Name: These Are the Jobs AI Will Destroy, Says HR Exec
Uploaded: 2024-10-31
Duration: 14 min 3 s
Description: Joanne Smith, executive vice president and chief people officer at Delta Air Lines, shares how Delta is integrating AI into its hiring process and why she believes keeping human interaction in the process is essential for finding the right talent.

Joanne Smith, executive vice president and chief people officer at Delta Air Lines, shares how Delta is integrating AI into its hiring process and why she believes keeping human interaction in the process is essential for finding the right talent.

These Are the Jobs AI Will Destroy, Says HR Exec

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Joanne Smith, executive vice president and chief people officer at Delta Air Lines, shares how Delta is integrating AI into its hiring process.

Because you hear a lot of people saying, hey, I was gonna take my Miami job. I know you all have probably heard about that from so many people. So how do you keep company culture strong while also saying it's ok, it's gonna help you. And, and here's how, yeah, I think for them, I mean, there are certain job categories that will probably not be necessary in five years. Um And, you know, I, I think I was, I'll just use my own daughter's um, experience. I told her she need to get a degree in something that was gonna pay for her to live in New York. Right? When my parents said the exact same thing and I went to journalism and I did not listen to that. She was a journalism major life she would love, but she was so mad at me. Um I just, I love creative writing and all that. But, you know, so she went into mis, well, you know, certain mis jobs are just not gonna be necessary and she was like, kind of beating me up the other day. So, um I should have gone into more of that journalism but I think um II, I do think there are some jobs but for the most part that what our story is, you know, and it's easy to have a mission of. No one better connects the world, that's Delta's mission. No one better connects the world and to connect the world you have to be in it. Yeah, so we're not remote, you know, we, we are face to face, we, we believe in the power of face to face interactions. And so it's kind of core to our culture is face to face and human. And therefore, I mean, that's what we just, people are a little nervous about it and some jobs probably will change and go away. But I think for the masses, I mean, 96 8% it's just gonna shift and we're gonna upscale using Gen A I Joanne. Thank you so much for being here. I very much appreciate it. Um So as someone who just took a Delta flight here this morning, I can tell you that I have seen firsthand how Delta is using A I from a customer facing side. Um and I know that you're also transition to using it or have already transitioned to using it from an employee and internal side. Can you talk to me about, you know, the best and worst use cases you've seen at Delta for using it? Well, first of all, thank you very much and it's, it's really great to be in a small group and it's, we were talking about how this is a small community and, and so many of us are connected. And so it's really fun to be in a, in a group of hr professionals. And so, I mean, they're, you know, the, the kind of the sky is endless of possible use cases. And I think the biggest challenge we have are finding the ones that we can implement. Uh, there are some big kind of secret ones that we can't talk about that are, are gonna take some time, we're getting building partners. But then there's a lot of little use cases that are just going to and you make what we do and, and with our partner service now is one of them. It's just kind of just the day to day job easier and get back to the old fashioned good work of hr and I, I, I think that is kind of what my most exciting news cases are is when we can get the tools in our hr business partners hands to do kind of stuff that they have to hunt all over for and make decisions on when there's probably someone that has done it before and has can, can benefit from that decision. And when the model learns and how much faster that can go, makes our, makes our B HRB PS more strategic. So that is one of the exciting use cases now is just how do you get all that information that lays in lies in the system? I mean, we're on a customer facing side. I mean, we've been using A I for a long time but I, one of the challenges I see is there's different, varying degrees of understanding of generative A I and the step change function and what it's capable of doing versus data science and analysts, uh analytics and uh machine learning. So that that is something. So we're using one method of, of really not so much generative A I yet but with our customer facing jobs or on the phone, you know, so all of our policies are procedures and we handle calls for KLM and Air France and Aeromexico and some policies are a little different. We whether we fly that airline, maybe it's as simple as a pet in cabin might be different restrictions on an airplane with this size under the seat versus this size, you know. So our, our agents used to have to kind of go through so many documents to find the right answer. So we've had um roughly 6000 interactions of making those answers better and faster, better service for our customers. Very cool. What do employees do? They come to you and say, hey, Joan, I wish I had this thing that would make my life easier. And can we use A I do this? Is there a top thing that they say to you with that? Well, II I think the the employee needs are always and I we live in the airline business. So um what one of the best benefits and why people are attracted to the airline bus business is travel. Um So we make the world accessible and what they'd like to do is be able to predict because as an airline employee, you go behind the revenue paying customers, but they wanna do is predict. Am I gonna get on the flight with some certainty? And some of the things that happened last minute at an airport, if uh you know, some folks move their flights up early, you know, they go stand by, they stand by for an earlier flight that moves that employee down that pecking order. So if we can be more predictive in our travel benefits for our employees, um that's a huge benefit. But again, I don't know that that is yet generative A I, I mean that is that is using, using machine learning and A I but what employees aren't asking us yet, but they will um is I've got these skills, I need those skills to get this job. And how can learning models be adapted to me and my personal learning style. That's game changing. Speaking of skilling, because I'd love to talk about that. How are you using it currently to upskill A I or upskill your employees and attract new ones to the company? So, you know, for the past two years, we have been using the time and, and we're a business that doesn't really have a lot of attrition. I mean, we're pretty stable work with modest growth every year. The pandemic kind of changed that, you know, like this. But, but typically, you know, we are, you know, modest growth, not, not a lot of turnover. Um So we use the pandemic as a time to look at all of the inventory of the skills for the 450 plus jobs that we have at Delta, I mean some jobs, pilot mechanic, flight attendant, but then there's varying degrees of mechanics and then for our uh strategic jobs, our merit positions. Um you know, there are so many different and revenue management analyst is different than a airport. Customer service analyst is different. So we've been using this time to really inventory all of the skills required for the job. Um then actually have they built a skills based to be for you to input what your skills are. So the skills first approach that we've been on for the last year is really taking off and we're now developing a talent hub. So you can see these are the skills I have. This is the skills I need. It's much more transparent. How do I get from job A to job B the future when we're able to actually use our own data and our own policies, our own culture, values and build that information internally, then the the power of, of learning, you know, how you use generative A I to adapt my style of learning and what skills I need to the content. I mean, we have hundreds of thousands of uh learning and development um on ramps every year. I mean, people are using our, our systems but they're not customizing it and to the way that A I is gonna allow us to customize it. you know, I was at, um, our most powerful women summit in California last week and we had this great conversation about A I and using it to hire a diverse workforce and who's doing it, how they're doing it? Are you looking at that at Delta? And has it helped, has it hurt? How do you, how do you look at bias and, and A I? Yeah, I mean, that is one that I think we're all struggling. So I know that there's some experts here at the table and I'm probably way far down the, the, you know, I'm not that expert at it. You know, we used for, you know, years ago, we were, you know, dabbling a little bit more with A I in the interview process, we interview all of our, um, candidates face to face. Um, but we're dabbling a little bit with A I, but I mean, the regulatory issues are gonna be, you know, something of a challenge but also, you know, our value, we are deeply rooted values company. So we, we never will take the human, you know, out of that human resource hiring and human is gonna be in the loop, but we can't possibly go through 2 million applications for 10,000 jobs um without use of some A I applications behavioral assessments. So we do rely on our partners a lot. As many of us in the room, at least, maybe not many Delta as limited capital and as hr leaders, I'm sure we've heard this story. It's always tough to kind of debate with your customer, our service people who's gonna get the capital. And so we have to be able to depend on our partners. Thank you very much to meet you here to kind of build those solutions within those tools that we will be using. Interesting. Where do you think is the biggest um pitfall that you see of, of using A I and implementing it at Delta? Well, you know, I I for, I can't speak right now at Delta and, and, and I, if my, if my boss is listening right now and he might, I say we need to learn it right? I think he knows it. I think the biggest issue is we got under have a level of understanding and change management that's gonna be required because the pitfall to me is you don't wanna go chase the chi shiny objects and get on this train, this train of A IJ of a I, but then, you know, you really have to understand what it can do for you and where, what you wanna bypass on, you know, don't be, don't feel like you have to rush to it. And then, but I think the understanding is how do you make people's lives better? How do you make our employee experience better? How do you make the customer experience better? We're not looking at it as a productivity initiative. People say, oh, you know, this means a I means you're cutting heads. No, we're looking at ways to work differently and make the experience better. I think that's what I was exactly going to ask about. Next is the fear because you hear a lot of people saying, hey, I was gonna take my Miami job. I know you all have probably heard about that from so many people. So how do you keep company culture strong while also saying it's OK, it's going to help you and, and here's how, yeah, I think for them, I mean, there are certain job categories that will probably not be necessary in five years. Um And you know, I, I think I was, I'll just use my own daughter's um experience. I told her she needed to get a degree in something that was gonna pay for her to live in New York, right? My parents said the exact same thing and I went to journalism and I did not listen to that. She was a journalism she would love but she was so mad at me. Um, I just, I love creative writing and all that. But, you know, so she went into mis, well, you know, certain mis jobs are just not gonna be necessary and she was, like, kind of beating me up the other day. So, um, I should have gone into more of that journalism. But I think, um, II, I do think there are some jobs but for the most part that what our story is, you know, and it's easy to have a mission of. No one better connects the world. That's Delta's mission. No one better connects the world and to connect the world you have to be in it. Yeah. So we're not remote, you know, we, we are face to face. We, we believe in the power of face to face interactions. And so it's kind of core to our culture is face to face and human. And therefore, I mean, that's what we just, people are a little nervous about it and some jobs probably will change and go away. But I think for the masses, I mean, 96 8% it's just gonna shift and we're gonna upscale using gen A I, what advice would you give to the people here in this room? I think specifically around people looking to build or buy with A I models. I'm sure a lot of people here are thinking about that. How, how are you looking at it. So I think for right now it hr um we are buying license agreements. Um but the real power of being able to use it with your own, like again, the large language learning will have to come when you're building it. And so maybe not right now, but we're thinking of a future for building, but we're not gonna get that overnight. Um And so you, you'll buy the things that will be just really transactional opportunities to make things work go faster and slightly better. But if you really wanna make a, I use learning and development a lot, if you really wanna start, you know, customizing to your data, to your policies, to your culture, we're gonna have to build some of that internally because we're firewall on, you know, off everything else, right? So, but, but I think it's, it's gonna happen and it's just for hr at least we're not gonna get the capital prioritization right yet. So we're gonna defend a lot of the, of the build. I mean, excuse me, of the buy all. And last question for you, Joanne, what keeps you up at night? Relating to A I and hr what do you, what do you think about before you go to bed? You know, I I'm not, you know, I think what's the threat in society is like, you know, I, I think that there are some real um like pitfalls there that we've gotta be as you know, I'm, I'm reading about countries that are doing education um for students to understand what's real and what's not. So, I, you know, I think I'm more worried kind of societally, you know, like what are, what are we telling our teaching, our, our students and how do you start to prepare for it? And, and I would say I'm excited about the opportunity. I think that embracing it, it's very darwinism, right? You gotta adapt die, right? So this is gonna happen, you know, this, this is gonna be more disruptive than the internet. Um It's not gonna happen overnight, but we're all gonna have to adapt. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Joan. I appreciate it. And now we're gonna join for a discussion and open up to everything. So thank you very much.