Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everyone. Today is Wednesday, February 19th, 2025. My name is Jeannie Shu and I will be your host today and welcome to the to this year's this sorry, this month's labor markets watch. Good to see you all. So I'm just going to dive right in. So today we are we are talking about today's conversation Will will be on employers who employers continue to face a tight US labor market. Data on wages, worker turnover and job vacancy suggests that these pressures may be easy, but strategies such as workplace flexibility and pay equity remain key differentiators as worker expectations evolve and they have the potential to shape broader labor market trends. So during today's session, some of our questions that we'll discuss today are what do the trends in turnover, compensation and job vacancies signal for the labor market? How are the how are labor market conditions influencing employer hiring and retention strategies? How are employers reassessing the cost and the benefits of turnover in the changing labor market? And how has the role of attraction and retention initiatives evolved such as workplace flexibility and pay equity? Today, it is my honor and privilege to be joined by our 2 speakers, Rachel Barnes, Labor Market Economist at the Conference Board here in the In the Economy Strategy and Finance Center and Robin Erickson, a Head of Human Capital Research here also at the at the Conference Board. Welcome both. Thank you. So this webcast today is recorded and will be available about one to two days after the live broadcast of this of this today show. Please use the Q&A box to ask any questions you have. We will do our best to answer them during today's webcast. OK, so but just before we begin, a gentle reminder. If you need a certificate, attendance certificate, please click on the icon shown to download your certificate at the end of the work apps. You may use your certificate to self apply for continuing education credit directly with your certification provider. Again, the chat box is open, the the Q&A box is open. Please feel free to let us know your thoughts are I will have to say that for today's show, Robin and Mitchell have a jam packed agenda. So you know, we'll get, we'll get to your questions, hopefully all of them, but just just be patient with us. There's going to be a lot going on today. OK, with that said, I'm going to turn this right over. And Mitchell, tell us what you're seeing. Well, thank you, Jimmy. And you know, for those that have, you know, joined us before on one of these web casts, we are going to save our audience questions here for a couple minutes. But really to to really give a lay of the land of the labor market. And I really wanted to bring Robin in to really go through some of the narratives that we see on the economic side of the labor market, but really attach that to what are businesses thinking? How are they navigating? I mean, what are some of the considerations that they're going through in in the environment that we face? And so just some core labor market themes off of the top that that we'll go through. The first being I really do think that, you know, across a number of measures, the US economy remains near full employment. Certainly this is a cooling labor market slower than the last several years when we're coming out of the pandemic given all the RE staffing and rehiring, some of the job switching which we'll talk about. A lot of that has actually fallen though. And I think that's really what we want to dig into today that some of the churn that we would see whether that is hiring, whether that is worker quits have fallen below pre pandemic levels, not just returned to those levels. The other that I think is relevant here is that you continue to hear a story of a dual environment at the labor market because of that low churn hiring is a little bit lower job opportunities presumably or not is is fruitful and plentiful for those that are looking. So if you were entering this job market, whether you are a new entry, definitely stories out there of of college graduates and some of the the troubles there, but also returning labor market entrance, right. And so I think there really is kind of a differentiation of the situation that some of these workers face. If you're in a job, your salaries, you know, have have looked pretty good the last several years on average at least. And job security at least kind of the layoffs that we might see if if really the economy was showing more weakness have not taken place. And the other one that I think is really more persistent again, and I think we we point to a lot of structural factors is labor shortages still coming off the pandemic. We still have a really shifting job market as far as the skills that we think we need going forward. And that is on top of some of the aging demographic issues as we'll touch on. So hope to get your, your thoughts really on how those are are playing out and some of the things that businesses are considering. So just to go through some of the evidence. So you, you just don't have to take my word for it. I think this is really one of the stories to follow, if not now, certainly over the next decade. Prime age workers, those that are aged 25 to 54, the employment rates of them that is employment over their population is over where it was pre pandemic, certainly recovering well before kind of going into 2024. So we've been looking at a relatively stable job market. What you really do start to see is, is an ongoing drag is that older age bracket, that older age cohort of workers, this is all 55 and over. So you can imagine at least this line on the right in yellow is really reflective of the ongoing retirements that are pulling more and more of those folks out of the labor force all together. And where are we really with the trajectory of of compensation and wages? I think that is obviously a question, particularly as inflation has seemed a little bit more persistent and sticky than we would like it to be. And I think this really depicts at least the evolution of of how we've gotten here in the story, really the reopening of the economy. We saw obviously the need to to rehire, whether that was restaurants, a lot of in person services, I think broken out by education of those workers. You can see at least that red line taking off higher. And so I think that really was a story early on in the pandemic. But I think really more recently, whether it's the last, you know, 12, 12 months, six months really coming into the end of 2024, we've actually seen more of that hiring, at least in certain parts of, you know, information technology coming back, professional services. And that is really where we see some of the highest wage demand at least kind of going into this year. But certainly, I think this is still above where the Fed would like it to be, where business leaders would like it to be. Really in aggregate, we're somewhere just over 4%. So I think really with some of the things we'll talk about, some of the churn that is no longer affording some of the opportunities that might have been there in the 1st place, I think we will start to see that moderates. The question is how quickly might it do so. And I think there's a necessary kind of undergirding factor of that we have to discuss when we do talk about wages, and that is productivity. And that is really just by any measure of, of really how productive the economy is being GDP divided by any kind of metric of of kind of your labor contribution, We are doing much better. And the economy looks a lot stronger than it did, at least in really the decade leading up to the pandemic. And I think that leads some of us to say, you know, is AI already starting to show its impact? Are we starting to see some benefits of of some of the investments that we've seen? I think there's there's, you know, maybe maybe I think is the answer to that question. But I think there's one that I think is, is relevant to the turnover and retention question that we're talking about today. And that is we think that at least in the economics community think that when we have rematched and resorted a lot of these workers, what we're going to go through kind of the historic quits that we had seen over the last several years. When all of that happens, there is obviously a little bit maybe of a lag time of getting those people up to speed, maybe getting them engaged in a sector or a business that they weren't familiar with. But given that resorting to either more productive businesses, putting them in a place where they're more satisfied, there is a productivity boost from that. And I think at least that is part of the story that we're seeing here. I would just add also reskilling. I think a lot of workers are going to need to be reskilled and so I think that'll be something else that will go along with that the the changing dynamics. Absolutely. And just to drive home the point of of really where we are, you know, on this turnover metric. So if you take a gross turnover, which is really just measuring the monthly hires and total separations that includes quits, retirements, etcetera, and add those together as a percent, you know, of your employment that has actually gone back to, you know, about 2012 levels. And that is really an economy that was still slowly coming out of the Great Recession. So that is really not indicative. I think and matching other indicators that we see of Labor market strength, again, hiring has remained at least relatively strong even if starting to consolidate in in some industries. So I think this one is really the one to watch and the one that has people a little bit concerned of just looking for, for real big signs of, of Labor market strength. And I think to drive that home, it is not just that people are refusing to leave, everybody's happy. It is still the case that openings are coming down and job openings, you know, very similar to to quits. A lot of these graphs look very similar. You know, over this last couple years, these have come down. But I think it's notable and, and again, I think this matches a lot of other things that we're seeing is that we've kind of hit somewhat of a plateau. We've softened, but you know, not to call it a soft landing. Certainly you don't want to jinx it, but this is the type of chart that you would look at if you were looking to really pad kind of that storyline. And and I would just add here, yes, job openings are coming down, but they're still higher than they were before COVID. Yes, yes. And, and I think really in the last several months, if you look back, you know, six months and again kind of to finish 2024, you know, there was a little bit more optimism in some of these numbers. So again, you know, I don't think really the story of the labor market is that we are continuing to see ongoing cooling. I think we have somewhat reached at least a place where it is unknown really where the trajectory goes from here. And this I, I know it is, is one of Robin's favorite charts. But what this is showing is really just the tie of the the propensity of workers to quit jobs and that is obviously tied to unemployment and you know, really some of these other metrics of, you know, how strong the labor market is at that time. And we've typically seen that as unemployment has gone down, the quits rate has gone up. And in fact, the correlation for those, it's a negative correlation, but it's actually .93, which doesn't happen in nature very often as economists. Know certainly and you know I think it was something that's notable again about this is that, you know the quits right is is well below where it was, you know before the pandemic again, kind of to those kind of mid recovery levels after the Great Recession. But I think what is also interesting about this to really drive home your point of how the unemployment in a strong labor market coming into the pandemic, look at 2019 where really that was the highest rate of quits that we had seen in quite some time. So I think that story certainly does hold, but I think it does raise a question of if we continue to see unemployment remain pretty, pretty static and pretty low, which at least hopefully that might be the case going into this year, you know, what can we expect from that quits rate, I think is a question. So let me just stop. First, ask a question that just came in, which is so is the unemployment rate considered low? It it absolutely is. So you know that is this blue line here and one of the ongoing stories is that, you know, at least since 2023 you had seen that continued tick up July. If you recall this year was actually a particularly bad jobs report that had ticked up to 4.3 had crossed what is known as the sum threshold of of a rise that indicates recession. And given some of the kind of data calibrations, the new data we've seen, we are actually no longer over that threshold. So not only are we no longer really seeing a rise in unemployment, which is certainly encouraging, but I think really if you look over the course of of just the last 25 years at this blue line, just that 4.1% is, is quite low, just an aggregate to look at unemployment. And the I have a follow up question for someone who had to follow up to the slide, not follow up to the unemployment, but but can can you explain the you mentioned a .93 turnover rate like some we need a little bit more info like what does that mean? So sorry if I worry that too quickly. So typically I'd show everybody my, my fabulous little X here, which is as unemployment goes down, voluntary turnover or the quits rate goes up. And so it's a negative correlation of .93. So it's a negative .93 correlation, not a turnover rate, OK. And I apologize, it's Robin safer chart and I tried to recreate it and I didn't scale it on the second axis as I was supposed. Great. Thank you. All right. Sorry. Please go ahead. And you know, I want to at least highlight kind of something that that relates to that story from the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index. This is kind of one of the detailed breakouts that that we dig into. And one of those is about the kind of consumers, you know, sentiment about the present job situation, their kind of Labor market opportunities. And that really is measured by kind of three answer choices here. You're not seeing the neutral one, but that is our jobs plentiful or our jobs hard to get at that time. And really I think you can see at least from the last two times that those lines have crossed that is really our indicator of recession if if you were kind of looking at one in this data set. And I think so it's notable that we have seen this steadily decline kind of with, you know in line with other indicators. But it remains at least for the time being, you know, a little bit, you know, margin between kind of seeing the jobs hard to get rise I think to a more concerning level. And I think that's probably because of the labor shortages, which are ongoing. Even even though we have lower unemployment, I think our labor shortage is going to continue for a while. And I think this is I think the reason that we see it as relevant really just for the economic, economic trajectory going forward. Certainly as business leaders are are looking towards kind of navigating the the economy and some of the forecasts that they have to make. This is really important because some of the high wages and growth that we've seen, really the pressure to to really push up that compensation was coming from a number of job switchers that really had a hit, you know, quite a high number as we'll talk about, you know, some factors of turnover and retention. But I think this is really important to_that as we've seen some of the opportunities for those folks to to jump jobs come down so, is the premium for the wages that they're getting for jumping jobs so. We see kind of the convergence of job switchers and job stayers just in kind of their wages over this this past year. And I think if you go back to 2022 and 2023, what you see is that the job Switcher line, the yellow line is very high and the wages were very high for the people who switched. And the people who stayed did not see as high of increases, but they did see some increases. And I think the important thing to notice now is sort of that convergence. Sorry, I think I'm going to have to go back to the correlation part question again. So are there any factors that you can touch on that that that contribute to the quit rate to sorry, K, are there any factors that you can touch on that contribute to the quit rate correlation to unemployment? Yes. So I think the the biggest one is, is that when unemployment is low, I think that people feel safe to quit their current job. Not because obviously they, they have an offer to go to another company, But if that doesn't work out at that organization or they don't like the manager or they don't like the commute or whatever it is, that if, if unemployment's low, then the chances are good they'll be another position afterward that they can go to. However, when unemployment's high, you're going to be less likely to quit your job because if it doesn't work out at the next organization you go to, there will be fewer jobs that are available. And I think she's going to touch a bit more on that later on as we talk about retention. We, we will. And I think there's definitely a, a, a tie in. I don't want to say correlation, but there's certainly a correlation and there's a tie in with job openings too. You know, if if we're, you know, seeing unemployment spike, that means in general we are seeing layoffs that are pretty substantial as we'll kind of highlight here in a few minutes, We're not seeing that yet. But, you know, if there are, you know, at least substantial layoffs throughout the economy, chances are there's not kind of this polarization where we're seeing great job growth on the other end. And I think if you're hearing about layoffs in any industry, you're going to be less likely to quit your job. All right. Thank you. So I want to open this really for a discussion of, of not only what we've really quickly run through and, and I apologize, a lot of data points. But I think really the ideas I want to harness right here of really pulling out some of the themes as really business leaders, as human capital managers, hiring managers are really seeing this playing field. And so I just want to go through 1 by 1 of really the narratives of, you know, from that data what I think we at least are hypothesizing. And the first one is that really attracting and retaining talent, of course, is going to remain a priority. But I think really from our standpoint, it is at least a drawing on the back of some of the shortages, some of the issues with restaffing and and talent identification finding people over the last several years. One of those I think that we get often asked about is labor hoarding. And you know, I know a way in which, you know, companies are invested in doing this is around initiatives of total rewards. And you know, all of that is is fair game for you. I want to know really what you think about just that broad context of that being a factor in what we're seeing. Yes. And So what the phrase labor hoarding refers to is that if you have a team of people and you don't want any of them to leave because you might not make your numbers or you might not make your revenue or whatever that is. And so you're going to keep your talent. However, employees want to learn new skills, they want to get ahead, they want to be promoted. And so if they don't see a career path in your organization, they're going to go someplace else. And we're going to talk a little bit more about retention. But that being said, if you're not providing internal mobility, that's the other sort of catch phrase and human capital internal mobility options, I don't think you'll have that. You won't be able to retain people quite as well. And at least that internal mobility, you know, we've at least seen that in our employee satisfaction surveys, which you know, we'll at least highlight here in a few minutes. But you know, what is the, the business sense of, of that, that I know we have automation and digitization efforts on here as well. How is that impacting, you know, some of the talent assessments and and demand that that might be playing out now and and considerations for later? So I definitely think that as technology evolves, we need different skills. And in fact, I'll give you guys an example. I wish, I so wish that I had. I saw a billboard. I wish I'd pulled over up the next exit, turned around, come around and take a picture because it literally said got cybersecurity skills? Name your own salary. And it just goes to show if that's one of the most, you know, roles that's in high demand, you can you can ask for a premium in terms of salary. And so I think that it's very important as we think about technology is going to continue evolving. But right now we actually have issues with literacy, even just about what AI is. And so I think it's important for organizations to be thinking, OK, not only may we have to reskill if, if my job goes away because of the evolution of AI, I I will either need new skills or I'll have to be laid off. And you know, I think some in, you know, something that we've seen at least in, in our work of some of the labor market impacts of AI is that, you know, this kind of comes in, in 2 forms. What are the initiatives around AI that I'm pursuing today? I might need specialized AI or technical talents to pursue those. And then what does that really do and, and look like for the rest of my workforce? How does that really, you know, push us to recalibrate some of the organization? And I think those are two aspects, but you know, drilling in a little bit to the the skills, you know, that was at least the AI. What are some other skills that are out there, maybe not in in the AI field that are that are really in high demand? So some other skills that are in high demand, I think it's still the number one, but that's our truck driving skills. And you know, we have a real shortage of workers in truck driving. And so there's there's that idea. I think that also we're finding that we may need fewer hospitality workers, at least at fast food restaurants where you can now order, but with a kiosk instead of having to place your order with a person. So those are a couple other ideas. So I think there's, you know, a lot to to be considering as far as how this this is going to alter the workplace. One of those that I actually do want to, to come back to is the retirements is kind of this labor shortages piece in in really a demographic sense and kind of what this looks like going forward. You know, how does that change really just the idea that a company needs to hold on to people, you know, rather than be a little bit more flexible? So there's a definite business case to be made for holding on to people, but I also think it provides sort of the business case around worker flexibility. If you find that your older employees are retiring because they don't want to work full time, well then offer them part time roles. Maybe they only want to work eight months of the year and the other four months of the year they want to be in Florida golfing. So, you know, make make those types of jobs available as well. And you know, one more that that I think comes up often in these conversations and, and I think it's under discussed in some of the economic statistics because there are, you know, within the household survey, you can see those that are staying home from work to care for elderly parents to care for, for children. You know, what are some of those considerations about maybe some of the new priorities of workers and and some of the assessment of what benefits they they are really looking for? So we're going to talk in just a few more slides about worker flexibility, but I think it's not just flexibility in terms of where you work, but also the hours that you work. And I think we saw that during COVID when all of a sudden there was no child care and there was no elder care to be found. And so I think organizations had to basically say, if you can get your work done whenever, go for it. And I think, you know, there's no reason why there isn't an expectation today of employees that they could be able to, you know, leave for an hour to go pick their kids up from school or go to a ball game and then come back and work later on. And it's because of technology that enables us to work 24/7, which that's work life balance is another perhaps episode that we could talk about. But but yes, that's another reason why we can work all the time. And that's why it's great to have you all because there's so much overlap exactly with human capital and and labor economics. But there's one that I actually do want to drill into because I think it's, it's incredibly important of, of some of the discussion around how strong is hiring given some of maybe, you know, maybe some of the the concerns around the data given some of the revisions. Not to get into the weeds today. But you know, what is your sense of, of really the last six months of the hiring environments, what our business is looking at? What are some things that might be holding them back or kind of giving them pause? So in our recently published C-Suite outlook, which just came out in January, attracting and retaining talent was the number one goal of all of the C-Suite executives globally. And so that's clearly, you know, very important. I think that we're also seeing that perhaps it's not quite as difficult to attract and retain people as it might have been a couple years ago during the the great Resignation, but it's still not easy. And I, I'm going to show you about that in just a few minutes, all. Right. Folks, we're we're actually going to have a. Poll right now and we want to get your feedback to understand what you're seeing. So the question for right now is it's a two-part poll, so just you know. So we'll go through results of one at a time. In general, how difficult is it for your organization to find talent? A very easy, B somewhat easy, C somewhat difficult and D very difficult. We'd like to hear your thoughts. We like if you can take a minute to or take a second or two to be able to let us know. Again, the question for right now is in general, in general, how difficult is it for your organization to find out again, is it A very easy, B somewhat easy, C somewhat difficult, D very difficult. I would really like to see us to get at 50% of all of you there are there are a lot of you today joining us. So and like we would like everyone, it's, it's an understanding of how what you're seeing in the market so that we can understand, right. So again, in general, how difficult is it for your organization to find talent? A very easy, B somewhat easy, C somewhat difficult and D very difficult. All right, I'm closing the poll and the results are in. So let's just take a quick note and just see what's happening. You're we're we're still seeing somewhat difficult as the lead. Over 62% of you feel that that's somewhat difficult. 24 thinks that 2024 percent is somewhat easy, follow by very difficult. And then 1.7 of you do think it's very easy. I mean, so and that's one thing to think about. Alright. So I just want to give that to a note for for Robin and for Mitchell before I go to the second poll again. The second poll is how in general, how difficult is it for your organization to retain talent? So it's a little bit different. A Very easy B somewhat easy. C somewhat difficult. D very difficult. Again, the polls are open for you to let us know. And again, this is a little different, right? That was the other poll had said about how difficult it was to find talent, but here we're talking about retaining talent. Again, in general, how difficult is it for your organization to retain talent? A Very easy. B somewhat easy. C difficult, somewhat difficult. D Very difficult. Again, if we can get to 50%, we'll be able to see and how it and how it how it differs for all of you between finding talent and then also keeping the talent. I'm going to give this one more second or five more seconds. 54321 and we're closed. All right, So let me just go over this quickly for you guys to see. So somewhat difficult of retaining talent leads the way at 43.9%, then comes with somewhat easy at 40.7% and very easy at 9.8 and then very difficult at 5.7. I'm not sure. Is this what you're thinking? Like is that what you had expected to see that? We'll ask you first, Mitchell, what did you expect? Well, I think we can at least use this time to reflect on at least adding this at least temporarily to something that we've collected over the last several years, which is the exact question. But the one thing that I would say is that what strikes me is that no, not necessarily. I think what this really tells me is that we're getting more choosy with the types of workers that we see as a fit for some of the roles that we need. OK. Well, I actually was not surprised to answer your question, Jeannie, in terms of the poll results, because if you look on the far left hand side that's we asked the same question and our survey of human capital leaders. And you can see there we have some longitudinal data that spiked in 2022 and 2023 where it was very difficult to find talent at 83%, the height of 83% and then went down to 80% in 2023. But 74.4% of the people on today's webcast said that they are finding it difficult or very difficult, somewhat difficult or very difficult to find talent. So that is a that's, that surprises me a little bit because that's a little bit higher than what we found. But again, this data is from 2024. We are about to publish the survey for the reimagined workplace in the next few weeks. So you can look out for that. Please take it the survey if you get it in terms of the the difficulty retaining talent, you know, we're looking at that. That spiked again in 2022. It went down slightly in 2023. These are the bars on the right hand side. In 2020, 441% of the organizations were having a difficulty retaining talent either somewhat somewhat difficult or very difficult. And that's not so different here with 49%. But all of that being said, if, if you're, if almost 50% of organizations are having a hard time retaining workers, that's still, that's still a high number. It might be lower than it was, but it's still it's still a high number. Yeah. And I do think, you know, one thing that you know, I think relates to the the next couple slides we'll we'll go into is that just the gap? I think, you know, let's just take for, for granted that, you know, this is, this is great data and we're, we're making new bars here. If the gap between these is, is 25 points and it's, it's more difficult to find that talent than to retain it. I think that really does give a little bit of credence to the story that, you know, that job opportunity for job switchers, you know, those quits certainly aren't there in the same way. But still, we're going to need to find and and attract the talent that is really going to fit our organization. And I had been holding on to this question because I I knew this slide was coming up. So, so the question is, is how like, what have you found out to be the main reason for people to quit their jobs compared to unemployed people looking for jobs? Is there anything like that You've that in any of those surveys, folks? Robin is the head of our research at of, of human capital Research. And you know, she's got a number of surveys out there. So, so she's got a lot of these numbers and then from the top of her head and but also just so just as a little plug, if you do receive one of our surveys on it would be great if you filled it out for us just because we had then we have more data to share with you. So I just want to do a little tiny plug before we go on. But but let me just let me go back to the question. So have you seen a reason between people quitting their jobs and for those who are unemployed looking for work? So I think that there's definitely, there are reasons why people quit their jobs and there are reasons why people stay at their jobs. So that and I think they're probably the same top five, but they might be in a different order. I think it could also depend on the generation that you know, at what point in the career are the people who are answering those questions, right? So for example, your younger workers aren't that interested in or, or they don't need to be as interested in the most flexible positions, right? They might not have kids to pick up after school or, or something like that. But I do think, you know, there's definitely something to be thought of there. And in terms of people who are unemployed looking for positions, typically those are the people who have lost their positions due to layoffs or they're trying to join new fields, right? They're trying to do some reskilling. And so, for example, I know that there were many people who lost their positions in a consulting firm. And so something that many of those people did when they lost those positions was to try to get more certifications in other areas where they could add more and be able to provide more insights to other organizations. And a different question and and I I'm actually not familiar with this terminology, but perhaps both of you have. So there is a do you agree with analysts forecasting a great something called a great detachment of workers leaving their jobs in 2025 based and I'm just curious to hear more. So, sure. So I think there's somebody whose main job it is to put the word great in front of things and you know, get it published. That being said, I've actually predicted for a while now that I think that we will see the great Resignation 2 point O coming up. So that that's my personal prediction. That's based on the fact that I think many workers want more flexibility than they currently have or they want different flexibility. And so I think that we will see as some of the economic uncertainty, some of the political uncertainty or the geopolitical uncertainty dies down. I, I, I expect we'll see that. Great. So the great detachment is grace is basically the same concept as people who leave their job, but it's also the idea that fewer workers are actually really connected to their jobs. They're they're not as engaged with their jobs. I see. And that would also lead lead you to leave. Got it. Understood. OK, what's up? What's next? Well, we'll dive into it. I think we'll, we'll get into a little bit more of kind of some of those things here in a few slides. And just to to really reflect on really the poll and and the difficulty over time. You know, I do want to highlight that we aggregated these. So those that were actually reporting no issues at all is still relatively low. But I think this does tell you something about at least, you know, some portion over time that this really confirmed that I think, you know, struggle to find candidates has gone down. What I think is is really interesting is how low actually that real trouble widespread problem, which are kind of the two top categories of the five answer choices here has really gone downward. You know, whether or not we we thought we were in a little bit of of a weak point, you know the last six months when we had some, some hairy data. I think this really does drive the point home that at least at least according to our CEO confidence measure through the fourth quarter that was not a huge concern. But I guess the question is, is it not because at least you know, over the last couple, couple months we had really put a little bit of a stall on any expansion plans for workforce? It could be the, the, the the stall on the expansion plans, but it could also be some of the other top other things that we're going to see affecting the workforce perhaps. So I want to go to this one because I think this is really the connecting points you know of Robin and I's work of when you ask, you know you all business leaders what they are looking to do around their workforce. This is actually something that you all told us in our Reimagined Workplace 2024. We're already getting to work on on this year's iteration, but I think this is an interesting at least kind of time stamp that we'll compare kind of the current state to in a second. But last year we were asking you all what kind of cost savings, you know, were you really seeking to implement and had implemented around some of your workforce. That first one I think really resonates with us of restricting hiring. And I think that was kind of at least again, adding a little bit of support to that story, implementing layoffs. I'll just add restricting hiring is actually the number one cost saving measure that an organization will take. If they even think that the job market is is teetering, they might just stop hiring and delay hiring. You can save money by delaying opening a position. And we, you can see here the light blue lines are 2023 and the dark blue lines are 2024. And so we've actually been asking this question since 2020 when we started our reimagined workplace survey series and we asked what cost cutting measures organizations were taking as a result of COVID. And so restricted hiring has always been the, the, the number one there. You can also see that you were saying to implement layoffs. We were very excited last year to see that that had gone down to 29%, but that went up very, very slightly to 2024. And then you can another way to change your job market mix perhaps is to reduce the hours worked. And so you can see that that really that went up but but almost negligibly. So it's stuff that we were glad to see that reducing employee benefits and. Reduce compensation were not happening in very many organizations. Certainly, and I think, you know, one reason that this, you know, sticks out to me is that, you know, to some degree some of the labor market story that we've seen over the last six months or so, I think really does hammer home that, you know, restriction or at least a limitation on too much expanded hiring, reduced work hours is, is actually something that we can see in the data. But layoffs is actually something that has not popped up to a great degree. And I'm, and I'm curious if you have any thoughts on really maybe the, you know, experience of the pandemic that we all had certainly of, of kind of human resources professionals had, you know, what is really the, the take away that they've had from the last couple years? And is it influencing, you know, maybe some of the things that we've seen in the last year? So clearly we saw pretty high layoffs at the beginning of COVID. And then we saw that though that that phenomena actually switched very quickly because we then started to see higher productivity and fewer layoffs. And so I think that that's a good number for us. I mean, because it does represent some of the layoffs in softer industries. Perhaps we saw some layoffs in Technology Black in the last year or so and consulting firms and perhaps we'll see something different this year when we ask. Just one question to follow up on layoffs. Has there been an increase in layoffs? Have you seen in the past? Oh, am I jumping overhead? Nope. I'm jumping ahead because you are. He has the data you. Are probably better at organizing this PowerPoint than I am. So this is actually something that we have not seen jump up. And if you see these on a couple charts, I have cut them off because COVID creates a you know one or two-month blip that just ruins everything. But I think really when you zoom in kind of past that data point, you can see that at least versus history again really layoffs and discharges as measured by this JOLTS Bureau of Labor Statistics survey says that we are again kind of only about 2015 or so levels. So I think really we have not seen necessarily the kind of deterioration. I would say that I think quite a few people feared with some of the numbers that we got in July and August and and some hairy and noisy reports a few months ago. It felt like all of the the biggest organizations were reporting layoffs, but not only those, really, really huge organizations. And you know, I think it's, it's worth mentioning at least you know that there's a number of announcements of layoffs here in the last week or so. So it's not to say that we are are necessarily out of the woods, but I think really our starting place going into the year is one of of relative strength at least you know, through some of this historical education. Great. Thank you. So while we're there, I think it's, you know, worthwhile to just jump around out of order and this is the hiring rate because I think this is also very similar to that that layoff story. And again, tied to maybe one of these themes, you know, of this is that are we kind of seeing this low hiring because we've kind of fully restaffed? Is it because some of the quits, you know, haven't been as quick as maybe some businesses expect? And I think really just seeing that dynamic together really hammers home how low this churn is at least an aggregate, you know, compared to history. But to go back to this one, you know, really our newest survey that that we are showing here is our C-Suite outlook for for 2025. And this is the human capital internal factor. It's really the priorities around which they are going to invest in their human capital. And I just wanted to know really your response to this and if anything strikes you kind of given the conversation that we're having. So we've definitely talked about attracting and retaining talent. We're going to talk a little bit more about retaining talent before we're done. I think we haven't spoken much about people productivity and I think that there are real hopes that AI will increase people productivity. I am not sure that it will decrease the size of our workforce as much as it will require reskilling. And so as we said, if my job is going away because of technology, the evolution of technology, then I need, I need new, new skills. And you can see there that it's, it's a, it's a tie between leadership capabilities and upskilling and reskilling talent. And I think that those are really very important. And, and one thing I want to at least address here, and I know you have, you know, at least a few things you want to say on, on remote and some of the flexibility. But you know, one at least, you know, thread to pull on of some of the layoff announcements is certainly at least, you know, a push to return to the office. And I think there's at least a bet at least in some part that's going to lead to some attrition. And you know, when you see downsizing on here, when you see some of those things and side by side with how businesses are are navigating kind of this workplace remotes, whether hybrid or what's the arrangement is, you know, how does that really factor in? So it was very interesting because in the C-Suite outlook in 2024, we found that hybrid was not an issue that the leaders were concerned about. And we think it's because basically most organizations had gotten to their happy medium, right? What like what worked for those organizations. But we have seen in recent times that there have been reports of there have been layoffs and there have been some people who've come out publicly and not so publicly and said, you know what, we're really asking people to return to the office as a as a soft layoff, soft quitting, as as a way to get people to leave. And again, that was sort of what prompted me to say earlier that I do expect we'll see another great resignation. And, and I know we are again jumping very out of order, but I do want to jump to this one because I think, you know, this really drives that point home. You know, whether it is really used as maybe a, you know, attrition event or, you know, strategy or as something, you know, maybe used in a more positive light of really driving, maybe more worker retention, greater engagement, access to labor pools that might be a little bit out of reach. Yes. And so on this slide, you can see that we asked the question of in the past six months, how has voluntary turnover changed for the following groups. And 16% of those organizations where their workers were fully on site said that their voluntary turnover had increased compared to only 8% for those organizations that had hybrid workforce or fully remote workers. So it was roughly twice people were quitting it, roughly twice the rate at those organizations that were fully on site. I think you know, as we get into some of the considerations in the new and shifting expectations of workers that I know human capital and and your team has done a lot of work on, I think that is one that I think we're going to have to you know, carry forward with us. So definitely that flexibility, I will say at least the job postings that we get to see in the data, the full remote has certainly declined quite drastically. But that hybrid, that flexibility, you know, that is really coming into play in some of these arrangements, I think that is at least more persistent. I would agree. One quick question, do you, do you see AI making up for the disaffected workforce like will this will, will this updates in AI, the changes that we're we're seeing in from AI will that help with with the workforce? You mean the disengage? Is that what you meant? I think it depends on how it's handled. I think there's a lot of organizations where they're not trying to reskill their workers, where they're happy if they quit and go someplace else and then they'll hire new employees. I also think that there are some organizations that are really trying hard to reskill their employees, make sure they're literate about AI and how AI can be used in their organization. Thank you. Where do you want to go next? I'm not even. Taking care of. It exactly so. Oh, all right. And terrific. We will jump to you and some of the indirect costs that might be, you know, being considered in some of the turnover discussions. So I was very excited to be asked to join you today. We've recently published 3 reports on retention in the Human Capital Center because we believe retention is an Evergreen issue. Not only does it show up every year at the top of human capital priorities for the C-Suite outlook, but it's an Evergreen issue because it's good, it's a good policy. And I'm we'll, we'll talk about why in just a minute. But you can see here we've, we've listed on this page seven different indirect costs of turnover. So what happens when your employees leave? Well, you have lost productivity because if someone quits and it takes you three months to hire their replacement, and then it takes that employee three months to learn how to do that job properly, that's six months worth of lost productivity. Second, you've got lost client relationships. If someone is been at your organization for a long time and they leave, they very well may take those client relationships with them. Lost institutional knowledge. This is a really big deal from the perspective of so many people leave an organization and they're the only ones who know how to do their job. You've got a weakened leadership pipeline. Again, if someone leaves because they're not being able to, if they're if they were being hoarded right and not able to move into another position, well, they'll go someplace else. If they want a promotion, well, that does weaken the leadership pipeline. You also then have an unsustainable increase in workload. What does that mean? Well, that means that if Jeannie quits, then Mitchell and I have to do extra work to make up for her work until she until she's replaced. You got lower employee engagement. That comes from the fact that as you watch people leave, all of a sudden, you know, the grass is always greener. But if your friends are going to wear the grass is greener, you might want to do that. And then you also have that lost investment in training, right? We you spend how many hours and weeks training people and then they could leave. So it's really so those are very much the indirect cost of turnover. And if we go to the next slide, you'll see that we have a little bit of a turnover calculator for you, which is a lot of times many organizations only think about the direct cost to replace an employee. And these numbers are based on some sample numbers. You can look for our cracking the code calculating the truer cost of employee turnover report to get where the we got those numbers from. But I think they're pretty representative throughout many organizations. And when someone quits and say it takes takes three months to hire someone else, then you are going to have an inner reduction. You don't have to pay them, you don't have to pay their benefits, you don't have to pay their salary. But one of the things that many organizations do not do is to look at those lost indirect costs. And specifically, the example here is if you don't track that lost productivity of six months, you're going to think, well, I'm just going to save money because the direct cost to hire someone new is less than the interim reduction in labor cost. So I can let people go. But no, if you can monetize any of those indirect costs we just talked about for this example, it's lost productivity, then you can very quickly see that the a truer cost of employee turnover per exiting employee is much, much higher than you were looking at in terms of the direct cost to replace. And and do you think that is, you know, obviously you are suggesting that, you know, maybe some are not as keen to some of of this, you know, really full comprehensive view of of what turnover looks like to their organizations. But certainly, I think there's a lot of this that they're more combating now maybe than ever, especially given the tight labor market, you know, really the again, kind of difficulty of job finding. So is this something that I think, you know, might be more important as we move forward? I definitely think it's more important as we move forward, but also I think the ability now exists to analyze the data. And so one of the things you're finding is a greater reliance on data analysis because more data is available. And as more data is available, you might actually want to try to monetize many of those under a cost. We just went. Over and then this way I mean then you're understanding like what does what what does it take then or to look at to think about is about retention. Why why is retention informant not just because you know they don't they don't want to do my work. OK, but I'm emailing. But the total value, right? That's what you're really getting AT. And this is an, this is pretty cool. I think this is, I mean, if I were all you, I would go and play with this. So but I mean, but then it's, it's true. You know, you're then you're understanding what it takes like, like is that, you know, is that what, what is the value of, of retention? And we're showing it here. So I'll just give you an example. At one point we did a survey, not here so completely other organization where we asked human capital leaders what the effect of greater turnover would be. Was it going to be increased profitability, about the same profitability or decreased and over 60% said increased profitability from this very reason because they only saw that direct cost and the interim reduction in labor costs and they weren't thinking about any of the other costs. And I at least, you know, I know we had had here favorite slide that I had ruined upfront, but I wanted to zoom in a little bit on on the quits and just kind of give it sent a sense of where we are, you know, given some of this retention and we are at least at a point that is lower than pre pandemic. So I think maybe some of this that we've seen is maybe pulling forward some of those that were liable or looking to switch jobs over this. But I think there is a question of, you know, how this goes in the future, because I think, you know, is to an economist, the lower this number goes really from here, I think we would see that as a little bit more of a weakening sign than we would like to see. OK, I'm conscious of the time here. Is there anything in particular you want me to cover? You know, I maybe this is a, a good summary and, and any of these slides, you know, help drive your points home, you know, what are again kind of those expectations and, and how should businesses really be thinking about that going into to 20.5? So we found four drivers of retention. They're right there across the top, compensation and benefits, workplace flexibility, leadership and culture and growth and development. And I, I mean, I think competitive compensation is a given, right? If, if, if you're not being paid a competitive salary, then your chances of keeping people or your chances of staying is very low. That being said, I do think that now flexibility is part of the equation for whether or not an employee will stay or go. And we actually asked in the last year or so, we asked employees beyond the competitive salary, what's the most important benefit. And workplace flexibility was the number one after a competitive salary. And so I do think that that has changed since COVID. And there you go right in this chart, exactly beyond a competitive salary, which of these are the most important to you now? And you know, you could argue that bonus is not very far behind flexibility, but flexibility didn't even exist as a benefit before COVID, really not. I don't know that we'd ever asked about it. So if you go back to this slide, I just wanted just to quickly talk about what does it mean employee, implicit expectations of employee. And so there's this concept of a psychological contract, which is basically the unwritten expectations that an employee has of an organization when they start a new job and the unwritten expectations that an employer has of an employee. And so you can see there we've listed what does the employee expect on the far left in the middle, what does the employer expect? And then what happens when the psychological contract is fulfilled? That should be a complete circle there. But the it's basically the employee feels valued by and values their employee employer, so they're less likely to leave. And so I at least just want to spend one minute wrapping up with with really some of the takeaways because I think that was was great as far as really the evolution that we've seen over the last several years of the dynamic between, you know, hiring, really the management of workplace culture, some of the benefits, some of workers expectations. And I think just generally I want to drive the point home from an economic standpoint that we are entering 2025 and in a relatively good place as far as the labor market is concerned. A lot of the things that we might have been paying attention to and a little concerned about over the last several months seemed as if they have eased and certainly looking a little bit stronger. And you know, I think there is really, you know, a question of some of the policy elements, of course, some of the economic uncertainty still with interest rates and some of the things that are giving businesses fits with some of their outlook. But I think everything that we've talked today is, is really underscoring of just exactly how much we are going to be seeing that retention, attracting employees, looking and identifying talent are going to remain key priorities going forward. Thank you so much for having me. It's been very fun to share our findings all. Right, I believe that I can start my clothing, whatever you want. Thank you again for all joining us today. It's been a pleasure. I've been Mitchell, I mean, like I hope to see you guys soon and hope. OK, So for closing, thank you all for the dear audience, please. Thank you for joining us today as well. There is a survey at the end of today's broadcast. 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