Alexandra Levit – How Good Talent Intelligence Benefits Recruitment and Retention

Connect with Alexandra Levit:

• 

Connect with David:

• 
• 
• david.turetsky@salary.com

Connect with Dwight:

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• dwight.brown@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Alexandra's website
• Inspiration at Work
• Deep Talent: How to Transform Your Organization and Empower Your Employees Through AI book
• Humanity Works: Merging Technologies and People for the Workforce of the Future book
• They Don't Teach Corporate in College book
• HR Data Labs Season 6 Episode 20
• HR Data Labs Season 6 Episode 18

• “What we’re seeing now is that . . . organizations don’t have a good handle on the skills of the existing workforce.”
• “When [the states of New York and Indiana] put their talent intelligence systems together, . . . they were able to pipeline a whole bunch more people into those open jobs that employers had and keep them from leaving the state.”

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 for 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 alongside my trusty co host and friend, Dwight Brown of Salary.com. Hello, Dwight.

Dwight Brown: 0:54

David, how you doing?

David Turetsky: 0:55

I'm doing great because today we are speaking to Alexandra Levit, who is the president and CEO of Inspiration at Work, which is a woman-owned consulting company. Alexandra, how are you?

Alexandra Levit: 1:07

I'm great. Thanks so much for having me, David and Dwight,

Dwight Brown: 1:10

Thanks for being here!

David Turetsky: 1:11

It is our pleasure. So Alexandra, tell us a little bit about Inspiration at Work and about yourself.

Alexandra Levit: 1:17

Okay, well, I am a futurist, specifically in the workforce domain. And most people do not know exactly what that means. And that's okay. I like to explain it pretty simply as a person who looks at trends that are percolating up through the market through society through the business world and in our case, the workforce to make an educated determination about what has the greatest potential for disruption. And so I work with both organizations and individuals to ascertain Okay, well, knowing you want to be gainfully employed, or you want to be gainfully in business for the next several years, at least, what are the types of things that you need to do to be adequately prepared and my landscape is typically around five to 10 years, I try not to go too far beyond 10 years, because I think that so many things can happen. There's so many external variables that that it gets a little murky. But I think if we pay attention to the signals around us, and if we are willing to challenge our cherished assumptions about what we know to be true, I think that oftentimes, we can be pretty accurate with these forecasts.

David Turetsky: 2:24

That's really cool. And I think we're going to spend most of the episode today talking about that. But before we do, like we ask all of our other guests, what's one fun thing that no one knows about Alexandra?

Alexandra Levit: 2:36

I think there's a couple. I guess if I was going to pick one, I would say that I bowled competitively as a child. I had this lovely six pound ball, I kid you not, it was six pounds. And I was this tiny little person. And I was on the circuit competing in bowling tournaments. And it's funny people always like, Well, are you a good bowler now? And it's one of those skills. It's not like riding a bike, you absolutely lose the skill. And I'm such I'm on an adult bowling league now. But I'm so horrifyingly inconsistent. My team hates me, I'm that person who could either bowl a 90 or a 190 depending on the day.

David Turetsky: 3:19

That's why we use average.

Alexandra Levit: 3:20

Right. Right. Exactly.

David Turetsky: 3:22

Yeah.

Dwight Brown: 3:22

Lies, damn lies and statistics, right?

David Turetsky: 3:26

Well, I so there's a bowling alley not far from me that I love to go to and the people there are wonderful. And I am so they keep asking me, why don't you join a league? And then they watch me for the three, three games I bowl. And you know, to your point, one could be a 200. The next one could be 105. Next one's like 140. And what is going on with you? Well, first of all, as I get older, and I think you may have seen this too, Alexandra, I have tennis elbow. And so pieces of me stop reacting as well. Or I can't be as consistent because I get a pain somewhere, you know.

Alexandra Levit: 4:05

Yeah, that's absolutely accurate. And once you start hurting in a place, like it's very hard to keep going because it's the same motion over and over. It's not like you can use your other hand.

David Turetsky: 4:18

When I was younger, I used to use a really heavy ball. I think it was an 18 pounder because I was throwing the ball so fast that I had to slow my motion down. And I still have my my ball. I think it's a 16 which I used when I wasn't feeling great. But I'm using my 16 now because I still don't want to do it too, you know, I don't want to go through the motion too fast. But I just can't do the 18 anymore.

Alexandra Levit: 4:42

Yeah, well 18 is, I mean just from sheer momentum and force alone, you'll knock over pins with that size of ball!

David Turetsky: 4:51

There's a Bugs Bunny episode in my brain going where my hand goes with the ball down the alley and knock all of them down because I made them.

Dwight Brown: 4:59

They still put the kiddie bumpers up for me.

Alexandra Levit: 5:03

My kids still want those. I'm like, you guys are 15 and 12, I don't think you.

David Turetsky: 5:08

They're all automated now. So it's actually fun to go and they come up and go down. They've got LEDs in them. It's actually kind of neat. Yeah. So let's get into our topic for today. And it's really interesting one, and we're gonna be talking about talent intelligence. So Alexandra, you mentioned you're a futurist in your introduction, what are we talking about in terms of the future of the world at work? What are your signals? What do you see happening in the world of work today?

Alexandra Levit: 5:44

And this is such a great question. And I'll take a few minutes to go over what I think are four overarching trends with respect to what we're seeing, and I'm hopeful that this audience is a very knowledgeable, informed group. And that none of this is going to be too much of a surprise, I hope. But these are things that we're seeing today that will definitely be projected into the future, the next 5, 10, probably even 15 years from now. So the first thing is job redesign, we are seeing a lot more of the creation of new job categories. And this is primarily because we need to oversee and manage AI based machines, and integrate humans and machines on teams together. And we need to figure out a way to keep humans in the loop so that when we put a piece of technology into a traditionally human driven process, it doesn't just run amok, and that it's actually doing what it's intended to do. And because of this, we're seeing these new jobs, cross departmental fault lines. So maybe a job might combine HR and IT, for example. And I think that's going to be a skill set in HR that we just don't really have, right now this job redesign, it's happening kind of on an ad hoc basis. But I think it's going to need to be a lot more strategic. And we're going to need to figure out a much better way to do it at scale, because so many of these jobs are going to need to be created. The next one is employee experience and flexibility. We've always seen or maybe not always, but in the last several decades, employee experience has become a really essential part of the employee lifecycle and engagement. So we see that we have tried to address things like what's the experience that the candidate goes through during talent acquisition, and how are people onboarded? What's the learning and development experience? Like how do we do performance management? When we off board people, how do we do it? But I think we're seeing this being taken to the next level in that the employee experience in the near future needs to be a combination of high tech and high touch, it needs to be really well integrated. Whereas previously, it was a lot more siloed and transactional, you would have to go eight different places for your different needs within HR. And I think it's also going to need to focus on the two primary themes of purpose and flexibility, employers are really going to need to drill down into those two ideas, and craft their employee experience accordingly. The next one shouldn't hopefully be a surprise. And that's this renewed focus on employee well being. For years and years and years, we viewed employees as commodities. Most organizations are just not accustomed to concerning themselves with aspects of their employees lives outside the office or outside of their immediate job function. But the pandemic really did change this, it necessitated a much more holistic view of the employer employee relationship with a particular emphasis on mental health. What is concerning to me about this one is that I see us going backwards, in many respects. I think employers did a fantastic job during the pandemic, but a lot of these benefits are being rolled back now. And I think that's the wrong decision. I think this is only going to become a more critical need. And then the final thing I would I would cite as a major trend is this very, very rapidly increasing compliance and government regulation situation. And HR compliance has this absurd level of complexity these days. There are hundreds of new regulations associated with first it was reopening and then distributed work and travel and vaccination and testing, PPE. And now we're seeing it turned toward the management and regulation of AI. And the thing about this is, is that these regulations can vary, definitely by country, but also by state, by local jurisdiction. And so as an HR professional, you really have to be in the know about what's going on in your specific area and keep up with it. It's almost like a full time job for an HR person. So these are just the four major, major things that I'm seeing drive the future of work, just to give us kind of a place to start with.

David Turetsky: 10:12

And every single one of them could be their own special podcast.

Alexandra Levit: 10:17

Right! Isn't that fun?

David Turetsky: 10:19

In fact, we have done podcasts on those specific topics, because they are essential right now to being able to not just overcome the short term, but to win in the long term.

Alexandra Levit: 10:31

Yes.

David Turetsky: 10:33

And by the way, a lot of these things, they don't live in isolation. They're all interconnected.

Alexandra Levit: 10:38

Exactly.

David Turetsky: 10:38

So and so, let's talk a little bit about something that's a little, I guess, beyond this, which is, how do you gauge which one is the thing that you need to focus on today? Is there a way of being able to say, Listen, I, I guess my compliance is being helped by our payroll provider or by our, our General Counsel, as far as wellness, you know, we've got a set of programs that seem to work from an engagement perspective, we hear good positive things about them, you know, where would you suggest the practitioners actually go to start to actually even understand where they are against all these different things?

Alexandra Levit: 11:17

I think that's a really good question. And I would say, if I had to pick, it's somewhere in the middle of the first two, this issue of job redesign, and also creating a meaningful employee experience. And that actually leads into our topic of talent intelligence, because I think talent intelligence can solve for both of those things. And I think it helps us do these things in a new, more effective way and most importantly with large numbers of people. Whereas talent intelligence is something that can be practiced on a kind of a one to one basis, you can, you can do it on a small scale, but the real benefit of it is that you can do it on an extremely large scale and get the same results. So I would say that the changing nature of the workforce is such that so many things have to be reconfigured. And what we're seeing now is that just virtually every organization, is that organizations don't have a good handle on the skills of their existing workforce. And what that means is that you are laying off 10s of 1000s of people in one domain, and you're struggling to hire in a different domain, instead of figuring out what can the people within my current organization who are loyal and reliable do? And how can I redeploy them? And this is something that's going to keep happening, it's going to keep happening, because of the integration of AI, it's going to keep happening, because they'll there will be future disruptions, there may be a recession, this is something that every organization needs to be doing. But I think there's there's a lack of understanding about how to do it, how to assess the needs, and the abilities of your workforce, and then how to be more flexible about that, how to do things in a way where you can move people into roles that you might not have ever thought they were capable of, and they might not have ever thought they were capable of. But the the intelligence behind behind the AI here will be able to be a lot more influential, I think in helping us see brought more broadly in this area.

Dwight Brown: 13:20

Well, and we were just, we were just talking about this on another podcast, with our internal group in terms of the the impact of AI. And as with any major innovation, there's always the fear that it's going to completely displace humans and where we kind of ultimately landed was along this line where AI is definitely going to replace some of the human function. But it does seem like more companies have that long term view of exactly what you're talking about that you really need to reskill your your workforce. And that's that's ultimately what's happened historically too anytime that, you know, the industrial revolution, everybody thought humans were going to become obsolete. Well, no you need people to keep up that AI, to keep programming the AI, you need people on the back end with with those kinds of things. But to your point, companies need to have that view that needs to be in the forefront of their consciousness in order to be ready for that. Otherwise they'll get caught flat footed.

Alexandra Levit: 14:24

Yeah, Dwight, that. That's exactly right. I'm very fond of saying, when people ask this question are is AI going to replace humans? I say think about every time you've observed a piece of technology being inserted into a traditionally human driven process. You need a person to design that technology. You need a person to figure out where it goes, to oversee it, to fix it when it breaks, to explain its insights to decision makers. I think I just listed five or six jobs that were created by that. But what is, what's really the truth here is that you're not going to be replaced by AI, you're going to be replaced by a person who can work with AI. And this is, in particular, important, I think, and this is an area that frequently gets overlooked. For the managers who have to supervise humans working with AI. This is a skill set that nobody has. We only know how to supervise people with pretty limited autonomy, and who can do a very specific job who do not have access to this extraordinarily powerful technology where they can basically do their job in a way that they've never been able to do it before. And you've got to manage that differently. And that's a skill set, that you got me. I mean, nobody has that right now. So.

Dwight Brown: 15:44

Exactly it's so new for us. It's.

Alexandra Levit: 15:46

Right. Yeah.

Announcer: 15:49

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: 15:59

Why don't we talk a little bit about how talent intelligence does help, especially from a recruiting platform or from a retention perspective?

Alexandra Levit: 16:08

Sure. So talent intelligence is a form of artificial intelligence that is going across really any source that's either public or private, and scraping workforce data and career data from billions and billions of sources and data points. What did somebody do when they started a career in accounting? And then they move to something else? What does the data show about that? What does the data show about do people who work at Deloitte, do they have the same traits as people who work at Accenture? What are some of the traits that people might have as frontline workers that could be relevant to jobs in other types of industries? And because it has access to so much data, it can make correlations or make distinctions. When looking at an individual company's data with respect to what are the skills that are currently in their organization? What are the skills that might be needed in the near future? And most importantly, what skills could be developed by people who already work there in a relatively easy way, maybe through some minimum amount of training, so that those people can be more broadly skilled and more easily redeployed? And one of my favorite examples of this, I was working with a consumer goods company that had a call center that they just could not keep people in this call center, they could not staff this call center, nobody needed to work, no one needed or wanted to work in the call center, at least in the in their current recruiting model, it just wasn't really working out. So what they found through talent intelligence, though, was that they were in a geographic location where a lot of restaurants and bars had closed, because the downtown area was in this state of, I guess, a little bit of decline. And there were a lot of bartenders that were out of work. And what they learned is, bartenders actually have a lot of the same skills as call center people. They've got problem solving, and multitasking and interpersonal skills and good listening active listening skills. And that's a leap that I don't think there's anything wrong with us as humans, but humans wouldn't make that leap. Whereas talent intelligence tells you, hey, let's get all these bartenders and just train them in how to run, how to answer calls. And then we can have a talent pool, have access to people that we would not have had otherwise. And I think that's a great example of how it can work, it can really turn things around in a situation where you just cannot hire the people that you need.

David Turetsky: 18:42

So it's a great example. But one of the things and I'll challenge talent intelligence on a few different things, but one of the most important ones is, from the very beginning of this podcast, we've always talked about the fact that data, especially about people, is crap, especially in its unaudited form. And one of the things that scares me about building models, and I built tons of models, especially when it came to doing predictive analytics. It always scares me, especially in an unaudited world of especially using data science, lots of large datasets, that we get bias, and we have bad data. And we have actually extreme bias built into the datasets, which then go to influence the models and influence outcomes. So how does talent intelligence fix that or adjust for those kinds of biases?

Alexandra Levit: 19:38

I think you you make a really good point in that when we look at who the programmers are for AI, or really for any type of technology, I mean, just think about the audience. It's 90% Caucasian or Asian men between the ages of 25 and 40. So you already see that bias is being naturally baked into these programs because you just have such a limited perspective of people who are involved in the process. So that is one thing. I think having and this is another area where I've actually seen tremendous improvement over just the last 12 months, the organizations really starting to step up their oversight of AI driven programs. And this would include talent intelligence programs, to have ethical guardrails in place to make sure they are checking it for bias, because at any time you, you could have the AI telling you, okay, well, just because all of these people who were successful in this role in the past were Caucasian, that means that you should hire all Caucasians from now on I mean, AI is only as good as our ability to interpret it. And again, this goes back to what we were saying at the very beginning around oversight, like you cannot just set and forget this stuff, you have to be looking at every piece of data that comes out of there, and making a value judgment about whether this is actually something you can use or not, at least that's what I think. And I've kind of been banging this drum of oversight for many years now. But now it's starting to actually be regulated where, and I think this is another kind of foresight point. I don't think you're gonna be able to use this technology in a few years without some pretty strict guidelines around it. I don't I think right now, we're a little bit in the wild west where, yeah, it's up to the employer to do what they think is best. And I don't think that's going to continue.

Dwight Brown: 21:27

We're still figuring it out, definitely.

David Turetsky: 21:30

Well, it's also lead to lawsuits. I mean, there's a pending legislation right now with Workday.

Alexandra Levit: 21:35

Yep.

David Turetsky: 21:36

Regarding the AI built into its recruiting technology.

Alexandra Levit: 21:40

Yep.

David Turetsky: 21:40

And one of the interesting pieces of this is, basically Workday's response is, Look, we're, we're building a technology, but then it's up to the implementation teams, and the company who, who now runs or leases this technology to develop the skills necessary to monitor and or configure this stuff.

Alexandra Levit: 22:01

And the thing is, they're right about that. If you actually look at the law, in most current jurisdictions, it is the responsibility of the employer. So it's easy to say, oh, my gosh, like, I didn't know the technology did this, let's blame the vendor. At the end of the day, the employer is the one that's liable. So that's why I tell them like you can't, and they're probably gonna lose that lawsuit!

Dwight Brown: 22:26

You can't kick the can down the road on that one, you've got to take responsibility for it.

David Turetsky: 22:30

And yeah, but Dwight, I'm not actually sure that's necessarily true, because I hate to use this kind of a draconian comparison, but gun manufacturers have been found liable in certain instances where their guns were modified in certain ways to kill in a specific way. And so while it's not exactly 100% a good analogy.

Dwight Brown: 22:53

Yeah, well, that's a heck of an analogy, dude.

David Turetsky: 22:56

But if if we look at the application of the technology and the way in which it was intended,

Dwight Brown: 23:02

Right.

David Turetsky: 23:03

that's what's happening.

Dwight Brown: 23:04

Yeah.

David Turetsky: 23:05

And so I think, Alexandra, to your point before, until or unless the people who are developing these systems and the algorithms out of the box, because a lot of times they're implemented out of the box. If they're not implemented correctly, we might find that the results of the algorithms predict what exists and what exists is biased decisions. And so, you know, you don't have to be a futurist or a rocket scientist or a podcaster, to see where this may go, you know, in terms of, you know, credit applications and other things where algorithms exist, and have been built in isolation from these other factors. But those things are also highly regulated as well. And they've been fashioned over decades. But still, still, a lot of times they turn out to be biased.

Alexandra Levit: 24:02

Yeah, I mean, that that is, that is accurate. And I think that's why everyone involved in the process needs to be paying attention to this. And also its potential to augment, like you said, the bias that already exists, that's human driven. We have to be using this as a force for good. And I think it can be used as a force for good, but not without some significant forethought. And that's why, I don't know I just get, I get so prickled by the whole idea of AI just coming over and taking over for people because it's actually the exact opposite. The more we use this technology, the more we really need sophisticated human assessment of what's going on.

David Turetsky: 24:41

Well, let's actually talk about that. Let's talk about what a good example might be of a talent intelligence system that's actually doing what we're hoping it to do and where it's actually working well.

Alexandra Levit: 24:49

Well, I love to use government examples because frankly, you typically do not see the public sector being cutting edge in anything really related to technology. But in the public sector, talent intelligence has really taken off. And it's taken off for a couple of reasons, namely need, because there are two things that might not seem like they can be simultaneously solved. But talent intelligence does solve for both of them. And and the first one is, in the US states, there are certain states that employers want to move out of, because they cannot get the talent that they need so they want to move geographically. So they want to leave the state and, you know, have the state lose all of the benefits associated with having a large employer. And at the same time, in those same states, you have high unemployment, you have chronic unemployment, you have people who want to move because they can't get a job. And so you're like, Okay, well, we have all these employers over here with jobs, who are going to leave and we have all these people who are unemployed, how can we match them? And in a traditional system, it would be very difficult to match them, because you have, for example, a bunch of convenience store workers who want to do something else or want to develop a career, but they figure they're going to be in this dead end, frontline worker position for the rest of their lives. And you've got companies, I mean, the best example I've got is health care organizations, they just can't find anyone. And you feel like there's no logical connection between the two. When in fact, and this has happened in both the state of New York and the state of Indiana, when they put the talent intelligence system together, and they had the employers post their jobs, and they had all their people fill out profiles, the system was able to tell them with some degree of accuracy, okay, well, if you're a convenience store worker, and you want to become a phlebotomist in a hospital, like, here's the two courses that you need to take. And with some extra human support, with respect to how they could actually make that move, they were able to pipeline a whole bunch more people into those open jobs that employers had and keep them from leaving the state, because they could now find people. So that my favorite examples are I mean, a lot of private sector companies doing this too. But that's my favorite, because I love to see the public sector and government doing things that benefits citizens. And I think that they've really been out in front on this, frankly.

David Turetsky: 27:20

In the world of remote work, there's no reason why people have to be co located. There are, moves in that way, I'd love your futurist view of that at some point, but

Alexandra Levit: 27:31

I'm happy to give the futurist view on that.

David Turetsky: 27:34

But before we get there, you know, think about the agricultural work that happens outside cities, right, and all the skills that are built into those towns that exist, that are struggling because of the family farm moving to more corporate farming, and the you know, the selling out and what happens with that. Most of this country is agricultural anyways, so I know it doesn't seem feasible, but it's true. You get outside the city, you know, half hour to an hour, it's all farms. And yeah, I don't think a lot of people realize that. But anyways, my point is that there are skills in those towns, even though those towns seem like ghost towns, for the most part, because there is no infrastructure there. But there could be. And I think that that that goes to where you were talking about, right?

Alexandra Levit: 28:18

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, those people have a set of skills that can be used in farming, that could also be used elsewhere. Now, what concerns me about this, though, I know it's bias is probably what concerns you the most, but what concerns me the most, is that this isn't, these aren't logical conclusions that people are just going to come to on their own. And this requires a lot of hand holding to get people to see what they are in fact capable of, and to skill up enough to be able to take on a new career path. And there's going to be at the end of the day, people who are motivated to do this and capable of doing it, and there's going to be people who aren't. So it's the people who aren't that I'm very concerned about. I have a very bright view of talent intelligence and what it's capable of doing. I just don't think it's going to be 100% effective in getting people whose jobs are becoming obsolete to move on. I think that that's going to be a much taller order if I'm being very honest.

Dwight Brown: 29:14

Surely there's a psychological aspect of things.

David Turetsky: 29:18

But it could also be the economic too though, Dwight.

Dwight Brown: 29:20

Yes, yeah.

David Turetsky: 29:21

Money talks, BS walks as they say, I think someone, Barnum who actually said that? But somebody with money said, money talks with somebody with money said it. But Alexandra, I mean, couldn't that also play into it? Where, look, there are no jobs, there's no money and you know, government assistance, it's not a long tale. So, you know, could that actually push people to say, Maybe I should be adventurous and see if there is another role for me somewhere else?

Alexandra Levit: 29:49

Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm hopeful that both things will happen actually. I do think we need more government assistance. I mean, this is I guess, the liberal in me a little bit for these folks. But I also hope that as we get the word out about things like this, that people will see, hey, why? Why couldn't I do something like that? Why couldn't I move from being a frontline convenience store worker to, you know, entry level in, in a hospital and thing is once you get into an industry, you can then start moving up. So they have career mobility in a way that they never would have had before. It's just making that initial step that I think is going to be challenging for some people, depending on on each one, as you said, psychologically, depending on your personality, depending on how old you are, I mean, I hate to say that people who are older are going to be stuck in their ways more, but we're already seeing that with this return to work, tug of war, I mean, we're seeing this cut across age lines, big time. And so and it has a lot to do with people being kind of stuck in their ways, and only being willing to do things how they're used to doing them. And that's my concern with people being able to reskill into a different area, even if the jobs are plentiful and available.

David Turetsky: 30:59

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 let's talk about what some organizations are doing and what some people can do today to actually make use or to take advantage of this, what kind of what pushed did they need?

Alexandra Levit: 31:36

Well, first of all, I would say to look around, both in your in your government employment services and if you're currently working in an organization, see what your organization is doing with respect to internal mobility. Because there is this, I think it's actually a warranted stereotype, frankly, that internal mobility is really difficult to do, that it's hard to move from one department to another. And I think the reason for that is A: people or managers are guilty of talent hoarding, but also that there just hasn't been an infrastructure in place for people to move easily. And a lot of organizations, especially after what happened in the pandemic are stepping this up big time. So looking around at what is currently available to you. I just did a piece of research that showed that something like 40% of people currently working in organization are aware of another opportunity within the organization that's in a different department, that might be a better fit for their skill set. So the fact is, the awareness of this is growing, and you just need the mechanism to make it happen. So I think that's where I would start as an individuals to look at what's already being built around you, because chances are somewhere, there's something that can help you do this. And this is changing more by the day. I mean, there's already more talent intelligence systems being implemented today than there were six months ago. So it's not this super new experimental thing anymore. I think it's something that's being practically integrated into a lot of organizations and of course, governments. So if you're a frontline worker who, you know, doesn't have access to, who's not a knowledge worker doesn't have access to this, there very well could be a place for you to put your profile and the things you're interested in, and your skills, so that employers can find you.

David Turetsky: 33:27

I would also add that managers need to understand hoarding is a bad thing. And the culture needs to change and guidelines need to change to encourage managers to let those reins go, because it's not good thing.

Alexandra Levit: 33:42

That's right. I mean, it's, it's for the benefit of the company, look at it that way, instead of just like your individual benefit. And that person, it's only going to be a benefit, the more broadly skilled they are, maybe they'll come back to work in your group again, and they'll have all these extra skills. It's to keep those people in the organization is really, that's what you should be going for. And I think this is changing, I really, really do. It's just this is a very entrenched cultural thing that we are struggling a little bit to get over.

David Turetsky: 34:10

Well, Alexandra, this has all been awesome. And I think we could go on for hours talking about these all these individual pieces. Before we end today, is there any one one piece you didn't cover that you wanted to talk a little bit more about?

Alexandra Levit: 34:24

I think you briefly asked this, David, but we didn't quite get to it in detail. But I am being asked on the speaking circuit a lot now to tell employees to come back to work.

David Turetsky: 34:37

Encouraged or told to?

Alexandra Levit: 34:39

Well, I'm being I'm being asked to do it from kind of a futurist perspective. Where it's like, well, the future of work is that we're all going back five days a week nine to five. And it's troubling to me that I'm being asked that, because not only do I just think that's false, but I think this pushing the square peg into the round hole, we are never going to go back to that degree of rigidity. And while I, of course, think there are benefits to being in person, at certain times, for certain reasons, it should be much more fluid with respect to how you structure it. And I think there's really no way around that if you look at the DEI and B implications of forcing people to come into an office, if you look at the sheer costs associated with that, and the fact that we're gonna have these labor shortages, massive knowledge worker labeled labor shortages in the years to come, you're not gonna be able to keep people if you don't have any degree of flexibility. So I think this very stubborn attitude of I, but I want as a leader, because I've got a corner office, and it's easy for me to come to work, I want everybody back, because I don't really fully trust them. I don't think they're productive. You can find all kinds of data in either direction, frankly. But really, it comes down to having a workforce that you can trust to do their work and to also live their lives. And so that's the one thing I just want to point out, because I'm actually surprised at how much I get how much pushback I'm getting on this point.

Dwight Brown: 36:09

That's interesting. It's I mean, we're we're definitely seeing it over and over in the news as these companies start to push people back. And in my estimation, that the genies out of the bottle, you're not putting the genie back on that one.

Alexandra Levit: 36:22

That's exactly right, Dwight, I believe so too, and it's not to say you shouldn't go back at all. But it just has to be more nuanced.

Dwight Brown: 36:29

Right! Exactly.

David Turetsky: 36:31

Well, to me, there's a bigger problem, which is the misogynist nature of the rules. Right?

Alexandra Levit: 36:36

Right.

David Turetsky: 36:36

Sorry, it's bullshit, that it disproportionately affects women and what we saw with the pandemic, and the amount of work and the amount of support that female workers got, with a disproportionate amount that they were responsible for, for childcare, as well as keeping their day job 100%, you know, at the same level of productivity, and then a lot of female workers left the workforce, and we still see weakness there.

Alexandra Levit: 37:07

Yep.

David Turetsky: 37:07

It's just the same old misogynist rule.

Alexandra Levit: 37:09

Yeah. And COVID is still going on, people forget about that. I mean, my kids' dad has had COVID for two weeks, and I've had my kids for two weeks, because they haven't been able to go over there, because we're trying to, it's like this is, this is still affecting our lives!

Dwight Brown: 37:23

Right, this is still a reality for us, and will continue to be a reality for us.

David Turetsky: 37:27

And beyond that, though, Alexandra. It's not just about the pandemic, the pandemic opened our eyes to it, but the lack of flexibility that we've given workers in being able to be humans and take care of our kids. At the same time, I still have to apologize for the fact that I'm a single dad, and I have to take my kid and coach my kid's hockey team.

Alexandra Levit: 37:46

Which is ridiculous!

David Turetsky: 37:47

So at four o'clock, I have to leave work and go and coach his team. Well, I have to apologize for not being able to be on meetings beyond four o'clock. All right, well, I start work at eight. So I should get some dispensation. Look now, Salary.com is very flexible, they're not the ones pushing, but I still get attitude. And what's funny is I get attitude from from lots of different people from different backgrounds as well. That suffice to say, I don't think the return to work is what employers want it to be because they want to command and control people again, they want it to be

Alexandra Levit: 38:20

That's right. And it's more complicated to do

David Turetsky: 38:20

But we've seen it happen this year! It's not that way. it the other way. I mean, to be fair, to have a more like a future issue. It's actually happening. individualized way of managing people and a structure that is

Alexandra Levit: 38:27

Right. Yes. Exactly. Over and over and over again. more flexible according to the needs of the particular group or individual. I mean, that is tougher, it is easier to make a decision like, okay, we're all doing this. But the days of that are over and we need to accept that particularly because as you said, David, this was not the, COVID is not the last disruption. All right, I actually got asked flat out well, what do you think is the next disruption, I'm like climate. Like, climate is going to make it impossible for us to be in a given location every single day at a reliable period. Yeah.

David Turetsky: 38:58

Look, what happened on the west coast with People don't want to hear that. But that's already happening. the, with the flooding that happened? Was that something that was isolated to one week? No! And what's even worse is there are still people who are displaced from that and we're just not listening to it because it didn't happen, you know. Hawaii basically, we're still not covering the fact that we lost tons of people and we lost tons of infrastructure and we lost an entire city in Hawaii. So anyway, so sorry.

Alexandra Levit: 39:38

No I mean this, I obviously agree with you, this stuff is going to keep happening and we have to become more flexible, not less flexible, because things are not going to go according to the very reliable and predictable way they did in the past. Just not going to happen. I know we would all like that because humans hate change, but what are you going to do?

David Turetsky: 39:56

We live in a constant state of change now for

Dwight Brown: 39:56

Right, exactly. probably 200 years. You know, you talked about the industrial revolution before. It's constant now, right? The fact is, when I went to, one last point, when I went to interview for a car company back in 1990 something, and they had one computer that the entire human resource team shared. And I said, I already have a laptop, which was something I could move around, but it was gigantic, but it was a laptop. I said, Why am I going to go to a place where I'm gonna have to share that computer as a compensation analyst that I'm going to need on a daily basis? And the answer was, well, that's how we do work here. Well, think about that office, you know, at least two years in the future from that. They didn't hire me because of that. In the same way, Alexandra, you know, we're not going to use AI. Okay! Competitors are, you're going to you just don't realize you're going to, and in a couple of years, when everybody else is doing it and making, you know, huge productivity gains from it, that's gonna come back on you.

Alexandra Levit: 41:05

Yeah.

David Turetsky: 41:06

Not you, Alexandra. I meant.

Alexandra Levit: 41:08

I got you.

Dwight Brown: 41:08

You the people,

Alexandra Levit: 41:09

I got you.

David Turetsky: 41:18

Anyways, thank you so much. You're awesome. As you can tell, we get, all get very passionate about this topic. So we're gonna have to ask you back again, because we had so much fun.

Dwight Brown: 41:27

Yeah, it was great.

Alexandra Levit: 41:28

That would be delightful! I love being among kindred spirits. So thank you both for having me today.

David Turetsky: 41:32

Thank you very much. And thank you, Dwight.

Dwight Brown: 41:35

Thank you. Thanks for being with us today, Alexandra.

Alexandra Levit: 41:38

You're very welcome.

David Turetsky: 41:39

Thank you all very much for listening. Take care and stay safe.

Announcer: 41:43

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