Tackle Bias and Boost Employee Growth with AI on Your Side – Dr. Christian Schmeichel

[00:00:10] Nena Dimovska: Welcome to People Pulse, the podcast that brings the heartbeat of the workplace. I’m Nena Dimovska, your host, and each week we’re bringing bite sized episode packed with practical takeaways, interviews with industry leaders, and a dash of inspiration to fuel your people strategy and make your workplace thrive. We’re here to dissect the trends unravel challenges and explore the triumphs that shape in the modern workplace. In this episode, we’re unpacking the profound impact of the AI revolution on the modern workplace. Gen X, Millennials and Gen Zs all have witnessed transformative periods in history, but none as far reaching as the AI revolution.

[00:00:51] Nena Dimovska: It emerges as a game changer, fundamentally changing the workplace landscape. We’ll discuss its implications on the Future of Work and how HR can strategically leverage this transformative technology, for the Future of Work. Today, we’re thrilled to have a distinguished guest who’ll guide us through the exploration of the AI revolution in the workplace.

[00:01:16] Nena Dimovska: So, the following is a conversation with Dr Christian Schmeichel, the SVP and Chief Future of Work Officer at SAP. Dr Schmeichel leads the global Future of Work organization, driving people practices and workplace approaches for SAP’s more than 100,000 employees worldwide in his previous role as Head of HR for various broad areas at SAP, Christian crafted business focus strategies for SAP’s transformation, emphasizing talent, leadership, and culture. With a background in HR transformation and a global perspective gained from living and working in Asia, Europe, and the US Christian is recognized as an expert in the Future of Work and global HR transformation.

[00:02:04] Nena Dimovska: Welcome, Christian. And thank you for joining us.

[00:02:07] Nena Dimovska: Thank you very much, Nena. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:10] Nena Dimovska: Can you perhaps tell us how can AI be leveraged to predict skills gaps and personalize the employee experience across the entire life cycle, you know, leading to a more strategic HR to a more strategic approach?

[00:02:27] Christian Schmeichel: Yeah, I feel what is currently exciting for a lot of HR practitioners is this huge notion of, having much better data at your fingertips. So making sure that you’re coming from big data to smart data, coming up with large amounts of data that can be now distilled and consolidated in a very intelligent way.

[00:02:46] Christian Schmeichel: That these different data sources are kind of combined. And then, of course, yeah, when you use this data, you can, of course, come up with much better insights. At the same time, you can even come up with predictive analytics. So HR can proactively anticipate what is maybe needed on the future skills side of the house.

[00:03:04] Christian Schmeichel: And you can develop targeted strategies. So you can stay ahead of the curve, if you will, and try to support the business by finding the right talent with the right skills at the right time. And, of course, once you know, which kind of skills you need and you can do, for example, the skill matching and everything then powered by AI in a much faster and much more meaningful way, you can come up with much better personalized learning and development opportunities.

[00:03:28] Christian Schmeichel: Just think of personalized learning recommendations at scale, looking at the individual employee profiles at the, at the career aspirations. Just think of, for example, tailored learning experience, which everyone is looking for.

[00:03:41] Christian Schmeichel: This certainly boosts engagement and drives career growth. And certainly it’s also about, yeah, the everything else, more or less personalization of an employee life cycle.

[00:03:51] Christian Schmeichel: Where it’s not just learning initiatives, but sometimes it comes up with goal setting and knowing what others are doing. So also this element of continuous feedback and coaching supported by AI certainly is a huge game changer to be expected. Making sure that you can get, for example, maybe also AI based elements where there’s feedback coming from different sources.

[00:04:12] Christian Schmeichel: There’s so much data, of course, always considering local labor law and data protection guidelines. But on an aggregated level, there’s so much information that can be used. It’s simply fascinating. And of course, last but by no means least, when it comes to skills building, it’s certainly also important to think about our recruiting and talent attraction process.

[00:04:33] Christian Schmeichel: So just about revolutionizing the way how you speed up your recruiting process. It’s about automating repetitive tasks, freeing up the time of recruiters to think and work more on, on things that are value add, right? On the personal interaction. While you can analyze job descriptions, you can come up with even, for example, scalable job description creation.

[00:04:57] Christian Schmeichel: And all of this, for example, also backed up by maybe AI powered employer branding initiatives. There is I think the sky’s the limit what you can think of once you’re using this. At the end of the day, it’s about being smart, having better information, making sure you can drive things in a much more efficient way and thereby freeing up resources that can focus on the value add stuff.

[00:05:19] Nena Dimovska: Great point and thank you so much for bringing that up. You know, just like you said, staying ahead of the curve by analyzing and combining large amount of data that, that we have there from various sources to address… you know, various HR daily challenges.

[00:05:38] Nena Dimovska: And I honestly look forward to seeing that happen. Can you perhaps share a few examples of how to utilize AI to attract new talents, to develop our existing employees, or perhaps even have smoother exits?

[00:05:54] Christian Schmeichel: Yeah. I think what comes to mind right now for a lot of HR practitioners are things like for example streamlining your processes. In the case of streamlining your recruitment processes, with AI, you can have HR professions leverage huge amounts of data, right? Of candidate data to identify patterns. And predict maybe even the likelihood of a candidate success in a particular role, of course, always on an aggregated level. But at the same time, these informed decisions also looking at, for example, speeding up the process when it comes to shortlisting candidates, ultimately leads to kind of higher quality talent pools in the process.

[00:06:30] Christian Schmeichel: And then, of course, you can personalize your experience in the process also for candidates, because you have, for example, maybe a dashboard where you stand then in the recruiting process, all of that. This is simply exciting. And this is something a lot of HR practitioners are currently looking forward to the technological advances that will certainly come up on the horizon.

[00:06:49] Christian Schmeichel: And for other processes, skill development, it’s for sure, the personalized learning recommendations. You can come up with AI powered chatbots where you can more or less improve the experience. If you have a question on offboarding, just imagine what is possible on the onboarding side of the house.

[00:07:05] Christian Schmeichel: If you have, for example, already kind of pre boarding experience. One of our colleagues here was just also in India coming up with a great metaverse onboarding where you can already meet your future colleagues and experience your future work environment. Before you even start so that on day one, you already feel kind of in a well known environment.

[00:07:23] Christian Schmeichel: This is awesome. And of course, also when you think about sometimes even anonymized, for example, exit interview. All of this, making sure that the data is afterwards aggregated in the right way. These kind of feedback elements can certainly help HR to provide better services moving forward.

[00:07:41] Nena Dimovska: Great points. And I would add here that in addition to the exciting personalization, chatbots and, you know, empowerment of new employees or aggregating data from exit interviews. I would add here the knowledge transfer platforms that I think are also on the horizon, for example, for exiting employees, you know, to document their expertise, experiences, best practices from their work.

[00:08:04] Nena Dimovska: So we can facilitate a seamless knowledge transfer, to successors and minimizing disruptions in the ongoing projects. Or for example, survey analysis trends, you know, identifying patterns and getting some actionable insights regarding the reasons for employee departures. These are some data information that can actually drive data driven inputs into our HR strategic initiatives aimed at, you know, improving retention and overall better employee experience for our employees.

[00:08:39] Nena Dimovska: What’s your perspective on AI’s contribution? On the reduction of bias, especially in the process of recruitment, giving performance feedback or promotions.

[00:08:52] Christian Schmeichel: What I feel is super important is: one always needs to relate back also to the core principles of business AI. And this is of course, making sure that this technology is relevant, that’s reliable and also responsible. So when you transfer this now to the overall notion of AI being a kind of a supportive tool for HR, for managers, or even employees. This should be always, for example a data provision while at the end of the day decisions should be made by human.

[00:09:18] Christian Schmeichel: So I think this human oversight element and continuous monitoring seems to be key, right? And also to ensure that on one hand, yes, there is maybe a proper and very objective preparation of any decision making. Even without bias, at the same time, we need to make sure that even AI needs to stay out of bias as much as possible and is aligned with the organizational value.

[00:09:39] Christian Schmeichel: So just think of the hiring process where there is a lot of practitioners right now in the market also experimenting with this, making sure that the CV review, the job descriptions that are more or less created. And in the first place, also performance metrics, all of this is analyzed. And of course, that you try to mitigate bias simply by using objective criteria as much as possible.

[00:09:59] Christian Schmeichel: So one needs to remove this kind of subjective elements as much as possible out of the process to stay as neutral as possible. And you see me saying always, or you hear me saying always, for example, as much as possible, because certainly the technology is evolving, but there’s huge opportunity. And when it comes to performance feedback, yes, of course, if you have a lot of data that is more or less, educating any kind of more or less summarized feedback, it’s about providing fair and unbiased feedback to employees.

[00:10:27] Christian Schmeichel: Right. And so therefore, again, it’s important maybe to stay neutral, making sure that this is happening on objective criteria as much as possible. And that’s, that’s great. And of course, whenever you can have data consolidated in kind of an aggregated way, where, for example, there’s also a lot of data consolidated.

[00:10:45] Christian Schmeichel: This can simply mitigate kind of individual and objective elements and thereby hopefully reduce bias as much as possible.

[00:10:53] Nena Dimovska: Thank you for that. I think it’s fair to say that to make mistakes it’s human. So we need to work on ways on how to make these technology that’s smarter. That’s more data driven. And you know, just to, help us mitigate and identify even somehow in oftentimes I would say unconscious biases in this very, very important decisions about our employees. One thing that it’s sure is that the future of work will be flexible. So how can AI help us set flexible work arrangements that meet both the business goals, but also the high remote and hybrid employee needs?

[00:11:37] Christian Schmeichel: Well, first of all, it’s very important to understand that in today’s times, at least in the knowledge worker space, many organizations have come up with structured hybrid working models to be successful in terms of balancing what is the needs of an organization. Having on one hand here the, focus on working regularly, also on site together at the same time, also still offering flexibility in the work arrangements.

[00:12:02] Christian Schmeichel: And I think this is something which of course, first of all, needs to fit to the business model. At SAP we are seeing that a requirement of being three days per week in the office by default was, and you’re subject to labor law on the respective local legislation, seems to be a good practice.

[00:12:19] Christian Schmeichel: But of course, this. still means that there’s a lot of flex work elements in there. Wherever you work then, for example, on the other two days, there’s a lot of other flex work elements in there, which I think are very important, right? To also be an attractive employer of choice. AI and technology per se, can help big time, of course, in more or less also here managing the respective infrastructure for that, just in matter of making sure that whenever you have mixed teams where some people are working on site, others remotely, how you bring people together, the virtual collaboration platforms are key. It’s about also on the facility side of the house where you can streamline also maybe the use of buildings and workspaces.

[00:13:00] Christian Schmeichel: You can get feedback real time. How this is used, you can steer and course correct as needed. And of course, it’s about also having great data to make sure that you can really see what is important for an organization. A lot of organizations also like SAP are coming up with regular, pulse checks of the organization, right?

[00:13:19] Christian Schmeichel: How does the organization feel in these times of unprecedented change? What can you do also to come up with the right HR support portfolio and what else is needed simply to make an organization successful, future ready, engaged. And of course also, excited about what is coming, but also that they have everything they need to be successful on the day to day basis.

[00:13:41] Nena Dimovska: Thank you for that. I was just curious to ask… What would you advise HR professionals is the right amount of asking for feedback from the workforce about these changes and new practices that they’re being implemented? And from your experience, what is the Future of Work departments role in, you know getting feedback from the workforce and what to do with the feedback taken from these pulse surveys?

[00:14:08] Christian Schmeichel: What we see is that we feel of course, data driven HR work is certainly the way into the future. We at SAP have a Future of Work insights team, which is running here a continuous listening strategy for us. It’s important to, of course, gather regularly. Also here, the sentiment of the organization at the same time, making sure that this is also actionable feedback that’s, one can really see also what an organization needs and how to support people best. And of course this is something which we feel is the way to go. So I think in times where you had one big survey every two years, I think this is probably not suitable anymore. It’s rather about continuously listening, making sure that this data is then also used and aggregated.

[00:14:52] Christian Schmeichel: Now, with the help of technology, you can also gather and collect much more also qualitative feedback in a much more reliable and also faster way, which is super helpful. And I think leveraging this, I think this can beef up the quality of also here, the work of people in HR practitioners, big time.

[00:15:13] Nena Dimovska: Great. Thank you. Christian, what would you say is more valuable for HRs becoming AI experts or perhaps developing a broader skillset with strong interpersonal skill and solid tech acumen?

[00:15:31] Christian Schmeichel: First of all, I think in the age of gen AI, it’s super important that we’re all getting familiar with these new technologies. And of course, staying curious and open to learn. At the same time, I think the HR profession is a profession and therefore it’s very important to have also a lot of domain expertise.

[00:15:48] Christian Schmeichel: So I think at the end of the day, it’s about both. And of course we have always in the past looked as a great, well as an organization, usually to have, a talent strategy for the business. I think moving forward, it’s super important to also have a talent strategy for HR itself. Where I think the right skills are then nurtured in a holistic way, whether this is data driven HR, whether this is digital HR, and here in this case also, for example, AI skills.

[00:16:13] Christian Schmeichel: But this is something where all of us, need to be familiar with and also leverage the systems to the best possible extent. At the same time, I think we all need to keep up and even drive the evolution of our HR profession, being in the different domain expertise areas like total rewards, recruiting, what have you.

[00:16:32] Christian Schmeichel: At the same time, also shape and strengthen, from my perspective, and also the way of, managing huge transformation initiatives. It’s from the culture to the technology angle. All of these things will be, from my perspective, very important for organizations to be successful in the future in the HR space.

[00:16:50] Nena Dimovska: Thank you. And, you know, I couldn’t agree more. I also think that developing a broader skill set makes more sense considering that in critical situations like conflict resolution, employee development, coaching, change management, you know, empathy and communication are indeed crucial. Christian, your long tenure in the HR granted you a valuable perspectives.

[00:17:17] Nena Dimovska: So what advice do you wish you had known when you started? What skill would you say that has been most valuable to you up to date?

[00:17:28] Christian Schmeichel: Well, in hindsight, I feel that looking at what’s happening around us in the world and all these changes, it’s so important to stay open and to stay curious, to learn. I think that’s probably the most important thing from my perspective. I think this lifelong learning element is key and I’m a very passionate HR person and very much excited about transformation, which I think is something which has worked very well for me.

[00:17:54] Christian Schmeichel: And I can only encourage everyone who is also passionate about to leverage this. It’s about complex problem solving together with others, right? In a team. And therefore, of course, leveraging what is, probably the most important thing these days. This is the combination of great people and great technology, making sure that these things come together.

[00:18:13] Christian Schmeichel: And then I feel there are exciting times in HR and, it’s great to be part of it. And I think there’s probably a lot of stuff to come over the next couple of quarters and years, and this is probably once in a generation opportunity for all of us in HR to co shape the way how we will work and live in the future, and that’s simply fascinating.

[00:18:32] Nena Dimovska: Great advice. Thank you. Thank you, Christian, for sharing your insights on the Future of Work. Undoubtedly these will provide practical takeaways to improve our listeners work. Thank you for listening People Pulse. We have just unlocked another workplace heartbeat together. Remember to use this practical takeaways, stay inspired and keep your workplace heartbeat strong. Don’t miss out on future insights, subscribe and get ready to power up your HR strategy. Thank you.