This is a fascinating conversation with Josh Newman, the Global Head of People Strategy & Experience, at WPP. WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency, has around 100,000 employees and a fascinating agency-specific organization around the world. Josh explains the business and operating model for WPP, and how it became an $8.1 Billion market cap business.

Over the last year WPP’s board wanted to look at the workforce and find ways to improve productivity (“the Workforce Intelligence Project”). Josh explains how WPP took this sprawling, high-performing company and developed an enterprise-wide “work-design”, using its own AI and help from a new vendor Reejig, to understand what everyone was doing.

This effort enabled WPP to radically simplify its job families and prepare the jobs and roles for the company’s new AI platform, WPP Open. (As you’ll hear, WPP went from 60,000 job titles to fewer than 600 roles as the company prepares for its new multi-functional AI platform.) This is work simplification at massive scale.

This kind of work is now essential to every company as we look for ways to embrace AI. And as you’ll hear, the WPP Workforce Intelligence project has helped people find new jobs, advance their careers, and better pinpoint HR investments in the right place. The end result will be a company with higher growth, profitability, innovation, and client service.

If you’re a business leader, HR professional, consultant, or CEO you should listen to this discussion. Josh describes precisely how they accomplished this transformation and explains how AI is “preparing WPP for AI.”

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to WPP and Its Role in the Future of Work 05:36 Workforce Intelligence and Job Redesign Project 10:23 Leveraging AI for Job Architecture and Efficiency 15:05 Mapping Roles and Tasks for Enhanced Productivity 20:18 The Concept of M-Shaped Workers 25:11 Validating New Job Structures and Roles 30:19 Business-Driven Workforce Intelligence and Its Impact 35:06 Future-Proofing Organizations Through Continuous Learning

Additional Information

The Rise of the Superworker: Designing You Company for AI

The End of HR As We Know It? AI Is Starting To Change Everything.

Galileo Learn: The AI Professional Development Academy for Leaders

How WPP, The World's Largest Ad Agency, Is Transforming Itself With AI

Josh Bersin