As technology advances at an unprecedented pace, the future of HR and its people strategies are going to be data-driven. However, as we navigate through this digital transformation, finding the optimal equilibrium between human intervention and AI automation within HR processes is key if we are to effectively harness the potential of these technological advancements.

In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, David Green, and guest Bernard Marr, the author of "Data-Driven HR: How to Use AI, Analytics and Data to Drive Performance," delve deeper into this critical balance and its implications for the future of HR.

Therefore, listeners can expect to learn more about:

• Insights into how HR is transitioning towards a data-driven approach, highlighting the pivotal role of AI, analytics, and data in reshaping HR strategies;

• Real-world examples and use cases where the synergy between human expertise and AI automation is most beneficial in HR;

• The ethical considerations surrounding the integration of AI in HR, ensuring fairness, transparency, and compliance;

• The transformative potential of immersive technologies like VR and the metaverse in enhancing the employee experience;

• How AI is revolutionising the field of people analytics and enabling HR professionals to make more informed decisions;

• The essential skills that both current and future HR and people analytics professionals and leaders should cultivate to thrive in this era of rapid technological advancement;

• The pivotal role of HR in redefining workforce skillsets for effective collaboration with AI and emerging technologies

This episode is for current and aspiring HR and people analytics leaders seeking valuable insights into striking the balance between data-driven decision-making and human intervention, as well as understanding the transformative potential of AI, analytics, and immersive technologies within HR.

[0:00:00] David Green: Technology is advancing at an incredible pace.  Just the other week, Elon Musk's startup, Neuralink, successfully implanted the first brain chip on a live human being.  And it was only in November 2022 that ChatGPT was released to the public.  By December 2023, ChatGPT had over 180 million users.  The bottom line is technology is moving at an unprecedented speed, and its impact on the workforce is inevitable.  From automation and AI to virtual reality and chatbots, HR and people analytics leaders need to stay ahead of the curve in order to remain competitive. 

To discuss this fascinating topic today, I am joined by Bernard Marr, author of more than 20 books, including the brilliant Data-Driven HR.  Bernard is a successful business influencer and expert who writes and talks prolifically about future trends, business skills, artificial intelligence, big data and blockchain.  Bernard's superpower is his ability to take often complicated concepts and distil them into a language that everyone can understand.  In this episode, Bernard and I will dive into the potential benefits and challenges of incorporating technology into HR practices.  We discuss the importance of finding a balance between data-driven decision-making and human expertise, as well as the ethical implications of using AI in HR processes.  We also discuss the importance of upskilling and reskilling employees to keep up with the rapid changes in technology, and how HR leaders can leverage this technology to improve employee experience and engagement.  So, if you're ready to explore the endless possibilities of a data-driven HR function then let's get started.

Bernard, welcome to the show, I'm thrilled to speak with you today.  Could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background and perhaps for a twist, share one surprising fact about yourself that people listening might not know? 

[0:02:16] Bernard Marr: Very good.  First of all, thank you so much for having me on your podcast, I'm really looking forward to having a good chat.  I grew up in Germany, then studied at Cambridge.  I then got a job offer after I finished my dissertation there, so I thought, "This is great", I stayed at Cambridge.  Then, the department I worked for moved from Cambridge to Cranfield School of Management where I spent ten years.  I don't think I was truly ever an academic at heart, I was always a practitioner, and Cranfield was great for me because they gave me time every week where I could do my own consulting work, I could focus on my own writing, and after some time I thought, "Actually, I don't need the academic distraction, I just want to write and work with companies". 

So, over ten years ago, I just left the university settings and started working for myself, and now I do three things basically: I help organisations in practice, working with boards, helping them with their strategy, with their digital transformation; second thing is, I write, I have written 24 books, I write a regular column in Forbes, I write for my own blog; and I do speaking, so I do lots of teaching and speaking engagements.  And the surprising fact is that I love wine and I have actually just started a little wine website just as a little side hobby.  I think it's my midlife crisis!  I needed something else to engage me and I started learning about wine and I actually really like the intellectual challenge of it.  So, I can't actually remember when I last spent some time in a classroom learning something proper, and I've done that, and then I thought, "Actually, why don't I share some of the things that I'm learning?" and I love it, so that's the surprising fact.

[0:04:17] David Green: That is fantastic.  I spent seven years living in the south of France so my wife and I also learned a little bit about wine, although we're very biased towards French wine, it has to be said.  And on the writing side, Bernard, you've built up a formidable reputation as a futurist that's looking really at the technology that's going to impact the workplace in the future.  And over the years, I think you've predicted a lot of the stuff that we're seeing now happening, certainly in analytics and AI, and I certainly have always enjoyed your writing, and in particular the recently published second edition of your book, Data-Driven HR.  For listeners can you provide a synopsis of the book? 

[0:05:01] Bernard Marr: Sure.  So, the first edition of Data-Driven HR was a massive success, I think it became a bestseller in lots of different countries.  And then Kogan Page asked me, "Can you do a new edition?" I think four years afterwards.  I don't really like doing second editions because I think it's sometimes just easier just to rewrite this, and this is what I ended up doing with this book.  I pretty much wrote an entirely new book because so much has changed in the world of HR and especially with the rise of artificial intelligence and generative AI.  So, we changed the subtitle to include AI in it and it's really a book that for me looks at what is the current state of art in HR, especially around technology, around the use of data, around AI, how it is going to transform HR, also looking at some of the challenges, some of the pitfalls that organisations need to be aware of, and then looking at lots of practical examples. 

These are the kind of books I want to read.  I want to see, what are companies actually doing in the real world.  So, I talk about how organisations are using AI and data in HR in practice, and then I talk about, "Okay, now how do we make this work?"  So, I cover things like, how do we create a data-driven culture in our organisation; how do we build the right skills; how do we choose the right technology to actually deliver all of this?

[0:06:43] David Green: So, through your extensive research and experience in the field, how is the growth of AI reshaping HR strategies and doing that to better support businesses today, not just doing it for the sake of reshaping HR, but doing it to better support businesses? 

[0:07:01] Bernard Marr: Yeah, for me, AI is the most powerful technology humans have ever had access to, and what I'm seeing is that it's transforming pretty much every business function, including HR.  I am passionate about HR and the people side of the business because I think businesses without people don't exist, and what I'm seeing is that this function is being transformed.  But this is part of a transformation that, as you know, has been going on for a long time, from a move from a much more administratively-focused HR function to a much more strategic HR function.  And for me, this is where AI really plays in strongly, that it can help us automate many of the administrative tasks, and many of the tasks that take up lots of time in the HR department, but don't really add massive value from HR people into the organisation. 

So, what I'm seeing is, we can now use it to actually improve this employee experience.  I think lots of HR teams are scarred from previous automation experiences where they try to instal a chatbot, let's say, to help answer HR questions, and previous AIs were just not up to the task.  Whereas now, we have generative AI that is absolutely amazing at contextualising things, on personalising things, on understanding things.  So, for me, the improving employee experience is probably the key.  And there are huge opportunities to use AI to personalise the skills development, the training aspect. 

Just one example, now we have generative artificial intelligence that can create amazing content.  So, you can just upload all your HR policies, all your training manuals to a server, that server can learn and then can help people understand it and you can have a conversation with them.  But it can not only create text, it can also create images and videos and make up people.  So, if you wanted your AI trainer to be your celebrity crush or anyone that you can think of, that can be your trainer, that can be completely customised and personalised to you.  I see this being used in recruitment at the moment to streamline some of this.  I have some serious concerns about how some organisations are using it, because I think there's a really important balance we need to get right between the human touch and the application of AI. 

But there's some really good examples of companies, like Marriott, for example, creating games that you can play to run hotels, and people that then are really good at this game could potentially be job candidates for the hotel group.  And then I think safety and wellbeing, there's a real potential use case in HR.  And for me, HR has a really important role to play in pushing wellbeing in organisations.  And there's a huge application of generative AI in particular in mental health, and what some of the research found is that people are actually more open when they talk to an AI rather than a real human being, because they feel less judged and they feel that they can be more open.  So, there are again interesting applications around this where in Finland, I know that some companies have created an app that anonymously asks people about their health and wellbeing, and is then able to predict that someone is not well and then suggest things that they could do.  Yeah, so lots of applications. 

[0:11:05] David Green: Yeah, I mean almost, I guess, one of the challenges is, "Okay, what's important within our organisation, and let's try and focus on that".  To that point, Bernard, you mentioned there as well that all business functions are being transformed by AI.  What can HR learn from other business functions that are maybe a little bit ahead of HR when it comes to this, and what can they learn from their successes? 

[0:11:34] Bernard Marr: Yeah, so that I think the worst approach you can have is this FOMO approach, this Fear Of Missing Out, where you see everyone talks about AI, everyone is using AI.  So, I think taking a step back is really important.  The other important point is not to fall into the efficiency trap.  So, for me, the use of AI shouldn't just be about cutting jobs, cutting costs, but it should be about making things better.  And this is where, as you said, it has to start with the strategy, and I work with lots of organisations, helping them to create AI strategies for the entire organisation for the HR teams, and for me the starting point has to be, "Okay, what are you actually trying to achieve here?"

I think we live in a world where HR has never been more important.  I think the whole AI wave is transforming our organisation so massively that the role of HR is actually to help the organisation prepare for this, prepare the workforce for this, reskill, retrain, make sure they are ready for this.  And so, the starting point has to be your strategy, but it's almost a step before then, or once you've looked at your strategy, then you then say, "Okay, is this the right strategy?"  Because I've been called into organisations where we look at the existing strategy and the existing business model, and they say, "How can we use AI and data and technology to help us improve all of this and deliver this strategy?"  And then you realise, actually the strategy is no longer valid in today's world, because AI is challenging how we do things and what we sell and how we work as organisations in the same way it does this for HR teams. 

So, really important to then reflect on your strategy and once you're clear about this, focus, I think, is the key, that you don't get sidetracked by lots of different pilot studies, try to focus on one or two really important projects that will deliver some strategic value, but also then have one or two quick wins where you say, "Okay, we can implement this, this will make a real difference, it can show that AI has a place in our department, in our organisation".

[0:14:05] David Green: You talked about a couple of areas, like wellbeing and mental health and recruiting, where AI can really support HR, but how does this affect the role of HR professionals and the programmes that it delivers to leaders and employees, as well as how it supports the rest of the organisation around their AI transformation?

[0:15:19] Bernard Marr: Yeah, it's a good question, and you're absolutely right that HR has this unique role.  If you worked in marketing, you would think, "Well, how can we use AI to improve our marketing?"  In HR, you look at how can we deliver our HR services, but also has a huge implication, a much wider role in transforming the organisation and getting ready for it, which I think is probably even more important.  And because of that, what this means is that HR teams should automate as much of the really non-value added activities or the things that AI can now do.  So, if you think about what do HR teams do nowadays, there's a legal requirement, all of this, the legal side can be automated, AIs can do this really well.  Then, there is a support role, helping people understand about their pensions, about their holiday allowances, and so on.  Again, this can be very easily outsourced as there are not huge risks involved in this.  There are lots of powerful tools out there that can do this. 

So, this now means that actually it frees up HR teams to do the more strategic, the important things.  And for me, the most strategic function at the moment for HR teams is actually planning for the future, understanding how their organisation is going to change, and how the skills their organisation will need are going to change.  And what we are seeing is that generative AI in particular, I was just at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the IMF launched a report there that basically is a massive research report that looked at jobs across the world.  And what they found is that 40% of all jobs in the world are susceptible to AI competition, and this goes up to 60% in developed countries.  I don't think we've seen anything like this ever before.  So, for HR teams, this demo strategic role to really figure out, "How do we transform or help to transform our organisation to get ready for this; what people will we need in the future; what skills will we need in the future; and how do we prepare for that?"

[0:17:47] David Green: Yeah, which actually, as you say, is massive.  I mean when you think about 40% of jobs in any company, you know, if you've got a company of 200,000 people, that's 80,000 jobs that are going to change.  That's a massive analysis around workforce planning, what jobs --

[0:18:04] Bernard Marr: Yeah, and I was recently talking to the CEO of Indeed, the big job site, and they did similar research, and they actually found that 100% of jobs that are advertised on Indeed, between 50% and 80% of those job skills will be delivered by AI in the future.  So, again this means that we will see a massive augmentation of jobs.  Our jobs will change and the role of HR is to help us get ready for that. 

[0:18:42] David Green: Yeah.  And I suppose when you put that also against the fact that working populations in many developed countries, you talked about 60% of roles in developed countries, look at the G7; working populations are actually shrinking, so there are huge challenges around supply.  And then on the opposite side, on demand, demand is going to go up for those skills.  And then that's why, I guess, a lot of this huge focus around reskilling and upskilling your current employees, rather than just the traditional way of going out and buying those skills on the open talent market. 

[0:19:15] Bernard Marr: Absolutely.  And the other function that HR teams perform for organisations to almost help the organisation understand the whole workforce, so it's about analysing, reporting, it's about performance management, and this is another side where AI excels.  We now have these large language models, like ChatGPT and others, and they have been trained on words, but for some unknown reasons, they are also really good at analysing data, and this is something actually we don't really understand why.  But they are much better at analysing data than anything we've seen before.  So again, this helps HR teams who sometimes don't necessarily love data analysis, to analyse data and extract those insights in a much more human way, where they can almost have a conversation with their data saying, "Okay, who are our employees most at risk of churning?" whatever question you have, the AI can then go away look at your data and analyse it for you.  And this again is taking a massive burden off HR teams.

[0:20:31] David Green: We've talked a lot about automation.  What do you feel the right balance is between human intervention and AI automation in HR processes?

[0:20:40] Bernard Marr: I think the really important point is to figure out which bits AIs can do very well and people are happy with, and where do we need people.  And I think, especially in roles that involve empathy or where you look at particularly sensitive HR matters, I think it's really important to have access to people.  And for me, this is a bit of a trial-and-error project where you say, "Which bits are people comfortable?"  So, if you asked me ten years ago, "Will people be comfortable to talk to an AI about their mental health?" I would probably question this and have said, "Actually, I would probably think they need a person to do that".  What I find really interesting is that now we're seeing research that shows the complete opposite.  So, I think it comes back to what people are comfortable with, and I think it's really important to ask people and get their feedback, "Are you happy to use the AI?  Is this working for you?"  And if not, figure out how we do this. 

There's one aspect in particular that I have concerns about when we think about performance management, for example.  This balance we need to get right between an AI tracking your performance and reporting it, I would find this very creepy and uncomfortable.  But if we use the AI to help me personally understand my performance and give me some comparative data, but not share this with anyone else, I would probably quite like this and find this motivational.  So again, getting the balance right in recruitment I think is a massive issue.  If we simply outsource our recruitment to an AI, that is dangerous, because we've seen this in companies that have had lots of problems where the AI was biased towards certain genders or races and other things. 

So, what we need to do is use AI in the right way.  So, AI in recruitment, for example, is really good at finding potential candidates that have skills that you might not have looked at before.  They are really good at helping to assess certain skills by running games, for example, something Unilever has been doing for a long time, where they say, "Okay, I want to understand the risk appetite of candidates", and they then create little online games that help people assess or help to understand what your risk appetite is.  So, these are really good, but I think at some point you still need the human touch in recruitment, and I think we are a long way away from AIs being able to do all of this.

[0:23:29] David Green: Yeah, I think really what we're talking about is augmentation, isn't it, not necessarily full automation, and that kind of blend between the human and the AI.  If you look at, you mentioned there, some of the games that Unilever, I think you mentioned Marriott as well, that it simulates what it's like to manage a hotel, we consider this quite an immersive approach to recruitment selection, I guess.  If we look at things like virtual reality and the metaverse, how do you envision transforming the employee experience, especially as teams maybe become more hybrid and more geographically dispersed?

[0:24:07] Bernard Marr: Yeah, I think it has a big role to play in the future.  I don't think we are 100% sure yet what this will look like, but at the moment we are seeing lots of early versions of this, be this virtual reality, augmented reality, versions of it.  There are some applications where this is being embraced, and others where I think has huge potential.  I have been lucky enough to try out some of the headsets that are coming out soon, be this one from Apple or HTC, and they are mixed-reality headsets, they are much lighter and I find them super-exciting because you can look through them, people can see your face.  I think in Apple's case, the glasses have cameras that look inside the glasses, so they can see your eyes and your eye movement.  And so when you're on a Teams call, for example, people won't actually see your glasses on.  The AI will take the glasses away and people will see your facial expressions, which I think is really cool.  But it would give people a much more immersive experience potentially, where if we wanted to have this chat somewhere on a mall or in the jungle or on a beach, we could do that if we wanted to.  And if people wanted to watch us have this conversation in their living room, they could do that as well.  So, this is interesting.  I think it will make remote working much more lifelike.  I think this is what we are trying to achieve here. 

But then there are companies, like Accenture, who have embraced this really well.  So, they have created something called the Nth floor, which is their VR onboarding world.  So, anyone who joins Accenture can put VR goggles on, or you don't have to, you can just go into this, and you have this virtual onboarding experience where you can experience everything.  Especially in the training environment, I think it's really powerful.  I know that the London Underground is using virtual reality to train their engineers, because before they send them into the dark tunnels and onto the tracks to repair something, they can actually test drive this in virtual reality.  We're seeing this in healthcare where surgeons can actually take the data from a CT scan to then almost try out a surgery on your digital twin, which is quite interesting.  So, companies like GE are using this in their own training environment. 

Then there are examples like a US baseball team that try to recruit players.  And what they said, they created this really interesting immersive experience.  So, they send people a VR headset and say, "Okay, check this out.  What would it feel like to play for our baseball team?"  And you put the glasses on and you actually see what it feels like driving on the highway to the stadium, what the fan interaction will be like.  And I think this is again something, getting a feel for what will it be like to work in an organisation, almost virtually placing you in the office, seeing that, "Do I like this environment?  Do I fit into the culture?" I think has huge potential.  So, there are lots of things.  And what I'm excited about is that this emergence of generative artificial intelligence is now giving this whole, I don't like the term metaverse, but the immersive internet a real push, because for a small company, say, we want to create a virtual floor of our company, that would have been really difficult.  Now, I can write a few prompts on into my generative AI and say, "Create a virtual version of my office, take those pictures and videos of my office and create that", and it will just do this for you. 

So, there's huge potential.  We're not quite there yet.  I think the biggest roadblock is that people haven't got headsets and we have to see.  I can see in the future that glasses, smart glasses of some sort will replace our tablets and our phones, but we're still a few years away from that.

[0:28:36] David Green: I know and that kind of vision of what you paint is really interesting.  You can see how that is transforming in learning, onboarding in the examples that you gave, potentially recruiting as well. 

[0:28:49] Bernard Marr: Yeah, I had a really cool experience recently.  I was doing a presentation for a US telecom company and they wanted me to give a keynote in Singapore and in Sydney and I somehow couldn't make this work, and they wanted to try out technology.  So, I was in a 3D studio in London where they basically captured me 3D, and then they projected me as a hologram onto the stage in Singapore and in Sydney simultaneously in front of a live audience.  And that was an amazing experience where they felt that I was there, I felt I was there, but I wasn't.

[0:29:32] David Green: How do you see AI transforming the field of people analytics itself?

[0:30:27] Bernard Marr: I think it could potentially transform it completely, because I think the people analytics function has been working for the last 10, 15 years in trying to make people more data-driven, more data-savvy.  Analytics has been brought into this.  What we are now seeing is that generative AI has this amazing capability to analyse data, and what we are seeing now is this ability to move from a pull to a push concept.  So, in the past, we had to pull information out of our systems.  We needed to understand what data is there, how can we analyse this data, how do we then turn this into a meaningful insight and how do we report this.  With generative AI at the moment, it can actually look at your data and monitor and identify any abnormalities and then say, "Hey, this looks interesting, you might want to look at this", and create a report for you.  And then, if you then don't like this report and say, "Can you give me some graphs?" it can do this for you.  So, we're moving from a pull to push. 

That means this whole capability of generative AI means it democratises the access to analytics.  So, instead of having an analytics department in HR that spends a lot of time thinking, "How do we best present this information?" anyone in the organisation can simply ask questions and they can then have the data presented to them in whatever format they like.  So, if you are the CEO, and you want to understand some of the people issues in your organisation, and you don't like text, but you like graphs, or someone likes numbers over graphs, the AI can produce the data in whatever format you like and you can tweak it until you're happy, or you can say, "I don't really quite understand this, can you explain this in layman's terms?"  So, this whole conversation with data is completely transforming HR.  And again it's pushing it to a more strategic level, so actually asking the right questions would become more important than the ability to turn data into insights. 

Another area that I'm quite excited about is synthetic data.  So, whenever we talk about HR data, that data is one of the most sensitive data in our organisation.  And we need to make sure this is protected, that we make sure there's not access or stolen by anyone.  What we can now do is we can use, again, generative AI to create synthetic fake data that is based on your real data but can't be traced back.  And this then allows you to share this data, make it openly available, analyse it differently.  So, there are lots of things, I think.  For me, I'm seeing a complete transformation over the next five to ten years of how people analytics will be done in organisations. 

[0:33:37] David Green: Let's then look at HR professionals in general, I mean it's almost like an intelligence revolution that you're painting there.  What skills do you believe that existing and maybe future HR professionals and HR leaders will need that maybe they don't have at the moment to be successful?  You mentioned one, the ability to ask good questions; I think that that's definitely one, but what are some of the other skills you think they'll need.

[0:34:02] Bernard Marr: Yes, actually I wrote an entire book about this, called Future Skills, because this is a question I get asked pretty much after every talk I give, and I thought actually I have three children and what do they need to focus on.  And whereas we've pushed for data literacy and tech literacy for a long time, these are still important skills, but they're literally 3 technical skills in my book out of those 20 and the rest are all truly human skills that make us different from machines, because when it comes to data analysis, we can't really compete with machines, they will do this better.  So, what we need is we need HR leaders to understand technology and understand how AI is advancing, how our internet will become more immersive in the future, the importance of data for all of this, that's really important. 

But the skills that they need, which I feel lots of HR professionals traditionally have excelled at, are the human, the soft skills: do they have empathy; have they got emotional intelligence; have they got interpersonal communication skills; are they good at problem-solving, good at critical thinking?  And for me, HR leaders, if I had to pick two skills or two mindsets that I think encapsulate a lot of this, for me it's humility and curiosity.  If you have enough humility to say, "Actually, I don't understand everything and I want to learn", and the curiosity to then do this, that then pushes you towards this continuous learning mindset.  I think those are the key skills that any HR team and any HR leader needs to foster.  So, realise actually I don't know everything, there's so much happening out there, this is going to change our department, it's going to change how we work, and I need to continuously learn and develop to keep up to date with this. 

What I'm predicting is that we're currently entering this hyper-innovation cycle, where we've had previous industrial revolutions that were usually driven by one technology, be this electricity or steam.  And today, we have so many different technologies.  We have virtual reality, we have gene technology, we have artificial intelligence, we have quantum computing.  So, they are all enhancing each other, and so what we see is a world that will innovate faster than ever.  So, keeping on top of this is more important than ever.

[0:37:11] David Green: You talked about the skills that HR professionals and HR leaders need themselves, so then turning that slightly differently, how should HR itself lead in helping the business redefine the workforce skillsets for effective collaboration with AI? 

[0:37:27] Bernard Marr: Yeah, very similarly.  So, what you want is you want to find the skills and build the skills in the organisation that complement intelligent machines, so you get the best of both worlds.  Personally, I don't think you should massively focus on maths and analytics because this is something machines can do extremely well.  And again, focus on the softer side, the creativity, the complex problem-solving.  For me, critical thinking is hugely important because we now live in a world where generative AI can create lots of fake content.  We've just had this in the US where someone cloned Joe Biden's voice and then made calls to get people not to vote at a certain day for some of the primaries.  So, questioning where information comes from and the validity of data is really important. 

For me, a really good way of thinking about this is that you look at your organisation and what are you doing at the moment and what your core skills are, and then almost try to dissect those core skills and say, "Okay, which part of these can AIs do and which do we need a human for?" and then focus on those humans.  And another really important skill is being able to delegate to machines.  So, how do you successfully work alongside and with these machines?  Because one way of looking at this is that they give you superpowers.  And the humans, and there was again a really good quote, I forgot who said this, at the World Economic Forum, I think it was the CEO of a coding organisation, and he said, "The competition for your jobs in the future will not be AIs, it will be humans that use AI really effectively".  So, this is what you want to create in your organisation, is creating an environment where people use all of this immensely powerful technology but complement this with the human skills to create superhuman skills. 

[0:39:38] David Green: It's really interesting, and actually a of those skills that you've talked about, those softer skills, a lot of those are skills that you wouldn't associate with consultants, you know, be able to problem-solve, be able to get to the real question that you need to be able to answer, critical thinking, and it's quite interesting actually because certainly when we look at the composition of people analytics teams, the ones that are delivering value on a more consistent basis do have that consulting front end, so they're really diagnosing what are the key challenges that they should be focusing the work on.  And I'm not going to predict because it's a dangerous thing to do, but if you were looking at the composition of people analytics and maybe HR teams in the future, you will probably see more people with consultant skills and less people maybe with the actual skills to do the analysis, because the technology is actually going to do a lot of that analysis for them. 

[0:40:29] Bernard Marr: Yeah, and one of the things I talk about in the book is that I believe our organisational structures will change in the future and also the way we work.  I like this idea of a porous organisation that lets in other people, and so the boundaries of organisations will become much more fluid, and boundaries of teams will become much more fluid, where people bring in skills and work in a much more dynamic fashion.

[0:40:58] David Green: I was going to say, we're starting to see that a little bit with the introduction of talent marketplaces and that kind of internal gig workers.  But I think what you're talking about there is that potentially would be extended and maybe that would be organisations maybe sharing talent with each other perhaps. 

[0:41:13] Bernard Marr: Yeah, I guess if you think about how your own job has evolved and how my job evolves, this is to some extent what I do.  I go into organisations, help them for a while, sometimes stay with them from the outside in.  Those are the environments we need in the future to flourish.

[0:41:33] David Green: So, I'm going to ask you this question, I'm going to ask you to gaze into your crystal ball a little bit, Bernard, and I know you like to look three to five years out and I think that's sensible at the moment, we can't look beyond that I don't think.  Where do you see the future of AI heading for HR and people analytics, principally for HR?

[0:41:51] Bernard Marr: Yeah, so for me, some of the things we've already covered.  So, I think it's the advancements in generative AI that will become much more context sensitive.  This means that they can personalise everything in any way possible.  That has huge implications.  I think AI-driven employee wellbeing programmes I think is something I would predict to see more of.  And then something we touched on is the advanced predictive analytics.  So, instead of moving from descriptive analytics, which we see a lot in HR, to an environment where you go to a world where you predict what might happen in the future.  And you have this much more immersive world of analysing data that is democratised, where you ask questions and you go back and ask for explanation.  So, there's an interactive way of analysing data. 

The other thing I'm seeing is these more immersive learning environments.  We've seen this initially in applications, or when astronauts train, when surgeons train, because of the costs involved with generative AI, the costs of creating something like a digital twin will become so easy.  I was talking to a retail company recently and they were talking about virtual try-ons.  And so, if you want to buy a new item of clothing, online retail doesn't work at the moment because you see someone that looks completely different to you wearing this, a completely different body shape.  And in the future, you can simply take your phone to take a scan of you that will give the AI a complete understanding of your body shape.  And then you can try those garments on and you put yourself in an environment saying, "What will this look like when I go to this party?  And what will this look like when I sit on my desk?"  And we can translate this into the learning environment, where we learn completely differently in this immersive world, where we have almost a digital replica of the real world where we can try things out, and this has I think a huge potential for organisations.

[0:44:13] David Green: I mean, yeah, we're really only at the early stage in using a lot of this technology at the moment, aren't we?  So, the next few years promise to be fairly exciting.  So, Bernard, this is a question we're asking every guest in this series of the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  What are the top three ways you believe that HR can play a pivotal role in creating a thriving organisational culture? 

[0:44:40] Bernard Marr: So, for me, what organisations need to do first is inclusivity, they need to promote organisational learning, and they need to align organisational values with employee behaviour.  And if you get those three things right, you will have an amazing culture in your organisation.

[0:45:00] David Green: And technology can support that as well.

[0:45:04] Bernard Marr: Yeah, technology is a huge element of this.  So, embracing it, you want to create this open culture and this continuous learning culture, where you are able to try things, embrace technology absolutely.

[0:45:18] David Green: Well, Bernard, thanks very much for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  I've really enjoyed our conversation, I've learned a lot, I've written a few notes down and we're going to check a few things out to learn more about some of the topics that we've discussed.  Before we end the conversation, how can listeners connect with you on social media, follow the column that you do in Forbes, and I know you've got a tremendous range of materials that you put on LinkedIn as well; and also, find out more about the Data-Driven HR book, and I believe you have another book coming up on generative AI as well? 

[0:45:56] Bernard Marr: Yes, this is actually a book that of all the books I've written, that one is the closest to my heart because I believe that generative AI will have the biggest transformative impact on our world.  So, this is called Generative AI in Practice, where I talk about the implications for businesses, for jobs, for society and so on.  A good starting point if anyone wants to get in touch is go to bernardmarr.com, where you can find all my content, or find me on any of the social platforms.  Just search for Bernard Marr on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on X, on Insta, or check out my podcast.  I have a Future of Business and Technology podcast where I talk to amazing people.

[0:46:41] David Green: Brilliant.  Well, we'll put the links to those in the show notes and it just leaves me to say, Bernard, thank you very much.  I look forward to actually the books.  I think the book on generative AI comes out at the end of March, I believe. 

[0:46:53] Bernard Marr: It does, yeah. 

[0:46:54] David Green: And I know you can already find it on Amazon and pre-order it, for those that are interested in doing it, and you can actually buy the second edition of Data-Driven HR via Kogan Page and on Amazon and everywhere else you buy your books as well.  So, Bernard, thank you very much. 

[0:47:10] Bernard Marr: Thank you, David, and that was a real pleasure.