Uniting HR, Finance, and AI for Stellar People Strategy – Sandrine Bardot

Nena Dimovska (2): [00:00:00] Welcome to People Pulse, the podcast that brings the heartbeat of the workplace. The following is a conversation with Sandrine Barot, with over three decades of experience as a total rewards thought leader, multi-award winning consultant and educator for customized total reward solutions.  

Nena Dimovska (2): With the tech megatrend of ai, how do you see it shaping total rewards in general, any perhaps successful implementations you’ve observed? And how do enterprises effectively integrate AI into their total rewards strategy? 

Sandrine Bardot: I think that at the moment. 

Nena Dimovska (2): So 

Sandrine Bardot: It’s more about thinking about it than actually implementing it. There might be a few very large corporations that are experimenting with it, but I think experimentation is still at more at the individual level than the, the, the corporate level in the domain of total rewards. 

Sandrine Bardot: Gen AI is already being used more easily in talent acquisition and so on, [00:01:00] but when it comes to rewards, there is the sensitivity of the information. 

Sandrine Bardot: As well that really needs to be taken into account. Because you have to be absolutely sure that the information you input into the system does not go outside of your company. 

Sandrine Bardot: So that’s one of the, and salaries are one of the most sensitive informations that you can have about somebody, sorry. And health, I, I would say are the, two more sensitive. So obviously at the moment, what I’ve seen or what I hear is that a lot of the large providers are working on integrating more AI or Gen AI features into their software, that’s maybe more on the backend that’s gonna be transparent to the end user. What I have done with some of my clients I experimented with them. So I do performance and rewards. So for example, in performance management, so everybody’s talking about writing job descriptions with gen ai. [00:02:00] I think it can work, but I think it also needs to train to be trained really well because, two hospitals that are in the same city might still want to be able to differentiate a little bit certain, a certain number of their positions. 

Sandrine Bardot: Gen AI tends to produce results that are a little bit generic for the time being at least. That’s been my experience. So what I would say is use that for anything that has to do with language. And words, because that’s really the, the huge focus of charge. GPT, for example, or Claude, are very, very good with language. So, for example, job descriptions is gonna be a good place, but take it as a draft. Don’t take it like. It has written the truth because on top of that, they’re still, though there are fewer than in the beginning, but I remember my first time I, I worked on charge GPT or my second time. First time I was mind blown. Second time like, this thing is lying to me through its teeth. If it had teeth. [00:03:00] I mean, there were like errors everywhere. Fake references to, to articles in the, and you were trying to, to, to link to those articles and you were only getting, you know, page does not exist. 4 0 1 page doesn’t exist and so on. So in in performance management, what I’ve done is so for example, the large providers like an SAP an Oracle will have ai, in the background to help you write the objectives. With the employees so that the objectives fit with the smart template. But for most organizations, they don’t have that version yet, or they don’t even have that kind of tool in the meantime, what they can do. 

Sandrine Bardot: And very often my clients, for example, are in charge that checking that managers wrote. Objectives that are that are smart. You can create your own now custom little GPT and it’s very easy to to do. And as long as you don’t enter company sensitive information, you could enter like, kind [00:04:00] of. give this objective to my employee, or I wanna get that objective for me this year. And the, the, the tool can easily help you to write it in a way that is going to be more complete and more smart. I, I’m not necessarily a hundred percent aligned between smart, I think it’s sometimes the too restrictive as a box, but it gives you a better description of what’s expected, timelines and so on. 

Sandrine Bardot: So that would be the first thing. 

Sandrine Bardot: The second thing is. Starting to write some kind of feedback and you have like your line manager in my part of the world, we, we have to write English. For most of us it’s English as a second or a third language, or maybe not as proficient in writing. Very well in it. 

Sandrine Bardot: So you could write like your two or three points and then the machine will help you to write it in a much better way, which is based on what you want to say, but which will be. In done in a, in a, in a better way, you can handle feedback sessions as well through that, like a a mini coach [00:05:00] helping you to anticipate a situation and so on. So that would be, I would say, on the day-to-Day, coaching and slash performance management of the, of the employees terms of data analysis for, of data. I know that this is the forte of the machine. 

Sandrine Bardot: I don’t have yet. For me a good feeling that actually the tool is that good to analyze data. I’ve tried uploading, you know, Excel sheets that were like anonymized. With information about salaries and the machine is telling me this file has employees organized in rows and in the columns there is this and that information. Okay. I can see that. I mean, I opened my Excel sheet. I see that. 

Sandrine Bardot: So the, the, the, the graphs that are produced tend to be very basic as well. And so you still need to have a lot more input into the machine to say, Hey, if I wanted to analyze this, given that information. I go about it? And there the machine is good because [00:06:00] it’ll give you a methodology that maybe you can follow step by step or maybe it, it can do it with you, if you can do Python a little bit of programming. But I, me personally, I, I haven’t tried that, but I’ve, I’ve stayed at the methodology. Level that could be quite interesting. So there are some interesting things that can be applied. But I think that in, in total rewards, the main consideration would be how do we ensure the safety of the information that it doesn’t spill before we, before we really go into that. 

Sandrine Bardot: However. convinced this is a, a big change. Wait for the time where I just have to talk to my machine and say, hey chat GPT, or Hey Google, or, Hey, whatever, Siri, here’s my file. I want to do three scenarios for my sales population, with results of x. In the sales quota, quota one y in sales, quota two Z in sales quota three, and then run another [00:07:00] simulation based on other numbers. let me know which one you think is gonna be more relevant for the organization, the impact on profit, blah, blah. The machine does all the calculation and in. One minute, let’s say two minutes, but the value will still be in the person bringing the analysis and saying, okay, I think this scenario is better than that one because of X, Y, and Z. So it’ll be a productivity enhancement, but I think it’s not quite there yet, but it’ll come faster than what we, what we believe. So I look forward to it. Actually. It’s gonna be very interesting few years.  

Nena Dimovska (2): Thank you for, for the overview. You have a very interesting stance. have to agree that yes there is a lot of room for innovation and development. And I’m very excited to see the future holds when it comes to AI solutions, especially re related [00:08:00] to, hr, HR tools. Yet I have to say that I’m very much in favor of these AI tools because I think that in every aspect in in HR, there can be, as you said, enhancement and improvement and automation of tasks that we still manually do. 

Nena Dimovska (2): Especially as we discussed earlier, in many areas HR can be subjective science, and with AI the subjectivity can be minimized. And honestly, I’m eagerly looking forward to see how we can overcome this so we can come up with more data-driven, solutions, data-driven decisions, and, know, how to help our companies improve by you know, smart tools where the focus of the people and the value that they give is in areas where, you know, technology still hasn’t found its medical solution. So thank you very much for that. That was very interesting. I would say let’s gaze into [00:09:00] the future when we, you know, raise the topic of, of ai. When you come, when it comes to companies that are fastest to adapt to new trends, what would you say that is? The thing that distinguishes their approach? What sets them apart? Is it mindset? Is it strategy? Is it the people? 

Sandrine Bardot: I would say I don’t know if it comes from the top, but it definitely has to be supported from the top of the organization. But I would say that it’s companies that are. Are kind of progressive. First of all, they see talent not as a tool, not as a resource, but really as a, as a partner. They understand that most of the value that they bring to the market comes from their people. Sometimes it’s companies that are in industries that are more competitive for talent, so they’re obliged to up their game. They cannot just treat people like a replaceable piece of wood, you know, that you replace by another piece of wood so that would be [00:10:00] kind of a of environment and mindset I would say. say as well what I. I did not make the connection in the beginning when I, when I was working. But actually in the organizations that I’ve worked with, the ones that I found that were more progressive in HR typically also had more progressive finance function because yes, we tend to think that HR and finance are not, are kind of enemies, but actually they work very closely together. And when you have an HR function, which is progressive, where they look at. They don’t just look at things as a cost and look at one line on the, on the whole of the financial exercise. But look at, for example if I recruit people cheaper, yes, I’m saving on the salary, but actually I’m gonna have more attrition, faster attrition, less productivity, and so on. And so those people will, absolutely have higher cost because I will have to replace them more [00:11:00] often and so on. So those companies that have a finance leader who is open to having those conversations then can really. Put together the power of finance and the power of HR together and be more progressive in, in, in what they do. And so that gives them complete edge over other organizations that are maybe, more classic or more old fashioned I think another big mindset which is really, really important for the companies that, that are going to, to, to be the leaders in the future, is that they understand that there’s value in experimentation. 

Sandrine Bardot: And maybe you don’t roll out something to the whole organization right from the beginning, but you. Pilot and you test. that in marketing all the time. We do that with product features all the time. Why we don’t do it, we do it with some of the stuff that we do, including some of the reward stuff. 

Sandrine Bardot: And also to understand that there is a cost and there is a [00:12:00] risk of being inactive. Very often, companies tend to say, Hey, I don’t have to do it now. The law does not oblige me. I don’t have to be among the first to do something. But actually there is a cost of inaction. It’s important for organizations to to see that. So that would be another thing that would be really, really important and making a differentiation for, for those organizations. 

Nena Dimovska (2): Thank you. Now it’s beyond the verge of 2024, so if you can make one safe prediction for, for this year when it comes to total rewards and one bold prediction, what would those be? 

Sandrine Bardot: Ooh. I think a safe prediction is that we’re gonna see, we’re gonna continue seeing conversations around, versus versus cost of living. We still have people who are re from the impact of inflation. [00:13:00] Salaries have not gone up as much as maybe as the inflation. 

Sandrine Bardot: But at the same time, there are shifts in the kind of skills that are required. Think, and I, I attended a very interesting presentation from Gartner, what they were saying is that in the return to work, actually people are looking at the. Extra cost of going back to the office, the cost of the commute, the cost of maybe having to take extra pet care, childcare, elder care, paying your lunch, buying clothes to be in the office, all this kind of stuff put together. 

Sandrine Bardot: And they had made an estimation in the US $60 per day. That’s the extra cost of going back to the office on average. 

Sandrine Bardot: More, more importantly, that was about two hours. Pay per day, that’s 25% of a day. Two hours is 25% of an eight hour working day now. It’s in the US Not every situation is the same, even if it costs you 10% of your salary to get back to work, [00:14:00] and if you feel that the increases of salaries have not been enough, they’re still gonna be this tension that companies are gonna have to explain if they’re paying for labor or if they’re paying for cost of living. So that’s gonna be like a, a still a continuing conversation I think in 2024. That would be my safe prediction. 

Sandrine Bardot: Yeah. And by bold prediction would be that maybe ai, um. Becomes more prevalent in the world of total rewards. I think it’s already starting very strongly in talent management, acquisition, maybe performance management, it would, a few companies are gonna make a few breakthroughs and and bring us away to, to do that in a, in a, in a safe manner that will lead to better personalization. Maybe that would lead to what I call good HR or ethical hr. I believe that companies need to combine the, the. The [00:15:00] welfare of their shareholders, but also the welfare of all the other stakeholders, which include the employees. Because without success from, with your employees, you don’t have success with your clients and you don’t make the profit much as you could. So I really believe that this is going to be something. So we might see something, a, a breakthrough in specific like application for total rewards of ai. And I, I look forward to seeing it because I’m experimenting myself for clients and it’s kind of an interesting field to see. So that would be my, my vision. 

Nena Dimovska (2): Yeah, we’ll have to meet up again at the end of the year and 

Sandrine Bardot: Yeah. 

Nena Dimovska (2): see how these predictions turn out. 

Nena Dimovska (2): Although I just have to add my, my 2 cents that I guess that we both agree that AI is, an exceptional technology that can only enhance our, our work lives. And I think it’s expected that due to its power, it’s expected that we’re scared of [00:16:00] it at at times. but I think that we should focus on its benefits and how to use it responsibly. And as you said. Ethically very important. the future of ai. At the end of the day, it’s in our hands and we should just ensure that the development is aligned with our values and, and our principles. So before we wrap up, just a last question. Since you have, as we said, over three decades of experience, is there something that you have learned about yourself that has made you. A better consultant a better leader that you would like to share? 

Sandrine Bardot: Ah very good question. I would say, I think that one of the things that has helped me move from the corporate world where I was for 20 years and now as a, as a consultant has been, it’s not so much the ability to be self-directed in your work and so on. has [00:17:00] been communication and in my last two corporate jobs, I was global head of performance and reward for. 

Sandrine Bardot: You know, large organizations, multiple countries, dozens of lines of business and so on. At that level, your technical skis are not what matters the most anymore. The technical skis are important for the employees who are starting their career until mid-level career. then what makes the difference is how you communicate, how, and your storytelling capacity, your capacity to listen. To put yourself into the shoes of the people who are around you. And I would say to try to find a solution, which is there’s not a perfect solution. There is the best possible compromise. You cannot make one side win all the time. You have to find a compromise, which is valid for everybody. And so I would say that. Two skills storytelling or communication, let’s say. And the other, the [00:18:00] other one is an understanding of negotiation and and trying to find the best possible outcome for the majority of, of the stakeholders, is gonna make a, a huge difference. And that applies as well in corporate and as a consultant. So I, I think those are the two things. 

Nena Dimovska (2): I’m very glad that you’ve mentioned storytelling. It’s actually, I think, a, a buzzword now, and I could not agree more that I. 

Nena Dimovska (2): I think it’s a key tool for HR professionals in building strong company culture you know, sharing stories about the company’s history, values, culture, traditions, it’s storytelling per se. So we as hrs can help create a sense of shared identity and purpose through storytelling. 

Nena Dimovska (2): So thank you for that. 

Nena Dimovska (2): Sandrine, I really enjoyed the conversation today. 

Sandrine Bardot: me too would just. 

Nena Dimovska (2): And [00:19:00] thank you for listening. I, I, I would just like to 

Sandrine Bardot: Thank you. I, I just want to say just one thing maybe to close the storytelling is also important to lead people towards the future because if you shape a narrative and you’re able to motivate people to go in a certain direction, that’s what leaders do. I was lucky to work at Apple at one time when Steve Jobs came back into the organization and I. really saw the impact that one charismatic founder can have on a, on an, on an organization. It was same in Microsoft that I worked with as well, and it hu makes a huge difference to bring you to a certain direction for the future. So this is not just about who we are today, it’s so who do we want to be in the future? 

Sandrine Bardot: And we have such a big role to play as hr. So thank you for mentioning that. It’s been a pleasure to be here with you. And thank you for having me. 

Nena Dimovska (2): Thank you. I hope that we’ll see you again here on People Pulse. 

Nena Dimovska (2): Thank you for listening. [00:20:00] People Pulse, I guess that we can, we are safe to say that 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 the future Insight. Subscribe and get free to power up your HR strategy. Thank you.​