August 5, 2025 • 28 mins
In this episode of the HR Mixtape podcast, host Shari Simpson sits down with Dr. Alexander Alonso, Chief Data and Analytics Officer for the Society for Human Resource Management. They delve into the evolving landscape of HR competencies and the critical role of data analytics in shaping employee experience and inclusive leadership. This conversation is timely as organizations increasingly leverage AI in HR to drive strategic transformation and enhance workforce readiness.
Listener Takeaways:
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Learn how to identify competencies that are becoming obsolete and those that are essential for future HR success.
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Discover why integrating AI into HR practices can revolutionize talent management and employee engagement.
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Explore strategies for utilizing data analytics to inform decision-making and drive organizational change.
Hit “Play” to gain insights that can elevate your HR practice!
Guest(s): Dr. Alexander Alonso, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Society for Human Resource Management
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
You're listening to the HR Mixtape. Your podcast with
the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and
stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel, well,
like work. Now, your host, Shari
Joining me today is Dr. Alexander Alonso, Chief Data and
Analytics Officer for the Society for Human Resource Management. Dr.
(00:26):
Alonso is a recognized thought leader in HR analytics, workforce
readiness, and competency modeling, helping shape strategic direction
Alex, thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with me here at SHRM 2025 in
Yeah, I am fascinated by the place that you get
(00:49):
to sit in the HR world around data science and
analytics and just all the amazing ways that
you can see what our profession is doing and the
impact it's going to have. So I wanted to center our conversation around
kind of two topics today. One is around HR competency models
and the other is really that data science, data analytics space. And
(01:10):
the competency framework for me is really exciting.
I'm working on my doctorate and part of it is exploring generational
approaches to learning using adaptive learning tools and
the impact of HR competency models. I know this is like a big
question to start with, but what do you think
are some of the competencies that are maybe becoming
(01:33):
obsolete for HR and some that we definitely need to lean into?
So it's fascinating. I'm going to preface my response by saying that
some are actually really becoming obsolete, right? but some
are evolving in ways that we've not really ever
considered before. Right. And when I say that, one of the
things that strikes me is, and it's funny because my, my role
(01:54):
at SHRM was to build the first ever HR competency model. When I first
joined SHRM and I was an individual contributor 15 years ago, and
since then launched certification, did the BAC,
the BASC, all the different versions of it. And, One
of the things that stands out is over that time, we've
seen a shift in three key areas, right? The first was
(02:14):
really in what change management looked like and transformation looked
like. Case in point, if you were to look at transformation 15 years
ago, 10 years ago, we called it change management and it
was all about people. It was 100% about people.
Today, organizations are transforming themselves and doing
so for strategic reasons, and they're starting with the tech. So
(02:37):
it's the tech, but then the big issue is how do I make sure that
the system is human-centered and people-centered. And
then beyond that also enables this notion of
AI agentry and human agency, right? And
so that's something that is just an example of how we're seeing these things evolve
over time. I have a dear friend, her name is Kristen Sabo, Captain Kristen Sabo,
(02:59):
former U.S. Air Force. And she's a Google and she's a director of
social listening and employee listening, right? And she specializes specifically
in trying to understand how it is that their workforce
is transforming and how the technology that they're introducing
into the world, not just in their own workplace, is transforming things
(03:19):
that happen at Google with their workforce, how they feel, the sentiment, those
types of things. She is a person whose entire workforce is
100% AI agents. 100% AI
agents. And yet she is the most savvy person I
know in terms of transformation. And I mean, in
a fascinating way, she's actually an embodiment of what it would have
(03:41):
been like 15 years ago back in the military where
she would have dealt with a command climate survey and it would have been
a survey and that's all she would have done and that's the only data she would have brought to bear. Today
she's a data analyst and her entire workforce is
just a series of AI agents making it so
that she understands better what people are experiencing.
(04:02):
That's an evolution that I could never have pictured in the world of HR.
The other thing that I think we're seeing, right, and we took, you
know, obviously there's some backlash around what we've done over the years around global cultural
effectiveness, mindsets that were inclusive, variety
of different things, right? And if you're here at SHRM25, or even
if you are on LinkedIn Live, you saw Johnny C. Taylor Jr., our CEO, my
(04:24):
boss, and my friend, I gotta be clear. One of
the things he talked about is we're seeing what it means to be an inclusive
workplace change, and having that inclusive mindset change.
not just because of regulatory and policy differences, but in
reality, because there is a variety of different
ways that it can be achieved today, right? Ensuring inclusion today
(04:46):
is much more of a marketing job. Right. And
that blend of HR experience, employee experience
and consumer experience and, and much more focused
on those things. You would never have talked about that 10, 15 years ago. Right.
So those are the things that are sort of just like completely
evolving and being different. Now, people always ask me what has actually dropped
(05:08):
off. Right. What has dropped off, if anything, I'll
tell you what things that have dropped off. are
the notions of leadership traits to
some degree. Some of the things that are dropping off are
facets of business acumen. Business
acumen is to me somewhat of an anathema. It's
(05:30):
an ugly term because it's a way of saying You are in
business, but you have to be specialized and really understand business,
right? Understand and build acumen towards it, right? In reality,
what I think about that is we're seeing an evolution in this
profession to the point where we are the strategic drivers of
what is the transformation within an organization, right? And
(05:53):
because of that, because of that, I'm tired
of hearing about business acumen, to be perfectly honest. We are the business,
right? That to me is something that is evolving and kind of falling by
How do you think that's going to influence the next evolution of
I would argue, so the funny thing is my vision for
what we do with the certification team and how they build this research and
(06:16):
do this. When we first started this, we were updating every five years, right?
And today we're at the point where we're almost updating every 18 months because
the profession is shifting that much. What I
think that we're going to see in that next evolution is
really more around how well you create
three kind of key facets that are driving value in organizations. Can
(06:37):
you make great leaders, right? Can you
create a place where you're optimizing the value generated
by your talent? And can you take
the best talent available to you based
upon their skills and quantify that so that
you can optimize that talent? It's really the intersection of,
(06:59):
do I have a great culture and is it optimized for
me to get the best value out of my talent? And that talent
can be any type of talent. It could be AI and HI.
It can be human intelligence only, or it can be AI intelligence
only. But the problem is it's evolving this profession to
the point where we're going to start to see CHRO jobs change
(07:21):
and become CHIRO jobs, right? Chief Human Artificial
Intelligence Resource Officers. And you're going to see these things
happen. In fact, we're getting the first signals of that. Moderna did, ServiceNow did
this. We've seen a variety of places where this is happening. And
when you talk to CEOs, one of the things that we hear repeatedly is people
who are in HR understand difficult situations, managing people and
(07:44):
getting people to change. People who are in
tech don't really do that, right? So
whether we like it or not, this is going to be HR's baby moving
forward. We're going to be Kairos. We're going to see that happen more than
Yeah, it was really fascinating when I read the article about what Moderna did
(08:04):
in merging those teams together. And it was one of those
moments in my own, you know, HR profession career that I was like,
that's innovative. That's creative. That's actually being
strategic and forward thinking about what your organization needs and
changing the landscape. So it's exciting to be kind of on
the outside of it, watching how that's going to play out so publicly. Yeah.
(08:27):
I mean, the last thing that I think we saw happen like that, the last innovation
that we saw happen like that was when we introduced the internet
and you had to have a cyber person on
Okay, this next question might be controversial, so if you don't want to answer it, it's fine, just
let me know. I'm curious what your perspective is as somebody
(08:49):
who has lived and breathed and helped create these competency models
for HR. Our profession in general hasn't agreed
together on one model to rule them all, like,
you know, you're a certified public accountant or you're a paramedic, right, as
a licensing body. Do you think there's an opportunity for
the profession to coalesce? around
(09:13):
It's fascinating. People have asked me this in the past, and Lord
knows, having been at the beginning of it all, right, like I was that guy, it's
certainly a question I've dealt with quite a bit, right? I think what you find
when you look at all the models is there's a lot of overlap in many cases, right?
But what I lean towards is the one that's most forward leaning, right?
Because the one that's going to advance the profession is the one that's going to change the profession. And
(09:36):
when you look at that, I mean, not to, you know, obviously I'm
biased, I drink my own Kool-Aid and all that, right? But one of the things that stands
out is you see that there's this forward-leaning kind of
perspective when it comes to thinking about how AI is changing the world of work and
changing the data behind it to make sure that it's adapting to
what realities in the workplace are. Not waiting every five years, not
(09:57):
doing these things, right? That to me speaks to it. Do I believe the HR profession
will ever have a day where we're all under one umbrella? I
hope so. And that's from the guy who helped build the
biggest one in the world. That speaks to the importance of
actually having that model be in
your, in your DNA, right? As a, as a professional. And that, you
(10:18):
know, there are many great things about all the other models, but this is an example of
how much that means to employers. If
you were to think about that, that to me speaks to the notion, let's get, let's
all get under one tent, agree, and just back one, right?
Yeah. And I can tell you from my own personal experience, I have two
master's degrees, an MBA, one in HR, and it wasn't
(10:41):
really until I got my SHRM SCP that I saw
an uptake and return of my applications for
jobs, you know? So, so yeah, you're right. It's, it's definitely something that
the employer community is looking for. If you're an HR leader and
you want to assess the competency of your team, let's say not everybody
has gone down the journey, right, to get certified, but you know that you
(11:02):
want to help your team grow and identify potential gaps. What are
some ways that you would suggest HR leaders start to
You know, I always argue that a self-assessment of
your own kind of skills and what you know and don't know, more importantly, is
valuable. And I argue that you should do that annually. I
am a big believer that we as humans just love to validate what
(11:23):
we know. And, you know, maybe it's my psychological training,
but part of what I think we should really focus on is
how we are testing ourselves to learn. I use an example of this. I
actually am a big believer that you should do a course with one
of your coworkers. at any point in time. It should not be just you. It
should be you and your coworker, somebody who you trust, who
(11:43):
you feel vulnerable with, and you can do what you need to do, and go and
take a course that is something way outside your wheelhouse, right?
For me, believe it or not, it was just this last year,
I partnered with one of my best colleagues, the
Vice President of Business Intelligence at Trim, and one of the things that
we did was we took a course in something we didn't know anything about. So we both took
(12:05):
a course at MIT virtual, right,
all e-learning, getting our certificates in data
monetization, right? And sure, data, it
seems like we all know this, but monetization is a very different model, right?
And I'm the first to say it, she completely kicked my
butt in the grading of this course, right? She
(12:26):
was top prize marks, all those things, I was just happy to finish. But
what was great about it is we both learned from
that collaborative experience. Most HR leaders don't get the time to
do that. If you look at what HR leaders are most guilty of, is
we're very good at making sure other people are learning. And when
it comes to our profession, the cobbler's kids have no shoes.
(12:48):
We don't do it. We refuse to do it in many cases, right? Or we
do it, but we do it in an old way. And so the
other two things I'd argue is we really should take advantage of,
there's a variety of apps out there. that are now the TikTok
of learning, right? They've democratized learning to the
point where there are some, we partner with a group called Bytes, B-Y-T-E-S,
(13:11):
that looks at, and full disclosure, we've invested in them, they
actually do basically customized AI-based learning
that exists completely on whatever content your organization wants
you to have. So imagine learning about employee policies in
two minutes and swipe. You know, it's fascinating. There's things like that, right?
That just make it so much more accessible. The other thing I'd argue
(13:33):
is, and this is just something that I always invite other leaders to
do and really HR leaders, because we're very bad at this. HR
leaders in particular are very bad at this. No offense to anybody, but
we don't actually ever go get 360 degree feedback or even peer feedback, right?
tell me what I'm not doing, tell me how I'm not working well,
(13:53):
tell me what it is that I fall down on, right? And as
a competency, that to me is something that would
be absolutely valuable. Every competency model
on the planet in history has had communication in
it, right? Some form of communication in it. Every
single one has listening in it as well. But nobody
(14:14):
does listening to learn and
nobody does listening to change how I practice, right?
Those are very different things. Those are not the same thing
as active listening, which we've all heard about, or, you
know, taking feedback, all those wonderful words, right?
I mean, when I hear leaders actually think about what
(14:35):
they do for communication, I want them to listen, to learn, right?
Don't judge, don't respond to all that nonsense that we all do very well and
listen to change your behavior. If you know that the point
of the listening is to help you change your behavior upfront, it
I suspect too that part of the reason that HR doesn't do that is there's
(14:56):
this still, unfortunately, this ingrained fear
of, if I say that there's something that I might
not be doing well, that's going to reflect poorly on me.
Even though we teach our managers, we teach our leadership team that
that 360 feedback is so important. It's fascinating that we
It is fascinating. To me, it's funny, the best moment
(15:19):
I've ever had at SHRM as a leader, right? I've been a leader at SHRM now going on
11 years, and I was an individual contributor for the
first, actually, I take that back, 13 years, and I've been an individual contributor for, or
I started off as an individual contributor for the first two. The best
moment, everybody wants me to share what my favorite moment was at
SHRM, best moment I ever had at SHRM. My best moment at
(15:39):
SHRM was a day that I completely screwed
everything up. I completely screwed everything up.
I misreported information to chapters, right? And
it was not intentional by any stretch, but I forgot that the chapters had not
heard this information before. I didn't couch it the right way. It
had to do with the launch of certification. Some of it, not the original launch, but some
(16:01):
new facets that we were engaged in. And one of the things
I'll never forget is I got reamed. I
mean, not by my boss, let me be clear, not by my boss, but
by my, my, my fellow chapter leaders, my, the people who I
serve. Right. And they were right. They were right.
But what was most powerful about that for me was not only did it
(16:22):
really feel like a gut punch, because it was me being unwilling
to accept something, the best part about it was I was
supposed to go have lunch with one of my teams, the Sherm Knowledge Center, right?
Back in the day, I used to lead that group. And the knowledge advisors are
supposed to take out the ones who were in-house. And
I'll never forget, one of the leaders, I basically
(16:44):
wrote them and I said, hey, guys, I really screwed something up
and I need a good 30 minutes to get over it. I'll be
honest, I'm shaken by it, right? And
the best thing about that was every single
one of them to a person after that, the next day
or two, they said, I appreciate you being vulnerable enough
(17:06):
to tell us you screwed something up. And that you, even
in your role, experience those things, right? And let
me tell you about how you're doing things really well. That to me was
a completely different experience. To this day, still one of my
When you fail and you own it, there's such power
in that. There's such power in that. All right. I want to switch gears for a
(17:28):
little bit and talk about your other hat that you wear, your main
hat, right? There's a data science, data analytics role. You
know, when I think about. all of the data that
HR has access to. Sometimes we're not utilizing
it the best to influence our talent strategies, you
know, help the business make money. What ways can HR analytics
(17:50):
really start to drive and influence strategy for
That's a tough question. I mean, it's one that many researchers over the years
have tried to answer. I think about Mark Hustled as an example. 20 years
ago, it was focused on the value chain and how you create
the HR value chain, right? In my estimation, the best
way to really tackle this if you're an HR leader wanting
(18:12):
to drive strategy is you need to stop doing two
things. Don't use data. to
generate insights, have insights and
use the data to either confirm or invalidate what
you think, right? Because much of what happens is data
(18:33):
is only as good as the analysis that someone puts into it, right? And
we get a lot of reporting done. There's a lot of analytics out
there, but nobody's actually looking at it and trying to understand the
depth of what it means, right? Like, what does it actually mean? Is it
a leading indicator? Is it something that's actually more symptom
of a deeper issue? Is it something that is
(18:54):
actually just an anomaly? Those types of things, right? Don't confirm
your hypotheses, but by the same token, don't go out there and
assume that your insights are the only insights that are going to
be out there, right? Use the data the right way. And then
don't use it just to be the smartest person in the room. Use it
to drive action, right? Tie your insight to some form of
(19:16):
action, right? Those things get lost in many ways. And I'll
give an example. I was fortunate enough to be on a panel with Angela Hanning
of Fox Restaurants Concepts, right? And one of
the things she talks about is she talks about In our
business, it's a very data-driven business, right? Restaurants in general, you've
got the point of sale systems, you've got all the revenue that you should
(19:36):
have per person, all those things, and you determine who's going to be a great leader based
upon how well they are as an individual contributor, right? But she talks
about specifically There's no value in me
just giving you what revenue per FTE is at a specific restaurant,
right? That is something that is a great bottom
line type question, but the value in what
(19:58):
she gleans is actually how much she
knows from those managers about each of
the people that work for them. How much are those people able
to influence the contribution of one team
member to that bottom line, right? And that analysis is
deeper than just, let me run some numbers, right?
(20:20):
That analysis provides color to what it is that is actually
available there. They've used it to create leadership initiatives. They
found ways to create leadership initiatives that made it so that somebody
who was not on ever a leadership track, was never eligible,
they found an entire class of new leaders for their restaurant,
changing their entire business model. They have people
(20:42):
now who are the person that is really a
general manager, but the general manager who focuses on
people issues only, right? Knowing how to pull
the levers, not just in shift management, not just in,
is this person compliant? Is this person showing up? But using the
people to understand who's better based upon what we know
(21:03):
about these customers, who's better to deal with this type of
customer and who's going to drive greater value out of that interaction. She's
crafting employee experience to lead to better consumer experience, right?
That is a very different model than you think of when you think of HR.
You know, it's interesting. I was talking to somebody and I
forget who it was, so my bad that I can't mention them, but we were
(21:24):
talking about that concept of performance reviews
and peer feedback and how we identify our
hypos in our organization. And the concept that they were talking about
was that, you know, traditional ways of performance reviews
is, you know, you have your top down and your self review. You
don't typically do a ton of pure stuff, you know? And it
(21:46):
really came to light for me when I was thinking about my sons in the military. And
they do this exercise where they rate the top five in the class and
the top bottom of the class. And it's very public and it's very, it could
ruin their career, let's be honest. But what I found interesting about
bringing that concept into the workplace is there
are people in your organization who are go-to's for other peers.
(22:09):
And it might not be their role, right? It might be just somebody who
has great tenure. It might be somebody who's a great collaborator. It might
like not related to their role, but you,
you don't have anything in your process to identify those people.
So they might not even be on your radar, even though they're a good performer, you
might not identify them. So. That's kind of a long explanation for this
(22:30):
question is when you think about using people data
in an ethical way related to performance, what
are the things we need to think about or potentially the trends that you're seeing there?
So it's fascinating. A lot of people don't realize this, but this is an
area where I think AI is ripe. to really help us
be much more effective. Everybody has a hard time having a hard conversation.
(22:53):
Managers don't actually know 90% of what their people
do. And when it comes to HR, we are
not exactly great at helping them figure
out what is the best way to do this in a great way. We have this
sort of structured answers and what have you. But one of the things that strikes
me is This is where AI can make us a lot better, right? Imagine
(23:14):
a world where AI can help a manager identify everything
that a person has accomplished in a year, right? Or not even in a
year, let's say in a week. And then the AI helps
you kind of determine what the best way to approach this
person's kind of motivation tactics really are,
right? And then from there, imagine a world where you can actually get
(23:35):
a score sheet that says, after having had the conversation, right?
Now I know what points I hit well and what points I didn't hit
hard enough, what I need to kind of follow up on with this individual.
But more importantly, it'll score how well this individual actually understood and
is aligned with what feedback I was giving them, right?
That's an area where those are three different use cases. Those
(23:57):
are three different pieces of AI, but all of it is going to
be valuable in helping us be much more effective about these difficult
conversations, as they say, right? Now, what's fascinating to
me, though, is there is a whole world of
ways in which you can identify some of those people, that preamble that you
had for this question, those people who are influencers, that are drivers, that
(24:18):
actually are top performers. Believe it or not, there is now a
whole suite of tools that allow us to do that. It's called organizational network analysis.
And whenever you find this, right, imagine like a map of a neural
network, right? Whenever you find a node where there's a lot of
activity, that's someone who people go to, because
they're a respected influencer or expert within the
(24:40):
organization on something, right? They tend to be either a
high performer or they tend to be somebody who gets how, pardon
my French, but how shit gets done in the organization, right? And
that's actually really valuable. So what
you know now is you don't need to necessarily go by performance or
use because those are fraught with all kinds of bias, any number of factors, right?
(25:01):
But the other thing you can do is also kind of really
take advantage of those unseen nodes and say, look
at this. I now have people who I would never have thought
of, right? And there are organizations around the world using this
now. Rutgers was the place where a lot of this was invented. There
are organizations around the world now who are using this to basically say,
(25:22):
okay, you are a senior person who is really good
at this and helps educate these people. We're going to take you out
of that charge nurse role and we're going to bring you over here and you're going to be
management. And this is what you're going to do. You're going to help educate doctors now
and you're going to completely change the dynamic. Right. And that
Well, and that taps into the concept around skills. You
(25:44):
know, it's funny, as you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, my own performance review
as you do your self-assessments. And I'm like, man, I would love an AI tool that could read
all my emails for the year and all my team's messages and tell me like,
here's all the things you accomplished. And also that's super scary. Maybe
I don't want it to have all the information, but like, we're going to have to figure that out as
a society, because that is a really valuable tool. And
(26:08):
it's scary to know that somebody's going to be reading all that stuff. Somebody,
you know, using an AI robot or whatever. As
we wrap up our conversation, what is maybe one takeaway for
the HR profession that they can do right now to
One thing that I would advise every single person to do
(26:29):
in the HR, you know, data analytics perspective, right?
First and foremost, what I would actually do is basically
familiarize yourself with a framework of different data
analytics tools that are out there and do it with
the aim of identifying four key purposes for
your organization. If you're good at HR, right, you're doing
(26:52):
one of the four R's. You're either doing basic reliability
work, being really compliant. You're doing
something that is about restructuring and rethinking what you should
be doing. You are re-imagining your entire organization
and you're reinventing the organization, right? I'm
a big believer in taxonomies and numbers of three and
(27:15):
four and what have you. But if you're doing any one of those things, being resourceful,
being, you know, re-imaginative, thinking about how you reinvent
things, you know that there is a complete set
of analytics that you need to tie to those activities, right?
There's a whole framework out there. There's a great book out there. I
recommend taking advantage of that and starting there, understanding
(27:37):
what analytics I need to capture and how I might use it,
Alex, that's good advice. And thank you for sitting down with me and just taking a
few minutes to chat about competencies and data analytics.
You're listening to the HR Mixtape. Your podcast with
the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and
stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel, well,
like work. Now, your host, Shari
Joining me today is Dr. Alexander Alonso, Chief Data and
Analytics Officer for the Society for Human Resource Management. Dr.
(00:26):
Alonso is a recognized thought leader in HR analytics, workforce
readiness, and competency modeling, helping shape strategic direction
Alex, thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with me here at SHRM 2025 in
Yeah, I am fascinated by the place that you get
(00:49):
to sit in the HR world around data science and
analytics and just all the amazing ways that
you can see what our profession is doing and the
impact it's going to have. So I wanted to center our conversation around
kind of two topics today. One is around HR competency models
and the other is really that data science, data analytics space. And
(01:10):
the competency framework for me is really exciting.
I'm working on my doctorate and part of it is exploring generational
approaches to learning using adaptive learning tools and
the impact of HR competency models. I know this is like a big
question to start with, but what do you think
are some of the competencies that are maybe becoming
(01:33):
obsolete for HR and some that we definitely need to lean into?
So it's fascinating. I'm going to preface my response by saying that
some are actually really becoming obsolete, right? but some
are evolving in ways that we've not really ever
considered before. Right. And when I say that, one of the
things that strikes me is, and it's funny because my, my role
(01:54):
at SHRM was to build the first ever HR competency model. When I first
joined SHRM and I was an individual contributor 15 years ago, and
since then launched certification, did the BAC,
the BASC, all the different versions of it. And, One
of the things that stands out is over that time, we've
seen a shift in three key areas, right? The first was
(02:14):
really in what change management looked like and transformation looked
like. Case in point, if you were to look at transformation 15 years
ago, 10 years ago, we called it change management and it
was all about people. It was 100% about people.
Today, organizations are transforming themselves and doing
so for strategic reasons, and they're starting with the tech. So
(02:37):
it's the tech, but then the big issue is how do I make sure that
the system is human-centered and people-centered. And
then beyond that also enables this notion of
AI agentry and human agency, right? And
so that's something that is just an example of how we're seeing these things evolve
over time. I have a dear friend, her name is Kristen Sabo, Captain Kristen Sabo,
(02:59):
former U.S. Air Force. And she's a Google and she's a director of
social listening and employee listening, right? And she specializes specifically
in trying to understand how it is that their workforce
is transforming and how the technology that they're introducing
into the world, not just in their own workplace, is transforming things
(03:19):
that happen at Google with their workforce, how they feel, the sentiment, those
types of things. She is a person whose entire workforce is
100% AI agents. 100% AI
agents. And yet she is the most savvy person I
know in terms of transformation. And I mean, in
a fascinating way, she's actually an embodiment of what it would have
(03:41):
been like 15 years ago back in the military where
she would have dealt with a command climate survey and it would have been
a survey and that's all she would have done and that's the only data she would have brought to bear. Today
she's a data analyst and her entire workforce is
just a series of AI agents making it so
that she understands better what people are experiencing.
(04:02):
That's an evolution that I could never have pictured in the world of HR.
The other thing that I think we're seeing, right, and we took, you
know, obviously there's some backlash around what we've done over the years around global cultural
effectiveness, mindsets that were inclusive, variety
of different things, right? And if you're here at SHRM25, or even
if you are on LinkedIn Live, you saw Johnny C. Taylor Jr., our CEO, my
(04:24):
boss, and my friend, I gotta be clear. One of
the things he talked about is we're seeing what it means to be an inclusive
workplace change, and having that inclusive mindset change.
not just because of regulatory and policy differences, but in
reality, because there is a variety of different
ways that it can be achieved today, right? Ensuring inclusion today
(04:46):
is much more of a marketing job. Right. And
that blend of HR experience, employee experience
and consumer experience and, and much more focused
on those things. You would never have talked about that 10, 15 years ago. Right.
So those are the things that are sort of just like completely
evolving and being different. Now, people always ask me what has actually dropped
(05:08):
off. Right. What has dropped off, if anything, I'll
tell you what things that have dropped off. are
the notions of leadership traits to
some degree. Some of the things that are dropping off are
facets of business acumen. Business
acumen is to me somewhat of an anathema. It's
(05:30):
an ugly term because it's a way of saying You are in
business, but you have to be specialized and really understand business,
right? Understand and build acumen towards it, right? In reality,
what I think about that is we're seeing an evolution in this
profession to the point where we are the strategic drivers of
what is the transformation within an organization, right? And
(05:53):
because of that, because of that, I'm tired
of hearing about business acumen, to be perfectly honest. We are the business,
right? That to me is something that is evolving and kind of falling by
How do you think that's going to influence the next evolution of
I would argue, so the funny thing is my vision for
what we do with the certification team and how they build this research and
(06:16):
do this. When we first started this, we were updating every five years, right?
And today we're at the point where we're almost updating every 18 months because
the profession is shifting that much. What I
think that we're going to see in that next evolution is
really more around how well you create
three kind of key facets that are driving value in organizations. Can
(06:37):
you make great leaders, right? Can you
create a place where you're optimizing the value generated
by your talent? And can you take
the best talent available to you based
upon their skills and quantify that so that
you can optimize that talent? It's really the intersection of,
(06:59):
do I have a great culture and is it optimized for
me to get the best value out of my talent? And that talent
can be any type of talent. It could be AI and HI.
It can be human intelligence only, or it can be AI intelligence
only. But the problem is it's evolving this profession to
the point where we're going to start to see CHRO jobs change
(07:21):
and become CHIRO jobs, right? Chief Human Artificial
Intelligence Resource Officers. And you're going to see these things
happen. In fact, we're getting the first signals of that. Moderna did, ServiceNow did
this. We've seen a variety of places where this is happening. And
when you talk to CEOs, one of the things that we hear repeatedly is people
who are in HR understand difficult situations, managing people and
(07:44):
getting people to change. People who are in
tech don't really do that, right? So
whether we like it or not, this is going to be HR's baby moving
forward. We're going to be Kairos. We're going to see that happen more than
Yeah, it was really fascinating when I read the article about what Moderna did
(08:04):
in merging those teams together. And it was one of those
moments in my own, you know, HR profession career that I was like,
that's innovative. That's creative. That's actually being
strategic and forward thinking about what your organization needs and
changing the landscape. So it's exciting to be kind of on
the outside of it, watching how that's going to play out so publicly. Yeah.
(08:27):
I mean, the last thing that I think we saw happen like that, the last innovation
that we saw happen like that was when we introduced the internet
and you had to have a cyber person on
Okay, this next question might be controversial, so if you don't want to answer it, it's fine, just
let me know. I'm curious what your perspective is as somebody
(08:49):
who has lived and breathed and helped create these competency models
for HR. Our profession in general hasn't agreed
together on one model to rule them all, like,
you know, you're a certified public accountant or you're a paramedic, right, as
a licensing body. Do you think there's an opportunity for
the profession to coalesce? around
(09:13):
It's fascinating. People have asked me this in the past, and Lord
knows, having been at the beginning of it all, right, like I was that guy, it's
certainly a question I've dealt with quite a bit, right? I think what you find
when you look at all the models is there's a lot of overlap in many cases, right?
But what I lean towards is the one that's most forward leaning, right?
Because the one that's going to advance the profession is the one that's going to change the profession. And
(09:36):
when you look at that, I mean, not to, you know, obviously I'm
biased, I drink my own Kool-Aid and all that, right? But one of the things that stands
out is you see that there's this forward-leaning kind of
perspective when it comes to thinking about how AI is changing the world of work and
changing the data behind it to make sure that it's adapting to
what realities in the workplace are. Not waiting every five years, not
(09:57):
doing these things, right? That to me speaks to it. Do I believe the HR profession
will ever have a day where we're all under one umbrella? I
hope so. And that's from the guy who helped build the
biggest one in the world. That speaks to the importance of
actually having that model be in
your, in your DNA, right? As a, as a professional. And that, you
(10:18):
know, there are many great things about all the other models, but this is an example of
how much that means to employers. If
you were to think about that, that to me speaks to the notion, let's get, let's
all get under one tent, agree, and just back one, right?
Yeah. And I can tell you from my own personal experience, I have two
master's degrees, an MBA, one in HR, and it wasn't
(10:41):
really until I got my SHRM SCP that I saw
an uptake and return of my applications for
jobs, you know? So, so yeah, you're right. It's, it's definitely something that
the employer community is looking for. If you're an HR leader and
you want to assess the competency of your team, let's say not everybody
has gone down the journey, right, to get certified, but you know that you
(11:02):
want to help your team grow and identify potential gaps. What are
some ways that you would suggest HR leaders start to
You know, I always argue that a self-assessment of
your own kind of skills and what you know and don't know, more importantly, is
valuable. And I argue that you should do that annually. I
am a big believer that we as humans just love to validate what
(11:23):
we know. And, you know, maybe it's my psychological training,
but part of what I think we should really focus on is
how we are testing ourselves to learn. I use an example of this. I
actually am a big believer that you should do a course with one
of your coworkers. at any point in time. It should not be just you. It
should be you and your coworker, somebody who you trust, who
(11:43):
you feel vulnerable with, and you can do what you need to do, and go and
take a course that is something way outside your wheelhouse, right?
For me, believe it or not, it was just this last year,
I partnered with one of my best colleagues, the
Vice President of Business Intelligence at Trim, and one of the things that
we did was we took a course in something we didn't know anything about. So we both took
(12:05):
a course at MIT virtual, right,
all e-learning, getting our certificates in data
monetization, right? And sure, data, it
seems like we all know this, but monetization is a very different model, right?
And I'm the first to say it, she completely kicked my
butt in the grading of this course, right? She
(12:26):
was top prize marks, all those things, I was just happy to finish. But
what was great about it is we both learned from
that collaborative experience. Most HR leaders don't get the time to
do that. If you look at what HR leaders are most guilty of, is
we're very good at making sure other people are learning. And when
it comes to our profession, the cobbler's kids have no shoes.
(12:48):
We don't do it. We refuse to do it in many cases, right? Or we
do it, but we do it in an old way. And so the
other two things I'd argue is we really should take advantage of,
there's a variety of apps out there. that are now the TikTok
of learning, right? They've democratized learning to the
point where there are some, we partner with a group called Bytes, B-Y-T-E-S,
(13:11):
that looks at, and full disclosure, we've invested in them, they
actually do basically customized AI-based learning
that exists completely on whatever content your organization wants
you to have. So imagine learning about employee policies in
two minutes and swipe. You know, it's fascinating. There's things like that, right?
That just make it so much more accessible. The other thing I'd argue
(13:33):
is, and this is just something that I always invite other leaders to
do and really HR leaders, because we're very bad at this. HR
leaders in particular are very bad at this. No offense to anybody, but
we don't actually ever go get 360 degree feedback or even peer feedback, right?
tell me what I'm not doing, tell me how I'm not working well,
(13:53):
tell me what it is that I fall down on, right? And as
a competency, that to me is something that would
be absolutely valuable. Every competency model
on the planet in history has had communication in
it, right? Some form of communication in it. Every
single one has listening in it as well. But nobody
(14:14):
does listening to learn and
nobody does listening to change how I practice, right?
Those are very different things. Those are not the same thing
as active listening, which we've all heard about, or, you
know, taking feedback, all those wonderful words, right?
I mean, when I hear leaders actually think about what
(14:35):
they do for communication, I want them to listen, to learn, right?
Don't judge, don't respond to all that nonsense that we all do very well and
listen to change your behavior. If you know that the point
of the listening is to help you change your behavior upfront, it
I suspect too that part of the reason that HR doesn't do that is there's
(14:56):
this still, unfortunately, this ingrained fear
of, if I say that there's something that I might
not be doing well, that's going to reflect poorly on me.
Even though we teach our managers, we teach our leadership team that
that 360 feedback is so important. It's fascinating that we
It is fascinating. To me, it's funny, the best moment
(15:19):
I've ever had at SHRM as a leader, right? I've been a leader at SHRM now going on
11 years, and I was an individual contributor for the
first, actually, I take that back, 13 years, and I've been an individual contributor for, or
I started off as an individual contributor for the first two. The best
moment, everybody wants me to share what my favorite moment was at
SHRM, best moment I ever had at SHRM. My best moment at
(15:39):
SHRM was a day that I completely screwed
everything up. I completely screwed everything up.
I misreported information to chapters, right? And
it was not intentional by any stretch, but I forgot that the chapters had not
heard this information before. I didn't couch it the right way. It
had to do with the launch of certification. Some of it, not the original launch, but some
(16:01):
new facets that we were engaged in. And one of the things
I'll never forget is I got reamed. I
mean, not by my boss, let me be clear, not by my boss, but
by my, my, my fellow chapter leaders, my, the people who I
serve. Right. And they were right. They were right.
But what was most powerful about that for me was not only did it
(16:22):
really feel like a gut punch, because it was me being unwilling
to accept something, the best part about it was I was
supposed to go have lunch with one of my teams, the Sherm Knowledge Center, right?
Back in the day, I used to lead that group. And the knowledge advisors are
supposed to take out the ones who were in-house. And
I'll never forget, one of the leaders, I basically
(16:44):
wrote them and I said, hey, guys, I really screwed something up
and I need a good 30 minutes to get over it. I'll be
honest, I'm shaken by it, right? And
the best thing about that was every single
one of them to a person after that, the next day
or two, they said, I appreciate you being vulnerable enough
(17:06):
to tell us you screwed something up. And that you, even
in your role, experience those things, right? And let
me tell you about how you're doing things really well. That to me was
a completely different experience. To this day, still one of my
When you fail and you own it, there's such power
in that. There's such power in that. All right. I want to switch gears for a
(17:28):
little bit and talk about your other hat that you wear, your main
hat, right? There's a data science, data analytics role. You
know, when I think about. all of the data that
HR has access to. Sometimes we're not utilizing
it the best to influence our talent strategies, you
know, help the business make money. What ways can HR analytics
(17:50):
really start to drive and influence strategy for
That's a tough question. I mean, it's one that many researchers over the years
have tried to answer. I think about Mark Hustled as an example. 20 years
ago, it was focused on the value chain and how you create
the HR value chain, right? In my estimation, the best
way to really tackle this if you're an HR leader wanting
(18:12):
to drive strategy is you need to stop doing two
things. Don't use data. to
generate insights, have insights and
use the data to either confirm or invalidate what
you think, right? Because much of what happens is data
(18:33):
is only as good as the analysis that someone puts into it, right? And
we get a lot of reporting done. There's a lot of analytics out
there, but nobody's actually looking at it and trying to understand the
depth of what it means, right? Like, what does it actually mean? Is it
a leading indicator? Is it something that's actually more symptom
of a deeper issue? Is it something that is
(18:54):
actually just an anomaly? Those types of things, right? Don't confirm
your hypotheses, but by the same token, don't go out there and
assume that your insights are the only insights that are going to
be out there, right? Use the data the right way. And then
don't use it just to be the smartest person in the room. Use it
to drive action, right? Tie your insight to some form of
(19:16):
action, right? Those things get lost in many ways. And I'll
give an example. I was fortunate enough to be on a panel with Angela Hanning
of Fox Restaurants Concepts, right? And one of
the things she talks about is she talks about In our
business, it's a very data-driven business, right? Restaurants in general, you've
got the point of sale systems, you've got all the revenue that you should
(19:36):
have per person, all those things, and you determine who's going to be a great leader based
upon how well they are as an individual contributor, right? But she talks
about specifically There's no value in me
just giving you what revenue per FTE is at a specific restaurant,
right? That is something that is a great bottom
line type question, but the value in what
(19:58):
she gleans is actually how much she
knows from those managers about each of
the people that work for them. How much are those people able
to influence the contribution of one team
member to that bottom line, right? And that analysis is
deeper than just, let me run some numbers, right?
(20:20):
That analysis provides color to what it is that is actually
available there. They've used it to create leadership initiatives. They
found ways to create leadership initiatives that made it so that somebody
who was not on ever a leadership track, was never eligible,
they found an entire class of new leaders for their restaurant,
changing their entire business model. They have people
(20:42):
now who are the person that is really a
general manager, but the general manager who focuses on
people issues only, right? Knowing how to pull
the levers, not just in shift management, not just in,
is this person compliant? Is this person showing up? But using the
people to understand who's better based upon what we know
(21:03):
about these customers, who's better to deal with this type of
customer and who's going to drive greater value out of that interaction. She's
crafting employee experience to lead to better consumer experience, right?
That is a very different model than you think of when you think of HR.
You know, it's interesting. I was talking to somebody and I
forget who it was, so my bad that I can't mention them, but we were
(21:24):
talking about that concept of performance reviews
and peer feedback and how we identify our
hypos in our organization. And the concept that they were talking about
was that, you know, traditional ways of performance reviews
is, you know, you have your top down and your self review. You
don't typically do a ton of pure stuff, you know? And it
(21:46):
really came to light for me when I was thinking about my sons in the military. And
they do this exercise where they rate the top five in the class and
the top bottom of the class. And it's very public and it's very, it could
ruin their career, let's be honest. But what I found interesting about
bringing that concept into the workplace is there
are people in your organization who are go-to's for other peers.
(22:09):
And it might not be their role, right? It might be just somebody who
has great tenure. It might be somebody who's a great collaborator. It might
like not related to their role, but you,
you don't have anything in your process to identify those people.
So they might not even be on your radar, even though they're a good performer, you
might not identify them. So. That's kind of a long explanation for this
(22:30):
question is when you think about using people data
in an ethical way related to performance, what
are the things we need to think about or potentially the trends that you're seeing there?
So it's fascinating. A lot of people don't realize this, but this is an
area where I think AI is ripe. to really help us
be much more effective. Everybody has a hard time having a hard conversation.
(22:53):
Managers don't actually know 90% of what their people
do. And when it comes to HR, we are
not exactly great at helping them figure
out what is the best way to do this in a great way. We have this
sort of structured answers and what have you. But one of the things that strikes
me is This is where AI can make us a lot better, right? Imagine
(23:14):
a world where AI can help a manager identify everything
that a person has accomplished in a year, right? Or not even in a
year, let's say in a week. And then the AI helps
you kind of determine what the best way to approach this
person's kind of motivation tactics really are,
right? And then from there, imagine a world where you can actually get
(23:35):
a score sheet that says, after having had the conversation, right?
Now I know what points I hit well and what points I didn't hit
hard enough, what I need to kind of follow up on with this individual.
But more importantly, it'll score how well this individual actually understood and
is aligned with what feedback I was giving them, right?
That's an area where those are three different use cases. Those
(23:57):
are three different pieces of AI, but all of it is going to
be valuable in helping us be much more effective about these difficult
conversations, as they say, right? Now, what's fascinating to
me, though, is there is a whole world of
ways in which you can identify some of those people, that preamble that you
had for this question, those people who are influencers, that are drivers, that
(24:18):
actually are top performers. Believe it or not, there is now a
whole suite of tools that allow us to do that. It's called organizational network analysis.
And whenever you find this, right, imagine like a map of a neural
network, right? Whenever you find a node where there's a lot of
activity, that's someone who people go to, because
they're a respected influencer or expert within the
(24:40):
organization on something, right? They tend to be either a
high performer or they tend to be somebody who gets how, pardon
my French, but how shit gets done in the organization, right? And
that's actually really valuable. So what
you know now is you don't need to necessarily go by performance or
use because those are fraught with all kinds of bias, any number of factors, right?
(25:01):
But the other thing you can do is also kind of really
take advantage of those unseen nodes and say, look
at this. I now have people who I would never have thought
of, right? And there are organizations around the world using this
now. Rutgers was the place where a lot of this was invented. There
are organizations around the world now who are using this to basically say,
(25:22):
okay, you are a senior person who is really good
at this and helps educate these people. We're going to take you out
of that charge nurse role and we're going to bring you over here and you're going to be
management. And this is what you're going to do. You're going to help educate doctors now
and you're going to completely change the dynamic. Right. And that
Well, and that taps into the concept around skills. You
(25:44):
know, it's funny, as you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, my own performance review
as you do your self-assessments. And I'm like, man, I would love an AI tool that could read
all my emails for the year and all my team's messages and tell me like,
here's all the things you accomplished. And also that's super scary. Maybe
I don't want it to have all the information, but like, we're going to have to figure that out as
a society, because that is a really valuable tool. And
(26:08):
it's scary to know that somebody's going to be reading all that stuff. Somebody,
you know, using an AI robot or whatever. As
we wrap up our conversation, what is maybe one takeaway for
the HR profession that they can do right now to
One thing that I would advise every single person to do
(26:29):
in the HR, you know, data analytics perspective, right?
First and foremost, what I would actually do is basically
familiarize yourself with a framework of different data
analytics tools that are out there and do it with
the aim of identifying four key purposes for
your organization. If you're good at HR, right, you're doing
(26:52):
one of the four R's. You're either doing basic reliability
work, being really compliant. You're doing
something that is about restructuring and rethinking what you should
be doing. You are re-imagining your entire organization
and you're reinventing the organization, right? I'm
a big believer in taxonomies and numbers of three and
(27:15):
four and what have you. But if you're doing any one of those things, being resourceful,
being, you know, re-imaginative, thinking about how you reinvent
things, you know that there is a complete set
of analytics that you need to tie to those activities, right?
There's a whole framework out there. There's a great book out there. I
recommend taking advantage of that and starting there, understanding
(27:37):
what analytics I need to capture and how I might use it,
Alex, that's good advice. And thank you for sitting down with me and just taking a
few minutes to chat about competencies and data analytics.
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