Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Navigating the Future of HR: AI, Adoption, and Empathy (w/ Jason Averbook)

Transcript

Navigating the Future of HR: AI, Adoption, and Empathy (w/ Jason Averbook) · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome item change Makers to the deck Show with Tim Flower and Tom McGraw.
0:07
Let's get into it. Hello, change Makers, Welcome back to the deck
0:11
Show. I have to say, it's that rare occasion. It's a sunny
0:15
day in London. We haven't seen many of them at all this summer.
0:20
Whatsoever. I am flying solo this morning because we really wanted to catch our
0:27
special guest while he was able to talk to us. I believe he's joining
0:31
us from Singapore. So let's welcome Jason Alberbrook. He is the author of
0:36
a book that really caught our attention, the Ultimate Guide to a Digital Workforce
0:40
Experience, Leap for a Purpose, and we're going to be discussing that today.
0:44
Jason will welcome to the deck Show. Hey Tom, thanks so much.
0:49
It's great to be here. And yes, joining from Singapore, where
0:51
it is sunny as well, about ninety degrees fahrenheit. So what that about
0:58
thirty two degrees celsius. Quite warm. Not that I suspect a sunny day
1:03
in Singapore is a bit more of a common occurrence than in London. But
1:06
I've never I've never visited, so that's just a guess. Well, if
1:10
you love humidity. This is the place to come. Humid, humid,
1:14
humid. If you love humidity, you'll love Singapore. Might be a sort
1:18
of an advisable tourist, you know exactly slogan T shirt, make a T
1:23
shirt right, What finds you in Singapore today, Jason, I'm doing a
1:30
keynot tomorrow, at a keynote speech tomorrow at a major HR technology conference here.
1:36
The HR Technology Conference in Singapore is one of the largest in the whole
1:41
Asia region, and it's put on by a media company called People Matters.
1:45
So large community here, about twenty five hundred people or so at the event.
1:52
So we'll be talking all about the being digital in the world today and
1:56
how do we create a digital experience very cool and after. It's actually a
2:00
shame my co host Tim Flower couldn't be with us this morning because we used
2:07
to. We recorded I think a couple of years ago, many many episodes
2:10
of the kind of confluence of HR and I, and this year we've been
2:15
recording, as you might expect, Jason, many many episodes about AI and
2:21
its influence in the workplace. And I'm super excited to talk to you about
2:23
the additional confluence between those two areas. But perhaps just to begin with Jason,
2:30
just for the audience, introduced yourself and give us a quick overview of
2:34
your work so far. Yeah, sure, I'd love to. So.
2:37
I have been and I have spent my whole life in the world of HR
2:42
and HR technology. And I was not raised by my parents to be an
2:46
HR or HR technology, but somehow ended up in there. Oh, I
2:51
thought you were. I thought you were. They had one aim for me,
2:54
It had one ame for me exactly. Yeah. No. I started
2:58
when I was started when I was twenty years old implementing Doss mainframe payroll systems
3:06
for a company called sobrityan corporation. I had an opportunity to write the industry's
3:09
first Windows application. After that, left there to join a company called PeopleSoft
3:15
or I did everything from implement PeopleSoft to run product strategy for people Soft.
3:20
Then in two thousand and four, decided I was sick of people saying they
3:23
hated technology, hated my technology, and really said I wanted to get on
3:30
the service side of it, the other side of the table, and say
3:35
why do people struggle so much with technology? Technology is magical, it can
3:39
create this amazing competitive edge, Yet so many people are only okay with it
3:46
once they go live. They go live and they're like, Eh, it
3:50
didn't really meet the goals, and next thing you know, they're looking for
3:53
an RFP. So I really wanted to solve that problem and really have spent
3:57
the last two decades working with the organizations on transforming how they think about the
4:01
concept of not doing tech but being digital. Got it? Got it?
4:06
I mean your most recent book, I think, as I mentioned the Ultimate
4:12
Guide to a Digital Workforce Experience, as I say, quote our attention here
4:15
for quite obvious reasons, how did you become interested specifically in the way digital
4:21
is impacting employee experience in more recent yas well? I mean, it's it's
4:27
a great question, and it's an easy question. And what really started the
4:31
focus on this is what when the combination of three things were happening. A
4:38
people were struggling with getting quote unquote adoption. They were struggling with getting people
4:46
the average person who doesn't know how to spell HR to use pieces of HR
4:51
technology. And the reason why is because it was a terrible experience. It
4:56
was a bunch of disjointed processes. It was just a bunch of stuff thrown
4:59
up on an intranet or a link farm. No one could find anything.
5:02
The search didn't work, and people are like, why is no one like
5:05
this? That's the first thing. The second thing is that outside of work
5:13
became so much easier to get stuff done than inside of work. So,
5:16
wow, it's easy to get stuff done outside of work. I mean,
5:19
look, it's twenty twenty four. I always say it's twenty twenty four.
5:23
Outside of work, what year does it feel like inside of work? Most
5:26
people would say it feels like two thousand. So the second thing was this,
5:30
what do you think, Well, let's say twenty ten, But most
5:33
organizations would tell you that it's much easier to get stuff done outside of work
5:39
than inside of work. And the experience that I have using tools outside of
5:44
work is easier than the tools I have to work with inside of work.
5:49
And then the third thing that really really became clear to me is that what
5:54
we were doing in companies is we were focused on getting people connected instead of
6:00
building connection. The what we were trying to do is say, how do
6:04
I get people connected to this technology? How do I get people to dial
6:09
in, how do I get them to authenticate? Et cetera, et cetera,
6:13
et cetera. That was the goal, but what was missing was the
6:16
human side of it, which is how do you build connection with people in
6:21
a digital world. And then tom of course COVID happened where everyone all of
6:27
a sudden started working remotely. And guess what. I used to walk by
6:31
people and say good morning. Now all of a sudden, I go on
6:34
Slacker teams and say good morning, and what do people say? What do
6:39
you want? I'm like, what happened? It used to be you know,
6:44
if I was with someone live, there'd be one experience, but then
6:47
digital it was a different experience. And all of a sudden, I was
6:51
like, we have to think about this. I got to pick up a
6:55
miss Jason, because I've been there for debates in office debates because we were
6:59
quite a global organization. And next thing right, and you find a definite
7:02
cultural difference in our many kind of mainland European colleagues will when reaching out to
7:09
you on teams, we'll start with a good morning, how are you?
7:12
And uh, and the the the English and Americans. We tend to be
7:16
like there was I wasn't saying I wasn't bad. Now in my European colleagues
7:21
on this front. But I was listening to people say, goodness, it's
7:25
annoying. You know they're going to ask a question. Can we just get
7:28
on with it now? That's not Do you think do you think a reasonable
7:30
middle ground here is good morning, hope you're well, and straight into the
7:34
straight into the point of order, or do you think this is the Europeans
7:39
have it right? There should be some obligatory niceties. Allah the I r
7:44
L workplace in our in our teams comes you're tending towards them. If you
7:47
and I worked in the same company, I would reach out to you and
7:50
say good morning, and I wouldn't want anything. I wouldn't even want there
7:56
wouldn't be there wouldn't be anything else. I would just say good morning,
8:01
you know, like hey, good morning. I'd say, hey, there's
8:03
five green dots, there's five people in my team that are currently online,
8:09
and I'll say good morning. But the funny thing is is some people say
8:13
back to me, what do you need? I'm like nothing, I was
8:16
just saying good morning. So that's what they've confused the holy issue here.
8:22
But but I think what's really interesting is that digital changes people, and we're
8:30
humans outside of work what's really important is we're the same human inside of work.
8:33
Oftentimes we're not even I mean, I've been outside of work and inside
8:37
of work today and I've been sitting in the same chair in my hotel room.
8:43
Okay, we're the same human. But why are the rules different outside
8:46
of work and inside of work? Why is the feeling different outside of work
8:50
and inside of work? Which drives when we think about that, that's experience.
8:54
Experience equals feeling. That's interesting, I'm not very leads us perhaps to
9:01
the larger question we're going to discuss today, which is that evolving dynamic between
9:07
IT and HR. And it's particularly pertinent one to next think, which concentrates
9:11
on the area of digital employee experience, which will get to momentarily. But
9:16
first of all, how do you see that dynamic between these previously extremely discrete
9:20
functions evolving and starting to influence one another and where do you think that that's
9:26
ultimately going. So, Tom, one of the things that I like to
9:31
think is that the HR Department owns its digital strategy. Now when I say
9:37
that, people that think it get really mad at me. And the next
9:45
thing I say is that digital is different than technology. Digital does not equal
9:50
technology. It's one of the key premises in the book. Digital is a
9:54
mindset. Digital is a way of working, Digital is a way of being.
9:58
And HR should own the digital strategy as to how does it want to
10:05
deliver capabilities and services to a workforce. What it should do is be the
10:11
organization that enables that strategy, that brings that strategy to life using various pieces
10:18
of technology. So it is a very very close partnership between the function and
10:26
IT, but very distinct roles. The design intently said, design of the
10:35
experience should be something that HR talks about. What are my measures of success?
10:41
Is my measure of success? Go live? It shouldn't be is my
10:46
measure of success? How do people feel? It should be? More like
10:50
that, Come up with the measures of success, come up with what it
10:54
is that I'm trying to achieve, and then work with it. But so
10:58
often time what happens is we throw over a bunch of weird requirements to it.
11:05
They build something, it comes back to us and they're like, this
11:09
isn't what we wanted. Like you said you wanted four bedrooms and two bass
11:13
but dummy it I have a dog. You didn't say you had a dog
11:18
or dummy it I have to go upstairs. You didn't say you couldn't walk
11:24
upstairs, So does that make sense? It has to be a joint partnership
11:28
between HR thinking design it building and then continuing to innovate and focus on what
11:35
we call betterment. And do you see like as an out as an outgrowth
11:41
of that dynamic? Maybe it's I mean it sounds like it in the way
11:46
you describe it, and maybe I have it wrong, kind of slightly becomes
11:50
absorbed into HR if HR res owning the strategy, but of course HR or
11:56
overseeing that design as you call it, that could be an ultimate outcome for
12:01
an ambitious technologist now right, rather than somebody coming from the more traditional areas
12:07
of human engagement. I mean, what's your view and have this kind of
12:11
effects kind of company dynamics and structure and also traditional career paths. So,
12:18
Tom, I believe that HR needs to have its design chops. I think
12:24
it okay, Depending on your question, depends on the person and the skill
12:31
set. There are people in it that probably would do better in the role
12:35
of a digital HR leader. There are people in it that would do better
12:41
as someone who's thinking about cybersecurity, thinking about how integrations work between agents and
12:48
agents in the AI world. It's stuff I don't want HR thinking about.
12:52
Okay. So you know, there's people that understand the prescription, and there's
12:58
people that understand how to do the surgery. Okay, it understands how to
13:03
do the surgery. Quote unquote, HR is saying, what is it that's
13:07
the problem? Helping me understand diagnosing the problem. But when it comes to
13:11
that hands on or that coding work, I don't want HR doing that,
13:18
okay, because it has to fit into a wide, wide spectrum of an
13:24
existing body. And if I don't have the right it people doing that,
13:28
I end up with organ rejection, which maybe leads us to data. Right.
13:35
You kind of argument a book for the importance of a robust data foundation,
13:39
and in a way that elicits the kind of paradoxical realm we've entered,
13:43
because nothing sounds less about experience or feeling than data, and yet data is
13:50
increasingly integral to being able to actually measure feeling in organizations. So I wonder
13:56
if you could elaborate on that. So, Tom, I'm going to repeat
14:01
back something you said data is important to measure feeling and I'm going to change
14:07
that a little bit and say data is important to create feeling, right,
14:13
okay, Because when we think about the ultimate experience, the ultimate experience is
14:18
that a machine knows me everything about me, how I work, where I
14:26
live, all of the data about me within an enterprise. When I go
14:31
on to use a machine, and I'm saying use a machine intentionally, that
14:37
machine knows everything about me. It knows the language I speak, It knows
14:41
how fast I type, it knows whether I like to touch or talk,
14:45
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All that being said, data
14:50
not only do I use data to measure the experience. I use data to
14:56
create the experience. And that's why I say, the better our data,
15:01
data is the spine of experience. The better our data, the better the
15:07
experience can be. I love that. And it kind of opens another door,
15:13
which is to the current landscape of AI and machine learning. I mean,
15:16
what role do you see VS as playing or what opportunities the innovation do
15:22
you see them as introducing? Into his question of employee experience, and the
15:26
digital employee experience is an aspect of that. Oh, Tom, I don't
15:31
even I mean so I don't talk about my book anymore because the book is
15:35
dead. Sure, sure, there's what you mean. Well, I mean
15:39
there's some concepts. There are some concepts in the book that makes sense.
15:43
But anyone that has an employee experience today, your employee experience in twelve months
15:50
is going to look completely different fact and it's going to be driven by generative
15:54
AI. And the key to that is instead of me knowing how to use
16:00
a machine, it's going to be about the machine knowing how I work.
16:04
That's the power of generative AI is a human conversation, the ability to understand
16:11
speech, the ability to understand picture, the ability to understand data, and
16:15
to create an experience for me that matches that. So our days of counting
16:22
the clicks, are days of navigating portals and intranets, our days of searching
16:27
and not finding things are over as long as we design the experience for what
16:37
we want. And we now switch from leveraging old school old school AI two
16:45
point zero, which was basic machine learning, a lot of coding, a
16:48
lot of programming, to what generative AI is doing, which is learning every
16:52
day based on how I navigate and how I work. Is couldn't help,
17:00
but Perk up earlier when you mentioned digital adoption. It's something we've discussed a
17:06
lot on the show recently. The ability for employees to quickly learn us and
17:10
fully exploit new technology is obviously hugely important, and it's obviously hugely important to
17:17
you. We spoke about that dynamic between HR and IT. Do you see
17:22
it as playing an increasingly significant role in trying to help those employees adapt to
17:30
enjoy, you know, really really master the technologies which are coming their way
17:36
so thick and fast, And what are your broader thoughts on adoption? It
17:40
knows the canvas it has, It knows the space that has to paint with
17:45
it. Okay, So what I mean by that? So, first of
17:51
all, adoption is not it's job. Okay, I want to make that
17:56
really really clear. Adoption is not it's job, I tease. Job is
18:00
to work with the design. It has to make sure that it can meet
18:04
the employee or the user. I hate to say the word user, Tom,
18:08
I like to say human. Meet the human where they are instead of
18:15
having them go somewhere, so that it becomes what we call frictionless. Okay,
18:21
but so often we focus on Hey, let's think about how do I
18:26
design that, I'll call it an experience to drive adoption. My measure of
18:32
success shouldn't be adoption. I was with an organization last week who said,
18:36
guess what, we've had fifteen hundred out of eighteen hundred people adopt this tool.
18:41
And I was like, oh, cool, what's the impact. They're
18:45
like, what do you mean? I was like, well, fifteen hundred
18:49
out of eighteen hundred is pretty high. What's the impact? They're like like
18:55
this honestly said what do you mean? And like I said, well,
18:57
what don't you understand? I'm like, well, they said, well,
19:03
fifteen hundred out of eighteen hundred people have used it. I'm like, what's
19:07
the impact? Like, we have no idea? I said, how long
19:11
did they stay there? We have no idea. All they were counting is
19:15
how many IP addresses hit a site. And by the way, if that's
19:19
what you think is success, cool, But when you go to make an
19:25
ROI statement back to a CFO that oh, you have fifteen hundred out of
19:29
eighteen hundred people adopt, it's a pretty lame statement with not much meat behind
19:34
it. So what you want to do is measure impact, measure results.
19:40
That should really be the key as to what's driving the measurement of adoption and
19:48
going back to the notion of empathy. Well, going to the notion of
19:52
empathy, it's a big feming you, but we haven't really touched upon it
19:55
today, and I doubt that's an aspect of your book which is out of
19:57
day. In fact, I would suspect the fee is permanent, whatever the
20:00
changing technological circumstances might be. I guess the question is how can HR leaders
20:07
balance that need for technological advancement while maintaining the human touch in employee interactions.
20:15
More generally, how can they implement that kind of a culture and encourage it,
20:18
nurture it. What do your use So the first thing that you have
20:22
to do is you have to know your workforce. You have to know the
20:26
personas that you're designing for. So if I'm designing for an airline, for
20:32
example, a big program I just have been working on basically for a while,
20:37
they have three personas in the air on the ramp and corporate. And
20:42
guess what. Because I know how those workers work, I can design for
20:48
them. That means I can be empathetic towards them. I can be empathetic
20:52
towards the fact that they're not sitting at a desk all day long because they're
20:56
flying a plane. I can be empathetic to a nurse versus a CXO of
21:03
a hospital because I know how they work, I know what they do.
21:10
Empathetic means being able to show care for a human. But there's even little
21:17
things I can do, like not call users users. Yeah, Like it
21:22
is not a glamour statement to say, hey, you're a user. Hey,
21:26
guess what you're coming to user testing. Hey, guess what you're our
21:30
super user. Like I'm a human, I'm a person to changel that to
21:34
human, you're a superhuman. You're coming to human testing. Yes, exactly,
21:40
exactly. But when we think about AI, the equation for the best
21:45
AI experience today is AI plus EI equals augmented intelligence. Artificial intelligence plus emotional
21:59
intelligence equals augmented intelligence. The balance of machines and people working together. That's
22:07
if you can reach that blend, that's a huge measure of success. That's
22:14
hard because what you have to do is balance heads work, hands work,
22:19
and hearts work in the right way to put together the ultimate experience. Okay,
22:27
two part question to finish off, and then I want to hear a
22:30
bit more about what I suspect you're working on, which is a new book
22:33
which updates some of those principles to this quite radically different age we've been living
22:40
in the last two years, and that is, what would your main advice
22:42
be to HR professionals for future proofing their career by better encompassing digital and digital
22:49
sensitivity vice versa. What would be your advice to IT professionals as their roles
22:56
become more focused on employee experience? So for HR people, there's a my
23:03
keynote. Let me, I mean, let me tell you the name of
23:04
my keynote tomorrow. It's the R word. Anyone in Singapore? Yeah,
23:11
it's the R word. Do you know the tom word? The R word,
23:17
the R word, not the F word. The R word not the
23:22
F word, thankfully. The relationships relating close relevance, relevance, How do
23:33
you stay relevant? I got it? How do you stay relevant in today's
23:38
world? And I like to use the acronym lead okay, learning always learning,
23:48
Okay. The E is thinking about the concept of emotion and empathy.
23:55
The A is focusing on adaptability, which is being open to chain, and
24:00
the D is having that digital mindset. So for me, for every HR
24:06
leader, having those four things. A learning what is AI and why is
24:11
it going to impact experience? Once again, the E how am I going
24:17
to use technology and embed humanity into it? The A how am I going
24:22
to change or unlearn a bunch of the old ways that I've worked? And
24:29
then D think about that concept of digital fitness or digital empathy digital mindset.
24:34
Okay, lead Now, from an IT standpoint, my recommendation is to basically
24:41
understand your customer. Understand your customer, because your customer is going to be
24:52
doing things on their smart device that are going to be way ahead of any
25:00
thing that you have internally in your enterprise. When I start using Apple Intelligence
25:06
on my device in two weeks, when iOS eighteen is released to everyone,
25:11
which basically means every time I send an email, I can be using Genii
25:17
and prompting, and inside the company, I haven't built that yet. When
25:22
I'm able to say, Siri, create an Instagram post, take a picture
25:26
with my watch, post it to Instagram, tag Tom who's in my context
25:32
to it, and at the same time send him an email so that he
25:36
sees the Instagram post and it does it without me. Ever, navigating through
25:41
apps, systems, menus or things like that. All of a sudden,
25:48
I have that chasm of what's happening outside of work versus how things work inside
25:53
of work. So that's why I say to it, understand, under understand
26:00
what your customer is looking at, what they're looking for, because what they're
26:03
trying to do is keep up with what's happening in the consumer world to create
26:10
some sort of an experience that somehow matches the outside of work and inside of
26:15
work. That chasm, by the way, Tom, I hate to get
26:18
too detailed, but that chasm is about to explode, right. It is
26:23
about to feel like I mean, it's going to be twenty twenty five outside
26:27
of work, and it's going to feel like a long way back inside of
26:33
work when all of a sudden everyone has BYOAI. Yeah, yeah, I
26:38
can see that. Excellent advice. And is there a new book, Jason
26:45
or is the book outmoded at this point? What do you think? You
26:49
know? Tom? The book is being constantly written. Yeah, I'm not
26:53
writing a physical book at the moment. I'm writing LinkedIn posts and medium posts
26:59
every single day of my life. I'm doing podcasts every day of my life
27:03
because there just like I, the parent of two boys nineteen and sixteen,
27:11
would not dare guess what their job will be in five years. I would
27:18
not dare spend the time to write something right now that someone's going to look
27:22
at in five years and say, Wow, this is what he said five
27:26
years ago. Because that's how I mean. If you just look at how
27:32
fast a generative pre trained transformer is learning today between twenty twenty two and twenty
27:38
twenty three and twenty twenty four, them order of magnitude is millions X.
27:49
So to think that we could somehow guess what people are going to use these
27:56
tools to do, it's going to be the power of the brain. I
28:00
like to think Tom. When it comes to experience, we are all in
28:03
a movie right now. We are all actors in a movie in twenty twenty
28:07
four, and guess what in twenty thirty someone's going to watch the movie and
28:11
say what do these people do in twenty twenty four. That's our opportunity right
28:15
now when it comes to creating an experience that's relevant for today. Fascinating.
28:22
Jason, what a pleasure it's being to talk to you this Sunday morning.
28:26
It's been as nice to talk to you. It has been to see sun
28:29
in the sky here in London. Where can people find you and follow this
28:33
service? As you say, a ongoing book that's being written daily, Tom,
28:38
I think you know wherever, Social channels everywhere, just my name Jason
28:44
everbook, follow me on link LinkedIn is the first source. I use X
28:48
a lot. You know, I'm lucky enough to work for an amazing organization
28:52
called Mercer, where I lead our global practices around these areas. So any
28:57
of those sources are fine, but connect. Say you heard this, say
29:02
hi, it's the best to me, it's the best way to think about
29:07
the difference between, like I said earlier, getting connected and building connection.
29:12
When someone reaches out and say they heard a podcast, it's such an amazing
29:17
connection. So if anyone's listening, please do thank you so good morning,
29:22
say good morning. Just say good morning. And I'm not going to say
29:26
what do you want? Promise to guarantee Jason best of luck with your keynote
29:32
tomorrow. Enjoy being in Singapore, enjoy that humidity, and thanks so much
29:37
for a wonderfully full, provoking episode. It's a real pleasure. Thanks for
29:41
having me, Tom, appreciate it. To make sure that you never miss
29:45
an episode, Subscribe to the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your
29:48
favorite podcast player, and if you're listening on Apple podcasts, make sure to
29:53
leave a rating of the show. Just have the number of stars you think
29:56
the podcast deserves. If you'd like to learn more how next think can help
30:00
me improve your digital employee experience, head over to next think dot com.
30:04
Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.