AI is changing not only the nature of work, but also the approaches needed for effective human-centric change management related to this revolutionary technology. In this episode of People and Strategy, host Mo Fathelbab speaks with Nichol Bradford, SHRM’s executive in residence for AI and HI enablement to discuss topics including concerns about AI-related layoffs, how HR departments will evolve in the age of AI, and and achieving buy-in from senior leadership and employees on AI initiatives at your organization.
AI is changing not only the nature of work, but also the approaches needed for effective human-centric change management related to this revolutionary technology. In this episode of People and Strategy, host Mo Fathelbab speaks with Nichol Bradford, SHRM’s executive in residence for AI and HI enablement to discuss topics including concerns about AI-related layoffs, how HR departments will evolve in the age of AI, and and achieving buy-in from senior leadership and employees on AI initiatives at your organization.
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Mo Fathelbab:
Welcome to today's People and Strategy podcast, a podcast from SHRM's Executive Network, which is the premier network of executives and thought leaders in the field of human resources. I'm Mo Fathelbab, president of International Facilitators Organization, and moderator of the SHRM Executive Network. And I'm excited today to speak with Nichol Bradford, the executive in residence for SHRM's AI plus HI initiative to discuss AI from a leadership vantage point. Welcome, Nichol. Great to have you with us.
Nichol Bradford:
Thank you Mo. Great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. It's nice to see you again.
Mo Fathelbab:
It's an honor indeed. And what an important topic we're going to discuss, and I can't think of anybody better than you to begin this incredible conversation. So let's start just from the beginning, Nichol. Tell me, and tell us, and tell the audience how your love affair with technology started, and when you got started with all that stuff.
Nichol Bradford:
Great. Well, I'd love to start with why I'm at SHRM, and how I came here, because that's a big part of the story. I'm here as the executive in residence for AI and HI enablement, and SHRM's initiative around that, because SHRM and I share a passion and a focus on the human part of technology. I spent the last 10 years focused on human potential, and technology, and I've been in technology for two decades, but in the last decade, I've really looked at the ways that we can leverage technology to enhance and augment human potential. How can we use technology to heal, to grow, to thrive, and to become our best selves? What that specifically looks like has been working with technologists, and scientists, and clinicians, and coaches, and people in HR to look at specific cases where technology can be leveraged for mental, social and emotional health, human purpose and performance.
And with SHRM's focus on HR professionals, and the shared alignment about the people part of the biggest technological change that is happening in our lives I would say since the internet is what people say, and it is that big, but it's actually even bigger, and more foundational. And that's why we're working together.
Mo Fathelbab:
Can you elaborate upon why you think this is bigger?
Nichol Bradford:
Well, certainly the internet touch, we all spend time on the internet every day, even though the entire world is not on the internet yet. But what this does is this has the potential to change how we do things. So the first iteration of the internet was around searching, finding things, making things easier to find, making all the world's information available. And today, the sum total of human knowledge is on the internet. You can find everything that we know. What this next stage is, is, what do we do with it? We're going to switch from searching to asking. And anytime we have a shift in how we interact with information, it also changes us. And this asking part, and being able to use technology as an extension of ourselves, and being able to use it to do work for us, as opposed to just asking it questions about work is going to extend our reach, and augment our capabilities. And it's more profound in how it changes us, and that's the difference.
Mo Fathelbab:
So that is really powerful stuff you're saying. And one of the first things that comes to mind is I hear concern as to people losing their jobs. Is this going to take the place of my actual job? Will AI just be everything we need, and are we just going to lay people off?
Nichol Bradford:
Well, there's a couple of ways to break that down. First of all, being human isn't going to go anywhere. We have a lot of biology that's way older than all of our tech on wanting to be together, and our desire to belong, be seen, be connected to one another. An example of that, there was a mental health company that used generative AI to make some of their responses, and they did it in a test. And what was really interesting is in the test, when the clients were told that an answer was from a generative AI bot, they thought it was a good answer, and in some cases, they thought it was a better answer. But when they were asked what answer they preferred, is they preferred the answer from the human being, even though it wasn't perfect. We actually prefer perfectly imperfect human beings than the perfect digital answer.
I don't think that being human is at an end. I think what's really incumbent upon us is we have to become the best of ourselves. It's been really interesting. It's like it took AI for us to finally appreciate being human enough to really focus on ourselves, for ourselves, and it took AI acting like humans to fulfill our own potential, and use technology to make it that we can become the best that we can. There's this idea that's out there that we are as good as we will ever be, and that we don't have the potential to create more, to explore more, to collaborate more, and to connect more. And what I think AI is doing is it's going to get rid of some of the tools, some of the processes that we created to get from the Serengeti, to the Industrial Revolution, and to now, and then that will allow us to highlight and cultivate many of our other talents and abilities.
And I think we don't even know what we will build when our creativity and our collaboration is unlocked. So I don't think humans are going out of style. And then on the job side, every time there's been a giant technological transition, there's actually been a net number of new jobs. And the danger, and the disruption, and the fear is really about the people who cannot transition, and who might they be, and what do we do to support them? How do we actually change the way that we upskill and retrain people to support these people? And that's where the crux of the matter is, and that's where the only way to get to it is to get into it. So the question is, "How do we get into it, so we can have the smoothest transition for the largest number of people possible? And what are the beliefs that we hold that may no longer be true, that are influencing our ability to navigate a path that serves all?"
Mo Fathelbab:
Yeah. So the upskilling piece is going to be really important. Would you say it is harder or easier than people think?
Nichol Bradford:
There's some interesting data on that. Accenture, who does a marvelous job at their research, they did a study where they surveyed the C-suite, and they also surveyed the employees of the same company. And 37% of the senior leaders believed that their people would not be able to transition to the new technologies. Meanwhile, 85% of the employees of those same companies felt that they had a good grasp of generative AI. 94% of them felt that with training they could transition. But the really telling thing is that 95% of the employees did not trust their leaders to make decisions that considered all when it came down to implementing generative AI. And Accenture calls this the Trust Gap. And the problem with having a trust gap is that the difference between organizations where the people embrace the reinvention, and the ones where they haven't heard from their leadership, like 3/4 of companies have no articulated plan about what they're going to do, or how they're going to do it.
And with that trust gap, with them not embracing it, then they really don't help the organization reinvent the processes. And in an economic model, the difference between that implementation is only 4% of a productivity increase, versus if you truly reinvent, it's 20 to 36 percentage points of productivity increase in revenues. And it's one of those things that if you don't have the trust in the organization, and if you don't have the belief that people when given the right tools can adapt, then there's all things that you don't do. And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Mo Fathelbab:
What are some of those things?
Nichol Bradford:
Well, the first round of AI implementations, or a lot of the acceleration that we saw even before generative AI were the investments that companies did in their technology stacks during the pandemic. If you actually look at the numbers of the investments, the companies who just took that opportunity, and even though it was a very terrifying time for everyone, took that opportunity to actually invest in their digital cores, those companies are already showing the revenue impact of having done that. But when you look at how they did it, they made their people a part of the process. And there's characteristics of how people do change management during the middle of a technology shift that has clear winners and losers for how people do it. And the things that you do, especially as it relates to people, has everything to do with how you reinvent your talent, and how you invite them into the process.
How do you map out? One of the things I've heard is having your skills-based approach, having it be as precise as your technology roadmap. Your people roadmap is as precise as your technology roadmap. Those are some of the things that they do.
Mo Fathelbab:
Beautiful. So we're talking about people, and SHRM is an HR organization. So let's get a little more focused as to how HR departments are going to be evolving in the next few years in terms of how they're impacted by AI, and generative AI.
Nichol Bradford:
What I think is really exciting about what an HR professional can do inside of an organization is there's this concept of what's called an AI Catalyst. And what's interesting is that if you look at or talk to people who've done AI implementations for a while, because AI in general is not new. It's actually been around for a while, but it was away from you. So whenever you did a Google search, you were touching AI, but you didn't perceive it as such. There's a tremendous amount of AI on the back end of that. But historically, when people have done big tech transformations, and early integrations of AI where people weren't doing systemic things, and they were focused on specific use cases of one problem, that thing, the anecdotal failure rate, it depends, and I say anecdotal, because it depends on who you're talking to, but the point of view on the street historically is that 50 to 80% of AI implementations in the past have failed, and they fail because it's the wrong problem.
It's not the right data, or the resources were not brought to bear. So in the ones that have been successful, there is a character that people are describing as an AI Catalyst. And this AI Catalyst is the person who often does not have a technology background. This person often is not from IT. It's not driven by the technology side. It's a person who is really close to a problem, understands a problem, and has the strategic ability to help the leadership team decide which implementations to choose, which problems to solve. And they have this strategic capability. They have the ability to get buy-in across the company, because successful implementations also have a multidisciplinary team. The person, the subject matter expert, who really knows what the problem is with this particular class of customer, they can't get the product at the end. They can't get the implementation at the end.
They have to be a part of the iterative process of getting it right. So this AI Catalyst has to be someone who can get the subject matter expert to the technology team. And what's exciting for HR leaders is they could be the AI Catalyst for HR problems, because they're subject matter experts, and they can be a partner to AI Catalysts in other departments to help them be successful, because 1/2 of what the AI Catalyst does is educate. 1/2 of what they do is get resources aligned. 1/2 of what they do is get buy-in. And that is a natural role for an HR leader to have outside of their normal function with learning and development, and all the other things that HR does, and then they can fully be the AI Catalyst inside of the HR department, and HR problems. And it's really exciting, because I think that the HR teams have the ability to help the entire organization reinvent.
And I think similar to how HR really came in, and saved the day during the pandemic, to help people understand that, HR can be an essential part of these reinventions, because a decade from now, there won't be a company that's not touched by AI. There won't be an employee that's not touched by AI. This one cannot be ignored. And with that, HR leaders have a natural seat at the table in helping the AI Catalyst get the resources that they need for initiatives outside of HR, and then eventually imagine, imagine an organization where every person in the organization is an AI Catalyst.
Mo Fathelbab:
Love it. Love it. Love it. So Nichol, put yourself in the shoes of an HR exec, and you're advising your CEO on how to invest in AI. What would you advise that CEO?
Nichol Bradford:
Well, the very first step is not which tool do we bring in. The tools are coming like this. And a tool-based strategy basically means that you're going to be drinking from a fire hose, and always holding onto the tiger by the tail. So it's really about the human-centered change management, and really, how are you going to involve your people in this transition that they trust you, and help you find the right problems to solve, that will advance your business in the most profound ways, because that's really what it's about. And yes. The tools are important. And yes. The constraints are important. Responsible AI, and you probably just saw last week, Canada Air had a chatbot that told someone that they could get a refund, and they couldn't. And the person bought a ticket based on the chatbot, and Canada Air tried to not give them a refund, and eventually, the court ruled that their chatbot said it. So they have to give them the refund.
And the reason why that's meaningful is will people be responsible for their generative AI tools that they use? Will they be legally responsible for them? And constraints are really important, because of those types of things, and having responsible AI, and thinking through it, and that thing. But the larger question is, "Where are we going? How are we reinventing ourselves, the willingness to actually change your business processes," because the entire value chains can be redesigned, all of them. You can have interconnected data. One of the things that I think is different about this AI transformation versus the previous ones is that now people are building, just to say it in layman's terms is previously, if you had seven or eight different data sets, and they were taken in nine or ten different ways, you couldn't line the data up.
One of the sectors that really saw this was the healthcare industry, when they started putting healthcare systems together, and the hospitals were all on different systems. And it was even if they wanted to, they were having a lot of problems lining up those databases, that no matter which hospital you went to, or which specialist you went to, that doctor would have all of your health data. So it was a real big problem for them. Now, one of the things that people are doing, because these new tools move in different ways, is now you can have AIs that line up your data for you, that make the sense between it. The clean data part is going to be a lot easier than it used to be. It's not solved, but it's going to be easier than it used to be. So everything is going to change. And the most important thing is your change management, your communication. Do you involve your people in the process? Are they included? Are they inspired? Do they trust you?
Mo Fathelbab:
Change management keeps coming up, and absolutely it has to be managed, right?
Nichol Bradford:
Yeah.
Mo Fathelbab:
This is a big change, and it's potentially scary for some people. Nichol Bradford, such a pleasure. Thank you for your wisdom and insight on this very important topic, and I'm sure we'll be hearing from you much more in the months and years to come. Thank you so much.
Nichol Bradford:
Thank you.
Mo Fathelbab:
You can follow the People and Strategy podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on podcast visibility. So if you enjoyed today's episode, leave a review to help others find the show. Finally, you can find all our episodes on our website at shrm.org/podcasts. Thank you for listening, and have a great day.