The AI Toolkit and Enhancing HR Operations with Jonathan Bergdahl, Rachel Wong and Vimal Sharma

In the 6th episode of a special mini-series focused on AI in the workplace, guest hosts Pauline James and David Creelman are speaking with HR Execs and Pros – Jonathan Bergdahl, Rachel Wong and Vimal Sharma. In this discussion we gain practical insights from those who are leading the way and supporting their organizations, from the starting line, and discuss how they are leveraging AI at present, and how they are preparing and supporting their teams and organizations to implement AI effectively.

Tune in and Discover: 

• How is ChatGPT utilized in daily work and how does it enhance efficiency beyond just saving time?
• How are organizations currently leveraging AI capabilities, and how are they preparing to effectively utilize advancements in AI technology?
• How can HR professionals support employees in adapting to this new technology?
• Advice for HR professionals who are beginning their journey with AI.

About our Guests

Jonathan Bergdahl leads the Global Talent Operations function at EssenceMediacom, based in the UK.

Rachel Wong is the Vice President, Total Rewards & HR Technology, at Symcor Inc.

Vimal is an experienced HR executive and the Vice President of Human Resources for the Canadian division of WIS International.


We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Hello and welcome to the HR Chat Podcast. I'm Pauline James, founder and CEO of AnchorHR, and it's my pleasure to be your pod host today. Along with David Krillman, ceo Krillman Research, we're partnering with the HR Chat Podcast on a series to help HR professionals and leaders navigate AI's impact on organizations, jobs and people. There's lots of exciting news and discussions on the applications of AI. What we hear, even more often in our day-to-day conversations with HR pros our questions about how do we get started, what are others doing and what we hear is a real focus on ensuring that the organization is moving forward at pace in an effective way, but also doing so responsibly. In this episode, we focus on how HR execs and pros can begin to enable and support the organization to implement AI effectively. David, in speaking with HR pros, what have you seen? What are you hearing?

Speaker 3: 1:24

With respect to generative AI and, in particular, chat, gpt, I've mainly heard about individual experimentation. Some individual will be using it to help write a letter, somebody else will be using it for editing. Somebody might be using the image generation features to create some images for PowerPoint. The crucial thing here is that it's at an individual rather than a departmental level, and, while people are getting value out of it, they see it as much as experimentation as opposed to something operational. What have you seen, pauline?

Speaker 2: 1:57

Very similar. In addition, I'll note where I'm hearing of organizations, hr pros embedding the technology is often in regards to using chat bots to support employee inquiries and also for screening resumes, as being two common applications that I'm hearing of.

Speaker 3: 2:20

Okay. Well, let's speak directly to some HR pros about how they're getting started. Who's our first interviewee?

Speaker 2: 2:27

First I want to speak with John Bergdahl, Senior Global Talent Operations Director at Essence, from the UK. John, can you introduce yourself?

Speaker 4: 2:36

Sure, my name is John Bergdahl. I had up the Global Talent Operations Function at Essence MediaCom, which is a big digital advertising company. My role is responsible for a lot of the HR cycle of people that work here, from when they start to when they leave and everything in between.

Speaker 3: 2:55

Tell me you've now actually begun to use chat GPT as a tool in your everyday work. Maybe tell me what you use it for.

Speaker 4: 3:03

My day-to-day role is very much systems heavy. We have an HRIS, we have an ATS. Things are very systemic. Actually, one of the tools and programs I use is Microsoft Power BI to do a lot of data analysis, number crunching, forecasting analysis. Every quite often, actually, I run into roadblocks with Power BI because it's a very powerful tool, no pun intended. In order to get my way through and to find the answer, find what I need from the tool, what I used to do is try and Google the answer and you spend 20-25 minutes trying to find the right blog with the answer on it.

Speaker 4: 3:43

Actually, what I've found increasingly is, if you put the question about the specific thing in Power BI you're struggling with, put that question into chat GPT. It will give you a very systemic answer how to find what you're looking for, which I find very helpful.

Speaker 3: 3:58

How often do you use it?

Speaker 4: 4:00

Probably two or three times a week. That probably saves me, I'd say, about half an hour a week, which, when you multiply that across the area, is a big, significant time saving.

Speaker 3: 4:11

Do you find that it makes your life easier in some way, over and above the savings of time?

Speaker 4: 4:18

Very much so. Yeah, as I alluded to in my first answer, I think for chat GPT with technical answers, you've got to obviously have a reliability radar on full alert in terms of who is telling me this information? Where is it credible source? Notwithstanding that, it just saves a lot of time in terms of easily aggregates the answers. Otherwise the answer could be somewhere hidden on a blog, somewhere where on the sick kind of search page in Google. But what I find with chat GBT for technical answers, it kind of aggregates things up well, puts them into paragraphs, gives you kind of logical steps in order to how to get from A to T.

Speaker 3: 4:58

Are there anything about chat GBT that you're finding disappointing using it for this kind of technical support?

Speaker 4: 5:04

Yeah, good question. I only use the free version, as I'm sure the overwhelming majority of users do. It doesn't give you the kind of reliability of the information you're getting, but I guess you've got to use your discernment and if it's a technical process, you're going through and getting the answer, for it's very easy to see if an answer is nonsense or not and more often than not, chat GBT does actually give me the answer I'm looking for, which is great.

Speaker 3: 5:30

Thanks, john Pauline. Can you tee up our next guest?

Speaker 2: 5:33

Yes, Rachel Wong is currently the vice president, total rewards and HR technology at Simcore Inc. Over the past 18 years, she has held various positions, primarily in total rewards, across a number of industries. Rachel, thank you for joining us. Ai has been a significant and important topic within HR as of late and I'm interested in hearing where your organization is at in leveraging its capabilities.

Speaker 5: 5:59

Yes, at this stage we are babies. We're learning. We actually took our first step to use AI in our recruitment module, so AI has helped us in filtering our candidates and then providing a score based on relevancy to job posting. This very initial stage we're still testing up because in the recruiting team and even myself, we see the system is learning on a posting structure, but also I think it takes time to build up the algorithm behind the scene. But we took the first step and we learned a lot and it did help our TA team save a lot of time in really reading through all the resumes. So I do think that's a great first step. But at the same time, we have been trying to be open-minded on what else we can do. We do see the potential of AI maybe being our customer service agents to answer some of the commonly asked questions from employees, or they can help us in drafting some of the initial communications. So, basically, right now we're still exploring, but we are keeping a very open mind on how AI can help us.

Speaker 3: 7:00

Thank you. What advice would you have for HR professionals who are beginning their journey with AI?

Speaker 5: 7:05

I think not just AI but any HR technology will help complement all the programs that we have. I can give an example where back in the early days, for example, every coming half a year end, where we need to prepare for our merits, our bonus and so on, it used to be Excel spreadsheet days and, as you can imagine, excel is great but it's also prone to a lot of errors. But then, once we bring in the HR technology in, it not only helps clean the data, it helps give the user experience a much better, smoother user experience, more confidence, but also, on the HR side, less work on our end once we set everything up and I think the same thing with AI. We need to be open-minded, but also need to keep our eyes and ears open on what's out there, because I believe this code is never enough. No matter if you are HR or not, it's never enough. So really go out, try and just learn along the way. That's how I'm still learning new stuff every single day.

Speaker 2: 8:04

Thank you so much, Rachel. Really grateful for your time. David, do you want to introduce our final guest, Vimal Sharma?

Speaker 3: 8:12

I'm happy to. Vimal is an experienced HR executive and the VP of HR for WIS International, which is a global company specialized in inventory management. Vimal, how is your organization preparing to effectively leverage advances in AI technology?

Speaker 6: 8:29

So a few months ago, we implemented an AI task force at the enterprise level, sponsored by our CEO, and this task force includes team members from various functions across the organization.

Speaker 6: 8:43

And since this is, you know, new and ever-evolving, we've really taken the past months to educate ourselves and we've also had some live sessions with a few of the notable vendors.

Speaker 6: 8:57

Internally, we've continued to mean a regularity and really try to understand what the impact of AI will be for our industry and then also, more specifically, what is this mean for our business.

Speaker 6: 9:11

We're also assessing what initiatives we can implement across the organization where we can really test and learn from them, as well as add value for our clients, customers and our employees. And then, more specifically, within talent acquisition, we recently implemented the virtual assistant on two of our career site in the US in order to improve the candidate experience, so a candidate can really engage with Chatbot 24-7 in order to look for open positions within the area efficiently, really apply for any positions that they're interested in, and also ask questions and get instant responses to those questions, like what are the benefits that the company offers. And we are now preparing to launch the virtual assistant on our Canadian career site in the next few weeks. So, as we are starting this journey, we really value small initiatives that we can learn from, then refine our approach, but in doing all that, still continuing to keep moving forward and keep making progress.

Speaker 2: 10:29

Gimel, how are you supporting employees in adapting to this new technology?

Speaker 6: 10:35

So we must think through how we support our employees, and so effective change management will be key. Some of the benefits of AI will include creating capacity so we can complete those value add activities, improving process efficiencies and also, to an extent, improving employee job satisfaction by eliminating those repetitive tasks.

Speaker 6: 10:59

Now, we don't have all the answers, but what I would say is we need to be open to change. We need to communicate often and openly and transparently with our teams through the process and also create those opportunities and provide the support to our team members to develop new skills so they can leverage these efficiencies and advancements and really be a part of the journey.

Speaker 3: 11:33

What advice do you have for HR professionals?

Speaker 6: 11:36

So there are important risks to navigate and, as HR leaders, we need to be responsible to understand those concerns. What we have learned in our conversations is to start small, to start with those low-risk initiatives, but set those standards and best practices for the responsible use of AI. To be competitive, organizations will need to continue to learn, to explore and to adapt. What we can't do is sit back. We need to understand how AI will apply to our organizations and start wherever you're at Learn to crawl before you can walk, but making progress and keep moving forward. What that means for us is we continue to educate ourselves. We're focused on identifying and implementing those pilot initiatives within the business and learning from them and learning from those experiences. So, as we hear, we can expect significant shifts in the next 20, 40, 36 months, including the legislation around use of AI. So it's important that we be prepared in order to support our organizations and our people.

Speaker 3: 12:57

Thank you for your time and insights, Vimal.

Speaker 2: 13:00

So, David, what struck you? Listening to these HR executives and how they're leveraging this new technology and supporting the organizations and adapting.

Speaker 3: 13:11

Well, I was really taken with the help that John was getting with his programming tasks, and that's something I've heard from other people as well. So if you've got some skill already at using Power BI or Python or even just Excel, I think a lot of people have found that ChatGPT can be a wonderful assistant to help them do things that are more difficult than they would have tackled before, or maybe just do things faster. I've heard people say this increase in speed can be quite significant. Some people say it allows them to be 50% faster than they were before and, as I said, take on challenging tasks that they wouldn't have attempted on their own without ChatGPT as their friend and colleague in writing the code. So I think if there is a clear takeaway, it would be that we should empower anyone doing that kind of programming or automation, but give them time to experiment with ChatGPT. What about you, pauline? What did you take away from our discussions?

Speaker 2: 14:05

Well, there was one striking commonality between what we heard from Rachel and Vimal, which was that they are experimenting, but it is still early days. So if you're an HR leader and you feel that you haven't got them any applications of AI up and running, well, you are absolutely in good company. However, if you aren't at least at the experimenting stage and trying out some of these applications, then I would suggest that you are behind. I would expect to see very significant progress in 2024, both in terms of what HR departments are doing on their own and in terms of what they can get from vendors.

Speaker 3: 14:43

I think that's a great observation, and I really enjoy listening to these HR leaders. So tell me, Pauline, what do we have coming up next week?

Speaker 2: 14:51

Next week is the last in this series, so we'll have something special planned. We'll be reviewing the six episodes we've done and creating a best of podcast. We'll also be adding some of our own commentary about what caught our attention.

Speaker 3: 15:05

Okay, that's great. I'll look forward to next week. It should be an interesting one. So I wish everyone well and keep learning.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HR Gazettecom.