The business world is changing quickly, and the skill sets that employees need are constantly shifting, developing and evolving. So, how can companies develop strategic workforce plans and build long-term talent pipelines in such an unpredictable and fast-changing environment?
My guests this week are Jennifer Longworth, Director of People and Culture at Entuitive, and Ugo Orsi, Chief Customer Officer at Digitate. Jennifer and Ugo have a unique combination of perspectives on how AI is shaping the workforce of the future and some solid practical advice to share
In the interview, we discuss:
• Current talent challenges
• Hiring for the skills of the future
• The importance of a growth mindset
• Building trust and motivation
• The current use and future potential of AI
• The emotional impact of the AI
• Powerful automations
• Embracing change management and curiosity
• Adoption issues within middle management
• Ageing populations and reducing labour markets
• Thinking instead of executing
• Strategic workforce planning
• Increasing the ability to collaborate
• What might work look like in 10 years?
Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Trascript:
Matt: Support for this podcast comes from Harver, the industry leading hiring solution helping organizations optimize their talent decisions. Rooted in over 35 years of rich data insights. Backed by I/O psychology and cognitive science, Harver delivers a suite of automated solutions that enable organizations to engage, hire, and develop the right talent in a fast and fundamentally less biased way. Visit harver.com that’s H-A-R-V-E-R dotcom to learn how you can take the smart path to the right talent.
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Matt: Hi there. This is Matt Alder. Welcome to Episode 560 of The Recruiting Future Podcast. The business world is changing quickly, and the skill sets that employers need are constantly shifting, developing, and evolving. So, how can companies develop strategic workforce plans and build long-term talent pipelines in such an unpredictable and fast changing environment? My guests this week are Jennifer Longworth, Director of People and Culture at Entuitive and Ugo Orsi, Chief Customer Officer at Digitate. Jennifer and Ugo have a unique combination of perspectives on how AI is shaping the workforce of the future and some solid, practical advice to share.
Matt: Hi, Jennifer. Hi, Ugo. Welcome to the podcast.
Jennifer: Good morning.
Matt: Please, could you as just introduce yourselves and tell us what you do?
Jennifer: For sure. Good morning, Matt. Good morning, Ugo. I’m Jennifer Longworth. I’m the Head of People and Culture at Entuitive, and I lead the People and Culture function for a firm. We provide integrated structural engineering, building envelopes, sustainable building for new and existing building, and bridge services. And I’ve been in P&C my entire life, and I’m privileged to be able to sort of do the work that I get joy out of every day. I get to support people and the journeys, build– help strategy of the business, and it’s pretty exciting stuff. Ugo, what about yourself?
Ugo: Well, first of all, thank you for having me here, Matt. And nice to see you again, Jennifer. I am the Chief Customer Officer for Digitate. Digitate is a company based in Santa Clara, and we produce and develop a product called Ignio that is focused on the ticketless enterprise. Meaning, leveraging, machine learning, and AI. The vision is to eliminate the highly repetitive task and to increase the ability of humankind to think. So, it’s quite a noble goal. The idea is to pair the ability of AI with the innovative creativity of a human being to build or design a company for the future.
I’ve been working in IT all the part of my life for more than 25 years, and I’ve been always on the other side. So, driving as an executive or senior leader, IT operation, and IT deployment in different company. I joined Digitate three years ago. Mainly because I share their vison and their dream. What I’m doing right now after so many years is driving my passion, leveraging technology to improve how people can work.
Matt: Fantastic stuff. We’re going to dive in and talk a lot about AI and work and skills and all those kinds of things. Before we do, though, just to kind of set the scene in terms of talent and business and skills and all those kinds of things, what are the main challenges for businesses at the moment that you’re seeing when it comes to talent?
Jennifer: For sure. Matt, I can start with that if you’re okay. It’s a really big question. I think it relates to our chat today for sure. There’s definitely a lot of things around AI, technology, and talent acquisition and really focusing on hiring our talent today for the future. In the past, technology moved at such a pace that we hired for the skills that we needed today to do a certain function or a certain job. We didn’t worry about how technology was going to impact the current role or the skills you need, the capabilities, what people were capable of the future, I don’t think we thought so much about that. And today, it’s really entirely different.
We have to hire for abilities, their passion for wanting to learn, to grow, challenge themselves, challenge the business. We need people that are always asking questions, “Can I do this differently? Could this be automated? I’d prefer to be doing this, so how to get rid of this task that I hate doing?” Ugo and I talked a lot about trust in this space. Ugo, do you have definitely some thoughts around this?
Ugo: Yes, I agree what you’re saying, Jennifer, and especially when we’re looking to people, we look for what I call it attitude. I mean people that are focused on learn and change, especially because the technology spectrum is evolving quite a lot and having people that are passionate one single specific, for example code or language might not help on keeping up with the space, especially in where we are. And I would say as one of the challenge of the future, when you hire people, you need to give them motivating task, but especially you have to convince them that you are trustworthy for a transformation because when they’re going to join, if they’re going to join for long term, you need to grow them and transform them while you are transforming and growing. Therefore, you establish a different kind of relationship that is not only based on, “You do this job, I give you this money,” but you join us on a journey, and that is based on trust and that is where I think HR and the leadership play a different roles.
Matt: It’s a really interesting point because we’re hiring for the future, everything’s changing very quickly. And as you say, if someone’s going to make a commitment to be with an organization, they need to be sure that that organization is going to change as they change and as business changes. And I suppose that leads on nicely to my next question because I want to kind of really dive into what AI is doing to work. What’s the current impact that AI is having on work?
Jennifer: Huge impacts. I think that we can all see it touching our spaces in different ways. I think that anytime the technology plays a role in your work, you have to anticipate that it’s going to change. We’ve got upgrades to systems, we may be decommissioning systems and launching new systems. We’ve got machine learning AI, and so we’re always looking hopefully for ways to advance our business. And AI has the capability to do that, for sure.
I think it’s still pretty unknown today, the impact that it’s going to have on the future. In the P&C space, for sure, we’re always looking at opportunities to get rid of things that aren’t sexy. Automating processes from the time someone applies to a job to the time that they receive an offer, the ticketing system to onboard someone benefits, payroll, basic inquiries, all of that stuff, all those things can be automated.
In the diversity and inclusion space, we can leverage systems that remove biases from our hiring processes. We can take away names and identities to allow– you know that often the biases come through when we choose who we want to work with us, so those are some great capabilities when we talk about talent acquisition for sure.
We also have the ability to learn. Based on roles that we’re hiring for. Once they get the keywords, they learn, they know what success looks like. An applicant tracking system is capable of picking up those keywords, the skills, if I’m looking for a [unintelligible 00:07:55] in Ontario, that can filter all the resumes and that sort of thing and definitely help. So, you can see the opportunities not only in-talent acquisition, but in a role like that getting rid of a lot of the mundane tasks. Ugo and I have talked about finance. There’s lots of automation, machine learning, double entry, all of that stuff that can be automated out of a job. It really requires embracing change management though and curiosity in your role, I think, is another thing that we’ll definitely be looking for.
Matt: Absolutely. Yeah. Ugo, what do you think?
Ugo: I agree with Jennifer and I will add a couple of things. If I look the way you said, what is the impact? I see two kinds of impact, an emotional impact and an actual impact. Emotional impact is because AI in these days where we live in a very interconnected social life, and it’s clear that AI is impacting, how we can communicate, and AI itself can change and manipulate in a positive or negative way communication and that has created a lot of talk and discussion. Attached to that, thanks to a lot of movie, there is also a fear related to AI, as if a machine is going to take over the world and we’re going to become slave like in The Matrix.
Matt: [laughs]
Ugo: This, if you wish, people says, “Any publicity is good publicity,” but this is creating a little bit of paralysis because when we move and from my privileged point of view, I look what is happening really in the actual work life is not measured so the emotional impact is much higher than the real impact.
What Jennifer is saying are all what I call it, “low-hanging fruit” that can be harvested and can for sure make our life better at work. So, a lot of people complain of a highly repetitive job and dissatisfaction job and technology can remove this task. The problem is I see an adoption issue from management layer above, not willing to adopt this technology to pick up low-hanging fruit. So, my point is potential is huge but is not there yet, so the impact is more they talk than they do.
Matt: Yeah, I think that’s really interesting. There’s certainly– you’ve kind of seen it in talent acquisition this year, the hype versus impact, there is a big gap, but I suppose it’s also pretty clear that that is going to close over time and it will affect the jobs of the future. How could we sort of use the current trends that are out there to gauge the impact that AI will have on jobs as we kind of move forward into the future?
Jennifer: I think it’s really going to be fascinating to watch. The pace of change is just tenfold increased, before it would be five years before something significant changed in a way that you did something or a process was improved. It took a long time. Today, you can use AI to actually eliminate a task. Technology learns and adds things to its repertoire. It builds upon what we learned yesterday to be more efficient today. It can perform a task quicker than we can see. You have to slow down the screens to watch do an accounts receivable function or whatever. And I think the other experience is it often feels real. Like as a human, sometimes we don’t even know that we’re interfacing with not another person, which is really fascinating. So, the future jobs, I think we hire– we need to hire for skills of the future. Skills we might not even know that we need today, so that’s a bit of a challenge.
So, we’re really hiring talent based on ability to adapt to change, ability to learn and grow, people that want to challenge the status quo, you know what I mean?
I think, Ugo, we might have faced sometimes that AI is available, but it’s often blocked by people. Making the decisions. Leaders aren’t planning for the future. They’re getting worried about what they’re going to do. Like, “If you take this away, then what am I going to do?” People worry about that. So, we have to hire talent that’s embracing that as well and people that want to be open to do more fun, exciting, challenging things. So, change is going to be huge I think in the AI space and in our job space. People are comfortable. It’s comfortable knowing what I’m doing every day and coming into that space. It’s happened rapidly, right, Ugo?
Ugo: Yeah, I agree. And I would add something more because when we talk about hiring talent, a lot of people in these days think about, “How can I hire data science? Should I hire this kind of AI expert?” I want to send a different kind of thought based on what Jennifer said. I think the focus on the hiring to unleash the power of artificial intelligence, it is on the middle management layer. The top of executive pretty much seeing that this is coming and they are aligned, where the message gets changed in the middle management because the new labour force coming in, these are all kids. Unfortunately, a little bit younger than me that they grow up internet. So, they are more than used to leverage technology and see a technology as a friend. What is slowing down is the middle management people that didn’t grow with technology but still believe and see a little bit technology as a threat, not as and help it make the work and life better.
So, my advice for the hiring for the future, Matt, it is focusing on middle management that see technology as a help and not as a threat that are curious to learn and willing to adopt the change. So, moving that status quo.
Matt: Earlier on you were talking about the emotional impact and part of that emotional impact is people are fearing for their jobs. For years people have been talking about robots taking over the world as you say and taking all our jobs and all those kinds of things. But if you’re sitting in talent acquisition right now and you’re a recruiter and you’re looking at some of these tools that are coming in, there is a kind of a threat to the job that you’ve always done, so we’re talking obviously about people being flexible and change and all that kind of stuff. But do you think that we’ll need less people? Are people right to fear for their jobs or are their jobs just going to change into something different?
Jennifer: Yeah, I mean definitely in the spaces that I’ve seen and that I’ve been involved in technology, automation, that sort of thing, the jobs have evolved. I think that generally as long as people are up for the change and have the capability to learn and are open to new things, that the jobs just evolved. I’m laughing as you’re saying that. We were at Boston Pizza this weekend and there’s a little robot that delivers your food and it’s sort of cool but it stopped because it hit a crayon on the floor.
[laughter]
There is all of these things that the human still requires. Ugo and I were talking about Java coders the other day. We’re still going to need coders, but to do different things. And we won’t be like, “Where is that person that used to code 20 years ago in this language that nobody does anymore?” Meaning that we don’t need that but we need the person capable of fixing the errors and mapping what the functionality of it and that sort of thing. So, I think it’s an evolution. And we have a reducing labour market too. We have an aging population and all that sort of thing too.
Matt: That’s very true, that’s very true. Ugo, any other thoughts on that?
Ugo: I can speak about the Western world that I know it quite better. And if you think about it, let’s talk specific about IT, and you go back 20-30 years ago, there are flurry of job that didn’t exist. Think about it now, you say, “Well, but these are specific jobs, not exactly.” So, think about the influencer, people that write content on internet, they didn’t exist before. These jobs and this opportunity of career did not exist. So, my vision, I don’t want to sound too much optimistic, but I don’t see it as a problem of the fact that we’re going to have and we could create a huge unemployment worldwide.
I say instead, the fact that people are how they used to work is going to radically change. What I mean is this if you think about it, Taylorism, what they did very well is that they segmented our job and organized it in set of multiple easy tasks to execute.
And when you went to work since your first day, you’re sort of reminded, don’t think, execute. Well, now with AI coming, AI is going to execute, so you’re going to need to think. And that’s going to be– going back to the middle management layer, a huge transformation because people to provide value are going to be required to think, but if you wish the white collar a job, then there are tons of other jobs that are unpleasant to do where technology. And now I’m not only talking about AI, but also robotic can take part of it and can help and make our life much better. So, think about it, what now is coming if properly used, the opportunity that we can create.
Matt: Absolutely. I mean, when I was looking at careers, when I was leaving university, podcaster didn’t pop up [laughs] on any list, so that’s interesting. And I think that leads nicely to the next question as well is that how do you as a chief people officer or a head of talent acquisition, someone who has to plan for the future, who has to build workforce plans, has to think about the practicalities of how you hire these flexibly minded people, how do you strategically plan for a workforce of five years’ time when we’re not sure what the skills are going to be or how things are going to evolve, how do you do that?
Jennifer: Yeah, I think it’s a bit of a trick question. It’s really challenging. I think in the past we had a list of skills and abilities. We could check off those and if they fit the culture, it was a pretty good, hopefully match. I think tomorrow we’ve got to hire for things that we can’t necessarily check off a list and I think that’s going to be a little bit more challenging. And so, one great example everybody’s talking about right now is ChatGPT. And all of the things that it does, if you look at that and a function that it might support, say, communications or something like that, then what are the skills that you still need in the person? You need the person to be able to take a message and craft it for your business. They need to understand the market, understand how to brand it and make it yours, built in your values and your culture and so you’re looking for those type of skills and capabilities, knowing that some of the day-to-day tasks and that learning is going to be different.
In the engineering space, maybe some of the calculations will be automated and that sort of thing but you still need to check it, you need to qualify, it needs to meet certain codes within certain provinces, populations, you need to make sure it’s actually feasible, all these things still need to be tested. And I’ve said it before, but the curiosity, the ability to learn, adapt, grow, those are some of the things with the core function of the role that you’re hiring for. But that ability to pivot I think is really important.
Matt: Ugo, any thoughts?
Ugo: Yes, I want to add because I agree what Jennifer said. And let’s put some context before I reply. First of all, let’s consider that artificial intelligence is a model that replicates human intelligence. So, it’s not that we have created a really self-thinking mechanical being. What we did, it is leveraging the more laws of ability of compute that we are using mathematical computation to represent or execute specific algorithms. Why this is important to say this, because as of now, and I don’t think in anytime future, the computer will be self-aware and self-awareness for me, it is one of the necessary conditions for creativity. So, these two elements are what– on top of emotion machine do not feel anything. If you put these three together is what really makes, I personally think a human being.
What Jennifer is highlighting it is, if you take this as a human being and then you put in a context of work where they have to produce something, you need to create the condition where they are able to do it, but does it mean in five years from now, we will not– I think right now, I don’t think we can predict what is going to be. So, what we need to do it is to be ready for change.
And goes back to my point at the beginning, to be ready for change, when we hire, we need to establish a trustworthy relationship that we will appreciate the human being at the center of the relationship. We will work with them on the evolution. That means a radical mind change because we’re not going to hire anybody ability to execute on specific skill, but ability to adapt.
And the other important thing is, we as employer will see technology not as a threat. Give you a practical example. Today, if someone brings a task that has being support done by ChatGPT, a common feeling is a guy’s cheating. So instead of doing his job, he did– machine did it, so what is his value? And we are forgetting that they provide the context because they are self-aware of a suggested machine input. Same things for a lot of engineering. Yes, machine can do all the calculation, but the context on that calculation, in the reality, it has to fit that is provided by the human. So that is my suggestion for the future. It is the company to be ready for change. It means to establish trustworthy relationship.
Matt: And I think that’s a really interesting point about creativity as well, because ChatGPT can seem like it’s being creative, but it isn’t in the same way that humans can be so it’s kind of really interesting in terms of how we move forward. Coming right back to the present. We’ve talked about the hype versus the current reality. We’ve talked about people within the organization potentially blocking progress right now. What advantages are available right now in the present from AI when it comes to hiring and retaining talent? What should people be thinking about and looking about today?
Jennifer: Yeah, I think that there’s so much available today that can be leveraged to our advantage and to just make life easier and better and be able to focus on what is exciting. If you look at the diversity, inclusion space, there’s technology that can remove the biases of job description. It can comb through them, it can make them so much better. The applicant tracking systems can scrub the resumes, make them more generic. So, there’s a whole onboarding process that can be automated. AI can learn about challenges and it updates the processes lives, chatbots can maintain and take care of the mundane tasks, freeing up people to focus on more valuable work.
So, I think that in the sort of acquisition hiring space, it’s got so much opportunity. In terms of retaining, we talk about creativity like are we crowdsourcing ideas, ideas coming from everywhere and everybody in terms of automating something or, “Do you know there’s a technology out there that does this?” It’s like, “Let’s try it in here.” I think it’s really important to get the ideas from everywhere and everybody fostering that creativity and back to the trust piece, Ugo. It allows people the safe space to play in a positive environment, I think that’s really important as well and hopefully will help you retain your talent if you foster that energy of creativity. And let’s try this and fail fast and all that agile methodology as well.
Matt: Absolutely, [unintelligible 00:23:35]
Ugo: Yeah, I agree on all what you said and just quick and summarize. To me, the advantage is at night. AI and automation can eliminate all those tasks that usually fill the day of any recruiter and give the recruiter more time to establish what we are highlighting here is going to be important for the future of emotional content. So, look into the people for what they really are because that takes time. If you think about the recruiting process, it usually is half an hour interview, maybe you’ve got three, four interview. If you can give to this interview and you have eliminated all those checkmarks because a machine has done it, you can spend time really to understand a person. That I think is much more important because Jennifer can speak more than me. The major disappointing is when you got someone with all the checkmark and then he or she is not a fit and you scratch your head. Yes, you put your checkmark in, but you didn’t check the person. And sometimes it’s different, the chemistry, because a company is a group of people is a specific culture and behavior that not necessarily you will fit in.
Jennifer: If you think about retaining talent too, Matt, Ugo and I were chatting about with COVID, and Teams, and video conferencing and how much more connected you can make a global company in what we’ve learned and how we picked up Teams, video conferencing all of that. Like, look at us, the three of us, all in different locations, in different time zones right now. Three years ago, that would have been a clunky video conference, I can’t hear someone, all that sort of stuff. So hopefully even just leveraging something like that allows you to engage people more and feel more of the community space than ever we did think.
Ugo: I agree. I want to add one thing, because what Jennifer is highlighting, it is about hiring, and what I’m pushing it is one of the things that I believe and has been written in almost [unintelligible 00:25:34] “The man at the top of the world is not his single capability, but his ability to collaborate.” And I believe that AI and technology, like AI can increase on multiple X, the ability of humankind to collaborate powered even by machines.
Matt: And that I think leads us nicely into the final question. We’ve talked all the way through about how difficult is to predict the future, so I’m going to leave you with [laughs] a final question, that’s probably impossible to answer, but I’m interested to kind of hear your vision, if you like. So, what might work look like in 10 years’ time or even 20 years’ time? Where is all of this taking us? What do you think?
Jennifer: Who knows? Gosh, Matt. Like, I think you need to believe in the art of the possible. I think that we need to plan for anything and hire a talent with that in mind. We have to imagine that anything that we touch today can be reengineered in such a way that it frees us up to use our minds for different things. And that technology isn’t capable of doing because it isn’t capable of doing a lot of things. It’s that creative space, taking the facts, applying them to reality of the situation that we’re faced today. I think in the last 20 years where it’s come to the pace of change, it’s just amazing. So, trick question.
[laughter]
Jennifer: I don’t know.
Matt: It’s always a trick question. Ugo, what do you think?
Ugo: Predicting the future 5 to 20 years is very, very difficult but we can look to– I want to point to one specific trend that if it’s all true can give us some idea where it’s going. And it’s the Moore’s law. I think you have known that a gentleman in the 1970 said that the ability of the chip to compute power is going to increase in double year. And this has been true until now. And this has been one of the biggest engine of a transformation and allowing IT and AI right now to be real because don’t forget, the concept of AI are new. A lot of these mathematical concepts, they go back on ages. The idea of an algorithm according to words if you can go are in Indian sutra that are 3000 years old. It is the ability of making them real, that is change. So, if this keeps going, it means that the ability of machine to support us in mathematical model that can help in our day-to-day activity and improve a life is going to increase. Then we have to do another factors.
In 20 years from now, the generation that has grown with internet, so they have seen that working and for them day-to-day life, it is about collaborating and using technology equipment like an iPhone or being connected, they’re going to be in the command chair. Right now, it is a generation that didn’t grow up with the internet. It’s a generation that when mom didn’t know where they were and if they want to be picked up, they had to have a coin or do a collect call.
Matt: Yeah.
Ugo: And this is a generation right now is ruling. In 20 years from now, the generation of Internet will be ruling. So, the fear of collaborating with technology or inability or understanding is gone. So, it’s going to be much more natural. So, they’re going to be a more natural adoption of a technology.
What I think is for us, now until in the 20 years that many people are concerned, it is this technology does not get abused. So to make sure that certain of the principle and rules that make us where we are right now but interesting it has not changed since the Greek times are still reflected because the biggest fear it is, technology and the way we are connected can be prone to major manipulation, so things can go really sideways. I know I didn’t give you answer how we’re going to look like in 20 years. [Matt laughs] Well, if I had, I might be in a different position, but I hope I can give you a trend of where we are going and some explanation.
Matt: Absolutely. Ugo, Jennifer, thank you very much for joining me.
Ugo: Thank you, Matt, for the opportunity.
Jennifer: Thank you, Matt. It’s been great.
Matt: My thanks to Jennifer and Ugo. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com. On that site, you can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time, and I hope you’ll join me.
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