Kason Morris, Global Director at Merck

Siobhan Savage: Hello. Hello. How are you?

Kason Morris: Good. How's it going?

Siobhan Savage: I'm good. How was, how last time I spoke to you and all of your family were jetting off around Christmas time to my neck of the woods. How was the trip?

Kason Morris: It was a great trip. We had the opportunity to spend a month out in Asia. Just enjoying the sights and sounds of a few different countries.

So really great experience for the whole family. Yeah. Just making them world citizens, trying food, culture, all the things.

Siobhan Savage: Did you get to Australia?

Kason Morris: No. Didn't quite make it there. No, but that's gonna be, that's

Siobhan Savage: lemme know next hook you up. That'll

Kason Morris: be on one of the next go rounds for sure.

Siobhan Savage: I love it. I love it. Welcome everyone. So welcome everyone to Skills Connect. This is where we dive into conversations with leaders who are shaping the future of work. At Reejig, we're all about creating a bold and responsible workforce strategy. I'm Sivan Savage. I'm the CEO of Reejig, and today I'm joined by Kason Morris.

Kason is the global director at Merck. He is responsible for pioneering and is a force in talent development, workforce innovation, and we're really excited to have him here. He comes with over two decades of leadership experience and has been at the forefront of designing skills, par, tech driven strategies that prepare individuals, and also organizations for the future.

And we're so grateful to have case in here. I'm a personal fan of a lot of your thought leadership when it comes to, I've got your book. I've been part of that whole. Stalking you for the last two years. So I'm super grateful to have you here, KA, and welcome.

Kason Morris: Well, I'm so glad to be here and share these ideas on such an important platform at such an important time, in work.

So happy to have this conversation and next time I see you, I'll be sure to sign your book.

Siobhan Savage: I love it. I love it. I love it. So before we get stuck into all the questions and the five hot takes that I wanna get from you, tell us a little bit about where you've come from in terms of your lived experience and the perspectives that you've gained.

I think that's really, you've got such a beautiful background and story. We'd love for you to share that. 'cause I think that sets really a really good context for how you've evolved your thinking over the years as well.

Kason Morris: No, I appreciate that. Well, for all that don't know me or know about my background, I've been in a corporate talent and org development space for almost two decades.

but that journey has been a very interesting one. I've had the pleasure of navigating 10 strategic pivots across. Six different industries. And with that, with those pivots, it was always this idea of how do I help people do more? And having that logic and having that as part of my own mission and value statement, it allowed me to start to look at the different opportunities that were in the market.

And then what kinds of capabilities. What did I need to navigate those opportunities? So that's taken me into industries, management, consulting, professional services, financial industries, life sciences industries, technology and SaaS. And it's really given me this, pretty broad view on workforce trends, people development trends.

And just thinking about, now that we're stepping into this intelligence, age, and intelligence era of work, it's how do people go from that survive mode to that thrive mode? And my own journey has been a tried and true, experience of that. And I've really been evangelized to help not only myself, but to help others.

Siobhan Savage: I love it. One of the moments when we connected as well, that I was struggling with, I've got two little girls, I'd relocated, building a company, you're working minimum 12 plus hours a day. And one of the pieces of advice that you give me was all about integrating life and work together in a way that you're essentially designing your life.

And, as, 'cause you've come to our hq, it is completely designed around my little people being able to be part of me being a CEO. So having our offices all within the same facility as where the girls will be and the podcast studio. And we've got everything all in one place. And when you talked to me about this life work revolution, this is where I got really excited.

I was, there's actually. A way of thinking about, maybe I can figure this out. Tell me a little bit about how you coined that phrase, what was the meaning behind that? How did it come about? And then how do you think about that in the context of my example of designing for me, the individual, but then how do you think about that when it comes to organizations?

Kason Morris: That's a great question. I think for me, the idea of life work revolution, it's a concept that I'll break down. Initially it started with the idea of work - life balance. You hear it a lot, you see it in a lot of places. Everybody talks about worklife, balance, work - life balance.

And what I come had come to realize was that it's actually a false dichotomy because. Work and life will never truly be equal. And even when you think about the terms really matter, when you think about it's called work life. And then you're trying to balance it. So, in my head and following my own practices and principles over time I realized, hey, we need to reframe that logic and think about what are we doing in our lives and how then does that inform.

how we approach work. So work is a utility. Of life. And I talk about this in my book instead of the idea of balance. 'cause as I said, it's a false dichotomy because, we'll burn ourselves out trying to achieve equality in both things. Instead of saying balance. I made a shift to the logic of synergy.

And understanding, you have ebbs and flows. So your example is a great example of creating synergy because you have demands that are demands of you being a CEO and you recognize that, you prioritize life, your family, your children, and your presence as a mother. So you essentially had made work - based decisions in the context of your life.

Bringing everything together in the construct of your HQ and all the things that you have to do, and what that's doing is that's allowing you more proximity. I. To be present while you're still handling the demands of your growing practice, your growing business. And I think it's a beautiful thing.

And so going back to the original term of life work revolution, when you think of the context of revolution, right? Revolutions happen all the time. They've happened. Throughout history, you've had the renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and now we're actually living through one right now.

When you think about, what's happening with emerging technologies and our ways of working in our ways of living, it's being called that an intelligence era of work and life. So. The whole premise of that concept for me as a tagline for my book, is the idea that we're in the middle of a revolution.

It's, it should be driven by where you are in your life, and then how do you start to use your work as a tool. To make sure you are empowered in your life, and then how do you do that in relation to, your internal narratives, but then also how do you show up differently knowing the ways of working today in the external environment, and then how do you invest into your legacy?

So that's the whole premise of that concept, and how I engineered the title for the book and just my brand and the way I approach work. As a whole, and when you think about that in the work context, it means a lot for businesses and organizations now, because as we start to deconstruct.

Work and jobs and what actual productivity means. Now it's that understanding that you can't look at people at as just assets in an organization. Mm - hmm. You can't just look at them as resources. That's why the term human resources has gone away. When you think about, most organizations, they now think of it as people operations.

So it's, how are you investing in your people? So that you're driving business outcomes and that context for me in relation to where I push myself professionally as an executive really embodies the tenets of what I just talked about in the life work revolution. It's fundamentally shifting how work works so that people can thrive in this paradigm that I'm talking about, where they're prioritizing life and using work, as a component of it.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, personally, I. It was illuminating for me to think, after reading through it and we've put the, I've put the link to the book into the channel, because for me it was a different perspective. Everyone tells me I'm gonna burn out, because I am doing what I'm doing.

Everyone's, oh, she's gonna burn out. Oh, you're a bad mother. Oh, all of these things, right? And I had this whole. There's going to be a way that I can find some level, and I love the way you talked about synergy, because for me it was really illuminating around me designing for my own life.

and so far so good. So thank you. And that's on a personal level. I think about it at a work level, right? So, when you think about. The new world of work, right? We're talking that we have disruptions happening, that we have never happened before. I truly believe this is a once in a generation change to work, and we're just warming up to this.

When you think about life work revolution, where does ai, is it an enabler to this or is it an attractor? What's your take on that?

Kason Morris: It's a really interesting and powerful question and I would say it's a plus and I'll expand on this. I think one of the things that is a detractor and a challenge at scale is the pace of change.

'cause to what I've talked about in the various revolutions that have happened, we all go through. Revolutions historically, society and people go through the same patterns. They're disrupted, they revolt and then they, essentially normalize. The challenge now is that the pace of AI innovation and these other factors around emerging technologies are moving faster than we in our human capacity can actually naturally handle.

When you look at previous revolutions, they've ha they happened over centuries. And we're dealing with innovation now over a couple of years, decade. Look at the difference in the last decade. And that's only gonna continue to compress. So in that way, it's definitely a disruptor and it can be a detractor because people are trying to figure out how to handle this new normality.

On the flip side of it,. AI and emerging technology can definitely be an enabler, in the sense that now it isn't about the idea that AI will replace you. It's about the people that know how to work with AI and emerging technologies to take away lower order task where they have more capacity to do higher order more human centered activities.

Those are the people that will thrive in this next normal. So it's a really a reframing of work productivity and how you should be partnering with tools AI to help you be more productive, more effective, more impactful, and in how to take those outputs and then make those.

Human - centered decisions because there are things that AI can't do. That decision making, the cog cognition, different things along those lines. And that's a way for people to start to differentiate themselves as they think about what is their growth and their navigation and satisfaction look, as employees in the workplace.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, and I think a lot of what I see. Talking to folks, whether it's companies or whether it's individuals, there's this fear about ai. And I have went head first into, getting into the trenches on this one to figure out, is it, what's my, I really wanted a point of view on, is this actually a load of hype or is this actually real?

And I broke it down into two. Buckets for me as an individual, I'm half cyborg at this stage. In terms of, the amount of aggressive use of AI in my life as a person is incredible. But then when I look at it from a company's perspective, there is absolutely crazy amount of pressure in market right now for operational efficiency.

innovation. There is this real unspoken boardroom. Senses that's happening through pretty much major businesses around the world where AI is an unlock to this solving for this productivity efficiency gap. And that's kinda one part of the puzzle. And then on the other side there is the employees being absolutely terrified.

With the return to work conversation with the economy, the cycle's getting shorter and shorter, and now the AI conversation, there is this genuine fear with, folks who I, on these conversations in meetings that I'm in, a lot of employees asking, truly afraid of, what does this mean for me?

And a lot of where I talk about is, this is an amplifier for you. Absolutely. Companies will look at this in a way where they will be looking at productivity, but the whole premise for most of these companies, it's not all of them, but there is a exception to every rule. Most companies are looking for bold reinvention and absolutely to increase productivity, but it's about reallocation of energy and reallocation of budgets.

It's not about taking people out and cutting. It's actually about how do we free folks up to do, the most valued parts of their work. And to your point at the beginning, there is some things that should be done by humans, whether or not an AI can do it or not. There are selectively tasks that we should make sure are preserved.

For, human interaction, whether it's human governance or individuals doing it, because how are we gonna build the future talent? How are we gonna make sure that we are training? You remember when during covid graduates and interns working from home with no guidance and no skillability, they really struggled.

So imagine a world where we take all of the learning processes out of all of people going through the ranks of experience how much folks will struggle. So I really do think. That there is that amplification of the AI and really doing that. One of the things I was super keen to understand from you, so when you think about building, internal marketplaces, looking at, internal mobility as a strategy, yeah.

This can be a massive unlock. For folks who are worried about, job fears, because, organizations being really open and transparent about what opportunity and creating that culture of opportunity, right? Yeah. So there's this big thing of why you should do it. What do you think are some of the biggest buyers for organizations when it comes to thinking about talent, marketplaces, internal mobility, creating cultures of skills, skill par?

what do you think is standing in the way of that?

Kason Morris: I think to your point, I'll deconstruct what you said a little bit. Part of it is around the mindset and the value that skills is gonna be a building block and a common denominator. The other element of it is this idea that.

As organizations, we have a lot of data and a lot of information. We don't have a lot of intelligence that supports. Understanding, what talent we have and then what talent we need, and then what to do about gap closure. For that talent. So when building a marketplace, it's important to have not only an employee value proposition of where we're creating access to opportunity.

We're democratizing access. We're creating transparency in the understanding of your data so that you can now make informed decisions around how you wanna develop. For what you're doing now and then how you may want to develop for what you want to do next. The other side of it is really getting the business understanding, the idea that.

To your earlier point, intelligence is a huge unlock and we have to start to think about how are we incentivizing people to provide that information so that we can then start to make better investment decisions. So it's always being led by the business. Any, anytime you're doing anything in relation to a marketplace, it's, what's the ROI for the business?

I'd say one of the top level ones is insight now. Mm - hmm. What do you mean by insight? That can mean different things for different businesses depending on where they are. 'cause every everyone's journey is a little bit different. So some of that could be, Hey, I want to know talent with critical skills that might go into a new functional area.

Marketplaces can be a lever to help you best understand that. You may want to know what talent has latent. Capacity, meaning that they have skills that you wouldn't know about because they're just enrolled today. But as you encourage people to start to own their data and contribute their information and become more skills informed, they will volunteer more information around their capabilities.

And there's a lot of research that supports the idea that, employees for the future, all they want, they care about growth. More than they care about pay in that context. So when you think about a company having a strong employer brand for the future, that transparency in saying, we're going to right skill you, upskill you and re - skill you, for the future, no matter what path you want at our organization.

It, I think it's an invaluable, PO position to have and the mindset I take. When it comes to the logic of, having a talent marketplace, and I'm just using that as the pointed example, it's the idea that an employee can get hired once, but because they have an environment that supports them and supports their growth and supports their upskilling, they can reinvent themselves over and over again through a variety of experiences and the marketplace should be a platform that facilitates that.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, a lot of what we've talked about over the period of getting to know each other, you've seen me really focused on work and in this new era of work, how knowing it just beyond skills is not enough. And, for me, this big light bulb moment we had a couple of years ago was people have skills absolutely, but actually work in jobs that they have tasks and you require skills to complete it.

And that for us was a next level down around. Really transforming. And why do you think now that this is cutting through so fast in terms of what we're doing around the ta? What, because everyone was very skills based and I'm very skills based too. Right? But there is an element that I think we've glossed over a little bit, or maybe it wasn't possible.

The work component is now probably core to that conversation. Why do you think that's happening? Kason?

Kason Morris: I think because of the volatility in the market. So when you think about, to the point around the rapid pace of change and the need for innovation in relation to different functional domains and industries that had a previously a lot of security and what they did, how they did it, pretty traditional tried and true.

Now that's all, that paradigm's shifting. So I think. People are more curious about this equation that you've eloquently articulated and I actually fully agree with and support because at the end of the day, you can't do skills for skills' sake and skills not connected to task or, key outcomes are just words.

So you have to then ask yourself, it's what are the cri, what's the critical work? For where we are today and where we're going to go next, what are the critical tasks that support the execution of that work? And then what are the skills that support that, the execution of those tasks.

And then where are the people that may be ready now or might be ready soon so I can then make different kinds of investment decisions in them to either, upskill them, borrow them, potentially go out into the market to source them, et cetera. So I think that's the, to me. Is the biggest why and in and why not?

I think it's a different muscle for organizations to start to think about, the actual work and ta in the form of task. I think pr prior to this era, we made a lot of assumptions that if we found the right talent. They'll figure it out. Mm - hmm. And that most organizations didn't have the strength to really articulate what the work is in the form of task.

And now that we have these enabling technologies to help us do that, I think it's gonna be super impactful.

Siobhan Savage: I think what you said as well hit the nail on the head when you said, the whole premise of this shift has been the pressure that companies are under. Because when we first started our company.

With Ji, the market was caring about retaining their top people. Folks were leaving, people were getting 25% pay rises. There was this crazy moment in time where things just went a bit crazy and the evolution or revolution of that moment was actually about trying to get folks to stay.

And there was that tagline of democratizing career. And that was being played out in market and the skills - based movement really took a hold in that moment because it felt it was the answer to the retention issue, which was front of mind for the CEO and what we have seen, and just for context as well, my background is in workforce optimization.

So I started my career really focused on moving work to workers. And I know that sounds really simple, but my job was to make sure that in a really large organization that I was. Freely moving work around and that folks were busy and productive and we were professional services firms, so utilization and rates and billability was really important 'cause that's how we made money.

So my brain was programmed for that world and I thought I always, we built our product for actually the mobility use case for folks driving that. And then we built out the employee side of it. And what we found was. In the market that was the thing that people were absolutely jumping up and down for.

But very quickly we started to notice that in the marketplace, if you don't understand your work. You don't do a super great job of making recommendations to workers and your employees in your marketplace because the algorithms are not magicians no matter what. We've all sold you. AI is not a magician.

It absolutely requires context about what is the work that's being done, and then it looks at, does this worker. Or employee or external candidate, whatever way you wanna describe it, do they have, the skills and ability and potential to complete this work. And that was our big, super realization or early on.

And then what you just said was, then the next wave that we seen was, oh, whoa, hand break on. The world has now changed and the CEO cares about completely different things. And suddenly it shifted very much so over to why is everyone not busy? Productivity, efficiency and career pathing became this vitamin or this really fluffy HR thing.

we found that became even in some customers, we see now that. When I'm talking about, very much so, by the way, in the us and I think it's because the US was right at the front. It led the movement. It was very vocal about, skills - based. Mm - hmm. We even see customers now, don't whatever you do, don't talk about skills, don't talk.

Right. Don't bring it up. And I think it was because some way it got wrapped into this nice to have buckets, which is absolutely not what it's about. This is where for me, I'm trying to unbundle it from being seen as career pathing is a nice thing to do, and instead being skills is actually critical for you to boldly reinvent your workforce.

It is critical for you as an organization to make so sure that you're responsible in making sure that you don't leave anyone behind. And how you do that is through the marketplace you've deployed. And that's where we think the narrative should be really in market because we gotta move away from the floppiness, or no one's gonna get to do these projects.

And that's what we're seeing right now is that a lot of that is happening in the market.. And you've been leading in this, in the forefront of really looking about removing the barriers to get to a place where you're not just doing it for nice to have, you're doing it in terms of your CEO wants your business to be productive and efficient, so you're not just looking at it in that lens.

And I think that's a really important lesson for folks who are on the call. When you are thinking about communicating this to the business, how do you talk about the marketplace that resonates with them? What are the things that you talk about when you're doing the change program and really getting the business understanding, because I think that's gonna be really important information.

Kason Morris: Yeah. And I think the change element is so underserved, and there's a lot of research that support supports this idea. You can't do change around this as an afterthought. It has to be a deep part of it. And you gotta also do a bit of a culture check and understand where your organization is in relation to its norms and if they're willing to buy into the utility of this, of work.

so to your point around how to sell it and position the change, I think this boils down to. To anyone responsible for this work. Having some business acumen and really understanding the why, what are you solving for? And so some of this work as well, p again, research and practice supports this, is that it's very hard to do it all at once, to do an enterprise scaling of this, of approach, unless you're in an environment.

That is lean enough or has the culture already embedded into it and it's just a value add to that culture. So I would say if you have a strong business case that is solving an issue that has some tangible and measurable ROI, you either have a. A capability gap where you're trying to understand a population, you have a will or an engagement gap where you feel, Hey, I'm not getting as much out of an employee and I want to know a little bit more about them.

or you have a talent shortage gap where mm - hmm. You're trying to say, Hey, I know I. These are roles I have to fill and I'm not quite sure how I'm gonna fill them, whether it's through external hiring or potentially creating some efficiency gains by moving some talent and partnering with the right functions to do that.

So I think across the board, from a business value prop, one of those three things. Will likely register to a leader in some function. And what I tend to do is I tend to look for what I call a hero case. And by hero case, it's someone that has. A burning need. In one of those three value props, they have a little bit of, agency in their decision making.

So you have the right leaders bought in and it's about telling a story. It isn't about the marketplace in of itself. It's about asking them a question, Hey, would you feel better about your business if you had a better understanding of the capabilities of your talent today? Mm - hmm. And then allow them to respond to that and then.

Navigate the conversation around, well, what has to be true in order for us to get there and then propose your solution as a part of getting to that truth. And then the last point I'll make is that even with this work from a change perspective, is that it takes a village.

So again, if you have the business hook into the y, and then it's about how do you have the support. Around making sure you're bringing in, the right partners, the right collaborators, the right data. So if you happen to work in an organization where you have a people analytics function, where you have a global talent acquisition function, a global learning function, an org readiness or change function, understand those partners in your ecosystem.

Sometimes people wear many hats, but those are the kinds of partners that. You have to get bought in to the value of doing skills work before you even really go to the business with a strong case. And so once you audit and assess your partner alignment, you can then tell that story that I mentioned earlier, about creating a, either an efficiency gain, helping with a talent shortage, a capability gap, or an engagement gap.

and then you're, you have a little bit more runway. An agency to execute the work.

Siobhan Savage: I think the thing that's really interesting, and I also agree with you, I'm a vendor. I've built a marketplace, right? So for me to say, this is a little bit funny, but, technology is not, it's just part of the puzzle.

It's not the thing we're just what's serving the data and helping with the recommendation engine. Most of this is actually around mindset, behavioral change, and real transformation. And I think that's where we see the best results is when it's actually there's a wrapper around this where it's not just, we're bringing in this tech because, we're excited about the technology.

It's actually all the parts before it. And that's where the magic really starts to happen. And we see as well really good when you see someone from the business, it's not just HR sponsorship, it's actually someone from the business as your sponsor. Where they have a burning cri, we call it a critical event.

There's something that has happened that's caused this critical event for this person. And it might be because they're super passionate 'cause they've lost a whole pile of their top performers and that they just didn't realize that they were, not getting access to opportunity. Or it could be because they keep winning all these projects and need to get quick access to talent.

Or it could be that the business is unstable for them and they need to, they wanna keep their people safe, but they wanna be able to bench them and put them over other parts of the business when they don't, need them and bring them back So. These are all real reasons right now why people would need to do this in today's market, which aren't directly connected to that HR fluffy moment that we were talking about.

Kason Morris: No, a hundred percent. Or even going into a new emerging market. And you want to be able to set yourself up and understand, do you have the talent today to deploy into that market? Yeah. So it helps in, it helps inform that strategy as well.

Siobhan Savage: One of the things that I am genuinely, I believe in the next.

We are gonna see something we've never seen before. So. If you imagine we're all hurdling now towards automation and AI and agents. It's happened, train has left, this is already happening. And what I believe is gonna happen is you're gonna have this messy part right now where people are playing and testing and, they're, everybody go and build your own AI and get used to this thing.

And it's just this the subtle pre part before we really start getting into autonomous agents. And then we're gonna move and shift into agents and that's where really re - engineering and redesigning of work will really start to kick in. And what we're gonna see is this part where I can feel, and I don't know how to describe this, but I can feel there's this undercurrent of tension within the employee populations that in all companies right now, you can see it on social media, you can see it everywhere, that there is just this.

Energy around leadership and the decisions that leaders are making and how people are being held to account for these in public and certain things happening with, CEOs of healthcare companies, et cetera. There is this undercurrent in the market that is just sitting below the surface.

And what I'm worried about is we are going to move into this full AI mode where it's gonna become, everyone's driving towards this, and I hope. The moment of the opportunity marketplace and talent marketplace really comes into play again there, because these leaders are gonna be in a situation where their employees are gonna start, rumbling from the bottom and you'll feel that pressure internally.

And suddenly, what it's when something shows up hard enough to A CEO, they quickly pivot and go, I need to solve this problem. And their employees will start complaining and they'll start losing people. And their press and public narrative will start to shift in their direction. And I really think that in about 18 months, you're gonna have this reemergence of this surge, whatever we call it.

Talent marketplace, it doesn't matter, but there will be something, and we call it bold and responsible, this bold reinvention of work right now, but there's this responsible element. I feel the responsible element isn't sitting at the surface right now. It's being not really talked about, but very soon we're gonna feel this.

Real hand break moment again where we've went too far and the marketplace concept. So all of what you're saying, Cain, is so important because I want folks on the call to listen and still remember that. Sure. Right now there's prioritization that's happened in businesses. Connected to efficiency, but we want to prepare our workforces for this new where we're gonna go, which will be really around.

when we go into this AI moment, we need to make sure that we give everyone access to meaningful work and we pivot them. And this is where the marketplace and the work that everyone's doing now is gonna be more valuable than it's. Ever been before because we're gonna have a skills crisis that we've never experienced as a society before.

And I think that is gonna be really important, the work that you are pursuing, the work that you're sharing in market, because we're getting close to that point. And I know that sounds I'm being really dramatic by the way, but I just can feel this feeling of. Undercurrent where I do believe that this is gonna be critical very soon.

the timing, exactly. Not sure, but I think we're about 18 months away from real progress in AI in terms of real reinvention of the workforce, which will lead to people getting impacted. And when people get impacted, you are not just letting them go, you're impacting their family. You're impacting, there's the ripple effect into society about making these types of changes.

Right. Do you think I'm. Am I, do you think I'm too out there on that? What do you think? I,

Kason Morris: I think it's a genuine concern and position and what I would evangelize on the other side of it is for every individual and employee, don't wait for that to happen. You have to start taking agency in your own growth and development and start to, your call out is.

People should be more intelligent about the trends that are happening in their space, in their field and their domain. Because the more you can influence that and be an advocate for it and understand what those trends mean and how AI is impacting you, then that helps secure you as an indispensable asset in that context.

Then you also have the ability to start to. Learn those either transferable skills or to double down on those more durable skills that will help sustain you and d different differentiate you versus the perishable skills that will go away. Because guess what, agentic AI can do those things and that goes back to my point earlier about lower order tasks versus higher order.

Capacity and capability. So I would encourage any chief learning officers, chief people officers who are driving programs, to start to think about, their upskilling and right skilling solutions in that context and to the point that you made. Also when I think about, a world where all that is possible, and you have these agents as partners with you in the ecosystem.

It is also gonna create other kinds of unlocks, mm - hmm. For how people work, how they access information, how they may, right skill or upskill themselves or maybe access something at a point of need, to go faster. And this supports the idea of, what Josh Bersin has been talking about, the super worker logic and construct.

it doesn't, it doesn't just end there. I think there's a different pivot where, yes, the super worker matters because it's about how do you create efficiencies as an employee. But eventually that's gonna plateau. And then it's to the idea of when I think about systems, and I think about as an employee and then also as a business, how are you looking at.

Your systems as a way to unlock and keep your talent engaged, and also as a way to unlock and better understand how to position your business for success and have that dexterity that you'll need. 'cause that, I think that's what every organization is looking for now these days, is dexterity.

The ability to transform and reinvent on a dime with minimal loss and. AI is gonna help support that.

Siobhan Savage: And you've talked a lot about empower marginalized professionals through skill par design. How do we make sure AI doesn't reinforce existing inequalities in work allocation and career development?

how do we design that into the system to make sure there's fairness in those decisions?

Kason Morris: That's definitely will be, it'll. Take a lot of rigor and a lot of governance. You made the point earlier is that there's a lot you can do with ai, but you also have to have a social responsibility to decide mm - hmm.

What you will and won't do. And that's gonna be, an organization by organization decision. I also believe that it comes down to. Your architecture and principles and how you cross - functionally, agree with either your analytics teams, whoever essentially is owning the solutions.

It could be your IT organization. It varies to as to where these things live. But the point is that it's a cross and even legal, there's a cross - functional partnership, for each organization culture as to. Where do we draw our lines and why? And then how are we transparent about that?

I think that's gonna be the most critical thing. And I haven't seen a lot of that in the market of organizations being. Transparent and saying, Hey, we're figuring this out too, and we're figuring this out with you in consideration of you. And we may not get it right the first time, but we're gonna, we're alongside you.

versus the idea of things of employees and talent, feeling things are happening to them. And I think having that culture mindset, for any leaders or CHROs or CEOs. I think that's gonna really matter as you navigate the next rounds of innovation in the market.

Siobhan Savage: I think the scary thing about AI is the black box, right? And how do what decisions are being made and why? So one of the things I think folks can do to protect themselves in terms of when you're buying a company, AI ourselves, any of our peers in market, is you need to make sure that they've had independent audits.

Algorithms. Yeah, so there's new laws in New York. There's new laws coming into eu. We, before we even designed our actual products, would've been five years ago, we actually. Got our AI independently audited first before we put it into full deployment because we wanted to make sure, and people thought we were nuts.

They were, why would you do this? And we believe that in order for me to sleep at night, for us to do the right thing, for us to be, really custodians of really good and fair decision making on behalf of our customers, we needed to make sure that we were not just selling you something.

Because at the end of the day, we can tell you whatever you wanna hear, right? But at the end, and you get your taxes audited. There needs to be some level of governance as you described. And one of the things that, for anyone listening, make your vendors show the independent audit. And if they have not done an independent audit, do not use them because they're, you will be liable in these laws if you make decisions.

And there was cases that we seen Workday and others where they were being taken to court because someone had, been rejected for an opportunity and then said that it was based on. Personal characteristics, and you've gotta be able to prove that you did not do that. And if you can't prove that you're in trouble as an organization.

so I think one of the things to be very careful around is that, but that's just one thing that you can put the vendors to do. But also organizations they know also need to make sure that they're auditing the vendor and that their processes, which becomes even more complex. Right. But that's hopefully one thing to get us in the right direction, that your partner, who you're partnering with are gonna be there with you to make sure that you are doing your best to make decisions based on skills and potential and not someone's personal characteristics.

that's really where we can help us as technology partners, all of us that are in this realm. But to your point, there is so many other things that. Technology is one part of it. It's how do you bake it into the design of your organization, the fabric of who you are and how you do succession planning, in terms of who gets let go when you're making cuts.

how do you look at it in terms of, what is the compass for your company? For good and fair decision making. And that's the one thing that I spent quite a lot of time on in early building Reejig was, how do we help with that? And it's not an easy thing to solve. And especially now in the markets as things start to change politically and there's just a lot of shift around us, it's becoming very, it's a very interesting conversation to have and how does someone do it in a way where.

They're not making a political statement, they're actually doing it because they wanna do the right thing and they wanna make sure that everyone has access to meaningful work. So I think it becomes one thing you can do that's in your control is to choose a vendor who is actually going to enable that.

That's one step. In a world where we're not seeming to have a lot of decision making control right now, how can we help? Switching gears a little bit. Sorry, go ahead.

Kason Morris: No, I'm, no, I'm saying what you said is just su such a great point. And I would say anyone who's in a position to do this work, just make sure that you think about those factors in your mission and vision, making sure that it's responsible and defensible.

I do that with every function. I stand up in that Yeah. In that way. And try to navigate your organization to find the right, stakeholders that can support that point of view.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, and, just to be a bit blunt, if someone in your, if your company is not pairing or doesn't wanna get into the conversation about, making sure everyone has access to meaningful work, tell 'em the implications of what happens if you get it wrong and how you'll end up in court.

That's a good driver. When it comes to privacy and security, and if you operate in New York, if you operate in anywhere in Europe, if you operate in Australia, these are laws, these are not actual, visions or belief systems. These are actually the law and you will be liable.

So I think that becomes a other motivator. Unfortunately, you may need to pull that one, but if you do, it's there. And if you need any help, DM me and I can send you some information. From a, CLO, you work, alongside chief learning officers, HR leaders, executives, you are the voice in their ear right now around designing the workforce.

What do you reckon that they need to be told to stop doing because there is so much nonsense. In my opinion, that has been dragged from, I don't even know where, and we're all saying the same things, but when you are, beside them, co - piloting them, advising, telling them from a design perspective and telling them, how to do this.

What are the things that they need to stop doing? Because I think there are probably really important lessons that we all need to learn from you.

Kason Morris: Yeah. No. I can appreciate that question.. The way I think about that, the function overall is that we, you have to move from the position of feeling you're in a cost center to being a true value producer.

That's the tension because depending on the relationship that, CLOs and l and d has, either within HR or with the business, it's, Hey, you're an order taker. You have compliance training, you have certain things. That have a lot of budget and have a lot of administrative weight, and take a lot of work.

But are these truly the value add kinds of activities? So it's, how do you start to re - engineer your learning design function to really drive more of that consultative logic, to really, lean into the logic of how are we delivering learning and experiences and reinforcements in association with performance.

So, I even think about it e. In a previous seat, shifting away from the logic of a learning designer to someone who's a performance consultant. And then they're using learning and other interventions as tools to help drive and improve performance outcomes. So it's about this, the shoes that you step into.

and then the other piece of it is again, similar to the broader statement that I made about,. Companies having a lot of data and not a lot of intelligence. It's, to me, I feel learning data is a great place where you can mine information. So as a thought partner, when I think about this ecosystem of creating intelligence, this, when you think about skills and task and all these different things, this is, this can really help, a large scale learning organization become really prescriptive and targeted.

In its investments. So a great example of this is, sometimes you have CLOs who have huge spends for external vendors for content licenses for all the different things, millions of dollars, right? But is that content, if you look at the consumption rates of what people are consuming, how they're consuming it, why they're consuming it, is it aligned to their growth in a way that's driving outcomes A lot.

A lot of folks don't have real insight.

Kason Morris: around that. And as you start to build more intelligence around, what are the skills we have and what are the skills we need, and then what to do about those gaps, now you can make these better decisions around, here's where I'm gonna focus my dollars.

I'm gonna focus my dollars in, targeted programs. I'm gonna focus my dollars in technologies that support reinforcement, that use uses ai. In a way that further optimizes the impact of either my programs or my content. So these are the kinds of things that, when I think about ACL O, being able to come to that table and talk about how they're translating that top level business strategy and then under that talent strategy, and then under that into tangible activities.

Siobhan Savage: Hmm.

Kason Morris: Then that's where I go. And I say that our skills data foundation in conjunction with this idea of task and better understanding the work is that basis where we have that common language and it helps accelerate the capabilities and the focus of our learning orgs and performance orgs.

And I'll make this last point, because when you think about what AI is doing in the context of learning as well. People may have learning and content at point of need. They may not need a program in the traditional ways. We think about it. But that doesn't mean that l and d doesn't have a role in thinking about performance and articulating what good looks in being a consultant and providing coaching, in making sure that enabling technology.

Is gathering the right kinds of data that informs intelligence not only for the business, but also for the individual. So these are the kinds of things that I try to get folks to think about, to get into that value led lens versus, I'm a compliance cost center.

Siobhan Savage: Mm - hmm. There's a good question that's coming in the channel as well.

I wonder if you see HR moving to be a data enabler or a data disruptor in sharing work intelligence. So being confident in letting go of decisions, but enabling others at the coal face of the business to leverage the data and make informed decisions. What's your take?

Kason Morris: That's a great question.

I would say my pie in the sky would be that, this is business led and HR enabled, if I were gonna take that as a tagline, but when you're starting it, you start it normally, within the construct of hr, because there's certain data and processes that exist within hr. But part of that change management culture management logic that I talked about earlier.

That's the pull through that I believe when you're vigilant about it and you think about your strategy with that end state in mind that the business not only is, has shared accountability, but they start to own and lead it because they see the value in it and you've built the trust in that you can support them with the right processes, technology, and resources so that they can continue to.

Invest in making decisions this way with, skills, data, or other types of intelligence?

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, I think I plus won that and I would say what's gonna be the most important thing that I can see for folks in hr, people, team, whatever you wanna call it, is the being able to communicate data.

So there's gonna be so much data available now. With AI and anyone being able to spin up any form of intelligence, right? Mm - hmm. It's the, what does it help me do for decision making support IIE me, or how do I tell you my leader, what is the best next action to take? And I think that's a really new skill that folks haven't got their heads around just yet.

And I think that's gonna be one of the key things that I think we're gonna see and in that, closing. The conversation case and what other things do you think skill wise that folks within the HR and people teams need to care about themselves? Because one of the things I talk about a lot is that no one in HR ever is upskilling themselves 'cause they're too bloody busy.

we're not gonna after everybody else. So what do you think are gonna be the core things that we all need to focus on in our careers to make sure that we are future fit ourselves?

Kason Morris: It's a great question and I think we've teased out a few of them. The way I frame skills is I frame them around durability and perishability, and what by that is.

What's in your toolbox versus what's in your refrigerator, your groceries. The groceries are the tools and the tech that may be cyclical and comes in and out. Your toolbox is the hammer and the nails, the screwdriver, the things that you can come back to and you just continue to improve them.

I think as we become more data driven and data informed, your point to me is the most resonant in the idea that. People have to bone up on their data storytelling as a skill, continue to bone up on their stakeholder and relationship management because again, that shift to performance consultant, you made the point.

It's not so much about all the data and all the tech, it's about the insight and how can you manage the conversation to provide that insight so then that your leaders can make decisions quickly. And it can do that in a trusted way. And then other, I won't call them table stakes, but there's a lot of reports that support, a lot of human centered skills, emotional intelligence, adaptability, learning dexterity.

the other thing that I would call out as a unique one, and I don't think I'm coining it or anything, but it's this idea of it isn't just about AI literacy, it's about ai, human literacy. So what by that, it's about how are we, what are the skills that are required to actually leverage technology to go then make that human decision?

and I think that's a, that's an area that I'm curious about now and exploring and thinking about that and thinking about what are some of the underlying skills that would power someone, building that acumen. Because I think it'll be really helpful for them going forward, particularly in the learning function or beyond it.

Siobhan Savage: It is always incredible to talk to you. Thank you so much for sharing your time, your expertise with us. Your insights really into where we're at, but where we're going is always, it always gets me, it always gets me thinking. And really focusing on curating. This design of life and work and the revolution.

I love it. Folks, if you haven't read his book, you should, it changed my life in terms of the way I think about things. So, you can get the links in the di or in the chat. Thank you to everyone for dialing in and for also the folks that are listening on when it's streamed.

This is a great one. Thanks Kason. Thanks everyone.