Gareth Flynn, Chief Executive Officer of TQ Solutions

Siobhan Savage: Hello, Gareth. How are you? Good to see you.

Gareth Flynn: Great to see you too. Shahan. It's been a little while. I'm a little bit sleepy. It's very early in the morning in Australia, but it's fantastic to be with you this morning.

Siobhan Savage: I think the clock's changed. It's whacked out my whole schedule with everyone in Australia, so I'm making you all get up really early.

I'm super sorry.

Gareth Flynn: No, it's great. I'm looking forward to the conversation. I wanna miss this one.

Siobhan Savage: No. Perfect. Thank you and welcome everyone to Skills Connect. This is a podcast where we have conversations with the most bold and most responsible change makers in the world. I'm Siobhan Savage.

I'm the CEO and Co - founder of rege, and today I'm joined by Gareth Flynn. So for those that may not know Gareth. And for our American listeners, just to give you some context, Gareth is the leader of the workforce strategy consultancy called TQ Solutions, based here in Australia. Gareth has spent over two decades helping some of the world's largest employers reimagine how they attract, grow, and retain talent.

We started out together back in the skills strategy space, and now we're working in these new operating model designs together. So really focused on powering this AI part workforce, looking at the future state planning, and Gareth has become one of the most trusted voices, in all things workforce transformation.

It's really funny, Gareth, to see you popping up when I'm in America. On your research being used and stuff. I tagged you in on one because I was, how the hell did that happen? That's, how much did you pay for that? It's good to see. It's good to see global

Gareth Flynn: reach.

Siobhan Savage: It is. And he is just for folks that know as well, he's also the driving force behind tqs Global Skills research initiative where he basically gets to interview some of the top leaders and share the knowledge with the crowd.

So if you're not following Gareth on social, I really hope you do because he is great and we'll share you his links as well. So, Garth, welcome.

Gareth Flynn: Thank you for a lovely, introduction. Although it's a bit frightening. You said the word two decades. That makes me feel very old

Siobhan Savage: or very experienced and can charge a lot.

Oh, very experienced. That's right. I use that two decades when I'm in a bid proposal. So Gareth and I literally, I remember when I first started the company, it was five years ago, and I was. Really focused at that time and I came across you Gareths. So you've been on our journey as an observer on the sideline of Reejig and, a lot has changed.

A lot has evolved. I think we have both went on an evolution together, which has been really exciting to watch. You started out very much so focused on the recruitment and you described it an augmentation business as well, right? So can you give folks a little bit of context of, sure.

Where were you not, what are you excited about? 'cause I think that part is super helpful.

Gareth Flynn: So. Yeah, no problem. So, TQ and as Shavan said, two decades old, our legacy and our core was in talent acquisition transformation. So I came from A RPO background. So that was Heartland territory to me.

So we spent the first 10 years I. Helping companies insource, ta, build functions, optimize functions, build their tech stacks, work on their brand. You are right. We also had an augmentation play, which was a quasar outsourcing business, but on a much more piecemeal basis. Over the course of the last, decade, we've gradually been pulled more and more into workforce strategy, workforce, analysis and workforce transformation.

it's also where the market's moved. It's where my interest is, it's where I see our future being. TA is always going to be part of our world. But I think for me, the most exciting thing at the moment is AI adoption, workforce disruption, transformation. Task intelligence, skills, intelligence, work analysis, work, redesign.

this is where I see the future of our business being anchored in. And, yeah, it's, and you're right, I have followed your journey. We've moved through that together over the last few years. Yeah. And super excited about where the market's heading at the moment.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah. And I think the timing of the, I wouldn't call it a pivot for me or you, I think it was an evolution.

Of listening to our customers. People say to me, oh, you pivoted. And I was, no, I didn't. I evolved. And it's what we all should be doing and all of our business should be doing this, right? If you're staying the same and locked to the same thing that you were, selling to your businesses 10 years ago, I can tell you right now, it's not gonna go so well.

but it's been really interesting to see your evolution as well because right, while we've been evolving and I think we've been quite in sync around the way that we're seeing it. And it's because we spend, you and I spend a lot of time with customer. Yeah, you're very hands in as well as me.

I'm very focused on, actually why is this not working? And the skills side of things. So, you've talked a lot about, helping organizations rethink how they design worked for years, but before. Skills based became a trend. You were already doing this, but it was just not called skills based workforce, right?

it was actually focused on that problem. So, can you walk us through how you first started tackling those talent challenges at tq and before skills based became, a word you would Google, right? It was, you were solving real problems for customers, what things were you focused on that weren't labeled as skills?

Gareth Flynn: Yeah, look, that's a really good question actually. And so we, transformation of talent functions is core, to the business over the years. And I think, what we do really well as a business is unpack problems to solve. And that could be, I. One of our big retailers who's really struggled trying to attract and retain people in, Western Australia and Northern Australia, which is a nightmare to try and recruit in 'cause of our mining industry.

Or it could be a healthcare company that's desperately trying to find, and keep nursing staff.

Siobhan Savage: Mm - hmm.

Gareth Flynn: So we hone in on these problems and then try and work the problem. Now, often or not that. Led to sourcing strategy, brand strategy, but, some alternate way of recruiting or, thinking about their experience in the business.

But in some cases it was also about, okay, we need to think differently about this thing. We are hiring. We need to think about what is the success profile of this thing, this person, this type of role we're trying to recruit. And I think even then it was about. Deconstructing the job, thinking differently about the type of hire that companies were trying to make.

And they were doing skills, but not doing skills.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah.

Gareth Flynn: , 'cause it wasn't a thing, but they were, companies were trying to unpack the people they were trying to find and keep in a different way because the old way wasn't working because our market's very talent scarce and it, they almost, we were doing adjacency work without knowing we were doing adjacency work.

Thinking about alternate sourcing grounds for talent, thinking diff, mobility wise, starting to reduce the threshold of the match. There was one customer, we, a big bank we worked with where they, we almost had this expression that 70% is good enough. Yeah. And we can train or develop or work on the 30, but it's better to move this talent internally rather than trying to find it externally.

So, before skills was skills. We just, it was a, the problem was finding and the problem was keeping critical skills in businesses. Mm - hmm. And that's always been a problem. And it's still the problem. And it's still the problem. Yeah. So, but we had very clunky, very manual, very, human heavy ways of having to do this analysis and work, which is where, when AI started to come in, that's when obviously skills started to appear as a thing.

And that meant we could do a lot more of this work. Mm - hmm. More quickly, more efficiently, and at scale.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah. Yeah. And then what you're saying is actually really interesting because we actually have a lot of the same problems. We just branded it into something, over the last couple of years.

Right. When you think about it, we turned it into a hype cycle, and a movement. Right. And I think that's really interesting. One of the things that I will as actions to my brain when I look back at the whole Reejig journey, I remember having a call with you. And it was three years ago.

and things weren't going so well for me because I was right in that, storm of the matches are not working the skills, and it was very recruitment centric. You remember when we first started?

Gareth Flynn: Yep. Yep.

Siobhan Savage: And I was, it's not working. And I'm, and it's not bad, but it's not good. But it's not enough that people are going to be.

Enamored by the transformation. It's not living up to the thing we're promising. And I remember calling you and talking about, Hey, I think I got the skills thing wrong. Yeah. I think actually that it's not about skills and we had this whole big conversation and. A lot of what I was going through at that moment was really, holy crap, this is, it's not actually about skills.

It's skills. It's just an outcome of actually understanding the work. And we had, we've been having these conver, we've debate, I've debated with people a lot over the years and then I can see how people are coming along the journey or some people are against it for whatever reason. What, when we were going through that, one of the things that was really interesting was that you're able to step back and go, well, hold on a second.

Can you talk through in a really simple way, to the listeners, because there's a lot of folks that. Have bought into skills, put the reputation on the line. Mm - hmm. Yeah. They have, maybe procured a technology. Maybe they've spent a whole pe consulting money. I don't know. These folks have done a lot, and it wasn't that they were wrong, it's just that given the evolution of what we've now learned.

How would you think about, when we talk about skills versus work and the whole, what do you think about the skills - based workforce? What's your take on that whole place now given everything that you've learned? Because I think it's a really interesting and a non - filtered answer so that everyone, what?

I think Yeah, no, I,

Gareth Flynn: I, so look, I'll be very transparent. So I think firstly, I just wanna acknowledge, for the audience that you were. Probably, in fact, you were the first person to present to me an alternate view, and it was about three years ago. And the skills pro may not be the currency that everyone thought it was.

So I just wanna acknowledge that it was, you were definitely the first to challenge that view. So for the audience, I just finished two years ago, quite a major consulting piece with a one of our Australian businesses on skill strategy. I was just reflecting on that project whilst dog walking something I do, regularly.

And, I just had a nagging thing on my shoulder saying, had I drunk the skills Kool - Aid.

Siobhan Savage: Mm.

Gareth Flynn: And I thought about, HR tech companies trying to scale bench capitalists who support 'em, industry analysts that, benefit from some of this big consulting firms that benefit from some of this.

And I just had this nagging doubt that have we. Are we on the wrong strategy? So I, yeah, my skills research was premised on, I need to have a point of view that's mine and that's ours as tq. So the first thing I did would go looking for detractors to skills. So people that just didn't buy into it.

mark Efron, dart Linley, Aaron McEwen from Gartner. There was a whole number of people I spoke to that had an alternate point of view. None of them were saying skills weren't important. Absolutely not. But they were saying it may not be the thing we need to focus on as a priority. So I had some really additional signals after you.

Aaron was very, he called it out very clearly to me, early in that research and then I started to speak to companies that were on skills journey, started to see some of the benefits they were seeing, also the challenges they were experiencing, of which there were many. And so I started to unpack, okay, this thing is worth it in the end.

But man, are we actually going about it the right way?

Siobhan Savage: Mm - hmm.

Gareth Flynn: And I think during the course of 2024, there are a few more signals that I know Sandra Lachlan from EAM and I collaborate a fair bit at the moment. She has a different point of view. Mark Steven Ramos has been writing some wonderful material on, particularly task intelligence as a, mm - hmm.

As a primary. Mm - hmm. And so I started joining all of these dots. And then over Christmas it was about, okay, AI disruption at scale, workforce disruption at scale. And for me, this was the clincher in a changing view of mine. When I started thinking about work and workforce and workplace with ai, I went, hang on a minute.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah.

Gareth Flynn: Jobs are absolutely no longer stable, nor is work. The muscle that companies need to build, which they don't have, is work analysis and detailed work analysis. That is an imperative and it's something that we've gotta, yes you can get consultants to come and do some of this stuff ours, but it's a muscle they have to build themselves.

'cause this is gonna be an ongoing. Need as we get wave and wave of technology and AI disruption. So for me, the work analysis is now primary driven by ai. And what comes outta work analysis is task intelligence. Task intelligence helps you repackage and redesign work. Once you've done that, we know what work humans are doing.

We know what skills they need. And I think the kicker for me, when I started. Thinking about this cycle is that workers and skills and leaders and skills didn't, they didn't play together well 'cause they didn't get it. Mm - hmm. Skills is this ethereal thing that's not connected to anything. Ai work analysis, task intelligence, the skills connect skills to work and work output.

So workers and leaders are gonna get why hrs. Telling them to do this upskill reskill program and why this is critical for their career because they can connect it to work. Mm - hmm. And so I think the, there is significant second mover advantage in this space because Yeah. Adoption of skills and skill strategies, which is inevitable in my view.

I think this is an inev, is the adoption rate's gonna go sky high 'cause it's gonna be connected to output and people will get why it's important. So my viewpoint's really changed. And I think, I'm gonna call it, skills - based organization is one of the industry's best marketing taglines created in the last 10 years.

And it's made a lot of people quite a bit of money. But it's distracted folk from and businesses on what they should be focused on as priority. So that's how my evolution has changed, particularly No, I love it over the last 18 months.

Siobhan Savage: I love it because I, well, firstly, thank you for being so open and honest about that, because I think a lot of, my experience to date was people were, she's killing the company.

do what? She's killing the company and, this is not, this is terrible and blah. But I think the thing that I learned from that whole journey of telling everybody, Hey, here's everything I got wrong was, there's a whole pile of people that are responsible to solve this problem and they are doing their best.

To solve it with what they have at that moment. And at that moment, that was what the market had. So it wasn't if, all the skills leaders that went down this road were wrong. It was what was available at the time to try and solve the problem, which they were all very passionate about solving.

I think where there's a bit of a moment, a fork in the road now is, it's very clear that there is another way. And if you resist. Your own evolution. That's the problem. I think folks that maybe did, on the talent marketplace road, our customers have all evolved and have the work ontology inside of their marketplaces.

Not, what? It's not a if or not, it's a, it's evolved and whether you've went on marketplace road or talent intelligence or whatever, there's still a place. 'cause people have skills. Work has tasks and you require skills to complete the task. Right. And then I think when, to your point about the ai does not automate skills and this is one of my biggest bug bearers.

Yeah. When PE vendors are selling to customers right now that, I'll tell you what skills are gonna guys, AI automates tasks. Not skills. So if you are looking at skills for to solve that problem, I can tell you right now the report you're given to your CEO is wrong. One task can have up to five or six skills, depending what the task is.

And then you're looking at task subtask action, all formulating into work. And, Josh bur in his call is starting to call it, and you see a lot of the more analysts now, Gartners and stuff starting, they're classifying as work intelligence. So what was it, the talent intelligence, which is a different category.

It still serves its purpose for what folks need to, mobilizing your people, looking at mobility and career pathing and very important part of the process. But work intelligence is now. This new category, which is where the CEO is very focused right now. And I think your point is exactly right and I think,.

The ability for us to make mistakes and learn from the mistakes is the best thing and the best way to learn. I look back on my journey, Garth, and I'm, I am so glad that I went into Customer X and their data was terrible, and they shouted at me for the matches because if I didn't have that experience.

And I look back on all of those transformations, 99.9%, that was a data problem. We, no AI would be able to do anything because, although I'm part of the people that spent a whole pile of money making skills - based workforce and marketing hype. So I have to take ownership of that.

Probably spent about 50 or $60 million into participating in that. Yeah. But I think the. The AI is not a magician. It needs good quality data on your workers and it needs good quality data on your work in order for it to make a good recommendation. And if you don't have the, what was really interesting and in my journey was that the people data was easy to solve.

1. I actually could curate profiles for your people very easily. That was the work part. That was really hard. Yeah, because look at the job architectures, oh my God. Built for the eighties by dinosaurs and they're HR people who are consultants coming into your company who don't understand your company, describing your work in a way that makes no sense to the business.

It is not how the business would describe work, but yet here we are that's powering all of the decision making when it comes to our talent strategies. That in itself has to get blown up. For me, I'm on, I'm out on job architecture. I think it's if you keep buying that job architecture, absolutely.

People need to have a hierarchy. Their work. So you understand it's kinda one food in the past and one food in the future have still, the hierarchial thing of high jobs are described for compliance in EA and Rent. Yes. But have this understanding of the work in a dynamic function, which looks at everything from outcome to task, to sub - task to action, and then the skill triangulated to those, that's the, that's what customers need to build now,?

And I think that's where you and I very much so aligned and we're starting to see a lot of mutual customers that are now going. Oh, I get it. They're, yes, my CEO has just got a board initiative now where they have to do this and this makes so much more sense. So I love that you're, you've went from that journey of evolution and it's not a pivot.

You've evolved. I think you've evolved your thinking

Gareth Flynn: and I think Shawan, if I reflect on it as well, two years ago when I had this initial thought bubble of have I swallowed the Kool - Aid? We had, we hadn't seen agen. So we hadn't seen what was coming. So I think the Agen AI evolution that, I, it really hit me in the face when I went to Unleash in Paris last year.

I came back from there going, holy crap, I've gotta really radically change my thinking. We do a lot of work in HR Tech Stack Advisory. One of the things that I really realized there is that, well, firstly this is, and I've always said this about skills. It's not an HR thing. It should absolutely be a business thing, and HR can't drive an AI strategy for an enterprise.

The enterprise drives the AI strategy for the enterprise. So the other thing I've started to realize as well, that. My economic buyer, your economic buyer is likely not to be as much HR in the future. It is your CTO, your CAIO. Yep. It's someone who is thinking about data and AI and architecture at an enterprise level.

And sure, we've gotta influence them about what HR needs, but we also need to align greatly with what those people are doing. And you are so right. Skills is a data problem. Task intelligence is a data problem. Mm - hmm. And I've been spending the last three days with Sandra eam, who's over in Australia, and oh man, what they're doing with data and how they're collecting it.

And we're not talking about structured data that's in systems. We're talking about trying to unpack data that's in people's heads, using AI to extract that through interviews, through shadowing, through taking what people are saying about the work they're doing. Actually codifying it so that AI can do something with that.

Yeah, it's insane. It's next level so that everything that we're talking about today is a data problem. Yeah, and again, my massive takeaway from this last few days is your data strategy. Your data architecture is the key to success and needs to be priority almost before you do anything else.

Yep. Is get that foundation right and build on top of that.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, completely agree. I think the thing why we've been growing so quickly, I. Especially since we've moved to the us, we grew fast. You remember when we started Reg, we were fastest growing startup in apac, right? Yeah. We were fast.

I've never seen anything what we're experiencing. Not this time. I've got a few more gray hairs and I know what to do this time and a lot more agents that are in my business. So I feel a lot more prepared. But, what I've noticed is there is a on fire problem right now.

Where the CEO is wanting to reinvent because they've got operational efficiency and board pressure around velocity and productivity. So you've got this chunk of problem over here, and then you've got, the requirement from the CPO to getting demanded to tell me, what will my workforce impact look?

What will happen? Yeah. And you cannot and will not see org successfully do this transformation if the two partners aren't playing together. So what we've seen in a lot of customers, and you've been talking quite a lot of my customers this week, there's a lot of triangulation in the CEO, the CFO, and the CPO or CHRO.

All now working together to really create this, overall transformation. And I haven't, I never seen that in the skills space. The skills thing was a very HR problem. Absolutely. It was a HR thing, let's sell it to the business. Everyone blamed it, not working. And, the other thing I learned was, so when we first started, we used to tell ourselves that the reason why this thing wasn't working so well was change management.

You need loads of change management for this stuff. Right? That's what we always kept saying was the reason it wasn't change management. It's we were telling leaders to now start calling. The thing that when they call you up, they don't go, can I have a Python? A communication and a, they call you up and say, I need these things done.

And that's, and for this amount of time and, hurry up. What? They don't call you up. So you are trying to influence people that you didn't have a whole pellet influence on. So then when they didn't adopt these marketplaces and behave in the way, projects and gigs are the one that's the most interesting I've seen at failure level where they don't work, whether it's the leader, demand leader is actually required because we're trying to make them do things which is not natural to them.

What was interesting on my journey was we always used to at the start, and still the vendors will say this, it's a change management issue. It's not, it's a data problem, it literally is a data problem and you need one common language way of work to describe it. Whether you're in HR or whether in your business, everybody has to be talking the same language, and the language should be what's naturally being done at the work level, and then you can go to the skill level because the work that's being done.

So most customers typically start their journey and you probably, have seen this in some of your consulting work where they come to you and they go, we know we need to do this. This is very overwhelming. I was just pitching 12 months ago the skill space to them. How do I get people on board with this and what we say to them, and I would love to know your view, we say, number one, let's first get you your own work architecture, which is harmonized.

So your old job architecture, it's terrible. Let's update that and make sure, it's with the work ontology, it's all collectively this one common language of work and we. We give them that data so that becomes that critical infrastructure. And then we say you've got work intelligence, which can help you make decisions on the phase one, which is the redesign.

Yeah. So what decisions are you going to make to evolve your workforce? And then we go into, okay, now we're gonna look at agents. And where is required for those tasks? So the one thing we see a lot of is people get stuck in status quo is they get. The work ontology to get the intelligence, but then the agent part, it's, oh, what do we do?

We've never, that's a, that's where support needs to be brought in, I think. Yeah.? Mm - hmm. The whole P of people. Yeah. They've never built agents before. They don't know how to do it. It's scary. Plus, you don't want to have A - B - Y - I - O AI people going off, running around building their own version of the processes.

you want an enterprise wide. Transformation where the agents are being deployed, the plumbing, right? You've got water through the pipes. You don't want people sticking meals and each part of it dependent on how they view that process, right? Because that will turn into a disaster. That's typically what we see with our customers.

And then the final step we typically see is, okay, now when you bring in the agent, it's Jenga. You take out tasks, but you're adding in some new tasks because you're - engineering. That is the flow of what we see. Mm - hmm. The phases. What are you seeing on the ground with customers right now in terms of the maturity of where they're at?

I know Australia is a little bit behind America just because we naturally are, but what, where, I'm starting to see a lot popping up from that region now. Where are you seeing it?

Gareth Flynn: Yeah, look, I think we are, so this week's pretty important for. Me, my business and what we're trying to achieve here with in the market.

So we are in an education mode. Shavan, I think with a lot of businesses on flipping the conversation towards, work analysis and task intelligence. We're at that point. There are clearly some forward thinking companies, some of which are your clients and, we've worked with previously who are on that journey already.

But I think for the majority, and, again, going back to that second mover advantage. There were some that were very slow on skills, which actually in hindsight is great. 'cause now they don't have to invest a shit load of money in skills and stuff that others have done. And so this week it's about educating about okay, that there's a different way to do this and it's a data problem.

And you've got the, we now know about AI coming in and disruption and I think what we've seen in 2025 in this region. Is the C - suite putting pressure on businesses to develop their AI strategy, which is actually, accelerating people's interest in work and task intelligence because it's, they've got to, so I, my prediction is that we will see a rapid take up of, work and work intelligence type activity this year.

Yeah. That will drive the skills activity later this year. There's a competitive tension at the moment. Companies need to do this or they're gonna have a Kodak moment. Yeah. I think there's gonna be a fair few Kodak moments in the a SX, 200 companies here. Mm - hmm. And in other countries around the world where they're slow to move, so.

Mm - hmm. I think for us, we're trying to shift the narrative. We're trying to shift the conversation. That's why we've got Sandra out from the US. 'cause I want to, I want her to paint the picture of what is possible, doable and what good looks. Yeah. And that's why I'm trying to get her, to share that message locally.

But there's only, there's not many of our businesses that are forward progressed on this. Mm - hmm. Those that are, I think are in a great place from a competitive perspective. 'cause we Yeah. In two years time, we're gonna get, if I was 25 again Shavonne and I wish I was. I had the knowledge I had in my head today, I'd be going, okay, I'm gonna set up an AI native business.

Yep. My big question will be, which companies am I gonna kill? Which sectors am I gonna disrupt? How am I gonna build this business that will have so much competitive advantage from a operational cost perspective? Yeah. That these big guys who are messing around, flip flopping around on what they're trying to do, they're gonna go outta business.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah.

Gareth Flynn: , and so in the next two years. These bigger businesses need to really rethink themselves with some audacious goals. 30 50% off their, operational expenses. That's the thing they need to be thinking about 'cause that's what they're gonna be competing with in a matter of years.

And that's the agitation I want to take to the market here.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah. Amen to that. One of the things, part of thing that sticks out for me was I remember when the AI thing happened, the generative AI thing happened and I was early to play. I remember thinking, I wanna test this myself and see if it's actually, what's I was kinda, let me get my hands around this.

And I was also, the market crashed at the time, so, I was also surrounded by a whole pile of shareholders that were, not putting pressure on me, but I was super aware of my responsibility at a shareholder level, right? I was very aware of that and that gave me a lot of, ooh, it was very stressful.

but I remember being in Paris and I remember talking to Mike and I remember saying one of our other co - founders, and I remember saying. We were talking about, 'cause we were playing with it and we were, oh, this is good. And this was early, we were, this is, this could be incredible, what we could do with this.

And we were really afraid. We were, I was sitting there going, there's gonna be a business, that's gonna be AI first and it's gonna come and it's gonna kick my ass and I'm gonna get absolutely taken outta the market. And I remember leaving Paris going, hold on a second.

Why don't I just become that? Literally, I remember thinking, instead of me being afraid of the boogeyman and actually being terrified of what was coming after me, I gotta become that. And that was where I did this hand break, hard hand break moment. I was, hand break.

Right on. Literally got off that flight, went home, had a sleep next day, woke up and I was. Told my team, we are designing for this and this is gonna be uncomfortable and this is what we're doing and if I get it wrong, we get it wrong, but I believe that this is where we're gonna go. And I had a six month of hell of a lot of pain of, yeah, I remember that.

Just it was painful. Because people thought I was crazy. And reckless and all the other things that Fair enough. But I remember then going actually, and I think you have that moment too. You've got this opportunity. Nothing is standing in the way of folks. Completely reinventing. Every day we're waking up.

We have this opportunity to completely reinvent whether you're the biggest organization in the world. Look at the US government, right? Not right. Getting run Twitter i'd rather

Gareth Flynn: not. Sorry, America. But what I

Siobhan Savage: mean? But what I'm saying? It's why not? And I think the point that you made about the Kodak moment.

Is it anyone who's a leader right now? If you are not thinking about reinvention, we're not talking about tweaks and pivots. We're talking about complete reinvention of who you are, how you operate, how you make money, how you deliver a service. You're gonna have a person me who's gonna build a billion dollar company with under a hundred people.

that's real. Yeah. I'm gonna do that. Absolutely. For sure. And that's where it becomes really scary. And I think. Most corporates that I'm talking to where I told that story and that was how we grew so quickly in the early days. I told this story really publicly and then I was getting all these calls, can you come and tell us how you thought about that, why you did it?

And that was folks really at the early generative AI start of the deal, right? Where they were, we admired the startup mode. Can you explain that? And I think what you're experiencing this week was so interesting to hear that you've now got a lot of folks that traditionally would've been legacy skills.

That world who are now really embracing and having this open mindset. And I honestly think that they're incredible people to be in that room and to have an open mind and to their job is to steer the business in the right direction. So the fact that you've got all those people, coming to you and Sandra's perfect for.

She's the exact energy that you need when you don't know what to do. It's, okay, let's go. Do what? Here's what you need to do. Just get going. People, just start. And I think that's gonna be, I'm excited to watch the outcome of all the Australian companies now starting to really think about this.

the other thing that I think is gonna be really exciting. So on one side you've got this big, bold reinvention, but at the other side, no company wants to be harvesting people out of work. They wanna be responsible. The CEO has a responsibility. This is the moment I believe that the HR team really become the critical component of the team.

Yeah, because. AI should be treated a worker, but also when we're doing our AI strategy and we're impacting folks' jobs, this is where actually their job is to re - engineer and help the organization navigate people to meaningful work. So if anything, I think this is probably the most exciting place.

If I was back in my old career, I would be so excited right now about the impact that I could have. Do you see, has that sunk in for folks yet that this is actually a moment for them that they should not waste.

Gareth Flynn: Shivan, this is a great question, although I'm gonna call something out here as well.

we've had some reflections during the course of this week and, we've said it at a couple of events publicly. There is a lot of BS in the market at the moment about what the impact of AI is going to be on workforce. And there's a massive elephant in the room that no one's really talking about. The zeitgeist you hear in market is all rosy about augmented humans and more meaningful work, and it's all going to be great.

But the signals, I'm starting to see, the case studies, I'm starting to see it is HR and company's responsibility to try and do the right thing by the humans impacted totally with that, if we can reskill, upskill and move them to different roles and jobs and work phenomenal. But the reality is we are going to have impacted people and the number of jobs in lots of businesses is going to shrink.

Mm - hmm. And I used the DBS announcement, DBS Bank four weeks ago, based outta Singapore. They announced one new agent that they've implemented that has resulted in 4, 000 people who will exit that business. And 1000 new people were announced to be hired, which is wonderful. Mm - hmm. But there is a net negative 3000 people.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah.

Gareth Flynn: So managing that, disruption, the human impact, the how do we do this most responsibly? How do we try and retain as many people as possible? Companies have a duty of care. Mm - hmm. There is a social license and a duty of care, but I think we need to stop. And I used this expression yesterday at an event.

We need to stop lying to our workforces and we need to be facing into this working with our, we work our workforces as we navigate this process. Because the market is not facing into this fact. It is presenting a too glossy view and I actually think it's holding companies back because they can't talk about the elephant in the room publicly.

And everything's behind the scenes, and I think we need to get it on the table. And we need to embrace the workforce on this journey, communicate these impacts, because at the end of the day, that's gonna result in a better outcome for everyone. Yeah, agree. And there won't be any surprises. So that's been my, I've been tracking.

Announcements is a bit geeky. I know, but announcements, have you got an agent for this? I do store everything that I can interrogate. Yes. It's all in notebook. Lm. Yeah. Yep. But what? The, it's, I just think the narrative we are going to our businesses with is not honest. And I think we need to be honest with our people in business about what's coming.

That's my. I dunno, we've not spoken about this Siobhan before, but I dunno what your view on this is, but a lot of the HR tech vendors are presenting this glossy, rosy picture because they don't wanna be seen as the, yeah, the catalyst to this, but it's not truthful.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah. I think there's a lot of bullshit in general.

yes, it is going to take people out. That's guaranteed, I can tell you from my own lived experience and I'm a tiny sample set, right? Yeah. I saved $1.7 million a month. I had a sales team that I was spending $1.7 million a month on, and I automated that whole thing out. I make more revenue than I've ever done.

And all of those sales reps were, not happy with the outcome, but. They were sending 80% of their time was sending emails to get a demo with people you. Yeah. And I built an agent that removed that whole requirement. So I can tell you right now, as someone who's been through that, there is a probably a communication thing that I didn't understand or I was very new to all that.

I was new. I was early, right. So, I think in my own lived experience. Sometimes you just gotta rip the bandaid off and just do it and it's a short moment of pain. I would never have had a place for people to transition 'cause I was a startup. But if I'm looking at big corporates, I think the advice that I'm telling them is, firstly, our mission is create a world with zero waste to potential.

That's still stands true. So I don't wanna work with customers who are just doing it to harvest people at jobs. Yeah. All of the customers that we work with, we put them on the bold and responsible strategy. Yeah. So bold reinvention, but responsible reallocation or reinvention of the workforce. So, and, look, being really transparent, that plays perfectly into my product suite too, right?

Because I've got. My work operating system and then I've got my marketplace, right? I've got the two products that deploy. But the one thing that I think that's, it's happening and I can't see as much news in Australia anymore. 'cause I'm very American news. A lot of my feeds that I used to get, I don't get them as much anymore.

But over here it is a very narrative of. The last six months was very, no, it's humans and AI together in this beautiful relationship. Skipping into the sun in the last probably two months, it started to change a little bit where you're seeing these memos come out, which is, it's non - negotiable.

And if you don't it, well you can go work somewhere else. So you're starting to see this semi shift in the market. But the other thing I think that's gonna be really important,. One thing I've noticed is regardless of how you manage your comms, if you go and you, let's say you go and you understand your work.

You understand with work intelligence where to automate and where's the best value for the business to do that? And you build the agents you see, if you don't bring your people on the journey, none of this works if people don't use the agents. So you could have a subset, right, where you could look at a hundred percent of your population.

Let's say, let's take the sales team as an example. You have a sales team, and let's say you are, you build these agents. Now humans, all, there's no autonomous agents operating in the market. No matter what everyone tells you, this is subtask agents, right now, they are looking at parts of the agent, right?

So if you do not have your employees. Use the agents in the way that you want it. You don't set new expectations for this is what's gonna be required from your role right now. And if you say to people, everybody, your job this year is to build two agents and tell us how it went. If that's the way you're doing your employee part, this whole thing's going to feel and you are gonna be in big trouble.

The thing that's gonna be really important is it's the mindset shift. It's the change shift, but also how do you teach your people? To amplify themselves. So the amplification of the employee is critical if you do not tell them and are honest and teach them that, Hey Gareth, did that in the role that you do today, I've got seven different agents that are already prebuilt in copilot studio right now that can help you do that way faster.

So you can focus on high value work or at least get home for dinner this week. That's a different. Message to people. Yeah, because most of the problem I see in, and by the way, we are real life customers. We are in deep, full transformations doing this and have been doing this for quite some time.

So a lot of what I'm telling you is live from the trenches, right? You could go and have the best agent strategy and if no one adopts it. Then it didn't work. Did it even happen? And then you gotta report back up to the AI leaders to say, Nope, no one adopted. And it looks the project was a failure.

It wasn't. Because if you look at the 20% of folks that did adopt it, they had off the charts, productivity gains, quality went up in their tickets. We see this massive advancement of how they're able to take on more and the capacity, shoots up. But then the 80% who, for whatever reason, because we didn't do the things that we should do.

Didn't adopt and didn't do the thing that we wanted to, or we didn't set expectations clearly enough, then it net looks a failure because 20% of nothing is invaluable. Right. So this is what I think. I think it's a, I think it's an honesty and openness. I do in favor of.

Trying to sit in the middle of it without being too, I'm trying to have empathy for it right now. I think most folks don't know where the AI's coming in right now. That's part of the problem. So right now everyone's in phase one, so even the people that build AI are in phase one themselves, where they're thinking about, where is the best place to bring this thing?

And we are working with the most advanced customers in the world right now and we're in that. Implement part. We're not doing the full water through the pipes of looking at where the impact will be. But I think because this is so new, the customers need a trusted partner who have literally done this before because so many people, if you look on LinkedIn now, are agent experts.

They're now thought leaders in ai and they have, it's crazy. It's so there's a lot of confusion for folks. Yeah. But I think getting the strategy right, where it's. Knowing where you're gonna go, communicating that. Then creating new benchmarks for the expectations of the team. Doing the change management to enable, and then telling your people, this is how you can amplify yourself.

So then amplifying them so they are buying into it for what's in it for them. People are not going to adopt the technology unless there's a, what's in it for them If you, if they think that you're going to take them out of a job, which most people think of right now. Most people, employees are probably afraid of their job.

The economy's not great. So you, there's gonna be a, whoa, I'm not gonna do this in case they think that I am, I'm actually not. I can, I'll just stay back for a while because I don't want them to know that an agent can do a lot of what I'm doing 'cause I've got a mortgage to pay. So you can see the psychology right in the decision.

So that's what I am seeing in market right now, which is interesting.

Gareth Flynn: The, so it is early and I think what's happened in businesses, your C - suites have gone, Hey, this is really cool stuff. We've gotta bake it into customer facing products and services. So what we've seen in this phase one adoption of AI and agents, the investment's been in products and services that are externally focused.

Siobhan Savage: Yep.

Gareth Flynn: What do I, what we're starting however, to see is, the CFO going all that's all great and we're getting better revenue and stickier. Customers, but whoa, what about this massive opex thing in my p and l that I can optimize and get significant benefit from? So I do think we've been tinkering with jobs and workforce and the, we have got ameba AI at the moment.

That's not overly mature. It is not going to be, from what I can read and research, it is not going to belong until we have pretty good autonomous agents that can do. Multiple workflows that a human would or multiple humans would've done, that's not too far away. Mm - hmm. So I think this next 18 months will be the focus will go from products and services adoption to really thinking about workforce productivity, workforce optimization.

I, and that's where my points around honesty. It's a, it is a really cool thing. We're all playing with it at the moment in, created some really great stuff, but we are not, I don't think the dots have fully joined in the workforce, certainly not here in Australia about the impact this is going to have and quite significant impact.

And that, with that though, will become lots of new opportunities, lots of new things that people can be doing and I actually think people, if we're honest with them. Can start preparing for that and start mobilizing themselves for that because the economy's crap and everyone's got a mortgage, et cetera.

There will be a natural incentive to embrace and adopt because it's a survival of the fittest. Yep. And young workforce. Oh man. Some of the stuff I've seen under eighteens do with ai. There was a case went around internally at work last week. A 12 or 13 - year - old in Sydney wanted to create a tutor.

She's very academically minded. She wants to do well. Her parents couldn't afford private tuition. She recognized that some of her friends had private tuition, so she downloaded the New South Wales curriculum for her year. She used, I dunno, which agent, but she, let's say it was chat, GPT. She didn't, she couldn't think of the prompt, so she used generative to ask for a prompt and how do I build a tutor for, to teach me and help me and guide me through this year?

It did. She built it and the kicker was also, she wanted the agent to not only help her and teach her, but to demonstrate why the work she was doing, whether it was maths or whatever it was. Connected to the real world and work. She wanted to actually understand, well, why am I doing this algebra?

What's the point? And but she wanted that next level that you never get at school. Yeah. This is a 12, 13 - year - old girl who will be in work. I wanna hire her, who will be in the workforce in five years time.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah. Yeah. So, that's incredible.

Gareth Flynn: Incredible. Our existing workforce need to know this is coming and this again, this transparency and honesty.

If you're a business leader and you're recruiting or you're thinking about your workforce and retention of who, where you're putting your dollars, we have to upskill at scale frequently, quickly. Yeah. Our existing workforce, there is no choice but to adopt. And I think only by being honest and truthful will we get the action and momentum needed.

'cause otherwise we're gonna have a real societal problem in. 5, 6, 7, 8 years time. Yeah. And that I think is a, that is responsibility, that is bold and is a duty of care I think we've gotta bring to the market.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah. I love it. This being incredible, Gareth, the advice. Just the honesty, the transparency, the way you're thinking through, because everybody's, this is new and I think there's a thing that everyone needs to realize.

You're, guys, we're all learning. And it's part of our collective duty is to share how our thinking has evolved, but also why, because it helps bring everyone else on the journey. And I think, Garth, this has been such incredible insights for folks.. Gareth is available on LinkedIn.

We're gonna share this, his profile and some of his research along with the podcast. He's really good on social as well, so follow him and DM him if you wanna, get any direct conversation. 'cause I know he is doing a lot with a lot of our customers right now. So he is got, he's got a really, great perspective.

Gareth. Thank you. It's been a pr privilege and a pleasure to be on this journey together with you. And I'm excited to see what the next, version of TQ looks when I start to look around. It's gonna be exciting

Gareth Flynn: everywhere. I need to eat my own dog.

Siobhan Savage: I need to

Gareth Flynn: eat my own dog food on that one.

Shavon. It's, yeah, there needs, well, a, there's a,

Siobhan Savage: I'm, my team call me a cyborg sometimes, so, there's a balance.

Dr. Garrett, thank you for joining us. Hey, care everyone,

Gareth Flynn: pleasure to be here. Thanks for listening everyone.