Tanya Moore

▶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. I'm excited to welcome Tanya to the Built by People podcast. Tanya, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:54GuestFirst of all, thank you for having me. So my career journey really started by not having a clue what I wanted to do. And when I think about how I got to where I am, I got a business degree, I got my MBA, and I did both of those things because truly I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I thought business was safe. In those learnings, what I really started to discover was the importance of people in business, and that was what got me interested in consulting. And I started my career in organizational change management consulting. With PricewaterhouseCoopers. From there, I learned a lot about consulting. I learned a lot about clients. Did that several years, and then ultimately ended up in HR, which is a place that I never thought I would be. When I did an internship between my MBA years, I did an internship in HR and decided the one thing that was helpful about the internship was I knew what I didn't want to do, and that was HR. But that was 30 years ago when HR was very process, very compliance-driven. So a couple things that I learned, and this all, you know, comes up as a lesson for me in life, is be open to the possibilities. Because when I first— someone first mentioned HR, I thought, why would I want to do that? And then I realized all those years ago how much HR was changing and how much it really allowed me to make a contribution to both the business and to people. And then ultimately, I ended up leading career and skills for IBM at a time where IBM was going through significant transformation. And that was, especially as I look back, such an awesome learning environment. We were totally shifting the business a different direction to focus on AI, cloud, et cetera. We were learning by doing. So everything that I know now about skills co-creation, employee experience, agile, all these things I learned by doing. So that was really what got me to where I am today. I did a chief people officer role when I left IBM, and now I am with West Monroe.

▶3:00HostTanya, you started your career in change management when no one knew what it was. How has the field evolved and what makes it so critical for organizations today?

▶3:13GuestThe funny part is not only did people not know what it was, if they had it in their contract, they'd say, I don't want this. I remember going to an interview once for a project and the project manager said, I don't want this work at all. And he was the one throwing me a baby shower a couple years later after I was able to show him what, what change management was. So if I think about how change management has evolved over time, in the '50s through the '80s, it was all about how do we get the workforce to do what leadership wants, right? So there was a top-down decision that was made, and change management was all about leadership has made this decision, and now how do we get employees to get on board? In the '90s and early 2000s, it then went into more of like processes and frameworks and big projects, whether it was ERP implementation or a merger. So something that was very event-based, and still there was an event, and how do we get the folks to be on board? So we already made a decision, this is what's happening. Now how do we communicate who, what, that kind of thing. What's really shifted over the past 10, 20 years is that change management is all very people-centric. So as opposed to being an event-centric or a decision from on high. It's really leveraging the power of the workforce to understand and co-create actions. So if you think about it, if you have something that you're wanting to do, whether you're wanting to change something or you're wanting to implement something, if you are including people in that decision and in the structure, the format at the beginning, It's a lot easier to get them on board throughout. And what I have found is it often results in much better expectations and outcomes because you have people that know what they're doing and have to use these things every day that are actually contributing. So that's how change management has really changed. Interesting part is that as I meet with other CHROs and we talk about what's going on, the topic of change management literally comes up every single time. And I think it's because the pace of change that we have all had to deal with is only speeding up and not slowing down. And so because of that, we're all doing operation model changes. We're all fighting with— competing with different customers, competing with different competitors. We're having to totally change how we go to market. All of these changes are really resulting in us taking a different approach to how do we go about this change with the workforce. And thinking through that co-creation as part of change management, as opposed to more of that top-down, now how are we gonna get everybody to get on board?

▶6:05HostTonya, can you walk us through your approach to building a skills-based organization? And what are the key steps leaders should consider when starting this transformation?

▶6:14GuestThis is a topic near and dear to my heart. Skills, I think, are so very critical. So if you think about how companies used to think about jobs, I think about it in a maturity curve. Some companies think about headcount planning. How many people do I need to get the work done? Then people kind of think about, okay, how many people, what quality of people do I need? And then it starts to mature into how many people with what skills do I have? How many are in the market? So you start to get into that supply and demand of skills. And then you start thinking about like true strategic workforce planning, where the concept of skills, skill supply and demand is truly integrated into all facets of the business. And that skill planning is equally as important as the financial plans. And so that's when I think about just the maturity model of skills. Creating a skill-based organization is hard. It's really hard and it's complex. And the reason it's complex is because so many companies are still thinking about things from a, how many people do I, how many do I have in what job role? So when you think about that maturity curve I talked about and getting from one end to the other, it's really overwhelming. It all needs to connect to do it well. And there's a lot of resistance sometimes. At the same time, it's the one topic that I have found when you think about the line working with HR, it's mutually agreeable that the organization needs skills and needs relevant skills to really prosper. So it's a huge opportunity to really partner, be a partner to the line, and have that partnership in a way that is most meaningful to the line and the business. And drives business outcomes. What I find is that companies have trouble getting started because it is so overwhelming. So the couple things that I encourage people to focus on is instead of thinking about how to do it for the whole organization, think about what are the key roles and just start with a couple key roles. The other thing is when you think about skills, there's basic, like, how many skills do I have? How many do I need? What are the gaps? Instead of starting with that first question of what skills do I have, skip to the second one, because we all know that there are skills that we need to build in the workforce. And if you start driving people to building those skills, you start to get some momentum, you start to get some wins, and then you can always go back and think through how many do we have and how are we going to catalog it and all that. Find someone in the business on the line that really thinks this could add value, that's excited, that wants to partner with you, and try it there. So as opposed to trying the whole thing all at once, really find some of these areas that you can get in, show success, and then you would be amazed how much the business really does follow suit.

▶9:19HostTanya, employee experience and co-creation are areas you're passionate about. How do you address challenges like the loneliness epidemic, and retaining a multi-generational workforce.

▶9:30GuestI was fascinated a couple years ago, I think it was 2023, that the US Surgeon General put out a report that was, and I might not have the title totally correct, but it was around the epidemic of loneliness and isolation. This was true prior to the pandemic and only more true post-pandemic. So when I think about loneliness, isolation, the impact on our work, the impact on mental health, the impact on our communities, as well as the fact that we have multiple generations in the workforce, to me, it all comes down to connection and inclusion, psychological safety. So how do we make real connections, not just about what work are you doing, how's it going, when's it due, is it on time, but, you know, really caring about each other as people. While remote work can be really helpful from a flexibility and a work-life perspective, it can also be hard to then have that meaningful personal connection. So really what I try to focus on with my team and encourage others to do is make that personal connection a priority. So whether it's starting every single meeting before you dive right into, is your assignment on time or how the business results, inquiring, having some conversations that are only about check-ins and not about work. Starting to put together some rituals, if you will, that get at some of this, as opposed to only focusing on work and not our individual and personal wellbeing. Cross-collaboration across the organization's really important. And then we have also found things like our employee resource groups have been super helpful for this. And then social groups, volunteering, and that's where kind of the multiple generations come in is Understanding what is meaningful to each of those generations and then having programs, policies, activities that fit each of those needs. And if we tie that back to co-creation, that's not HR sitting in a room thinking, we're gonna do this for this population, this for this population. It's actually involving the workforce in one, just how are they feeling? How's it going? And then what would actually be meaningful for them.

▶11:46HostTonya, in talent acquisition, you've implemented various automated solutions. Could you share specific examples of what has worked, what hasn't, and the measurable impact on your recruitment team?

▶11:59GuestYeah, of course. We have spent a ton of time really focused on how do we make recruiting more efficient to really focus on the end result, which is recruiting top talent. And there's a lot obviously out there about how do you use AI in recruiting. We have chosen not to use it at the top of the funnel. So not to— we've got 1,000 people that applied to a rec, not to use it to skinny down the funnel. We use things like knockout questions and other things like that, but we very, very have heavily used it around automation. Process simplification, and then AI to help inform nudges, et cetera. A couple of things that we found really worked is understanding what capabilities are already in the tools that we own. So it's not like we even had to go buy something new, but in our applicant tracking database, in our customer relationship management database that we use for applicants, those organizations have capabilities in those tools that when we better understood and became comfortable with, We were able to use it for nudges for candidate responses. We got a scheduling tool that helped do all scheduling automatically. And we're using GenAI, but we're using GenAI for things like job descriptions, market scans, summarizing candidate notes. And so through all of this, we're trying to be really thoughtful about using it in a way that creates efficiency, but also doesn't introduce bias into the system. And we've saved about 100 hours per recruiter per year at this point based on these improvements.

▶13:38HostTonya, how do you approach evaluating and implementing new technologies while managing potential risks, particularly in HR processes?

▶13:47GuestSo the tech space is actually tough right now because it's such a hot space. Everyone understands how much impact people skills experience has on the workforce and on business outcomes. So there's just a ton of technology out there, and it's really coming and going, flies at us super fast. So the first thing I really try and focus is what's the business problem we're trying to solve? So it might be really cool, something might be really cool, but what business problem are we trying to solve? And if I think about the business strategy of the organization, our people strategy, How does that business problem fit into it? I also very much think it's really important to have a cross-functional group of people in HR, in the line, employees that will use it, be impacted, have a strong HR technology team, and really make those decisions together because everyone brings different perspective. And I find that you get to better solutions in regard to what you pick. And then the final thing that I think is just super important is having an overall technology roadmap. So based on the business problem you're trying to solve, if you do it in pieces, eventually all those pieces don't fit together and the data doesn't flow, not only within the systems for HR and people, but also how does it flow to your sales system? How does it flow to other business system outcome systems? So really having roadmap that thinks about the different parts, pieces, and how it all comes together, I think is incredibly important.

▶15:23HostTanya, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶15:27GuestIt has— it's a really exciting time to be in HR, in the people space. And I would be remiss if I didn't also say it's been hard. It's been really hard in terms of just all of the challenges with competition for talent. You throw a global pandemic in there, and then we're struggling with return to office, and then you have economic and political and social dynamics that very much impact our workforce and the work. HR is smack in the middle of all of that, and the pace of change only seems to get faster. So if I think about it with that lens, the first thing I would say is remain super centered on being a business partner. For the organization. So not HR for HR's sake, a business partner for the organization. Secondly, I think for us all to survive mentally and just get with this pace of change, we all have to learn to be super resilient. So having a growth mindset, really listening and continually learning, letting things roll off our back, having tools and techniques to be resilient, I think is super important. And then I would say two more. I think we have to be courageous. There's a lot going on right now, and our leaders, our organizations, our boards, and our people are relying on us to be courageous and do the right thing. And then finally, just based on how tough it has been and just the pace of change and all the new things we've all had to learn, really taking some time to take care of your team and take care of yourself. Because we're so focused on caring for others that sometimes I think that we don't always make sure to take that time for ourselves.

▶17:14HostTanya, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶17:19GuestDave, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.