Tanya Moore, Chief People Officer at West Monroe

Show Notes

AI‑Literate HR: West Monroe’s CPO on Human‑in‑the‑Loop and Workflow Leapfrogging

Summary

Feeling the pressure to do more with less while AI reshapes work?

Tanya Moore, Chief People Officer at West Monroe, shares how she’s evolving HR from an administrative function to a strategic architect of business outcomes.

Leading people strategy for a 2,000+ person business and technology consultancy, Tanya breaks down a practical AI playbook: raise AI literacy across the org (they now have ~100 super users), reinvent core workflows, and keep humans firmly in the loop.

She details how West Monroe built client-ready offerings like Intellio Hopper to modernize data 80% faster, and how her team uses AI to compress M&A diligence—from sifting thousands of documents to delivering faster, higher-quality insights.

Tanya also offers concrete advice for HR leaders: separate HR operations from strategy, focus on fewer, high-impact priorities, and “leapfrog” with technology instead of moving step-by-step.

She closes with how leaders should model usage, prioritize workflow pilots, and foster continuous learning (including her own 8–10 hours per week) so talent stays employable and energized. Hear the frameworks, tools, and mindset shifts any people leader can apply now.

Timestamps

[00:52] – CPO scope and West Monroe overview (2,000+ employees; business and tech consulting)

[01:50] – The new HR mandate: do more with less while elevating employee experience

[02:49] – From admin to strategic architect: partnering with the C‑suite and board

[04:31] – Balancing urgent and strategic: split HR ops, focus ruthlessly, and leapfrog with tech

[07:41] – Building AI literacy: ~100 super users and offerings like Intellio Hopper (80% faster data modernization)

[10:54] – Human‑in‑the‑loop: pairing judgment with AI to improve speed and quality

[11:56] – Workflow reinvention: AI‑accelerated M&A diligence to deliver insights faster

[16:47] – Model the behavior: leadership usage, workflow priorities, and a culture of continuous learning

Takeaways

- Elevate HR from process owner to strategic architect by aligning people strategy to business outcomes.

- Separate HR operations from strategic work to reduce reactivity and create focus.

- Focus on a few high-impact priorities; ship value, then iterate.

- Leapfrog with technology to compress timelines—don’t always move step‑by‑step.

- Build AI literacy org‑wide, cultivate super users, and redesign end‑to‑end workflows with human‑in‑the‑loop.

- Model continuous learning at the top and make experimentation a visible, regular practice.

Sponsor

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What is HR Voices?

HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call.

Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time.

There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.

HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”

Rebecca Taylor (00:01)
Hello and welcome to this episode of HR Voices. I'm Rebecca Taylor and I'm joined here by Tanya Moore. She's the Chief People Officer of West Monroe. Tanya, thank you so much for being here.

Tanya Moore (00:11)
Absolutely, thank you for having me.

Rebecca Taylor (00:13)
Yeah, I'm excited to chat with you because I was looking up, I was doing a little bit of research on you before we started to come here. And I noticed that you talk a lot about sort of the intersection of human skills and AI and all of these topics that are really, really relevant for people that are listening to this podcast and people that are kind of trying to learn. ⁓ So before we dig into sort of the bigger, you know, the bigger kind of chats, can you ground us in sort of a little bit more of the reality of what your role is? You know, so

What is the function of the Chief People Officer at West Monroe? How many employees are you overseeing? And how do you kind of look at how your team needs to sort of function right now?

Tanya Moore (00:52)
Sure.

Sure, So West Monroe is a business and technology consulting firm. We're about a little over 2000 people. And so my role as chief people officer is really to lead all aspects of the people experience. And so that's everything from how we hire to how we retain to how we do succession planning to how we build skills. ⁓ It's really aligning the people strategy to the business strategy and

and doing all of the execution as a result.

Rebecca Taylor (01:27)
such a key part is sort of aligning the people strategy with the business strategy. You see so much of it sort of all over the HR side of LinkedIn is sort of talking about the importance of that. ⁓ So in that sort of endeavor, can you talk to us a little bit about some of the challenges that you're facing right now that, you know, in sort of where the business is going or maybe in how you're aligning the people to that direction?

Tanya Moore (01:50)
Y'know, we...

I would say the challenges that I'm facing are pretty consistent with what I hear from my peers. And that is, it's kind of the bar for what is required of someone in this role continues to get higher and higher. And just the expectations for what's required. I mean, we came out of a pandemic and now we're in a situation where it feels like the mantra is do more with less, do it better, all while having a

fabulous employee experience. And that's hard. It's hard, especially in this world that is just constantly changing and is moving faster and faster. And it's hard to keep up with. So, ⁓ you know, I think that that's kind of the environment that we find ourselves in. So with that kind of backdrop, it's really us moving ourselves from ⁓

Rebecca Taylor (02:25)
Yeah.

Tanya Moore (02:49)
you know, what used to be seen as an administrative steward of kind of HR processes to really a strategic architect. And when I say that, it's, you know, I'm involved with our C-suite, with the board in architecting, how do the people need to support where we're taking the business? And that takes a lot of flavors, ⁓ you know, with kind of all of the things that you would think about in an HR people function and really doing it

in a way that is not just executing, but you're constantly thinking of how do you do it better? How do you have better outcomes ⁓ for the work that's being done for the people themselves? So they want to come work here. They want to stay working here. And, ⁓ you know, that's kind of really where the challenge is. How do you keep the, you know, keep the train moving while making it faster and better all the time?

Rebecca Taylor (03:45)
Yeah. Do you have any, and I'm putting you a little bit on the spot, so it's okay if you don't, but do you have any advice for those HR folks that are kind of dealing with the feel and the need and the urgency of being really reactive to, you know, sort of solving problems really, really quickly as they come and who are trying to strike the balance of thinking more long-term as well? Because it can be really hard when...

It feels like we have to keep things moving so quickly, right? Because of the rate of technology, because of the way the world changes. That sometimes I think it's like you find yourself sort of sacrificing the long-term for the sake of short-term problem solving. So do you have any advice or perspective for someone who is trying to balance that and maybe a tip or a trick that you use yourself?

Tanya Moore (04:31)
So one of the things that we do here at West Monroe, which is actually pretty helpful, is the HR operations side of things. So think of benefits administration, payroll, those types of things that are incredibly important to how the organization runs. They are under an organization that manages that separately from what my team does. And so that's one way that companies sometimes have done that is really having focus and

having each of those groups be excellent at what they do, but it makes it so teams don't have to feel like they have to do it all. And so you really have the opportunity to think about, I mean, each group is thinking about how do they make things better and better, but you're not focusing on quite as much. The other thing I think is along this line of focus is trying not to do everything. What are the couple of things that you're going to do really, really well getting that done and then going

to what are the next couple of things that you're going to do really, really well. And then I think the third thing that is, it really works for us and then it works for our clients is sometimes when, if you're behind with something, there's a couple of different ways that you can approach it. You can, you know, if you're trying to get from here to here, you can take a step at a time. And sometimes that makes sense. Maybe the organization isn't ready or, know, there are things that you need to do from a prerequisite standpoint.

Rebecca Taylor (05:53)
Mm-hmm.

Tanya Moore (06:00)
But sometimes there's an opportunity to what I call leapfrog. So, you know, really kind of think about, okay, I could do this step by step by step, or I could leverage and a lot of times it's technology to help me go from point A to point C much faster and get outcomes at a much, much faster rate. So that's something that sometimes it takes a little bit of a different shift of mindset to think of.

Rebecca Taylor (06:05)
Mm.

Tanya Moore (06:30)
about and sometimes it can be a little scary and overwhelming, but it can be really incredibly effective.

Rebecca Taylor (06:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love the leapfrog concept because it's true. It's sort of, know, if you can bypass certain steps because of introduction of new technology that does allow you to kind of step ahead, then it's always in, I think, most companies' best interest to kind of think about that. And I think right now, one of the technologies, we have to talk about it, right? That's really helping people leapfrog is AI. ⁓ Sometimes for better, for worse, right? Like I think that there's still

different levels of learning and education around kind of how to leverage it. And our point of view is always that AI is a tool, it's a resource, it doesn't do a job for you, it's not an employee necessarily. ⁓ It's something that can really kind of help you get information so that you can use your judgment to get to the right outcomes. ⁓ So can you talk to a little bit about what your AI strategy is with your team, with your employees? ⁓

doing a lot of research on you and I see that you're kind of really in this space a lot. So I'm super curious to hear about that.

Tanya Moore (07:41)
We are leaning in heavily.

⁓ really heavily. what I would say is last year we really focused on making sure across the organization, we had a certain level of what I would call AI literacy, that the entire organization from our CEO down understood where, you know, where the technology was going, understood what the technology was, understood how to leverage it and was starting, you know, really starting to use it. I would say right now we probably have a hundred super users in the org.

and I don't use super users lightly. You people that are out there experimenting, building custom GPTs, like people that are really, really at the forefront. ⁓ We made a ton of progress last year in terms of developing products that helped our clients. So, you know, one thing people struggle with when they're trying to modernize their organization or they're trying to get into the AI space is having their data ⁓ ready for that.

And so we created a ⁓ product called Intellio Hopper, just as an example, that modernizes your data, converts your data 80 % faster. Like that's just something, it's hard, it's corpy, you know, but if we can do it better and faster, those are kind of some of the things that we're focusing at. So looking at it from an offering perspective, what are some of the client pain points that are pretty consistent that we can leverage technology again to deliver outcomes better, faster?

then internally, really thinking about how do we really change our workflows? And so as I think about what success looks like for us at the end of the year, it's having at least 10 new offerings that are, and again, it's not 100, it's 10, that are really, really meaningful to the vast majority of our clients. It's having at least three new ways, I'm really hoping for five, but minimum of

of

three, five ways that we have radically reinvented workflows and not just a portion of our consultants are delivering with it, but the entire organization is now using this AI enabled workflow. So it's starting to take the concepts and really leverage those into how are we leveraging tools? How are we leveraging technologies to augment and lift the ability

of our entire workforce. Now we do all of that very much kind of what I heard you say with what we call human in the loop. So we're big believers that the technology gives us better insights. It can make us faster, can give better outputs, but only if we're paying attention and if we're putting our intellect into how that happens. So we are really focusing on the AI and human connection, what that looks like,

where to make sure that you have the thought process that goes into how you interact with it. Once it does its work, that you're really putting the thought process as a result of that too.

Rebecca Taylor (10:54)
think that's great as sort of that human in the loop side is also the part that in my experience has made employees feel a little bit less threatened by the concept, I think, because they see, OK, maybe some parts of my job will be automated to an extent, but I'm still the one that has to make sure that the data that goes in is clean and accurate. And then whatever the ⁓ output might be, I'm still then the one that has to.

decide what to do or not to do with it. And it can be really empowering. And I think something that you're saying that is really, really, really good advice is sort of don't try to take 10 steps at once. Think about it from steps one to maybe, you know, maybe there's a, and something you could sort of jump over, but taking it slow and kind of mastering certain steps before you get to the next is really kind of important. ⁓ Something I want to ask about that you've been mentioning a little bit is the workflows that you've

you know, sort of talked about and automated. So are you able to be a little bit more specific about an example of a workflow that you automated with AI?

Tanya Moore (11:56)
Sure. We do a ton of...

Diligence works for companies that's going through mergers and acquisitions and we're really well known for doing just a great job in that space When you are a company that's going through a merger and acquisition and you're doing the due diligence There's a ton of work up front that is research. It's Thousands and thousands of documents that are coming together that teams have to pour over to be able to Coalate to be able to have insights into that's a great

example of we are now able to show up to clients and say, these are our initial insights based on what we've done with the leveraging of AI versus saying, hi client, we'll be back in two weeks with these insights after we pour over all these documents. So we of course don't just pump it into a ⁓ technology and say, this is what it spits out, but we use it to really be able to accelerate

the pouring over all those documents so we can spend the time with, okay, this is what the data is. Now, what insights do we bring from it based on all of our work in this space?

Rebecca Taylor (13:11)
is a great example and thank you for that, especially when I was in HR, I did my share of mergers and acquisitions too. It's that time to just gather all of your documentation. That's the part that can make it really, really hard. It's funny because we see a similar kind of workflow within All Voices because we're an employee relations platform. Whenever you're doing an investigation, half of the battle is getting all the documentation in place.

Just like ⁓ &A, investigations are famously stressful ⁓ and timely, right? You can't take a lot of time to gather everything together and you can't, you need to have all your documentation in one place if you can. And that's sort of a, it's actually a workflow that gets a lot of use for our customers too, because it kind of just allows you to know, okay, everything that I need is here. Now I can ask my AI. ⁓

What are you seeing? can pull dashboards knowing that all that information is collated, especially if you're hopping across different systems, because some documentation might be in QuickBooks, some of it might be in Salesforce, some might be in email, right? So if you're kind of doing it across so many different places, it just makes it so much easier to know that everything's in one spot. So I love that example.

Tanya Moore (14:30)
And Rebecca,

one of the, something that I heard you mention that I have really appreciated with the technology is the what am I missing? What am I thinking about? know, what, because I find that, you know, we all come to a...

Rebecca Taylor (14:38)
Mm-hmm.

Tanya Moore (14:46)
⁓ a task with a certain frame that's based on our skills, it's based on our experiences. And so what I have really enjoyed is putting together, for example, my 2026 people strategy this year. I put together my people strategy, put it into chat GPT, and I said, what am I missing?

based on what we know about West Monroe, what we know about our clients, where the market's going, what am I missing? And it had some great things in there that I was missing. was like, yeah, that's good, that's good. So it helps us, think it can be really, and it's such a basic use, helping to kind of get rid of blind spots that we might have, helping to make something more complete than it might have been. ⁓ It's just great uses and great examples of, it's not,

Rebecca Taylor (15:20)
Yeah.

Tanya Moore (15:39)
It's not thinking for us, it's augmenting our thinking.

Rebecca Taylor (15:43)
Yeah, yeah. You can almost use it as a thought partner. So if you think of it in that way where, you know, it's, can, like you mentioned, you can find those blind spots, see what I'm missing. And because really good systems or when you're using AI properly, it has a lot more context than you might be giving it in that moment. You know, especially enterprise, JASBT has memory. ⁓ So it kind of, remembers previous conversations you've had. It's kind of the value of, you know, if you have,

platforms that are specifically doing a specific job, it'll have the context within the job that it's asking to be done. So you can ask, use it as sort of a thought partner to say, what might I be missing? What might I not be understanding? ⁓ And it can, think that that's also really helpful for value lean teams too, because there are so many companies that are doing more with less, they've seen staff reductions. And so you do sometimes lose that peer thought partnership.

And not that AI totally replaces it, but it is sort of a good tool and resource when the alternative is just you're on your own and hoping for the best, right?

Tanya Moore (16:47)
Those are, you know, those are pretty easy.

basic ways of using it that have great value. then there are, you know, the technology is getting so good now that you don't have to know how to write code to be able to create your own custom GPT that can help you provide insights. ⁓ So there's just, ⁓ it's a world that's moving fast. And so what I find is making sure that as leaders, we're modeling it, we're using it ourselves, we're, you know, having conversations with our

teams about it, where we've got a prioritization of what workflows are we trying to work. ⁓ And then we're experimenting and we're figuring out what works and doesn't, and we're making it better. So really modeling it. And then being in continual learning mode. I I probably spend eight to 10 hours every single week, whether it's listening to a webinar, looking on LinkedIn to see who's got the latest insight. Our chief AI officer weekly does a call that anyone

can come to on our team on in all of West Monroe with the latest insights. It's learning from others. ⁓ You know, there are some companies out there that are doing some are kind of ahead. And so how do you learn from others? So I think it's just being in this constant learn experiment mode.

Rebecca Taylor (18:09)
Yeah,

I think that's a really exciting place to be too. And I love that because it's, I always call it learning out loud. It's just kind of, we're all in this space where, you the technology hasn't been around for very long in the grand scheme of things. So we're all theoretically just as experienced with it as another person might be. And so if we can kind of learn out loud and experiment and try, I think that's, that's kind of an exciting spot for us to be. And I love that you're preaching that and practicing that.

Tanya Moore (18:34)
And it takes a little different mindset, right? Because sometimes ⁓ we'll be with companies and they'll say, well, where is the time you're giving me to learn? And the world is so different now that I think learning just has to be part of all of our DNA, because that's what's going to keep us employable, right? It's going to keep us up. It's going to keep us employable. So having employees see it as an investment in themselves as opposed to an ask by the company.

Rebecca Taylor (18:43)
Right, right.

Tanya Moore (19:04)
that's a little bit different than how employees might have perceived learning in the past.

Rebecca Taylor (19:04)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you're right. It is this mindset shift of kind of owning your career, owning your development and learning in the moment while you're at work too. I think that we're kind of done with the days of, yes, it's helpful to have trainings, webinars to set a foundation, but the learning really happens in the trying and in the stuff that you tried to do afterwards when you're trying to use a new tool to solve a specific problem. That's when you start to really build that muscle memory. Yeah.

Tanya Moore (19:18)
Yeah.

Yep.

Rebecca Taylor (19:37)
Well, thank you. Do you have any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

Tanya Moore (19:42)
The only thing I would say is we are all in this together. Like no one has this all figured out. And so as much as we're all willing to do things like this, ⁓ share insights, connect with each other, I think that's really how we will figure out how work gets done as we move into the future.

Rebecca Taylor (19:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, firmly agree. Well, thank you so much, Tanya, for being here. And thank everybody for listening. And feel free to check out our next episode when it comes out again. Bye.