We in HR have heard it all. We are slow. We focus too much on the tactical. We can't think strategically. We are all about risk management. We get in the way of progress. We can't be analytical. We need to be broken into two or even blown up, not my words, but those of my guest for this episode Stela Lupushor.

Like me, Stela believes that we are at an exciting juncture for HR and that the planets are aligning for HR to change the many misconceptions about the function and how that by harnessing data, mindset and human centred design HR really can be a catalyst for change. Stela describes herself as a geek by training, a consultant at heart and an entrepreneur in character.

Having previously held people analytics roles at companies like IBM, Fidelity Investments, and TIAA. Stela is now on a mission to humanise the workplace, empowering greatness one woman at a time. I've known Stela for a few years, and her expertise covers many fields, including people analytics, diversity and inclusion, HR technology and employee experience.

You can listen below or by visiting the podcast website here.

In our conversation, Stela and I discuss:

• How human centred design can deliver improved business outcomes and a better workforce experience, and how it's helping drive initiatives in areas such as diversity and inclusion

• The challenges and opportunities for people analytics and what lies ahead for the field

• The New York strategic HR analytics meetup group, which Stela co-organises, and which by my estimation at 2000 members is the largest people analytics meetup group on the planet

• We also look into the crystal ball as we do with all our guests and ponder what the role of HR will be in 2025.

This episode is a must listen for anyone in an HR leadership or people analytics role as well as anyone interested in how HR programs and people data can drive business outcomes, a better and more inclusive culture, and employee experience.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Gapsquare, to learn more visit www.gapsquare.com/accelerate.

Interview Transcript

David Green: Today, I'm delighted to welcome Stela Lupushor to the Digital HR Leaders podcast and video series here in New York. Stela, it's great for you to join us. Thank you.

Stela Lupushor: Great to see you David and thank you so much for the opportunity to be here.

David Green: It's a pleasure. Stela, can you give listeners a quick introduction to yourself, your background, and what you're currently involved with?

Stela Lupushor: Absolutely. So, I am a recovering corporate employee. I have been with, large organisations playing consulting roles for most of my career, mostly in HR. Starting with Pricewaterhouse Cooper's, IBM. Then led the analytics practice at TIAA and Fidelity, and about two years ago, I left the corporate world and decided to leap into the future of HR that I'm so passionate about and became a solopreneur.

And, the mission that I'm carrying with me is to humanise the workplace. And really, that's having been in HR and realising how much more human there is opportunity to bring into the HR world. I decided to make that my mission. So, the way I realise that mission now is I help leaders re-think the workforce strategy and then the HR strategy and support of that workforce strategy.

And then analytics strategy since that's how you measure and demonstrate your value and impact. And then I decided also to do something at the individual level. And, last year I founded a nonprofit called amazing community, which is focused on a specific segment. Women over 50, and specifically helping them prepare for the skills of the future.

Having been in this space for quite some time, I realise that from a demographic perspective, that's one of the most underserved groups that are experiencing the most amount of challenges, in returning or staying employed. As a society, we have the opportunity to rethink the norms to rethink the bias we have in HR in how we design our practices and, recruitment, retention and career even, and then, it informs working with women.

It informs a lot of the other spaces that I work in because I can see on the ground the challenges that you will have to address as a practitioner, as well as the leader.

David Green: Brilliant. Well, we're going to try and cover as many of those different areas as possible in the next 30 minutes or so.

But we're going to start with our shared passion of people analytics.  And I know obviously you've spent a lot of time as a practitioner at IBM, TIAA and Fidelity, actually doing people analytics. What are your thoughts on the health of people analytics and some of the main challenges and opportunities, also what lies ahead. What is your view of what's going on in this space really?

Stela Lupushor: It's exciting to be in the space because we're finally, I think, getting to a point where people pay attention.

We have a name that is consistent for the most part, previously we used to be called all sorts of things, HR analytics, people analytics, workplace, workforce analytics, you name it. And now I think we're settling on a name, and there is a lot more investment and CHROs roles and leaders in general are finally recognising the value and they are asking for it, which is always exciting to be in the place where your work is in demand.

But I think the most exciting part is the maturity of thinking. So now we're moving past the excitement thing. Well, let's, you know, predict attrition or let's, just do some sort of a complex analysis. Instead we're now taking a step back and saying, we have the capability, we have the infrastructure.

What are the business problems that we can address on how can we tie employees, or workforce, measurements to the business outcomes or the brand impact externally? So it's finally maturing. It's growing up and the infrastructure is available. The technologies are around, and that makes our life easier in HR's world.

I think the opportunity now is start to really hone in on the end to end employee experience and rethink the measurement systems to run horizontal along that experience as opposed to siloed within HR processes.

David Green: And I suppose the other thing you talked about, your passion is around humanising the workplace. Analytics is doing that in some organisations…

Stela Lupushor: And it's really a way to put facts behind what has been known all along. We all know that talent is really one of the most important assets you have. They are the ones who innovate. They are the ones who make processes run. They're the ones who delight the customer, and most of the time we look at people as a cost. Now you actually can tie that cost to the impact, the revenue, whatever business outcome that you're trying to address, and it gives HR a very different power or super power to be able to articulate how what they do, is having a bottom-line impact directly.

David Green: And analytics is one way that HR can influence both business outcomes, workforce experience, what are some of the other ways that you're seeing HR trying to wield its influence.

Stela Lupushor: It's a new space that I think it'll take a little time to evolve. We're kind of at the beginning of the journey. So if you think about what marketing and customer facing roles have done was the customer centricity and, we think in the whole value chain of our organisation, around the customer journey.

I think that type of thinking is starting to now bleed into the world of HR. And it's about time because if you think about the experience of your worker and eliminate the hassles along the way, that gets in the way of them being productive, engaged, feel part of the community, contribute. The business results will be the evidence for that.

And if HR, instead of thinking, here's talent acquisition, here's the onboarding, here's the compensation. Is now saying what is the journey of that employee from the moment they wake up in the morning until the end of the day, and how can we make that experience better? And measurements will allow you to identify the points where you can have an intervention to eliminate the hassles. Analytics will help you understand the connection between the employee experience and customer experience. So you'll have a very different conversation with the leaders and saying, let's implement single sign on, as simple as that. So an employee doesn't have to remember 17 passwords or let's eliminate the compliance issues that are not necessary, there are a lot of them that are self-inflicted. We put certain processes in place just because of one infringement maybe 20 years ago.

Why do we keep a lot of things in place so HR now, can step in and become the motivator and the marketer for the organisation facing its workforce?

David Green: So it’s helping define almost the moments that matter across the life cycle, using analytics to, to measure, improve. And then I guess tying that to customer experience and business performance because ultimately that's how you'll get the business to buy into it?

Stela Lupushor: Absolutely. And outcomes can vary. And that's another challenge and an opportunity to think differently from an analytics perspective. We traditionally will think about outcomes that we measure based on the data we have. And what we'll try to have is something that is very consistent across the whole company when in fact, let's face it, every country has different cultural norms.

Every market is on a different growth pattern. And they may have a different economy, volatility. So the context is different for pretty much every location you may be dealing with. So instead of focusing on attrition as one big important measurement across the company.

With the technology you have now you can do a lot more segmentation and a lot more refined outcomes that you look up and can link to, be that in customer facing roles, yes, it matters to have the customer satisfaction, but if you're in back office roles, maybe there is a different set of measurements that you can tie to and outcomes, be that productivity or the level of engagement of people around you, and tying that along the entire journey is helping you understand where is the earliest intervention point to make a change.

Giving this example, people don't quit overnight, right?If attrition is one of those, important things for the organisation, you need to think not to predict it because it's too late by that time to do something about it. You need to think earlier. What are the earliest paper cuts really that happen along the journey where you can have an intervention and say, don't change a manager three times a year because most likely that will lead to the whole team saying, I'm out of here because there's so much instability. Instead, thinking about the employee experience and capturing those moments that matter and the feedback along the way and understanding where you can intervene so you can prevent that later on, the disengagement or attrition or whatever the outcome is that matters to the companies.

David Green: I suppose the thing is if you're going to measure and you're going to put the measurements in place, you need to listen and actually act. I know in IBM you were involved quite a lot with the social pulse, the tool that IBM put in place, and there's a couple of really good examples of how they actually took the sentiment that was coming in and did something about it.

I don't know if you want to share one of those?

Stela Lupushor: Absolutely. The whole point of listening along the journey, because you never know when certain events and triggers will occur and as an organisation, especially with the information moving so fast, and, the risk of being on a front page of the Wall Street Journal is instantaneous.

You really need to have the finger on the pulse of the organisation to detect those signals early on. And the social pulse was a great solution that started as one of those we will just experiment. We don't know where this is going to take us, to I think it was 2013 or somewhere around that time when IBM declared that Uber is not going to be reimbursed and one of the consultants went online and described why that wasn't the best decision and had a lot of rational recommendations for it - the life of the consultant should not be more difficult than it already is. And, as a result a lot of people commented and tagged it, it got picked up by the social pulse and got escalated very quickly and in less than 24 hours the policy got reversed and it was a perfect moment to say, this is exactly why we built that tool, because it allows now the employees to have a voice and be able to escalate when it really matters as well as the leaders to get in front of the issue much sooner, which was a great demonstration of the power of analytics, but also the willingness of the leadership to listen and do something about it.

David Green: And I think Diane Gherson actually has the social pulse top trending topics in her office. So she can see it at any time.

Stela Lupushor: That's exciting. What a great, leadership example. And it points not only to the willingness to listen, but also to the agility and the mindset that you cannot afford any longer to create something that will take two or three years to deploy, especially at the scale of IBM or any large organisation, you really need to have a much more agile way of intervening and addressing issues that many times is just about the communication channels and analytics allows you to do that and listen to your workforce.

David Green: So there's also lots of opportunities for HR, technology, analytics, and everything else, but I sense that there's still some way to go for HR,

Stela Lupushor: A long way to go.

David Green: What are some of the skills and capabilities that HR needs to develop and build to take advantage of some of these opportunities?

Stela Lupushor: Analytics, of course. But I'm biased. I think the other space where HR can have a lot of influence is design thinking and this comes with that comment about the customer centricity and the ability to trade much faster on changes. And put yourself in the shoes of the end user. Really build up empathy and then build the process with that in mind. The other skill that I see huge opportunity for HR to step into is around ethics, algorithmic responsibility, to really bring more ethical design ethics into the design of artificial intelligence and automation, anything that technology is now allowing us to do.

I think it's very easy to get excited about ways that you can eliminate human intervention and put an algorithm in place of it. But the question is, is that algorithm designed using data that actually will ensure there's no discrimination? Th at there's no bias introduced into the conversation?

The other component of it is, it's great, it will help the organisation save some money, but what would be the impact on the community or on morale? So there are a lot of nuances that are becoming critical to have a conversation around and there's no champion for those. And I think HR is perfectly positioned to drive that conversation.

Because after all, we are the ones who are the carriers and the influencers of the culture. We have the ability to raise up flags, especially when it comes to anything that may impact the reputation of the organisation. So, we just need to build a few skills, to ask the right questions, not necessarily to know the nitty gritty, but be able to be part of the conversation when there is a decision to design a new security system, to understand what data feeds into that and then say. That's not okay. That data will cross over certain grey lines, or may negatively impact the human being because when it comes to analytics for people, there's a human being behind every number. And I think we have to have a very different responsibility put into the design work.

David Green: So in a way, it's a shift for HR to think more about the business rather than just about HR. Being a bit more open and transparent with what it's doing with data. What the benefit is to the organisation, what the benefit is to employees and sharing that data in the first place. And I think the big thing you said around the whole design thinking mentality,  let's not spend three years designing an HR program in isolation let's actually work with and for employees rather than doing things to them.

It's quite a big shift from traditional ways that organisations have done HR in the past.

Stela Lupushor: And HR I think, will see changes happening much faster, just because it's going to be pushed from all sides. So it's kind of a matter of survival, either adopt or fall behind.

And it was interesting to have the earlier conversation with you about Dave Ulrich and the fact that, we all remember him for the HR business partner model that he developed years, decades ago, and his thinking has progressed so much further than that. Then he is touching upon some of this, agility and design thinking and customer centricity, but we tend to not listen to that.

And I think it's time to step over the history that we grew up on and the textbook that we were educated on and say I think we can have now very different superpowers that we can use in day to day work. We just need to allow ourselves to take advantage of those instead of trying to protect and saying, no, this is how we've always been doing it and therefore we're not going to introduce any change.

David Green: Everything needs to evolve doesn't it? So talking about these superpowers, so have you got any really good examples that you can share with listeners, of organisations who are taking more of a human centred design approach to HR, and how that has benefited both the organisation and the workforce as well?

Stela Lupushor: Of course, IBM is a case in point although we've already talked about it. There are a lot of great examples of how IBM transformed HR from an agile perspective, how it's using analytics to make better decisions about the workforce and skills updates and hiring decisions, etc.

Other examples that are more technology driven. It's well known in the world of design thinking, is Zappos. it's an organisation that started with a human centric experience. Holacracy. There are many case studies written about it. And it's very critical to have the right people that feed that culture because not everybody feels comfortable in that type of experience. So again, that's another consideration for HR. It's for you to create the environment that attracts the type of people that you want to have, to deliver the purpose of your company. Another example that may not necessarily be typical is, Amazon. On one side you have a very keen customer centric organisation that's really transformed industries, transformed the whole landscape. And while at some points in time, you hear negative press about the experience of employees. What's positive is the listening part, because the company is very quick at adopting and saying, well, this algorithm negatively and disproportionately impacts women in the hiring process. We're going to scrap it and then make it public. So there's a lot of examples to learn from because it's not just about the experience and how you create it, but quickly adapt as well as be very transparent about the changes you're making as a result of what you've learned. I love the philosophy of Bezos that there are two types of decisions, those that are irreversible and those are the ones that he and the senior leadership needs to be involved. And there are reversible ones where you need to defer to the people on the ground to make those decisions.

And the more leaders can get comfortable with that idea, especially HR saying, you don't need to have a lot of the changes to be escalated up. You have to just have the right type of channels to listen. So you know, when things bubble up and become irreversible and you need to intervene, the rest, you can leave it up to the people on the ground who know what's happening to make the change.

David Green: I read one of your recent articles. I think it was in clarity magazine actually, and you detailed how organisations can embed some of these people analytics initiatives throughout the company. I think it would be really helpful if you could share some of the ways of doing that with listeners.

Stela Lupushor: So there are several aspects of it. We look at the drivers of change, and the way I'd classify them are, as a consultant, I have alliteration for everything, so, four Ds.

One is demographic shifts, and the fact that you have a very different landscape, of age, gender, sexual orientation, distribution of skills around the world. Let's face it. The population is aging. We have now five generations in the workforce with different needs and preferences. Technology is also influencing how we relate to each other, to the workplace and the expectations we have. So there is a lot more complexity that these demographic shifts are bringing to the workplace.

The other part is digitisation and the world around us. We are on devices, we have sensors around us, the world is becoming a lot smarter and understands what we want, when we want it, how we want it to be delivered to us. We're so spoiled and getting even more spoiled over time, as more companies catch on to the fact that a great customer experience will create longer loyalty and better business results. So we expect the same type of experience in the workplace. Why can't we have all of our information on a mobile device? Why do we have to have a laptop that boots up in half an hour? And a lot of things are possible. So digitisation is changing not only the world as a consumer, but the world as an employee.

Thirdly is disintermediation. And there's the fact that you have a shifting definition of boundaries around industries, around a value chain. Just think of the same example of Amazon. What industry are they in? Are they in retail? Are they in bookselling? Are they in media? Are they going to Mars?

There was an announcement about putting a fulfillment facility on the moon. It's a very different set of measurements and parameters that we now need to think about. And we're still stuck in the way of let's measure GDP and what's included in that. Let's measure your competitor landscape based on the industry definition. All bets are off nowadays with this disintermediated value chain.

And then the last is datafication. So all of this activity and shifts and movement creates a very different digital footprint that now you can make decisions differently. So, the organisation now has the opportunity to really study the workplace and the dynamics and detect the signals, both inside and outside, connect the two, and think differently about everything that we as HR knew before.

So one example, we typically think about all of these new skills that we need to jump on a bandwagon of digitisation. How can we become digital? How can we bring more data scientists? Become more analytical and we get stuck in a point of we don't find enough talent, there is not enough talent on the market.

When in fact, you are creating a job description that looks like a unicorn and then you're becoming a unicorn chaser as opposed to saying what is really the essence of what needs to get done? Certain pieces require data science. A lot of it does not. A lot of it can be done by somebody who only has two hours in the afternoon and can do it at their own leisure or their own pace remotely.

What gets in the way is our inability to think differently and saying, well, let's not give so much trust and power to job descriptions because let's face it, nobody for the most part works in a job description that matches exactly what's beyond day one, but we put so much emphasis on getting it right and then the recruiter to find the perfect match, that we create our own challenges.

Yes, it requires a different way of orchestrating work and requires a different management skill and measurement skill. But I think analytics is that super power that can enable you to do that. There are algorithms that now can read job descriptions and say, here are the clusters of skills you need. You have ways to identify the perfect match for the specific skill to get it done, whether that's external employee or internal resource. Again, this puts all the processes we know, it flips it on the side. How do you measure performance? How do you determine succession? there are lots of implications and that probably is one thing that makes it so much more complicated to get it done.

But whoever figures out how to do it I think will be the winners in the next decade. So, this is one way of looking at the Talent work, but then the talent itself, tapping into the alternative sources, it's important. We're so used to, and sometimes analytics help us do that, to look at the success profile, what that is and cater towards the bell curve as opposed to looking at the outliers and saying. Yes, the typical candidate looks like this, but there aren't enough of them. Maybe it's time to say somebody who may not have the educational credentials will be a perfect candidate just because they have the experience, or maybe a woman over 50 who will never end up being in the success profile algorithm as a perfect candidate for certain roles. Maybe there is just a small skill gap that you can quickly, upskill and train her on. And she can be the perfect catalyst. She can be the perfect project manager. She can be the one who brings disparate and conflicting situations to a resolution.

So there's a different way of looking at the talent spectrum that you have to solve and address some of these labour shortages and challenges about the talent availability that we're facing.

David Green: So it's interesting what you were saying about job descriptions, cause there's this great case study from Atlassian.

They had a problem hiring female software engineers, and they did some work, I think it was with Textio actually, and they started analysing the job descriptions and they found that men will typically apply if they meet 60-65% of the requirements, whereas women typically won't apply unless they meet more than 90-95% of the requirements.

And then they actually start analysing some of the words that they had on the job description as well. And some words put women off from applying and also too many bullet points apparently as well. So, they used that insight to completely reframe their job descriptions. And I do see that more data is now being used in the diversity and inclusion space, which is great.

And I just wondered, obviously it's an area that you're passionate about. You mentioned in the intro, the work you're doing with the amazing community. What are you seeing around how human centred design and data are actually supporting initiatives in the D&I space?

Stela Lupushor: Can I reframe something? It's flipping the D&I to I&D.

And I think the tradition, that ties back to some of the analytics as well as some of the regulatory and reporting requirements to have more disclosures around your diversity and composition of your workforce. And while that's great that that's so critical to do, that's the other side of the spectrum from an inclusion perspective, the more you focus on just certain segments without including everybody else in the conversation, the more isolated they will feel and the solutions will be, again, only tailored for one particular segment. And that's why it's so much more critical to bring the inclusion first.

David Green: Flip it around.

Stela Lupushor: Flip it around. if you solve for somebody who is disabled. Everybody else will be able to use it much better and benefit. The executive director of amazing community, Leslie Farstein she simply got the ear piece to address her hearing and it's connected to Bluetooth. So now when she gets a phone call, she can quickly activate that. She can listen to podcasts instantly. There is so much benefit, I said, look, I want that earpiece as well. And it's that type of mindset when you design for everybody, for extremes. The mainstream benefits.

And it's great for the workforce. It's great for society, you're including people traditionally excluded from the workplace. it's also great for your bottom line because now you're opening markets, new markets, and new target segments where you can create better products and better distribution channels as well as the reputation and the brand will be looked upon differently because now you have a bigger purpose to address.

So when it comes to amazing community, I think there was a perfect example and a segment that has not only experienced sexism, since women for the most parts make all the right choices, but they get penalised for a lot of things in terms of their experience, ability to continue with a career. In terms of the pay disparity, every child is 4% penalty on women when every child for women is 6% bonus when it comes to pay. So there are a lot of little things that women have to experience throughout their life just because they can have children, just because they come to step into caretaking roles.

The other thing about this segment is they experience ageism. They most likely will have an outdated skill set, especially if they too could be a career gap. They most likely will not look the look and as a result, there will be a lot of bias even in the hiring process. They will have an outdated or stale business network that doesn't help them to get back into the workforce.

So a lot of barriers that puts them at a disadvantage, and the problem with these challenges that they are experiencing is in the long-term, they outlive most likely their savings, most likely they will outlive their spouse or partner, statistically speaking. And if they have such an end, their social security savings, as a result of their spotty employment history will be significantly smaller.

So, it's a matter of pushing them into poverty, if something doesn't happen. But bringing back the inclusion part, if you design a solution that helps specific segments, it will benefit everybody. It's better for the economy because you have more people participating and contributing. It's better from health perspective on a health system because these people will have a reason and a need to get up in the morning and go to work.

It will contribute to the employment shortages because now you have more people doing bits and pieces of what needs to get done and providing more services. The exciting part about what analytics can do is just shed the light on where these women can contribute the most, is enabling them to build some of the skills because they will bring resilience.

They'll bring the responsibility that they have, they'll bring the collaborative mindset. They just need to be given a chance.

David Green: Yeah, I think it's good that data is really starting to support I&D, as I'll call it now, initiatives. That's really cool. Now, staying with people analytics. I don't know how you manage to do everything that you do, but I know you're one of the leading coordinators of the New York people analytics meetup group, which is I think one of the longest standing communities and a very large community, and I know it's helped inspire a lot of other similar groups around the world. It would be great if you could share with listeners maybe some words about the group and some of the things that it covers.

Stela Lupushor: So, it started as one of those griping sessions that Jeremy Shapiro and I had at lunch and said, there's no place for anyone, for us to go and have a conversation and just talk about things where everybody else understands us.

And he said, look, maybe we should do something about it. Maybe we should start a group. So that's really the genesis of this. we just needed the tribe. We needed to find a place where we can talk. And people understand and everybody relates to what's happening in the space. And it unexpectedly became the bigger tribe that it inspires others.

It gives people a sense of community. It educates all of us, not only where the technology is evolving and what are the new techniques that we can employ, but also creates a different conversation about the responsibility we have. And yes, we have over 1500 now, which is exciting. And it's even more exciting to see that there are clusters and cells around the world to do the same, you need to have that conversation and given all the ethical ramifications and implications we talked about earlier, but also you need to have that sense of camaraderie. I can see in just the conversations and people know each other and they refer to each other. People find jobs. I'm waiting for marriages to happen next,

David Green:  I'm sure it's not far off…

Stela Lupushor: …but it's great to be part of the tribe. I think it gives everybody a sense of belonging to something that they can influence and be part of.

David Green: Well, I think the people analytics community, as you know, is naturally quite collaborative. We want to share things with each other and I know the great thing about the New York group is people when they are in New York and there happens to be meeting, I know I've done it at least once, come along as well. And you're open to that as well. Because it's so easy to join, isn't it?

Stela Lupushor: It is a low barrier, and everybody finds something in it, because we try to make it inclusive at the end of the day. Yes, we have a common theme that we're working around and talking about, but the rest of it is where the magic happens. It's the networking it’s the hiring connections, it’s the serendipitous conversations that you may have in a hallway or in the elevator going up to the meetup that afterwards becomes a project that can become even a company sometimes. So it's the things that are happening at the periphery that are really exciting about this community.

David Green: We should probably do some analytics on the meetup group or something.

Stela Lupushor: I think there's a social network study to be done on that.

David Green: Yeah, I think so. So that leads us onto our final question, which is the question that we ask all our guests on the Digital HR Leaders podcast, and you can have a bit of fun with this. What do you see the future role of HR come 2025.

Stela Lupushor: Ah, it's so exciting to dream about the future, the role of HR in 2025 is not that far out.

David Green: It's not that far out, which is why we picked it, because otherwise it's…

Stela Lupushor: I'm ahead of my time. So if anything feels really scary to some, just…

David Green: We've had all sorts of answers.

Stela Lupushor: I think HR can be the business development arm. Really think about the way of identifying and securing the right type of source of talent, to bring to the organisation.

HR can also be an Uber marketing arm because it's about finding and marketing your brand, the employment brand to this wide talent pool. And finding the best, to come to do whatever it is that your company is here for. And I think HR can really be the orchestrator of work.

I don't think there is a job description for that. I don't think there is even much energy around what that may look like in defining what that organisation would look like. But those are the spaces where HR can play a big role. Talent is becoming more and more empowered and they make very different choices about the brand they want to come and bring their talent too. So creating the compelling story and experience for that talent to bring their best is really where the superpower of HR will be in the long term.

David Green: So much more commercial than it has traditionally been.

Stela Lupushor: I think all of the processes that we do today are going to be automated.

Be that you put a bot in place or you completely eliminate it because it's unnecessary anymore because technology will allow you to have more transparency, visibility to what's happening, optimisation, orchestration of work. So at the end of the day, that humanity component of it, as well as the strategic thinking and business focus that you cannot bring in value.

David Green: Stela, thank you very much for being a guest. How can listeners stay in touch with you on social media for example?

Stela Lupushor: You can find me on LinkedIn. you can also follow me on Twitter. I'm sluposho without the R and I am absolutely thrilled to speak with anyone who is interested to learn more about the amazing community, the analytics world, as well as has ideas for how to humanise the workplace for everyone.

David Green: Stela. Thank you very much.