Alex: What if employee engagement hinged less on perks and culture and
more on defining roles with clarity?
Today's guest shows how artificial intelligence can help human resources
professionals break free from routine tasks and instead guide hiring managers
in designing roles that improve engagement, retention, and performance.
My name is Alexandre Nevski and this is Innovation Tales.
If you ever felt that hiring, onboarding, or managing talent gets
bogged down by vague expectations and outdated processes, you're not alone.
My guest today is Scott Morris, and he brings nearly two decades of experience as
a people operations executive, delivering measurable results across industries.
Now, as the founder and CEO of Propulsion AI, Scott is on a mission to transform
how organizations define roles - with AI.
His platform streamlines the tedious task of writing job
descriptions into a 15-minute process, letting HR professionals
shift from administrative tasks to strategic, consultative partnerships.
Scott shares practical insights rooted in his extensive experience, cutting through
the noise to show how digital tools can solve your biggest workforce challenges.
Whether you're aiming to hire smarter, onboard faster, or improve
employee engagement, this conversation is packed with actionable steps
to elevate your talent strategy.
Without further ado, here's my conversation with Scott Morris.
Welcome, Scott, and thanks for joining.
Scott: Alex, I'm really thrilled to have gotten the invite to join you on
the show and I thank you for having me.
Alex: You're welcome.
I'm delighted to have this opportunity to talk to you about what's been
happening in the world of HR.
I know you've been vocal sometimes about, the way that some organizations or
many organizations view their HR teams.
Let's start maybe with you explaining your thoughts about this.
Scott: I think there are opportunities for the profession of HR to evolve.
And I think one of the things that's going to facilitate that evolution is the
application of new technologies, including those that we are at Propulsion AI that
we're using in artificial intelligence and the subset of AI called machine learning.
When you think about it, and I think anytime we start being critical, I
think it's important to be explicit that we don't want to paint with
too broad of a brush, right?
There are some exceptional HR people in the world who are
doing truly exceptional things.
And regrettably, there is always the opposite end in any profession.
There's always the opposite end of the spectrum.
And we have an awful lot of HR people that are not thinking
about workforce productivity.
They are thinking about things like compliance and policy
and those kinds of things.
And it's not that those are unimportant, but they are more
connected to risk management than they are workforce enhancement and
ultimately I think bottom line results.
And I think one of the, one of the places that when I am being critical of the
profession that I've spent 25 years in, it's frequently about the entry point.
We, have people that come into the profession that come in largely through
administrative, rather than other functional areas and I think that hurts
the profession, because the people that I've seen succeed, and when I say
succeed in HR, what I mean is those who have been most capable in marrying
an agenda of, workforce productivity, turnover reduction, employee engagement
with business outcomes and to create that marriage, you really have to
understand what a business manager goes through and what is important
from a functional manager standpoint.
But when that happens, and when you've got a person that truly understands
the manager's business and truly understands the business of human
capital, there's some magic that happens.
I think the problem is, we just don't have a good building path
within many companies to create that.
Alex: Are you saying that some of the HR professionals, struggle to
understand what the hiring manager, the business functions that they're,
supporting, how they operate?
Scott: Yeah, yeah.
I think that's a faster way to say it than I was saying it.
but I don't think it's because they're not trying to do it.
It's they're not afforded the opportunities to do it.
I think the best HR people are ones that actually come from functional
backgrounds and then learn the skillset of human capital and
learn about employee engagement and productivity and those kinds of
things, rather than coming through as sort of an entry level generalist.
And I think one of the reasons is the "urgent" always crowds out
the important and the "urgent" are things that are more task oriented.
And if you never get the chance to really understand what it's like to
steer a business function, then it's really, really hard to be a good
partner to those who are doing that and to bring an additional skillset.
I think of those of us who lead people ops organizations.
Alex: Yeah, of course, it's hard to get enough people in your human resources that
are coming from functional backgrounds.
You might be lucky and some of them might be coming from a functional
background, but I guess, HR people must also have, specialized
skills in their own, profession.
that's, I guess where the technology can help scale that
access to functional knowledge.
Is that right?
Scott: Well, I think so.
And if you, if we take the work that is done within PeopleOps or human
capital or HR, however you refer to it in your particular organization,
if you take that work, I think you can divide it into three sort of layers.
There is a strategic layer.
There's a consultative layer.
And there's an administrative layer.
I think the best opportunities come when we look at that administrative layer.
Most HR people especially the top HR people do not want to be
involved in that admin layer.
And yet that's where like the majority of the time seems to go because
there's no shortage of, like the things of tasks that have to get done.
I mean most really good HR people want to spend their time in consultation.
Give you an example in talent acquisition, right?
What we don't want to do is spend a lot of time writing a job description,
writing a job posting, posting things to the web, coordinating
the scheduling aspects, right?
Where a really top recruiter or HR business partner tends to want to spend
their time is coaching managers on interview techniques, drawing out of the
hiring manager the nuances of the role design that they are going to build around
for their team, ensuring that there's a top candidate experience that promotes
the company's employment brand, right?
That's where the HR people want to spend the time and these other
administrative things get in their way.
So I actually think this is a really exciting time in the sense that
technology is going to allow those HR people to release a lot of that work.
Now that is incredibly scary.
For a lot of people, anytime you are letting go of what has been the mainstay
of your job, it's got, it makes everybody nervous, like myself included, right?
But I think that's where the greatest opportunity is.
And if we're able to let go of those things, we're going to have the capacity
to embrace these other aspects that are more strategic in nature, more
consultative in nature And I think that's really what top HR people want.
Certainly what I wanted for all of the people that I worked with and
what I wanted for myself as well.
Alex: And that's certainly connects with topics or a theme that I've
seen come back quite regularly in this podcast is that the availability
of technology is not enough.
It's a necessary, but not sufficient condition because not everyone
is going to immediately embrace and understand the benefits but
sometimes will also, see the risks.
And so maybe, before we move on to describing some of the technological
solutions that are available, what kind of shift needs to happen
within an organization's leadership in order to make this possible?
Scott: So I know you know from my background as you and I have had
multiple discussions about it, but for the sake of your audience, I spent.
25 years in HR, 20 of those in a C level role organizations that
are, 15, 000 in size down to 250.
And then I made a jump and I became a tech entrepreneur and I learned
something that surprisingly over that 25 years I hadn't learned.
And it's about experimenting.
It's about failing fast.
And I think that's the first mindset that I think all of us, especially those of
us in leadership roles need to adopt, which is that to your point from a second
ago, that transformation, that let go or letting go of the old sort of, this is how
I defined value in my job and embracing the new way that we're going to deliver
value that doesn't happen overnight.
And it most certainly doesn't happen in a single iteration, I don't think.
And so the idea of, especially from a manager's point of view,
the idea of my people are going to pivot a couple of times.
We're going to try something.
It's going to be an experiment.
We can do a small scale on it.
It may work.
It may not.
We're going to see what the results are.
And then we're going to pivot and adjust it.
We're going to move on.
And I think if we take that pivoting mindset, that from a manager's point
of view, then I think that sets the stage, lays the foundation for our
people to be successful, there's another pivot or another mindset shift
rather that I think has to happen.
And that's on the part of each of us as practitioners.
And that is that we have to be willing to actually make that jump
to say I have delivered value that way, but I'm going to let that go.
There is a lot of talk about AI taking people's jobs.
And I think that's false.
I don't think that's going to happen.
And this is my real point that people, who embrace technology and are able
to make that mindset shift, are going to take the roles of people who don't.
So it's not AI that's going to take the job.
It's other people who are able to make that mental shift and deliver value in new
ways that are more likely to take the jobs of those who are holding on to that old
way of delivering value in any profession.
By the way, that's, I don't think that's limited to HR.
Alex: Absolutely, yeah, it's well said.
And I think it's one of the missions of this podcast is to help people
take those steps by showing them what others have, achieved with them.
So with that, I think it's a good point to transition to
Propulsion AI and the product or the set of products you've built.
I've had a peek at the demo.
it's very exciting.
I think you are calling.
it/her Athena.
digital human, I think you're referring to her.
Scott: Yes.
Alex: And, I like in the description that it's, not a document template, it's not
a form filler and it's not a GPT wrapper.
So what is it?
Scott: Well, so let me have you get a mental image for a second.
So you get the authority, you get the ability, you get the budget
to hire new roles onto your team.
And likely, the first thing that you do is you go to HR and you say, I am going
to hire these roles and I need you to get this on the web as quickly as you can.
And HR says back to you, well, I need to build a spec.
Tell me what the role does.
And most managers are going to say something like, well,
I need somebody like Bob.
And HR is going to say, but that's not a job description.
And the manager is thinking, well, I don't know how to write a job description, and I
don't really care about a job description.
I just know I need somebody to do these things.
And the reality in that scenario is that managers, they know kind of what
they want, but we are all universally bad at getting that out of our heads.
And even if we can get it out of our heads, we're universally bad at
doing the creative writing around it.
And yet, a really thoughtful job design drives bottom line performance.
Because it drives productivity and that drives engagement and it drives purpose.
And so getting that job design right is incredibly important.
We fix that.
Recruiters tell us that actually sitting side by side and doing the
hard work takes them four to six hours.
That's what our customers are telling us.
Propulsion AI fixes that problem in around 15 minutes.
First of all, Athena, our digital human is going to engage you in a conversation and
she is going to help you get those details out of your head by using frameworks that
are used by the world's top recruiters and HR business partners and talent leaders.
And as she is engaging you in that conversation, the true values delivered.
Which is that you as a user get your head around the role.
Now, rather than saying somebody like Bob or writing a job description
that reads like an obituary, now you have a clear idea of what you want.
What I mean is how it fits strategy.
What kind of outcomes does the person need to generate?
How are you going to measure success?
What kind of competencies are necessary?
What kind of skills are going to be necessary?
Which of those competencies and skills do you need coming in?
Which can you build along the way?
And in designing the role that way, You now have a roadmap to not only
great hiring, which means faster screening, faster sourcing, faster
interviewing, more directed interviewing, but you also have a path to learning
and growth for the individual.
You have a roadmap for really good performance management.
Think about generating all of that in as little as 15 minutes.
That's what we do.
Alex: Ok, so, let me play this back to you for my sake and the audience as well.
The first pain point that Athena helps with is the formulation of the
actual, you said job description, but it's more than the document.
it's what the role is going to be for somebody.
It can not just save time from hiring managers and the HR team, but also
drive employee retention and engagement.
Can you elaborate on that?
Scott: Sure, I mean, think about the last job description you read.
Was it filled with tasks?
I'll give you a concrete example.
Let's say we're hiring an accountant.
would be totally reasonable for me to write in as a duty,
follow up on delinquent accounts.
But when you think about it, that's a means to an end.
Do I really care that people come in every day and write a bunch of
emails and make a bunch of calls?
I mean, I guess I do, but I care about it as a means to an end.
And the end is moving a number, and that number in accounting
is called days outstanding.
It's a measure of efficiency about how the organization collects money.
That's what I really care about.
It doesn't matter to me how they do it, or it matters less to me how they do it.
It matters more to me that they are actually moving that number.
And guess what?
If I say to that person, your job is to follow up on delinquent accounts
and make calls and write emails.
How engaging is that?
But by contrast, if I say, look, it's really important to this business,
to the way that we make money, that we keep that day's outstanding number
low, and you're accountable for it.
That is a much more engaging statement from the beginning, but it also clears
the path for a different dynamic.
If I'm firm on the outcome, what I want is for you to bring
days outstanding from X to Y.
You come back to me at some point and you say, hey, look, if that's what you
need, shouldn't I be doing these things?
And I say, well, of course I didn't even, I didn't even know that
I don't do the frontline work.
Yes.
Do those things.
So now this person not only has the ability to be more autonomous, which
is going to build purpose and pride and engagement, but they are now
taking, they're in a position to be an owner rather than just a task doer.
And that's what leads to engagement.
And we know from a Towers Watson study that fully engaged employees tend to
produce 16% more than we pay them.
Fully disengaged employees, only about 60%.
We lose 0.4 FTE (full time equivalent of a person) for every
fully disengaged employee we have.
And we know from Gallup that only about 33% of the world's
work population is fully engaged.
Right.
That loss of engagement, that lack of fit has a 1.
1 trillion dollar price tag globally.
Alex: Wow!
And so it's also sounds like you would want helping the hiring managers,
not just formulate the role upfront, but throughout, this employee's, time
with the organization, wouldn't you?
Scott: But, you know, it's an interesting point that you say that because another
phenomenon that we see, in a lot of organizations is that you start out
with a job description and even if let's make the assumption for the sake of the
example, but it's a great job description.
It's perfectly written, et cetera.
Business needs change.
And in the world of today, if I report to you and the business context has
changed, you're going to call me in.
You're going to say, hey, Scott, look, business has changed a couple of things.
I need to take out of your job.
A couple of things that I want to put in.
Here are my ideas.
You and I are just having a free form conversation.
I'm a good corporate citizen.
And so I'm going to say, Alex, not a problem.
I'm on board.
I leave the office.
You and I effectively have a handshake on it, right?
I leave the office.
You have every intention of updating my job description, but then 50 other things
crowd that out and it never gets done.
And so over time, my job description has exactly zero to do with my job.
And the importance of the job description is it creates it clarity.
It's purpose.
And I'm not talking about what gets posted to the web.
I'm talking about the job description document.
It's purpose is to reduce ambiguity such that I can operate with as
much autonomy as you can offer me.
I don't feel like I have to bring everything to you and you don't feel
like you have to micromanage me.
So that document, it's easy to think of it as just a piece of paper, but
it's actually supremely important to my ability to go out and drive
results for the organization.
And so the fact that it's out of date, in some organizations could
mean zero, but in most organizations, it's going to mean a lot.
In the world of tomorrow, rather than coming to me with loose
ideas, you go to Athena first.
You and Athena work out the concrete spec for that job, for that new job,
my pivoted job, that meets what you need to accomplish or what you need
to accomplish through me, you and I sit down around that document.
And now it's much more tangible for me as an employee, you
and I collaborate around that.
You maybe take some notes, you turn back around to Athena when you're done.
And it's a five minute update process.
You send it to me electronically, and I sign off and it's done.
And so it's a much different context internally.
That's an internal use case that we think is legitimate and that we're starting
to hear from our customers is happening.
Alex: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you've already said it, but I'll just repeat it because I think
it's important that the job description in many organizations is a formality.
It's a missed opportunity to actually, drive people's, like you say, engagement
and ultimately the outcomes that the organization requires and using
artificial intelligence, what you are doing at Propulsion AI is you're helping
organizations leverage this opportunity to actually make it relevant and also
use it as an opportunity to, build in the best practices and, in situations where
it would not be, economically feasible to, handhold, to support, either the
manager or the employee, as frequently.
And then, I wanted to pivot, to reuse the word, to the view from
the human resources teams, right?
Because it sounds great from the point of view of the employee who
gets a much clearer definition of what they need to be doing.
Very, useful support for managers.
But from the point of view of HR, I guess some in the audience might think that this
means the end of HR, that an organization can simply, let go all of their HR
people and then use Athena instead.
But you already said that it's not the case.
Can you elaborate?
Scott: Yeah, sure.
I'll give you an example.
In my last corporate assignment as a chief people officer, we were
merging together four previously independent SaaS companies into one.
one of the things that my team had to do around that merger was ensure that
everybody had a job description in place.
And we're talking about four companies, right?
Some of them had good ones.
Some of them didn't.
Some of them had up-to-date ones.
Some didn't, but it was a hodgepodge of different things.
So we effectively had to write or rewrite 400 job descriptions.
It took us 13 weeks.
And with this product, with this platform, with Propulsion AI, it
would have been done in an afternoon.
Now the writing would have been done in an afternoon.
What would have been left is that consultative layer and the strategic
layer that I mentioned before, right?
What Propulsion would have done is eliminated the need
for HR to be a middle person.
The truth is that a lot of HR people lack the operational experience.
What that makes us is highly skilled, very willing participants, but
not knowledgeable as the manager is about what they need in their
organization and why they need it.
So it's important to keep that manager in the driver's seat role.
But because it's such an onerous task in the world of today, the HR people come in
and say, let us take that burden from you.
Well, there's a trade off to that.
So I take the burden, but I don't really understand the work.
So do I do the job as well?
What we've tried to do is make it so it's not an onerous task, so we can
keep that manager in the driver's seat.
And that's how we would turn that 13 weeks into an afternoon insofar as the writing.
Because every manager would be responsible for doing their own.
They are the experts.
That expertise comes out of their head.
Now the HR people come in and we start to consult and we start to
say, okay, let's look at this job and how it might fit a job family.
So now I start to think about career progression from one level
to another, based on what I see in this job and this job from this
manager and a subsequent manager.
So that's one layer of consultation.
Another might be focused on key performance indicators.
Propulsion AI does two things.
In addition to helping the manager focus on the outcomes, Athena
will help that manager define the best ways to measure success.
It happens in really two layers.
One is KPIs.
And so, as a chief people officer, one of my typical KPIs
was employee net promoter score.
It's a measure of employee engagement within the organization, right?
But it's not enough that my boss, the CEO, says you're accountable for eNPS.
If we have the right relationship, he should say eNPS is at 50 and
I need you to move it to 70.
So now I have KPI and I have effectively an OKR, a measure, a movement of a number.
Because back, you know, to the same example that I was giving
on "days outstanding", right?
What I do is a means to an end.
The reason I'm doing it is to move that KPI from one place to another
place, because that's what produces the return for the business.
And that's how I know that I'm actually accountable, not for the
day to day grind alone, but for something that's truly meaningful.
And that's where engagement comes from.
So that's the new role that the HR people take on now.
They are higher level consultants to those managers in an area
where they are squarely qualified.
To be able to deliver services, which is now thinking about the whole, how the jobs
fit together, how each job is going to move the numbers, why that KPI, et cetera.
And in the case of where the HR people are recruiting, the conversation
is now 10 X farther down the road.
Rather than talking about picking details, we're now talking about
getting into that recruiter's head.
A true picture of what that manager needs to see.
And that eliminates the dynamic of, hey, here's 10 candidates.
And the manager looks through resumes and says, I need to see more candidates.
Well, the times that that happens is where the recruiter hasn't been
as clear about what is going to thrill that manager when they see it.
This process reverses that because the spec comes out really clear.
Now the recruiter or the HR business partner can deeply interrogate that
with the manager goes away possessed of a much higher, broader amount
of information and knowledge and concept about what is necessary.
And that's going to lead to really good sourcing and really
good initial candidate screen.
Alex: I love that answer.
I think one, it's elegant because it's symmetrical.
The things you were saying about focusing on the outcomes rather than on the tasks
for the employees that were being hired.
You've pretty much repeated the same thing for the HR teams themselves.
The people working in HR are also getting to focus on the outcomes, just
like the people that they help hire.
So I think wonderful and quite elegant.
Scott: From a people standpoint, right?
I think it's also a good use of technology, right?
We should be using technology to make our people able to deliver
more value, not to replace them.
Alex: Absolutely.
And I guess that's what I was going to actually also say.
That's perfect because it is a recurrent theme in this show is how we are
essentially with the various technologies that, we're deploying, especially of
course, artificial intelligence, we are more and more getting to, for those of
us who embrace those technologies, of course, we're getting to see a bigger
picture than we were able to do before.
So the nature of work changes, but it certainly doesn't eliminate work.
Scott: No, no.
And there is no, I mean, any, any HR person will tell you there is no shortage
of things to do, no shortage of priorities that the organization has that we
somehow, leave unmet on the sidelines.
And so that's why I'm so hopeful and so optimistic about the inclusion
of technologies like propulsion AI, because it's going to free people,
free HR people, to do things that they haven't had the capacity to do before.
Alex: Perfect.
And as we're about to wrap up, a couple of questions: is there a
book, a tool or a habit that has made a particularly significant
impact on you in the last year or so?
Scott: Well, I mean, I think I'd be foolish if I didn't say, I
think the tool is Propulsion AI.
But I know, I take the spirit of the question that you're asking.
There's an incredibly good book on leadership that is written by a
professor named Ron Heifetz at Harvard.
And the book is titled "Leadership on the Line".
And it's a book on adaptive leadership.
And I like it because the whole concept of adaptive leadership is
that your responsibility, first of all, leadership is a verb.
It's not a noun.
You can only see it when it's being exercised.
That's what, professor Heifetz and his writing partner, Marty
Linsky, write in the book.
And the, so as you are exercising leadership, which now is independent,
anybody is a leader, if you are exercising leadership, right?
You are a leader by virtue of your title.
It's part one of the book that I really like.
The second is that your role as a leader is to challenge and provoke an
organization at a rate that it can absorb.
And so that constant gentle pressure, which is the nature
of adaptive leadership.
You through your actions are helping the organization to evolve and change.
I think that's an important mindset for anybody in a leadership role.
That's the real work.
The real work is not to be safe.
The real work is not to make everybody happy.
The real work is to provoke that organization at a rate that it can accept.
And by doing that, help it to evolve and change.
Sometimes that's through different ways of organizing.
Sometimes it's different mindsets that you bring to the table.
Sometimes it's the application of technology , but that
is the work of leadership.
And again, I like that they frame it.
And I truly believe this.
You don't have to be in a titled role to be a leader.
All you have to do is exercise leadership.
Alex: Terrific.
And of course we'll link the book in the description.
And, finally, is there one thing that you're confident that won't
change in the next 10 years and why does it stand out to you?
Scott: I was going to say no, because everything changes, right?
But I do think there's one constant and it goes to a core philosophy that we
just have about people at Propulsion AI.
Everybody wants to come to work and do good work.
And when we see people that are not in that mind space, it's usually because
we've allowed things to interfere.
And that's why we think the concept of clarity and a fit is so critically
important because when people are clear and understand what is expected of them
and they understand the standards by which they're going to be measured and
they have outcomes that are meaningful to the business that they're being asked
to be owners of, that builds pride.
It goes to that sense of the desire that I think every person has when
they come to work for accomplishment.
And that creates a good situation.
That's a world that we all want to be in.
And I don't think human nature changes over 10 years.
I think those kinds of things are going to endure.
The question is, what are we going to be able to do as leaders in
organizations to facilitate that?
What technologies are we going to use?
What mental models and mindsets are we going to instill and what
organizational structures are we going to compose in order to facilitate that?
Alex: Very well put, very well put.
The need for clarity and leadership, I think is a safe bet and human
nature, I think more generally.
Scott, it's been a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
Scott: It's good every time I see you.
Thank you again for the invite.
It's been a pleasure to be with you.
Alex: Scott's journey from seasoned HR executive to tech entrepreneur
reveals a powerful lesson.
Transformation isn't just about adopting new tools.
It's about rethinking how we deliver value.
By leveraging AI to simplify and enhance job design, Scott has shown
how technology can free HR teams and hiring managers from administrative
burdens, allowing them to focus on strategic priorities like engagement,
retention, and business outcomes.
The takeaway?
Clarity and alignment in roles are not just HR buzzwords.
They are essential drivers of organizational success.
So here's a question for you.
How clear are your team's roles?
And could better design be the key to unlocking their full potential?
Now, if you're curious to see how Propulsion AI can streamline your
hiring and talent management processes, Scott invites you to explore the
platform for free at getpropulsion.ai.
There's no credit card required, and you can scope and design as many roles, job
descriptions, and postings as you'd like.
It's an easy way to explore the practical side of everything we've discussed today.
We have more exciting topics and guest appearances lined up, so stay tuned
for more tales of innovation that inspire, challenge, and transform.
Until next time, peace.