Nathalie Parent, Chief People Officer at Shift Technology: “HR is the conscience of an organisation”

“I don’t see AI as a risk in itself. The risk is in the human reaction.” Those wide words come from Nathalie Parent, Chief People Officer at Shift Technology — a business that puts AI at the heart of what it does, helping to automate and ease the process of insurance claims.

Nathalie Parent has led global HR teams for 30 years, with an emphasis on high-growth software companies such as Shift. While she has helped many companies over those three decades, she never fails to put people at the centre: “I’ve always had a keen interest in people, their motivations, and how to create a work environment where employees could do meaningful work, grow and have a significant impact on the business,” she says.

Approaches that worked perfectly in the early 1990s look archaic in our modern world of hybrid working and AI. This is something Nathalie and her teams are keenly aware of, which is why they’re always looking for new ways to exploit technology — whether that’s to help with HR-related processes or to aid employees in their work.

Happily, Nathalie is more than willing to share the benefits of her experience and how Shift Technology is putting the latest technology to best use. Read on to discover more.

Related reading: Hiring for success: the case for skills and attitude

Tell us about your role at Shift Technology

I’m the Chief People Officer at Shift Technology. I’m based at Shift’s Global HQ in Paris, France where I lead an international team focused on talent acquisition, learning and development, total rewards, employee relations, workplace, culture and internal communications.

What made you pursue a career in HR? And what advice do you have for anyone considering a career in HR?

I started my career in HR with Watson Wyatt, as part of their actuarial practice. I’ve always had a keen interest in people, their motivations, and how to create a work environment where employees could do meaningful work, grow and have a significant impact on the business. 

After spending more than 30 years working in HR, and having the opportunity to work in a global context, I’d say the most important thing is to cultivate a growth mindset and stay curious. People are complex, and the HR landscape is evolving rapidly, particularly with the rise of Generative AI and the opportunities it creates to pair technology with human judgement.

We hear about terms like quiet quitting and lazy Jane jobs, indicating a shift in employees’ approach to work post-pandemic. Is this something you’ve seen at your work? And how are you reacting to it?

There’s no question that hybrid work has created a new set of opportunities, and some challenges too. The key to combatting quiet quitting is to ensure people have opportunities to do meaningful work and that they feel recognised and valued for that work, no matter where they’re located.

We think deeply about how we connect with and engage our people. This starts with having a compelling company purpose, and a set of values that tightly align our team,  no matter where they’re located. We put culture at the heart of our talent attraction process and we work with our people leaders to make sure they’re taking the simple and impactful steps that build trust and connection.

This includes things like regular one-to-ones, and social time with their teams — whether virtual or in person. Ultimately, it’s about recognising the individual motivations of each team member and working with them to find opportunities for them to have the greatest impact.

Essential Small Business Guide for HR Automation

You love your business, that’s why you do what you do, and why you’re so great at it. But are you finding that you are spending more and more time dealing with admin? So, what if we told you, you could get that time back? By using technology, specifically HR automation, to do all the things you hate, you can once again enjoy your business and remember why you set it up in the first place.

How do you think offices as we know them will change in the next decade?

I wish I had a crystal ball. The first words that come to mind are ‘adaptation’ and ‘flexibility’. We need to create spaces that are highly adaptable to allow for different ways of collaborating and to account for the different working styles of introverts and extroverts, as one example.

I think it’s also fair to say that the next cohort of workers will have evolving expectations around access to more amenities tied to supporting their overall health and well-being, whether that’s green spaces within close proximity, walkable locations relative to residential areas, more emphasis on modular spaces that can adapt based on the relative flow of teams and individual employees. While working from home has been established as a viable working model, I think flexible office spaces will continue to provide important connection ‘hubs’ for the teams of the future.

Related reading: How the world of work will look in 2030

Post-pandemic, what are your thoughts on flexible work trends and how do you think they’ll shape the upcoming years? 

The pandemic has demonstrated that there are many different ways of working. As HR leaders, it’s critical we keep looking ahead to anticipate the environments that will be most conducive to attracting and keeping the best talent. I don’t think there’s one ‘set model’ or way of working.

What’s abundantly clear from the last few years is that we need to be even more creative in how we design our distributed work experiences to focus on impact and outcomes versus preconceived notions of where and how great work happens.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received and how has it shaped your career?

It wasn’t advice per se; however, throughout my career, I’ve held the belief that HR is the “conscience of an organisation”. This has been a grounding element for me over my 30 years in the HR profession. There will always be competing pressures to balance the business aspects of HR with the human dimensions. Striking that balance is how we, as HR professionals, build trust and credibility. This north star has been my guide over the years and has helped me when I’ve faced challenging moments. 

What are the top three challenges HR professionals face today? 

Generative AI, talent attraction and retention.

Generative AI is redefining all areas of business, and life. It’s a fascinating space and, like many teams, we’re exploring how we use the technologies to complement our work. We see considerable opportunities to free up human capacity for other types of work and use Generative AI selectively to help improve the speed, consistency and efficiency of some of our core HR processes.

Talent attraction and retention are two other dimensions that are increasingly complex. The competition for talent is fierce and, once you hire someone, it’s equally challenging to hold onto that talent, especially in a context where people are thinking more deeply about what’s important to them and how work fits into their wider life and aspirations. It’s not enough to offer a competitive salary and good benefits: you need to identify the ways that will meaningfully motivate people so they ‘stick’ with you, especially in turbulent times. These aren’t new challenges, but they do require constant attention and creativity to keep adapting.

What do you perceive are some of the risks of deploying AI in the workplace?

Like any technology, we need to be thoughtful about where and how we leverage it. AI is not a silver bullet. It creates an opportunity for teams to think about how and where AI can streamline, simplify and unlock capacity in other areas. It also has the potential to be a great liberator — freeing team members up to focus on more creative work, by enabling the routine, repetitive tasks to be automated.

I don’t see AI as a risk in itself. The risk is in the human reaction. We need to apply human judgment when faced with any new technology. It’s up to us to understand the risks and establish healthy parameters, so we use it to our benefit versus our detriment.

Many HR departments continue to digitise more and more of their processes and workflows – has this been the case at your company and what has that experience been like?

As a startup that has been scaling rapidly over the last five years, we’ve been focused on building our global team and serving customers. Like many companies, we’re now identifying where we need to reset or rebuild some of our processes to keep pace with our growth. We’re undertaking this work now, starting with a full analysis of the employee journey and the critical touchpoints along the way.

This is where AI gets interesting as we can more sharply define which interventions can be automated in order to free up human time for the critical moments that matter through the course of an employee’s journey with Shift. These could include moments like having a new child, dealing with a health issue, caring for ageing parents, and moving to a new role within the organisation. These are examples of some of the critical moments that matter in life. We can help our people navigate these moments by leveraging technology to make the simple steps consistent and efficient while freeing up more time for human interactions that are more complex and often have a higher impact.