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Steve Boese on AI, HR Technology, and the Future of Work
11 Plays1 month ago
In this episode of MustardHub Voices: Behind the Build, Curtis Forbes sits down with Steve Boese to break down the future of HR technology, AI in the workplace, and what’s really driving employee experience today.
As a co-founder of H3HR Advisors and host of leading HR podcasts, Steve shares insider insights on how organizations are adopting (and struggling to adopt) new workplace technologies. From AI and automation to payroll and benefits innovation, this conversation uncovers where HR tech is delivering value—and where it’s missing the mark.
They also explore the growing impact of employee burnout, mental health, and workplace well-being, and why these issues are now central to business performance, retention, and culture.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How AI is changing HR and workforce strategy
- Why many companies fail to adopt HR technology effectively
- The gap between HR tech innovation and real-world execution
- How leaders can improve employee engagement and retention
- Simple ways to gather employee feedback and build trust
Whether you’re an HR leader, founder, or business operator, this episode offers practical insights on navigating HR tech, improving employee experience, and building a more resilient workforce.
About Steve Boese:
Steve Boese is the Co-Founder of H3 HR Advisors, a strategy, research, and advisory firm focused on the global HR and workplace technology market. Through H3 HR Advisors, Steve works with HR technology providers, investors, and enterprise leaders on market positioning, product strategy, thought leadership, and go-to-market execution. He is also the co-host of two of the most recognized long-running podcasts in the HR industry, HR Happy Hour and At Work in America, as well as H3 Live, a video series bringing real-time insight to the HCM community. A respected analyst and commentator on the future of work, Steve has spent years helping the industry cut through noise and build smarter strategies around people and technology.
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Transcript
Introduction to Mustard Hub Voices and Steve Bowes
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome back. This is another installment of Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. In these episodes, I sit down with the people building, backing, and running better workplaces. I'm your host, Curtis Forbes. My guest today is Steve Bowes.
00:00:19
Speaker
Steve's the co-founder of H3HR Advisors, strategy, research, and advisory firm focused on the global HR and workplace technology market. Through H3HR Advisors, Steve works with HR technology providers, investors, and enterprise leaders on market positioning, product strategy, thought leadership, and go-to-market execution.
00:00:41
Speaker
He's also the co-host of two of the most recognized long-running podcasts in the HR industry, HR Happy Hour and At Work in America, as well as H3Live, video series bringing real-time insight to the HCM community.
Podcasting Advice and Guest Engagement
00:00:55
Speaker
A respected analyst and commentator on the future of work, Steve has spent years helping the industry cut through the noise and build smarter strategies around people and technology. Welcome to Behind the Build. Thanks for joining me, Steve.
00:01:08
Speaker
Yeah, Curtis, thanks so much. That was quite the intro. Appreciate it. um But yeah, it's been a great ride. I still love doing it. love it. I love talking about how we make work better in all its different manifestations, right? And try to do a little of data to further that goal.
00:01:27
Speaker
Speaking of making work ah better, any advice from one podcaster to another on ah tips and and tricks to make this a meaningful experience for everybody listening?
00:01:40
Speaker
You're running a happy hour network in America. You have to have some tips for me. I have. Yeah, thank you. I've done a lot. Thank you for mentioning those shows. I've done a lot of podcasts, mostly on in your chair, ah fewer in in this chair. But um I think we always try to, when you've done a good job at this already, making the guests feel comfortable, relaxing them, and hopefully throughout the conversation, getting them to to share a little bit about what they're passionate about.
Influence of Podcast Dialogues on Advisory Work
00:02:09
Speaker
I do think ah for me, um I'll give an example of one I just recorded and it just posted with an author and and a researcher, Marcus Buckingham, who's a great friend. um But i like he sent the book, which isn't out yet, but he sent the galleys over or the team did. And you know I read 92% of it. i didn't get through all of it, but I i read it almost all of it. Uh, it was really, it's a really good book about, uh, love in the workplace in, in, in a positive sense. Um, yeah,
00:02:40
Speaker
But I find that guests appreciate that too, because there were a couple of times in the conversation where I'd say, oh, but in Marcus, there's a chart in the book which shows, you know, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And you could see his eyes light up a little bit because he knew had prepared, you know, somewhat.
Steve's Journey: From Finance to HR Technology
00:02:55
Speaker
and and But not just prepared, but just I was interested in the topic, right? And I wasn't just kind of showing up to to do the interview and clock out again. So that's... And that's hard to do sometimes, especially if you do a lot of podcasts and you've done a lot of them. But I try to bring that that interest and enthusiasm to what the guest is interested in as well. that's ah He's an incredible ah he's an incredible speaker. He is a really great author.
00:03:27
Speaker
I'm curious if the conversations there on those shows shape how you think about your advisory work. Does that ever influence kind of how you go about doing that stuff? think so. a little bit because often we get the opportunity to speak with, you know, ah HR leaders, talent acquisition leaders, benefits leaders, yeah whatever the case may
H3HR Advisors: Content and Strategic Focus
00:03:48
Speaker
be. But like, you know, folks doing real, in you know, frontline in in the moment work in these areas. And it does help us appreciate their challenges and also allows us when we talk to providers that we work with, or or sometimes we don't, just any providers that, you know, hey, have you thought about this or you thought about that? And and again,
00:04:14
Speaker
sometimes it's not it's not necessarily um deep, deep survey work, but it's but it's impactful in its own way. right And and um so when when a leader tells us, hey, don't ask me about my you know payroll system because it's a mess right now. you know I can't talk about that. We we we sometimes can glean some insight from that. So I think it does. ah it The more we can talk to people whose you know businesses are running on these tools, right the better the better informed we are and then the better advice we can we can hopefully give to our the folks we work with.
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah. And you've had some incredible guests. I mean, the show is excellent. You've had some incredible guests and you've covered such a- Including yourself, Curtis. don yeah I appreciate that. Yes, I did have the opportunity and that was a actually a lot of fun.
Tech Innovation vs. Market Needs: Challenges and Insights
00:05:03
Speaker
um so you've covered so many, so many things and and you're right. I mean, on ah on a show, you don't always have the opportunity to go deep, but you can go wide with just the breadth of of shows that you've been able to produce and put out there. So that's pretty impressive. Yeah.
00:05:19
Speaker
I'd like to hear about the origin story. I mean, you didn't come up through traditional... HR. So, so, you know, and a lot of times I don't, you know, I don't hear the kids in high school dreaming about, right. Being the next ah HR influencer. So, I mean, how did you end up being the career in a career at the center of, of HR tech and and workforce strategy? but total Yeah. Like like for folks many folks, right. it It was a total series of events that were not planned or, or designed, but it's, you know, been a good, a good, enjoyable, um, But no, I came up through finance. I was an accounting guy, finance and accounting out of school, went right into corporate ah corporate managerial kind of accounting, financial analysis, you know big, probably a Fortune 10 company at the time. Company's still around. they're They're smaller now due to lots and lots of divestitures and antitrust things along the way, but huge, huge company at the time. And so I was just a guy. among many people working in finance. And I liked it, it was fun. But as what was the case 30 odd years ago, and is often is still the case, or at least we like to think it's the case,
00:06:31
Speaker
in In bigger organizations, younger folks and newer folks are often ah pushed forward when new technology ah becomes introduced into the organization or is being contemplated being introduced. And that's what how it was for me. Like we were in ah in a time where we were doing major systems upgrades and enhancements and looking really to improve the corporate systems that were in place for things like finance and procurement and, you know,
00:06:59
Speaker
asset management and things like that, which is what I was doing. And a lot of the folks who'd been there a while just didn't have the appetite for it. didn't Weren't interested, were reticent, you know very reluctant to change, but I didn't know anything, right? So let's let's go, let's learn something new. Let's play with the new toys. And so I got pushed into systems work pretty early on. So I only did the the debits and credits for a few years and then became more of a kind of ah enterprise it t person and did yeah erp for a long time and migrated over to the hr side uh of erp uh somewhere along the way um interesting okay well um yeah that's kind of fascinating you mean you just just by sort of that tangential like adjacency you got uh you got pulled into that world and then
00:07:49
Speaker
um I guess pretty quickly recognize the opportunity that was there for you. I mean, today you're the you're the co-founder of Advisors.
00:07:58
Speaker
For anyone who doesn't know what the firm does, you know what what tell tell us what is. How would you describe the role? Advisors is a small boutique kind of analyst and advisory firm run run this run by Trish Steed and myself. and um We've been working together a long time. We're partners on the podcast that you mentioned, Curtis. so We do we do kind of two things. right one thing is um the content we've talked about that some already we do podcasts we have a number of different titles on the network we do video long form and short form we also have a couple of other podcasters who work under our umbrella and do shows in their in their area like small business hr or international or we've done diversity shows in the past recruiting shows okay um so that's one side of our business and we'll work with partners on content right there's you're always trying to get attention right to your ideas to your your your
00:08:53
Speaker
thought leaders, your your thought leadership itself. And we we work a lot on that. The other side of our business is um product and marketing and and just strategic advisory to providers. So they could be payroll companies, workforce management companies, talent acquisition companies, yeah ERP. we know We've worked with some of the real big yeah ERP platforms in the past.
00:09:16
Speaker
and And that really comes from our backgrounds. We've done a lot of different jobs in the space along the way. So as implementers, as buyers, as consultants, as ah product leaders, we both worked in product at different companies in our past. and And now we do the sort of analyst advisory space. We've kind of done it all. Like I've implemented, I've bought, I've managed, I've developed up and so on. so So we have good perspective. But the other thing we do is, you know,
00:09:50
Speaker
Through the shows and through our other work, we you know we're just always looking at software, talking about talking to providers, talking to users and and you through the shows and through other mechanisms. We travel a lot to do it. Home this week, but I've been on the road the last couple of weeks at events where we're looking
Struggles with HR Tech Adoption and Vendor Support
00:10:12
Speaker
at tools. So those are the two sides of of the business. Yeah.
00:10:15
Speaker
you know For me, the last thing I'll say about it is I'm passionate about making work better for everyone, especially just normal, average, everyday workers. right And that's certainly a challenge. And lots of people are interested in that too, as much as me.
00:10:33
Speaker
But that's what I think about all the time. and um And hopefully folks see that in the in some of the work that we do, um especially the stuff we do you know on the content side.
00:10:45
Speaker
I love that. And it's often a neglected segment, right? A group of group of folks, right? Those those frontline, um you know, a lot of those, we we we call them average, but I hate using that word, right? Because, you know. they're average and meaning, you know, they're they're not the folks we, the news is interviewing or you know, we're not vetting them at gala, but yeah.
00:11:09
Speaker
it's It's important to recall, it was just a few years ago, here certainly and around the world where, you know, vast majority Vast swaths of those kinds of folks were called essential workers and were sent out to continue working while most of the rest of us sat comfortably. Anything but average, right? Semi-comfortably right in our home offices. So it's important to think about that too.
00:11:37
Speaker
So one of the things I love about what you do, I mean, first of all, HR happy hour is, is, has been one of the longest running, right? Not just even one of the most popular, but one of the longest running, probably the longest running as far as I know. Okay.
00:11:51
Speaker
Who knows? Right. But I think so. 2009 it started. So for context. Oh, wow. So yeah, probably. We'll just, we'll just, just assume. Um, but, uh,
00:12:03
Speaker
You get this opportunity, I mean, you're you're the the advisory and the strategy um you know and the analyst role, you you get this opportunity to really stay on the front um you know on the front end of this space and see all of the new stuff that's coming in.
00:12:21
Speaker
yeah um I'm curious to hear Give me an idea of some of the most surprising things that you've been hearing lately, studying lately, seeing lately in your advisory and analyst work, through whether it's through the show, through some of the other things that you're doing, because yeah we know that that AI is dominating these conversations in HR.
00:12:42
Speaker
What do you see from your angle? Yeah, well, certainly the AI story is one that everyone's familiar with and continues to be rung out in in the HR and kind of workplace tech space. So I wouldn't call that surprising anymore.
00:12:58
Speaker
i guess if there's anything that's maybe surprising, and I see this in a good way, is over the last couple of years, maybe three, four, even, the amount of innovation and new capabilities being introduced in really things we used to call boring or fundamental, or you really couldn't innovate too much there. I'm talking about things like payroll and um pay benefits and time and time in attendance and workforce management capabilities that
00:13:35
Speaker
have gotten so much better through the application of AI and other things, but but just the fact that you know companies have been able to innovate and compete on some of these innovations and often bring really powerful new capabilities that benefit end users and benefit these average employees that we're talking about or the frontline workers.
00:13:59
Speaker
um I think I wouldn't have guessed that seven or eight years ago or 10 years ago probably, right? Because you know things were things work in in in waves, right, and in this market for sure.
00:14:12
Speaker
and so maybe ten years ago
Market Dynamics and Segment Challenges in HR Tech
00:14:15
Speaker
We would have been talking about analytics predominantly and and you know reporting, predictive tools, things like that, that kind of very early discussions are around AI, but mostly we we weren't even calling it that. We were calling it predictive analytics.
00:14:33
Speaker
Not really thinking that payroll or core benefits in those kinds of functional areas were that ripe for innovation. And they have been. And so I guess that to me has been the, if anything surprising, it would be that like in a good way.
00:14:50
Speaker
Steve, you you mentioned, so i I love this topic of innovation. um You sit at this interesting intersection between like you work with vendors, you work with um you work with investors, right? You work with enterprise leaders kind of all the same time.
00:15:08
Speaker
um With all the innovation that you're seeing, Do you see a disconnect right now between, or is there maybe between what's being built, but what organizations actually need? In other words, with all these new tools, with all this new technology, people can solve problems that aren't necessarily problems, right? People can come up with some incredible new technology that like,
00:15:32
Speaker
maybe doesn't necessarily move the needle for a business. So I'm just kind of curious, like, do you ever see a disconnect there? Yeah, I think so. i think it's a good question. i think yes, probably the answer is yes. um And this is the classic innovators challenge, right? In in an enterprise for sure. i guess in consumer too, I suppose. But you want to be innovative. You want to be a bit ahead of your competition in a given domain, whether it's payroll, benefits, talent, recruiting, whatever.
00:16:02
Speaker
You want to be ahead of your competition and perhaps you want to be slightly ahead of where your customers are at. But if you get too far ahead of them, then you've got product you can't really get adopted. Even if you can sell it, you can't really get it to have that impact in the organization because it's hard to adopt. um I do think that happens a lot in the ah HR space still.
00:16:25
Speaker
And I think it it, it still stems from some of the legacy, um, structures of corporations that that work in a certain way, right? HR is still not often seen as the engine driving the business, right? It's the administrative kind of fuel tank, right? Behind the scenes. And and so so you'll see things like investment budgets, internal IT resources, um perception of you know where strategic investment in technology should be made, etc.
00:17:04
Speaker
I think there's still, especially you start moving up the to the enterprise spaces, still lots of challenges for to to
00:17:15
Speaker
be considered on par with other other areas of investment, right? yeah Depending on the organization, whether it's operations or supply chain or even finance, right? So ah so so I think there's still a lot.
Gap Analysis: HR Tech Offerings vs. Needs
00:17:29
Speaker
what what's that led what's that led What that has led to, in my opinion, is still a lot of organizations that have been much slower to adopt the subsequent waves of innovation that have come down the HR technology path, right? So whether it was analytics or reporting or lot of self-service and mobile capabilities, and now it's AI, that they are either eager to adopt or beginning to adopt, but maybe not as far along as many in the vendor community like to think or would like them to be. yeah um I was at an event last fall, and this is an example. it kind of illustrates the point. I at an event last fall, and I was doing a
00:18:10
Speaker
kind of moderating round table of HR folks, right? Different levels, different subdomains, but it' essentially HR folks. And, you know, we were trying to get at, well, what are some of the challenges you have with your, you know, i think this particular top subject area was people analytics.
00:18:26
Speaker
And, They were all kind of pleased with the capabilities that they had either from their HRIS providers or from if they had an analytics tool that they were using. But consistently around that table, these leaders, four or five of them said the same versions of the same thing, which is, I just want someone to show me how to use this.
00:18:46
Speaker
And not just how to use it, but how to apply it in my business and effectively, efficiently to drive the kinds of outcomes that we thought we were going to get from this. It's just, I don't know how to do it. I need i want it to be simpler and I want someone to help me walk through it. And and we hear that a lot in ah HR and and and maybe less so in the other domains of the business. I don't know. I don't work with those other domains all that much. so yeah But we hear ah HR people talk about this a lot. So um if there's any feedback to the vendor community, we we tend to give ah you know from time to time. Certainly it's that, hey,
00:19:21
Speaker
you've got to bring your customers along yeah on this journey with you. And they might need more handholding, more support, more, you know, fundamentals before you can get to where you want to be with your amazing new tools. So we hear that a lot, I think. It it makes me wonder, Steve, you know, so many organizations, and and I think this is especially the case with large incumbents, right, is this idea that we want to bring new things to our customers. And so there's some element, know,
00:19:52
Speaker
There's an element of entrepreneurship like inside of the the big company, right? Where they want to innovate, they want to bring some new pieces there, um but you know, large organizations tend to move slowly. They're not as nimble, right? There are a lot of stakeholders. There's a lot of decision makers, right? And so for a lot of these reasons, things typically get or tend to get, A, you know, held up in ah in in meetings, right? yeah or Or whatever the process happens to be. But then also kind of a step further is, you know,
Enterprise Solutions for SMBs: Communication and Fit
00:20:29
Speaker
Sometimes they wind up in their own echo chamber and within the organization. And, you know, it's interesting when I watch ah larger organizations or those that serve large mid market up to enterprise who are trying to go downstream and sell to SMBs.
00:20:47
Speaker
um And yet they're really operating on the same enterprise model. And so it brings this question that I that i always have, that I'm always asking myself, and I know I'm not the only one that thinks this, but like you know there are HR leaders that wear a million hats, right? and And we see HR teams shrinking, right? Especially with all the new technology that's coming in. These groups are are shrinking and expected to do more with less.
00:21:16
Speaker
I'm curious what you think Most people building technology for these groups don't fully understand about their day-to-day reality.
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah. Because this is something this is ah an area where I see a wedge, right, between what their daily work is like and how these tools are being built for them, sometimes by folks who don't quite understand them. Yeah.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a good observation. i think for in the ah HR space, for sure, providers who attempt to move down market with an enterprise architected, complicated platform solution, or just as even doesn't have to be a platform solution, just a solution,
00:22:01
Speaker
tend to run into that problem, both from a complexity and execution side, but also just ah ah they don't speak the right language. The communication is way off, right? We've had um a the the conversations that they're having in the mid-market, upper mid-market and enterprise side, you're having CFO, CIO, CHRO kinds of of dialogues all the time.
00:22:29
Speaker
start going down far enough in the market, we don't even have those people half the time, right? You yeah have an owner, maybe a controller, or maybe you have an owner and an Operator.
00:22:40
Speaker
Someone's running operations and you have a part-time person
Untapped Potential in HR Tech: Basic Tools
00:22:43
Speaker
doing this or that. So they they the communications um and the conversations you're having got to be completely different. And um i do... i You know, it happens a lot, right, in this market maybe others as well. i'm I'm surprised, you know, when I hear it of many times. Now, it could be that, you know, we if in a given vertical, if there's ah two dozen companies all trying to sell to the same Fortune 5000, global companies, there's only so many of those ah right around. And so we have to chase growth and share in other places. But it's I think it's consistently um a market move that's much harder to to execute than it seems on paper. right I think they say themselves sometimes, well, if we could sell this to you know pick your Fortune 100 company, if we could sell it to them and get that contract signed, then How hard is it going to be to sell, you know, a thousand person company or 500 person company? Right. Yeah. It's, it seems in some cases it's infinitely harder because the buyer persona changes so significantly and, uh, challenges are a lot different. Yeah, exactly.
00:24:00
Speaker
And the, the, po there could be politics, there could be, that there's so many things, right. It's not easy. I mean, I think one of the things, um,
00:24:11
Speaker
it's I mean, you see that there are a lot of providers in the space who are selling into that that really small to to say, you know lower mid-market size that have hundreds of thousands of customers, right? And so, like over a period of decades, many times, right? They have honed that ability to build product, service those markets, sell to those markets, support those markets, upgrade customers, right? Many thousands of them, train them, what are all the things you've got to do.
00:24:46
Speaker
That's a skill that builds up over time, provides a lot of advantages right in the market. So if you're a another company trying to come into that market, you may not. It's the same thing, right? It's the same thing that happens.
00:25:00
Speaker
It's the same thing we saw when the on-premise providers had to go chase the cloud, right? And the native cloud providers had a huge advantage, right? At least for the first half decade or more of that of that of that pivot. and And big part of what the enterprise, the on-premise providers struggled with is just...
00:25:24
Speaker
the The blocking and tackling of delivering you know an on-demand product, they just didn't have those capabilities. Forget about the product itself. It's spinning up a test environment, deploying patches into the QA, and then then into production, and ensuring the right amount of uptime. and you know All the things you had to do, which were completely different in skills and capabilities, they just didn't have. and It took them a long time to develop them. and Sometimes they would just buy them or they'd acquire other companies, but it still took a while. I'd say the same thing happens when when a company, any provider is trying to do a fairly significant shift in the market that they're trying to serve, whether it's up or down the market or we're trying to chase a vertical, right? I think we're seeing more um more attention being paid to vertical and market solutions in the HR space, which I think is generally a good thing. But that's also really complicated, ah depending on the the domain. But like the needs of healthcare or the needs of financial services or the needs of um manufacturing can be really different, retail even. like Well, Steve, can be really different.
00:26:33
Speaker
From your investor and vendor side, are you are you seeing a lot of solutions chasing the same problems, for example? like Or do you feel like there's genuine white spaces out there that aren't getting enough attention?
00:26:48
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think i think it's there's definitely a follow the leader kind of mentality in the space for sure. But um I do still think there's a lot of white space. It's one of the One of the talent acquisition providers used to, i don't know, I haven't seen it in a little bit of time, but we used to go to their kind of analyst event and they would kind of brief us all on their product updates and their market position and just how they were doing in the market, etc and they used to put up this chart every year, which said, this is how many companies we believe are so are not using an applicant tracking system of any kind.
00:27:24
Speaker
that we can just that we can determine. and And they had built a couple of like web bots right to go out there and scrape websites and career sites right and try to figure out what these companies were running right for an ATS, which I don't think is probably that hard to do.
00:27:39
Speaker
Maybe even back then it wasn't that hard to do. But the point I'm bringing up is it was shocking right what their data said about how many pretty decent sized companies still were not using like a commercial off the shelf ATS. They had hacked something together with their own IT resources or they didn't even really have one. It was just upload a resume right through ah through a link and you know someone was just collecting you know PDF files and on a server somewhere and looking at them. So my point is this, like the amount of what of of opportunity in that market was stunningly large, even for what we thought was a really mature market. So if we talk about things like
00:28:20
Speaker
you know, AI or, you know, ah software managed executive level coaching or, um you know, really advanced skills ontologies to help organizations, you know, do workforce planning.
00:28:38
Speaker
the numbers of companies that just don't have tools to do that stuff is enormous, right? it's Everybody's got a payroll system, right? yeah Sure. and Or they've outsourced it. And that's about all you can assume still, I think, right? For for big chunks of this
Post-Pandemic Focus: Employee Well-being and Mental Health
00:28:54
Speaker
market. Like just assuming everybody's got a performance management tool or everybody's got, you know, a nine box calibration tool, man, no way, like no way. Like there's so much out, there's so much opportunity still out there and um which is great, right? It it gives yeah think keeps the market, you know, kind of vibrant in that way. But yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunities to out there.
00:29:18
Speaker
You know, you, so you bri up brought up AI and and I want to, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about something you mentioned actually when we chatted a little while back. e You mentioned that um you expect employee care and and burnout and I think you list well-being, right? As really major themes this year.
00:29:42
Speaker
i'm kind of curious to hear what do you think is driving that? Like what is what are you seeing in the data or conversations that, you know, is making that front and center? Yeah, there's good data on it. In fact, i was just before we got on this call to record, I was reading a new report from a company called Lyra Health. It's a mental health provider in our space. They've been around for a long time, do great work, have great great tools to help organizations. with those yeah and They're not a client of mine, so I don't remember. conflict of interest there. I think this article we actually commented on on LinkedIn actually not that long ago. I have a feeling I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And their data is right. i'm looking right now. One in three employees say they're merely surviving. One in four said their mental health declined in the past year. One in two reports have trouble staying focused or engaged in their work. So again, I haven't read the whole part. I just downloaded it this morning. looking at it.
00:30:36
Speaker
It's crazy. So I think a combination of you go back to the pandemic era, ah even before that, mental health in the workplace was a significant issue. Employees were burning out, reporting signs of burnout, reporting declining mental health already. um The World Health Organization kind of pegged burnout in the workplace as a diagnosable thing, right? That happened right around that same time. The Surgeon General of the U.S. came out with a major statement around mental health at work.
00:31:08
Speaker
calling it one of the most significant issues facing the the country at that time. And I feel like that's not gotten any better. The data doesn't indicate it's getting better. And then you you layer on some of the stuff that's happened in the last few years, certainly here in the us Forget about the climate and politics and all that, which has got, you you you know, there's a lot to be stressed about there. But just talk about finances, right? We've had a pretty significant period of increased inflationary pressure that you've got to be pretty fortunate, I'd say, if it hasn't affected you at all, right? Or somebody really close to you or certainly your employees, right? So we're seeing a lot of ah folks really concerned about their finances.
00:31:54
Speaker
ah having financial challenges, facing the pressure of rising costs for many of the essentials of life. Wage growth has slowed a lot. And now we're in a period where just go on TikTok or Twitter or wherever you like to go and just search for five minutes about ah people who are trying to find a job right now.
00:32:15
Speaker
yeah Pick your field. It doesn't even matter what, right? It will take you no more than three minutes to find someone in a really bad situation hold who's talked about so submitting hundreds, maybe even thousands of job applications in the last few months or a year and and had no luck, right?
00:32:37
Speaker
So it's tough, right? out It's really, really tough out there right now. And so, yes, for employers, I think it's it's it's an acute challenge, but it's also a chronic one, right? it's It's been something that we've talked about a lot on our platforms. We've had lots of people come on the podcast and talk about it from different approaches. And I mentioned earlier, i was surprised a little bit about all the innovation in things like payroll, right?
00:33:02
Speaker
Over the last five, 10 years, a lot of that payroll innovation has been around financial management and helping employees better understand their finances, understand their pay, you know predict their pay and get access to their pay earlier. right It wasn't that long ago where earned wage access, was that was not a thing. right I mean, I've been doing this a long time.
00:33:26
Speaker
I probably would say 2016, 2017, before that, that was not a thing. If employee needed access to some of their pay, they had to go hand in hat to payroll and beg yeah right for for a payroll advance, which often didn't get done. right That was a very hard thing to do. it was pain in the butt to do it system-wise and employers probably didn't even want to mess with it. So anyway, I think that's a part of it too. ah And maybe this is stuff that's always been happening and we just think about it more. We have more platforms to talk about it and and more normal average people, right, can go on Instagram or TikTok or wherever and share quite openly about their about their struggles, some of which have to do with work, right?
00:34:14
Speaker
This is really interesting, um Steve. And I know that, you know, as AI dominates a lot of that conversation, in the space with the innovation, a lot of the reaction from the workforce isn't always about excitement. You know, there's like a lot of that fear, a lot of that uncertainty, and a lot of anxiety, I guess, about what it means for people's jobs, for people's future.
00:34:42
Speaker
um you know, i I, have to imagine that that has to be a big part, right. Uh, you know, of the wellbeing side of being connected to that specifically.
AI's Impact on Job Security and Workload
00:34:53
Speaker
I didn't mention that. It's a great point, Curtis, right? There's all these other things that are um creating challenges, right? For, for workers and just for people in our, in our workforce, the, the, what's going to happen with this looming,
00:35:11
Speaker
if you want to use the word threat or you want to use the word, you know, upcoming ah increased adoption of AI or expansion of AI, maybe is a better way to say it. It's, it's definitely coming. And,
00:35:26
Speaker
I mean, does this wave of technology behave differently in general in the world of work than previous waves, right? We've we've heard this over and over again, right? Previous waves of technological innovation, even the incredible incredibly disruptive ones like the PC, like the internet, like mobile phones, right?
00:35:46
Speaker
these the three biggest ones. They didn't, they there was disruption and there was some churn, but Essentially, you know, everybody, the ocean lifted, everybody's boat eventually continued to rise. But far back as the Industrial Revolution. I mean, it killed a lot of jobs, but it created, ah you know, as many as it killed, if not more. And the question, is this going to do the same thing? And more prosperity, right, overall as well. The standards of living we enjoy today in most of the the developed world are...
00:36:18
Speaker
Generally, right, on average, far superior to those in the pre-industrial age, right? We live longer. We live better. We don't get as sick. Our food is better. it's I'm not saying everything's great today, but right. you Right. Right.
00:36:31
Speaker
But there are enough smart people, and I don't call myself one of them, but there are enough smart people out there, you know, at least raising warning flags about AI adoption and whether or not it's going to behave similarly to these other technological waves of innovation that we've discussed, that it's so powerful and it can it can it can do so much, so effectively, so efficiently, eventually cheaply probably too, that – that it's going to be so disruptive that the the impact on the job market is going to be long lasting, more profound, and and more people will be left behind.
00:37:06
Speaker
And people are ah rightly concerned about that. I don't know how it's going to play out. I'm not sure anyone really does. um People are worried about it for sure. and It doesn't help people's worry or their stress over when companies like, you know, we can name them. This is public stuff. Like Block, you know, was a great example recently. Came out and hacked 40% of the workforce saying it's an AI thing, right? And other companies have done similarly. You have to appreciate- couple of the most popular little shows I've done, I do a small little workplace commentary show, five, seven minutes, couple times a week. The most popular one I've done a long time was about CEOs using AI as a cover, right, for cutting workforce, workforce reductions that they probably would have done anyway. Like that one in particular, you know, got people really fired up, right, to... Yeah.
00:38:07
Speaker
So, Steve, I don't know. Yeah. That was one thing you you have to almost appreciate the transparency, right, that that they came out with and said, look, this is a real thing and this is what we're doing and I'm not hiding behind it, right, like so many so many actually do. But it leads me to wonder, like, you know, while the job market is, it's it's just, it's so peculiar right now, right? There's there's talent shortages in some places, right?
00:38:32
Speaker
right? And there's ah there's an excess in others. yeah And um it makes me wonder, is there a meaningful difference between how how leaders are experiencing the AI anxiety and how, like for example, frontline workers or individual contributors are experiencing this? Or is it universal?
Disconnect Between Leaders and Employees on AI Impact
00:38:54
Speaker
I'd say it's probably different in as much as I think you know almost everything ah only With the exception of the most in touch and more enlightened and more thoughtful leaders, I would say most leaders just can't identify with the concerns of average workers near as much as they like to think they can. And that's some, some of it is they're just disconnected and they're, they're, they're, they're operating in different orbits. Right. And it's, they're too far removed from, from people's everyday experiences.
00:39:30
Speaker
And other times it's just because you have to, right. If you're the CEO or a C-suite leader in a very large company, yeah there's only, you know, 15 hours in your day, right? And that's probably what you're working. And, you know, much of that time is spent on things that just, that the average normal worker in your organization just can't identify with either. right So I think there's an equal set of disconnect between each side sort of understanding the the other.
00:40:01
Speaker
and Having said that, the folks who are making those tough decisions, making the calls around investments in technology, around deployment, around how workforces are going to be managed,
00:40:12
Speaker
you know, typically, right, that's just how it works, right, in our system. They typically are quite a bit immune or insulated from the impacts of these technologies, right?
00:40:23
Speaker
and Somewhat because there's fewer of them, right? I mean, you know, they're they're there's, you know, hundreds. Walmart has a couple, what, a million, word whatever, some number, right? Call it a million. I don't know it Let's say they have a million people working for Walmart. It's probably more than that now.
00:40:40
Speaker
And there's 25 people in their C-suite. There's probably not many, right? So like if we're going to have a 10 or a 20 or 30% impact on work at a place like that, right, we're going to see it across the board and impact those people much more than than than leaders.
00:40:58
Speaker
Look, I'm not going to come down on leaders here at all. I'm not. It's very tough to do both jobs well, right? To really be that person steering a very massive ship that's got a lot of people. The the decision you make impacts millions of people's lives, right? Both directly and indirectly.
00:41:19
Speaker
Tremendous amount of pressure. tremendous this amount of, uh, stress to do it. Great rewards for doing it. If you achieve that position, you're going to be handsomely rewarded. And I think you should be honestly, I don't, it's, there's only, you know, there's only 100 CEOs of fortune 100 companies, right? It's just like being, a it's like being an NBA player, right? They are handsomely rewarded as well because there's very few people in the world who can do what they do. And, um, so I do, I do think it's, uh,
00:41:49
Speaker
You know, it's hard. It's easy for me to sit here and say, oh, you know, leaders are so out of touch. They don't get what's going on. And to some extent, I think that's true. I think it's probably always been true. Is it is it more true now? Yes. um Will it ever change? Probably not.
Leaders' Challenges in Employee Well-being and Support
00:42:07
Speaker
um um And we'll have to see, right? The the AI thing is...
00:42:14
Speaker
I think anybody who can sit here and say, oh, this is how it's going to play out in the next 10 years, I think they're they're just guessing or they're just BSing you because I don't think they know. Well, to sort of dovetail off of this this idea about what leaders are are getting right or wrong, I mean, a lot of them say they care about employee well-being, but their systems and maybe they're their processes don't really reflect that. So...
00:42:40
Speaker
you know I'm curious where that gap comes from. Is it because of lack of clarity? Do they not have the tools? you know Is there an execution problem? Was it something else?
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. i think at least somewhat it probably comes from um you do get a little bit out of touch, right? we Like we said, you get a little bit out of touch and i think there's a little bit of... um
00:43:11
Speaker
You know, I sort of, I did this, this and this, and look where I kind of ended up. And and a lot of the people who were in my peer group ended up, we did we did fine kind of thing.
00:43:23
Speaker
So the example I'll give, it's sort of indirectly a well-being kind of story, but it's it's partially, which is the return to office, right? So pandemic comes, everybody goes to work from home if they can, right? you know Essential workers, frontline workers mostly don't, but most everybody else does for a pretty long period of time.
00:43:46
Speaker
Shockingly, it works out much better than we thought for most companies, right? People adapt, they adjust, they manage, their lives perk up quite a bit. When you ask people, employees who were in-office employees, who now are working from home, we're working on, say, 50-50 hybrid type schedules, man, everything gets better. All the scores they report are better. Their engagement's better. Their well-being is better. Their work-life balance is better. Their relationships with their family and friends are better. All the things, right?
00:44:14
Speaker
What happens over time? right The economy, the bump from the pandemic begins to slow, growth slows, right employment rate starts to tick up, right and more and more companies decide the return to office is, you know that's the solution to whatever problem we think we're having, whether it's a real problem like revenue, profit, or an imagined problem like Or ah I shouldn't say imagined, a problem that's less hard to measure or define. like Nice Culture and you know community and collaboration and acculturation and things like that.
00:44:55
Speaker
So they start calling people back into the office. Well, if you're a C-suite executive at a big company, You're very well compensated and you probably have lots of people in your life, whether they're your family members or they're just people you hire to help you manage the day-to-day difficulties of life, right? They sort out things like your grocery shopping and cleaning your house and getting your car serviced and on and on and on. right For the rest of us, we do all that stuff ourselves. right and When we were working from home, they became doing my laundry became infinitely easier to manage right and incorporate that into my life. so you know The executives typically right have a very difficult time seeing that or empathizing with it, or they don't care right because there's there's this element of, hey, you know when I was coming up in the seventy s the the whenever it was now, right?
Building Trust and Safety in Workplace Culture
00:45:49
Speaker
I got up, I went to the office every day. You just did it. so Yeah, I think the that flows into well-being the same way, right? You know, do executives and leaders have struggled with their mental health? Do they struggle with burnout? Absolutely, they do. Probably less likely, I don't know the data on this, it's a good question, probably less likely to admit it, less likely to report it, less likely to talk about it publicly because it it sort of connotes weakness. And, um you know, probably less likely to... to
00:46:22
Speaker
support that when it's not part of their lived experience as much as as maybe maybe it is for others but Steve what about for the smaller for the SMB leader lean HR team or even just an owner operator that doesn't have an HR bench like those without a lot of resources What's the, what's a ah realistic first move towards building that kind of culture where people feel safe, where they feel seen, whether they where they feel supported?
00:46:52
Speaker
What's your advice to them? Yeah, I think, i think, to try to build trust, um to build trust and and to and to do that through openness, transparency, and honesty as best you can. And to try to create an environment where people feel that they have that safety and security to talk about things that perhaps in the past we swept under the rug, right? Trish, my partner and co-host on our shows talks all the time about like when she was coming up, you know, working in public accounting, you didn't show up to the office talking about, man, I'm really stressed or I'm i'm really burning out. I need a mental health day, right? Because the the culture wouldn't have supported that kind of
00:47:42
Speaker
Right. ignition right that you couldn't you'd be perceived as you can't cut it there's something wrong with you perhaps even like there's you're not cut out for this business right it's too for you and
00:48:02
Speaker
being open, being as a leader or as an owner, being open, being honest yourself and trying to see humanity in people. just recorded, we mentioned Marcus at the top of the show. just recorded with him yesterday, right? And he talks about his new book about bringing love into the workplace, right demonstrating to your team members as well as your customers too, not love in the romantic sense, but love that you care about their their thriving and flourishing as a human being.
00:48:34
Speaker
And so to the extent we can show each other, and especially important for a leader or an owner, that we care about you as a full human being and we want you to thrive and flourish, right? And succeed.
00:48:48
Speaker
That's how you create an environment where people are safe to talk about these things and feel supported in these things. And and again, I know that's not easy to do. You've got quarterly numbers. You've got probably Curtis investors banging on your door or employees who want something, right's right?
Listening to Employees for an Innovative Work Culture
00:49:07
Speaker
It's, It's not easy. it's it's It's easier to say, hey, let's stick to the agenda today and and get on with it. um I think that's probably what's required, though, to create the kind of places that, you know, and Marcus talked about it in his book a little bit, and I'll talk about it here.
00:49:23
Speaker
It's not even just about us anymore. you know, I'm older now. You know, i have i have a 25-year-old. But for anybody, right, this is applicable. Right. Where would you like to see your kid working for five years, for 10 years, for 15 years? What kind of place, right? What kind of culture would you like them to be operating in? Let's say they had to, right? Let's, and think about that. That's kind of what- What a great way to put it. Yeah.
00:49:51
Speaker
You know, it it highlights, I think, and underscores what becomes more important, not less, but about the human side of work, even as technology, I think, takes on more of this operational load.
00:50:07
Speaker
Yeah. Right? you're You're talking about these things that are, technology aside, like, here are things that are really important, I think, that about the human side of work that we have to consider and it almost becomes more important now ah rather than less. Yeah, I think so. I think we'll be talking probably even less about technology in the next couple of and more about these things. I could be wrong. I'm staking some of my, you know, time and energy and don't know about my reputation, but at least some, some of what, you know, we're paying attention to here at H3HR. And i love the technology too. We work with many providers and and we try to give them the best advice we can and they do amazing things. I saw a tool a couple of weeks ago at an event i was at, which was designed to help prevent, um,
00:51:02
Speaker
like interview fraud, right? i don't know how much you know about this, Curtis, but like again, people going for video interviews or online interviews or remote interviews, and then a different person shows up maybe to take the next interview or even shows up on the first day of work, right? That's not the same person. And they've developed technology you know with the split screen. Here's video interview one, here's video interview two of the same person.
00:51:26
Speaker
And like all the biometric markers of how large the eyes, you know how far the nose was from the ear, and it puts it all on the screen. It's very like Tom Cruise, Minority Report-ish. It's incredible. That was kind of the visual that I had in mind. And I was like, man, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. i was excited. That's crazy. but you know so I think we've got to figure out a way, right?
00:51:48
Speaker
As people who are interested in the world of work and trying to architect solutions for the world of work and hopefully trying to make the world of work a better place, I think we've got to figure out how to manage both things, right?
00:52:00
Speaker
Hey, let's love technology. use Use it to the fullest, to its fullest capability, to and unlock potential, unlock innovation, unlock success, but also help people along the way and help them live their best lives too.
00:52:14
Speaker
I think that you're um you're halfway towards answering this next question. I want to wrap us up here and I want your perspective. you know if If a business leader came to you and you really only had a minute, maybe you're on an elevator and before the doors you know open to the top floor and they walk right out of there.
00:52:34
Speaker
They want to know you are. They're like, Steve, my God. You're the guy to answer.
00:52:43
Speaker
They want to innovate. They want to do right, better to their people, right? But they also don't even know where to start. What's the single most important piece of advice that you give them? I would probably try to figure out a way. That's a great question, Curtis. I should have a better answer for this. um Here's what i probably would do. Like, I would just do like a, like a, almost like a, a binary kind of question, which I would probably try to have them answer every day. Like good day, bad day, or, you know, I love this. I don't love that. Mark has talked about this yesterday. So it's on my mind a little bit. One of the most powerful examples I remember for a long time ago was ah a small consulting company, you know, worked all together in the office, advertising company. I think they were in consulting, whatever. And they put two trash bins by the door.
00:53:32
Speaker
red ah one red and one green, and then a bucket of tennis balls near near the trash bins. And as you left for the day, you grabbed a tennis ball and you put it in the red basket. Like today, not a great, not on balance, not a great day. Or a tennis ball in the green basket.
00:53:46
Speaker
Good day, better day, whatever. It was just binary. It was it was just zero or one, right? And they then the next morning, the office manager would come in, tally up the tennis balls, log it. reset the whole the bins and they go on their way. And then every week or so they'd publish the results. And it was just a matter of, hey, I'm being asked every single day, what do I think about my day today?
00:54:08
Speaker
So whether it's your day or your experience with some change initiative or some new set of workplace rules or some new technology you're trying to implement, start by asking people. Don't ask them often. Don't create a long survey.
00:54:23
Speaker
make it binary and just figure out, find out what people are thinking, how they're feeling, and then you can action it. Because I think most organizations just feel overwhelmed with how do I, I need a survey tool or I need a pulse tool or I need some sort of digital check-in, I need something complicated. And the reason I bring up that example is this company just put a couple of baskets by the door and a ball and a thing of tennis balls and someone took 10 minutes a day to tally them up, right? And that was good enough to get some some data and and and start having conversations. So I'd figure out a way to do that.
00:54:57
Speaker
so Your version of that and and start there. I love it. Steve, thank you. i really appreciate ah you joining me today. This has been a lot of fun.
00:55:08
Speaker
Yeah, this was super fun, Curtis. Thanks for having me. I apologize if I rambled on too long, but I generally don't get to answer the questions I usually just ask. Yeah, I was thinking about that. You're usually sitting in this chair, so it's all good, brother. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.
00:55:23
Speaker
Thanks to all you watching and listening to Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. Please visit mustardhub.com to learn more about Mustard Hub and discover. We help companies become destinations for workplace happiness and turn culture into a competitive edge.
00:55:39
Speaker
Until next time.