How one company used AI to transform talent

Until ear­ly this year, Schnei­der Elec­tric was liv­ing with an uncom­fort­able truth. Some 47 per cent of employ­ees who left the glob­al ener­gy man­age­ment and automa­tion busi­ness said they were leav­ing because they couldn’t see any future career oppor­tu­ni­ties. It was clear that, in this com­pa­ny of 140,000 peo­ple, the tra­di­tion­al means of inter­nal tal­ent recruit­ment and career pro­gres­sion were not work­ing.

To solve the prob­lem, Schnei­der launched its Open Tal­ent Mar­ket, an inno­v­a­tive appli­ca­tion of AI in HR that is help­ing to place the company’s con­sid­er­able inter­nal exper­tise where it is most need­ed.

The plat­form cur­rent­ly per­forms three func­tions: match­ing employ­ees to vacant roles, help­ing them find a men­tor and con­nect­ing them to side projects. Cru­cial­ly, it puts employ­ees in con­trol of their own careers. Peo­ple are free to share what­ev­er per­son­al infor­ma­tion they feel is rel­e­vant, such as skills and goals, which is then matched by the system’s algo­rithms to the company’s require­ments.

“Pre­vi­ous­ly, we would human­ly try to make match­es, but we weren’t able to bring the sup­ply and demand togeth­er,” says Jean Pel­leti­er, vice pres­i­dent of dig­i­tal tal­ent trans­for­ma­tion at Schnei­der, who played a lead­ing role in launch­ing the project. “We’d been ask­ing to do this for years, as we out­grew our abil­i­ty to oper­ate with­out it. The spir­it was there, but the tech­nol­o­gy was miss­ing, and that’s where AI is the game-chang­er.”

Despite this use of AI in HR only being rolled out glob­al­ly in April, Schnei­der is already see­ing the busi­ness ben­e­fits. Although it’s too ear­ly to say exact­ly how the sys­tem has affect­ed the employ­ee attri­tion rate, the ear­ly signs are encour­ag­ing. Some 38,000 of the company’s 75,000 white-col­lar work­ers have already enrolled and there’s a plan to make it avail­able to blue-col­lar employ­ees via on-site kiosks. Mean­while, an imme­di­ate­ly vis­i­ble upside is that man­agers look­ing for suit­able inter­nal can­di­dates for vacant roles have been able to reduce the time tak­en for sourc­ing “from months or weeks to sec­onds”, says Pel­leti­er.

Enhancing employee experience

Help­ing peo­ple find suit­able side projects is also trans­form­ing employ­ee expe­ri­ence at Schnei­der, whose work­force are encour­aged to spend 10 to 15 per cent of their time on areas that fall out­side their usu­al role. “We’re mea­sur­ing that as ‘unlocked hours’,” says Pel­leti­er. “Those hours are not only the employ­ee mak­ing dis­cre­tionary effort for devel­op­ment, it’s us actu­al­ly sourc­ing inter­nal­ly for the skills we don’t have res­i­dent on our teams.”

But the over­ar­ch­ing busi­ness ben­e­fit of using AI in HR in this way is the vis­i­ble increase in dynamism the tal­ent mar­ket is fos­ter­ing. “We have cre­at­ed an inter­nal gig econ­o­my with­in Schnei­der that is deliv­er­ing exact­ly the agili­ty we need,” she says.

What’s more, apply­ing tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven solu­tions like this is par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial in organ­i­sa­tions that are under­go­ing a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, says Josh Bersin, a lead­ing HR indus­try ana­lyst who spe­cialis­es in HR tech­nol­o­gy.

“The more ‘dig­i­tal’ your com­pa­ny becomes the more project-based it needs to be,” he argues. “So we need tools and sys­tems to facil­i­tate this new world of work and I’m excit­ed to see them here at last. Cre­at­ing a tal­ent net­work in your com­pa­ny will great­ly improve your reten­tion. And when your peo­ple feel safe to try new things, con­tribute to oth­er projects and share their exper­tise, they can inno­vate and solve prob­lems faster than ever.”

A fur­ther ben­e­fit of this use of AI in HR is the way it helps to enhance the company’s diver­si­ty and inclu­sion ini­tia­tives, says Pel­leti­er. “We can’t help but be human and have uncon­scious bias. But AI looks at hard facts, it looks at skills, it’s mak­ing things agnos­tic,” she says.

How­ev­er, she is also aware of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in-built prej­u­dices lurk­ing with­in the system’s algo­rithms. “We’re super vig­i­lant towards that,” she says, but is con­fi­dent when the tech­nol­o­gy is com­bined with human skills, the result is far supe­ri­or to where Schnei­der was before. “It’s brought sci­ence to where we used to only have art and now we’ve found a good bal­ance between the two.”

Rewriting human resources

Of course, rapid­ly imple­ment­ing and scal­ing a sys­tem like this in a 184-year-old glob­al enter­prise is always like­ly to throw up chal­lenges. “This is by far the most dis­rup­tive tech­nol­o­gy we have brought into Schnei­der. It’s a com­plete rewrite of HR,” says Pel­leti­er.

She explains the com­pa­ny failed to pre­dict the effect that rapid­ly rolling out the plat­form would have on some of its peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in mid­dle-man­age­ment roles. Fre­quent­ly, they have felt their staff are more open to being “poached” inter­nal­ly, while being unable to see the broad­er busi­ness ben­e­fits of a more dynam­ic work­force.

“What I don’t think we did incred­i­bly well was the change man­age­ment around mind­sets,” says Pel­leti­er. “Do not under­es­ti­mate the peo­ple part of it and the fact you have to be open to shift­ing and rethink­ing, not only your HR depart­ment, but how man­agers and employ­ees are equipped to deal with this.”

How­ev­er, once these human ele­ments are addressed Schneider’s team lead­ers are usu­al­ly able to see the big­ger pic­ture. “Most pro­gres­sive man­agers get it,” she says.

As for the future, Pelletier’s boss, chief human resources offi­cer Charise Le, is clear about how Schnei­der needs to dou­ble down on the out­comes the Open Tal­ent Mar­ket is deliv­er­ing. “When it comes to tal­ent, we need to achieve empow­er­ment for all,” she says. “Expec­ta­tions of employ­ees may change, but the need to make your own career choic­es will not.”

Pel­leti­er is excit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of using AI in HR to unlock fur­ther val­ue, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to oper­at­ing at pace. “Speed is the key to win­ning in the mar­ket, whether it’s with tal­ent or with our busi­ness,” she says. “AI has brought speed to us that we’ve nev­er had before. And that’s why we con­tin­ue to keep look­ing at it.”