HR Leadership in the AI Era: Starting Points, Lessons Learned, and Practical Advice with CHRO of IBM

CHROPartners

HR Leadership in the AI Era: Starting Points, Lessons Learned, and Practical Advice with CHRO of IBM

30:17

 

In this 30-minute vlog, IBM's CHRO Nickle LaMoreaux and Jill Goldstein, Global Managing Partner for Talent Transformation at IBM, share invaluable insights about HR leadership in the AI era. Nickle offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into IBM's transformative journey with AI.

She traces their evolution from rudimentary digital assistants to today's sophisticated models powered by advanced natural language processing. By sharing tangible outcomes like the dramatic improvement in employee experience and the expedited HR transaction times, Nickle makes a compelling case for the seamless integration of AI into HR frameworks.

However, the dialogue isn't confined to success stories. The vlog delves into the very real challenges that accompany the AI evolution. The importance of cultivating trust when introducing AI and automation, the imperative of transparency, and the benefits of co-creation with employees are dissected in depth.

Both Jill and Nickle furnish invaluable advice on evaluating emerging AI use cases. For those poised to embark on their own AI odyssey within HR, this vlog is an indispensable guide, loaded with insights, lessons, and pragmatic advice to help chart the way forward.

We have provided, audio, video or a transcript (below) for your convenience.

Links referenced in the vlog:

IBM HR HiRo case study: Human Resources | IBM

IBM AI Ethics: AI Ethics | IBM

Enjoy!

Cindy Lu

Founder, CHRO Partners

ps. If you are interested in more discussions about AI and more with other CHROs, consider our HR Mastermind Groups: https://www.chropartners.com/

Transcript:

In this transcript, Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners, interviews Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO at IBM, and Jill Goldstein, Managing Partner at IBM, about HR leadership in the AI era. They discuss the challenges that CHROs are facing today, including the need for efficiency, compliance, and consumer-grade experiences for employees. They emphasize the importance of trust and transparency when implementing AI in HR functions and highlight the need for clear policies and principles. They also discuss the benefits of starting small and experimenting with AI technology, as well as the importance of developing technical acumen within HR teams. Overall, they provide practical advice for HR professionals looking to implement AI in their organizations.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

Hi there. This is Cindy Lu with CHRO Partners, and I'm joined today by Nickle LaMoreaux and Jill Goldstein. And we are going to talk about HR leadership in the AI era. And we're going to get some great starting points, lessons learned, and really practical advice. So don't get scared and you have to stay to the end for some really great advice, some practical advice that you're going to want to free advice that you can click on and take home with you right away. All right, so I know I have so many questions for you, we're just going to speed through these, but feel free to weave in your own personal background as we go. I know they can read the bios and all that good stuff, but I'm going to start with you, Nickle. What are the biggest challenges you think that CHROs are facing today?

Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO at IBM:

Oh, there is a long list, but I will maybe get started with the fact that regardless of the industry that you're in, whether you're in a big company or small company, I think there are three forces that are really hitting HR departments. The first is we're being asked to do things more efficiently. We are being asked to do things faster and at the optimal cost. So that is something that maybe isn't new, but I think that speed is increasing.

The second thing is the compliance and regulatory environment that we are operating in is getting more and more complex. And then the third piece is our employees in all of our companies are demanding consumer grade experiences as they are in the employment contract in the organization. So these three things are happening. We're asked to do things faster and at an optimal cost, but yet we're dealing with this increasing compliance and accuracy that is required and we have to have delightful experiences. And these three forces are really sometimes at odds with one another. So I think about the HR professional, the HR department, the CHRO, really getting pulled in these three directions and it's our responsibility to figure out of how do you get all the pieces to work?

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

It is a big one, especially the last one that's consumer grade experience. Think of the next generation coming up. They grew up on Amazon. I know if it's not as easy as that, they probably don't want to work at your company. But HR sometimes can be the barbers child, like, "Okay, we're willing to deal with the worst systems and we're willing to save money and we'll just work harder." But right now what I'm seeing is a lot of burnout in the HR community. And so this is, I think a really needed conversation. And I'm going to switch over to you, Jill. You talk to a lot of CHROs I'm curious if you have anything to add to that.

Jill Goldstein, Managing Partner, IBM:

Well, the first thing I would say is I fully agree with Nickle. When I talk to CHROs, they share their priorities as enabling broader business transformation, accelerating the digital agenda, advancing the talent agenda, underpinned by an agile HR function. And this idea of experiences and non-negotiable, it both informs those priorities and are required as a part of those priorities. All that said, for many industries given market realities today, like Nickle mentioned, I see a strong focus on modernizing the HR function with increased efficiency and efficacy. I do think though, as HR professionals, we're at a great point. We're at a point where employee experience results in increased self-service adoption, fewer volumes and transactions heading to the HR function, which results in lower cost to serve. And so for the first time in my career, I can remember 20 something years back, PeopleSoft was introduced and it was supposed to be great because of the self-service capability. I think now what we're seeing in the market as HR professionals, we have the ability and the capability through technology to deliver against that promise.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

Yeah, that's so critical. And I believe the talent agenda is on top of mind for the C-suite, not just HR anymore. It's not an HR conversation. It's absolutely a business conversation. In fact, at our big HR event this year, it's about the CEO CHRO relationship. And one of the round table topics we're going to have is how the C-suite wants to sometimes jump over the foundational, tactical HR stuff and just get to the sexy stuff, like succession planning. And it's a challenge because they don't have the foundational things, and I feel like AI could help us leapfrog over all of that. So I'm anxious for this conversation today. So with that said, Jill, I feel like I know the answer to this, but do you think that AI is a must have for HR functions? And really what are the consequences that they don't engage?

Jill Goldstein, Managing Partner, IBM:

I would tell you yes. Artificial intelligence or as Nickle refers to it, “augmented intelligence” is a reality in our business across the workforce and within HR. AI is all around us today as employees and HR professionals. If you think about Microsoft products that we use, cloud HCMs like Oracle, Workday, SuccessFactors, Natural Language Processing as a part of chatbots, activities in candidate and recruitment applications and popular search functions. We touch it every day. And many HR leaders that I know are trying to get ahead of this, and I think Nickle has done a fabulous job representing this within and across IBM, where they're looking at reviewing and refining their codes of conduct, how, when and if to leverage artificial intelligence. They're rethinking the human and machine partnership differently, how AI is going to change ways of working, and they're rethinking the operating model.

As you think about new ways of working augmented workforces, it may shine a light on an opportunity to reach the operating model. So in my point of view, it's here. HR leaders accept that and lean in. The risk of not embracing AI is that as an HR organization, you're going to struggle to deliver the needs of the business at the pace the business needs, and you're also going to struggle to attract and retain talent within HR, but then also more broadly across the enterprise.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

Yeah, I think that is absolutely true. The top HR folks are like… You call somebody an HR business partner, strategic HR business partner, and then all they're doing is tactical treadmill work. And that awesome talent's not going to stick around and you know how critical those roles can be in your organization. I love that augmented intelligence. And any CEO C-suite executive who doesn't get that it's just not because their recruiting department's not working hard enough, there's just not enough talents out there. So I'd love to hear, Nickle, about your journey. Where did your HR function start with this whole AI journey?

Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO at IBM:

So we've actually been on this journey since 2017, so maybe you can address an early adopter, but it was exactly for some of the points that Jill just referenced and that you were just talking about. We wanted to start to embrace self-service a little bit more. We were also hearing from our HR professionals, those strategic HR business partners, that most of what they were doing was information recall was transactional work. They weren't doing the strategic advising or workforce planning or even coaching because they were spending so much time just brokering information to managers and employees. And so we started with a digital assistant, a chatbot, if you will. We call it AskHR here at IBM. And really it was about information recall in a real time way. So the chatbot's always on 24/7, but also it was enabling us that increasing complexity that I talked about where maybe certain states, countries, jurisdictions are requiring HR departments to have different policies, it was allowing us to serve up that information very, very quickly.

And so we started in 2017. In 2020, we took it a step further and we enabled it with a lot of automation. So it could do transactions for you, like time off. It could transfer employees. If you were a manager. It could raise a ticket with our help desk. So it started to do transactions where you didn't have to log into any other systems. And if you think about where we are right now through the chatbot, we have 9 million interactions a year. So it is fully being embraced by our employees, managers, executives as well. It has improved our employee experience, and because it also does transactions, it's taken 75% of the time out of HR processes. So this for us has really unlocked a ton of value. It's allowing our HR partners to focus on higher value tasks. It's speeding up processes for our employees, and it's allowing our employees and managers to spend time on core business and what really differentiates our company.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

That's so great. You're going to have a pile of submissions, I think, resumes of HR folks wanting to work for you, if you don't already, I'm sure you do.

Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO at IBM:

Let's keep it coming.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

That's right, that's right. And now you probably have technology to help filter through that, right? And so Nickle, what are some of the ways in the future that you're thinking about using AI?

Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO at IBM:

So for us, there's this next step. So obviously chatbots, digital assistants, very, very powerful tools. Jill referenced that I do like to call it augmented intelligence because I think there's an ability of HR professionals, managers, employees, every function in a company to really work with AI. So for us, the next step is true, what I'll call augmented intelligence, AI driven automation and digital labor. We're putting a lot of this digital labor into our processes so that when you have HR professionals working in these processes, they're doing the things that are higher value, unique value add. A good example is we have implemented Hero into our promotion process. So any HR professional that works in a promotion process, particularly at scale knows they spend a ton of time tracking down data, pulling from performance systems, skills and learning systems, project assessments, past work history, and you're reconciling that.

In our new performance and promotion process, what you're actually seeing is Hero, our automation, is pulling all of that together, surfacing it up for the manager and the HR professional so that they can spend most of their time on role-playing on how to have a conversation. How do you make that promotion a moment that matters special for the employee? How do you communicate to employees that aren't getting promoted? So less time is being spent on the data and more time is being spent on what is really going to make a difference. Through Hero and this automation, we are saving last year, 12,000 hours for our HR professionals and managers who would've in the past, disproportionately spent time on data collection. And so for us, this is a huge game changer. It makes the experience better for the employee, experience better for the manager, and leads us to better outcomes.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

That's awesome. I can't tell you how many people I've met in my career have said, "I think I want to step out of management because I just can't stand that whole performance management process." I'm like, "But you're such a great leader." "I know, but I hate doing all of that administrative work to get to that point of working with the employee." So that's amazing. Your leaders must be very thankful for having Hero in place.

Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO at IBM:

Oh, we have a lot more to go. So we're going to be launching Charlie and Sherlock and a bunch of others to come. And again, managers and leaders are pretty excited about this, but also HR professionals because it is taking that mundane, repetitive work, manual work off of their plates.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

Right, right. Yeah, it's funny, yesterday my intern was working on name badges and it's a very manual process. I'm like, "Why don't we have AI to do this for us yet?"

Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO at IBM:

[inaudible 00:14:30] Jill will be in contact with you.

Jill Goldstein, Managing Partner, IBM:

I'm there. I'm there.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

There you go. So I guess there's the whole issue of trust. What did the news say that, well, I read that employees trust their employers more than they do the news or the government. So trust is a big issue. And then we have a lot of our members and community grappling with just, how do we even go about this? We know we need to lead, we need to be involved in this. But what are the policies, procedures? So I'd love to hear a little bit about what you did, especially in the beginning.

Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO at IBM:

Yeah, there's a couple things that we did in the beginning. And so as an HR team, you do need to have the really tough conversations about what AI will and won't do. And when AI is working, how is it going to work? And so we put a set of policies, practices, principles of trust and transparency in place that are core to any time we are going to use AI. And they include things like the AI must be transparent, so you must be clear about how the AI is working, what data is it using? Why is it using that data? It also must be robust. So if you're going to use AI, it can't be on a very small sample size. It's got to be robust enough to make the models legitimate. Within the HR function right now, we have also set a principle that AI is never a decision maker.

AI can certainly surface recommendations, but at the end of the day, decisions are made by humans. And so it's important to do that first step and to communicate that first step clearly to your workforce about what your principles are and why they exist. The second step is to explain to your employees that you're taking them on a journey. The great thing about AI right now is it is all about experimentation. It's going to look differently in different companies. We're new to this technology. But the downside is it's in early stages. And so what's going to work? What's really going to add value to your process? You're going to have to explain to employees that we want their feedback. You're going to be co-creating with them. What is the AI getting right? What is it getting wrong? Where is the automation making a difference or where should automation not exist?

And so having that early discussion with employees so that they don't expect perfection right out of the gate, I think is really important. And then maybe the last piece, I would just say, and I know this is hard for us as HR professionals because as we talked about, accuracy is really, really important. But with AI and automation, what I would say is you have to just get started. You're not going to have perfection right out of the gate. You do have to experiment. And so don't expect and wait that this is a three-year journey and you're going to have a big bang launch your new AI tool. Just get started. Allow employees to play with it, allow them to break it so that you know what the boundaries are. But that would be my third piece of advice about just getting started.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

Just like market testing. Well, and speaking of getting started, I think there's a lot of technology emerging in this space, and I don't know if everybody knows exactly what the cases are. So Jill, I'd be curious to know from your perspective, how do you evaluate new use cases?

Jill Goldstein, Managing Partner, IBM:

So I'm going to give you two thoughts before I actually answer your question. The first is that I want to go back to one of the things that Nickle said is that you have to evaluate use case based on what you and your organization feels are appropriate and fit for purpose. Within IBM, we take a look at transparency, explainability as well as to Nickel's point, helping a person make a decision but not crossing the line into making that decision. So the first thing you have to do is make sure it's fit for purpose for your organization. The second thing is I think we all recognize as human beings, let alone HR professionals, that there are some use cases that should probably be human first. If we have an employee who is coming to us for bereavement, the idea that they're going to interact with the machine just really creates a little bit of the heebie-jeebies for me.

We want to provide that person with access to an empathetic person as quickly as possible. So the first thing I would say is make sure it's in line with your company principles. The second is making sure we realize there are some use cases that are not fit for purpose. Then once you do that, I'd encourage you to think about what's important to your organization based on where you are in your journey. The feedback that we get from our workforce is really important.

I hear Nickle all the time talking about the feedback that we're getting from our employees and managers as an influence for the roadmap. Now, whether or not, if you're looking for productivity, you probably want to start with things that tend to produce high volumes of transactions. That tends to be things like employee inquiries, interview scheduling, learning enrollment, pre-payroll processing. If new joiners are giving you feedback about their frustration on a fragmented onboarding process, you know that that's one place to point your use case. Or perhaps your focused on creating capacity for your HR partner. And if that's the case, the promotion example that Nickle just shared is perfect as a starting point.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

Yeah, those are awesome ideas and great starting points, very practical. Jill, I'm curious, what's been your biggest learning when you've been deploying intelligence technology? And I know Nickle said it's not like this, okay, after three years, you've got this big system, right?

Jill Goldstein, Managing Partner, IBM:

Yeah, no, I think the first thing, well, probably the only thing that comes to mind is we all need to have clarity on why you're deploying the technology. I still reflect on my discussions with HR leaders around the world, across industry over the last few years, many of whom are still struggling with getting the value out of deployment of the cloud HCM that they expected, Workday, SuccessFactors, Oracle, and in reality, it is less to do with the platform and more to do with the business decisions that were made while deploying the technology, forgetting why you were deploying the technology. And so as I think about how to get the most out of your AI journey, it's really to make sure you have clarity on why you're deploying it. And chances are it's some combination of employee experience, modern and agile HR operating model, and HR productivity. Just be clear and that'll help to guide the deployment and help you to maximize your investment.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

Right. That's great. You're right, there are so many that are just struggling with foundational HR numbers at this point. So I think it can be a little bit daunting to think about AI, but there's some things in life where it's okay just to skip over some of it. Maybe there's a whole leapfrog that can happen here to make life easier for HR folks. So Nickle, our audience can really range from mid-market to jumbo companies. In fact, when we do a survey, it's funny, we see some of the bigger companies having a lot less headcount in HR than the smaller companies, and I think because they're maybe leveraging technology. What advice do you have for them? Because it can be so scary that you're like, "I can't even deal with this. We're barely able to come up for air." What advice do you have for them when thinking about how to implement AI across their organization?

Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO at IBM:

Yeah, so some of this is a little repetitive to what Jill just said, but I think it's important for me, HR professional to HR professional, just be very clear about this. This idea of just getting started and experimenting is really, really important. If I'm honest, if I could go back in time, I told you we started this journey in 2017 with a chatbot. I would not have launched the chatbot the way we did. We launched it in a very typical HR way, big bang. Here's a chatbot that is going to answer all of your HR questions. If I could go back in time, I would've done and simply said, "This HR chatbot, all it can do is answer vacation questions." Or, "All it can do is create you an employment verification letter." Or, "All it can do is transfer employees for you." What you find is that by starting small, you gain credibility.

So don't be afraid to say, "Oh, it's only going to do this one task." That task can actually be the thing that makes it sticky if it's important enough in your organization and allows you to experiment in a very safe way. So get started, start small. The second thing I would say is be thoughtful about where you get started. Just as Jill pointed out, is there transaction? Are there questions that are those high volume that most employees, most managers need answered? Is there a part of your process that always gets low marks when you ask for feedback, low satisfaction? That might be a great place to get started. The bar is already low, so try something, experiment in that space.

The third thing I would say here is don't worry if you say, "I already don't have any other technology," or, "My other foundation that you just talked about is already really bad." AI and automation, the way that technology is built right now does allow you to leapfrog. You do not have to have perfect systems under. So that's important to know. And then the last piece I would say is that don't think as an HR leader, I'm not technical, how am I going to implement AI? Or my team doesn't know how to write an AI prompt. This is the other thing that I think is surprising about the AI automation technology landscape out there, is that it is becoming very user-driven. It is becoming driven by process experts, and the technology is getting to be such a point where users, business process owners are the ones that can use it. You don't have to know how to code or write an AI algorithm. The technology is out there that is allowing us to use it as business process owner. So don't be scared about that.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

That's great. And thank you for being vulnerable about your chatbot story. I think that's important to remember there are limitations. My phone still can't spell my husband's name right. It's B-R-I-A-N, not B-R-Y-A-N. So if you had asked me a year ago if I thought AI would be helpful in my day-to-day, I'd been like, "No, she can't even spell my husband's name, right." So fast-forward, I'm the biggest proponent. I've bought all these courses on how to write copy prompts and how to improve my efficiency, like with this blog, for example. And then I think I love your point about let them experience success early and fast, even if it's small. That's really awesome. With that, Jill, what additional advice might you have for our audience?

Jill Goldstein, Managing Partner, IBM:

One of my favorite learnings when Nickle and her team share the IBM story is the realization I had to pull the thread a little bit on what she said was that they found it more effective for their organization to teach HR professionals a little bit of technology rather than investing all their time teaching technical people HR. And I think that is the next level of detail under what she just said. As a result of that, I believe that as HR organizations start on their journey, the first thing they have to do is create some level, not a deep level, but some level of technical acumen across their HR team. It helps to demystify some of these AI capabilities that they're now being asked to use or deploy or evaluate. It enables a stronger relationship with your IT or CIO function, and it will ultimately accelerate the journey that you have around your modern, agile, technically enabled HR function. That would be the first thing.

The second piece of advice that I have is to just reiterate, the best way to start is to start. And in my mind, if you go into it with eyes wide open, what you'll do is you'll accept that first use case as a learning experience. It won't go exactly the way that you would hope. You'll do some would've, could've, should've, but at the end of the day, you and your team are going to be that much smarter to accelerate the journey over time. So I would encourage you to start, and that is the best way to make progress and feel like you're helping your HR professionals, the workforce, and the businesses that you serve.

Cindy Lu, Founder of CHRO Partners:

That's great, Jill. I feel like I could spend an hour with you on just the technical acumen part and digging into what that actually means. So maybe another conversation's in order, but I wanted to thank you both. Nickle, I've been admiring your posts from afar for a couple years now, so it's such an honor to be able to have some time with you and share your knowledge. I know our audience will really appreciate it. And Jill, thanks for just bringing the larger perspective from all the clients out there. Anything last minute you'd like to share with the audience? Okay. Well, with that, I'm going to, in the show notes, we'll post Jill and Nickle's LinkedIn so that you could follow them. They've got some really educational posts and I think maybe starting with the technical acumen, just start reading too, start to follow and learn what's possible. All right. Thank you ladies so much for your time today. I'm excited to share this with our community.

Jill Goldstein, Managing Partner, IBM:

Thank you.

Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO at IBM:

Thank you.