Skills Shift—Thriving With AI, Part 2

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Kate Bravery: The problem I have with job descriptions is, more and more, we're hiring people because they have the skills and the mindset to contribute to our business, not to contribute to a job. And if we lock one person into one job, we don't make progress on agility or productivity. 

As we move to more skills-powered, talent and reward processes, the job description, I think, is going to fade in relevance. 

Jill Finlayson: Welcome to The Future of Work podcast with Berkeley Extension and EDGE in Tech at the University of California, focused on expanding diversity and gender equity in tech. EDGE in Tech is part of the Innovation Hub at CITRIS, the Center for IT Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute. UC Berkeley Extension is the continuing education arm of the University of California at Berkeley. 

We're continuing our conversation about AI and skills, and what organizations are looking for as they develop their workforce. What skills do you need to fortify your career, and how do you demonstrate you have those skills? 

We're delighted to welcome back Kate Bravery. Kate is a senior partner and global leader of talent advisory at Mercer, where she is the lead author of Mercer's Annual Global Talent Trends Study. Having lived and worked in Asia, Australia, and the US and Europe, Kate has a global perspective on people strategy, talent management, and leadership development. 

Kate, let's pick up where we left off last time. All of these assessments are being rolled up into a digital version of you, a digital twin. What is a digital version of you, the employee, and how are companies using this? I didn't know that they were doing this. 

Kate Bravery: This is still science fiction in some places, and we are definitely envisaging where could we go from here. When we start to combine traditional psychometric data with the data that we might get from inferred or rated schools with big data we hold within the organization, we can get a pretty sophisticated view, not just about where a person might fit today, but we've got such a robust understanding of them, we could start to run scenarios. 

If we opened up a new office in Canada, and we wanted to go into a new industry sector, who has skills today that could enable us to do that? Or if we did close down this part of the business, what is the length of time for the people in those roles to reskill into other jobs that we have that they might be most suitable for? 

Those were really challenging questions to ask before. They're the ones that I'd be embarrassed to ask my analysts to do, because it involves lots of Excel charts, getting lots of information, combining it together. 

This is now possible. We can now start to look at jobs that don't exist. Because in the past, we used to say, is this person suitable for that job. Here's the job, here's a success profile for the job, here's the assessment tools for that success profile. Measure the person, and then we can answer that singular question. 

But then they're like, oh, well, maybe we want to know if they're suitable for that job over there. Well, hang on a minute. This job was in engineering, and now you want to ask me about marketing. I can't answer that. 

But that's the world we're living in. And so I do think a lot of the discussions in a lot of the forums that I'm involved with and the co-creation I'm doing with clients, is how could we use all the assessment data we have, inferred data, rated data, validated data, to start to ask, where could this person go from here. 

What might their career look like? If they have aspirations to be earning more, what's the best path for them to get there. 

That requires us to bring rewards, information, job information, skills information, and motivational profile all together. And that's possible. We've got some pilots going on with that at the moment. And I think it's quite exciting. 

But like all firms, we're going very carefully with our clients on that, because privacy, consent, quality of the data, and to your point, individuals having ownership over that digital twin. And this is all new ground that's being tested at the moment. 

And we are certainly working very closely in Europe, where we've got new AI laws about AI driving decisions in high risk areas, such as hiring and promotion. So it is very early days, but is it possible? Absolutely. Is the pilot showing that we could start to really get talent management operating on steroids with this type of thinking? Yes. 

Jill Finlayson: It's a little scary, I will say. We've been talking a lot about the employee, but work is being redesigned, as well. Not just automated, it's being redesigned, it's changing. Can you explain a little bit about what job descriptions are today and what they're going to look like in the future? 

Kate Bravery: Gosh, I'm not even sure if we're going to have job descriptions in the future, if I'm honest. Job descriptions historically, have always been backward-looking. They're accurate on the day you take up the role, and two weeks later, they often fall short. 

The exciting thing about the era that we're living in now, is that creating a job description is easier than ever before, because we have AI tools that can do that, and we've got AI tools that can also keep it more accurate, more quickly. So I think that's good. 

The problem I have with job descriptions is, more and more, we're hiring people because they have the skills and the mindset to contribute to our business, not to contribute to a job. And if we lock one person into one job, we don't make progress on agility or productivity. 

I feel that that's a very traditional way of looking at careers and how we do work. As we move to more skills-powered talent and reward processes, the job description, I think, is going to fade in relevance. I still think we need to have very clear goals. 

Back to that conversation about what happens behind closed doors in a talent review, we now need to know what we're being measured against. But I don't think it's static from when you joined the company, and then three years later, we're still pointing to it and saying, well, I did this, or I didn't do that. We're not doing that. We're refreshing it when it's relevant, because you've taken on more responsibility or your priorities have changed. So I do question whether job descriptions, as we know today, will even be relevant in the future of work. 

I do think that things like LinkedIn is becoming a bit of a proxy for it. And I think our skills passport and skills profile will be more relevant as we move forward. 

Jill Finlayson: At Mercer, you've developed an AI work redesign tool. What is that used for? 

Kate Bravery: So, it's so interesting. A lot of the conversation has been, AI is going to change the way we do work, and let's give all our people access to AI tools, and we're going to see great productivity improvement. 

Of course, many of these roles were poorly designed before. Many people are feeling at burnout. When we asked people last year in our Global Talent Trends Report, what saps your productivity, people didn't say, oh, it's not having access to a large language model. What they said was, too much busy work. Not enough thinking time, too many meetings. So we already had problems with work. And then we've thrown a whole lot of new digital tools and thinking, well, this is going to make you work faster and smarter. You and I both know that that's ridiculous. 

But what we are finding, is that if companies take the time to actually redesign jobs and optimize them for people in tech, we are unlocking that productivity and agility. 

And the reason why it's called work design rather than job design, is back to my point before, is what we want to do, is say, let's look at the work that needs to get done, and then let's figure out how we do that work. Yes, there are some tasks that maybe might be more suitable for machines. So where can machines assist? Where can they help with us cognitively? Where can we have agents? 

But also, there's a lot of questions on the human side. Does this need to be done by a full-time role? Could this be done by a contingent worker? Could we look at junification, a more junior person doing this role? Or if we've got some areas where we don't have enough of the talent coming through, how can we use work redesign to solve it? 

One of the big issues we have, both in the UK and in the US, we don't have enough nurses. We don't have nurses in our creaking health care systems. When we look at some of the nurses jobs, up to 80% can be non-nurse duties. 

So wouldn't it be smart to take away those non-nurse duties? Some of it can certainly be automated. And we can certainly have aides, which help with memory and reporting and all of that kind of stuff, giving them advice and nudges and things like that. 

But if we can make the job narrower, not only can the nurse have more of an impact, because we have more auxiliary or administrative support helping, but we can also start to think about, well, maybe then we can have some of the tasks from the job above in this particular role. 

And that helps people with succession, and actually getting people to be able to move up sooner and quicker. So there's lots of ways that I think you can use work design to solve issues of either supply and demand. And, yeah, we have an AI-driven work design tool, which enables companies to see how could work be configured differently to unlock productivity. So can you gain 30% to 50% capacity, or to make the job less exhausting, make the job more exciting, to help with more compelling careers. 

So I think there's a lot of those sort of human outcomes, in addition to just flowing all those productivity gains to the bottom line. We are actively working with some companies who have that agenda. One of our clients said to us last week, my goal is to redesign jobs with well-being as an outcome. 

Now, I don't hear that every day, but that's the type of thinking that gets me excited that we've got some really progressive leaders that know we don't have sustainable work habits, and just asking everyone to work harder and longer is the fastest way to burnout. 

And it's a false economy, because you're going to end up having spiraling health bills and a workforce that's depleted. 

Jill Finlayson: This is also leading to something I've not heard too much about, internal talent marketplaces. What are these, and why are we seeing these starting to come to the fore in some companies? 

Kate Bravery: Well, it's very much related to what we've been talking about in terms of driving agility. In the old world, you'd have one person locked in one role. And that doesn't allow people to build the skills they need to stay valuable in the future fast enough. 

So we saw some experiments in the past, where people were saying, every Friday people could do a special project. And that was great, because you got some innovation, people got to learn a few new skills. But that wasn't really scalable. 

And now, we're beginning to see companies say, look, there are some roles where we need knowledge and expertise, and they might be fixed roles. But there are other roles, where maybe we could have 30% of the role that could be available for different projects because we've got a lot of project work in our business today, and AI is no short of bringing lots of new projects and opportunities, and people could learn valuable skills on doing that. 

But if their full-time role is 100% of the time, the option is, work longer or work on the weekend, and that's not sustainable. So some people are now saying, let's design jobs that can flex, that have 30% flex. 

And we've also got some companies that are saying, we also believe we've got a set of roles that could be fully flow roles. I'll give you an example. We used to see that in the IT function. So you'd have IT talent that was sort of owned by the enterprise. They'd have a ticket, and wherever the opportunity is, they would be deployed to that. 

And now we're seeing that in other business areas, as well. All of that is really exciting. I think it's really fresh thinking about, how do we get vibrancy in how people learn, try things, move around, progress, really puts the whole career lattices on steroids. 

But you've got to operationalize that somehow. And we've been seeing that these talent marketplaces that know what skills people have and what their job aspirations are, can match that to the internal gigs or projects that are available. 

And so what they're essentially doing, is saying in this internal gig, these are the tasks that need to get done. These are the skills needed to do the task. Who has those skills today, or who's close to them, and this might be a valuable learning opportunity that would put their development on steroids? 

And that's what these talent marketplaces are doing. Why I love them, is they're sort of democratizing access to opportunity. In the past, probably when you and I were in corporate life, someone would tap you on the shoulder and it was often the same people that got the same kind of plum opportunities, because they were loud, extrovert, visible, and all of that good stuff. Or they did a lot of the political schmoozing. That world's gone. 

And also, with managers having such wide spans of control, they don't have that visibility that they used to. They aren't stewards of your career in the way that maybe they used to be in my father's time. And that's gone. That's not coming back. 

But this way, I get to see what other opportunities might nudge me towards my career goals, or if I've identified there are three or four skills that if I could add them to the skills I have, multiple opportunities open up to me, it can say, hey, Kate, have you looked at this? I think that's quite exciting. 

Some of these platforms also allow us to identify skill coaches. So you can actually say, I want to build these skills. And say, well, you know, Jill over here is really strong in these skills, why don't you buddy up. So I really like that. 

But from your company's point of view, they are being able to unlock a lot of latent capacity in the organization. They are reducing their spend on outside services and consultants, and providing growth opportunities for their people. So I really do see when these are done right, it's a win-win-win. 

I say when it's done right, because letting your talent be used by other parts of the business is not necessarily in your manager's DNA. And if it's not managed well, people can lose their base and their anchor and their sense of family. So there are some things to get right as you start to implement these sort of new ways of working. 

Jill Finlayson: We're talking about these internal talent marketplaces, and I'm glad that you talked about the pros and the cons. As an employee, it seems to open doors to gigs that might give me new opportunities. 

At the same time, it might give me a lack of security. Like, will I be seen? Will I have security? Am I findable? What would your recommendation be to make yourself more findable in these internal marketplaces? 

Kate Bravery: Firstly, find out if your organization has one. And don't leave it up to the AI to populate it on your behalf. So, I do think it requires us to lean in, because particularly for more tenured workers, this wasn't part of our reality. We didn't have to do that before. 

So I think we need to be more active on that front. I do think that there's an opportunity for all of us to be putting our hand up for some of those kind of work redesign projects. I think that gives us a good sense of what skills are on the rise, what skills are declining and that can help us make sure that those skills that are becoming more valuable in the organization are the ones that we are making sure are there for us, or that we're getting ourselves in opportunities that can build them. 

And if you're wondering what they are, I think I mentioned before, the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report is out every two years. It's very good at talking about in the US, in a particular industry, what's rising and declining. But quite frankly, you can ask ChatGPT, and it will give you a pretty close answer. 

And then I think it's keeping on top of it, because there are some systems that link very nicely to learning systems that are in the organization. So if you learn a particular new skill or you've got credentialed, it's feeding through. But in many of the organizations these are separate systems. So you need to take control. 

Jill Finlayson: So if you're someone who feels your skills are sunsetting, what should you be thinking about in terms of sunrise skills? 

Kate Bravery: Look, I think it's different for everybody, but I find using generative AI as your coach, as in sharing as much about your background, your aspirations, the skill you've got today, the things your manager talked about in your last performance review, and in my organization or in my function, what are the jobs I should be thinking about. 

I think this is a great way for getting us to think about roles we would never considered. I'm always surprised at how these internal talent marketplaces can surface jobs you might not never have considered. 

I was working with someone the other week, and they said, I previously was in a claims role, and yet a lot of the skills and the expertise I built made me very suitable for a cybersecurity governance role. And they had a good overlap and were very excited. 

But they would never have thought about it. Completely different parts of the business. So I think it's really healthy. I think these systems are only as good as the data that's in there. And we are still at the beginning of really making them work across the organization. 

The only other thing I would say is, it's new for managers. So if you're interested in taking up gigs and opportunities and you're not in a declared flex role, have those open conversations, because it's two worlds. It's the more traditional world hitting the more agile world, and you want to make sure that your manager remains your advocate and he knows that it isn't because he doesn't want to be working for you, or he's not interested in a career in this area. Sometimes it's just about building new skills that you will actually bring back to your department, to your team. 

Jill Finlayson: So if you're a manager, how should you be thinking differently about your team's skills, and as pointed out, organizations are much flatter now, you may have a lot of direct reports, how has this manager role changed? 

Kate Bravery: Oh, my gosh. I think the manager role is unrecognizable. And I think it's going to change even more. There's a piece of research that has just come out from our sister company, Oliver Wyman, and it's actually saying that many young people would prefer AI as a manager than a human manager. 

And we might laugh at that, but I think there are certainly aspects of the managerial role where AI might be better suited. If it's about making decisions about rostering, or making sure that I can manage my own time, or setting my goals, or even giving me negative feedback, so I can improve. 

Some of that might actually be better suited to be delivered by AI. It might help me to take more control of my career. So I do think that that's going to change. 

But if I think about the manager role today and where we're at, I believe the most important thing is giving people job security. And it might not be job security, it might be career security. You might not have a job for life, but you've got a career for life, as long as you are staying relevant. 

And staying relevant is really a combination of the two things we've been talking about today. It's about making sure that we are adaptable and we seize these opportunities, build these skills, and that we're visible. Because if we're not visible, then we're not going to be relevant. 

And there's another piece of research which hasn't been released, but I know it's on the cusp of being released. And this is from Mercer's HR digital team. And their headline is going to be around the proximity paradox. 

Because they have found that the more people get exposure to AI, the more their anxiety about having a future job increases. And the reason why it's a paradox, and it's interesting, because normally with tech, it's the other way around. The more we learn and use the tech, the less we fear it. 

And that is really quite scary. And that means that managers have got to be giving people security about, we are going through the biggest reset of work that's ever happened. We want you to be part of the journey. We want you to help us shape what work looks like in the future. 

We want you to not just look at what skills get you the next role, but what is your plan B. Tell me two other jobs you could do in the organization, if you added one or two skills to what you have today. We've got to encourage people to start thinking laterally about career moves and about building skills. 

Because if we don't change that mindset, that fear is going to increase. And you and I both know, when people are fearful, they don't innovate, they don't learn, they have mental health problems. And we have enough of that in our workforce today. 

So I really do feel that they need to be having honest conversations about AI, getting workers to lean in. Too many people lie about using AI. We don't use it when they do use it. And I think that's going to be really important for the time that we're at. 

I think their research shows that, gosh, I can't remember what the stat was, I think it's only like one in three people said that their manager has had a conversation about the impact of AI and what that would do for their jobs. And the majority have no idea what skills they need to stay relevant. That's got to change. We've got to change that. 

Jill Finlayson: So this conversation is not only what skills do you need to be adopting, but are there certain skills or expectations that we should be letting go of? 

Kate Bravery: Oh, gosh, that's a really good question. Look, I think based on the conversation today, I'd probably say my worth is tied to my job title. And I say that for a number of reasons. One, I don't think it's psychologically healthy to build your whole life around a particular function role title. I think that's changing. 

And I think when we do that, we cling to it too tightly and we're not open to opportunities. And if that role no longer exists, that has a real detrimental impact on our health and well-being. 

And so what do I think you need to embrace, would be my future worth is going to come from working with AI. I mean, I think it is augmented intelligence, and I think that's really exciting. 

And the sooner we can figure out how best to help the machines make us better at our job, look better, be better, move forward, I think the stronger position will be in. Probably not as succinct as I would like to share there, but that's probably the stuff that's running through my minds about the journey we're on. 

It is scary, but I do believe if we get it right, we have this unbelievable opportunity to build the type of work and careers that people want to be part of and that people are excited to get up and do. I'm not sure we have that today. 

Jill Finlayson: And well-being is a big part of that. How are we seeing these changes impact company culture, and how do we preserve the humanness of the workplace? 

Kate Bravery: Look, I believe we all need to be very vocal on that. I believe that whether you are an executive, a manager, an HR or talent professional, we have to be the stewards of humanity. 

If we aren't vocal about what do our people want, what are the unmet needs they have in our organization, how do we keep top talent engaged, supported their financial and their health managed if we're not thinking like that, then I think when the job market becomes more buoyant, which it will, top talent will leave. And so I do think we need to keep that very much front of mind, regardless of what's happening around us. 

I think trust is so important at this time. If you can't have certainty, and many of us can't have certainty, you've got to have trust. And so I do think managers need to be building trust with their people, with their teams. 

And that goes back to the conversation we just had about being honest about AI, being honest about skills that are rising in importance for the firm, being clear about where people might sit on talent pipelines, and encouraging people to think about their skills portfolio encouraging them to create a portfolio of all the work that they've done, making sure that they're staying visible on all the digital platforms externally and internally. We've got to teach people the new way of working and navigating this work. 

But I do think if we forget about the human in all of this, then why are we at work? If we don't make work more sustainable and more interesting, we're going to have other challenges that we as a society will need to address. 

Jill Finlayson: I'm glad to hear you say trust. And I think in your book, you say trust and accountability are a team sport. What do you mean by a team sport? 

Kate Bravery: For me, one of the things that we saw really jump forward in the pandemic, was team working. Suddenly, the barriers between teams were broken. We had a purpose, which galvanized us together, and we saw unprecedented creativity and excitement about coming to work and contributing to a mission. It was really exciting times. We need to get some of that back. 

But what we also saw was many teams were ill-equipped to manage performance. If performance management is no longer the preserve of your manager and direct reports, because it's no longer that sort of didactic relationship, and more work is getting done in teams, and teams across many boundaries. 

Cultural boundaries, temporal boundaries, digital boundaries, generational boundaries, contractual boundaries, part-time workers, it's complex. And managers were struggling around that. But also, team members were struggling. Because you now need to set team goals. 

And we got a lot of feedback in our engagement surveys that people felt that they were performance managing their peer. No one wants to do that. That's awkward and icky. So how do we rethink performance management for a new age? How do we drive better alignment and accountability? 

And how do we have managers and team members working side by side in the flatter organizations that now exist? That was really what we were getting at there. And I think there's a few examples in the book of companies that are trying that out. 

Jill Finlayson: So any final tips for employees and managers that they can take with them to take action? Because this is obviously happening very quickly. They've got their day job, right, but what should they be thinking about to think about the future of their career? 

Kate Bravery: For individuals, given what we've been discussing today, make sure that you've got the right messages on your LinkedIn profile. Make sure that you are taking a look about what skills are coming up to the fore and you're using AI tools to make sure that anything you put out there is aligned to the type of career you want to have and the way you want to be recognized. I think that's definitely one practical thing everyone can be doing today. 

As we start to embrace more AI-driven talent processes, like AI-driven interviewing, make sure that you are practicing with AI, asking them to interview on a topic, rate you against typical competencies of that topic, so that we are learning some of the new ways in which we can shine when it's maybe AI rather than humans rating us. 

And I think, take control of your career. We are living through incredibly exciting times. I think everybody should know what they would like to be their next career. Everyone should be able to rattle off the three or four skills they want to build in the next year, and everyone should have a plan B. 

And if you need support on that, reach out to people in your firm or your manager, because sometimes they don't know that you need that. And our data is showing, they're not very good at doing that proactively. So to your point about busy managers, I think individuals need to be the one driving it. It's their data, it's their skills, and it's their career. 

For the manager, I think managers need to be really clear about where they're spending their time. The value adding time for individuals is around building trust, feeling confident that they can experiment, be honest about their use of AI, and have enough coverage so that they can figure out what's next. 

That's the job that managers should be doing today. And they should be leaning on AI tools to take away some of the process work. So many managers, though, are really caught up in doing lots of individual contributor work themselves. 

And if that's the majority of what they're doing, maybe they need to be thinking differently about, are they the best manager for their teammates at this time. 

Jill Finlayson: So when you're taking control of your job and your career path, what can you do to make people feel a little bit more comfortable learning how to be agile? Because this is what we're kind of leaving them with, is things are not going to be the same way they are today. They are changing. 

Kate Bravery: Absolutely. There is a premium on demonstrating agility and adaptability. I think everybody will stand themselves in good stead by thinking about, what does our business need to do over the next 18 months, two years. 

Having that business mindset and thinking about, where is value going to be created and what are the skills that are going to grow in importance, I think is really important. I think putting your hand up for work redesign. 

How can the work that I'm doing today or my colleagues doing be done differently with AI. Being on the front foot of that is going to help you be informed, help you demonstrate that agility and adaptability that we were talking about. 

And we've said there about having a plan B, and talk about that plan B. I think I'm seeing more people write on LinkedIn, what I'm doing today and what I want to be doing tomorrow. I have people on my team coming to me around skills they want to learn, because they actually want to operate in another area. 

And they're challenging me to say, just because I sit in your team, I might want to learn skills that don't sit in your team today, and making sure that I'm comfortable with that, which I love. And obviously, we do that for a profession. 

But it is a changing climate for managers and it's a changing climate for individuals. But I do think it's one of the most exciting times to be in the workplace, because we have the chance to redesign work around humans. And I think if we keep that front and foremost of our thinking, we'll end up in a better spot than we are now. 

Jill Finlayson: I'm excited about redesigning the workforce with the human at the center. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a wonderful conversation. Kate. 

Kate Bravery: Jill, it's been lovely. I think we've gone into all sorts of places today. But thank you for having me on. It's been so much fun to chat to you today and to think about the implications of the new world of work for people entering the workforce or planning a career change at this time. 

Jill Finlayson: Thanks so much. And with that, I hope you enjoyed this latest in a long series of podcasts that we'll be sending your way every month. Please share with friends and colleagues who may be interested in taking this Future of Work journey with us. 

And make sure to check out extension.berkeley.edu to find a variety of courses and certificates to help you thrive in this new working landscape. And to see what's coming up at EDGE in Tech, go ahead and visit extension.berkeley.edu. 

Thanks so much for listening, and I'll be back next month to continue our Future of Work journey. The Future of Work podcast is hosted by Jill Finlayson, produced by Sarah Benzuly and edited by Brandon Gregory and Matt DiPietro.

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