An In Good Company podcast with Emily Barry, Global Human Resources partner at Allianz.
At the heart of one of the largest insurers in the world, Allianz Commercial, are the people who decide what risks the company will accept or reject. And behind the people making those calls about the fundamental profitability of the business sits HR, tasked with supporting and amplifying the human element of work in an increasingly automated world. As AI efficiencies take hold of frontline business functions how is HR adapting to support the human experience of work, and to underwrite the importance of human decision makers? Can it actually reinforce their sense of belonging in a changing workplace? Our guest this week has some ideas...
Does belonging suffer in AI-focused work spaces?
In this episode of In Good Company, Emily Barry explores how AI is reshaping belonging, connection and leadership, and why organisations need to be intentional about keeping humans at the centre of work. Even as they welcome in the efficiencies that AI-tools bring, companies in general, and the HR function in particular, is forming an idea of the human gaps they leave - and how they intend to fill them.
This episode involves:
- Creating connection in distributed organisations
- Leading through uncertainty and transformation
- Leadership behaviours that build trust and belonging
- AI's impact on employee experience
Watch the full episode here:
What does belonging mean in the age of AI?
Belonging has been on a journey at work. 20 years ago we weren't necessarily encouraged to bring our whole selves to work. We were very much encouraged to have a work identity and a professional identity. Fast forward, and you find that we are encouraging people to bring certain aspects to work, but not necessarily people's whole selves. It was a sanitised version of yourself that you were able to bring to work. What we see now is belonging becoming much more important. And that it's about bring all of you to work and feeling you really matter as an individual within your organisation. Identity and belonging at work has changed along with technology in the same time frame. Identity and belonging are part of the organisational language, but when you lay AI onto that landscape you start to sense a fear of replacement, if people are fundamentally fearful for their roles in the future. It's an absolutely fundamental shift, if we don't design it with with human beings front of mind, then we might create incredibly efficient organisations that nobody wants to work at, because all their human features are entirely lost. And so you've got to really design humans and how we work with AI in a team-like model to ensure that people do still matter.
How does AI set up new ways of belonging at work?
There is a reluctance at a very surface level to just see AI as the thing that's going to take jobs away. And I think maybe for some of the younger generation who are coming into more entry level positions, that is a real worry. But I think what people aren't thinking about is what are the new careers that are going to be created in their place. And so if we look at some of that younger generation, for example, these are people who have or are growing up with AI and are just much more literate than some of the people in the workforce already. So although one career path of more administrative work may have been closed because AI can do that, there's a whole other path around building AI agents and managing them that hasn't opened up yet. You know, I think we need to be really careful when we're talking about this to to recognise that there is a fear there, there's a fear that's quite legitimate, but we're not seeing the opportunity at the same time. We need to consider both to have a really good overview of how our organisations can change.
How has belonging changed up to this point?
Before the pandemic, belonging was so intertwined with physical proximity. These were workplaces where you were sitting next to your colleagues day after day. You would physically go for lunch together, have coffees together and go out after work. Belonging was almost a side effect of just being at work. Whereas what I see now is belonging is becoming much more intentional. You have to make the decision to go and build relationships with people, and in a way it's easier because you can video call anybody in your organisation. We know that it's more difficult to build relationships in a virtual environment as well. When we are designing organisations, we need to make sure that we're giving opportunities and carving space for belonging to really happen. What I would hope AI does is free up time and capacity for people to invest more in relationships because if you're not doing all of the administrative work that you can outsource to an AI agent, then you've got that time back to do really value-adding work.
What do people need during periods of significant change?
What you tend to see in these large-scale transformations is that sense of connection that people have can take a real hit. When people's connection becomes broken or uncertain, people will tend to fall to self-protective behaviours. That's not outwardly connecting as much, trusting less, narrowing focus. All of the employee behaviours that are the opposite of what we try to grow within an organisation. It's not necessarily the change that is damaging to people and damaging to connection, it's the uncertainty that comes with change. People can handle hard news. What they can't handle very well is not knowing what the outcome is. We don't always have all of the answers, but what we can do is overcommunicate what we do know and do it with honesty. We can say, "This is what I do know. This is what I don't know. This is my plan to find out." We need to make sure that the way that we communicate with people is really, really human.
Listen to the episode on Spotify
Head to Impact's YouTube / Spotify channels to catch up on previous episodes, including…
Do people speak up enough at work? with Mark Levine, Professor of Social Psychology at Lancaster University and Director of the Lancaster Policing Academic Centre of Excellence.