The TechWolf Podcast

TechWolf

Technology in HR is booming, yet confusing. Many vendors claim to include AI (agents), skills, seamless integrations, and other technologies in their product offerings. In practice, product promises often differ from reality. In this podcast, our host, Julius Schelstraete, holds no-nonsense conversations with business practitioners and thought leaders on everything related to "the skills-based organization": what it is, whether it's realistic, typical roadblocks, real-life use cases, and more. Join us as we move beyond the hype and examine skills-based HR from a critical, realistic lens!

  1. 1d ago

    “HR has over-rotated on technology.” | Julia Johnson, SVP Global Talent Management at Cognizant, on why the employee experience decides AI adoption

    Most talent teams treat AI as a tooling decision. Julia Johnson, SVP Global Talent Management at Cognizant, thinks HR has over-rotated on technology: the work gets done with the machine, not against it, and the experience people have using it decides whether it sticks. Recorded in her first week at Cognizant, after years in talent leadership at IBM and Kyndryl, she explains why pay calls still rest on a manager's judgment and why she paused a performance rollout at Kyndryl the same day managers pushed back. She also predicts what the talent function looks like in 2030: fewer people, more strategic work. Timestamps: 02:29 The outdated assumption leaders still hold: that AI will do the thinking04:49 Building for skills when job roles go stale as fast as they launch06:32 Why HR has over-rotated on technology, and the preposition that fixes it08:40 Augmented, not artificial: why pay decisions still need a manager's judgment11:39 From a startup nanny's room to 350,000 people: culture at scale16:16 The day Kyndryl paused its performance rollout after manager pushback19:44 Ship at 80% or go back to the design? How to tell21:40 Same technology, used differently: her six-month ambition23:12 The head of talent in 2030: fewer people, more strategy26:11 Why she rejects the claim that AI will displace people27:52 Her question for the next guest

  2. Oct 13

    “Peel back the onion. It’s really not doom and gloom.” | Former CHRO Susan Youngblood on what the data says about AI and jobs

    The AI bills are arriving, and some companies are already asking who should lose access. Meanwhile, the headlines say AI is wiping out entry-level jobs, and the labor data says otherwise. Susan Youngblood, a former CHRO who rolled out AI across a 9,000-person customer service organization, separates what is happening from what is being reported. She also explains why HR leaders who wait to be invited into the AI conversation will be cleaning up its consequences instead. Timestamps: 03:10; How progressive companies redesign entry-level roles for AI-fluent hires04:32; The hiring data the media keeps getting wrong05:56; What separates companies pulling ahead on AI from those stuck in pilots07:51; Two questions that expose fake AI adoption09:31; The token bill arrives: who keeps AI access, and who loses it13:10; Every agent needs a named human owner15:22; What rolling out AI to 9,000 people taught her about HR’s real job19:17; When the CFO asks if a human is cheaper than an agent23:30; Her prediction: token budgets in your comp package25:02; AI whitewashing and the layoffs that weren’t about AI

    “Peel back the onion. It’s really not doom and gloom.” | Former CHRO Susan Youngblood on what the data says about AI and jobs

  3. Sep 24

    The AI org-chart experiment | BCG's Julie Bedard on accountability, error rates and token spend

    Roughly a third of companies now talk about AI as a teammate or an employee, and between a fifth and a third say it has already carried over into the org chart. The argument for doing it has always been familiarity: give people a human reference point and they will use the thing. Julie Bedard and her co-authors tested that with 1,200 to 1,300 managers in HR and finance, all reviewing the identical document, with only the stated author changed. Adoption intent did not move. Personal accountability dropped, escalations rose, and reviewers who thought an AI employee wrote the work caught fewer errors and passed them on. Timestamps: 03:08 - BCG's 10/20/70, and the 70% nobody budgets for 05:44 - The experiment: one document, three different "authors" 08:59 - The finding that killed the familiarity argument 11:27 - "Our governance systems haven't caught up with agents" 17:25 - Reviewers caught fewer errors and escalated more 23:34 - Test track versus New York City at rush hour 27:56 - Token-based competition, and why usage is the wrong thing to reward 36:04 - The first 90 days for a CHRO or a chief AI officer

    The AI org-chart experiment | BCG's Julie Bedard on accountability, error rates and token spend

  4. Aug 27

    Who owns work redesign, and what has to be true first | Accenture's Matthew Morgan on skills technology, ownership, and the questions nobody asks

    Every leadership team is now asking which work goes to agents. Almost nobody has answered the harder question sitting underneath it: who owns the answer. The business owns the process, IT owns the deployment, talent owns the skills data, and total rewards owns the pay bands, which means any one of them acting alone produces a redesign that falls over within a quarter. Matthew Morgan, Managing Director for Talent Reinvention at Accenture, has spent twenty-five years in job architecture and skills data, and he is watching four client organizations run at this problem right now. He came in with a sharper starting point than most: stop leading with skills, and start with tasks. Timestamps: 01:05 - HR’s moment to lead, and why it is still playing catch-up 03:10 - What “talent reinvention” means, and how it differs from transformation 06:23 - Why tasks, not skills, are the language your business already speaks 09:22 - What has to be true before a skills technology works at your company 11:29 - Where to draw the line between redesigning work and just automating tasks 14:26 - The four-legged stool: who actually owns work redesign 16:36 - Agents in the org chart: what Matt has and has not seen in practice 19:58 - Cloudflare’s 20% layoff and the sellers, builders, measurers split 30:37 - The three questions to answer before you buy any AI tool

  5. Aug 3

    “It's not a super sexy problem, but it's the foundation of everything.” | Ian Bailie, Synopsys' VP of People Strategy, on a best-of-breed skills stack

    Most companies chase a skills strategy and end up with a portal nobody opens. Ian Bailie has built this twice, once at Cisco a decade ago, the hard way, and now at Synopsys, a 40-year-old company that just doubled in size and absorbed a $35 billion acquisition. His take is blunt: stop turning skills into an HR project. Lead with what AI is doing to the actual work, fix your job architecture first, and give people a reason to care before you ever ask them to touch a profile. Timestamps 00:45 — The Kyle Forrest question: how to actually get HR, IT and finance in one room 02:30 — Why “we're HR, and we have the solution” is the wrong way in 06:00 — Doing this at Cisco 10 years ago, before the tech existed 07:50 — The Synopsys stakes: doubled size, a $35B acquisition, 40 years of legacy 11:30 — 3,000 people, one job title: when job architecture is too simple 15:00 — Why he refused to buy another skills portal 22:00 — One taxonomy, three platforms: Degreed, Avature, BetterWorks 27:40 — Automate, augment, human-only: reading the task data 31:00 — Giving people the agency over how AI changes their job 38:30 — HR's moment, and the risk of missing it

    “It's not a super sexy problem, but it's the foundation of everything.” | Ian Bailie, Synopsys' VP of People Strategy, on a best-of-breed skills stack

  6. Jul 22

    “Nothing’s being asked of HR that hasn’t been asked before.” | Deloitte's Kyle Forrest on zero-based work, spotting fake AI agents, and what the CHRO job becomes by 2030

    Every vendor at every conference is selling you an agent. Most of them are selling you a workflow with a chat window. Kyle Forrest runs Deloitte’s Future of HR practice and its Next Generation CHRO Academy, and he spends his weeks in the room with CHROs trying to separate the real from the rebranded. In this episode, he lays out the test for a genuine agent, why “make HR strategic” has been the same ask since the 1980s, and what it actually costs a leader to redesign a function that includes their own job. Timestamps: 02:00 - The knowledge walking out the door as boomers retire 09:36 - Can HR’s “unique AI moment” and “nothing new here” both be true? 15:37 - The three types of HR function, and why “be strategic” is a lazy demand 24:00 - Stagility: 75% of workers want stability, 85% of execs want agility 28:09 - 42% of workers say no one is measuring AI’s impact on them 31:45 - AI assisted, augmented, powered: telling people where their role is headed 33:19 - Zero-based work: should this work even exist? 40:55 - The BS test for a real agent versus a workflow with a chat window 47:10 - The trend Kyle wants you to push back on: pre-built agents

    “Nothing’s being asked of HR that hasn’t been asked before.” | Deloitte's Kyle Forrest on zero-based work, spotting fake AI agents, and what the CHRO job becomes by 2030

  7. Jun 26

    “What took us months now takes minutes.” | Cotality CHRO Kendra Angier on building a skills engine, engaging the C-suite, and her 12-24mo strategy

    Most skills programs never make it out of the spreadsheet. Cotality's CHRO spent nine months trying to hand-build a skills taxonomy before she killed it and started over. In this episode, Kendra Angier explains how she rebuilt the workforce-intelligence stack around dynamic data, pulled her COO, CTO, and CFO into the buying decision, and earned an 80% employee NPS on skills along the way. It's a candid look at what actually moves a skills strategy from theory to Monday-morning reality. Timestamps 00:50 - Why she rejects the idea that AI is killing early talent 02:43 - The Cotality rebrand, and what it demands from the workforce 06:09 - The case for a 12-24 month horizon, not a ten-year plan 08:36 - How she got the CFO, COO and CTO to fund skills 13:42 - The nine-month taxonomy that nearly broke the team 21:22 - “What took us months now takes minutes” 25:47 - Why the change-management risk beats the data risk 38:17 - From chief HR officer to chief work officer

    “What took us months now takes minutes.” | Cotality CHRO Kendra Angier on building a skills engine, engaging the C-suite, and her 12-24mo strategy

  8. Jun 17

    AstraZeneca’s 4-year Odyssey with skills intelligence | Lara Martinez, Global Director of Talent Intelligence, on why agility beats the SBO label

    Everyone wants a “skills-based organization.” Almost no one has built one.  At AstraZeneca, Global Director of Talent Intelligence Lara Martinez Gonzalez has spent four years connecting a tangle of recruitment systems, development platforms, and job architecture into one language for the workforce, and she’s blunt about how hard it has been.  In this episode, she argues skills is a data problem, not an HR project, explains why she refuses to say the word “skills” in front of business leaders, and shows where the value has actually landed so far. Plus the trap that cost her almost a year, and the company she’s seen get closest to skills-native. Timestamps: 00:57 — The one skills claim leaders should push back on 02:05 — Four years of skills work, told as an Odyssey 05:46 — How to pick which problem to solve first 10:48 — Why she drops the word “skills” in business meetings 16:30 — Reading the market: from skills to tasks 20:19 — Who should own tasks:  HR or the business? 21:54 — The honest ROI: “still squeezing the lemon” 31:32 — Her 90-day advice to peers two years in

    AstraZeneca’s 4-year Odyssey with skills intelligence | Lara Martinez, Global Director of Talent Intelligence, on why agility beats the SBO label
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About

Technology in HR is booming, yet confusing. Many vendors claim to include AI (agents), skills, seamless integrations, and other technologies in their product offerings. In practice, product promises often differ from reality. In this podcast, our host, Julius Schelstraete, holds no-nonsense conversations with business practitioners and thought leaders on everything related to "the skills-based organization": what it is, whether it's realistic, typical roadblocks, real-life use cases, and more. Join us as we move beyond the hype and examine skills-based HR from a critical, realistic lens!

Information

  • Creator
    TechWolf
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    38
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © TechWolf
  • Show Website
    The TechWolf Podcast

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