News Spotlight

Workplaces are becoming more toxic. Employees don't feel respected at work because of poor etiquette that was developed during the pandemic when they worked in isolation (Washington Post).

Gen Z workers are frustrating management. Companies find their youngest employees the most difficult to work with that's why they need mentoring and career support (Wall Street Journal).

Employees are looking for sabbaticals as a benefit. Workers are increasingly choosing employers that offer sabbaticals to combat burnout, gain new experiences, and improve their work-life balance (The Guardian).

Stat of the Week

47% of Americans believe it's unrealistic for them to retire before or at the traditional retirement age of 65 and expect to retire at an average age of 74, reports a new study.

In the workplace, late retirements can create generational tensions and affect career advancement opportunities for younger workers. Additionally, it may impact workforce diversity and the influx of new ideas. For employers, retaining older workers longer can preserve valuable experience and institutional knowledge, but may also increase healthcare costs and require adaptations to accommodate age-related needs.

Deep Dive Article

The Leaders Championing the AI Workplace Movement - Part 2

For part two of The Leaders Championing the AI Workplace Movement series, we look at how organizations are ensuring their workforce is prepared to integrate AI into their HR processes. Companies are taking a multi-faceted approach to prepare their workforce for AI integration, focusing on both skills development and change management. On the skills development front, many organizations are implementing comprehensive training programs to upskill and reskill their employees. These programs often cover a range of AI-related topics, from basic AI literacy to more advanced skills like data analysis, machine learning, and AI ethics. Companies are leveraging a variety of learning formats, including online courses, workshops, hands-on projects, and partnerships with educational institutions. Some are creating internal "AI academies" or digital learning platforms to provide ongoing, personalized learning experiences. Additionally, organizations are increasingly emphasizing the development of soft skills that complement AI, such as critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence, recognizing that these human-centric skills will become even more valuable in an AI-augmented workplace.

In terms of change management, companies are adopting strategies to ease the transition and address employee concerns about AI integration. This often involves clear and transparent communication about the company's AI strategy, its potential impact on jobs, and the opportunities it presents. Many organizations are appointing AI champions or creating cross-functional teams to lead the integration efforts and serve as bridges between technical and non-technical staff. Companies are also focusing on creating a culture of innovation and experimentation, encouraging employees to explore AI applications in their work. Some are implementing pilot projects to demonstrate the benefits of AI and gather feedback from employees. Additionally, organizations are revisiting their organizational structures and job designs to better align with AI-augmented work processes, often creating new roles that focus on human-AI collaboration. Through these combined efforts in skills development and change management, companies aim to create a workforce that is not only capable of working alongside AI but also enthusiastic about its potential to enhance their work.

For this series, I spoke to Fortune 500 CHRO’s including Donna Morris (Chief People Officer, Walmart), Michael Fraccaro (Chief People Officer, Mastercard), Cornelius Boone (Chief People Officer, eBay), Kirsten Marriner (Chief People & Corporate Affairs Officer, The Clorox Company), Maria Zangardi (SVP, HR, and Corporate Officer, Universal Health Services), and Karen Dunning (Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Motorola Solutions).

Below is the second of five questions I ask these leaders — subscribe to my FREE Workplace Intelligence Insider Newsletter and you’ll immediately receive the full article.

What steps are you taking to ensure your workforce is prepared for AI integration, in terms of both skills development and change management?

Donna Morris (Walmart): We’ve learned a lot. From UX feedback to insights about the features that move the needle on associate productivity, our associates have helped us chart the future of these tools.

Some of our key learnings include:

• Go wide, then deep: We’ve seen there are two types of use cases – the general uses that benefit everyone, such as drafting emails or summarizing notes. That’s important in the initial awareness phase, but we’ve found different roles need My Assistant for different reasons. For example, the team who builds our learning materials dove into using generative AI for content creation, while an associate on our Sourcing team uses it to summarize large documents for reports.
• Identify and Amplify Use Cases: We launched My Assistant quickly because we wanted associates to start experimenting. As you would expect with any change curve, we had a cohort of early adopters who really dove in. We looked at usage data to identify those users, reach out to them and ask them to share their learnings. In each case, they were excited to share their experience and be seen as leaders in this space.
• Keep Iterating: We’ve had some major wins along the way. We’ve integrated an experience for managers that saves them 15 clicks on average when they’re performing tasks like opening a requisition or transferring associates to a new role. We’ve recently rolled this functionality, along with the rest of My Assistant, to 13,000 managers in Sam’s Club, and we saw over 90% adoption in the first six weeks.

Michael Fraccaro (Mastercard): AI is a journey, and we’re keeping employees at the center of that journey through awareness, education and change management efforts. We’ve created forums for ongoing discussions of trends, technologies, and safeguards. We ensure our employees know our current use cases for AI, including our commitments to ethical AI and avoiding bias in AI through education of our data privacy principles and AI guidelines. We’ve set-up an AI educational series through our Up On Strategy global storytelling platform (ie. fireside chats with executives); as well as self-paced learning opportunities offered through our learning platform. We’ve also set-up dedicated workstreams to explore AI implications for our products, processes, and employees to ensure we have the right guidelines in place, and to consider what skill-building opportunities we need to prepare for. It’s a wide array of offerings, learning resources, and ongoing support as we continue to navigate this journey.

Cornelius Boone (eBay): eBay is not new to the AI space. We were early adopters of machine learning, and AI touches nearly everything on our platform and marketplace, so our current focus is on driving AI competency within non-tech teams. For example, our Legal & Government Relations team hosts a monthly “AI in Action” Training Series to understand how AI is revolutionizing the legal and government relations landscape. They bring in AI experts, offer hands-on experience with enterprise AI tools, and exchange tips and tricks. As a company, we also provide AI training, piloting opportunities, and knowledge base articles throughout the year. We just held our second annual AI conference to share advances in research, development and application to help eBayers know what Gen AI tools are available to support our work and how to use them. While we recognize that the EU AI Act creates a broad regulatory obligation to provide a sufficient level of AI literacy to the workforce, we view this as much more than a “check the box” exercise to meet compliance obligations. We plan to roll out Bias Education training later this year to AI teams on critical topics like understanding the risks of bias in AI and how to identify and mitigate biases through inclusive practices.

Kirsten Marriner (The Clorox Company): As a growth-minded company, we’re encouraging all teammates to embrace change with curiosity. This includes our more than $500 million enterprise digital transformation, with an emphasis on adopting AI to enhance efficiency. While functions build AI skills specific to their work, we also train everyone on common skills like prompt engineering and business fundamentals. In HR, we’re focused on skills for Microsoft Copilot, holding sessions to train and share best practices. This fosters a culture of experimentation, learning, and continuous improvement.

Maria Zangardi (Universal Health Services): As with any new technology or advancement, we are carefully and mindfully evaluating what role AI can have/should have in our business. Any AI implementation will need to come with education of the involved workforce and would be compliant with all appropriate federal and state regulations, to ensure transparency. Employing 96,700 individuals including 22,000 Nurses, Universal Health Services (UHS) operates 27 acute care hospitals and 333 behavioral health facilities in 39 states in the U.S., and in Puerto Rico, and U.K. In 2023, we cared for over 3.6 million patients. Healthcare is a personal business. We pride ourselves on being a preferred employer along with being designated a perennial Fortune World’s Most Admired Workplace, Fortune World’s Most Admired Company and Forbes Global 2000 Company.

Karen Dunning (Motorola Solutions): We place great emphasis on employee communications that provide guardrails pertaining to generative AI, how to exercise caution and explain the potential risks related to litigation and intellectual property. We host an employee portal with FAQs, policies and guidelines on the acceptable use of generative AI to help employees avoid placing customer data or sensitive IP at risk. We also offer an internal employee webinar series to present AI policies and invite an open forum for questions, and have partnered with LinkedIn Learning as another avenue for our employees to continuously build their understanding of the latest AI advancements.

This is the second of five newsletters in the leaders championing the AI workplace series. Stay tuned for the next one which will focus on the potential ethical concerns and biases in AI-driven HR tools.

Thanks for reading — be sure to join the conversation on LinkedIn and let me know your thoughts on this topic!

Quote of the Week

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
​John Steinbeck