Avoiding Random Acts of AI: A CHRO’s Take on HR Innovation

[00:00:00] Mo Fathelbab: Welcome to today's episode of People and Strategy. I'm your host, Mo Fathelbab, president of International Facilitators Organization, People and Strategy is a podcast from the SHRM Executive Network, the premier network of executives in the field of human resources. Each week, we bring you in-depth conversations with the country's top HR executives and thought leaders.

For today's conversation, we'll be talking about the intersection of AI and HR. I'm excited to be joined by Kathleen Pearson, CHRO at McDermott Will and Emery. She's a thought leader on AI's transformative potential in HR. Welcome, Kathleen. Hi, Mo. It's great to be here. Wonderful. Kathleen, tell us about your career journey and what brought you to the field of HR.

[00:00:53] Kathleen Pearson: So I have what would be considered a non-traditional route to HR. I actually started my career in marketing and business development, in law firms. I've always been in the law firm industry, and I. really learns the business first, from a marketing and business development perspective.

But there was always that people aspect. It was always drawn. Drew me into how teams work together, how you drive strategy and how, really you bring people together to solve. Problems. So I transitioned from marketing and business development and an easy transition into recruiting. And that's sales for just a different type of audience, right?

You're selling, the organization to, to candidates, right? And so that was my first foray into HR and I just loved it. And again, learning how to build teams, learning how to bring people together from different backgrounds and, I fell in love with HR from that point on. And, the rest is, I guess, history.

[00:01:53] Mo Fathelbab: Well, I wanna dive into how you, build teams and, as a leader overseeing talent strategies at an international law firm. what core principles guide your leadership style and your approach to fostering high performing teams?

[00:02:08] Kathleen Pearson: Yeah, great question. And I think there are really three key components that drive, my approach to HR and building teams, and it starts with it with empathy, right?

You have to really understand your people and know where they are each, individual, each team really Building that trust. And it starts with empathy. And the next really is continuous growth. fostering that idea that we want people to continue to grow, upskill change. We have a very dynamic workforce, a very dynamic, world that we're in right now.

And so we really have to continue to foster that idea for continuous growth. And then that springboards right into, innovation. Right? And that takes us to the core, hot topic that we're talking about, which is ai, right? And but it has to build on those three layers. You can't just jump right into innovation.

If you don't have that empathetic trust that's built, and if you don't have that continuous growth mindset, you're not gonna be ready for, how to launch innovation. So again, I feel like it's, this one giant circle that starts with empathy and then builds and into growth, then builds on innovation.

[00:03:24] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. And I find it, really fascinating to talk about empathy and trust. And I'm curious if you could unpack that correlation for us, for a minute. how does being empathetic drive trust and, how does one be empathetic? Because I'm not sure everybody really knows.

[00:03:43] Kathleen Pearson: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really, that's the secret sauce, right?

And it's really hard because you have to start with the individual and most, most all people want to be seen. Right. Even if they, even if you're delivering a difficult message, they need to be seen in the process and you need to understand where they're coming from, where their fears might lie, where their trust issues, where their, where there's a breakdown in communication.

People just want to be seen and heard from their leaders. And so I think that's really where empathy starts. It's seeing someone and it's saying, I, may. Had to deliver a tough message, or you may not like what you're hearing, but I see you and I'm going to honor where you are in this process.

And that builds trust, right? And the more people trust their leaders, the more, you'll have a successful team in the long run.

[00:04:37] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. And Kathleen, how did your experiences as an HR leader shape your approach to talent strategy on a global scale?

[00:04:46] Kathleen Pearson: Yeah. I mean, I think that, that, again, that's a, great.

Great question. I think when you're thinking about global strategy, you have to think about culture and processes as a bends don't break, right? And because there are local nuances that have to come into play and you have to really again understand, The nuances of the locality for what you're trying to, lead through or the change that you're trying to make.

So I think, really starts with that kind of flexibility, understanding the broad vision that you have, but then also really diving into where are the people and, things that work in the United States are not necessarily gonna work in London. And they're not necessarily gonna work in Germany.

Right? So you've got to understand that and, think about where those people are. And again, I, hate to keep beating the drop, but it goes back to empathy and it's having people see that you care and that you're taking the time to actually, think about where they are in their journey and what will work there and what won't.

[00:05:50] Mo Fathelbab: So Kathleen, with over two decades of experience in human capital management, what emerging trends do you foresee, in the intersection of AI and HR?

[00:06:02] Kathleen Pearson: There are a lot of, converging factors here, and I think that there are two, and, I'll, hit on both of them. One is obviously efficiencies, on the true administrative side where, there are efficiencies that can be seen with ai and we will work.

Differently. There's also a strategy component, and that strategy will help lead how we work with people. Our workforce is going to change dramatically. I do believe that, and it already is in some pockets, and I think the emerging trends really from an HR. lens and perspective, we need to start to think about how we can add the human back into, the process, right?

So it's not all about machines are gonna do everything and we're not gonna think anymore, and that's, all that. But it's where can we have higher and better use of our humanity and create those connections with people that we're not able to do right now because we have such a, an administrative burden on some of the tasks that our employees have.

So I think looking at that trend and really thinking about how we can add that kind of empathy and add that, humanity back along with, I, I think Johnny says it a lot, right? He talks about AI plus AI yes. Equals ROI. And I think that's a, that is a key, equation. And what I see sometimes is the trend it when HR is not involved and not part of this conversation.

Firms and organizations tend to go a little bit too far of, we're going to slash a headcount or we're going to create all these efficiencies. So again, I think bringing in that kind of idea of how we can, build teams and bring the humanity back to the work that we do.

[00:07:54] Mo Fathelbab: And if I hear you right, you're saying that by utilizing AI for efficiencies, it will allow more.

Opportunity for human connection.

[00:08:05] Kathleen Pearson: Absolutely. And if, you'll allow me, I'd love to give a, an example, the real life example that we saw here at the firm. We do, HR, prompt aons in order to like, get people's brains thinking about how AI may help and what we can do to, further, innovation within our organization.

And one of these prompt aons that we did with the HR team. We had all of our, local teams get together and start to brainstorm and think about ways that AI could save them time. We started with what's your biggest pain point? Where is your bottleneck? And one of our very talented HR managers, really identified a pain point that the team had, which was auditing, performance evaluations.

I know everyone in HR loves that process, right? And with an organization of our size, it took a, good amount of time to do that. we're talking weeks worth of, manual auditing for every single performance evaluation that was written. And we, developed, or she had this idea to develop an agent that will assist in the drafting of those, evaluations and built in best practices from SHRM, best practices from employment law, the things that you would look for in a performance evaluation.

And it pulls them out. And so that. The evaluations from the very beginning, are quote unquote cleaner, and they have, they're a little bit easier to deal with. And we took a process that would typically take weeks and we boiled it down to about a day.

[00:09:39] Mo Fathelbab: Oh my God.

[00:09:40] Kathleen Pearson: And so that's a huge time save. But immediately when she saw that, she ju done this, you could almost see her, like her face dropped and she said, did I just lose my job because this or my team's job, Because this is gonna take such a, manual process that we used and, now that time is, freed up. And I said, actually no, you're going to be able to do what you really, the highest and best use of your time as an HR professional, which is making those connections with those managers, really getting ingrained in deeper with the departments that she supports so that she can create those relationships and work on that people aspect.

So I think that's a great example of how you can take this, and, Take some of the noise out of the work that we have and then get back to the people part of HR, which is really why we all want to be here in the first place.

[00:10:36] Mo Fathelbab: I think that is beautiful. So one other thing that you said, Kathleen, which piqued my interest, is this notion that the workforce is gonna look different.

Can you describe how you perceive, or what you think that look different is gonna be?

[00:10:50] Kathleen Pearson: Absolutely. I think that we are going to get to a spot that we have digital employees that we're working side by side with. And what does that look like? We don't know yet. That's exciting. But how do you evaluate these, digital employees?

How do you make sure that they are efficient and providing value back to the team? So I think we're gonna. Differently that way. I think that we have the opportunity to, again, create connections on a human level. I think that we will have disruptions and there will be, jobs that are displaced, but there'll be brand new ones that are created.

Again, how do you create sort of a. Digital, coexistence with human employees and, where does that organizational development start to look like? How do you, evaluate the efficacy of what they're doing? and what could be built further? I think is really fascinating. And so I do think that we will have a very different, workforce makeup in the mid to long short term.

[00:11:53] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. Yeah. So the other thing you mentioned is this prompt, iFan and, looking for bottlenecks in places where we really need some help and some improvement. I, first of all, I think that's a brilliant idea and I can't imagine how many ideas, you had crop up during that prompt iFan. But also I'm wondering, does that then let people just figure out whatever they wanna do with ai, or do you then centralize how AI will be deployed?

Across the whole organization?

[00:12:23] Kathleen Pearson: Great question. I think that, one of the reasons we did the prompt a-thon in the first place is that we, became very aware that there were random acts of AI that were already going on, right? So people were bringing their own ai, but working stealthily in the background, right?

And so I'm in a law firm. And clearly we have guidelines and we've got very specific things that our general counsel, wants us to use this responsibly and ethically, especially when it comes to client data or in the HR space, our human capital data. So we don't want people going rogue and uploading things and fixing problems on their own without kind of those clear guidelines.

And so we came up with the idea of doing an AI prompt to. Give people the guardrails and say, we want you to use this responsibly and we want to give you permission to use this. Because I actually had an HR, coordinator called me one day and she said, Kathleen, I think I need to, self, report something I've done.

That's not anything as, CHRO wants to hear. And so I said, well, what's, going on? And she said. I used AI to write a job description because I was really jammed for time and I needed to get it done quickly. And I was like, great. That's a perfect example. You didn't have to recreate the wheel, but let's talk about which, platforms we can use to do this responsibly.

So we went and did the, prompt Aon to bring all of these teams together, and crowdsourced it and made it a fun game and. We had an IT professionals for each team while they were going through the process. And the IT team was amazed because this is not a, product or a, a particular software that is going to be used the exact same way by everyone.

It's not Excel. It's not just going to do this. And so giving people that RI room and space to, explore, was key.

[00:14:21] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah,

[00:14:21] Kathleen Pearson: and the IT professional said, I have never seen that many light bulbs go off so brightly all at one time. Because everyone just instantly got it because they were working together and they were thinking more holistically about how it could help.

And so now flash forward, we took a lot of those ideas and built different things that we can do. We've got different gpt that we've deployed. We've got some teams that are writing their own, and again, giving them the opportunity to, get that mindset shift, and then they can start to use it and deploy it in the right way and we can monitor it.

it's been a really fun journey.

[00:14:58] Mo Fathelbab: It sounds like it. So I wanna go back to the random acts of ai. I love that. But what are the dangers of random acts of AI within a firm?

[00:15:08] Kathleen Pearson: Absolutely. I, think if you, again, if you don't know how to use AI appropriately. And you're not using. so we have an enterprise account that has the guardrails built in.

the models are not being trained on our data, but if you are bringing your own, AI and you happen to upload something, it is now out there for the world to see. So there's da data privacy issues that come up with that. I think really understanding the limitations of ai, it's not perfect, and I think that people assume that something is a perfect output.

It's not, you have a very, talented, very smart PhD in your pocket that wants to please you, but it's a five-year-old, so it sometimes goes rogue. Just like I would never ask a team member to write a report for me, and then I give that without review to the general counsel. Right. I would always review.

So it's, reminding people that you need to review, you need to be responsible. You really need to. Double check citations. All of the things that you would do if you ask an assistant to do something for you, you would not just go ahead and automatically send that to your boss. You would, you would check it.

And so I think when you think about random acts of AI and people not using it responsibly, that's where it comes at. It's people uploading things that are inappropriate or using the wrong tool or. assuming that it's absolutely 100% correct, it's just like a human, it has errors.

[00:16:45] Mo Fathelbab: Kathleen, how should HR leaders prepare to adapt to the rapidly evolving integration of HR and ai?

[00:16:53] Kathleen Pearson: I think that HR leaders need to get in the pool right now with it. Really, you need to understand how to use it. You need to understand what its limitations are and what your teams can do and what and study up on all the different models that are coming out. There's something that new coming out almost every day, and so it's hard to keep up with it, so you just have to start using it and start to change your mindset a little bit around.

whenever you're about to start a new project, think, can AI help me with this? Is this something that I might be able to, leverage AI to get better insights on? Just start using it because if you don't start using it, your organization will, and you're going to be behind the curb and HR really needs to be at the forefront of this.

We really need to be driving this because we're going to have a population that doesn't understand it. Doesn't understand how to change and move with it. And it goes back to those kind of core principles like empathy, continuous learning and innovation, and continuing that cycle and apply that here. So I think it's just really, really key.

If you've not started yet, go, go. Use Chat GPT just once.

[00:18:07] Mo Fathelbab: I, I think that is great advice. And I remember when I had not used it and I felt like I was behind the, the eight ball, but what's really interesting for people who are maybe a little worried about jumping in with a professional request, you could also use it for personal things.

Right. I, wonder if you have any examples where you may have used it Person.

[00:18:25] Kathleen Pearson: Absolutely. that's actually exactly where I started. So we were gonna take a, trip, a family trip to Europe last year, and I, we had the itinerary ready and I went to chat GBT and I said, tell me one restaurant that I absolutely have to eat here.

Tell me one. normal, like the regular, touristy thing that is a must see here and give me one off the beaten path that a local would know that I would not. And and it, gave me an itinerary for each place. And we used all three and it was perfect. It was brilliant. Another way I used it, when I got my husband to start using it, we were at Home Depot and we were gonna buy a lemon tree.

The lemon tree, there were two and he was like, I don't know which one or if this will even grow here in San Diego. So I turned on Chat GPT Vision, and I said, look at these two trees and tell me which one is healthy and if this will grow at San Diego. And she looked at them. And said, that one looks diseased, don't buy it, and this one will grow great.

You need to have it. And it gave me a whole list of things that I needed to do with a treat. I mean, so there's tons of things that you can do.

[00:19:37] Mo Fathelbab: I love that. I love that. And I have to admit, I have not used the visual, aspect of chat GPT just yet. So that'll be the next thing I try. Thank you for that. so Kathleen, I know that, you're a board member at Lambda Legal and you have a deep passion for inclusion.

How do you think AI will. Affect inclusion in the workplace.

[00:19:58] Kathleen Pearson: Great, great topic. I, think it, it can actually level the playing field in quite, quite a few ways. I think, we can use AI to, make sure that our hiring practices are equitable and, start to remove some of the bias. Now you obviously have to be careful with bias with this system too, but you can also find ways to.

Build an ai, that helps with the screening process, that helps remove some of that bias and it can also do some workforce analysis that uncovers perhaps some trends with a per a particular population, that you may not be aware of and may not be aware of. Cove the trends in the workflow or how people are getting their work, or the training opportunities that people have.

I think there's a lot of creativity that we can use in, this space, for inclusion and creating more opportunities for people than we typically would when we're just, trying to manage the, workflow of our teams organically.

[00:20:58] Mo Fathelbab: So Kathleen, how do you leverage technology to scale and develop talent in your organization?

[00:21:03] Kathleen Pearson: Great. I mean, one of the things that we've done with ai, like I mentioned, was the prompt Aon, and we've expanded that out to all of our, different business units and given them the opportunity to do that. We've also used, and leveraged LinkedIn learning. We've, tied that to performance evaluations and goal setting to give managers that opportunity to really work directly with, the employees and staff to make sure that they are growing and have the opportunity to continue to learn in areas that, they have identified either as a, future growth potential or something that we need as an organization to upskill people.

We also try to do pulse evaluations routinely to talk about and ask where we might have, Learning opportunities and better opportunities for people to, leverage the technology as well as, upskilling and, learning in different areas.

[00:21:59] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. Thank you for that. And you've touched on, some of the uses, what.

Platform do you reach for the most? And are there any other uses that you could point to that you haven't shared yet?

[00:22:10] Kathleen Pearson: Sure. I absolutely, am a chat GBT Enterprise, user. that's my go-to. I like the, the reasoning models that they have and the deep research is amazing. You can actually run a deep research report, and take that very lengthy.

45 page, document sometimes and drop it into another platform called, notebook lm. That's by Google. And it will do a summary for you. It will give you a briefing document and actually generate a podcast with two people talking about the topic. So that's a great way to learn, and it's a great way to build new skills yourself.

and then also, like. The note taking apps for Otter ai. I use those for meeting annotations. And also, napkin AI is a great tool that you can use to, build flow charts. So I think there, there's lots and lots of them out there, but those are my go-tos.

[00:23:05] Mo Fathelbab: Yes. And what are your thoughts on the new memory update and chat GPT that remembers all of your conversations?

[00:23:12] Kathleen Pearson: I think it's a blessing and curse, right? So I think as it learns from you, I think it, it's great because it will remember of what, you've done in the past and you don't have to have just a linear prompt so there's a deeper understanding. So it really becomes like an assistant. One thing that I really like to do, at the end of every week, I actually ask it.

Go through all the things that we've worked on and give me a report for how much time you've saved and areas that I can improve, and work with you differently. And so the memory feature allows that. And so it allows me to capture and realize like, oh wow, I really went down a rabbit hole here.

or, and it gives you opportunity for how. It's learning how you work and it's learning how it can help you. So I think that's great. Now, on the flip side of that, it's also a little scary that it remembers everything about you. that can also be a challenge as well.

[00:24:10] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah, that's, a concern for sure, because, is that going into the public domain?

[00:24:16] Kathleen Pearson: Exactly, and, I, believe it is. So it's, and it knows a lot about you and it, I would like to think that it's not being used in nefarious ways, but you know. Sam Altman would have to answer that question.

[00:24:29] Mo Fathelbab: We'll have to let him answer that question exactly. Kathleen, what measurable outcomes have you observed when it comes to how AI is used to enhance employee development and feedback systems within your organization?

[00:24:43] Kathleen Pearson: So the feedback systems are really, interesting and important. We're building those into our employee evaluations right now and the way people used them last year, before we actually had the agents built, people did use them for the performance evaluations. And what we found was it was a much richer and deeper, Performance evaluation draft. So the managers sometimes struggle deeply with giving honest feedback. We all have that problem. It's hard when you really like this employee and you need to give them sort of that, that development message maybe. and managers sometimes struggle with that. Actually a lot struggle with that.

And what we found when they use these tools, because you're iterating back and forth with, this, Agent that can help you write this, it can write in a empathetic tone that gives the employee actually actual better feedback. the worst nightmare for HR is when that feedback is not honest, right?

And oh, this is the best employee ever. And then six months later they say, and. It's time to fire them, right? And we don't have the tools to do that. An employee never had the opportunity to get better. And so we really found that it was a much better outcome. The people were able to get much better feedback, and it was much more honest and, Again, it took less time because the manager wasn't struggling with that white space. And then they were also able to use it to create talking points in and around that evaluation. So when they sat down with the employee, they were armed with empathetic ways to talk to the employee, and share that feedback.

So I think it, that's, a great example of how, we, elevated the thought process for our managers and created a better experience for our employees and it took less time.

[00:26:35] Mo Fathelbab: Gotta love that. That's a win, win win.

[00:26:37] Kathleen Pearson: Yeah. And we built that in-house. I mean, so that was a, tool that we were able to build in-house.

which again, is thinking about how we use these, this technology in a very different way.

[00:26:50] Mo Fathelbab: And how long did it take to build it in-house? I'm just curious. About a week. About a week. Amazing.

[00:26:56] Kathleen Pearson: About a week. And we were able to ground it in our own competencies. So building it in-house, we were able to feed it, what our employee expectations are and really craft it and make it McDermott, right?

So it's it, is what works for our people and it feels organic and natural for our folks as opposed to an off the shelf that sort of has someone else's parameters built in.

[00:27:18] Mo Fathelbab: Amazing. Last question, Kathleen. What is one piece of advice that has shaped your work or personal life?

[00:27:26] Kathleen Pearson: Oh, that's a hard one. I think is to lean in and if you'll allow me just to give one more story.

I'm a storyteller by nature,

[00:27:34] Mo Fathelbab: please.

[00:27:36] Kathleen Pearson: I'm from the southeast and I did not grow up. Driving on ice or snow. In fact, when Southerners see ice and snow, we typically do what you're absolutely not supposed to do, right? You slam on the brakes. What happens when you slam on the brakes, on ice?

[00:27:56] Mo Fathelbab: You keep slid,

[00:27:57] Kathleen Pearson: you slide into the ditch.

That's right. And so this notion of leaning into challenges, keeps coming back and resonates with me. So leaning in is what you're supposed to do if you're sliding on ice. You're supposed to turn the wheel into the slide and slide in. And so I think this idea of leaning in is, really key.

When things feel uncomfortable, when things feel scary, don't slam on the brakes 'cause you're going in the ditch, but lean into it, figure out why, and then lean through it. So that's really a, friend of mine told me that story a couple years ago and it's just resonated with me in so many different ways.

Especially in today's environment.

[00:28:41] Mo Fathelbab: Ah, I love that. And that's where we'll end it for this episode of People and Strategy. A huge thanks again to Kathleen for your valuable insights. You can follow the People and Strategy podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also podcast reviews. Have a real impact on podcast visibility.

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