Digital disruption can be an intimidating term, and, perhaps more challenging, it is often a topic leaders know they should be thinking about, but aren’t sure where to start. The “wait and see” attitude is a mindset that needs to be left in the past, or organizations risk being left behind. Digital transformation is the clear mandate for organizations to sustain their growth. Join this session to understand how CIOs & CHROs can partner together to nurture the talent & accelerate digital transformation for continuous organizational growth.

In a recent People Matters TechHR SEA 2021, leaders and experts from HR and tech came together to reflect upon how CIO & CHRO partnership can help in restoring the organization's growth in times of disruption and uncertainty fueled by the pandemic and the increased focus on digital transformation. 

Here is an excerpt from the fireside chat where Michael Jenkins, CEO at Expert Humans put forward some challenging questions to Michelle Wu Chief Information Officer & Executive Director for at Ingram Micro, Patricia Liu, Chief of Staff at Razer Inc., and Paul Cobban Chief Transformation Officer at DBS Bank on how CHROs and CIOs can lead the digital transformation for the future of work.

Here is what these leaders think about the CHRO & CIO synergy when they were asked about their perspectives on this particular relationship between CHRO & CIO, and the associated issues and opportunities that they face in accelerating the transformation efforts?

Michelle Wu Chief Information Officer & Executive Director for at Ingram Micro

At Ingram Micro, we have been partnering with HR and closely follow HR models to validate our talent decisions. We work closely with HR to set competency and skills metrics, to assess where and how can we find right talent, what measures we can take to develop the early talent pipeline and to more critical processes of diversity like attracting and retaining women talent. 

For CHRO, the CIO relationship and us is a lot more focused on skilling and reskilling. It's our role in the equations that we (CIO) work very closely with HR to lay out what is the right when it comes to taking talent related decisions.

Patricia Liu, Chief of Staff at Razer Inc

Over the last 12-18 months we have been inundated with all sorts of technology we could tag and hence we need the right synergy and relationship between CHROs and CIOs to sail through the unchartered territory of technologies. And what I found most helpful, while I was wearing the both hats of that of a CHRO & CIO, was following the following principles to really be able to separate the wheat from the chaff:

• People
• Digital Mindset
• Utility of the technology

In order for digital transformation to happen, the close partnership between CIO & CHRO is really important in order to really sift out the wheat from the chaff and to be able to really focus on right technology, processes, and resources.

Paul Cobban, Chief Transformation Officer at DBS Bank:

DBS has been recognized by the industry as a firm that to some degree has experienced success in leading the digital transformation. We have people reaching out to know the secret sauce or magic behind this success and they constantly ask us to “can you show us your technology architecture?” If you ask me that’s a wrong question to ask, and it is not that we don’t show them our technology. We are open and welcome everyone to look at the technology architecture. However, according to us the right question for them to ask should be, “how did you get your developers motivated to get over the firm’s legacy system and offer them a creative confidence to re-architect the thousands of applications again?” And the answer to that question is, is of course the collaboration between HR and IT. 

HR plays a significant role in unleashing curiosity, and bringing the mindset change among people, and building it as a company culture that motivates people and satiates their need to do transformational work. The role of leadership, the role of this synergy between key and HR is really the provision of psychological safety for people.