EY’s AI Strategy for People Advisory Services: Managing Partners and Regional Leaders at EY Share AI Insights

In this episode, Batia Stein, managing partner at EY Law and partner at EY People Advisory Services, and Chris Gordon, Canada region leader at EY People Advisory Services Tax, join “TBR Talks” host Patrick Heffernan for a discussion on EY’s AI strategy for its People Advisory Services practice. Stein and Gordon detail EY’s approach to automation in the tax and audit divisions within EY, and the trio also shares their thoughts on immigration, cybersecurity, data privacy and data sovereignty, as well as tax, HR and what the future may hold.

Episode highlights:

• The next trends in people advisory services

• Navigating uncertainty, AI developments and human behavior changes

• Data access challenges and changes

• How EY PAS and Tax are using AI and what gets applied to EY broadly

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Edited by Haley Demers

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Art by Amanda Hamilton Sy

EY’s AI Strategy for People Advisory Services: Managing Partners and Regional Leaders at EY Share AI Insights

TBR Talks Host Patrick Heffernan: Welcome to TBR Talks: Decoding Strategies and Ecosystems of the Globe’s Top Tech Firms. Where we talk business model disruption in the broad technology ecosystem from management consultancies to systems integrators, hyperscalers to independent software vendors, telecom operators to network and infrastructure vendors, and chip manufacturers to value-added resellers. We’ll be answering some of the key intelligence questions we’ve heard from executives and business unit leaders among the leading professional IT services and telecom vendors. 

I’m Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst, and today we’ll be talking about people advisory services with Batia Stein, Managing Partner at EY Law and a Partner within EY’s People Advisory Services practice, and Chris Gordon, Canada Region Leader at EY People Advisory Services Tax. 

Meet Batia and Chris from EY People Advisory Services

Chris and Batia, thank you so much for joining the podcast, really appreciate this. We’re in season four now, which is crazy to me. And we’ve had just such a wide range of guests this season in particular. So, it’s been an enormous amount of fun. But from what I can recall, this is the first time we’ve had anybody from People Advisory Services, from Tax on this program at all over four seasons. So, this is really, it’s exciting. This is something new, something different for us. And so, I would love if you could just introduce yourselves and give us a little bit of background and sort of explain where you’re coming from. I know we met in Barcelona, we had a great time there. Got to chat quite a bit. But if you could just let our folks know who you are and what you’re doing at EY, that’d be great.

Batia Stein, Managing Partner at EY Law and Partner at EY People Advisory Services: Great. I’ll jump right in. Well, first of all, thanks, Patrick, for having us. And it’s great to know that we are the first from PAS, from People Advisory Services Practice. So, my name is Batia Stein, and I lead EY Canada’s immigration practice. We provide Canadian, US, and global immigration services to our clients through EY’s global immigration network, which is in about 140 countries today. I am a Canadian lawyer. I’m a US attorney by profession, and I’ve been with EY for quarter of a century or so now, just over 25 years. And through that time, I’ve helped build our immigration practice very proudly. And that includes everything from service delivery model, how we work with clients, and the technology suite, which I know that you have some interest in, so we’ll talk a little bit about that in a minute. And primarily what I do is I work with my clients to provide strategic advice and thought leadership, creativity to help them navigate the uncertainty. And frankly, we find ourselves in one of the most uncertain times geopolitically. And so that’s really what I help clients with. Chris?

Patrick: Excellent.

Christopher Gordon, Canada Region Leader at EY People Advisory Services Tax: Yeah, so again, thanks, Patrick, for having us on. This is fantastic. The first nod for EY PAS. So really, really privileged to be on this podcast and sharing with you and your listeners. My name is, as you said, Chris Gordon. I am a partner here in Toronto, Canada. I’ve been with the firm, gosh, 22 years now. I’ve been in mobility for 25 years. In a prior life, I was with another firm. I think you and I, Patrick, share that firm in our history. 

Patrick: *laughs* Not to be named, okay. 

Chris: I started my career as a tax associate doing sort of US-UK cross-border tax for expats. Then I moved into broader assignment service, strategy, program design, development, helping clients manage their outsourced function for mobility. Then I moved about 17, 18 years ago into immigration, building, helping to build, working with Batia and others from London, starting from London, England, to build our global immigration business around the world. At the time, we were probably in about 30 countries. Now we’re in about 140+ countries around the world. So that was where I started my career. And then most recently, I’ve stepped into the role as the national and super region leader for Canada, for People Advisory Services. So, it’s kind of a full circle moment where I’ve gone in through all the areas of then human capital and what we call now people advisory service. And now I have the privilege of working with our team here in Canada and our leaders across the globe to set strategy for our business.

The next trends in people advisory services: Communication, connectivity and insight

Patrick: Excellent, excellent. And thank you guys for coming on. And Batia, I want to maybe ask a question because you’ve worked in immigration so long. You mentioned this is a tumultuous time in terms of what’s happening globally. But I’m curious to take maybe a bit of a giant step back. And when we think about the whole role of human resource management, people advisory services and all that, the last five years now have been tumultuous. You know, we had the pandemic, we had the quiet quitting, we had a lot of staff reductions across the technology space, which spilled into professional services. And I have to say one thing I was struck when we met in Barcelona was how closely knit a community the people were that were there. It seemed like they were all sort of relying on each other to get through. So, when you think about what some of those big trends have been over the last few years, are there things that are happening now that you think are sort of beyond just the geopolitics that are sort of building up the next few trends across immigration, across broader people advisory services?

Batia: Sure, absolutely. The one that sort of pops to mind, Patrick, immediately is really, I would call it generally speaking, communication and connectivity and insight. And all of that is really supported through technology. You know, our clients, our corporate clients really want to understand their employee populations, you know, firstly, so that they can keep up with the change. You know, if there’s a, you know, unfortunately, if there’s some kind of geopolitical incident or there’s some kind of legal change that requires them to know where their people are, what their status is, who’s impacted, they need that data and that information instantly. You know, that can happen on a weekend and they need to know it that day, right? We just had a weekend like that not too long ago. And we also want to enhance employee experience. There’s a real lens on making sure that- you know, immigration has become quite challenging for individuals. It creates a lot of uncertainty. It is something that can create anxiety. And so, employers really want to make sure that their employees have that high touch and level of insight into where they are in their process. When will their kids be able to start school? When will they be able to settle? All of those kinds of questions. And so that’s really driven by understanding the data, using technology to do that, and to create an elevated experience for both the employer and the employee. So, I think that’s the first trend and probably a primary trend that I would highlight.

Patrick: That’s fascinating. I think of the Big Four firms as having a cybersecurity team that has to react on the weekend when something goes really wrong, but it never occurred to me to think, oh, right, and the immigration folks, the people advisory folks as well.

Batia: Oh yeah. Just a few weekends ago. No jokes at all, but that happens to us quite often. Just a couple of weekends ago when the presidential proclamation was announced that around H-1Bs and the changes to the H-1B program, there was a lot of uncertainty on day one as to who that would impact and how it would impact people. Could people, for example, who were in H-1B status outside the country be allowed to come back in? 

Patrick: Right.

Batia: And so, we spent the weekend analyzing the proclamation, advising our clients, re-advising when clarification came, and helping people to manage their employee populations of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people.

Patrick: Right, and that gets, I mean, there’s probably nothing more about the employee experience, especially in immigration, than your visa and what’s your visa status and what’s your residency status. 

Batia: Absolutely.

Patrick: I’m curious too, because you mentioned employee experience. It’s one of those areas that at the beginning of the pandemic, and I know that goes back five years, but there was such an intense focus on, are our people safe? Are our people healthy? Are they happy? Do they have what they need? And then I feel like we went through a period where employee experience maybe got pushed aside. You know, we didn’t- we stopped thinking about employee experience broadly, but for you guys, it’s something that’s sort of every day. And so, I’m curious, how have you seen employee experience sort of rise up and down, if it does, at your clients in terms of, you know, is it a boardroom issue? Is it a C-suite issue? Is it something that’s just sort of pushed down lower in the organization? Or does it rise to the top again and again?

Chris: Yeah, I think if you- if we think about the pandemic, as you mentioned, as almost like a milestone, right? There’s been a change in expectation around what the employer and the obligation of the employer for the employee. And so, what we’ve seen with many companies is a heightened, especially within the HR organization. So, whether at the board room, they’re not necessarily talking about it in the same way, but certainly within the HR organization, employee experience is one of their top priorities. We are seeing definitely a shift in how organizations are functioning around that, whether that’s how they design their mobility program, how they design their HR program, the way that they communicate with their employees, the touch that they want to put on their employees in terms of both, as Batia mentioned, communication, but also this idea of surveying and making sure that everything that’s happening with the employee to their expectation. 

If we think about the shift in expectation and the immediacy in data expectations, right? People want to be able to put their finger on a button and find out their status. And so that all is part of the employee experience. As soon as an employee goes into the HR system, there is an expectation that this firm now has me, not just from a delivering my comp and my salary perspective and delivering the right opportunities, but keeping me aware of everything and anything that may affect me, that may affect my employment, that may affect the organization and the company, and even into the social space, right? 

Patrick: Right.

Chris: I want our company and our organization to support the things that I support, the causes that I support. So, it’s a much bigger issue that HR is grappling with and functioning and dealing with. A lot of organizations, like I said are restructuring how they deliver messaging. A lot of self-service tools are being implemented within organizations so that employees can actually have their finger on the pulse of what’s going on within the organization or within their mobility program or whatever it is that they’re interested in. So, there is definitely a shift that we’re seeing. Yeah, as I said, employee experience is something that we’re hearing a lot more around and certainly something that we’re helping clients address.

Patrick: You mentioned- 

Batia: I’ll just add, Chris-

Patrick: Sorry, go ahead.

Batia: Sorry, Patrick. I was just going to add that, you know, immigration is a deeply personal experience. And so, it really does impact the C-suite. It does impact board members. You know, we are regularly helping C-suite cross borders and board members. And so, there’s nothing that grabs the attention more quickly than somebody quite senior, you know, having a challenging time at the border or being stopped. And so definitely it permeates the entire organization.

Patrick: Right.

Chris: Yeah. And when you think about mobility as a connected service, tax, you want to make sure your taxes are right. You’re filing the right taxes. You’re not paying more than you need to pay. Your immigration’s correct. Your payroll’s being delivered. All of those things now are converging and integrating, and the employee is looking at all of those as a single stream of support. They’re not thinking about whether you may have a different vendor for each or the same vendor for each. They want the same experience regardless.

Patrick: Right. And I mean, tax and immigration, those are so deeply personal. I mean, that’s a really, it’s an important point to think about, like how your employees are going to feel that more than they’re going to feel their technology. 

Adopting new technology solutions at EY People Advisory Services

But let’s talk about technology for a second, because I know you guys are building some of those solutions you talked about, some of the platforms working with Microsoft and probably others. Have you seen, I guess the big question for me is the technology- in our world, the technology always works. It’s the people that mess things up. It’s the humans that screw up the technology, not the other way around. But when it comes to some of the tools that you’re developing for your clients and tools that you’re using internally within EY, are you seeing the adoption maybe happening a little faster now? Are you seeing people, and is that part of just a better designed tool, a better designed, I know one of the ones is built right into Teams. Or is it more a function of people have just gotten better and more adept at adopting technologies quicker? And just your broad experience in that regard. Chris, maybe if you want to go first on that?

Chris: Yeah, I think about our technology journey. Right, when I started, God 20 something years ago, it was an e-mail and no one expected a response to that e-mail for five days or a week or whatever, right? As expectation shifted and became more immediate, then the need for technology to really address that became critical. And if I think about then, sort of, you know, societally, there is this, everybody’s on an app, right? Like, apps have become the way forward, so the user experience, the expectation of easy, frictionless access to data, to information, is something that people are taking from their experience in life and bringing that to their experience in the work environment, in the services that their employer provides to them, and mobility being one of them. And so, as we’re seeing sort of technology really advancing super quickly, right? A system that we developed five years ago is now today an obsolete system. And so, we’re constantly evolving. 

And so through our relationship and our alliance with Microsoft, we have developed an EYMP, which is EY Mobility Pathway, which is a dynamic system that tracks, reports, allows clients through dashboarding to have their finger on the pulse. Both clients at the administrative mobility function level and also the employee, to have their finger on the pulse of their tax services, their immigration services, you know, if they’re business travelers, there’s business travel elements to that. It really is this idea of data being democratized. People being able to have access to the data anytime they want 24/7 and being able to play back and forth with that data to provide information, to pull information in a very secure way. I think you mentioned, you mentioned risk, right? Threat, cybersecurity. 

Patrick: Yeah.

Chris: So, ensuring that data is transited no more through e-mail, but through systems that are secure and immediate, real time. And it is a challenge as you said, you know, humans are still part of the process. However, with AI and generative AI, there is much more ability to reduce error, to mitigate that human error element to it, where now AI is implemented in systems. But again, there is still a tension there, right? Some organizations don’t want that implemented, there’s still a fear there. So, we have to tread carefully with that, move the industry along, whilst also respecting that there are also- that there’s expertise that still delivers support to our clients. But definitely, the technology journey is apace, and it is a race. Let’s be clear about that. It is a race to really- I don’t think there is an endpoint to this race. I think it’s going to constantly keep building as we move forward. I don’t know, Batia, if you have any other thoughts.

Batia: I was just going to say, I think that coming back to your question, Patrick, I think that data privacy, data integrity is what’s driving adoption and employee experience. Right. So, I think employees want the experience. They want to make sure that their information is secure as do our clients, our employers. And so, I think that is really something that’s driving adoption. And I’ll just say on a personal note that being part of EY, you know, you told us that you used to be part of a advisory practice as well, a consulting practice. We’re in a wonderful position. It really, it makes me- I get excited by the idea that we are an immigration practice embedded in this broader, much larger organization with advisory, with this alliance with Microsoft, with, quite frankly, with the ability to develop technology at a pace to really lead the race, using Chris’s words. That’s the piece that excites me, because this is really something that is going to sustain the future of our practice. And so being in a position where we are really surrounded, I think, with the right environment for the development is super exciting for me.

Patrick: Yeah, and I think the multidisciplinary model works so well for you and for the others in the Big Four, just because you bring so much to the table and every client might do one piece of their business really well, but they are- they do have needs across, you know, every enterprise client has needs across all of the things that EY brings to the table. 

Data access challenges and changes

I want to ask a very specific question that you may not want to answer, but I’ll have to ask it anyway. And it’s about data, because we hear about data all the time, and we hear about how that’s the piece that is preventing faster adoption of agentic AI or generative AI. It’s the piece that’s always most difficult. Everybody tells us that enterprise clients just don’t have their data in shape. They can’t accelerate. They can’t move from pilots to scale, blah, blah, blah. What we’ve heard recently that I think is fascinating is this idea that even with clients that you’ve been working with for a decade, getting sustained useful data from the clients is still a challenge. And I’m curious, we’re hearing different things about where, you know, EY fits on that spectrum of the ability to work very closely with their clients and access their data. And Chris, I know you’re laughing ’cause you’re like, you can’t believe I’m asking this question. But I’m just curious, in your more than two decades of experience, data has always been part of the equation for you. How has that changed maybe in recent years where that ability to get sustained access to the data that you need out of your clients has improved or has maybe been a roadblock.

Chris: Yeah, no, that’s a- you know how to ask those questions.

All: *laughs*

Batia: I’m glad it’s yours.

Chris: If you think about sort of the journey that we’ve been on over the last decade, let’s call it, There was this desire to protect data in a way that denied access. Right. 

Patrick: Right.

Chris: So, there were lots of layers of access controls and systems in place to limit the amount of information that was available to a provider like EY or even to HR within the organization. They don’t have access to all the individual’s data and information. With the demand for more information now coming from the employee in the organization, those systems of how they constructed and architected their data security have to now shift as well. And so, we’ve got this tension between the demand for information and demand for immediacy of information that then can drive strategic decisions with an institution of data management and data control within the tech and security organization that now needs to be reconciled. And so that’s probably part of what you’re seeing, right?

The consistent access to data, some of those controls need to be reassessed and reviewed. There has to be trust in the system. And so, as we think about the best cases where we have that access to data and those two-way data flows with our clients, those are the clients where there is a trust system that’s set up. And that means the client organization reviews all of our systems, checks out and is comfortable that they can now have a secure flow back and forth. And so those barriers, let’s call them those controls, those gates, to a degree are then lessened or removed so that we do have that consistent access and flow of data. Now, that does require trust. It also requires a different way of contracting. I can tell you, for example, if we think about the construct of contracts that were made probably 5-10 years ago even, right? Let’s say 10 years ago. And even 5 years ago, those contracts were, “you cannot use our data for any other purpose other than,” right? 

Patrick: Right.

Chris: And so, if you now want that data for insights and you as an organization want EY to now do benchmarking for you, for example, right? Your contract doesn’t allow us to do that. So again, there has to be a full reconciliation of the data systems and the data control that the organization has as their policy, and then a reconciliation of what their demand is in terms of data consumption. That’s kind of my answer to the question. I’m not sure it’s answered your question fully, but that’s where I do see the change.

Patrick: No, it’s super helpful. And I think the way you laid that out in particular to talk about trust is a perfect segue into the next thing we want to talk about, which is AI. 

Batia’s law background and EY’s Law Firm

So, let’s talk about, well, I want to talk about AI, but actually before we get to that, Batia, you said something at the very beginning that you’re an attorney. And I just have to ask how many other attorneys are there within EY? Is it a firm full of lawyers that we didn’t know about? Like, is it the secret, you know, subculture of lawyers at EY?

Batia: *laughs* That’s a good question. So, within our EY Law firm, our practice in Canada provides those three areas of law, as I said. So, it’s Canadian, US, and global outbound. We have around 300 people onshore in Canada. We’re also supported by our Global Delivery Services Center in India, by another 300 or so. So, it’s a large practice. And then of those 300 or so in Canada, we have just over 100, 120-140 lawyers and attorneys, mostly US attorneys.

Patrick: Okay, yeah. 

Batia: So, it is a- I don’t know how you would classify it. Is it a subculture? I’m not sure. But yes, we have a very strong law firm practice.

Patrick: Excellent. And then so I’m just really curious on this one particular point, like how did you end- you didn’t go to law school to work for EY, so how did you end up?

Batia: *laughs*

Patrick: Right?

Batia: I did not. So surprisingly, I’ll share my story, but surprisingly, it’s not that unusual. We have a few people with similar profiles. So I went- I actually did my undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology.

Patrick: Okay.

Batia: And decided that I needed to do something that was practical. So decided to go to law school in my third year of my anthropology degree. And went to law school so that I could work with refugees, so that I could help asylum seekers and refugees. And after graduation, I articled, interned at a boutique large immigration law firm in Canada, and then opened my own immigration practice for about two years where I did just that. I worked with refugees, worked with humanitarian cases. And at the time, EY was starting an immigration practice, piqued my interest. I saw that immigration in particular was- in Canada was following the path of U.S. immigration into the corporate world. And so, I approached the folks and joined the firm.

Patrick: That’s fascinating.

Batia: And now I do exclusively corporate law.

Patrick: It’s absolutely fascinating. And I have to say, earlier this season, we spoke with a guy who is with BCG who got his PhD in philosophy. 

Batia: There you go.

Patrick: And I thought, okay, well, that’s the first time we’ve ever had a philosopher. You actually might be the first attorney that we’ve had on the podcast. So, we’re checking off a lot of boxes today. It’s great. 

Batia: *laughs*

How EY PAS and Tax are using AI and what gets applied to EY broadly

Patrick: I do want to ask about AI, because it’s something that we talked about in Barcelona. It comes up relentlessly now. And it occurred to me when you were talking about immigration earlier, in my distant, distant past, I actually stamped visas at the embassy in Cairo, US Embassy in Cairo. 

Batia: Oh wow.

Patrick: Yeah, I did immigration visas, I did visitor visas, all that kind of stuff. And I just think about the application- 

Chris: Very cool.

Patrick: Well, yeah, it was, yeah, we could have a beer and talk about how cool that job was. 

Batia and Chris: *laughs*

Patrick: But anyway, I think now about if somebody could have filled out that form using AI, you know, how different that would have been. And the same for your own services that you’re providing to enterprise clients when it comes to literally filling out applications or forms and stuff like that. How much is the firm starting to use AI to do some of that work? And do you ever see it sort of being a huge part of the work that you’re doing?

Batia: Yeah, yeah. It’s an excellent question, and I think we’re on the journey, right? So, we definitely are using AI in cool ways and are looking at using it in even more ways and better ways. And part of the driver really is that things have become so much more complex. The only thing that is certain in the world right now for us in immigration is uncertainty. And so, we need to make sure that our best minds, greatest thinkers are focused on that, focused on client service, focused on strategy, focused on understanding the changes. And as you said, the filling out of the forms and the analyzing of the data, of which we have a lot, right? I mean, there’s a lot of data that we hold. So, analyzing that data that we hold, analyzing the data that is publicly available to enhance our decision making and our clients’ decision making around strategy is what we need to be doing. And so, we are using some tools to do that already. So, we do have some technology, as you know, in play that we are able to automate some of that process for sure, and looking to automate even more of it using AI.

Patrick: And how much do you share what you’re doing within immigration and then more broadly within People Advisory Services with the rest of the firm? I mean, how much are you getting from the rest of the firm? How much are you sharing back? And by how much, I’m really thinking like more around the innovative side, like this is a way of thinking about the data that we have. And because your firm as a whole, of course, has a massive amount of data on all your clients. But how you manage that, how you orchestrate that, what you can and can’t use, all of those things, you’re going through it individually in your practice, how much does that get shared? How easily does that get shared across the firm?

Batia: Yeah, so that’s a great question. We are, at the end of the day, in Canada, at least a law firm. And we are an immigration practice. And so, we are very careful with how much we share from a privacy perspective, from a regulatory perspective, we wouldn’t share without clients explicit consent to do that. Having said that, I like the way you phrased the question because it’s not just about the data we hold, but it’s about the way we are developing and using technology. And so, from a technology perspective and how we use technology, that for sure is, you know, we are working in this much bigger and broader environment. We are learning from our, as I said earlier, from our consulting practice, from our technology folks, and they are learning from us in terms of how we are building and what we need to do. But from a data perspective, to be very clear, that is held privately and confidentially for sure for our clients.

Patrick: Right, and then Chris, on the Tax side and the People Advisory broadly, how are you guys using AI these days? And maybe also, what do you see coming next? Like what’s the next evolution? We’ve gone from AI to GenAI to agentic AI. What’s next?

Chris: Yeah, no, if I think about sort of a tax return, for example, providing a tax return used to be, you know, a client would have to fill in, you know, an employee would have to fill in all their information on what we call an organizer, right? Now we have information in systems. The client has information in their systems. There are systems that are on apps, maybe in an employee’s phone that when they travel, if they switch that app on, their calendar gets updated for where they are in the world. That then gets pulled into this form. So now when they have the organizer format that appears in front of them saying, fill out your organizer, actually, it’s playing back information that’s already in the system. Now they just need to verify. We’re using technology, AI, APIs, connecting systems in ways that are accelerating the process of preparing tax returns, also delivering, again, on that employee experience, right? I have this data, I’ve given you this data before, how come, you know, it’s in my calendar, why is it not in my form, right? And so, we’re able to now do that. 

In terms of sort of the next level, the next stage of experience, it really is going to be around, and we’re looking and playing with and piloting certain agentic pieces of that, where actually systems are now going to be doing some of that conversational response based on data in the system. So, someone can call up in the system and say, what’s happening with my tax return? And rather than it just being, you know, a box with information, there’s actually a conversational piece to that. That’s what we’re exploring right now. How do we put agents into the system that can enhance the user and employee experience? And we’re beginning to pilot that. 

The future is endless, right? And again, it really goes back to that trust piece. How much information do you want in the hands of an individual to have a conversation with? Or how much of that, because if you want to have a conversation with an individual, you’re going to have to book a meeting time and it’s got to go do the scheduling and all those other things, right? But if it’s in the hands of agentic AI, then that can be more immediate in terms of your information request and receipt. So again, it’s really building that trust with our clients, piloting with clients that want to push the boundaries of this and then using that as a use case to demonstrate to other clients the benefits of that, and also the opportunities for improvement. So that’s kind of where we are right now across People Advisory Services. 

And if I think about Canada in that context, Canada is one of ten super regions. So earlier this year, EY, we restructured our organization into ten super regions. Canada is one of those ten super regions. And being a super region allows us to pilot some things, share that with the rest of the globe, the other nine super regions, lead in some of those innovations, and really sort of drive some of that prototyping. And we’ve seen some of that already. And it’s beginning to, as I said, it’s beginning to- it’s evolving in ways I think that, you know, the imaginations of our people are really helping us sort of push the boundaries of what’s possible. It’s really, really interesting. And as Batia said, it’s very exciting. It’s very exciting. 

Patrick: Well, you just- 

Batia: Yeah.

Patrick: Sorry, go ahead, Batia.

Batia: Oh, I was just going to add, Patrick, you know, where our clients and their employees are, allow us to- you know, one of the deep values of coming to a firm like EY is that we can use this information in- entry once and multiple use, right? 

Patrick: Right.

Batia: So, we do that for our clients, for sure, both on the immigration and tax side. Employees don’t want to have to give their information more than once. And if they allow us to share it, we absolutely do and will.

Patrick: Well, and employees don’t want to give their information more than once, because we all have so much experience of having to log into that streaming service again. We’re like, wait a minute, you already have my credentials, why am I logging into the streaming service again another time? 

Batia: Yeah.

Patrick: And you actually, Chris, you said something that I think combined with Batia earlier; you mentioned sort of immigration as such a personal thing. When we’ve been thinking about AI, we’ve been thinking about in terms of what firms like EY bring to their clients, it’s the opportunity to cut costs or increasingly to increase revenues. So, it’s cost cutting and it’s revenue growth. You two have added the employee experience to it as well. Like there is a true employee experience benefit to AI, which I think most of the time we think about AI in the broader sense of being, you know, taking away jobs, eliminating jobs, but actually you’re positioning it more, this is how AI can make not only folks at EY’s job better, but even the employees of your enterprise customers, they get the employee experience benefit of it too, right?

Chris: Yeah, as we went down this journey, probably about, I don’t know, seven or eight years ago, as we were thinking about what was going to happen within HR and the evolving landscape ahead of us. And this was pre-COVID. We came up with a tagline: humans at center. And so, everything that we do, whether that’s technology, whether it’s how we build our systems, whether that’s how we scope our services, we do that with a mind of keeping humans at the center. So whether that’s the employee of our clients, or, and when I say the employee, the traveling employee, or the administrative employee, the person that now governs the programs that we deliver, or our own people, our intent is to put humans at the center. We do believe strongly that human connection is what people crave. We are designed for connection. And so, to the extent that we can have systems do a lot of the hard, heavy work, then actually humans have more time. And as you mentioned, cost, scale, and experience, right? Humans connecting with humans definitely brings about the best outcome. And so you get the machines to do the heavy lifting piece, you get them to deal with the non-critical pieces of the process, and then you can have humans now better connected for the things that were more critical and more human-centric, dealing with a lot of that tension and the emotion that comes with, again, immigration, tax is very personal, very sensitive. So, it allows and frees up our people to now engage in a different way with our clients.

Patrick: And Batia, as the cultural anthropologist in this chat, I think you must agree with the idea that we all want to have that personal relationship and all that, right?

Batia: Absolutely, absolutely. *laughs* I will say that it’s also for our- I can talk from the perspective of our people who are working with our clients that, as I said, and I’ll say it again, the complexity around us. I mean, being an immigration lawyer when I started 20+ years ago is very different to being an immigration lawyer or an immigration service provider today. The complexity is extreme. And so really giving our people the space and the opportunity to really think about the complexity and connect with our clients around that and support them in that through the use of AI and through the use of technology is really what we need to be doing and what we are doing.

Naming the unknows: Navigating uncertainty, AI developments and human behavior changes

Patrick: Yeah, excellent, excellent. So, I have two questions left, both of them sort of big picture stuff. One is, what are the, in each of your respective spaces, what are sort of your biggest unknowns, the things that you wish you kind of had the answer to. And I’ll give you an example from our- from my perspective, one of our biggest unknowns right now is what’s going to happen to the labor pyramid within all the services companies that we follow. It’s traditionally a pyramid. You guys have an up and out model like everybody does. You have an apprenticeship model. How much is that going to change over the next few years? That for us is important to understand because it has such a huge impact on the way that you run your businesses and the success of them. But within your spaces, what is that sort of, that unknown that you wish you really had an answer to, or you think you’re going to be working to get an answer to over the next couple of years? Batia, you want to go first?

Batia: Tough questions, Patrick. I was sitting here thinking, the biggest unknown for me is the is the unknown, if that makes sense, the change that’s all around us. But in a way, that’s actually known. The one thing that is certain for us is that there’s going to be uncertainty going forward. I don’t think we’ve had a time period where there’s been as much uncertainty just around immigration requirements and geopolitics and all of that is unknown. 

The unknown really for me, and this is the exciting piece, because it’s unknown just because we’re in development still is really how we’re going to use AI and technology to support our clients and operate differently and better, to be honest. We know we’re going to do it. We’ve started on the journey, but the degree to which we are going to be able to leverage AI and technology is an exciting unknown for me because it’s just something we haven’t fully discovered yet. So, I think those would be my two answers.

Patrick: Yeah. That AI one is so true, because so much has already changed just in the last couple of years, so it really is an unknown in terms of what’s coming. So, yeah, Chris, how about you?

Chris: Yeah, again, it’s a really good question. This caused me to go into sort of pensive, thoughtful mode. But if I sort of take a step back, the one thing that sort of, and it doesn’t keep me up at night, but certainly you’d like to have maybe a crystal ball so you can kind of see into the future is how is human behavior and human expectation going to change with time? Because as we adopt technology, right, we adopt the telephone and then we adopted e-mail, the expectation was that much more immediate. What’s the new expectation going to be once we embed AI in all these things? And then how do we as an organization start to plan for that, right? That’s kind of, and so there’s the exciting pieces Batia mentioned with AI and new technology, for me is then what does that mean for human behavior? What does that mean for the new skill sets and talents, adaptability, we talk about the ability to adapt, right? We got to get people with the ability to adapt. And what are we adapting to, right? That’s the unknown piece that Batia mentioned. And so how does that change our business? How does that change our business model? How does that change our people? How does that change the makeup of the people that we attract or we’re looking to attract? Like all of those things are what I sort of think about. And now you’ve really started that wheel going in my head, I’m going to have to start to write things down now. Patrick, thank you.

Patrick: So, now overlay a generational change on top of that as well. 

Chris: Yes.

Patrick: So- because the way that I adapt to technology is very different than the way that my colleague Haley sitting next to me adapts to technology. So that’s, and then it depends on what industry. Yeah, it’s fascinating. 

Final thoughts

All right, last question. I promise we’ll wrap this up. I’ve been asking everybody this question so far this season because it kind of, it ties to AI, the sort of, again, the common story, the conventional wisdom out there is that AI is going to replace a whole bunch of jobs. So, if your job had to go away, if you could say, all right, I’m going to spend 10,000 hours now and I’m just going to, I’m going to gain a skill. There are some things that AI won’t take away. Batia, you mentioned creativity and creative thinking earlier. But if there was something you could sit down now and just say, I’m going to spend 10,000 hours and I’m going to develop an irreplaceable and- a skill that could not be replaced by AI. And it could be speaking multiple languages, although that could be replaced by AI. It could be playing the guitar. It could be turning yourself invisible, I don’t know. Pick some sort of thing that you wish you could do, some sort of skill that if you could say, I’m going to spend 10,000 hours and just perfect it, what would that skill be? Chris, you have to go first this time.

Chris: Yeah. Oh, wow. Man, you really know how to put these questions out there. These are like deep, philosophical, life altering questions. No, if I were to sort of spend 10,000 hours on something now, it would probably be, and I kind of do some of it now, but it’d be mentorship, like strengthening my chops with mentorship. Yeah, sort of, yeah, mentorship, life coaching or something like that. Because again, as the world changes, the ability for people to adjust to that change can be quite burdensome and quite taxing. And so, helping people navigate the change, which is kind of what we do every day in our roles, help sort of vision a future and bring everybody along. But sort of helping people make the change would be something. If I had nothing else to do, then I’d probably go into life coaching or something like that.

Patrick: It’s fascinating. And that’s so dependent upon trust too, the whole trusted relationship. 

Chris: Yes, sir.

Patrick: Yeah, excellent. Batia, how about you?

Batia: I’ll build on that a little bit because I love the answer. I’m going to say that focused specifically on mentoring people and building, continuing to build my own skill around interaction. Human interaction, client service, understanding, you know, empathy, understanding where people are coming from, where our clients, what’s driving our clients, because I think that’s the key to client service. I think it really is around understanding people’s positions and what’s important to them to really build that lasting relationship.

Patrick: Well, I got to say, you two are, you’re absolutely reinforcing the humans at the center message of the firm. So that’s fantastic. Excellent. Thank you both so much for coming on. This has been an enormous pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed this.

Batia: Thank you, Patrick. It’s been great.

Chris: Thank you, Patrick. It’s been a fantastic conversation.

Patrick: Tune in next week for another episode of TBR Talks. Don’t forget to send us your key intelligence questions on business strategy, ecosystems, and management consulting through the form in the show notes below. Visit tbri.com to learn how we help tech companies, large and small, answer these questions with the research, data, and analysis that my guests bring to this conversation every week. 

Once again, I’m your host, Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst at TBR. Thanks for joining us and see you next week.

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