The TechWolf Podcast

TechWolf
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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. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. May 25

    "Tell me about your strategy. Skills can wait." | Sandoz's Workforce Intelligence Lead on the one move that flips SWP from push to pull

    Most strategic workforce plans never make it past the CHRO's desk. The horizon is five years, the work is detailed, and the business leader you need in the room would rather talk about anything else. Felipe Hessel runs Workforce Intelligence at Sandoz, and he's worked out how to flip that dynamic, getting executives to pull SWP towards them rather than dodge it. In this conversation, he walks through his six-step framework, the contracting move that earns him the right to ask about critical roles, and the agents he built that cut his own SWP cycle time by 60%. Timestamps 01:11 - Why HR's role in AI transformation isn't what most people think 04:30 - The three-legged stool of transformation is missing a leg 07:33 - The four legs of Workforce Intelligence: analytics, SWP, skills, AI 11:02 - The 90-day playbook for a new Workforce Intelligence role 12:57 - How to flip a sceptical CEO from push to pull on a 5-year workforce plan 18:11 - The six-step SWP framework, from contracting to course correction 23:51 - Why investing in workforce tech without integration is a trap 28:45 - The AI claim every business leader should push back on 32:46 - 2030 prediction: HR as a product organization

    "Tell me about your strategy. Skills can wait." | Sandoz's Workforce Intelligence Lead on the one move that flips SWP from push to pull

  7. Apr 29

    "Sellers close deals 14% faster." | Special Episode: Workday’s Josh Tarr & TechWolf CEO Andreas De Neve on Revenue-Linked Skills Strategy.

    When your sales team closes deals 14% faster, the "skills gap" stops being an HR problem and starts being a revenue solution. In this Special Episode, TechWolf CEO Andreas joins Josh from Workday to discuss the messy, high-stakes reality of transforming a 20,000-person organization. They move past the buzzwords to discuss why 75% of skills profiles usually fail and how Workday used AI to achieve a 91% skill acceptance rate from their employees. Timestamps: 00:00 - Highlights: why 75% of skills data is usually "dead" on arrival. 01:29 - Fast & Thoughtful: Defining the Workday x TechWolf partnership. 02:20 - The "Less than 20%" Problem: Why most job profiles are missing the point. 04:38 - 3 Years of Mistakes: What I’d tell my past self about data strategy. 06:08 - The AI Pivot: Moving from "Internal Mobility" to "Workforce Planning." 08:18 - Precision Hiring: Identifying the "Critical 12" skills for every role. 08:50 - The 14% ROI: How skills-based hiring directly impacts sales velocity. 09:44 - Scaling to 20,000: The rollout of the Skills Suggestion App. 10:42 - 91% Acceptance: How to actually get employees to own their skills data.

  8. Apr 15

    "There would actually be a people shortage" | McKinsey’s Sven Smit & Anu Madgavkar on AI, Agents, Robots, and the $100-Trillion Economy.

    The world is bracing for mass unemployment, but McKinsey Global Institute researchers Sven Smit and Anu Madgavkar suggest we might actually face a labor shortage. As agents and robots move from theory to the office floor, the real friction isn't just the tech; it's our inability to learn as fast as the machines. This episode challenges the "soft skills" myth and explains why your AI strategy will fail if it lives in the IT budget. Timestamps 07:05 – Why 80% automation might still lead to a labor shortage. 11:50 – The "Happy AI" trap: Why adding tools isn't the same as productivity. 19:20 – The blurring lines between knowledge workers and physical labor. 22:57 – Why "Soft Skills" are a dangerous trap for the next generation. 36:53 – Tasks vs. Workflows: The secret to 80% productivity gains. 49:08 – The Budget Error: Why AI belongs in the business P&L, not IT.

    "There would actually be a people shortage" | McKinsey’s Sven Smit & Anu Madgavkar on AI, Agents, Robots, and the $100-Trillion Economy.
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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
    35
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © TechWolf
  • Show Website
    The TechWolf Podcast

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