Betty Thompson got her start in HR as an entry-level employee at IBM when she had to turn to the department to navigate a difficult personnel situation. Now, as Chief People Officer at Booz Allen Hamilton, she oversees all aspects of talent for the firm's more than 36,000 employees across the globe. In this episode of People and Strategy, Thompson speaks with host Mo Fathelbab on how necessary changes in education, diversity and inclusion, and civility will shape the next decade’s workforce.
Betty Thompson got her start in HR as an entry-level employee at IBM when she had to turn to the department to navigate a difficult personnel situation. Now, as Chief People Officer at Booz Allen Hamilton, she oversees all aspects of talent for the firm's more than 36,000 employees across the globe. In this episode of People and Strategy, Thompson speaks with host Mo Fathelbab on how necessary changes in education, diversity and inclusion, and civility will shape the next decade’s workforce.
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Mo Fathelbab:
Welcome to today's episode of People and Strategy. I'm your host, Mo Fathelbab, President of International Facilitators Organization. People and Strategy is a podcast from the SHRM Executive Network, the premier network of executives and thought leaders in the field of human resources. People and Strategy is the podcast delivering in depth conversations with HR executives and people leaders to advance the field of human resources by providing engagement and thought leadership to senior executives.
In today's episode, we're looking ahead to the workforce of 2035 and what is coming up in the next 10 years. For this conversation, I'm joined by Betty Thompson, Chief People Officer of Booz Allen Hamilton. As a C-level executive on Booz Allen's leadership team, Betty oversees all aspects of talent for the firm's more than 36,000 employees worldwide. Betty's a pioneer in human capital strategy and human resource functions for complex businesses relying on workforce planning and world-class talent management and engagement. Betty, welcome to People and Strategy.
Betty Thompson:
Thank you, Mo. It's great to be here.
Mo Fathelbab:
Thank you, Betty. Betty, I'd like to start with your journey, if you could tell us about your career and how you ended up in this position with Booz Allen.
Betty Thompson:
Okay. Well, it's a long career, so I'll try to keep it short.
Mo Fathelbab:
We've got time. Go ahead.
Betty Thompson:
Yeah, we got time. So I started my career on really the business side at IBM, and I came in very entry level. And I was running a data center up in Baltimore, and I was pregnant with my third child, and I was dealing with a very difficult personnel situation. So I was interacting with the HR team quite frequently to try to resolve it. And I resolved it, thankfully.
I went out and I had my third child and I took a few months, extra months off, and when I was coming back, I wasn't planning to go back to Baltimore, it was time for me to do a rotation into headquarters. And the phone rang and it was HR and they were calling and asking me if I would come in and do my rotation with them, because the HR people had gotten to know me through the personnel situation and they thought that it would be a good fit for me. And I said, "Yeah, but I really was hoping to go into sales planning or something else." And they said, "Well, just come and try it."
And so I did. I thought I'd be there two years, I was there eight. And during that time I got my SHRM certification, and then I ultimately moved on to Fannie Mae because I didn't want to relocate. And at IBM, to keep moving up, you really did need to relocate. So I looked for a company that was headquartered in the Washington DC area and ended up at Fannie Mae, where I ultimately became the head of HR there.
And I was there a long time also. And phone rang and I was looking for a change, it was Booz Allen. And I came in and I talked to Horacio Rozanski, who's now our CEO and chair, but he was at the time the chief people officer and he was looking for his replacement. And so I started there in 2008 and I've seen the company go through tremendous growth. Because I think when I came in we probably had 15,000 employees, we now have 36, as you said. We were not a public company, we were a private partnership, we've since gone public. So a lot of changes. We were not as much of a technology company, we're all in on technology now, so it's been a really fantastic 16 years.
Mo Fathelbab:
That is a storied career, if I may say so myself. Congratulations.
Betty Thompson:
Thank you.
Mo Fathelbab:
Yeah. And I believe you're also the chair of the board of SHRM?
Betty Thompson:
I am, yes. Delighted to be an honored to be.
Mo Fathelbab:
Wonderful, wonderful. In your presentation at SHRM24 you focused on three main changes affecting the workforce over the next decade: education, inclusion, and civility. I'd like to spend a few minutes on each of these topics.
Starting with the pandemic. So in the pandemic, obviously we had many children who were affected by the pandemic, whether it was because they're staying home or because of the social isolation. And that must have an impact as it relates to those children in the workforce in 2035. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Betty Thompson:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it was a really difficult time to be an educator and to be a student, particularly for the younger students because they hadn't ... Maybe it was their first experience with education, and being at home, in a hallway, or sitting at a desk, not being with your other students, not being face-to-face with your teacher, I think was really difficult. And I think we're still seeing the effects of that. You mentioned the isolation. I think that's driven a lot of mental health issues that we didn't have before at these ages.
So I think they're at a real disadvantage, and I think we're not doing enough to catch them up and make sure that they can get to the grade level of reading and math and all of those things that they need to. I'm worried about it. I don't know what the answer is, other than we need to be investing more because that's the future workforce, and I'm very worried about how prepared they're going to be.
Mo Fathelbab:
Well, that's a good call out and something we should all be conscious of. We have a 16-year-old who certainly went through some of that pandemic stuff, and-
Betty Thompson:
And I think it was even more acute in disadvantaged areas because there were ... I know friends of mine who had their kids in private school and they were going to school every day, whereas the public schools were not. And so I think some, where you already were disadvantaged from an economic standpoint, you were disadvantaged even more from education standpoint during that time.
Mo Fathelbab:
100%.
Betty Thompson:
And that certainly is going to have long-term effects.
Mo Fathelbab:
100%. Well, let's hope for the best on that. Continuing with the theme of education, I think you talked about one in four adults are not sure of the value of a four-year degree anymore. And so you're looking more at skills-based hiring instead of degree-based hiring, if that's the ... Can you speak more to that?
Betty Thompson:
Sure, yeah. No, I think that there are ... First of all, there's a lot of skills that we're looking for and that other companies are looking for that are technical skills that a lot of the four-year degree programs are not offering. And so they're not generating the talent that we need with just a four-year degree. There's certifications. I mean, we were building a huge data science practice to build our AI business, and we were having much better luck going to the tech bootcamps or to the community colleges because they were able to act more quickly to take on new technologies. So I think there's a lot of alternatives.
Military, veterans, are a great source for us, and they have the technical skills, they have the mission understanding, they have clearances, they have things that we need, but quite often they don't have a four-year degree. I think the other thing is, I don't want anybody to assume I don't value a college degree, but I think that you can get a good job and good employers might pay for your education because cost is a huge-
Mo Fathelbab:
Huge.
Betty Thompson:
... barrier for getting a college degree. My company paid for my master's. That would've been harder for me to pay for at the time. So if you have a good employer, there's a good chance that you might be able to have them pay for your education and not have all of the debt that we see people coming out of schools with today, and they have the skills that they can do the work.
Mo Fathelbab:
Yeah. So clearly you value education. I value education, I believe in lifelong learning. What I'm hearing from you that I haven't heard contextualized in this way before is perhaps these skills trainings are even more valuable than college in certain instances.
Betty Thompson:
For sure. I think that's right, because they translate immediately to a job. I mean, we all have colleagues and friends and their kids that aren't able to get a job when they come out of college because they didn't really focus on the skills that employers were going to be looking for. And I think that's critically important. The schools need to be preparing for jobs that people can get and that they can do really well with. I think we do that in medicine and in the legal profession, but not so much in some of the other disciplines.
Mo Fathelbab:
Yeah. What are other examples of skills-based training that are valuable for you all?
Betty Thompson:
Well, I think there's certifications that can be online. There's some that are actual courseware. AI is a big one that there's a lot of online training that we can have. We developed our own of three levels of AI training, starting with AI awareness. Those are things I think that are really valuable today and will be valuable in the future.
And again, it demonstrates that somebody wants to learn. They just don't have the means to do it in the traditional way that we think about it in terms of a four-year degree.
Mo Fathelbab:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Moving on, so inclusion and diversity is something that's getting a lot of scrutiny these days. What changes do you think we need to consider and look at to make it more effective?
Betty Thompson:
We've been working on diversity. Most organizations have had some focus on diversity, inclusion, equity, for the past 30 years, and yet we have not ... I don't think any of us would say we've made the progress that we would've liked to. So that should tell us something about what needs to change, that we can't keep doing what we've been doing and expect that we're going to get different results.
Mo Fathelbab:
The definition of insanity, right?
Betty Thompson:
Exactly, exactly. So I think the answer is inclusion because people will be attracted and they will thrive if they feel they are part of something, and that they feel included, that they matter. The work that they do, that there's an understanding of the differences, and being able to leverage those as assets and an advantage. And the pie doesn't have to be just so many pieces, we can make the pie bigger and give everybody an opportunity.
I think the way that we've been approaching it was very much putting people into categories as opposed to saying people are multidimensional, there's value in all of that. And if we can just make everybody feel like they're valued, then I think we will get the results that we want from an equity and diversity perspective.
Mo Fathelbab:
And what initiatives have you all undertaken to make everybody feel valued?
Betty Thompson:
We are experimenting with what we call nudging. And what this is, is as a manager ... Because it all comes down to the people you work for, I mean, the managers make decisions about who's going to get the most visible project and those kinds of things. We would send an email to the manager and it would be nudging them to ask questions about their employees, to get to know them better.
Mo Fathelbab:
Get to know them.
Betty Thompson:
Because when you know people, you do better for them. You're more understanding, you're more intuitive about how to talk to them and how to think about their talents and where they could be applied. And so we do these nudging campaigns, and it's not really even a campaign, it's just these nudges that we send out. And it's been incredibly effective because people want to do the right thing. They're not trying not to be empathetic or they're not trying to be not inclusive, but they just need to be reminded because their natural behaviors take over because they're working and they're busy and all of that. So these nudges make it really simple for them to think about their people.
We've also done a lot of in-person training of what we expect to be very, very clear with our leaders about what we expect in terms of them engaging their employees. With all of this remote working that we came to enjoy during the pandemic, we've lost the human touch of those hallway conversations. And so we're giving them tools and ideas about ways to bring people into the office and to be together in a meaningful way.
And so training leaders is really the most important thing, and being very clear with them what the expectation is. And our expectation is that they are engaging their employees, that they're getting to know them, and importantly, letting the employees get to know them so that you can make that human connection. There's always ways to find things you have in common.
Mo Fathelbab:
It's a two-way street.
Betty Thompson:
It is absolutely, absolutely.
Mo Fathelbab:
Yeah. Wonderful. So let's talk about the empathy piece. You brought up empathy a couple of times, and there's this whole notion of bring your whole self to work versus what I heard you say, bring your best self to work. And so how do you have an empathetic workplace that doesn't get in the way of people performing?
Betty Thompson:
Well, I think it makes people better performers when they have somebody that is empathetic. And I think empathy leads to inclusion too, because empathy requires you to think about, "How is the other person thinking about this. Let me put myself in their situation, let me get to know them better." So I think they go hand in hand, the inclusion and the empathy.
But I think that's where people not only feel included, they feel cared for. And people really respond to the notion that, "Somebody cares about me." I always remember, and this happened when I was at Fannie Mae, so it was a long time ago, but I was in the car and I was on the phone with my boss and we were just transacting, getting something done over the phone. I was driving, I'll confess. But I hung up and we finished and he calls me back a few minutes later and he said, "Are you okay?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm fine." And he said, "Your voice just didn't sound quite right." And I said. "I really ..." And I was, I was fine. I said, "No, I'm fine, really." And he goes, "Okay. I was just checking."
Again, that happened a long time ago. I still remember that because it meant so much that he cared enough to call me back and say, "Are you okay?" Those things, they stick with you and they make you want to do better. And they certainly retain you, you want to do good work for that person because they cared about you.
Mo Fathelbab:
It's interesting, those subtleties are things that we naturally pick up as human beings.
Betty Thompson:
Exactly.
Mo Fathelbab:
And I think sometimes we ignore them for whatever reason, maybe we're just too busy or maybe we think we're being too overreaching.
Betty Thompson:
I think that happens too. It's funny, when I was interviewing Al Roker yesterday on the big stage-
Mo Fathelbab:
Amazing interview, by the way.
Betty Thompson:
Oh, thank you.
Mo Fathelbab:
What a great interview. Yes.
Betty Thompson:
He's an incredibly nice, wonderful person, and talented.
Mo Fathelbab:
And so funny.
Betty Thompson:
But I told him the Maya Angelou comment about, "People will forget what you did, but they will not forget how you made them feel." And I said to him, I said, "Al, when you were talking to me, you used my name, you said 'Betty.'" I said, "I'm like, 'Al Roker said my name.'" I mean, that made me feel special that he used my name in the conversation.
Mo Fathelbab:
I went to this training course when I was just out of college with this guy Walter Haley in Texas Hill Country. And the thing that he said that I'll never forget is the most powerful word in the English language is somebody's name. Use their name.
Betty Thompson:
See? There you go.
Mo Fathelbab:
So thank you Betty for that reminder.
Let's move on to civility and culture. We are experiencing some major amounts of incivility in the workplace. How are you training your people to look out for that, whether it's direct incivility or indirect incivility, whether it's overt or hidden? How are you all dealing with that?
Betty Thompson:
It's interesting. I don't feel like I'm having to manage that because we're so focused on this empathy and this caring and inclusion and wanting our talent to stay with us, so I don't feel like we're having to overtly be that way. But it's there. And quite honestly, we have a very high standard for behavior. We make it very clear what we expect. And we have a number of channels for people to let us know if that's not happening.
And of course, it does happen, and we deal with that. We have a process where if somebody raises an issue, and there's multiple channels, anonymous and otherwise. We have an independent person go in and look at that, interview, figure out what went on there, and then they write a report and present it to a committee. It's anonymous. The committee does not know where this person works, who they are, doesn't have a name, any of that identifying information is taken out. And the committee makes a determination about what's the right action to take.
Sometimes it's, "That person needs to have a conversation and be coached about how this is. This person needs to take more training. We need to get a coach to come in and help this person." But it could be that they have to leave the organization because we're not going to ... And that sends a very strong message about how people are supposed to behave in the workplace.
But it is a challenge, and it's going to be even more so in these coming months during the election season. And you also have to deal with people, what are they saying on social media, not just what's happening within the workforce. And how do you have those kind of conversations, and how do you make sure that people feel respected in those conversations. I think we've lost a lot about wanting to hear somebody's different perspective and hear that other point of view. We're so entrenched in our own point of view these days because we're in the echo chamber, we're all in our own echo chamber. And so we've lost that curiosity about, "Well, why do you think that way?"
And that's what we're trying to drive, is be curious about what other people are. Because again, it all fits together with this inclusion and empathy and caring, is if you're going to care about somebody, then you're going to be civil and you're going to be curious about what matters to them.
Mo Fathelbab:
What you said that's really just powerful, I want to just reiterate, empathy is going to trump incivility. If we're being empathetic, if we're taught to be empathetic, then there's less room for incivility.
Betty Thompson:
Exactly, exactly. And I do know that some organizations struggle with it more, whether it's they've got a very junior workforce or some of the industries are just going to have a lot more different kinds of opinions and more. And we've seen what people will say on social media that we would never have said, and how do you deal with that?
And so I think the campaign that SHRM has around having these civil conversations, it will take way more than a million and we're on a great track to get well above that. It is important, because not everybody does know and not everybody has set a standard for that kind of behavior.
Mo Fathelbab:
Yeah. Can you talk more about the 1 Million Conversations?
Betty Thompson:
I think it's just a great campaign, and it really is about this notion of just listen. Let somebody have a point of view and see if you can just listen in and give the respect that you may not agree, but it's okay for them to have a different opinion and to be curious about that.
And I think the cards and the tools that SHRM is providing are really helping people to know how to do it, because you would think it would be more intuitive, but it's not.
Mo Fathelbab:
It's not.
Betty Thompson:
And especially after isolation of COVID social media and all of the stuff that we're hearing all the time and invading our heads and our civility, we've just had to remind people. I think it's a great way to remind people that they should be civil. It seems like a low standard.
Mo Fathelbab:
Yeah. It's how I was brought up, it's a given.
Betty Thompson:
Exactly. It seems like a low standard.
Mo Fathelbab:
It's not an option.
Betty Thompson:
But we now need to remind people of that, and I think this campaign is doing it in a really powerful way.
Mo Fathelbab:
Yeah. And are you all at Booz doing any specific training on civil conversations, particularly as we head into this election season and find ourselves in potentially tricky conversations?
Betty Thompson:
Yes, we are. We're having practices that people can have. We are actually testing some technology. It's like an avatar where you can say, "I need to have this conversation with this person. Help me have it." You can use AI to ask about some of kinds of things. So we're actually not so much providing training as we are resources and suggestions about how people can have these conversations.
And then of course, it's the example you set. I mean, I happen to think our CEO is just absolutely incredible and amazing, and is very kind. And people know that, they know he cares and that he's just always kind. And setting that kind of an example at the CEO level, it permeates. I think leaders need to really understand that what they do, how they say things, the way they act, it travels.
Mo Fathelbab:
It starts at the top.
Betty Thompson:
And it really matters. It starts at the top.
Mo Fathelbab:
It starts at the top.
Betty Thompson:
Exactly.
Mo Fathelbab:
Yeah. I'm curious to get your thoughts on ... I've been pulled into a couple of conversations around the Middle East conflict over the last few months. And one of the things that has come up is not generalizing, not judging, sharing your experience. Tell your story, not your opinion, because that's where we get in trouble, not repeating what we hear in the media because there's 10 versions of it. We don't actually know what's true.
Betty Thompson:
It's true, yeah.
Mo Fathelbab:
I'm wondering how that jives with what you all do and what of that is resonating with you?
Betty Thompson:
That's been a hard one. That has really been hard because there's just such tragedy on both sides, and there's such a long history and all of that. But we actually, our CEO hosted an all-employee call and let people ask questions and let people have a conversation about it. And so just providing a venue that's a safe place to have those conversations I think is really important because you do want to, I hate to say this, manage them, but you do need to manage them a bit so that people feel safe.
We've used our EAP counselors to come in and facilitate and help people know how to have those conversations. We've set up employee networks so that there's an online way that people can engage in the conversation, and we have leaders involved in it. So it's not just say anything, people understand that, "Well, there are people on here that are more senior and I need to be acting appropriately on that." And when they're not, we have people that can go out and have a conversation about that, and usually it falls to HR to have those conversations.
Mo Fathelbab:
Absolutely. Finally, as we look ahead to 2035, what qualities and skills will be essential as you look ahead through your lens?
Betty Thompson:
Yeah. And I think '35 is way too far out because I think things are happening so fast, but I do think that the technical skills that we're going to need. We're going to need people that understand robotics, engineering, software, those kinds of things, the technical skills. But we're also going to need people who have the professional skills, the influence skills, the emotional intelligence. All of those things, all the things that are, we used to call it soft skills, are really going to be as important, if not more important, as we shift to relying more on technology.
I think those things are still going to be critically important for people to really be able to have good decision making and be more inquisitive, because you can pull up a lot of information in a Google search or in a chatbot, but you have to be willing to ask questions. Like, "Where did that come from? Is there another version of this?" Which I think is going to be fantastic if we can get people to be more curious about the things that they're reading and the things that they're hearing.
Mo Fathelbab:
I like that. Be curious, I think that's a great summary. Betty Thompson, what a great, great conversation. Thank you, thank you so much.
Betty Thompson:
Thank you, Mo. I really enjoyed it.
Mo Fathelbab:
Yes, absolutely.
As we begin winding down this episode, a big thank you again to Betty Thompson for all her predictions and insights into the workplace of 2035. You can follow People and Strategy Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a huge impact on our visibility. So if you enjoyed today's podcast, please be sure to give a review. And finally, you could see all our podcasts at shrm.org/podcasts. Thank you again for listening, and have a great day.