3-6 The AI Advantage: Shaping Tomorrow's Global Workforce with Microsoft

In this episode of Sirva Soundbites, we invited Juan Carlos Gonzalez, Senior Director, Global Mobility, together with Soumya Raj Chakrahari and Sai Dronamraju from Microsoft to discuss about the possible impacts and opportunities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within global talent mobility. 

Join Sirva Soundbites host, Emma Dodwell-Groves and the Microsoft team as they dive into the strategic importance of AI in enhancing the global talent mobility function and how it shapes employee experience.

Key Takeaways: 

• Understand how AI can help to reimagine and redesign work and bridge communication gaps.
• Discover how Microsoft is using AI to create a positive impact on employee experience.
• How AI can be utilized in talent acquisition, development and retention. 
• Understand and reduce possible risks around AI. 

Juan Carlos Gonzalez is a seasoned expert in Human Resources, Finance, Project Management, and International Consulting. At Microsoft, Juan Carlos leads the Global Mobility function as Senior Director, managing intra-country, global immigration, multinational workforce, and cross-border travel.

Soumya Raj Chakrahari is a seasoned Business Program Manager at Microsoft Global Service Center Pvt Ltd, with over 14 years of experience in the Service and IT industry. Soumya specializes in global mobility, immigration compliance, and travel management.

Sai Dronamraju is a US Certified Public Accountant with over 15 years’ experience in the Private and Public sectors. Sai is currently the Tax and Compliance manager for the Microsoft Global Mobility team.

Emma Dodwell-Groves is a Consultant on the Sirva Global Advisory Services team and has over 15 years of experience supporting clients in talent development, global mobility, and cultural training, with a more recent specialization in consulting on diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) and environmental sustainability. 

Sirva Soundbites provides the insights, tools and best practices to help talent mobility and human resources professionals navigate through the evolving global talent mobility landscape more confidently and effectively. 

Got a question? Drop us a note! 
soundbites@sirva.com 

Transcript

Sirva soundbites S3E6

 

The AI Advantage: Shaping Tomorrow’s Global Workforce with Microsoft

Transcript

Emma Dodwell-Groves:[00:00:00] You are listening to Sirva Soundbites, the official podcast of Sirva, a leading global relocation management and moving services company. We aim to bring you authentic and insightful discussions on the latest trends and best practices in global talent mobility and the evolving future of work. Are you ready?

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Let's get started. Hello and welcome to Sirva Soundbites, where we aim to connect, inform, educate, and entertain our listeners. I'm Emma Senior Manager of Global Advisory Services at Sirva. And today's topic has been brewing in the background for years, but has absolutely exploded in the past year or so.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: You guessed it, you've seen the title. Today's podcast topic is on AI and how it's going to shape the global workforce. Numerous thought leaders across different industries have stepped in to discuss the direction that this amazing technology is taking and where our future is headed as a result.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: But as this is Sirva Soundbites, we're going to be focusing on the possible [00:01:00] impacts and opportunities of AI within mobility specifically. And who better to speak to on this cutting edge technology than a few special guests from Microsoft. We are lucky to have with us. Juan Carlos, Sai, and Soumya. Hello all, and a very warm welcome to Sirva Soundbites.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: To start things off, let's give our listeners a quick introduction to you folks on who you are and what your role is at Microsoft. 

Juan Carlos: Good morning, afternoon, evening. This is Juan Carlos Gonzalez. I currently serve as a Senior Director of Global Mobility at Microsoft. That includes basically all types of mobility, relocation, global immigration, and cross border travel.

Juan Carlos: Responsible of leading the function from my strategy and management of the center of excellence. The function is under total rewards within the HR family. Thank you for joining us. And I appreciated my team to join me in this conversation as well. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Perfect. Next up. 

Soumya: Hi, I'm Soumya Raj Chakrahari and I'm a business program manager at [00:02:00] Microsoft working with Juan Carlos and Global Mobility team.

Soumya: Thank you. Happy to be here. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Beautiful. And next, Sai. 

Sai: Hello, everyone. My name is Sai Dronamraju. I am the Tax and Compliance Manager for the Microsoft Global Mobility team. Thank you for having me. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Fantastic. We have the dream team here to talk about global mobility, leadership, and the transformative power of AI.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Before we dive in, I'd like to start, you know, with a little bit more of a personal story from you folks about your own, whoa, moment in AI. I'm sure everyone has one out there who's engaged with AI at all. So I'd like to ask the group, you know, was there a moment when you were interacting with AI tech where you were totally blown away and thought, well, this is going to change everything.

Juan Carlos: You know, for me, the, the, the moment was when I realized that I longer not needed to spend a lot of time reviewing my emails. English isn't my first language, so this was a significant breakthrough for me. My whole process was to basically create [00:03:00] the documentation, very labor intensive, and then evolving on the drafting, going back, looking at the spelling, grammar errors, and then trying to make sure that the style was correct.

Juan Carlos: In the region where I'm from, we communicate in a different way. So I needed to be, make sure that my message was meeting the expectations of my new listeners. So that was for me, super interesting, the journey with Copilot and, or Artificial Intelligence Engines, where basically I create the draft, and then I don't have to spend a lot of time reviewing.

Juan Carlos: I just trust Copilot, give me some suggestions, go back, review again. And then, I'm there to save a lot of time. So that was the moment for me where I really thought, Oh, wow, this, this is amazing. It's going to change lives, not just mine, but the rest of a lot of people in the business. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: I love that. And I especially love that, you know, you needed to change the appropriate cultural style.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: There is artificial intelligence going, Oh, let me help you with your cultural differences. You know, something that we think of is so human and that's just goes to show really how [00:04:00] intuitive it has become. Um, Sai or Soumya, any examples from yourself? 

Sai: Yeah, I think it's kind of hard to just pinpoint one moment because, uh, you know, we've about a year ago, I think we were looking for ways to, uh, incorporate Gen AI into our way of working in a meaningful way to where we are now.

Sai: We, you know, co pilot essentially has become our daily habit, you know. It could just be like recording meetings and, you know, taking meeting notes. Uh, but since, since one call has kind of touched on Outlook a little bit, maybe I'll, I'll use one other example. I think the advantage of co pilot is that, you know, I think that's what kind of impressed me the most is it's, it's incorporated into all of the, the entirety of Microsoft office suite.

Sai: And. Annually, I do a tax overview session internally at Microsoft, and usually I spend a lot of time putting together the slide deck, the notes for the meeting, and you know, so on and so forth. But this year I was really short on time, so I decided I could use some help. So I went into the slide deck from last year, the PowerPoint and the [00:05:00] copilot within PowerPoint from last year, and I asked to compare the any updates to the tax law changes from prior to this year.

Sai: And I asked to compare the any updates to the tax law changes from prior to this year. Uh, not only did Copilot help me with the kind of in a tabular format kind of tell me what the changes were It also gave me some structural and formatting changes to my slide deck So just in case if there's any repeat audience the presentation can still look fresh And at the end I was able to create like an faq document So I could give the attendees an additional resource at the end of the presentation.

Sai: So I think What would have typically taken me a half a day, a little bit more than half a day. I was able to finish it in two to two and a half hours. So the productivity gains, uh, were what kind of blew me away. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Massive. Yeah, absolutely. And what's, I think, particularly interesting there also is, is then the necessity of good prompts.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: I think a lot of people aren't using it as well as they could, and people are going to learn more and more how to, but you know, your familiarity with it meant that you were able to, Get so much more out of the tool to make your work more efficient. I love that. And Soumya. [00:06:00]

Soumya: Hey, I am completely with JC and Sai.

Soumya: We had our woah moments with each other, with ourselves when we were exploring Copilot and starting to use it. And it has actually become a habit now. I cannot imagine myself without Copilot. I cannot imagine myself working without Copilot. And one example I can give is more like Sai's example, but it has to do with project management.

Soumya: In the past, it would have taken me a week for me to collate all the information and prepare a project plan with charter and, you know, different kinds of work streams and coming up with those beautiful presentation to show the leadership. But, uh, with CoPilot, I used it. PowerPoint. And also I used it with different tools that we have in Microsoft.

Soumya: I was able to come up with a project plan within two hours. And that was like a woah moment for me because that has helped me save a lot of time [00:07:00] and it was beautifully built much better than what I would have done if it was on my own. So yeah, I have had many, many such moments, but this is something that I keep telling as an example, along with this, I have heard people talking about their personal stories of.

Soumya: You know, doing presentations for their children, presentations for their, you know, family members, they have used Copilot and they have had their woah moments as well. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Absolutely. Everyone certainly has. And I think when you say there, of course, you couldn't work without it. Now that's, you know, you guys have embedded it.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: You've been, you started a little earlier than some, there are some people out there who use it. Sometimes don't think about it as much, but within a few years, I think everyone will be saying the same as you, you know, everyone will say, I couldn't imagine working, living without it, right? It's going to become so pervasive.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: And I'll just show you a quick one for myself as well. And I think, you know, as I said, everyone out there has one. One moment I noticed was when I could use generative AI to develop meal plans. And from that, grocery shopping lists tied to [00:08:00] those meal plans. And it's taken so much stress and hassle out of my personal life.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: You know, the amount of time you go, what am I having for dinner? The type of arguments that come from what are we having for dinner? So it's just taken a lot of stress out of my life and mean that I'm, I can be more responsible and more fiscally, you know, efficient as well with my shopping. So let's dive in properly.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: We've had our woah moments. Let's start with Juan Carlos. Could you give us some insight into the strategic importance of AI, you think, in enhancing the global talent mobility function, particularly with the work you're doing at Microsoft and, of course, through enabling your partners? 

Juan Carlos: So for us, basically, we start with our vision on how we basically are leveraging artificial intelligence, um, and at the center of people's vision.

Juan Carlos: We're always exploring bold new ways to reimagine and redesign work to help thrive and achieve more. By activating the full potential of responsible AI, we're focusing our efforts in developing and maintaining a world class AI capability in HR. So we start with HR, [00:09:00] and that's where we begin. Go down from a mobility perspective.

Juan Carlos: We initially as HR organization, we created a digital transformation team with the vision of building a center of basically a four centers of excellence to develop artificial intelligence all together. However, as technology advanced at a very rapid pace, we promptly learned that it was a very good vision, but at the time of execution, we were too slow.

Juan Carlos: So what we have done is break down into each C O. E. To empower the digitalization of an A. I. Adoption individually. So this decision has helped us out now from a mobility perspective to really push the development, not just to our team, but also to our partners or Microsoft Global Mobility. A. I. Adoption strategy basically aims to fundamentally transform the global mobility sector by harnessing the power of AI

Juan Carlos: And this strategy basically focusing, as I mentioned, on the digital presence and enhanced [00:10:00] customer engagement by incorporating, of course, for us, Microsoft solutions into the products that we are creating in partnership with our suppliers and partners. With that vision, we are trying to elevate not just the offerings, but how the function is being perceived by the overall HR and community.

Juan Carlos: Or overarching vision is to basically create a cohesive and intelligent vendor ecosystem that employs responsible AI to boost efficiency. Accuracy and the overall experience of global mobility operations. The ecosystem basically will bring together various vendors and service provider, because that's the reality of the mobility industry where we have, you might have one tax provider, you might have a different relocation company.

Juan Carlos: You might have a destination service company. You might have a direct relationship with household goods provider, temporary providers. So this ecosystem has to be a, the enabler or facilitate in real [00:11:00] time data sharing that provide it. The mobility practitioners and the business leaders predictive analytics with automation of processes and keeping the employee at the center, as well as teams of mobility that can get out of the drudgery off, you know, spreadsheets of management of tasks into be more strategic and more focused to help the humans to develop.

Juan Carlos: So that's for us as an strategy, and we are aiming to create basically this Simplest intelligent vendor ecosystem focusing responsible AI to help basically empower or partners that will empower employees. And at the end of the day, become a beneficial circle for everybody. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: So this is amazing. And of course the scale of it is, is incredible, you know, as, as professionals in the global mobility world, um, the level of transformation that you're talking about there, that is literally driving an entire industry's shift, you know, with looking [00:12:00] forward.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: And I love the fact, you know, how tightly that is intertwined into your overarching vision, your future vision, and how those aims are really crystallized in, in your collaborations and working with your partners as well. So I know you can't share everything, even that level of detail is amazing. And if we had enough time in this podcast to listen to all the incredible things you're achieving, we'd need, you know, more than, more than a quick podcast.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: We'd need 50 audio books, probably. So let's use this opportunity to just delve into some of Microsoft's initiatives in advancing some of those talent mobility functions. Areas that you you mentioned through a I. So you talked about the employee experience and let's turn this around. Let's ask Sai actually.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Could you share Sai how Microsoft is using a I to impact the employee experience? Either things already in progress or things that are still aspirational. Either. 

Sai: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, at Microsoft one cross kind of briefly touched on it. We're currently on a journey to build a [00:13:00] best in class HR ecosystem.

Sai: And, you know, and obviously, AI is going to be a significant component of this, but so we do have a few ambitious projects underway, but we do also have a few success stories. For example, you know, when we think of AI or especially benefits of Gen AI. The one thing most of us think about is bringing in efficiencies, right?

Sai: And then kind of cutting, bringing in automation, cutting down the drudgery, like, like Juan Carlos was talking about. So we kind of started with that. We took our HR chatbot and we, we incorporated Copilot into our HR chatbot. And what we saw was typically when employees use our HR chatbot, you know, as a tier one, the HR chatbot tries to answer a few questions, some generic questions based on the policy and the process documents we already have in place.

Sai: As tier two, they usually reach out to the HR service consultants. So when we introduced Copilot into this HR chatbot, it, what it did, the Copilot's innate ability to not just filter through tons of information, but also the ability [00:14:00] to personalize the responses instead of just giving generic responses for employees because we do have the employee graph built into copilot already that not only significantly improves the Response times for employees, but it also Released some of the time for our hr service consultants.

Sai: So what we've noticed we've noticed a 30 Productivity increase for our hr service consultants. So that significantly or that allowed them rather You You focus on more strategic and productivity projects from more of an inspirational perspective. You know, as you can imagine at a company like ours and I'm assuming and most other companies as well, we have a lot of HR tools and unfortunately not all of these tools always communicate well with each other.

Sai: So what we're trying to do is we're trying to look at HR architecture as a whole. And within our HR organizations, and they all have different data sets. We are trying to incorporate co pilot. Uh, so we can. easily streamline the data between all the data sets that our HR organizations have. [00:15:00] And when I say HR organizations, it's not just internal.

Sai: We also have a lot of vendors and supplier data sets that we do use. So having the ability to connect to all of these data sets allows Copilot to easily Easily streamline the data that we have and also the ability to, uh, and also the ability to provide quicker responses to our employees. So that's something what we're working on.

Sai: We are trying to no longer work in silos, but create like Juan Carlos mentioned and an intelligent single source of truth or an integrated ecosystem. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: So there's a couple of things that's so interesting. There are a couple of things I'd love to pull out of it and just probe a little bit more. And one is, you know, you talked about.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Um, how the time is being freed up that, you know, big increase in efficiencies so people can then use their skills to be more strategic and, you know, that's what everyone is talking about. At this point, there's like, Oh, is a I going to take my job? No, it's actually going to free up so much more time for you to focus on the things that are less mundane or less repetitive.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: So that's [00:16:00] not just the employee experience. That's that's the practitioner. experience hugely in allowing people to really use those skills that are still uniquely human, which I think is particularly fascinating. And the other thing I'd like to sort of just highlight, which I think we're going to go into in a bit more detail now anyway, is just that, you know, like you said, the access to an integrated system, it's, Just so messy out there.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Everyone has a great tool. Everyone has this great set of data. Not everyone is communicating with each other. And so it, it comes across in employee experience through how many contact points they have and how data isn't shared effectively to a single source so that they can see it and make sense of it and the ability to sort of react to trends and everything, it just feels utterly essential.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: And it just seems like a revolution in the ability to collect that information. So, fundamentally, what we're talking about here, what I've just gotten from you, Sai, is the AI is most effective and can be most effective in your future [00:17:00] plans with a single source of truth behind it, connected, accurate data.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: How would that work, and how would Microsoft be able to Uniquely contribute here. How about some? Yeah, 

Soumya: yes, that's true. AI is most effective when it operates within a single source of truth and within a totally connected ecosystem. And at Microsoft, we are uniquely positioned to contribute to this vision in several ways.

Soumya: Let's break it down. Single source of truth. What single source of truth it means having one central repository where all data is stored, managed and accessed by centralizing data. We eliminate silos and ensure that everyone in the organization has access to same and up to date information. This is exactly what Sai is kind of trying to explain.

Soumya: We have numerous amount of. Tools internally, and we have this integrations with our suppliers and vendors as well, which adds more and more tools to us, which means everybody have their [00:18:00] own set of data. Everybody have their own versions of data, but what single source of truth does is it centralizes the repository and make sure to share the most updated data to.

Soumya: connected ecosystem. That's the second part, right? So how we are going to get into that. This ensures the consistencies, accuracies and reliability of information across the organization. And at Microsoft, we achieve this through our integrated platforms like Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and we also have AI solutions such as Microsoft.

Soumya: Azure AI Dynamics 365, just as JC just explained, this enables advanced analytics, machine learning and automation by putting it at the center and by connecting all these different systems. What we are trying to do is we are building AI on top of most updated data through single source of truth, which enables us to, uh, make better decision making, you know, with most updated data, we will be [00:19:00] able to enhance the decision making.

Soumya: And as, as I mentioned, we are also going to touch upon the efficiencies, which means AI will retrieve the information from this data and be able to reduce the manual tasks. And it increases the productivity to your point. And sometimes, Uh, or most of the times it also personalized the experience, you know, for example, if an employee is talking to co pilot and the co pilot is relying on the single source of truth, which means it has access to most updated data, it will personalize the information, personalize the experience to the employee, which enhances the employee and customer experience at the end of the day.

Soumya: So it's kind of all interrelated, but at the end of the day, what we are trying to do is by using these capabilities, which are uniquely positioned by Microsoft as an organization, we are kind of trying to enhance all kinds of experiences for the organizations. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: And I think this is, it ties back also to some [00:20:00] of your own woah moments, you know, I think it was Sai that mentioned, you know, just the, how things were even improved further than what the original ask was, you know, recommendations about stuff.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: So the same as that, when you talk about that personalized experience there, that things that somebody who's a practitioner might not think about or be too busy to get around to being so specifically personal can be done instantaneously. And. and logically, you know, through a system, which can make them feel seen and heard.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: And I know I'm going on a slight tangent here, but I recently read a really interesting article about how they put in front of people responses that doctors have in difficult medical discussions with patients. And they had ones that doctors use and ones generated by generative AI that of course been, you know, fed by these learning models that are suitable.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: And most of the time, the AI generated ones got higher scores for empathy. And for consideration because difficult conversations or, you know, let's say escalation situations. It can be tense. There's a lot of emotions there. And, you know, generative AI has the [00:21:00] opportunity to to take best practice and help to, you know, know the psychology behind it and actually give you recommendations to improve even the human way you're experiencing with that personalization as well.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: So, as I said, slight detour. I know we're not talking about doctors in this context, but I think that's quite a powerful one. So we've been talking about the connected ecosystem, and I'd like to sort of go back to Sai and talk a little bit about how AI can impact policy design, you know, policy management and reporting based on some of that integrated ecosystem.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Sai? 

Sai: Yeah, no, obviously we're still in in very early stages right now. But what we're trying to do is we're trying to work on identifying opportunities where we can leverage a generative AI to to optimize not just global mobility employee experience, but but also, you know, from a corporate perspective.

Sai: Cost optimization perspective. For example, what we're looking to do is if there's a possibility to kind of identify trends, we do have we have been moving people for a really long time now. So the ability to identify [00:22:00] trends and see what what's working and what's not working. So we can replicate. The the the movements or whatever it is that that kind of worked in a particular case and kind of make that more of a norm, um, from a from a cost optimization perspective, the ability.

Sai: So we do have a lot of moves and having the ability at the time of planning a relocation or an assignment to do the scenario planning, right? So where we can look at a particular A proposal, and we can look at from a from a tax perspective, immigration perspective, just from an employee experience perspective, what would be the length of assignment, for example, or the or the relocation dates, you know, from a tax residency planning perspective, just to see what works and what doesn't work and having the ability to know upfront what to expect.

Sai: Can help the relocation specialist or the mobility managers optimize those packages for employees. Another key aspect we're looking to do is the ability to report on D& I trends and [00:23:00] not just within our own, our own relocations, but also be able to compare that to the broader market, which will then help us contribute to Microsoft's overall D& I strategy.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: I mean, goodness knows that's, that's required. Like there's, it's such a manual process right now and people aren't comparing apples to apples. Um, and it's so important, but it's often so, you know, that somebody's doing it in their spare time, a lot, a lot of the time as well. So just having something there to, to really track and, and compare to the market is quite incredible.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: With my role actually in Sirva in consulting, one of the big things we're asked to do all the time is support. Policy design and adjustments. And we do that through benchmarking and trend analysis. And in the past, that's been, you know, hugely time consuming, but we're currently rolling out our A. I.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Powered benchmarking and analytics tools. So like you said, we're now able to sort of assess trends down to an industry or policy provision level, and it's a complete game changer. It means our clients can be so much more agile to those market shifts and shifting expectations just So much faster, but [00:24:00] especially in line with the DEI.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Content. Let's pivot a little towards talent. Specifically, you know, talent acquisition, retainment, development. So I'll turn it back to some. Yeah. How is Microsoft looking at a I and talent in your perspective, both in what's being done right now and maybe what's in the pipeline for future, especially, of course, in the lens of mobility?

Soumya: Yes, a lot is happening at Microsoft for sure. When it comes to talent world in the world of talent, The AI can be used at any level and every level, and I'm sure in Microsoft, every team that is as, uh, that is part of talent, is definitely trying to use the AI and better their processes and programs. For example, let's take talent acquisition.

Soumya: During this process, there is a possibility for them to use AI to streamline the recruitment process, right? What it does is it would, it filters vast amount of candidate data. And it, uh, it identifies the best fit for the role. And, uh, what, what we are doing right now is [00:25:00] manually checking all the resumes or, you know, documentation, or probably looking into the data that we have that has been updated by employees or applicants and all of that, but there is a possibility of using AI here to make all of that automated.

Soumya: And I am sure if I thought about this talent acquisition must have already, you know, started a project on that and, uh, And are on their way to, you know, execute that. Another example that you are touch basing upon is talent retainment, which is very, very crucial for Microsoft culture. I'm sure managers already started using the AI to coach and guide the employees through their career paths.

Soumya: We have made it a mandatory button in our, uh, you know, performance management, where it helps employees and also managers to make sure they are, uh, you know, they are making Include all the relevant information for employee performance, and sometimes we tend to [00:26:00] forget some things that happened six months ago, right?

Soumya: And with this enablement that has happened in the performance management team, the copilot. Behind the scenes, AI is helping managers to collate and collect all the information relevant to the employee and help them assess the performance appropriately and accurately and help the employee with their personal and professional development.

Soumya: On the other side of the coin, employees are also able to use this AI capabilities to write best. Perfect connect, or, you know, their achievements that they have put together in their past performance year. So we are definitely incorporating the AI into almost all the fields. These are a few examples that we have.

Soumya: And in future, I'm sure not too far from now, we are also going to get into the predictive talent placements where we are going to predict what's the best talent placement scenarios, where we consider the tax implications, employee preferences, Employer [00:27:00] preferences, team preference. We are going to come, come to a place where we're going to predict these placements too.

Soumya: And we're already on a journey of upskilling and growth mindset amongst Microsoft. AI has become a mandatory for all of us to learn and upskill ourselves. Of course, we, we are. We are having those beautiful training sessions and, uh, teams helping us with all of that upscaling. But, uh, you know, that is, that is definitely making sure to provide us with learning opportunities and be at top of the industry at this point in time.

Soumya: And I know, Emma, you did touch upon the DEI, and, uh, I'm sure, you know, we will have a Couple of opportunities there as well, or more opportunities there as well, because that's a very important consideration for any organization. And in Microsoft, the D E N I is a, is, is like embedded into our culture.

Soumya: And we are pretty much sure that by utilizing AI, we'll be able to do those comparisons with the broader market. Trends [00:28:00] and we'll be able to contribute to Microsoft's overall DEI strategy to make it only better day by day. And that's the future that we are looking at by embedding these particular functionalities and skills to be embedded into all the teams that we have and make sure we are performing at our best.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: I think there's so many angles at which AI actually fits really neatly into DEI. And one other example that I think you used just there, which sort of, you know, made a light bulb go off in my head was that there's a huge cultural difference to self review periods, you know, when you have to toot your own horn and say, here's all the amazing things I've done this year.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: There are many cultures in the world where that's a deeply uncomfortable thing. So if you have, you know, AI helping you to collate all your achievements, it's like somebody else giving you the compliments instead of you having to do it yourself. Cause they've shown that, you know, culturally always people from more, um, humility driven cultures and, you know, we'll, we'll often Downplay their scores [00:29:00] and downplay their achievements.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Whereas in cultures where they, you know, they're much more confident showing off about their achievements will overplay them. And that is reflected in their compensation, you know, and their bonuses. So I think that's an amazing equalizer as well that I'd never thought of until you mentioned it. 

Juan Carlos: Emma, and if I can, if I can interject just because your last comment really, really resonates with me personally, right?

Juan Carlos: I grew up in a Latino culture where basically you were Thought to be respectful as as well as quite a cultures in the world and you never critique authority. You always are respectful. So for people. Coming from a culture like that, a artificial intelligence, as you mentioned, could be a game changer on the sense of empowering the person to not just look at the impact that the person is creating, but how the person is impacting basically multiple people in the ecosystem or industry.

Juan Carlos: And that's the power of AI where basically we are [00:30:00] Microsoft. We're trying to help companies that help basically our customers, our employees, our users. To leverage everything that they do and they create We have this technology called Microsoft intra where basically is connecting your calendar is connecting your emails your share points And you have access to all this data and that's basically we're you know, trying to level set the The communities around the world, you know, you can leverage on that So you don't have to basically come up with your own style, but the technology is helping you providing all the tools at your fingertips So you can take that be empowered and really as you mentioned feel that you can contribute at the same way.

Juan Carlos: But at the same time, you're compensated similar to the other people who potentially were grow up with that particular, uh, cheap in their minds on how to interact, how to connect, how to basically rewarded. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Yeah, and I think especially when we look at, you know, we've been talking about skills and [00:31:00] upskilling, and when it comes to those cultural differences and misinterpretations of how they're perceived, there's also the language of it, you know, you don't, if you don't know the right keywords, maybe you have all the skills for a job out there, but you don't know, How to, you know, you don't know necessarily what jobs to look for in future with these types of models.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: And, you know, the intuitiveness of this, somebody whose skills are recorded because of exactly that process that some you just described and you did as well on Carlos that, you know, that somebody's skills can be out there without them having to, you know, to report it in the same self conscious way, and then it can be matched to jobs that need those skills, even if both of them weren't necessarily looking for each other.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: It really could be a revolution in acquiring talent. I feel like I use the word revolution a lot in regards to AI, but I think that's accurate. I think we're at a revolution. You're right. I think 

Juan Carlos: you're 100 percent right. You know, one of the initiatives that Sonia was mentioning on GTA, global talent acquisition.

Juan Carlos: And by the way, in Microsoft, we joined. Two functions, global talent acquisition and total rewards. So we're Mobility. We are partnering very [00:32:00] close with or or the recruiters. And you know, we are are looking at a basically talent management as a whole strategy for the entire company. And we we call talent talent continuum.

Juan Carlos: And that's exactly what you're talking about. Right. Trying to identify the talent at the right time and proactively provide tools to the managers who are critical, basically a workforce that empower client or employees and generate energy and help in creating clarity. Um, To provide them with the necessary tools at the right time.

Juan Carlos: And that's exactly artificial intelligence from a global talent acquisition. What it's trying to do is trying to bring the right momentum, right time, right momentum for the employee, employee, sorry, uh, bringing the right moments to the employees. And that journey is inviting us as mobility. to come with everything that we have in our ecosystem and industry that can be supported to these, uh, companies and employees ultimately.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: And I, I, [00:33:00] myself, I'm a mentor and I don't think my mentee wants AI as their mentor. You know, I think they still want a person with their lived experience, but I'm using, you know, a generative AI to make me a better mentor. I'm using it for guidance and upskilling and training plans and development options, you know?

Emma Dodwell-Groves: So, you know, if I don't have those skills, then, you know, Like you said, it's providing that platform specifically and in a targeted way to help people upskill through that whole process. So I'm going to turn the coin around a little bit. This is all super exciting. Everything we're hearing, we've said it's a revolution.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: It's all, you know, a bright horizon of all the amazing things it can do. But there are a lot of people out there who are nervous about AI. And they might be concerned about risks we've all heard about and the media sometimes exacerbates them as well. So security. Accuracies ethics, bias, I think, is a really big one, especially, you know, if we're talking about looking through all the CVs and using AI to sort through them.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: If there's already bias in [00:34:00] systems or out there in the world, is that bias going to transfer across? So I guess I'd like to turn it back to you. Juan Carlos, if you'd like to answer this one, what types of things have Microsoft been doing to not only reassure users out there around those things, but also to sort of mitigate some of those potential risks?

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Absolutely, 

Juan Carlos: So for us, Artificial intelligence. Microsoft is something that is new now. It might be new for people that right now are reading on the news over the last two years, but Microsoft has been working with the last 20 years on artificial intelligence. So over the years, what we have done is we have established a comprehensive, responsible AI governance program.

Juan Carlos: So we have an entire team of people, um, managing these. And this program basically ensures that all AI systems developed and deployed by Microsoft adhere to the high standards of responsibility and ethics. It includes policies, procedures and compliance measures to ensure AI systems are developed and used responsibly.

Juan Carlos: We are also asking our employees to upskill and [00:35:00] security at the core front. So we, uh, from a reporting perspective, Microsoft has a framework for reporting and reviewing sensitive uses of AI. So we're doing this across the board to make sure that we are in front of this. We're learning. We are not perfect.

Juan Carlos: We make mistakes. But this framework allows employees to pause, reflect and seek guidance when designing, developing and deploying AI systems that could have significant impacts on individuals and society. You know, every year we take this, what I call the standard business of conduct. And for this year, the focus in an AI on how we are showcasing to employees the risk of not taking the precautions.

Juan Carlos: or assessing the models. And before we basically being launched a solution, we test. Also, we as Microsoft, from a guidance perspective, we provide clear guidance for public messaging about AI and products. These guidelines ensure that all communications about AI are transparent, accurate and responsible.

Juan Carlos: Security and privacy are the [00:36:00] core for us. So Microsoft emphasized the importance of protecting user privacy and securing data. You have here in the market, we never are basically tackled by any authority around we are sharing data from our employees or customers or clients. That's not the case. Super, super secure for us.

Juan Carlos: So techniques such as differential privacy are used to separate data from identifying information, ensuring that AI systems comply with that application laws like GDPR. For example, we at Microsoft actively work to mitigate bias in AI systems that and that's super important nowadays, especially think about where we're going right now here in the U.

Juan Carlos: S. Through election year. It's just an upset. I don't want to jump into that topic. But this is checking the representativeness of AI training data, training human levelers, and that data objectively and making at the core or a systems more transparent in how decisions are made. We at Microsoft have [00:37:00] the side based design, sorry, six key principles that guide AI development and use, and those are fairness, reliability, Safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability.

Juan Carlos: These principles are essential to creating responsible and trustworthy AI. I'm going to repeat that. So at Microsoft, we have identified six key principles that guide AI development and use. fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability. These principles are essential to create a responsible and trustworthy AI.

Juan Carlos: For us at the core is to make sure that we do the right thing at all times, making sure that we take time. So the rush of launching products or algorithms into the market for us has to be led by a good logic of how to do. Work ethically and following the regulations around the world and following [00:38:00] basically our core principles as a company.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: So how do you, how do you ensure this type of thing? I mean, it's like you said, you have 20 years of experience. It's not as fresh as some people think it is. And as we know, the media really like, you know, shines a big terrifying spotlight of the robots are taking over on some of it. So when you have all these amazing six key principles, how are you ensuring that they're going, going ahead, that they're being followed and targeted in your, in all your endeavors?

Juan Carlos: So, uh, people at the core, right? Everything technology can be can do nothing without the people. All the technology basically is for the people, education, right? Making sure that we all are people who are working behind the scenes or software engineers, they go through the right training and also that we have principles of the time of managing and maneuvering data.

Juan Carlos: That's the reason why having these big platforms help us out with security and controls. Um, we can have access me, for example, as as a leader of the function. Think of it. It's just it's a good example of how do we how do we [00:39:00] lead by principle? I could have access to the compensation of everybody in the company.

Juan Carlos: That's that's because we are in a nature function. And generally, when we are talking about expatriate population, we're talking about a high level employees. I could have access to the data, but that through the platform to these massive platforms, right? we define who really need access to the data. So we keep the transparency at the core.

Juan Carlos: We keep make sure that, um, through the furnace treating of the data and security at the core that we will not basically be exposed or we will not be exposed in the data. over employees or our customers into the market. And that at the core, I think it helped us out a lot with gaining the trust on the market, gaining the trust and respect on us basically doing the right thing for our customers.

Juan Carlos: And also the individual person who day to day is responsible of making sure that there are doing an exceptional [00:40:00] work and security at the core for a, this person in a day to day. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: So that's very reassuring. I'm sure for both myself and the whole our audience of listeners out there. And unfortunately, as much as I would love to talk to you guys for another few hours on this really interesting topic, we're going to have to wrap up soon.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: So first of all, I'd just like to have a big thank you to all three of you. It's been a great honor talking to you on this really interesting topic, and you've shared some fantastic insights around it, especially in relation to talent mobility. so much. I know that our audience has already learned a great deal, but we do, before we let you go, we always get our guests or at least one of our three fabulous guests to share a single top tip on our topic.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: I know that's almost impossible considering the scale of what we're talking about, but I'm going to turn that back on Carlos as a leader of the group. If you wouldn't mind sharing in regards to AI and global talent mobility, what is one tip you can give our listeners to take away with them? 

Juan Carlos: Embrace the change, embrace the change, [00:41:00] embrace the opportunity that this brings.

Juan Carlos: I know it's scary sometimes when we are talking about AI taking over our jobs, but this is a seismic point of transformation. And we as mobility practitioners and mobility industry, we have to take the challenge, remain authentic, because that's going to make the difference in between the bots and a human, right?

Juan Carlos: Make sure that we bring the best of our lives, professional, personally, into the workplace and leverage on the technology to accomplish more and impact the world in a better way. 

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Amazing and very concise. I'm impressed. So it's really inspired me. I'm going to lean in personally myself. I hope everybody else does out there who's listening.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: So thank you again. It's been a real pleasure talking to you all and thank you to our audience for listening to Sirva Soundbites. If you enjoy our show, please click subscribe and share and be sure to come back next time. Until then, this is Emma, Juan Carlos, Soumya and Sai. And don't forget, Sirva provides [00:42:00] everything needed to move talent and deliver experience.

Emma Dodwell-Groves: Thank you all and see you next time.