HR, AI, and the Future of Work with Laura Maffucci

[00:00:00] Hey, what's going on? Welcome back to Joey's HR Lounge, the space where HR leaders think out loud. I'm your host, Joey Price, CEO here at Jumpstart HR, Executive Analyst at Jumpstart HR Research. And we're here to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart, but also near and dear to the heart of our guests here, which is the ever-evolving world of work and the data that supports it.

[00:00:26] So, without further ado, we'd love to welcome Laura Maffucci, who is the head of HR at GP. So, Laura, welcome to the show. Hi, nice to be here. Thanks, Joey. Nice to see you. Yeah, glad you're here. I know we were talking a little bit earlier before the show, but I'd love to ask you something that I ask all of my guests.

[00:00:48] Not to put you on the spot, but sort of. What's your HR hot take? What's something that you think more people need to know about or that we don't talk about enough? Or an unpopular opinion. What's your hot take? I think it's all of those things maybe rolled into one. You never want to ask me for a hot take.

[00:01:10] I think right now there is a gross underestimation of how not okay most people are and how that's really affecting them at work. And how much work is playing a role in that, but also just the way the world is now. So, geopolitically, but also everything with AI, I think a lot of companies are putting a lot of the sentiment they're seeing from employees is resistance or fear.

[00:01:37] And I think there's just a deep distrust that people have in companies, corporations, governments, institutions of all kinds. And all of this AI push is just making that worse. And people don't feel like they're being heard. People feel like they have to, and you do, you literally have to question every single thing you see. Is it real? Because is it real? Is it AI? And that's a very disconcerting place to be.

[00:02:04] So, I think that organizations need to be paying more attention to the fact that their workforce is probably not operating at its best because no one is really doing okay right now. Yeah, and I think that's a palpable hot take that you can feel on LinkedIn. You can feel it at conferences when I'm chatting with other HR leaders and I'm like, how are you really?

[00:02:32] And, you know, we're being in a unique position where truly the future of the workforce is in our hands, but it comes with both a blessing and a burden of like there are things that are being shaken up and there are a lot of transformation. Again, you're no stranger to this. GP, you've got the World at Work report that is still new and fresh. In that report, though, you painted a fascinating picture of how work is changing.

[00:03:01] And for our audience, I'd love for you to share maybe what's one finding that generally surprised you and why do you think it matters for HR leaders in light of all this transformation and trepidation that we're experiencing? I'm not sure, you know, that it surprised me. I think I expected to see this, but I think it's one of the more important points.

[00:03:24] You know, the report did show that, you know, there has been a power shift and, you know, most companies kind of have the power when it comes to employment and the employment market right now. But employees are still keeping their options open despite that. They're not hesitant to be out there looking for a job.

[00:03:45] You know, majority of people, 52% of employees globally are either actively searching or they're likely to within the next few months. And people are willing to move to other countries, looking to move to other countries. So I think we're also underestimating the way people are evaluating, like, how do I want to be spending my time? What do I want to be doing? And is this working for me?

[00:04:10] And despite the economy and, you know, feeling, you know, it is more of an employer's market right now, they're not giving up the reins so easily. Yeah, yeah. Well, and the other thing, too, I wanted to talk about, it's about who holds the power in the job market.

[00:04:30] Because with folks looking to find a job, you said, well, not you, but the research, it said that 74% of employees and 59% of executives believe that companies now hold the power in the job market. And we've seen pendulum swing the many years that we've been in HR, but has this shift changed how organizations should think about attracting and retaining talent? Or is there a risk of becoming too complacent?

[00:04:59] I think there's a risk of being a little too cavalier. You know, I think after the pandemic, people did reevaluate their priorities. A lot of people were working from home and they realized they could do their jobs from home and they found a much better way of integrating their lives and healthier ways of living is a result of that. You know, pendulums shift back and forth. Everyone was doing that. Now you're seeing a lot of return to office. I think that that could backfire on people trying to find good talent. In what way? What are your thoughts on that?

[00:05:28] Well, if you've got a top candidate who prefers remote work and you're demanding that they're in the office and there's another job that's allowing them to work remotely, they're going to work remotely. You're not going to get that talent. And I think that's where a lot of these return to office mandates are going to backfire on people because your best talent is going to be able to go out there and find. They're going to have more options. They're going to find remote work.

[00:05:55] I think jumping too far onto the AI bandwagon and, you know, you're seeing it right now this week. At least five of the big ones have come out. All the ones that did, oh, we laid off thousands of people for AI. They're hiring them back. Now, some of that is because the way they messaged it being about AI, it wasn't about the jobs being replaced by AI. It was about them freeing up resources to pay for the infrastructure to support AI.

[00:06:24] However, they are finding that they can't do what they thought they could do and they need the people back. So, again, it's those pendulum swinging. I think, too, when you're seeing the immigration challenges now, hiring across borders and being able to hire globally without the person having to be in the United States is also becoming more important. If you want to find the best talent and that good talent doesn't happen to live here, to be able to still hire them globally.

[00:06:52] So, really keeping a more open mind than I think a lot of organizations tend to do. Yeah, and speaking about hiring globally, I saw somewhere in the report 84% of executives are struggling to find skilled talent in local markets. So, the alternatives are AI or alternative geographic markets.

[00:07:14] And I think that for all companies that can consider it, I think looking globally, absolutely, it's a business necessity and a competitive advantage. I'd love your thoughts on that. But when I think about even our own business, I think of, you know, what skill sets do we require here in the U.S.? And then what skill sets can we build from a growing global workforce?

[00:07:42] And truly, when the alternatives are, you know, AI or agentic AI or humans, whether they're domestic or abroad, every skill, every task, every job is a case-by-case basis, at least from my perspective. But I'd love your thoughts on that. Yeah, you know, I think that human in the loop is really important.

[00:08:09] I think that's another thing that these companies who really jumped the gun and fired people thinking they were going to replace with AI didn't appreciate how much you still need a human in the loop. You see stories about companies that built their own AI and encouraged everyone to use their internal AI, and they realized three months later that all of the revenue numbers that they'd been using out of the AI system for reporting were wrong. So, you know, having people who have experience in discernment and judgment is really important.

[00:08:40] I think things like curiosity and just being learning agile, as long as you're tech-savvy, and I think you can't exist in this world today without a baseline of tech-savviness because everything is tech at this point. I think it really boils down to, you know, who has the learning agility to learn how to do the new things because new things are coming out every day, and the curiosity to want to learn how to do it.

[00:09:05] And the judgment to know when what they're getting from AI is quality or not. Well, so the learning agility, how should organizations and hiring managers think about, you know, bringing talent into an organization? Not everyone comes with those new skills.

[00:09:28] Certainly, they don't have the skills that you cannot expect them to have the skills that are cultivated in your organization because they're not in your organization. But what do you think? How should organizations evaluate candidates without overlooking potential because they're looking for ready-to-produce AI skill sets? Yeah, I think there's a lot of expectations that need to be level set. I think we saw this back when social media was first starting out, you know, well, I want someone with 10 years of social media experience.

[00:09:58] Well, social media hasn't existed for 10 years, so you're not going to find somebody with 10 years of social media experience. So you have to help people to understand, you know, where are we in the journey of this new technology? You're not going to—it's new. So you're not going to have people who have years and years of experience in AI or in these skills. I think you have to look at what is your organization doing? Are you actually building AI or are you just trying to optimize your processes with AI?

[00:10:27] And that changes how much and how intense the level of tech and AI talent you need is. I think from there, you need to approach it with a higher what you can't teach. You typically can't teach curiosity. You can't teach learning agility. You can't teach critical thinking and discernment.

[00:10:46] So really digging in on behavioral interviewing, looking at people's previous track records and listening to stories about their experience in other situations where they brought in something new for the first time that shows their openness to learn new things and to experiment. To be able to learn something and very quickly apply it back to their roles.

[00:11:10] Those are the types of things that I think in most organizations you need because those are your people who are going to be willing to work with, say, you bring in an AI builder to build some things to optimize your processes. Those are the people who are going to be able to work best with people like that and really have AI actually add value to your business. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:30] And, you know, the scary part from your research, at least scary to me, was the number that 31% of employees fear AI could replace them. And 26% worry their contributions will be undervalued if they use AI.

[00:11:49] The reason that's scary to me is because I've had those conversations with not only HR leaders, but professionals who are maybe more experienced and have more years of work under their belt. And that's the fear.

[00:12:33] Their job is going to be taken because or as a result of it. You know, I think one of them is you can't be afraid to speak up and say the unpopular thing to leadership that may be in, you know, what they're calling now, you know, AI delusion of thinking it's the be all and end all and going to replace everything.

[00:12:52] I think it's doing what you can to influence the rest of the organization and make sure that it's being adopted in the right way and that there's a strategy behind it and that work is being reimagined and that tools aren't just being slapped on top of existing processes. You really need to reimagine how work is getting done. And you need to involve the people who do that work. I think that's a big mistake a lot of companies make. They bring something in, they don't even ask the people who are involved in that workflow how it works.

[00:13:20] And I think you need to view AI as an enabler and a way to add value to the humans that you have. Free them up to do, to be creative, to do all of the things that AI can't do. And to babysit the AI or, you know, make sure that the AI is accurate and running and keeping that human in the loop.

[00:13:42] And you need to really walk the talk on that and really communicate strongly and loudly to employees that that is why you're doing this. You're not doing this as a way to replace them. Of course, that means that's how you have to be looking at it. And getting organizations to look at it that right way is really difficult. I don't know that enough of them are looking at it as an enabler of humans as opposed to a replacement. And I think that they also just think, oh, they just give mandates, you know, do this with AI, go get AI.

[00:14:12] And that's where you wind up finding tools slapped onto things that aren't necessarily really adding any value. And then you're just going to wind up with a mess of disparate tools. So I think HR needs to approach it, you know, from that change management lens and just being really loud about that and taking the opportunity to influence where they can. Yeah, you know, I'm a big principles guy and values guy. And you nailed it. It really rises and falls on your change management process.

[00:14:41] How early are you including stakeholders? How open are you to their feedback and suggestions? Not only at the onset, but once things have been implemented. Because earlier this week, I was reading about how many AI tools are acquired and then just sit on the shelf because the proper change management hasn't taken place.

[00:15:10] And, you know, that's one of those things that companies get wrong. We have a framework, it's called the bridge on how to buy HR technology. And the B stands for starting with the business problem. And if you miss that, you do not set yourself up for success. And I think that's, you nailed it right there. They're not asking first, what problem are we trying to solve? Yeah. They're like, oh, we just have to use AI. They don't know why. They don't know what value they're going to get out of it. They're just saying we have to do it. Yeah.

[00:15:39] AI is not the savior of your business. It is not the savior for anyone. It's clear understanding of your business problems and what tools and resources you need to accomplish those business problems. That's going to save your business. And that's people, that's technology. Of course, it's a mix of both. But you've got to start with, what are we trying to accomplish here and how can we do that?

[00:16:01] And not just, oh, our board is asking us to adopt AI and so we're going to go with the vendor that we've used all along or the vendors that are being referred to us. You really have to understand who's best suited to fit your business problem. And it is the boards and it is the more senior leadership and it is the roles and the people who are least connected to the actual work being done.

[00:16:27] Who are coming out and giving these mandates of, oh, you have to use it. And they don't understand the work itself. And that becomes inherently a problem. And then you have, you know, I think a lot of the things I've been seeing lately, people under the age of 35 absolutely hate AI. No way. The younger you are, the younger the generation, the least favorable they view AI. Yeah. Which is really interesting.

[00:16:54] So what is that going to do as, you know, as they get older, as time progresses with it? Because it is when you take a step back and you think about it, this isn't like two guys in a garage who built a company and everyone thought the technology was super cool and they started using it. It was a bunch of billionaires who did this and said, you're using this, it's going to change everything and it's going to replace everyone. And we were all just like, okay, whatever you say. And it's kind of being thrust upon us in a way. And it's like, well, who's deciding that this is what we're doing?

[00:17:25] And the younger generations do not like that. Yeah. And I think that's a huge issue that we have to think about as employers and our employer brand, because with it being such a societal factor, that's going to determine who wants to work for your business.

[00:17:46] It's, you know, you're summer interns now, but what does that mean for your mid-level managers five years from now and then senior leadership 10 years from now, a decade from now? You know, I mentioned this in my TEDx talk. I did a TEDx talk a few years ago now on the topic of AI in the workplace.

[00:18:06] And one of the things I suggested is, you know, companies should write their own obituary of like, how do we want to be remembered in the AI generation? And that was kind of morbid, but it's all about the future. No, it's a good way to look at it. How do you want to be remembered? Yeah, for sure. What else? What else do you think companies are getting wrong with AI adoption though? I'm getting so much wrong right now. We've got time. We've got time.

[00:18:34] I just think, you know, the old ways of doing things and listen, I'm not exactly a youngster. I'm Gen X. You know, I get it. I'm Boomer Light. I think I'm so old in Gen X that I'm considered Boomer Light. But, you know, gone are the days where people are loyal to a company. You work there for 20 years and they've been gone for a really long time. But corporations are still coming from a place that that's how it should be.

[00:19:03] And they're not recognizing how, no matter how old you are, what your generation is, people's priorities have been changing since 2020. They've been relooking at things and they have just different ways of prioritizing their lives and what matters to them. And companies aren't recognizing that at the same pace that that's happening. And then you have the younger generation who they're like, I'm going to sit in a cube for the rest of my life and I'm going to do this.

[00:19:31] You know, and what's going to happen when they're all opting out? You know, what are we going to do? There are reports. The numbers escape me at the moment. But a lot of young professionals are opting out of management. Yeah. And I think they've seen leadership pressures under COVID.

[00:19:56] Those who were in college at the time, I remember what it was like navigating that. And then they're like, you know, for a couple of thousand dollars more, do I really want to sacrifice my nights and weekends when I'd rather, you know, build a life for myself? We're coming up against a challenge that we can't necessarily blame AI for.

[00:20:24] No, it's more than AI. It's way more than AI. Yeah. And, you know, the organizational design brain that I have, I'm like, we've got a pretty important challenge ahead of us that we've got to corral. Because if no one wants to lead a company, there are other factors that I could. Yeah. And I think so much of it is viewed as, you know, it's so perfect. They don't have the patience for how performative so much of it is.

[00:20:51] The false sense of urgency, you know, just all, you know, social media is what it is. But I think it's pretty good at giving you a sense of how people are actually feeling about things. And a couple of the little trends that I've seen that I see a lot of that I think is very telling is, you know, the jokes about you work in marketing. There's no such thing as an emergency.

[00:21:16] And then, you know, they'll show like a beautiful landscape and they'll say humans saw this and they still invented Microsoft Teams. Like, you know, like what are we doing, you know, and they're looking at that. And, you know, people are finding alternative ways of, you know, independently making money and living, you know, decent. I mean, right now with the economy, the way it is, it's scary. And that's all flipping on its head, too. So it's a scary time.

[00:21:43] But they're not, the younger generation is not looking there and thinking, I want to go work in marketing for 35 years and climb the corporate ladder. A lot of people who have climbed the corporate ladder are like, can I climb back down now? This is too much. This isn't what I wanted. So I think corporations are going to have to adjust to that to make it palatable because people want to make money and they want to do things they're interested in.

[00:22:11] And so if you are interested and you want to be in marketing, you should be able to do that. But corporations are going to have to restructure how they operate so that people can do that in a way that adds value to a business, allows the business to succeed, but also isn't so performative and ridiculous that it's negatively impacting your life. Yeah. Yeah. We're in for an interesting road ahead, Laura. And I believe you'll help us solve it. I don't know about that. I'm tired.

[00:22:39] But if we had advice for an HR leader who is trying to balance all of this, right, and their CEO, their board is saying, hey, we need to realize AI value from the HR seat. What are some projects, initiatives that you could recommend in light of all this conversation that we're having now?

[00:23:07] What are some safe ways to start or to think about AI adoption? Is that in your L&D? Is that in your payroll? Is that in your benefits? What do you think HR leaders and a mid-enterprise size employer should be thinking about if they haven't been thinking about it already? I think, number one, you have to be brave because you have to be willing to express the viewpoint of the people.

[00:23:36] And that's not necessarily going to align typically with a CEO and a board. You also have to start from a white space. You have to reimagine the work. If I was rebuilding this function today or rebuilding this process today with the tools I have today and what I'm likely going to have in 10 minutes because everything's moving so fast, how would I set this up? I can't get through a day without having to refresh something because it's updated. Yeah, exactly.

[00:24:02] So make sure you're starting from scratch and really thinking about it from a white space and thinking about it in a new way. And keep an eye on things. One thing that I've noticed is you can see really high adoption of AI in a company when a mandate goes down to use AI and you enable people the right way to do it. I think we did. And you can easily mistake that uptake as enthusiasm and lack of fear around AI.

[00:24:32] But I encourage people to take a step back and really look at it and think, is that it? Or is also a good percentage of it people who are afraid of losing their jobs if they don't use AI so everyone's diving in. So it's very easy to misread the activity that you're seeing as enthusiasm and lack of fear when it actually might be the other way around. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:55] It's true now as it has been in the past that those soft skills and emotional intelligence, the ability to read a room, the ability to connect with people, that's so, so, so critical. Last question. And we'll end it on an AI note, but we'll end it on a human note as well.

[00:25:18] So when you look ahead, the companies that navigate this transformation well, what do you think are, what's going to separate those who navigate it well versus those who struggle to turn the corner? Ones that navigate it well will, again, like I've said a couple times, they will reimagine the work, not just slap on add-ons.

[00:25:42] They will enable the organization, do not just throw an AI mandate out there and then not give people the tools to build it. Because even the most tech savvy among us who might be able to figure out how to go out there and build an agent for their work processes in their department, they've got a day job and it's very time consuming and they likely don't have the time and don't mistake that for them being resistant. They just, they don't know how to do and get started on what you need them to do or have the time. So make sure that you're doing that.

[00:26:10] I think that is going to be critical for companies. And I also think keep a human in the loop. Don't overestimate the value of what AI is going to be able to do and don't get yourself in a situation where you've let a bunch of people go and your customer service falls apart. And then you're hiring everyone back. I mean, I just think that's a huge mistake. And think really long-term and think about how pendulums swing.

[00:26:39] If every company is moving so far towards AI, pretty soon you're going to start seeing companies advertising. You get to work with a real person. And that's going to be the thing that's paying a premium. Could you imagine? Wow. I feel like... That's going to happen. What's the Tom Hanks movie with Wilson? Oh yeah, Castaway. Castaway. It's like we are an anti-castaway company. Yeah. You work with humans. You get a human.

[00:27:05] I think that's going to be very soon we're going to be seeing that because you do get frustrated. I mean, none of it is super great. Some of it's good and far better than it used to be, but you're always going to hit a wall when it's a machine. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you know... I mean, screaming representative really loud into the book. Representative! Oh, and it's the worst. It's the worst. Well, Laura, this has been great. You know, I think it's a good place to land the show up here.

[00:27:35] I've really enjoyed talking with you. And not just the research, which we'll drop a link for those who want to learn more, brush up on it, and share with their team. But just to hear your experience, your lived experience and how it shaped your view as an HR leader. So, my hat's off to you in your career journey and hope our paths cross again. It's fun. The real versions of us, not the agents or the hologram. Exactly. Not our avatar.

[00:28:05] Yeah, our avatar. How can people find you? And are there any links or... I'm on LinkedIn. LinkedIn. And that's the best place to find GP and to find me is on LinkedIn. Awesome. All right. Well, until next time, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you.