Today I am honored to be joined by Kamishwari Rao, Chief People Officer at Publicis Sapient. Thanks so much for joining today.
Very happy to be here. Thank you, Alex.
So what is a Chief People Officer?
Yes, it's a good question because there are so many terminologies for that. But my view of Chief People Officer is someone who kind of is focused on creating strategies for people in an organization and also is focused on the culture. So that's how I see my role.
Do you feel there's maybe a commonly misunderstood part of your job? When people hear Chief People Officer, what are some reactions they have to that that you most often have to correct?
Yeah, I think people, you know, because I have the word people in the title, I think people think it's more of a grievance solving sort of a job and role, whereas the majority of the work that we do is about being more proactive so that people actually don't have grievances. So, you know, I think that's kind of mostly misunderstood. And I think the second thing I would like to add is people think being a, as a Chief People Officer or people function, it's like everyone's nice, right? Again, I would use that in quotes. Yes, I think we have more empathy. And I think for us, people come first when you're in the people function. But I don't think that translates to just being nice. I think a misunderstood part of people success, HR, is that all responsibility for the people and development sits in this one silo off to the side. They're going to do everything for you. When really, and I want to hear your thoughts on this, it seems to me the reality is that people is everyone's job. And people success plays a very specific role in that. But no one is absolved of helping people, helping grow people, helping develop people and helping make sure that the people culture is strong. And the same way that the quality of being nice, that shouldn't sit in one function, that should be a cultural thing across the whole company. So I'm curious if you agree with that.
I agree with you that actually creating the right environment for people, creating the right experiences for our people, focusing on their growth and development is actually everybody's job. Because when you're working in a company like Publicis Sapient, I think it is a people business. So it is everybody's job. There is no product. We get the work done through our people. And so that is everybody's job. I think the difference between the people function and everybody managing people and creating the right environment is I think we understand sort of the science behind people's behaviors. We understand the technology that is being used to kind of run a lot of the functions. We understand human behavior probably far more than someone else. And so we use a lot of the knowledge to your point earlier when you talked about craft. So it's a lot of craft to develop the programs that we develop. And then so therefore it is more of an enabling function so I always tell our business leaders that you know attrition is not a it's not my problem. It is everyone's problem, right? Similarly, growth and development is not just my responsibility. It's everybody's responsibility. So you're right in that I think but that's the difference I'd say between the people function and the role of everyone. What is everyone's role? What keeps coming up even on some of the maybe so-called hard functions, maybe the left brain functions, engineering products that you might typically associate with something maybe the opposite of soft. What keeps coming up when they talk about Publicis Sapient's differentiator in terms of how we approach work, they talk about the key unlock not being the best at engineering, being the best at product. We have the best in engineering, we have the best in product, but what they talk about is the key unlock is coming to every client engagement or every task at hand with a level of empathy and EQ and that being the core thing that differentiates us from our competitors. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that because even empathy seems like something which shouldn't sit within a core function. It should be everyone's job.
What we talked about in the past as soft skills, the words that are now being used are human skills. So as a leader, as a manager, it is not enough for you to have soft skills like communication, like presentation. It's not enough to have that kind of skill. What you need to have is human skills like empathy, resilience, being able to keep going on and on and on, things like that. They're calling them human skills and not soft skills anymore. So anyway, there's a whole change that has happened in the world in the past few, I think I would say, it started the research, but the COVID kind of created that little bit of a push to focus more on human skills than on soft skills. So if you take that to Sapient, I think we recognized that like 30 years ago because what we based a lot of how we interact with each other and with our clients was on our values and our values describe the behaviors expected from them. So whether it was engaging with openness or whether it is about having a learning mindset or it's about embracing the future, all of it actually create those values and behaviors, which are more human and create the human connection. And the relationships with each other, which then kind of creates that differentiated culture, which is why when I first said, what is my role? I actually talked about both people strategy and culture, which are, culture is a big piece of how you create strategy that makes our people differentiated.
Taking a step back for a second, what do you think people want from a job?
I think people, you start with the, I think Maslow's hierarchy of needs is no longer valid, but that's, even if you start there as a matter of, people do want security. In different parts of the world, security means different things. So people do want the security of the job. But because we are in IT, I think that need very quickly kind of moves forward. I think people are looking for fulfillment. I don't know how to explain that, but the work that I am doing, what value is it adding and to whom? I think so people look for that. I think people want to make a difference beyond themselves. So a lot of people are in the job because of that, in a job because of that. I think others are there because they want to spend a little time here, earn whatever they can, and then go off and do things, other things where they may not earn as much, but I think it'll be more fulfilling for them. Maybe a pursuit of a hobby or, I know my son, he works at a startup. He works several hours a day, but his intent is I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do a woodworking job. I'm like, okay, all right. So there are, I think the ask from people is changing. The ask in different countries is different. The needs of people are different depending on what life stage they are, it's different. So it's kind of very complex environment. So there's not really one answer to what do people look for.
Generative AI is the big buzzword. Everyone's talking about generative AI. It's like any tool that has positives, it has negatives. No one really knows where everything's going to play out, but what do you think that workers, employees of any company can do now to help prepare themselves for the age of generative AI?
I think if you just dive in, honestly. I mean, whatever, I think you can keep listening. I mean, you can listen to podcasts and you can do trainings and all of that. I think, yes, you have to do it to just understand how to navigate it in the beginning, but I think you need to dive in. I think you need to start using it in your work and not kind of keep it to the side and say, I'll get to it. I'm hearing some of that and it worries me because I'm like, people just jump in because otherwise you will not know how it can help you. And then it'll move so fast. I think it's moving very fast that we will get left behind. So I make it a point every day. I have that thing open on my laptop as another, it's an open window and I'm constantly trying to figure out, okay, can I use it here? Can I ask this question? Can I kind of build on this? And then I delete all my chats because I don't want anybody else to see it. We could use those as B-roll in this video. But yeah, I think people need to jump in. I think it's, I feel like if I can do it and I don't want to like, I'm not like one of these tech geeky type people. My kids laugh at me, but they're like, mom, really? But like jumping in and actually it's taught me so many things. And so I'm using it in my work. And so I feel like people should just jump in and use it.
Often, I think the default when we hear about or are experiencing a technological change is how is it going to affect employees like the massive, like as if there were such a thing at all. But generative AI is such a clear example of it's going to affect every job if you're in the C-suite or not. And hearing that you yourself are making it a point to carve out time in your day to experiment with it and see how you will evolve I think is really instructive for what people probably should be thinking about when they think about Gen AI. I think it's the biggest change since the, you know, since we moved from handphones to digital phones and then, you know, just internet. I mean, I worked, you know, I worked at this finance company, of course, their margin banking where they had like dumb terminals and big servers in the rooms to internet. I mean,