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Josh Bersin

Josh Bersin

In 2001, Josh Bersin founded Bersin & Associates, which became the leading research and advisory company for corporate learning, talent management, and HR. In 2012, Josh sold the company to Deloitte, when it became known as Bersin by Deloitte. As a Deloitte partner, Bersin was involved in many HR and learning engagements and was a principal author of Deloitte’s annual Human Capital Trends Report. He retired from Deloitte in 2018.

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Josh Bersin

How To Make Productivity Soar: Four Stages of AI Transformation We’ve been doing a lot of advisory work on skills and job design and now that AI tools have arrived, we’re reinventing work faster than ever. So let me give you some thoughts on this process, and you can also learn more from my recent podcast. As you know, there are many types of AI business tools: Copilots, Assistants, Agents, Talent Intelligence Systems, and embedded applications. Each of these products are built on an AI-first foundation and they layer on domain expertise, use-case analysis, and iterative design to build smarter and smarter systems. Self-driving cars started as voice assistants, automatic braking, and lane warnings. Now they keep you in the lane and slow your car when the speed limit changes. And soon enough they’ll be driving for us, so we can sit in the back seat and read a book. Our HR Assistant Galileo started as a research and problem solving tool, and it’s rapidly becoming an AI coach, benchmarking tool, recruiting, and change management system. So all these tools go from simple use-cases to deeper applications and autonomy over time. As the tools get smarter and more domain focused we are going to have to rethink our jobs and business processes. And unlike ERP, where we essentially trained people to “adopt” the system, now a lot of the groundbreaking applications come from the bottom up. Individuals will discover capabilities for AI and then apply them in increasingly innovative ways. And over time, as they get smarter, our jobs move more to “supervisors” and “trainers” of AI, not just consumers. For example if our self-driving car took a bumpy route, we may “retrain it” to take a longer but smoother road. As I discuss in the podcast, I believe there are four stages of adoption today. And we’re in the middle of doing all four at the same time. Level 1: Make existing work easier. (Same job, better tools.) This is where we click on the Microsoft Copilot or Zoom or Teams and the system analyzes a meeting, summarizes emails, or writes a document with our help. We do our jobs the same way we did before, but we now have a “super-productivity” tool to make it easier. These “add-on” use cases are emerging everywhere, and they already feel like a commodity. In most cases employees see 10-15% or more improvements here, but life isn’t that much different. And sometimes the tool slows us down (Copilot doesn’t create slides well at all yet) and may actually get in the way. But we can expect this mode to continue and most of us figure this out on our own. Level 2: Major steps eliminated, but the job is the same. (Same job, tools eliminate work.) At level 2 we automated a lot. Software engineers now use copilots to develop 70% of their code, so they’re spending more time testing and prompting the AI. Their individual coding skills may atrophy, but they can now work on more architectural issues. The “job” of software engineer may still be the same, but the output is far greater. So we’re making the same pay, doing the same work, but using highly automated tools. This includes scenarios like chip designers, software engineers, supermarket checkout clerks, nurse scheduling jobs, and even recruiting assistants. Paradox customers, for example, virtually eliminate “scheduling assistants” for recruiting. At this level companies can see 50-75% productivity improvement, and free time to focus on quality management, customer service, and ongoing improvements to the tools. Level 3: Re-engineered work, partnered with agents. (New job, redesigned process, agents automate work.) At level 3 we go further: we re-engineer the process and the work. Imagine how McDonald’s replaced its counter workers with a kiosk, eliminating the “may I take you order please?” role. This took some major design effort but resulted in a whole new set of roles, workflow, and management structure in the restaurants. The “cost per burger” went down, and the customer experience is almost as good (not quite). Here we need to be careful because sometimes the “self-service, AI-enabled” experience doesn’t work. A good example is the supermarket self-checkout. It rarely works well and usually takes longer than standing in line. But it will get better, and the resulting experience is faster throughput, more data (the self-service agent might offer you a discount since it knows your buying history), and far superior employee roles. In level 3 the employees are still involved, and we are more or less “working with the machine,” aiding and supporting the process. Level 4: Autonomous intelligent agents, people training and managing the AI. (New job, redesigned process, people “manage” the agents.) At level 4 we go even further. Imagine an AI recruiter (Paradox does this) that could email a hiring manager and his team, gain feedback and requirements on a job and role, consolidate input, and create a total description. This Agent could then review this job against the company culture and pay policies, compare the job against similar jobs in the external market, and tweak the level, job title, and description to be competitive. And then it could start sourcing, and give the hiring manager and human recruiter a set of candidates ranked by various criteria. That process, which takes dozens of steps for a recruiter, could be fully automated and vastly improved. The Agent could even look at prior hires and get even smarter about who to source based on the success of other candidates. Now the human job is to “train” and “monitor” and “manage” this AI Agent, who has effectively become a digital employee. (Note: Salesforce is doing a terrific job of building this out for sales and service.) The Rise of the SuperWorker Our thesis is that AI is not a “job-replacement” technology, it’s a “SuperWorker empowerment” technology. In other words, most of these scenarios result in higher value jobs, higher pay, and value creation (not cost reduction) in the business. This is happening fast. We’re in the middle of a big study in this area and I’ll be explaining this more in our upcoming 2025 Predictions report. The upside of all this will be new and higher paying jobs, faster response to business change, but a lot of IT, design, and data management to do. But based on our research, this is coming soon.

Josh Bersin
2024年12月01日
Josh Bersin

HR：清醒吧！员工更信任AI而非HR 多年来，我一直是HR的支持者和朋友。在与HR团队的每次交流中，我都对他们的热情、投入和善意印象深刻。然而，尽管我们尽了最大努力，一项针对851名职场专业人士的最新调查发现，“员工更信任AI，而非HR。” 什么？这怎么可能？在你否定这个结果之前，让我解释一下数据。这并不像表面看起来那样简单。数据揭示了什么？ 1. AI被认为更值得信任当被问到“你更信任AI还是HR专业人士”时，54%的受访者表示更信任AI，而27%表示更信任HR。这个数据虽然听起来奇怪，但实际上反映的是“信任”的问题。员工知道经理有偏见，因此任何由HR提供的绩效评估、加薪或其他反馈可能都会受到某种偏见的影响（甚至是近期偏见）。而AI没有“个人意见”。在基于真实数据的情况下，它的决策往往更“值得信赖”。65%的受访者相信AI工具会被公平使用。这很合理：我们已经从认为AI会毁灭世界的担忧中跨越了鸿沟，现在更多地将其视为统计和基于数据的决策系统。而且你可以问AI“为什么选择这个候选人”或“为什么这样评估这个员工”，AI会给出精准且明确的答案。（而人往往难以清楚地解释自己的决定。） 2. AI已被信任用于绩效评估尽管目前市场上可用的AI绩效评估工具还很少（如Rippling的工具），但39%的受访者认为AI的绩效评估会更公平，33%认为基于AI的薪酬决策不会有偏见。同样，这很可能是因为AI能够清晰地解释其决策，而管理者往往依赖“直觉”。 3. AI更受欢迎作为职业教练当被问到“你是否重视AI工具在职业目标设定方面的指导能力”时，64%的受访者表示“是”。这再次表明员工对反馈和指导的需求，而这是许多管理者做得不够好（或者不够开放）的地方。这不是对HR的否定，而是对管理者信任度的质疑对我而言，这些数据揭示了三个重要点，每个都可能让你感到意外： 1. 员工对管理者的决策能力存疑我们并不总是信任“管理者”在招聘、绩效和薪酬方面做出公正、不偏不倚的决定。员工知道偏见存在，因此希望有一个系统可以更公平地选择和评估他们。 2. AI从“令人恐惧”到“被信任”的转变我们已经跨越了“AI令人害怕”的心理鸿沟，开始更多地将其视为可信赖的工具，这使得企业可以更大规模地将AI用于人事决策。 3. HR需要迅速适应AI时代对于HR部门来说，前进的方向已经明确。我们现在必须立刻学习AI工具，将它们引入最重要的HR领域，并投入时间去管理、培训和利用这些工具。关于HR赢得信任的能力，现在的逻辑变成了这样：公司内部支持和信任的建立将越来越依赖于HR如何选择和实施AI系统。员工的期望很高，因此我们必须满足这些需求。不管你喜欢与否，AI正在改变我们管理人的方式。

Josh Bersin
2024年11月21日
Josh Bersin

Josh Bersin:通过效率实现高速增长：新时代的主题最近的选举中，各种信息混杂，但有一条呼声响彻领导人的耳中：美国政府必须提高效率。美国选民似乎对芯片和基础设施法案上花费的数十亿美元并不感冒：他们想要的是更低的税收和更负责任的政府。正如埃隆·马斯克所解释的那样，降低成本是一项涉及数千个细节的工作。每当你聘请一名经理，就会产生更多的费用中心。本周，亚马逊首席执行官安迪·贾西 (Andy Jassey) 宣布他希望减少经理人数。正如我在最近的 HBR 文章（通过力量倍增器发展你的公司）中所讨论的那样，如果你围绕“更少的人”进行设计，你的公司实际上可以发展得更快。围绕更少的员工来优化公司意味着什么？这意味着要改变很多事情：在没有组织发展计划的情况下，不要分配员工不要在发展前就招聘员工并期望收入会随之而来（Salesforce招聘 1000 名销售代表来销售 AI？）迫使管理人员在基层实现自动化，并不断重新思考岗位职责消除复杂的职位名称，减少级别，以便于人员调动停止根据“控制范围”支付管理人员的薪酬——根据产出、收入、盈利能力或增长进行评估加倍投资培训，并开始在不同的职业类别之间进行交叉培训告诉那些请求增加员工数量的领导“重新考虑减少员工数量的计划” 用奖金支付员工工资，避免根据绩效高薪加薪（这会使不公平制度化）大力投资人工智能和自动化测试项目，让一线员工给你出主意除非你有非常明确的商业案例，否则避免大规模的 ERP 升级培育精英管理文化，奖励人们的技能和表现，而不是“达到目标”。许多人力资源实践必须进行调整。最重要的是人才密度的理念，让每个人都能表现出色……并重新思考我们的招聘方式，这样我们就不会在不知不觉中招聘了太多员工。我们从小就接受这种古老的钟形曲线观念：只有 10% 的人能被评为 1，20% 的人被评为 2，依此类推。这个愚蠢的想法本应迫使人们竞争，这样人们就会争相获得备受推崇的 1 评级。虽然这在逻辑上说得通，但效果却适得其反。如果你相信（就像我一样）每个人都能成为高绩效者，那么这种制度会伤害最有抱负的人的绩效。每个员工都能在合适的角色中发挥出超强的表现。研究表明，真正的团队表现遵循“力量曲线”——少数人（篮球界的勒布朗·詹姆斯或斯蒂芬·库里）的表现比其他人高出 10 到 100 倍。其他团队成员见证了他们的成功，并找到了属于自己的“超强表现”角色。如果所有高评价的位置都被占满，其他人的动力又是什么呢？我们希望每个人都能感觉到自己可以成为超级明星，我们希望公司能帮助他们找到这个机会。我们招聘员工时，不是以附加的方式满足“缺少的技能”或“缺少的人数”，而是以“力量倍增效应”为目的。新员工是否会成倍地提高整个团队的绩效？或者他们只是“填补了一个看似空缺的职位”。后一种做法是走向官僚主义的旅程；前一种做法是超级竞争性增长的秘诀。（我们称之为“人才密度”）为什么现在提出这些观点？在一个员工减少的世界里，我们所有人都将面临人才短缺的问题。随着AI的加速发展，我们必须把公司视为由超高绩效员工组成的网络。我无法预测联邦政府将会做些什么，但希望这些有启发性的思考能够影响华盛顿。是的，我们还有工会等问题需要考虑，但即使是世界上最大的机构也有其局限性。如今，自动化触手可及，任何“大公司”都可能受到小公司的威胁。因此，越早开始“精简”思维，越能获得优势。作者：Josh Bersin

Josh Bersin
2024年11月13日
Josh Bersin

LinkedIn推出AI招聘助手：重新定义未来招聘流程 LinkedIn Enters AI Agent Race With LinkedIn Hiring Assistant LinkedIn推出了首个AI Agent : Hiring Assistant，旨在帮助招聘人员重新成为招聘人员。 LinkedIn于本周推出了全新的AI招聘助手，这款工具旨在自动化招聘过程中高达80%的工作，特别是候选人筛选和招聘前的步骤。通过与LinkedIn平台的无缝集成，这款助手不仅提高了招聘人员的工作效率，也显著提升了候选人的质量。该工具的“体验记忆”和“项目记忆”功能，可以记录招聘人员的搜索和操作习惯，并将所有与招聘项目相关的信息进行整合，从而智能化地优化招聘流程。这款助手已经在西门子、Canva等公司的招聘流程中得到了应用，这些公司报告称，通过LinkedIn招聘助手，招聘人员的生产力显著提升，候选人质量也得到了极大的改善。招聘前的AI辅助搜索仅需30秒即可完成，而传统的搜索通常需要15分钟。 LinkedIn招聘助手还通过AI驱动的沟通功能改善了候选人的体验。数据显示，使用AI辅助发送的招聘信息的接受率提高了44%，接受速度也加快了11%。此外，AI搜索的候选人接受率高出18%。随着越来越多的公司采用AI技术，招聘与候选人之间的竞争日益加剧。求职者也在利用AI工具优化简历，甚至在面试中使用AI辅助表现，从而使HR在筛选候选人时面临更多挑战。因此，LinkedIn招聘助手等工具正成为招聘人员不可或缺的助手。 LinkedIn招聘助手不仅仅是提高效率的工具，它真正的价值在于解放招聘人员，使他们能够专注于与候选人和招聘经理的对话，改善雇主品牌，并更好地了解就业市场。这种转变反映了人才获取的战略性转变——从执行角色转变为人才顾问，帮助公司更好地实现增长。详细请看Josh Bersin 写的这篇介绍 As I discussed in the article Digital Twins, Digital Employees, Agents Everywhere, tech vendors are creating AI-powered Agents as fast as they can. And in HR, where we deal with hundreds of mundane checklist-types of processes, the opportunity for automation is everywhere. This week, just as Microsoft launched a tools to help companies build Agents in Copilot, LinkedIn announced its Hiring Assistant. And this is a pretty amazing product. The Hiring Assistant is the first highly-integrated agent I’ve seen that fits right into the LinkedIn workflow. And the companies using it now (Siemens, Canva, AMS) are seeing recruiter productivity and candidate quality skyrocket. Here’s how to think about it: consider a schematic of the recruitment workflow. As you can see, there are more than 30 steps to complete, and this doesn’t even include background checking, offer-letter generation, benefits discussions, pre-boarding, and onboarding. With this brand new Assistant LinkedIn believes they can automate almost 80% of this pre-offer workflow. And the LinkedIn Hiring Assistant is just getting started. Here are some screenshots of the workflow: As you can see, the agent prompts the recruiter with intelligent responses and questions along the way. And throughout the process it stores more and more information to get smarter and smarter. This Is A Sophisticated Product This is a well-engineered product. Not only does it include many subtle features (ie. “find me a candidate like Joe,” which brings in Joe’s profile and analyzes Joe’s role, skills, and experience), it includes several platform innovations. The first is something LinkedIn calls “Experiential Memory,” storing the recruiter’s search and activity history for future work. The Hiring Assistant learns what this recruiter is doing, how they communicate, and how they operate, to tune its results to each recruiter’s needs (ie. a tech recruiter vs. an executive recruiter). Second is a feature called “Project Memory,” which brings together all the information about a single search project. This means the candidate selection criteria, emails, and input from hiring managers are stored in the project, enabling the assistant to see the whole experience of selection. Recruiters understand this challenge: every hire and every hiring manager is different, and each project has unique and sometimes new requirements which have nothing to do with the job description. Other Agents Will Have To Take Notice LinkedIn is not the first mover in this space, but the company’s credibility will accelerate the market. Paradox, the current leader in recruitment automation, has been automating high-volume recruiting for almost a decade and offers an agent that not only helps recruiters but also supports job seekers. It isn’t focused on sourcing liked LinkedIn, but it automates the rest of the process (candidate inquiries, interview scheduling, assessment, onboarding). And it really works: this week Chipotle announced that Paradox’s solution reduces time to hire by 75%, making it a central part of the company’s growth strategy. LinkedIn Hiring Assistant is receiving similar accolades. “Doing a normal search before AI took upwards of 15 minutes. Now, with AI-Assisted Search, it takes about 30 seconds to get results. The time saved is tremendous. It is so much more convenient and easier doing it this way,” said Victoria Östryd Söderlind, Senior Recruitment Specialist, Toyota Material Handling Europe. “The AI features on LinkedIn have allowed our recruiters to do more, to be better and to grow faster in all of our activities. It’s about spending time in the right places where our time is more valuable and LinkedIn’s AI features have enabled us to do that. What it’s not doing is removing great conversations with candidates, stopping our ability to ask them questions or getting to know candidates as people and humans,” said Olivia Brown, Head of Talent Acquisition, Octopus Energy. Improving Candidate Experience While LinkedIn talks about the value to HR, the bigger value may be for candidates. The company found that AI-Assisted outreach messages generate a 44% higher acceptance rate and are accepted 11% faster by job seekers. And AI-based searches produce 18% higher candidate acceptance. As Paradox has discovered, candidates don’t like to waste time scheduling calls with recruiters if they can avoid it. And that leads to another important issue. There is now a growing AI battle between recruiter and candidates. AS AI helps recruiters source and screen candidates, the candidates are using AI to “power-up” their resumes. One of our clients told me that almost all their job applicants now submit resumes that look eerily similar to job descriptions. Why? Job candidates are using AI also! This means is that tools like LinkedIn Hiring Assistant are more essential than ever. As job seekers tweak their identity and even use AI interview assessments to game interviews, HR has to beef up its tools to better differentiate candidates. Liberating Recruiters To Recruit And Advise The big story is actually this: while Hiring Assistant is an efficiency tool, what it really does is free up recruiters to talk to candidates. Recruiters who are bogged down with drudgery can talk with hiring managers, improve employment brand, and get to know candidates and the job market better. This is part of what we call Systemic HR: moving talent acquisition away from the “fulfillment center” role to that of a talent advisor, helping the company think about its best ways to grow. As you look at these tools and think about automation, I encourage you to read our new research on the strategic shift in talent acquisition. Automation is not just about productivity and cost savings: it’s really about liberating our minds to think and add value in new and exciting ways.

Josh Bersin
2024年10月29日
Josh Bersin

Josh Bersin :SuccessFactors Leapfrogs HCM Capabilities: AI, Skills, Talent Intelligence, And More 本周，SuccessFactors 宣布了一系列重大更新，巩固其在人力资本管理（HCM）市场的领先地位。这些新功能包括 AI 驱动的工作推荐、文本分析、绩效评估和全球工资单升级等。SuccessFactors 还推出了开放的技能系统，并与 Lightcast、Degreed 等技能供应商合作，提供更全面的职业发展工具。此外，通过整合 WalkMe，SuccessFactors 改善了用户体验，使其在实施和使用方面更具优势。Dan Beck 的领导下，SuccessFactors 持续推动 HR 技术的创新与发展。有兴趣进一步了解下 This week SuccessFactors announced a vast array of new features, focused on taking the lead in the red hot HCM war against Workday, Oracle, and others. These capabilities fall into four areas, each of which bring SAP into a leading position in many areas of the global HCM market. (Product details here.) As I learned about the release I noticed the fingerprints of Dan Beck, the company’s new president and chief product officer. Dan has been at SAP for 11 months and has accelerated the company’s technology roadmap and focus on total solutions. Let me summarize what’s new. 1. More And More AI Capabilities Built-In First, of course, is AI. Two years ago SAP announced its “Business AI” strategy, which describes how all SAP business applications are integrated and enhanced with AI. (Workday’s similar strategy Illuminate was launched a few months ago.) In the prior release SuccessFactors described 63 AI use-cases; this week they introduced 30 more. And all are integrated into Joule, SAP’s intelligent Agent. Each “use-case” is essentially an AI application and many are quite complex: automatically developing job descriptions, analyzing performance reviews, setting and aligning goals, developing onboarding, creating growth plans, and evaluating pay inequities. In other words these AI “features” are really automation workflows that each eliminate hours of work for HR professionals. Since each is also integrated into Joule, you can use them through the conversational interface. While many HR vendors are adding AI features, I find SAP’s particularly robust because they’re integrated into the entire lifecycle of an employee. SAP’s engineering focus really shows here. Some of the new features include AI-based job recommendations to job seekers (and internal employees), text analysis and editing for performance reviews, and new mobile use-cases for Joule. 2. Upgrades to Global Payroll The second set of announcements are a significant update to global payroll. SAP currently has the broadest global payroll solution in the market and now has a new UI, a Payroll Command Center, and a sophisticated AI offering called “Explain Pay Slip.” You will effectively be able to ask Joule “why has my pay changed from last month” and it will dig into all the details and explain the differences. This covers 70% or more of the questions employees ask HR service centers, so this feature has an enormous ROI. Employee Central, the company’s core HR and payroll module, now has a more integrated view of all benefits and more integrations with Joule, making the 52-country payroll system the broadest in the market. 3. Open Skills System and Launch of Career and Talent Development The third set of announcements will change the HR Tech market: SAP is formerly opening up its Talent Intelligence Hub to accommodate every skills and skillstech vendor. Providers like Lightcast, Korn Ferry, Techwolf (SAP invested in them), and Degreed can now feed the SuccessFactors skills system and SAP is going to build tools to normalize and harmonize skills. This brings SAP to parity or beyond Workday Skills Cloud: the skills model is integrated into Opportunity Marketplace, Career and Talent Development (the new version of SuccessFactors learning), and SuccessFactors job architecture, team management, performance management, and recruiting. The new Career and Talent Development offering also introduces AI-assisted career insights, leveraging skills and aspirations to find relevant jobs and career paths. The system lets managers create assignments, find and onboard internal candidates, and then use Work Zone (onboarding and enablement) to start their new internal position. This level of integration goes beyond tools from Gloat or Eightfold or others for internal talent marketplace. Several years ago SuccessFactors introduced its comprehensive skills strategy and today it’s coming to fruition. There are several major implications here. First, vendors like Eightfold, Gloat, Phenom, Beamery, and many others will have to decide how they partner or compete with SAP. Last month I met with both Delta Air Lines and Pepsi, both of which are using SuccessFactors Talent Intelligence hub as their new end-to-end platform. Each company told me that they no longer felt the need to use some of these other third party products. Second, the SuccessFactors skills model is expansive. In addition to harmonizing and helping companies build technical and leadership models, the system itself has its “whole self” module which includes aspirations, styles, motivations, and preferences. Companies that use this can add subtle human needs to the model. Other vendors have tried this (Cornerstone and Gloat both ask users to express career and personal work preferences) but SAP, with its enormous customer base, has the potential to leverage this across industries. Imagine an employee in IT who aspires to work in HR, for example – the system would find the HR Tech jobs within the company which leverage their architectural or technical skills. SuccessFactors also includes a mature system for team-based work, which is missing in these other applications. This release adds AI-assisted 360 reviews, performance templates, and integration with Joule (employees and managers can share performance information through the agent.) 4. Integration of WalkMe into SuccessFactors. The fourth major announcement is the bundling and integration of WalkMe. Given the vast and complex nature of SuccessFactors, there are many places to read documentation and learn how the system works. This forces customers to build large training programs for users. (All HCM platforms have this issue.) WalkMe, which was acquired this year for $1.5 Billion, is the leading provider of “digital adoption platforms.” It is essentially an advanced AI system that watches a user’s interaction with a system to coach, train, and automate your work. Initially developed to help users learn how to use systems like SAP or Salesforce, WalkMe advanced into a highly intelligent real-time coach, similar to what we now expect out of an AI agent. While I don’t know how this will be priced, this gives SuccessFactors an “ease of implementation” advantage. WalkMe is an open platform and does support many HCM applications, but now that it’s integrated and bundled into SAP customers will find SuccessFactors much easier to deploy and use. (Just for your reference, the SuccessFactors and Workday “how to” manuals include nearly 1,000+ pages each.) Bottom Line: SuccessFactors Leadership Emerges SAP’s ambitious, long-term engineering approach to human capital management is clear. I’ve been watching SuccessFactors since it was a small independent company in California, now growing to a vast cloud business with 10,000+ customers and more than 150 million end users. This release demonstrates how patience, engineering excellence, and relentless focus on customers pays off in enterprise software. Under the leadership of Dan Beck, SuccessFactors now offers industry-leading capabilities in most areas of HCM, giving customers an even deeper offering to consider as HR technology rapidly evolves.

Josh Bersin
2024年10月28日

Josh Bersin

Josh Bersin:Digital Twins, Digital Employees, And Agents Everywhere 2025 年，数字员工和人工智能助理的崛起将彻底改变人力资源运营，改变招聘、数据分析和员工管理等任务。这些技术包括数字双胞胎和智能代理，它们将与人类专业人员一起工作，以提高生产力和优化工作流程。随着人工智能工具成为日常业务不可或缺的一部分，人力资源领导者必须拥抱这些创新，同时继续关注技能培训、心理健康和包容性工作环境。向人工智能的转变还将重塑团队动态，这对人力资源部门重新设计角色和流程以保持竞争力提出了挑战。 I recently heard Elon Musk predict that every citizen would have multiple Optimus robots in their homes within five years. And while I often ignore his predictions because they’re exaggerated, I think he’s on to something. We are about to witness an explosion of Digital Employees in our companies, and these may be the “robots” we’ve heard about for years. Let me explain. This week I talked with dozens of vendors and clients at Unleash and then visited our development partner Sana Labs in Stockholm. It’s now clear that we’re going to be working with multitudes of “digital employees” in the year ahead. (And as Dario Amodei, the founder of Anthropic explains, AI can do many more positive things in business, science, and health than we ever imagined.) By “digital employee” I mean a software powered agent that can talk with us, answer detailed questions, solve complex analytic problems, and navigate a multitude of systems. ChatGPT and its peers, which introduced the idea of an agent, has now spawned dozens of “agentic” use cases, which I’d be willing to refer to as personalities. Let me start with a “Digital Twin.” Imagine you have a superb customer service agent with years of experience helping your most demanding clients. If you load the last five years of their emails, coupled with all their internal documentation, and a log history of their last two years of service calls, you can essentially “create him or her” digitally with all the knowledge, style, and internal contacts this person has developed. This twin, which may look initially like an AI assistant, could then carry on this employee’s work when the real life worker is on vacation. One of our clients, a large insurance company, has already built “digital twins” for claims processing. If you think about the complexity and workflow of processing a claim, much of it could be learned by an agent, making the “claims robot” an expert on this important process. And as you change claims rules and limits, the agent will learn new guidelines in only seconds. Our AI assistant Galileo, a trained expert on HR (Galileo is trained on 25 years of research and thousands of conversations with clients and vendors), is essentially a “digital twin” of me and the other analysts in our firm. I’m not saying Galileo is as fun to talk with as we are, but I can assure you that he (or she) is as knowledgeable and supportive. And Galileo is even smarter than I am: he has instant knowledge of skills models, compensation benchmarks, turnover statistics, and other data bases which I can only access by looking them up on demand. And using the Sana platform we can configure Galileo to have multiple personalities. Galileo the “Recruitment Agent” might have in-depth knowledge of screening, interviewing, and candidate skills assessment and he may have direct linkage to SeekOut, Eightfold, or any other sourcing applications. In his candidate facing personality he may be able to answer candidate questions, explain shift schedules, and “sell” the company to top job candidates. (This is what Paradox has done for years and vendors like Eightfold and LinkedIn are launching now.) But there’s more. Imagine that this “digital twin” or “digital employee” has intimate knowledge of Workday, SuccessFactors, or a variety of other systems. Now the assistant can not only answer questions and help solve problems, he can also process transactions, look things up, and run reports against multiple system. The digital employee has turned into a “digital analyst,” who can find things and do work for you, saving you hours of effort in your daily life. (Vee from Visier is designed for this.) Suppose you ask your digital friend to attend meetings for you, participate in conversations on certain topics, and alert you in real time when urgent issues come up for discussion. He could help you scale your time, keep you informed about decisions you need to know about, and help you manage your action items. And the list goes on and on and on. Best of all, what if your digital twin can talk to you. Suppose he “checks in” with you about the project you asked for help with last week, so you inform him how things are going and he gets “smarter” about what you may need next. Galileo does this today, prompting you to dig into a problem and explore areas you may not have considered. And if you ask him about management or people issues, he could give you advice and coaching, based on the leadership models or even CEO interviews in your own company. (BetterUp, Valence and others are working on this.) This is not science fiction, my friends. All this is becoming reality and will certainly be common next year. Every vendor has a slightly different focus. The Microsoft Copilot specializes in MS Office-related activities, ServiceNow’s focuses on internal service and support, Galileo is focused on the needs of HR, and Joule is an expert on all the functions of SAP. Each of these “digital employees” needs training, feedback, and connections to stay current and relevant. So it’s doubtful that one digital employee will do everything. (Training a digital employee means managing his or her corpus of information, which will be a major new role in HR.) One thing is very clear: we are going to be living and working with these guys. And as we use them and see what they’re capable of, we’re going to redesign work. Little by little we’ll offload tasks, projects, and workflows. And as we do, we’ll get smarter and smarter about redesigning our teams. I liken the process to that of a carpenter who gets a new multi-function power drill. Before the drill he may have manually drilled holes, carefully selecting the drill bit and the level of pressure based on wood density. Now he drills holes faster, more accurately, and with more precision. Soon he just speeds through the process, spending more time on cabinet fit, finish, or design. The same thing will happen to our HR tasks, projects, and designs. And these new digital employees are programmable! So once we figure out what they’re capable of we can adjust them, customize them, and connect them together. Eventually we’ll have intelligent assistants that operate as entire applications. And that’s the threat to incumbent software companies – the agents hollow out many of our existing applications. How Do Our Digital Employees Impact Our Own Work? One more observation. Many a few of the clients I talked with kept asking “what about our softskills?” What work is truly human? I think that’s the wrong question. Rather we should ask the opposite: how much can I delegate to my new friends as fast as possible! Have you been upset that your vacuum cleaner took away the rewarding human work of sweeping a floor? How much joy do you get from washing dishes? Did your dishwasher make you feel deflated when you stopped splashing around in the soapy water? Of course not – these tools eliminated tasks we considered to be “drudgery.” Well today, thanks to digital assistants, creating a pivot table to do cross-tab analysis has become drudgery. You can stop getting your hands wet with that task – ask Galileo or Copilot to analyze the data, and then ask him to chart it, add more data, and try new assumptions. The more we learn to use these new digital employees the more “drudgery” we can stop doing. And consider complex “human-centered” activities like “change management.” A client asked me “how could Galileo help me with change management for our new HCM system?” I answered her with dozens of ideas: ask Galileo for case studies of other companies and have it build a checklist to consider based on what other companies did. Then ask Galileo to build a training plan; ask it to read the user documentation and create a table of what features are new; then ask Galileo to rewrite that change plan by role. And finally ask Galileo to write a press release about success, craft some compelling communications to employees, and ask it to compute the ROI of all the steps eliminated. These are all “manual” human tasks we do today and they take time and ingenuity to figure out. If you went through this process in Galileo you could ask your digital employee to save these steps and prompts in a “template,” and you have just taught your digital employee how to do change management. The next time you need him he can step you through the process. As I started to explain this to my client I stopped and said: wait a minute. I can’t possibly show you everything Galileo can do. You have to try it for yourself. And that’s my big message. Don’t wait for a vendor to drop a finished solution in your lap. These are intelligent, trainable, digital experts. You have to get to know them so you can figure out where they fit in your job, your projects, and your company. Just like you do with any new hire. I say it’s time to get started. No more sweeping floors or washing dishes by hand. Let’s meet our digital employees, tell them about our projects, and ask for their help. Step by step, day by day, we can redesign our jobs to be more more productive, liberating us to do greater things.

Josh Bersin
2024年10月19日
Josh Bersin

ADP Lyric HCM, The Next-Gen HR Platform Many Have Waited For Josh Bersin 写文章介绍了ADP的 Lyric HCM，给予了高度评价。ADP于2018年启动了一项秘密项目，目标是开发下一代企业人力资源管理平台。这个项目最终被命名为ADP Lyric HCM，它的设计旨在应对当代灵活多变的工作环境。Lyric HCM基于高度可扩展的微服务架构，能够处理包括全职、兼职、临时工、自由职业者等多种员工类型，同时支持多重管理结构。该平台具有灵活性，可帮助企业快速适应组织重组、兼并收购等变化，且能够实现全球薪资和税务管理，提供符合各地法律法规的自定义规则。 Lyric HCM的设计不仅注重系统的灵活性，还融入了大量的AI功能，使其在用户体验上更加智能化和易用。通过ADP Assist这一AI工具，用户可以通过自然语言与系统互动，轻松进行复杂的HR操作。此外，Lyric HCM还提供实时的行业基准数据，帮助企业根据最新的薪酬和岗位信息做出决策。该系统的“人本位”架构使其更具灵活性，相比传统以职位为基础的系统，它可以更好地满足当代企业多重任务、多角色管理的需求。 Lyric HCM不仅支持多种HR功能，如招聘、绩效管理、培训和发展，还拥有一个统一的员工体验平台，员工可以通过简单的查询完成例如婚假申请等事务。此外，ADP还建立了强大的全球服务团队，确保客户获得定制化的实施和长期支持。自上线以来，ADP Lyric HCM已经吸引了超过120个大型客户，证明了其系统的稳定性和可扩展性。其核心市场定位是为全球化、分布式的企业提供服务，尤其是在零售、医疗保健、餐饮等行业。作为一款融合AI技术的全新平台，Lyric HCM展示了未来人力资源管理系统的潜力，并成为Workday、Oracle、SAP等主要HCM供应商的有力竞争对手。 In the Spring of 2018 I attended a confidential meeting in New York City to learn about a project called Lifion. ADP had hired a new team of engineers convened in a secret mission to build the “next-generation platform” for ADP’s offerings in the enterprise market. This new system, designed ten years after the release of Workday, was intended to be a highly scalable, configurable, micro-services based system, capable of managing payroll, HR processes, and all talent applications for any category of employee. The system had to support dynamic teams, many worker modalities (full-time, part-time, hourly, gig, contract), and enable a company to manage many organization structures within its corporate function, each with different business rules and overlapping employees. It was designed, in a sense, for the highly flexible, dynamic companies of the post-pandemic era. In addition to this flexible architecture, the system was designed to support workers with multiple managers (and multiple time sheets), dynamic reconfiguration for M&A or new business entities, and global payroll and tax services with custom business rules that might be variable across the company. It needed to include a recruiting module, a variety of options for goals and performance management, tools for onboarding and development, excellent reporting, and an easy-to-use narrative interface that let any employee, manager, or HR professional use, configure, or run reports on the system. In my initial meeting I walked away impressed, and I wrote an article describing this project. Today, almost six years later, this product has a name (ADP Lyric HCM) and it has reached general availability for ADP customers with 1,000 customers or more. Today ADP has 120+ large accounts so the system is proven. And since its inception Lyric HCM has been infused with extensive AI features (ADP Assist is on par with SAP Joule as a true AI interface) and benchmark information from ADP’s data cloud. In other words, this system has the potential to be a “The Next Generation” HCM platform in the market. What Is ADP Announcing And Offering The core HR system has to do a lot of things. Not only does it have to manage payroll, benefits, and tax rules (in a global, constantly changing regulatory environment), it has to be flexible, easy to configure, and filled with easy-to-use interfaces for employees and HR. And by “flexible” I mean the system has to make it easy to open a new org structure, move employees around, and create multiple modes for a “manager” or supervisor. Almost all traditional HCM providers, Workday, Oracle, and SAP, were not designed to work this way. These vendors built contract work add-ons but in most cases when you want to flatten your organization, merge with another company, or reorganize roles it’s difficult. Flattening the organization often means “re-implementing” your HRMS. Most companies only do it once a decade. ADP Lyric HCM is designed to fix this. Imagine a company like Gold’s Gym where the company is constantly opening new Gyms and hiring new managers, with employees dual reporting to multiple managers. I talked with Gold’s Gym and as you can imagine the company went through a transformation during the pandemic. Started as a Southern California fitness company, Gold’s was acquired and is now a global organization branching into many new offerings. Facilities were consolidated and each local fitness center operates with a lot of management independence. For example, an employee who is a trainer in one gym with one manager may also be a trainer or support staff in another gym with another manager. This type of “work-centric” (as opposed to “job-centric”) operation is becoming very common. Lyric HCM supports these multi-manager work models, including features for performance management, time tracking, and contract workers. Think about any retailer, healthcare company, or other highly distributed operation. One Gold’s Gym may pay overtime in one way, another in a different way. You can imagine the permutations. Every company has situations like this. I was recently at Rolls-Royce where they are centralizing engineering teams away from product groups, making 30 to 40% of their engineers “floaters.” Rolls has enormous contracts with government and commercial customers, each with different financial models. They need a system like this just like a gym, restaurant chain, or elder care network. There’s more. In addition to these HRMS and global payroll features, ADP has built an employee experience platform, employee communications system, and learning and development system. You simply type a query like “I’m getting married” and the system shows a page that consolidates tasks and resources in one place. If an HR manager wants to “pay a bonus” the system asks what organization, shows a list of people, and lets the manager define the bonus without hunting for menus and panels. Highlights Of The Next Gen Approach Since this system was architected in the age of AI, it has some very unique capabilities out of the box. First, in the area of flexibility, this is a “person-based” architecture, as opposed to a “role-based” architecture. That feature alone enables all these features to be possible. Second, in the area of usability, the system is among the most “AI-enabled” interfaces I’ve seen. While most HCMs are building assistants to speed through transactions, Lyric HCM literally “learns” what you’re trying to do and prompts you through the process. Remember these HCM systems are complex (Workday’s “Users Guide” is 2500 pages long), so we want the system to feel approachable not intimidating. As you can see from this slide, ADP also offers embedded benchmarks as well as a nudge engine. The benchmarks come from ADP’s data cloud, giving companies up to date salary ranges and other metrics by job title and job level (no other HCM platforms do this). The nudge engine is used for Lyric HCM’s onboarding and development system, reminding users of tasks or activities they need to perform. ADP Assist, the company’s Gen AI tool, lets you ask questions about any employee or group, legal and tax issues, and payroll or financial data. It’s quite powerful and I would say it rivals Joule as a conversational interface for HCM. Third, the system has a novel and approachable interface for employees. Rather than offer people a variety of “centers” or “portals” to find things, the system is smart enough to give employees exactly what it thinks they need. Typical HR transactions like changing your family status or address, or looking at benefits or pay are simple. Persona-based dashboards are designed for payroll or tax managers. And any HR professional can customize the interface for their use. Because the system is so dynamic, users can set up smart reports and other views to pinpoint the data and organizational unit they’re interested in. And ADP has built a management development tool (to take newly promoted supervisors through development), an onboarding system, and many features for performance and goal management. Where Will This Go? ADP Services When we think about ADP’s platforms we have to remember that ADP is not just a cloud software company. Most of the company’s revenue comes from services: payroll, PEO, and license fees around those offerings. This means ADP’s sales and service organization is very service-centric and highly trained in all areas of HR. (Most HR software sales teams are not HR domain experts.) To support Lyric HCM the company put together a global service team combined with dedicated client success executives to make sure each customer has a personalized, outcome-based implementation plan. This means ADP Lyric HCM is not just a great platform, but a set of people to help with configuration, utilization, integration, and long-term planning. ADP is starting to work with integrators, but likely will handle most of their customer implementations themselves. Impact On The Market. At this point Lyric HCM is positioned as an offering for mid to large companies headquartered in the United States with global workforces. This means Lyric HCM is directly positioned to compete with UKG, Ceridian, Workday, Oracle, SAP, and vendors like Darwinbox, HiBob (which is going upmarket), Lattice, and others. The “Pay” companies (Paychex, Paycor, Paycom) are focused primarily on smaller companies, but as they grow their offering they may compete as well. That is not to say ADP can solve every client need. These platforms mature over many years and each vendor has different industry and focus features. At this point I believe ADP will most likely win in industries like retail, hospitality, health care, and other distributed, hourly workforce companies. And given ADP’s focus on small and medium business, it will take time for ADP to reach large companies. Nevertheless, it’s time for change in HCM. Designed for agility and infused with AI, ADP Lyric HCM shows us a future we’ve been looking for.

Josh Bersin
2024年09月23日
Josh Bersin

AI Agents, The New Workforce We’re Not Quite Ready For (Agentic AI) Josh Bersin 刚刚谈到：AI代理人的兴起标志着工作方式的一次革命。这些AI代理人不仅仅是工具，而是未来的团队成员。从开发培训课程到管理招聘过程，AI代理人的能力正被企业系统广泛利用。科技领袖和投资者对此展现出了极大的兴趣和投资。企业需要为这种变革做好准备，包括安全性和管理实践的更新。我们一起来看下，英文原文附录链接在最后！ AI智能体，新一代劳动力，我们还没有做好准备智能体正在到来，智能体正在到来。如果你关注AI技术市场，你就会知道，最近有很多关于“智能体AI”的讨论。换句话说，我们的AI助手开始拥有更多自主能力。不再只是回答问题和写诗，它们现在可以代表我们“做事情”。这正是长久以来预测的AI下一个大趋势。埃里克·施密特最近谈到了这一点，微软也在讨论，像Mayfield这样的投资者正在投入资金。而这种演变确实将彻底革新我们的系统。可以这样想：“大语言模型”是我们过去两年一直在学习的内容，它们现在正逐步转变为“大行动模型”。智能体不仅仅会回答问题，它还会为我们做事情。消费场景是无穷无尽的：为我预订航班，为我买票，向我的朋友发送电子邮件。但在商业领域，这种转变将颠覆并破坏我们的许多企业系统。它还将改变我们工作的方式、管理的方式以及我们对团队的思考方式。考虑我们与供应商讨论的两个HR用例。学习与发展（L&D）AI智能体想象一下，你指示一个L&D AI智能体“为我们的销售人员创建一个15分钟的课程，以教授他们如何定位我们的新产品”。AI智能体将根据你的输入（课程时长、目标受众等），向主题专家发送电子邮件，视频记录他们的评论和专业知识，整合新产品信息，构建课程，并将其发送给L&D负责人进行验证。作为经理，你可以审查课程，并指示智能体收紧信息或添加更多主题，课程将重新创建，然后你可以说“可以上线了”。智能体随后会将课程发布到学习管理系统（LMS）中，向所有销售人员群发电子邮件，并开始监控学习活动。几小时后，智能体会运行分析，并向经理反馈进展情况。是的，这在今天完全可能。而且很快就会启动。再来看第二个例子。招聘AI智能体人才招聘负责人收到了大量关于高级软件工程师的职位要求。她指示招聘AI智能体开始搜索。智能体询问招聘人员的地点偏好、职位级别选择、薪资范围和技能要求，然后开始工作。智能体扫描LinkedIn和其他招聘工具，查看ATS中的现有候选人，同时也查看所有内部员工的合格技能。智能体随后优化这份名单，创建一个“面试候选人短名单”，并回到招聘负责人那里征求意见。在就地点和薪资范围达成一致后，智能体返回并向这些候选人发送了一封富有吸引力的电子邮件，并附上一个视频面试门户链接，让他们进行面试。面试被录制下来，AI智能体使用面试智能工具来评估和筛选候选人，询问他们的时间安排，并为他们安排现场面试。在此过程中，AI智能体会查看他们的背景，搜索社交媒体，查看他们的各种联系，并可能查看他们的GitHub等平台和其他凭证，然后为每位候选人创建一个档案。这些智能体很快就会出现，对我们许多人来说，它们看起来和感觉上会像“员工”一样。我们将不得不对它们进行培训、入职和指导。随着它们在各自的角色中“成熟”并成长，我们将它们连接到更多的系统、更多的人和更多的数据上。 Lattice的首席执行官萨拉·富兰克林大约一个月前实际上提出了这个概念，尽管遭到了反对声音，但我认为她是对的。这些智能体实际上将属于组织结构图的一部分。我们的工作将是管理它们，确保它们的安全，并监督它们的安全性。还有更多内容即将到来虽然感觉像科幻小说，但这一切正在发生。而且它不仅将改变我们的HR技术堆栈，还将改变整个企业技术格局，也让我们的HR角色变得更加轻松。原文来自: https://joshbersin.com/2024/09/agentic-ai-ai-agents-the-new-workforce-were-not-quite-ready-for/

Josh Bersin
2024年09月06日
Josh Bersin

Cornerstone Galaxy: Acquisition Of SkyHive Could Pay Off Cornerstone在人力资源技术领域长期以来一直是学习管理系统（LMS）的领导者。公司最近推出了Galaxy，这是一个集成了人工智能的全新人才管理平台。这一重大进展是在一系列收购之后实现的，尤其是最近收购了SkyHive，显著增强了公司的数据处理能力。Galaxy平台通过提供全面的技能发展、绩效管理和员工晋升系统，为HR技术空间树立了新标准。 Galaxy区别于市场上其他基于技能的或智能平台，例如Eightfold主要从人才获取开始，而Gloat着眼于人才流动性。Galaxy则从另一个角度出发，即员工发展，这是由Cornerstone在学习与发展（L&D）领域深厚的背景所支撑的。Galaxy系统内置了完整的用户界面，能够推断技能，让员工标记和评估自己的技能，帮助员工找到并完成各种学习形式，管理合规性和认证程序，通过任务、评估或管理辅导提升技能。通过整合性能管理、发展计划、继任计划，以及招聘过程，Galaxy使公司能够通过绩效管理推动技能发展。在收购SkyHive之前，Cornerstone试图仅使用其LMS信息的数据集来实现这一目标，但这些数据并不足以构建完整的人工智能语料库。通过这次收购，Cornerstone获得了一个完整的劳动力市场数据系统、一个公司中立的职位架构以及大量行业技能，使Galaxy能够与其他主要的人才智能和人才市场供应商直接竞争。 Cornerstone spent the last decade acquiring LMS and talent software companies, all in a goal to build an integrated skills platform. Finally, after years of hard work and integration, the company introduces Galaxy, an advanced offering in the world of AI-powered HR systems. Before I explain Galaxy, the history is important. Founded in 1999, Cornerstone started as an e-learning platform company (CyberU). The company established a foothold in the emerging LMS market and grew through strong marketing, sales, and product innovation. Since then the company has gone public, reached a $5.2 billion valuation, and was then acquired by a private equity firm (Aug. 2021, three years ago). The new management team continued to acquire companies (EdCast, SumTotal, Talespin, and most recently SkyHive) and has now stitched these systems together into a unified platform called Galaxy. Galaxy, as I show below, is a skills-powered integrated talent management platform, built around the core of learning management. And this is what makes it unique. The other talent intelligence or skills-based platforms started elsewhere. Eightfold started in talent acquisition; Gloat started in talent mobility; SeekOut started in recruiting; Beamery started in CRM; and players like Retrain.ai and NeoBrain started in more vertical domains. Each of these companies use large-scale profile data to infer skills, give companies tools to find and match candidates, and eventually to deliver learning. Cornerstone, with deep background in L&D, is coming at this from another direction: employee development. The Galaxy system, which is built into a complete user interface, infers skills, lets employees tag and assess their skills, helps employees find and complete many forms of learning, manage compliance and certification programs, and advance skills through gigs, assignments, assessments, or management coaching. And since Cornerstone is an integrated talent suite, the system lets companies drive skills through performance management, development planning, succession planning, and also recruiting. Before the acquisition of SkyHive, Cornerstone was trying to do this with its own data set of LMS information. This data, which includes billions of learning records, was simply not sufficient to build out the entire AI corpus. By acquiring SkyHive, Cornerstone gained an entire labor market system of data, a company-neutral job architecture, and lots of industry skills. This brings Galaxy into direct competition with the other major talent intelligence and talent marketplace vendors. I have not yet talked with Galaxy customers, but the user experience is integrated and shows the sophistication of thinking under the covers. Remember that Cornerstone acquired Evolv, Clustree, and EdCast before acquiring SkyHive, so the team has been building AI capabilities and use-cases for several years. And now that Cornerstone has a VR platform for learning, more use-cases are coming. While I don’t know Cornerstone’s revenues, the leadership team assures me that the company is growing and the profitability is high. This means the company has long-term sustainability and despite its many acquisitions, is likely to evolve to “Oracle-like” status. (Oracle has acquired hundreds of companies over the years and now looks at M&A as one of its core strengths). Here’s the major play in the market. With 7,000+ customers, Cornerstone has many customers shopping for new tools. If Galaxy is as solid as it looked in the demos, some percentage of these buyers could upgrade to Galaxy and avoid the purchase of Gloat, Eightfold, or another LMS. While we cannot be sure where Galaxy will play, for companies that want to deploy a skills architecture across all talent practices, it looks like a solid option. Cornerstone Vision: Cornerstone User Experience Cornerstone Career and Talent Marketplace Cornerstone Performance Management Skills in Goal Management Why Cornerstone Still Matters Cornerstone has a massive customer base. The users of Cornerstone, Saba, SumTotal, Lumesse, and Halogen include many of the world’s largest companies and thousands of mid-market organizations as well. These organizations have invested billions of dollars into learning infrastructure, content, and user portals to reach employees. If Cornerstone Galaxy delivers on its promise, the company can help many of these organizations avoid buying lots of standalone new tools. And given Cornerstone’s size, the company could become, as I mentioned above, the “Oracle” of the space. And note, by the way, that a recent survey by HR.com found that the top rated HR tech issue to address is L&D infrastructure, so this issue is on everyone’s mind. While the market is highly competitive and there are many skills-based tools in the market, Cornerstone’s focus on L&D is unique. None of the other major LMS vendors have the skills infrastructure of Cornerstone today. If your skills strategy is focused on building skills, Galaxy may be the answer. More to come as we talk with more Galaxy customers. Additional Information

Josh Bersin
2024年09月03日
Josh Bersin

Josh Bersin: With Thoughtful Design And Culture, Dropbox Proves Remote Work Is A Winner Dropbox, a company with a $7 billion market cap and over $2.5 billion in revenue, has adopted a "Virtual First" strategy in response to the pandemic, transforming its work model from lavish San Francisco offices to a remote-first approach. This shift was led by CEO Drew Houston and Chief People Officer Melanie Rosenwasser, moving away from an office-centric culture to enhance productivity and teamwork through remote work. The strategy includes home office stipends, Dropbox Studios for face-to-face interactions, and innovative meeting management services. Despite initial challenges, this approach has led to high employee satisfaction and a strong talent strategy, allowing Dropbox to thrive in a competitive tech landscape. One of the most interesting tech companies we’ve studied is Dropbox, a $7 billion market cap rocket ship generating more than $2.5 billion in revenue. This kind of company, which sells a platform that competes with Microsoft, Google, and other major players, lives in a world of brutal competition: competition for product leadership, sales deals, and talent. And today, as AI engineers are in short supply, Dropbox has to attract the best and brightest to continue its growth. In its early days, Dropbox was a typical San Francisco-based tech company with gourmet food, gorgeous offices, and a culture of lavish benefits. In the pre-pandemic 2010s this was the rage, and Dropbox became a hot place to work. The pandemic upset that applecart. Not only did “work at home” obsolete the company’s real estate and gourmet investments, it forced the company to rethink its culture. The Chief People Officer, Melanie Rosenwasser, told me that the first few months of the pandemic were traumatic. Employees were upset by working at home and weren’t sure what the company stood for. She and Drew Houston, the CEO, had to rethink the whole operating model. As Melanie described it to me, they took a risky, irreversible move. They decided to totally shift their operating model from that of “San Francisco gourmet offices” to “energized, empowered, team-based, remote work.” Not an easy decision. Note that just this week Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO and board member at Google, blamed Sundar Pichai for “remote work laziness” as cause for Google’s “falling behind in AI.” So the debate about remote work continues, and some of the most successful leaders still haven’t figured it out. Well Drew, Melanie, and the Dropbox team placed a bet. Knowing that the pandemic had interrupted their campus investments, they dramatically shifted to a “Virtual First” strategy. And they told the company “we are moving away from an office-centric culture” and going to a model of remote-first work. And this included converting offices to Dropbox Studios as well as a carefully architected approach to teamwork, collaboration, and periodic face-to-face activity. Rather than ask people to “come in 3 days a week” (this kind of policy bugs people because they drag themselves into the office just to zoom with others at home), they designed one of the most sophisticated approaches I’ve seen. Employees receive a generous stipend for home office improvements and the company now offers a series of programs, services, and tools to make team and personal productivity thrive. While it seemed risky it worked exceedingly well. By holistically thinking about culture, management, teamwork, and productivity, the company developed a set of innovations that empower people to work at their best, meet with their teams at least one week per quarter, and come together when and where it makes sense. And this model, which looks like an HR innovation, became a business innovation that helps the company thrive. While Dropbox lost a significant number of employees at first, now the company has one of the highest Glassdoor ratings in its industry (4.3, 85% recommend CEO, higher than Google). Dropbox wins awards for employment brand. And not only does Virtual First create productive operations, it helps the company build “tools for the new world of work,” which is where every company is going. Work at home is complicated. In between dogs, kids, gardeners and delivery people we’re futzing with MS Teams, Zoom, Webex, Google Docs, and dozens of other tools. Most of them work well but they’re each different and inconsistent. Dropbox, as a “system designed for remote work” simplifies this enormously. Virtual First helps Dropbox test its products on itself. Why has Virtual First succeeded? As Melanie and the team explains, the shift turbo-charged its talent strategy. Now Dropbox can hire people from any geography in the world (reducing labor cost) and they look for high-energy, passionate, high-performers (not employees who like the offices). Teamwork is stronger than ever. I know, from our company, that this works well. We have 40+ people in our organization and we rely on frequent face-to-face meetings, an open culture, and tremendous amounts of training and communication to grow. Back when I ran our company in an office we hardly talked with each other unless we had a meeting. Things are much more collaborative and productive now. Dropbox has proven this at scale. You can read about Virtual First on the Dropbox website, but one of the innovations I want to point out is the company’s “concierge service” for meetings. (The Offsite Planning Team.) When you as a leader want to have a meeting, this team helps you decide your objectives, reviews the outcomes you want to achieve, and then puts together a detailed plan (location, logistics, agenda, tools) to help you make it work. This removes enormous amounts of wasted time from managers and helps the company operate productively. I cannot tell you how much time I’ve wasted “managing offsite meetings.” To have a seasoned, professional group that helps with this entire strategy in process is a godsend. For Dropbox, this team now knows precisely how the teams work and can continuously improve its consulting services to make sure face-to-face meetings are impactful. A “new manager introduction” meeting, for example, is different from a “get product ready for launch meeting” as you can imagine. How does this apply to your company? Regardless of industry, I guarantee you have remote work teams. Many companies have front line workers (healthcare, retail, manufacturing, transportation) who have to locate with customers. But think about finance teams, IT teams, scientific teams, and HR. We all need productive remote work practices, and Dropbox has proven that a strategic focus on this area will pay off. Melanie and I will be doing a webcast in the near future and she is joining us at our Irresistible 2025 Conference as well. Dropbox has taken the lead in this new world, and they want to share their learnings with all of us.

Josh Bersin
2024年08月30日

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