Embracing the Future of Work: Insights from Natalie Matalon

Thomas Kohler:
Today’s guest Nathalie Matalon, Chief People Officer of The Stepstone Group.

Natalie Matalon:
More and more companies are moving away from having requirements for academic credentials and it’s much more skills based hiring. It started with the big tech companies where the smartest software engineers didn’t necessarily graduate from Stanford. They may have been a Stanford dropout, in fact. And now we realize that the labor market, because of the shortage, needs to evolve in different ways. And skill based hiring at the external level, and then internally investing in learning and development and changing organizational mindsets from job specific expertise to developing what I call general athletes, super smart people that can solve difficult problems and are incredibly adaptable and are able to move from one function in one job to another fairly seamlessly.

Thomas Kohler:
So what I hear, and try to summarize it very shortly, is one global trend is that there is still a shortage. Plus the access to work is getting more accessible.

Natalie Matalon:
Exactly, it’s getting more accessible. But it also the variety of employees that organizations now have in terms of generational gap is becoming much bigger as you have the younger generation joining organizations and the older generations not leaving them. And that also presents a really interesting challenge and opportunity. In order to ensure that we’re creating inclusive work environments and providing everything from learning and development to the health benefits, for example, what the younger generation cares about versus the older generation is very different. And so the people functions now have to think much more nimbly, if that’s actually a word, and creatively, in order to ensure that when you think about the complete package of the work environment, including your benefits, and how you allow people to work flow flexibly, you’re creating a space that is open to everyone. It used to be that the focus was on perhaps women leaving the workforce because of starting families and us wanting to focus on allowing them an easy and seamless path back. And now the human challenge has become much more broad to different types of groups.

Thomas Kohler:
Nathalie and I talked about her career and the journey she took. I think it’s really impressive. And then we talked about the labor market macro trends, and also what it means for organization and how to adapt, what to anticipate. And what does it mean for leadership ultimately, to make sure that we navigate all the dynamics that are coming up with the economic trends and labor market trends we identify.

Thomas Kohler:
So today we have Nathalie from the Stepstone group here as a CHRO, and I’m really looking forward to this episode or actually chief people officer. Right. So we get a bit of context about yourself and intro because I think you have a very interesting background, very interesting career, but also I think a lot of listeners or people out there would like to say, hey, wow, cool. That’s something I would also like to achieve maybe one day, right, so maybe you can give us a bit of insights about what you most, who you are. And then we go a bit into the labor market because there you have a lot of insights as well and what trends we see and so on, and maybe talking a bit about leadership.

Natalie Matalon:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me today, Thomas. Really appreciate it.

Thomas Kohler:
So what is actually your career and what shaped you most?

Natalie Matalon:
I think my career is, well, perhaps for my age, context is fairly non traditional. I think in this day and age, it’s more the standard. I started my career as a college hire in financial services, and I spent probably the first 15 years in various roles within the business. And one of the things that I noticed over time is that I was very much attracted to the human element, whether it’s customer experience and service initially, and then more focused internally on how change that was happening within the organization resonated within the teams that I was leading. And I had an opportunity to take a six month assignment in the people space. And it was presented to me as an opportunity to have someone from the business perspective come into HR and help build a function like a business. And I found that to be particularly on the talent acquisition side. I found that to be a really interesting challenge because at the time, I recognized the need for the organization I was part of to really evolve and shift the way we thought about talent acquisition and the profile of the people that we were acquiring needed to shift as the organization evolved and as we were doing different acquisitions.

And so I took on that opportunity, and about three weeks into that assignment, I called my boss and told him they should probably backfill me in the other position, because I think I just found my next career move and have not regretted it since. I worked in talent acquisition for Capital one. I then transitioned to work for global talent acquisition for Google’s engineers. And that role was particularly exciting because of the scale of the challenge and opportunities in that organization. I then evolved into other positions within the people space and had another opportunity to join a fantastic organization, Farfetch, just before it was going to IPo and be able to scale and grow that organization from 2500 people to, I think it was 7000 by the time I left. And now I’m the chief people officer for the Stepstone group, which is almost like coming home. It’s my first love in the people space. What this company does is connects employers and candidates and creates opportunities for people to thrive in their careers.

And I get to do this on the people side for a company and a mission that I’m very passionate about.

Thomas Kohler:
Nice. Thank you for the intro. So very exciting career journey. And now you have, I think, also with your role and also with the company you work at. A lot of insights into data on the labor market. Right. So can you maybe share some trends you see on how the workforce of the labor market is developing?

Natalie Matalon:
Absolutely. So at the macro level, we know that there is a great labor shortage and that labor shortage will continue to grow through 2020, 2050 and beyond. Of course, it’s starting with lower birth rates in many countries. I think China for the first time had registered more deaths than births and that trend is expected to continue. And we’re also seeing that we have an aging workforce that because of the economic downturn are less able to exit the workforce and need to work for longer. That is really presenting interesting opportunities that in the context of AI and the revolution that we have on that front, it’s sort of all coming together. So on the one hand, we have what we call the HR burnout. So you have to work much harder to find the right level of talent to attract into your organization.

And that’s where AI tools really come into play. Clearing the way to remove all of the zero level work. We call it the things that can be automated, that can be optimized. They don’t necessarily require the human touch and then allowing our human element to really focus on things that move the needle. It also then transfers into types of products that companies like the Stepstone Group create in order to make the recruitment process much more AI driven and simple. But equally on the candidate side, I think it’s really fascinating where we’re making sure that we’re optimizing on every lead possible. And we have tools now like interview prep tools that allow candidates to put their best foot forward, which I think is incredibly exciting. This labor shortage is also really interesting from a global perspective.

I think we’ve seen already international mobility and it started maybe 1015 years ago with the hunt for data scientists and software engineers and really shifted the way organizations and companies thought about their recruitment practices, their value proposition, and also sort of the working conditions. Do you allow people to work remotely? How do you optimize remote working teams? And more and more we’re now seeing with a shift back to work, this physical mobility across countries and trying to supplement talent, which I think is really interesting and on the people side, creates a great deal of challenge and opportunity to ensure that mobility is done in the best way, supporting individuals and making sure that we’re moving people as the organization needs. I think the final trend that’s really fascinating to me, that we’ve been seeing this quite heavily over the last, maybe, I don’t know, ten years. But more and more companies are moving away from having requirements for academic credentials and it’s much more skills based hiring. It started with the big tech companies where the smartest software engineers didn’t necessarily graduate from Stanford. They may have been a Stanford dropout, in fact. And now we realize that the labor market, because of the shortage, needs to evolve in different ways. And skill based hiring at the external level, and then internally investing in learning and development and changing organizational mindsets from job specific expertise to developing what I call general athletes, super smart people that can solve difficult problems and are incredibly adaptable and are able to move from one function and one job to another fairly seamlessly.

Thomas Kohler:
So what I hear, and try to summarize it very shortly, is one global trend is that there is still a shortage. Plus the access to work is getting more accessible.

Natalie Matalon:
Exactly, it’s getting more accessible. But also the variety of employees that organizations now have in terms of generational gap is becoming much bigger as you have the younger generation joining organizations and the older generations not leaving them. And that also presents a really interesting challenge and opportunity in order to ensure that we’re creating inclusive work environments and providing everything from learning and development to the health benefits from, for example, what the younger generation cares about versus the older generation is very different. And so the people functions now have to think much more nimbly, if that’s actually a word, and creatively, in order to ensure that when you think about the complete package of the work environment, including your benefits and how you allow people to work flexibly, you’re creating a space that is open to everyone. It used to be that the focus was on perhaps women leaving the workforce because of starting families and us wanting to focus on allowing them an easy and seamless path back. And now the human challenge has become much more broad to different types of groups.

Thomas Kohler:
In case you like my show, please subscribe I would really appreciate it. Yeah, I think that’s also a second trend then that also the soft skills, maybe like adaptability and being able to collaborate from, let’s say, different cohorts of a workforce is getting way more impactful than the actual skill.

Natalie Matalon:
Exactly. How you thrive in organizations and how you navigate through it is, has always been, but I think now has become even more important than the skills and capabilities that you’re bringing to the job itself.

Thomas Kohler:
And you also mentioned that an inclusive workplace gets way, way, way more important in terms of maybe a generational gap in a workforce. Right. How would you define then inclusivity in that sense, to manage the age gap, for instance? Because there are different attributes, of course, to inclusivity, but when we consider it in terms of different age.

Natalie Matalon:
Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
Do you have any ideas there?

Natalie Matalon:
We do, we actually, it’s interesting, at the Stepstone group, we have a ten under 30 group, and it’s a developmental program that we’ve devised in order to create a specific program that recognizes the challenges of people that are new to the workforce and allows them to navigate that. And the success of that program then highlighted the fact that actually we should have a 1050 group as well. Because as you become older, fear of change, we all have it, but as you become older, it may resonate a little bit more. We want to make sure that we’re creating a safe space for people to continue to grow and evolve their skills. Today’s 50 is yesterday’s 30. And so we’re really trying to figure out how we create a much more sustainable path that allows people to continue to evolve and grow in their career. And then you have the connection of the two groups, which is indeed any group of any element of diversity, where you have to think very strategically about your communication strategies and recognize that it’s never going to be a one size fits all. It used to not be a one size fits all from a global sense, cultural sense, but now it’s really on so many different dimensions.

And you need to reiterate messages in different ways in order to ensure that you’re catering to different needs of your population.

Thomas Kohler:
And when you look at the outside view in terms of how the workforce can maybe impact your organization’s success, for instance. Right, I saw one function or station in your career at Google, which is called global talent intelligence staffing channels. Could you also maybe give some ideas on what a talent intelligence function could do and what value can it bring to the organization strategically? Because I think that’s what a lot of companies maybe not have as a function, but when some recruiters or whoever it is in the function deliver the outcome, what a function of this could also deliver, then they all say, oh, wow, yeah, we need that and now we can make these decisions, right?

Natalie Matalon:
Yes. You know, that was actually one of the most fascinating jobs to have, especially in the context of Google and the resources that that organization had access to. I would say there’s really three layers. The most exciting but also most broad is sort of thinking very strategically and very long term on trying to recognize through white papers. And we had a lot of really excellent, very smart phds at the time working on it, thinking about what the trends are, not for the next three to four years, but really very far into the future. And then what does that then mean for our organization in order to need to adapt and change today in order to get ahead of it? So some of the concepts that we discussed earlier in this podcast would have been highlighted probably already ten years ago. Most organizations won’t have resources or capacity to do this. The next layer down is a much more practical one, but still yet very strategic.

And that allows an organization to understand on a three to five year horizon, what type of skills will I need and what alternate profiles beyond the, you know, I’m looking for X and I found X would I be able to find? And I’ll use data scientists as an example again. When data science, science skills and capabilities became really relevant in the marketplace, there were very few people that called themselves a data scientist. They were born and raised in different functions. They had a very wide set of educational backgrounds and work backgrounds. And so being able to understand the correlation between background, skills and capabilities into this new thing that we’re trying to build and create was something that not many of us had done before. And this function was able to really connect the dots and allow us to be very proactive and very creative in the way that we source talent. And then at the more most practical level is really understanding in today’s environment, over the next twelve months time horizon, where are the best people that do something that my organization aspires to do, and then how do you identify them, create a relationship with them and understand how you might be able to attract them. So it’s a very interesting multi layered approach that lives very far into the future and very sort of immediately into today’s needs.

Thomas Kohler:
I even, I think, have a top of mind example on Google, actually, where I had, I think, conversations with, I don’t know when, but with sources or recruiters at Google that sourced teenagers that have some kind of talent in maths or logical thinking based on day one math competitions at the age of 13. And now we already try to engage with them because if they turn, maybe, I don’t know, 1820, whatever, they should work with us and we should already know them and they should know us already. Right? This would be an example, for instance.

Natalie Matalon:
100%, and this is really also tied to the labor shortage. You know that the market is evolving, you know that resources are scarce and will be even more scarce in the future. You’re really creating the mechanisms that allow the talent to develop in order for you to be able to benefit from them in five to ten years. It’s a very long term way of looking at things. It’s essentially creating your own market. And Google does indeed do this very, very well.

Thomas Kohler:
Interesting. And when we think about what are maybe some solutions to fix the shortage or the implications of the shortage for an organization, because maybe you cannot fix the shortage. It’s just there and it’s a trend that it will happen and it’s likely to happen. But what are the implications? We already talked about that maybe you don’t get the right labor workforce for the challenges you might need. And also what is needed in an organization to compete, to create economic value is always changing. Right. So change is always there, and change is hard, and maybe the older people get, the harder it is to change as well. Right.

But what are some solutions? You already mentioned some groups and so on, what you have internally, but what else do you have in mind to solve that also maybe for a practice example for someone to listeners and what we could do or what they could do now to really make sure to also be aware of what might be implications of the shortage. Right. And also how to solve it.

Natalie Matalon:
Yeah, I think it’s really about optimizing. We talked about attracting talent into the organization, but once you have them, it’s about optimizing the talent that you have and creating opportunities for them to continue to grow and evolve. There’s ways to optimize the workforce that you have through learning and development programs, through a very progressive way of thinking about talent. And we tend to still, I think that this day and age, you need to hire someone to do x. You would want to hire someone that has already been doing x for x number of years and they can bring their experience into the organization. The organizations that I see most adapting today are the ones that understand that by taking someone that is already within the organization has proven core skills and capabilities in terms of. That are universal in terms of problem solving, analytical thinking, and creating a program that allows them to learn on the job. At times, given the context of organizational dynamics and how things work around here, they can be much more productive much quicker than someone that you’re bringing external.

Now, obviously, this is a composition of skills and capabilities, and you probably want to have the right mix of external versus internal. But really, I think over time, the focus should be a disproportionate percent of your population transitioning into roles that objectively they’re, quote unquote unqualified to do. But really they have the right skill set, or rather the competencies that allow them to acquire the skill set required for the role.

Thomas Kohler:
I have also an example for that, I think, which is maybe also what you saw maybe in the past for recruiters, right? Recruiting can be a very dynamic job, or the demand on recruiting can be very dynamic, let’s call it like that. And sometimes maybe you have a workforce, a permanent workforce of recruiters that you need to look work for, right? Or what happened also in the past, a lot of layoffs because organizations restructure or reorganize. And then maybe you could also think of what are the gaps we have in the organization now with the course correction, and what are maybe some people that are not needed for the next period in that role. But what we could retrain and say, okay, maybe a recruiter can become a customer success agent or a seller or whatever it is, right?

Natalie Matalon:
So this is also possible, I guess that’s exactly right. And in fact, the context that recruiters must have in order to be efficient and effective in their role, their deep understanding of the business and what is required to succeed in particular position, it actually puts them at a major advantage as they go to enter that position. You made some correlations that I think are really relevant. Recruiters are hunters. They hunt for candidates and they make the right match. And that’s very similar to some sales skill sets that we’re looking for in the market. The subject matter might be slightly nuanced, but the skills and capabilities are exactly there. So I think that’s a perfect illustration of being able to utilize your workforce in a different way.

And indeed, I think the more people circulate through your organization and have a wide breadth of experiences across roles, the more effective and advised our thinking is in whichever role they’re doing today. And over time, the organization benefits from it in multiple ways.

Thomas Kohler:
And in all of these, let’s say, circumstances with adaptability, there is change happening. There are diverse workforce groups, and we need to close certain gaps and bring everybody on the same page. What does this mean for leadership in Europe? Opinion? Because I think this is where we start.

Natalie Matalon:
Absolutely. I think leadership needs to evolve in a much more dynamic way as well. How we think about the workforce and how so. We all have unconscious bias, and leaders are no different. And just as the organization needs to be dynamic with how they utilize the workforce, leaders need to be dynamic in how they think about the future of the organization. The type of companies that tend to thrive and succeed over time are the ones that are not necessarily married to the way we do things today. They recognize that change is, yes, at times uneasy. But without change, organizations become dinosaurs.

So what you want is leaders that open the door to thinking differently, to allowing people to challenge the status quo, allowing people and great ideas to come from all levels, and creating the psychological safety for people to say, you know what? I don’t think what I’m doing today is really necessary for this company longer term. Have we thought about evolving into x? The people that are doing the job are the ones that usually notice it, I think, before anybody else. And the role of leadership is to create that safe space and the platform to allow the organization to organically evolve. The other part of it is really around modeling the behavior. And if leaders are very stuck in their ways and do things a certain way for many, many years, I think that sends a message to the organization that change is not welcome here. And so they need to fly the flag and lead by example.

Thomas Kohler:
First, in case you have any feedback or anything you want to share with me, please send me an email on Thomas eoplewise.com or hit me up on LinkedIn. And in case you really enjoy the show, please subscribe. I would really appreciate it. And what is your maybe personal set of principles or frameworks that reflects the leadership style you prefer or you advocate for?

Natalie Matalon:
For me, it evolves really, over time, and I’m very much inspired by the people I work with and the people I work for. For me, leadership first and foremost, we have a value at the Stepstone group called stand on your number, and it’s essentially articulate what it is that you’re going to do and actually do it. And the notion of articulation of a vision and a mission and the direction of travel as a leader is really, really critical. But equally critical is for us to recognize how are we doing? How far have we come? What are challenges and opportunities? How do we create a path to remove these roadblocks, and how do we consistently repeat the message about where it is that we’re going. So at any given time, everybody can recite it and they know, which creates an environment of shared purpose and shared mission and clarity of direction. And then secondly, I think vulnerability in leadership is really, really critical. The leaders that I have had the privilege to work for, that I most admire, are the ones that admit and acknowledge that they don’t know everything. And when they do something that didn’t quite work out the way they intend, they raise their hand and they say, this wasn’t what I meant to do.

This is what I’ve learned from it. This vulnerability teaches people that they don’t have to be perfect, that they can highlight where they have challenges and ask for help. But equally, when a mistake is made, and we will make mistakes because we are human, it’s not about the mistake itself, it’s what you learn from it. And modeling the behavior of psychological safety, again, of as long as you learn and evolve from an experience, you’re better off and the organization is better off. And so you’re removing fear of change because change leads to uncertainty, which leads to possibly making a mistake, and I don’t want to make a mistake. You’re removing all of that and you’re creating a path that allows people to really organically evolve. We are already very self critical of ourselves and we don’t need to put any other external barriers to allow people to evolve and challenge themselves.

Thomas Kohler:
Super interesting. And I think that the value you mentioned also creates trust because once Reid Hoffman, I think, quoted that or said that trust equals consistency over time. And by that I would say general truth, you can scale easier and faster because you can go in by default with trusting people instead of, hmm, I don’t trust you yet. You need to prove it first. But if everybody understands clearly, okay, if I communicate something, I communicate it clearly and then I do it. This is, I think, the ultimate way of building trust and just making sure you really can trust and are able to trust. And also not always, you cannot always achieve everything. What you communicate upfront because there are circumstances you maybe cannot anticipate or there are circumstances changing along the way.

So actually what you said in terms of vulnerability, in terms of, okay, then I just talk about it, what’s going wrong or maybe what is not so running well, as expected, this exactly the perfect combination. I think in terms of having a committed workforce and being able to deliver.

Natalie Matalon:
Absolutely. And I think that level of authenticity and transparency is really important where people feel safe. You say what you mean, you mean what you say and you actually do it and you follow through on it, it means that there are no hidden agendas. I think people sometimes spend so much time trying to understand, well, so and so said x. Did they really mean y? That’s incredibly distracting. And it also works to undermine people’s confidence and clarity of mission because they’re constantly second guessing what the messaging actually was. And so this really just creates that organic end to end clarity, transparency, authenticity, where people understand the mission and they feel that everybody is going in the same direction and we have each other’s backs. And I think that’s the other value that we have at the Stepstone group that I also feel is so critically important to any organizational success, is we’re in it together.

We succeed or fail together. And if we have one group that has gone way ahead, has crossed the finish line, but everybody else is still way back there, still struggling to walk even in the right direction, we have not succeeded as a group. And so what I would hope and expect is that that team that’s doing incredibly well would pause, go back and pick up the people that need additional support and help and help them through so that everybody can cross the finish line together or not at all.

Thomas Kohler:
I think that’s a very great final word, unless you want to add something.

Natalie Matalon:
Thank you so much for having me today. This was great fun.

Thomas Kohler:
Thanks as well. I appreciated it. Bye.