HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat Podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics covered include HR Tech, HR, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham, Bob Goodwin, Pauline James, and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week.
The show is approaching 1000 episodes and past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, Gartner, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, McLean & Company, UPS, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, McKinsey and Co, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
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Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
HRchat Podcast
Upskilling Tomorrow's Tech Workforce with Tan Moorthy, Revature
In a world where technology unfolds rapidly, the dialogue on workforce sustainability shifts towards a central theme: upskilling. This HRchat episode features Tan Moorthy, the new CEO at Revature, where he shares powerful insights on the imperative for organizations to embrace continuous learning and adapt their workforce to the evolving demands of artificial intelligence and technology. Tan's extensive expertise in human resources and technology provides listeners with a unique perspective on why traditional hiring methods fall short in today’s market.
The discussion unpacks pivotal strategies on how companies can shift their focus from solely hiring experienced talent to cultivating existing employees’ skill sets, enabling them to navigate the challenges posed by AI and tech advancements. With an alarming 80% of software engineers needing upskilling by 2027, this episode urges HR leaders to recognize the pressing need to foster a skills-first culture. Tan emphasizes that human potential can flourish when paired with technology, creating unique opportunities for growth and innovation.
This engaging conversation not only addresses the skills gap facing many industries today, but it also serves as a crucial reminder that developing a learning mindset is essential for every professional, regardless of their field. Whether you're a business leader, HR practitioner, or simply interested in the future of work, Tan’s insights will resonate with you. Tune in to discover the depth of knowledge shared, and take the first step in equipping yourself and your workforce for the inevitable changes to come. Don’t forget to follow us for more captivating content and be a part of our community dedicated to understanding the evolving world of work!
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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 and visit hrgazettecom.
Speaker 2:As technology rapidly evolves, a big challenge facing HR leaders is ensuring that their business has access to the right talent at the right times. Traditionally, this has been accomplished by hiring experienced professionals from the market, often at a higher cost, leading to disparities between long-term loyal employees and new hires, Exacerbating hiring challenges. Sourcing talent in emerging fields like AI, where expertise is still limited, for example, is not a viable option. To address these obstacles, as today's guest, a two-pronged strategy is essential. This approach focuses on one, cultivating net new talent and two, upskilling existing employees. Hey, this is Bill Bannam. Welcome to this episode, and today I'm joined by Tan Morthy, a seasoned HR exec and global thought leader. Tan is the Chief Operating Officer over at Revature, a company taking a human-centric approach to building skills-first technology workforces for enterprises, with an emphasis on continuous learning. Tan, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the HR Chat Show today. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:Very good. Thanks, Bill, and great to be with you, Looking forward to our conversation.
Speaker 2:So let's get to know you a little bit more, beyond the reintroduction just a moment ago. You are the COO over at Revature, a technology talent as a service provider, and prior to that you were at Infosys serving as the head of delivery operations in the US calendar and Latin America, and you've done lots of other cool things. Why don't you take a minute or two to introduce yourself, tell our listeners about your career background, your current role and what gets you up in the morning, what makes you, what gets you passionate?
Speaker 3:Thank you again, bill, for this opportunity to interact with you. Background I've been a through and through IT professional for almost four decades now and then more than half of that I was at Infosys on several roles on technology and on corporate functions, being the group head of HR for Infosys and, most importantly, being the global head of education, which is really the connect between what I was doing before and what I'm doing now at Revature. My passion has been about people, people development and interacting with people, and that's what excites me about what I'm doing at Revature as their COO, working with the team internally, but also with clients in creating net new talent for them to leverage in this new world of changing, ever-changing technology. And what I'm excited about when I wake up in the morning is to see who am I talking to today to make a difference.
Speaker 4:Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's talk about something that we can't help but talk about on the show these days, and that's AI and how that's replacing jobs, is augmenting jobs, is changing in many different ways the world of work. Regular listeners of this show will know that, in addition to being involved with the production of a bunch of the Disrupt HR events, I also run an AI Summit series now, specifically in the UK, where we we look to offer folks an opportunity to reskill through learning about new AI technologies. But instead of the reskill piece, I want to focus on the upskill piece with you now, if that's okay. On the Revitra side it says outside sorry, it says that 80% of software engineers will need to upskill by 2027 that's only two years from now to keep pace with with ai. That's, that's huge, but I actually believe it. Can you explain what companies need to know to keep their people trained and relevant?
Speaker 3:yes.
Speaker 3:So you know, with the ai and the pace at which ai is changing, I think nobody can miss the beat on what's going on there, and therefore everybody needs to do something about knowing more on AI and how they can use AI to augment what they do, and that means whether you're a software engineer or business analyst or project manager, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:You have to get upskilled on AI, and what companies I think need to do is one to understand where the current skills are with their people, so that you can have appropriate programs to upskill individually for the roles that they need to be playing in the future.
Speaker 3:And so skills intelligence, creating a taxonomy and a baseline of current skills of people, creating a roadmap for where the organization wants to go using AI and other technologies, are two pieces that I think need to come in place first, and then work with people to say how do we get you to where we want you to be and where you want to be? I think creating that intersection between what people aspire to get and what companies want people to do will make it a win-win, and AI would then mean different things for different people. If you are in marketing, it is about how do you augment what you do with the creativity part of AI? If you are a software engineer, it is about how do you then augment your productivity with the output that AI creates for you. But in all cases, it is about understanding how AI can ultimately make a difference to their business, to their clients, to their customers, and bringing the best of both the human and the technology to make that difference.
Speaker 2:AI seems to be ever more taking over roles, augmenting roles and all the rest of it. For for all those people you mentioned, for example, the marketing department just a moment ago are we kind of at, uh, ground zero in, in the sense that everybody, unless you're a developer, everyone's getting to grips now with all this new technology and therefore it's kind of the perfect time to put your hand up and say I need to be upskilled and, and the leader, the leader's response's response to that should be no problem, this is new to everyone. Let's get on board and create a program for you.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I think the and that's the great level of right, because everybody, like you said, is at ground zero in terms of where AI is and therefore the opportunity to learn exists. So you don't have to be ashamed of learning if that's the problem, or look at learning and say, I mean, I did this as school, I'm not going to learn anymore anymore. That's no longer the case, right? No matter what what you do, no matter what your age is and no matter what business you are in, um, ai in some sense has leveled the need for everybody to start learning again very good, we're on the same page.
Speaker 2:Um, okay, uh, elon musk says uh, I was watching an interview with him from it was a couple of years ago, I think it was um, he said. He said that since the onset of the smartphone, we are all essentially cyborgs, which is not not a way that I thought about it until he explained it. We're all, we're all attached to our phones, uh, and, and therefore we're just extension of our phones. Now, where our phones are extensions of us, so we're, in a way, we're already an extension of our phones now, or our phones are extensions of us, so, in a way, we're already cyborgs connected to AI-powered technologies. What, therefore, are some disruptive examples of daily functions that AI handles today that maybe employees managed and handled only a few years ago?
Speaker 3:I think in almost every function there is some component that AI has taken over, right, I mean even in, for example, what you and I are doing here. I'm sure AI will come and edit some of what we're doing, you know, without either one of us really realizing it. But you know, we talked about marketing earlier. But if you look at the legal profession, for example, we know instances where the case study which used to take maybe weeks, maybe months for somebody to prepare, can now all be summarized through AI for somebody to get prepared for the legal counseling right, as an example. And so in every function, I think things have been taken over by AI. More importantly, I think AI is bringing reducing the time it takes to do something, so that people can spend more time on where the human can add value, which is in the thinking, in understanding the context and in being more precise in their solutions.
Speaker 5:And.
Speaker 3:I think that's what AI is doing for people.
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Speaker 2:Your team believes that by training individuals from non-traditional talent pools and enhancing their capabilities with ai, making them sidewalks and whatnot, um organizations can create a pipeline of skilled professionals capable of meeting the needs of tomorrow's workforce. Makes sense to me. Why are skills more important than specific experience? So give us your take on skills-based hiring the importance of skills over traditional experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, like we talked about earlier, ai has been a great leveler in terms of everybody needing to learn, which means when you start looking out, traditionally, when a manager looked out for people, it was about does this person have experience in this area?
Speaker 3:Now, with AI, a lot of the prior experience individuals have can come from tools and therefore the new things that the human can bring in are things that were perhaps not even done in the past by the human, or that the human can bring more value into it. What that means is your prior experience. Your degree may not matter as much as being able to use AI today to augment your capability, understand the situation and get started. The second there's always this talk about lack of talent. Now, looking at non-traditional pools and entry-level talent, can create a net new talent pool that can hit the road running because one they don't have the legacy of working on old systems or old ways of doing things, where their thought partner is AI and therefore together they can produce more than what was perhaps being produced individually, through sometimes good, sometimes bad experiences.
Speaker 2:So your AI-powered tech helps employers identify current employees qualified for open tech roles. Why is that useful? And, as part of that answer, maybe you might want to touch on, for example, time and recruitment cost savings, the impact on company culture, onboarding and so on.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So you know, as companies look to use AI for what they need to do, upskilling existing people makes a huge difference in one using the experience people have about the company much more understanding the culture of the company and now bringing in the AI knowledge, helping people within the company move up and fill in roles that exist than for organizations to go out and recruit from outside.
Speaker 3:So it's not only a reduction in cost for companies but also an opportunity to retain existing people because they're going to learn AI and use it, if not here elsewhere. And you might as well use them in your company because they already know your company much more and can be productive faster than somebody coming in from the outside. So upward movement of talent and the ability to reduce overall per capita cost of the human resource within the organization or the benefits to the organization, retention of the talent, giving individuals an opportunity to learn something new and, more importantly, use that in the context of what they already know, makes a huge difference to the individual as well. So I think it's a win-win to upskill existing people than look to get people from the outside. One, they don't exist and two, even if they do, they will come at a very high price tag and in terms of retention rates.
Speaker 2:You know it costs a lot of money to replace an employee. That's correct. So, for example, I was reading yesterday uk figures were 6665 pounds per employee on average. If you got to replace them, uh, so that would be around the 10,000 us dollar mark, I think around that, around that price point. Um, it costs a lot more. So, uh, talk about the power of upskilling your employees and how that leads to keeping more employees and some of the cost savings there and some of the other benefits as well, for example, the knowledge. If you lose people, you lose the knowledge that they leave with right.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the context of it right, the context of the organization is lost when people leave the organization. The culture, knowing the culture and being able to get things done within an organization is something people who have been with the organization can do much better than somebody who comes from the outside. There's not only a cost in recruiting and paying a higher salary for somebody you're going to recruit from outside, but there is also the cost of time it takes for somebody to assimilate and know the organization, which is an intangible in terms of how long it takes and the effort and the time that goes into it, not only for the individual to get up to speed but also for others to mentor the individual. So there is all of these intangible parts that is not even factored in the number that you just gave. So the benefit is significantly higher when you can upskill existing people to be ready for the roles that you have, and it also is a win-win because individual look at it as a positive opportunity to stay back.
Speaker 2:One thing else I wanted to ask you about is your extra platform. That looks pretty cool. You have instructor-led technology academies offering project-based hands-on group training to promote that career mobility, to promote advancement that we've been talking about so far in terms of developing your skills. Can you tell us a bit more about the extra platform?
Speaker 3:Sure. So you know, if you look at learning and upskilling more importantly, a lot of times organizations have looked at it as an avenue to provide some online content to employees and hoping that they learn, but that has not yielded the results. It's almost like saying there are swimming pools that the city has provided and that everybody will become a swimmer. Right, doesn't happen, because there is a structure to the learning. There is a, an element of relevance, a context that you need to have for the learning. Having a cohort while you're learning makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of learning.
Speaker 3:Most often, learning has been looked at and evaluated on the amount of time and effort people have put in, or completion rates and satisfaction rates, versus saying has this yielded the people that I need to get the job done? And that is where our platform comes in starting with creating a skills intelligence to understand where, what the current skills are of people, creating a roadmap based on the technologies that the organization wants to use, and putting in place a very flexible way of learning in consultation with the manager and the individual, because you know somebody, a group of people, might have a whole day to spend, somebody might do two hours a day, and, and it could be cohorts spread across the globe. So to create that flexible way of learning for an organization in a structured way, through assessments, through projects, through group learning, makes a difference in the effectiveness that learning can provide, and that is where a platform can create the difference.
Speaker 2:Wonderful, that's great, thank you, and there will be links, of course, to the website in the show notes listeners so you can check it out there. But beyond checking out the links there, tan, how can folks connect with you, so maybe that's linkedin email, whatever you want to share? And, of course, where do they go to find out more about revature?
Speaker 3:so the website is a good place to go. Revaturecom. My linkedin is available, tan murthy, and my email is tanmurthy at reveturecom perfect.
Speaker 2:Well, that just leaves me to say for today, tan, I appreciate your time. Uh, listeners, tan and I had a little bit of a technical issue before we hit record today, which turns out it was all my fault, and he was very patient with me while we're figuring that out. So I should just add, in addition to thank you for your time, thank you for your patience. It's been great chatting with you today.
Speaker 3:It's been a pleasure. Bill, thank you so much for taking time to interact with me. Take care.
Speaker 2:And listeners as always. Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1: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 HRGazettecom.
