Your Digital Twin Wants to Review You with Kevin Oakes

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts, and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media, and visit hrgazette.com. Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show.

Hello, listeners. This is your host today, Bill Bannham. And in this episode, we're going to focus on culture, leadership, and the changing shape of work. And joining me back on the show after way too long is Kevin Oak, CEO and co-founder over at the Institute for Corporate Productivity and author of Culture Renovation.

Kevin is one of the most respected voices in human capital research, known for helping HR and business leaders move beyond trends and focus on what actually drives performance. He's also been sharing some thought-provoking ideas recently about AI workforce redesign and how HR must take a more architectural role in shaping the future of work. I hope you enjoy this conversation that I had with Kevin. Kevin, it's great to have you back on the HR chat show today.

How are you doing? I'm doing great, Bill. Thanks for having me back. Kevin, you've been studying organizations and people practices for quite some time now.

When you compare today's challenges to earlier periods of change, what feels genuinely different about this particular moment that we're living through? Yeah, it's interesting. I've focused a little bit more on what feels the same lately with some folks. I think what's happening with AI, there's a lot of parallels to what happened when the internet first came out.

And I was uh running a dot-com company at that time and uh very immersed in the you know the uh how the internet was changing the world. And so there's there's there are some parallels here with AI, but I think what's different today is that it's happening much faster. Um, you know, the speed at which uh things are changing as a result of the adoption of AI, uh, I think has caught a lot of people off guard and you know, uh in companies, people aren't quite used to that pace of change.

Um, in fact, there's been you know a lot of uh rhetoric lately, a lot of articles on cultural pushback to adoption, uh, where even some employees are uh trying to intentionally sabotage AI efforts because they're a little nervous about it. Um, aside from you know that that usual rhetoric, what I get excited about is especially for the HR communities, I think uh they the the HR, the strategic HR people are becoming more and more important uh in organizations as they think about workforce planning and strategy and as they get immersed into how AI is really changing uh the outlook for the workforce long term.

So, from an HR perspective, that's to me, that's exciting, even though there's a lot of you know scary aspects of uh of this that are making people nervous. Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazette.

com. And now back to the show. And when you talk about the speed of change there, Kevin, um, can you can you give us a bit more context around that? What's happened in the last few years in terms of um the jobs that are no longer available to entry-level folks, for example, well, yeah, in terms of also in terms of how automation, uh, agentic AI and so on is uh augmenting roles and what that means for in terms of you know, can we lose?

I I've just been on a uh another interview with an analyst saying 30% of mid middle management jobs um don't need to be there anymore in terms of what can be replaced. Yeah, what what what's changed? What what is that speed of change in the last few years? As opposed to last few years, is probably the last few months.

It's um, you know, I think there's there's certainly been a lot of predictions like you just uh outlined around what's going to happen to um early in career uh uh individuals. I've I've got two daughters that fit that bill and you know can kind of see it firsthand as they you know look out at the job market. Um and I think it's a lot of this is um very influx. Um as humans, we always adapt, as you know, as uh a culture we always adapt.

There was a lot of these same predictions when the internet first exploded onto the scene and a lot of disruption um at that time. Uh I've talked to companies who definitely are uh reducing the you know number of recent college grads that they're hiring, for example. I've talked to other companies that are trying to pounce on that opportunity and saying this is the lifeblood of our organization and future leaders, and you know, we you know we now can have access to talent that maybe we didn't have access before.

Um I don't get too caught up in the hyperbole. You know, I don't think um, you know, we're good we're running into uh a time period where we're not going to be um uh developing leaders going forward or developing young talent. Uh I do think that the jobs are simply shifting. I think there are roles that um AI is certainly augmenting.

There are going to be more and more roles that AI is even replacing. At the same time, it's creating uh roles, and we see it over time uh that many roles are being created. One of our predictions for this coming year is that organizations are using layoffs a bit more strategically than they have in the past. And we've seen a number of very high-profile companies uh announce layoffs uh overall.

It doesn't mean that those companies aren't still hiring because every single one of them is. Um, but the layoff uh becomes a strategic lever that they can pull to change the workforce structure, to change the org structure, um, to put in um, you know, more AI solutions in one area while they build up another area uh with people. And uh I think that's what we're gonna be faced with for the next uh couple, three, five years, maybe. Um Bill Gates is saying the same thing out there.

It's uh uh you know, it's just a time period where we're going to see rapid adjustment, I think, from a number of companies to the opportunities that are available. Why do you think organizations are often more comfortable talking about AI efficiency? Uh you know, last year we saw and the year before we saw a lot of investment into AI and automation. This year, what I'm hearing is uh it's about proving out the ROI of those investments and how how it is supporting uh uh employees.

Um why do you think organizations are often more comfortable talking about AI efficiency than openly discussing its impact on jobs and workforce design? Because it's easier. Um, you know, I think anytime technology um, you know, has uh assisted an organization, we focus on efficiency first. Um, you know, where can we um do something faster uh with less resources?

Uh that's the easiest way to prove ROI right off the bat, and I think is a necessary step. Um I don't think it's a miss by organizations. I just think it's a natural way that things progress. Before we start talking about effectiveness and before we get into things that are more creative around how to use the technology, now there's there's millions of creative uses that uh organizations and individuals are using AI for today.

One of the things we wrote about, I just got off of an internal webinar that we did on digital twins and how um individuals are replicating themselves, you know, based on uh previous work, based on preferences, um uh and providing to the workforce a way to bounce things off of uh an individual. Um I know one CEO is using this for performance reviews where he tells his direct reports, uh, hey, go you know, present this to my digital twin, have a performance review with my digital twin, see what the twin would say before we then do your actual performance review.

We're gonna see a number of creative uses like that going forward. That's still a very rare thing to see today, but we'll see it become more and more prominent going forward. But I think it's just a natural progression, Bill. You know, you you see the efficiency part first, and then you see, you know, more of the effectiveness uh part uh later on.

I wonder if uh it's it's a good time then to, I don't know, offer up maybe a use case or something. In a recent HR executive uh article, you suggest that HR must own the blueprint uh as as the architecture of work changes. What's what's an example that you've seen where HR is uh stepping into that architectural role? Can you maybe name a company or um that yeah, give give us give us some sort of use case there?

Yeah, I think there's uh several prominent companies that have done that. ServiceNow is a good example. Uh Jackie Canney, the CHRO, uh, is overseeing a lot of the AI initiatives inside the organization. Uh you're seeing it uh with uh Nickel, who's a CHRO of IBM.

Uh, she's doing the same thing. These companies are being very progressive in how HR is shaping the future of the workforce uh with AI front and center. And that those are both good examples of strategic HR, um, you know, where you've got leaders that really understand how to apply this. They're not technicians, but they understand the applications and they're taking the lead and making that happen.

And I think that's healthy. I think it's healthier than having uh IT do it. Um that was the initial um you know knee-jerk reaction, I think, by uh executives is to you know uh assign anything to do with AI to the IT department. Uh AI is is much less about uh technical competence, it's more about creativity uh and how to how to apply it.

Kevin, let's talk about skills over jobs. You've highlighted that only a small percentage of organizations have a mature skills strategy, yet those that do strongly outperform. What's holding most companies back from making that shift? Yeah, we've been talking about skills for a while, and but the the data is very, very compelling.

Um we as a company have been exploring skills readiness, and it's clear that it's a strong predictor of market performance. Uh all of our research centers around high performance versus low performance organizations. And we measure performance by revenue growth, profitability, market share, customer satisfaction. And the high performance organizations are nearly three times more likely to report high or very high skills readiness of the workforce going forward.

And they're doing this a number of different ways. Um, they're six times more likely to catalog the skills and capabilities of the workforce, six times more likely to determine which tasks are best performed by humans versus AI, uh, four and a half times more likely to identify skills gaps that exist out there. Uh, and when they look at how do we upskill the workforce, they're they're providing opportunities at a much uh more rapid pace than those low-performing organizations, 12x uh more likely to offer those upskilling or reskilling opportunities.

Some of that comes from internal talent mobility, and they're four times more likely to have uh uh mobility programs inside the organization. And I think that's important when we talk about you know, hiring has slowed down, you know, some companies are doing layoffs, all of a sudden internal talent mobility uh has really rise to the top as a way to upskill and reskill uh the workforce. And I've always felt that internal talent mobility is incredibly healthy in an organization.

Um, I think it when companies can identify the skills that they have, that's the that's the first uh step here and catalog those skills. Uh, then they can apply talent where it's best needed. And uh, you know, all of that I think is is what high performing organizations are doing much better than low performance organizations. Okay, sum some of that up for me then and uh and maybe some other thoughts that you've shared with us today as we approach the uh tail end of our conversation this time around.

Um culture still matters. You you've you've long argued that culture is a critical driver of performance. In 2026, you and I were recording this in early 2026, what when leaders are under pressure to cut costs, hone in on the RRI of recent investments into AI and automation, as we discussed earlier. Why does culture still deserve serious attention?

But I'm gonna challenge you to answer in 90 seconds or less. I think as you know, Bill, I wrote a book a little while ago called Culture Renovation, uh, which is uh a blueprint for how organizations can effectively create a healthy culture and change culture over time. Um, what's been interesting in the last year is that that's only become more popular. Um, more and more organizations are reaching out because they're recognizing there needs to be some changes to their culture.

Um, the culture needs to be uh a little bit more change ready and embrace change going forward in adopting some of these new um, you know, new methodologies that AI has really introduced to us. And so culture, I think, is more critical than ever. And more and more CEOs and more and more boards of directors are paying attention to it. They're looking for measures of the culture, they're looking for indicators of culture health or uh toxic culture uh and taking appropriate action.

So it's uh it's a very interesting time uh for anybody interested in organizational culture. Well, that's very interesting. So you've been on lots of boards. Um, tell us a bit more about that in terms of how how that's that's changing a little bit.

I I think more boards um are recognizing that they don't know enough about the culture of the organization. Too often it's filtered through the eyes of the CEO or maybe a couple other executives that they interact with, as opposed to seeing data uh based on you know based on a number of different factors around the organization's culture. And it's the culture that often will surprise uh companies and boards uh and and uh be a risk uh overall. So uh I've seen even culture subcommittees being formed from boards, so they're treating it just like the audit committee, governance committee, et cetera, and looking at those measures and reporting back on what they're seeing.

You know, are we trending up, are we trending down? What do we need to do to ensure that we have a healthy culture as an organization? That just leaves me to say for today, Kevin Oakes, new superstar. It's been great to catch up with you.

Yeah, you as well, Bill. Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette?

And remember, for what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media, and visit hrgazette.com.