AI冲击下的白领危机:你准备好职业重塑了吗?概要:随着 AI 技术的快速普及,白领就业市场正悄然发生结构性变化。ADP 数据显示,需要高等教育背景的岗位增长最慢,而零售、餐饮、制造业等“传统蓝领”岗位需求激增,薪资涨幅甚至是白领的三倍。Josh Bersin 提出,白领专业人士需正视现实,主动进行职业重塑。这不仅仅是“学习新技能”,更是一次心态与方向的双重更新。经验与判断依然宝贵,但如果不能掌握AI工具和新方法,将难以在职场中保持竞争力。在这个快速变化的时代,你是否也思考过如何在5年、10年后仍保持职业优势?欢迎留言分享你正在学习的新技能,或者你对“终身职业”概念的看法。
以下是正文,最后附录英文原文:
在过去六个月里,我们已经看到大量迹象表明白领经济正处于衰退之中。员工停止跳槽,工资增长放缓,而研究表明,拥有大学学历的员工如今是市场上最不被需要的群体。
请看 ADP 的最新研究,数据显示:那些需要高等学历(“高度准备”的岗位)现在是增长最慢的职业类别。
? 大学学历的需求正在下降
好消息是,这也让低薪、教育程度较低的群体迎来了更多机会。
餐饮、医疗、零售和制造行业的就业需求强劲,工资增长速度甚至是白领工作的三倍。从整体来看,这对美国经济是利好的,因为它有助于缩小收入差距、提升生活水平。
但对于那些在大学、研究生教育甚至博士学位上投入了大量金钱和时间的人来说,我们是否正在变成“未来被边缘化的劳动力”?不幸的是,答案是是的。
那么,我们(以及雇主)该怎么办?
简单地说,“赶快学会使用 AI”,对吧?研究显示,使用 AI 的软件工程师生产效率在几周内提高了 26%。对于市场营销、研究、出版、设计等专业人士来说也同样有效。
但这种转变需要时间。
一次令人震惊的拍摄经历
我最近在伯克利为一门在线课程拍摄视频,当我走进拍摄场地时,我惊讶地看到 6 名资深的视频/音频人员,一个摆满灯光、摄像机和音响设备的房间,还有一名制片人、剪辑师以及其他专业人员,他们大多是 40 到 50 岁之间。这一天的拍摄团队成本估计至少在 5 万美元以上。
而实际上,很多内容完全可以在一个灯光良好的家庭环境中,用一部 iPhone 和几只好麦克风就搞定了。请一位熟悉剪辑的 YouTube 博主,也能出不错的效果。虽然质量可能不同,但我几乎整整一个下午都在注视着一群“旧模式的工作者”。
老一代的职业失落感
我还看过一篇关于 Gen-X(40-50岁)职场人的职业困境的文章,一位资深广告人感叹道:
“我花了 20 年研究广告和品牌,而现在一个 20 岁的网红比我更懂营销!”
这太真实了,真的。
接受现实:我们必须适应变化
我们这些曾经的顾问、分析师、工程师和专业人士,如今正在经历 1970 到 80 年代制造业工人曾面临的焦虑。我们也必须学会适应。
以下是我个人的一些建议:
1️⃣ 放下偏见,承认需要重塑自我
我曾经不断为自己 1970 年代接受的人文学科教育辩护,那段经历确实美好且重要。它教会我“看待世界的角度”,但并不等同于“实用技能”。
此后的职业生涯,我不断“自我重塑”:
80年代学电脑和IT
90年代学数据、市场和分析
2000年代了解互联网、创业、领导力
最近十年,深入研究 HR、管理、领导力和 AI
每个十年,我都重新开始,而“谦逊”是最大的动力。说实话,我曾以为 AI 只是 LISP 编程和一些疯狂的 UC Berkeley 计算机科学家搞出来的东西。直到三年前我才开始重新学习,从 YouTube 视频、播客、文章中补课。
无论你是财务、市场、工程还是设计专业人士,都需要这样做。曾经用滑尺的你,得接受 HP 计算器,再接受电子表格,现在要接受 AI。不学习,你也会被取代。
这很难受,但你任何时候都可以重新学习。请接受这个现实。
并且要明白,“资历”可能并不重要。在这个时代,你可能得重新成为一个“学徒”。
2️⃣ 不要抛弃你的智慧与判断力
尽管技术在变,但你的经验、判断力、教育背景仍然很重要。
比如一位资深的视频制作人,他也可以像年轻人一样掌握 iPhone 和 AI 工具,但他的经验、审美、品牌意识、语言控制力,是新人难以比拟的。
AI 可以让每个财务部门都变得“自动化”,但最终真正盈利的公司,一定是那些更懂成本结构、盈利产品和商业模式的。这些能力不是工具教你的,而是智慧与判断的积累。
3️⃣ 尝试新事物,失败就放弃
技术快速变化,很多人会选择“观望”,等那个“最牛”的工具出现再去学。
但那通常是失败之路。
例如 Galileo 这样的系统,也许已经比你现在用的工具好 10 倍了。即使它未来可能失败,也值得尝试。
1980 年代 Lotus 1-2-3 是一项伟大发明,首次实现了表格、文档和演示的整合。但最终它也被淘汰了。
但那些第一时间学会 Lotus 的人,很快又掌握了下一代工具。一位我在 IBM 的朋友,就是 Lotus 的第一位系统工程师,后来成了 Yahoo 亚洲区总经理,最后还当上了风投合伙人。
如果他当时只顾担心 Lotus 会不会失败,也不会有后面的辉煌。
4️⃣ 投资你的激情、能量和生命力
接受职业终结是痛苦的。有时候让人焦虑、迷茫、甚至抑郁。
我也经历过,花了多年学习的知识,如今一提就被人白眼:“你还活在过去。”我自己也常常这么做,可能跟年龄有关。
解决方法是:重启你的个人能量。
我花很多时间和年轻的 HR 领导、创业者、家庭成员相处,保持活力,吸收新鲜观念。
保持身体健康(散步、早起、健身)也非常重要。这些让你有精力去“重启”。
我每个周六早上都会录播客,这既是总结,也是前瞻。这种反思与更新,是重塑的重要部分。
5️⃣ 接受不确定性
最后一点也是最重要的。
当你的工作没了、或你需要重新开始时,就像跳下悬崖——你不知道落地在哪里。
但这是可以接受的。
如果你愿意更新技能、接触新世界,总会有新机会出现。就像那些失去工厂岗位的蓝领工人,后来转行做木工、包工、教师等等。
如今我们这些“白领被冲击者”,可能无法像从前那样清晰地规划未来。
但我敢保证,新机会一定存在。只要你准备好,未来一定充满希望。
Over the last six months we’ve seen much evidence of a white-collar recession. Employees have stopped changing jobs, wage growth is slowing, and research shows that workers with college degrees are the least “in-demand” in the market.
Note this new research by ADP which shows that jobs requiring advanced degrees (“extensive preparation”) are now the slowest-growing part of the job market.
The positive of this is that lower-wage, less educated workers are seeing opportunities.
Demand for food service, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing workers is strong, and in fact their wages are growing at 3-times the growth of white-collar jobs. And this is positive for the US economy, since it reduces income inequality and raises standards of living.
But for those of us who invested heavily in college, graduate school, and other advanced degrees, are we becoming the new “dislocated workforce” of the future? Unfortunately the answer is yes.
What Should We (and Employers) Do?
Well the simple answer is “get your act together with AI,” right? Studies show that software engineers who use AI are 26% more productive in weeks, and the same is true for those of us in marketing, research, publishing, and design.
But this shift takes time.
I recently spent an afternoon doing a video-shoot for an online course here in Berkeley, and when I arrived at the location I was astounded to see 6 senior video/audio people, an entire room of lighting, cameras, and audio equipment, and a producer, editor, and other professionals, each of whom were in their 40s or 50s. This massive team of video producers was probably costing the vendor $50,000 or more for the day.
I bet most of this could have been done in a nicely lighted home with an iPhone and some good microphones and a YouTube influencer who knows video editing. I’m not saying the quality would be the same, but I was literally staring at “legacy work” for hours as I sat painstakingly through the interview.
I recently read an article about the career frustrations of Gen-X workers (now in their 40s and 50s) and I had to smile. One of the professionals lamented “I spent 20 years learning about advertising and branding and now a 20-year old Influencer knows more about marketing than me!”
So true, so true.
Let me not belabor the issue, we just have to accept that things have changed. We, as the privileged consultants, analysts, engineers, and professionals in the world, face the same frightening fate which manufacturing workers felt in the 1970s and 1980s. And we have to learn to adapt.
Let me give you my advice.
1/ Let go of your bias and admit you have to reinvent yourself.
I spent a lot of my life cost-justifying the “liberal arts education” I received in the 1970s, and it was a wonderful and important experience. And I continue to maintain that learning about history, science, and philosophy is valuable over time. But what it taught me was “perspective,” not skills. Yes, I learned to read and write and think, but most of my career since has been about reinventing myself regularly.
In the 1980s I learned about computers and IT; in the 1990s I learned about data, marketing, and analytics; in the 2000s I learned about the internet, entrepreneurship, and leadership; and in the ensuing decades I’ve learned about HR, leadership, management, and now AI.
Every decade you have to reinvent yourself, and in every situation your humility is what drives you. Honestly I thought AI was all about LISP programming and the crazy UC Berkeley computer scientists I worked with until three years ago. I woke up like everyone else and “relearned” what I needed to know, watching YouTubes, reading, and listening to podcasts.
If you’re a finance person, marketing professional, engineer, or other white collar worker, you must do the same. Just because you found your slide-rule fun and trendy to use in the 1980s, you had to shift to the HP calculator, spreadsheet, and now AI to stay ahead. If you fail to reinvent, you too can find yourself “thrown aside” for a younger replacement.
This is a humbling experience, but you can learn at any age. Just accept that the world has changed.
And let me add this. Your “seniority” and “experience” may not really matter. In a world of career reinvention, you may have to be a bit of an apprentice again.
2/ Don’t let go of your wisdom, judgement, and maturity.
Despite the amazing skills of some, your experience, judgement, and education does matter. While you learn new tools and skills, it’s ok to fall back on everything you’ve learned before. And that means you, as a white-collar professional, are bigger and more than your “skills.”
Consider the videographer, for example. He or she may learn to use AI and the iPhone like a teenager, but they bring their experience with mood, branding, tone, and language. Your experience as a finance professional, an engineer, a designer, or a leader still matters.
Technical skills are actually the easiest to obtain – it’s the judgement, wisdom, and experience that create value.
Imagine, for example, if every finance department is fully “AI-enabled.” That doesn’t mean every company in an industry will be as profitable – it will be the companies that deeply understand their cost structure, their profitable products, and their business models that outperform. That stuff comes from wisdom, judgement, and experience.
3/ Try new things and throw them away if they fail.
When technology changes quickly there’s a tendency to “wait.” I’ll just wait until the world’s leading “design tool” or “finance tool” comes along, and then I’ll jump in and reskill myself.
Sorry, that’s a recipe for failure. New systems (like Galileo, for example), may be 10 times better than the ones you’ve used before, even though some may fail.
Lotus 1-2-3 was a miraculous invention in the 1980s and it taught us how to integrate spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. (Believe it or not, nobody even considered such integration in the 1980s.) But Lotus went the way of the dinosaur, and those skills were stranded.
The people who jumped into Lotus and learned how to use it quickly migrated to a new generation because they had been playing around. One of my friends at IBM in the 1980s left the mother ship to join Lotus as their very first systems engineer. Yes, he eventually left but later that he became the general manager of Yahoo Asia and then a successful venture capitalist.
If he had worried about Lotus’s future (it was a small company at the time), he never would have succeeded as he did.
I play with lots of new tools all the time, often just to see what’s going on in my domain. This is why I talk with almost every HR tech vendor that approaches us.
4/ Invest in your own passions, energy, and longevity.
It’s not easy to face the demise of your career. It’s painful, frightening, and sometimes depressing.
I spent so many years learning about my old stuff and when I bring it up people roll their eyes and think “this guy is living in the past.” I know I still do it and maybe it’s because of my age.
The solution is to reinvigorate your energy: personal and professional. I spend a lot of time with young HR leaders, young entrepreneurs, and my own young family members. It helps me stay current and excited about the future, because many of the things they do are amazing and unexpected.
Take care of your physical health (go for walks, get up early, go to the gym). This gives you the energy to “reinvent.” I spend every Saturday morning working on my podcasts, largely as a way to “think ahead” as well as summarize the week. These periods of personal reflection and exercise are vital as you reinvent yourself.
This morning I was watching a video of a job fair in Washington DC, watching dozens of middle-aged professionals who had been “DOGE’d” out there looking for work. One woman, a senior research professional in the FDA, was lamenting her need to reinvent her career at the middle of her life. I could see the sadness and fear in her eyes.
She made the comment, “I spent a few days sitting on the couch wondering how I could ever get up again,” but then went to a job fair and suddenly realized there was a huge market of new opportunities. The reporter asked her how she felt, and I could see her eyes flash as she realized “maybe this reinvention will be good for me.”
5/ Uncertainty is ok.
And that leads me to the final point. When your job is gone or you need to reinvent, it’s like jumping off a cliff. You don’t know where you’ll land.
Well that’s perfectly ok. In most cases if you build your skills and reach out into the new world, you will find something new that you never expected. Many blue collar workers who lost factory jobs became carpenters, contractors, teachers, or other careers. We, as the white collar disrupted, may not see the future as clearly as we have in the past.
I can guarantee, however, that new opportunities do await. Just strap in for a ride and positive things will happen ahead.
Additional Information
The best HR & People Analytics articles of January 20252025年伊始,人工智能(AI)和人力资源(HR)领域发生了一系列重大变革。DeepSeek的崛起是否标志着AI的“斯普特尼克时刻”尚未可知,但可以确定的是,AI正以前所未有的速度重塑产业、企业和工作方式。与此同时,混合办公、DEI(多元、公平与包容)等工作议题的政治化,在特朗普政府的回归下变得尤为突出,使得HR领导者面临更大挑战。
全球HR趋势与预测
世界经济论坛《未来工作报告2025》:未来五年内将新增1.7亿个新岗位,但9200万个工作将被取代,人才技能转型成为关键。
Spotify CPO Katarina Berg 提出HR应从“资源”转向“关系”,建立更具信任感和数据驱动的HR模式。
Gartner:AI第一的企业可能会因过度追求生产力而适得其反。
AI与人才分析
Josh Bersin的“AI超级员工”概念:AI将助力员工提高生产力、创造力,并推动企业文化变革。
Visier报告:欧洲64%企业高管 已获得员工数据分析权限,数据驱动HR决策成为主流。
员工体验与健康
麦肯锡健康研究院研究表明,关注员工健康的企业在业务表现上明显优于同行,健康与生产力紧密相关。
组织架构正在向技能为本的模式转型,人才战略已成为企业核心竞争力之一。
2025年,HR的核心任务将围绕AI技术、数据分析、员工福祉展开。面对变革,HR如何借力AI,实现企业与人才的双赢?欢迎讨论!?
To rework Lenin’s infamous observation, replacing weeks with months: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are months where decades happen” – this manifestly could be applied to January 2025. It’s still way too early to judge whether the sudden emergence of DeepSeek is AI's Sputnik moment, but it is safe to say that AI is already rapidly reshaping industries, companies and how we work. We are increasingly seeing the politicisation of work topics such as hybrid work and diversity, equity and inclusion programs – especially with the arrival of the new Trump administration in the United States. Let's just say that there’s a lot on the plate for chief people officers to contend with at the moment.
Perhaps this partly explains the slew of insightful resources in January, which has made compiling this month’s collection as challenging as it has been enjoyable. Selections include the unmissable new Future of Jobs report from the World Economic Forum, the big trends and opportunities to look out for in HR, AI and data science in the year ahead, and a powerful new study from the McKinsey Health Institute, which finds that companies that prioritise employee health and wellbeing enjoy better business outcomes than their peers - a ray of light in the darkness. There’s lots to enjoy and learn from.
This edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly is sponsored by our friends at Visier
In Visier's latest research report, "The State of People Analytics in European Organisations," we explore how European companies are leveraging data-driven strategies to achieve measurable business outcomes. With 64% of organisations now enabling senior executives to access people insights, the shift toward analytics-driven decision-making is clear.
Based on a recent study by The Josh Bersin Company in partnership with Visier Inc., the report highlights key people analytics adoption trends in Europe, the maturity journey of people analytics teams, and the tangible advantages experienced by organisations using advanced people analytics platforms. From adaptive workforce planning to meeting regulatory demands, this report is essential for HR leaders driving growth and innovation in 2025.
Download the new report to learn:
Key trends driving people analytics adoption and growth in Europe
Why strategic investments in people data are critical for the future of work
The measurable business benefits of advanced people analytics practices
To sponsor an edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly, and share your brand with more than 140,000 Data Driven HR Monthly subscribers, send an email to dgreen@zandel.org.
JANUARY ROAD REPORT
I’m typing this on the Eurostar on my way back from Paris, where Laurent Reich and his team hosted the first Peer Meeting of 2025 for member companies of the Insight222 People Analytics Program® at L'Oréal’s Global HQ. A huge thank you to Laurent, his team and all the speakers over the two days: Isabel Gomez Garcia de Soria, Theo Leccia, Ashish Pant, Tracy Villanueva, David Tregidgo, Luc-O D L, Kai Wehmeyer, and Julien Legret, as well as my Insight222 colleagues: Naomi Verghese, Jordan Pettman, Jane Bloomfield, David Bebb and James Garrett, and all those who attended what was an absorbing, collaborative and fun two days.
Attendees at the January 2025 Peer Meeting for member companies of the Insight222 People Analytics Program, hosted by L'Oreal in Paris
January also saw two webinars, the first with the Italian People Analytics community (thanks to Martha Curioni, Aizhan Tursunbayeva, PhD, GRP and Federico Bechini), and the second, where I moderated a panel with Anette Bohm, Dawn Klinghoffer and Ian Cook on The Strategic Outlook for People Analytics in 2025 (click to get access to the recording) – thanks to Barry Swales, People Analytics World and Visier Inc. for organising. Speaking of webinars…
Join me for an Insight222 webinar on February 5 to discover the key themes shaping People Analytics in 2025.
If you want to learn how AI, close alignment with people strategy, and data democratisation, are enabling Leading Companies to drive business value with people analytics, register for the Insight222 People Analytics Trends Webinar. The webinar, which will take place on February 5, will be hosted by me and feature Naomi Verghese and Madhura Chakrabarti, PhD unpack the findings from the recently published 5th annual People Analytics Trend study. You can register for the webinar here – or by clicking the image below.
Share the love!
Enjoy reading the collection of resources for January and, if you do, please share some data driven HR love with your colleagues and networks. Thanks to the many of you who liked, shared and/or commented on December’s compendium as well as the five-part 2024 retrospective (Part 1: Creating value through people analytics, Part 2: Orchestrating the future of work, Part 3: Enhancing employee experience and wellbeing, Part 4: Developing leaders, culture and inclusion, and Part 5: Building the strategic HR function.
If you enjoy a weekly dose of curated learning (and the Digital HR Leaders podcast), the Insight222 newsletter: Digital HR Leaders newsletter is usually published every other Tuesday – subscribe here – and read the latest edition.
2025 HR PREDICTIONS, TRENDS AND PRIORITIES
KATARINA BERG - 2025 HR Predictions: Looking Into the Crystal Ball
In 2025, it’s time for HR to double down on the Human and rethink the Resources.
Katarina Berg, Chief People Officer at Spotify, presents ten predictions organised under her clarion call for HR to focus on the Human and replace Resources with Relationships. Three that stand out are: Make Trust and Purpose Great Again (“Trust is the glue, and purpose is the fuel”), Data-Informed HR: Sherlock, Not Skynet (“Data is your detective, not your dictator.”), and Ethical AI: Keep It Human (“AI is like your overachieving intern – it’s great at automating the boring stuff, but it can’t replace human judgment”). These are, in my view, by far and away the best set of HR trends, predictions for HR in 2025. If you agree, I also recommend buying Katarina’s book, Bold: A New Era of Strategic HR, and subscribing to the Spotify HR Blog.
GARTNER – 9 Future of Work Trends for 2025 and HR Toolkit | JEANNE MEISTER - 10 HR Trends As Generative AI Expands In The 2025 Workplace | JOSH BERSIN - The Rise of the Superworker: Delivering On The Promise Of AI
There has been the usual flood of commentators offering their take on the trends, priorities, and opportunities for HR in 2025 – including my own 12 Opportunities for HR in 2025: Thriving People, Thriving Organisation. With so many to choose from, it can be a challenge to ‘separate the wheat from the chaff,’ but hopefully I have done this for readers here! As well as those I highlighted in the December edition from the likes of Steve Hunt, Andrew Spence, and Lars Schmidt – and the one above from Katarina Berg, here are three others I recommend diving into. (1) Gartner’s Emily Rose McRae presents nine future of work trends for 2025 (see FIG 1) with perhaps the standout being that “AI-first organizations will destroy productivity in their search for it.” (2) I always enjoy Jeanne C M.’s annual set of HR trends, and the 2025 edition is no exception. Jeanne frames her ten trends around her belief that 2025 will see a more organisations “moving from experimenting with generative AI to making it an essential part of their business planning process”, and that this will transform HR. Two of Jeanne’s predictions that standout are: a) AI Agents Will Proliferate And Become The Killer App In The AI Era, and b) Generative AI Will Transform the Future of HR Jobs, where she highlights 13 HR jobs of the future (see FIG 2). (3) Josh Bersin’s 2025 set of HR and leadership predictions is themed: The Rise of the Superworker: Delivering On The Promise Of AI. Josh describes a Superworker as “an individual who uses AI to dramatically enhance their productivity, performance, and creativity,” and a Superworker company as “an organization that embraces this transformation, building a culture of adaptability where people reinvent themselves.” The study breaks down four types of superworker (see FIG 3) as well as the five imperatives for 2025, including the need to redesign works, jobs, and organisational models.
FIG 1: 9 Future of Work trends for 2025 (Source: Gartner)
FIG 2: 13 HR jobs of the future (Source: Jeanne Meister)
FIG 3: The four dimensions of AI automation – and ‘superworker’ (Source: The Josh Bersin Company)
HYBRID, GENERATIVE AI AND THE FUTURE OF WORK
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM – Future of Jobs Report 2025
Analytical thinking remains the most sought after core skill among employers, with seven out of 10 companies considering it as essential
The fifth edition of the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report is, like its predecessors, an absolute treasure trove of data, insights, and visualisations. The 2025 report is based on data from more than 1,000 companies and over 14m workers, and will be a much referenced resource by researchers as well as workforce planning and people analytics practitioners. It offers a comprehensive analysis of the interconnected trends shaping the global labour market and explores what this will mean for the evolution of jobs and skills over the next five years. There are far too many highlights in the report to list them all here, but here are some standout ones for me: (1) By 2030, 170 million new jobs will emerge, yet 92 million will be displaced—a net increase of 78 million roles (see FIG 4), which not surprisingly means that (2) Skill gaps are considered the biggest barrier to business transformation, with 63% of employers identifying them as a major barrier over the 2025- 2030 period. (3) On average, workers can expect that two-fifths (39%) of their existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025-2030 period. (4) Analytical thinking remains the most sought after core skill among employers, with seven out of 10 companies considering it as essential in 2025 (see FIG 5). (5) Two demographic shifts are increasingly transforming global economies and labour markets: aging and declining working age populations, predominantly in higher income economies, and expanding working age populations, predominantly in lower-income economies. Kudos to the authors: Attilio Di Battista, Sam Grayling, Ximena Játiva, Till Alexander Leopold, Ricky LI, Shuvasish Sharma, and Saadia Zahidi. If you only read one of the resources I've selected this month, read this.
FIG 4: Total job growth and loss 2025-2030 (Source: World Economic Forum)
FIG 5: Top sought after skills by employers in 2025 (Source: World Economic Forum)
RAVIN JESUTHASAN, RUPAL KANTARIA, AND SIMON LUONG - Workforce Transformation In The AI Era
Leaders need new talent strategies as AI and demographic changes create the need for agile, skills-based organizations.
In their article, Ravin Jesuthasan, CFA, FRSA, Rupal Sachdev Kantaria, and Simon Luong explain how with several workforce megatrends converging successful CEOs are being transformed into talent architects, with workforce strategy becoming as important to companies as financial strategy (see FIG 6). This is expanding the role of the chief people officer, whose mandates at some companies have expanded to include strategy, transformation and operations. All this, argue the authors, is leading to a transformation of work and the human experience of work across three critical dimensions: (1) Redesigning work for a truly agile operating model. (2) Skills as the currency (see FIG 7). (3) Adaptive leadership. The report is part of a series, The State of Our World 2025, compiled by the Oliver Wyman Forum, which has been designed to help global leaders navigate what is a turbulent and exhilarating environment. These include: The Revenge of Geopolitics, Solving the Demographic Dilemma, and Unlocking the Value of AI. If you want to know what's on your CEO's mind, read this.
FIG 6: Talent strategy is leading board agendas (Source: Oliver Wyman Forum)
FIG 7: The need to rethink skills as currency (Source: Oliver Wyman Forum)
PEOPLE ANALYTICS
TOM DAVENPORT AND RANDY BEAN - Five Trends in AI and Data Science for 2025
Our long-term prediction is that generative AI alone is not enough to make organizations and cultures data-driven.
The 2024 edition of this article, by Tom Davenport and Randy Bean was MIT Sloan Management Review’s most-read article of last year, and the 2025 version looks set to similarly popular. The five trends outlined in the article are: (1) Leaders will grapple with both the promise and hype around agentic AI. (2) The time has come to measure results from generative AI experiments. (3) Reality about data-driven culture sets in. (Only 37% of companies surveyed said they work in a data- and AI-driven organisation, and 33% said they have a data- and AI-driven culture. 92% believe that cultural and change management challenges are the primary barrier to becoming data- and AI-driven). (4) Unstructured data is important again. (5) Who should run data and AI? Expect continued struggle.
RICHARD ROSENOW – People Analytics Conferences: 2025
By focusing on community building, providing diverse and practical content, and addressing accessibility concerns, conferences can better serve the evolving needs of People Analytics professionals.
A terrific resource compiled by Richard Rosenow on the top events scheduled for 2025, which was based on a survey of people analytics professionals. It lists the top events that practitioner are attending (including People Analytics World, TALREOS and Wharton People Analytics), those events that are top of the wishlist, which I’m proud to see includes the Insight222 Global Executive Retreat, plus insights on what people enjoy and need from these events.
SCOTT REIDA - The Augmented Workforce: Redefining Roles and Hierarchies in the Age of GenAI | MATTHEW HAMILTON - Three mental blocking & tackling drills to recenter your People Analytics efforts | CAITLIN VAN MIL - SHAP Values | AMIT MOHINDRA – Who is the Human in the Loop?
In each edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly, I feature a collection of articles by current and recent people analytics leaders. These are intended to act as a spur and inspiration to the field. Four are highlighted in this month’s edition. (1) Scott Reida, a workforce strategist at AWS, walks through a workforce scenario from now to 2035 to demonstrate year-on-year how tasks for data scientists will be automated through AI (see FIG 8) allowing human workers to focus on more strategic work with role-levels consolidated and cost savings realised. (2) I’ve always enjoyed Matthew Hamilton’s thoughtful musings, and in this article, he walks through three mindsets for people analytics professionals to adopt including: embracing the power of visual analytics. Thanks too to Matthew for his kind mention of the Data Driven HR Monthly in his article. (3) Caitlin van Mil launches her Everything Data Science microblog series with a piece that breaks down SHAP values. (4) Amit Mohindra outlines how The “human-in-the-loop” imperative presents an opportunity for HR to elevate its role in leading their organisation’s adoption of AI:
Organizations do not adopt AI; individuals do. HR facilitates organizational change through its influence on leadership, culture, and learning. The chief people officer is in a better position to spearhead AI adoption initiatives than the chief technology officer.
FIG 8: Source – Scott Reida
THE EVOLUTION OF HR, LEARNING, AND DATA DRIVEN CULTURE
KEVIN COX, SUSAN PODLOGAR, AND KATIE BURKE - Less is More: The Transformative Power of Discarding Outdated HR Concepts
If HR sees technology as someone else’s work, HR will have missed a huge opportunity. To drive these discussions, rather than follow others, HR leaders should be students of technology and how it can influence work, strategy, and culture.
As this excellent article in People + Strategy begins, the job of the chief people officer is increasingly complex with their C-suite peers often turning to them to solve the new challenges that have made leadership so hard in this turbulent decade. Instead of more, three experienced chief people officers, who have recently stepped down from their roles, provide some thoughts on what HR should be spending less time on moving forward. One example from each: (1) Kevin Cox highlights culture surveys, and advocates how AI can create better assessments by analysing more sources. (2) Susan Podlogar (she/her) calls for the setting aside of low-value HR work to focus instead on high-value transformation work including being at the forefront of how technology is integrated (see quote). (3) Katie Burke writes how HR needs to be better at connecting employee experience and happiness to impact, productivity and business results.
DAVE ULRICH, REBECCA RAY, AND ALAN TODD - Next Step in GenAI for Human Resources: Proliferation vs. Prioritization
Proliferation offers an abundance of innovative ideas but can lead to being overwhelmed and not having a clear idea about where to invest. Prioritization filters the opportunities into priorities that deliver value.
With the proliferation of GenAI in the HR market (estimated at $3.25 billion USD in 2023 and projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 24.8 percent from 2024 to 2030), how can HR leader prioritise the investments in GenAI apps that will provide the biggest benefit to their stakeholders and organisations? That is the question tackled by Dave Ulrich, Rebecca Ray, and Alan Todd in their article, where they provide four concrete recommendations: (1) Define desired stakeholder and outcome (“focus on impact rather than activity”). (2) Rely on an integrated framework to organise apps (see FIG 9). (3) Determine which GenAI apps best deliver stakeholder value. (4) Build a guidance system on existing HCM platforms.
FIG 9: Human Capability Framework (Source: Dave Ulrich)
WORKFORCE PLANNING, ORG DESIGN, AND SKILLS-BASED ORGANISATIONS
MARC RAMOS - 6 Part Series: Tasks Versus Skills - Squaring the Circle of Work with AI - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
The world of work is changing rapidly, and the skills we need to succeed are evolving faster than ever before. While a strong focus on skills development is crucial, many organizations find that a sole skills-based approach is insufficient. There's a missing piece of the puzzle: tasks. Tasks are the building blocks of work, and understanding how they connect with skills is essential for developing effective workforce strategies, particularly as AI becomes increasingly integrated into our workflows.
As I’ve been sharing broadly, HR, Talent and Learning & Development teams have increasingly had a laser focus on skill development, upskilling/reskilling, Skill-Based Organisations, and most recently gaining the right AI skills. Marc Ramos takes a slightly different approach: “A dilemma regards an over-reliance on a skills-first mindset as a somewhat dominant charter. What’s missing is acknowledging the proportional value of tasks, quantifiable tasks with the complementary value of skills, qualified skills.” AI and AI tooling is at the heart of this provocative new series; that is, how to address the combination of Tasks + Skills + AI. Part 1 and Part 2 re-emphasise the critical value of tasks and provide 7 Playbook Takeaways. The remaining “What-If” sections share forward-looking AI-centric scenarios: Let Learning Breathe, A Task Intelligence Control Room, Employee Experience as an AI Product, and Ramos has also created an Instructional Quality AI Agent using OpenAI’s API Models. Marc has also generously bundled all of this into a free eBook.
FIG 10: Control Room mock up or heatmap of tasks not accomplished and negative impacts to sales quotas and related skills (Source: Marc Ramos)
EMPLOYEE LISTENING, EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE, AND EMPLOYEE WELLBEING
BARBARA JEFFERY, BROOKE WEDDLE, JACQUELINE BRASSEY, AND SHAIL THAKER - Thriving workplaces: How employers can improve productivity and change lives
By making work a place that improves health, organizations can build a strong, productive, and engaged workforce and release greater individual and organizational potential.
A landmark new report from the McKinsey Health Institute in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, which has the headline finding that enhanced employee health and well-being could generate up to $11.7 trillion in global economic value. The report, authored by Barbara Jeffery, Brooke Weddle, Jacqui Brassey, PhD, MA, MAfN ?️ (née Schouten), and Shail Thaker, addresses three key questions: (1) Why prioritise workplace health? (e.g. financial return, improvements in productivity, engagement and retention, lower healthcare costs and absenteeism, enabling a more resilient and adaptive workforce – see FIG 11). (2) What is the current state of workplace health? (with a survey of 30,000 employees worldwide finding only 57% reported good holistic health). (3) How can organisations measure workforce health and develop an action plan? (how to build the investment case and company-specific KPIs – see FIG 12, case studies from the likes of Novo Nordisk, Swiss Re, and Novartis, and the role of people analytics including a case study from Experian. Finally, guidance is provided on six principles organisations can follow to get started: (i) understand the baseline health status of employees and the value at stake, (ii) develop initiatives for a sustainable healthy workforce, (iii) pilot interventions to test and learn, (iv) track three to five metrics to measure success, (v) ensure leadership commitment and sponsorship, and (vi) embed employee health into organisational culture. A tour de force.
FIG 11: Workplaces with high well-being outperform other stock market indexes (Source: McKinsey)
FIG 12: KPIs to build the investment case for employee wellbeing (Source: McKinsey)
CARLIJN POPELIER AND RUUD RIKHOF – The (de)Humanized Workforce: Job Deconstruction - to what extent is the future workforce at risk of being further dehumanized?
HR must take the lead in understanding AI’s impact and guide conversations about how these benefits are distributed. By doing so, we can keep the human experience at the center of this transformation.
The cornerstone of this thoughtful paper from Carlijn Popelier and Ruud Rikhof is the concept of Humanized Growth, which they describe as “integrating the interests of employees, consumers, local communities, government, the planet, and broader humanity.” The paper takes a deep dive into the (un)intended consequences of new work arrangements and how they impact ‘humans’ and provides some helpful recommendations to chief people officers and senior leaders. Three of these are: (1) Leave HR service delivery to others and set expectations for employee experience. (2) Have a point of view on how AI impacts the workplace and how the benefits of productivity improvements are distributed. (3) Lead the transition to a skill-based approach. The authors also provide a primer on deconstructing jobs, including a helpful visualisation of the hopeful and cynical view of implementing this approach (see FIG 13). A highly recommended read.
FIG 13: The ‘hopeful’ and ‘cynical’ view of deconstructing jobs (Source: Popelier and Rikhof)
LEADERSHIP, CULTURE, AND LEARNING
JONATHAN HUGHES, JESSICA WADD, AND ASHLEY HETRICK - Why Influence Is a Two-Way Street
Managers achieve better outcomes when they prioritize collaborative decision-making over powers of persuasion
The ability to wield influence is important for meeting team and individual goals in highly matrixed organizations, but research, presented by Jonathan Hughes, Jessica Wadd, and Ashley Hetrick finds there is too much of an emphasis on selling one's own point of view (see FIG 14). The authors explain how this can hamstring good decision-making and argue for a collaborative model of influence where the best decision for the organisation is the primary goal. They also share five research-based strategies on how managers can steer culture toward two-way influence. (1) Expand job definitions and responsibilities so that they provide guidelines for cross-functional engagement. (2) Replace traditional influence training with training focused on collaborative influence. (3) Engage in cross-functional goal setting and alignment of incentives. (4) Rethink criteria for promotions to management and executive leadership. (5) Model behaviours of collaborative influence.
FIG 14: How Influence Is Wielded in Organizations (Source: Hughes et al)
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION AND BELONGING
TORIN ELLIS - Reducing Bias in HR using Artificial Intelligence
Only 27% of companies are using AI to address bias despite AI’s potential to automate processes and minimize personal and unreasoned judgment.
This research study provides a helpful primer on how the thoughtful application of AI can remove bias from HR processes such as hiring, promotion and performance management. The report, which is a collaboration between Torin Ellis as well as Madeline Laurano and Kyle Lagunas of Aptitude Research for plum, covers: (1) How AI impacts HR processes and its role in either perpetuating or eliminating unconscious bias. (2) How to implement AI tools to foster DEIB values. (3) Examples where AI has been successfully employed to neutralise bias and promote fairness in HR practices.
FIG 15: Actions companies are taking to reduce bias (Source: Torin Ellis, Aptitude Research)
LILY ZHENG – What Comes After DEI?
Instead of the performative, individual-centered, isolated, and zero-sum methods of the current mainstream approach, DEI work must evolve to become outcomes-based, systems-focused, coalition-driven, and win-win.
A timely and thoughtful article by Lily Zheng, which outlines how their new framework built around fairness, access, inclusion, and representation can succeed where Lily believes that DEI has failed. As Lily explains, (1) Fairness is when all people are set up for success and protected against discrimination. (2) Access is when all people can fully participate in a product, service, experience, or physical environment. )3) Inclusion is when all people feel respected, valued, and safe for who they are. (4) Representation is when all people feel their needs are advocated for by those who represent them.
HR TECH VOICES
Much of the innovation in the field continues to be driven by the vendor community, and I’ve picked out a few resources from January that I recommend readers delve into:
FRESIA JACKSON AND HEATHER WALKER - The biggest lie continues: The impact of leaders vs. managers – Fresia Jackson and Heather Rose Walker, PhD mine Culture Amp’s extensive data to bust the oft-repeated myth that “People don’t quit companies; they quit managers.’ The findings they do uncover include: (1) Career opportunities, leadership, and company confidence drives employee commitment, and; (2) Leader’s impact on engagement has grown since 2020 (see FIG 16).
FIG 16: Leadership’s impact on employee engagement has grown since 2020 (Source: Culture Amp)
LIGHTCAST – The Speed of Skill Change – A new report from Lightcast, which analyses the extent of skills disruption in US job postings, finds that the average job has seen one-third of its skills change from 2021 to 2024. The report identifies three big themes: (1) Adapting to Artificial Intelligence, (2) The Growth of Green Skills, and (3) Cybersecurity skills Continue Climbing, and provides workforce planning tips for each.
FRANCISCO MARIN - Why Now is the Time for Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to Go Mainstream – Advancing social capital is one my 12 Opportunities for HR in 2025, and in his article, Francisco Marin of Cognitive Talent Solutions, looks at the historical evolution of the field and writes why the time is now for ONA.
FIG 17: The historical evolution of ONA (Source: Cognitive Talent Solutions)
JOHN GUY - Skills-Powered – Our maturity framework for getting the right skills – John Guy outlines the skills-powered maturity framework that developed with Simply Get Results’s customers (see FIG 18).
FIG 18: Skills-powered maturity framework (Source: Simply)
PHILIP ARKCOLL - How to Evaluate and Defend Your Flex Work Strategy – This is a terrific resource from Philip Arkcoll and the team at Worklytics. It highlights 15 common issues they are seeing in their research into flexible working and the metrics they’re using to help organizations identify them. These include: (1) Are people maintaining their networks or becoming isolated? (2) Is your organization becoming more siloed? (3) Do you have enough overlap on distributed teams? (see FIG 19).
FIG 19: Team overlap based on working hours (Source: Worklytics)
PODCASTS OF THE MONTH
In another month of high-quality podcasts, I’ve selected five gems for your aural pleasure: (you can also check out the latest episodes of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast – see ‘From My Desk’ below):
JEREMY SHAPIRO - People Analytics Trends for 2025 & Revisiting Competing on Talent Analytics – Jeremy Shapiro joins Cole Napper and Scott Hines, PhD on the Directionally Correct podcast for a lively and insightful discussion on the evolution of the field, reflections on Jeremy’s seminal 2010 HBR article, Competing on Talent Analytics, and a review of 2025 predictions for people analytics from Jeremy, Cole and Scott, as well as research from RedThread, Bersin, and Insight222.
BRANDON ROBERTS - The future of AI in the workforce: Lessons from ServiceNow’s four-point strategic journey – Brandon Roberts, Head of People Analytics and AI at ServiceNow, joins host Kyle Forrest on the Capital H Podcast to dive into the company's transformative journey with AI. He shares a four-point plan guiding their AI strategy, covering key areas like AI operating models, data and tech infrastructure, the right investments and talent, and workforce enablement.
STACEY HARRIS - The Future of HR – Stacey Harris from Sapient Insights Group joins hosts Stacia Sherman Garr and Dani Johnson on RedThread Research’s Workplace Stories to discuss the HR landscape as we enter 2025. They have an absorbing conversation on what ‘engagement’ truly means, the limitations of current AI applications, and why a company’s culture—not its tech—might be the biggest obstacle to success in 2025
AMIT MOHINDRA – Strategic Workforce Planning – Amit Mohindra joins Nick Kennedy on SWP – The Strategic Workforce Planning Podcast, to talk all things SWP and people analytics.
ELLEN HENDRIKSEN – Dealing with Perfectionism – In a fascinating episode of HBR IdeaCast, psychologist Ellen Hendriksen speaks with Curt Nickisch about her new book, How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists, where perfectionism comes from and how it affects teams.
VIDEO OF THE MONTH
BEN WABER, GEORGE LAROCQUE, AND CLIFF JURKIEWICZ – Helping Employees Gain Valuable AI Skills
In this insightful panel discussion on Nasdaq, Ben Waber, George LaRocque and Cliff Jurkiewicz of Phenom join host Jill Malandrino to discuss how to strike a balance that helps employees gain valuable AI skills while simultaneously giving the organization a competitive edge.
BOOKS OF THE MONTH
AIZHAN TURSUNBAYEVA - Augmenting Human Resource Management with Artificial Intelligence | MARTIN R. EDWARDS, KIRSTEN EDWARDS, AND DAISUNG JANG - Using R in HR Analytics: A Practical Guide to Analysing People Data
There are two book recommendations this month. First, Aizhan Tursunbayeva, PhD, GRP’s book explores human resource management technologies across operational, relational, and transformational elements. It includes an analysis of vendor value propositions, and pays significant attention to the ethical implications of AI and how they can be addressed through Responsible AI principles. The second book, by Martin Edwards, Kirsten Edwards, and Daisung Jang is designed to help readers learn how to use R and R Studio to analyse HR data and deliver insights that drive workforce and business performance. The authors also cover data privacy and the ethical considerations of using people data. Two excellent and complementary reads.
RESEARCH REPORT OF THE MONTH
SCOTT HINES, JUSTIN O’NEAL, CHRIS HUNYH, AND JOHN GOLDEN - An alternative path to unlocking high-potential talent: Universal models beware
In this paper for the Consulting Psychology Journal, Scott Hines, PhD, Justin O'Neal, Ph.D. Chris Hunyh, and John Golden, Ph.D., investigate the intricacies of identifying high-potential talent within organisations overcoming the challenges of using a single defined measure of potential. As John Golden highlights here, insights from the paper include: (1) Redefining Potential: The article challenges traditional notions of potential, advocating for a behavioural framework that aligns with strategically critical roles: “It’s not just about climbing the ladder; it’s about finding the right fit for every rung.” (2) Innovative Methodologies: By integrating multiple theoretical constructs and utilising behavioural ratings, this study paves the way for predicting employee readiness for future growth opportunities. For those unable to access the report, have a listen to this podcast on the study.
BONUS RESOURCES
Some bonus resources to also consume this month:
Hung Lee published his annual set of forecasts for recruitment and HR technology, which are always worth checking out and cover much, much more than recruiting: See Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.
In a recent edition of his excellent Workforce Futurist newsletter, Andrew Spence unveils 35 New AI Roles to Watch Out For.
Sharna Wiblen’s article in MIT Sloan Management Review, Who’s Making Your Talent Decisions? explores how technology—algorithms, vendors, and systems—shapes talent decisions to a much greater extent than many of us realise.
Stacia Sherman Garr provides a helpful primer on Understanding the Impact of Recent DEI Executive Orders.
Speaking of DEI, Bruce Daisley does an admirable takedown of Mark Zuckerberg’s cowardly decision to roll back on DEI at Meta: Zuckerberg cancelling DEI is a grim day for work.
Finally, Nathan Warren’s column on Exponential View, outlines five contrarian ideas that may just change your perspective—and your strategy—on AI at work. These include: You're likely only scratching the surface – with organisations actually needing to retool entire processes around AI (see FIG 20).
FIG 20: The shift from assistants to agents will be dramatic (Source: Exponential View)
FROM MY DESK
January proved to be a productive month for writing as well as the first three episodes of Series 44 of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, sponsored by our friends at TalentNeuron (thanks to John Lynch, David Wilkins, Maureen McGinness, and the TalentNeuron team).
DAVID GREEN – The Best HR and People Analytics Articles of 2024 – My 11th annual retrospective of the best articles of the year came in five instalments: Part 1: Creating value through people analytics, Part 2: Orchestrating the future of work, Part 3: Enhancing employee experience and wellbeing, Part 4: Developing leaders, culture and inclusion, and Part 5: Building the strategic HR function. Enjoy!
DAVID GREEN - How can organisations leverage skills intelligence to make more informed decisions? – A wrap-up of Series 43 of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, which featured Sandra Loughlin, PhD, Keith Sonderling, Mikaël Wornoo?, Melissa Daimler, and Christophe Cabrera , and featured the common question: How can organisations leverage skills intelligence to make more informed decisions?
STACIA GARR AND DAVE ULRICH - How HR Can Create Stakeholder Value and Drive Organisational Growth in 2025 – In our traditional opening to the year at the Digital HR Leaders podcast, I was joined by Stacia Sherman Garr and Dave Ulrich for a conversation on the key priorities and opportunities in 2025.
PRASAD SETTY - How Will AI Shape the Future of People Analytics? – Having established and led the fabled people analytics team at Google, Prasad Setty has an abundance of knowledge and wisdom to share about people analytics. We discuss learnings from his time at Google, current challenges in the field, and how AI is shaping the future of people analytics.
DAVID WILKINS - How to Turn Strategic Workforce Planning Into Impactful Action – David Wilkins joins me to share TalentNeuron’s findings on the key priorities for organisations when it comes to SWP. This shapes our conversation on what it really takes to master Strategic Workforce Planning.
LOOKING FOR A NEW ROLE IN PEOPLE ANALYTICS OR HR TECH?
I’d like to highlight once again the wonderful resource created by Richard Rosenow and the One Model team of open roles in people analytics and HR technology, which now numbers over 600 roles. You can also read Richard’s latest newsletter related to this here.
THANK YOU
Nick Lynn for including the Data Driven HR Monthly in his list of recommended newsletters alongside some of my personal favourites by the likes of Bruce Daisley (Make Work Better), Rachel Botsman (Rethink with Rachel), and Serena H. Huang, Ph.D. (From Data to Action).
Gianni Giacomelli for also recommending the Data Driven HR Monthly in his 2025 New Years Resolution: Only Read Good Newsletters post, which included another of my favourites from Thomas Otter (Work in Progress).
Mike Irvine for including my 12 Opportunities for HR in 2025 article in a recent edition of LinkedIn’s The Must-Read Articles for Talent Professionals This Week.
Rick Leunisse for including me in this ‘General HR Tech Influencers’ category in his list of LinkedIn Influencers to follow. Rick also included categories for Workday Subject Matter Experts, Workday Employees, and HRIS Innovators and Thought Leaders.
Offbeat for including me as one of 50 learning professionals to keep an eye on in 2025. I can happily return the favour by highly recommending Offbeat’s weekly newsletter, edited by Lavinia Mehedințu, which is one I read every week: Where L&Ds Always Learn.
Thanks to Matt Manners and the Inspiring Workplaces team for including me as one of The Top 101 Global Employee Engagement & Experience Influencers 2025
Kyle Forrest for generously including me in two posts. Firstly, in a list of six 2025 set of predictions and trends for the world of work, and then secondly, in his list of non-Deloitte sources to obtain insights in the HumanCapital and HR ecosystem.
MagnusHR for including Excellence in People Analytics as one of its five reading recommendations for 2025.
Jeroen Naudts for including me in his list of 10 People Analytics Experts to Follow.
Kalpana Joshi for including me in her list of five top HR influencers on LinkedIn to follow in the HR and people management space.
Teamflect for including the Digital HR Leaders podcast at number 5 in its list of 15 Podcasts for HR Professionals.
Thinkers360 for including the Digital HR Leaders podcast in its article: 125 Podcasts from You Should Listen To in 2025.
Aurélie Crégut for citing the Digital HR Leaders podcast episode with Yves Van Durme, in her excellent post on Structuring Data for Success: A Guide for HR Teams.
Phil Kirschner for including me in his group of inspiring thought leaders who introduce and amplify new perspectives on the future of work.
Olimpiusz Papiez for posting another wonderful set of learnings from an episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, this time the one with Stacia Garr and Dave Ulrich: How HR Can Create Stakeholder Value and Drive Organisational Growth in 2025.
Finally, a huge thank you to the following people who either shared the December edition of Data Driven HR Monthly and/or posted about the Digital HR Leaders podcast, conferences or other content. It's much appreciated: Ollie Henderson, Paola Alfaro Alpízar, Sarah White, Mila Pascual-Nodusso, Robin Haag, Elliott King, Ryan Wong, Mark Woodhouse, Hakan Sahin, Veronika Birkheim, Gareth Flynn, Thomas Kohler, Monika Manova, Alice Reinhold, Javier Calzolari, Nicolas Quadrelli, Bastiaan Starink, Dan George, Jaqueline Oliveira-Cella, Alessandro Cosentino, Kouros Behzad, Diane Gherson, Ihuaku Ugwu, Amardeep Singh, MBA, Ian Grant FCIPD, Kevin Metherell, Francisca Solano Beneitez, Sanja Licina, Ph.D., Laura Oh, PhD, Swechha Mohapatra (IHRP-SP, SHRM-SCP, CIPD), Irada Sadykhova, Ian OKeefe, Anna A. Tavis, PhD, Bengi Bozdag, Monica Sirbu, Shonna Waters, PhD, Adam Tombor (Wojciechowski), Sachin Sangade, Robin Kane, Jason Saltzman, Johnatan Moreno, Roshaunda Green, MBA, CDSP, Phenom Certified Recruiter, Jaap Veldkamp, Patrick Coolen, José Valdivieso, Danielle Farrell, MA, Nevena B., Menna Shehab ElDin, David Simmonds FCIPD, Debbie Harrison, Meghan M. Biro, Kathleen Kruse, John Healy, Greg Pryor, Daria Manoilenko, Samir Murgude , SPHR®, SHRM-SCP, IHRP-SP, Catriona Lindsay, Mark North, Maria Alice Jovinski, Zohaib Azhar, Michael Arena, Michelle Lee ?, Malgorzata Langlois, Erin Spencer, Timo Tischer, Richard Bretzger, Nick Hudgell, Evan Franz, MBA, Darshana D., Johannes Sundlo, Luis Maria Cravino, Sergio Garcia Mora, Graham Tollit, Ifraan Karim, John Gunawan, Jay Chang, Hanadi El Sayyed, Alexis Baker, Neil Vyner, Giovanna Constant, Marcela Mury, Monika Buzasy, Lewis Garrad, Tina Peeters, PhD, Lewis Garrad, Abhilash Bodanapu, Kouros Behzad, Dan Lapporte, Ying Li, Stephanie Andel, PhD, Kris Saling, Caitie Jacobson Mikulis, Roxanne Bisby Davis, Joonghak Lee, Delia Majarín, Emanuele Magrone, Claire Masson, Lucie Vottova, Gawain Wang, Sophia Huang, Ed.D., Jacob Nielsen, Søren Kold, Samy Ben Said, Ralf Buechsenschuss, Gal Mozes, PhD, Alexis Fink, Dave Fineman, Danielle Bushen, Peter Ryan, Elizabeth Esarove, Ken Clar, Erik Otteson, Mariami Lolashvili, Craig Starbuck, PhD, Maria Ursu, Mattijs Mol, Toon van der Veer, Arne-Christian Van Der Tang,
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Green ?? is a globally respected author, speaker, conference chair, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. As Managing Partner and Executive Director at Insight222, he has overall responsibility for the delivery of the Insight222 People Analytics Program, which supports the advancement of people analytics in over 100 global organisations. Prior to co-founding Insight222, David accumulated over 20 years experience in the human resources and people analytics fields, including as Global Director of People Analytics Solutions at IBM. As such, David has extensive experience in helping organisations increase value, impact and focus from the wise and ethical use of people analytics. David also hosts the Digital HR Leaders Podcast and is an instructor for Insight222's myHRfuture Academy. His book, co-authored with Jonathan Ferrar, Excellence in People Analytics: How to use Workforce Data to Create Business Value was published in the summer of 2021.
MEET ME AT THESE EVENTS
I'll be speaking about people analytics, the future of work, and data driven HR at a number of upcoming events in early 2025:
February 26-27 - People Analytics World, Zürich
March 13 - HiBob Heartcore HR LIVE, London
March 19 - Workhuman Live Forum, London
April 10-11 - Wharton People Analytics Conference, Philadelphia
April 29-30 - People Analytics World, London
May 6-8 - UNLEASH America, Las Vegas
June 4-6 - TALREOS (Talent Analytics Leadership Roundtable Economic Mobility Summit), Chicago
July 31 - August 1 - People Matters TechHR India 2025, Delhi
October 21-22 - UNLEASH World, Paris
More events will be added as they are confirmed.
Josh Bersin
2025年02月02日
Josh Bersin
AI Agents, The New Workforce We’re Not Quite Ready For (Agentic AI)Josh Bersin 刚刚谈到:AI代理人的兴起标志着工作方式的一次革命。这些AI代理人不仅仅是工具,而是未来的团队成员。从开发培训课程到管理招聘过程,AI代理人的能力正被企业系统广泛利用。科技领袖和投资者对此展现出了极大的兴趣和投资。企业需要为这种变革做好准备,包括安全性和管理实践的更新。
我们一起来看下,英文原文附录链接在最后!
AI智能体,新一代劳动力,我们还没有做好准备
智能体正在到来,智能体正在到来。
如果你关注AI技术市场,你就会知道,最近有很多关于“智能体AI”的讨论。换句话说,我们的AI助手开始拥有更多自主能力。不再只是回答问题和写诗,它们现在可以代表我们“做事情”。
这正是长久以来预测的AI下一个大趋势。埃里克·施密特最近谈到了这一点,微软也在讨论,像Mayfield这样的投资者正在投入资金。而这种演变确实将彻底革新我们的系统。
可以这样想:“大语言模型”是我们过去两年一直在学习的内容,它们现在正逐步转变为“大行动模型”。智能体不仅仅会回答问题,它还会为我们做事情。
消费场景是无穷无尽的:为我预订航班,为我买票,向我的朋友发送电子邮件。但在商业领域,这种转变将颠覆并破坏我们的许多企业系统。它还将改变我们工作的方式、管理的方式以及我们对团队的思考方式。
考虑我们与供应商讨论的两个HR用例。
学习与发展(L&D)AI智能体
想象一下,你指示一个L&D AI智能体“为我们的销售人员创建一个15分钟的课程,以教授他们如何定位我们的新产品”。AI智能体将根据你的输入(课程时长、目标受众等),向主题专家发送电子邮件,视频记录他们的评论和专业知识,整合新产品信息,构建课程,并将其发送给L&D负责人进行验证。作为经理,你可以审查课程,并指示智能体收紧信息或添加更多主题,课程将重新创建,然后你可以说“可以上线了”。智能体随后会将课程发布到学习管理系统(LMS)中,向所有销售人员群发电子邮件,并开始监控学习活动。几小时后,智能体会运行分析,并向经理反馈进展情况。
是的,这在今天完全可能。而且很快就会启动。
再来看第二个例子。
招聘AI智能体
人才招聘负责人收到了大量关于高级软件工程师的职位要求。她指示招聘AI智能体开始搜索。智能体询问招聘人员的地点偏好、职位级别选择、薪资范围和技能要求,然后开始工作。智能体扫描LinkedIn和其他招聘工具,查看ATS中的现有候选人,同时也查看所有内部员工的合格技能。智能体随后优化这份名单,创建一个“面试候选人短名单”,并回到招聘负责人那里征求意见。在就地点和薪资范围达成一致后,智能体返回并向这些候选人发送了一封富有吸引力的电子邮件,并附上一个视频面试门户链接,让他们进行面试。面试被录制下来,AI智能体使用面试智能工具来评估和筛选候选人,询问他们的时间安排,并为他们安排现场面试。在此过程中,AI智能体会查看他们的背景,搜索社交媒体,查看他们的各种联系,并可能查看他们的GitHub等平台和其他凭证,然后为每位候选人创建一个档案。
这些智能体很快就会出现,对我们许多人来说,它们看起来和感觉上会像“员工”一样。我们将不得不对它们进行培训、入职和指导。随着它们在各自的角色中“成熟”并成长,我们将它们连接到更多的系统、更多的人和更多的数据上。
Lattice的首席执行官萨拉·富兰克林大约一个月前实际上提出了这个概念,尽管遭到了反对声音,但我认为她是对的。这些智能体实际上将属于组织结构图的一部分。我们的工作将是管理它们,确保它们的安全,并监督它们的安全性。
还有更多内容即将到来
虽然感觉像科幻小说,但这一切正在发生。而且它不仅将改变我们的HR技术堆栈,还将改变整个企业技术格局,也让我们的HR角色变得更加轻松。
原文来自: https://joshbersin.com/2024/09/agentic-ai-ai-agents-the-new-workforce-were-not-quite-ready-for/
Josh Bersin
2024年09月06日
Josh Bersin
Cornerstone Galaxy: Acquisition Of SkyHive Could Pay OffCornerstone在人力资源技术领域长期以来一直是学习管理系统(LMS)的领导者。公司最近推出了Galaxy,这是一个集成了人工智能的全新人才管理平台。这一重大进展是在一系列收购之后实现的,尤其是最近收购了SkyHive,显著增强了公司的数据处理能力。Galaxy平台通过提供全面的技能发展、绩效管理和员工晋升系统,为HR技术空间树立了新标准。
Galaxy区别于市场上其他基于技能的或智能平台,例如Eightfold主要从人才获取开始,而Gloat着眼于人才流动性。Galaxy则从另一个角度出发,即员工发展,这是由Cornerstone在学习与发展(L&D)领域深厚的背景所支撑的。Galaxy系统内置了完整的用户界面,能够推断技能,让员工标记和评估自己的技能,帮助员工找到并完成各种学习形式,管理合规性和认证程序,通过任务、评估或管理辅导提升技能。
通过整合性能管理、发展计划、继任计划,以及招聘过程,Galaxy使公司能够通过绩效管理推动技能发展。在收购SkyHive之前,Cornerstone试图仅使用其LMS信息的数据集来实现这一目标,但这些数据并不足以构建完整的人工智能语料库。通过这次收购,Cornerstone获得了一个完整的劳动力市场数据系统、一个公司中立的职位架构以及大量行业技能,使Galaxy能够与其他主要的人才智能和人才市场供应商直接竞争。
Cornerstone spent the last decade acquiring LMS and talent software companies, all in a goal to build an integrated skills platform. Finally, after years of hard work and integration, the company introduces Galaxy, an advanced offering in the world of AI-powered HR systems.
Before I explain Galaxy, the history is important. Founded in 1999, Cornerstone started as an e-learning platform company (CyberU). The company established a foothold in the emerging LMS market and grew through strong marketing, sales, and product innovation. Since then the company has gone public, reached a $5.2 billion valuation, and was then acquired by a private equity firm (Aug. 2021, three years ago).
The new management team continued to acquire companies (EdCast, SumTotal, Talespin, and most recently SkyHive) and has now stitched these systems together into a unified platform called Galaxy. Galaxy, as I show below, is a skills-powered integrated talent management platform, built around the core of learning management. And this is what makes it unique.
The other talent intelligence or skills-based platforms started elsewhere. Eightfold started in talent acquisition; Gloat started in talent mobility; SeekOut started in recruiting; Beamery started in CRM; and players like Retrain.ai and NeoBrain started in more vertical domains. Each of these companies use large-scale profile data to infer skills, give companies tools to find and match candidates, and eventually to deliver learning.
Cornerstone, with deep background in L&D, is coming at this from another direction: employee development. The Galaxy system, which is built into a complete user interface, infers skills, lets employees tag and assess their skills, helps employees find and complete many forms of learning, manage compliance and certification programs, and advance skills through gigs, assignments, assessments, or management coaching. And since Cornerstone is an integrated talent suite, the system lets companies drive skills through performance management, development planning, succession planning, and also recruiting.
Before the acquisition of SkyHive, Cornerstone was trying to do this with its own data set of LMS information. This data, which includes billions of learning records, was simply not sufficient to build out the entire AI corpus. By acquiring SkyHive, Cornerstone gained an entire labor market system of data, a company-neutral job architecture, and lots of industry skills. This brings Galaxy into direct competition with the other major talent intelligence and talent marketplace vendors.
I have not yet talked with Galaxy customers, but the user experience is integrated and shows the sophistication of thinking under the covers. Remember that Cornerstone acquired Evolv, Clustree, and EdCast before acquiring SkyHive, so the team has been building AI capabilities and use-cases for several years. And now that Cornerstone has a VR platform for learning, more use-cases are coming.
While I don’t know Cornerstone’s revenues, the leadership team assures me that the company is growing and the profitability is high. This means the company has long-term sustainability and despite its many acquisitions, is likely to evolve to “Oracle-like” status. (Oracle has acquired hundreds of companies over the years and now looks at M&A as one of its core strengths).
Here’s the major play in the market. With 7,000+ customers, Cornerstone has many customers shopping for new tools. If Galaxy is as solid as it looked in the demos, some percentage of these buyers could upgrade to Galaxy and avoid the purchase of Gloat, Eightfold, or another LMS. While we cannot be sure where Galaxy will play, for companies that want to deploy a skills architecture across all talent practices, it looks like a solid option.
Cornerstone Vision:
Cornerstone User Experience
Cornerstone Career and Talent Marketplace
Cornerstone Performance Management
Skills in Goal Management
Why Cornerstone Still Matters
Cornerstone has a massive customer base. The users of Cornerstone, Saba, SumTotal, Lumesse, and Halogen include many of the world’s largest companies and thousands of mid-market organizations as well. These organizations have invested billions of dollars into learning infrastructure, content, and user portals to reach employees. If Cornerstone Galaxy delivers on its promise, the company can help many of these organizations avoid buying lots of standalone new tools. And given Cornerstone’s size, the company could become, as I mentioned above, the “Oracle” of the space.
And note, by the way, that a recent survey by HR.com found that the top rated HR tech issue to address is L&D infrastructure, so this issue is on everyone’s mind.
While the market is highly competitive and there are many skills-based tools in the market, Cornerstone’s focus on L&D is unique. None of the other major LMS vendors have the skills infrastructure of Cornerstone today.
If your skills strategy is focused on building skills, Galaxy may be the answer.
More to come as we talk with more Galaxy customers.
Additional Information
Josh Bersin
2024年09月03日
Josh Bersin
Josh Bersin: With Thoughtful Design And Culture, Dropbox Proves Remote Work Is A WinnerDropbox, a company with a $7 billion market cap and over $2.5 billion in revenue, has adopted a "Virtual First" strategy in response to the pandemic, transforming its work model from lavish San Francisco offices to a remote-first approach. This shift was led by CEO Drew Houston and Chief People Officer Melanie Rosenwasser, moving away from an office-centric culture to enhance productivity and teamwork through remote work. The strategy includes home office stipends, Dropbox Studios for face-to-face interactions, and innovative meeting management services. Despite initial challenges, this approach has led to high employee satisfaction and a strong talent strategy, allowing Dropbox to thrive in a competitive tech landscape.
One of the most interesting tech companies we’ve studied is Dropbox, a $7 billion market cap rocket ship generating more than $2.5 billion in revenue. This kind of company, which sells a platform that competes with Microsoft, Google, and other major players, lives in a world of brutal competition: competition for product leadership, sales deals, and talent. And today, as AI engineers are in short supply, Dropbox has to attract the best and brightest to continue its growth.
In its early days, Dropbox was a typical San Francisco-based tech company with gourmet food, gorgeous offices, and a culture of lavish benefits. In the pre-pandemic 2010s this was the rage, and Dropbox became a hot place to work.
The pandemic upset that applecart. Not only did “work at home” obsolete the company’s real estate and gourmet investments, it forced the company to rethink its culture. The Chief People Officer, Melanie Rosenwasser, told me that the first few months of the pandemic were traumatic. Employees were upset by working at home and weren’t sure what the company stood for. She and Drew Houston, the CEO, had to rethink the whole operating model.
As Melanie described it to me, they took a risky, irreversible move. They decided to totally shift their operating model from that of “San Francisco gourmet offices” to “energized, empowered, team-based, remote work.” Not an easy decision.
Note that just this week Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO and board member at Google, blamed Sundar Pichai for “remote work laziness” as cause for Google’s “falling behind in AI.” So the debate about remote work continues, and some of the most successful leaders still haven’t figured it out.
Well Drew, Melanie, and the Dropbox team placed a bet. Knowing that the pandemic had interrupted their campus investments, they dramatically shifted to a “Virtual First” strategy. And they told the company “we are moving away from an office-centric culture” and going to a model of remote-first work. And this included converting offices to Dropbox Studios as well as a carefully architected approach to teamwork, collaboration, and periodic face-to-face activity.
Rather than ask people to “come in 3 days a week” (this kind of policy bugs people because they drag themselves into the office just to zoom with others at home), they designed one of the most sophisticated approaches I’ve seen. Employees receive a generous stipend for home office improvements and the company now offers a series of programs, services, and tools to make team and personal productivity thrive.
While it seemed risky it worked exceedingly well. By holistically thinking about culture, management, teamwork, and productivity, the company developed a set of innovations that empower people to work at their best, meet with their teams at least one week per quarter, and come together when and where it makes sense. And this model, which looks like an HR innovation, became a business innovation that helps the company thrive.
While Dropbox lost a significant number of employees at first, now the company has one of the highest Glassdoor ratings in its industry (4.3, 85% recommend CEO, higher than Google). Dropbox wins awards for employment brand. And not only does Virtual First create productive operations, it helps the company build “tools for the new world of work,” which is where every company is going.
Work at home is complicated. In between dogs, kids, gardeners and delivery people we’re futzing with MS Teams, Zoom, Webex, Google Docs, and dozens of other tools. Most of them work well but they’re each different and inconsistent. Dropbox, as a “system designed for remote work” simplifies this enormously. Virtual First helps Dropbox test its products on itself.
Why has Virtual First succeeded? As Melanie and the team explains, the shift turbo-charged its talent strategy. Now Dropbox can hire people from any geography in the world (reducing labor cost) and they look for high-energy, passionate, high-performers (not employees who like the offices). Teamwork is stronger than ever.
I know, from our company, that this works well. We have 40+ people in our organization and we rely on frequent face-to-face meetings, an open culture, and tremendous amounts of training and communication to grow. Back when I ran our company in an office we hardly talked with each other unless we had a meeting. Things are much more collaborative and productive now.
Dropbox has proven this at scale.
You can read about Virtual First on the Dropbox website, but one of the innovations I want to point out is the company’s “concierge service” for meetings. (The Offsite Planning Team.)
When you as a leader want to have a meeting, this team helps you decide your objectives, reviews the outcomes you want to achieve, and then puts together a detailed plan (location, logistics, agenda, tools) to help you make it work. This removes enormous amounts of wasted time from managers and helps the company operate productively.
I cannot tell you how much time I’ve wasted “managing offsite meetings.” To have a seasoned, professional group that helps with this entire strategy in process is a godsend. For Dropbox, this team now knows precisely how the teams work and can continuously improve its consulting services to make sure face-to-face meetings are impactful. A “new manager introduction” meeting, for example, is different from a “get product ready for launch meeting” as you can imagine.
How does this apply to your company? Regardless of industry, I guarantee you have remote work teams. Many companies have front line workers (healthcare, retail, manufacturing, transportation) who have to locate with customers. But think about finance teams, IT teams, scientific teams, and HR. We all need productive remote work practices, and Dropbox has proven that a strategic focus on this area will pay off.
Melanie and I will be doing a webcast in the near future and she is joining us at our Irresistible 2025 Conference as well. Dropbox has taken the lead in this new world, and they want to share their learnings with all of us.
是时候重塑人才招聘了 -Research Shows It’s Time To Reinvent Talent AcquisitionJosh Bersin 的文章 "研究表明,是时候重塑人才招聘了 "强调了人才招聘亟需进行的变革。由于只有 32% 的人力资源高管参与战略规划,而且许多人觉得自己只是个接单员,因此这篇文章呼吁进行战略改革。在劳动力短缺和急需技能型招聘的情况下,目前削减成本和减少招聘力度的方法与对技能型专业人才日益增长的需求相矛盾。文章敦促企业将人才招聘作为一项重要的战略职能,利用现代技术并将其与学习和发展相结合,以提高效率并关注内部人才流动。
原文如下:
This week we published a disappointing research study, Talent Acquisition at a Crossroads. The study, conducted in partnership with AMS, points out that talent acquisition leaders (this is a senior position) are largely left out of their company’s strategic planning process and many feel they operate as “order takers.”
In today’s world of labor and skills shortages, this is a wakeup call for change.
Here’s the data:
Among these 130+ HR executives only 32% are involved in any form of strategic workforce planning, 42% believe their company has no workforce plan at all, and 46% say “they’re running around to keep up.” And when layoffs do occur, often the recruiters go first. (Witness Tesla this week.)
All this is happening in a world where 58% of companies feel skills shortages are significantly impacting their business plans, more than three-quarters believe they must transform their talent practices to grow, and “skills-based hiring” is a top priority yet difficult to implement.
Here’s the paradox: companies are cutting their talent acquisition spending at the same time CEOs feel that skills shortages are getting worse. What’s going on?
Talent Acquisition Needs A Reinvention
Let’s just face it: recruiting as a business function has to change. Once considered the “staffing department,” where companies posted jobs and scanned resumes, talent acquisition has become highly strategic operation. What skills do we need? How do we find people who will fit our culture? What internal candidates should fill our key positions? Who are the right leaders for us to hire?
Unfortunately, almost 80% of talent acquisition functions are quite tactical. PwC’s CEO survey found that CEOs rate “hiring” as the third most bureaucratic process in their companies, tied with “too many emails” and “too many meetings” as a time-wasting process. And that explains why two-thirds of TA leaders are being asked to cut costs.
I had a conversation last week with a former TA leader for one of the Big Three automakers. He told me that in the fervor to hire staff for EV engineering he was asked to hire “any engineer he could find, regardless of skill,” because the company was in such a hurry. No time for skills assessment, competitive planning, or even location analysis. Just “go out there and hire engineers.”
We have been studying the auto industry as part of our GWI study and found that important EV roles (reliability engineer or power plant engineer, for example), are quite specialized and hard to find. Strategic recruiting departments need to understand these roles and source these individuals carefully. Just hiring engineering grads from a local community college is not going to move this needle.
(Consider the data by Draup on what these roles are. Talent Acquisition teams with talent intelligence skills can pinpoint who to hire.)
And it gets worse. In our Dynamic Organization research we found that high performing companies focus heavily on internal hiring, talent intelligence tools to find hidden talent, and continuous internal development to fill skills gaps. We can’t simply throw job requisitions over to the recruiting function any more: the people we need may be buried inside the company.
This week Tesla announced a layoff of 10% of their workforce. Was their time to balance and redeploy talent internally? Absolutely not. According to my sources every business unit had to let 10% go, and and many of the people being fired were talent acquisition leaders, the very people who help with these issues.
We talk with many HR executives and there is an enlightened group. Companies that understand this issue (about one in eight) have elevated Talent Acquisition to a strategic function, they merge or integrate TA with L&D, and they redefine their recruiters as “talent advisors.” Mastercard, as a leader, just renamed their recruiters as “Career Coaches,” demonstrating their role in helping people find the right jobs.
Despite the onslaught of AI, this role is becoming even more human-centric. High-powered recruiting teams source internal candidates, understand company culture, and have a deep knowledge of jobs, roles, and organizational dynamics. When well supported and trained, these professionals are strategic advisors, not just “recruiters.” And companies that understand this often outsource or automate much of the administration in recruiting.
Technology plays a major role in this reinvention. Most large companies have dozens of legacy systems, many of which make the candidate experience difficult. When organizations focus on modernizing and streamlining their technology, talent acquisition can become 10-100X more efficient. This, in turn, gives recruiters and talent advisors the time to search for the right skills, carefully select the best candidates, and focus on internal hiring and development as a strategy.
Technology Is Here But Not The Entire Answer
Of all the HR technology markets, recruiting is the most innovative of all. New AI-powered systems like HiredScore (just acquired by Workday), Paradox (leader in conversational AI), Eightfold, Gloat, Draup, and Lightcast (pioneers in talent intelligence), and many others can reduce time to hire from months to weeks and weeks to days. But none of this technology works if the Talent Acquisition team is left on an island.
In the last year I have met with more than 50 heads of talent acquisition and once the door is closed and we talk honestly, they always tell me the same thing. “We are not treated as a strategic function, we are being asked to cut costs, and we are constantly running from fire to fire to keep executives happy.” This type of “service-delivery” focus simply will not work in the new economy.
What should companies do? As part of our Systemic HR initiative, we help companies evolve their TA Function to operate in a more strategic way. Organizations like Bayer, Verizon, and many others have elevated the role of recruiter to talent advisor, they’re building skills in talent intelligence, and they’re integrating the recruiting function with L&D, career management, and employee engagement.
I’ve always felt that recruiting is the most important things HR professionals do. If we can’t get the “right” people into the company, no amount of management can recover. But what does “right” mean? And how can we source, locate, and attract these particular people?
This is a highly strategic operation, and one that must integrate with internal mobility, culture, and employee experience. I encourage you to read our Systemic HR research, join our Academy, or reach out to us or AMS for advice. In this new era of talent and skills shortages, we simply cannot run recruiting in this tactical way any longer.
Josh Bersin
2024年04月24日
Josh Bersin
世界幸福报告能教给我们关于工作的什么? What The World Happiness Report Teaches Us About Work最新《世界幸福报告》揭示,尽管经济增长,美国幸福感下降。研究强调,高薪并非幸福的关键,而公平薪酬、良好的企业文化才是。特别是年轻人,受到气候变化、政治纷争等影响,幸福感低落。企业需关注文化建设、弹性工作,关照员工心理健康。工作场所的信任、社区感和公平至关重要。我们要反思:真正的幸福是什么?
我每年都认真研读《世界幸福报告》,今年的报告特别引人深思。以下是我对一些关键发现的解读。
首先,美国的幸福指数(10分满分)降至第23位,比全球最幸福的国家芬兰低了13%。实际上,在过去15年中,美国的幸福度几乎下降了8%,呈现出持续的年降趋势。对于我们这些生活在美国的人来说,这可能并不陌生:坏消息、政治争斗以及人们在价值观上的分歧似乎无处不在。
这一切发生的同时,美国的GDP增长却持续领先世界上大多数主要经济体。这意味着我们作为一个国家正在变得更加富裕,却显著地变得不那么幸福(下文将详细解释)。
从企业角度来看,这个观点很简单:仅仅提高薪资并不能使人们感到更加幸福。尽管每个人都希望得到公平的报酬,但高薪酬并不直接转化为高参与度。我们2023年的《薪酬公平终极指南》发现,与薪酬水平相比,薪酬公平与员工参与度的关联性高出7倍。
其次,报告指出,在美国,年轻人的幸福感明显低于老年人(这一点并非在所有国家都适用,但在大多数发达国家中是这样的)。在美国,30岁以下人群的幸福评分为6.4,而60岁以上人群的评分为7.3,幸福度低了12%。我们对年轻人的这一低幸福评分使美国在全球青年幸福排行榜上仅位列第62位,远低于我们的总体排名。
这反映出我在上周播客中讨论的现象。如今的年轻工作者担忧全球变暖,他们在年轻时就经历了疫情的冲击,他们对于战争、通货膨胀、社会问题以及政治不和感到沮丧。埃德曼信任度量尺表明,年轻人认为相比政府,企业在为社会带来创新方面更值得信赖,高出近20%。但令人担忧的是,这种信任程度也在下滑。
从企业的视角来看,这进一步强化了播客中提到的观点:我们(美国)的劳动力中位年龄现已达到33岁。这表明许多关键员工对生活的热情有所下降,这迫使雇主需要采取更多措施。我们对企业文化、员工福祉、工作灵活性和个人成长的关注,现在比以往任何时候都显得更为重要。这就是像四天工作周、灵活工作时间以及其他诸多福利(如生育支持、儿童看护、心理健康、健身、财务福利)变得越来越普遍的原因。
(最新的劳动统计局数据显示,我们在福利上的支出占工资总额的31.1%,比三年前的29%有所增加。在信息行业,这个比例高达35.5%,是有史以来的最高值。)
此外,重点强调:对企业来说,重振早期职业发展计划至关重要。许多企业在20世纪60、70年代建立了这些计划,但随后这些计划逐渐被忽视。如果你正在从大学招聘顶尖人才,并投资于校园招聘(这一趋势正在上升),那么确保你有一个坚实的1-2年发展计划、工作轮岗以及面向年轻人的群体参与计划是非常重要的。我最近与康卡斯特讨论了他们的计划,他们的早期职业发展计划正在直接为他们的领导力管道做出贡献。
第三,也是最引人注目的一点是,报告强调了社会关系和信任在幸福感中的巨大作用。进行这项研究的学者团队发现,幸福感的“坎特里尔阶梯”(一个简单的“你觉得自己多幸福”的1-10评分问题)可以分解为六个贡献因素:
人均GDP(财富)、社会支持(密切关系的数量和质量)、预期寿命(健康)、生活选择的自由(按个人意愿生活的能力)、慷慨(向他人给予金钱和时间的倾向)以及腐败感知(相信“系统”是公平的)。
这些因素对幸福的贡献度大开眼界。
令人惊讶的是,社会关系是幸福感的最大贡献者,而健康只占大约1.4%。请注意,第二重要的因素是对腐败的感知或者说是公平感,这解释了为什么薪酬公平非常重要。我们再次发现,财富对幸福感的影响相对较小。
这对我们的工作有何启示?
这里有一些简单的启示:
关系很重要。如果管理层和主管不能建立起团队合作感,员工便会感到不适。尽管我们面临财务和运营压力,但我们仍需抽时间了解员工、倾听他们的声音,并与他们共度愉快时光。通过聚集人员并创建跨功能团队,我们即使在远程工作情况下也能建立社交关系。
信任至关重要。我曾在高层领导贪婪、不忠、不诚实的环境中工作过,公司内的每个人都能感觉到这一点。信任是经年累月建立起来的资产,我们必须不断地进行投资。通过道德、诚实和倾听来培养信任,你的领导模式中包含了这些元素吗?
薪酬的影响可能比你想象的要小。虽然每个人都希望赚更多钱,但人们更希望感觉到奖励是公平且慷慨的。因此,不应仅仅过度奖励表现突出的员工,而忽视其他人的努力。
生活选择的自由极为重要。众多研究显示,与薪资相比,员工更加重视工作的灵活性,因此,考虑将四天工作周和灵活工作选项作为你的雇佣政策的核心部分是非常重要的。
多年前,我在一个人力资源领导者的大型会议上发表了关于企业公民责任的演讲。我指出,公司就像小型社会一样,如果我们的企业“社会”不公平、不透明、不自由,那么我们的员工就会感受到痛苦。演讲结束时,我不确定听众的反应如何,但来自宜家的一大群人向我走来,给了我一个热情的拥抱。宜家这家公司,深深植根于瑞典的社会主义文化,是地球上最长久的公司之一。他们真心相信集体思维、公平和对每个个体的尊重。
原文来自:https://joshbersin.com/2024/03/what-the-world-happiness-report-can-teach-us-about-work/