How Juliana Nunes is putting the problem before the agent

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1 min

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Healthcare · Pharmaceuticals · Medical devices

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Juliana Nunes, SVP, Global Head of HR Digital at Johnson & Johnson, asks teams to explain the problem before proposing AI.  

Her approach starts with understanding today’s work, removing unnecessary complexity and deciding what a better experience should look like.

Her partnership with Reejig supports that understanding of how work happens. Technology choices follow the diagnosis, alongside questions about data, safeguards, cost and the benefit expect

She also makes employee experience an ongoing responsibility. She’s created a new “customer success” role that looks across HR’s technology, bringing employee feedback to the teams responsible for adoption and improvement.

Her wider ambition is to help more HR colleagues solve problems they understand firsthand. Bringing digital, HR, technology and business experience together helps make improvement part of everyday work.

The transformation story

How Johnson & Johnson made employee feedback part of how HR technology improves

Agent requests needed a clearer problem

Requests for AI agents were arriving before teams could clearly explain the problems behind them. Juliana saw that adding technology to a complicated process could increase its cost without making the work better.

Understand the work before choosing AI

Her team developed an AI blueprint that starts with the problem and examines the work before choosing technology. Reejig helps the team understand how work happens and where complexity can be removed.

The approach also checks data, cost, safeguards and whether the expected benefit justifies the investment.

“Just putting AI on top of a crappy process isn’t going to bring you anywhere.”
Give employee feedback a dedicated role

Juliana created a customer success role inside HR to understand employees’ experience across products and bring feedback to the teams building them. The role had just started at the interview.

Separately, conversations with business leaders revealed shared needs missing from near-term plans, giving Juliana specific priorities to bring back to the team.

Start with the needs that matter most

Juliana challenges teams to address essential needs first. A hiring solution had stalled while 84 requirements were debated. A Latin American team started with three essentials, moved faster and reported positive results.

The lesson was to solve the most important needs, then keep improving with experience.

What’s next: help more people build

Juliana wants improvement built into permanent roles and more HR colleagues able to build solutions. A community of over 200 citizen developers provides a base to grow, alongside continued learning and support.

What other leaders can take from this

Lessons for leaders

01
Diagnose before you automate
Ask what problem you are solving before deciding it needs an agent.
02
Make experience someone’s job
A dedicated role keeps employee feedback flowing into product decisions.
03
Design time for judgment
Three requirements that move beat 84 that stall.

“[We needed to] really understand how the work happens today… that’s the partnership we have with you, Siobhan…” “Just putting AI on top of a crappy process isn’t going to bring you anywhere.”

Juliana Nunes, Johnson & Johnson
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