Delivering Skills-First Careers, Powered By AI

AI helps Deutsche Post DHL Group align its current employees’ skills to future challenges

As a key service during the pandemic, the logistics and transport industry has kept the world connected, adapting operations to keep up with the fast-changing landscape and accelerated digital world. For Deutsche Post DHL Group (DPDHL), a logistics company, we prioritized what excellence looked like for our business and focused on helping our people adapt to suit this everchanging environment. 
 

Transferable skills and ensuring people are developing in their roles are increasingly vital for every business, which is why we chose to utilize AI to help us align our current employees’ skills to future challenges. Choosing this strategic, competency-based development approach means DPDHL employees can continuously evolve and learn, establishing career paths that are not necessarily linear, but are fully personalized to them.

Powered by AI

A key part of DPDHL’s Strategy 2025 is identifying capabilities within the organization, which is why we came up with the idea of our Career Marketplace using a skills-matching AI, as this allowed us to pinpoint potential skills gaps and to seamlessly match jobs. Our objective was for HR to be more process-oriented and to enable a frictionless transition throughout the entire employee lifecycle. 

Upon researching more about AI and similar tech, we realized AI suited our needs perfectly to introduce a better dialogue and conversation within the business.

The technology reflects the differences between desk-based and field roles, such as those in handling or delivering goods. AI can pinpoint employees’ transferable skills to see what the next career move could be for an airside handler or supervisor in a warehouse, for example. 

Once their skills are identified, employees can choose how they would like to develop, whether that be making an upwards or sideways move in their career path in any of our locations in the world. This is vital as it means we can retain key talent, therefore dropping around 10% of our external recruiting needs and potentially saving huge amounts on recruiting costs. 

This emphasis on personalization and a range of possible routes to success within the business is a talent magnet.

Inspiring Our Employees

Adopting an AI skills engine also allows employees to ‘raise their hand’ when they are open to new challenges or career moves, enabling recruiters to see their matches in an internal talent pool without the need for an active application. This benefits us in two ways. Firstly, it streamlines the internal recruiting process, relieving some of the admin burden and helping us fill positions more efficiently. Secondly, and most importantly, it gives our employees a voice and an opportunity to move and progress within the company, keeping them motivated and happy, which is vital for staff retention.

Here at DPDHL, we want our staff to grow and to be celebrated, and AI technology allows us to find the hidden gems in our workforce that otherwise may go unnoticed. Now, more than ever, employees are seeking a sense of purpose in the workplace and for our employees, we hope this technology will develop their competence and confidence by giving them the ability to speak up about their skills and where they would be best placed at DPDHL. 

Our goal is to uplift our employees, and AI certainly enables us to do so. 

Embracing AI in HR

AI can work as a talent scout by not focusing on job titles or experience, but by what skills employees have, focusing on what people can do or potentially do, rather than what they have already done. The power of this technology will no doubt help to fill jobs in a crowded labor market, yet only 17% of organizations are currently using AI-built solutions in their HR functions, according to a Gartner AI survey. 

While this is expected to increase by a further 30% by 2022, there still seems to be some hesitancy towards AI in HR. From our experience, utilizing AI facilitates more accurate and efficient data-led decisions, improved employee experience and confidence, as well as cost savings. 

This last point is especially relevant as companies look at their post-Covid business recovery strategies.

Our goal was to increase our talent retention whilst also tapping into the potential of all employees by harnessing an AI skills engine. DPDHL aims to be an employer of choice, with motivated and skilled employees who deliver exceptional quality. For us, AI was the missing piece of the puzzle in helping to achieve that. It allowed us to think differently about how we manage our talent and to offer employees an enhanced experience, putting them at the heart of our business.

Meredith Wellard is VP, Group Learning Talent and Platforms, Deutsche Post DHL Group. Visit Deutsche Post Connect Meredith Wellard