The Missing Link: Strategic HR and the Power of Skills Taxonomy: Gary Lee

Dorothy Yiu: Welcome to the HR Impact Show, where we have honest conversation with global people, leaders about building great workplaces. I'm your host, Dorothy Yiu, CEO, and co-founder of EngageRocket. EngageRocket is a HR technology and advisory company that uses data to help improve employee experience from hire to retire. Dorothy Yiu: Joining us today is Gary Lee.

Gary is the organization and business partner director at Dassault Systèmes. With over 20 years of HR experience globally, we're excited to dive into his experience in building future ready workforces. Welcome to the show, Gary. For our audience who may not be familiar with your journey, could you tell us more about yourself?

Gary Lee: Hi, I'm Gary, and I'm currently with Dassault Systèmes as an organization and business partner director. The title may seem quite general but I think it's a good step forward in terms of HR because we really partner with the business. And contrary to how most people start and finish their HR journey, mine was the opposite. Gary Lee: So I started from a training & consulting background.

I did it for over a decade and then I decided to move in-house. And I've been through many different industries, many different kinds of work cultures, startups through governmenting organizations, through MNCs. So that's my career journey so far. Dorothy Yiu: Your career journey did span 20 over year, and across different geographies as well.

I think you worked in, was it Denmark and China? Gary Lee: Yeah. I spent quite a fair bit of time especially in later part of my career in different countries. Traveling a lot to different parts of Europe, the US, and of course APAC.

Dorothy Yiu: So you once said that actually the most significant career moment for you was when you decided to pivot towards strategic HR. Now that's a very broad term. Could you tell us more what you mean by strategic HR? How would you define that and what do you think was so pivotal about the switch?

Gary Lee: I think strategic HR is more than just a title change. Gary Lee: I guess if I were to borrow what Dave Ulrich shared about four levels of HR, went from a HR manager to a HR business partner. And unfortunately in many organizations, even though there are a switch in designation, people are still doing more or less the same things. And really to be strategic HR is to ensure that HR value is driven by the business value rather than the other way around.

Gary Lee: More often than not what HR cares about, it's not what the business cares about, which is why in a lot of discussions with business leaders, we tend to have that same rhetoric where they say, I don't understand what you're talking about, especially if it's HR speak. HR to HR, we understand one another completely, but sometimes we need to make it strategic enough and simple enough so that our business understands because we exist in order to help our business. Dorothy Yiu: Draw that link for me, right?

Because currently your title is organization and business partner director. Dorothy Yiu: How does that encompass strategic HR and what would you say is the biggest value or your biggest North star metric that you're delivering for Dassault Systèmes. Gary Lee: I guess my boss managed to summarize this designation quite well. Initially even I struggled to explain what is it that I do.

So to put it very simply, it's to drive the capabilities and the capacity of the organization that I'm responsible for in order to impact the performance. Gary Lee: It's as simple as that. As long as there's anything related to capacity building, capability building people within the organization then it becomes my business. Dorothy Yiu: Okay, so let's double click on the capacity and capability building.

You once wrote, I believe this was on LinkedIn, on the importance of having a robust skill taxonomy. Dorothy Yiu: How does that play in today's talent strategy? Especially 'cause everyone's talking about how we are moving towards a skill-based economy. So tell us more about that.

Gary Lee: I think having a robust skills taxonomy doesn't mean that it has to be well structured. Gary Lee: It also comes into play where you have the flexibility because things keep changing. Like maybe 5, 10 years ago, gen AI would never be part of a skills discussion, but now everybody's talking about it. In the next decade, it can probably be something else, right?

In order for us to build our future capabilities, our skills taxonomy needs to be agile as well. Gary Lee: To me, I think having behaviors and mindset, it's a given. And different people have different interpretation of what, for example, proactivity means. Have a different idea of what strategic means because a junior employee versus a senior employee, being strategic would mean different things and they need to be in their own space.

Gary Lee: But skills is something that, I believe can be measured. And this also draws a very strong distinction from academics. Like for example, if I have a degree in business, it does not necessarily mean that I'll be successful in starting up a business. No university in your right mind has ever said that.

Oh, if you have a first class honors degree from wherever in business, it means that you have an entrepreneurial spirit. Gary Lee: And in fact, if you ask a lot of degree holders today working, they'll tell you that what they studied and what they're doing now can be totally different. I've got so many conversation with marketers and they say they study marketing because they wanna do branding, they wanna do promotion and things like that. Gary Lee: And then when they enter the workforce doing marketing, they realized what they're doing is marketing operations.

They're doing on a day-to-day basis, and they keep doing it until they reach a certain level in the marketing space before they can say, wow, I now can influence marketing. And to them they realized that it was the skills that they built up while doing marketing ops, understanding events, touching the ground with the customer, understanding their psyches, so on and so on. Gary Lee: These are things that the books will not teach you. These things that academics will not teach you.

That's why we talk a lot about hands-on learning. We talk about on the job training. These are all about building up the skills. So while we're doing all these things, the how to, we also need to know the what are we trying to measure, which is why the skills taxonomy tells us what to measure.

Gary Lee: If it doesn't get measured, then it doesn't matter. Dorothy Yiu: I mean to your point that if strategic HR or what your role currently delivers in terms of value add to the organization is to constantly upgrade the capabilities and capacities to make sure that organization is still performing. Dorothy Yiu: How do you make sure that your skill taxonomy remains relevant? How do you uncover the skill gaps that exist in your organizations today, especially if, maybe the managers don't even know what are the latest, most relevant skillset that's required or they're missing within their teams?

Gary Lee: So drawing from my past and my current experience, I have seen extremes. Some organizations that don't do much of skills taxonomy. And now the other extreme, which is where I am now, where our skills taxonomy is reviewed every year. And we have specialists or experts who are dedicated towards that, working very closely with the business, working very closely with our top leadership to figure out, okay, where are we gonna be in the next 10 years?

Gary Lee: Then we work backwards. Where do we wanna be in the next five years? And when we talk about business goals, business objectives, we then link it down to the people and the skills required. Every year we are pivoting, making changes along the way.

So that's one extreme. Every year doing it can be very tiring. You really need a lot of time, effort, manpower to get that done. I would suggest probably reviewing it maybe every two to three years instead.

Doing a massive makeover just to ensure that the skills are relevant. At the same time, the more we choose from, the more difficult it becomes to do housekeeping. Gary Lee: So I think keeping the skills simple. If it's something that is generic across the board, then I wouldn't look too much into it.

Things like project management. Is this something that should only be left to project managers or should it be something that every employee should have? Gary Lee: Because if we are moving towards transient teams, that's been a thing that's been happening. If I'm moving in transient teams, then don't I need project management?

Yeah, and if this is something that's universal, then I don't really need to include that as part of the skills taxonomy anymore because it's a given. Dorothy Yiu: So just now you talk about to measure it. How do you measure? Gary Lee: So in my organization, what we do is a whole mixture.

One is of course self-assessment. Then with the manager's assessment. And what we try to do is we try to find tools that enable us to measure it. Gary Lee: So for example, if I have people who are doing programming, then of course it's the easiest.

I measure you using coding tests. If I'm looking at sales, then I will try to break down the sales process, which in Dassault, we really do it in a very detailed manner to figure out your sales skills. Gary Lee: At which point are you strong? At which point do you need improvement?

From the engagement all the way to the delivery. So we've actually broken it down into blueprints. So that's the way we measure. And admittedly, some skills are easier to measure because there is already different tools that you can use.

Gary Lee: There are others that might be slightly more challenging, that may need more human assessment. For example, how do you measure effective communication? It varies across different cultures as well. A good example.

I've got a sales leader who is Russian. He performed very well in Russia, but when I put him in a different geography, he couldn't do well. Gary Lee: Is it because his communication wasn't good? No, it's just that it was relevant for him when he was in Russia, but not in another geography.

Dorothy Yiu: Gary, go back to something you've said, which is pretty impressive, that Dassault Systèmes actually re-look at your skills taxonomy on a yearly basis. Dorothy Yiu: Can you tell us, how do you run that process on a yearly basis? Gary Lee: Okay. So from a simple explanation, what we do is we leverage on ESCO, which is the European skills and qualification taxonomy that's already present.

We use that as reference to what we already have, so at least there is some form of external reference rather than it being very biased internally. Gary Lee: Then from there, we look through the skills definition that we have, whether is it still relevant, for example, if I'm looking at the term customer intimacy or customer centricity, the word may be the same, but the way we define it could be different. Even if I use the word effective leadership can vary from time to time and even in different geographies as well.

Gary Lee: So it's not just looking at the term, but also how we define each term. And once we have established the baseline taxonomy, the yearly review may not necessarily go through everything thoroughly all over again. We may place focus on some roles more than others. Because some roles, for example, if I'm in R & D, I don't expect the skills to change in the next couple of years because it also follows trends.

Gary Lee: But whereas maybe in terms of sales, because I have redrawn the sales territories I've changed my business strategy, so therefore the kind of salespeople that I'm looking for may require different skills. So in that sense, I probably need to review that more intently for that particular cycle as compared to other professions or functions within my organization. Dorothy Yiu: And this review usually happens with the senior management, the line leads? Gary Lee: It usually starts off with HR, the people team starting off the process.

We will talk to the global business leaders to do a sanity check and say, based on what we have now, is it okay? Gary Lee: Are there certain skills that you may have thought of that we could explore? At the same time, the people team will also provide input to the business leaders and say, Hey, we know that, Gen AI is around, what skills should be emphasized on more, not just even adding. For example, learning agility, I think it's playing a more prominent role now because gen AI is so much more than just, ChatGPT, right?

So learning agility becomes important. Then the question is how do we then measure learning agility? And even before we can measure learning agility, we need to first understand. What is learning agility?

Gary Lee: If I have to explain it to a person in layman terms, what learning agility is, it's how fast you learn and we go back to the basic premise. Do people even know how to learn? How do people learn? In fact, I don't see many workshops out there which focuses on teaching adult learners how to learn because it's very different from academic learning.

Dorothy Yiu: So once you have refreshed skill taxonomy, then you will pinpoint maybe the strategic functions that's more important for the business performance that particular year. Say for the sake of argument, it's sales team, then what happens? Do you do a review assessment across the board of all salespeople against this new sets of skills? And then anyone with gaps, does that translate to training?

Gary Lee: We do this at multiple levels. Gary Lee: One is assessing the gaps, the skill gaps. The other one is also looking at the performance of the employees. Is it just one year or is it over a couple of years?

Because then that will also let us know whether it's something that's just a blip in the whole matrix, or is it something that is already a trend that we're spotting and if it's a trend we're spotting, is it an individual employee trend or is it a trend that's happening within that region? Gary Lee: Because doing this analysis will help us to understand what then needs to be done. It's not as simple as just sending people for training and go, okay, your skills gaps are settled.

We hope for the best that you know your sales will improve. There's a lot more than that. And sometimes, some people are just not cut out to be sales. Gary Lee: Not because they're not capable enough, because their motivation isn't towards sales.

Not everybody is motivated to chase numbers, just like not everybody's motivated to become a people manager, right? So those that we cannot help them become more effective in sales. Then we think about other ways, for example, repurposing them. Gary Lee: They may have certain experiences or knowledge that's invaluable to the organization.

And we will see how we can work with that. Because in our organization it does take quite a number of years in order to build up the relevant expertise and experience for solutions as well. Dorothy Yiu: What you're essentially saying is that once they do assessment and you review whether or not, I guess some individuals, it's just about closing the gaps for them, but then some individuals, maybe you're better suited in another role. Gary Lee: I would say that an improvement in skills will lead to a corelation to increased performance.

More often than not, we also have seen that an increase in skills does not necessarily cause performance to increase. So that's why I can only say that's a corelation. Dorothy Yiu: That makes sense. Dorothy Yiu: Just our curiosity, is there a skill within the skill taxonomy that you have that is evergreen?

Gary Lee: The usual suspects are there. Effective communication, project management, people management as well. I guess what has changed are how we define it, what are the scopes, whether they have either expanded the definitions into smaller skills or have they lumped it together and called everything communication. But there are some that are definitely evergreen that every HR would probably know.

For example having empathy when we are having difficult conversations. That is evergreen, especially as a people manager. But the degree in which we need to demonstrate empathy will be very different, which is why people managers usually delegate very difficult conversations to HR whenever they have a chance. Dorothy Yiu: How do you navigate cultural nuances for some of these evergreen skill sets?

Dassault Systèmes, you operate in also different markets, right? Dorothy Yiu: How do you translate that or take into account the cultural nuances when you are deploying these skill sets across the board? Gary Lee: So we do a top down, bottom up approach. The top down at least provides us with the guardrails in which we operate.

But the bottom up approach will give us the context and the nuances. I think listening to not just the people managers, but also what's happening on the ground gives us a much better way of tweaking the nuances behind it because what we've also realized is that sometimes people managers have a particular view that they really strongly believe, and that may translate into how they assess what's happening on the ground. In my organization, I have cross border managers, so they may not also necessarily understand what's really happening.

Dorothy Yiu: Gary, you once said, and I'm quoting you here, everyone is a talent, but not everyone is talented. I laughed when I read that and that stood out, and I know this sentence has been like an anchor for you or philosophy almost in how you kind of view HR workforce planning. Could you tell us more about this? Gary Lee: So this term came about in one of my previous organizations when I was working in talent management and I had a ex colleague working in performance management.

And after going through different employee profiles, different functions, then we realized that hey, companies say people are our greatest assets, then why aren't we treating people like our greatest assets? Gary Lee: There must be a reason why. So eventually we said, ah, no, everybody's a talent in the company, but not everybody's talented. And if I were to draw comparisons to how a lot of business leaders say, I wanna build a high performing organization, what does that really mean?

Do they mean that they want everybody to be a high performer? Gary Lee: And if everybody is a high performer, it doesn't necessarily mean you get a high performing team because you need some people to guard the post. You need some people who are willing to play according to the rules. Then you need some people to be the ones chasing after the goal.

So to build a high performing team, you need a blend of different talents and not everybody is talented. Gary Lee: Some will be high potential, high performers, and good. Some of them are your staple or what we call the pillars. Are they talented?

No. But you can depend on them to ensure that when you wake up in the morning, business is still there. Because high performers and pillars have different ambitions and motivations as well. Gary Lee: Imagine as a business owner, you have a team of very highly ambitious individuals who give you high performance quarter after quarter.

Would you be happy? I ask many business owners this before. And their initial response was like, yeah, sure, definitely. And until I enlighten them and say then you need to feed their hunger every quarter.

Gary Lee: It will wear you all out and how much more can you grow? Are you just building a short term project or you gonna sustain a business, you want people to stay with you. So you need talents. Some will be more talented than others and some people may suddenly get an epiphany somewhere along the way in their career and from the talent they become talented as well.

Dorothy Yiu: What would you say then, universally across all of the talents unite them then? Would it be, say, the values of the company? Gary Lee: That's probably one. And what I've also realized is that what also unites people together is when they start to see their own value in the organization beyond monetary rewards.

Gary Lee: If you ask very plainly why do people work, that's the baseline, right? It's not about the, oh, I love the company. That's why I work for them. The baseline is because they pay me a salary that gets them in the organization.

But what makes them stay for a long period of time? Gary Lee: That's the part that I'm interested in. Some say, because I like working with the people around me. So that's about fitting into the culture.

They like how ambitious the company is in always creating innovative solutions. So you realize they're also drawn to a certain culture. Dorothy Yiu: That's exactly what we do, right? At EngageRocket, we measure that intrinsic motivation that you just spoke about beyond the monetary rewards, the external rewards, benefits, so on and so forth.

But it's also how you feel about the organization and the willingness to go the extra mile for the organization that counts. Dorothy Yiu: Let me just also ask you, to tie it all back to strategic HR, what are some of the mindsets that you think is so important for HR leaders to have? Gary Lee: I think the first one is stop thinking like HR. Because when HR thinks HR, we can't convince anyone.

I would say being in the role of HR is probably one of the hardest because we are not selling products, we're not selling services, we're selling ideas. We're selling feelings, right? How do you tell a manager, a people manager, that he or she needs to be more empathetic towards his or her team? You are not selling a piece of paper.

You're not even selling a product. You're literally promoting an idea, and you are telling this person to literally change the way he or she has been operating for so many years. So I think, being in HR, the mindset is we really have to stop thinking like HR. And in fact, I would look at understanding our own value first as human resources.

Sometimes we forget that HR stands for human resource. We are resource to humans. How do we do that? Dorothy Yiu: Tactically speaking, how do you do that?

How do you convince people of ideas? Gary Lee: I think what has helped me personally in human resources is to really understand change management a lot more. Beyond Kotter's 8-Step and the change curve, what I've realized is communication. How we communicate, who we communicate to and how frequent we communicate.

Gary Lee: Then comes another term, stakeholder management. You realize stakeholder management is all part of communication, some people have said, oh, that is a skill. But how do you manage stakeholders? And people tend to forget that stakeholder management is not just upwards, it's also across, or go downwards.

Gary Lee: So, that's also something that I would look at as well. Dorothy Yiu: That's why communication is an evergreen skill, right? Gary Lee: Yeah, it is. I would say that HR, human resources have been made to wear many hats.

We don't just stick to the confines of HR anymore. Sometimes we have to play marketeers. Gary Lee: Before an engagement survey, how do you get the participation rate to go up? We have to market the survey.

We have to tell people, and then especially when we have employees who say, what's the power of doing? It's gonna be the same old thing year after year. Nothing's going to change. How do you then convince them?

Gary Lee: How do you market? So to do marketing, you have to do sales, you have to do change management. Then you have to execute the survey as well and all the background work and so on and so forth. So you have to be the data analyst, you have to be the ops person.

So I think HR has to be willing to take on, wear different hats at different points in time. Dorothy Yiu: If you're representing also the skill taxonomy, sometimes it's also about roleplaying. And even taking up some of those new skills to kinda show them what it's like in reality. Yeah, that makes sense.

When you think about the idea of, the workplace of the future, in fast forward, say 10, 20 years from now what does that look like to you? What's your version of the ideal workplace of the future? Gary Lee: I wouldn't say ideal because I think ideal now and ideal in the future would be very different. But what I foresee would happen is that we might see less people management roles coming.

Gary Lee: Like I mentioned earlier, a lot more transient teams because we have different expertise and different experiences in the organization. And as we welcome the newer generations into the workforce, they look for variety in experiences, rather than sticking to what is routine in the past, a person can stick to the same role, same job, everything the same for five to ten years. Gary Lee: Today, after maybe one and a half to two years, people get bored. Dorothy Yiu: But wouldn't that call for, actually precisely that, wouldn't that call for more people management?

Gary Lee: Then that's where we do it slightly different. Because of newer technologies, we may not need people, managers, people can manage themselves through technology. Gary Lee: Why have a people manager? People manager is there to ensure that, people know what to do to ensure that, people follow the rules.

And if they have any problems, they can approach the people manager. But there's some things that technology can replace. Dorothy Yiu: What about building connections? Dorothy Yiu: And to your point just now, we talked extensively about empathy, who will then be that agent of empathy or that representative of empathy throughout the organization at all the different levels?

Gary Lee: I would say that's where peers come in. Dorothy Yiu: Interesting. Gary Lee: I mean, we talk about peer learning and you work well with peers and more often than not, even in today's setting, sometimes you complain more authentically to your peers than you do to your supervisor. Why is that?

And when you need to solve something, sometimes you don't talk to your supervisor, you talk to your peers first. So especially with the newer generation, I get a sense that will become more prevalent and not everybody wants to manage. So even the ambition, the inclination to want to be a people manager may be less. Dorothy Yiu: I wouldn't disagree with that.

Also because the demands of people manager now is also extremely high, right? You're supposed to be able to manage remote, multi-generational. Dorothy Yiu: Be a coach, be a mentor, be a role model of what top performance look like. It's like extensive list.

So I can imagine many people not being super keen on taking up that role. But what about the idea of younger people coming into the workforce is needing a coach, right? Or someone to guide them or career development? Gary Lee: That's where we already have all these in place.

You can have a coach or you can even have a mentor. If you ask the more experienced employees, are they okay with being a mentor? Sure, they'll raise up their hand. Gary Lee: But if you ask them, Hey, I need to be a people manager of 30 pax?

Uh, no. Because they understand that's a different kind of responsibility, the accountability is also different. Dorothy Yiu: How much do you think AI is coming into play on this? Gary Lee: I wouldn't put a percentage to it.

I think it would vary across geographies first. And second, the type of industry as well. Dassault being more tech. Naturally, we will be more receptive to AI, so I probably see a much higher percentage.

And I think for those that are more, brick and mortar kind of businesses, probably less. Again, the demographics of their workforce will also determine how much AI will be part of their professional lives. Dorothy Yiu: Let me switch gears now and ask you a bit of a fun questions to wrap up our podcast. If you could have a coffee with anyone past or present, who would it be?

Gary Lee: That's a good question. I think in Singapore we don't take enough time to pause and think about life questions. Gary Lee: Personally speaking, I would want to have coffee with my grandfather because I have never met him in my life. Apparently my great-grandfather was a great man.

He has his own tombstone at Fort Canning. He's the only Asian amidst all the Brits. Gary Lee: If I got to know him. It would be nice to have a conversation with him and figure out how was his life like.

Dorothy Yiu: What was Singapore like during that era? Gary Lee: Yeah apparently if the British didn't take away my great-grandfather's land and everything, I probably don't need to do HR also. Dorothy Yiu: Probably some buildings has your name on it. Dorothy Yiu: What's one thing you wish employees understood better about HR?

Gary Lee: There's a misconception that HR is always on the employer side. That's not necessarily true. I think the role of HR is to be the neutral party. Yes, we are paid by the business at the same time, we want to provide a more balanced view.

Gary Lee: I think we are the custodians of the company. And the company also includes the people. I've seen HR swing on either side of the extreme. Some are too company focused, some are too people focused.

We need to be neutral and that's why we have policies and guidelines. So at the end of the day, we let the policies, the guidelines, the definitions right, to direct our behaviors and decisions. Dorothy Yiu: What is one tip that you'll offer to any HR professionals who may be listening to this podcast on building trust with employees? Gary Lee: I would say be authentic.

I think they don't necessarily want to hear diplomatic answers. I think, especially now with the rise of AI, AI can provide more authenticity than people sometimes. Being authentic matters a lot. They count on us to do that.

Dorothy Yiu: So it's back to communication and honest communication. Gary Lee: Yeah. If it's a difficult conversation you need to have, then have it. I think people will appreciate that more.

Dorothy Yiu: What's one AI tool you recommend to our listeners? Gary Lee: That's a very good question. I'm still stuck with the generative AI stuff, so I'm still looking at the Deep Seek, things like that. But looking at it more from Chinese perspective, so I'm reading all the AI stuff in Chinese, not English.

Dorothy Yiu: Wow. Yeah. They're progressing very quickly, actually. Gary Lee: Correct.

So that's why I think if I can understand it in Mandarin, it would probably accelerate my AI knowledge as well. Dorothy Yiu: So what's the most exciting thing you've read recently? Gary Lee: It's how the Chinese view AI. I think that is where I think the Chinese are pretty remarkable.

They're very open to the West. At the same time, they are not afraid to compete with the West in terms of innovation. I think we've seen that in the EVs as well. Dorothy Yiu: Thank you so much, Gary.

I truly enjoyed just deep diving into skills and skills taxonomy and just kinda get a glimpse of how you view strategic HR. Dorothy Yiu: Thank you very much for your time today. Gary Lee: Thank you. Dorothy Yiu: To our listeners, thank you for tuning in to our HR Impact Show.

If you have enjoyed the conversation, please like and subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any of your favorite podcasts. You can also subscribe to our community at engagerocket.co/hrimpact. I'll see you in the next episode.