Among TechHR Singapore’s amazing lineup of speakers who joined us virtually was Lucrecia Borgonovo, Chief Talent and Organizational Effectiveness Officer at Mastercard, who gave her address on “Becoming an employer for the future: Creating an internal talent marketplace” all the way from New York. 

While addressing the audience virtually, Borgonovo spoke at length about Mastercard’s background, its workforce and about their AI-driven opportunity and talent marketplace, Unlocked. 

Dimensions of Work 

“Like many companies, during the pandemic we were tracking and monitoring a lot of different external and internal trends,” Borgonovo explained while talking about how the idea of an internal marketplace started to take shape.

“So when we think about the future of work, we think of three different dimensions: the workplace, the work and the workforce,” she explained. “So the workplace is all about where the work happens. This is where the discussion about fully remote/hybrid comes into place. Then you have work: Is it about tasks? Is it about outcomes? What is the role that automation plays in how we think about work? And then finally, it's about the workforce: how is the workforce being organised? What is the makeup of our workforce? When do we think about gig workers? How do people come together to get the work done?” she said, explaining how Mastercard looked at the work and all that it entails. 

Key trends in the marketplace

Borgonovo discussed the key trends that Mastercard has noticed in the marketplace that have served as building blocks for Unlocked.

Call to action

“In the beginning of COVID, our former CEO made a call to action to our employees asking them to volunteer their skills, their passion, their time, in support of the most pressing needs of the business and of our customers. We had a number of volunteers and a number of people that were raising their hand to be part of what was initially a bit of a movement.” 

“We realised that what we saw was  something that we probably already knew: that we have an incredibly proud employee workforce and that we had an untapped talent marketplace inside of our organisation, with people of very diverse backgrounds, diverse skills, and incredible talent that we could really leverage in support of the greater needs of the organisation,” she said. 

“It started off as a project called Project Possible that we decided to scale and really make this a part of how we work and how we connect in the organisation and that is how Unlocked came to life,” Borgonovo said.

“Our hope with Unlocked is that we can help address opportunities at the company level and at the individual level. So, at the company level our hope is that we're going to have a better understanding of the talent we have, the skills we have, and the skills that we need to support future growth in business. And to be able to mobilise talent and be able to do that at scale and with speed in support of the areas that are of highest priority to the business,” she said. 

Future-proof workforce

“When it comes to employees, our hope is that through Unlocked we are able to future-proof the workforce by being able to skill employees in those areas that are the most critical demand to the business,” she said while elaborating on what her vision is for the future. 

“And then most importantly, through this platform, we're also able to democratise access for all, so that there is no need to be tapped on the shoulder for a particular opportunity or to be able to access a mentor in the organisation for an opportunity,” Borgonvo elaborated. 

 “You have the opportunity, as an employee, to access different types of possibilities based on your own needs,” she said. 

Vision for the future

“Our vision for Unlocked is to become the one-stop shop, where employees can connect to their priceless possibilities, and at the same time we can meet the business needs with greater speed and at scale,” she said. 

“The approach that we have taken with Unlocked is to start small, test and learn and then scale. Earlier this year, we rolled out Unlocked across our entire employee population and we now have 80% of our employees registered with the program,” she said, adding that the response has been very encouraging.  

“We’re very encouraged by the early signs and the early metrics as it relates to the cross functionality and the cross pollination of talent across the organisation. The vast majority of our projects are cross functional and cross regional. We're seeing the same thing with mentoring. So whether you're being mentored by somebody or mentoring somebody, we're seeing that the bulk of these relationships are cross functional, they're cross regional. We're also starting to see reverse mentoring as well, which is when people earlier on in their career are mentoring people that are more senior or more experienced in their careers,” she said. 

“We are very interested in understanding the long-term impact of Unlocked as it relates being able to fill roles in a more timely fashion, our opportunity to access talent at scale across the organisation, people's ability to increase the proficiency of their skills, in particular critical skills and capabilities in supportive areas of greater growth in the company, our employees, perception of career growth and career development in the organisation, and of course, being able to reduce attrition overall, but in particular attrition due to lack of career opportunity,” she said. 

“This is just the beginning of the journey, we have an exciting journey ahead of us,” Borgonovo signed off.