Gretchen Alarcon, ServiceNow | ServiceNow Knowledge 23

This is techstrong tv. Welcome back to ServiceNow Knowledge 2023. We're here with Gretchen Acon and we're talking about employee workflows and AI and how just about every way we think about managing skills may be about to change.

Gretchen, welcome the show. Thank you for having me. You guys announced this whole new play on employee workflows and it's infused with ai.

Walk us through what's the new thing and what's happening here? Yeah, we are so excited. You know, as we looked at where we could go next with our employee workflows, we spent a lot of time this last couple years talking about the employee and then the role of the manager.

As we started looking even more deeply, what we started to see is that connection between the employee and manager isn't just about fulfilling day-to-day tasks. It's also about some more strategic opportunities. And so we took a look at all the aspects of talent management and we said whether this really matters to employees and managers.

And when you look at the details, what you find is it's all about the skills that people have. I need to know what skills someone on my team has where I could deploy them someplace different, what I could do to help them develop those skills. And so we said, you know, there's gotta be a better way than all of the different systems people have today trying to connect all those processes.

And so that was the foundation of employee growth and development, our new product. Where does AI factor into that? Do the algorithms know me personally and what my desires and wants are?

Or is there some other way that this happens? Well, I wish it was just that magical. Um, but what AI can do is start to say things like, well, you've identified certain skills that you have.

There are other related skills that maybe you have but you didn't think to put in your profile. And AI could actually prompt you and say, you said that you know how to code in Java. Do you also know how, how to code in Python?

Let's add that to your profile so we can start to get the to that sort of content. We also can use AI to tie in the development component. So we could say, you've decided that you wanna grow to be a manager and looking at the skills that you have, you need to develop a proficiency in certain areas.

Here are the courses that might be a good idea or here are some people you might want to get to know, maybe you might find a mentor. But AI can help facilitate that For an employee, Let's say as a manager, I wanted to cultivate some new skills. Can this help me figure out who might have the most likely inclination to get those skills or might be in the best position to attain them?

Absolutely. And that's actually one of the things I think is really exciting about this is we've all had that situation where a new project is coming up and the person you'd like to give the project to is overwhelmed. And often what happens is that person has become the go-to, but there's somebody else on the team who has very similar skills who just hasn't gotten that shot.

So when we think about ways to kind of overall grow your organization, if a manager can start to see what skills people have or what skills they're trying to develop, they might do a better job of allocating work to help employees really gain some new skills and increase their overall productivity. All managers, all people for that matter have certain biases built into how they view things. Mm-hmm.

Can we maybe take that out of the equation as to who we're gonna promote and kind of use for different tasks? Cuz everybody seems to have their natural, what you call go-to, right? I think one of the things we see an opportunity with here is to really come back again to what are the displayed skills that someone has or how can I actually measure that those skills have grown.

So we're not necessarily just looking at what has this person done the last three months, having more of like a recency bias or something else. We actually have better data and then we can actually align that to say, you know, these are the new skills that are actually much more material to your organization. Let's make sure those are being developed or that the people who are investing in those skills are starting to see that their careers are growing as a result.

So I think there's a real opportunity for us there. We used to call all this human resources and now we're calling it talent management. What, is there a difference in your mind?

You know, I think when you look at where the market of HR systems has gone over the last 20 years, I've, I've been fortunate to be at the forefront for a lot of this. You know, a lot of the focus has been more on HR as the system of record and capturing data and that's important. But what really matters is being able to take a look at where does this interaction between a manager and an employee or an employee with systems really work.

And so we see this actually elevating into the system of action as opposed to staying in the system of record. And to me that's really the next generation of HR systems is putting the work and the content where the person who's doing the work is actually gonna find the value. So skills, growth, development, coaching, all those sorts of things, that's really an employee and manager responsibility that we see as being part of that system of action.

Can I imply this externally to job candidates or do I have to get that first into the system or can I put it on to LinkedIn for that matter? Well we do have the ability to bring in skills from other systems. So let's just say that you have a separate applicant tracking system or you have a separate system where you're tracking your learning or what have you.

We can pull those skills in so we can start to understand are there new skills coming in? Often what happens when there's a shift happening in a, in a market, you start to see that first with newer employees coming in because they start identifying different skills than maybe your employee base has. So there's a way for us to actually use this to start to say there are new skills coming onto the marketplace and your employees are talking differently.

Is that something you wanna develop into your organization? Maybe you're bringing in some new capabilities this way and this is a way for us to surface that. Will we get better at realistically recruiting people?

Because we've all seen the example where um, there's a job wreck for somebody who has 15 years of experience on a platform that hasn't existed for more than two years. Um, can we get smarter about all this? Cuz what happens then is the people applying for their job inflate their skills and then we ha to qualify for the thing in the first place and the whole thing winds up being suboptimal shall we say?

Yeah. There's always that person who's like the, you know, person who discovered the internet, right? All of us discovered the internet.

I think the thing that really will start to come up with this is we'll start to see people saying these are the things we're really looking for. One of the things I think that people struggle with in writing job descriptions or internally writing a structure of what a role is, is we got kind of focused on what are the tasks that somebody does and there's kind of another set that says well you need a bachelor's degree or you need the following knowledge. But if you start to really take that apart and look at the skills that the person has, then your BA that are able to understand these are the skills that we actually value inside the company and this is what I'm recruiting you for, this is what I am developing because this is what matters to us.

So I think we're gonna find a little bit more of a consistency as organizations look at this. And frankly where I'm really excited about this is to start to think about this in terms of your supply chain of talent, right? So who is new into the organization or who is ready to grow or who's maybe up for a promotion and using skills as the way to actually measure that to say this person has achieved the right things and let's move them into that new role and give them that opportunity.

Do you think ultimately that will reduce turnover because that is the bane of many a project where suddenly somebody just leaves because they're bored or they don't like what they're doing anymore or somebody gave them something more interesting to do? Um, can we apply this in a way that would make more people happier sooner? I think that's one of the best opportunities.

I think when you think about when people leave an organization, often they say they're leaving their manager, right? Or they're turning over, but that's come from something has stopped in their career progression, right? And sometimes it's a case of look, you know, we have you pigeonholed, we think you are a fantastic analyst and we want you to be an analyst and you've decided that's actually not what you want.

You have broader career aspirations. So being able to put that forward and say, I am a great analyst but I wanna move into consulting, how do I do that? And actually making other people in your organization part of your career journey journey is what we see being part of this employee growth and development.

I also think there's an opportunity as well to start to understand for those people who really are, you know, market makers or high potentials, whatever term you wanna use, understanding what skills they have and what skills they're going to need to help them be prepared for that next step. The more we can make that visible now we can have tangible action steps. So it's not just this person is a high potential, but these are the steps we're putting in place to make sure this person knows that they're being cultivated and they're building the skills so they'll be ready when it's time for them to move to the next role.

So I do think that's gonna have a very positive impact on turnover. How smart can smart get, where are we going from here? You know, I think where we see a huge opportunity is to start to see how this changes the behaviors with inside the organization.

I was just speaking with someone else about when you think about skills and how an organization thinks about this, in the past we have had organizations that kind of said, hey, we want to get to a talent marketplace or we wanna think about growth on projects, those sorts of things. And that's a change in behavior, it's a change in culture. People need to get to the idea that, you know, the people who are on my team are not just here to do the job I've asked them to do today.

They're here to build their careers. And so how can we help them by focusing on the skills and understanding that, you know, a good manager is a talent promoter. They're not just achieving today's work, but they're setting their team up for future, whether that's within their organization or someplace else within the organization.

Will we get to the point where we can also start to maybe decipher what tasks are about to become automated by say AI so that I can figure out what to re-skill my folks are to do something more interesting and uh, challenging. Mm-hmm. Um, cuz today I think everybody's having a conversation about the, the cheese hasn't moved yet, but they know it's about to move.

Yeah. I think that's an opportunity for us to really think about what part of this role relies on your skills versus skills that could be automated or something else that's maybe, you know, a lower level work. I think one of the things we will start to see is an understanding that, you know, AI can take a lot of the busy work out of a system, out of, out of a process, but you still need a human coming in with their creativity and their judgment and their ability to build connections that, you know, AI can't necessarily do.

So AI is always gonna be a great facilitator, but there still needs to be that human component on top of it. And I think as we think about how this applies to overall employee growth, being able to say these skills are requiring things that are uniquely human and we wanna put more investment there than necessarily into something that we think could be automated. It's a great way for us to think about that supply chain of talent.

What happens to the HR department of the future? Does that become more integrated into the lines of business than a lot of organizations going, HR is roughly the equivalent, but visit to the principal's office. So what, you know, what, what happens with those folks?

Yeah, I think what we're gonna see much more of an emphasis is on coaching. So if you're moving to more of this emphasis of building skills and helping people grow, the role of the HR business partner is gonna get more and more tied into the role of the organization and being able to say, I need a coach manager who has to have a difficult conversation, or I'm gonna sit down and write a plan with a manager on how they're gonna grow a couple people in their team when they're maybe building some new skills and how I can help them with that process. There will always be a role for HR in terms of operations supporting those day-to-day questions that are coming in or the center of excellence because they have pieces where they really are experts.

But I think the role of the HR business partner in this shift is going to be to really talk about how do we help the, the business group that we're supporting reach their productivity by making sure they've got the right people with the right skills aligned to the right projects. All right. As you look down the road, what is ServiceNow focusing on in this particular area?

What else should people expect? Yeah, you know, there is so much happening in employee workflows. I keep telling people, you know, if you don't like what we're doing, wait six months, we'll have something new to talk to you about.

I think where we see an overall huge emphasis, if I think about the shift we did in the last year, employees are always at the center of everything that we do for employee workflows and the way we think about what's happening next. Our first question is, who is supporting that employee? So is there an HR agent or an HR business partner or a manager?

What are we doing to help them, um, be better champions for the employees? So there's kind of who's helping them. Legal fits in there too in terms of helping with some of those components.

And then there's a question of where is the employee performing work? Are they working in the digital space or are they working in the physical space? And what are we doing in those two areas to better support them?

Whether that's with, you know, better portals, better mobile capability integration with teams or in the workplace, making sure we're optimizing the workplace so they're, you know, on the right floor with the right people that we're measuring our costs of workplace and making sure we're building the right environment for employees. So it always comes back to the employee at the center. They say what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Will this flip around and will employees be able to use a system like this to determine, hey, which manager do I wanna work for? I mean, it's a great idea if you think about, you know, employees as a, as a champion of talent and trying to figure things out. Maybe someday, I won't say no, but I think getting into better understanding of, as an organization, how do you set that right capability for your managers?

We want all managers to give a great experience to their employees and how can we do a better job? It's by coaching them as well, making sure that they have access through what we call our manager hub to not just the day-to-day tasks, but their own development capabilities to help them understand the processes that are important in the organization and give them the coaching they need so they can be the best advocates for their employees. All right folks.

You heard in here hiring's gonna get better. The job experience is gonna get better. You may even wind up making more money.

Hey, thanks for being on the show. Thank You. And we'll be back in a minute.