2025 State of People at Work: Personalization, Connection, and AI

I am really excited for this discussion. Uh, this is perfect time of the year. I'm sure some of you are rolling out strategic plans and initiatives and thinking about where should we focus our attention, what should we anticipate coming our way? And, and. I think this is a great time to really dig into what are some of the trends, what are some of the strategies that are gonna shape this year? So. I am, uh, I'm excited to welcome a colleague, a collaborator, uh, a friend of mine who, uh, this is actually our second year working on this project together, which is awesome. I'm excited about how this is gonna be a ongoing tradition with our community. Uh, but. I would love to welcome. Rebecca, uh, letter to the stage. Uh, she founded. Opportunities. Knock and also is a bestselling author of her book, uh, knock as. Well. So. I definitely encourage you to check that out. We'll share some information about that. But. Rebecca, welcome, uh, to the virtual stage with me. Thank you for taking some time outta your busy schedule too, to spend some time with our community, and it's been such a pleasure to work with you on this project and this report, uh, it's really came out to be an amazing piece of work, so thank you so much. But yeah, welcome. Thanks for being here with us. Thank you so much. What an awesome introduction. Love the energy. Just so grateful that you all are taking some time outta your crazy schedules to hopefully reset, get inspired. Our goal is that we think a little bit differently about, um, the state of people at work, uh, the hr, the talent, the workforce development spaces this year. Uh, brief introduction on myself. Um, and thank you, Zach. My name's. Rebecca, leader. I live here in. Denver, Colorado. Um, Zach and. I had a chance to meet in person recently to sort of brainstorm and distill everything that we experienced, heard, saw, um, researched over the last year. So this project is a labor of love. We started it last year in 2024. Last year was a little bit more of, um, trends. This year we decided we wanted to go higher level. So rather than should we do return to work, return to office, should we be completely virtual, how do we do that? We're gonna go a level higher, hopefully, to inspire you and challenge you and your teams, uh, for 2025. And it's also a challenge for us because we distilled everything we experienced over the course of 2024, and. I think we met in maybe. November. So it was a very quick, um, but in depth look at what was happening in the marketplace and where we see things headed. So we're very excited about this, and we have some resources. We're debuting today at the end of today's webinar, a guide that you can download and, uh, take back to your teams with the discussion, discussion points and questions. Um, we also have a one pager and even an assessment you can take to see sort of where you stand, um, up against these four strategic targets that we're gonna reveal to you. So, um, we don't wanna belabor this introduction and kind of get into it, but yes, as. Zach said, please, please, um, share your thoughts. I opinions questions as we go along. So thanks for having me. I am the founder of a training company for, uh, talent leaders, and. I help people build the skills to build meaningful connection in the workplace. So everything. I do is about building connection in our careers. Uh, and. I also do digital badge strategy, and. I am the author of my book called. Knock. How to. Open. Doors and. Build. Career. Relationships. That. Matter. So, so happy to be here. So grateful for this opportunity. And. I, Zach, I think we should dive into these four strategic targets. I love it. And just to kick it off, check out the book. I have it. Oh, I can't really. Speak. Thank you. But. I, no, it's a, it's a great read. So for anyone that's really trying to, and especially us as leaders in this space, being able to network open doors, build engagement, build relationships, it's, it's so important. So, uh, applaud for you for bringing that to the table, Rebecca. So, yeah, let's dig into it. Thank you. Let's, uh, kick this off. Okay, great. Uh, your teams. All right, here's the link. Perfect. All right. You're gonna see four quadrants here that we're gonna reveal, and we're gonna start with this very first strategic target. This one is called wholeness. And. Wholeness represents this. HR candidate and employee experience that is multifaceted. So if you sort of think of, um, we have the orange there, uh, as, as a symbol, you can think of all the, the segments inside of that orange, but then also there's a aligning that kind of, um, brings that all together. And then you have this wholeness within your organization, but also you can think of wholeness when it comes to your teams. How whole are your teams feeling? Are they feeling like they have transparency and trust with their leadership? Are they feeling like they can, um, their voices can be heard, they can be vulnerable and open with their teammates? And then on the individual level, how whole do our employees feel when it comes to, to, to the workplace and to work? We talk about, you know, bringing your whole self to work. We, we talk about fulfillment, um, wellbeing in the workplace. So wholeness is this idea, uh, on the organizational level, on the team level, and on the individual level. Um, I'm gonna give you a couple examples here. Um, there is a stat that says from a. MetLife report that eight in 10 workers want employee care in their personal lives. So what that tells us is they see work as a part of their whole life, their whole world. So they're not just seeing a benefit at, oh, I get healthcare benefits so. I can be healthy so. I can go to work. I also get healthcare benefits so that. I can take care of my family, or. I can do the things. I love to do and. I can travel. So they're seeing that crossover, um, between work and their personal lives. And so they wanna feel that wholeness when it comes to, um, even employee care and employee benefits. And then in that same report, um, they were, MetLife reported that 40% of the workforce does not feel cared for by their employers. And so there is, there's a gap there. Um, and. I saw, um, somebody mentioned, you know, people, they, people wanna feel, um, valued at work, um, having a remote workforce and the, I think it was our friend who has the warehouse business, um, excuse me for toggling a couple screens here because. I see more in the chat. But, um, that's where this wholeness comes in. Uh, people wanna feel cared for at work and not just so that they can perform at work, but so that their whole lives are whole. So wholeness is that first, first example. And, uh, if you can, yeah, we're gonna click through here, Zach. So here's an example from bonus leave who. I recently had the opportunity to collaborate with on a similar, uh, program where they are a peer to peer, um, and organizational recognition platform. So they are achieving wholeness by providing services in their tool and features that, um, are multilayer. So first they have, um, recognizing your team so managers can see recognition that their team is getting from their peers. So that sort of purview of the leader. And then, uh, from a performance management perspective, um, they have a performance management tool so that they can, um, see the recognition that the organization is giving to each employee and use that to help each employee achieve their individual personal goals at work. And. I think there was one more click in there unless we missed it. Uh, yes. So then the peer to peer recognition. So we have peer to, um, employee to to leader. We have organization to employ where they're celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, life milestones. And then we have peer to peer where employees are, um, get points and they can, um, celebrate their peers and recognize them. And people are loving it because they, um, they feel more, more recognized. They feel like their, their work is, um, going toward, towards that greater hole. So this was an example where we can see that multi-layer wholeness, and it even takes that shape of the orange there, um, in the circle. And. I would, I would also, just to build off this, uh, from some of you probably attended our programs this last year. Uh, we've done sessions on like employee listening skills at work, employee appreciation, and a lot of 'em, if you remember, those sub themes were really centered on how do we build that holistic, kind of personalized experience within each of those domains. So when you think about development opportunities or, uh, employees and people are really looking for more of that personalized employee development plans, uh, I know individual. IDPs were individual development plans were a huge focus for a lot of you this last year. And. I see that as another huge focus area for 2025. If we were gonna invest some of our attention for engagement and performance reasons and provide that really holistic, uh, whole feeling experience to our employees, having some of those tailored development plans to employees' personal goals, as well as their own professional goals. Then also mapping in their organizational objectives for the company, uh, really provides that like revamped wholeness experience. Uh, we also see that in other elements like our technology stack, so com employees looking for these more integrated platforms, um, you know, having those collaboration spaces that are paired with these different elements, like should just showcase it with bonus lead, right? Like, there's so many elements of performance management, recognition and even forums and connection building integrated into these things. Uh, the other piece for wholeness is that flexible workplace policy element. So meeting people where they are on in terms of how they want to work, where they wanna work and when they wanna work. And for some of you, you're like, that's a, that's a dream state. That's not realistic for our organizations, but. I have seen some really good, you know, blue collar manufacturing, healthcare organizations, uh, figure out what does flexibility and hone look like for them, and finding ways to really meet them to provide that type of experience. So, uh, those are some of the big ones that. I've noticed from our programs as well of like, how do we, how do we create this wholeness within our companies and our employee experience, and then make that a focus for 2025. So that would be some of my recommendations of where you want to maybe spend some of your time and attention. Awesome. I love that you sort of touched on all those layers, like the individual and the organization and even the team layer. Zach, uh, I was gonna mention on top of that a couple examples that we may not think of, um, when we think of wholeness. Um, one is, uh, just how many of your open job recs are open? Um, how many are you filling? So you can think of wholeness in terms of how full is your organization and where are the gaps and where can we fill them? Um, another one, uh, on parental leave, uh, and parental benefits. So as a mom of a 2-year-old is very, uh, wishy-washy. You never know if they're gonna be at school. Thankfully today it worked out. Uh, but parents avoided up to 13 work absences a year, um, when they had more support from their employer in terms of childcare. And. I really kind of unpacked that and thought about 13 work absences, which is nearly, nearly two work weeks, uh, excuse me, two full weeks of work. And that may be on top of, um, like unexpectedly out on top of. PTO on top of sick leave. And so that impacts wholeness. Your people aren't at work because they cannot be there. They, they physically cannot be there. And so, um, we think about wholeness and it goes all the way to the benefits level at our organizations. Another one that. I thought was really unique was we talk about, you know, return to office or hybrid or fully remote. And this was a new idea, which is, um, and. I always appreciated company offsites. So while sometimes it does require you to be away from your family or from your home for a little bit longer, even if it's two or three days even, conferences can be that way. Um, there was a study in. Harvard. Business. Review about each team offsite where teams got together. It was sponsored by the company, dedicated time to brainstorm, collaborate, and connect. They generated over $180,000 in revenue from those new collaborations at those offsite. And one thing. I thought was really fascinating was that 17% of those new connections we're still active two whole years later. So, um, talking about wholeness in your organization, how do we make people or help people feel more engaged? That connection, that human to human connection and the teams that you have, um, and how, how, uh, strong they are that can really make or break, you know, the retention in your organization and the performance. So, um, that was something that. I feel companies can do, um, if they have the budget to invest in team on offsites. Um, and that maybe even circumvent the whole idea of, are you on site? Are you offsite? But you know that one time a year, two times a year, you're gonna have time, dedicated time to connect with your team in the same space. Um, and. I think that can be really powerful. And. I had one such experience when. I worked at. Salesforce, and it was one of the best experiences in my six years there. Um, got to meet our distributed team that. I worked with all the time, uh, and, uh, some really impactful work came out of that. So. I wanted to just sort of give some new ideas on that wholeness. Yes, we can get you that. HBR article, so give us a little time and, um, if we aren't able to get to it at the end of today, please send us a note and we can send that along. Yeah. Alright. All right. Kind of tease us up for this next one. So what is the next. Insight? Alright, yes, our second strategic target is openness, and openness represents trust and transparency in the. HR candidate and employee experience. So you'll even notice the word open in some spaces, um, because we see this across the marketplace and those that are successful in, in competing in our marketplace today have achieved openness in some way. So, or they're valuing it. Um, it's about equal access to opportunity to move towards equitable and diverse workforces. What do. I mean by that? It means we can open up the a the avenues and the channels, um, from which we are recruiting, um, and not, not only focus on two and four year degree universities, if we are moving towards skills-based hiring, we have whole world at our fingertips to open up those traditional pa uh, pathways and channels that we had been using to hire. Um, and we could potentially be finding new, new talent, new top talent by opening our views and opening those pathways. It opens and expands, uh, communication channels for performance management, which. I know. Zach was talking about. Um, and public collaborative recognition. So we mentioned. Bonusly, so that openness and transparency. We know that some people don't love public recognition. They'd rather it be between their manager. Some people don't like the attention, but we know that, um, we also know that that transparency can help people feel more connected and more, um, more, um, have stronger relationships within the organization. And so openness can mean, um, transparency in terms of how we communicate within our organizations, and it can also build trust. Uh, so. I will give a couple examples here. Um, yeah, so we talked about opening up new pipelines for recruiting top talent. Um, so a couple examples of this where, um, this article from. Hire. Me was talking about organizations that focus on not the top metropolitan areas for hiring, where there may be more competition for certain jobs in certain areas, but looking at other cities, um, if you do have remote workforces or you have offices in other places focusing on tier two, three, and four cities, um, and you can draw diverse candidates and fill those open roles. Um, also we see a huge shift in education requirements being, um, removed from job descriptions. However, I was listening to a thought leader today on. LinkedIn where we also know that even though education, formal education requirements are being removed so that we can focus only on skills and less on maybe bias or specific institutional names, um, and what would've been perceived as a credible source of education in the past, we know that still a lot of people that are being hired may have those formal, that formal education, which is not to be frowned upon. And how might we look at the skills that people have regardless of where they came from, and provide opportunities for candidates to show how they can apply those skills. Can they do the job? Can they apply the skills they have rather than, um, only a checkbox or only looking at places, um, certain, uh, certain, uh, sources of those candidates which were historically all from the same pathways. So, um, by removing some of those requirements, we are opening up the candidate pipeline to people who are qualified, who maybe gain their skills on the job through a bootcamp, through, um, non-traditional educational, uh, programs or workforce development programs. And they are highly qualified and ready to tackle the next job. And, um, also, uh, interesting stat on, um, Chicago. Public. Radio, excuse me, I think this was. Colorado. Public. Radio that, um, there were tons of increases in enrollment for dual enrollment for high school and college students. What does that mean for us as or for employers? That means that we can even go to the places where we're seeing dual enrollment, um, because those students are getting their requirements completed, they're learning the skills faster, and they're ready to enter the job market sooner. Um, and they're also obviously very hardworking because many of them are juggling work, high school and, um, college courses all at the same time. So really opening our minds and opening up new pathways to the job market, um, can really serve organizations in a new way. To kind of add some other strategies and ways and practices that. I see organizations doing this. Uh, obviously one, to build off of the whole element of building transparency as a, as a piece of openness. Um, we see a trend and focus on how do we build more transparent goal settings and, and objectives within each role throughout the organization. If you survey a lot of your employees, uh, across, uh, most organizations, a lot of people don't have clear understandings of what those expectations are and what, uh, what is coming if they accomplish those things. So if we could share organizational goals and, and progress more openly and have more openness and transparency around those things, you're gonna create a lot more alignment and trust within your company. Uh, the other piece is, uh, also the trend of just ongoing open communication channels and feedback forums and ways for people to have more transparency into how the organization is making decisions where things are going. Having those virtual meetings where employees can ask questions and shared feedback openly with leadership in real time is gonna be something that we, we really see trending continuously happening. Uh, I think a lot of. C-suite executives get intimidated by that because they're scared, you know, if there's something, uh, you know, vulnerable or a little bit, you know, uh, um, uh, kind of touchy to talk through that you are not sure how they'll be able to answer those questions. Uh, but what we find is, you know, employees are really looking for employers just to engage more with these conversations. It's not as much as about having the answers to everything, but more about just having transparency and openness to the dialogue that we're all hoping to have. Uh, some of the other pieces of openness is more around what. Rebecca shared, especially in the kinda experience of like equal opportunity, uh, that's very relevant in-house as well, right? So how do we have like more bias free, uh, promotional and, uh, yeah, promotional and job opportunities throughout the organization. Uh, I am really interested to see how. AI can play a role within some of this. There's concerns obviously that whoever built the. AI tools, their own biases and implications are gonna be built into those systems, but. I. I personally am also optimistic that we can start to use some of these tools to analyze job openings, uh, support with performance review processes to remove some of that biased language or decision making to help provide more, um, you know, I. I would say like scientific reasoning behind our decisions within the workplace. Mm-hmm. Um, other pieces of, of like communication and transparency. I think about more 360 degree feedback tools and collaboration platforms where we can have more comprehensive open feedback channels between employees. I think that's something people are looking for quite a bit within their employers. Um, uh, and, and yeah, I think like especially with, uh, the interesting, you know, different trends related to inclusion and. DEI and some of those pieces, I think having an openness to that is another tactical strategy that we will see a, a growth in within 2025 is like, how do leaders publicly or how do organizations proactively commit to these type of values within their workplace practices and decision making? Awesome. There's so much there in transparency, which we're gonna talk about in the fourth target as well. Um, and a lot of these are interwoven. So really great examples, and. I like that you took it in the more sort of open, transparent direction. Zach, um, speaking of. Open, I was gonna mention just because it's, um, it's been around for a while, but it's still sort of an emerging space in, um, in our industry, which is digital badges and microcredentials. Um, so as we do, as we talk about, um, skills-based hiring and opening up those channels beyond two and four year degree universities, or even at those universities or employers who are issuing digital badges or microcredentials for smaller subsets of skills. So, you know, people can now earn badges and, um, it's like a mini diploma essentially for communication skills, for relationship building skills, which is my, um, my focus, uh, or customer service skills. Um, people are learning them in different places. They may learn them on, you know, their weekend job or in a volunteer capacity, and they could, um, have someone verify that they have those skills, they can apply them to the job, um, the job market. And so, um, the open badges, um, actually the word open is in there is, um, a part of the standards that are guiding the digital badge and microcredential space. So anyone who likes turn it around on that topic, please reach out to me afterwards. I've attended the badge summit in. Boulder here the last three years, um, and it's a fascinating subset of our market that is enabling more people to, um, have verified skills so that they can, um, use them along their career paths. So, um, I think that's a lot on openness. Anything else to share? Zach? Uh, well. I, we're gonna talk a little bit about this in the other theme, but it does connect to openness. And you already talked about the, especially on the transparency piece, is pay transparency for all of you. You were part of maybe a campaign that we did add achieve earlier this year or earlier in 2024 on pay transparency. And. I feel like there's levels of, of maturity and advancement that we are seeing with that and, and to what level of transparency are we going? And that's another trend that. I think is going to continue to become more open and open and, and you even see certain states rolling out their own legislation around that requiring employers to release certain pay bans and, and transparency around those, those, uh, uh, pay levels and, and why certain levels and and roles throughout the organization are making a certain thing. So being very open and transparent about that is gonna be, I guess, another piece here, which. I know we're talking a little bit later, so. I don't wanna steal too much thunder here too early. That's, No, you're not, you're not stealing it. You're just teasing it out. It's perfect. Awesome. So we're here, um, at our third of the four quadrants, our third strategic target. Um, this was the, the one that was the most difficult to define in one theme in one word, and. I had a bunch of different ideas, I'll have to pull those back up at some point and look at where it came from. But traction is where it landed. So traction represents balancing speed with quality. So. I know several people in the chat mentioned you to talk about ai, what we're seeing, everyone's talking about ai and, um, one thing that stood out was. AI can provide tons of efficiency and tons of speed, and it's causing some challenges. So if people can, you know, apply for jobs using ai, AI tools, or even with one click of a button and they can apply to 200 jobs in one day, but then employers are being inundated. Many of you, I assume, um, are in that, in that boat, um, being inundated with resumes and you don't know what's real, what's not real, what's being fabricated, um, in how do you evaluate this? And then your teams are, you know, bogged down and can't be efficient or effective, and then candidates aren't getting hired because everyone's just applying to everything. So how might we balance speed with quality in this, this age of, of. AI and how we can be mindful when we are using. AI in our, in our, um, workplace. Um, it's also another word that came up and. I actually heard, um, Seth. Godin talking about this on a podcast recently was tension. So positive tension. And, um, the, the symbol here is sort of the, the tire with the treads. So there's the traction, um, also the tread, um, on the tire, but also on the road. Um, and so we're trying to figure out how to remain grounded, um, but also embrace these tools that can help us to be efficient and, um, improve our performance. And so, um, this is a really critical one right now, and. I think it holds it, it's requiring us to hold ourselves accountable to asking these tough questions. So yes, we have tools available to us, are they the right ones to use? And how might we use them in a smart way? How might we focus on the human elements of business that we need to really zero in on? Which. I know. Zach and. I are going to to highlight here in a moment. Uh, I wanted to just mention there's a lot happening, um, in the research world on. AI and. AI in the. HR space. Um, but. I was just gonna highlight a couple things that, um, stood out to me and. I wanna see here, um, on the next slide, if you don't mind clicking through. Zach, are we there? Yeah. Perfect. So, um, Gartner had a report that was really interesting and it was talking about, um, new highly specialized jobs that, that are needed that will be needed where generative. AI and, and those related technologies are used creatively, um, to transform what teams do and what their clients expect. But it needs a rich blend of business and technology acumen, meaning you need to still have the hard skills and the strategic and creative mind to be able to evaluate which tools are going to be the best for our organization and how might we use them. And so with any technology, um, that we bring into our tech stack, there are customization options, there are ways to configure it there, admin tools. And so there's a lot of thought that needs to go into how we're using these tools. Um, an example of that would be, you know, setting the parameters to evaluate or review job applications that are coming in by the thousands, by the millions. Sure, you can sift through them based on a series of keywords or skills, but the real magic is who's deciding what those skills are that are needed to be successful for that role. And so we still do need a lot of that human mind to use these tools in a meaningful, mindful way that will re result in high quality talent, high quality, um, processes in our hr. Um, and so, um, also this. Gartner report was recommending some of the human elements that would be necessary in order to implement. AI in a smart way. So clearly communicating what's acceptable, how to use it in your work every day for employees or how to use it, um, for candidates leveraging tools to detect fraudulent content. So how do you know what's real versus not? Um, and then, you know, making sure you do have those human touchpoints for in-person interviews. For example, in my past, um, I had to fly somewhere and give a presentation for my interview. And those are things that cannot be, you know, fabricated through an. AI tool. Yes, you can use them to create slides, but can you actually deliver that information in the room? And so how might you create thoughtful interview experiences, um, that will substantiate the skills that people say they have when they're using. AI to apply for those jobs? Um, and using candidate references still. So that hasn't gone away. Still making sure you have people who, who can vouch for you that you would be a great fit for a certain role, um, and making sure that hiring managers do have time to sift through screening, and that, um, we are grounded in our hiring practices and not just, you know, looking for keywords and saying like, yep, this is, this is the fit. Um, so how might we make sure that we're infusing human elements in our processes? And, um, so as we can see here, I, um, again, in this. Gartner tool, um, uh, report on the right, the combination of technology and the human mind and strategy is what's needed going forward to, um, have this traction. And by the way, traction also means like you're gaining traction, you're getting, gaining speed, you're moving forward, you have set direction. Um, so it's not to slow you down, but it is to make sure that we're grounded in how we're using new technology. This is, uh, to me, I think it it when. I sense like the, the type of changes and evolutions that a lot of us are experiencing within our companies right now, this one, to me personally, I. I feel like. I. I have experienced or seen the most, it's like a lot of organizations are going back to this transition to building traction and momentum and, and forward movement into their organizations where if you think about the evolutions that have happened over the last couple years since. Covid, right? It was almost like a reset. We kind of halted, we paused, uh, a lot of things were focused on wellbeing and just protecting, uh, ourselves and making sure everyone's good. And then now we can kind of sense like, okay, hey, we're ready to put ourselves back into traction mode, right? And you see this at a lot of private equity groups, uh, C-suites talking about productivity, you know, going back to, uh, scaling and growing and, and moving forward in some way. That's kind of the big focus. And. I, I get a sense that a lot of you are probably rolling out some pretty strict and and tight, uh, uh, strategies and expectations on your people this year. And. I, I foresee that being the case, right? It's gonna be very much of how do we get back to that performative edge and, and conviction and traction within our strategies. And how do we do that by setting very strict and, and, uh, I would say even like, um, aggressive goals and objectives on our people. And how do we build accountability checkpoints so that we're having regular check-ins to track progress and course correct and make sure we foster, uh, more of that positive tension forward that enables speed and stability. And yeah, we're back to the. AI driven world that we're growing here to enhance traction, right? A lot of it's really focused on how do we become more efficient and effective within our organizations? And are, are there ways we could train our people to leverage these tools to enhance their roles? Are there ways we can embed this into our operations so that we can have more traction within what we're trying to do? Um, I also see in terms of like development opportunities, uh, you're gonna be able to personalize and scale more coaching and mentorship and development across the organization using some of these. AI powered coaching tools that will enable on the spot feedback and coaching so that people can build more traction within their individual roles. And that will provide even more real time metrics and dashboards and accountability measurements for people to really roll in that direction. So more data, yeah, it's gonna be a very, I think, uh, in terms of, of traction, right? We're gonna have really tight goals and objectives, accountability measurements on the flow, coaching and mentorship so that people can really be as productive as possible. And that will be one of the names of the games this year, right? It's all about back to productivity for a lot of groups. Totally. Um, Zach, do you mind going to the next slide, which speaks completely to what you were actually the next one, I just switched it on you. Yep. So. Zach and. I kind of got in a little bit of a loop talking about this visual and this idea when we were putting this program together. Um, it's not as black and white as this, but if you were to think of sort of, you know, only human completely manual processes on one end of the spectrum, and then, you know, completely automated artificial intelligence on the other, which. I think a lot of people are viewing it this way and it is more blended now. Um, but what are, where are those critical human touch points? And really asking ourselves this year, where do we need to stay grounded? And so, as you mentioned, you know, perform performance management, professional development plans using. AI for those kinds of, um, purposes to recommend trainings that you can take in your platform or on your. LMS. Um, and. I come back to this idea of, you know, one, I think individuals, so employees can be, can, um, have more education on what skills they can use to apply for different roles within the company. Even so you can talk about mobility within the company. Um, people may not know that they have a certain skillset that they could apply unto another team. So how might we educate our teams on career paths, career pathing for their growth, which helps the organization with retention. So instead of them going out to find something else elsewhere, they can stay internally, but apply their skills somewhere else. So we can educate employees on that. But then who is deciding the rules for these. AI tools, right? Like, that's where the magic is, is not necessarily that the. AI can, you know, um, deliver information at speed, which yes, is amazing and magical and miraculous, but how do we decide, you know, what's important to our employees, to our organization so that we have processes, procedures, prompts that are making sense, um, for our organization, and are we reevaluating them after a while? So the brains behind how we use these. AI tools is gonna be really important. Um, and it's the same way you can talk about with job descriptions, um, excuse me, job applications. Um, you still need to be able to speak in an interview about how your skills can support and, and help and contribute to that role, that organization, that prospective employer. And so, um, you know, to anyone who's saying like, oh, humans are going away, it's all gonna be. AI bots, you know, it's very important that there are humans doing the, the strategic thinking behind, um, the prompts, the, the, the tools, the settings, and how we wanna use. AI in a meaningful way. I, I appreciate everything you said there, uh, Rebecca, about, yeah, like, it's, it's how do we intentionally leverage these and not, uh, uh, take that human element out of our organizations? And. I remember this from a, a discussion we had with our ex leadership network, uh, at the end of this last year, and. I forget who said this within our network, one of our. HR executives, but really shared how eventually, uh, in the short term ai, uh, we anticipate. AI to be a huge differentiator for our organization. So it'll be something that those that are able to capitalize and leverage it in effective ways will have, uh, some higher levels of traction and impact, uh, compared to the organizations that are not. But in the long term, it will grow into an element of all of our organization. So it won't actually be a differentiator for many of us, right? It'll be like having access to the internet. Every organization has access to the internet. Yeah. So it's not as much as, uh, uh, a huge, uh, differentiator. It's, it the differentiator in an. AI and tech enabled environment will be those that are able to leverage the human element within it, right? Like, that will be the difference between our employee experiences and our customer experiences and how we're developing new products. It's how, uh, we're bringing that human element into these technologies that's gonna differentiate ourselves from the competitors and other organizations around us. And let, um, yesterday actually, we were ta. I was talking with another leadership network member, and we're talking about, okay, then what are the skills that we need to work on, right? Like, what are the human skill sets that we need to prioritize going forward? And she even labeled it more character skills and character skills for the organization. And how do we develop those and layer those into the technology and the. AI systems that we're leveraging and making sure those human values and skillsets are showing up within how we're, you know, behaving and engaging with these, these tools. So, um, yeah, so don't, don't discredit the human element, everyone, right? Like, I, I really, I think, yes, find ways to automate and bring. AI into the system, but then consist consistently ask yourself, okay, like, how do we wanna leverage this with our human values and character values and skill sets to bring in a enhanced, differentiated experience for our people and our business? I love it so much. And. I think about this all the time because we're, you know, we're seeing these, you know, hiring managers being inundated with all these job applications, so then people get to the interview and then they're not able to sort of back up the claims that were on their resume. So then that does not improve productivity because hiring managers are spending time with people that maybe aren't the best fit. And so we have to sort of bring ourselves down to earth a little bit to figure out how we can still focus on quality and truly like slow down in the age of, of ai, which is, is a big challenge. So that's, that's why traction and sort of the treads on that tire and on the ground are, are the symbol here for that third one. All right. So we got one more to cover with 10 minutes left here. Uh, we're gonna keep it rolling. I, I would love that. You can dig on that one more, but yeah, that's. Perfect. I was gonna say, we could have asked the audience to guess what the last one was, but that would've been a hard one. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. The fourth one here is truth. Um, and so we talked about openness and trust and transparency. We talked about how might we balance speed with quality, and we talked about wholeness. Um, but this was an important one because in the context of today's work workforce marketplace, there's a lot of doubt and there's a lot of fear, um, and there's a lot of confusion. So are the skills that are on resumes that are pouring in proof, can someone actually show me that they have these skills? Um, are people using. AI to write resumes that match job descriptions, but yet they aren't necessarily the right fit for the organization or, um, the right fit for the role? And so everyone is, is wondering what's the truth? Also, candidates are seeing that hiring managers have fabricated kind of what they're looking for, or even ghost, ghost job postings, which, um, I, I unpack that a little bit and sometimes it's sort of the bucket where, you know, we're looking for candidates in the future. If you're interested in future opportunities, you can send us your resume apply here, which has not, is not a new strategy, but other times it may be a fabrication of, um, jobs that do not have an intent to hire right now. Um, and perhaps it's looking good for investors or for the marketplace. Um, and so candidates are wondering like, are these jobs, even jobs that they're gonna hire for at all? Or am. I applying into sort of a black hole? So those are a couple examples of, of, um, where truth is showing up. But also you can see here in this, this, I love this doom loop and boom loop, um, here posted, um, from, I'm gonna give you, uh, the actual, the source that. PO reposted it, which was, um, the, oh, this was from. MIT. Sloan, um, but they reposted it from the source and they talked about, um, the, the level of trust, um, which is related to truth. So 50% of employees, um, that, that have high anxiety when their employers are monitoring them. So think about employers are like, okay, we have this policy that people have to be in the office three days a week. So are they actually doing it? Are they checking in and then leaving the office just to show that they did it? Um, is that true? Um, and so there's some question there, and people are feeling that they're not trusted to do their work. Um, and then when they have that anxiety, then the performance is reduced because maybe they're spending more time tracking their time for their employer who's maybe, um, questioning where their time is spent than they are actually doing the work. Um, and in contrast in the blue here, the boom loop where people feel more trusted, they are two times more productive, possibly because they can just spend their time, you know, performing and they don't have to worry about their job security or about their employer trust. So trust and truth are very closely aligned, but truth deserved its own strategic target because we need to look at the facts and we need to look at what's real. Um, another place this is showing up is, um, and. I know personal friends and colleagues who have been subject to, uh, return to office mandates, um, after their teams were fully remote. I know one person who was remote, a remote worker for like 14 years, uh, and now has to go into the office for, uh, um, I think it's hybrid. And that's a pretty big change for her lifestyle and for her career. Um, and so people are asking, is it really because of company engagement and performance, or is it because we're trying to sort of maybe even have a workforce reduction that's voluntary, save budget, other reasons? And so you talked a lot about transparencies that in the beginning, um, and really just being open. And. I think for me at least, I feel if, you know, I have some openness and transparency about what's behind policies, then it's a little bit easier to, you know, to understand where it's coming from, understand the why, and then there might be less conflict. Um, and so, and then also here on the right, we can see, we talked about employee care, there's that reception gap. So employee employers feel that they care for their employees much more than employees feel cared for. And so they're probably both, right? They're probably both true, but can we start to close that gap and figure out what it is that our employees need and want, and how we can meet them, um, meet them there? So truth is a big one. I think it's very critical. And right now where. AI is making processes so fast and we're running a mile a minute, um, I think it's really important to ground our work in truth in fact, and, and then marry that with, with transparency and openness. Yeah. Especially with our decision making related to. AI and how we intend on using it within the organization. And are we being truthful about that direction? Uh, I think that's the level of transparency that, uh, people are looking for, right? There's a lot of concerns, like, I wanna engage with these tools. I want to help build these tools into my function and help this grow and be a more effective part of the company. Am. I just building my replacement, right? Is that like the underlying truth to all of this? And that's the concerns and questions people have about some, some of these things. Mm-hmm. So how can we build more transparency and truth into the direction in the future here and being real about that? And, uh, another piece that you kind of talked about, yeah, that's skill verti, uh, ification like decisions and platforms and, uh, how can we have more truth into how we're hiring or deciding, uh, who's getting into certain roles and can we partner with platforms like. LinkedIn learning to, uh, have some truth around those certifications and those verified skills and using that as a source of truth. Mm-hmm. Um, I talked about transparency. So again, yeah, open salary discussions. How can we implement pay transparency policies so that we can build that trust and ensure fairness is, is represented within our compensation practices. Um, real time recognition platforms is another thing that. I, I. I outlined and thought about with truth, right? So much recognition is, is top down and very subjective in many cases. So how do we build more truth and who's being recognized and, uh, for certain achievements or behaviors and milestones within the organization? And a lot of ways to do that is through real time peer recognition and letting people decide and drive that within the company. And. I also think about other elements of truth like performance management and performance review practices. Uh, we had a deep discussion on this in the. Ex leadership network this last year as well, of really challenging practices like the nine box model, which traditionally is a very subjective, biased performance review process. So how do we take some of that and bring more truth into how we're reviewing our talent and why they're receiving certain reviews and, and bonuses and decisions that happen from these practices. So, um, yeah, that, I, I, I think we could go on, but. I know we only have a couple minutes here, but truth is going to be, I think, another really important element of, uh, what employees are expecting and looking for from the experiences and the, the companies that they work for and represent. Totally. I love it so much. Um, the, the last slide here, uh, I think almost last, I just wanted to call out. Um, oh, the one and above. Yep. This one. Um, I wanted to call out a tool that. I think is really amazing doing some amazing work in this space. Um, I heard about them at the badge summit. It's called. Smart. Resume, if anyone's heard of them. Um, Ian. Davidson, shout out. But. Smart. Resume is a new tool that is helping to validate skills on resumes. So it's helping to reduce all of that doubt and questions, um, that are coming with can people do what they say they could do on their resumes. And it's kind of funny that for so long, resumes have just sort of stood up to what people say they can do. But now there is a way for, um, you, I believe it's free to create your own smart resume if anyone wants to try it out. But you can, um, have verified skills that come from a variety of places, um, on your, on your resume, and then, you know, it will help employers ultimately. So this is one tool that. I see in the marketplace that's helping to, to address that truth piece. Awesome. Check it out. All right. So for next steps and to kind of bring us home here, Rebecca, what are some of the things that we have for this community that they can access and also, uh, engage with to kind of take, you know, the next steps or the next level from here? Ye yes, we have a lot for you. Um, this is just the beginning. So you, you all have now seen the four strategic targets. Uh, we, we have, um, a question guide in, um, the full guide. So you can download either the one page overview, if you wanna take those strategic targets to your teams, your leaders, share that with them. Um, and then the full guide does have a, a discussion question guide aligned to each of the four strategic targets. Um, it's new today, you can purchase it, uh, for 1999 and share it with your teams. And that's just the beginning. Um, you can go to the next slide, please. Um, z and. I thought there, this would be a really great way to support all of you this year and your teams, um, and not just have a one time webinar, then we go back to our desks and we maybe think about this. Um, and so how might we help you do that? And so we designed a 20 minute free assessment. Um, you can take it, the survey within 20 minutes, or if you wanna spend longer, feel free, um, to sort of identify your organization's most aligned and maybe most misaligned, uh, strategic targets. And then we've designed a workshop series. We can come, um, support you with your teams and have a hands-on workshop series where we'll dive into one to two strategic targets that could be, uh, strengthened this year. And then work with your teams to actually create some mini projects that you can put into practice. And then kind of circle back towards the end of the year and see what the progress has, um, the progress that's been made. So you can take the free, free assessment, uh, and we can send you your results, uh, and then we can, uh, come and support your teams. So here we have the. QR code for the assessment. Feel free to scan it now. Um, and then also you can download the free one pager and the full guide, it says 29 99, but it's, it's actually 1999. And then also, um, you are also welcome to check out my book. Knock if you wanna help build more connection on your teams this year with your colleagues, with other leaders within your organization or even your clients. So, um, we hope you'll take advantage of the assessment, the, the one pager and the full guide to bring back to your teams. And we would love to partner with you, um, in a hands-on capacity to help you, um, move your teams forward and your people, um, forward this year in 2025. Alright, I love it. Thank you, Rebecca. Uh, at the very least, get your one pager and start to look at these key pillars and maybe even think to yourself on a score to zero to 10 or zero to five, where are we with this pillar and where might we go to work in, in 2025? And yeah, check out the full guide and if there's ways we could support you more hands on, please reach out. We'll send up a follow up email with some of these links too. Uh, you have the. SHRM codes in there as well, if you want to take advantage of those codes and credits from today's session. Otherwise, that is all we have for you today. Thank you so much for joining us, for kicking off your year with us, uh, for investing in your own development and growth as well. It, uh, warms my heart that we're able to share this time together. So, uh, have a great rest of your day. And that wraps up our, our first webcast for 2025. Thank you so much.

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