Tanya Moore
Chief People Officer and Partner
West Monroe
Episode 248
HR Leaders: Master Rapid Change with a People-Centric Strategy
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleApril 1, 2025 · 17:21
Thesis
“By embracing people-centric change management, fostering genuine connections for employee well-being, and strategically leveraging technology, HR leaders can drive business outcomes and navigate the accelerating pace of change with resilience and courage.”
Show notes
Transforming HR and Change Management with Tanya Moore
In this episode of the Built by People podcast, host Dave D'Angelo welcomes Tanya to discuss her extensive career journey from organizational change management consulting to HR leadership roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM, and West Monroe.
Tanya shares insights on the evolving field of change management, emphasizing its shift from top-down directives to people-centric co-creation. She also talks about building a skills-based organization, tackling the loneliness epidemic, retaining a multi-generational workforce, and implementing automated solutions in talent acquisition.
Tanya concludes with advice for HR professionals on being resilient, courageous, and being a true business partner.
00:00 Introduction and Tanya's Career Journey
03:00 Evolution of Change Management
06:05 Building a Skills-Based Organization
09:19 Addressing Employee Experience and Loneliness
11:46 Implementing Automated Solutions in Talent Acquisition
13:38 Evaluating and Implementing New HR Technologies
15:23 Parting Advice for HR Professionals
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What you'll take away
- 1Modern change management is people-centric and co-creative, emphasizing workforce involvement from the start for better buy-in and outcomes, especially critical given the accelerating pace of change.
- 2When building a skills-based organization, focus on key roles and address known skill gaps first to gain momentum, rather than trying to catalog all skills across the entire organization upfront.
- 3Combat loneliness and foster connection across multi-generational workforces by prioritizing psychological safety, personal check-ins, employee resource groups, and co-creating meaningful activities with employees.
- 4Leverage AI in talent acquisition for automation and process simplification (e.g., scheduling, job descriptions, summarizing notes), but avoid using it at the top of the funnel to 'skinny down' candidates, to prevent bias.
- 5Approach new HR technology implementations by first defining the business problem, involving cross-functional teams, and integrating new solutions into a comprehensive technology roadmap to ensure data flow and system cohesion.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Instead of starting with 'what skills do I have' for a skills-based organization, jump to 'what skills do I need' and start building them, as we already know where the gaps are, to build momentum.
- •Avoid using AI at the top of the talent acquisition funnel to narrow down large applicant pools, as it risks introducing bias; instead, use it for automation and process simplification.
In Tanya's words
“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.”
This quote highlights the speaker's personal transformation and the evolving strategic importance of HR, shifting from process-driven to people and business-centric.
“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.”
This emphasizes the modern, collaborative approach to change management, moving away from top-down mandates towards employee involvement and co-creation.
“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.”
This offers a pragmatic, action-oriented strategy for building a skills-based organization, prioritizing immediate skill development over initial comprehensive auditing.
“To me, it all comes down to connection and inclusion, psychological safety.”
This succinctly summarizes her core solution for addressing the loneliness epidemic and managing a multi-generational workforce, focusing on fundamental human needs.
“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.”
This details a thoughtful and ethical approach to AI in talent acquisition, leveraging it for efficiency while avoiding potential biases in early-stage candidate screening.
“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?”
This highlights the importance of a problem-first approach to technology adoption, ensuring that solutions address actual business needs rather than just being trendy.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Employees are primarily concerned with covering monthly expenses, indicating a need for financial well-being support programs.
- •Traditional top-down change management often faces resistance and fails to fully leverage the workforce, leading to suboptimal outcomes.
- •Organizations struggle to transition to skills-based models because the task seems overwhelming when approached comprehensively, stuck in a 'job role' mindset.
- •The 'loneliness epidemic' and isolation, exacerbated by remote work, negatively impact employee mental health, connection, and engagement across all generations.
- •Inefficient talent acquisition processes consume significant recruiter time, hindering their ability to focus on strategic talent sourcing.
- •The rapid influx of HR technology makes evaluation and integration difficult, often leading to fragmented systems and poor data flow if not guided by a strategic roadmap.
- •HR leaders are under immense pressure to navigate constant external challenges (competition, economic shifts, global events, return-to-office debates) while also caring for their workforce.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Your career started by not having a clue what you wanted to do
Exploring Your Career Journey
Tanya says change management is all about getting the workforce on board
Tanya Moore on Change Management
Creating a skill-based organization is hard and it's complex
Building a Skills-based Organization
How do you address challenges like the loneliness epidemic and retaining a multi-generational workforce
Loneliness and the multi-generational workforce
Tonya, in talent acquisition, you've implemented various automated solutions
Employee Experience: Automation in Recruitment
How do you approach evaluating and implementing new technologies while managing potential risks
WSJD.com: Technology Decisions in HR
Tanya, what parting advice would you like to share with our community
A message from Former HR Chief Tanya Flanagan
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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