The Advisors' Blog

During our webcast “The Top Compensation Consultants Speak,” Jan Koors of Pearl Meyer said, “I do think that by virtue of the fact that [AI is] going to change how all companies do their jobs, who does their jobs and their workforce needs, it’s going to impact compensation structure and human capital management over time.” That got me thinking that, at the rate AI is developing, some HR professionals and compensation committees, at least at companies that are already developing or significantly leveraging AI, should already be considering how their HCM strategies need to shift in the face of this disruption.

I have a feeling that much ink will be spilled on this topic in the near future, but I haven’t seen much written on the intersection of HCM and AI, or about AI considerations for HCM yet. So I was excited to stumble on this blog post by the executive vice president for people operations and the chief talent and organization effectiveness officer at Mastercard highlighting five ways they’re leveraging AI to improve the way their employees “work, grow and manage their careers.” Here are short excerpts from the blog on each of the five ways — check out the full blog for more.

AI as career coach. We’re using AI in Unlocked, our internal talent marketplace, to match employees to opportunities, including short-term projects, volunteering, open roles, mentors and learning pathways, recommending them based on both skills they have and skills they want to build. Today, 90% of our workforce is on the platform, with 500,000 project hours and counting.

AI as wellbeing guide. To understand what employees think and feel about the company and what matters most to them, we need to synthesize a lot of data and extract the most meaningful insights. We use AI sentiment analysis to help us understand key themes and areas of opportunity, and to deliver personalized insights to our employees on how to optimize their working habits.

AI as workflow assistant. AI is being built into the flow of work for everyday moments — nudging a manager to approve a team member’s vacation request, for example. Our automated interview-scheduling tool uses AI to coordinate and, when needed, reschedule interviews with hiring managers.

AI as copilot. AI can be a personal digital assistant, improving productivity by reducing repetitive tasks and creating capacity for innovation. We’re using AI to make meetings more productive with real-time summaries and action items directly in the context of the conversation.​ 

AI as workforce planning partner. AI can be an advisor for intelligent decision-making, helping understand demand and supply for skills in a local market. Using Unlocked, we can see skills across our employee base, learn where we have gaps and develop learning paths or hiring plans to address them.

The blog also has this word to the wise:

AI is an exciting tool, and that’s important to remember — it’s a tool that people use. […] We host ongoing discussions about the trends, technologies and safeguards we’ve put in place to ensure our employees know our AI strategy and the current use cases for AI that create value for our business. To drive general AI proficiency, we’ve set up self-paced learning opportunities with customized content depending on an employee’s level or expertise in the area. This training is coupled with our commitment to ethical AI and avoiding bias in AI through education of our data privacy and responsibility principles and AI guidelines.

– Meredith Ervine