Shannon Teixeira
People Solutions Leader
Waste Management
Episode 387
Unlocking HR's True Potential: AI Automates Low Value, Empowers Human Strategy
Current chapter: Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built By PeopleNovember 14, 2024 · 15:56
Thesis
“HR's strategic imperative is to integrate AI to automate low-value work, thereby freeing up time and energy for human-centric innovation and a curated, relational approach to change management, ultimately driving both organizational value and enhanced employee experience.”
Show notes
Most change management frameworks are designed to be applied uniformly across an organization. Shannon Teixeira, People Solutions Leader at Waste Management, thinks that's exactly the problem. Her approach to change—and to AI adoption specifically—is relational rather than transactional: personalized by team, assessed for readiness, and curated for fit rather than applied from a template.
Teixeira's career has been deliberately non-linear—spanning organizational design, HR technology, talent acquisition, and interior design early in her career—and she's brought that cross-functional lens to her thinking about AI's role in the HR function. Her core argument: we're at the cusp of a profound shift toward a blended workforce, and HR's role is to automate low-value, high-volume work in order to free up time and energy for the interactions that actually create value. Talent acquisition and onboarding are the first places she'd look. The strategic case for doing so isn't efficiency alone—it's the creative time that gets unlocked. Innovation requires slack, and most HR teams have none.
Her framework for managing the overwhelm that comes with constant organizational change is pragmatic: clear OKRs (objectives and key results) combined with guiding principles that create a decision-making filter. When employees know what matters most and have a principled way to evaluate trade-offs, the volume of the noise drops—and the quality of the decisions rises. Her servant leadership philosophy runs through all of it: leaders exist to support the people in their care.
- Relational vs. transactional change management: why a "fit for purpose" approach to AI adoption outperforms one-size-fits-all frameworks
- AI as a strategic enabler in HR: automating low-value work in talent acquisition and onboarding to free capacity for high-touch interactions
- Creative time as a leadership imperative: why innovation requires slack and how HR can create it through AI and meeting discipline
- OKRs + guiding principles as a prioritization system: giving employees the framework to make good decisions in complex environments
- Managing change fatigue: reading organizational readiness and customizing the pace and approach accordingly
- Servant leadership in practice: what it looks like to support the people in your care rather than manage them
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What you'll take away
- 1HR leaders should embrace a 'portfolio career' mindset, leveraging diverse experiences to focus on organizational design and effectiveness.
- 2Strategic AI adoption in HR aims to automate low-value work, redirecting focus to higher-touch, high-value activities and customized employee experiences, particularly in talent acquisition and onboarding.
- 3Effective change management for AI requires understanding and addressing employee fatigue through tailored, relational approaches and readiness assessments, moving beyond one-size-fits-all methods.
- 4Fostering innovation necessitates creating dedicated 'creative time' by optimizing time utilization (automating tasks, streamlining meetings) and managing intellectual energy within teams.
- 5Prioritization within organizations should be guided by clear objectives and key results (OKRs) combined with established guiding principles to provide a robust decision-making framework.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Shannon advocates for a 'fit for purpose' and 'relational capacity to change' approach over transactional, one-size-fits-all change management, emphasizing personalization and emotional connection.
In Shannon's words
“our role as leaders is to really look at and support the people that are in our care.”
This quote defines servant leadership as a foundational principle for effective leadership.
“we're just at the cusp of what is possible around adopting AI as part of our ecosystem, the way, you know, the way that we work and looking at it from a blended workforce.”
Emphasizes the transformative, early-stage potential of AI for HR and the concept of a blended workforce.
“My approach to change is really a fit for purpose, not necessarily a one-size-fits-all, you know, You know, a lot of times we can transact our approach to change. And really, I like to curate the approach, really like to personalize it and look at a relational capacity to change...”
Advocates for a highly customized and emotionally intelligent approach to change management over generic methods.
“in order to create more innovative outcomes, we need creative time. And time is the thing that, you know, most of us can say is very challenging, that we just don't have enough time to get everything done that we need to.”
Highlights the critical and often overlooked need for dedicated 'creative time' to foster innovation, enabled by AI.
“between having the objectives and key result clarity and using a realm of guiding principles to help us have a decision-making framework, we at least can, you know, pause for a moment, think about, you know, the impact of making that particular decision and make the best choice that we can at the time.”
Outlines a practical, dual-framework approach for effective prioritization and decision-making within organizations.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Organizations struggle with low-value, high-volume HR tasks (e.g., in talent acquisition and onboarding) that consume time better spent on strategic, high-touch activities.
- •Ineffective or generic change management strategies lead to employee fatigue and resistance when adopting new technologies like AI, hindering successful implementation.
- •Lack of dedicated 'creative time' and optimized energy utilization prevents HR teams and employees from engaging in the innovative thinking required to drive organizational progress.
- •Absence of clear prioritization frameworks (like OKRs and guiding principles) causes employees to be overwhelmed by tasks, making it difficult to focus on high-impact work and informed decision-making.
In this episode
Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built by People
Dave: Shannon Teixeira from Waste Management joins Built By People podcast
Shannon Teixeira on Built By People
I'm curious to get your perspective on how seeing AI shape the future of HR
How AI Will Shape the Future of HR
There's a little bit of resistance to change within every organization
HR Executive Network: Change Management in an AI World
In order to create more innovative outcomes, we need creative time
The Need for Creativity in an Organization
Dave: Shannon, how do you help people prioritize work at work
Shannon Downey on Prioritization and the Future of Work
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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