Horst Gallo

▶0:01HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce.

▶0:44GuestI did not plan to go into HR, and it was kind of ending up here as an accident or so. I was working in an insurance company, working with our brokers in the field and I was doing work, which was basically like a combination of HR, finance, legal. And then I did as well at the same time, my studies of evening classes. So my business administration degree, 4 times a week, no time for anything. And then when I finished that, I wanted to learn English. I wanted to do something very differently. So I gave notice and I wanted to move to England. To finally learn it. It didn't help because my English is still not great, but that's what I wanted to do. And then of course I joined IBM at that time who opened up the HR Service Center in, near London, and that's how I ended up in HR. And of course, like 25 years or so later, I never looked back. That's how I ended up here.

▶1:42HostThat's great. And I'm sure you've seen a lot in your career. I'm curious what you're seeing as some of the more significant trends shaping the HR landscape and what you're doing in your current role to adapt to those trends.

▶1:59GuestYeah, so I think one of the major things what I see is, and this is not new, it's this balance between on one side customization, specialization, really getting down to personalization for the, for the employee on one side, but on the other side, of course, also driving scale and actually doing that at a very different kind of level around that. And I think that balance is a very difficult one at the moment. But now new technology is actually helping with that a lot because of course many of these work, what we were trying to do, administrative, repetitive or so, can be now outsourced, can be automated and so forth. And of course the biggest trend now for me is generative AI, using that in the way going forward. And of course you have many tools actually out there which are helping you. But at the same time, actually, there's now things you're probably familiar with, Copilot, what Microsoft actually was doing. And there's now finally out there a Copilot for HR, which is helping you. This is a company called Atlas Copilot. They are doing the same work actually what Microsoft is doing, but for the HR profession. So you can go in there and actually talk in a similar kind of way than actually ChatGPT and say, I need a strategy around workforce management. They will tell you, they will have a conversation with you, actually do some of the things around that. That is really super cool because it helps us as an HR professional. And then of course you have many startups around that who are working on AI for engagement, for having conversations, for doing the interviews actually for you. And this is really a super cool kind of area because it really can focus on the main parts of your job around that.

▶3:48HostThat's interesting. And just a quick follow-up on that tool, that's something you're providing all of your HR staff members access to?

▶3:57GuestYes, yes, exactly. Because it's an important one because you can work on it across the board. We are also now trying to actually have our HR policies actually included so that you have not only an external kind of source of information, but actually an internal source as well, which is behind the firewall. And that really helps a lot because it is kind of like you don't need to ask your neighbor, you can just go into Atlas and it gives you all of the information actually what you need.

▶4:25HostFascinating. Well, thank you for sharing that. I'll be sure to quite that tool when we communicate this conversation to the community. I'm curious what some of the bigger challenges you've faced as an HR professional in your career and what you did to overcome those challenges and also what you learned from those challenges.

▶4:49GuestSo it's, I think there's plenty of challenges, plenty of things like anybody actually has around that, but maybe there's like 2 or so major ones which stood out for me. I didn't mention, but of course, when I look at my career at IBM, I was fortunate enough actually to live at 3 different continents. I moved basically role and country every 2 or 3 years. And that of course actually meant that I had to learn about culture in different places actually very, very quickly around that. But as you're going up, maybe my biggest personal kind of learning was when I took my first executive job, I was responsible for 17 countries, a lot of people, a lot of organizations and complexity. And of course, I was working day and night, as you can imagine, you probably did the same. Everybody has the same kind of problems around it. And I was feeling like really overwhelmed. I was feeling like I could not do the things in the right way. And of course, I didn't have any private life anymore. And I was having a conversation with my mentor at that time who was the CHRO for IBM. And interestingly enough, he was saying like, look, what you're missing is control. You're driven by somebody else's agenda. You always do something what somebody else does. So you need to find a way to actually make decisions yourself, even if it means that you just pretend to make decisions. And he was talking about, of course, maybe going home at 5 o'clock and actually spend time with your family, eat dinner, spend time with the kids, and then actually afterwards you work another 2 or 3 hours, but at least you feel you have that control over that yourself. And that really helped me a lot. Maybe it's just an imaginary thing actually in the head, but that was an important one. And the second one for me was, and I was talking about being in different places, not accepting that you know everything or you don't have to accept everything. You don't have to know everything. You can ask questions. You have a team normally who's actually very willing to do that. And especially when I was in China, the culture of course is a very different one. They would come up with different kind of suggestions on how to run events. And I would always be appalled because I was like, oh my God, that would never work where I come from. But then of course, when we actually were doing this, it was the most amazing kind of events and it was super highly regarded. And it actually taught me to really trust in your team and to delegate and actually to listen because you're not an expert in culture, you're not an expert in everything, but actually if you have the right people with the right mindset, they can actually give you the right tips to do that. That I think was, was two of my biggest learnings in my career.

▶7:26HostOh, that was very insightful. Thank you, Horst. And how do you see the future of work evolving and what role do you think HR will play in shaping that future?

▶7:38GuestYeah, it's— I think we're in a very interesting place. Of course, COVID has changed a lot of different things around that. Technology, of course, is one part, and I've talked about that already. This is a given. But I feel like we are in the midst of being much more in the center in a company. Because when you look at what COVID actually— what happened there, nobody had the answers, nobody had the solutions around it. So you need to bring companies together by maybe connecting real estate, by connecting IT, by connecting HR in order to create the real, the real experience for people to look at wellbeing in a very different way, to look at diversity and inclusion in a different way. So I think HR is gonna be, is starting already to be much more in the middle, in the center of the company where communications also actually flows in and actually makes all of these things actually happen around that. And when you're in the center of things, you can influence many things in a very different way than actually was before. I remember especially when we were in IBM, there was like 5 or 6 different departments or different organizations actually in charge of that. But once you're actually that connection part, you can influence things and they will have a significant impact throughout the organization. I think that's going to be a big part for the future.

▶8:56HostAwesome. Is there anything controversial that you're doing in HR which you believe is effective and should be better well-known or accepted within that space?

▶9:10GuestI don't know if it is controversial because I always believe that HR folks are business leaders first, and then of course they specialize maybe in HR. But for me, over the last 5 or 6 years or so, I was starting to work with, with startups where I'm an advisor on the product, on the go-to-market, on how they actually operate over around that. And that actually helped me a lot more to understand how a business is run, how revenue is made, how you actually make money over as an organization, what do you want to spend it on. And by doing that, of course, you can give back because you have a lot of different experiences around it, but it gives you a very different mindset. It gives you a mindset of a business leader., and then of course you can actually bring that to the table. And I think that's slightly different than, than many HR folks actually are doing because they focus too much on that people aspect of it. Not that it is not important, but I think you need to understand both equations actually very well. What question would you have me ask the next person that I interview? Oh, you're asking already a lot of good questions around that, I feel. But one thing what I always feel is we talk too much about, oh, we talk too much about success. I think learning is happening actually a lot more around failure. So maybe what's the biggest failure you have had in your career and what did you learn from that? I think that's always questions we don't like to go to, but we know we find actually that's the biggest learnings around that.

▶10:44HostThat's great. And what's, what's some parting advice that you'd like to share with your fellow HR executive as, as we wrap things up here?

▶10:52GuestWell, I think there's a lot of things, of course, we can all actually do differently around that, but I do think in today's age, um, the only thing which is constant is change. And therefore, of course, actually getting comfortable with change, learning, having a growth mindset, trying to do things differently. And maybe doing things what most of the people don't like to do because that's the biggest kind of learnings around that. And I can clearly say for myself, the areas where I learned most was the areas I didn't want to do in the first place. And then of course, actually, I was thrown into that and that was for me the biggest kind of outcomes around that.

▶11:30HostBoris, thanks so much for participating in this interview series. It was really great to chat and I've enjoyed your company and all the insights that you've shared. Thanks again.

▶11:41GuestSure, no worries at all. Take care, enjoy the rest of your week, okay? And thanks for being flexible with me. No worries.

▶11:47HostTalk to you soon. See ya.

▶11:49GuestBye-bye.