Like, talk about nurturing and keeping building the relationship, and you also, then, in some ways, retain some of that knowledge just kind of like, you know, leaves that, you know, walks out the door of the organization as well. I just thought I was fascinating that all these people were there and they weren't no longer working in the company. And I was pretty mind blown at the time.
Bill Agostini 29:39
Yeah, no, when I repatriate the US and work for Honeywell, it was, it was right there the same the same area, and I love going to the office, and you had people that retired and come into our offices and use the gym and get stuff. I couldn't
Chris Rainey 29:54
believe it. Honestly, I think, what if I want to ask you about to the manager thing based on your ex? Experience right across the whole world. What do managers really think of HR?
Bill Agostini 30:07
What do managers really think of HR? Yeah,
Chris Rainey 30:09
like, you know, I mean, you've spoke to hundreds, you've worked in different companies all over the world. What do you what are managers perceived perspective of the value that HR brings to the business, or maybe even frustrations.
Bill Agostini 30:26
I think, I think it's very different from place to place. You know, the if you think about the US and the Americas as much more rules, you know, working in Europe, I spent a long time working in Sweden, it's much more egalitarian and and, you know, also the Middle East, there's a real reliance on HR to support support people. And there's a lot more, I say, in the Middle East is much more care and loyalty to the employee, which gives HR a much more bigger importance. So, you know, if I, if I kind of bake it down into in Europe, I saw HR much more as that Personnel Department providing all those hygiene factors, making sure that you were taken care of, talking to the works councils, making sure that you as an employee, were taken care of and given. And then on the other side, the strategic HR was very much about development and deployment, right? So they had, I would say, a fairly reasonable view of HR in the Middle East. I see very much as, again, that extreme focus on the well being of the employee, so they see HR as a as a very necessary factor, but at the same time frustration over too many policies, procedures, extra work and at times, not delivering as much value to the businesses they can where I see, if I think about a US centric model, it's really about, I'd say, employee relations. And very much, you know, as a litigious society, about what can go wrong, how we're going to get sued. We're not going to say and not say and and so that impacts a lot of the good things that HR does here in terms of adding that value. So it it becomes very much like what experience you've had with HR and where you're working. Again, it's, it's, it's a challenge anywhere. And you know, I think there's a ground to be gained by HR now, especially by leveraging technology. But there's, there's also thinking around what companies need to change, right? So if we think about what we're just discussing about different different cultures and different places, if you're in Europe and you're an employee, well, their protections are out, right? You know, you know, I, at one time, I had a six month notice period, which was little bit extreme, but you have three, three months notice period, right? You know, you go into a company, you have a test period where you can say, hey, this is working for No, it's not working for me. The same from the company side, there are a lot of protections for employees, where, in the US, I think, you know, during the 80s and the 90s, companies had to flex, and the people that I lost out were employees, right? They became a little bit, I would almost say disposable human resources based on, on, on share price, yeah,
Chris Rainey 33:45
what's the current, what's the current notice period? Now you have to give in the US.
Bill Agostini 33:50
Well, really, nothing. It's nothing, right? Yeah, yeah. It's a courtesy to give two weeks, but it's a same way, the other way around. Yes, you know. So people just don't show up sometimes, and even with people that interview that accept jobs, don't show up, but a lot of that trust has gone and and so when people talk about Gen Y and Gen Z not being loyal or not wanting to work, or, you know, anything around then it's they've looked and seen what happened to the previous generations and just saying, well, I'll give as much loyalty as I get. I'll give as much effort as I'm rewarded for. And and they're, in a sense, also taking on a partnership between the employee and the company, right? And so they'll go to where they're treated the best. And that's that's the nature of the beaks today, and that's why HR even has a greater importance in terms of being that business partner to the business and explaining this is what our people need. This is the ebb and flow. They're looking for experiences. They're looking for the. Development, and they're looking for contextual recognition and reward, right? So these annual cycles of performance management, and you know that you do on a yearly basis, don't work, right? You know, you do something good and you're saying, Well, you know, we're going to reward you for it. It's like, Okay, where is it? Yeah.
Chris Rainey 35:21
Well, one of the one of the conversations that happened during our well being panel a few weeks ago was a question around, are companies responsible for employees well being? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, because it seems to be a new topic now, when I we know again in my day that wasn't, you know, now, it is sort of an expectation that, hey, if you want my loyalty and you want me to be you need to take care of my well being, you know. But be responsible, you know, it's a different word,
Bill Agostini 35:54
um, so I would, I would frame it this way. I think companies have always been responsible for their employees and total employees, and this kind of segmentation of work versus non work, you know, you're a person, right? You don't transform when you open up the door of your office. How you come to work and how you do work is very much about how you how you are and how you feel. You know, your your mental, your physical well being are very, very important, right? And thinking about the total employee again, I think if you go back, you know, 70 years, I think companies felt more responsible for their employees and their well being taking care of it. And again, we had a dip in that, and now I think it's more pronounced in terms of what we're talking about. But we've you know, companies have always been responsible for their employees and thinking around if you want to get the best out of someone, then you have to take care of them. Now there, there are limits to that, right? You know, putting those things out in terms of benefits is, is a very big way to show added value of working for a specific company, you know, and just thinking about what you can do in terms of thinking about how they're treated on the job, and then what challenges they're having when they come to work. And you know when I talk to some CEOs, when they've succeeded is when they've had people managers that have seen them as a person, thought about their situation, whatever that may be, and been flexible around allowing them to do work and that, that goes back to what we were talking about before, in terms of this industrial mindset around work hours, work weeks, workplaces, yeah, yeah. And you know, you know, I had a team, and, you know, this is a while back, but it was my job to set, to be fair and set the job requirements. But I told them, I I don't care if it takes you four hours or 40 hours, right? That's up to you. And you know, if you need help to do it better, I'm here, or I can get you, right, but you do it at your pace, and you do it where you need to do it. And there are two requirements for me. One, you're you're here and with the team when we need to work together, and and we, we work globally. So I said, you know, your mobile phone has to be on from eight o'clock in the morning to 10 o'clock at night, so that people can reach it right? And this is, this is 25 years ago, right? This is, this is a long time ago, thinking about modern concept, but we haven't gotten there because we want, we want metrics. We want to be able to say, well, people are working,
Chris Rainey 38:57
yeah, it's not measured. You know, I say this to the team earlier on, I'm so ashamed my business partner because he likes to work X many hours in the morning. And I remember having a conversation earlier on, saying, just because I'm with someone's here from this time to this time doesn't mean that they're ring of that value, right? Yeah, we measuring the time in the office, or we're measuring outcomes and the impact. And that is quite a big shift for everyone. Though, culturally, you know, people operated in the same model for so long that that is, you know, so even companies, to this day, I won't say who they are, that I know of are still like tracking employees when they log in, when they log out, you know, like they feeling like, you know, it's like, there's a clear lack of trust that sends across the message. The message is, we do not trust you,
Bill Agostini 39:45
yeah? And you know, there's so much push now to get people back to the office, yeah? And again, you know, it's solving the wrong problem. And it goes back to that, that shift in what the younger generations are looking for now. Is, well, they could, you know, sit at work and not do work,
Chris Rainey 40:06
versus and, yeah, and they didn't. People do
Bill Agostini 40:09
and it's kind of like, if you're engaging them and you give them work that that really gets them excited about doing that's the important thing, right? Yeah, yeah. And that, you know that we used to talk about discretionary effort in the old days, right? Well, what is somebody doing when they're not being watched or don't have something specific to do? And I look at it as for for today's workforce, all of their time is discretionary, right? They will do what they're passionate and what they're rewarded for doing, and if they're not, they won't right, and love that thinking them in a box or stick them at a desk is not going to change that
Chris Rainey 40:50
we've spoken about where we the past, we've spoken about the present. I want to move on to where we need to be. So I'd love to hear your thoughts. We've become, we've gone through sort of our digital transformation in HR, you know, let's start with, you know, how impactful has HR been, with data on on that point and also from there, leading on, leading from there. Let's talk about where you think we need to move to in the future in order to be successful.
Bill Agostini 41:23
Well, I'll go back to that. I was around when a lot of things happen with the internet and information overload with communications, right? More is definitely not better. So it's the quality of the data, and it's the quality of analysis of that data. So really thinking about what is causal versus what is correlated, right? So, you know, we could have all kinds of correlations. We could think about how we can match things. We could have all kinds of charts, but really what what is having an impact? And I think in terms of of HR, we need to work more closely, and work more closely with the business and even data science scientists, and look at the real causal impact of any action. So being better with data, you know, thinking about, how do we translate what are core behavioral attributes, you know, things like learnability, agility and curiosity as fundamental behaviors, right? So you know, how much do you try to improve yourself, how adaptable and flexible you are to change, and how open are you to change? Right? Like those different attributes. And then think about something that, again, has been around since the 60s, is conscientiousness, if you measure consciousness of a person, that is a key differentiator in work, right, how well they'll work and for you, and how much they'll do, how much they feel accountable for delivering that so really thinking about HR, focusing on those areas and doing, doing that business, partnering So, controlling that flow, understanding the business, focusing much more in business acumen, but then working across the company holistically and be those brokers, right? So giving people more opportunities is what they're looking for. Is saying that if we look across the business, and you're, you're driving up here, and we can, we can deploy your someplace else, and you can learn even more. You win, and the company wins, and we're always looking for that win, win situation. And I mean, this is really old stuff, but I used to talk about, you need to define the organizational demands, right? What the business needs, what it needs it, and where it needs it, and then HR is looking at that town supply and making that match, right? And so we go back to the whole, you know, buy, borrow, build, right in terms of talent, and if we get in the right people, focusing much more on behaviors, and then we define the skills we need, we can teach those people their skills and that that's, that's also reward for the individuals, is that they're learning on the job. It's, it's real world. It's not something you read in the book. It's not getting an HR degree someplace, or, you know, learning something from a theoretical spectrum. It's really learning on the job. Do you
Chris Rainey 44:39
think that the technology will kind of help accelerate that as sort of AI and generative AI technology takes over a lot of the administrative tasks. Where do you see the opportunity for HR to then focus its resources to have the most impact?
Bill Agostini 44:59
Should. Do, right? Like in anything it should do, technology should help. It's just really about how we application, apply AI in the right places, technology in the right places. And then also, the final filter we have to have is common sense, right? Does this make sense to do?
Chris Rainey 45:24
Yeah, I'd say we forget about that one sometimes. Yeah, so it's
Bill Agostini 45:27
like, it's like, I have the data, I have the data. It's like, you know, I'm not sure that's really correct, but that's,
Chris Rainey 45:34
that's, that's where the but that's, that's where I feel like it will, AI will, technology will free us up to spend more time in that place. Yeah, does that make sense? Like having time to actually, I have the data, but most of the time, people are so rushed to do everything else that you actually have time to you know, both match the data with your years of experience and insights and your gut and the common sense, then make a decision, because that's, you know, you leverage the years of experience that you have with the data, because the data never tells the full story. You can make the data do look and sound however you want, exactly. Let's, let's be honest as well. So that is super important that you have both coming together. Yeah, no, no, definitely.
Bill Agostini 46:20
And, you know, I was just, I was just, I was just doing a course on AI, right? And, you know, talking about some of the outputs. And the idea is that, you know, AI is doing the leathery grunt work, right, and it's still learning, and it's also pulling from what's out there. So it does that grunt work, but we always have to do that step is start looking at that challenge, the outputs, yeah, put that filter on, use that common sense, and then also have conversations, right? So, you know, one of, one of the things early as a consultant is my, one of my managers said to me, is all of this data information is just to help two people have a conversation about what's needed and why, right? So the data and the technology isn't the answer. It's a way to help us have a conversation and together work out what, what is the right answer at that time, and then nothing, nothing is chiseled, and stuff is being agile. In terms of, we tried this, it didn't work, right? That's okay. We can learn from that and move forward. And I, you know, one of the biggest things I try to impart people is we always go through that, lessons learned, right? You know, what went well, what didn't go well? What would we have done differently? What did we forget to do right? And that, as you know, really being learning organizations is to keep that, that focus on, how do we improve all the time?
Chris Rainey 47:58
And then you can also, you can also start to map out. And so for many years, me and Shane kind of did built our company, but at no point did we kind of map out the process or the knowledge that was in our brains. So when you do those exercises, you also start to then map out what success looks like, and what are the things that we did that we did that did, how the impact? Because if you don't do that, you kind of, you don't know, really, what was the magic that made it work, right? If that makes sense, yeah, so it's really good for everyone to be exposed to, ah, I didn't even realize that's the thing that they love the most about our product. That's because sometimes you know, you assume something, and most of the time, we're wrong about that.
Bill Agostini 48:46
Yeah, and, you know, whenever I've done process re engineering, right, what do you do? You you go talk to the people that are doing the work 100% and they and they know, they they do it day in and day out. They say, well, they keep telling us to do a but, you know, I really think we should be doing big and if we did be it make my job much easier, and we'd be able to do a bunch 100%
Chris Rainey 49:07
Yeah, one of the, one of the things you said is, or in the notes that we prepared, was, get rid of the Industrial Revolution metrics, processes and procedures like performance management, AIP, etc, and become the playmaker. What does that mean? What does it be mean to become the playmaker?
Bill Agostini 49:28
So if you, let's say, as a true HR business partner, right, your first thing is about having a strategic knowledge about the business and business acumen, how the business makes money. Right then, when the business is coming to you and managers coming to you, you're challenging them and understanding, okay, what are the needs? And then you as an HR person working, you know, with the different groups, it's understanding what's in the market, what's in the organization, what's possible, what's not possible. And really deploying talent, right? So not sticking people into boxes in terms of, well, we're hiring somebody for this job. We're hiring somebody for this organization, is that we're hiring you for our company, and we're going to develop you and deploy you as needed, and that's going to give you a lot of opportunity, and then as you go through that, you're going to give us feedback about what you would want to do more and how to do it right. So like, if you see a playmaker in basketball, it's about passing the ball around and finding the best positioning to score, right? And that's the same thing with with impact.
Chris Rainey 50:36
Why is that so important, though? Because you you know, instead of the, instead of specific, specifically, specifying the job accountabilities, tasks and TA, why is that? Why is that a limiting factor?
Bill Agostini 50:52
So? So, if you think about any going back to these laundry lists of jobs, you're you're taking somebody trying to fit them in a point on a chart now, right? Most times, by the time you put them in that job, one they're probably either overqualified or under qualified. That job will probably change, and the needs of the company will change within a year, right? And then you're measuring them on on lagging indicators about, well, you did this last year, so we're going to reward you this year, but we don't really need that anymore. We need something different, and that was going back into those core behaviors. So you know, if you if you have the willing right and you have the curious, you can train them right, you can give them opportunities to learn, either, you know, through experiences, through formal training, or just being mentored. And that's a huge, huge advantage for HR being a strategic partner, and that's where they could really, really help the business. Yeah. And then you have what the what I like to call fit for future employees, because the employees can morph and change as the organization and the market changes. So you're not really, you know, you're hiring for what was last year, instead of hiring for the next five years. And
Chris Rainey 52:14
the pace of change is moving so quickly that you just can't operate in the past, you could do that, right? But now you just, you know, like, I see, I still see companies going through their skills, you know, journey, trying to mapping skills. By the time they've done it, they're, like, already a year out of date, but by the time, by the time they've done that as well, listen, I know we're already way over time, all right, and we're gonna have to do a part two, because we didn't get you. There's so many other questions we had, and I would love to hear your thoughts on it, so we're gonna have to get you back at some point. But I would love to hear your thoughts on your predictions in terms of the all of the companies now kind of going back to the trend of moving everyone back into the office. I'd love to get your prediction on that, and then we'll say goodbye.
Bill Agostini 53:02
Okay, so I think, and some of this are much more us specific, because it's very different than Europe, Middle East and Asia, but I think it's really going to drive inefficiencies. So as you mentioned earlier, you know, it shows a lack of trust. And you know, if they want to do nothing at home, they can do nothing at the office, right? And actually, often it's harder to do work at the office because you have more distraction. You have more people to talk to. So I think that is going to be one of these things where they're going to come back and play HR. So in, you know, in a year's
Chris Rainey 53:44
time, HR is gonna take the heat once again. Full circle. We went full circle from the beginning of this podcast. We're back to teaching for HR, taking the heat once again.
Bill Agostini 53:57
I think the other thing is, you know, with with talent acquisition now and over focused on precise experience and precise skill, instead of really back to where we were in terms of behaviors and fit for future behaviors. You know, there is going to be this struggle, and I think this is where technology is making things worse, right? Because you feed in a bunch of requirements and it's spitting out a few people, and this, this laundry list approach, is hurting diversity, and I think it especially hurts women. Traditionally, you've heard this that you know, men will look at the title and say, Oh, I like that. I don't care if I'm qualified, I'm going to apply where, you know, women have a tendency to look and engage all of the bullets and say, I don't know if I'm really want to apply for this. And I've talked to my wife about this. You know, don't, don't take a job for. Profile is as truth, right? So I think we need to think about that in terms of ensuring we have diversity of people and of thought by being much more open in terms of job profiles. And then again, going back to American companies and where they're struggling, they're going to have to look at places like Europe, anywhere in Europe, even I lived in Dubai, how Dubai treats their employees and focuses on well being. And even Singapore, thinking about those models where you hire somebody in a test period, and you know, you have six months to kind of figure out if it's working. Those notice periods and protection for employees has to be better, as you mentioned earlier, total well being, they're people working for you. You're responsible for them. You're responsible for their safety, and you're responsible what they take home with them in terms of their frustrations, right? Because that impacts not just their lives, but the lives of their family and the community. Yeah, and then, you know, a lot of what we've talked around with HR, AI and self service that could take away all of that admin, make it quicker and make managers and the employee themselves more responsible for those hygiene factors, and give HR more of that bandwidth to really focus on strategic thinking and business acumen and being that true business partner. So, you know, there's a lot of challenges, but you know, there's a huge amount of opportunities for transformation. It's just going to take a lot of courage, yeah, and a lot of difficult conversations. So
Chris Rainey 56:48
talking about our last part very quickly, before we wrap up, do you think HR will be replaced if we don't start to evolve by self by self service and AI?
Bill Agostini 57:01
I don't, I don't think there's ever a situation where HR will be replaced. It's more likely to be more focused and more focused, where you have that true strategic partner, partner reporting to senior leaders, and having, I would say more going external for things like org design and a lot of the COEs I get it, yeah, yeah, that you can get, you can get more expert help when needed. So I would say a more refined HR, a more impactful HR, but it's likely a smaller HR. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 57:44
it means we need to evolve as well, right? And upskill and reskill ourselves. Well, it's not to talk to you forever. I know I gotta let you go at some point. I knew. I knew this was gonna happen in a good way. But for everyone listening, if you enjoyed the episode, please, like, comment, subscribe, make sure you go on the follow bill, over on LinkedIn. If that's all right of you, Bill, I just threw it out there. I'm gonna leave a link to Bill's LinkedIn below. Go connect with him. But I love the fact that thank you for taking us through the journey of HR. I'm gonna have to think of like the good title for the episode. Now, the journey of a cool title for this, but I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. The show, and I wish you all the best until we next week. Appreciate you. Thanks. Thanks
Bill Agostini 58:26
so much. It was great to talk to you, Chris. Take care. Thanks.
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