AI and Automation: Simon Brown of EY On How To Effectively Harness AI Technology In People Operations

With technological advancements, particularly in the AI space, an increasing number of tasks can be either fully or partially automated. In this series, we are talking to People experts about how they’re utilizing new technologies to make their jobs easier and provide greater strategic value. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Simon Brown.

Simon is the Global Learning & Development Leader at EY and the international best-selling author of ‘The Curious Advantage’. He co-hosts the popular podcast, The Curious Advantage, which is in the top 10% of podcasts globally, and has been in the Apple Management Podcasts’ Top 5 in 20 countries. He is a regular keynote speaker at international events on the topics of learning, leadership and transformation — including the role and vast potential of AI.

Simon has extensive experience as an entrepreneur and leader across global organizations in the technology, finance sectors and health sectors. Simon is a member of the World Economic Forum Chief Learning Officer Community and supports the next generation of learning and EdTech companies as an angel investor. In 2020, he was awarded the Chief Learning Officer, Gold Strategy Award, building on his Silver Strategy Award in 2012.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Before we drive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I’ve had the pleasure of spending my career in a variety of positions, from large corporates to consultancies and even startups. After university, I started my career in audit but quickly discovered that it was learning and development where I wanted to focus. Since then, I have had an amazing learning journey that has taken me all over the world, building in me a true passion for learning and curiosity.

Lifelong learning is at the heart of the EY experience, which is what drew me to join EY this year. I’m committed to matching this spirit of curiosity and learning with development opportunities for EY people to create an organization that’s on the front foot of change and equipped to build long-term value for our clients and communities.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I remember when I first started work in audit, I was doing a stock take for a computer company. I remember being in their data center picking one of the larger computers at the side of the room and asked them to show me which computer was in their records. They laughed — I was told it wasn’t a computer at all, it was the aircon unit! The lesson was that we all make mistakes, and therefore they aren’t something we should hide or be embarrassed about.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I certainly feel that where I am today is because of help from so many people along the way — it takes a village as they say! It may sound corny, but my wife has played the biggest part in helping me grow, supporting me through changes in my career from those first days in audit switching to learning, from leaving a paid job at PwC to set-up a new company with Brightwave, and through upping sticks and moving the whole family to a new country with the move to Novartis in Switzerland. I’m hugely appreciative of all the support she has given me over the years — I wouldn’t be here without her!

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Carpe Diem — seize the moment — we have it up on the wall at home. I am a strong believer that you need to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to you, as well as work hard to create your own opportunities. We can achieve so much more than we think. Linked to this is also the daily motto ‘if you don’t ask you don’t get’, which I find is also important to remember! Sharing your expectations and aspirations helps them come to reality.

Thinking back on your own career, what would you tell your younger self?

You don’t need to know everything, you just need to be curious. Ask a lot of questions and seek answers to the things that interest you. A curious mindset can make it easier to adapt, learn new skills and innovate. I used to think that not knowing the answer would be perceived as a sign of weakness, but realize now that so often answers are not clear, and the value comes from working them out together. Since I started my career, curiosity has become even more critical — and as we say in the Curious Advantage book, Curiosity may now be the greatest driver of value in the digital age.

Let’s now move to the central part of our interview. How have recent technological advancements such as AI made your job easier?

Technology, specifically AI, has completely transformed the workforce over the last few years. There’s no doubt that AI will change the dynamic of many industries — including professional services — for the better.

AI in the workplace can be applied for many purposes, but today it is primarily to augment human capabilities, meaning employers must provide their employees with the right training to fully unleash the benefits. In my role, I’ve seen first-hand that when humans learn how to integrate and work with AI, they can spend more time being creative and strategic and achieve higher levels of outcomes. On many occasions over the last 18 months, I have seen AI move a conversation to a higher level, faster than would have been achieved without it. Try bringing the AI answer into a meeting as a starting point to accelerate things.

Just like humans can achieve more by working together, AI models can perform better by linking up. Each model has its own strengths and weaknesses, so knowing which to use when is important. This helps by utilizing them for their greatest strengths. This blending can enhance the overall performance, robustness and accuracy of AI overall.

What’s not being discussed is that the practical skills around using AI are just as important as the AI itself. Organizations need to proactively manage the change and adoption of AI, providing the skills, the tools and the safe space to experiment. Without these new skills, people cannot harness AI’s full potential. I’m committed to giving EY’s people the tools and learning and development opportunities so that AI can uplift their roles and create more meaningful experiences. Successfully adopting AI could go a long way toward strengthening company culture, employee engagement, flexibility, agility, wellness and overall work experience.

In which processes do you utilize automation the most?

We’re using automation to help us personalize the career experience at EY, but I think of it beyond automation — I would see it more as value creation. A good example of this is EYQ, our very own AI assistant, similar to ChatGPT, that aims to empower employees and drive more innovative client solutions. The secure chat capability can be used to ask questions, gather ideas for client proposals, brainstorm and boost overall productivity.

I use this tool daily for everything from acting as a thought partner, to idea generation, to helping reword or summarize things.

What should people bear in mind when automating processes?

AI will only be as powerful as the training available to evolve employee skillsets to understand how to deploy, use and manage these new tools. Therefore, any organization that invests in AI also needs to invest in comprehensively upskilling its workforce. This ensures people are equipped to work with these future-focused technologies and adapt to disruptions. It also creates a more level playing field and avoids worker displacement.

Building trust in automation and augmenting employee potential starts with ensuring AI tools are accessible to people so they can obtain more insights, work more efficiently in their day-to-day roles and collaborate more productively across teams.

One of the many ways we’re ensuring EY’s workplace is fully equipped to work with AI is through continuous learning opportunities. For example, in collaboration with Hult, EY offers a fully accredited master’s program that provides advanced degrees in critical innovation-focused skillsets like AI, machine learning and blockchain. In March 2024, we celebrated our second cohort of master’s in business analytics, bringing us to nearly 300 graduates from our three EY Degree programs.

What are your “Top Five Tips For Harnessing AI Technology to Propel People Operations”?

1. There is no single solution for AI — it requires trial and error. Organizations will need to be curious to experiment with AI as there’s no one-size-fits all that can meet each employee’s needs. Getting it “right” will take time and effort. While some opportunities for applying AI may be visible from a leadership viewpoint, many will surface from its day-to-day application across the organization. To customize the employee AI experience, we have implemented EY Opportunity Marketplace, an AI-powered tool that creates skills profiles for people internally, allowing them to market their qualifications and experiences and identify gaps where they want to build competencies. The data also helps EY manage its workforce to meet current and future market demands.
2. AI learning must adopt a “triple loop” approach. In the workforce, it’s no longer a question of “if” but “how” when discussing investing in and deploying AI. I see three loops to how organizations are learning about it — they can be summarized as ‘optimization, ‘innovation’ and ‘reinvention’. Many organizations are solely focused on this first loop of learning how to optimize how AI can help their employees work more effectively while achieving the same outputs, but this is only scratching the surface. Truly understanding AI’s potential and teaching employees how to harness AI is not complete without the second and third loops that are being overlooked. The second loop of innovation is experimenting and learning to discover what we can do differently with AI that we couldn’t do before — what are the new things that are now possible? The third loop is considering what the world looks like when everyone is using AI — what do we need to learn to operate differently in that new AI-powered world, how do we learn to reinvent ourselves, our business models and our organizations?
3. AI should make work more human, not less. The human element is critical to enduring AI success in every sector, especially in learning and development. At the heart of ensuring success and the best possible outcomes, employers need to balance AI-enabled decisions with real human experience. Recruiting offers a really good example. EY’s global recruitment efforts amount to roughly 4–5 million applicants annually and anywhere from 100,000 to 140,000 annual hires. It is a substantial undertaking and AI has helped us to democratize access to jobs and opportunities at EY. EY Candidate Assistant can recommend a job to someone they may never have thought of — or heard of — as they explore flexible career options that align directly with their unique interests and ambitions.
4. There’s a balance between boldness and responsibility. Companies everywhere are working feverishly to implement AI at scale with a balance of speed and responsibility. But with its unlimited potential, AI also brings the risk of algorithmic bias. To mitigate these biases, companies need testing and guardrails for designing and implementing AI. AI ecosystems must deliver on three things: building confidence, creating value and augmenting people potential. Part of this commitment means not pursuing technology in areas where bias may be associated with the outcome of the technology used. We formalized EY AI principles that include accountability, security and privacy, transparency, fairness and inclusivity and professional responsibility. That means AI-powered large language models (LLMs) could be trained to identify and correct biased terminology in job postings or interview questions. Even better, an appropriately trained and tested LLM could write job postings that significantly reduce biased language.
5. AI can give employees the gift of time. AI has the ability to improve the quality of the hours that people spend at work through better skilling and interaction with their colleagues, enhancing the overall career experience. This can be done through GenAI tools that reduce and remove routine admin tasks, or by organizations and leaders modernizing their KPIs to drive the right behaviors. With more time comes more opportunities for learning and development, and more creative and strategic work. Organizations will need to make a critical decision on what to do with this extra productivity.

What are your favorite “I couldn’t live without these” tools?

I really find EY.ai EYQ useful in my day-to-day work. It’s a set of GenAI tools for everyone at EY that includes chat assistants for both general and specific topics, plus tools for managing prompts and creating new solutions and prototypes. With the latest update, EYQ is more than just a tool — it’s a full ecosystem. It lets EY people use generative AI through chat assistants and also gives them the power to create their own tech solutions and proof of concept right on the platform.

I also love Midjourney and have my own account for image generation. I have been working on a set of pictures of Swiss animals with mountain backdrops in vibrant colors to get printed for our home.

How do you see technology impacting the HR space in the future?

AI is going to impact the talent space greatly in the future by unlocking meaningful experiences and helping to build exceptional careers. I feel there’s a misconception about job displacement. The reality is, that AI is not going to take away jobs in the way we think. AI and robots will take some tasks away to allow more time for strategic work, but these are tasks employees didn’t want to be doing in the first place. In fact, AI will create new roles and responsibilities.

For learning and development, we are already seeing many applications for how AI can help in the production of learning content including videos, simulations, and courseware, and now we are starting to see how AI can also act as a coach and guide. I’m excited to see AI play a role of both doing some of the work and then coaching and guiding on other aspects. What learning will look like in this world is going to be very exciting!

In terms of recruitment, there’s still some skepticism on how the technology will impact the process, but there’s also excitement about the prospect of a more tailored job hunt, with bespoke options to better meet specific needs and preferences. I truly believe AI will make recruiting more human, not less. For example, the EY Talent Attraction & Acquisition team is currently exploring how AI sourcing algorithms can help us interact with more candidates — from a wider array of backgrounds — without having to manually sort through thousands of additional resumes/CVs.

We are very blessed to have some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have a private lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this.

I have always been hugely inspired by Richard Branson, having followed his career over the years and his courageous innovation and bold moves to take on big challenges and move into and disrupt industries. There’s a Virgin Atlantic story that still makes me smile: How he wanted the company to compete on better entertainment but couldn’t afford the investment of putting screens on his aircrafts, so instead, he made the bold decision to finance new aircraft that came with the screens included. I would love the opportunity to chat with him on our Curious Advantage podcast!

How can our readers further follow your work?

Follow me on LinkedIn! I thoroughly enjoy interacting with my followers and sharing my experiences, on both a professional and personal level. Since joining EY, it’s been a whirlwind of meeting with new colleagues around the world and learning from some of the best minds in learning and development. I have started a #First90Days series recapping my daily activities and reflecting on my experience and learnings as I get up to speed. Join me on the journey.

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!