Lindsay Crawley, Chief People Officer at SCAN Group & Health Plan

Show Notes

Human + AI + Human: SCAN’s CPO on AI Adoption, Hybrid Culture, and the Early-Career Gap

Summary

If AI headlines are making your people feel vulnerable or irrelevant, how do you move them from hesitancy to agency?

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert, Chief People Officer at SCAN, a Long Beach–based nonprofit Medicare Advantage organization with care delivery assets, shares a practical blueprint for building an AI‑confident workforce without burning people out.

With a CPA background, Lindsay brings a valuable lens to balancing business performance with people needs. She explains SCAN’s “human + AI + human” approach, why they frame AI as a multiplier—not a job eliminator—and how they’re upskilling employees on the soft skills that matter most: critical thinking, judgment, learning agility, and adaptability.

Lindsay details experiments like an AI coaching pilot, a company hackathon, and the pitfalls of poor workflow integration and context switching. She also sounds the alarm on cutting entry-level roles, arguing that skipping early-career talent now will create a succession crisis later.

Expect actionable guidance on messaging, governance, data quality, and integrating AI where work already happens.

Timestamps

[00:45] – SCAN’s mission, footprint, and hybrid model (collaboration days and distributed leadership)

[01:51] – From office-first to intentional hybrid: why in-person still matters

[03:05] – 2026 challenge: moving employees from AI hesitancy to agency and addressing fear of irrelevance

[05:46] – Human + AI + Human: AI as a capability multiplier and input vs. output framing

[07:39] – Upskilling strategy: critical thinking, learning agility, hackathons, and safe-to-experiment culture

[11:27] – AI coaching pilot: scaling manager support and the importance of workflow integration

[15:23] – Adoption watchouts: data quality, governance, and keeping a human on the “back end”

[18:14] – Don’t skip entry-level roles: exposure, succession, and building future leaders

Takeaways

- Reframe AI as a growth multiplier: communicate “human + AI + human” to reduce fear and increase agency.

- Build soft skills at scale—critical thinking, judgment, and learning agility—to future-proof your workforce.

- Embed AI where work happens (e.g., Slack/Teams) to cut context switching and drive adoption.

- Pilot AI coaching to give more people access to feedback, improve conflict resolution, and support managers.

- Govern for reliability: invest in data quality, clear policies, and human review on both the input and output sides.

- Protect the early-career pipeline with real exposure and development to avoid future succession gaps.

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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.”

Emily Fenech (00:00)
Welcome to HR Voices. I'm Emily Fenech and today I get to hang out with Lindsay Crawley-Herber, who is Chief People Officer at Scan. Welcome Lindsay.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (00:10)
Thanks, thanks for having me, Emily.

Emily Fenech (00:12)
Yeah, I'm so glad that you're here. I was reading about Scan. Scan is a mission-based organization and you promote keeping seniors healthy and independent, which is, love that. Can you tell us a little bit more about the organization and the mission?

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (00:25)
Yeah, so Scan is a nonprofit, Medicare Advantage, predominantly Medicare Advantage insurance company. But we do have four care delivery assets. So yes, where it's all about keeping seniors healthy and independent ⁓ through their care delivery journey, as well as their insurance. And I've been here about five years, and I have to say it has been a really nice career experience where I do believe we are

truly focused on our members and making the right decisions, which is refreshing because that's not always how is in health care.

Emily Fenech (01:02)
Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell me a little bit more about the employees? How many, where they work, how they're distributed? What's that like?

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (01:09)
Yeah, so we're predominantly Southern California, so Long Beach based, Long Beach founded. And we are, we're hybrid, I would say. So we have some people that are in office, but mostly we have collaboration, sorry, have collaboration days on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And then,

Depending on where talent is, they may come in once or twice a month. So for example, I actually live in Indianapolis, Indiana, and I am out in Long Beach at least two times a month.

Emily Fenech (01:42)
that's wonderful. How did you guys land that? Did that something that happened sort of during COVID era or is it something that's always been part of the company culture DNA?

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (01:51)
⁓ no, very much COVID. So prior to COVID, we were all in that office or they were all in that office because I came post COVID. I wouldn't actually have this job if it was pre-COVID because everyone sat in Long Beach Monday through Friday. And then through COVID, we've realized that we could actually do the same work in more of a hybrid environment. While

Some people are fully remote, some of our member service reps and those that are out giving care to the older adults. We, at an executive level, do understand the importance of collaboration, so we're very intentional about how and when we get together so that we still have that connection, but at the same time ⁓ can still be very productive in a hybrid environment.

Emily Fenech (02:37)
Yeah, I love the flexible approach for those who can swing it.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (02:41)
Yes,

it's not for every company, but it's been really, really, really great for us.

Emily Fenech (02:46)
Wonderful. As we ⁓ have a Christmas tree behind you, we're in the holiday season. As we roll into 2026, I'm curious what employee challenges are top of mind for you? When you think about the people that you support, the strategy you're setting for them, what's top of mind?

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (03:05)
For me right now is AI. ⁓ So one of our biggest challenges is helping people move from like a hesitancy around AI to really having agency and excitement around AI. The thing we, as many companies I think are dealing with right now, we've implemented a lot of AI, but we're not really fully seeing the ROI.

we're really trying to advance it and think about it more from a human work perspective, not so much a technology. It's more about having the confidence to work with the technology, having the critical skills and ⁓ critical thinking and judgment and trust during these kind of uncertain times. Like we're all trying to figure it out. ⁓ I had a leader the other day talk to me about, she's like, I'm not concerned about

the tool and the technology, but I am a little concerned about becoming irrelevant. And that really stuck with me because I think as things change, even personally dealing with my teenagers, I've become kind of irrelevant and it's a little hard to personally handle. And I know I'll become more relevant again, they're in those ages, but we don't want our employees to feel or have a concern of becoming irrelevant. And so we wanna make sure that we are

transforming and thinking about and equipping them to feel comfortable with this tool and this technology. I mean, to be honest, AI is not the hard part. It's more helping people believe and see that they are so important in this AI enabled world. And it's really kind of a mind shift change, I think is kind of the place we're at right now.

Emily Fenech (04:52)
absolutely. And it's definitely about feeling irrelevant, but also vulnerable. I don't think that these headlines are helping much. I think there's been an awful lot of layoffs that no names, right? But a lot of folks are saying that layoffs were attributed to AI when I don't think in all cases that's necessarily true, but it does leave people feeling vulnerable.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (05:18)
I

agree with you. It does leave people feeling vulnerable, but I also agree with you that it is not the reason why in most, in many of these cases. I mean, all companies are dealing with cost cuts. ⁓ They are dealing with decreased revenue, increased costs. I mean, there's so many micro and macro factors that are impacting it, but people are blaming it on AI. And we've taken really a much different approach that it's...

Emily Fenech (05:29)
Yes.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (05:46)
It's human plus AI plus human. So AI is going to enable and make you, it's a multiplier of capabilities, not an inhibitor or something that's gonna decrease jobs. Like we're not looking at it to necessarily decrease jobs, but actually allow us to do more and great our work with the talent that we have today.

Emily Fenech (06:07)
Most leaders I speak with reflect that same sentiment back to me. And one person said it really well that stuck with me is that the way that they're leveraging AI at their organization is as an input, not an output. Like it's not actually doing any work. It's just getting better inputs to the strategies that humans are setting and the work that humans are doing, which I really liked that phrasing.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (06:29)
Yeah, no, that's great. And I do think eventually it will do some output. just don't think we're... There's very few people that are to the point that it's an output, but even when it's an output, there's still so much human touch that needs to occur to get that output. And...

Emily Fenech (06:33)
Okay.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (06:47)
we're all growing, we all need to be doing more with less. so the least scan is going through a huge growth spurt right now. And I can't always add headcount every single time I have these massive growth spurt. Like I need scalability. And AI is a great tool to allow scalability without having to burn out your employees. What ends up happening historically is we tend to burn out our employees during these like big growth periods. But if you have AI in the right places at the right time, you can...

wind go through that storm without having to burn out your employees.

Emily Fenech (07:21)
Can you give us some examples of how you're addressing that challenge, right? And you've shared a few already, but more specifically, you have employees, they're feeling irrelevant. What has been your messaging strategy with them? What has been your upskilling strategy with them to ensure that they're coming along the ride with you?

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (07:39)
Yeah, well I think framing matters. So we've been framing it.

very much as this is a possibility, this is a growth opportunity, this is to maximize your potential and benefit and not from a fear perspective. So I think that, I think the way you communicate it matters. ⁓ And then practically speaking, you know, we're investing in different types of trainings, ⁓ but the trainings, lot of the trainings we're focused on is critical thinking, adaptability, learning agility, because the tools will continue to change in

Most employees are not going to be building the AI bots or that they're just, they just need to be able to use and think differently and think about how they can maximize this new tool, what, be it an AI or whatever the new automation tool is that you are experiencing or what the next level of new change that we don't even know exists today comes out. But being ready and knowing how to maximize that potential. So a growth mindset is so essential today.

and I think as we continue to go forward. So we've created a lot of learning experiences, a lot of freedom to explore, ask questions, test and fail. We had our first hackathon this summer where people came in and got a bunch of ideas. We implemented them. ⁓ It's all around that learning agility and then being vulnerable and being okay with experimentation and saying, hey, I messed up here and we're gonna learn from it.

While I think a lot of people are focused on the technology, we're actually focused on more of the soft skills that are needed to really get us through this next phase of change in technology.

Emily Fenech (09:22)
Yeah, that's really smart. I love that. Instead of just being, you know, experiment with a tool and be rewarded, right? I ⁓ love that tools will change and you need to be able to identify use cases of where it can assist you, where it can't. ⁓ And that's all a way of thinking. I'd love to hear a little bit more about

you personally and your people team and what has been the big, know, AI is the biggest challenge for your employees and some of the fears they have associated with that, but specifically for HR, what has been your biggest challenge?

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (09:56)
Well, like I said earlier, we've been growing a lot lately. mean, a lot. keeping up with breaking sure we have the right talent in the right places, the change of the workforce and how we're doing work. So, I mean, even though it's AI, this change with AI is so human focused. Like we have to rethink what skills we need, what capabilities we need, and like making sure my team.

is equipped and set up to help the business through this change has been a big push for us. We also have added a lot of headcount lately, which is why AI is also really on my mind because I am a CPA by training and so I have a different background than maybe some of my peers. I'm always thinking about the cost of adding all of these heads and how we can actually make these business meet our business goals.

and meet the needs of our people at the same time. So like there's that natural conflict that exists. And so I always am focused on balancing that and making sure my team understands how we balance that as well.

Emily Fenech (11:04)
Mm-hmm. I see a I mean you hire all these people and you sit back and wait for them to be valuable You know what? mean like it takes people time to figure out the business to learn what their role is to get comfortable

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (11:12)
Yeah!

Emily Fenech (11:16)
And so ultimately like, you know, be revenue generating, be productive. I see AI as a great way to speed that part up. Cause so much of it is just humans running into humans, scheduling, like silly things like scheduling and having the right courses and access to the right information at the right time. And I think a lot of that can be automated. Are you experimenting at all in, ⁓ in like in recruitment or onboarding?

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (11:27)
Yep.

So we have done a little bit in recruiting, but the area that we've been experimenting the most is around coaching. So we have been doing a lot of piloting around AI coaching. One, it's more scalable and it allows more individuals within the organization to have some level of coaching. But it allows us to, allows managers to kind of pause

and maybe have a little bit better judgment before they react because they can use that AI coach to talk through before they had that conversation with their boss or their employee or their peer, especially through conflict resolution. ⁓ It's still very early on. And I do think one of the challenges in AI implementation is we don't always think through workflows and how we just kind of pile it onto existing workflows. Well, even in our AI pilot, we've

piloted it on and it's not deep in our workflows, so then it creates not as much use as I would like. That is one of the things that I found in this pilot is people forget that they have it because it's not right there in front of them and yes, it's like over here and so then I forget and that's one of the challenges with AI and that's why it's a human first. Like we have to rethink work, how we do work, the way we do work and we don't just pile it on top.

And so even with this coaching, I think the potential is really, really there, but we have to figure out how to integrate it into the teams or into like just more into how we work. So Slack or Teams so that it can create more in the moment coaching. But I think the potential of AI coaching and the impact on the employee experience as well as the performance of the employees is going to be game changing.

Emily Fenech (13:35)
Yeah. I mean, the workflow integration plus the data integration is just essential for anything NetNew you're bringing on. I know people have so many places they now have to go to get information that it's, you know what I mean? Like in order for me, in order for me to just like send an email, I feel like I'm touching like nine tools.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (13:50)
yeah.

Very much so. And that's why

we've had some of the AI adoption that we've implemented has not been as successful as we'd like because you're having to like open a new screen and like even those little things. you save, I know this opening this screen is going to save me five minutes, but it also is adding four minutes that like, makes my brain have to think a lot like that I have to go and do that. And like those things, if you don't make it just part of the natural workflow,

People don't utilize it and they don't value it the way that they should or could.

Emily Fenech (14:26)
The context,

the price of context switching. ⁓

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (14:29)
Yes, exactly.

Yeah, context switching, it wears on the brain for sure.

Emily Fenech (14:35)
As you've been on this journey, any other, that's a really good kind of watch out or something to think of as you're evaluating a tool. there anything else that advice you have to offer of things that maybe buyers should be thinking about when they bring new tools on board?

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (14:48)
I mean, think it's, I think it's the, the workflow is huge. ⁓

making sure you have the right data, like bad data in, bad data out. ⁓ So you have to really take the time to train the AI and make sure that it's giving you the right information. That's where that human plus AI plus human. So if you forget, a lot of times people forget the human on the backside. And when you forget the human on the backside, then your responses from the AI are very risky and could create a lot of liability actually for the organization. So I think, ⁓ you know, we're,

Emily Fenech (15:18)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (15:23)
Really thinking through the workflows, thinking through the experience for both the employee as well as maybe the customer, whoever else may experience this AI tool, ⁓ and then making sure that you are putting the human on the backside so that it is actually getting the right information out ⁓ is very important.

Emily Fenech (15:44)
I'm going to add that to my handy list of HR equations I've learned this year. Well, you hear human in the loop quite a bit, but that's only the back half of that equation. It's sort sinking in with me now, so I'm catching up to you. like, I hear what you mean. AI gives you something a human needs to make sure they review it. But it's also, don't forget the first part too of...

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (15:50)
Human plus a lie plus human.

Good!

⁓ yeah, no

absolutely.

Emily Fenech (16:09)
setting the right context, making sure the prompts are right, making sure the governance is in order, making sure it's policy aware or aware of whatever it needs to be aware of, like contextual aware. ⁓ That took a lot of work too. also think people underestimate how much work that is on the upfront to get those outputs to a place where they can be less biased, less, you know, more reliable, ⁓ less prone to error. It takes a lot of effort. It's not like...

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (16:31)
Mm-hmm.

Emily Fenech (16:36)
as easy as some people will market it to be.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (16:40)
agreed.

I completely agree. you can't trust exactly that AI is always right. Just like you can't trust human, but it feels like when it's a technology, you're like, oh yeah, it has to be right. you need judgment and critical thinking. mean, like I said earlier, some of the skills that we're really focused on is that judgment, that critical thinking, that learning agility so that we can

you know, change the workflows to make sense and make sure that the AI is actually helping us and not hurting us. ⁓ One other thing I do want to bring up that I think is, and I have no solution for this, but it's on top of my mind, ⁓ is I'm hearing a lot of people, and we don't have a lot of really ⁓ early career talent at our company. We have some, but not a ton. But what I'm hearing from a lot of my peers and ⁓ our people are cutting and automating.

out those roles. But the problem is we're going to end up with not a smarter workforce, but a smaller workforce, and it's going to become an issue down the road. And so I think that is a watch out that myself and peers need to help figure out and solve. How do we still hire early career talent and build them in ways that we don't aren't like having labor shortages in a few years?

Emily Fenech (18:06)
Mm-hmm. I don't remember if it was the CEO, CPO. Someone C-suite at Amazon Web Services gave a great podcast on this, and I will send it to you afterwards.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (18:14)
No, please do.

Emily Fenech (18:15)
His perspective on it was like, you know, the fact that people are not hiring entry level talent anymore. thought they're the least expensive. They're the most eager. They're the most AI fluent of any generation. Right. It's kind like, be really foolish to stop hiring. I think it's just the challenge you stated so well, which is what are they going to do with their time though? Right. Like, how are they going to spend their time? But to not nurture that.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (18:26)
Yeah.

Emily Fenech (18:41)
to just skip that level, you're going to have so many more problems down the road if you're not, if we're not investing, if we don't know what to invest in and we're not investing. The last. Right.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (18:49)
Cheers.

We're not going to teach them those critical thinking skills

and the learning agility and the being comfortable with change. mean, even though they're probably more comfortable with change than all of us because everything, their whole life has been changed so much faster than the rest of us when we grew up.

Emily Fenech (19:03)
Yes.

Yeah, and what are they really prepared for? I haven't spent too much time thinking about this, when I reflect on my own experience as, you know, early career, it's like...

How much was I really learning? Like where were the learning moments that prepped me for leadership later on? Because I'm not certain that cutting and pasting into a spreadsheet was prepping me for leadership. You see what I mean? But like what were those, what are those moments that are critical to the future of the workforce and to your business specifically? Like how do we pinpoint those? It's a fascinating conversation.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (19:29)
yeah, absolutely.

When I think back to my career, I was very fortunate. I did consulting for Deloitte and I was in rooms that I never should have been in. ⁓ The exposure I got to executive thinking and presentation skills and just how you interact in really an executive business setting and problem solve was...

Emily Fenech (19:49)
Hahaha

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (20:08)
had a huge impact on my career. And guess what? We can have like, I don't need someone to cut and paste. Like I was in a lot of the cutting and pasting too, don't get me wrong. But we don't necessarily maybe need them to do that anymore. But we still need to make the investment to put them in the rooms, to teach them the skills, because someone else is going to eventually like, I do want to retire. I need somebody else to take my thought at some point.

Emily Fenech (20:31)
Yeah, I mean, also, if you reduce your workforce too much, you're now creating like a, I don't know how to describe this, but like with one person's out, like if your entire marketing department is running, one person running 17 agents and that person gets a better opportunity, where are you? Yes.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (20:49)
Right, exactly. Yeah, succession planning is going to be so important.

Critical skills building is going to be so important. ⁓ But, then selfishly, I have kids and I want to make sure that there's still a future for them, ⁓ future careers for them as well.

Emily Fenech (21:06)
Well, mean, your advice would apply to them as well. If they invest in those soft skills, adaptability, growth mindset, they'll be fine.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (21:14)
That is my goal. I try every day. And I also am definitely having them experiment with AI so that they're comfortable with the tool. ⁓ Actually, we were at a... ⁓

We went to the Kentucky horse racing tracks and my six year old asked me to put in track GPT like which horse is going to win because he wanted to bet. And my older girls were like no, no, we have to do it the right way, the old school way, we can't cheat. ⁓ And he actually beat them. He won money.

Emily Fenech (21:45)
Well, of course he did, but

he doesn't see this cheating. I don't think it is. And I think, what are we worried about? This kid knows how to identify a use case. Like, us old folks over here talking about, how are we going to teach our workforce to identify use cases? And your youngest is like, guys.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (21:51)
I don't either. It's being smart.

Yeah!

He's like, I got it, I'm six, I totally got it.

Emily Fenech (22:07)
I got it.

Yeah. my gosh. ⁓ That's a great story. Speaking of growth mindset, my daughter joined 4-H and had to give a speech and she chose to give her speech on what a growth mindset is. I was like, how do you know what that is? And she learned it from this podcast.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (22:22)
That's amazing.

Emily Fenech (22:28)
She listened to it and it was a, one of our guests was a, had done actual PhD research on it, on grit and growth mindset. And she listened to it and I didn't even know she had heard it. So, ⁓ it was a big, it was like the third episode of HR Voices. And so it's really been an encouragement that, you know, even if she can learn something, even if it's only my kids listening, but you can learn so much from, yeah.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (22:51)
Yeah, no, that's amazing. See, you're having

a, you're creating our future workforce as well. I'm gonna have, I'm gonna now take, make my kids listen to that episode.

Emily Fenech (22:56)
That's right.

Yeah, well, make them listen to this one. Yeah, at least.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (23:03)
Well,

actually earlier today I was showing my son that I'm on YouTube. He didn't believe me. He was like, you're not on YouTube. And I'm like, no, actually there's been some podcasts. I'm actually on YouTube. I don't have a YouTube channel myself, but my podcast that I've been ⁓ on are on YouTube. And he was like, mind blown that his mom was on YouTube. Yep.

Emily Fenech (23:10)
Yeah!

Mm-hmm.

Getting that credibility. Well, it's been a wonderful

conversation. I do like to always close it with ⁓ asking guests if they could share a word of encouragement or advice with listeners.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (23:36)
Yeah, I mean, I'll go back to that growth mindset. I mean, I think that is so critical. Vulnerability, learning agility, your ability to think differently and be open to others' thoughts. And I just think that's so critical for the success of us today and the future, because the technology is going to change. Like, we didn't know AI was going to come. We don't know what's coming down the future. And I think just keeping that growth mindset is so important. Always learning.

Emily Fenech (24:06)
I love that. Well, thanks so much, Lindsay. This has been a great conversation.

Lindsay Crawley-Herbert (24:10)
Thank you, I appreciate it.