This week’s podcast guest is Anshul Sheopuri, Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer at IBM Workforce, talking about one of the key skills for HR professionals at IBM, data literacy. As both a business and technical executive at IBM, working in HR, Anshul shares his views with us on both the strategic and technological future of HR, with a particular focus on the application of artificial intelligence across the field. Throughout this episode Anshul and I discuss the five pillars of trustworthy AI and HR and how he is developing a data-driven culture at IBM by celebrating individuals who embody that culture, investing in the right tools and technology to democratise data across the organisation and making it clear which skills are needed, including data literacy. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is Patrick Coolen, Global Head of People Analytics, HR Intelligence and Organisational Design at ABN AMRO, talking about his journey, setting up and evolving his people analytics team at ABN AMRO, over the last eight years. I have known Patrick, for most of that time and one of the main things that has always stood out to me has been his laser sharp focus on delivering value to the business. Throughout this episode, Patrick and I discuss, his brilliant article written together with his colleague Jaap Veldkamp, 8 Big Ticket Items for People Analytics. We look in particular at analytics for personalisation as well as analytics for value and analytics for evaluation and discuss Patrick's journey developing the people analytics team at ABN AMRO over the last eight years, which all started with a focus on advanced analytics and the business. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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This week’s podcast guest is Nicky Hoyland, CEO, and co-founder of Huler who talks about moving away from defining where work gets done and instead focusing on the task at hand, the ultimate goal we are striving towards, and letting people figure out for themselves the best way to do that. As a self-proclaimed work tech nerd, Nicky talks about the role that workplace tech plays in a new world of work, enabling people to get work done in the easiest simplest way possible, so once again, we can focus on the end goal of business, above all else. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, the guest is heard Ernest Ng, Vice President of Global Employee Success Strategy and People Analytics at Salesforce, talking about his team’s approach to managing the workforce, mirroring the approach the company takes to ensure customer success and satisfaction. Throughout our conversation we talk about the role of people analytics in ensuring employee success and the importance of developing a data driven culture, more broadly across HR. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, the guest is Dr. Jaclyn Lee, Chief Human Resources Officer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, who is talking about the role of data and analytics in the culture transformation program at the university. While technology plays a big part in culture transformation at the university, Jaclyn remained ever cognisant of the people at the heart of the transformation and ensuring that their diverse values were understood and respected. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, April Rinne, Change Expert and Author of her fantastic new book, Flux: Eight Superpowers For Thriving in Constant Change discusses her mission to get us to think differently about our relationship to change, that it is not something we can necessarily control, but it is something we need to be very comfortable with. Throughout this episode, April and I discuss April's advice to organisations going through change as well as the power of portfolio careers for workforce planning, for the individual to have a meaningful, satisfying work life and on a societal level, to provide unparalleled access to opportunities. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, Tina Kao Mylon, Chief Talent and Diversity Officer at Schneider Electric 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. 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 and how data and analytics ensures the success of Schneider Electric’s unique multi-hub model. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, my guest is is Janice Burns, Chief People Officer at Degreed, who is passionate about the importance of learning and that the impact of learning isn't limited to remaining within the four walls of an organisation. Throughout this episode, Janice and I discuss Janice’s key strategic roles moving into the Chief People Officer role, the concept of guided freedom and why learning leaders should think differently about facilitating learning and she also shares her thoughts on the role of coaching and mentoring in professional development. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, the guest is Joan C. Williams, distinguished Law Professor at the University of California, Hastings College of Law and author of a brilliant new book, Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good. Joan is dedicated to propagating an approach to Diversity and Inclusion that delivers real impact for the business and ensures real change is made. Throughout this episode, Joan and I discuss, how to connect D&I initiatives to business metrics that matter, with case studies from companies around the world, we look at the five patterns of bias that repeatedly emerge across organisations and industries and the concept of bias interrupters, what they are and how to use them in everyday scenarios, to reduce the impact of bias. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this week’s podcast, David speaks to Peter Manniche Riber, Head of Digital Learning and Analytics at Novo Nordisk, about how the shift to remote work and digital ways of working has, in many ways, democratised learning and made it more inclusive. Great learning experiences should deliver value to the individual by opening up new opportunities as well as creating value for the organisation. In this episode, Peter shares his thoughts on what great learning experiences look like, how to measure the business impact of learning and how to move to data-driven learning design. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this episode of the podcast, the guest is Maarten van Beek, HR Director for Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg at ING, who I spoke to about the shift from a learn, work, retire approach to careers, to a model of lifelong learning. To encourage lifelong learning and talent fluidity across the organisation, taking an employee centric approach is vital. In Maarten’s opinion. HR should focus more on the employee journey, the employee experience and less on the responsibilities and confines of rigid traditional L&D roles.

Throughout the episode, Maarten and I discuss how organisations can promote a lifelong learning approach to work by encouraging and supporting employees to reinvent their skill sets every three to five years, the power of using skills data to fuel talent fluidity and the business value and societal value of measuring skills proficiency without depending on traditional qualifications and educational experience. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this episode of the podcast, Ralf Buechsenschuss, Global Head of Org Design, Analytics and Digitalisation at Zurich Insurance Company, speaks about the future of work, which we both agree is most definitely already here, and how it necessitates a skills-based approach to workforce planning.

The unpredictability and pace of change facing organisations today is, without a doubt a major challenge, a challenge only exacerbated since the start of the pandemic. It is a skills-based approach to workforce planning that has the potential to position the HR function as a strategic partner to the business, by addressing business priorities as they arise. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2020 report, predicts that by 2025, 50% of all employees will need to be re-skilled as 97 million new jobs emerge and 85 million jobs will be displaced by a shift in labour between humans and machines. In this episode of the podcast, Mikaël Wornoo, Founder and COO at TechWolf, speaks about how AI and natural language processing is helping to solve a perennial challenge for organisations, namely the process of gathering skills data automatically, continuously, and objectively to understand the skills you have, the skills you need and the gap in-between. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this episode of the podcast, my guest is Rob Cross, Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College and author of a brilliant new book “Beyond Collaboration Overload”. In this episode, Rob talks about the number one predictor of performance. It's not actually about how smart you are, but how you act as an energiser across your network.

Throughout the episode. Rob and I discuss how to reclaim 18% to 24% of your time or about one full day per week by reducing collaborative overload, what it means to be an energiser and how to use organisational network analysis or ONA to measure energisers and their impact across the organisation. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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In this episode of the podcast, which sees Dave Ulrich taking my usual host chair and Jonathan Ferrar and I answering Dave's questions, we discuss some of the key messages from Excellence in People Analytics and the Nine Dimensions for Excellence in People Analytics that we write about in the book.

We also talk about the traditional HR function’s attitudes towards analytics, the skills the future HR professional needs and how more broadly people analytics will support a new approach to careers and upskilling for the organisation. Throughout the discussion, we also cover several case studies from the likes of Microsoft, Nestle and FIS. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Microsoft's Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan. Microsoft is one of the best examples of scaling people analytics to provide value for employees and the business in the world and in our conversation, Kathleen and I discuss how HR is a strategic partner to the business at Microsoft and how she has worked closely with CEO Satya Nadella, to develop the culture at Microsoft over the last five years and to build a data driven culture in HR. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's episode of the podcast, Toon Van der Veer, is the Global Vice President of People Continuity at AB InBev and a strong proponent of using data, analytics and artificial intelligence in people management. As Toon explains to me in our conversation, data provides HR professionals with countless opportunities. And this is certainly proving to be the case with the innovative work he is leading at AB InBev. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Joanne Kuipers, manager at the Tata Steel academy based in the Netherlands. In our conversation, Joanne and I explore how Tata Steel is successfully harnessing skills data to inform workforce planning and learning and to drive business outcomes such as safety compliance and productivity. We also discuss how Tata Steel visualises skills data and makes it actionable for managers and he key considerations in a build versus buy approach to closing skills gaps. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's podcast is Rick Van Echtelt, The Founder and CEO at AG5. Through their software AG5’s mission is simple, to visualise and close skills gaps. Rick and his team do this by essentially providing an accounting system for skills, which aggregates data from multiple systems, maps current skills, tracks progress towards learning new skills and identifies some missing skills needed to future-proof the organisation. In our conversation, Rick and I discuss the challenges involved in getting a handle on skills data. Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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My guest on this week's episode is Tertia Wiedenhof, Global Leader and Product Owner for the People Analytics and Insights Team at Rabobank. To reflect the advance of new technology, the changing needs of customers, the emergence of new competitors and changes in the way we work, Rabobank is shifting to agile ways of working as it transforms into a fast moving, digital co-operative bank. HR at Rabobank was one of the early adopters in embracing agile, but what does this actually mean to the work of HR? What does it mean to the approach to people analytics, both in the way the function is set up and the focus of its work? Click below to listen to this week’s episode or to read the full transcript.

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