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A Very Particular Set of Skills · Humanity Working

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: And what if we all had this career companion, right?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: That that was always there that helped us make the right decision.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: The decision is ours, but the information that we're getting is going to be there when we need it.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's the thing that I think is most exciting.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_04: Alright, today I'm joined by Ben Slater, who I should say up front is no relation to me, even though we both have uh an Oxford connection and share a last name.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Ben and I have actually only just recently met.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um Ben has a couple of roles that make him a great guest for this pod.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_04: First, he's a startup advisor and coach, but secondly, and probably more importantly, he's the senior vice president of marketing for Beamery.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_04: And we'll get into what Beamery is in more detail in a moment.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_04: But for now, you can think of it as an AI-powered talent platform that is used to hire candidates faster, develop workforce skills, and increase employee retention.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_04: All of those areas are things that we talk about a lot on this podcast.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_04: So it's great to have you on today, Ben.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm delighted to be here.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: And Paul, we haven't ruled out a uh long lost, distant relative that connects us, but uh uh I I I approve of your surname, that's all I can say.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_04: Well, well, thank you very much.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_04: I think that uh back in the day there were a lot of slaters in the UK, I think.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so so uh let's uh let's start off with the uh origin story of Beamery.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um tell me how it began and and when did you first start to get involved?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I joined Beamery uh pre-product, pre-revenue, uh before any outside funding, a couple of months after we started the business.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: And the origin and the focus really throughout the entire life cycle of the company has been opportunity exists everywhere in the world, but it's not equally distributed, right?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the mission of Beamery has always been how do we how do we create more equality in the hiring and talent development process?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: How do we ensure that businesses are understanding someone as who they might become, not who they were in the past or the school or the institution that they might have spent time in?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's really been the kind of red ribbon that's existed throughout the entirety of B Marie's history.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um we started trying to address that in the graduate market as the initial focus, right?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's where folks, I think, tends to be a lot of uh a lot of bias in the sense that people look at the institution.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: They don't necessarily look at the skills of of someone.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that very quickly expanded.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, before long we focused on the the enterprise market and how we could bring that type of equity to uh the hiring processes for large organizations.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_04: Hmm.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_04: So that's very interesting because you went to you went to Oxford yourself, right?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: I did, yeah.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_04: So so given that, was your uh as you joined BeamRe yourself very early early on in that process, you must have been very aware of what a difference it made coming from Oxford, or were you, or or was that was that part of your overall uh personal driving?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I look, I it's it's certainly a a privileged label to have on your on your resume or CV.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um it it can certainly open some doors.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: The thing that I was really passionate about is and I was I was I I had observed this when I saw friends of mine enter the workforce.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the the there's this old saying that people spend sort of seven seconds looking at a resume.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: I actually think it's less than that.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's less than seven seconds, right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: And the resume is not a it's not a good articulation of who someone is.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: So the thing that was pat that I was passionate about is how do we tell individual stories in a way that is more engaging and is more relevant to the business.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's what got me excited about the idea of Beamery.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and look, it's I've always wanted to work in in markets with huge potential, right?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: And every business is trying to hire better, every business is trying to ensure that they have the right skills at their organization, and every business is trying to retain and progress their talent.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_04: So let's talk about the workforce skills part of this.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_04: What do you think is changing in terms of the skills that employees need in order to be relevant today and tomorrow?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I think the the first thing to say here is that I think we have this fascinating moment where companies, governments, societies, everyone's facing this challenge, right?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I some would go as far as calling it a crisis, right?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: An existential crisis between the skills that they have and the skills that they need.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the focus is okay, you know, AI is accelerating this, and you know, therefore some skills will become obsolete or less important, and you know, employees need to change.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: For me, I look at this in two ways, right?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: So there are clearly new technical skills, and they are largely technical skills that organizations require to be able to step into the future, right, to be able to support future business objectives.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Right, if you are uh an automotive company and you want to build an electric car, well, you need different skills, right?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: So there's there's there's what what requires what's required for new business projects, but then there is, and I think this is particularly true in white-collar positions, there is what is changing about the way we work in a world where we may all, at some point in the not too distant future, have AI co-pilots that assist how we get things done.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: And there's gonna be an important skill in terms of how we work with AI, but there's also gonna be, for me, a paramount importance based on the things which are uniquely human skills, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Communication, how to act with empathy, how to collaborate.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: These things for me, what is intrinsically human, right, are the things that are gonna be most important uh in many instances to successful organizations.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no school to teach those things right now, right?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Those are things you tend to learn through your experiences in the workplace.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that's one of the challenges, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I mean, you and I work in very similar fields, and and we often talk about the idea of making the intangible tangible, um, and and how important that is inside companies.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um what we found, and I'm curious as to whether you find something similar as well, is that it's not only the employee that struggles with defining exactly what they need in terms of these human skills, it's the employee as well, right?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_04: And so, and particularly in worlds where they're used to getting feedback on this stuff in very inconsistent ways.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: We've spoken we've spoken to employees, for example, who say, Oh, I have my my annual review, and in my annual review, my my boss will tell me that I'm not succinct enough in my communications, and then three months earlier they've told me I'm too abrupt.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and they get and so they're getting this this very confusing set of feedback with no idea as to how they actually act, uh act on it.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_04: Do you see that?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_04: And if you do, how do you go about squaring that circle of making this intangible thing tangible in a way that both employers know what they need to do and employees know what they need to do?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's a really good question.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: Fundamentally, I think most employers don't understand the skills that are required, or the composite skills that are part of every job.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: And look, that's because those skills have changed very rapidly.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, there's technology that can help with that, and you know, that's one of the things that we do at Beamery.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: But I do think it starts there.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: You need to understand as a company what what you need, what you have, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: What the roles look like today and what they'll look like in the future.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's kind of the table stakes here to make a lot of this stuff work.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: When it comes to the employee, look, I think this is really hard, right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because most people don't think of their job as a set of skills and capabilities, or what they do in their job as you know, them exercising skills and capabilities.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: They think about it as getting job requirements done because that's how we position things to employees.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, to be a marketing manager level one, these are my responsibilities.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: This is the these are the things that I'm doing day in, day out.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I think to help employees understand, you know, the this in a kind of skill frame of reference, we have to change the syntax that we use, right?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: We have to start talking about the skills that are going to be required for them to go from job one to job two, right?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: We have to really go deep on coaching and development, and we have to make it as tangible as possible.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: And this this stuff is really hard.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think you know, talent marketplaces, we saw a lot of fora around those over the last few years as a potential solution to this, right?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think the challenge with that, and and this is sort of uh for for for for folks listening in, this is a sort of um a project-based or a gig-based way of organizations being able to upskill their workers, yeah.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: So deploying talent to places based on you know availability of talent, but also critical need.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the problem with that is it requires a ton of organizational change, right?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because you as a manager need to be okay with letting your employees go and work for someone else, right, for at least part of a time.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you're not necessarily going to be able to backfill that person or get budget to achieve the things you start to achieve.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I think what we're facing here is a difficult conundrum where number one, employers don't have the data they need, so they need to get that data.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: And number two, when they have that data, they need to communicate in a different way to employees, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'd love to understand like if you're having these conversations as well, are there things that are recurring or are there things that you know when you're speaking in in those terms that that are that are resonating with customers?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_04: It's really interesting.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_04: We almost start by questioning, right?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_04: We start with the idea of okay, you shared that there's a s there's a soft skills deficit inside your organization.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_04: What do you mean by that?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_04: And in a very large proportion of cases, they'll start with something like communication or conflict resolution or something along those lines.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_04: And we'll then say, okay, well, well, what else?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_04: Because you know, we could if if that's all it is, then we then we can get everybody on communication uh in communication classes and we can we can measure and demonstrate, we can use simulations, we can use all kinds of things to be able to show that.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_04: But very rapidly they get, no, no, no, that's not that's not all it is, but I don't really have the means of of explaining or articulating what else it is.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_04: I just know that, and then it descends into a variant of young people today or educational institutions or something or something along those lines.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_04: And it's really interesting because as they struggle to articulate what the challenge is, they start to realize themselves that they don't actually understand what the problem is and that there's some re remedial work that needs to happen on the employer side in order to understand that better.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so I do think that that is um it is part of the part of the challenge, and it's not solved by the myriad soft skills ontologies that are out there, all of which are different to each other, and by this generalized acceptance that this is sort of you know complicated stuff.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um I think there's work that we all have to do to simplify this down to a point where employers understand it and employees understand what is uh what is clearly wanted of them.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um and that applies, by the way, I think across the uh across the life cycle of human learning.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um and there's a lot in the educational sphere right now around this concept of lifelong learning and and uh you know what do you need to know at various points in your in your career?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_04: That brings me on to my next question, actually.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_04: Which is um I'm curious as to what you think the role of the employer is in this picture of creating highly prepared employees and developing the workforce.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_04: What do you think is the role of the employer versus the role of educational institutions?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: Ultimately, it's in the employer's best interest to ensure that their that their staff are as valuable as possible to their business.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: And the reality we're going into now is that talent demand far outstrips supply.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't have, to my mind, an option.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: You have to build these programs to develop and build new skills internally, otherwise, it's gonna be very expensive to try and either borrow talent from a consulting standpoint or buy it in the market.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, for me, it's it's not an option, right?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: You have to do it, you have to be thinking about upskilling.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: There are different ways that you can do it, right?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Some which is you know embedded learning, some which are sort of you know apprenticeships, things like that.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um but it's it's a responsibility, I think, of every business.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Now, with educational institutions, I think the big question there is are the things that people are in many cases spending a large amount of money to learn, are those things useful?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: And look, I did I'm a history major, right?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, is that is that the most commercially useful skill or commercially useful degree?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: You can make an argument that that's helped me build transferable skills that I apply relatively regularly in my in my chosen career, but there are I think there's a big opportunity for education institutions to focus more on what will set graduating students up for success in the future versus just the courses that they've always run.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know, you you could leave at 21 with a large amount of debt, and you know, you have a piece of paper to your name, but do you really have the skills that you're gonna need to be successful in a workforce in five to ten years?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't know the answer.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_04: So that's that's fascinating.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_04: Your your degree's in history, mine's in math.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um I've given a I've given some thought as to what uh relevance I think the my math degree has for me, because I you know clearly I'm uh I'm not uh doing, I don't know, topology every day or or you know numerical analysis even in most cases, right?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_04: So um but I do think it was valuable.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_04: I think it was valuable because math degrees kind of uh teach you how to think, I guess, is a is a um is a good way of thinking about it.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_04: As you're trying to figure out a proof, for example, you have to you have to really go through a a process a very, very complex analytical process in order to be in order to be able to do it.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um what do you think your history degree brought you in terms of human skills or soft skills that you can use in the workplace today?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the main things are the ability to quickly and effectively consume information and then to distill information in clear effective communication.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: So they're communication skills for me.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh understanding and knowing about the Swedish Empire.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, fascinating, probably not critical to my day-to-day uh role, but as an executive, communication is the most important skill, right?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's uh it's how we positively impact the organization.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_04: And isn't it fascinating that you you can articulate that now, but I wouldn't be surprised if when you started in the workplace, you were probably not really able to articulate what what benefits you were getting from it, which is which is kind of extraordinary that we work all to your point, right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_04: We pay a lot of money to go through all of this stuff and with very unclear ROI from not just from our perspective, from but from the perspective of the employers that are hiring us.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I give you an example of a quote unquote soft skill that is very rarely taught at higher higher education at institutions, but will be very valuable.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: Sales is part of every single job, right?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: In some way.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: In some way, everyone is in sales, right?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: Whether that's selling the work they're doing internally, whether that's selling a project to a colleague to get them to join, whether that's selling in the conventional sense.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: Selling isn't tool, right?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, if we're looking at skills, persuasion, right, which is kind of the skill we're talking about here, yeah, teaching people to be able to communicate effectively, hone persuasion, and be able to articulate the value in doing something, that is uh those those are really important skills.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think it's uh I think it's a missed opportunity.
• 18:22
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• 18:24
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• 18:27
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• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And while you're taking this break, here's another fun fact for you.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you do a one-day course on soft skills training in your organization, 70% of the information is lost in a week and 90% in a month.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, only 10% of the information remains, and it's probably not the most useful stuff.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: The name of the restaurant that did the catering, maybe, how bad the coffee was, whatever.
• 19:02
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• 19:20
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• 19:48
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• 19:52
  SPEAKER_04: So sticking with educational institutions for a while, uh just for a little bit then, how do you think fundamentally they're going to need to change their approach to remain as relevant as they have been for the last, let's say, 60, 70 years?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: I guess the the question that I think about is will they be able to?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and the reason I say that is you know, costs arising, right?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think a big part of the value that uh incoming students place around a university diploma is on the future earning potential or ROI they'll get off the back of it, right?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think if we start to see organizations focus more on skills and the the potential of incoming graduate students, we might start to see university application rates decline more.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um now I think the counter to that is and this is just kind of like very practically popular companies get a lot of graduate applications.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: Institutions are a really good filtering mechanism for them to be able to make a big pile a smaller pile, and that and that's unf that's an unfortunate reality.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: So the technology needs to at least for that it needs to exist for them to be able to do that in a different way.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: And again, that's why we believe that skills are so important, right?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you can use technology to highlight the skills that someone has, their potential to learn skills that are relevant to the role, and their potential to grow inside your business, that surely should be a more relevant marker than you know the the institution that they that they studied at.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think if if universities are to adapt, for me it needs to be hand in hand.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hand with how the how the world of work is changing.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: If in five from 10 years to 10 years, you know knowledge workers are fundamentally operating in a different way.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: If we're not teaching those skills at at university, then I think we're out of touch, right?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because the the the role of higher education needs to be able to be prepared to prepare us for the next stages of life.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we're going to see the disparity between those two um the these two areas increase.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: So we need to be able to tie it back together.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_04: That's really interesting.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_04: It reminds me of a conversation I had, I think about three or four weeks ago, with um a hiring manager at Google.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_04: I won't name her, but she but basically she said I I posed a question to her.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_04: The the question I posed to her was you've got two candidates.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_04: One of those candidates has been to an Ivy League institution and come out of that I Ivy League institution with a with a terrific degree.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um and your second candidate spent that same period of time um basically doing a um working working full-time and doing a set of highly relevant Coursera certifications um that they themselves assembled and built themselves into to try to make them as uh as employable as they could be by an organization like you.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_04: Which one of those two candidates would you prefer?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_04: And her answer to me was intriguing.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_04: She said definitely the second candidate, but then she also added something else which she said it wouldn't even be close.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_04: And I thought that was I thought that was really intriguing.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_04: And of course the reason why that why she thought that was that she was she was taking evidence that this human was scrappy enough and adaptable enough and resilient enough to be able to do all of that in order to be able to try to get the the qualification that we were uh that we're looking at here.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_04: So I I'm with you.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_04: I think there are real challenges as to how the adjustment and adaptation happens from these institutions of of higher learning to make sure that these candidates really are relevant, which is not something that they've been uh highly focused on in the past, at least you know at least certain ones.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um let's go back now to the employer because you said something really interesting um earlier on, which was you said I don't think they have a choice in terms of of you know uh investing in their people, making sure that their people are uh are relevant, et cetera.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_04: But certainly we've seen at any rate that while you believe that and I believe that, um, employers aren't necessarily all acting that way, uh acting that way right now.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_04: So do you see big differences in terms of how employers look at learning uh at um at growing uh growing their people, growing and developing their people?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we we see it across quite a few of our customers.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think the the big unlock for organizations is being able to get more granular data around the skills of their workforce.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, I've spoken to a lot of HR leaders who have used data on LinkedIn, you know, the uh skill data on LinkedIn uh as a way of understanding the capabilities of their workforce.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: Now, anyone listening will know that that's not the most accurate data.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: I've been endorsed for many things that uh I wouldn't necessarily describe as personal skills.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: But if you can help someone understand in more detail what skill density looks like in their organization, then they could do something about it, right?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think one of the one of the problems that organizations have, and this is a true organizations of any size, is particularly in times of economic uncertainty or economic challenge, what gets cut first, right?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: And learning and development budgets, I don't know whether they're top of that list, but they're not too far from the top, right?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: Or they're at least paired back.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it gives a leader that leader being armed with the information of hey, we we need to be this type of organization, our business strategy is going in this direction right now.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: We've the skills we have are over here, right?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: And for us to be able to achieve on our business strategy, we actually need to be able to bring these people along to the right.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: We need to be able to bring them forward into the future.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: And here's the data.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because ultimately, although people are roughly 70% of the budget line of an organization, decisions around people are usually made by gut feel, not with hard data.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: So if we can bring data to the party, uh then I think it it it it changes the um it changes the conversation.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I can't remember the exact provenance of the quote, but our our CEO referenced it the other day.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, if if uh if we have data, let's use data.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: If we have opinions, let's use mine, right?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's gonna always gonna be the perspective of folks that are outside of the HR organization.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: We have to bring data.
• 27:39
  unknown: Yeah.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_04: Gosh, there was something you mentioned there, uh which I think is I mean it's absolutely true, right?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_04: What is one of the first things that gets cut learning and uh learning development budgets?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_04: A company, I mean, m most companies aren't stupid.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_04: So what do you what do you think is fundamentally behind that?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_04: Because what we've seen in organizations where that is put into where that's acted upon is that if you're downsizing, if you're getting you might start by getting rid of people, and then you might very shortly after that, you might reduce investments in uh in learning and development.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um of course, the overall effect of that is that the survivors are now not being invested in either, and so more of those survivors tend to leave as well, and you can end up with kind of like a vicious cycle occurring.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_04: So given that it doesn't really make a lot of sense for L and D to be one of the first things to be cut, why do you think it is so common that that happens?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's I think the perception is that it's fluffy.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it is, you know, particularly for like uh, you know, a CFO or um someone who is in the numbers all day, if something doesn't have real tangible ROI, it's really easy to cut.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I think we need to do a better job as an industry at talking about the real ROI of investing in these programs, talking about the ROI in terms of building skills of the future, in terms of what that means for business impact, right?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: Talking about the ROI on retention, about the ROI on productivity, right?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if if if these programs are working, they should be making employees more productive.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: But we had to put the two together, I think.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, it's always going to be something that uh is is is at least raised to go on the shopping block.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, totally makes sense.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um so in situations where learning development budgets are being slashed, um companies we've seen anywhere, I'm sure you have as well, sort of companies claim to sort of like half solve this problem by implementing things like Udemy or or related course catalogs that are available inside inside those organizations.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um even though the uptake of uh of courses on these things can be woefully, woefully low.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um what's your take on that in terms of the the value of implementing things like course catalogs as a means of solving the problem as to how to learn uh how to help your employees learn and grow?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_04: I've obviously shown my shown my cards on that, but what do you think?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, look, I I think the the the pro for these courses is they provide optionality, right?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: And they allow the employee to be the captain of their own ship, right?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: And to to make the decisions around how they want to consume learning content.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: For me, the responsibility for employee development is it's it's almost this trifector, right?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: So you have HR programming, you have the manager, and you have the employee.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: But within that, for me, it's the manager and the employee that are the most important constituent parts.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think the the role of HR is to provide the availability of information, but that it's the job of the manager and the employee to work together on what development looks like.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, again, HR needs to make the job of the manager easy here in terms of how career architectures are designed of the business, right?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, what mobility options look like, and you know, policies around um you know, around promotion and you know, all of the basic building blocks here, they also need to provide the visibility in terms of skills and potential.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, with that information, it's the manager and the employee that need to be owning this.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's really intriguing.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_04: A couple of things that I will uh that I'll add as color commentary to what you just said.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_04: What we've seen through our work is that um the impact of things like the um Udemy and Coursera and so on, without picking on them, there are those will be the ones that a lot of companies will be aware of.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_04: The impact is extremely minimal.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_04: And the reason appears to be because what you're really doing to your point about optionality is you're providing an easy means for people that are very motivated to do this stuff to do it.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_04: And in reality, of course, that that group of people inside your organization, they're gonna find a way anyway, right?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_04: I sometimes liken it to the idea of a gym opening in your ne in your neighborhood, right?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_04: If a gym opens in your neighborhood, then some people who are really motivated to work out will go there regularly.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_04: But if that gym didn't exist, they'd be going out for a run or they'd be lifting uh they'd be they'd be doing something different.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_04: They'd find a way uh to work out, but it's not gonna do anything for the people that don't have that high level of intrinsic motivation in order to be able to grow themselves anyway.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_04: And so that's you're not doing anything to alter that.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: All you're doing is you're giving those people that would be doing it anyway a way a way of doing it slightly easier.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_04: So it's almost like a it's almost like a benefit, like an employee benefit, but it doesn't actually do anything to it to address the underlying problem.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_04: The other piece of color commentary I'd add as well to this is that we spent quite a lot of time interviewing both employees and managers.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the questions that we ask employees around this specifically is um do you have a clear understanding of how to learn and grow in your organization?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_04: And then a follow-up to that is do you clearly believe that your employer and your manager wants you to learn and grow?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_04: And in most cases, the responses to those questions are pretty negative.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_04: We found about 80% of people that we spoke to did not have a clear understanding that their employer or their manager wanted them to learn and grow.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um and so that's part of the that's part of the challenge.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_04: So I love how you how you framed it in the way that you did.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_04: It is, it's that it's the HR department effectively the way we look at it is they're creating the environment, the circumstances in order to facilitate the growth that you're talking about.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_04: And then collectively, the manager and the employee are partnering to help the employee develop inside the organization in a way that benefits the company and benefits the employee.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_04: So I think it's a I think it's a really, really great way of thinking about it.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um so let's just shift a little bit to um the AI element because I know from uh you know from what I know of Beamery, that you have a um an AI-powered talent platform.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um what do you think is going to be the role of AI in skills development moving forward?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_04: And how are you guys using it today?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so for the for the benefit of folks who aren't familiar with Beamery, um, as you mentioned, uh our talent platform is really built with AI at the core.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we we call what we power for businesses talent lifecycle management.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason for that is we believe that there's a place for one platform to be the control center for everything from talent attraction to kind of nurture, um, you know, hiring, and then ultimately when someone becomes uh part of your organization, um, you know, mobility and and upskilling as well.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so we'll sit alongside you know an applicant tracking system or uh HRIS to power those uh workflows for the world's largest organizations.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I think your question is a really interesting one, and there's there's two big things that uh that come to mind.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: So the first is around skill identification and verification, right?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think AI can be very powerful here when it comes to building a more complete picture of someone's skills and potential with inference.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you know, Paul can do this skill, therefore it's likely you could learn this skill, right?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's a couple of caveats there around the requirements and the depth of the model to be able to do this effectively.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we've all seen the kind of chat to hallucinations, et cetera.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, you need to be able to understand the industry that a company is operating in, the size of the business, et cetera, because those are uh those are those would create vastly different uh recommendations.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: Where HR, sorry, where AI can be most valuable though, from my perspective, is operating as a as a sort of in-the-background co-pilot for users in different types of workflows.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right now, any professional is unbelievably busy.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we've talked a lot about learning and upskilling in this conversation, but I think a big part of why things like Udemy are not super successful is the amount of time that people have to dedicate to learning is quite low.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the the power in AI can be we can embed it in experiences in a way that doesn't require people to learn new skills, but will help them be more productive.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think AI can fade into the background, it can bring insights and information into the flow of work to help people make better decisions in a way that is totally seamless and feels very natural.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that that for me, I think, is going to be the real power of AI.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in the in the world of talent and HR, that could be helping a manager understand information about the best markets to hire in, you know, likely cost of hire, likely time to hire before putting a role live, right?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: Or it could be helping a candidate understand the potential career part of the business and the skills they're likely to learn along the way before they apply.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, what if we all had this career companion, right?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: That that was always there to help us make the right decision.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: The decision is ours, but the information that we're getting is going to be there when we need it.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's the thing that I think is most exciting.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_04: Um, okay, last question for you.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um so you've been in the world of work for a while now, um, but I'd like I'd like you to sort of imagine that you're starting your career today.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_04: If you were, what would you be focusing on to make sure that you can get hired, retained, and promoted?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's two things.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: The first, I do believe fundamentally that the people that are able to work effectively with AI are going to be more productive than those that do.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: So learning how to master AI in the context of getting things done more effectively, I think is a fundamental skill you need to learn, not just if you're entering the workforce, but also if you're if you're in it.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: The other communication for me, I think is the most important skill in business.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: And really leaning into being the best possible communicator in any setting, whether that's public speaking, one-to-one communication, written communication.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think that paired with AI, uh, AI mastery, I think would be the two things that I would I would really focus on if I was entering the workforce today.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: Ben, thanks so much for joining us today.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_04: I appreciate it.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: My pleasure.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: Great conversation.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Music is by Dolo Records.
• 39:31
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• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: It helps us reach more people.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.