AWS HR Director: ‘Want a learning culture? Be curious, clean your data and acknowledge anxiety’

Speaker A: You're listening to Unleashcast, a podcast series on the world of work and what's driving passion and innovation amongst business leaders. This is Nima Sherpa Green, the editor in chief here. Welcome to today's episode.

Speaker B: Welcome, everyone. Who's listening? Welcome to Unleashed cast. And I'm really happy to be joined by Jake Shannon, who's the HR director at Amazon at aws. Um, Jake, can you introduce yourself a little bit, share a little bit about yourself?

Speaker C: Yeah, sure. Happy to. I've been with AWS now for ten and a half years, um, and it's just been an incredible ride, incredible journey over that period of time. Spent a lot of time in Seattle, um, spent a couple years in South Africa as well as in Germany. And I've just transitioned back now, uh, back to our headquarters in Seattle, but thrilled to be back here in Paris. Spent a lot of time here, thrilled to be back here at Unleash World.

Speaker B: A fully global remit then, which is very on brand for Unleash World. Um, for everyone who's listening, it's actually, we're really in the thick of it. It's day one at Unleash World in Paris, the full global kind of HR leader set. Um, this is a really obvious icebreaker question, so for listeners, please forgive me, but what's it like to be a speaker here at Unich World?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's exciting. There's a lot going on, there's a lot of energy, uh, and looking forward to spending some time with, um, our customers. And, um, this is something I do on a regular basis, is meet with customers and talk about a lot of the HR impacts as we build up our workforces, as we work with their challenges, as they adopt the cloud, as they continue to innovate in the cloud. So, uh, that I do on a regular basis anyway, so it's great to do it in this kind of a forum as well. And of course, obviously, just the energy and enthusiasm here is awesome. And hope to catch some of those sessions later this afternoon.

Speaker B: Wonderful. So, obviously we're here in your executive boardroom, and I know you're going to be having a lot of those conversations with customers here. Um, and for everyone who's listening, over the next 20 minutes or so, we're going to be talking about a topic that my editorial team hears again and again is top of mind of people with budget control, with strategy control, this critical need to upskill and, uh, to do so in a way that's efficient, that's within budgets, to really make sure that they upskill on cloud skills in particular because of that desperate need actually to get that part of the equation. Right. Can you talk a little bit about that in your session?

Speaker C: Yeah, I'll just cover a couple things. And it's something that I hear a lot about too. Right. Like, as I've since been transitioning from Germany now to the US and reconnecting at old networks and all that, both with HR professionals, but also leaders from other companies. And yeah, it's something I hear more and more as well. Um, how do we do this? How do we get it faster? How do we hire the right people? But then how do we get our folks that are currently on the ground, how do we get them into those right skills? So there's a lot of topics. We'll be covering a lot of that in our session today. And then obviously this thing about how does Gen I impact all of us?

Speaker B: Because it is. Absolutely.

Speaker C: It's something that, um. One of the key messages I think I've. I've landed on over the last couple of months is this idea of like, don't panic. Like, it's, yeah, you know, we're not behind. There might be others that are ahead, but we're not behind. And we just need to continue to figure out what we want to do. There's a lot of anxiety out there. We need to help calm, you know, folks down in terms of, hey, what does this actually mean? A lot of. A lot of people are thinking about job loss, where this is really more job augmentation or job assistance in a way. Like, that's. I think that's the way to think about it in terms of. As opposed to. This is actually about job loss per se. But given the anxiety and the hype out there, I can understand why it's a topic so thrilled to be talking about. That's what we'll be covering in the session today.

Speaker B: Thank you. For me, I tend to try and prefer to look forwards, but I can't help but reflect that this reminds me about the hype and the hyperbole and almost the fuss over the first move to the Cloud 10 years ago, people all saying, I know we need to do this, yeah, but migration to the cloud and on prem and is it hybrid and all of that. So really, I'm getting a lot of overtones of that kind of, um, push. And that point that you said about not panicking, I'm sure you, especially being at aws, remember a fair amount of panic from your customers. Um, what would you say is, um, the most Reassuring thing you can say to a leader in HR and a HR practitioner who knows they need to get on board with generative AI, but is feeling that pressure of that panic. What would you say they need to think about?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think two things I would say. One is there's a fair amount of learning that we all need to do in this. Right. Um, you know, I've read obviously a lot of different articles and books. I've talked with our own tech leaders around what this means. So there's a fair amount of learning that we need to do and our executives need to do. So number one, I think we all need to educate ourselves and work with our senior teams on, on educating that. I remember, you know, having some being in some sessions with different leaders as well as we were as we're working through, you know, at Amazon. We've been, we've been in the AI and ML, um world for a long, long time. So this isn't necessarily new. And at the same time there has been a shift, um, recently and we do see these major shifts, you know, every 10 years or so.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So this is just another shift. And I think we've got to figure out like, so you just, there's a lot of education that we all have to do, number one. And then number two is you got to figure out and where you want to go. But more than anything else, you just got to start.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Like that's, that's what I would say. You got to start, start innovating, start figuring out what's the one or two areas you really want to go after right now. Go that, go after that doesn't matter if it's, if it's right or if it's wrong. It's just what's important that you get started and that you kind of figure out you go from there and that you can ship. I've seen a lot of examples of, I've had the good fortune of supporting a lot of different tech orgs during my tenure at aws. And it's the one thing that I've learned more than anything else is that sometimes when you get into this new technologies, you don't always know. You have to rely a lot of times sometimes on external experts. You gotta build that in house expertise and then you shift and you go from there. But the most important thing is just get started. Don't delay. This is the time to start. Try to figure out what's that sort of enduring legacy you want to build for your company in this space. But, but again, don't panic, you're not behind, but the time to start is now and not wait further.

Speaker B: Right. So more cool heads. Cool heads, yeah. And look at the business case. Exactly.

Speaker C: That's exactly right.

Speaker B: I mean, I've been speaking to some of your, your big customers, um, across Europe, you know, obviously us being in Paris at the moment, um, and some of them talk about there being different levels of maturity, different verticals, um, across Europe. Um, I've got some stats in front of me for everyone listening. Obviously this is a European Year of Skills EU mandated project where they're trying to highlight the fact that there's this massive skills gap, the talent crisis, and it's not going anywhere. And a few stats really jump out to me. Um, with, uh, 5 million cloud jobs unified globally, 75% of IT professionals see cloud skills as the most crucial area of need. Um, so where should HR leaders start in exploring how to transform their business in that specific way?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things, um, you can focus on. And before I go there, I just want to make mention one of the things I mentioned. I spent two years in South Africa and one of the things that we've just opened there is a cloud, cloud skills center and AWS skills center, um, where we provide free training to anyone that comes in. Right. And so, and you're seeing that in a lot of different ways, um, in a lot of different places around the sort of democratization of cloud skills training. And I think that is just important overall, uh, in general. Right. That we're going to continue to see that that has to be overall part of our overall strategy. How do you get this early? Um, and for folks that are in career transitions or that are looking for other kinds of opportunities to go in and take opportunities. So just kind of want to mention that before I get into them, what we can do, you know, as companies. But because it's important. There's a lot of stuff already out there. A lot of companies, including us, do offer that kind of stuff in terms of what we're working on. And what I'd recommend is again, I'd say start with the basics. It doesn't have to be again, these are still early, early days. I know as I talk to my tech leaders that I work with on a regular basis, this technology is still changing, I hate to say by the minute, but definitely by the week. It's like some of the conversations I was having a couple of months ago have already shifted in advance. So I think it's again to get started, start with the basics, get people together, talk about it. Figuring out various ways in which you can share data, do a hack of hackathons, just, just ways to get out there and get this conversation going around. Uh, what are the types of things, you know, that we can do? But more than part of anything is just, it's just getting going and getting started and getting some kind of a close feedback loop so that you can figure out what's working and what's not working. But get engaged.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And then, and then, um, and it'll drive itself, I think once you get it going.

Speaker B: It's that piece about having a learning culture, right?

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: I think that's one of the most popular things that we hear, um, within the journalist team is that, um, obviously a board, a leadership team will have these goals, but there's gotta be a learning culture throughout the business for change to really, um, be driven, especially in a technology that is as innovative, is as changeable and mutating as much. Um, if I could say that, and

Speaker C: I'll be talking about it as well, um, a little bit in our session this afternoon too. You know, having a learning culture and assessing individuals for an Amazon, we call it learn and be curious as a leadership principle. Um, but one other thing I just want to comment on in terms of where to get started, one of the most important things in all of this work is what we call these foundational models, or what I would just call having clean data. It's like the number one, it should be a given. But, you know, garbage in is garbage out. And so if you don't have clean data already, that is going to be a problem when you start moving into. Especially as we start talking about the types of applications we can go into. From an HR or training development perspective, if you don't have good data going in, it's going to be really hard. So if you're not already cleaning up and scrubbing your data, this is a good time to eliminate your, what we call tech debt, get your data clean. Uh, because that's going to be foundational as well.

Speaker B: Again, back to basics, right?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Every business should be doing that as a matter of course.

Speaker C: But we know it's going to become even more important now. Um, because I remember one of the first times I really understood the potential impact for AI was actually at a church I go to. Someone was giving a talk and had used genai to write a talk that they were giving. And it became obvious in about two minutes or so that, that it was not a real talk. And then the person stopped and said, but it was really interesting because you're like, oh, wait a minute, that's fascinating. But again, it depends on what the feedback is going into that model that is going to dictate what comes out.

Speaker B: Very briefly, I can share that in newsrooms. As you can imagine, people are testing this as well. I know previous colleagues have actually, maybe they'll put out a newsletter and they'll put one dummy story in there that has been written with a health fair and it's amazing. People really can tell.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: At this moment. But I wonder how long that will be the case.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker B: And it's how quickly this technology is moving.

Speaker C: That's where these, these machine learning models are. They really are advancing. But again it comes back to that foundational data and are we really feeding it the right, the right information that we want anyway? We could spend a lot of time on it.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, you've led me really neatly into my next question which would be, you know, obviously we're talking about AI a lot. It truly is topic of the year. Uh, um, seeing that as a journalist, um, but what other influential trends would you say are ah, important for your customers that you might be talking about whilst you're at the niche world?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, you know, we kind of touched on this already. Um, you know, when we talk about trends, um, you know I mentioned this leadership principle of learning, be curious. Um, and this idea of learning culture and I honestly think in terms of where we go next, it's, you know, there's something here about just this ability to learn and grow that I think even as HR professionals, like we've got to figure out and tap into, we can have the best training programs out there and all that kind of stuff but if folks don't want to do it like they're not, you've got to

Speaker B: get buy in, right?

Speaker C: Yeah, they're not. So, so it's like how do you sort of really tap in to get the hearts and minds of our folks behind this shift instead of being scared about it and having anxiety about it. How do you get them to embrace that, you know, and really go into it with their whole heart and soul in a way? And I, it might be a little bit of hyperbole but I really mean it that way. My own son in law, um, just made a big transition himself from being a, ah, essentially an aircraft mechanic into this world of cloud computing and went through a number of cloud certifications himself and he lives in dc. I had dinner with him and his wife, my daughter, last week, last Monday. And as we talked about that transition, there's a lot of anxiety in that. But he did that because there was support behind him. There were people that believed that he can make that transition. And I think we've got to figure that part out because how do you get that sort of that emotional connection? So people want to make this shift and want to do it in mass if you will. And that's where the individual becomes super important. Every person. How do you unlock that?

Speaker B: Change is hard. Change can be frightening.

Speaker C: That's exactly right.

Speaker B: And so again it's something that we're hearing so much from. Um, our reporting is that there is almost like a slight disconnect between leadership and employees and the companies where that's not the case is where they're really good internal comms that this is something we will support you on. We're not going to ignore the elephant in the room. Obviously we want AI to make our business grow. But we're not going to forget that there is anxiety there. And we need to, as you're saying with your son in law, have that support in place and be really, really

Speaker C: open about it and embrace it. Yeah, embrace it. The other thing I would just, you know, I think we talk about two different types of skills really. Right. There's the skills of folks that are going to be building the technology, the gen AI technology and then there's the folks that are going to be using that technology and they're different.

Speaker B: Good distinction. Yeah.

Speaker C: And I think we have to, especially in hr, we've got to be able to distinguish, distinguish between those types of roles. Uh, people that are building, they're building the rockets and that are using the rockets. Just to uh, use a slightly different analogy. And so I think that's going to be important in this especially as we try to differentiate our training because it's very different if you got to do the basics, the core hard basics of developing it versus figuring out how to use it for XYZ region or reason. Yeah.

Speaker B: So it's got to be very consultative in that way. Even in I mentioned business use case earlier. But then again also just having an idea of roles within an organization, Correct?

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Great. We're actually coming towards the end of the podcast, um, um, which I'm sad about. Um, but I just thought, I know this is such a, this is such a big topic, um, for everyone listening, this podcast is going to be going, um, live alongside some content that we've already briefed in with some of your Customers, some of the other really large HR practitioners here at Unleash World. Um, can you share any anecdotes at all about, ah, the conversations you're having with the customers, interesting stories, anything of that nature?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, um, I'll share just maybe two things. I'll keep it a little generic, but then, um, I'll just give some of my own thoughts as well in terms of how I think this could impact HR going forward. We hear always, uh, about the call center examples and we have experiences of those where, you know, you have someone on the phone and you. I mean, how many times do I call into the airline that I use?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: You know, and it's, it's interesting that, to see the shift, but I think it can even become even more impactful in terms of they would have all that information to be able to guide me in terms of what I need to do. Right. That's the kind of, that's the kind of conversation you're having. I was talking to a CEO a few weeks ago who was telling me that, you know, this is becoming a really big help for how they do this in their, you know, their service centers, if you will, because it's such an important part of their business. We have it as well. And in fact it's. One of the big organizations that I supported in Cape Town was our, you know, service organization. People call in. So you have the ability of this to really shape that and really be a customer assisted tool. So I have more free. Instead of having to ask you a million questions, just imagine a world where it just all comes up in front. I know, exactly. Not in a creepy way, but in a way that says, hey, I can. Based upon your past user history, I anticipate what you might be asking and therefore I can just solve your problem much faster. The other one is an automotive example that I would give and there's lots of different automotive examples that we could use here. But for me, the real. I had a major problem with one of my cars over the summer as a car that I had stored for a couple of years while we were on assignment and coming back. It was working, but certain parts weren't. I pulled out the old manual and I was looking online for manuals and all that stuff. But just imagine the world where. And this is coming as we work with all of our automotive customers, where you can, you know, take a picture and it'll go into a generative AI tool and it'll give you instantly what it is, what you have to do to solve it, as opposed to having to figure out, well, wait a minute, do I have a manual or did I get rid of it? Or I can look up online and try to figure out, but then you got to go through, like, 30 different pages just being able to take a picture and automatically figuring out, like, hey, wait a minute, I know how to solve my problem in minutes, as opposed to. In this case, it took me literally two or three hours, then finally ended up having to go to a dealership to say, hey, will you just fix this for me? I can't do it myself.

Speaker B: I think avoiding manuals is a future everyone can get on board with.

Speaker C: Agreed. I agree.

Speaker B: I was nodding furiously when you were talking there. Um, okay. You thank. Fantastic. Jake. Are there any, uh, parting thoughts? Anything else you want to share with customers maybe, who aren't at a niche world?

Speaker C: Yeah, no. I would just say, again, it's such an exciting time to be in technology. I mean, that's the thing I would say, uh, every time I turn around. I joined AWS 10 years ago. It's just been amazing to see this journey that we've been on. And now we're making another pivot, as every other company is. I would just say, when it comes to Genai, don't panic. Help calm folks down around the anxiety that comes up. Um, really figure out the education piece of this. What do we need to learn, what not to learn. And then more than anything else, start now. Just get started, get going, and then learn and iterate over time.

Speaker B: Beautiful. That's a lovely place for us to end. Thank you everyone for listening. And thank you so much, Jake, for joining us. I really appreciate it.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening to Unleashcast. This has been Nima Sherpa Green, the editor in chief here. Stay with us for more news, thought leadership, and the top trends shaping the world of work.