Salary.com’s Senior Consultants – HR and Comp Predictions for 2024

Connect with Greg Wolf:

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Connect with Garry Straker:

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Connect with Eric McMillan:

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Connect with Courtney LeCompte:

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Connect with Rebecca Gorman:

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Connect with Mara Marino:

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Connect with Dwight:

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• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

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• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Compensation Consulting
• HR Data Labs Season 6 Episode 14
• HR Data Labs Season 6 Episode 12

• “We’re going to see organizations continue to seek out creative strategies to stand out recruit and retain talent.”
• “I do wonder what impact the development of artificial intelligence will have on wage growth and if it will put downward pressure on wages.”

Announcer: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

David Turetsky: 0:44
Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. And this is a very special HR Data Labs podcast, Dwight and I have the pleasure of talking to the entire senior consulting team from Salary.com. Hello, senior consulting team from Salary.com!

Various: 1:03
Hello, hey, hello!

David Turetsky: 1:07
As you can tell, we have a bunch of wonderful people on the podcast today. And we're gonna go through each one of them. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask each one to talk about who they are, and give them a minute to describe themselves and their background. So let's start with Greg Wolf. Hey, Greg.

Greg Wolf: 1:22
Hey, David, thank you. Greg Wolf, I'm in our Kansas City office. You know, I started out my career at Hallmark greeting cards and you know how right off you want your transition to go smooth. I interviewed at Hallmark, both in operations and corporate, had two job offers and they go okay, we know you want to come to corporate. Well of course, I go to manufacturing. And they said don't do it, you'll never get out of manufacturing. So kind of a long story short, after eight years or so I came into corporate HR, you know, did the staffing training, but got into compensation, really found a good niche before I joined the Hay Group for 14 years. And then now with Salary.com. So, you know, it was kind of a nice transition. And it's been just a fun career, meeting and working with clients and trying to move them along.

David Turetsky: 2:14
Awesome. Great. Mara, how about you?

Mara Marino: 2:17
So my name is Mara Marino, originally from the Boston area, but now living in Florida. And I started in compensation by way of recruiting. So I was recruiting not knowing what is was supposed to pick candidates, started to get information about salary data, used a lot of systems over the years and Salary.com was my favorite, the CompAnalyst tool. So glad to be part of the consulting team now.

David Turetsky: 2:41
Awesome. Courtney, how about you?

Courtney LeCompte: 2:43
Courtney LeCompte and located here in Denver. I started my compensation journey in HR, and kind of just through my natural aptitude for analytics, moved into consulting with compensation. Worked for a few different consulting firms, worked for some employers councils, worked for the state of Oregon for a bit. So have a nice variety of industry expertise and worked with a variety of types of clients. So yeah, happy to be here.

David Turetsky: 3:12
Awesome. Garry, how about you?

Garry Straker: 3:14
Garry Straker. I'm based in Connecticut. And I've been a total rewards compensation consultant for about 25 years, I never had the opportunity to work on I guess we would call the client side in our business. So I've really been embedded in consulting work for you know, that 25 year period, and I've really enjoyed working with clients in many different industry sectors and many different pay markets across the country. You know, love doing what we do. There's never been a more interesting and fascinating time to be in the area of compensation. So really happy to be here.

David Turetsky: 3:44
Okay, Eric!

Eric McMillan: 3:45
Hi, thanks, David. My name is Eric McMillan. I'm based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I have, like Gary, I've been a consultant my entire career, so I'll just say 20 plus years. I did start at the Bureau of Labor Statistics doing econometric analysis. And so from there, I went into compensation with all the big firms. Happy to be here!

David Turetsky: 4:06
Geek love there, Eric, on the data analytics side.

Eric McMillan: 4:09
Yeah.

David Turetsky: 4:10
Rebecca, how about you?

Rebecca Gorman: 4:11
So I have a background similar to Courtney's. I've done both the in house compensation total rewards work as well as the consulting stuff. So I've been doing this, gosh, about 23 years. And I'm happy to be here too!

David Turetsky: 4:26
And now we do this for all of our guests. I'm gonna go around the room one more time. One fun thing. No one knows about you. Okay, let's start from the bottom up. Let's go back to Rebecca.

Rebecca Gorman: 4:38
Well.

David Turetsky: 4:38
What's one fun thing no one knows about you?

Rebecca Gorman: 4:41
What came to mind, I thought I will never say this, but it came mind and you're going to me first and I don't have anything else. So I have webbed toes.

David Turetsky: 4:48
Oh!

Rebecca Gorman: 4:49
It's hereditary. Two of my toes...

David Turetsky: 4:53
That's awesome.

Rebecca Gorman: 4:54
are webbed, and I hated it when I was a little girl and my daddy said, don't worry honey, you'll be the better swimmer.

David Turetsky: 5:01
That's what I was going to say!

Rebecca Gorman: 5:05
And that made me feel better.

David Turetsky: 5:07
Eric!

Eric McMillan: 5:08
You know, I don't have a lot of secrets. I guess, you know, for this crew, maybe the thing that nobody would know about me is I'm a pretty avid bird watcher. And I like to look for unusual birds kind of in my area, I will travel and go hike and look for the elusive woodpecker, you know, kind of thing. So that's fun for me. I like doing it.

David Turetsky: 5:29
I heard Woody is still there somewhere.

Eric McMillan: 5:31
Somewhere.

David Turetsky: 5:33
Gary.

Garry Straker: 5:34
So I've shared this with some people. But not everyone knows this about me. But I have a background in theatrical production and had in the past the opportunity to work with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon and London and absolutely love doing that work. Was was really awesome. But it ended up changing my career when I, you know, emigrated back to the states some number of years ago. And I'm just as happy now.

David Turetsky: 5:56
Well, we're happy you are here with us as well. Courtney!

Courtney LeCompte: 5:59
I'm like Eric, I don't have a lot of secrets. I couldn't even think of one thing that no one else would know about me. But I will share this with you because I don't think any of you know this about me. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a dentist. And I was the kid that like for every holiday, I got all of the dentist stuff, like the dentist Barbie, the dentist tools, all of that good stuff. All the way through high school, I thought I was gonna be a dentist. It wasn't until I actually got to college, took me that long to realize there's way too much science involved. And it's like my first semester of college, I was like, Oh, actually, I'm not gonna do this. I can't do this.

David Turetsky: 6:39
So Courtney, when you describe some more client assignments as root canal, you really know what you're talking about.

Courtney LeCompte: 6:45
Yeah, I know so much about it.

David Turetsky: 6:47
Greg, how about you?

Greg Wolf: 6:48
You know, I guess unlike a lot of the folks here, I have a ton of secrets. And so it was kind of, it was kind of difficult to pick one. But I always get skeptical when somebody says they don't have a lot of secrets. But that's another story, another podcast. But kind of the probably the one thing, and you know it's so long ago I really don't talk, but it was really a great experience for me, was my first job was I played basketball in Australia. You know, I played basketball in high school and college and, and then got selected to go over to Australia for a season. And it was really just a neat balance, because we got to travel around the country and not only play a lot of basketball, but we got to go into schools and give presentations and, and really develop kind of a love for the game throughout the country.

David Turetsky: 7:34
That's awesome. And for those of you who don't know Greg, he's very tall, relative to me, very short. There you go. So this is a really fun podcast, we're going to have lots of fun today, because what we're going to be talking about is our predictions for 2024. And the really interesting part about doing this is because each of the people that are on the call have a different perspective on the world, and especially the world of human resources and compensation, they're going to take different perspectives. And what we're going to do is we're going to have someone talk about their prediction, and then each of us are going to discuss it, we're not going to discuss it for long, because that podcast would be very long, but we're going to have a short discussion about it, and then go on to the next one. Hopefully, what we'll do is then come back next year, or in six months, and see how did we do? And then we'll talk about what's going on in the world at that moment in time. We're gonna start off with Greg and your prediction for 2024.

Greg Wolf: 8:42
You know, and it's one that really, it seems like with many clients it always seems to come up, it's really kind of from the perspective hey, what are salary budgets being forecasted at 3.8? To 4%? You know, depending on what source we're looking at, and, and kind of the, my thoughts are, it's going to be lower than that, noticeably lower than that, really, for a lot of reasons. And you know, and just a couple of those, you know, I mean, there's some variations when you take a look at it from state to state, industries. But you kind of see some of the data, some organizations are expecting lowering their salary increase budgets really is showing a tick up and then, I don't know single digit to nearly 20%. But I think it really goes a little more grounded. It just seems like clients and the discussions that I've had just seem to be a little more cautious, a little more conservative, with salary budgets and even hiring. So I think those go hand in hand and then with employee voluntary turnover trending downward, you know, by more than 20% I think it just kind of leads to that prediction, which again, I think will come out pretty well. But with all that said, you know,

one thing is clear: 9:55
employers are still concerned, you know, with their wanting to have competitive compensation levels. And then internal equity, again, a much of a very much a focus, as well as transparency.

David Turetsky: 10:10
It's a great kickoff prediction. Anybody have any thoughts on that?

Courtney LeCompte: 10:15
So, you know, we've seen a few salary budget surveys already published. And what we're seeing on there is a 3.8 to 4%. I think it's gonna be interesting as additional salary budget surveys are published, if we see anything different, because I know towards the end of the year, we see several others published as well. So some of those early publications are showing that 3.8 to 4%.

David Turetsky: 10:34
I think one of the keys here is the difference between the merit budget, and the budgets for total increase. Like what is included for market adjustments, what's included for other adjustments. And so to me, it's going to be the the balance of merit versus other.

Garry Straker: 10:51
David, I would also add, if I may, that there was a piece on the front sheet of sorry, the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday, and the headline was company's cut pay for new hires as shortage of workers eases. And I thought that was an interesting report from The Wall Street Journal. I suspect that we're probably going to see, you know, it's going to be a little bit uneven and I think some industries, some labor markets are maybe going to have to continue to provide significant wage growth, while others I think, will taper off. So I, you know, I don't disagree with the overall sort of consensus, but I think we're going to see a little bit unevenness in terms of what organizations are actually doing, in some cases, maybe what they're doing within their own organizations.

David Turetsky: 11:33
Totally agree, Garry. Let's go to Mara.

Mara Marino: 11:35
Yeah, so one of the predictions that I had is that with the costs of labor rising, more companies will choose to invest in automation, especially entry level jobs will be eliminated. We already see this at the grocery stores where there are more self checkouts than cashiers. And similarly, I think jobs like business and technical writers, data processors, training facilitators, inspectors, because now they're scanners that can inspect things, right? And some manufacturing jobs will be automated with EOT and artificial intelligence.

Eric McMillan: 12:10
Well, I would say at the grocery store, I would like it, if the self checkout lanes, if more of those were actually open. They have them, but they aren't, they aren't always open for some reason. But I would agree with Mara, that a lot of that is going to happen. I'm curious about how it's going to turn out, you know, you see it in marketing a lot now and just content creation. And some of it is not very good. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, in the real world, how it improves. And if it's, if it's a good option, as an alternative to human labor.

Mara Marino: 12:47
Yeah. So because of that, I think some of those jobs, the ones that do exist, their salaries might start to dwindle, or go down, because there won't be as many of them. So I'm curious how that will affect salaries as well.

David Turetsky: 13:02
Okay. Courtney.

Courtney LeCompte: 13:03
So throughout 2023, we've seen, I know all of us have seen employers continue to struggle with motivating their employee base, recruiting and retaining key talent. I think that there are many factors at play and obviously, all organizations are different there. But I think what we're going to see is organizations continue to seek out creative strategies to stand out. Now that can be in addition to or in lieu of competitive wages. You know, some organizations can afford both, they can afford the competitive wages, and they can afford, including additional ways to recruit and retain talent. Not all organizations can afford both. So they're looking for other creative strategies, right, outside of compensation. And so my prediction is that we're going to see traditional benefit offerings being reevaluated and restructured so that they're aligning with this modern workforce we're seeing and, and, you know, evolving dynamics of the workforce. So specifically, my prediction is, and I'm kind of hoping for this, that we see more benefit offerings for mental health and wellness, specifically around counseling, team building, community engagement, and also stress management. And then also more benefit offerings around career development. So maybe some mentorship programs, tuition reimbursement, I know is a common one. And then more robust training programs.

David Turetsky: 14:28
If WorldatWork and HR Tech last year were a prediction, or were a trend, where we're showing trends toward that, I think you're right, Courtney. We saw especially at WorldatWork this year, and at SHRM this year, I think we saw a lot of offerings around those things. And obviously, it's going to take time for organizations to adopt new technologies and those new offerings, but I agree, I think that's that's really, it would be really great if the organizations started putting their ear to the ground and listening to employees who are desperate for those, and so I hope you're right.

Courtney LeCompte: 15:02
Yeah, maybe we'll see some employee surveys to gather some information to make some data driven decisions around the needs of the employee workforce. I mean, hopefully, right? I also think, you know, I've read a lot of articles around this, you know, we have this evolving workforce. And all

David Turetsky: 15:16
We're with you. of a sudden, there's this really high need for flexibility. We have a lot of employees now that want to be remote. So there's this shift. And so some maybe fringe benefits that were great a few years ago, like, you know, letting employees bring their pets to the office, or free meals, right, in the office, those probably don't hold as much weight for those those employees. So just kind of re-shifting, reevaluating, and connecting with the needs of the workforce, I think is is important. And that's my prediction and hope that employers will will put some focus there.

Announcer: 15:50
Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by Salary.com. Now back to the show.

David Turetsky: 16:02
Okay, Garry, how about you?

Garry Straker: 16:03
So I'm anticipating the career progression line of sight will evolve as a best practice for recruiting and retaining talent. And David, I'm saying this being influenced by some recent developments that have occurred in both Colorado and Europe. Colorado has introduced legislation that requires career progression disclosure, as part of some amendments to their pay equity laws, which was, I thought, a very significant and interesting development. Turns out that the European Union also passed recently, a new European wide directive impacting all 28 member states that will require employers in Europe to provide career progression disclosure. And just last week, the Illinois Governor signed into law an amendment to their pay equity law, it has some language related to career progression disclosure, although it's not as far as Colorado has gone. So I'm anticipating that organizations, in part due to some compliance needs in various markets, are going to start paying a lot more attention to providing career progression line of sight. They're going to spend more time identifying career growth opportunities and earnings growth opportunities for employees in order to be able to recruit and retain in what I think what is going to continue to be a highly competitive labor market.

David Turetsky: 17:18
And it just happens to be that the government is pushing what should have been best practice for so many years of telling people where can your career go from what job you have now. Who would have thunk that we would have had to have compelled companies to tell people!

Garry Straker: 17:35
You know, David, I agree. I mean, it makes, to us like common sense, right? It just, it's just perfectly logical that you would provide that, that access to opportunity and visibility into why would I want to stay in this organization in the long term? What am I going to get from this? And is this a place I really want to, you know, invest a lot of my career and energy, you know, just from a professional perspective.

David Turetsky: 18:02
Exactly. One would hope that companies would see this, see the writing on the wall, and whether or not they operate in Illinois, Colorado or EU, say, this is something we've should have done a long time ago. Let's fix our stuff. Let's get our descriptions in order. Let's start telling managers how career progression should work and actually make this happen. Let's hope.

Courtney LeCompte: 18:25
Well, I think we're already seeing that, right? I mean, not even being compliance driven, we have so many organizations that are reaching out to us for job architecture, leveling frameworks, career progressions, because they see the benefit in it. And so I think we're just going to see it from a different angle now, organization's reaching out from a compliance standpoint.

David Turetsky: 18:42
Right, Courtney, exactly. Yeah. But it wouldn't have been great if they had just done it anyways? I mean, to your point, it would be better if all of these companies would have just done it to that, to that extent?

Courtney LeCompte: 18:54
Of course!

Dwight Brown: 18:54
So much is driven by regulation. That's always the impetus for so much good stuff.

David Turetsky: 19:01
Okay. Eric, you're next buddy.

Eric McMillan: 19:03
Okay, so one of my predictions for next year and shouldn't be a surprise to anybody: remote work! I think it's going to continue to be very popular among the labor force. People that are looking for jobs, they're going to they're going to say, I'm not even going to look at a job unless it allows me to work remotely. So many people have gotten used to it in a lot of different industries, right, the ones that don't require you to be at the hospital or something like that. I think that's going to continue to be a major sticking point. And the organizations are going to continue to have challenges with how do they manage a pay program if they have a significant population that is remote. I mean, I talk with, we all talk with clients in organizations every week that are still kind of struggling with it and trying to figure out what's the right answer for their organization in terms of managing that pay. I talk with people a lot that they hired them in San Francisco and then they, that person moved to Oregon, they didn't change their pay. So, you know, and they're like, well, we just, we don't have a policy to do that, we don't know exactly what to do. And it's it's going to be policy driven. But I think there's just a lot of question marks out there for all sized companies. You like to think the large ones maybe have a better handle on it, but some of them I've talked to do not.

Dwight Brown: 20:23
Yeah, the genie's definitely out of the bottle on this one and it's not going back in. And we were just talking with a guest yesterday, who was talking about an anesthesiologist that she knew. And it you know, that fits in that category of ones you don't think are good for remote work. Well, this anesthesiologist decided that they were going to go just part time with everything. And they decided that the freedom that they had, was very freeing for them and gave them the work life balance. So all that to say I, I am with Eric on that prediction. And I don't think the genie's going back in the bottle on that one.

Mara Marino: 21:02
Yeah, I have a lot of healthcare clients that are also trying to figure out a way to offer flexible work schedules, because they need to have people on site. So what they're doing is installing new software that allows employees to pick their own shifts, right, so that they feel like they're in control of their hours, even though they still have to come in. So they can't work remote all the time, for obvious reasons, right, they need to have patient care. But at least giving them the opportunity to choose their hours, no longer are we going to be tied into you know, 7 to 3, 3 to 11pm shifts. So now the shifts are going to change.

Courtney LeCompte: 21:37
I've seen that too. I think the theme there is flexibility. And to the extent that makes the most sense for the department for the the role. Also four day workweeks, I know we're seeing a lot of of trending around that as well so.

David Turetsky: 21:49
But I think one of the keys here is there needs to be policies in place in order for these things to be understood as okay. Right? A lot of times managers will do this a little rogue and say, Okay, well, because the anesthesiologist needs that flexibility and work life balance, I'm going to do it just for her. Well, now you're kind of setting the rule of it's okay. And now we have to go back and revise our policies to make sure that payroll and HR and all the other governance issues around that are aligned. So maybe now because they're part time, we need to hire another anesthesiologist to be able to cover off on the other shift. So now we have to go back and fix all the things that got broken by making that rule. So Eric, I think it's a great prediction. I think now, with the instantiation of those policies, it becomes a little bit more formal.

Greg Wolf: 22:39
Yeah. Hey, David, you know, it's kind of funny. My

Eric McMillan: 22:39
Absolutely. second prediction was just the opposite. You all know, like, like, the past few years? You know, I mean, it's been, like unprecedented. And, you know, once in a generation type things happening, that we've had to deal with it not not just in our work life, but in the world around us. So, you know, I mean, we focus a lot on the pros, you know, work life balance, more freedom, that increased productivity, all that is, is 100% true, and in some ways, it still outweighs it, but we're, they're starting to do a little bit of research. And even I think employees, at a certain level are starting to realize that, you know, no face to face connection, you know, I'm missing something. I like Zoom. I like the, you know, interaction with people and, you know, so then just not as much collaboration. I mean, you know, you don't run into people at the coffee machine or over lunches. And, you know, it's just that whole routine and and I think when you see that trend kind of switching when you have larger organizations, making it mandatory, you're right, they you know, you get Amazon and BlackRock, Disney, JP, you know, it goes on and on, are making it more of a requirement. And you know, kind of, you know, they have some flexibility. But the main reason, again, that I think is unsettling for organization lead, organizational leadership is that they just fear that it's ran its course, and they fear this huge productivity drop, and what do you do if people aren't in the office? And so I see my prediction is, it's going to continue to accelerate the other way. So not that Eric and I are ever on the wrong side of it, that's one thing.

David Turetsky: 24:28
What and what's fascinating, Greg, is both can exist, because there are some industries where it is reverting, and there are some industries which are getting more flexible. And it could even be within the exact same company you'll have both. So let's stay tuned for this one, and we'll come back to this and see who was right, who was wrong, and maybe both of you are right!

Greg Wolf: 24:51
I like, I like that third answer.

Eric McMillan: 24:53
Everybody gets a trophy.

David Turetsky: 24:54
Yes we all do.

Dwight Brown: 24:57
Yeah, participation trophy.

David Turetsky: 24:59
So Rebecca, you're up next!

Rebecca Gorman: 25:02
Yeah, so my prediction was, um, Courtney touched on it a little bit, but it's really driven by a lot of what Garry was saying. And that is, with new regulations, legislation, requiring things of organizations that they're not prepared to deliver or provide, because they don't have the infrastructure, meaning it's hard to provide the government or employees with a roadmap for career progression, when the organization itself doesn't have a roadmap for career progression. So it's not like they have this secret that they're hiding that they just haven't been sharing. It's that they don't have one and so they haven't provided it. And so my prediction is that as Dwight, Courtney, most everybody has been saying, I think that these developments around regulations and legislations requirements, legal requirements are driving organizations they have been, and they're going to continue this year, or this next year, to drive organizations to develop infrastructure. That's just the term I'm using, around job architecture, but also around distribution of of dollars. So compensation and benefits being the number one line item for an organization, it's surprising that that money isn't spent more strategically. And I think that when we have smaller merit budgets, organizations are going to have to have a rationale for why some people are getting more and some less than maybe some none. But in order to do that, they need to have help putting together the, putting the pieces in place to be able to deliver that, make those decisions and be compliant. So that's, that's my prediction.

David Turetsky: 26:32
Absolutely. And Rebecca, we know that the government has many times put in place regulations that have cost a lot of money. And we saw this, especially with California and with pay transparency, where a lot of organizations needed to go develop their market pricing again, or redevelop salary structures or developed them for the first time. So yeah, it happens.

Rebecca Gorman: 26:52
Yeah, I mean, CEO pay ratio is one of those things that is universally panned as a useless metric. I can go on and on and on saying that, but folks wanted to know, okay, well, how much are CEOs paid relative to the average employee? And that's good, interesting information. But the actual process and practice of getting to that number has turned into something of a boondoggle. So what whether that metric actually is meaningful relative to the intensity of putting together that number is debatable.

David Turetsky: 27:24
I think it actually was developed by the executive compensation Consultants Group. It was a bad group.

Greg Wolf: 27:30
Not our group, some other group.

David Turetsky: 27:31
Not our group. That's right.

Rebecca Gorman: 27:33
I would be surprised, but maybe so.

David Turetsky: 27:37
There might be a mob of those, those people.

Rebecca Gorman: 27:40
Yeah.

David Turetsky: 27:41
That's cool. So yeah, I agree with you, Rebecca.

Rebecca Gorman: 27:43
Red tape is expensive. And sometimes they lead to good things, and sometimes not. But in this case, I'm optimistic.

David Turetsky: 27:51
Yes, me as well. And what hopefully Garry will make a ton of money on the new Illinois pay equity legislation includes career progression too.

Rebecca Gorman: 28:02
Yeah.

David Turetsky: 28:04
Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this? Well, you're in luck, we have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast, or whatever is on your mind, go to Salary.com/HRDLconsulting, to schedule your FREE 30 minute call today. So now it's my turn. I thought a lot about this. In fact, I spent the entire week and a half thinking about what my prediction was. And I want to go back to one that Dwight and I had talked about a long time ago, which is the economy around artificial intelligence. And I think that we've heard so much about it globally, especially from regulations trying to attack it, I think we're now going to find that there is going to be a new push, which is high schools and colleges are going to start to take advantage of artificial intelligence, and start training people on how to actually utilize it, how to corral it, how to control it, and how to actually build careers out of it. Think about it is the internet from the early and mid 1990s, an entire cottage industry has developed around the artificial intelligence world. And it's right now at its infancy. And I think in 2024, we're actually going to start to see those investments in artificial intelligence grow dramatically. And we'll start to see those institutions, the colleges and high schools start to develop curricula around it. So people who are youngsters, who are going to take over the world from us, will have much more of an understanding and appreciation as well as control over what this becomes.

Eric McMillan: 29:52
I would agree with that. David, I felt, it feels like it's happening really quickly. Everything you read, there's some association to that or, you know, a lot of the articles that I read and, and so it's it feels like it's happening more quickly than when you mentioned, you know, the internet industry in the mid 90s. We're going at lightspeed compared to that

Rebecca Gorman: 30:14
Everybody got see the new Mission Impossible movie!

David Turetsky: 30:17
Why?

Rebecca Gorman: 30:19
Because it's based on that. Artificial Intelligence and, you know, you, once you create artificial intelligence that is so sophisticated that it can program itself, there's no way to ultimately control that artificial intelligence. It's a movie, but it's yeah.

David Turetsky: 30:39
To go back to Mara's prediction, though, about the bot jobs, right? I agree with Maura that there will be many more automated roles. But to the extent at which what you're talking about Rebecca, where, you know, it's Skynet, and the, you know, AI and all those other movies predicting that the artificial intelligence will take over, literally, you can disconnect them. Unless, unless you make it so that, you can literally unplug AI. It's not it's it's, you know, kind of kind of dumb, just pull the plug out. But to the extent to which

Rebecca Gorman: 31:11
I know the Guru's are, there's two camps. There's one camp that really thinks we got to be careful, and one camp that's aligned with what you're saying.

David Turetsky: 31:20
Yeah. So Rebecca, just wait until there's a power outage? Yeah. And that server doesn't restart because there was an error. But unfortunately, right now, we're still in a situation. And I think you guys are all understand this. We're still in a situation where computers still are stupid, really stupid. They don't heal themselves. And artificial intelligence does not change that. If your phone dies, Siri can't do anything. Siri is not going to answer your call. I can't say the A L E X A name without it responding, but in that same vein, it's not smart enough to be able to help itself if the device is shut off. So while I hear you, we're not at that stage yet where it's built into every single thing to the extent to which you just can't flip a switch and shut it off.

Dwight Brown: 32:09
I think that I think the big word there is yet.

David Turetsky: 32:13
Yeah, that's right. And the beautiful part, Dwight is, our

Dwight Brown: 32:14
Yeah, I think, I think we're gonna get there. kids will know much more about it than we ever will. We're definitely at the infancy and, and there's a lot of, you know, misunderstanding of what AI is currently where it's headed. But yeah, I, we'll get there. Right. I don't know if I want my kids to know more about something that I do.

David Turetsky: 32:37
It's gonna happen.

Dwight Brown: 32:38
Play to my insecurities.

Garry Straker: 32:40
But David, I do wonder what impact the development of artificial intelligence will have on wage growth. And one of my predictions, and this was maybe going out on a limb a little bit is that, you know, the utilization of artificial intelligence in certain industry sectors will probably put downward pressure on wages. Because, you know, employees who have been empowered in the last 24 months, who have probably taken a once in a lifetime opportunity to maximize their earnings potential and use whatever leverage they have to demand higher incomes. And that's worked pretty well over the last couple of years for many employees. I wonder if it's gonna work as well, with the advent of artificial intelligence?

David Turetsky: 33:27
Well, Gary, look at the example that we gave, I think Mara, you gave the example of the automated checkouts, right? What happened to those people? They didn't go away from the supermarket, they're still there. Now they're actually the people who are standing over those self checkouts, right? And they're helping people get through the line. There are still signs outside of those supermarkets saying we need help. So to the extent in which retraining and rescaling are still efforts that are underway, I think a lot of the wage pressure that you're talking about are going to be replaced by reskilling and upskilling so that those people now have other careers and other opportunities, because it's still hard to find good people. And to the extent to which we can hire them to do those roles of maintenance and support, we desperately need them.

Dwight Brown: 34:18
Yeah, I mean, think about the industrial revolution where there would there was the big scare that it was going to make all humans obsolete. And to David's point, I think I think ultimately, it does just end up shifting the where people are earning their money. As long as organizations, like you said, are deliberate about reskilling retooling employees. It will be interesting to see what that does to wage growth, though, to your point, Garry. You can reskill and retool, but does that mean that you're reskilling somebody into a job that has comparable pay, or are they going to have to take a pay cut to go there? So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out into the future.

David Turetsky: 35:00
And just remember, we're talking about 2024. Yes, it's coming up, this is August. By the time this podcast gets released, it'll be only a couple months away. But there's not going to be as much of a sea change in the bots taking over completely within 2024. That might be 2025, by the way, especially if an AI gets elected instead of the people who are currently running for President of the United States. But so dramatic, maybe, maybe not. But we are going to see steps in that direction.

Mara Marino: 35:32
Yeah, I was working with a client who was paying a premium for visual inspectors, they had to inspect the material to a very finite tolerance. Now they have scanners that can look at that, and so less strain on people's eyes. And so now those employees can go into another job, not necessarily the visual inspection.

David Turetsky: 35:53
They can become optometrists because now... No, but that's a great point, Mara, you know, also they could be able to be supporting those tools, or those those machines. Yeah, exactly. So this was an awesome discussion. And I think we've laid a lot of things out on the table, I've captured all of these predictions in our spreadsheet, we're going to be tracking them throughout 2024 to see how they go. And then we're gonna come back later on, and talk to you about how your prediction went. And we're gonna give you the opportunity to grade yourself, and we're gonna give the audience an opportunity to grade you as well. So no pressure.

Dwight Brown: 36:43
There'll be a metal at the end, though.

David Turetsky: 36:44
Yes, yes, we're gonna give out metals. Anyways, this was great, great discussion, everybody. Great predictions. Is there anything that you wanted to close with, as far as what 2024 is gonna look like, from your perspective? Give us 20 seconds. Let's start with you, Greg.

Greg Wolf: 37:01
You know, mine would be that we're going to see more and more of a focus around incentive plans and in finding, you know, with all the changes that we talked about so many still unknowns, and we're in that evolution to find the new norm. You know, finding new ways to motivate incent and engage their employees are going to be front and center.

David Turetsky: 37:24
Okay, next, Mara.

Mara Marino: 37:25
All right. Similarly, I also think that there's going to be more incentives for hard to fill shifts, and for people to come into the office when they don't really want to.

David Turetsky: 37:34
That's great, Courtney.

Courtney LeCompte: 37:36
I think in 2024, we're going to see more of the same. And what I mean by that is, I think we're still going to see organizations experiencing the same challenges as a result of a tight labor market and inflationary pressures. And so that's why I think we're going to continue to see creative solutions to recruiting, retaining and engaging that workforce.

David Turetsky: 37:56
Excellent, Garry.

Garry Straker: 37:57
So I'm thinking organizations are going to spend more time managing their internal labor markets, partly for a lot of the reasons we've been talking about AI, more pay transparency, perhaps career progression disclosures, all those things are going to require a lot more focus and tension in terms of how people move within our organizations. And I also think that, you know, the external labor market is something that's really beyond the control of most employers, and it will do whatever it does, based on a whole number of different factors. But I think that organizations do have a responsibility and opportunity to manage their internal labor market, because that is something they can control. I think they're going to spend more time doing that.

David Turetsky: 38:36
Excellent. Eric.

Eric McMillan: 38:38
What I was going to mention was, I think, in 2024, we'll still see a low unemployment rate. And it's still going to be very challenging, particularly in the service industries for the low skill and lower wage positions. You know, minimum wage is not really a thing anymore, you you've got to pay 14 or 15 bucks. And I think there's going to be continued pressure, especially at that part of the labor market, that's going to be hard to recruit people into that level of a job unless you're paying what would be considered kind of a premium level of pay.

David Turetsky: 39:14
Excellent, Rebecca.

Rebecca Gorman: 39:15
So for me, mine is really a recommendation or a plea to business leaders, particularly in the US that it's critical for operations from the C suite to actual operations, finance, legal and HR to work together for a holistic solution for human resources. It's, as I said, the number one line item. We've got to get together as businesses and really think of HR as part of the machine that makes an organization successful, that improves margins or doesn't. And as long as we think of HR as Oh, that people think that the HR people do, businesses are not going to reach their ultimate potential. And all of these things are big business problems that affect the performance of a stock, the performance of a business etc. And it really needs to be part of an overall strategy for the organization. And not just the HR strategy that's separate from the business strategy. So

David Turetsky: 40:10
I think all of us are saying amen to you so now.

Dwight Brown: 40:14
Definitely.

David Turetsky: 40:16
Dwight, how about you?

Dwight Brown: 40:17
I think we are, we're going to be headed toward recession territory. Some troubling little pop ups, I guess you could say that I saw yesterday, I noticed that Dick's Sporting Goods and Macy's both reported earnings far short. And what they're finding is theft is becoming a big issue. The other piece is that they as well as some of the loan servicers are seeing a lot more delinquencies, and I think those are our big signals that we're we're probably headed toward something, you know how deep it's going to be? I think that's the big question. I don't think it's necessarily catastrophic. But I do think those are strong signals of other stuff that's going on in terms of people's pocketbooks and spending and what we're going to see and experience.

David Turetsky: 41:06
Okay, Debbie Downer.

Dwight Brown: 41:08
I know.

Greg Wolf: 41:09
Well, let's have a positive one.

Dwight Brown: 41:11
Yeah.

David Turetsky: 41:12
Well, I got, I got two positives ones for you, just to counter Dwight. Number one, I think that companies are going to be forced to moderate their return to work policies. I don't think they're going to be able to withstand the pressure, especially with knowledge workers, feeling the pressure on other fronts, from inflation, and from their lack of ability to afford good home care for their children and for their seniors that are living at home that they have to take care of, that are going to start to happen more so now. And the second prediction is that the Welcome to the World of HR Data Doodles is going to get to number one on Amazon. That's, that's my hopefully best prediction that I can make.

Rebecca Gorman: 41:50
Alright, works for me! You know, what we're gonna have to do to make that happen? We're gonna have to add like a splinter show that talks about HR true crime. Because isn't it always a true crime podcast that gets to number one?

Eric McMillan: 42:03
There's a lot of crime in HR! Yeah.

Rebecca Gorman: 42:08
HR murder investigations.

David Turetsky: 42:10
HR true crime podcast. Yeah, there you go. Rebecca. So you're going to help us it's going to be you, Dwight and I, that we're gonna have to, you're gonna help find us the cases and Dwight and I are going to be the bloodhounds.

Courtney LeCompte: 42:20
We just need to scandal. Just need a scandal, that's all.

Rebecca Gorman: 42:23
Oh.

Eric McMillan: 42:24
Should be easy to find.

David Turetsky: 42:25
I'm not gonna be part of this scandal, please.

Rebecca Gorman: 42:28
For sure number one.

David Turetsky: 42:30
This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for being a part of the HR Data Labs podcast. And, again, we look forward, Dwight and I look forward to having you on again, to see how these predictions worked out, especially the last one.

Various: 42:42
Thanks, David. Sounds good. Thank you. Really great. Thank you guys. That was fun. Bye.

David Turetsky: 42:46
Thank you, Dwight. And thank you all take care and stay safe.

Announcer: 42:49
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