Episode 37: How National Australia Bank Has Scaled People Analytics (Interview with Thomas Rasmussen)

This week's guest on the podcast is Thomas Rasmussen, one of the most respected and pre-eminent People Analytics leaders in the world. Thomas has built and led People Analytics teams at A.P Moller-Maersk, Shell and now National Australia Bank where he has responsibility for employee experience, digital, HR strategy as well as People Analytics. In his words, People Analytics is truly more impactful than ever. It has gone from being a strategic differentiator the best CHRO’s demand, to an absolute essential to manage the COVID-19 crisis.

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

In our conversation Thomas and I discuss:

• How people analytics is helping to support executives, managers and colleagues at National Australia Bank during the pandemic

• The progress of people analytics since Thomas and Dave Ulrich published their seminal 2015 paper, "How HR analytics avoids being a fad and why people analytics needs to be based in HR."

• How people analytics is organised at National Australia Bank, providing example case studies of the work

• How bringing employee experience, analytics and digital together creates a powerhouse and enables the scaling of analytics

• The importance of ethics and how this underpins people analytics and the use of people data for good.

This episode is a must listen for anyone in a workforce or people analytics role, HR and business professionals interested in how people data can drive business outcomes and CHRO’s looking to build or scale their people analytics capabilities.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Insight222. To learn more, visit https://www.insight222.com.

Interview Transcript 

David Green: Today I am delighted to welcome Thomas Rasmussen executive for workforce strategy, digital and analytics at National Australia Bank, all the way from Melbourne, to The Digital HR Leaders Podcast. Welcome to the show Thomas. Please can you provide listeners with a quick introduction to your background and your current role at National Australia Bank?

Thomas Rasmussen: Sure and again, David, thanks for having me. This is my favourite podcast series, so excited to be part of it. I have been with National Australia Bank for a bit more than three years. My current role is really to look after our workforce strategy, digital and analytics, which is a very exciting task.

Before that I spent four years at Royal Dutch Shell, helping build the people analytics set up there and before that I spent seven years in a company called A. P Moller-Maersk a shipping energy logistics, a hundred thousand people at the time, obviously global and based out of Copenhagen, Denmark, where I am from.

If I go back even further that is when I spent some time in academia and did a PhD when I was very young.

David Green: We first met I think at a conference in London back in 2014 where you and the team from Shell were speaking and the people analytics space has moved on a lot since then and probably even more so since you got into it at A.P Moller-Maersk. The scope of your role at the bank has recently increased and you are covering a number of different areas as you touched upon, but including colleague experience, digital strategy, and even NPS voice of customer as well as people analytics in it. Can you give us a sense of how the team is organised and how bringing all these areas together helps you to scale analytics in the bank?

Thomas Rasmussen: Sure, and somewhat some of the elements in terms of measuring customer satisfaction and really driving that is a relatively recent thing so I will have to give you a rain check on how exactly we set that up. But otherwise the simple philosophy is really that you need people analytics to sit together with your employee experience and with your digital, which is basically the oversight of all the HR technology and implementation of that together with our great colleagues in the technology function. The idea is quite simple, the people analytics basically shows you what works in terms of driving value, in terms of reducing cost, in terms of improving customer outcomes but typically those findings are a bit high level, so it will show you where there is value. And then the question very quickly becomes, how do you turn that in to changed behaviour? So how do you extract the value and you use employee experience or colleague experience and human centred design and turn that into nudging.

So you make it easy and appealing for people to do the right thing and to do the things that you want them to do. So far so good. Then the challenge becomes how do you scale it and you can not scale it without technology. So that is really where you need to work with great vendors, have a great ecosystem, work with the architecture, work with your technology colleagues so you have that big solution really scaled across the 34,000 people at National Australia Bank. That is really how you go from insights to behaviour that has the positive impact. So that is the idea of the setup.

David Green: And it is interesting that in your view a people analytics team needs to reach a certain level of maturity and demonstrate the value before it gets combined with colleague experience and digital because it makes a lot of sense to me because if you want to personalise employee experience, if you want to actually create relevant nudges for people, you need the data to underpin it. But in so many organisations these are two separate things.

Thomas Rasmussen: Yes. I think they really are the perfect match and it is also once you actually then implement it, and we do this in iterative agile cycles, so it is not about, okay, we are going to plan the project and spend some money and then after that year we will implement it and see if it works.

It is really via those small drops, so it is test and learn. But it just accelerates all three elements and they play really well together. The great thing is you then also get some data out of that process. So you use the technology to scale it, but it also gives you the data you need to actually get feedback on how it is running and how you improve it and how you optimise it so that is quite exciting.

David Green: We saw recently at the PAFAOW online conference when you and Sally Smith were talking about some of the work that you were doing at the bank in response to COVID 19. I feel that speaking to you and your peers around the world, one of the bitter sweet aspects of this crisis is that people analytics is being elevated.

But I think it would be nice for people listening to this who didn't tune in to PAFOW, if you can outline some of the ways that people analytics is helping support executives, managers and colleagues at the bank in this these troubled times.

Thomas Rasmussen: Yes of course, there are four tangible, immediate things that come to mind.

So first of all, there is daily reporting so where are our people? How are they doing? How many are absent? Do we need to be concerned? Do we have some that have been out sick for a longer time that we need to immediately contact? So really that element which enables you to supply the level of care that you need for your colleagues, that is typically stuff that is reported on, at best weekly, sometimes every fortnight or typically monthly basis all of a sudden you need to do that daily and really sort of splitting that up and that takes a bit of work.

Beyond that there is getting feedback. So NAB has been really outstanding in terms of communicating to it's 34,000 colleagues on what is going on, what are we doing, what is happening? And you need to supplement that with two way communication and making sure that you get some feedback as well. So we partnered with Glint and, today actually, we deployed our third survey, which is just two to five short, sharp questions where we get valuable information, automated analytics of all of the verbatim and that really helps us take the right action, so that has been invaluable. All our leaders actually got that feedback in terms of how the team is doing and really getting that input.

We also very quickly implemented by the great work that Sally Smith did and together with our partners in technology as well who really help us to deliver all the things we do, organisational network analytics. So we deployed Microsoft's workplace analytics product and also in addition to exec level reporting on workloads and changes in work patterns and so on as we moved in 80% of our workforce to actually be working from home over a very short period of time.

We sent reports to almost 3000 people leaders based on what does it look like for your particular team and how does that compare to the baseline we had in February? Again with the intent of leaders being able to better support and take care of their colleagues, so it is really fascinating. Many other elements were around deploying the right resources to the front line. So you can imagine a bank with a proud history, like National Australia Bank, we obviously want to be there to support our many customers, including many small business, many small business customers and many of them are impacted by the current situation, with almost a complete lockdown of the Australian economy. That, of course, made a huge spike in phone calls, emails, contact from our customers and so the talent team used data to help redeploy a thousand colleagues from other places in the bank that had previous experience with those frontline direct customer support roles within a very short timeline.

So it was all about getting people with the right skills to the right jobs very, very quickly.

Those were the four immediate, very tangible things that we have done.

David Green: Just touching on the kind of organisational network analysis part, I think it is great to see that you are combining the active kind of data sources such as the surveys with some of the passive data that we can get from network analysis. Because I think we read lots of stuff about the challenges for employees about suddenly working remotely and clearly there are many challenges involved in that, a myriad of challenges, but maybe what is less talked about is the challenges for managers suddenly having to manage remote teams, many of whom for the first time. So I am guessing that those insights were really important and gave them information to help them manage their teams better.

Thomas Rasmussen: Yes, you are absolutely right and they were not an isolated thing it was part of broader efforts to really support leaders, to help support our colleagues so that they can do great things for our customers every day. There were various webinars, training material, refresh courses in terms of how do you actually manage a remote team because a lot of people have not tried it before and it is very different.

You are also managing a remote team that has never tried it before and I guess the silver lining of all of this is, sure there are some teething problems and some challenges, but there are also quite a lot of upsides to that in terms of increased flexibility, also location all of a sudden does not matter anymore.

And so it is a lot easier for everyone to be there on equal terms. And we also saw a lot of leaders really dialling up the frequency of communication, which we can see is having clear and positive results. So really part of a broader package of supporting our people leaders is with our colleagues from leadership developments and from learning and from other parts of the bank really chipping in and also great external speakers, providing advice and tips and tricks along the way.

David Green: I mean from speaking to many peers, as I said earlier, I was speaking to many of your peers around the world. It is clear that people analytics is playing an important role in organisational responses to the crisis and I know as well in plans for returns to the workplace as well. Do you think people analytics will become even more important as we emerge into the next normal, if we can call it that?

Thomas Rasmussen: I definitely think so. We have talked about this before, David offline, and I have often said that if you go back one or two years the best chief people officers they have people analytics predictive capability and they can not live without them.

As part of identifying value, driving insights, and there is this old saying that, it is not about knowing where the puck is, but it is about knowing where it is going to be if you want to win. It is very similar with people analytics and so you need the reporting, which is where the puck is, but you need the analytics to figure out where it is going to be so you can move with the business.

But it was still an elective and some chief HR officers could decide we do not need that and I think that that is changing because now it is an absolute must if you do not have that basic data. It is very, very hard to manage through the crisis and if you do not have the predictive elements, it is also very hard to do sensible scenarios in terms of what is going to happen in the future and what type of conversations should we be having about our response to those different scenarios. So it has moved to the centre of many things, but again, it is an integrated part of several different value chains as I see it and I do not see any reason for why it should not stay there once restrictions start to lift a bit.

David Green:  I think it is interesting actually from a lot of the people we are speaking to around the world, those that had already had that stakeholder equity and built those all important relationships with senior people in the business and in HR, they seem to say we are busier than we have ever been David. Then there is a few others that I speak to who maybe have not quite developed that stakeholder equity yet, and they are still doing work, but they are not really doing much in relation to the Covid situation. I thought, as I know it is something that you have talked about before the importance of building those stakeholder relationships, so it would be good to hear a few words from you that will help some of our listeners trying to do the same.

Thomas Rasmussen: Yes, definitely. So the analogy that I use is, imagine you were at some ski resort and there is no snow and all of a sudden you get two meters of snow. You can get a lot of skiing done if you know how to ski but if you don't then you can still get some skiing done but it will take a bit longer because you can not go on those fun slopes and you can not go off piste and so on. I guess that is what we are seeing. So you do have an advantage if you have that maturity and my view is that people analytics is an end to end value chain.

There are bits in the middle that are technical and very much about science and technology and statistics and all that stuff, but there are bits and pieces at the ends of that value chain that are very social and very business focused. Number one, you need to know what to look at, what is the business concerned about?

And that requires you to understand your business and to talk to your business stakeholders about what is on their mind. Then there was a lot of analytics and tech and so on in the middle but at the end of it, you also then need to clearly communicate the so what? Here are the results. Here are the findings. How are we going to turn that into action? I think it is those two elements that you really see being split up and greatly supported by the harder stuff in the middle of the people analytics value.

David Green: Let's continue with this conversation around the field itself. We have talked about this as well before, the paper you published with Dave Ulrich I think it was in 2015, I think it is the most downloaded paper on people analytics. You identified four key suggestions to avoid people analytics being a fad. Focus the work on business problems as you have just talked about, taking analytics out of HR, remembering the human in human resources, which kind of places the human centred design that you have talked about there, and training HR professionals to have an analytical mindset.

As you reflect on those four suggestions, five years later, what progress do you believe the field has made and would you add or remove any of those additional suggestions?

Thomas Rasmussen: So it is amazing how time flies, right? We wrote the paper in 2014 it just got published in 15 so it is actually even more time has gone past. So my own reflection is I would not take people analytics out of the people division or HR analytics out of HR anymore, because it is abundantly clear to me that you need that subject matter expertise and a lot of it is applied social science or psychology or metrics and so on. But also truly understanding your leaders and you need to be very close to your business partners that front this conversation into the business otherwise it is going to be too hard. Typically the analytics is stuff you integrate into other things and so HR initiatives and processes and if you do not understand those, it becomes very hard to translate it and basically monetise the analytics. So that is one learning for me.

I think that is greatly helped by the fact that there is still a common core in analytics and in terms of the stuff in the middle around technology and the great prospects of having a data lake. So basically every division, every area of the company pooling data sources together and then everybody using that data lake as a starting point for analytics, I think that has to stay as a shared pool of course supported by some centralised resources. But you still need a hub and spoke model when you have central stuff in a company, but you need that spoke element simply because you need business proximity and so that you can monetise it. So that is a bit of a development.

I think we also, we were not deliberately trying to be a little bit provocative at the time, in terms of take it out of HR and we did not know anybody was actually going to read the paper, so we thought, okay, we might as well throw it out there and see if we get a reaction.

And we most certainly did.

David Green: You did. I think that was important because now most people understand the need to focus on the business problem but I think back then, and even I still see it sometimes, people start with the data and they will try and find something in the data. And you will know yourself, if you give data to a data scientist, they will find something but it might not be relevant and it can take a lot of time to get some insights out and everything else. So I think that that focus on business first is very important and I think it is a lesson that the community can take. I think the last one you talked about there was the need to train HR professionals to have an analytical mindset.

And I think we have clearly moved on a lot since then. What are some of the ways that you would advise companies to do that? How do you get your HR professionals to have that analytical mindset?

Thomas Rasmussen: So I think it is a combination of different things. So number one, you need to enable your HR business partners to do that, to play in that space and to have that role.

So there is something about a level of seniority and the people you attract and making sure the roles are appropriately sized. There was another element which is really about removing all the stuff that otherwise it would take time so admin stuff, providing reporting, all of that stuff. I think that is where digitisation and really technology and process simplification helps because then you strip out some of those more transactional elements that an HR partner would otherwise have to spend quite a lot of time on. That enables them to have that different conversation and different discussion where it is more about providing insights and strategic advice, rather than okay, let me run this process for you and let me know where you are in that process.

So as you automate that, you lift the other elements. Great business partners, their true quality is linking people, culture, structure to business needs, right? And data analytics is just a means to an end to actually do that and business partners that can do all three just get better outcomes. So I guess that is what we are seeing. I do not think it is enough to just train people in statistics, it is also enabling them by taking away some of the other stuff that otherwise fills up their day.

David Green: Yes because I think what is under appreciated a lot is the sheer volume of work that a business partner is asked to do. Actually another area you are talking about there, which I think we will touch on again, is the keeping people analytics in HR. I was fortunate to spend some time with Sally Smith and the people analytics team down at NAB, but I think you were skiing at the time in the Northern hemisphere, summer of 2018. One of the things that really impressed me was the community of data and analytics professionals you have at the bank. Can you outline this a little bit and talk about how this helps the work and careers of your team and other data professionals at the bank as well.

Thomas Rasmussen: Sure. So, a lot of elements of analytics, the core analytic skills, that is really generic. It does not matter if you are doing it for finance or you do it for risk or you do it for people, or you do it based on customer data. Because you need to know about architecture, you need to know about data config, you need to know about statistics, you need to know about visualisation and all of those elements.

So essentially by creating this community, which the technology division in NAB has done, a lot of analysts and data scientists are seeing that it is not just me and the eight other people that are in my division, it is the 800 people across the entire company that can share this, right? And then you can start sharing learning and have machine learning competitions and who does the best one gets a badge and all that stuff. It opens up career paths as well and also an opportunity to learn from each other. I think the prospect of companies that do that is you can develop faster if you do it together with others versus doing it in isolation.

So I think that is truly fascinating and then it is just more fun and it is a better value proposition and you have much wider career paths, because then you can do it in different elements. That is really for those core things that are the same, you still need to pick up those as subject matter expertise areas, so risk if you work in risk, you need to know about customers if you are customer facing, divisions of customer service and so on and of course people and psychology, if you are in a people division. Then slowly but surely you start joining the dots between it and start analysing stuff across value chains rather than just from one vertical.

So I think that is pretty great to hear and there is a lot of buzz, we managed to fill out that auditorium that you also filled up a couple of times when you were kind enough to speak for the NAB colleagues, that happens on a monthly basis on pretty technical topics like machine learning, algorithms and what not. We can easily attract 400 people to a talk on that.

David Green: It was pretty daunting for me, Sally had set up a few sessions, some with the team, some with the kind of external people analytics community you have helped build down there and some with HR. Then she said, we would like you to speak to our data professionals. I was going, okay, so the first thing I started with was I am not a data scientist, this is not going to be a technical presentation. But I think that there was a general interest in how HR is taking some of these machine learning ideas and actually translating that into programs for employees.

So yes it was daunting but fortunately it was well received.

Thomas Rasmussen: Do not worry about that you got great feedback, they want you to come back so maybe when we are through the lockdown we can bring you down again.

David Green: Well, that would be good and if we can combine it with the Ashes when that is next down in Australia, that would be good.

Thomas Rasmussen:  Okay, Okay.

David Green: Actually on that, and again I know we have talked about a number of case studies that you have done at the bank before. Are you able to provide an example that provides a good example of how people analytics is delivering value to the bank, its customers and its workforce as well?

Thomas Rasmussen: Yes so I think there is a very live case and again, I saw one of our great business partners working on stuff like this. We showed, for instance, that all branches with higher engagement they deliver better customer outcomes, so better customer satisfaction. It is because engagement is contagious. The next question then becomes, what drives that? That is actually leadership so we better select some better leaders, provide better training and provide better support, then you get those outcomes. It is a value chain like that which ends up in better customer service to our customers and a better experience for all our colleagues.

Recently there is a lot of great work on how much time do you need to stay in a role before you truly master it. We can see that is a really good proxy for how capable you are and we can see that that greatly impacts our customer outcomes. A number of things impact how long you want to stay in the role and so on, so we need to make it attractive for you to stay and build capability and deepen relationships with customers. I think that is one of those areas where we can actually quite accurately track, how do you fine tune the set up so you deliver the best outcomes for your customers in terms of getting that optimal time in the role because that varies a lot depending on the role. It is then about how do you make sure that you then manage how many do we need to come in to new roles versus how many come out and all of that stuff. So I think that is truly fascinating and again, this focus on always working towards business outcomes.

So the HR element or the people element is an element in a value chain but without the full chain it is not of value. But then seeing it all come together and then seeing the outcomes of it that is the amazing bit.

David Green: With that data community, you have a number of those projects you are working very closely with the customer analytics team, for example, and bringing the customer data and the people data together.

Thomas Rasmussen: Yes and I guess, this probably will not be a big surprise to many, but if you make your colleagues happy they will take care of your customers and over time that takes care of your shareholders.

So I am really proud of the way NAB is framing this and we have this notion of really driving that. We are seeing that again and again and again in data. It is just because happy, engaged employees, it is contagious and we know it when we are a customer. When we meet somebody who is fired up and switched on we can feel it and we probably buy more. We probably get an extra coffee or we are going to add that extra dessert or whatever, versus if it is somebody who is depleted of energy for various reasons, there can be many reasons for it, we are probably less inclined to do it.

You can just see that human connection really sparking here. There are many many other things that also impact the customer satisfaction for sure, your product needs to be in order, how it's delivered and all that stuff, but the people delivering it is just pivotal.

David Green: So what is next? What are some of the areas you will be focusing on in the next 12 to 18 months?

I appreciate that you only recently had the role expanded so I guess some of that is probably still to be confirmed.

Thomas Rasmussen: So I think we have an amazing opportunity to really drive progress collectively. I really mean the entire bank, right? So we are in to a good habit of really good communication, constantly getting feedback and really good collaboration across all aspects of NAB. We are all getting better and better and better at leveraging data and insights and also using the same data and insights, so that is what I see really progressing. Whereas some companies can have a tendency to only believe the stuff they cooked up themselves, but really sort of driving a shared view and a shared platform, in terms of the insights and the actions. Because that is not what we debate. You do not debate the facts and the insights you basically debate, so what and how do we monetise it? Which is a great conversation and much more mature conversation.

It is really all about how do we make it simple. Big organisations can sometimes have a tendency to make things complex, complex for your customer should make it complex for your employees and so on. Sometimes it is designed for good reasons, controls and risks and all that stuff, but once in a while you need to step back and really sort of evaluate a lot of this stuff. Making sure it is safe, but really thinking how can we make stuff simpler, simpler for our customers, simpler for our colleagues and simpler for everyone who is part of it. That is also much more rewarding to be part of as a colleague as well.

David Green: That is great. Okay, so we touched a little bit on the future of the discipline. We have got to get to the final few questions now. We could probably talk all evening, your time, but you probably want to get to have some food and maybe a beer or something like that. So if we look forward towards the future of the discipline, what excites you most about people analytics?

Thomas Rasmussen: So what really excites me is seeing it converge and so people analytics really being embedded in everything you do. So people analytics is part of how you do recruiting and assessment, people analytics is part of how you do leadership development. People analytics is part of how you do REM and benefits. So really how you tie it all together and so it becomes that red thread that spans through all of the people processes, that for me is step number one.

Step number two is then how you connect it to all the other processes and set ups you have in a company so it just becomes a way of thinking. And the starting point always becomes, have empathy, respect data privacy and understand that you are dealing with people, but get some facts and some data because you will deliver better outcomes for your colleagues and you will be more fair.

There will be a lot less bias and over time making better people decisions will actually positively impact how your customers perceive you and what you deliver to them, which impacts your bottom line. So I think that is the exciting thing. And for me, the exciting piece is also employee experience moving closely together.

But people analytics and technology, because to me that is just a match made in heaven. That is really a powerhouse when you can join up those dots. If you do it with that business focus and you are inclusive and you understand that what you are doing is a means to an end, to help support your colleagues, to support the customers, and you are not just doing it for the sake of doing it.

David Green: Biggest concerns about people analytics potentially in the future and how it could develop?

Thomas Rasmussen: So my concerns are sometimes around making sure that we stay on track when it comes to data privacy and data ethics because by now there are a lot of things that you can do or could do that you should not. So it is really truly understanding that you are dealing with people who have hopes and dreams and fears and you are dealing with sensitive data for the right reasons and so on. So truly respecting the responsibility you get. I think it is Dawn from Microsoft that says, people analytics for good.

I have heard others say that it is important that people analytics stays on the right side of creepy. That is really my only concern. I have seen a few pieces of innovative technology I would call it, where sometimes they get a little bit concerned that some of the tech has moved a little bit faster than the underlying science that is there to support it. So I think it is striking that balance and I do not want to kill the enthusiasm, I welcome innovation and new things I just want to make sure that we make sure it is safe and evidence-based as well.

David Green: Yeah that means with potential providers, the need to actually be able to look under the bonnet a little bit?

Thomas Rasmussen: My starting point is most providers are outstanding and they actually allow you to look under the bonnet. I have tried on a couple of occasions and they said, oh, it is AI and it is proprietary and you can not look. And the only appropriate answer is to say, okay, thank you very much. We will not be able to work together. Because it is our jobs to be the custodians of data privacy, ethics and doing the right things and the minute you forget about that, you are heading towards big trouble and you might erode some of the value that you spent years building up.

David Green: It is interesting when we set up Insight222 at the end of 2017, one of the things we do is we do co-creation work with some of our clients.

The first project that they wanted us to co-create was an ethics charter, one that they could take, it was like an MVP, that they could then take and iterate within their own organisations. It is interesting, I think that actually when you speak to people in the field, is the biggest concern that someone somewhere is going to do something wrong and it is going to set the whole field back. But that is the risk I guess.

So that leads on quite nicely actually. You have been in this for a while, you have led teams, you created the team and led the team at Shell is still revered as one of the best in the world, most respected. Same at National Australia Bank and previously at A.P Moller-Maersk.

What are the key tips that you would give to a new people analytics leader creating the function in their company or who wants to advance it to the next level?

Thomas Rasmussen: So every company is different, right? The starting point is realise that there is a global community. So join Insight222, join the PAFOW community, I think your monthly updates and digital newsletters on LinkedIn are a huge resource it just gives you all the new stuff that is there and so you move faster, you move together with other people that have done some of it before. Maybe you don't have to do the same mistakes that I did, you can leapfrog some of that stuff and so become part of the community would be my first step.

The second step would be make sure you have a chief people officer who truly gets this, and that, by the way, is also how you assess whether a chief people officer is really good or not. If you have one great, lean in to it, if you do not consider if this is the right time to look for other career opportunities. Because the HR team is moving in that direction and so you need to be with a chief people officer who gets that otherwise you are at risk of getting left behind. So that would be my second thing.

Then the third thing would be start small. You do not have to have that all singing, all dancing, set up, get some wins on the board and start with one single thing that the business really cares about. It could be safety, could be productivity, could be various other things and then focus on that and come back with intelligent insights and actions that actually inform that conversation and help make better decisions. Then you can build on that and then you can get into the more funky stuff later on. So those would be my initial thoughts on that.

David Green: Well, I definitely owe you a beer when I am down in Australia next for giving a very kind shout out, so thank you for that.

So this leads onto the last question that we are asking all our guests on the show at the moment. AI and automation, we have talked about it a little bit anyway, but do you see them as an opportunity or a threat to HR?

Thomas Rasmussen: Both to be honest, it depends on how they are applied. It is a double edged sword so to speak, so used appropriately, a huge opportunity, but if you do not you can do a lot of damage. The analogy I use would be, it is a bit like using a power tool. If you know how to use power tools it greatly amplifies your ability to get work done quickly. If you are like me and not very good at using power tools, it also greatly amplifies the impact of your mistake. AI is a bit like that and sometimes it takes a little bit of time before you can actually see it. So, a huge opportunity, I think and we all need to lean into this. You just need to be mindful that we do it in a safe and secure way. In particular bias reputation would be a concern when it comes to AI and predictive modelling, it does not necessarily have to be how it is all done in the past maybe the future looks different. So really setting the right parameters and making sure you get the right testing but that said I am hugely excited about the upsides that AI can bring. So I think it is worth it and to push it into it, you just need to be mindful and to be aware of the potential risks.

David Green: And it might be a bit early to say at the moment, but do you think the whole COVID 19 situation is going to accelerate the use of AI and automation in HR?

Thomas Rasmussen: Yes, definitely. I do not think we are even beginning to comprehend the impact that COVID 19 will have. I just look at the conversations we are having about working from home. We have leapfrogged ten years in a few weeks, right? The impact on flexibility, the type of talent you can attract, how you can connect.

So I think it will leapfrog that and then also COVID really highlighted the need to have data, because you need data when you need to make fast decisions and you do not have all the pieces of information, data will help you steer in the right direction.

I think that will remain even after we return to our new normal.

David Green: Thomas, thank you very much for being a guest on The Digital HR Leaders Podcast and joining us from your evening in Melbourne. It is greatly appreciated. Please can you let listeners know how they can get in touch with you or follow you on social media?

Thomas Rasmussen: So I am on LinkedIn my name is Thomas Rasmussen. I work for National Australia Bank so you can just click the link in there and then we can connect.

David Green: Thomas, thank you very much. It was a pleasure as always, stay safe and stay well.

Thomas Rasmussen: Likewise. Thanks a lot, David.