Transcript
Mark:
Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, ChatGPT has people looking at new ways of working and what impact AI may have on business and HR. Today, my guest is Aaron Green, the chief marketing and solutions officer at SAP SuccessFactors. We’re going to look at the effect ChatGPT may have in a range of scenarios, how it’s influencing HR, and how executives can plan for what’s next on this edition of People Tech.
Aaron, hi. Thanks for joining me. So everybody’s talking about ChatGPT right now.
Aaron:
Yeah.
Mark:
And have been for the last couple of months. What’s your take on it in the context of HR’s needs?
Aaron:
Absolutely. I mean, it’s an interesting one, Mark, because we often look at technology in sprints. And every once in a while, there are potential watershed moments in technology. And if we even think about the way that we were talking about AI for so many years, it was through task-based automation. And nobody was really talking about generative AI. And then probably about five or six months ago, suddenly started seeing people’s profile pictures that an AI was creating for them. And then suddenly we saw ChatGPT just really take the world by storm. And this era of generative AI has the very real power to fundamentally change the way that business operates at almost every level.
I think that for HR professionals and for HR providers, it really is going to be important to ensure that we leverage the strengths of AI for real value creation as opposed to just throwing generative AI into a system for the sake of throwing it in there. There are very real ethical and responsible ways in which AI needs to be developed and to be deployed. And probably nothing moreso important than when we’re talking about deploying AI into systems that interact with people and help to manage people for an organization. So we think that the improved value can be around quality, efficiency, and productivity for HR professionals and even for people leaders and employees. And within SAP SuccessFactors, we’re really thinking about these through the lens of a human being and AI interactions, again, focused on that transparency, the ethics, and really the privacy issues around AI.
Mark:
So ChatGPT is funny because it was launched in November.
Aaron:
Yeah.
Mark:
So basically six to a half months ago. It seems to be everywhere in a fairly short amount of time. So do you think it’s going to end up impacting the structure of HR departments and their operations?
Aaron:
Yeah, I think it will. And whether we say impact or disrupt, it will become a part, if it hasn’t already, of the way in which we as people operate on a daily basis, and certainly for HR professionals and HR departments. And I tend to be a, I’d probably say a pragmatic optimist. And so in looking at it, I think ChatGPT can really have the impact of augmenting the work that HR professionals do every single day, and really with that lens towards increasing productivity and simplifying operations. So for example, in recruiting or recruitment, ChatGPT has the ability to take out some of the or help augment some of the more operational tasks, like creating the best possible job description to find the best possible or to market to the best possible candidate to get the right skills into the organization.
And we could also see things like ChatGPT and the natural language processing around it really help create very tailored learning plans and learning programs for individuals. So when it comes to HR departments and HR operations, again, it’s about augmenting the work that they do today. It’s about streamlining or operationalizing some of the more mundane tasks that are important and critical, but can be automated through AI. So that’s really the way that we see this folding into the work that HR does today.
Mark:
Now, obviously there’s more going on out there with AI than ChatGPT. What’s out there that has you excited?
Aaron:
So, I mean, there’s a ton out there. And, I mean, I’ll be honest, I was not the person who had my Instagram or Facebook profile photo done by AI. It’s super cool that that’s out there, but I think we are in this really fascinating era right now where AI has so much potential, and so much potential to help in the way that we operate on a day-to-day basis. But equally, there’s a lot of responsibility that we have to think about in terms of making sure that we don’t create a system where there is fake news or fake media that’s being created. And there were some examples as recently as a couple of weeks ago where songs were being created by generative AI programs, which I think is incredible and is really exciting in terms of, again, ushering in just this new era of human and machine interactions. And I think what we will see in the next wave of generative AI tools will really be AI that becomes a lot more responsive to us at an individual level as opposed to looking at things in a one size fits most perspective.
Mark:
What worries you?
Aaron:
What worries me? So I started by saying I’m the eternal optimist, or the pragmatic optimist, I should say. We have to, and every technology provider out there has to really ensure that the AI that we are developing, that we are releasing, is developed in a way that is ethical and responsible. And by that I mean looking at things like eliminating bias that’s built into the prompt engineering for AI, really making sure that there are clear boundary conditions around the way in which AI operates and where it does need to stop, and that there are the right controls in place for us to be able to interact with and continually refine and reshape the way that AI works.
I saw today that the EU has proposed really making it clear when content is generated by AI, that it actually needs to be stated that the content is being generated by AI. And again, I think that’s through the lens of making sure that what is released is done so in an ethical and a responsible way, and that people are very clear when they’re interacting with pieces of content where the source of that content is coming from.
Mark:
I’d like to take a look at a few specific issues in HR, if you don’t mind.
Aaron:
Yeah.
Mark:
One is, how will AI help employers address issues surrounding their skills gap?
Aaron:
So skills gap, I mean, first let’s talk about, or I’d love to level set, skills is one of my favorite topics. There are probably two big topics I talk about right now, and they’re skills and AI. So you’ve just married the two together perfectly, Mark. But skills have fundamentally become the new currency of work. If we just think about the ways that employers look to fill roles today, it’s not just based on experience, but it’s based on the skills that come with that experience itself. And there’s so many ways that AI can help with this. I think the first piece is the recruiting example that I gave earlier, helping create the right job descriptions that market to the exact skill or skills that you were trying to bring into the organization. I think that’s something where AI can be extraordinarily helpful of not just looking at the rich history of your own organization, but also benchmarking against other job descriptions, other people who have those skills and helping to write those job descriptions, or pardon me, tailor them for you.
I think the other really exciting piece is around learning and creating hyper-personalized learning plans that look at company recommended learning courses as well as other learning courses that are specific to the skill that the individual is trying to gain. And I think that’s where AI can again create those hyper-personalized learning recommendations. And lastly, and this is a piece where we’ve invested quite a bit within SAP SuccessFactors with our growth portfolio and talent intelligence hub. It’s about leveraging AI to not only dynamically update a skills catalog for an individual, but also help infer what skills somebody may have gained as the result of, let’s say, taking a learning course or being part of a project or being part of a team for a period of time.
And with that, we then get this picture. An organization gets a picture not only of the skills that they have today, but also of the skills that they will need in the future to do. And that really goes into that next generation for HR workforce planning. We’ve often said, “This is where we want to go, but we have to figure out how we’re going to get there.” AI can help us when we say, “This is where we want to go as an organization,” whether it’s commercially or perhaps where, physical locations that we want to operate in. And AI can actually then help us say, “Here are the skills that are going to be required to get you there, here are the skills that you have in the organization today, and here are personalized learning plans and to help cross skill and upskill your workforce to get to where you want to go.”
Mark:
What do you think about service delivery? Does AI have a role in there?
Aaron:
It does. And if I think about where I started my career in HR where service delivery was picking up the phone or calling an email, or pardon me, picking up the phone or emailing an HR person and that HR person did all the service delivery for you. We then moved to a model of shared services, but again, it was the same kind of concept of a contact center or a group of contacts that an individual would work with. AI, through capabilities like digital assistant, has the ability to really help expedite tasks that an employee or a people leader can really do via self-service versus needing to call up HR and have some of that white glove service delivery itself.
AI also has the ability to help speed up the actual service delivery ticketing process. But again, another way of thinking about service delivery is through workforce planning and analysis. And this is where AI, through large dataset analyses, can really do that forecasting and the planning for workforce supply and demand and assess those workforce gaps. So I think there’s the service delivery piece, which is the employee, the people leader. And then there’s the service delivery piece, which is really aimed more at the senior HR professional working with business leaders to understand that supply and demand and what they’ll need.
Mark:
Do you think AI could have helped HR with all the challenges they faced during COVID?
Aaron:
Absolutely. I think certainly in terms of… There are a few different ways that we could look at this. Firstly, depending on where you were in the world, well, COVID impacted obviously all of us. But depending on where you were in the world, hybrid or remote work became the norm long-term. Certainly we’ve seen in many jurisdictions, and I talked to a customer or an organization today who they were back to work in the office two months after the pandemic began because that was their corporate culture. What AI can help us do is really connect people and connect them where they are working in a hybrid environment, connect them back to the workforce, and also look at where you have skills that you may not have thought about.
And by that, I mean when suddenly everybody is remote, you have the ability to start saying, “How do we build the right kinds of teams where we’re no longer confined to the physical hierarchy of everybody’s working in the same office, but perhaps the best person to work on this project is somebody that’s based in Rome as opposed to somebody who’s based in London?” And AI does give us that ability to better understand the skills of the workforce. So if I think about how we would apply that in rewinding two and a half, three years ago, in certainly the early days of the pandemic, organizations were trying to figure out not just what the health and wellbeing of their workforce was, but also where their workforce were and what skills those people had to keep them engaged with the organization.
Mark:
My last question is, everything seems to be moving so fast in all of this.
Aaron:
Yeah.
Mark:
So how can an executive, like a CHRO, how can a CHRO digest everything and work what they’ve learned into their planning?
Aaron:
So I think when it comes to AI, an approach firstly of working with a software provider or a platform provider who is developing AI in an ethical and responsible way is step one. And I can’t underscore the importance of that enough, because there are providers out there who are putting AI into everything and kind of trying to figure out what comes out the other side. I think for a CHRO working with a provider who works very closely on legislation, who works very closely with thousands of organizations, and who has experience with business AI, I think that’s going to be incredibly important for CHROs. I also think it’s important for a CHRO to think about what the very specific use cases are or the needs are in their business, and work to solve those one by one or a few at a time with AI.
So for example, are we as a society ready for AI to do performance assessments and determine who is a top performer and a low performer? I would say probably not today. Now, will we as a society with technology evolve in that way in the coming years? Perhaps we will. But again, it’s about finding what the right use cases are inside of an organization and really letting AI solve for those challenges. So that could be a digital assistant built directly into your enterprise applications to do natural language queries and help people navigate their day-to-day jobs. It could be the hyper-personalized learning recommendations or recruiting, like we’ve talked about in SAP SuccessFactors. Again, automating some of the more operational and mundane tasks in order to free up time for people to do the higher-level work, and certainly within HR, that’s really critical and important.
Mark:
Aaron, thank you very much for talking with me. It was really great to meet you and really great to talk with you.
Aaron:
Thanks, Mark. It was an absolute pleasure to be here.
Mark:
My guest today has been Aaron Green, chief marketing and solutions officer at SAP SuccessFactors. And this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. We’re a publication of Recruiting Daily. We’re also a part of Evergreen Podcasts. To see all of their programs, visit www.evergreenpodcasts.com. And to keep up with HR technology, visit the HCM Technology Report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer.
Image: OpenAI
