While there are undeniable advantages to workplace digitalization, it also brings to light new challenges around integrating clear career opportunities for employees so that they can transparently navigate what’s possible. One AI-based method adopted by Schneider Electric is its Open Talent Market (OTM).

The OTM is an AI-driven platform that can source employees ideal different opportunities throughout the global organization, including training, part-time and full-time positions, and mentorships. The OTM's algorithm helps to remove biases within the hiring process — biases such as gender, race, and age.  

Schneider Electric SVP of Talent and Diversity Tina Mylon told SDxCentral that the OTM is centered around “leveling the playing field… really putting it in the hands of the employee, powered by digital AI and machine learning.”

Mylon said that discussions about implementing the marketplace began in 2019. In May of 2020 during the early COVID-19 pandemic, Schneider's CEO decided to roll out the marketplace globally and give all employees access.

“One of the main frustration points and one of the triggers sometimes for people leaving was just not enough transparency, not enough access to how to animate these career opportunities and ways to upskill,” Mylon said.

As of March this year, the OTM has 72,339 employee registrations — 77% of the global eligible employee base. While not all the registrations are necessarily active, Mylon says that there have been some promising statistics of engagement. 

While Mylon explained Schneider hasn’t seen a massive uptick in attrition rates from 2019-2020 to 2021-2022, “certain segments,” particularly people who have recently joined or who “have really hard skills like digital talents” have been more likely to leave. “Attrition is something we're watching carefully. We are not immune to the resignation, but we see it much more in pockets,” she continued. 

According to Mylon, thanks to the OTM, Schneider assigned 5,700 part-time project roles globally, including over 3,000 across business units and over 2,000 across borders. In addition, the company assigned over 1,000 full-time positions — 758 across business units and 473 across borders. 

Mentorship is area Schneider has focused on with OTM. Thus far, the program has assigned over 12,000 mentorships both across business units, and 8,000 across borders.

“We want to make sure there's efficient and AI-driven, non-bias matching based on your needs and skills that you want to upgrade and experience some mutual mentorship,” Mylon explained. “And we are very clear that it's not just reverse-managed mentorship, like a senior person expounding wise advice to a young person. We really say it's about mutual mentorship because it's a two-way street.”

One employee within Schneider Electric Vietnam, Linh Ho, described her experience flipping the pigeonholes of traditional internship roles into meaningfully shaping her career path, defining the OTM marketplace as a “way of integrating the gig economy to help all employees unlock their potential and to be 100% in charge of their careers.”

As Schneider has evolved out of a single-headquartered company and into a multi-hub model, the OTM has become the technological “enabler” of their operational mission to give employees access to exploring and working within the totality of their organization.

“How do you find these ways of adding [a] human touch? And it sounds so basic, but it's quite interesting when you put that filter through any part of employee experience,” Mylon noted. Whether it’s in hiring, training, moving up to a new job, Mylon wants to “make sure the digital experience[s] are super efficient, unbiased, swift – but embedding ways that we have human outreach.”