The Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the June Human Capital Watch. Today's topic is reimagining the workplace in 2024. We are very excited to be presenting this research to you. I'd like to introduce my co-authors and Co presenters today. Barbara Lombardo is a distinguished principal research fellow here at the Conference Board and she's also a program director for two or three of our councils. She was a she's a former consulting partner in the Human Capital practice. And so we're thrilled to have you here, Barbara. And then we also have, thank you, Barbara. We also have Rita Myerson and she's principal researcher here in the Conference Board. And we're very excited to have you too, Rita. She came to us just last fall from many years of experience in consulting, research and teaching. And I guess I forgot to tell you about me. I'm Robin Erickson and I lead research here at the Conference Board for Human Capital. And I come from a consulting background as well in the in the talent space. So we're thrilled to have you wanted to let you know that if you'd like to earn credit for attending this presentation live, you can see the widget that says Click to sign up for available credits. And you do have to stay online for the entire webcast and you'll have a few pop ups that ask you to confirm that you're here, but hopefully we'll keep you here because you're so excited to to see our research. So some of the critical questions that we'll be answering today are how have employee recruitment and retention changed in 2024? What is the status of hybrid work and what are some of its benefits? 3rd, how have perceptions of employee well-being changed from 2023 to 2024, something that many people are interested in, AI? How can human capital leaders help their organizations capitalize on the benefits of AI? And what are the organization's current posture toward cost cutting? So those are the things we're going to be looking at today. And for those of you who are familiar with the Reimagined Workplace series, this is actually our 6th report in the series. We started this Reimagined Workplace Set study series in April of 2020. We had, if you remember, COVID started officially in March of 2020, and by April we had a survey in the field to see how organizations were reacting to COVID and the pandemic with their employees. And so you can see the pictures there of, you know, the six different installments. We did the survey twice in 2020 and have done it annually since then. So our report this year is called The Reimagined Workplace 2024, Leading in a Transformed World of Work, and you'll see why we believe that the world of work is changed and how we are now living in the new world of work. So quickly, in terms of the methodology for the report, our respondents in all six of these surveys have been human capital leaders. We had 216 respondents in this survey, and the survey was an online survey. We had it open I think for three weeks from April to May and we looked at two different categories of workers. So the organizations represented, 57% were mostly professional and office workers and 39% were industry and service workers. So that's important to remember when you're looking at the data that it's not all people who are sitting at computers and are able to answer surveys. So we just wanted you to know and we're going to talk to that data slightly. And then last, you can download this report. It's in the widget. You can also download these slides. The other thing that I'd just like to remind everyone is that we'd love to answer some questions. So please do add questions. And for the, for myself and Barbara and Rita in the Ask the Q&A widget, you can also chat with your fellow participants in the chat. So with that, I'm going to go on and talk about the five insights that we found in the reimagined Workplace 2024. The 1st that I'm going to speak to is around recruiting and retention challenges and how they've eased significantly despite the current economic uncertainty and and tight labor market. We then we're going to have Rita talk to us about how hybrid work rates remain stable with significant benefits reported by human capital leaders. Third, we're going to talk about the perceptions of employee well-being and how they have improved since 2023 according to human capital leaders. Then we're going to have Rita discuss how human capital leaders are focused on near term AI initiatives. And finally, Barbara will talk to us about the cost cutting measures because we were surprised actually to see how our cost cutting measures are continuing. So with that, let's talk about recruiting and retention. So sorry, according to human capital leaders, finding and retaining talent has gotten much easier in 2024. So how do we know that? Well, on the left hand side of this chart, you can see that we have data from 2019 when we asked how difficult it was to find talent and 63% of the human capital leaders responded that it was difficult. You go all the way to the right, then to in 2024, you can see that that number has gone down to 55%. So it has gotten easier, but you know, the high, the Great Resignation, you can see the high in 2022 and then in 2023. So it's definitely gotten easier to find talent and it's also gotten easier to retain talent. So if you look on the right hand side, look at overall, only 25% of organizations were having a hard time before COVID retaining talent that that went down in 2020 with all the layoffs that were happening. But it started to get much more difficult to retain talent and there was a high in 2022 during the Great Resignation of 66%. And so now it's gone down to 41%. So you can see how that's gotten much easier. The next thing we wanted to do is just show you briefly. This looks like a a difficult chart. It's not as difficult as you might think. It's the same charts, the difficulty finding talent on the left and the difficulty retaining talent on the right. Here you can see that we've separated the workforces and you can see that on the far left that twenty, 2160% of those organizations with mostly professional and office workers said that it was difficult to find talent, and that number has actually gone down to 47% right now. It's an indicator that talent's not moving as much as they did, obviously during the Great Resignation. Next to that you've got the mostly industry and manual services workers and it was difficult in 2021 to find that talent and it's gotten a little bit easier. But note that it's still more than significantly, it's almost two. It's 2/3 of the those organizations said that they are having a difficulty finding talent. Then if you go to the charts on the right, you see the difficulty retaining talent, and you can see that in 2021, only 28% of organizations said that it was difficult to retain talent. Those organizations that had mostly professional office workers, that has gone up about 9 percentage points or eight percentage points. But you can see that it is much more difficult on the far right for organizations to retain mostly industry and manual services workers. And and that represents, I think, you know, the issues that we're seeing in hospitality and transportation and that it's just, you know, almost half of the organizations are saying that they're having difficulty retaining talent. So what does that mean? Well, when we asked CHROS in our most recent CHRO Confidence Index, you can see that from so this chart actually. So this is different data that we're going to share some of our other studies with you as we go through this today. But starting in Q1 of 2023, you can see the blue lines hiring and our overall index was 55% for hiring or 55 rather not percent and then that's gone up to 59. So it's gotten a little bit more difficult, sorry. They have more confidence. Our CHS have more confidence in hiring workers than they did in in the Q2 of 2024 than they did in Q1 of 2023. Similarly in the black lines retention and you can see that the index score was 57 in Q1 of 2023 and that's gone down, but just slightly OK to to 54% in Q2 of 2024. So why is this happening and what could explain this? Well, we believe that there's several labor market dynamics that are happening. First of all, in terms of finding talent, the total jobs openings have been slightly or slowly declining since 2020, but they're still higher than they were pre pandemic. So, you know, there's a little bit of shock every month when the job openings report comes out and it's it's relatively high. It's still lower than it's, it's higher than it was pre pandemic, but it keeps going down slowly. The same time companies have brought in their job qualifications and they're making positions attractive to a wider pool of candidates, often because there's more flexibility that's being offered. And they realize that it's really important to have a strong employment brand in terms of finding their talent. When it comes to retaining talent, average hourly earnings have been declining. That's not that much of a surprise given the spike that happened during the Great Resignation, the spike that happened to salaries. And then also there's a lot of organizations that have reached their hiring needs, particularly for those people who are on site. And so there is still a tight labor market. Unemployment is still very low. I've been researching retention for over 20 years now. And what you usually find is that when unemployment starts to go down, voluntary up. And so it's not, it's a correlation, it's very high. And I think that the reason why we are seeing it being easier to retain and to find talent right now is because workers are afraid to move because there there's all this economic uncertainty. We also have some political uncertainty. So I think that as soon as some of those uncertainties are resolved, I think that workers will be again start to move. And not to steal any of Rita's Thunder, but I think that they we might actually go back to the great resignation, maybe Great resignation 2 point O And So what do we do with that? We actually did a report last fall about how talent acquisition is really important with strategic workforce planning. And when you think about how if the difficulty finding talent and retaining talent has gone down, it gives HR leaders more time to think about strategic workforce planning. And in our research that we did last fall, we found that many organizations aren't doing it and many are not including talent acquisition in that in that planning, which read our report, if you're interested, you can see it sited right there at the bottom. But it allows organizations to get ready for the future and and be thinking about the the long term needs of workers, what skills they need and whether or not you have the right positions. So with that, we're going to go to our first poll question. So you might have to screen to see all of these responses, but the question is what difficulties are you still experiencing with recruiting? And we'd like you to select all that apply. The first issue is around a limited candidate pool. The 2nd difficulty could be that your offers are being rejected. The third is that there's competition from other employers. 4th, there could be candidate concerns about workplace flexibility or candidate concerns about total rewards or cultural fit or and right could be any of those. So while we give you a couple minutes to answer that poll, I'm going to ask Barbara, what do you expect that we will see here? What do you expect from these choices Will come out on top? You know, I hesitate to say what I expect, but I'll tell you I'm kind of interested in seeing where workplace flexibility falls in the mix. That'll be our next topic that we don't cover. But I think that's a dynamic that has come to play during a post pandemic that really wasn't having the influence. It was, you know, 2019 and before Oh, am I, oh, am I, am I going to be influencing what people? Respond, they can select all that they want, so don't worry about it. Barbara. So we've got over 50% of you have responded. So I'm going to go ahead and close the poll. I'll count it down 54321. And here are the results. I'll see that the candidate flexibility is #161.7%, but it's followed pretty closely to a limited candidate pool by a limited candidate pool. Rita, do these responses surprise you at all? Not at all. And I think there's also the component of Gen. Z and the research that Barbara and you did on that, that is probably highly influential in what we're going to see, what we're seeing now and what we're going to see in the years to come on the flexibility piece when we think about how they have operated in throughout the pandemic and and where we are today. All right, well, why don't you tell us about hybrid work, Rita? Fantastic. So what we've seen is that hybrid work rates remain stable since 2019, Sorry, sorry, 2022. We're going to take a look at our data from that with significant benefits being cited by human capital leaders. So let's take a look at the data. I'm sorry, that's my cue. Oops. That's OK. There we go. OK, So we've all seen kind of the, I don't know if I would, we've seen high profile and almost maybe even salacious, but it's there's lots of return to office mandates that we're kind of seeing in the headlines. However, that being said, and that's, you know, maybe industry specific and voice specific hybrid and remote work appeared to be here to stay at least for now. And if you look at the purple line on your screen, so the top line we've seen kind of a stability from 61% in 2022 give the, you know, the different scenarios. This is both hybrid and remote and it's only fallen slightly to 56%. We also take a look specifically at hybrid. So you can see that like lighter blue line that's fallen very slightly from 45% from 2022 to 2024 at 40%. On site has only moved very slightly also from like 39%, moving gradually to 41% to 2024 at 44%. And remote has stayed consistent at kind of hovering 16%, moving a little bit to 18 and now back to 16. So it's good to know that our participants who voted, who gave us kind of their point of view are seeing something similar. All right, let's go to the next slide. As you do that, I just want to make one comment about that slide you just covered. One of the things I love about that is just how consistent things are, not a lot of change. And I we, I have read, I think you all have read some very dramatic headlines declaring that, you know, hybrid was dead, it's over, everybody back in. And this is a nice, I think counterpoint to those you used what? You. I know, I know, I know. I know. We're in the political season, you know. So it's, it's really interesting to just see this sort of steady calm, hey, it's happening. It's here, it is. And we say at least for now, we don't know what's going to be in 5-10 years from now, but this is what we're seeing. Thank you so much for that. And look at all the benefits that HR leaders are reporting, which really sets us, we're going to talk about like designing the business case and how you as human capital leaders can kind of work with the C-Suite on that. But let's take a look of the majority of items here listed that you can see are over 70% going from the work life balance to the flexibility where employees work. Our job satisfaction data that we're going to talk about attract and retaining employees, Barbara's deep expertise and employee experience, employee well-being, which we know we just spent lots of time doing kind of the round up on our research on that. You certainly can go ahead and read our research on that. Flexibility in when employees work. That's a really important one that I think we have some room to kind of work through that one. Definitely where were we work, I think we have that one down, but kind of when we work and the collaboration and how to make this is one of your favorite things to say how to make hybrid work work. That's a really important one. We also have reducing the carbon footprint there is the real estate elements and improving employee productivity. OK. So let's take a look at the data moving forward next slide. Please. It's really touchy so I'm trying not to move too far ahead. I understand. All right. Well, this one, as Robin would say, is a pretty heavy slide here on our recent job satisfaction data. But what I want to call out is that according to our most recent research, remote and hybrid workers are most satisfied with their jobs versus fully on site workers except on two areas. So 24 of the 26 sub components interestingly on commute to work but not interestingly on job security. So that makes a lot of sense. But again, this, all of this helps us to work with human capital leaders to design the business case for hybrid work. And we hope that that's one of your big takeaways from today. Any thoughts on job satisfaction from Robin or Barbara before we move on to the next slide? Robin, it definitely is an eye chart like you were saying. But the point we were trying to make is that the hybrid and in this chart the hybrid versus fully on site workers, they're they're more satisfied and then the elements that they're more satisfied with. And I think that's really where we think the OR, you know, HR leaders and employees are going to be able to look at this and then tailor what they're doing and their strategies based on what they know is most important. Barbara, any thoughts on that? Keep going. All right, so the next slide gives us a point of view on. We asked Human Capital leaders in the past six months how has voluntary turnover changed for the following groups? And we look specifically at fully on site workers and hybrid workers and fully remote. And really what's interesting here is that about fifty you're seeing half. So from 16 to 8%. This can really have the flexibility component really helps with reducing turnover. So that's that's really the big message here. Any thoughts from that my co-authors here? I just remember when we first saw these data, I was really struck by the proportion here. It's it, it, it's twice as I want to use the right word, you know, difficult right for fully on site. Yeah, that's that's significant. Very important and a really important point as you continue to think about building that business case. OK, One other point here that we wanted to make. Sorry, I moved the slide Robin, you probably wonder why it automatically moved the ghost over here at CCB in the studio. All right. We also wanted to understand from a human capital perspective leader based on their on site work policy, how difficult in your do you have bringing folks your employees back to, you know, back to work based on this back to the office. I'm sorry, based on your policies and we look at it as mandate strongly encourage an employee choice and you can we can clearly see that there's a positive relationship between and retention, workplace flexibility and also agency. If you look at the last one think look at the employee choice one that's very interesting 81%. So our majority say when the employees have a choice, it's easiest. And that's, that's something to consider when you're thinking about how you are creating policies and how you integrate agency and choice into the policy meeting as well as your overall employee experience. Rita, can I just interrupt before we do the poll? I just wanted to mention that this data from human Capital leaders is consistent with the data when we surveyed US workers about the total rewards packages they were receiving last fall. And I think the survey had over 1000 people and over 1000 workers respond. And the number one choice for the top rated benefit beyond a competitive salary was flexibility. And so that's from the workers. And we're seeing it here that it's much easier to retain workers if it's their choice. So, Barbara, did you want to add anything else? You know, just that before we do the poll, I want to raise a question. I'm seeing a question from Audrey, and I'll point this to you, Rita, because you covered the, the workplace flexibility. She's saying, what are your thoughts on missing out on top talent due to not being fully remote? So I, I think, and Audrey, I hope I'm interpreting your question accurately. Like, how to what extent are companies who aren't offering some, you know, kind of flexibility missing out on maybe top talent that they might have been able to attract otherwise? That is such a good question and I think that that's pretty nuanced when we think about it, the industry as well as type of worker. So when we think about our types of work, we have 60% are are kind of our professional, our knowledge worker and then we have 40% from our research here of industry or kind of like on site workers. So that fully remote piece it, it plays a role and it could play a role specifically in hot skills. So maybe your engineering skill set, product development, things that can be done remotely. So that makes me think you really need to have flexibility and these policies. Thoughts from What do you think? Yeah. Oh, I agree. I absolutely think that in with individuals, candidates who know that they have skills that are highly sought after, they've got the great experience they can, they can be picky, they can say no. And they can move around quickly. Even though we look at the majority of the data that Robin talked about earlier, the JOLTS data in particular with the job openings, I think these are like very specific hot skills that maybe we might be thinking about could be OK. All right. We're ready for the poll. While I'm going to that, I just want to encourage you if you have any questions to go ahead and put them in that little QA widget and we will try to answer as quickly as we can. So the second poll question is what strategies is your organization using to make hybrid work work? And you can answer all it apply. The 1st is providing tools and technologies that support hybrid work. The 2nd is training managers and leaders on how to lead geographically dispersed teams. Third, creating an inclusive and equitable environment for dispersed teams, giving making sure that your remote workers have the same opportunities. That's what that one means. 4th it says helping people recognize that different work environments support different types of work. For example, you don't want employees going into the office to have to go into a closet and be on a Zoom call all day when they could have done that from home. So perhaps having calls or thinking is best done at home and being together, collaborating in person. The last choice here is we are fully on site. And while we're waiting for people to answer this, I just wanted to mention and have you comment. Rita and Barbara, we actually are a hybrid team with me in in Chicago working from home and you are in our studio in New York. And but it's a small world because I'm actually flying to New York tonight. But isn't, isn't it interesting to have a hybrid? You know, we, we ourselves are a hybrid team. And Robin, I think we do a really good job of making hybrid work work. Yes, yes. So any thoughts on what we might see here in terms of strategies? I love this question. It's definitely something that we are thinking about. In fact, we have a report coming out on the best practices for hybrid and our next Human Capital Watch in July will be focused on hybrid work. So going to give you just another few seconds to answer. I'll count you down if you haven't hit submit yet, 54321 and let's see the results. So the first one, almost 80% say that they're providing tools and technology that support hybrid work. It's pretty much a race between training managers and leaders, as well as then helping people and leaders recognize the different work environments, support different types of work, and look at that. Only 10% of our respondents said they're fully on site. I think that's fascinating. Barbara, Rita, what do you think of these results? You know, when I I just feel compelled to comment on is the how low the create an inclusive and equitable environment for dispersed teens is. Think about that in the context of the chart that Rita spoke to a few minutes ago that showed you the concern about job security that was. Higher for. Remote and hybrid that that. That was the only. One, they're on the commute one, which is very complicated, but the job security one and we've just too in the in the press. I know I have and I know you all have seen a lot of references to pay disparity potentially, you know, between those who may choose remote or hybrid, you know, workplace flexibility choices versus those that that that go into the office and have the visibility in the office all the time. We've heard about pay, we've heard about opportunity differences in terms of promotion and you know, being a candidate for different jobs. So that those things I'm reading about and hearing are very troubling to me. And I, I'm hopeful that, you know, over time, because we all are saying, you know, this is here to stay, at least for now, that there is an enlightened approach by organizations about really recognizing this as an inclusive, an inclusion and equity issue. For for because there's all kinds of reasons, you know, people make the choices they do and to penalize, you know, in in whatever way around salaries, bonuses, opportunities, you know, for making those choices is I, I, this is, you know, I'm rendering an opinion here, but I, I would so much rather see energy diverted toward how to level that playing field and how to remove any of that that sort of disparity because there's again, so many reasons it's. You make such a good point and if you think about it, look at the difference between OK, we're providing, look at the number it's set, we're almost at 80% on the tools and the technology, but training people on how to do it and helping people recognize the different, you know environment support them. This self-awareness components are from the leader perspective and from the employee perspective, it's almost half and that is where. It's but it's only half. But it's only half. Rita. We we could make the case that everyone should be training managers and leaders on how to lead geographically dispersed teams. Yes. So I completely agree with what you both said and do just want to mention that we believe we've asked about training ever since our first reimagined workplace survey about whether or not organizations were training both their managers and leaders and their employees to, to work remotely. I mean, it's, it's, it's time goes very quickly. But remember, there were an awful lot of people who had not spent much time on Zoom four years ago and all the learning curves that that we all had. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to you, Barbara, to go through our next insight around well-being. Thanks, Robin. Just before I do that though, there's a question from Susan that I want to get to around. She's asking is there data around space usage changes due to hybrid work? So I don't have data in front of me, so I'm not going to mention numbers, but I have seen a lot of data you probably all have too around, you know, commercial office space occupancy rates, especially in big cities here in New York, in San Francisco, you know, being lower than they ever have been. And, and certainly, you know, lower than pre pandemic. You've probably seen some things around repurposing of those spaces in big cities. And I also will say, I think, you know, I, I think that that's a real headache and heartache for, for leaders who know that, you know, their budgets include long term lease payments that, you know, they're, they're stuck in these, these I just, and then I, I can understand, you know, the tension in knowing that you have that some cost, but also knowing that you're not, you know, fully utilizing that space that you're paying for because you're giving people that sort of flexibility. So, so I get why that would be. And I think over time, over time, you know, we'll see some redesign of office space, but that too is, is an investment. So I think this is a really, really tough thing for for leaders. And I believe, Robin, didn't you just do AI knew a podcast on this with our ESF, with our economics team. Yes. And one of the things that I think is very interesting was that in our first reimagined workplace report that came out in May 2020, we actually predicted that remote work could become the most important legacy of COVID-19. And as a result, there would be ramifications for cities as organizations need less office space. And Barbara, I do have that statistic in front of me that our economic Strategy and Finance Center found, which was that the decline of the office market is, is very much affecting cities as office buildings face occupancy levels at only 50% of pre pandemic levels. And so I do think that it's definitely a thing to be thinking about for our cities. It's a thing to be thinking about. It's important to be thinking about if you're an organization with a large percentage of employees that are remote or hybrid. But there are, there's different ways to to repurpose that space, right? Not just for another, you know, not just for residents, perhaps trying to bring more residents, more people to live in the city, but also in terms of how offices can use the space rather than having, you know, individual desks and cubicles, they can think about collaboration, space and teamwork. So we definitely take a look on our website, you can find our research on office space and the impact on cities. So with that, Barbara, talk about well-being. I will and let's move to the next slide. Thanks Robin. So you, you saw, if you remember when Rita was talking about hybrid and we saw that chart that showed all these long bars about all the positive impacts that, you know, hybrid and remote work were having. And one of those was improved improving well-being. I think it was 75%. It was way toward the top, you know, 75% of the human capital leaders who responded to our reimagined workplace survey noted that as a positive impact. So, so I think that that's important context. What you see here, though, another piece of context I want to mention as we look at these data on this slide is remember what happened to well-being, You know, during the pandemic? It was it, it took a really bad hit. Mental health in particular, you, you probably recall 2020-2021, I mean, for a host of reasons was really difficult. And I think, you know, workers were really struggling and leaders were struggling to figure out how to address that. So I think we when we look at these data that I'm about to speak to, we have to look at it in that context that this this data is all about change. The question was compared to six months ago, you know, how, how US workers, and this is this is AUS worker survey of the workers themselves. So this is self reported data from workers. We asked them, how has your well-being changed? How would these things changed in the last six months? So. You know, the the thing that jumps out is kind of a lack of change. You see the biggest chunk is the same and that's it. That's important, I think to interpret that in the context of where it has been in recent years, which has not been good. So these just a moment on, on the factors here, level of engagement, how engaged you are, level of mental health is probably the one we associate, I think right now the most with well-being, sense of belonging, sense of feeling included intent to stay, which is of course, you know, linked to retention, level of effort expended, which is actually the, the, the sort of really technical definition of engagement is, you know, discretionary effort. So these things, there wasn't a question like how's your well-being, you know, compared to six months ago? We have these these, I'll call them like attributes or factors that I think all of us associate with well-being. When people talk about well-being and I won't we won't get into definitions and things of well-being. That's that's a different paper, that's a different webcast. But these are the that we. Welcome you to watch though, yes? But those are actually yes. And we did that one. Yes, we. Did it together. Yes. So these are the things that people think about when they when they think about well-being. And look, it's kind of like not moving. And that's important because it's despite billions of dollars being spent on well-being programs. So that makes this is, you know, that that much more dramatic despite billions of dollars. No, I'm not exaggerating being spent on well-being programs by US organizations. Not, you know, not dramatic movement. However, can I just? Oh yeah, I was just going. To I was just going to say that last year in 2023, when we talked to CHROS, they told us that employee well-being in many organizations was worse than it had been during the pandemic. And that's actually what prompted us to do our report and study on well-being. And that came out, it's called the next frontier of employee well-being. And so I think that was it anyway, but we'd love to. Have you take a look at that? Yes, OK. And I'll just spend another moment on well-being because I know we have other insights we want to get to and we're coming up on the the 45 past the hour here. But I will say glimmer of hope on the horizon. Now, what I just showed you was workers, you know, self reporting changes and and we as we said, it doesn't look like, you know, dramatic change. There's a glimmer of hope though, because with the reimagined workplace survey, the human capital leader respondents, if you look at they're they, we asked them the same questions, the same factors, engagement, inclusion, belonging, intent to stay, mental health and what you see and this fact you stay to fascinate me is very consistent increases in the increases and decreases in the decreases. So things are getting a little better. They're kind of saying some positive movement. Now you may ask like, why are the human capital leaders, you know, looking like indicating a bit of a positive trajectory, whereas it looked like primarily no change from the workers. Couple of reasons. This was late, this survey was later and then later in 2024 there could be a little perception disparity. You know, this is it's hard to ask you and capital leaders to speak on behalf of, you know, the state of the the workforce at on these factors. So those could explain some of the differences, yet still we're seeing kind of a glimmer of hope here. So let me just take one more minute on the next slide. And this is really out of our, our well-being, the next frontier of employee well-being paper, which you can take a look at. But we're saying what, what do we, what should we do about this? How do you move the needle further? Because it was it was, you know, well-being again, so bad during pandemic, like you said, some perception and even worse, but maybe getting a little better. So this is what that paper is all about that, you know, programmatic approaches and you heard me mention the expensive, you know, spend on those programmatic approaches are necessary. You need to be offering well-being programs, yes, because everyone is now it's become an expectation of workers table stakes. So necessary, but not sufficient. And what really has to happen next is embedding well-being into the strategy and the culture. I'm not going to speak to all of these, but there's all all so many ways you can do that. It's not a short term fix, it's a long term journey. But embedding it in your communications, embedding it in leadership development programs, embedding it in what you expect of managers, how they manage, you know, as first line people managers in your employee branding in a very, you know, sincere way. And then emphasizing, and I, I like this one thinking of, you know, of, of collaboration amongst employees, really emphasizing our responsibility for our collective well-being because it's about how we treat each other every day as Co workers. And, and the reason this is so important is you can have all the programs in the world, you know, that I can, I can, you know, speak to my, my therapist, you know, weekly courtesy of my employer. However, if I'm showing up to work every day and I'm not being treated well by my, you know, by my boss, by my coworkers, then all that's spent on this programs is for naughty. So that's what we mean when we say in bed, All right, next one you unto you. Thank you. And it was so fun to kind of take a look back at our well-being research and see how it aligned and kind of some similarities with the reimagined workplace. So we're going to move on to our next topic, which we're going to see also requires a little bit more of strategic embedding. So HC leaders we have found are focused on near term AI initiatives, but we still think there's some work to be done. So if we move on to the next slide, we will see that in late 2023 from our C-Suite outlook. And I know you did some research on the Chros in particular on this. The majority of CE OS and Chros report a commitment to adopting AI. And what I want to call out here in particular is the 31% at the moment. If you look all the way at the global Chr OS, you even see them a little bit more enthusiastic plans to adopt immediate across some business unit and operations. Whereas CE OS and other C-Suite leaders were about 10 to 12% less in terms of their point of view on that. So Hooray for human capital leaders for like pushing the way here that we know that this is really important and it's going to impact every aspect of how work gets done and what work life is going or really our reimagined workplace that we're living in today. Rita, can I just look, can I just sure. Sorry, Rita, I just wanted to add that we actually, when you were saying congratulations to HR, we've actually written quite a bit around AI for HR for human capital, and those reports are available in our AI hub if you go to conferencedashboard.org. I know I sound like a little advertisement, but we've done some very interesting work including around AI for human capital, management strategy and AI for knowledge management. And Barbara and her team are working on AI for employee engagement. So that'll be coming out soon. That is particularly interesting across the. Board. It's been a fun paper. Can't wait for it to get out. Yep. Thank you, Robin for calling that out. And here's the data that really supports our point of view on what we're talking about here, that human capital leaders are kind of focused on the short term time horizon for AI, but they also need to be thinking about the long term strategies as well. So what we're seeing at the top of the kind of the top of the chart here when we speak to human capital leaders, what they're saying is they're modeling, they're experimenting, they are looking at particular use cases across human Capital Management functions. So what does that mean? Recruiting, strategic workforce planning that we called out earlier, learning and development. Very curious to see how it's going to be played out in the employee experience. But what needs to be focused on is that you move down the chart here, that the governance, advocating for governance, mitigating risks on AI, the literacy programs for the entire workforce. Also thinking about the creation of new roles that are going to bring expertise to the organization and then the opposite of that, mitigating this displacement of workers. And then really important but kind of at the bottom. And I'm, I'm sure that if we were to take a look at this in six months or a year from now this, we probably would see a higher number here, but implementing reskilling strategies for jobs that have a high probability of really being taken over by AI. And we've seen this in the media, both with Walmart and Amazon, where they're reskilling workers that and that that and where AI is taking parts of kind of that work over. So they're a really good example of how they're integrating it. OK, with that. I think we have another poll question. It's our last poll. Yes. And so it says we're going to try to go through this little bit quickly because we have one more insight we want to share with you. But the question is where are you experimenting with AI use cases in your human capital functions? You can select all that apply. So talent acquisition, some of these are the ones that Rita just mentioned, the talent acquisition, learning and development, knowledge management, performance management, compensation planning or other. So while we are waiting to have that filled in, one of the things that I think we have to be really concerned about is nobody knows how AI is going to change, right? It's evolving so quickly. And so I think part of the challenge that organizations have and human capital leaders have is trying to think about how are we going to be agile. So any thoughts on that before we get to the responses, Rita or? Barbara thoughts on Agile? You know, so on agility, I'm I'm going to, you know, take that interpretation. I think so much is being asked of leaders and here we are. And, you know, you look at the chart you showed us, they're focusing on, you know, pilots and use cases and how we going to do this. And at the same time, oh, we need, you know, to have governance, we need to have guidelines, we need to have training. There's just, there's so much work to be done. And I think we're asking so much of our leaders and it's happening, AI is, is happening so quickly that I, I, I feel really badly even, you know, commenting on the fact that. But I think it did come out in the data that the attention isn't being spent on that long term stuff that it really needs to be. But, but I get it because boy, there's a lot to do. But but that basically was our recommendation. To and we don't know. Do the pilots but also look at that longer term horizon as well? But but all I was trying to say, Barbara, is that I am adding to what you were saying is that I don't know that we know a long term what AI will look like. So I think that makes it much more difficult and I agree, we are asking an awful lot of our leaders. So I'm going to go ahead and close this poll. I'll count it down 54321. And you can see and I'm not surprised at all that almost 60% of organizations are using AI in talent acquisition. Talent acquisition has the most technology of all of the human capital functions. And Barbara or Rita, are you surprised to see learning and development come second? No, because our learning and development councils talk a lot about how they are experimenting with AI in creation of content in, you know, kind of self-service of learning on demand. So there there's a, there's. A and the democratization of coaching, right? I think we're going to see a lot more of that. Yeah. Robin, I just wanted to point out before you close that interestingly, I know we have to go 27% said others. So we'll be curious to see how that expands out. Completely agree and don't be surprised if you see a survey in your future asking what else are you doing with AI and human capital. So, Barbara, take us home with our last insight. I will and I want to talk about. You can go on to the next slide, Robin, about cost cutting measures. And you know, we asked this question back when we started this survey at the onset of the pandemic because we were really interested in understanding how organizations were pivoting, you know, with all that was happening. And back then we saw things like you, if you look at the bottom of this chart, things like reducing hours worked, things like furloughs, implementing furloughs, this was happening a lot. Reduced compensation, you know what, you keep your job, but we're going to, we're going to pay you lower because there was, remember that time there was so much uncertainty. So we asked this because you know that we were really interested in how organizations were pivoting. What's happened over time, though, here we are, it's 2024 and what's really come out and we're just showing you the last two years of data this year in 2023 is we were interested in seeing that restricting hiring and reducing, you know, travel reductions, travel constraints for non, you know, kind of client facing discretionary travel are still very much at play. And you all live in this world. So I know you, you know, you're feeling it too, but those are very much still out there even in you know what, what some you you could describe as a pretty robust, you know, economy. Now this varies hugely by industry. You know, this and, and the layoff piece was a little surprising to us at about a third 30% last year. And this year. The story is very different for a tech company, for a consulting firm than it is in the industries of government and education and healthcare and hospitality where they're they're not able to fill the jobs are being created, they're not able to fill them. So huge disparity by industry, but still this what, what I take away from this is this, this attitude of like caution, prudence, just just, you know, let's not go crazy here. We're going to we don't. And and it's really driven by uncertainty. You heard Robin say uncertainty about is it? Are we in an oh, there's still inflationary, you know, measures, but remember that short and shallow recession that we weren't, we were predicting hasn't happened yet. Is it which is where is it going? What's happening? What's going on with interest rates and then elections? This is an election year in the US. It's also, there are major elections in many countries around the world. And many of these organizations are global organizations that operate in, in multiple countries and also just geopolitical uncertainty around the world. So there's all this uncertainty which we think is tempering, you know, creating that sort of that that prudence and that caution that that's our interpretation. One last thing I want to mention really quickly about these data, it struck us that very few are reducing spend on benefits programs. And that actually encouraged us because I think it's a recognition that, you know, well-being, well-being matters, that investment in those, those well-being programs and those sorts of benefits are not being reduced. So with that, how's our time, Robin, we have 3 minutes. So I'm just really going to quickly, why don't you not not going to walk through every recommendation, but what I will say is here's overall what we saw. Like if I had to say in a nutshell, what was, what was the, you know, the study telling us? I see human capital leaders who for the last like three years had to be putting out fires like every single day with with, you know, do we, oh, do we, are we going to return to office? What are we going to, you know, expect of our employees? Are we going to be tracking their badging? What is going on with mental health? Oh, no, we need to invest more here. Oh, no, you know, people are leaving. There's this, you know, this, this great resignation. I've got openings, I've got people, you know, having to cover two jobs. Like things have been a little crazy and I, I'm just seeing like a little bit of a like you, you know, I'm not saying that's not stopping, but just I can take my breath. Like I can just pause and take a breath here. And so we're saying it's a moment, you know, to to look at that long term, the strategic workforce planning, really looking long term at how to embed well-being into your culture and in base and long term around, you know, your AI strategy. Yeah, it's still going to be crazy. It, it remains crazy. But just a, you know, just a glimmer that maybe there's a chance to to look long term Robin. Terrific. Well, thank you Barbara and Rita, I really appreciate your help and your your your leadership with this report. And in today's webcast, just wanted to mention to our participants that we do have a lot of webcast coming up. You can see there are human capital watches for the rest of the year with in July. Are you redesigning your workplace for the hybrid world? So we hope you can attend many of those as well as we just wanted to mention that we have four more events or conferences coming up that are human capital related. Feel free to download these slides and then you can have links to those conferences or events. And we we hope to see you at some of these. And then last but not least, if you are one of those folks who really enjoys podcasts, we have a huge library of podcast called C-Suite Perspectives and we hope that you will listen in. So with that, I just want to thank you all for attending. Please do answer the survey as it helps us improve our future web casts. And thank you again and have a great day. Bye bye. Thanks, Robin. _1726167616881