Care To Do Better; How Accenture Equips Businesses to Reskill their Employees

Episode Transcript

Kelly Ryan Bailey  00:01

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Let’s talk about skills baby. I am your host, Kelly Ryan Bailey. Each week I chat with inspiring visionaries about the skills that make them successful, how they developed those skills and their innovative approaches to improving skills based hiring and learning around the world. Come learn what skills help you live your best life. This week, our guest is Eva Sage-Gavin. Thank you so much for joining us, Eva.

Eva Sage-Gavin  00:33

Kelly, I am so happy to be here. Thanks. It’s perfect timing.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  00:37

It really is. So let me just give a quick little introduction to Eva. You’re going to have to sit there a moment and bask in the glow that I’m hoping to put on you right now. But I do want to make sure that everyone knows the background. I am so impressed and so excited for this moment. So, Eva is the Senior Managing Director of Global Talent & Organization / Human Potential Practice at Accenture. She leads a global team that is responsible for helping clients harness digital technologies and evolve their workforces to innovate, unlock human potential, and drive transformation. She also plays a pivotal role in shaping the practice’s market strategy, including offerings and investments. Eva was recognized by National Association of Corporate Directors in 2020 as one of the most influential leaders in corporate governance for making a significant impact in boardrooms. And, she was featured on Silicon Republic’s future of work influencers 2020 list as a top 16 influencer to follow. I completely agree with that. I also follow Eva, you all should. Eva has also been honored as a top 100 HR tech influencer by HR Executive for shaping the world and future of HR technology. And she is a William B. Groat award recipient for lifetime achievement in human resources. So prior to Accenture, Eva served in C-suite roles as a CHRO at Gap Inc., that’s when we met, PepsiCo, Disney and Sun Microsystems; and a senior advisor at Boston Consulting Group and to G-100 companies supporting CEOs, board directors and CHROs. As the first female member of multiple public technology company boards, Eva served as co-chair of women Corporate Directors Bay Area chapter. She is also a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, faculty and advisor for Santa Clara University Women Corporate Board Ready program, which we’re going to talk more about that in a moment because we just were. And additionally Eva is Executive in Residence at Cornell University of Industrial and Labor Relations and guest lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Industrial and labor relations from Cornell University. Thank you so much for for letting me give you that moment. But I would just want to add to this that I met Eva, again, when I mentioned she was at the time the CHRO at Gap. The last time we were together, which we were reminiscing on before we jumped in here was about six or seven years ago. And that sounds like a long time. But I remember this distinctly because there was this fantastic event in Sacramento, California with the California Community Colleges. One of the women that we both still know today, who was the chancellor at the time of the California Community Colleges was there. And it was one of those moments. In all honesty, I really looked at these super powerful women. And I looked up to you guys, and I was able to be there and participate in a way and not only were we doing all the things that we loved, but it was that moment that was like wow, look what I might be able to do in the future. Because here are some fantastic women that have been able to do these things too. So, this is an extra special moment for me.

Eva Sage-Gavin  04:15

Kelly, I am so thoroughly embarrassed and honored. And thank you for bringing up that point about our time together in Sacramento. I mentioned the timing is great. And so often when we think about a new year and new beginnings, we think of new resolutions. What could be better than our topic today on skills and you know, reconnecting with old friends and changing the world together as, as best we can. So I’m very honored and excited to help anyone listening. If anything I’ve experienced may shorten their pathway or speed their development, that’ll be a great outcome from today.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  04:54

I agree and you know, I think I would love to do because I’ve given some, I mean you have some fantastic highlights here, but it’s sort of the highlight reel. I’d love to jump in, because I know how passionate you are about this. But I’d love to be able to share with our listeners, you know, how did you get into this? Tell us about your journey.

Eva Sage-Gavin  05:16

Well, I’m going to take you up on the highlight reel and just give you the quick highlights and then happy to go in any area. But Kelly, we talked about this is a lifelong passion for me, I was fortunate enough to be inspired by strong role models and saw that skills were access to opportunity, opportunity was access to, you know, being able to contribute and contribute was access to impacting and leading others. So from the very beginning, I’m from a family of educators, and had great advice and instruction early on, that helped me find my path to human resources and Cornell, which I’m still connected with today. And move on to probably one big idea that might not be obvious in my background is the importance of diversity of experience. You know, we often talk about lifelong learning, but a lot of our learning does happen from the environments were exposed to the challenges we faced and the innovation and creativity we’ve stimulated. So you see that I have experience in technology, experience in consumer, experience in service, and honored to be involved with academia all my life, volunteering my time, with Skills for America’s Future, which is Community College connection actually sponsored by Dr. Jill Biden, in the past, still associated with Aspen Institute, Cornell and other amazing universities. So that’s kind of the trio headline is one lifelong passion, two academia, and three diversity of business experience and volunteering my time to make a difference.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  06:57

That’s fantastic. Well, you know, and the other piece that I would love to talk about a little bit here is just sort of, you know, I know, in this, you’ve been doing this for so long, but like every time that we’re together, or I see something that you post, like I fully know that it is a strong passion for you, not only in helping people as we can see, but really sort of how to make change, organizational change around this. So that because, you know, I think we all know that there are areas that hold people back because of technology and processes in place. And so that’s the piece really that I always noticed the thread of the work that you’ve done was really around how can we move these barriers out of the way, and help people be successful?

Eva Sage-Gavin  07:42

Yeah, it’s such a great point. And there’s kind of two pieces to that one is the individual, and what skills they acquire, and how they stay resilient and relevant. The other is the organization. And are they providing pathways or opportunity so that people know what they need to do to get prepared. And some of us are lucky enough to have employers that heavily invest. Some of us aren’t. We may be independent business owners, students, and we have to craft our own path. So a lot of the work that I’m doing is pathfinding, to be able to say, you know, through thought leadership and research, here’s what’s coming. Here’s whats available to you. And, and then I have the tremendous backing of Accenture to make that research publicly available. So people can pick it up, they can follow it and say, for leaders, hey, you know, we have to think about the whole person, and all of their capability, not just technical training and giving them technology. If they can’t use it, they’re not going to get leverage. It’s human plus machine. For individuals, rather than signaling here, the hot skills, there’s ways to access them, and then how can you always be looking ahead to stay resilient, relevant and employable?

Kelly Ryan Bailey  08:58

You’ve really mentioned a lot of fantastic skills here that I think are so important in a person’s journey.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  17:04

 So we had just talked a moment about, you know, sort of your background in, you know, this concept of skills and some really important resilience skills. And so I’m going to pick it up from that moment, because what I want to, and I’ll preface this really quickly, I want to just quickly start to ask you like, when did you start seeing skills from an HR perspective? And, you know, kind of where that went with things? So,

Eva Sage-Gavin  17:30

Yes. Okay. That’s great to know, because I have an idea on that. Okay, perfect. So,

Kelly Ryan Bailey  17:35

So Eva, you mentioned some really fantastic skills in that statement, because I find that, you know, there’s these sort of like foundational layer skills that really make people successful, like resilience, as an example, across any industry that they might work in. What I’m really curious about, especially since you’ve been involved in HR at the highest of levels, when did you start seeing the talk about skills, right, happen in that sort of corporate environment in HR?

Eva Sage-Gavin  18:04

Yeah, it’s an excellent question. And I mentioned my affiliation with Cornell. And I think that they were ahead of the curve in understanding that things that we normally use to think about what’s important for candidates, right? So that’s a classic thing, interviewing people for a job. Organizations like and institutions like Cornell, we’re looking beyond that they were looking at what are the core or raw skills an individual has? How do you know? And then how can those skills be visible or demonstrated? As simple as we can say it if you think of all of us as a collection of our life experiences, our skills. And if we have a way to share those without those being masked or hidden, then we have a chance to put people in jobs that they can excel in. We have as an HR team and employers, a chance to pick people who are going to soar. And then we have a chance to look at what else does everyone need to go to the next step? So I’d say that early on, probably first stage in my career, I became involved in tech really, really early. And this idea of who could learn brand new technology that no one else has seen that was coming right out of the labs was the first HR challenge I faced. I was a recruiter for technology. And that’s where I saw the power of humans, machine, data, data science analytics emerge, and wow, here we are today with artificial intelligence and never more important.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  19:35

It’s so true. Now, you know, because we have sort of this crossover experience with the work with the you know, California Community Colleges, of course, at the time you were at Gap, but you were working really closely with Aspen Institute HR Policy, I don’t even know if it was called HR Policy at the time, but

Eva Sage-Gavin  19:49

It was, yeah, it was

Kelly Ryan Bailey  19:51

It was, so you know, you mentioned this sort of knowing where what someone brings to the table in terms of skills from their life experiences right, and then where the pieces are missing. I really am so curious your thoughts around that partnership with education and and sort of how you, over the years have handled this concept of we say upskilling reskilling right? But do you find that to fit better in partnership with higher education versus others? Or is there sort of a multipronged approach?

Eva Sage-Gavin  20:27

Multipronged is really a good point. And I call it even multi stakeholder. So one of the things I loved about when we met in Sacramento is the partnership with American Association of Community Colleges, Aspen Institute, and at that time, it was Skills for America’s Future. It’s now Upskill America.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  20:46

That’s right.

Eva Sage-Gavin  20:47

And then you mentioned HRPA. What happened is different coalition’s came together under invitation, you know, from the public sector. And the idea was, this is actually around 2008. We have massive unemployment, Americans are out of work, or economy is suffering, how can we get people to areas of high demand that require new skills? And that’s the problem we were facing. So, you know, when we met, the American Association of Community Colleges was meeting with employers who could see the hot skills, they could advise on curriculum, and in some cases, they could put instructors into education networks or job in practiums, or internships, or job shadowing, and that’s the part that I was passionate about is when you have people who are hiring and practicing, talking to people who are preparing talent, skill pipelines, that can reach out to individuals and make sure they have these what we call market signals.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  21:49

Mm hmm.

Eva Sage-Gavin  21:50

And then if you can add a layer to that, of how can someone get into that, those programs, those opportunities, that digital learning, that is the power that moved all of us forward. And, and thats the reason that team, and that coalition is still in place today, and I’m still actively involved.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  22:08

Completely, they have done some amazing, amazing work. I was, you know, I continue to be so impressed with them. But of course, that moment was I got to be involved with a lot of sort of, like public, private partnership groups. But that was really one that stood out to me as sort of like hitting all the right points. You mentioned in that comment that that the employers that would come to the table in these discussions sort of knew what skills and actually I think this question still comes up today, because I love that you made the comparison to the 2008. I do it all the time myself. I’m like the great recession is just a mini, you know, version of what we’re going through right now. And how, you know, this question keeps coming up, how do employers know when things are changing so quickly? And and when we even think now this year, right, or last year, I guess, you know, the amount of technology that we had to figure out because we all went virtual like that is, probably changing jobs just as quickly as they were changing prior to that. You know, how do employers know when it’s not going to be the same next year or in the next five years?

Eva Sage-Gavin  23:18

Well, this is this power of what I call signals. So I mentioned the idea of coalition’s, and partnerships, and many of our innovation labs are made up of academic research. I’m going to use one example, actually I’m going to use two Kelly. I recently just came through a six week program with MIT. It was called a convergence forum, and it was MIT’s top leaders and professors with, in this case, it was Accenture’s top leaders, and we worked on things that don’t exist yet. One of the things I worked on was a whole team on human.ai. And we had professors speak to us who were futurist, but also had tremendous experience in navigating some of the past challenges like the last massive economic recession. One I want to do a shout out to his professor Tom Malone. He’s famous for being the father of collective intelligence, turns out we were both in Silicon Valley in the past in tech. And his new book is Super Minds. When you are looking at leaders, whether it’s MIT or you’re looking at Cornell has a Silicon Valley advisory board. I mentioned all the networks and coalition’s I’m involved in. Women, Corporate Directors, really many people in advanced positions as board directors, they’re looking at ESG they’re looking at the World Economic Forum. They’re looking at gender and pay equality, all these things linked back to skills. And so we work hard at Accenture to be a curator of market signals, simply collecting, advising and providing insights and then making those available through thought leadership. So people can follow those and say, you know, they are signaling this kind of a career path is emerging, these kinds of technology skills, these roles that have high pay equity opportunities. And we do that through, you know, various analytics, research. But one last point, we practice on ourselves. We’ve got 519,000 people

Kelly Ryan Bailey  25:37

You can right, yeah?

Eva Sage-Gavin  25:40

There, there isn’t a day, at least a week that I’m not learning a brand new skill, either through online, through a partnership or, frankly, on the job.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  25:51

Exactly. Because you get to be involved in all of these new things all the time. And so I can see how naturally, you would just continually pick up new things. Before we jump into what is new and exciting in your world, because there are a lot of fantastic things. The one thing that I again, thinking of all of these, you know, groups initiatives coalition’s that I’m working with as well, how, what would you say back to them? And I and I tend to think of like the, again, the multi-stakeholders, right, you’ve got some groups that are providing the education, some groups that are providing that learning development, you’ve got some groups that are the employers that are going to hire people, maybe there’s some regional governments involved, you know, there’s all sorts, but how can they make the most of what they’re doing? Like, what are some best practices?

Eva Sage-Gavin  26:41

Well, one is this idea of connectedness. You know, we have technology that can give us so much information, but it can be overwhelming. So we talked a bit about, you know, innovation and crises, and I recently was involved in an initiative to make a what I call a master connection. It’s called People Plus Work Connect. But we host a CHRO forum of Chief HR Officers. And almost 30+ of them got together last March in the peak of the pandemic immediately after it had been announced globally, and we were all in shelter in place. Long story short, four people after that session said, our companies want to do something we want to do something. Can you serve as a master connector? You Accenture, but it was me, Ellyn Shook, and then CHROs. Ellyn, by the way, is our Chief HR officer at Accenture.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  27:38

Oh, wow.

Eva Sage-Gavin  27:39

But it was Verizon, like in financial service now. And long story short, in 14 days, we developed a technology platform, that anybody that had jobs that were going to be available, and anyone who had workforces that were being impacted, could post that. It was a business, and it is business to business connection. So you could go on and say I’m Company A and I have jobs in Las Vegas, and Company B could say and I have openings.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  28:09

Mm hmm.

Eva Sage-Gavin  28:10

What’s really neat about that is you say, well, you know, isn’t that a job matching? Well, it wasn’t at an individual level, it was a company and company level, we keep out personally identifiable info, just keep it very clean, straight and fast. But what was super cool is the connectors who could do interpretation, a job in an industry where you think I can only hire X, I have to have this profile was up against workforces that were heavily impacted. Travel, tourism, hospitality. I don’t need to tell you, in-store operations. We were able to convert skills that might exist in one industry, to skills that could live in a new industry, and get groups of people connected and ported over. An example of that is Home Delivery Group has hired 750,000 people

Kelly Ryan Bailey  29:04

Oh I bet because right now, that’s what everyone needs.

Eva Sage-Gavin  29:08

750,000. So what it did is the old requirements that you must have this degree, you must have this badging a lot of that was put to the side if you have this skill, and you know, you meet certain requirements for safety’s first, we’ll give you a shot. And people were amazed at the cross industry movement that happened overnight.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  29:32

So I want to geek out here for a moment because you know that I like know the inside of this stuff. And I the questions that come to mind for me when I hear this I’m like okay, first of all, like what were you doing to you know, I use the term skillify right, but like, what were you doing to essentially skillify these people and these roles to be able to make that connection? And was there human touch on this too or was it solely a technology exchange?

Eva Sage-Gavin  30:02

It’s an excellent point. The simple answer is it wasn’t solely a technology exchange, the human touch is absolutely critical. And I’ll just use the simplest example I can. But we have really sophisticated ones, if you and I want to geek out and talk about capabilities, skill pathways, but just using the simplest one on person to person advice. One of the greatest skills right now, is the ability to have a safe, clean environment, that there’s little risk of infection. I mean, that’s as simple as it gets.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  30:36

Of course.

Eva Sage-Gavin  30:37

Well think of places that have to be open that are essential hospitals, supermarkets, anywhere, you know, we need to go to get goods and services. And then think, on the other hand of who is the heaviest impacted industry, hospitality certainly would be there

Kelly Ryan Bailey  30:53

Of course, food and beverage

Eva Sage-Gavin  30:53

I had a major hotel chain call me and say, the workers I’m most worried about our housekeeping staff, they are being disproportionately impacted, and do you have any ideas? And of course, you know, we had a lot of knowledge about what kinds of qualifications went in. But such a simple example, we said, Well, have you talked to every one of essential services that require public buildings to be open?

Kelly Ryan Bailey  31:22

Right.

Eva Sage-Gavin  31:22

They’re like, no, so they sent a crew over to a local grocery store, it was a smashing success. The grocery store said, We have never had to sanitize to this level, it is daily.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  31:34

And of course, they know how to do that.

Eva Sage-Gavin  31:36

And they’re certified. I mean, you can think of top hospitality firms, they’re trained, they’re experienced, they know how to use appropriate tools, chemicals, resources, and we, you know, sometimes don’t see these essential workers for all their skills.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  31:53

Right.

Eva Sage-Gavin  31:54

And and I picked that example, because, you know, I’ve worked in very high skilled industries and in very accessible skill industries. And to see these individuals, many are women now have real jobs, they have the role throughout the day.  Right.  It isn’t grocery store cleaning at night. Throughout the day, you’re seeing that active. It got to a point where they said to the regional hospitality executive, we want to hire them permanently. You know, there’s no going back. And their answer was, well, let’s do a loan. And we’ll revisit when things are better.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  32:28

Right.

Eva Sage-Gavin  32:29

But you’re an expert. Think of all the skills that are core. And if just for a minute, you’ve thought about, well, anyone with a marketing background could do that in a high growth industry, anybody with a transportation background. I mean, anyone with an HR background could help surge hiring these were the simple, logical pathways we built, but we made the cross industry intros. And then we use science and technology to go fast and get people to areas of opportunity fast.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  33:01

Yeah, I love that. And sometimes, you know, it’s so funny, because when you talk to people that know what we know, it seems so common sensical that those two connections would make sense. But to many people, it doesn’t, you don’t necessarily think of that. My family owns a couple of restaurants, and a bar in New York City, and in this process, you know, we as business owners had to, you know, basically put on hold our staff and the conversations were around, do you know that if you’ve been a waiter or a waitress, that you’re a fantastic salesperson, like really fantastic. And it is, but it requires this manual touch because again, the majority of organizations don’t necessarily hire that way. They’re looking for that bachelor’s degree, or whatever it might be. And they don’t think that way. How would you like challenge organizations to you know, of course, you’ve made this connection, which is fantastic. But in the event that someone like yourself is not they’re able to, you know, do that, how would you challenge back to organizations to say, actually, you’re, you’re kind of getting in your own way?

Eva Sage-Gavin  34:12

Well, you know, we’ll go back to our meeting with the American Association of Community Colleges. And this idea, you know, my underlying principle is access to skills is access to opportunity, which is lifelong resiliency. It’s really simple. And it’s not a conceptual thing for me, I’ve tried to follow it myself and open doors for others. So this idea that skills can be acquired from anywhere and that if you open your lens to the people that are doing the work. We work with technologist and I’ll call out one Kelly, Sky High.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  34:48

Yes.

Eva Sage-Gavin  34:49

Many times we’ll go in and now let’s go inside a company you asked me about HR and talking about work we do, you know, inside the house as they say. Someone was saying to us I have to go digital overnight. I have to suspend my store operations for in-store purchasing, but I’ve got to get accelerated home delivery. I want curb pickup and I want some limited access, we’re all familiar with the basics there. My digital team needs to triple and my store ops team is going to be affected. Is anybody transferable? Because those two worlds often were hired from different pathways with different skills, we were able to go in using partners like Sky High and actually do technology analysis of what are the raw skills? Who has them in your store operations workforce? What kind of training would they need, and then how many could be immediately trained and moved over, for all the changes to your supply chain, digital operations and customer service? You know how much joy it gives you to think about this many people that you would have laid off can soar and learn new skills that you might have overlooked?

Kelly Ryan Bailey  36:06

Mm hmm.

Eva Sage-Gavin  36:07

That is, you know, you know, I have half my backgrounds consumer and half my background is technology, I didn’t ever think the lines would be so critical of uniting us. But that has been a huge focus for us for any retailers or store based operation, overnight digital, look at your own workforce, you know, training quickly, and let’s get goods to people’s homes and get them the services that they need. And early stage companies like Sky High, who we met through an entrepreneur, startup organization called Unreasonable Futures, many women and underrepresented minority owned businesses that is magic, magic.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  36:56

And you’ve helped all those people. I mean, you know, in all honesty, if that if that question wasn’t asked, how can we potentially use our current, you know, employees to fill these needs, they may have let go, all of those people and tried to hire new people. And so it’s sort of like, it’s so personally fulfilling, at the same time, I’m sure to help.

Eva Sage-Gavin  37:20

And, you know, the other thing many of these startups look at is, are we looking at talent pools that are expansive, you and I’ve had the age old debate of technologist women racial diversity, and you know, the phrase that I can’t find anyone, we’ve been able to use technology to look at a workforce and say, here are talent pools that are available, and there might need to be an investment in training, but compared to, you know, any other source you have, you know, people that know your culture, they’re lifelong learners, they’re high performers in their current role. And they have all the baseline skills, that with training, they have a better than a 70% chance of success.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  38:03

Right.

Eva Sage-Gavin  38:04

And then you have the math and the analytics to show it and by the way, may not have a four year degree, and it’s okay.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  38:10

Mm hmm. It’s so true. I feel like the degree gets in the way for so many roles. It’s one of those areas for me that I 100% appreciate higher education. And, you know, I definitely always suggest that when people have the time and space, but when it’s something that, you know, you’re not able to advance because you’re holding out for this sort of, like, perfect picture, I feel like that gets in the way. How do you, you know, when you think about how someone moves from one place to the next, and that sort of learning, or education in the middle? You know, what do you again, I think of like best practices here, because this is the question that comes up all the time when you have an engagement like the one you just described, and you know, okay, we need these people to have the skills to move over here. What kind of resources are you looking at? We’ve talked a little bit about higher education, but I know there’s other alternatives as well.

Eva Sage-Gavin  39:05

It’s a fantastic point. One of the ecosystem components we haven’t spent a lot of time on is the incredible surge and, and those that are available at an individual level. There’s early stage companies in the space but there’s famous ones like Coursera, or EdCast or others. And, you know, many are also opening up to individuals during this difficult time where they may be furloughed. They may have some economic bridge and they can do a six week program and get a certification. Those are amazing opportunities. And again, you know, I talked about I’m living this, my daughter’s at a technology company, M&A, and her travel went from daily to suspended and virtual. What a great time to look at options she found out there was a fast track available program for an executive MBA, that could be around her schedule, and she’s enrolled and passed her first semester. That’s an example of someone who does have a four year degree. But I coached students a lot. And I do a lot of mentoring. And often it is a working mom could be a single parent family, their home school homeschooling, they have a lot of challenges going on. But we know they have all these raw skills, maybe from restaurant service, maybe from working in retail, and with a credential, some online education, that now is a visible badge, they’ve been certified in X or Y.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  40:40

Right.

Eva Sage-Gavin  40:40

Maybe they were able to get that done over a multi-week period around their, you know, very challenging schedule. The next step is making that badging or that signal visible that I do have this certification. I do have this years of experience. And I’ve had this community experience that prepares me. You use sales, right? Customer service. And so almost I’ve worked with people to reprofile, how their social media footprint shows up. LinkedIn shows up, what keywords will recruiters pick up, so you can get in the stream to be visible.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  41:21

It’s so true. There’s, I mean I always, I share this quick snippet. But you know, I in our field, I only have a bachelor’s degree myself. And there were times where I had considered, you know, you know, additional formal education and moving up to the Masters, but my children were young, you know, there were things life was in the way, and that just never happened. But it didn’t stop me from learning new things. It’s just not something that is there in a diploma and, you know, available there. But I do, I think if we understand how to communicate it, that’s really the most important thing, whether or not there’s, you know, a piece of paper to say you have this

Eva Sage-Gavin  42:00

And part of the wonderful thing about artificial intelligence and the ability to analyze is you can see signals of these skills experiences that can be converted into leadership, and what you and I would call kind of a core skill baseline. The other thing is, if we want to just geek out for one second, many things that are considered mandatory technical skills are easily verifiable. But the skills that are on really high demand are the question you asked a minute ago, they’re insights. And so we did a very extensive research project with Aspen Institute a few years ago. And we looked at what are the emerging skills for the leader today and tomorrow, or the employee. These social skills on innovation, creativity, judgment, problem solving, those are the ones that are breaking through right now. And with groups like our partnership with Sky High, we’ve also looked at what we call early adopters

Kelly Ryan Bailey  43:04

Okay

Eva Sage-Gavin  43:04

They’ve got certain certifications that you wouldn’t have thought, wow, you know, you can get workday certified. Because if you have this background, it’s immediately transferable. So on my team, I’m really proud, Kelly, you know we’re technologists and consultants. We are more than 50% gender diverse, we’ve had no issue finding trained individuals with technology. And when we have had challenges, we have gone out and said, we’re going to hire you based on potential and immediately put you into training to get you those certifications.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  43:39

You really like live and breathe this internally and then help you know others do that with their internal processes, which I just love again, that that passion point. That work that you did with Aspen, I’m pretty sure that I read that report. But for our listeners, I just forget the name of the report. Do you recall it by any chance?

Eva Sage-Gavin  43:57

Yes, it’s called Middle Skills is the Simple Phrase. And what I can do, Kelly is there’s a couple I’ve been thinking about, and I haven’t called them out, but that’s one that we actually get to present at a conference at Ross School at Michigan. So that back to that coalition idea. And so we can get that for you. The other one that I’ve been sort of signaling is one we just released called Care to do Better. And it’s about modern HR and the idea that you have to look at a whole person, not just employability or financial, but you want to look at relational, their wellness, their physical safety, and also people want to be with boards that are more purpose driven.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  44:39

Mm hmm.

Eva Sage-Gavin  44:40

You know, when everything’s at stake, you want to feel you’re living a life that matches with what you’re passionate about, you know, to the extent that you have economic safety, then you want to really be aligned. Not everyone has economic safty, so I don’t want to minimize that. That has to be job number one. I must have enough income to be safe, and have my family have food and a roof, but the minute that those basic needs are met, people are saying, you know, am I proud of what I’m doing?

Kelly Ryan Bailey  45:10

Exactly?

Eva Sage-Gavin  45:11

Am I aligned with organizations that stand for, you know, what I value? And so we often do work to think about, are we thinking enough about the whole person? Or are we just staying with employability and financial important, but really winning organizations are looking at a whole human being all their needs, including mental wellness.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  45:34

I love that you bring that up. And it was sort of perfect timing, because I was actually thinking it when you described the Aspen report. Because the thing is, and I think, you know, all of us in this space, we kind of knew that that was happening, sort of this undercurrent, but with COVID it’s all just front and center for us now. I mean, we spend the majority of our time in our work. And if we’re, if we don’t love it, right, I mean, yes, of course, once basic needs are met. But if you don’t love it, that’s a really, it’s a, it’s a lot for you to deal with, from a mental perspective, when we talk about that full person, and wellness, if you just don’t have that, that strong feeling and passion towards what you do. But I think, this to me, I get super excited about it because that’s sort of the purpose, the reason why behind why I started this podcast, because that’s what I was seeing. I was like, we were from a technology and data perspective, helping people creating the pathways, giving them the stepping stones, like we can show you everything that you need to do, but at the end of the day, if they’re not, you know, here, if they’re not having the right feelings, and that’s why you go back to those skills, like the innovation, the creativity, but what about, do you guys in that second report that you mentioned, you guys really touch on? You know, I say life skills. Some people might say, growth mindset. But sort of those like, these are super foundational skills when we talk about just like life, and, you know, professional success.

Eva Sage-Gavin  47:02

Absolutely. And I mentioned that, you know, I’m so honored to be part of these partnerships in ecosystems, trying to do things that haven’t yet been done at scale, to make them available. So we can all move forward. And in this mental wellness, there’s a lot of things emerging, because this crisis is just had such a toll. I mean, we just passed, you know, 400,000 lost souls. And, you know, I think we both are going to get emotional, there isn’t a family I know, that hasn’t been touched by this pandemic, including my own extended family, and it’s just heartbreaking. It’s day by day. And you know, the effects can be long lasting, if one makes it to the other side. So the mental fortitude and resilience required to support a family member that might be facing COVID, another family member who’s been laid off as a result and another family member, or the same family member, who has three young children at home with no childcare, no schooling, it’s as tough as it’s ever been in my multi-decade career. So we have formed a lot of strategic partnerships. And yesterday, I had the honor to be with Arianna Huffington, and her work at Thrive Global. There is so much there available. And she is part of her contribution has put out at no cost a first responder toolkit to be able to help those essential workers who have to be there to support others. But within that, we Accenture have developed and participated in a program called Thriving Minds.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  48:42

Yes.

Eva Sage-Gavin  48:43

It’s online, Kelly. We made it available to our 500 plus employees and immediately 130,000 people engaged in it. And a lot of the things in there are things you and I know, but it’s logical. You can put them into your daily life. Things like micro steps.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  49:06

Yep, I was gonna say it’s always we talk in the world of work, right? We talked about these habits, everyday habits, when you’re looking at someone who you’re like, wow, I want to be that person. They always talk about those daily habits that keep them, you know, in a progression in a growth stage. That’s exactly what the micro practices like all of that, I think it’s so it has to be part of the everyday.

Eva Sage-Gavin  49:29

So you know back to anyone who’s listening, there’s so many things out there and you can say I’m overwhelmed. But the idea that let’s just you know, focus on one or two, no, we’ve been helping HR and CEO and CFO executives just really basic. You know, there are six key things people need, right? You know, employability financial, to meet their basic needs, and you safe, whatever, if it’s home safe connectivity, if it’s essential worker. If they do need relational, you know, who am I working with, and training leaders on how to be good virtual leaders is a brand new skill for many people. So they need mental wellness, you know, many, when they log on have already been through five or six hours of family care, could be medical attention could be meals for their children. I mean, you and I, you know, live in the real world, we know how hard that can be. And then the final and most important is this purpose driven.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  50:33

I love it. Now, is this available? So you mentioned that it’s available to Accenture employee? Is this available to the public as well?

Eva Sage-Gavin  50:40

Well, Thriving Minds in particular is something that we have internally for Accenture. But if anyone listening wants to go on to Thrive Global website, Arianna Huffington is the founder and CEO, there are tools and resources available at no cost. And I talked about the first responder program, and then there are others that were encouraging people to mention it to their companies. And you know, we’re happy to make the connection. You know, there are other resources as well. You know, this is where we’re saying to employers may not have the financial resources to, you know, put everything out, but there’s community resources. We’re finding that these coalition’s are leaning in and making some of the funds that are beginning to flow available. I’m doing some work with Harvard on hidden workers. And we did put out a blog on Christmas Eve on December 24th, about types of hidden workers, of veterans, you know, those who have been on unemployment, etc. and different ways to think about giving people access and helping them get back on their feet. People Plus Work Connect is free. I should have mentioned that.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  51:53

Oh, good. You know what? I’m glad you did, because I wasn’t sure if it was just that small, you know, the group of employers that you mentioned, or it could be anyone?

Eva Sage-Gavin  51:59

No, it’s free and if you have jobs to offer, or you have workforce impacted, just go on accenture.com, its People Plus Work Connect, there is no charge. And

Kelly Ryan Bailey  52:06

Just to clarify, is it only organizations that are looking to make an exchange or individuals?

Eva Sage-Gavin  52:18

It is not individual.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  52:19

Okay, okay.

Eva Sage-Gavin  52:20

It’s employer to employer and we had to think of a way we could do it without personally identifiable info. So we’re putting employers together through that through that network

Kelly Ryan Bailey  52:33

That’s fantastic

Eva Sage-Gavin  52:34

We have had people log on though and see it and go to their employer and ask their employer to sign up and they have.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  52:40

Oh, that’s great. That’s fabulous. Because I think that’s the thing is, I think, just to go in and try that out, I mean, are there, these are so many wonderful resources, Eva, like, I just, I’m excited about all the things we just talked about. And I will make sure for our listeners that when we publish, you know, when this is all published, that this will all be shared, because we’ll make sure everyone has the links and everything. I know, it’s hard to always remember when we’re listening. But these are some fantastic pieces, especially at this moment in time. And, and I think like you mentioned earlier, you know, it’s 2021, it’s like, sort of one of those years, right, where, from a transformational change perspective, we’re just seeing a lot of hope and possibility, and, and a move forward. And I think if we can consider this, like a collaboration with, you know, everyone out there, right, because we all want to see everyone be successful. There’s a lot a great deal that is helpful. And just these are just a few of these resources.

Eva Sage-Gavin  53:38

Well, and you know, maybe that kind of brings us to a final point about why you and I have really lived our life with skills. Many times I’ve been that one person that got a chance. Because I was able to show that I had a skill or position in a certain way. You know, the first woman on multiple public technology boards. You know, I was the first woman in technology, in systems account, services and sales many decades ago. And that idea of rethinking, you know, I have these core skills I’m willing to learn and I’m willing to, you know, buckle down and show I can hit certain milestones, give it a shot. That open mindedness is so powerful, and I see it in so many places and technology. My friend, Fran Katsoudas at Cisco, was looking to open her talent pool to find more women in technology. So she started moving beyond computer science degrees to people with economics degrees, that had certain core financial and mathematical baseline skills. You know, as a result, you know, those pathways were opened and, and my daughter happened to be an adult who has an econ degree and a really strong financial and technical background. So these are incredible opportunities to be able to say who am I? So if you’re listening, who am I? What am I towering strengths? What skills are transportable across industry? Can I make them visible, you know, in all of my digital platform and profiles. And then can I take advantage of some of these free services to be able to connect, find the pathway, apply and get considered. And I would say that we’re seeing tremendous openness, particularly in inclusion and diversity at a level I haven’t seen in a long time. And so take advantage of it, make it a top priority, so that you can get that resiliency you can get paid everything that you work, you can reach out to mentors and and follow their pathways. And a year from now we can be looking at each other and saying, Wow, did we learn a lot from the greatest crisis the world has ever faced.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  56:04

It’s so true. And I think just to add to that comment for people as they’re listening, you know, just because you’re struggling right now, and we all are, we’re collectively struggling, so don’t think that you’re alone by any means. But these challenging moments, you’re learning so much going back to those skills that you mentioned, and I say, resilience being like such an important piece to this, you are honing these skills in a way that can only happen through having these experiences. And so, maybe think of that, you know, positive light of that this is a learning experience, but so many things in life are

Eva Sage-Gavin  56:40

And one last point I know, you always asked me when we’re chatting, is there one more thing I’d love to mention

Kelly Ryan Bailey  56:46

Please.

Eva Sage-Gavin  56:47

I’m now zeroing in on a phenomenon we’re seeing which is women leaving the workplace at significant ratios. Yesterday, I saw data point I haven’t double checked it, so it’s anecdotal, that women’s participation in the workforce has slipped to 1988 levels. I was in the workforce in 1988, we must address and reverse this, that incredible skill capability and talent pool is extraordinary. So as our kids get back to school, as we have care opening up with the vaccine, you know, arriving I’m asking everyone to see how quickly we can welcome people back. Combining that with there might have to be a little bit of skill pathway work done, pay equity, we cannot have that talent drain and be successful as a society, for our communities and for those individuals. So my heart breaks for everyone who has had to make that difficult choice. It’s tragic. And so I do want to put a special call out for those of us who will be opening doors to roles and getting people back to work. Let’s not eliminate anyone because they had a break.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  58:06

Yes

Eva Sage-Gavin  58:06

Let’s not discount the skills they learned while they were managing these really complex, challenging situations. And let’s invest and bring them back. Get a refresher get them into great jobs and and let’s leave 1988 in the past and make 2021 the year of inclusion, employability resiliency, health and and a return to you know, really, people planet prosperity, that we can do it, we can do it fast.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  58:36

Exactly. I am so glad that you left us with that parting thought because of course top of mind right now, Eva, for anyone that is also interested in tackling that challenge, I please reach out because there’s a number of organizations I know that I’m involved in that help women through this process. Getting back to work. It also sounds like Accenture may be a wonderful partner in this work and Eva, if you know of any other, you know, groups that are sort of assisting with this or people that might have an opportunity to get involved, you know, let us know. But please reach out because I agree this is, it’s prevalent, and we can come together on this.

Eva Sage-Gavin  59:15

Well, I knew it was a personal passion. I wanted to make sure we didn’t leave without that. And again, this is about talent pools with incredible experience that deserve the right to bring all their gifts to the workplace and be in purpose driven organizations. So you know, I’m working as fast and as hard as we can to open those pathways and make those introductions and we’ll make sure that anything we covered today from the Care Gets Better research to Thrive Global website to the middle skills work we did with our incredible partners, Aspen Institute and Upskill America are all available and and try to help get you know, get us going again to what could be possible.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  1:00:02

Exactly. Eva, thank you so much. I mean, I am just personally so happy about this. I hope everyone that’s listening has enjoyed it just as much as I have. It has truly been an honor as it has been for many, many years. So, you know, if anyone is interested in again, Eva is a wonderful influencer in this space, I highly suggest finding her on LinkedIn, or Twitter. And following her of course, there’s a ton of information that also comes out at accentur.com and they are on every social platform. But we we are so thankful that you have the passion and that you’re in this Eva and, you know, taking charge, so thank you.

Eva Sage-Gavin  1:00:45

Well, thank you without you sponsoring and bringing us all together, we might not have a chance to reach the wonderful audience that follows you. Hang in there, everybody. We’re gonna get through this and we will be stronger for it. And 10 years from now, someone will be talking about what we learned from a great pandemic or 2020 and beyond.

Kelly Ryan Bailey  1:01:05

So true. Thank you all for listening in to Let’s Talk About Skills Baby. Of course, we are available on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube. You can find me Kelly Ryan Bailey on all the social platforms. We really appreciate it and hope you all have a wonderful day.