MRA’s September Talent Report with Jim Morgan

Description: 🎙️ Tune in now to the latest episode of the podcast - the September Talent Report! Stay in the know about all things business, with a spotlight on talent trends and best practices. This month, we're diving deep into the world of compensation and total rewards - essential insights you won't want to miss! 💼💰

Resources:

Talent Report+ Webinar Series 

MRA Membership 

About MRA 

Let's Connect:

Guest Bio - Jim Morgan 

Guest LinkedIn Profile - Jim Morgan 

Host Bio - Sophie Boler 

Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler 

Transcript:

Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word.

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:21:03
Unknown
Hello everybody and welcome to 30 minute Thrive, your go to podcast for anything and everything HR, powered by MRA, the Management Association. Looking to stay on top of the ever changing world of HR? MRA has got you covered. We'll be the first to tell you what's hot and what's not. I'm your host, Sophie Boler, and we are so glad you're here.

00:00:21:05 - 00:00:42:06
Unknown
Now it's time to thrive. Well, hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of 30 Minute Thrive. It is that time again to go over this month's talent report with Jim Morgan, MRA's vice president of Workforce Strategies. So we'll dive into what he's been seeing in the world of business in September. So thanks, Jim, for being here today. Yeah, my pleasure.

00:00:42:06 - 00:01:11:03
Unknown
It's good to be back. Well, for September, your extended or featured topic of the month was on compensation in total rewards. So I'm wondering why you chose this topic for for September. Well, we've got our big comp trends event coming up in a little over a week now. And the timing of that is not coincidentally, is companies are right now sort of going into budget season, preparing for 2024 and those that are on a calendar year.

00:01:11:05 - 00:01:33:22
Unknown
You know, we've just found that this is a really good time for us to start talking about compensation and benefits for the next year, providing them what we've learned so far in 2023. And it's always a game, you know, that, oh, we could be the first ones to come out, but then we come out with data in May, and by the time you're budgeting, it's like, Well, that data is already six months old and it'll be nine months old by the time we start the year.

00:01:33:24 - 00:01:51:18
Unknown
But if you wait too long, people are like, I got to put something in there because I have to figure out what's happening. So I think Maria just sort of made the strategic decision that says we can start getting that data out there in middle or late September. It gives everybody October and November to to budget to figure out their next year, to figure out salaries.

00:01:51:18 - 00:02:13:21
Unknown
If they've got compensation needs, they've got time to still do some work on it. And so that's how we end up with compensation being about this time of the year. Good topic. Good month. Yeah. Let's talk about what's happening in the recruiting and retention world right now. So I know you focused on Gen Z strategies that companies are kind of employing right now.

00:02:13:21 - 00:02:37:12
Unknown
So can you name off some of those strategies? Yeah, You know, and it's well, it's a generational thing because it's Gen Z right now that are the new and younger people coming into the work. I think it would apply to just about anybody. But I also think people have to understand what the Gen Z workers went through with the pandemic as an example.

00:02:37:14 - 00:02:56:18
Unknown
They were in their last couple of years of college maybe, or their last couple of years of high school or their first year of work or something. And those are pretty critical times, too, all of a sudden to be kind of cooped up and things like that. So I think that's Thriven things a little bit. And the fact that the market for talent has just been upside down.

00:02:56:20 - 00:03:19:02
Unknown
So what we've seen is a lot more companies are promoting their emotional health benefits, talking about the things that they have available to people. You know, with each generation, I think we get a little bit more open and honest about mental health. There was something we used to not even talk about or as a sign of weakness, you know, now it's almost I need somebody to talk to.

00:03:19:02 - 00:03:35:02
Unknown
I'm going to grab anybody and I'm going to have a conversation with them. But it's and it's really important to younger workers. And so they're they're using that now, I think, as a selling point to say this is we know this is important to you and we're going to put it out there as one of the benefits that we've got.

00:03:35:04 - 00:03:56:04
Unknown
They're also trying to be a little bit more, I think, transparent on pay and benefits, because if you're just entering the workforce or you've only been there for a year or two and you're Googling, hey, how much should I be making? You're probably getting some pretty wild numbers, some pretty good looking numbers, but not necessarily the most accurate ones.

00:03:56:04 - 00:04:29:08
Unknown
And they don't realize that for someone living in downtown New York or whatever it might be. And so I think helping younger workers understand what the market really is, how they set their compensation, that it's competitive, it's benchmarked. While younger workers may not necessarily be all that interested in that, I think it gives them a little bit more of a reality when they come in saying, Oh yeah, that $100,000 and you're you as an employer, like we have people of 15 years of experience that are doing that job and making $100,000.

00:04:29:09 - 00:04:49:04
Unknown
So trying to just give them a little bit more background and information. And then lastly, you know, we're at this generational tipping point, and I think we might have talked about this before, but, you know, we're a couple of years away from the Gen Z's and the millennials outnumbering the Gen Xers and the baby boomers. Why is that a big deal?

00:04:49:06 - 00:05:17:05
Unknown
You want very different benefits than what I want. And we're going to have to start making some of those adjustment settings. More of the people who go out looking like me with what we've traditionally had and coming in looking like you and wanting different things that they're asking more questions about what matters to you, what do you value, and just taking one of the simplest ones being health care, which has always been an incredible benefit for people and you have got to have that.

00:05:17:07 - 00:05:36:19
Unknown
You can be on your parent's health care till you're 26. So 22, 23, 24, 25, that doesn't have a whole lot of value to you at a time when I'm trying to secure you as an employee in my organization and keep you if you're good. So what do you want instead? And how do we start trying to take a look at those things?

00:05:36:19 - 00:06:00:14
Unknown
So I think there's a little bit more conversation and listening going on around the benefits. You know, Jim, I'd like a Netflix subscriber option that was cheaper than health care. So maybe we'll see if we can get you one. Well, like we said, we were focusing on compensation, total rewards this month. But last month we kind of focus on the AI and inclusivity.

00:06:00:15 - 00:06:26:15
Unknown
So you actually launched a couple of DIY poll questions last month and you have the results now. So do you want to kind of share out what those poll results were? Yeah, I'd be glad to. And, you know, again, another event we've got coming up is our DIY conference, and this was really because the AI was the topic last month and it just helps us constantly sort of stay in touch with where our members are to find out what's going on.

00:06:26:16 - 00:06:49:21
Unknown
So we asked last month, you know, where are you on your DIY journey for the people that were attending the talent Report webinar, we had 46% say they were just beginning, 31% doing their, you know, doing pretty well. So 77% of the group is sort of in that, yeah, you know, our feet or what we're kind of moving, but we're not there yet.

00:06:49:23 - 00:07:11:18
Unknown
So I'll come back to that 21% who haven't started and 2% saying that they're fully implemented. So, you know, just a quick. All right. I see what's going on out there is that, you know, people are they're doing things. I think they realize they have to do things. It's an expectation of younger workers is an expectation if you're in a talent supply chain of the people.

00:07:11:18 - 00:07:35:09
Unknown
Further up the food chain are saying, you know, we're looking at your diversity and what you're doing there. So people are they're they're getting started, but they're just not there yet. And I think we're seeing fewer and fewer now that haven't started at all and those who haven't started at all. Just looking at why that was, which was the next question, really, it was around two things.

00:07:35:10 - 00:08:07:13
Unknown
One was leadership commitment, especially in a smaller company, maybe less than 100 employees. If you don't have the leadership ready to go, that makes it quite a bit more difficult. And the second one was just not having the time and the people and the resources to know where do we start? Because it would be great for us to say, Oh, we're launching this DIY initiative, but if nobody's got the time to see it through, to put the activities in place, to put the initiative in place, to figure out what we're doing, how we're doing, it communicated to everyone that it's not going to get very far.

00:08:07:15 - 00:08:27:22
Unknown
So I think, you know, the positive is more and more people are initiating starting moving along on the journey. The hard thing is, is just making sure we've got everything in place. And that means leadership is committed. We've put some resources into it. We've got the employees fired up about it and it's a big deal. So it's ongoing.

00:08:27:22 - 00:09:05:08
Unknown
I think it continues to be a journey for people. But slowly but surely we're we're moving along, get results. So another topic that I'd like to dive into is are talent thinking section, where you kind of highlight the recruiting and candidate process. So any new up and coming things this month or just anything to highlight on this. Yeah there was a really good benefit study that came out by Ernst and Young and I actually circulated it around here and I, I just sort of put a little disclaimer on it that said, I know this doesn't sound like a really exciting topic, but the information they've got is really good.

00:09:05:08 - 00:09:30:22
Unknown
It might be worth taking a look at. And they had a lot of discussion around that generational tipping point that I was just talking about a couple of minutes ago that says, how does this change the game in terms of what's going on out there? So few of the things that you know, that they mention and that, you know, I'm seeing and hearing when I when I'm out in the field is this whole gig economy and remote work has just changed the game and we all know that.

00:09:30:24 - 00:09:52:23
Unknown
But when you stop and think about, okay, have we really accepted yet that the norm has changed that where people are working, when they're working, how they are working, lots of different expectations and what employers have to do to be clear about what is a remote job and what's not a remote job. And when we say work remote, this is what we mean.

00:09:53:00 - 00:10:16:02
Unknown
And here are the policies that we have around remote work and starting. You see some of the pushback on that that yeah, so if you can work remote, we don't have any problem with that. But if you've got three kids running around in the background or every time we call you your phone in your laundry or you're at the grocery store, when we have a Zoom call, at some point I'm going to start asking some questions and say, you know, I get it, you know, once in a while.

00:10:16:02 - 00:10:39:18
Unknown
But boy, this seems to be sort of the pattern of what's happening out there. So the gig economy, remote work has changed things and employers are having to to adjust to that. The benefits issue that I was just talking about, really knowing our people and it's getting a little bit more personalized because I think it really means someone has to sit down with people and say what matters to you?

00:10:39:24 - 00:10:59:17
Unknown
Because health care may or may not be a big thing. Loan payments may or may not be a big thing. A Netflix subscription may or may not be a big thing, but we got to know our folks to know what it is that we're going to offer. Because if we just sit in a room and two of us talk and say, I know what we should do, we should offer everyone packed insurance.

00:10:59:19 - 00:11:26:10
Unknown
Okay, great. How many of our people have pets? Well, I don't have any idea. All right, well, then why are we doing it? Well, everybody else seems to be offering it. Maybe everybody's got one. They think it was the greatest thing. But what does that mean? And not everybody's going to want to take advantage of it. So how do we let people begin to figure out what they want and where they are in their employee lifecycle so that we're actually providing things that that that matter to them?

00:11:26:12 - 00:11:45:12
Unknown
So that I think is really the biggest thing. The last one that we're seeing more of is everyone's got HR Information systems now that are designed to make life easier for us. We can go right in and do our vacation. We can put our pto time and see what's going on. Just by going online, we can figure out when we're going to be gone.

00:11:45:12 - 00:12:05:15
Unknown
We can see what our salary is, what our withdrawals are, what our benefits are. All that stuff is now online, and that's becoming more and more of a technology Thriven process that employees, especially younger ones, are not not thinking. I got to walk down the hall and find an HR person and talk to them. I can go online.

00:12:05:15 - 00:12:26:13
Unknown
I've got an app on my phone. I can see exactly how many days off I have when the vacation days are coming up. And a lot of that is sort of working in the virtual world again, that how do we make all that information accessible to people and make it easier for them to manage their own benefits. So those are a few of the things that they were talking about seeing.

00:12:26:13 - 00:13:05:14
Unknown
And I think we can sort of confirm that with what we're hearing to kind of expanding on that technology Thriven aspect. This month. I know you're also talking about employees having a I policies and just leveraging AI in general. So can you talk a little bit more about what you're finding this month with with AI? Yeah, the AI is just fascinating, unknown new past year, you know, A.I. has been around for a long time, but I think the Chad GP like just brought it into the every day lexicon and now everybody is all right, what are we going to do with it?

00:13:05:14 - 00:13:33:01
Unknown
What's going to happen? What does it mean? Where is this information going? In HR? I think especially this is a big deal because to the extent that people are relying on artificial intelligence to do some things in the world, you know, the caveat on this is, are you doing an analysis of what A.I. is doing? Does it have unintentional disparate impact on disqualifying candidates?

00:13:33:03 - 00:13:53:18
Unknown
If you're writing job descriptions and things like that, are they being written in a way that is not discriminatory? So there's a lot there's a lot of caveats behind it. And that I would say to anyone who's listening is that's a legal team question. That's let's make sure we're doing okay. So having said all of that, it does bring an awful lot into the HR world.

00:13:53:24 - 00:14:14:10
Unknown
And so you are seeing companies that say, you know, we can generate a list of expected skills and qualifications for a job. You know, we can type it in, we can see what comes back. And I would never just say, Oh, it came back. Here it is like posted. I think it comes back and you've got to look at it, you've got to read it, you've got to review it, you have to personalize it for your company.

00:14:14:16 - 00:14:31:16
Unknown
But it certainly can give you a start in terms of the information that you might be looking for. It might be a way to you know, it can search for alternative phrases. So maybe your job descriptions were written two or three, five, ten years ago. It can search for things and find a new way of saying a thing.

00:14:31:17 - 00:14:58:15
Unknown
Same things, but maybe in more modern day nomenclature so it can help you with that. We had a company that used it to develop our social media strategy to say, If this is what we're doing, where might we go and with which platforms? And so again, it can generate some ideas for you. Draft jab, Jab, announcement is four different things generate interview questions for people.

00:14:58:17 - 00:15:22:17
Unknown
So it's there's just so much that is capable now it's just understanding just like you know with Google, with Chad, GPT, with AI all of those things. Where is the information coming from? How has it been vetted? Who's looking at it? Because you just can't take anything off the shelf and say, This is it. So that's my that's my disclaimer on all of it.

00:15:22:21 - 00:15:39:10
Unknown
But people are also just trying to figure out how do we use this to save us some time? And it's going to take me 2 hours to generate some interview questions can generate 20 of them in a second and then say, Wow, these three are pretty good. I'll rewrite them. The rest of these aren't good. I'll come up with two on my own.

00:15:39:12 - 00:16:03:17
Unknown
So I think a lot of it right now is time savings. How do we use it to just be more efficient? What it's going to mean in the future, I think is it's going to be wild. I had I had a friend who got an email from their boss and they didn't know how to respond and they're like, No, I just asked Chad how to respond.

00:16:03:19 - 00:16:29:15
Unknown
So I thought that was just crazy. It was kind of shows like you are using it in everyday life. Yeah, and it's got you know, you have the ability now to say what sort of tone do you want it to write in? Is it direct, legal and straightforward? Is it kind of fun and friendly? And, you know, and it's just again, I would read everything, but, you know, you can see how selecting different words makes it come across a little bit differently.

00:16:29:15 - 00:16:52:08
Unknown
And what's the brand of our company and how do we want it to sound? There's it's it's really fast. It's a fascinating time to be dealing with those things. So your quote of the month was even about I said I might not take your job, but someone who knows and understands I will. So can you explain that quote a little bit more?

00:16:52:10 - 00:17:07:00
Unknown
Yeah, I heard that. And in a webinar that I was on and, you know, it just it immediately got me thinking that, you know, everyone is, oh, I'm going to take my job, it's going to take my job. And are there some jobs that are mentioned? Yeah, sure. I'm sure that there are some that are going to be that way.

00:17:07:02 - 00:17:35:01
Unknown
But just about everything has a human component to it, you know, that's still involved. And so I think the presenter was simply saying it's not sort of a black and white, it's either Sophie or artificial intelligence. But if I have a Sophie and a Sophie who understands artificial intelligence, the second Sophie is probably going to figure out how to blend those two things together and come out with a better product, a more efficient, more effective way of doing things.

00:17:35:03 - 00:17:58:14
Unknown
And so you are starting to see employers now start to, you know, not that you have to be an expert in it and be trained in and have a master's degree in it and know how to do artificial intelligence analysis, but at least to know what's out there and what's it capable of and what can it do that I think is going to be a selling point for some people as they are switching jobs or entering into the job market.

00:17:58:16 - 00:18:33:11
Unknown
For sure. Well, this month in charts, our favorite section you've included where the different generations are moving to. So can you explain what the charts shown some of the stats there and where the data is kind of coming from here? Yeah, this one was really I thought it was interesting and I don't think anyone's going to change their world based on this, but LinkedIn had taken a look at everyone who had pursued a job online and had changed their online posting that it didn't say that JPMorgan was at MRA and Waukesha.

00:18:33:12 - 00:18:52:04
Unknown
Now Jim Morgan was now working for Catapult in North Carolina so they could see, okay, there is a baby boomer and they just took a job in North Carolina and they can see the movement. And so they they just did some analysis of that. And I just sort of found it interesting that when you look at the younger people and you're like, okay, where are they going?

00:18:52:04 - 00:19:12:16
Unknown
And you see Boston, Massachusetts, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Austin, Texas, Madison, Wisconsin. You know, number four, you're seeing those Denver, Nashville, Minneapolis, the places that you know, yeah, it sounds like kind of the hip places. And that's where people are going to. And if we've got a company and a brand that's attracting younger people, hey, we're in the right place.

00:19:12:18 - 00:19:31:24
Unknown
These folks are moving here and taking jobs here. You know, interesting. Does it change what we do? I don't know. Maybe not. You know, and then I start looking at, okay, where are the baby boomers that maybe now are, you know, 55, 60 and they're moving jobs. Where are they going? Austin is still high in Raleigh is still high.

00:19:32:04 - 00:20:00:02
Unknown
But then you see Cape Coral, Florida, in Sarasota, Florida, and Phenix, Arizona, and kind of a different you know, and you understand that there's warmer weather, there's more people that are a little bit older there. There's some duplicates in all of this. But you can see that younger people are going to these fast moving, more hipster places. Older folks are going more towards where there are other people like me, whereas they're lower taxes, whereas they're really good weather year round.

00:20:00:04 - 00:20:19:15
Unknown
So it starts to just sort of give you an impression of what's going on out there. And then for what it's worth, overall, they said if you just looking for where are folks going, it was number one, Austin, number two, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, number three, Denver and number four, Nashville. So those are kind of the the hotspots right now.

00:20:19:15 - 00:20:45:22
Unknown
And all of those are in the town that report this month. Well, as we kind of wrap up here, I've always got to ask, Jim, can you give us a sneak peek on what October's talent report topic will be? Yeah, and let me before I share that big secret with one other thing that we did this month was when we were talking to all of our C-suite roundtables, we asked them a little bit about, Hey, what's keeping you up at night?

00:20:45:22 - 00:21:07:08
Unknown
You know, what's driving you crazy here? And these are just a couple of the leading ones that came out of it, That from a CEO and CFO point of view, I thought, you know, might be of interest to some of your podcast listeners. Hiring and talent retention remains at the top of everybody's list. I think everyone just knows that's having an impact throughout the organization process and workflow improvements.

00:21:07:10 - 00:21:30:00
Unknown
I think there's really this concentrated how do we do more with less? How do we get the most out of each person? Where do we need automation, Where do we need some other things? So those are top of mind for them. Big organizational change issues. Maybe it's an organizational restructuring, it's a new CRM term, it's a merger and acquisition, a lot more activity in those areas.

00:21:30:00 - 00:21:51:15
Unknown
So that's a big one for them. Preparing the next generation of Sofi bowlers, that's a big one for everybody. You know, how do we take that next generation of leader who might be taking over a little bit sooner with a little less experience, make sure that they're they're ready. Cybersecurity, Top of everybody's mind is our new horror story every day.

00:21:51:15 - 00:22:14:05
Unknown
So they're working on those and then employee benefits for all the reasons that we just talked about, you know how do we make sure that we're competitive with everybody and we're offering, you know, what what it is that that that our people want. So anyway, ad for next month, the topic is building the generational bridge. And it'll be talking a little bit about this generational tipping point.

00:22:14:07 - 00:22:37:04
Unknown
How do we help everybody communicate within the workforce? How do we, you know, take all the these the zoo animals, the millennials, and replace all those baby boomers and after that, the Xers? And how do we make that a nice, smooth transition? Because I would argue those are two pretty different sets of generations. And it's just going to take a little bit extra effort to make sure that we have a smooth transition.

00:22:37:08 - 00:22:58:12
Unknown
And then yeah, it's a great topic. Excited for that? Yeah, looking forward to it. Well Jim, thanks again for all like great content today. And just recapping what you've been seeing and what our members are seeing in the world of business with an emphasis on talent. This month in September. So I would just encourage our listeners, don't forget to share out this episode.

00:22:58:14 - 00:23:20:01
Unknown
Consider joining MRA. If you are not a member, we have all the resources you need in the show notes below, including resources on this talent report and upcoming webinars. Otherwise, thanks for tuning in today and we'll see you all next week. And that wraps up our content for this episode. Be sure to reference the show notes where you can sign up to connect

00:23:20:01 - 00:23:35:05
Unknown
For more podcast updates, check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, make sure to follow MRA's 30 minutes Thrive so you don't miss out. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next Wednesday to carry on the conversation.