Courtesy of Jennifer Rogers, below is a transcript of her speaking session on 'Acceleration of People Potential in an Era of Change' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Summit in Financial Services Live.

Session Information:

Acceleration of People Potential in an Era of Change

As we look toward the operational environments of tomorrow, we see a future very much influenced by modernization and automation. However, while technology is an important driver in our future operational landscape and capital investment in these endeavors continues to increase, are we keeping up to speed with our innovation around people development? How are we proactively positioning our workforce and communities for the future of work? In this session, we’ll reimagine learning through the lens of dynamic, differentiated capability development and continuous improvement.

We'll also discuss scalable. measurable, and workplace-accessible enterprise strategies including:

• Leveraging of artificial intelligence to target skills of the future and proactively build skills ahead of the pace of technology change
• Creation of differentiated, adaptable, and connected learning experiences, designed to reach the workforce in real-time in the flow of work
• Real time learning analytics, tied to measurable business outcomes, that monitor the effectiveness of workforce development and inform future people innovation and change

Session Transcript:

I'm proud of us today. She's coming from Houston, Texas, not very far from where I'm at I'm hearing San Antonio, Texas. And I'm talking about Jennifer Rogers.

Jennifer is an experienced executive with a demonstrated history of strategic workforce transformation and capability development. She specialized in workforce optimization and has led large strategic initiatives in several global, high-risk compliance industries, including oil and gas mining creation and financial services. She is passionate about leading cutting-edge innovation in the human development space with a particular occasion. To strategist that, proactively prepare the workforce for the future of work. I have had the privilege of Working and collaborating side-by-side with Jennifer, some of the greatest conferences around the world, and I'm still very, very much honored to have her with us, sharing your wisdom, Jennifer with our global audience today. Thanks for doing that.

Thank you so much, Josie. And as always, it's an honor to be here with you and to be here with the audience for financial services live.

I'm excited about the topic that I'd like to share with you today, and so without further ado, let's go ahead and get started talking about accelerating people potential in an era of change.

So, a little bit about me to start off with just say, gave a great synopsis and bio with regards to my background in history.

one of the things that I wanted to share with you all today, though, is a little bit around my passion.

It's one thing to talk about, you know, the industries we worked in and the roles that we've held. It's another thing to talk about where we really love to work and innovate in this space. And so my passion is really all about creating and cultivating vibrant ecosystems that captivate and cultivate the workforce forward.

I engage with many different organizations at different levels to make that happen, and I'm really pleased and honored to share with you all today some thoughts and insights in terms of where we're working today to continue to ensure that our workforce is prepared for the future.

So, starting off, I think we're all very aware of the idea that we're in a changing world. I've, given talks around some of these topics for, for some time.

And I think, you know, everything that we've been through, over the course of the last year, almost two years, at this point, make this slide even more relevant.

But we are in a changing world, There are mega trends that are predicted. There are different models that speak about this.

This one happens to be compiled by Peter Fiske, and there's data from lots of great sources that you can see on the slide. But essentially, these are mega trends predicted between 2020 and 20 30.

So we're in that era right now.

And it's pretty important to think about all of the different ways in which our world is changing. I know we feel that very tangibly, but these are some of the mega trends as compiled in Peter's work.

So we definitely anticipate shifting economic power.

So emerging markets, developing economies, I think, we've all seen, are part of that today. Climate change and resource scarcity.

Also, part of the megatrends that we're facing technological breakthroughs, we'll talk some about that today in this presentation.

Demographics and social change, which are a huge part of what we're seeing across the world is as well as rapid urbanization.

These are all factors that are important for us to consider, because, in fact, our world is changing.

And once again, we want to ensure that we're in a position in which we're proactively prepared for those shifts, ideally before, before they, they come to being for us.

The next part that I want to talk to you about today is our changing work. So in addition to our world changing work is changing pretty rapidly. There's a great study that came out, McKinsey published it in 20 18.

It's, it's great because it talks very specifically around sector shifts by two thousand thirteen's year 20 30.

Um, there are different sectors in that report, and I encourage you to take a look at it if you're interested. But today will focus primarily on the sector shifts in this report, around banking and insurance.

So in this particular industry, you can see on the screen the predicted sector shifts by the year 20 30.

We see obviously decreases in some key areas, as well as increases in areas, and that is actually reflected in the change in hours in millions of FTEs. So some great information in that report, if you haven't taken a look at it.

Some of the things I'll highlight for the purposes of setting the stage for this conversation today, however, are, kind of, the, the areas that are decreasing and increasing the maddest.

So when we look at banking and insurance in specific, the sector, the sector shifts that we're expecting to see by the year 20 30 shows and decreases in, in key areas.

So there's, there's decreases around general equipment, operation and navigation, and inspecting and monitoring.

Also decreases in basic and advanced literacy, numeracy, and communication. That surprises people sometimes.

But remember, this research is really looking at the role of automation and how that plays a role with regards to how much time we're spending in some of these skills in our day to day. Also decreases in basic data input and processing. I feel like that one is pretty relevant to making an insurance, as well as a decrease in quantitative and statistical skills.

And I get some questions about that sometimes, but when you think about what we're automating in the industry, it starts to become clear that it's not that you won't use those skills or that our workforce won't use those skills.

It's that they will not be used as much.

So we won't be devoting as many work hours, or man hours have woman hours, people, hours to add to that particular activity.

However, where we see increases are really a great sign.

So we see increases in advanced IT skills and programming, in banking and insurance, as well as tech design, engineering, and maintenance, which may not have been an area previously, where there was as much attention spent, Scientific research and development, basic digital skills, leadership, and managing others, and creativity.

So the the really great news about all of this is some of those rote tasks and time spent by our workforce are really transitioning to an era in which human beings can really shine. The skillset that our workforce requires are actually the skills, the skill set that we bring to the table as human beings, that differentiate us, and give us the opportunity to really show who we are.

That has some implications, however, around, once again, how we prepare our workforce for those skills and for spending more time in those particular areas.

On top of changes in our world and changes in our work, our workforce, obviously changing as well. This was actually done once again as part of that same study back in 20 18. It would be interesting to see how much of this has has shifted or accelerated in the current pandemic times as well.

The first piece is around minds, shift, mindset shift. So looking at that culture of lifelong learning and providing those development opportunities for employees, we need to get them prepared proactively for what's ahead. When 30 isn't that far away, new collar jobs. Also a changing aspect of our workforce. What does that mean?

It really means that a lot of the activities that people are performing today in the workforce are going to shift as we start to see more automation.

So those activities get re-allocated between workers and it requires different skill sets to be combined together, creating kind of a new set of middle set and middle skill positions that have never existed before.

The workforce composition also changing as well.

So we've got a booming gig economy that's leading to a rise of independent contractors. Freelancers changes the landscape once again, around how we ensure that people are prepared.

It really kind of reaches into our communities at large, with regards to the responsibility that we have around developing potential partners and economies.

Organizational structures, obviously, changing, too, We're looking at more agile structures, with less hierarchy and more collaborative team networks will touch into that in this presentation, too.

And then C suite changes and HR changes, where we're looking at a much more adaptable senior leadership with different functions and skill sets included.

So, lots of change ahead of us. And what we're going to talk about in the remaining time today is really key areas to focus on, around the ways in which we prepare strategically and start to execute around our processes that help us to deal with that change.

So, the first area is around reduction, in variation in processes.

For this audience that I'm speaking to today, this is probably pretty common topic. We'll talk a little bit around what this means, though, with regards to organizational development and the people side of things. How do we reduce variation in processes?

Why do we do that? Well, we'll talk about that in the second step.

which is really, we're really looking to reduce variation in processes so that we can actually optimize and recognize the diversity that exists in our workforce.

There's amazing opportunity to actually harness the strategy associated with the fact that while we're reducing the variation in equipment and processes, we're actually wanting to really broaden our view of the variation or diversity. they just in our workforce. It's actually a strategic advantage for us. What does that all do? That gets us to the place in which we can really re-imagine the workplace which we'll explore in the latter part of the presentation.

So, firstly, reducing variation, some of this goes without saying, but what we really want to do is make standards in our processes, equipment, and parameters accessible to our workforce. one size doesn't fit all. What do I mean by that?

Well, there's different things listed on the slide here that you can you can kind of take a look at.

But really, we're acknowledging, once again, there's diversity in our workforce. They need to be able to access those standards in a way in which it resonates with them and actually comes alongside them in their work.

So, how do we do that?

We need to continuously describe the work, not the org structure, consistently and categorize our areas of risk.

That comes along with identifying measurable targets as well.

When we start to describe the work instead of a hierarchical structure, it puts us in a more flexible place in which we can really adapt to changing positions, changing, structures, changing world around us.

We want to continuously divine capabilities, as well, by discipline, not by job title. Once again, those job titles are changing, But they probably won't be the same in 20 30 for a large portion of our workforce as they are today. So, how do we orient ourselves to where we're constantly, and continuously defining what capabilities people require to work in different disciplines, and not necessarily lock it down to a specific job title that may not be relevant as we move into the future.

We also want to maintain multiple scenarios simultaneously, so, for those of you that are engaged in this scenario, planning in your workforce, is pretty important. How do we apply that to our workforce developments and strategic organizational development?

There are ways to re-use objects. We'll talk a little bit about that to really reach people in the right way. We want to obviously deploy into the flow of work so, reach people and build their capability as they're working.

That helps us with safe and productive operations rather than pulling people off of work or off shift to continue to develop And then tracking behaviors around people via XAPI. So, what those things mean?

Let's dive into those just a little bit to give you a flavor of what this looks like.

So, when we talk about capability expectations, there's some really interesting trends and technology that are emerging on the scene, and I wanted to introduce you all to some of these contacts.

These contexts and concepts, you haven't seen them.

So we talked a little bit about making capability management, malleable and Agile, and able to adapt to organizational strategy and the world around us.

one of the ways to do that, is really to start to deploy capability management in the form of technology that allows you to constantly and continuously manage that. What you see on the screen is actually an example of some tack. that allows you to actually continuously input or scrape sites, publications, white papers, LinkedIn profiles.

Whatever exists in your space, and parallel industries, as well as, in, in competitor landscape, as well, to really kind of continuously build an expectation around what capability looks like.

Gone are the days where we sit in a boardroom, or a conference room, and, you know, and write on a whiteboard what we think the skills are. We have AI at this point that can help us to continuously form of view around that.

Very, very helpful.

What's also helpful is when you can actually align this to scenario planning from your organization, What do I mean by that? Well, we have certain scenarios that we may expect to be playing out from a business development perspective.

As we move into the future, we can actually build capability matrices that show exactly what capability we need in our workforce if we intend to play out a particular scenario in the future.

This kinda gives you a view of where your organization stands, if scenario A play that instead of scenario B, These can also be used for.

Things that we don't expect to happen. So, not strategies, but, but just environmental scenarios.

For example, For those of you that are still struggling a little bit with capabilities in the workforce with regards to what happens in a pandemic, this would be an example of being able to play out those environmental factors as well. and look at where the workforce sets and what is what is possible with regards to the ways in which they work. And the places that they play a role in the organization given what's happening in the landscape, whether planned or unplanned.

An important aspect to this as well, really gets into the access to standardization, and for those of you that haven't explored the ways in which we can actually single source through content management systems, The information, this is an interesting place to ponder and consider, as well, we tend to think of learning as formal training. And, that's an important part of workforce development, However, there are many different other avenues that are important as well.

Continuous learning, so the ways in which we we share knowledge, we get contextualize help in applications.

We have on equipment support in the flow of work as well as hybrids like augmented reality and virtual reality, remote support and things like that that we'll talk about throughout this presentation. All of these things are aspects of how we develop our workforce, and it's really amazing. If you have organizational processes that allow you to actually deploy the same information to people in a variety of formats throughout the ways that they work.

The organization that I see that are struggling the most in the current environment are the organizations that have built all of these things separately. So, they're kind of siloed off.

So training materials are siloed from continuous learning, materials, and experiences siloed off from augmented reality and virtual reality. There's actually a way to actually build in processes, and support and technology to where you build this once you deploy it and re-use it in all of these different aspects.

In every language, in any, in every modality, in every channel that your workforce needs, all at one time.

Much faster, and honestly, much more cost efficient with regards to being able to get great experiences out to people that really can help shape and change their behavior and prepare them for the future of work.

Augmented Reality is a hot topic, as well.

This is a piece that was in that kind of hybrid scenario, and something that organizations are definitely exploring in every industry, and we have some heavy industrial examples on this slide. Certainly, there's a lot of capital outlay in those particular industries. And so it is very important that we're really supporting people around the use of that equipment, and the ways in which they're organizing their work, to really ensure productive operation.

And so that's one aspect where we can actually take standard operating procedures that exist within an operating model, and actually display those in a heads-up display, and even monitor compliance around procedural steps, right in the flow of work.

Rather than pulling people out, and having them go through PowerPoint slides, or a training manual, or even a standard operating procedure to help guide their activities. So, lots of great progression there.

I also want to introduce you to a concept that you all may or may not be familiar with.

There is an open standard called the Experience API, and it's really, really important, because what it actually does, is it's it's well positioned to be able to actually look at the ways in which we're shaping and changing human behavior in real time.

What do I mean by that? Once again, have some examples on the slide from Heavy Industrial.

This applies to every industry, however, whereby, we can actually look at a series of statements and link data that help us to see what people or groups of people are actually doing in real time, as they act upon whatever objects make sense in there, in their work.

So, for example, you know, Jennifer turned the dial on a particular, um, no piece of equipment. Those are, that's the kind of data that we can track, similarly.

You know, Jennifer Resolved a particular issue in a, In a Application or software.

All things that are tracked and available to you as an open standard that become very powerful. We'll look at that in a moment.

Additional parameters around this are really kind of: what context is the person operating in, and what results come out of that. So what context do I start with before I resolve that issue? And then is the issue really resolved? What are the results?

There's a data schema for this that allows us to actually come alongside people while they're working, and actually start to see this and form a view around this, which is important, not only to the organization, but to the individual as well.

We can also do this in virtual reality, whereby, once again, we're, we're putting people in a simulated environment. This one happens to be technical and actually tracking exactly what they're doing, and the ways in which they're performing that.

That helps us with compliance and also around productive operations.

Um, one of the interesting places where we see a lot of this is, is in virtual reality and this particular example that I have here, you can see, you know, kind of a general kind of simulation whereby, in the beginning, you could kind of see attempts and how long someone took and maybe kind of, you know, some idea of how they did.

But, that's not what we really want to see. And when we apply an open standard like XAPI, we can actually see things that are more relevant to us. For example, in a medium risk context, what actions did people actually perform in that simulated environment and does that match the actions that they're performing in the flow of work?

Also, what incorrect actions are they performing, and what barrier failed, like continuous review, or a procedural barrier, or a technical barrier that's in place, that failed, because of an incorrect action, As well as, of course, evidence of particular competencies. In this example, anticipating and preventing work related injuries and illnesses.

So lots that can be done on the technical side, but also on the soft skill side. So in this particular aspect, lots and facilitated reality, where whereby you're in a virtual world, and they're actually real actors that are speaking for these animated and the avatar people. And you're having a conversation.

This is an example of me actually doing that, and mapping some of the skills that I'm demonstrating in that simulated environment, in this case, with an upset colleague or, or employee, and translating that to skill sets that I'm demonstrating and that we can track over time.

There's also amazing things that can be done around personalizing experience. So in this example, we're actually showing the ways in which we can look at who a person is, what actions they've taken previously in simulated or real environments. And then, actually, personalized learning and experience to really target either the skills that they need to work, that they've identified, that they want to work on, or the skills that organizationally we need for them to work on to actually get to the next level. So, lots of great opportunity here.

That really gets me to kind of the next area. And once we've standardized all these things, and we have a way to look at them and deploy them, and a common data source, we can actually utilize that to recognize diversity.

Because people are really hard, are sustainable.

Strategy as an organization, That's what that moves us forward. We need to make them visible.

Once we've got these standards and processes in place, we're able to actually see them in a common way across all of the work that they do, regardless of who they are.

What does this mean?

Well, really, we can engage our workforce in the capability curation. We'll look at this in a moment. Link, continuous feedback to performance measures, I know some organizations have already taken that leap, and for those of you that haven't, it's an amazing journey. Love to talk more with you about that.

We need to make our capability expectations evergreen and fully transparent to our workforce, so that they actually know where we need to be by 2030, and they understand what steps are being taken to help prepare them for that.

We can measure real-time capability development in the Flow of work, which is really exciting, and correlate those capability development.

Activities to experiences, which really help us to engage in some strategic workforce planning whereby we know exactly what targets we're trying to hit for whatever scenario we feel like is near term, And we're deploying the right mix of experiences, and, and job combinations, and what have you to get people to, to the place in which they need to be, as well as, helps us to recruit for the future.

So a few things around this, I won't talk about it too much. But the last hundred years or so, we pretty much use the same methodology to try to understand who people are and where they can play a great role in our organization. This is just a sample. It's been scrubbed. It's not from a particular person.

But we've done this a lot through the technology that existed before whereby we asked somebody to kind of fill out a form or type up a CV or resume that that gives us some idea of who they are and where they can play a role in our strategic development as an organization and in their development as an individual.

Unfortunately, this type of format really hasn't given us a lot of valid information about how people can play a role, if jobs are changing, if skills are changing, how how does this information actually play into that?

Let's look at that for just a moment.

We've been missing a lot. when I look at the example that I just showed previously. And then I look at what we get from the same person. When we ask them to talk about who they are and what makes them.

Then, there's very little overlap between what exists in the resume or CV and what people tell us, either through input strategies or through artificial intelligence, assisting them, or even just oral history. And so, when we look at this particular example, this is the same person as the previous slide. We start to see all kinds of things that are incredibly important with regards to the skillset that, that's coming.

That aren't necessarily reflected in the CV, that exists today.

So, what do we do about that?

So, once again, technology, that allows us to actually build some insights around this pretty quickly. So, as we look at this, we see that there's really an opportunity to use artificial intelligence, along with human validation to actually constantly be suggesting skills to people with regards to what skills we think they might have based upon the actions.

Remember that XAPI data that I talked about before, that, we see them demonstrating, whereby, they can control their own skill profiles. We can say on the AI, I think she might have the skill. Do you have a yes or no. And then, if you do, what, teammates have you used it with that? So that they can confirm those for you.

Lots of opportunity to do that in a pretty robust way.

What also is interesting is, when we combine this with continuous feedback in the flow of work, this example that's on the screen happens to be an example from an application that works in Outlook.

If if our colleagues are working in that type of environment day-to-day, but obviously, we can embed this in anything.

Whether it's a heads-up display that people are wearing in a manufacturing environment or, or on a desktop or kiosk in, in more of a dust kind of job. That you can see the opportunity to embed this continuous feedback. Whereby people make accessible to their peers, the skills that they're working on, and then they get continuous feedback around their demonstration of those skills. Which builds a really robust profile around people. That gives us the opportunity to link that into experiences that you see on the slide.

The ability to actually link that to experience and give people exactly what they need at the time they need it in the modality that they need to build their skill profile.

We can also look at potential skills.

So, what are the skills that you may have, because you, you've reported that, or others have reported that they see other skills in you. So, what does that mean? So, if I am looking for particular skills that I feel like are a gap in my organization, I don't necessarily need to look only for that specific skill.

I can look at clusters of skills, around that.

That suggests that if someone has skill A, and B, I can accelerate them into skill C faster.

So this is also a great opportunity to, to discuss and look at in terms of processes and technology that you have within your workforce. This gives us organizational views.

Obviously, this is just an example, whereby we can see current and future state and actually map our organization against different scenarios to really ascertain whether we're, we're prepared for the future.

We can also look at predictive and comparative analytics. I won't spend too much time on this now. But really, once again, correlating experiences that we make available for our workforce from a development perspective to real-time skill development in their profiles to really ensure that we are moving people forward.

This gets us to a capability based, org development kind of cycle, whereby we're looking at capability to drive our decisions around recruitment. We can accelerate onboarding by actually knowing, at the time in which people come into our organization, based upon input by hiring managers, and recruiters in applicant tracking systems. Exactly what skill sets and profiles people actually have so that we can find the gap between where they came in and where they need to be and accelerate them into that faster.

We can incorporate this also into performance and real-time capability development. So, we've got a great view of what's coming in the future, which helps us to really look at that strategic workforce planning, and fundamentally ensure that our organization is prepared for what's ahead.

So, we've looked a little bit around standardization of processes, data, technology, and looked at the ways in which that can help us to actually see and celebrate the diversity that exists within people.

And, and where does this take? Yes, well, this really takes us to a place in which we can re-invent our workplace, we can evolve equipment, processes and people.

What does that look like?

Will really, this gives us the opportunity to really express whatever desire we have for people within our organization and our organization as a whole in the industry.

We can measure and track key operational parameters, utilize process data, and people data, to trigger specific, personalized intervention points, and correlate continuous workforce to capability development with continuous process improvement.

A few examples of this on the slides, as we start to round out some of our discussion today, we do have a scalable people infrastructure. I won't spend too much time on this particular aspect in this presentation.

But one of the key points to understand here, if you look at kind of the darker green on the left-hand side of the screen, is that we have a capability development or measurement.

Aspect in our organization? What does that look like? What processes and technology are driving that? And how is that correlated to content, to knowledge management, to the ways in which we're actually enabling and supporting our workforce to perform not only the jobs of today, but the jobs of tomorrow?

Then the teal parts that are directly above or below the green sections start to look at how we personalize from there?

How can we look at capability profiles around individuals, as well as, IOT inputs? Which, we'll explore in just a moment, around equipment and processes and actually marry those together in a way in which we're providing the exact right experience or intervention for a colleague in the flow of work to ensure that they're safe.

That they're productive, and that they're developing the skills, that they need, not only for today, but, for tomorrow.

Lots more on this slide, but, once again, not in the scope of this, this particular conversation.

one of the most interesting places we can get to you when we talk about re-imagining the workforce, it's really kind of demonstrated on the slide here, whereby, if we, if we actually look at operational parameters, and equipment processes.

In terms of the data that we have, around how things are performing.

And I say things, because that's what I'm really talking about, equipment, processes, things. How are those performing?

We can actually say, For example, this particular operational process is trending out of limits.

Jennifer's in proximity, or even operating that particular piece of equipment or technology at that point, and here's her capability profile.

When we start to marry these things together, we can actually create anticipatory development experiences for our workforce, whereby, we, we give them to them in a way in which it's so transparent, they don't even necessarily know that it's happening.

We're actually saying, Jennifer, you're in proximity or directly operating or responsible for this operational process.

The IOT data is telling us that it's trending in or out of limits.

So based on your capability profile and where you're developing and where your strengths are, here's exactly what you need at this moment in time to continue. continue working and, and really make sure that we never trend out of limits.

With regards to that operational process, that you intervene in a way in which the operational processes maintained. And we no longer see a trend in which things actually get out of limits. So, lots to be able to be done there Once we can really look at that combination, once again, of the standardization of processes and data, as well as being able to really recognize diversity and people, It gets us to a fundamentally different place as an organization.

The last thought I'll leave you with, as we start to kind of close out the presentation, part of this time slot and go into any questions that you all have, which I would love to hear, is a quote by Jim Morone. I think it really illustrates where we're trying to go with regards to accelerating people. Potential.

It says, the big challenge is to become all that you have, the possibility of becoming, not believe what it does, to the human spirit, to maximize your human potential, and stretch yourself to the limit.

And I think that's what we're really looking for, for our colleagues, and, you know, some of the principles that we've looked at today, around that standardization and reduction variation of things, as well as recognizing diversity and people in re-imagining our workforce, hopefully get us to that point in which we can achieve it.

That's all I have for you all today. I hope you've enjoyed this presentation, And I look forward to engaging with you all around questions that you may have either live in this event or feel free to follow up with me afterwards, with regards to challenges that you have in your organization, and ways in which we may be able to, to work around re envisioning the workforce and ensuring that they're prepared for the future work.

Fantastic. Jennifer, thank you so much for that, such great insights on the, on the journey. I know that there's so much more that you can talk about, and there's so much depth to each one of this three pillars that you share with us.

I've had the privilege of seeing you go through each one of those before and more at length, but a definite acid job. Capturing the essence of each one of those and showing us the value and the applications. There's some really interesting questions that have come up here. We have about eight minutes so we do the best we can do at that time allotted.

The first one is, is how, How do you effectively engage the work force in this process?

Because, there is, there is excitement about technology, but there's a lot of fear about technology and you come from an industry that we all know, farewell, has had major displacements in employment in the last few years. You'd booms and busts that happened and people feel a little bit disposable at times and that technology can be seen as a replacement for what they do. How do you not only, I don't want to focus on the negative of fear but really on the excitement of engaging people on this journey. You want to work for you in your professional experience.

I think it's a great question, and it comes up all the time.

And the interesting thing that I've experienced as going, you know, going through these transformation projects in some high risk high compliance industries that you referred to, is that there, there tends to be an initial fear when we talk about automation.

And, you know, kind of this thought process that the robots are going to take over the world and replace us all, and all of those kinds of things. But I think the beauty of all of this is that the data doesn't actually show that, Right?

When we talk to people about the idea, that the introduction of automation into the space actually frees them up to be human, and for us to really value things that exist, within them, that we've, we've never asked them about before. It tends to energize people haven't experienced.

At one point, where I was working with some colleagues that were working in an underground mining situation. We actually did an experiment with them, where we gave them the opportunity to actually give us some oral history and engage in their profiles and build out a profile.

That was fundamentally different than what we had asked them for before. And, you know, honestly, it felt very empowering for them to say, hey, you're recognizing that I have leadership skills.

You're recognizing that I have critical thinking skills, but I have. I may have some technical technological skills.

Those are things that we never had a way to actually give people the opportunity to be seen for before. So, you know, I think one of the things that's really helpful is emphasizing to people what's going to be the most important for you as these industries emerge is what makes you human.

And for the first time ever, we're really looking to find advanced ways through artificial intelligence, human validation, all of those kinds of things, to actually see who you are, and give you the tools to be able to show that.

So that we can give you development opportunities.

But also, get you engaged in jobs and, and roles that you're really interested in.

So, I mean, it's interesting, because I get this question a lot. If it's funny, though, when you start to engage people in this way, they do seem to be very energized and almost have more hope around the idea that, yes, my job is changing, but the things that you need from me, I probably feel more empowered by, than anything you've ever asked me before.

So, it's really just, um, you know, talking to people in the right way about it, and giving them the opportunity to be a part of the process and to really kind of manage and control their profiles and some of the examples that I shared.

Um, we actually mean people. The individual controls, their profile data privacy and all of that, Right. So, you know, they don't make available anything, that they don't want to, but, it's quite empowering for them to actually say. Yes, actually, I do, have, you know, leadership experience beyond my current role.

And it's something that I do, want to share and to be considered, as we move into, into the future.

So, lots of great things to be done there. It's really about framing and, and really involving people in the process of kind of curating profiles and providing feedback for one another and for the organization as a whole around them.

You said something there that really resonates across industries. We hear a lot of the very successful transformation leaders talking about that, in that, you know, engaging them in the process.

You know, the old saying that, you have to involve people at the point of creation so that they can better at the point of implementation, is a very important. one. Of course, you know, people have been burned, if you will, by large implementations of technology in the past. And we've all have lived through the ERP implementation, that's gonna make our life so much easier, much more difficult life weighed on. And so, I think that there is there is that for those who have been around for some time, there is a bit of a past experiences that have not translate very well.

But you emphasize a farewell that perhaps, you know, people were not very well engaged in the point of creation on previous technology development.

So there's an opportunity for all of us to engage those, the workforce at the point of creation with these new technologies that are coming, though.

Absolutely. And, you know, there are different approaches to that.

You may choose certain disciplines to start within your organization, where you feel like the most change is coming, To be able to work with those.

You can choose different, different parts of the world, based upon communities and and things of that nature.

Honestly, labor unions actually really have responded well to this, this type of innovation. And so, they're, you know, definitely places where they can be engaged and really, work with the community to, not only build jobs within a particular organization, but, potentially stimulate the economy and build jobs within the larger community as a whole. So, lots of different approaches and ways to think about that.

Whereby, you don't have to boil the ocean. You can kind of start with a particular discipline, a particular part of the world, You know, all different types of ways to think about that, and really, you know, gain some momentum there, and then apply it more broadly to the larger organization. You know, as you can.

And it's important to stay Agile and continue to, to work through this process. That's definitely not something they, like you said, an RFP process, I know where you turn that, you know, you spend three years working on something and, you know, and, finally get to something. This is something you can implement almost right away, in, small pieces and scale from there.

That's right. Jennifer, I can't believe it, but then we're like, we're out of time, because it's such an interesting topic. Really, really appreciate it. There are several other questions that have come up here that we will not have to address on this session. You left your contact information, so is it OK for people to send some of the questions directly to you, if necessary.

That would be great. Absolutely.

I'm, I'm completely open to that very well. I also encourage our audience, if you want to ask, you know, a more general question, go ahead and use the LinkedIn posts that we have submitted. A question in there, Jennifer, or any of the speakers who are have expertise in, that area would be able to answer your questions there, but that, Jennifer, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and expertise with our global audience, so they provide a lot of thought provoking concepts And practical implementation of technology that we are all better off knowing about.

Thank you so much, Josie, and thank you to you all for listening. I can't wait to hear about some of the amazing innovation that you all are implementing in your workforce today. I think we can all learn from one another.

So I look forward to hearing from many of you.

Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. That's Jennifer Rogers, leading in accelerating innovation across industry, and the sharing her incredible practical experience on the implementation of technology that creates value for all stakeholders. We are going to be taking a break. And when we come back at the top of the hour, we're going to be meeting with Frank van Geffen, who is a Leader at rabobank. And Frank is going to be talking about the value of information from big data, data scientists, and data management to real, practical information for decision making. So, great applications to the financial services sector, and the great express and insights from a true leader in data analytics. So take a break now. I'll see you at the top of the hour.

About the Author

Jennifer Rogers,
Former Head of Learning at Anglo American.

Experienced Learning executive with a demonstrated history of strategic workforce transformation and capability development. Specialization in complex, global, high-risk-high compliance industries. Passionate about leading cutting-edge innovation in the learning space, with particular attention to learning in the flow of work.