Tanya Moore, Chief People Officer at West Monroe and a recognized expert with over two decades of HR leadership experience, shares how HR leaders can strategically navigate the AI transformation and position themselves as indispensable. Tune in to learn the secrets on how to redefine the nature of work in your organization and build a resilient, skills-based workforce. This episode provides a clear roadmap for success, including a five-step framework to make sure you stay agile and don’t fall behind. Listeners will gain the insights needed to not just keep their jobs, but thrive in them.
This episode features an interview with Tanya Moore, Chief People Officer at West Monroe.
Tanya brings over 20 years of experience in HR and transformation leadership across consulting and corporate roles. A trusted advisor, she’s led large-scale change at global companies and built award-winning career and skills programs adopted industry-wide.
In this episode, Tanya shares an actionable framework for building a skills-based workforce in the age of AI. She outlines the five essential steps every HR leader should take to prepare their workforce for the future, explains how HR should actually be the first adopters, and offers a fresh perspective on reskilling as a shared win for both people and the business. Whether you're rethinking your talent strategy or just getting started, Tanya’s roadmap will make sure you’re not caught flat-footed.
Guest Bio
Ms. Moore has over 25 years of consulting and Human Resource (HR) experience in the private, public, and non-profit sectors specializing in strategic workforce management; complex talent transformation; reskilling; employee experience; employee engagement; organizational change management; training; compensation and performance management; talent acquisition; and workforce and leadership development.
She is currently the Chief People Officer for West Monroe, a technology and business consulting company. Prior to that, she was the Chief People Officer of M.C. Dean.
Ms. Moore served as a Partner in IBM’s Talent & Transformation organization, bringing leading practices to clients to support their workforce transformation. Ms. Moore also served as the Global Corporate Headquarters Director of IBM Career & Skills, with responsibility for envisioning and executing a new career and skill acceleration experience for the IBM workforce, which included the vision, strategy, and execution of corporate-wide career and skill programs. In this role, Ms. Moore pioneered new approaches to skill transformation and developed several award-winning programs that have become industry standards.
Previously, Ms. Moore was the IBM Global Business Services (GBS) Public Sector Human Resource (HR) Leader where she has primary responsibility for the GBS Public Sector HR function. In this role, she reinvented the Public Sector HR function to advance outcomes in talent acquisition, career development, diversity, employee engagement, and learning. She also managed the HR business partner team. She also served as a senior consultant with federal and government c-suite clients in the areas of organizational and culture change, strategic workforce planning, workforce transformation, and leadership development.
Ms. Moore has an MBA from William and Mary where she specialized in Organizational Development. She serves on the William and Mary Consulting Board of Directors, the Virginia Career Works Northern Region Board of Directors, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce Workforce Committee, and as a Harvard Business Review Advisory Council member. She is regularly asked to speak on topics that include transforming the skills of your workforce, the new role of HR in the digital age, and using AI to advance your HR and people transformation.
Guest Quote
“We are a function that should always be anticipating the needs of the business and our employees, which means we need to be 10, 20-plus steps ahead. If you're playing that far ahead, then you really should never be in a high-pressure situation because you're planning and understanding what is happening.”
Time Stamps
[00:41] Meet Tanya Moore: HR Leadership Journey
[04:04] Strategic Workforce Planning in the Age of AI
[06:51] Preparing for an AI-Powered Future
[09:57] Overcoming Challenges and Building Skills
[15:28] Gaining Leadership Buy-In and Leading Transformation
[18:20] Personal Reflections and Final Thoughts
Sponsor
I’m Telling HR is brought to you by Rippling, the #1 rated HR workforce management system that eliminates the friction from running a business. Visit Rippling.com to learn more.
Links
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[00:00:00] Tayna Moore: The newest thing with AI being in the picture now, you know, you used to identify the skills you have, the skills you need and close the gap. And now I think it needs to start with what's the work? What's the work that needs to be done, and should this work be done by a machine? By a human.
[00:00:28] Leighton Martin: Welcome to, I'm telling HR, the go-to podcast for ambitious HR professionals for. Wanna shake up the status quo, make a real impact and fast track their careers. Brought to you by rippling. I'm your host, Leighton Martin, HR business partner, and I'm here with Tanya Moore, Chief People Officer at West Monroe, a digital services firm that blends consulting and technology to help organizations accelerate transformation.
Tanya brings over two decades of HR leadership experience and is a recognized expert in guiding organizations through rapid growth, large scale transformation, and cultural evolution. She's led through complex change initiatives across industries, knows exactly what it takes to build resilient people, first organizations.
So today she joins us to discuss strategies for building a skill-based workforce, leveraging technology to personalize the employee experience. And the evolving role of hr. So Tanya, welcome to the show. Thanks, Layton. I'm excited to be here with you. Super excited to chat today. I know we have some meaty topics to discuss.
So before we dive in, I guess, can you tell us a little bit about your background and what first sparked your interest in hr? I got my MBA
[00:01:42] Tayna Moore: from William and Mary ultimately joined PricewaterhouseCoopers that became IBM. As a consultant in change management, did that for about 10 years. There was a point in my career where IBM was going through a huge transformation.
I had just come off a, a wonderfully rewarding project with one of our US intelligence agencies, but it was also very just mentally, emotionally draining and, you know, so I was at the point of, uh, maybe I should look to do something else. And my mentor, who I just am so grateful for to this day, said, well, have you considered hr?
And I kind of gave her this face and I was like, why would I do that? Right, exactly. She gave me that face like a dog will give you. Like she cocked her head and was like. Hmm. You know? Hmm. And she said, Tanya, what would you say if one of your mentees said that to you? I said, I would tell them to have an open mind.
And she was like, exactly. And so I thought, you know, let's give it a shot. And I haven't looked back since.
[00:02:39] Leighton Martin: I love that. I feel like that's very relatable to. So many people how they pivoted into hr. So you wrote the book on strategic workforce planning. How has your perspective evolved as AI has entered the conversation?
You know, what's really shifted for you and how you think about planning for the future of work?
[00:03:00] Tayna Moore: So what I will share is I definitely wrote a chapter of a book, listen, take the Credit. But I do think that when you, when you think about the book is called Best Practices and Emerging Directions, and it was really a nice compilation that the authors put together of thought leaders in different parts of strategic workforce planning.
And mine really was. Kind of writing about the practitioner and the practitioner's guide to doing this work. And it was based on years and years of doing it, not only with IBM for our global workforce, but also doing it with clients. And so that really did help me to understand that. Everybody needs to move towards a skills-based organization.
We have to do workforce planning with skills in mind, not just how many people do you have and you know, how many, how many dollars do those people need to produce. So a very, very different and still very modern approach to strategic workforce planning. It was interesting though, to get to your question, I would say.
It was probably six months after that book came out and we were getting such good feedback from the book, but I felt like there was something that had shifted in my chapter. I felt like there was more and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. And as a result of. One thing that I am just a big believer in is that we all have to always be learning.
And so as a result of really kind of continuing to stay up to date with what's going on, where things are shifting, how we need to move. The newest thing with AI being in the picture now is that, you know, you used to identify the skills you have, the skills you need, and close the gap. And now I think it needs to start with.
What's the work? What's the work that needs to be done and should this work be done by a machine? By a human. And then you can also get into the intricacies. If it's a human, is it onshore? Is it near shore? Do you outsource it, et cetera. But when you look at and break down the work, then you're only looking at, okay, what are the skills that you need for the pieces of work that remain?
For the people, and then you upskill those and then you take a different path with the things that need to go to a machine in terms of getting that automated, using ai, et cetera. So there's a step, I think, before the steps we've been talking about previously that I think candidly was missing. And needs to start being incorporated.
[00:05:28] Leighton Martin: I love that. I think you're spot on there. And that leads right into the next question. You know, thinking about what's the work and using that as our how to frame. What should HR leaders do right now to prepare their organizations for an AI powered future? You know, what are the steps? What, what do we need to be thinking about?
[00:05:46] Tayna Moore: So I am a big believer and some of this I think was based on seeing Diane Rson, who's the former CHR of IBM, do this. She really led from the front, and I say that in terms of she started to have us all think about in our own day-to-day job, what, what do we need to be doing differently? This is a huge opportunity for HR and people organizations to lead from the front.
To play a critical role to model this for our organizations. And I also think that we have to act now. The pace of change, the velocity of change is only getting faster. And so if we wait, we're gonna fall further and further behind. So the steps, I would say they're kind of five key steps. The first one is you just need to get smart.
You need to get out there, you need to read, you need to listen to podcasts, you need to go to webinars, get smart on what's happening and continue to stay up to speed. The second one is to build partnerships, and some of that is partnerships in the organization. So HR can't do this alone. You gotta have your IT team on the team with you, and you gotta do it with the line.
So you gotta do it with the business. Really understanding. The business's needs, and then understanding how from a people and a tech perspective, you solve those needs. So that's really the second one. The third one is this concept of if you don't already have a culture of. Growth, learning and agility, you've gotta build that in because part of what people need to know sometimes even more than a specific skill, is just to have that growth mindset, to have that open mindset that I didn't have when someone asked me if I wanted to be a, an hr.
That really allows you to be open, to learn, to experiment, to take risks. That's really, really important just with the speed at which everything is moving. The fourth one is you gotta build skills, so build those AI skills. HR teams have to do it themselves. Leadership teams have to do it. It's not enough to just build skills and everybody else.
Leadership teams have to have those skills themselves. They have to be using AI tools, really modeling the way and then having those re-skilling and up-skilling programs. That are part of what employees are expected to do, make it a little fun, so they're rewarded for it. There's some recognition. And then the fifth one is what we talked about earlier is really re-imagining work.
What's the work that needs to be done? What should be done by what resource? It's hard to start there 'cause that's daunting, but it's definitely, um, something that we all need to do as part of this HR AI journey.
[00:08:33] Leighton Martin: Mm-hmm. Is there anything else that you recommend in how companies can reconfigure their workforce instead of really having this reaction out of like fear or urgency that can help folks reskill as we are in this age of AI transformation?
[00:08:49] Tayna Moore: So I think one thing that I have seen. Companies struggle with is just where do they start? Where do I start? And then. I see some companies say, okay, we're gonna start, but then it's like a big analysis that goes on about who, where, how, what specifics. And so you spend a lot of times in that analysis phase when through all of that time you're, you're losing time.
What I have found works is to just start, right? So there are some skills, basic skills that all of us need regardless of our role for your company. What are those skills? And start educating on those. I. While you're doing that analysis as to who needs what and getting more specific with the business. The second thing is.
I've, I see a lot of good when you do pilots, try it with an organization. And then ultimately you really do need a thoughtful, reskilling, upskilling roadmap. Who's gonna be skilled to what, you know, who has what skills already? How are you gonna continue to grow those skills? How are you gonna reward people for getting 'em?
How does it fit into the fabric of your organization? And then that really gets to the adoption piece. One thing that has been surprising for me is. The fear and kind of anxiety and that lack of psychological safety that people have around this whole AI topic. Is my job at risk? Will I lose my team if I, I re-skill them?
Will I, you know, like what does it look like for me personally, for my team? I continually hear that the adoption part is the biggest part. Again, back to the people. How do we get folks to understand that this is in their best interest? Not necessarily even and the company's best interest, like it's really a win-win for all.
So that there's some things I think you could get started on now, and then there are some things that I think you need to be more strategic with in regards to a roadmap, and that's a lot of times where business partners can really help. You know, we'll come in. Other companies like us will come in and help you to kind of map that out and give you a bit of a jumpstart on some of the areas where you can get some quick wins.
[00:11:00] Leighton Martin: To your point again, many times you can have that analysis paralysis. Yeah. And it's, you know, let's just get started and can kind of figure out the roadmap and more of those strategic items down the line.
[00:11:10] Tayna Moore: One of the things that I kind of feel is part of hrs job is to make people employable, not just employed.
So our job is to give people the skills, the capability, the agility that they can find another. Position in our company, or they can go someplace else and find another position. And so to me, if we do that, we're investing in our teams. But it's truly goodness for them. And at the same time, goodness for us.
So that's just a little phrase that I use with my teams if it's helpful,
[00:11:44] Leighton Martin: super helpful. And of course I want folks to stay at rippling, but it's also how are we preparing you to be building these skills to be successful elsewhere too? And what have you run into in terms of like the biggest resistance that you've ever seen from leaders?
About any type of like AI transformation in the workforce?
[00:12:03] Tayna Moore: I would say the biggest one that I see is I work with clients in our organization is just protectionism. It's protection of the past, it's protection of their team, it's protection of the people, it's protection against change. That's really kind of the, the biggest from an organizational.
Component underestimating the impact that this all has on people. You know, we talked about how this isn't a tech problem, this is a people plus process, plus tech. Again, how do we crack that code? How do we provide that communication, the transparency, the psychological safety to allow people to lean in and want to have a growth mindset, to want to try something, you know, to feel comfortable.
I think that's the other thing that comes to mind for me.
[00:12:51] Leighton Martin: It does so much come down to, right, are we fostering that environment where folks do have that growth mindset and feel like they can lean into that? What's your playbook for getting buy-in from leadership? You know, how do you approach that?
[00:13:03] Tayna Moore: If I were to kind of think about generally, the first one is when you are in an HR people function, you have to know the business.
Know what the company does, know what it sells. Know what that group does. Know what their market is. Know how they make money, know what they're struggling with. Know what your leader's metrics are. You know, really understand what does this person or these people care about. And then speak with them on topics that they care about in language that they use.
Because then you're really coming at it from a perspective of. Care of knowledge. Another thing that I've seen work, I, I say think big, start small. You kind of have to have a vision, right? But you gotta start somewhere. And so this concept of pilots, this concept of small wins, I have found it successful in a couple different ways.
One, there are people in the organization that just naturally lean in on things like this. Go where there's energy is what I tell people. Go where there's someone that's excited. Go with someone that wants to partner with you and test and learn who's gonna be a good partner. And then as you're showing success, highlight to the rest of the organization and you tend to find that other leaders have fear of missing out and so we'll wanna like get on board with you.
The other thing is go where there's a big pain point and how can you just kind of chip away at that pain point. And then the last one is. To co-create with the business. Again, if you're doing something strictly from here comes hr. A lot of times that's just not super successful. So getting in, really understanding who's impacted, bring 'em in from the start, you're going to get to better solutions You're building, buy-in as you go.
Those are kind of three of my biggest tips.
[00:14:49] Leighton Martin: So if our listeners could do just one thing today to start learning about transformational change, obviously in this context of AI and hr, what would you recommend?
[00:14:59] Tayna Moore: I don't even know that I'd recommend a specific skill. I would recommend really understanding and building a growth mindset.
Building that agility, being open to asking questions, being open to being curious because I really believe that if people have that at the core of their being, rest will start to come naturally.
[00:15:20] Leighton Martin: Incredible. Well, thank you Tanya, so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed this conversation.
[00:15:26] Tayna Moore: Thanks for having me.
[00:15:28] Leighton Martin: And thanks for tuning into, I'm Telling HR. I am your host, Leighton Martin. This episode of I'm Telling HR was brought to you by rippling. If you want more sharp takes or tactical insights like this, hit the link in the show notes and subscribe to our newsletter. For thousands of HR pros go to stay one step ahead.