Workday CLO: ‘You’ve got to be doing skills today to help prepare your organization for AI tomorrow’

AI was the core theme of Workday Rising in Las Vegas last week.

At the show, the tech giant’s CEO Carl Eschenbach launched its next generation vision for AI, Illuminate, sharing how it will help accelerate, assist and transform the worlds of HR and Finance.

During the Day 3 keynote, Marlon Sullivan, the CHRO of Johnson Controls, a smart buildings company with 100,000 employees globally, took to the stage to declared that AI is “table stakes in the HR realm”.

“The role of the CHRO now is enabling that transformation” and HR leaders need to be “change agents” in this unprecedented technological disruption.

The key to reaping the business rewards of AI is for HR to change its mindset.

Sullivan told the audience of HR leaders: “You’re a business leader, you just happen to sit in HR.”

Skills need to be the currency of work in this new AI-powered world of work.

As Chris Ernst tells UNLEASH in an exclusive interview: “You’ve got to be doing skills today to help prepare your organization for AI tomorrow.”

Skills not only help AI to make sense of the complexity of work, they are also what “business wants to be more agile, more fluid, flexible [and] dynamic”, and what “workers are looking for to stay relevant and grow their careers”, adds Ernst.

It is rare for employers and employees to be so aligned on these big labor trends – the fact it is happening with skills is special, a win-win, and “an important part of why Workday [is] committed to skills, given our focuses on elevating humans and supercharging work”.

Skills are ‘table stakes’ in world of AI

Speaking at Workday Rising during a media panel session, Byron Auguste, Economist and CEO & C-Founder of Opportunity@Work, a non-profit social enterprise focused on expanding opportunities for all, declared that no jobs require no skills.

It is time to look beyond degrees and formal qualifications and instead look at people who are skilled through alternative routes (or STARs in Opportunity@Work’s terminology).

Ultimately, “skills as a currency are table stakes for allowing people to advance”, and then AI augments people and their skills.

It is very rare to have an all-technology solution – people are incredibly valuable, but they do need tools to manage the complexity of work.

Talking about this in practice on the same media panel was Walmart’s Chief Talent Officer Lo Stomski.

Walmart employs 2.1 million associates globally, and the HR team is on a mission to “try to create 2.1million unique career paths” (without technology that would be “daunting”), notes Stomski.

When thinking about skills, Walmart takes a broader look than many employees – Stomski calls it ‘skills plus’, and it looks at individuals’ experiences, attributes and traits.

This took changing the mindset of hiring managers, and really creating a systematic approach to career paths and pipelines in your organization.

Ultimately, as Auguste puts it, people learn skills every single day, it just takes employers to widen the aperture on skills and experiences.

Clearly, Walmart is ahead of the game here, which helps explain why its CEO was front and center in a new Workday documentary (directed by Josh Kahn and produce by LeBron James and Maverick Carter) called Untapped.

At Workday Rising, attendees were treated to a preview of the documentary before it comes on Netflix in October – definitely keep an eye out, it’s a must watch.

Getting skills right is key to retention

Auguste’s point about the need for continuous learning was picked up by Sayan Chakraborty, Co-President of Workday, during a media briefing.

He shares: “People will have to be constantly learning and putting themselves in environments that encourage that.

“Employees will realize the minute they stop learning, then they are at risk.

“As HR leaders that investment in continuous learning for your employees will be the only way you retain employees.”

Entrance to the Expo at Workday Rising in Las Vegas.

This is proven by Workday’s recent Global Workforce Report, which UNLEASH unpacked at Rising with the tech giant’s CPO Ashley Goldsmith.

The report found that while the job market remains tough for workers, 50% of companies are struggling to keep their top, highest performing talent.

The solution, according to the data, is to lean into internal mobility programs that help employees to grow and develop, with two-thirds of leaders reporting a positive impact on their organization from taking this approach.

Goldsmith tells UNLEASH that HR leaders need to be very aware of these trends.

She calls on them to make sure “you’re attending to your internal workforce” particularly your top talent, plus “making sure that you’re finding ways to keep them connected to meaningful work, and connected to your organization, so you don’t inadvertently lose the very people you most want to keep”.

Despite a challenging economic environment, HR leaders really need to focus on showing employees that “their career, advancement and growth matters to us”, concludes Goldsmith.

Doing nothing is not an option; Workday CLO’s advice to his peers on skills, AI and retention is to “start somewhere simple soon”.

“It’s understandable why organizations might take their time, but you’ve got to jump in, experiment and learn,” notes Ernst.

He continues: “This is definitely the most challenging work I’ve ever been involved with in 30 years of doing talent and HR work.”

“It’s very easy to get caught up in all sorts of very theoretical conversations”, but the key is to focus on the challenges you have and how your skills data will help you solve those issues.