This week, it’s all about numbers, scale, and achievement. In terms of numbers, how about a Skills-based, AI-enhanced framework that is keeping 250,000 employees happy and appropriately paid? And which saves the company an estimated $100m per year, money avoided by avoiding expensive churn and not paying beyond market rate—even for scare capability? And as for the achievement, the spotlight in this episode is on Anshul Sheopuri, Vice President & CTO, Data & AI At ‘IBM Workforce,’ Big Blue’s immense global HR function, where he’s led the work on using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and lots of data to improve hiring, compensation and even DEIB policies across the company. So important is this idea of ‘Skills-for-pay’ and ‘Skills as currency’ that he sees it as a ‘silver thread’ unifying people processes and practices… which of course we soon correct to a ‘red thread’! We’ve been looking to meet with Anshul for a long while, and we’re glad we hung on in there, as this is an excellent conversation with a true subject matter expert who’s using tech to really make a bunch of positive change for his colleagues. A really interesting piece of best practice you could start looking at right away is using employee digital footprint to see what their Skills really are. Sadly, Stacia never got the AI help with tonight’s dinner she thought she’d get, but hey—you can’t have it all.