This week’s podcast guest is Tina Kao Mylon, Chief Talent and Diversity Officer at Schneider Electric. In this episode, Tina talks about how Schneider Electric uses their talent marketplace platform to not only match individuals to career opportunities, but also to mentors, striking the right balance between being technology enabled and human centric.

Throughout this episode Tina and I also discuss:

• Schneider Electric’s pragmatic and applied high tech, high touch, approach to culture and leadership transformation

• How Schneider Electric is using employee voice to help build a flexible and hybrid work approach that is inclusive of everyone

• How data and analytics ensures the success of Schneider Electric’s unique multi-hub model

• The ways in which Schneider Electric’s talent marketplace model, disrupts manager’s understanding of work and careers and democratises opportunities for the workforce

You can listen to this week’s episode below, or by using your podcast app of choice, just click the corresponding image to get access via the podcast website here.

Interview Transcript

David Green: Today, I am delighted to welcome Tina Kao Mylon, Group Chief Talent and Diversity Officer at Schneider Electric, to The Digital HR Leaders Podcast. Tina, it is great to have you on the show. Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to you and your role at Schneider Electric?

Tina Kao Mylon: Sure, and happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me, David, it's a real honour and a pleasure to be with all of you. So, with your introduction, indeed, my job is all things talent and all things diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is a pretty broad remit, but a really fun role. And in that capacity, I am overseeing for the group, everything around talent. So, talent acquisition, branding, talent management, learning, as well as the diversity, equity, inclusion, and wellbeing space.

And I am based in Boston, which is one of our global hubs.

David Green: Yeah, we are going to talk about the four global hubs, so we will go on to the question as it's quite a unique setup that you have got at Schneider Electric, and I think it drives a lot of the things you do around talent and diversity and inclusion as well. As you said, it's a big remit, I guess it is good that you are linking all the areas of talent together, in other companies we see it can be quite siloed, so I guess you are providing that glue that links all those areas of talent together and underpinning it with diversity and inclusion throughout the employee lifecycle.

Tina Kao Mylon: I think David, you are absolutely right. I think that is the strategic intent. So, on good days, the synergy is beautiful. We think about people and leadership and talent and technology and culture, altogether and indeed, there are so many synergies across those silos, if you will. And on a challenging day, it's a lot of different topics to juggle, but you know, I'm an optimist and I agree, I think there is a lot of confluence of topics that go together under the portfolio I manage.

David Green: Well, we are going to dig into some of those areas now Tina. Let’s get started by talking about Schneider Electric and the leadership and culture journey that you have been on over the last five years, I know you have been in the company for just over five years, I think.

Can you tell us about the program, how it got started, what the main aims are and, in your view, what it means to be a leader in this rapidly new world that we have been immersed into in the last year and a half?

Tina Kao Mylon: Absolutely. So that is a great first question, quite a meaty one. It has definitely been on my mind, not only in the five years I have been with the company, but certainly as you alluded to in the last 18 months. This whole topic of where leadership and culture, not only due to the pandemic, but certainly enhanced, refined, accelerated, by the pandemic is top of mind for us.

So, if I rewind a little bit, about four or so years ago, we embarked on a very deliberate focus on culture and leadership transformation. And it sounds very high level, it sounds very kind of headliners, but the intention indeed was to say in this environment that our industry finds herself in more agile, more digital, more disruptive. Do we see a material shift in the way we need our culture to respond, i.e., the way we work in practical terms? And also, the way we see our leaders having a disproportional impact on culture, for sure, how we want them to drive. And we launched that four years ago with a set of initiatives, a mandate etc, and I won't go into the details there, I think it is more interesting in the next chapter ahead.

The great thing is we did a deep dive survey in 2017, 2018. We did the same survey just a few months ago with our top 3000 leaders and what we have noticed is, indeed some material shift in how we see our leaders taking on their roles.

We are not there yet. We are a work in progress, but some of the highlights, David, I would say is how do we lead in a more de-centralised, distributed, empowered way. And Schneider being a company of 140,000 people, you can imagine sometimes we still adhere to some pretty traditional command control ways of leading. But in the data, we see definitely a shift from the feedback from the ground up, that leaders were learning to let go, empower, and it is anchored also in our business model, which we will talk about in terms of multi hub.

A second material shift I would highlight, and this relates to then the next chapter, is indeed how we think about leading both with a high touch and a high-tech way. So, while we are very much committed in our industry is dictated by the high tech. Digital, electrification, automation, we know that in this environment, that has accelerated even more recently, we need to lead with care and we need to lead with more collaboration, more connection and more coaching. Now, again, this is not a new topic, but for many of our leaders, it is maybe not part inherent in their DNA. And this was the transformation we have been on.

So, coming to leadership now, what we are trying to do is make sure this is not just a, we tried to change culture by talking about change culture. Actually, we are trying to be quite applied and pragmatic about it. At the end of the day, the tipping point is when we all start behaving differently and we do believe there is a few hard-wiring or anchors that we want to move forward with.

So, one of the things we are about to launch, in a week, is all of our leaders getting spontaneous, upward feedback. So, this is a digital simple tool, but again, really saying, hey, these are the new behaviours that we have outlined, and we just communicated that also this month, and we want feedback from all over, especially your direct functional project teams on how you are doing. And to have a very practical application around that.

We also have launched, for all our mid-level to senior leaders, digital coaching. So coaching is a broad term, but we believe that when one receives coaching, one becomes a better coach, right? And that whole feedback of continuous feedback it's quite straight forward, but working that muscle is something that maybe requires a nudge. So, we have just partnered with a start-up. I am quite intrigued by it, it will be a pilot for sure, where we are going to have quite a few of our middle layer and senior leaders embarking on digital coaching.

Those are just two hardwire examples, if you will, of what we are trying to do. But at the end of the day, I think it is indeed really trying to make sure we have this high touch, high tech approach to leading and making sure while we acknowledge things are fast, things are accelerated, things are virtual, things are digital, that human touch, that human connection, and the caring element is still part and parcel of what we are trying to drive.

David Green: And I think it's important that you talked a little bit about the pilot that you are doing, and I know later we are going to talk about your open talent market, which is probably one of the best examples that I have seen, of a talent marketplace. We will class them all as the same brand. But I think that that started as a pilot and I think it is a really good example of, in HR, we have got to be agile as well. We are talking about the company being agile, but we have got to be agile as well, and sometimes running pilots seeing if it works, iterating and then taking it forward.

Now, I guess there has been nothing more than that, in terms of having to be agile as in the last sort of 18 to 20 months, with the pandemic. What I can really hear, listening to you, is that flexibility, that it has kind of been fitting into leadership behaviour in Schneider Electric.

How does that flexibility at work, fit in to what you have just outlined for leaders? And what do employees now expect, now that we are 18, 20 months into the pandemic?

Tina Kao Mylon: It is another very hot, very germane question and thanks for asking, David. Indeed, straight up to our CEO, Jean-Pascal, it has been top of mind for many of us, as we contemplate.

And for us, I think we believe that our approach is quite pragmatic and also, we are trying to find a way, or a philosophy, that is universal to our countries. I know that sounds nearly impossible, but that was the spirit.

So, in Q4 of last year, we did an all-employee global poll, really trying to understand on pragmatic terms, what it means to them. How they imagine work from home, work from office? What does the concept of an office or site even mean to them? Different terms about flexibility. In a nutshell most, so 83%, of our employees wanted that flexibility, i.e., hybrid. So, we did refresh our global flexibility policy last year, with a guidance around a global minimum standard of two days’ work from home. It doesn't mean every employee in every country has to adhere to it, but we wanted to nudge all of our countries to at least prepare and anticipate that.

And there was also some guidelines about, hey, let's not make this process too formulaic. Do you need like three layers of approval? We should make sure there is equity of making sure when people join a meeting from home or an office, there is equity of technology and how to manage the meeting, etc, etc.

That said, we all know and the data shows, that in the external marketplace hybrid is not so easy to implement, in practical terms. But strategically, philosophically, I still think it's the right thing for us.

We have been also very clear, David, we are not work from anywhere, or maybe not yet. And this is part of our business model in our point of view, meaning co-existing with flexible hybrid ways of working. We still believe in the power of face-to-face connections in our hubs and offices. And you know, there is case by case where sometimes people have challenged, what difference does it make? Why can't I work from Hawaii indefinitely now? And our philosophy is, listen, at the end there is still a unique experience of connecting, collaborating with customers and people, colleagues, and we will still maintain those offices and we want you, as best as to your ability, to manage your own unique life and work with your teams to leverage that.

So those things we believe co-exist, right? Still some face-to-face and office presence with this notion of flexible and hybrid,

David Green: And I guess we are all experimenting in all our organisations, and it is great that, I think like a number of companies, you actually at least saw what employees wanted and then reflected that in the hybrid policy or approach that you have got. I guess we are going to keep asking these questions as we go through and it may be interesting to see how employees’ preferences change or may not change, once the health crisis has been averted.

As you said, you have got to look at how do we make it equitable for people to join meetings virtually versus people that are in the office? And how do we make sure that our mobility, our culture, we are inclusive, all these things, which obviously you are looking after all of that within Schneider Electric. For example, how does our policy help us hire and keep our best employees versus some of the competition.

So, I guess in some respects, we are almost at the start of all this, and I know we are going to talk about it again a bit later, but I know Schneider Electric, has a pretty sophisticated people analytics function, that is going to help keep you honest, during this experiment that we are going through.

Tina Kao Mylon: Yeah. I don't think there is a magic formula, but we try to be as data-based and transparent about this master experiment, as you refer to it. I don't think any companies have really nailed it. You also point out, and let's not forget that we are still in the midst of the pandemic, so it is hard to also formulate policies when the reality of health and safety are still a little bit in flux. But I do believe as a broad principle, flexibility is there is no going back on that. And we have to as companies, certainly of Schneider’s size and diversity, if we can't progressively move to that and be ahead of the curve, we do suffer from areas of talent attraction, how we do business in an agile way with customers. So, we need to be quite advanced and constantly iterating and open-minded about that.

David Green: Of course, one of the features of the pandemic is that it is running at different speeds, in different parts of the world, all the time. So, in the UK, for example, there is quite a lot of companies now going back to the office, since September, one, two days, maybe more days, a week depending on the policy there. I know in the US because of the Delta variant, a lot of companies put their return to office plans back on hold until next year.

Now what is quite unique in Schneider is you have a multi-hub model, which you have moved to over the years. I would love if you could talk to that multi hub model, because I think what makes it quite unique is how your leadership team is spread around those hubs as well. It is not like you have hubs in one centre, it really is a proper four hub model, isn’t it?

Tina Kao Mylon: Yeah. I love how you are nailing all our exciting, colourful topics that I am involved with, it’s perfect.

So, when I look back, and I wasn't with the company there, but 15 years ago Schneider Electric's footprint, and I am estimating, but we were roughly 65% turnover our revenues were in Western Europe, France being a heavy one. And same thing for the employee base and the leader base, about 65% were in Western Europe.

So now fast forward a decade and a half, indeed the multi-hub, which is really anchored around global city hubs and India, China, US, and France are the four core hubs. We also have satellites and unit specific hubs. But those really anchor our business footprint in terms of our fast, agile, close to customer, way of operating. And that is indeed part of Schneider's fabric and success in our business.

Then also of course, access to talent in those marketplaces and equity of opportunity, which from my DEI side, is really important. A practical example of that, and I think the listeners will get it really quickly. In the old days, you had to get your passport stamped. You want to become a leader at Schneider, you had to do your full due in Paris, while a beautiful city, maybe not working out for everyone.

These days if you look at, let's start with, as you point out, our executive committee, our leadership team there. We really strive for those global teams, equal distribution across the hubs and indeed you see my boss, who is a Chinese national living in Shanghai, out of one of our global hubs doing that. My peer and rewards is a French person living in Paris. I'm in Boston and an American. So, what I mean is we really do believe in trying to balance those key roles on a team. Sometimes time zones can be a little bit hard to connect, but we still believe it is the most agile, fast way, both in terms of our market and our customers, but also how we work and create equity and opportunity.

So, we do track this David, pretty rigorously in our multi-hub, and we look at three dimensions, we look at the rough distribution of those global leaders. Are we evenly distributed across the regions of the world? We look at also, are we leveraging those hubs so that they are really leveraging those locations that we think are most appropriate for the business. And finally, we do have some guidelines that we prioritise local and regional talents because common sense, when local and regional talents are in those roles and in the pipeline, you build up those marketplaces and those talents. At the same time, we always circulate, and we have global mobility for internationals, but it is clear that we want to continue to build the local pipelines.

So those three principles become part of our philosophy and I know the board, our CEO, and our CHROs are very committed to it.

David Green: It is quite unique. I suppose that sort of model helps when you are responding to a global pandemic, because you have got senior leaders that are close to the ground on what is happening in their particular geography, rather than a group of leaders in the same location.

Tina Kao Mylon: Yeah. I think there's many lessons learned around supply chain setups around the world of how the pandemic has challenged us. I don't know if we have a perfect follow the sun kind of model David, to be honest, but I do sincerely believe that in terms of responsiveness and agility and speed, and also diversity of opinion, I look at my executive committee as a benchmark. You have people not only in different geographies, but of course also different profiles, nationalities, experiences, and meant to say also its 44% women. You really then start to see, hey, it's not so complicated when you bring diverse profiles together, you can create some pretty cool things. In addition to be agile in a local level to respond.

David Green: And representative of your customers and your employees as well.

Tina Kao Mylon: Totally. I love the ambition, it was one of the reasons I joined Schneider, in fact. The role originally was supposed to be based in Hong Kong, where my previous boss was. For my own work, life priorities I wanted to remain in the US, in Boston, and we made that work.

I see the power of it. I see the complexity sometimes, but I think you are right, in terms of workforce of the future, customer base, and overall diversity, it is a model that we believe strongly in, and we will continue to push.

David Green: So, moving on to, I highlighted it a little bit earlier, your open talent market, but generally within HR now we see trends of more technology, more digital disruption, more personalisation with that technology as well, rather than the one size fits all, HR technology and programs we have had in the past.

Can you share a little bit on how Schneider is responding to this?

Tina Kao Mylon: Absolutely. And I know you are an expert in this area, so you probably have many, many benchmarks.

I will start the one, and we have been quite active in partnering with people and telling the story in the marketplace, I guess we are generally just buzzed by it and excited. And I do believe it is a very progressive indicator of the future.

So, we branded ourselves internally Open Talent Market. It is indeed an AI driven, machine learning amplified, technology platform with different types of functionalities. We focus especially on internal projects and matching of supply and demand there. Internal jobs. So permanent jobs that we want to make sure we are making transparent and visible to our employees. And then mentoring.

Then we are building out some of the functionality, the next one is career. So really trying to look at career paths, what does the data tell you. Tina, you are in this role now and based on your profile and skills, given the supply and demand of Schneider, what is the most likely career opportunities you might have and how might you get there.

Now we have been on this journey for a couple of years, a year, and a half ago we went global. So, we went full on. We said, we are in the midst of a pandemic, we have supply demand of labour needs, or project needs that are unbalanced. Let's try it.

So, we launched it globally and today we have around 55,000 employees in the platform. So, it is a pretty big number. Our goal is to double that by next year, so to get everyone using it, everyone learning. And today to date we have around 4,000 projects. So, it is anything from a two-week sprint, we need you to help do some research on X, to a six-month project. We have guidelines around, hey, you shouldn't have it exceed more than 15% of your work time, etc, etc.

And then we also have around 8,000 mentors. So, 4,000 pairs of mentoring matches driven by AI and what your priorities are. And I love this one because about three quarters of it is cross unit, so cross entity and cross border. So, myself, I have six mentees. I am totally tapped out and they are all in different countries and most of them aren't even in HR. So, it has been so cool for me just to get to know some other profiles around the world.

And then we have the job matching. So, it is a massive human experiment within Schneider. I think it is the future of employees taking charge of their career, having more transparency instead of waiting to be tapped on the shoulder and saying, Tina you are ready. And it is very data and digital driven, back to your earlier point.

It also comes with challenges. There is definitely a huge mindset challenge of, oh my gosh, that is indeed an open market so my employee could be looking on their own, for opportunities or projects through the platform. And it also disrupts that, manager defines how long you should be in a position and what is your next job, old-school mentality. But I think it is all for the better.

So, we are still playing with that. Sometimes the matches are a little bit still off, we have to play with the AI. But we are really excited about the platform, and we think it is just a really imaginative way to think about future of work and the reality, frankly, of where employees, especially the next generation, want to go.

David Green: And it is interesting because the more data ingested then hopefully the more accurate the recommendations become anyway. And it seems like a really nice level playing field of clearly, providing benefits to employees by allowing them to see career paths within the organisation, to get involved in projects and as you said, either be a mentor or a mentee with colleagues across the world, as the technology supports that as well. And then from an organisational perspective, if you have got urgent projects that need to be filled or you have got people under-utilised, for example in a global pandemic, you can quickly redeploy them via this technology, into other areas of the business that are busy or seeing higher demand.

So, it gives you that agility and that fluidity that we wouldn't have without technology of this type, because it would be very manual, and it would probably be very location-based. So, you would probably support your teams in Boston, but you wouldn't necessarily get the opportunity to support your colleagues in Hong Kong as much. So yeah, it is really fascinating.

I read something that Josh Bersin, wrote a couple of weeks ago I think, just before the HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas. And he was saying, he has not heard anyone really have a bad word about the talent marketplace or the open talent market. Yes, as you said, there are of course some challenges and challenges around mindset, and obviously making sure that the recommendations are accurate.

Tina Kao Mylon: Of course, digital comes with efficiency. So, we often use one of the data points of, roughly used to take us two weeks to find that open position. Two weeks just to gather the specs and spreadsheets and succession plans. It is two minutes now. So again, quality of hire is still the most important in the end, but if I go from two weeks to two minutes, that is a powerful argument for my business.

So, we have to get better, and you know exactly to your point, once we have reached a tipping point where we all have good data in, where we all are genuinely, honestly, trying to make this work, I think both process technology and also culture, we could achieve something really interesting here at Schneider.

Kind of leads into one of the other big areas that you are looking at, diversity and inclusion. So, the problem with that tap on the shoulder is how inclusive is that, how fair is that, again, I am talking generally across organisations. So, in terms of the open talent market, how does this tie into your diversity, equity, and inclusion work and how is this more fluid approach, more inclusive?

Tina Kao Mylon: So, for sure, in simple terms, we are trying to democratise the career opportunities.

And again, it is first starting with transparency. So, we have never had a system where all jobs were posted. One of my first mandates is actually trying to get all of our leaders to be comfortable with posting a job. They might say, oh, but I already know who is going to take it. Sometimes it is worth just putting it out to bid, if you will, and seeing maybe you get some new discovered talent that you would never heard about, or new profiles.

And then the second thing I think, is really using data to create a more competitive, transparent process. If the AI works right, it should probably be less biased than human error, which tends to still be fraught with certain hidden biases.

Now we have to work both ends, right, in the end, it is still a human decision that decides on the talent. But I do believe the data-driven approach also brings a little bit less bias and more objectivity into it. So, I think that is one of the levers that we always said that this is also very much of building more equitable opportunities within the company in a transparent data-based way.

David Green: Yeah. And as you said, then you have got to validate that and validate that the technology is enabling that level playing field and I guess that is probably something that you are looking at very closely?

Tina Kao Mylon: Yes. We have also been quite careful with this vendor, and many of our other technology platforms of course, we also know AI can be quite inherit and have some bias, you are absolutely right. So, this is something we do with stress tests and just working with the partner, to make sure we are testing and looking at the data that we don't see material record of that. But indeed, human or machine, I think both cases we have to pay attention to that.

David Green: Obviously this is, as you talked about, a bit of a mindset shift for leaders and then they are stepping into this digital world, and I am sure you are training them for it and helping them along the way.

What are some of the skills that you are finding leaders are needing in more abundance than they maybe did previously, not just because of the digital world, but maybe employee expectations have increased, people are looking for a bit more flexibility at work as well. I guess we have been seeing that play out in the last 20 months or so, what are some of the skills, competencies, and capabilities, you are looking to build on in leaders around that?

Tina Kao Mylon: So, we started our conversation talking about this shift and we have been terming at leadership in the next normal, because the normal is never static. One of the key themes is what we are saying is being a coach. So, coaching and feedback. Very much straightforward, but how a day-to-day leader is doing that instead of tell and instruct, it's really more about facilitating coaching, listening, trying to help an individual employee continue to perform better and reach their potential. That is a very different way for us, I would say, and definitely a learning opportunity for us.

The other thing I think that is also important for us is indeed back to the equity and inclusion story. Our leaders are leading, not only more dispersed teams, more virtual teams, and also more diverse teams and this sensitivity to different profiles, different perspectives in a virtual manner. We have had a very instructive and well-received training just about how to lead in new, smarter, and more inclusive ways. And it is as pragmatic sometimes, as having to set up a meeting in Teams or Zoom or whatever, that is truly sensitive to time zones, different learning preferences, different way now that using some of the functionalities so people can raise their hand. It sounds so basic, but you and I know, day to day it is not so easy. You have to build that muscle and build those habits to do that. So that has been another dimension in leadership capabilities that we are really focused on.

And then the last thing, if I may just add quickly, I think for us we really are trying to get our leaders to be more disruptive and to do it in a faster way.

So, nothing unusual here, but back to just the fast pace of change for the globe, but also for our industry. Just the move towards electrification and software and different ways to think about energy consumption. Our customers are no longer hiring us to make a data centre more efficient, they are hiring us to build the efficiencies and to bring in the technology, but also to be more sustainable.

So, it is just a different value proposition and not that speed or disruption will solve the whole thing, but we want our leaders to think even more in that, Okay, we have got to move. It is more like listening and waiting for our customer. Really trying to shape the future in the market, along with our customers and partners.

David Green: Great. This is good. And you have talked about, I think you said 44% of your global executive leadership is female. You have gone public and shared a sustainability index for 2025, that is 50, 40, 30. So that is a workforce that is 50% female, a manager population that is 40% female, and a leadership population that is 30% female. How are you planning to achieve this goal? Not least that you are already overachieving in one area at least.

Tina Kao Mylon: This one is going to be really tough. My own view and in Schneider's view, we don't believe in quotas, just to be clear, we believe in really high ambitions, and this indeed is a high ambition.

So, our goal is indeed, and it is part of what we call our Schneider sustainability impact. So that is an external market, externally communicated, ambition, up to 2025. It is audited. It is tied into the bonus, actually, our performance on the SSI for most employees. We just issued a first ever sustainability bond, by the way, that includes the 50, 40, 30 ambition. So, I have many factors pushing into our nudges to get this achieved.

Now that said it is indeed ambitions. So, 50 is recruiting 50% gender balance, today we are at 43, just to be transparent, so we have a ways to go. The 40 is the frontline or middle level management of leaders. We want 40% women there. And then 30% is our top management.

Where we will struggle, we know it is the leaky funnel, which is indeed the 40. Today we are only at 26% and that means if you just run the numbers and you calculate your attrition and the velocity by which promotions are happening, we need to dramatically shift and think about how we are going to tackle this one. And it is all down to every decision counts. You can do the numbers, but every decision count on how a leader selects the right, qualified, merit-based employee and hopefully we are able to change the game and the numbers for women.

I don't think, besides of course part of the commitment is to have some teeth around it, so the SSI, like I said, tied to bonus, tied to bonds, etc and very external. The other piece, of course, is all the supporting mechanisms. We know from the data, it does help when you create more flexible, or you have more generous leave, and you have equitable pay. All of those processes’ programs, they materially affect our ability to attract and of course also engage and retain all talents, but especially women. So, we will continue to push on that.

One quick example. We launched our global family leave policy three years ago. At the time it was ahead of the curve, it was leading in our industry. It was really broad, so it wasn't just on maternity, paternity, or parental leave, it included bereavement care, etc. And now we know we need to refresh. We have seen the market catch up. We have seen other companies, competition or otherwise, really progress in hundred percent leave and all these dimensions. So that is an example where we believe in what we did in, we still believe in it, but we know we have to keep iterating to keep up with what our employees need.

And then the other piece is still back to the most difficult probably, mindset piece. At that moment of decision, when someone is trying to select an external hire or internal, are we making sure we are as objective, unbiased, data driven as possible? Are we making sure people are writing job descriptions that are as universal and inclusive as possible? Are we thinking about how profiles of the past, we are an engineering company, so we love engineering degrees and 10 years engineering experience, but for some of these roles do you have to have that degree of technical experience or expertise? Those are some practical measures but at the point of the decision, this is when the education, training, reminders, and nudges, that is what we are really trying to support the countries with.

David Green: So that is where data can come in. If it is an external hire, a great example is, you might have 50 male and female people applying and then there might be a point in the recruitment process where suddenly you get a lot of female applicants, self-dropping out. What is that, as you say, could it be the way that an advert is worded? Could it be the way an assessment is delivered, or any part of the process, and it is understanding that and then trying to do something about it.

And then you talked about the middle layer, are we actually providing equality of opportunity? I don't know if you guys explore with network analytics at the moment, but I have seen a couple of examples where because men in these companies have strong networks, higher up the organisation, it almost blocks their female colleagues, even if they are high performers, from moving up and they leave. From some of these examples I have seen, females are better networkers externally, so they are able to get jobs outside the organisation, but that doesn't solve your problem of trying to help the 50, 40, 30.

Tina Kao Mylon: You are absolutely right, and we don't do network analysis globally, though I love the topic, I would love to introduce that. We do it in some of the key countries.

Your point about the data is spot on. So just as a transparent recent commentary, we convened our DEI advisory board yesterday. So, it is a group of internal leaders representing all different businesses etc and one of the things we looked at is indeed, the recruitment side of this ambition. So, the people we are bringing in, we are pretty encouraged by the percentage of women. We are not at 50% yet, but we have seen incremental, steady, progress year after year. So, we believe we can get to that. At the same time, we have also seen that with this volume of hiring, and we are in growth mode, so we are hiring, so you start to see the data come in. We are not perfect; we are not perfectly equitable when it comes to pay again. So, while in the broad current workforce, we have really equalised pay equity, we haven't solved it, but we believe we are doing a very, very good job. But with the influx of more people joining, we see a few percentage points where there seems to be some delta between what we are hiring men versus women, and we have to then address that.

So, with the volume comes new challenges, but the data was super telling. And the board was like, oh my gosh, we can't just be laser focused and obsessed with just bringing women in the door. You have got to do it with the right support, with the right pay, with the right career conversations. It is a whole network or ecosystem of a strategy versus just a tactic. Exactly right.

David Green: That is interesting, and it leads us to the penultimate question. In all the areas that we have talked about, data is playing a key role it seems, in helping guide decision-making and putting insights at senior level and thinking, okay, wow, we know we have got to do something, or we are doing something well, because it can be both of course. What is the role of people analytics within Schneider Electric? Whether it Is linked to DEI or whether it is linked to some of the other work that you are doing.

Tina Kao Mylon: So, people analytics plays an incredibly important role in our company, and we have made, I have to say, great strides in the last couple of years but also, I think we can all acknowledge it is a work in progress.

One of the things that we have counted on them as partners is, you alluded to it earlier. In a big company like ours, the best way for us is to move fast, move with pilots, use agile, and get proof cases or proof of concepts, at country level then, if it is a beautiful story, we can scale and we think about whether it is applicable global. Now that is just more of the how, but very much with our people analytics friends we count a lot on the whole suite of AI experiments. So, whether it is a chatbot, or NLP, or just interesting analytics, this is the mechanism and the sprint that, at least at Schneider, we need to go.

The open talent market started that way. What we are trying to do with digital talent and skills, which is another project for another discussion, is all about small experimentation with the 20 most critical digital roles that we see for our future. So, we count on people analytics, not just to provide the flat data, but to have the mechanisms of the AI to very much help us.

The second quick thing, I think, is definitely around overall employee experience. Overall, we are really trying to build a more cohesive, cloud-based, integrated way to think about employee experience. But beyond employee experience, I think also thinking about a system of smart data intelligence, how we integrate that both from the user experience, but also how data continues to feed into it. That is something we are just about to launch. And pretty big ambitions next year for an overall enhancement to how we interact with employees on all topics, with a strong foundation of data and AI.

David Green: Right, well, I look forward to hearing more about that then when you launch it.

So, the last question, this is one we are asking everyone on this series, and you have touched on this a little bit, so you might want to sort of summarise some of the words that you have already said.

How can HR help the business identify the critical skills for the future?

Tina Kao Mylon: I almost feel like HR in general, is a little bit behind because the market dynamics and the speed is already dictating that already. So that is one thing we are acknowledging that we need to be a little bit faster and more agile and anticipatory, with data, to think about that.

I guess my simple answer David is focus. And what I mean by that is I think the days of old, we were trying to do master capital S strategic workforce planning and trying to capture everything and I don't think the environment, because it is always changing so fast, we have learned to be much more laser focused.

So indeed, I mentioned the digital roles, everyone is recruiting for digital, the market is hot, retention is challenging. And we have, through data, aggregated the current, but more importantly, the forecasted critical roles that we see, regardless of what unit or entity, what is that pull that we want to focus on? So, we will do a rapid POC in the next six months. Our CEO is mandating, funding, and supporting this, and it is nothing fancy. But the idea is really working with the business on, are these the roles? And then using external data to flash on a granular level, what are the key skills? What's the marketplace tell us? What's the pay? Competitive landscape and all the way down to career and training and up-skilling for those roles.

And that is something we just kicked off in October and we have very clear commitments that we have to have some results by early next year, but that proof of concept will be an interesting way that gives us a snapshot on the most critical roles for business and what they need.

David Green: And as you said, it is that focus, isn't it? Let’s identify the 20 key roles and really focus our efforts on that, rather than trying to be too broad and trying to pick everything off.

Tina Kao Mylon: Yeah, we are trying to get away from a perfect academic exercise, if you will, a little more agile and of course it has to be automated. I really don't want to hand around spreadsheets, so we are also thinking about ways to leverage the open talent market. Because at a granular level, you can declare skills, you can see future skills. So that red thread, if we can connect it to the technology platform, to the business skills needs, we could do something pretty interesting in that space.

David Green: Well, Tina, it has been wonderful speaking to you and learning about the great work that you are leading at Schneider Electric, understanding how the hub model works and even hearing about some of the pilots that you have just kicked off as well. So, thank you for being a guest on the podcast. Can you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you and follow you on social media?

Tina Kao Mylon: LinkedIn. So, it is probably the easiest mechanism, we are quite active users, like many of you, and of course I am happy to make a connection. Look me up @TinaKaoMylon. We are always wanting to learn from other colleagues and practitioners in this space, David.

David Green: That is great. Tina, thanks very much for being on the show and it has been great learning from you.