Kathi Enderes – HR Tech 2023 – How AI Enables Skills-Based Workforce Planning

Connect with Kathi Enderes:

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Connect with David:

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• david.turetsky@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Salary.com's Consulting Practice
• Research from The Josh Bersin Company
• Season 6 bonus 4
• Season 6 bonus 2

• “One big theme that we see for [the coming years] is: how can HR operate in a more integrated way? ”
• “I think a lot of companies are waking up to the fact that they need to do much more agile and dynamic workforce planning.”

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: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. As we've been talking from the HR Tech 2023 Conference here in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have some of the most brilliant people in the world of HR and HR technology. And today I have with us, Kathi Enderes from Bersin. How are you?

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:04

I'm good, David. Thanks for having me!

 

David Turetsky: 1:07

It's so exciting. We got to talk to you last year. And in the spirit of last year, we're going to do something a little different from a topic but first, like we always do. What's one fun thing that no one knows about, Kathi?

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:19

Wow. You didn't prepare me for that one!

 

David Turetsky: 1:21

We never do because we wanted to be a shock.

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:24

Okay, something that nobody knows about me. Supposed to be fun? Okay. Yeah. Well, I don't know how fun it is. But I'm actually an excessive marathon runner.

 

David Turetsky: 1:35

Wow!

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:36

I've run over 40 marathons.

 

David Turetsky: 1:37

Wow!

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:38

And for me, that was super fun.

 

David Turetsky: 1:39

Oh yeah.

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:40

I loved it.

 

David Turetsky: 1:41

I do 5k's but I don't run marathons.

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:43

I started with the marathon and then I never stopped.

 

David Turetsky: 1:46

Really?

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:46

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 1:47

That's amazing.

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:48

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 1:48

Is there any one in particular that you find the best or you love doing the most?

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:53

Of course. Boston.

 

David Turetsky: 1:53

Really? Really?

 

Kathi Enderes: 1:55

Boston is the biggest. I mean, it's, it's such a big event. So you run the marathon anywhere else. I've run it in San Francisco. Nobody even knows there was a marathon.

 

David Turetsky: 2:02

Right.

 

Kathi Enderes: 2:03

In Boston, like everybody has the day off, everybody's watching.

 

David Turetsky: 2:06

It's Patriot's Day.

 

Kathi Enderes: 2:06

It's Patriot's Day! Exactly. And it's a big deal. So

 

David Turetsky: 2:09

I live two towns over from Hopkinton so, yes.

 

Kathi Enderes: 2:12

Oh really?

 

David Turetsky: 2:13

In fact, my kids live in Ashland, which, which goes right through, the marathon goes through. So next time, I'll actually cheer you on.

 

Kathi Enderes: 2:19

Oh, wow, that would be amazing.

 

David Turetsky: 2:21

We have off too, so that's why I can come.

 

Kathi Enderes: 2:23

You always have off, I know, everybody has off. So it's it's fun.

 

David Turetsky: 2:26

The Boston Marathon has also, it has extra meaning now, after the bombing.

 

Kathi Enderes: 2:31

Yes, of course.

 

David Turetsky: 2:32

So many people's lives were affected, whether they were there at that moment, or they know somebody. And you know, it's one of those things where, if you're from that area, you understand when I say it's got a lot of meaning. And it really changed our perception of being safe in Boston.

 

Kathi Enderes: 2:48

Yes, of course, yeah, that was terrible. I was not in that one. Lucky, I got a lot of messages, people saying are you okay? Are you there? And I'm like, no, no, I'm not running this year. So

 

David Turetsky: 2:58

Well, thank goodness.

 

Kathi Enderes: 2:59

Yeah, thank goodness. So yeah that was bad.

 

David Turetsky: 3:01

But the good news is now we know to cheer you on every marathon that we can.

 

Kathi Enderes: 3:05

Well, thank you. Appreciate it.

 

David Turetsky: 3:08

So from that perspective, you know, there's there's obviously a lot going on in the world right now. 2023 has proven to be one of the more challenging, especially in the global scheme of things, there's been a lot of things going on, not just in terms of business and HR. But in terms of conflict, and the economies and recession happening on a global basis, and inflation happening on a global basis, as well as interest rates going up on an on a global basis. What we wanted to try and talk to you about today is what has been happening in the world of HR in 2023, and how that translates to what we might think about what's going to happen in 24, and 25. We're gonna ask you to put on your prognostication hat. But first, give us a rundown of what your perspective and what happened with 2023 was.

 

Kathi Enderes: 4:05

Wow, what happened in 2023? Well, in the world of HR, of course. I mean, the biggest thing and we're here the HR Tech Conference, everybody's talking about AI. So the AI, the chatGPT that was introduced last November, I think turned the world of HR upside down, and honestly, also the world of business upside down, because not just in the world of HR will we see like AI generated value but and also in operational roles in the actual workflows of every single role that you have in an organization whether that's healthcare or retail or manufacturing, like knowledge workers, software engineer on and on, right? All of them will actually change with a generated AI so I think that was massive of course, on the tech side. I think the other thing that and you mentioned it is the inflation, pay levels, expectations for pay really rising, pay equity, huge theme this year. Because of our new laws, right, in Europe, and then throughout the US and in Australia, so pay equity was a big, I think it continues to be a big unsolved problem and topic. I think another thing, of course, pay levels, reward systems not really keeping up because organizations just don't know how to make ends meet.

 

David Turetsky: 5:19

Right.

 

Kathi Enderes: 5:20

But neither do people, right? Neither do employees. So that's, that's going on too. Of course, labor shortage is actually not declining at all, it's getting worse and worse in a way, with labor shortage with inability to recruit, getting the right skills, the whole skill based everything keeps getting more, more urgent for everybody. And in the middle of all of that, I think new leadership approaches too and new organizational models, new, like, another thing that's going on, every industry is converging with another industry. It used to be we knew what, what the industry we were in, right? So in healthcare, you knew exactly how to run your healthcare. And retail, you knew exactly what kind of roles, what kind of jobs, what kind of operating models you had. But now retailers are becoming healthcare organizations too! Like Target is doing general general care, physicians and all of that. Walmart is doing the same thing. CVS is doing the same thing. So retailers are now becoming healthcare organizations and of course, that needs completely different skills, different job models, different operating models, and you're also competing on a talent basis, not just with other retailers, but with everybody else. And every company, of course, is now becoming a tech company. Right? So you're competing suddenly on all these skills with all the different industries, all the different companies as well.

 

David Turetsky: 6:38

Right.

 

Kathi Enderes: 6:38

So that's going on too.

 

David Turetsky: 6:40

And what also happened in the, you mentioned a little bit about this with inflation and with interest rates going up. It really made people second guess investments they had made, which made some areas, well, some companies challenge the business model that they were in and they'd be layoff some employees.

 

Kathi Enderes: 6:59

Yes. Oh, no, that too, because yeah, especially the tech, tech industry. And I think the tech industry was interesting,

 

David Turetsky: 7:02

Yeah. because, in a way, I mean, do you know this, they overhired in the pandemic, right? So they just amped up up up. And then suddenly they said, Oh my God, we have all these people that are working on stuff, we don't even know what they're working on! And then now they've got to narrowed down. So it's, it's kind of this, like the opposite of being dynamic and flexible organization, if you're just just growth, we're hiring, right? That's what they did. They just grew through hiring, they didn't put flexible models into place where they said, maybe we don't need to hire all these people, maybe we get contractors in until we know we want to invest in this kind of area. Exactly.

 

Kathi Enderes: 7:37

Then they wouldn't have to like let go of so many people either.

 

David Turetsky: 7:40

What was amazing was, because this didn't really happen very much in the past, for many companies that had actually gone through those contractions, they also weren't hiring at large levels as well. Whereas you see, a lot of these companies are hiring in other areas. And it begs the question, why don't you just re-skill the people that you have hired, and not just throw them all out, and then still keep recruiting for these other roles?

 

Kathi Enderes: 8:06

going into 2024 2025 is how HR operates, right? Because when HR operates in a more integrated way, when you think, well, maybe recruiting is not just growing is not just recruiting, right? Maybe we look at the skills we need, the skills that we have. And maybe we can to your point, we can re-skill some people, maybe we can move some people around, maybe we can do more project based work, and maybe we can also retain some people more so rather than trying to grow through recruiting alone.

 

David Turetsky: 8:37

Right. Do you think it might be because they don't have the career frameworks and understand the skills necessary? And understand the skill libraries or the skill areas or the skill resources that they actually have currently? Is it maybe there's a lack of the information

 

Kathi Enderes: 8:53

I think so. I think that whole skill based necessary? organization is such a big buzzword, every company says they want to move there. But a lot of them just stop with just creating a taxonomy, right? They're trying to boil the ocean, right? They say, oh we need all the skills in the entire organization. Well, if you do that, right, I mean you just start inventorizing, and then you keep going on it, but you don't do anything with it. So the real thing about skill based organization in my mind is not just getting an inventory, but actually what they are trying to accomplish. Or you're trying to figure out figure out a skill gap, a capability gap, a talent gap in one area, right? So if your software organization, for example, a tech company, you might say oh, we need more like AI people probably, data people, analytics people, data science people, and maybe we need less mainframe people or whatever, right? I like old school legacy framework systems, but maybe you can re-skill them!

 

David Turetsky: 9:47

Exactly! And that's why it kind of mystifies me that they don't look at what the potential could be for just taking those people who they actually probably still like, and want to have them stick around but they're getting rid of them because they just don't see the potential for that reskilling!

 

Kathi Enderes: 10:03

Yeah, no, it's so true. It's so true. I mean, they're losing so much intellectual capital, because they know their internal processes. They know the culture, they know, have relationships, they probably have relationship with customers, with suppliers, with vendors, like all of those kinds of things you lose when you just say, oh, we just don't need these people anymore.

 

David Turetsky: 10:22

And I'm not trying to be emotive when I say this, because, you know, people, people say that business, there's no place for emotion in business, which is horseshit. But really, it's that empathy, or the lack thereof, the company doesn't look at their current resources and go, now we can cut 10%, that's fine. It's not a problem. This is business. It's not personal. It's bullshit!

 

Kathi Enderes: 10:44

It's a personal for every person, right?

 

David Turetsky: 10:46

Exactly! And they have to go home and they have to tell their family. Well, I lost my job. Well, how are we going to make ends meet? I don't know. We'll have to go on public assistance. I mean, that so many people are living paycheck to paycheck that the contemplation of a layoff should be the last resort any company takes!

 

Kathi Enderes: 11:04

Absolutely.

 

David Turetsky: 11:05

Okay. I'm on a soapbox right now.

 

Kathi Enderes: 11:06

I'm with you there. Obviously, I'm European, right? So I'm against layoffs all together. I don't think they're, I mean, unless the business would collapse, otherwise, it should be the very, very last thing you think about. And I think in Europe, because you can't just give people a kick in the, in the back and two weeks later, they're out, they think about it much better. And they they care much more about finding a place where people actually can be a high performer. So you get to be much more intentional about it, because it's not possible. And like I did, actually, like decades ago, when I was in consulting, we did a, worked with a client on a very large workforce reduction program, sadly. We didn't recommend who it was. But we got the cost basically, the cost base across all of the European countries.

 

David Turetsky: 11:52

Wow! And wide variation in Greece, for example, it costs like$2,000, to lay somebody off, in Belgium, $600,000 for somebody

 

Kathi Enderes: 11:58

So like, you better think about it! who makes 60,000 a year.

 

David Turetsky: 12:04

Exactly! And, but but that also brings up a point, which I think I had a conversation with someone a few days ago about this, which says that, you know, you brought up the it should be the last resort. Well, what if we held the CEOs feet to the fire and said that if you do a layoff, that means you either need to take a pay reduction, or you don't get your bonus that year?

 

Kathi Enderes: 12:22

Exactly. I mean, that's exactly right. Because at the end of the day, it's not on the people, right? It's not, it's never on the employees, because if it's if a (layoff) it's not about performance, right? It's about the CEO wasn't performing really well.

 

David Turetsky: 12:36

Or yeah, I mean, they may have made a mistake going into that business, or the timing was wrong, or they underperformed. Well, you know, line of sight says that it goes from the top down then in case of failure. So

 

Kathi Enderes: 12:49

I think it's so true. I think it's so true. And I think that's that mindset of thinking about all the HR disciplines more in a holistic, we call that systemic way, is really where HR needs to go now. There's no other way than doing this. So I mean, most HR organizations still operate very much in silos, right?

 

David Turetsky: 13:09

Yes, they do.

 

Kathi Enderes: 13:10

Here's the people analytics people, here's the comp people, here's the talent acquisition people, here's the L&D people, here's the leadership development people, the employee experience, the like DEI people, on and on and on. But none of the things you can solve in a silo! Like recruiting you can't solve in a silo because sometimes you can't recruit anybody, right? So you got to think about internally maybe.

 

David Turetsky: 13:29

Recruiting needs to go to compensation and get what's the latest range?

 

Kathi Enderes: 13:32

Of course! Exactly. And and, like, if you say, well we're just growing through recruiting alone, it's in this labor market also, it's not going to work. It's just not going to work.

 

David Turetsky: 13:42

Well no, especially from the fact that the recruiters need to get direction from someone, maybe it's from the hiring manager, the hiring manager had approval for hiring those resources. Where did they get it from? You know, have they created that plan, that workforce plan? Are they following the plan? Are there exceptions to the plan? There are so many checks that might need to be, you know, created in terms of hiring that one person. Why aren't there the other way around when you're letting people go? Sorry to go

 

Kathi Enderes: 14:13

I totally agree. I mean, that you mentioned they back. were getting kind of direction from the hiring manager. And I think what's also happening, which is true, of course, most recruiters don't dare push back, right? When the hiring manager says, oh, I need to hire these 10 people. They don't ask, Oh, let's talk about each of these roles, right? Do they have to be full time roles? Could they be maybe project based and first, like you cannot get anybody with these skill sets in this location? There's no way because we know for a fact it doesn't exist in this location. So like being much more of a talent advisor and much less of an order taker from like the hiring managers. They say, just go out and recruit these people. Right?

 

David Turetsky: 14:52

Right and then and then, you know, we talked a So little about this before, talent pools, building talent pools, whether it's inside the organization or stoking the community to try and find those skills, whether they exist here, or wherever, and being able to keep them warm. So when you need to hire for those types of skills, they're available for you.

 

Kathi Enderes: 15:10

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I think that skill based workforce planning is still something hardly anybody is doing honestly. But I think more and more it has to come. Because most of the workforce plans that you have are headcount plans, really. That's all finance approved, I get three people., so now I gotta get three people. But finance doesn't care about skills, right. And so how you get the skills could be many different ways. It could be three full time resources, it could be six contractors, it could be 20 projects that you do just internally with, like internal resources. So that like headcount planning really doesn't work anymore for this world where you don't know what the jobs are, what the roles are, what the work is, what the skills are, that you need to have.

 

Announcer: 15:50

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David Turetsky: 16:01

What does that evolve to? What does that become? Is that where we're gonna need the AI overlords to be able to help us understand how we're going to take all the big data of where do those skills exist and find those diamonds in the rough to help us uncover them?

 

Kathi Enderes: 16:16

Absolutely. I think that talent intelligence systems and there are several of them here obviously, we're looking at one of them, Beamery is one of them! Or Eightfold, Phenom, like Gloat to some respect to like some of the recruiting related talent intelligence systems, they already know, like, they know what's outside, but then they also know what's inside. Right? So comparing that outside world with the inside world, on a skill basis, and then also seeing competitive intelligence to see, okay, so if your competitors are hiring, maybe just have that kind of skill set. In, for example, we have worked with a pharma company, a very large pharma company, on their R&D, of course, because R&D is the biggest thing, of course in pharma. And they saw that their competitors were hiring for, also had, completely different skill sets in R&D, like next generation skill sets, and they still had the legacy like just drug development versus others had actually, like sometimes pharma doesn't even just create pharmaceuticals anymore. They create games, for example, for lazy eye or something like that, right? So there are different interventions that have nothing to do with actual pharma, right? Treating diseases without having you to take a pill or something. So then you need completely different skills that they were able to see actually, they had still a legacy skill sets. And so that, then you can say, oh, maybe we should also look more for that kind of skill set. And then you could say, oh, maybe we have people that are already kind of close in our area that we could reskill them, upskill them and then move them over there. So we don't have to just like throw it all out and and build it all anew from from scratch.

 

David Turetsky: 17:53

But But Is that is that a function of their HRIT? Is that a function of their workforce planning efforts? Where does that kind of lie who has the responsibility for being able to point that stuff out? Because who owns that workforce planning? Who is the person who's responsible?

 

Kathi Enderes: 18:12

It's interesting, I think some most, well first, most organizations don't do this at all, right? Most, like maybe five to 10% of companies do this well. Most companies are still like, they don't have any, to your point, they don't have any insights on what skills they have, what skills they need, what skills are available outside, because they all go by jobs, right? They don't break it down into skills. But those that do, I think that's some of them have, like strategic workforce planning groups, some of them make this part of the HR business partner role, like the consultant role, working, of course, with that talent intelligence, I don't think HRIT would be the right place, because they're doing the like, the plumbing.

 

David Turetsky: 18:49

They're just trying to keep the wheels on the bus.

 

Kathi Enderes: 18:51

Exactly, exactly. So but I think it's a very forward looking strategic thing. Some some groups that we talked with, they have an HR planning and strategy group that actually does that. And then works with the business partners who are assigned to these business areas, to consult with their, with their business leaders on how to go about that in a very strategic way, obviously, so it's not just handing over, here's my plan, and you just go out and recruit. Like, okay, what are you trying to accomplish? What capabilities are you trying to build? How can we help you do this?

 

David Turetsky: 19:20

Are those relatively new groups within companies? And who do you see, do you see the pharma? Do you see other like software or technology companies? Who's actually leading in that kind of space?

 

Kathi Enderes: 19:33

Yeah, I mean, it is to your first question, it is very new. I think most companies, some very few companies have a talent intelligence COE or something like that. But most, most don't. But I think a lot of companies are waking up to the fact that they have to do something and like, much more agile and dynamic workforce planning and Workforce Strategy and all of that around it. Yeah. And so I think from a vendor perspective, it's the talent intelligence vendors really that aer best in this space. And if you've listened to Josh's keynote today, he was talking about these are the second generation AI companies. So these are new companies that were actually built on AI, they are not transactional system, they put AI on top of it, which like the HCM systems are, which is great, because you still need the HCM, but they were, they're data systems, they're big data systems that were built on data and AI. So you're trying to, you're not trying to make them transactional systems, you trust the AI to actually predict and get all these skills together. Because without AI, it's impossible to capture all of this, it's moving too fast. And if you're trying to move, like do that manually, you're never gonna get done.

 

David Turetsky: 20:39

No, you're never going to but you also then have to have your leadership trust, of course, that that's going to drive change in the organization, and that they have to embrace it. Because they're giving the AI overlords a lot of power in that case to predict our future.

 

Kathi Enderes: 20:55

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, of course, you still want to have the humans to decide on it, right? Yeah, you will never say, Oh, here's the AI generated workforce plan, because,

 

David Turetsky: 21:05

Hey, it's been designed for you, we sent it to your email. Just click approve and we're going to go to that.

 

Kathi Enderes: 21:10

Just approve, then we're gonna recruit all these people and retain all these people and reskill all these people. Exactly. But that's why I think the consultative mindset and a consultative skill set of the HR people that are going to sit with the business leaders now and talk with them very strategically about what are we trying to accomplish? What's the problem we're trying to solve? And then work with them on how to create that plan.

 

David Turetsky: 21:33

But Kathi, now, we're talking about HR, and we're talking about very different skills that our HR business partners and our HR leaders have to have. They've never had to, you know, basically, work with this kind of technology before! We've, we've always tangentially had some of this stuff. But I mean, not AI, but we've always had some kind of technology. I'm not gonna mention the name of the company. But I mean, we're talking about back in the 80s and early 90s, when a computer didn't exist in the HR world. So this is this is new stuff for us. Who and how can start to acquire those skills in the HR world? Is it really the generalist? Is it really? Is it the people in OD? Who is it that have to do that?

 

Kathi Enderes: 22:23

I think, yes. And yes, it could be the HR business partners, it could be the people in OD, it could be people in talent management, I think different different organizations will have different groups that naturally lend themselves to that work. And of course, you're gonna upskill them and reskill them to be data savvy, to be, and more consultative. I think that consulting mindset is so key.

 

David Turetsky: 22:45

But they have not had that skill, either. It's been, well, I can't say that of everybody. But having a consultative mindset means that you have that relationship with the business, and that you have all the tools and the data you need in order to be able to do that.

 

Kathi Enderes: 23:02

Absolutely, exactly. Yeah. I mean, what we are seeing, and we are actually publishing a very big study on what we call systemic HR. Yeah, we're seeing the best HR functions, functional, like consulting firms, not like like, product companies, not like service delivery or support functions or cost centers. They are really like consulting organizations, very flat, very agile teams, problem aligned, consultative, obviously, also database. And I started my career in management consulting. So like, you did nothing, of course, without data, because the client said, well, where's the data?

 

David Turetsky: 23:37

Well, how do you back this up? What is this? Gut feel?

 

Kathi Enderes: 23:40

Exactly like, in God we trust, everybody else bring data?

 

David Turetsky: 23:45

Exactly. Yeah, Oh, that's a good one. I like that. But the CFO world has been living this for years, decades. They have rules around it, like, you know, all the FASB rules. The GAAP rules. We're still a little bit behind that. I mean, we have the pay transparency laws and other things and tons of regulation. But what else is going to drive this? Is it just the technology that's going to drive it? Is it the need? Is it the skill? Yeah, what's going to drive it?

 

Kathi Enderes: 24:14

I don't think that technology will drive it. I think the technology will enable it. I think the need is driving it and the need is driving it because the problems we have to solve in HR are so much more complex than just 10 years ago.

 

David Turetsky: 24:25

Yes.

 

Kathi Enderes: 24:25

I mean, if you think about what HR was doing,

 

David Turetsky: 24:27

Even three years ago!

 

Kathi Enderes: 24:28

Even three years ago, before the pandemic, and now we're dealing not just with all the pandemic stuff, but hybrid work and wellbeing and mental health and diversity and, like pay equity, all these things that were not even topics before. Now, we do have to do all of them.

 

David Turetsky: 24:43

And workplace violence, which

 

Kathi Enderes: 24:45

workplace violence

 

David Turetsky: 24:46

never had, you know, 10 years ago, who thought that we'd have this level of workplace violence?

 

Kathi Enderes: 24:50

Absolutely, absolutely. And yeah, so all of these, all of these topics, and there's no other way than if you want to solve these problems, and the business is looking to HR to solve this problem. Another huge problem that we, I think in HR have a huge opportunity to solve. And only HR can do it, is solving for introducing AI into the organization itself, not in HR, which is another use case, but in the workflows of every single person in the organization, because that's gonna impact transforming all the roles, all the jobs, all the skills, operating models, management models, and who else can do it? IT won't do that. IT will put that that, like, chat GPT or whatever you're going to use out there, right, they're not going to transform the work.

 

David Turetsky: 25:34

Right. My thought is on this, and I'd love your reaction to it, if HR got out of the administration way, and enabled AI to do a lot of the workflow and education, on simple questions, you know, what's the hiring range for this job? I want to hire this job. Can you help me with that? You know, I need time off approval for this stuff.

 

Kathi Enderes: 25:56

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 25:57

Why is HR getting in the way of that? I mean, HR technology, been trying to get

 

Kathi Enderes: 25:59

Oh, yeah. it out of the way from Employee Self Service tools and on mobile phones. But if you had the ability to chat to a thing, like in your phone and say, hey, I want to do I want to time off requests for you know, or I want to ask these these staff, when they're going to take their time off requests, can you go poll them and find out when they're going to take their vacations this year? Right.

 

David Turetsky: 26:22

We don't have people like secretaries or administrative assistants to go do that anymore.

 

Kathi Enderes: 26:26

That's right.

 

David Turetsky: 26:27

Why can't we have the AI do that?

 

Kathi Enderes: 26:29

Oh, and you can! I mean, I was actually at Talent Connect last week in New York. And Donna Morris, who is the CHRO of Walmart, she presented what they have done on with generative AI where they actually did exactly, what you just said, for all 1 million people in the US and they all gave them a company phone.

 

David Turetsky: 26:48

Wow!

 

Kathi Enderes: 26:49

And you can ask it anything, and it doesn't just tell you how to do it. It actually does it for you, too. So you say I want a PTO. I want to take PTO from October 20 to 31st. Then it's gonna say, okay, great. I put this in review for the system. Should I submit it? It submits it, right? It does it for you, too. So which is and it took them only 90 days to build this, is what she said. It took them 90 days to build this. So they

 

David Turetsky: 27:10

Are you serious? built it on top of all the, because every one, like Workday builds something on Workday, right? And everybody built it on their own thing. But she wanted something that's on top of all of the transactions not within each system, because otherwise you have all these chat bots that you have to still go to different places, right? You talked about silos before.

 

Kathi Enderes: 27:30

Exactly, those silos, right? Because on this one at a chat, and that chat bot, you can say things like I want a PTO day to I need to hire somebody in this location. And then it's gonna say, Okay, let's open the requisition for you and write the job description and everything else. Oh, I need to do a performance review and helps you with that too, like whatever, right? So,

 

David Turetsky: 27:52

have to work overtime, because we won't be able to hire in time for that person to go out on leave. So those kinds of things kind of generate that next generation of problem and the next generation and next generation.

 

Kathi Enderes: 28:14

That's right.

 

David Turetsky: 28:14

And it causes kind of a cavalcade of, of solving business problems and workflows. If HR can get out of that way, like Walmart, you're saying Walmart has, that would just be phenomenal for us, then we could be that consultant you talked about before.

 

Kathi Enderes: 28:28

Exactly. And it would still not do it by itself, right? And you'd still have to upskill and reskill and break down silos, and at least you would be not burdened with all of these administrative no value add tasks, because it system can do this much faster, better, cheaper, right? Without errors and without like having to call somebody and you could do it even voice based. Right? So like a shop floor worker in Walmart can talk into their phone, right? And just basically.

 

David Turetsky: 28:56

It has all the context to know who that person is, who they report to and all that stuff.

 

Kathi Enderes: 28:59

You don't have to enter new any of this, it knows exactly who you are.

 

David Turetsky: 29:02

And they make a ton of different errors by entering that form.

 

Kathi Enderes: 29:06

Exactly! And then you have to look up that like the job codes or the location codes or whatever you have, right, right. It knows all of this. And then it can suggest other things that you might want it to too. So it can tell, can I help you with this stuff? Can I help you with this stuff? Because usually people do these kinds of transactions after they do this kind of thing.

 

David Turetsky: 29:23

That's right.

 

Kathi Enderes: 29:24

So it learns a lot on this. And it took them so short, right? That's the amazing thing that I think with, like generative AI, especially how quickly it has evolved into something that's really useful, while it's still like being updated constantly as well.

 

David Turetsky: 29:40

And this topic is so brand new. It sounds strange to say this, but in 2025 we may listen to this, Kathi and say, oh boy!

 

Kathi Enderes: 29:48

We didn't know anything!

 

David Turetsky: 29:50

We were so naive when we said that. Think about what the world is today. And I'm hoping that that's a good thing by the way, not a, oh, wow, we never got anywhere near that.

 

Kathi Enderes: 30:03

Well, that could be true because you always overestimate the change that's happening in the short term. And you underestimate the change that's going to happen in the long term. Right? So we think next year, it's going to be so much further along, maybe it's not going to be that much further along. But maybe in 10 years, probably, it's gonna be somewhere we can't imagine at all.

 

David Turetsky: 30:20

Well, the one thing I'm hoping and I'm praying is that legislatures across this country, don't make the stupid move of trying to regulate chatGPT and generative AI out of the business world, before we even understand what it could do.

 

Kathi Enderes: 30:34

I think it would be a big mistake, because the opportunities are endless. And the opportunities to make work better, too, are endless, right? It takes care of all the things that nobody wants to do anyway. And it makes us all, as Josh said, super workers, right? It makes us all like Superman, because we know so many things!

 

David Turetsky: 30:51

But they're so ignorant of any of that. And I'm not trying to broad brush and you know, say every legislator is, but the people who are opening up their mouths and talking about making legislation on this right now are saying, this is a movie that we've seen the ending of before, and it's not a good one. And, you know.

 

Kathi Enderes: 31:10

Yeah, I mean, I hear you, I hear you. I'm always a positive person. I'm an optimist. So I think it's, it will happen, and it will happen, actually to things that we don't even know how good they're gonna be. I think the whole, I know a lot of HR people are afraid too. They're afraid because they don't understand it. They're afraid it's going to take their jobs, it's gonna, they're afraid they're like they're in over their head, right? I think it's gonna make jobs just better. And every time we've seen any of the things, jobs were not destroyed, jobs were created, right? Better jobs were created every time we had like a big step change in technology, jobs were created.

 

David Turetsky: 31:49

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. You want to know the one thing that I could agree with that might be a concern, and that's velocity. Work used to be a lot slower, technology enabled us to go faster. Now the technology that can take all these things off our plate enable us to go even faster.

 

Kathi Enderes: 32:33

That's true.

 

David Turetsky: 32:34

And so AI doesn't have to take a break. It doesn't have to take a rest, AI is now going to be waiting for us to make decisions. And so the pace of change, and the pace of decisions are going to go much more rapid.

 

Kathi Enderes: 32:48

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 32:49

And we're going to have to up our game, maybe it's Red Bull, maybe it's coffee, I don't know.

 

Kathi Enderes: 32:55

I don't do any of these! I can't.

 

David Turetsky: 32:59

But but but you know what I'm saying?

 

Kathi Enderes: 33:00

Yeah!

 

David Turetsky: 33:01

Because the state of a computer is always in a, I'm ready to process now, let me process, but humans are not. We're going to have to build in those gaps into those technologies. Or I can understand why people might be afraid of AI making them go way faster than they're used to.

 

Kathi Enderes: 33:23

I get this but I don't think AI will change this. I mean, this is already what it is today. Every time you get like 15 emails and 20 pings and WhatsApp and Slack and Teams and all that. And do you have to respond to all of this? No, but we put this on ourselves. So we have to take that pause ourselves and say, and I think that's why people are so burned out. That's why people are so stressed out because it's constant now. I mean, you know this, like in the 80s or 90s, there was no email, right? You couldn't take your work home.

 

David Turetsky: 33:53

That's true. There were barely laptops and laptops were like 15, 20 pounds.

 

Kathi Enderes: 33:58

Exactly. Or you had a desktop. Right? And you couldn't like, nobody had a cell phone! Of course, you didn't even have a cell phone. It wasn't even possible. Right?

 

David Turetsky: 34:04

We don't even have legislation right now that covers those working hours that we're working that are beyond the office, on our cell phones and whatnot.

 

Kathi Enderes: 34:12

That's right. So the always on is already happening all the time. But yet the four day workweek actually is coming more and more into play, right? So maybe four day workweek is is going to, maybe that's one way to think about the AI is it could free us up to only work four days a week!

 

David Turetsky: 34:29

Okay, Kathi, you're like me. Tell me there's a time on the weekend where you don't get an email or you don't get a text message or you don't get that I have an idea. And we work on it right then.

 

Kathi Enderes: 34:42

Of course not. Because I want to, right? Not because I have to but because I love it.

 

David Turetsky: 34:47

But that makes this even worse because we love working. Even though we love life and we want to take advantage of our kids when they're young and things like that. We love working and for a lot of us, this is going to burn us out just much faster.

 

Kathi Enderes: 35:01

I don't know, I think the burnout is happening for people who don't love their job. And there's more, way more people who don't love their job than like us. Right? 90% of the population kind of despises work. They'd rather not work than work. You and I are different, right? And a lot of people that we know are different. But you think about the general population, most of them say, Oh, I hate my job, every day I dread going there, and I can't wait to come home. That's not how we're wired. So I think that the people that get burned out are the people that don't do it because they love it, but because they have to, right?

 

David Turetsky: 35:33

But we've seen epiphanies like the pandemic, where we had the Great Awakening, or the great resignation, or whatever you want to call it.

 

Kathi Enderes: 35:40

Yeah all the great ones. All the great ones, right? All the great ones had really bad outcomes, which I don't know why they were so great. Which was great, but it wasn't that great for us.

 

David Turetsky: 35:48

But what they did was it exposed that they were in pardon the expression, shit jobs, and they looked around, they went, Wait a minute, there's a job that's over here where I don't have to clean bedpans. I don't have to watch people die every day. I don't have to do this. I don't have to do that. And I can get paid basically the same and have a better life. Well, that epiphany is going to happen more to knowledge workers than to the skilled workers. And it's going to start getting into the, and with the demographic bubble of the baby boomers starting to retire or retiring in mass, aren't we going to see that a lot of the knowledge worker gaps that exist today just get exacerbated even worse?

 

Kathi Enderes: 36:28

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. But that's where AI has a huge opportunity too! Because if you don't have enough people, right, how you're going to fill up that gap?

 

David Turetsky: 36:37

That's true.

 

Kathi Enderes: 36:38

You can have AI do a lot of the job that, but only if we redesign the work. That's why we're coming back that redesigning the work, not just HR stuff, but actual work, every single job is huge opportunity and using AI to fill workforce gaps, because then you need less people. We did a big study on healthcare, we launched it last year in the healthcare industry and we predicted that there's going to be a nursing shortage in the US of 2.1 million people, which is every third nursing job will be empty. We did that on a lot of data.

 

David Turetsky: 37:11

With increasing demand with the aging population.

 

Kathi Enderes: 37:15

Exactly. So what we then did too, is like, how is that gap even fillable? And if you're try just recruiting you go 10 to 15% of that, right? You can't, because there's not that many people who want to be nurses! They can't. Even if you recruit all of them, like, that's, that's not that many only 200,000 a year graduate from nursing school. Right? So recruiting goes a little bit of away. Then we said retention, okay, retaining people who otherwise would leave the industry or leave your organization goes another 15% of that big gap. So it goes a little bit more. Then we say reskilling. So basically upskilling, reskilling people that are in non clinical jobs into clinical job takes some time, right, it takes years, but then you have them.

 

David Turetsky: 37:55

And licensure.

 

Kathi Enderes: 37:56

Exactly that, that's even a little bit bigger of the gap, like maybe 20%. But the rest of it is only closable if you use, if you redesign work, use AI technology, automation or team based work models, non clinical people basically to do that too, as well. All of these like redesign things, almost 50% of that gap, needing less of them. Otherwise, you can't do it. So

 

David Turetsky: 38:20

That makes it untenable.

 

Kathi Enderes: 38:22

Yeah, exactly. So that's a huge opportunity. And I expect it's going to be the same in many other disciplines too. Because you see, the shortages of course in like airline workers, for example, flight attendants whatever, like, hospitality, everywhere really. You have the workforce challenge, like gaps as well. How are you going to fill them? You can't just fill them with people. There's just not enough

 

David Turetsky: 38:43

And immigration policies are being what they people! are, we're actually seeing the available workforce that we used to have is constrained even further.

 

Kathi Enderes: 38:53

It's very true, especially in the jobs that quite frankly, many Americans wouldn't want to do anyway. Right? And then how, how are you going to? Yeah, I know we get into politics, we don't want to go there!

 

David Turetsky: 39:03

But here's a here's a here's a simple nonpolitical one. On Cape Cod, we used to be able to hire lifeguards to be able to fill all the pools and all of the needs of all the camps that existed. Well, what happened? Well, after the pandemic, a lot of those people couldn't come back. And then a lot of the real estate got so expensive out on the Cape, that we couldn't hire people with the right rates, because we couldn't afford to put them anywhere! So a lot of those pools shut down or had to have limited hours because you can only hire a lifeguard for a limited period of time. A lot of the business models of the camps had to change because they got so expensive. So it literally changed the way we live. Because not only couldn't we hire those people from abroad, we couldn't get them here, we couldn't keep them!

 

Kathi Enderes: 39:50

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 39:51

And so it wasn't just about not being able to bring people in, because we weren't allowed to bring them in. But we weren't allowed to hold them or host them in that area.

 

Kathi Enderes: 40:00

Wow. I mean, and it's all of these things are so multi dimensional, right? It's not

 

David Turetsky: 40:06

And you can't automate that, by the way.

 

Kathi Enderes: 40:08

Oh, no, you can't automate that.

 

David Turetsky: 40:10

Life guards? No.

 

Kathi Enderes: 40:11

That is very true. And I mean, you can't automate the newest job, either. But you can automate parts of it. And so then you need net less nurses.

 

David Turetsky: 40:19

Right. Or the administrative pieces of the nurses job could be. Exactly.

 

Kathi Enderes: 40:23

Charting, also patient flows, right, where nurses should go. All of that can be an AI. Medication robots has have been in place for decades. But then we had a great storm we did the healthcare system study, I wasn't that great. It was just like, almost fascinating when we talked about how you redesign the work. And they said, Well, it's interesting, because we've had medication robots, that IT deployed, but you couldn't put them, their alleys were too, too narrow, so they wouldn't fit through. So they're just standing in a corner. And we're not using them because IT said, I'm done. We deployed the robots, right? And nobody is accountable for redesigning the layout of the hospital. So now you can't use like, so now the nurses still have to do medication, although robots do it better, faster, cheaper, of course.

 

David Turetsky: 41:06

Well, with less shortage or shrinkage.

 

Kathi Enderes: 41:09

Exactly and no, usually no room for error, right? Because, like the things that you can't automate to your point, of course, it's the bedside, right? It's still like somebody caring for you. Nobody wants to say, Well, I was only seen by a robot, right? When you're not feeling well, and all of that.

 

David Turetsky: 41:26

Maybe you could program a robot to have as much empathy as a nurse. I doubt it. Nurses love their patients.

 

Kathi Enderes: 41:33

They love their patients. Exactly.

 

David Turetsky: 41:34

But there's that physical touch, there's that empathy.

 

Kathi Enderes: 41:38

Empathy, exactly. But can you support the nurses with a robot? Absolutely. Right? And can you support them also with non clinical people that maybe when somebody gets sick to clean up or something like that. We found out in the Healthcare Study, Roomba for hospitals! Roomba, exactly, Roomba or like Zumba is actually the scrubbing thing.

 

David Turetsky: 41:57

Oh I didn't know that. I thought it was just a dance.

 

Kathi Enderes: 42:00

Zumba is also a dance. We have one of these scrubbers at home, right? But yeah, nurses would we found out when we started healthcare, they only work at top of license, which is a concept, basically to do only the work that you are uniquely qualified to do 50 to 60% of the time, everything else they do like 40 to 50% of the time they do stuff that somebody else could do, a machine could do, like somebody lower skilled.

 

David Turetsky: 42:24

And they're paying them a lot of money to do shitty stuff.

 

Kathi Enderes: 42:26

Paying a lot of money, and it's burning them out. Of course, they don't want to be there anymore because it's stressful. It's hard. It's physically demanding.

 

David Turetsky: 42:32

Oh, yeah. Especially when you double shift

 

Kathi Enderes: 42:34

When you double shift them exactly. So I think them constantly! all of, and that happens in every profession, right? Every profession has these opportunities to say, how can we use the talent, the people that we have to the top of their license to the top of their capabilities, their skills?

 

David Turetsky: 42:57

And I think Kathi, that's a great place to end it. Because all we're going to see in a couple years, did we heed that and are we going to use that really sage advice to treat people at the top of their license?

 

Kathi Enderes: 43:12

That's right. I love it.

 

David Turetsky: 43:13

Cool. Kathi, thank you so much for being on the HR Data Labs podcast!

 

Kathi Enderes: 43:17

Thank you, David. I could have talked for another few hours!

 

David Turetsky: 43:20

That's awesome. Thank you so much. Take care and stay safe.

 

Announcer: 43:25

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