Being a people leader is more important than ever. Emerging tech could help them be at their best, says Mastercard exec.

• Lucrecia Borgonovo, Mastercard's chief talent officer, is on BI's Workforce Innovation board.
• Borgonovo says AI is a key part of the company's leadership and talent-development strategies.
• This article is part of "Workforce Innovation," a series exploring the forces shaping enterprise transformation.

When Lucrecia Borgonovo, Mastercard's chief talent and organizational effectiveness officer, first transitioned to leading its talent team in 2021, she was entering a business world in flux. Companies' workforce strategies needed to change if they wanted to stay competitive.

"Whether there was a playbook before the pandemic, you're kind of throwing it out the window because you have to reimage the art of the possible," Borgonovo told Business Insider.

She said Mastercard has seen significant growth in integrating AI, analytics, and data into its operations. In 2022, the company launched Unlocked, an AI-driven internal talent marketplace that allows employees to pursue skill-building and career-development opportunities. The initiative is part of Mastercard's larger effort to leverage emerging technologies for employee training and engagement.

But experimentation also needs to come with collaboration. Relying on a community "has never been more important, because alone, you don't have the answers. So you definitely have to tap into the wisdom of the individuals that are part of your team," Borgonovo said.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What new ways do leaders have to approach talent recruitment and retention?

At Mastercard, we have looked at what makes a leader in the context of all of the different emerging trends and changes in the external environment. We all recognize that it's never been harder to be a people leader, and it's also never been more critical to be a people leader in terms of the role they play in driving talent performance and greater levels of engagement.

We thought in partnership with the board and our executive leadership team, how do we need our leaders to show up in this changing environment? And then we put in place a lot of different programming to enable people leaders to show up at their best.

There are those critical moments between a people leader and an employee that we want to make sure we're not supercharging, whether it's your performance review or your expectations setting.

We're about to embark on providing our people leaders an AI digital coach that can support them in those key moments, for them to be able to practice having rich, candid, and valuable performance and feedback conversations

Also in support of helping leaders develop their talent and making sure they have the talent they need for the pressing needs of their business, we have an AI-driven talent marketplace called Unlocked, which encourages our people leaders to leverage their kind of "copilot" when tapping into skills or talent that they need outside of their reporting line.

As employees assess their opportunities and which companies they want to join, how do you become a place where people want to work?

Our workforce has evolved, and the expectations of the workforce have evolved. We know that some of the things that made you a really great employer may have changed. So we're always trying to stay ahead and making sure that our value propositions really resonate with people.

I think in terms of three anchors that make us a really great place where people want to stay and join — or rejoin. I'm a boomerang, so I've been in the company twice.

It is really about innovation and technology. People want to be in cutting-edge work and working with products and technology that will have a significant impact on the world. How do we make sure that we're providing people with the opportunity to continue to stay on top of their game, be curious, and learn?

I think social impact is something incredibly important. We know that people want to work on things that have meaning and purpose — so not only being able to work on projects that are creating incredible value for our customers but also great technology that can have a positive impact.

Underlying all of this is something we constantly hear from employees here, people who have left, and people who continue to join and rejoin: our culture. How do we show up for one another and how do we show up with our customers?

All of these different things are probably the recipe that is making us a really great place to work. We're very lucky because we know that we have an incredibly engaged workforce, and they're also incredibly proud to work in the organization. Employee referrals are our No. 2 source of recruitment, and the percentage of boomerangs, people returning to the organization, also increased quite a bit.

What is your biggest challenge right now in your role? What is the thing that you are spending most of your time wrestling down?

I think it is probably the speed of change. I personally don't see the speed of change decreasing anytime soon. So how do we make sure to continue developing our people at the speed needed to match the needs of our business? How do I make sure that in my role, I'm helping to future-proof Mastercard?

Something that keeps me curious is how we continue to upskill and reskill employees in a way that is impactful.

Some of the work we have done through our talent marketplace, which came to life in the context of the pandemic, I think definitely tested the incredible agility of our workforce.

I feel very encouraged about the level of engagement that we have gotten from employees in terms of growing, staying current, and staying agile.

How do you think employees are feeling right now about the competing narratives around AI — that it's potentially highly disruptive but also a great opportunity?

For the first time in our employee survey, we asked a question about AI, and what we've learned is our employees are incredibly excited about the benefits that AI can have in their work. I think it also confirmed that people are very curious and interested in building greater confidence and fluency in the use of this technology.

We wanted to make sure there was democratized access to AI, and depending on where people were in their learning journey, we made a lot of different resources available for them in support of building some of the fundamentals.

After that, it is role-based. Whether you're a software development engineer, a consultant, or in sales, we recognize that you may use this technology differently. So learning is much more tailored to the different job families.

From an HR standpoint, we're very much looking forward to leveraging the incredible value of this platform, not only in terms of increasing the quality of work but also freeing up time for people to be more focused on innovation and their personal well-being.