At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mastercard found itself in the same position as every company in the world: business needs were shifting, resources became scarce, and the path forward became more obfuscated with every passing day.
Heather Yurko, VP of Digital Talent at Mastercard, had seen these transformations before. She saw what talent marketplaces could do before—the ability to break down silos and empower people to take control of their careers—but when time was scarce and demand was scaling, responding to the outpouring of company enthusiasm for a talent marketplace model required leveraging the power of AI.
“Seeing these waves of people put their hands up and say, ‘I’m very interested. I want to do this. This is a passion project.’ Even during a really rough time for them personally, they really wanted to be able to have a sense of giving back, of helping, of enabling our customers,” Yurko said. “And what we found during that first wave was that (our manual talent marketplace) was that it was amazing and wholly unscalable because we were doing this manual matching on the back end; there was no way this was going to work long-term.”
“And so that was when we started to have conversations with Gloat and really understand what was possible,” Yurko said. “Because I’ve seen this done both ways; I’ve seen it done twice manually and then once with an AI-enabled platform; my goodness, you cannot get that kind of scale without having a platform to enable you.”
Her discussion with Josh Bersin and Kristi Enderes touched on what companies need to do to be prepared for not just the economic uncertainty that lies ahead, but for the rapidly-changing realities of business during all circumstances. As we become more globally connected and digital tools play a larger role in our lives, companies that deploy digital-first talent management strategies will be best equipped to face whatever future comes next.
Watch the full discussion above, and check out our guide on building a skills-based organization here.