Navigating the AI transformation

Through “not shying away” from AI and leveraging it by recognising its benefits and closing the employee “trust gap”, one global CPO has suggested how businesses can unlock new opportunities.

In a recent HR Leader Podcast episode, the global chief people officer at Qualtrics, Julia Anas (pictured), spoke about the importance of focusing on the “people difference” while navigating the AI transformation.

Anas, who has spent most of her career in the US working in the business partner function, with involvement in talent acquisition, data insights, and reporting, said that through her experience, she has found that “what really differentiates good from great companies is the employee experience” and working for a company that is a leader in the experience management space.

Implementing AI

Amid the AI transformation, Anas said workplaces should not shy away from learning while leveraging AI. She said each employee experiences a different “trust gap” depending on how long it takes for everyone to get comfortable with the technology.

Anas said AI provides potential to “unlock” opportunities to free up time, allowing workers to work on other tasks. She believes that AI upskilling increases efficiency so that workers have “less to do” and more time to spend in the “strategy zone”.

To help workers understand their expectations and the implementation of AI, HR professionals must be “intentional [in helping] employees find the space, right, to experiment, to get comfortable with it,” Anas said.

AI “doesn’t have to be the end all, be all,” she said, but it should help to assist employees in “carving out and building towards … where you want to help them grow and develop”.

Transparency allows workers to understand expectations surrounding AI, she said. In particular, “where we want to see leveraging, when to and when not to leverage it, how to experiment, how to share your learnings with one another”, she added.

Encouraging experimentation

Creating a work environment where workers are free to learn, experiment, and try without fear of failure or letting someone down, “like we’re all in this together,” is a “very important universal component” for the AI transformation, Anas said.

She said: “If you don’t have trust, you won’t be delivering those better people and business outcomes ... Having that foundation [and] investing in that foundation will be paramount to ensuring that your people are excited to come to work every day.”

In this way, workers will show up to work tied to the purpose that HR and the business are working towards and will be able to help deliver that success, she said.

She concluded: “As I reflect and think about what a pivotal moment in time this is for workplaces across the globe, it’s very transformational.”