An In Good Company podcast with Matt Simmons, Senior Manager for Learning and Development UK at Starbucks.
AI, learning, and the future of work: A conversation with Starbucks’ Matt Simmons
If I were to ask the question, what is the future of work? What pops into your mind? Do you start thinking about tech? Will AI change your work or will it take over your job? What will inclusive, purpose-driven work look like and how will learning change?
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Matt Simmons is Senior Manager for Learning and Development UK at Starbucks. In this episode, Matt chats to Dan about what it means to set the learning strategy for over 16,000 people at a globally recognised brand.
Their conversation covers:
- The ethical and thoughtful integration of AI in workplace learning
- The place of human leadership in an AI-driven future
- The value of DEIB
- What Starbucks are doing to prepare their people for the future
The role of L&D in adapting to AI
"I think one of those cultural shifts is just to be a lot more aware and thoughtful about how we use AI and what we use it for. We need to start with first principles, and there's a massive education piece that all of us in learning need to support for the organisations that we work with. And we need to prepare the people that we work with to do that. So, I mean, one of the ways that we're doing that at Starbucks is we've just rolled out a data academy right here in Starbucks UK. And that's offering various level of data-based apprenticeships, in order to better equip our partners with the skills they need to understand data. Because ultimately that's what AI, as it currently stands, is – it's a tool to help us to manipulate and understand vast amounts of data at speed. And we are actually next year then going to offer apprenticeships in AI."
Balancing AI with the human
"There will be certain core human leadership qualities which persist throughout history and I don't think that they are going to go away. I do think people need to be just as important, maybe even more so. I don't think that AI can or will replace those. I think anyone would be foolish to try and make predictions about where this might go, but if I had to make a prediction, I think that we are likely to see a little bit of a rebound in a few years from a demand for AI-generated experiences and tools to the opposite – to the more human. And to things that value the power of connection and genuineness and human experiences. And I think that will very much apply in the leadership space."
"In large part that's what the learning organisation is: it's the mindset of not being afraid to experiment and try stuff and fail."
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057: The future of learning and development with Ani Acker
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