HR, We Have a Problem - The impact of executive buy-in on AI adoption - and why HR can’t wait for IT to lead the way.

[00:00:00] 20% of software developers working in corporate America that are going rogue in terms of using AI in applications without AI even being sanctioned for use within their organizations. So we're almost seeing kind of this bottom-up type of approach to AI where it's starting to pop up in different places. But concurrent to that, then you've got this overlay of who's minding the store? What about ethics?

[00:00:30] What about integrity? What about the humanoid versus the AI experience? And what does that look like? And how does that impact? You know, you've got this whole push for skills hiring now. Well, who has the better skills? Is it AI or is it the human? And how do we make all of this come together? How do we get it to mesh?

[00:00:55] Welcome to the HR Huddle Podcast presented by Sapient Insights Group, the ultimate resource for all things HR. It's time to get in the huddle.

[00:01:14] Hello everyone. Welcome back to the HR Huddle. I'm your host, Terri Zipper, CEO and managing partner at Sapient Insights Group. And I'm back for another exciting episode of HR, We Have a Problem.

[00:01:28] This is the show where we like to break down the big and most relevant HR issues of the day. We help you make sense of what they mean. And we talk about what you might do about them. So joining me today is Jean Achille, CEO of the Devon Group. Welcome, Jean. Great to have you. Oh, Terri, it's so good to see you.

[00:01:49] I can't believe I've been doing this show now for almost two years, a show that I almost didn't do because I really didn't want to do it. But somebody just, you know, like I couldn't, I couldn't not do it. And now I, now I don't want to give it up. I've been doing the show for almost two years and I've yet to have you on the show. So I'm very excited to have you join me today. This is going to be fun.

[00:02:11] I think so, too. You know, it's funny, our paths cross so frequently. And I know you, you have so graciously hosted a number of our clients as on your show. And we've been waiting in the wings for the call. So I'm very excited to be here today.

[00:02:30] Well, I was trying to think, you know, the other day when we first met, and I want to say it was like 2010, 2011, maybe. It was very early, early HR tech days for me.

[00:02:43] And I was quite in awe of what you do and just HR tech in general, but that's, you know, that's how we met was through that process of, you know, I was back in my Mercer days when I had software and I was trying to figure out who to talk to and, you know, what analysts should I work with?

[00:03:00] And I just remember you, you know, helping guide me through that and, you know, just giving me ideas and helping me with that whole process. So that, that was pretty cool. And you're still doing this good, this, this awesome work. I love it.

[00:03:16] You know, no one ever leaves HR tech, even people who leave call me and they're like, you know, I want to come back. I want to come back to the category. How can I get back in? And I, it reminds you of that moment when Al Pacino says, you know, I try to leave and, and, and they, they bring me back in.

[00:03:36] It, it, it has that strong sense of community, that strong sense of cause blended with amazing technology. So you can never get bored in this particular category, but I'm laughing Terry, because you're talking about like 2010, 2011. I'm going, whoa, a lot has changed since those days. I do remember them well though.

[00:04:02] Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you know, I was thinking about it because you and I had an interesting conversation recently just about emerging tech and AI. And I thought based on what we were talking about, which was sort of operationalizing things and, you know, really how we are supporting our businesses through this process. And I thought, you know, this is something that I think people need to hear. The audience needs to hear about.

[00:04:31] So that's what I was hoping we could talk about today. Does that sound like a good plan to you? It does. Boy, I feel like everywhere I go these days, people ask questions about AI. So it's top of mind just in a million different spots. Yeah. Well, let's get into the huddle. So why don't you give the audience a little bit of your background? I kind of, I kind of started it there, but you've done a lot and you've got a very interesting role in the HR tech.

[00:05:01] Space. So give us a little bit of that background and, you know, where, where are you like to focus? Yeah. I'm not going to put dates on anything anymore. If people want dates, they can go to my LinkedIn profile, but I actually started back in the days when HRMS was on the mainframe. And at that time, we were very excited that the functionality was going to be brought down to the PC level.

[00:05:27] Oh my gosh, we just thought that we had, you know, discovered sliced bread or something. So I moved from there out to, and that company was called Insight. I moved out to Minneapolis shortly thereafter with Ceridian, which of course is now Dayforce, and ran product management at Ceridian for the HR and payroll products.

[00:05:50] Again, never dreaming of where this journey would take me. I did a brief stint at Nortel and, you know, kind of increased my tech chops in terms of learning, learning how to, how to crawl around the floor of our office and put a network together should we ever need that.

[00:06:08] And you know what that's like as running a small business. But, but yeah, eventually got super frustrated by the whole experience of working with PR firms and meeting the principals at the initial meeting.

[00:06:24] And then three months later, you know, being on our third account rep who didn't know the difference between a CFO and a CTO and just constantly having to, to, to educate folks again. So it was the confluence of having the tech background, specifically the HR tech background, and a strong marketing bent.

[00:06:48] And I say marketing loosely because my career actually started as a recruiter, if you really want to go to the way back machine. So, you know, I had kind of this weird, different bag of tricks and decided to start the Devon Group. And that's where we are today. We are a tech PR firm that has a very strong HR tech focus. We do work on some other tech areas as well. FinTech in particular is a big one.

[00:07:17] But, but, but, you know, this started Terry at a time when people, if you had said HR tech, they would have looked at you and said, what payroll? Like no one really was thinking about the level of sophistication and the depth of functionality that, that the products have achieved. So it's just, I know that's a long answer to your question, but it's just been a very exciting ride. And like I said, you can never get bored in this category.

[00:07:47] You really can't. It's kind of amazing. And you were probably doing that around a similar times as me when, you know, any sort of technology background that you had, people were like, Ooh, you know, bring that person in. They know something about tech. Right. It's kind of like now, you know, the opportunity, there's huge opportunity for people who are, you know, getting, cutting their teeth with AI. Right. Exactly.

[00:08:16] Because that's sort of the shift that we've made now where all these things have come down to the computers and then now they're up in the cloud. And now it's sort of, okay, what's the next big thing? You know, obviously at least every, from everything that we're seeing, it's, you know, what are you doing with AI? I think, I think, and I think that card is being overplayed. Doesn't that sound, that sounds very cynical of me. That's what we're going to get to. We're going to talk about that.

[00:08:46] By cynicism. That might be a broader life topic, but, but, you know, we've seen this play before. As Bill Kudyk used to say, we've seen this play before. We saw it when we saw the commercialization of the internet and, and the ability to suddenly open up, you know, access to knowledge and, and access to automation and efficiencies that we didn't have previously.

[00:09:12] You were mentioning, you know, when we moved computing into the cloud, now, of course, everywhere you go, everyone's talking about AI. The reality is AI has been embedded in a number of the apps that we interact with on a daily basis. And we never, we weren't previously like calling it out. Like it's a thing I'm picking up the stapler on my desk here going, here it is AI. Yeah.

[00:09:39] It isn't that simplistic and it isn't that compartmentalized. Yeah. And so for those of us in tech, I think maybe we, we snicker a little bit when we hear people talking about, you know, this advent of AI. So I don't know, what, what do you think? What are you observing? Well, I, you know, I'm kind of like when it, when they first started talking a lot about AI and, you know, I don't, I still think it's, it's obviously not.

[00:10:09] Not really artificial intelligence. Right. I mean, it's, it's, it's still machine learning. It will always be machine learning. And in my view, I mean, unless we can actually make sentient beings and I don't think that we can, but, you know, to me, it was like, okay. I'm never going to talk about this AI thing. I'm, you know, it's, it's just, it's a thing. It's going to be there, but it's not physical. Right. Like you said, it's not a stapler. It's not a laptop.

[00:10:39] You can't just pick it up and hand it to somebody. And so, so much of it is hype and marketing, right? Like they had to give a name to it so that, that people would, would want to focus on it and be interested in it. And there's a lot to it, right? I mean, there it's, it's doing a lot of, I think there is going to be right now. I think we're seeing more of the what's embedded in your tech and how to make my day easier, simpler, whether it's just, you know, Hey, help me write a job description.

[00:11:08] Or, you know, Hey, I want to write a 500 word blog about X. You know, a lot of it's that, you know, the really simple stuff that people are dipping their toe into, but I think we're going to start to see a change when we start to really see. I don't know about you, but I don't know very many people that are hopeful about the world of work. And I'd like to change that.

[00:11:33] My name is Marcus Mossberger and I started the hope at work podcast where you'll find two things. Number one, really interesting guests. And number two, innovative ideas about the future of work. Check it out. The, you know, the agentic AI really starts to come into, into play. Yeah, I think, I think there are a fair number.

[00:11:57] I was reading some research from hacker rank that does this, this terrific research of software developers. And there's like 20% of software developers working in corporate America that are, are going rogue in terms of using AI and applications. Without AI even being sanctioned, you know, for use within their organizations.

[00:12:20] So, so we're almost seeing kind of this bottom up type of approach to AI where it's starting to pop up in different places. Yeah. But concurrent to that, then you've got this overlay of who's, who's minding the store? What about ethics? What about integrity? What about the humanoid versus the AI experience? And, and what does that look like?

[00:12:46] And how does that impact, you know, you've got this, this whole push for skills hiring now. Well, who has the better skills? Is it AI or is it the human? And how do we make all of this come together? How do we get it to mesh? So, so I think we have way more questions than we have answers at this point. Yeah. Yeah. I, we are really, in my view, very early days. And like you said, it's, people are using it from the ground up.

[00:13:16] If, if you don't make some decisions in your organization, that's not going to stop people from using it. Right. Right. Remember how it was when we first got like all the social medias and all the, and they're like, you're not allowed to use Facebook at work. Like everybody's like, whatever. That's right. I'll use, I'll use my phone. I'll do it on my phone instead. Right. Yeah. And then sort of HR figured out, okay, well, maybe we need to do something.

[00:13:44] Maybe we could do something with this. And I think it's the same kind of thing, you know, right now. Now it's, I think the script is really going to be flipped when we get, we get the robots. Right. Yeah. And actual physical. Exactly. So to speak. Right. And do something and perform some activity. Right. That, I think the script is going to look very differently there. But, you know, we're, we're early days in that regard. And I'm, I'm still thinking of Will Smith and iRobot.

[00:14:15] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The physicality of actually having something next to you that's doing things differently than, than, you know, in your work environment. And, you know, you and I are in a work environment where we're in front of our desktops or our laptops or we're traveling. I mean. Yeah. We have a portability and a flexibility that someone perhaps who's in a manufacturing environment doesn't have. So some of this is going to impact us differently.

[00:14:41] You know, one of the things though, that I hear constantly about the use of AI is the use of chat GPT for ideation or to write things, you know, like, oh, write me a blog post on this or write. And I don't know if you've read some of the AI writing, but it's really poorly written. It's like, you know, more adjectives and adverbs than anyone deserves to have in a copy block.

[00:15:06] And so that's why I agree that we, we have miles to go here. We're, we're not there yet. It's getting better though. It really is. Yeah. And the people that I'm seeing who are kind of starting to take the steps, right? Like, oh, I finally got my own private chat GPT so that I could just keep it internal. Right. Nobody else sees my stuff. Yeah. They're like, hmm. Okay. I'm, I'm amazed.

[00:15:34] And this is going to put me out of a job. I'm like, I don't, I don't think so. Because now think about the things that you're thinking about and the work that you're doing. Now you may productize your work in a completely different way than you did before. Right. Yeah. And so, you know, the fact that you're doing it now and sort of getting ahead of it is huge. Right. And I think that's what people are going to do.

[00:16:01] You've just tapped into something that I think is really important. And that is, you know, when you go, well, I mean, this is life. So it's not just segmented to, to work versus life. This is life in general. There's a certain cognitive load that we all have to deal with as we go throughout our day. So why not make certain aspects of it easier? You know, the ability to automate or achieve efficiencies that we as a human, you know, maybe

[00:16:31] we can get to 83%, but AI can get to 97% and that makes a world of difference someplace. Why not do that? I like, you know, what are we? Yeah. And, and so to your point, when that cognitive load lightens, think about how you can redirect all of that energy to other more creative initiatives. Because I think there are, we see a lot of retention issues in the workplace when people

[00:16:59] are kind of coming into the office every day or into their workplace every day with this, like, I'm so behind before I even get started. And I'm not excited about anything I'm working on. And, you know, so, so why not, why not, you know, kind of, kind of tease out the best of the human and let, let AI do the other stuff. Let, let AI do the grunt work. Yeah.

[00:17:23] And like you said, a lot of people, you know, manufacturing and car companies and even hospitals and the, you know, other places have been dealing with sort of robotics now for a long time, but it, it wasn't something that they talked to, right. Had a conversation with, or ask them to do something. And I, and then people sitting in offices haven't been dealing with that at all, right. Everything is through words that you type into your computer. Right.

[00:17:51] Or meetings that you send to sit in for hours. Exactly. I'm more excited about like the virtual meetings. Like, yes, it's one thing to do these meetings. I can't wait to, you're actually sitting next to me. Yes. Yes. Virtually. It's going to be so cool. It's going to be so cool. I, I also think that we've seen, you know, as we look at, let's say HR tech, we've seen

[00:18:15] better traction of AI in areas where there has been kind of less resistance to change to begin with. I think recruiting is a good area. There's usually a fair amount of budget for recruiting. It's a, it's a pain point. It's a pain point that's been as, you know, as old as time. It's, it's a tough, tough problem to solve.

[00:18:39] And I've, I think we've seen a lot of talent acquisition leaders embrace using AI in, in their tech stack. And I see it less so though, in other parts of HR. I don't know if that's because the buyer is risk averse or because the IT support isn't there. And I know you have some perspective on, on perhaps some of those, those aspects of it. Yeah.

[00:19:04] I mean, I think it is, it's, it's growing in some of these other places and a lot of the HR vendors are, you know, embedding it in such a way that people don't even really notice. Right. But I think this idea of, cause a lot of the, the sessions that I've been in recently are just heavily focused on this agentic idea. Like you're going to have an agent and that agent's going to do these things.

[00:19:29] So you've got to start thinking about as a, you know, as an HR professional, you've got to start thinking about what in my area of HR and HR is complicated. I know people think that's the easy place to go work. Just, you know, go to HR. HR, it's one of the most complex in the organization, just given the, the amount of things that they touch and the fact that they're solely responsible for, you know, focusing on the people. And people are complicated.

[00:19:59] Exactly. And there's a, their day is made of a, up of exceptions. There, there's, I mean, it's a, it's a revolving door of whatever the latest issue is that need, whatever the latest fire is that, you know, whatever. I mean, it's, it's not, it's not, it's a very dynamic job. And people do really not realize that. I think they think it's like, you just go around and, and, you know, chat with people all day.

[00:20:28] It's quite the opposite. It's funny when I tell people who don't really know the kind of business that we're in, that I'm in somehow connected to HR. And the first question I get is, if I did this, would I have to go to HR? I don't know. I'm not that kind of HR. Not to mention every organization is so unique that, you know, there's a different playbook for practically, you know, depending what state you're in or, yeah.

[00:20:57] I mean, people don't realize that they don't realize the complexities of it. Yeah. They, they really don't. But I think, you know, it's, it's getting, it's getting there. And I think, again, if you're in HR, you know, start thinking about how, stop worrying about what it doesn't do. Right. Stop worrying about the fact that it's got bias and recruiting somehow like, okay, how, what are you going to do to overcome that? Right.

[00:21:26] Like this is all in its infancy. You didn't complain about the iPhone when you first got that. Cause you didn't even know what was possible. Exactly. Exactly. So now you have something that can do kind of what you're doing. We tend to focus a lot on what's wrong with it instead of what's right with it. And so, you know, think about what you're trying to accomplish. What are the things that are not exceptions? Let's start there. What can I offload, right?

[00:21:56] And get an automate through this AI that are the non-exceptions. Cause I'm still going to have to do the heavy thinking and the, and make decisions. Right. And I need to make sure that whatever we're using from an AI perspective is going to give me good information that I can trust. You know, I, I, I'm with you a hundred percent, except I do think looking as an HR professional looks across the spectrum of their, of their typical year.

[00:22:27] If there is such a thing, there are some areas that they could look at immediately in the context of AI and things like open enrollment, any kind of seasonal hiring, you know, campus recruiting, things like that, that disrupt the day-to-day flow and are resource intensive. Yeah. I think those are some of the things that, you know, if I were sitting in, in an HR seat and I'm thankful I'm not, because I think it's one of the hardest jobs.

[00:22:57] And, and, you know, we have the pleasure of representing a number of HR practitioners and I am truly in awe of them because it's, it's, it's not a job that anyone says when they're in high school, gee, I want to be in HR because it takes years to even understand how multifaceted the role is. But yeah, I think, I think there are, I think there are layers. I love your perspective though, on looking at what's right about it.

[00:23:24] And even going back to that historical perspective that I alluded to earlier about the internet, you know, looking at the tremendous gains I'm going to get rather than being concerned about some of the legislative issues or, you know, what the department of labor is saying, like, you can't worry about everything, your head would explode. So yeah, I'm with you there. It is a good question though. Like, who do you, who really owns AI in the organization?

[00:23:53] Or, I mean, is there actually something to own? Because, I mean, there are decisions that need to be made around it, obviously. And like you mentioned earlier, the whole, like the whole concept of, you know, we have to know we can trust, we have to be ethical about it. Right. So, you know, what are, are you seeing organizations? Of course, the big guys are, you know, they've built their, you know, within their organization,

[00:24:20] they've built groups and committees and all these kinds of things. But a lot, a lot of these smaller to midsize organizations, I mean, they're trying to sort their way through it and they don't, you know, it's not like they have, you know, big teams within the organization that they're putting on this to think about and come up with the, you know, the ideas. You know, it's funny and somewhat counterintuitive.

[00:24:46] I see large enterprises putting this with their IT teams, which puts HR right behind the eight ball again. Because every time HR is in the queue, in the IT queue, they are relegated to a lower priority just because of the nature of HR. Yeah. Yeah. I see the SMB and the mid-market companies in particular being far more nimble and, and far more, I'm not saying they're doing it.

[00:25:15] I'm not seeing it, you know, across the board, but I am seeing it in certain functional areas. And I think there's also a tendency in smaller organizations to empower the managers more. And so managers of certain work groups, whether it's, you know, based on where they're located or certain functional areas like sales, you know, where they see they can have a productivity gain through something. I'm definitely seeing them embrace it.

[00:25:43] So it's almost, it's almost funny that the large enterprise is taking perhaps longer to implement and the smaller companies are the more agile in this case. Yeah, I would agree. And, you know, I think organizationally, I haven't been asked, but in, in my opinion, you know, the, the C-suite and that executive level team really needs to understand what's happening

[00:26:13] here. And how, cause I don't know that anybody really owns it, right? It's great. IT. Okay. You own it. I mean, HR owns something, but they, when you think about how much it's going to get used across the organization in not just in IT, but in, or in HR, but in IT and marketing and finance, and then out in the operational side of the business, there's an impact to HR, right? Like what's the change management?

[00:26:43] What's the training plan? How do we make sure people are adopting the things that, that we're doing? But, you know, the, I think the executive level within these organizations has to have a good understanding, a good basis for understanding what's happening here with this market shift. Cause if they don't, I think they're going to do a lot of things wrong. I think that's spot on.

[00:27:08] I think, you know, I'm, I'm smiling because I'm remembering when social media was emerging, we would get calls to do training classes for executive leadership teams on social media. And what to, what will this mean to your organization? I hope there's something similar going on with AI because, you know, we've already seen, when we look across maturity models, we've already seen great strides being made in an

[00:27:36] area that in fact touches the customer and that's the, the customer relationship management, the customer success teams. There's a, we've all been at the receiving end of AI powered chatbots that are, you know, asking us to interact with them rather than scream representative in the telephone. So, I mean, it's important, not only on the executive leadership team level, but potentially

[00:28:01] on the board level, you know, that, that there be some sort of concerted effort around AI. And, and hopefully, you know, I don't know if every organization can see its way through to having, you know, a chief AI officer, but certainly the sentiment is, is necessary to, to make sure that you can catapult the organization forward as opposed to have it, you know, kind of stuck in the mud somewhere and have the competition catapulted forward instead.

[00:28:32] Yeah. Well, and this is that, that, those inflection points where you see businesses who you thought would never go out of business, go out of business because they weren't ready for this. They didn't get ahead of it and they're having to play from behind and now they can't catch up. Yeah, exactly. Well, and that, that goes back to the whole topic of recruiting and looking for people who

[00:28:56] have AI expertise, because we can't expect that there are going to be a lot of people out there who have deep expertise, but they, there is a talent pool out there that has AI expertise. And I would say run towards them and make sure that you've got some of them on your team, or at least have relationships with vendors that can provide you with that, that AI expertise. This is not going away.

[00:29:25] This is not a flash in the pan. And it's, it's, what's interesting about it is, you know, going back to that example of the internet, the internet took a while to unfold. You know, the commercialization of the internet and actually being embraced in, in enterprises probably happened over like, let's say an eight to 10 year period of time where you really said, you know, everyone, everyone's there. That's not the case with AI.

[00:29:54] We are, we are 18 to 24 months here. This, this is going fast and, and pervasive. So pervasively. So I think, I think this is very interesting. It's, it's, it's a, it's a bit of a quandary for HR because again, they need resources to make sure that they know what the right decisions are that they should be making. Yeah. Yeah. You need, it needs to be on your agenda. If it's not on your agenda, you need to get it on your agenda and start thinking about

[00:30:23] it from all, from all aspects. Like, you know, what, what could we do faster, better, more efficient, right? What are the implications we need to be thinking about? What are our competitors doing? What are our partners doing? What are people, you know, who can we share with and sort of talk about how they're, you know, we, we learn through others. Right. And since so many of us work remotely these days, it's not like you can, you're in the

[00:30:51] office and you can just go down the hall and, and, and talk about it. You got, you got to make time to get with people and talk about what they're doing and how they're using it and how, you know, you could connect to, to what they're doing because a lot of your vendors are using it. Right. And exactly. You know, so learn from others, right. Take the opportunity to, to learn. You, you work with a lot of vendors. What are you, are you seeing anything in particular there about like, how are they making, you

[00:31:20] know, this whole thing more relatable and, you know, what is anybody doing this really, really well from a vendor technology perspective that you've seen? You know, I'm, I, I'm, I'm smiling because I'm truly amazed at how some vendors seem to want to make it overly complicated. And perhaps that's because there's a cost involved by that.

[00:31:49] What I mean, if I make this extremely complicated, I can upsell you or I can, you know, I can build complexities into its implementation. So sometimes you sit and you listen to the story and you're like, wow, you know, this isn't the way it needs to be. On the other hand, I've seen, you know, I just saw a demo of a product from a company called

[00:32:12] Tenor that helps managers practice difficult conversations using AI. And it was so crisp and clean and straightforward. You know, it's like everyone should have one. You know what I mean? Like, like you want to have that person that there's no risk, you know, and I can just practice. And that way, when heaven forbid, I have to go into a workforce reduction situation and

[00:32:39] have those awful conversations with people, my, my, you know, I know what I should be saying. I'm not going to create problems, you know? So it's, it's fascinating how AI in some cases is being represented very, very, in a very straightforward manner, a very relatable manner. And in other cases, you know, buried somewhere in something else that's something else and, and being presented as very complicated.

[00:33:09] So, you know, I think that might be though, that that's just part of this category. I think, and I'm not saying strictly HR tech, by the way, I think that tech vendors in general, there's a lot of being protective of the IP and being protective of the legacy. And, and sometimes, you know, simple feels like it, like you're dumbing down. And that's really not the case at all.

[00:33:39] So it's in a very interesting, well, part of our job is to help people relate to their audiences and understand how to engage those audiences. I could tell you that tech people can create artificial barriers with their audiences by kind of, you know, talking down to people when perhaps they didn't intend to do that. Yeah. That might be a whole other discussion for another day though, Terry.

[00:34:11] That's a whole other podcast, right? And I want it, you know, it's, you were talking about your iPhone, you know, how, like, if somebody said to you, I'm sorry, I have to take your iPhone away. You'd be like, no, no, no, no. I was with a friend the other day and we drove around the block and she suddenly stopped the car. And I said, what happened? Is everything okay? She was, I left my phone at home, you know? So we had to go back.

[00:34:38] I mean, you know, there are certain things that become so part of your life that you can't live without it. But this AI thing, boy, I think we should revisit it in six months and 12 months. And we're going to be having different conversations every point along the way. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Are there any sources that you might recommend to people to follow? I know you mentioned an AI research company that you work with.

[00:35:07] Any, should people follow them? Is there other, you know, are there other sources that you think would be good for people to learn about AI and stay on the kind of front edge of what's happening, what's changing and how it might impact them? It's such a good question. There are a lot of conferences you can go to and sit through a lot of sessions.

[00:35:28] But those sessions on AI might have what we would consider conflict at their core, meaning that there's an agenda that's, you know, being promoted. And therefore, you might not be getting an unfiltered perspective on AI. I think that one of the analyst firms that's doing a really good job on the AI topic, and this isn't going to surprise anyone, would be Gartner.

[00:35:53] They have quite a bit of depth in the artificial intelligence topic. Some of it would be probably more than any of us would need to know, but it would definitely be relevant to an enterprise IT team. So that's some of the research that we're following quite closely.

[00:36:12] There is, of course, also quite a bit of buzz on LinkedIn, which at this point is probably our most reliable B2B social media platform. Yeah. I think we've had some really, some infiltration of some real, you know, questionable activity in some of the other social platforms. So I would encourage people to take a look at the smart people on LinkedIn who are covering the AI topic. Yeah.

[00:36:41] Substack too is another good one where I'm seeing good articles. Exactly. It gives you a little bit more in depth than just a LinkedIn post. Although some of these LinkedIn posts are so long. They are. I know. It's getting kind of hard to read all that sometimes. You know, one of my other favorite people, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Thomas Otter. You mentioned Substack. And Thomas Otter, of course, is, is ex-SAP, ex-Gartner.

[00:37:09] You know, he is over at Acadian, now a venture capitalist. So he's really, the pendulum has really swung. But one of the smartest people we have in the HR tech category. And I think always worth paying attention to his musings. Yeah. He's one I read as well. Well, is there anything that you would like to leave the audience with today that might, you know, either help them feel more comfortable with where they are in this process?

[00:37:39] Or, you know, anything that you think might be of interest that you might want to leave the audience with today? Something that, you know, might give them a leg up or something they can start thinking about or doing tomorrow? You know, this is probably going to sound very cliche, but I firmly believe it. Don't be afraid.

[00:38:03] You know, this is, no one's going to go unfed if you play with ChatGPT for an hour. You know, no one is going to think worse of you if you didn't understand, you know, Claude. I mean, start to play with these tools and start to become familiar so you can better understand. In fact, we mentioned LinkedIn. One of the lowest risk things you can do on LinkedIn is write a post.

[00:38:32] And then in the lower left side of the post, it will say rewrite with AI. Click on that. See what AI does to your post. You can always return. It'll give you the option to return to your original post. You don't even need to post it, but play with it. Just start to become familiar. Facebook also has some excellent AI tools that will help you with prompts. So I would say don't be afraid.

[00:38:58] Just, but don't put your head in the sand because that's not an option with this one. Be curious. Be curious. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, I want to thank you, Jean, for joining me today. This has been a great conversation. I can't wait till our next one, which won't be two years from now. We'll find a way to do something much sooner than that. But, you know, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been fun. My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me on.

[00:39:28] Now, before we go, I want to remind people that the annual HR system survey is out. So go to the website and check that out. And also don't forget to listen to Stacey and Cliff next week while they spill the tea on HR tech. I also want to thank our producers, Brand Method Media Group, our marketing team. And I want to thank you for tuning in. We really appreciate our listenership. Would love to know how you, what you thought about the episode.

[00:39:56] Leave us a review if you have a minute. Would love to know if, you know, what topics you'd like us to talk about. This topic itself actually came from this year's survey where we asked the participants to tell us, you know, what would you like to hear us talk about? And so this was one of those topics. So I was happy to have Jean on to cover this. But that's all the time we have today. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of HR, We Have a Problem. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, everybody.