Janine Ramirez: 

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Erudite Shockwave Talks. I am Janine Ramirez:. I'm a people first advocate at Erudite, a people first for H.R., built by psychologists and data scientist to empower a better employee experience. So at Erudite, we love learning, and this webinar series called Shockwave Docs is our way of learning from experts and sharing insights with all of you. So thank you very much for joining us today to explore the future of work, the future of workforces, and how H.R. can adapt so you're not left behind. Before I introduce our guests, I just want to quickly go over some reminders. One time is precious, so we'll keep everything within one hour. Please make use of the chat to ask any questions and share your experiences anytime throughout the webinar.

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Janine Ramirez:

I'll read them out for you and my boss for questions. The more the merrier. So please invite your colleagues to join the conversation right now. Sharing is caring. And lastly, if you have time today to help our product team out with their research, would appreciate if you could fill out a quick, quick survey. Linked in the chat. I'm going to send it there in the chat and I'll tell you more about it after the talk.But now let us get to it. I am super, super honored to introduce Wagner de Neuzil, who is a clinical psychotherapist in H.R. and Future of Work, pro With over 20 years of experience in executive coaching, H.R. strategy and organizational development and transformation and everything you need to know, he's got it. So welcome to Shockwave Docs. Wagner Thank you so much for sharing your expertize with us today.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Thank you so much, Janine. And I love being people first. I think that's why we were all here, because you said that so many things are changing, the workforce, workplace, everything is changing. But one thing that's not changing is that people, all people want to be emotionally connected to others. They want to know that they have a purpose and they want to know that they can trust the communities they belong to. So we are going to talk about H.R. and the future of H.R.. I think everybody's hearing about the need for us to adapt. You said not to be left behind. I think that's true, Janine. I mean, we can be in a lagging indicator of the workforce if you have to be a leading indicator of where we are taking the workforce.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

And to start let's start by let me share with you the context. I think that the next slide, please. The the next slide. Yes, I am a speaker, coach and advisor has been advising a lot of start up companies. And I can tell a little bit about how flexible, how agile and how adaptive these new companies are. In fact, the HCI group for these small companies I've been talking to a lot of them, they're thinking creatively. I give you an example because it goes right into this, the idea that actually you might not need to know H.R. to be an effective H.R. leader. What you need is the capabilities to lead the business where we need them to lead. And we with that. One of the companies that I was working with, they decided to get a digital strategist instead of H.R. partner.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

What they need the digital strategy to make things very available to everybody. So you can see the H.R. is changing and even the capabilities we bring to the table are changing. But look at the context we are in. I like the idea that context becomes R upon pass because so many times in now because we intend to do this, but so many times we just follow the neighbors. We do benchmarking, we do those things that says, Oh, they're doing this, we should do it same. Actually, you have no basis to say That's going to work for you if it's not within your contacts. Contacts is really important. Maturity levels in your organization, all this matters. So when I think about your strategic priorities, do you have them very clear?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Your industry industry shifts. Just person has told us that actually companies are betting on different capabilities across the industry, like Walmart, for example, doing financial services or health care. So you can see that there is a blend of capabilities no matter what industry, what competitive landscape are you there to grow market share, which is very hard to do right now, or you're there to disrupt and create new offerings that's going to leave everybody behind. So all this matters to the business. But look at H.R.. H.R. has to make leadership ready for the future ready organization. H.R. has to think about the workplace design in a different way. Hybrid, flexible, asynchronous work. All this matters. It matters a lot because that's how you create value for the organization. And last but not least is skills. If I ask all of you, is it possible that we got skills right? I don't think we did yet. I think this is possible to get there. But I will talk to you about how important it is to think about the digital ecosystem in value driving outcomes. So next slide. Now that we know the context, the context is very complex.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

I love these slides because I think it's a mantra. Clarity creates capacity. Clarity is so important to all of us. Why? Because people are saying they don't have capacity right now to learn. They don't have capacity to do new things. They don't have capacity to think about what's next for their business. Because we are not very clear about the strategic intent. Sometimes you are not very clear in the direction you're taking your people. So it's very important for us to be very clear because the time that you spend perfecting PowerPoints for 2 hours a day, because you don't know exactly is expected. The time you spend chitchatting with everybody trying to figure it out, what's happening in the company. So I would say you could save about 6 to 8 hours a week just by being more clear with your people in transparency about the strategy and about where you're going and building trust on the way there.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Next slide. I think it's important to know the workforce has changed. If nobody told you, I think you already felt it. I think the workforce today is what I like to call the five states. They are distributed no matter how much you want to call them back to the office. You can spend your whole voice trying to bring people back to where you live.But if they have no interest in being there, they are going to continue to do a flexible arrangement. And I think the key word here is flexibility. Work life harmonization is playing a role here. People are taking care to really pay attention to their accountabilities in their personal life, their professional life, their ambition, their aspirations. But we need to be comfortable with the idea that actually, no matter what, even if they go co-located, we are not going to find all these skills in the same place for people to be co-located. If you want a diverse organization, if your office is in the most expensive cities in the world, you're not going to be diverse. I think it's an illusion that we can really concentrated this diversity and inclusion in one place when geography dictates who lives there, who doesn't live there. So let's get used to the idea that we're going to find skills in remote areas. We are going to find the diversity in different places in the workforce is distributed. They are dynamic. That's another thing that going back to Janine, let's not be left behind here. H.R. has the illusion sometimes I'm being very honest because I've seen it. We have the illusion that our nine blocks, everything that we do is for the long term ID of leaders, pipeline, leadership, pipeline, support them.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Nothing. That's not. But the populations dynamic, you only have three years in the life cycle that we used to think was like 5 to 10 years, 15 years. The life cycle of an employee is like the half life of still half life of still is three years. Right? That's why it still is not working that well, because it goes out of date very quickly. Think about your population you're bringing in. You're bringing great talent, great early career folks who are thinking that the first year they need to feel that they belong where you hired them to be. They need to feel that connection. So you have one year to really connect those people to the networking your culture and show that they can trust it.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

The second year is all about showing that you are serious about providing opportunities for growth. So you have to show that you're equipped to give them resources to learn, grow and advance. The third year, they're really thinking, What's next for me? What's my next role? If you are not ready to provide that through a talent marketplace or something, those people are going to look into the option number two, which is I lead this company, I make more money because compensation has risen to number one topic in conversations. And the most important thing, the priority list of employees. I know the market has changed. I know that layoffs are becoming part of our daily life. I know all of this. But things are so cyclical and changing so quickly. Opportunities for early talents that really talented and skilled are plenty. Trust me, you have three years to convince those people that they belong where you hired them to be, and that's when you start identifying if they are your leadership pipeline on the third year digital of course they are digital.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

We are digital. We are extremely streaming from our from our platform right here. I think most organizations are a little behind already without a digital strategy because think about I wrote an article the other day and a lot of people resonate with that. A lot of people, I just ask, Do your employees really know where to find things, when they need to activate a process, when they need to do termination, where they need to do performance management, they need to do a leave of absence. Do they know where to go really to find where they need to go? It's very hard right now. We think that the proliferation of PDFs where you have Microsoft team, your organization, you know, the SharePoint pages, we start proliferating and there is no knowledge management or content management. H.R. needs to start thinking about content manager contact and content management because it's critical to create a platform where employees and managers are seeing leaders can go and they know where to find things because you have a strategy for your digital platforms.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

So the employee experience is a digital platform. You have to start thinking that way. Diverse. Of course. We are diverse no matter what you do. The workforce out there is growing diversity because especially in the United States, when you look at the demographics, what a demographic, they're growing the fastest in Hispanics, they're growing very fast. The blacks are growing fast. And we are giving you more opportunities. We are diverse no matter what. And I will go one step farther. We are diverse and thought leadership. We are diverse in the way we think. We are diverse the way we love each other. And the whole idea that people have multiple identities is really important. So when you think about the dynamics of identities, how many dimensions one person brings to the workplace?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

So right there you can see that one size never fits all, never but each and has the tendency to use the same tools, the same process in the same narrative for everyone. So we are a little not in sync, let's put it that way. Discerning. The last thing I say is don't wander. Estimate the intelligence of your people. You hired the best people in the markets when you start now, people are talking about gaslighting when you're saying you're flexible, but you want everybody back in the office. When you start saying that, you know people first, they start laying off everybody. When you are saying that there is opportunity to grow and you are committed to diversity and inclusion, and nobody in the senior leadership looks like you, those things matter.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

And I think employers are really discerning now. They're asking questions. They're asking questions, hey, how do you make decisions in this organization? Hey, how do you work with self-managed teams? Hey, how do you train your managers? Those are good questions in an interview, how well-trained they are and they are discerning about am I going to get into a full time role or should I be an independent contractor? Should I be in what we are calling the open talent market? So talent acquisition is moving towards talent access because we have all these types of talent models that you can tap into and skills are everywhere. So you can see that the workforce has changed dramatically. So guess what? We need to change, too. Next slide, please, because this is our goal a frictionless employee experience.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Why? Beyond engagement service, beyond all these things that we do to try to find out really how our people are doing? You need to think that you need to create a workforce, ecosystem that works. You know, they have to have access to the resources to do their work. I was talking to a company that was introducing ease of doing business in the company as a metric that we use for customers, right? NPS, ease of doing business with your organization you should use for your employees how easy it is to accomplish everything you ask them to accomplish. It's not easy. I That's not easy. And the sense of belonging, the idea that they can connect freely with anyone they want, no hierarchical power trips. And this frictionless employee experience is the secret source of confidence in the future. Next slide, please.

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Janine Ramirez:

Before we go, guess we go back because there are so many interesting points that we need to absorb. Like I know Wagner for you, it's like, you know, this is your truth. But for us, there are just like some things that we need to kind of like sift through. And you mentioned about like clarity in objectives. And like one of the questions we always get in these events is like, how can we align the organizational objectives with each others objectives? Like in your experience, are they usually aligned or are they at odds? Like leadership and the organization and h.r.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

That's a great question. And i other day I wrote this send. I wrote now i read the sentence for distraction is a misalignment of expectations. I forgot who said that, but it's awesome, isn't it? Frustration is the misalignment of expectations. So what expectations do we have of our H.R. partners? They're closest to the leaders. They're closest to the dialog that happens in the senior leadership teams. When they talk about strategy. How close are we really? Are we listening or are we talking or are we just pushing process on that? We need to be very honest about this because we need to step back to go fast. You have to slow down. I truly believe in that. It slowed down a start focusing on what matters the most.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

I think Jared does not have the time to prioritize because we're always running and solving problems. We need that ability to step back and start talking to the business. And I've been in companies that do this well. What are the capabilities you're trying to build to be competitive? That's the conversation you have with business leaders. Tell me about the capabilities, your ability to be more affordable in the marketplace. Tell me about the capabilities that you wish you could build, but you don't have the skills or the talents to do it. So that's the conversation that leads to understand where the business leaders are. And then you bring back to discuss how might we upskill, reskill or build an organizational design that fits the capabilities is a value driven conversation. So it's not simple, but it's not that difficult. It's about having value driven conversations. That's just fifth nature.

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Janine Ramirez:

And I’m sure we'll learn a little bit more about how you can communicate that to leadership later on. But I wanted to ask a little bit about the five these of the new workforce that you that you mentioned. So I mean, there was the whole pandemic. Do you think like how did the pandemic help shape the the current workforce and the future workforce? Do you think that this was kind of a natural progression already, like the natural evolution of the workforce, or did the pandemic kind of change the course of the workforce?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

You know, Janine, I think this now is not just a matter of saying what is the impact, what happened, the numbers forget about the numbers for now, being a psychotherapist in the past. Now i'm su licensed and i keep thinking about why is this happening now, these mental health crises, why it's so elevated still when the pandemic fuzed like was in the past. We need to understand that emotional reactions to emotional reactions come after events have passed, because during the events we are trying to survive the past three years. We just focus on surviving, keeping our jobs, keeping our families safe. And I think we did then allow our minds to relax, to experience the impact that we had. So what you're seeing in 2023 and 2024 is the residues of the emotional impact of going through traumatic experiences was very traumatic for most of us.

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Wagner Denuzzo: Well, for all of us people who think, oh, this is not traumatic to me, yeah, it's was easy to be home, was great to be home with loved ones and dogs and all that. But that's just us holding on to something there makes us feel like, okay, it's okay, we can survive. So from survival mode to engaging the future, now we are experiencing the impacts and I think that's the huge piece that we are missing. We are really talking about the right way to talk about things that actually we are trying to avoid the conversation of pain and emotional pain. Nobody wants to talk to or about. And that's what we are experiencing right now. The emotional pain is on the surface. Underneath the surface. We need to pay attention.

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Janine Ramirez:

We're still processing it, right? Maybe we don't know the effect yet on you're sure that.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Exactly.

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Janine Ramirez:

Okay, great. I'm going to save my other questions for you. Yes. You're going to be tackling them in your next few slides.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

That is much more so during the questions. I think this was important because we settled the idea that the workforce is being impacted by so many forces. The unemployment, the big changes, the resignations, all the trends that we've seen in the last 18 months feels like it keeps changing every three months. So next i want to talk to you about what you can do in h.r. To start establishing a system where actually we take digital transformation seriously because the business already went through this. Remember, in the last ten years, the businesses said business is a platform now because everything's in the cloud. We have to rely on ecosystems. We have to rely on partners in the ai, in all the technologies that came up is to help the customer experience.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Now we are talking about the employee experience and how to make it very viable. I'm sure you all have systems of record. I like to to create this strategy. Three systems. Systems of record are the systems that you need to build as an architecture for our accurate and consistent data. Designing APIs are the mistake that I see very often right now. Is that all? We should put everything in this system because we put so much money in the system. Let's make everything there wrong because actually the capabilities of the big guys may not follow the needs that you have in your home, but so you have to pay attention. What is the demand that you need? What kind of solutions do you need? Because the solutions are everywhere. And I'm been working with so many startups that are doing fantastic work that through APIs you can connect the dots but don't think through all your eggs in one basket because that basket is not going to give you the eggs cooked. Actually, the eggs are going to be raw and it's going to take time anyway.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

So develop self-service workforce boards on the systems of record. Imagine a AI chat app coming up and you eliminate all this need for content management. That's very crazy right now. Everything, all the contents is there. Just you can answer all the questions generative technology is going to be taking care of a lot of the what I call direct access. We stop calling shared services because people don't like that. But when you introduce to managers that actually you will have direct access to the functions and the information and the process that you need. They are very happy been in organizations that did that. People prefer to get it done than waiting for a phone call for an H.R. partner to give them links to go to the same place that they could find so self that systems of record accurate information, consistent information that can be shared with the finance and others, systems of insights.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Many companies believe that they already have the analytics that they need. But actually, let's not confuse reporting. We analytics. Analytics is predictive. Analytics is more than descriptive. Descriptive analytics is basically reporting. And as somebody said recently and I love I use that all the time there is like milk after two weeks might not be good for you anymore so data has to be in the flow of work has to be immediately consumed. Understood. So you can create hypotheses to address within analytics. So design a telling strategy where you organize your tools for the insights that you want to get. What kind of strategies do you have for the talent and what is your high path? This is in the current data that you have. Then you build the hypotheses and go for analytics because to be honest, I don't know how many of you, to be totally honest, how many of you are really benefiting from the analytics that you have today?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

You are benefiting because the leaders say, Oh, that's great. They have all the numbers in my possession. Now, can you tell me about this? Can you tell me about that? And then becomes this game of like, can you tell me about it? There is no activity that leads to a different outcome. That's why you need a system of insights. Four is to do training hypothesis and be more predictive systems of engagement. That's why we trip. We all trip on this. That's what I was thinking. Imagine if your intranet is all your internet. This probably is more confusing than that. You need a system of engagement. How do you engage your employees, managers and leaders in one platform digitally? How do you co-create this interconnected system? How do you create a two way system where people are talking to us, talking to leaders, talking to each other? Where do you enable this ecosystem to be fully digital? So collaboration happens. Yes, the connections have been conversations are cross-functional and cross level because the hierarchy has to disappear a little bit.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

So I hope this helps the clarity of your strategy for digital age. Our next slide, please, because now we have to talk about.

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Janine Ramirez:

Sorry, can I go back to that? Go ahead. Go ahead. Process is like, okay, there's a lot and like just like the basic employee experience, like we're hearing a lot about employee experience now, but if we think about it, like we should have been focused on this like years and years and years ago, right? Like, why do you think it took so long for the transition from something more administrative, like administrative work to actually being like this signers of a fulfilling work experience?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Janine I think this is an important piece. I'm very empathic towards our leaders in the business. We're trying to figure it out. What's the way forward? I'm very empathic towards our our leaders who did their best to set up the operational operating model. Let's think about that. You know, you need accurate information. You need to be compliant. You need to think about all the risks that you need to avoid. So we are in this incredible wave of change in the last ten years have been focusing on how can we structure things in a way that we minimize risks and create value for the organization? I understand that the problem is that we are not dynamic enough, and I think that's where you're talking about. You know, I think we are lagging behind doing place variance because we are focusing on the business, we are focusing on the customers, we are focusing on the skills that we need to have.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

I think now it's time to focus on the individuals and give them the tools and the opportunities to co-create reality. When you think about employee experience, think about organizational culture. I think the employee experience is to the individual what organizational culture is for the organization. The employee experience is that personalized sense of how he feels to be part of this community. Workforce is a community, so the employee experience is a shared accountability between the employer and employee where actually they can create the best way to use their skills, feel that they are productive in their purpose driven goals and actually grow their career, their intellect and start feeling that actually there is a dynamic talent strategy that fuels that energy, I think is about energy.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Unfortunately, our leaders don't have that much time to spend with all the population that they they lead. But I think leaders have to spend more time with people and start creating project missions. They they're co-created by employees that led then do it because I've been companies like this if you let employees give the inputs and solve for the dilemmas and problems that we give to them and then we give them permission to fail, permission to try something new as I am VP Minimum Viable Product.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

The problem that we have today is that leaders even say, Oh, this is a program for you. You're going to have hands on on this. But then you have to present to senior leaders and say, no, we are not going to do it. That's not co-creating. Co-creation is giving people the power. So what I say is through distributed teams required distributed power. If leaders are not sharing power, we are not going to move forward.

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Janine Ramirez:

And it's a great way to look at like employee experience and work culture and also like empowerment within organizations. And like one of one of the things I thought of right now is, you know, like in the past, h.R couldn't really focus on that because there was so much to do. But thanks to technology, it kind of, you know, leads them to or gives them more time to focus on what really matters. And I know that's what's coming up next time.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

So next slide, let's talk about that because lot of chatter typically, you know, i ask them how can they be able to ultimate it? But I did it on purpose because it is limited. It gives you a sense of things. And I think it's important to know this. They might even give you a sense I use for job descriptions, my team use for a letter or for just to understand leadership for hybrid. The other day was very good evening well being the workplace gave me a strategy but think about it for example, I have access to data and to 2021. Of course, there is something missing here. What was next slide? The title Marketplaces didn't show up. I asked how we can automate things. Nothing about telling marketplaces. So you need to be attentive to the data reports that you hear in the markets.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Everything that people say are all based on surveys. Surveys are based on time. At some time ago, somebody asked people why you're going to invest your money. So I'm a little skeptical of surveys because all of these reports, the workforce of the future reports, everything leads to the idea that, oh, what research base must be science based? Know be careful. Science based requires scientific knowledge to make sense of things that you are doing using so you can translate with the science background reporting on these trends. It's just like you ask somebody what they believe in and they told you. But it's us asking our neighbors, you know, that's not science, that's just survey. Anyway, down on marketplaces, if you haven't been engaged, you have to because they're evolving very quickly.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

You see you have gloats. Those are the four top ones lately. Gloats the eight fold on the bottom left fewer 50 on the bottom right and workday doing their own cloud skills, cloud and all that. So time marketplaces are giving you the hope that actually employers can have at their fingertips the power to choose their next career move. And that's true because through talent marketplaces, you can educate your people about the importance of skills, the importance of a skills based resume, the importance of having a digital brand out there, the importance for us, the company, to have the ambassadors out there sharing how how great it is to be here. Actually, the tell marketplace is engaging in creating equity opportunities for people to see what's available in the company, for people to see that a skills is really critical for their success, for them to take ownership of their careers, for them to see the actually recommendations are not so scientific.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

They are just basically giving their ideas on where my you go next. I remember when I was the future of for capabilities for Prudential. Many of my team members came from the business. They didn't come for a job because of the talent marketplace. So when you think about Tell Marketplace and I can do another session just on how to be successful implementing one, because it's not about throwing the capability to people and say, hey, you should be there is about educating, listening, starting where they are. At Prudential, for example, we gave a lot of education before we implemented. We even created career services. So you see h.r. Has to think differently is not about processes. A nine blocks is about how can we meet the employees where they are so they can come this way and we meet in the middle. So town marketplaces is is a great thing next this is an important piece and the last slide is the brutal reality of it.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

But this one is if you have to create a strategy, it has to be value stripping, has to be a dynamic talent strategy enabled by this digital architecture in a new age are operating system not a model. A model is very rigid. You know, you have the CEO is performance management, talent management. They're all in silos. Yeah, we all say that they are under the umbrella of talent, but they are in silos in the business. Don't need more silos because they can't comprehend all the silos that we have in h.R. So the employee experience is about well-being and clarity. So you have these interconnected pieces. And the other day friends of mine and i think you hear this a lot connecting the dots in an organization is the role of connecting the dots is the new future is still fragile.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Connecting dots, connecting strategy, connecting to the needs of leaders, connecting to the needs of employees, connecting to the marketplace, connecting to skills in careers, connecting to this idea that people only have three years to stay with you. So manager capability I can't emphasize enough because sensing and coaching, that's the role of the manager of the future. They're not there to manage your performance. My team, for example, the previous one was doing working with the all of the businesses. Brazil is a fungible, very, very agile team and you need managers who are comfortable with that. You're not managing the work itself. You're coaching them for success in their careers, their work, but you're sensing where your teams are going and sensing the strategy around you to translate that and create an employee experience, career management, empowerment in learning tools you have, you can have the best learning, but it's so confusing to find if you have duplicative learning, it's so easy to find learning.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

So don't think that by finding a library of learning, you're doing something. It needs to be curated, it needs to be accessible, it needs to be connected to the marketplace because it still gets there. You identified that leads you to upskilling. So empowerment comes from you giving the right resources and that's good for people. They're going to be empowered to follow their there their their own career strategic more first planning not many people do this right is not about the head count with finance in trying to figure out affordability is about skills, talent pools where can you get the talent doesn't need to be full time all the time you can get a team from a team. For example, the company that does UX designers product design accelerates tremendously because it can get the whole team attached to your team in-house. You accelerate the product deployment and that's how the future is going to work. That's how organizations are going to get ahead. So when you're planning a skills workforce, do one year, two years, three years, they start thinking about the capabilities of the business, the skills that you need and the talent pools that you need to pick from talent development, analytics, internal mobility.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

I think, you know, we are talking about sensing listening in play. Listen is very important, but talent development comes from the ability to have internal mobility. You need to create the space because we all have the tools. But if there is no space for people to go to, what happens? They go elsewhere. So we need to create the sense that our design work designs shifting all the time. So organizations should be static. You shouldn't have the head of this, the VP of this, the director of this is always the static. You should be much more creative about moving your design to a to come to fruition with the skills and people's capabilities. Because then you create more movement, gig economy is there, you have to create space, otherwise there is no mobility. Next. And this is a provocative one.

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Janine Ramirez:

And one I want to lake boss before you go to your brutal slides.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Okay? No, no. So don't tell me tell me what's coming to you.

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Janine Ramirez:

Okay? Like you talked about, like tech, using tech to free up your time. My pen still analog there. But for anyone watching who is not tech or data savvy.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

I'm.

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Janine Ramirez:

Like, Is it possible to go into the future without embracing technology? Like, what's what's your message to those who haven't embraced technology?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

I love this question. You know, why the enterprises of the future must have technology at scale, must you can't have 10,000 people, three, 30,000, 100,000. IBM had like 350,000. You can't have that population without the support of analytics. But I truly believe all these startups that have been advising all these small companies, actually, you have to focus on one thing and only one thing, how can we build trust in these environments where together we can unite collective leadership with shared purpose and common goals? Trust is the only way that's going to lead to the conversation about co-creating the future with everyone being much more open, a much more horizontal, by having collective leadership be the guidance, shared purpose and common goals. I know it's possible some companies do this, but you need to work through the emotional impact on leaders who are feeling insecure. The whole idea that you have to support somebody before you ask them to change is a really important concept. You can ask people to change and by the way, don't try it. When was the last time you made somebody change?

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Janine Ramirez:

You can't. You can't. They got to do it on their own, right? Yeah.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

A zero exec.

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Janine Ramirez:

It's so funny because these are like basic concepts that you can apply to anything. I mean, right. That's like, yes. Through the evolving to the technology. Yes. Through I mean, anything really, they get things. So I love it. I love the conversation. But another thing is, even for people who love technology, like me, I love like trying new things I writers and things like that, but it can get overwhelming. I'm using so many tools, right, for digital.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

I love that because that's why you need to design a strategy for digital. You can just go in, keep buying things. It's not like that. And and the other thing is we spend too much time massaging the data because our senior leaders wants to see the data to show what they expect to see. You can rely on data to show what you expect to see.

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Janine Ramirez:

You got to follow the data. Yes. Yes. Okay. This is a question more more for us as erudite. But what's your message to the teams that are developing these technologies for each are like, how can we ensure that what they are tool actually does add value and helps each other, teams and organizations.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Now that's interesting. I do think that ethical A.I. is an important piece. I think many companies are thinking about their role, how ethical it is to start inferring. Inference is a tricky thing with your inferring based on something you see. A.I. can be programed to be ethical and can be less biased. But we need to be careful because actually it's not about the technology. I see a lot of groups doing incredible technology. It's about understanding how to utilize the output that you receive from that you have to share. Sharing is a skill of the future leaders who hold close to their business, the information, the financials, everything. They are not building trust. They are not connecting to their people and actually they are not benefiting from the energy that's created when people really want to do a great job for you. So I really think it's not about the technology itself is about how do you use the outcomes in share much more as share should be a default default behavior and snobbery. Now I'm fortunate.

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Janine Ramirez:

And it's funny because it's it's A.I., it's technology. You think robots, you think flying cars. But at the end of the day, like what makes it great and what makes sure that there's little bias or more bias or whatever is the team, right? That's like it also depends on the people. So yeah, I remember like sorghum makes showing really quick, but Rick Lake, one of the founders of Erudite, was saying actually like with A.I., that technology is pretty straight forward. And what we still need to figure out is the human side of it, like how humanity can use it, how humanity has to develop it and things like that.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

So but I was telling, okay, been there talking about this, I have one more slide in that. The closing is like, yeah, you need to understand they're using technology to understand the employees with the power residing with senior leaders creates a dynamic of power. So employers might be shying away from really integrating their best thoughts, their expression of the self. I think we should allow people to express them selves as the drives that they have. They're going to shy away from being honest. And you're going to create a culture of cynicism, a culture that's very superficial. Leaders must getting the ring, meaning they have to be themselves, too. They have to openly discuss their challenges, openly discuss vulnerability, openly discuss how troubled they are. Sometimes then the doubts they have about their ability to do things because the sharing of their is how we capture the language and the sentiment in place. Don't want to see just a sentiment from themselves. They want to see the sentiment of the whole organization. What is the sentiment of our leaders? Why it's so secretive.

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Janine Ramirez:

And I love the direction towards empowerment, like just people empowerment. Okay. I will let you get to. Okay. Your brutal slide.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

That is true. The next one is about get a sense of what the people in culture organizations becoming. It's not a tiny microcosm of resources might not be in the future, let's put it that way. The People in Culture Organization is a human centered ecosystem because ecosystems rely on partners, external, internal. You have to think more broadly about how people in culture organizations are operating systems producing value driven capabilities. So the capability you're building is for adding value to the business your customers, and they leverage frictionless employee experiences in a dynamic flow of work for the virtual enterprise. So IBM just launched the virtual enterprise in actually through the best companies in the world. The biggest companies are becoming virtual enterprise. What does that mean? It has to be in the flow for it needs to be easy.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

It needs to be frictionless is in actually the ecosystem you build is to drive value capabilities. So next in that this is the one that's a little difficult oh that you've broken to the people and culture organization from age out process programs and policies. Let go of what's not working. Let go what is not. Because we focus on processes as this is going to save the world. It doesn't we don't share top talent lists. We don't share with people that they are in the in the in the leadership pipeline. We keep doing process on top of process just to feel comfortable that we have names. But senior leadership, of course, succession planning is important. Other than that, I think we need to really engage our managers programs.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

We put programs for diverse people, programs for people, and it's very nice. So there's this program where they're going to have hands on experience. But what is the outcome if h.r. Is not ready to do a sustainable long term for programs? Don't do programs because programs are very disappointing when they end. There is no no outcome and instead talk about experiences, give them projects, experience, let them do expressions of themselves in jams. Let everybody express themselves. That's the best way forward. And empowerment with what I call success support services put people in challenging roles, put people, instead of pushing them to programs, push them up, not on the side, boost them up, and gives them what I call success support services, because that's important for Major Silencio is performance management ratings. Why do we still have them?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

I'm not saying that we should eliminate performance management. I'm saying that we need to train our managers to have continuous conversations. And at the end, having a letter written for them in place can write their own letters and it works. Nine boxes. Why? Doing 69 boxes? And I give you this question because it's a tricky question. If our nine box is performance important. So first of all, do you know what potential means for the future? Second performance, if we are asking our people to take risks, a move not vertically up, but grow their careers horizontally. Logically, they are going to go to a career or another road that's challenging. They don't have a 100% of the capabilities they have to build that up, but managers have to give the opportunity. So those individuals who are top talent this year and took the courage to to a different line of business or function, they're not going to be top talents in the first year because they are now going to be the top performers. They are learning, but they took the risk. Those are the top talent that you need, not the nine blocks anyway.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

That's my opinion. So self nominations have worked for some. Think about this environment. You really broadly announce that we are going to have programs and we are going to have opportunities for people who consider themselves ready for leadership roles, managers, whatever it is. And you ask them, do you have what it takes to be a leader with us? So you put them through an assessment. They raise their hands to go in. They run into accountability, expectations All this is very clear from the beginning. Many of you I mean, many people may opt out, but those who self nominate are going to be truly energized to be there. Because on the other hand, I've seen this happening all the time.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Who are nominated for the programs? All we go through, each our partners, they get overwhelmed. They give the list that they gave you last year. So it's always the same people being nominated for the same programs in over and over. It's the same people because you don't have time to identify them. You know, it's so rushed. Everything is so rest. So I beg you it slow down, create a really reasonable idea of what you want to accomplish, which is better from h.r. Recruiting, reporting, preparing. Go to telling access and start thinking about you don't need all full time employee so you can have access to employees very quickly. Predictive API instead of reporting. Like I said, in coaching, you're not trying to do performance improvement plans because they never worked in a way.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

I don't know. Any company that does really well in coaching is a much better skill that can be pervasive in the whole organization. I think I have one more slides though. I oh is my saying I love this, be fully engaged. I know this was overwhelming and we have 10 minutes for questions, but what I say is through being engaged because we need to put our energy where we want to being the flow. Remember me high tech say Hali is a psychologist who died recently and he proved that we are in the best state when we are challenged for for our mission and are using all our skills to the edge of not being able to do it anymore. So we are in the flow when everything comes off. You don't think about anything else. You're in the flow of work that's being engaged. Don't be attached. Because I guess attachment to programs, policies they emotionally attach to ideas that doesn't work. Being emotionally attached, you just close the doors for all the opportunities in our life that could come in. And that goes for your career as well. So I leave you with that. I don't know if you have any questions. We have a 9 minutes.

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Janine Ramirez:

I have lots of questions. There is already points on both. Tomorrow I'm going to have like aha moments you're in there. But I love like the new focus of of h.r. For the future of the people and organization. And I feel like we're seeing this shift as early as now. I mean, we're talking more about wellness programs, well-being. Are you seeing this shift in the organizations that you're working with? Like, is this actually becoming reality? You think?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Janine, I'm going to be honest. What I'm seeing is that everybody has a question mark behind whatever they are saying. They're going to do this year. I don't think anybody knows for sure the pathway to the future, but I think people who are reluctant to see and live in this ambiguity are going to have a hard time. Because if you think, you know, just because you're afraid of ambiguity, you don't know. You're just forfeiting something to feel a little calmer. But the world is anxiety producing. The world is complex. It's better to have the support of each other through co-creation of the future than trying to push through a door that's already closed.

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Janine Ramirez:

So like how do you get leadership in this changing environment? We have to adapt. It's always changing. How do you get them to actually invest?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Oh, I like.

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Janine Ramirez:

It in do their people.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Oh, I love this. I love this because I forgot to say this in a stage of so much transformation, transitioning change, everyone is a leader. I used to say in a previous company that doing a transformation leadership is everybody, everyone's business. It is. If you start investing in cultivating leadership skills from the beginning of your career, I'm writing a book about that.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

It's going to be ready by the end of the year, but it's almost ready. But I need to publish because I truly believe in this. Everyone is a leader and you have to cultivate the leadership skills from the beginning of your career because the world has shifted and you now you're a team member who has to have a leadership skills to deal with the team dynamic, self-managed teams.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Everyone is a leader in a self-managed team, so you need to develop those skills of cognitive mastery, emotional intelligence, the idea that actually you need to be more curious about others to be truly inclusive, understanding the self in all your hang ups and all the biases that we absorb from socialization all these years, if you're not willing to see that, you're not going to move forward. So organizations need to allow people the space and the time to really have introspective conversations and start having more real conversations. I think that's going to be the future.

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Janine Ramirez:

You've worked with a lot, a lot of managers, so you're talking about this before we started. Like in your experience, what percentage is like ready ready for for the future workforce?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

That's so funny. They say that because in a when I used to work at IBM, for example, we had manager champions, we selected best managers if we could find it. It was a really long process to find them. I do believe we have 5 to 10% of managers who are ready because they've been through the journey. Then you have about 20 to 25% of them who really want to do a good job. They just don't know where to start. And then you have 50% of managers who are never one to be managers. I think half of the managers may never want to be management. They are managers because status compensation and that's the growth that they suffer themselves. So think about the multigenerational teams that we have today. People have different stages in life, different maturity level, and they go where they got different ways.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

But I think what's emerging is the managers who want to do a good job to create an environment, to create an experience for them selves, to be much more capable of handling, coaching and emotional conversations. So I think that's the secret, the secrets to help managers build that capability of connection and the capability of witnessing difficulties without being so absorbed or rushing away from a situation that's very hard to do. I was trained as a psychotherapist. We are trained to skip boundaries. We are trained to listen. We are trained to be very empathically. Managers never did that. And I think that's the future of the job right way. If they charge us and start stealing on human behavior, I think we are not going to get there. That's a critical piece that's missing.

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Janine Ramirez:

I have like a two part question from from what you just said. One is like it's it's complex, it's difficult. It takes years. There are people that have trained for years and still it's difficult. Right. So where can leaders start and where can h.r. Start to get on this path?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

That is something that i truly believe in. Learning happens in the moment. So people said when i had coaching circles, for example, i love the idea of coaching circles. You're bringing a small number of people together to be in a safe environment to discuss things that they don't usually discussed in classrooms or online. But this creates momentum for people to share, be more comfortable sharing and being themselves, learning from each other. Those aha moments that you talked about happen all the time in coaching circles. These are the moments that they are creating, that they are mastering new skills and they are building coaching skills. So to me it's like experiential learning, giving them the space to have those conversations continue to promote the idea that learning happens through these interactions. I think that's the future.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

And leaders who benefit from being together they're in small teams to allow this psychological safety to happen. You know.

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Janine Ramirez:

Nice. We have a question from Richard earlier. Sorry I just signed now, but he says that talent value has built the retention and performance platform and the motivation in index. What are your thoughts in capturing and measuring employee motivation versus engagement to predict performance, productivity and corporate value?

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Yes. You know, there is so many methods out there for you to assess, talent to value and all that is great. I do believe you motivation but motivations intrinsic and so you need to understand the experience of each individual has a mystery that we will never find out. There is an intrinsic motivation for all of us. Right? We need to have trust in relationships. To get to tap into that is very hard to tap into. Intrinsic motivation. No external motivations can be so inspiring. I truly believe in that. So motivation, General, is the ability we have to inspire people. Engagement. Don't get me started. We only have 2 minutes. Let me just tell it this about engage.

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Janine Ramirez:

So we're going to have to do another one for you. But.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

But think about engagement surveys. The results come out. We massage the message. It takes weeks sometimes. Okay. That is some companies are doing in 24 hours. Yes. But people don't know what to do with that data and then goes to senior leaders. First, the senior leaders wants to see what they want to see. So the massaging happens, takes weeks, months. If you are doing this in October or at the end of the year, year, end is going to take over. Nobody is going to action anything on engagement. Then it starts the year we are talking about, oh, this year we need to strategize for the year. So we never really see what the company is doing out of giving all this information to that.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

So I think engagement surveys are becoming a fallacy in a way continuous listening, continuous learning and continuous understanding of what's motivating the employees. I love the idea, but we need to create something that's natural, that there is psychological safety involved and we need to build trust before we do anything else.

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Janine Ramirez:

I love it. We're going to have a wrap, but definitely you will have more conversations with Wagner. If there's anything that you want our audience to take away from the day, what would that be.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

You know what? Be kind to yourselves and be grateful for the opportunity for us to have this conversation, to even think about these things. I do know that we are all anxious about things that we need to do, this so much turmoil with layoffs and so many things happening with loved ones in deeds. But if you can be focused on being uniquely you, be you, because what you transpire is going to be much more valuable than trying to pretend that you are in control.

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Janine Ramirez:

Lovely parting words, Wagner. Thank you so, so much for lending us your time and your thought provoking ideas to date. We hope one came away with some new ideas and strategies for building a happier, more productive workforce for the future. So don't forget to follow us and follow Wagner on LinkedIn for updates and for future events and more ideas and insights on the future of work and h.r. And yeah, before we go, I also like to invite everyone who is working in the field of art to help us make our rights workforce insights more actionable by answering a really, really quick survey. We are not from a survey, but we do need your feedback to make our insights more actionable and improve our platform. So we'll send that in the chat and that's it. That's a wrap on erudite shockwave docs. The future of h.r. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, and thank you, wagner.

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Wagner Denuzzo:

Thank you.

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