Immortal HR: Technology and the Evolution of the Profession with Marc Miller

Get ready to embark on a journey through the world of HR with our returning guest, Marc Miller, author of "Immortal HR: The Death and Resurrection of Miss HR Job." Does the idea of HR becoming immortal intrigue you? We're here to unravel it with Marc, who shares his insights on HR's indispensable role during the COVID-19 pandemic and how the profession had to embrace technology to keep workforces safe.

Hold tight as we explore the changing landscape of HR in the age of technology. How has COVID-19 impacted HR? How can AI facilitate or hinder workplace dynamics? Marc enlightens us on these questions as we delve into the rise of social movements in workplaces, the importance of identifying key workers, and the potential pitfalls of AI. He uses the Workday vs. Mobley lawsuit as a case study to dissect the biases embedded in AI algorithms, highlighting an often overlooked but critical aspect of technology in HR. 

Navigating a multigenerational workforce is another challenge in the modern workplace. How can HR leverage technology to manage talent? Mark shares his thoughts on this, emphasizing the significance of understanding different generations and staying agile. And as we wrap up, Marc revisits the Workday vs. Mobley lawsuit and how it holds implications for HR departments. Join us in this episode of the Rebel HR podcast, where we pull back the curtain on the intricate relationship between HR and technology with Marc Miller.

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Chapters

• 0:03 The Immortal HR Job
• 9:49 HR Evolution in Age of Technology
• 14:30 Bias and Lawsuits in AI Algorithms
• 17:00 [Ad] Virtual Rockstar
• 17:49 (Cont.) Bias and Lawsuits in AI Algorithms
• 20:59 HR Embracing Technology
• 27:59 HR's Role in Navigating Pandemic + Multigenerational Workforce
• 32:39 Generational Differences and Talent Management
• 43:07 Conversation Wrap-Up and Contact Information

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

This is the Rebel HR Podcast, the podcast about all things innovation in the people's space. I'm Kyle Rode. Let's start the show. Welcome back, hr Rebels. We have an awesome guest this week with us. We have returning to Rebel HR Podcast, mark Miller. Mark, if you will recall, illuminated us back almost three years ago when we were just getting off the ground, and was a wonderful and gracious guest. Then he is back here to tell us about his new book coming out Immortal HR the Death and Resurrection of Miss H Harriet R Rose Job or, for those of you that are ahead of the class, hr Job. The subtitle here it is the Death and Resurrection of Miss HR Job. How COVID and Workforce Issues Made HR Job Critical and Indispensable, if Not Immortal Mark, welcome back to the podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:08

It's great, kyle, see you, you're looking well. I'm so happy for your success of Rebel HR Because my episode I think it was 26,. There's another 150 following me. All great topics, topical, of key importance to the people anywhere in HR management, from any function all the way up to CEOs, so to speak, which many CHR Rose are becoming CEOs, by the way, but that's a whole other discussion.

Speaker 2: 1:37

I'm excited to tie the loose ends from my previous talk with you about the ghosts of past, present and future of HR Tech and then say, well, you know, now it's no longer a ghost, she's literally immortal.

Speaker 2: 1:52

She became immortal because she was there to help organizations survive and did an amazing job, because HR was at the center of everything when COVID hit in March of 2020 and since then, moving towards the new normal. And I said to myself, if I'm going to write a new book and I had the previous book called the death of HR, who killed Harry Rose job, how can I write about Harry Rose job without resurrecting her? You know, so I came up with a mortal HR and it started from there and in my book I talk about how it came to be and why and all that stuff. So it was pretty interesting, I must say. And then many of the people that targeted her in 2017, 2018, and 2019 became critical collaborators that knew that Harry Rose job HR job was the center of everything regarding the survival of an organization and the mental well-being of their workforce and keeping the key people and the talent management and all of that. So I put it together it's in final stages of editing. It's upcoming in the fall of 2023, hopefully.

Speaker 1: 3:07

Absolutely, and I love to see you writing again. And the last time we talked it was all about the death of HR job and, fun fact, mark dresses up as a detective and does a wonderful live presentation we were talking about. I'm literally staring at pictures of him standing around. Poor HR job in a keynote.

Speaker 2: 3:35

I was able to do a bunch of key notes where I had friends be the dead person lying in the crime scene which was in the dead bed, broken, and she had a mouseball wrapped around her neck and it got a lot of good interest and I kind of enjoyed talking to large groups and I had the opportunity to talk to a couple of thousand at one time as a keynote over the years. With this talk and I insist that the stage be totally dark I'm not even introduced and all of a sudden the lights go on and they see a body lying there. I love it. I walk in and say detective Miller's on the case and I kneel down next to the body, check her paws, hold up the mouse cord wrapped around her neck and my friends are lying there trying not to laugh as the body trying to stay still and I have the scene depicting the scene that's in the book, with a stapler a red stapler of her shoe or glasses, a file cabinet nearby and it was just a lot of fun. I so enjoyed it and people enjoyed it. And then COVID hit and I said, okay, I had to continue to do my teaching at NYU and teaching at Manhattan College here in the Bronx, north of Manhattan, and they want me teaching HR management, hr technology and talent management systems and that keeps me busy. And then my consulting periodically comes in with needs analysis, vendor evaluation.

Speaker 2: 4:59

And here's the underlying thing this book is showing the power and the importance of HR and how Harriet Rose learned to embrace technology. And whereas the original Harriet Rose said just let me do my job. 95, my speech has started up with her walking to work the day that she was killed and not caring about anything and meeting people in the hallway and saying, oh, it is millennial and they're sue systems. They don't even acknowledge me, she said as she walks into an NTO of it and said these millennials, they get there a lot earlier than me. I just want to do my nine to five work. So she's dropping clues about people in HR back in 2015, 16, 17, 18. She was a woman of a certain age, she didn't have a lot of good performance appraisal and she basically annoyed everybody to the point where she became an obstacle and then a target for people to do away with her, and that started that book. And now so in the new book, I have to say well, why is she immortal? How did she come back? Well, the reason is because there was something that happened on March 2020, enter Connie Vid, covid, or us, known as Ms Amdemic and they were.

Speaker 2: 6:14

All organizations were saying, oh my God, what do we do? How do we survive? We've got all this stuff we got. We got to worry about their well-being. We got to figure out how people could get in and out of the office. There was such software needed. There was technology needed. There were smart apps needed for the smartphones. There was building access. There was uploads of vaccination statuses and cards. There was COVID testing at NYU.

Speaker 2: 6:41

I had to go through oops to get into the faculty and to get into the campus and then there was, oh, let's do it all remote or let's do it hybrid. When I was teaching at NYU for the first year of the pandemic, we had totally online for one semester and then they said, oh, let's do hybrid, hybrid. We have half our students from the school of engineering there in China anyway. So I had a great wall of students in a classroom at NYU with cameras on me and on the wall and people and me lecturing, you know, with everybody wearing masks behind plexiglass. It was a zoo and we started to get across the things we had to do, but it was all had to be figured out. I had a smartphone app that I had to indicate I'm coming in today, please, and they had an algorithm saying how do you feel. And also, let's check your COVID status in order for me to even enter into the building because I had to show you the garden.

Speaker 2: 7:38

It was all fascinating stuff that Harry and her team of people had to deliver and had to help an organization survive and that makes up the book, with all these different people that were used to be people that wanted to do away with it. But she had a working group on analytics, ms analytics. Mr Arturo intelligente artificial intelligence. Mr check GPT for chat she's a algorithm and they had a mission and challenges to help an organization right away. And then she had other people that you work with, like Diane versity for diversity, and quitty for equity, mr inclusion for inclusion and Ms belonging.

Speaker 2: 8:26

And you know, once COVID hit, employee well-being was top of mind and also keeping key employees. Don't forget the great resignation, the quiet quitting. All of this came into play after March 2020, kyle, when COVID uprooted everything globally around the organization, and even today in midtown Manhattan office occupancy is 39%, so everybody's suffering. You get the coffee shops not surviving, you get local restaurants not surviving, you get the street vendors not surviving, not to even speak about the people that own these office buildings for office rentals. They're being converted to apartment buildings, apartments or mixed use and say, well, why don't we have to go into Manhattan? So we wanna work hybrid, and that's the only way to attract a generation X and Y or Y and Z. Actually.

Speaker 1: 9:21

Why would they want to?

Speaker 2: 9:22

go and commute.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Absolutely. It's so funny and, honestly, like I remember back, this has been three years ago now, more than three years ago now, and it's like you're mentioning all this stuff and I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot about that. Oh yeah that, oh yeah that. Oh yeah, oh yeah, that it's like, but I do think it's so. Much has happened and, to the point, your first job was about the death of HR job and it was really a story of somebody who was refusing to adapt. Right, it was an emotional fail.

Speaker 2: 10:05

It was about a work that wouldn't embrace technology, that wouldn't be nimble, that wouldn't be agile. Back in the 2016, 17, 18, 19, before COVID, companies wanted to have a strategic HR function. Then this is many decades after HR was called personnel and was a do nothing. This is way after. This is with the good vendors like Workday and the old PeopleSoft and UKG. It was then Ultimate Software and then they merged with Kronos so, but even then there was nine box models and sentiment analysis.

Speaker 2: 10:38

All of this was in play in the early 2010s through 2018s, 19s, where HR became more strategic. But what really sealed the deal for HR was COVID started and HR was where they said holy cow, what do we do? Who's got the data? How do we handle who's in our workforce? Are they safe? Where are they working? How do we find out who's key? How do we share jobs? How do we deal with workforce anxiety? How do we give them help? How do we help them navigate whatever they need If they're unhappy? All that EAP stuff.

Speaker 2: 11:17

Well, and then the social movements that occurred in 2020, george Floyd killings, you've got social media. You've got Me Too. You've got the sexual harassment, workplace harassment. All of that became a forefront in 2018, 19, 2020, 2021 and 2022. While we were trying to deal with COVID at the same time. And, like you and I said even before, people don't want to commute five days a week. It's funny when I listened to the traffic reports here in Westchester County in Manhattan. They say, well, it's working Wednesday, or everybody's commuting on Tuesday and Wednesday, but the traffic's light on Monday and Fridays because everybody's staying from home and they don't want to get in and that's the way it is, and it's overseas the same thing.

Speaker 2: 12:07

So I built this book and it's a lot of fun and I'm talking about it as well, but some of the other people. In terms of talent management is, one of the key trends is identifying key workers and making sure you're keeping them happy, keeping them engaged, keeping them on a career journey that they want to have. So I created the characters of Mr Tally Management I, ms Rhea Cruting, mr Upton Schiller and Mr Lee Develop for corporate training and recruiting and training and development. And how do you work with all of these people and figuring out what organizations need to keep our best people to deal with the onboarding and using technologies underlying everything, whether you're. We're not even talking yet about chat GPT, which I'll get to a generative of AI, but that's crazy right now and that's just since October, november, when that hit the marketplace with openaicom, which is the deliverer of chat GPT, and now there's Bard from Microsoft and others that are out there and every day I get newsletters and I get New York Times and I see, well, everybody's using generative of AI and how do we control it? And there was a Times article the other day which I grabbed and said, oh, I'm gonna talk to my students about this and put it into my book A picture of Elon Musk embracing and kissing a beautiful robot with warm black hair and it was a fake picture. So there's now software, kyle, that is able to identify what's fake a photograph versus real and somebody's photograff and I'm a hobbyist photographer you couldn't tell it's not real, the quality of the photograph, and the software actually goes into the pixels and said, no, this was machine created, it didn't come from a camera. And they're able to work out a picture and say, well, that's not really President Biden talking, it's a video created by fake news people or bad actors or whatever putting words in anybody's mouth, which is a problem, and that whole issue of regulation, which keys me to one key point that's very important for you and I to mention regarding HR management and applicant tracking and bias.

Speaker 2: 14:30

Bias is a big risk with using underlying algorithms within generative AI large language models, to the extent that there is an act of lawsuit called Workday versus Mobley, and this is a gentleman. This hit the papers a couple of months ago and it caught everybody's attention. This is a gentleman who is a minority person, middle age who applied for 60, I think. In his papers he said 60 jobs from 60 separate companies and he found out that of that, 60, 58 of them were using Workday's applicant tracking modules, with their underlying architecture, to select resumes to go forward with for the next step. He, being a minority person of a certain age, got.

Speaker 2: 15:30

It was rejected to most of those, if not all of them, and instead of suing the individual companies, he said uh-uh, I'm gonna sue the founder, I'm gonna sue the source of the bias which he accused Workday of having built-in bias into their applicant processing module, which they readily say uses artificial intelligence, underlying algorithms, to look for the best candidates for a particular job. That lawsuit has yet to be adjudicated. It's in the court system federal court, it won't. There's another meeting in the end of October. It's like saying, well, let's sue Colt or Remington for producing the gun that shot somebody and killed somebody and so that's a shield and federal law they are shielded from or suing Ford for a car that killed somebody.

Speaker 2: 16:27

You can't do that, nor can you shoot, kill the gun manufacturers. But with artificial intelligence and technology there's now talk that this could be the landmark decision that makes the software provider stand accountable. If they're using algorithms looking at salespeople and if the algorithm say, well, what are the best features of our best salespeople? Well, if they've got 10 years of data, they will all old white guys at a certain age. Yeah, and if you file, you know, and that's what it's gonna lead to. We'll have to see. It's pretty interesting.

Speaker 1: 17:41

You know it's fascinating and I think you know, gosh, I could talk about generative AI just because I just find it fascinating. But you know, that's that bias exists because the AI is learning from us and we're all biased, right. So it's like an echo chamber of bias, potentially, if it's done incorrectly, right.

Speaker 2: 18:04

But if it's done, you know what. You and I can stop doing what we're doing and say let's change careers. We could become what's called a prompt engineer. Have you heard that?

Speaker 1: 18:17

I. This is one of those jobs that they're like, you know, when you're in school. They're like jobs that you're gonna do might not exist today, like this is one of them.

Speaker 2: 18:27

Right, this is one of the newest jobs People have been paid $230,000, according to the articles I've been reading, to know how to prompt artificial intelligence, and the concept is you have to word your prompt to get the results you want. So one of the people that I think highly of in HR is AI HR Academy for Innovation in HR. They just created a post on LinkedIn that talked about chat GPT prompts for HR in different functionality. So they gave you examples. You could ask chat GPT to create a job description for, insert job title and then ask it to include the responsibilities and say I want 10. You have to say that Within seconds you will get a list of job descriptions based on chat GPT, reading the job description title or the job title Now in my book and at my classes.

Speaker 2: 19:30

I came up with the idea a couple of months ago when this all hit from public domain. We asked chat GPT to write the job description for the first HR manager based on the moon, just like write a job description for the HR manager based on the moon, and it did, and I put it in my book, cause lawyers are studying whether I was okay to do that, but it was amazing to see it took into account sticks being on the moon dealing with isolation and anxiety and having the HR person make sure they're aware of that. For the workforce, it's based on the first workforce. When we build the moon colony. It's going to be populated by people from all cultures, all ages to sit there on the moon for a year or two. And if you get hired as the HR manager to manage these hundred, 50, 100, 200, 300 people, what do they have to do? Well, chat GPT came up with a job description. It was great.

Speaker 1: 20:32

And it was nice.

Speaker 2: 20:35

And you know what and it wasn't terrible Now in academia, cause that's a piece of my life these days I have to be very careful when I assign something to my students and NYU and other colleges are making me the procedure now or the policy, saying you have a choice. You could tell your class you won't accept chat GPT generated stuff. Or if you find out that they use it without telling you it's plagiarism, and give them an F. Or you say let's embrace it. If you use it, show me what it gave you and tell me what you did with it, which is my approach. So if I asked them to talk about talent management and what are the top 10 features of a good talent management program, well, yeah, I could ask chat GPT that and they'll give me a list of 10. So my students do it and stick it into this thing. They think they're going to get away with it, you know.

Speaker 1: 21:25

So I think, so, I think this is fascinating because this lines up perfectly with the book, which is what do you do? Do you fight it? Do you fight the technological tsunami? Because the reality is like it's here, yeah, and it's, and it's generative, so it's learning like it's, like it's, it's and it's going to enable an Acceleration of technology at a rate that we haven't seen since the internet. Right, like this is, so it's not going away. So do we fight it? And do we, like, build all these restrictive policies and potentially get, you know, get in the crosshairs again to get killed, or Do we, you know, do we embrace it and figure out, okay, how do we use this for good? Well, and how do we?

Speaker 2: 22:09

and how do we actually embrace this in a way, that's that that makes sense and and and fosters, you know, for for everything to accelerate, not just technology, absolutely and the word embrace is somewhere in my chapters that are sitting in the editor's desk right now, because Harry rose job as the, as the embodiment of the function of HR, had a new mindset. Before she had those fatal eyes where she was insensitive and irrelevant and isolated and all that. But now she A new mindset. She had to collaborate. She knew she had to embrace technology.

Speaker 2: 22:45

She had a whole bunch of Mises that led to her ability to collaborate and and know the importance of technology, talent management, the employee experience, sometimes known as ex, sometimes referred to as ux. Now it's even broader than that. It's called DX, the whole digital experience that employees expect to see when they log on or search for a job. They need to know how to use analytics. They need to know Harry had had to embrace the concept of data visualization To tell the big picture story, to get permission from the executives and get money from executives to invest in technology, to see the actionable insights based on metrics and predictive analytics. She didn't want to do any of that before she was when she was killed. So she had to say, oh, I've got to change my Mentality, I've got to know that there's a difference between being effective and being efficient.

Speaker 1: 23:46

Right, I could be.

Speaker 2: 23:47

I could be efficient and pick a new HR technology at three months, but it might be ineffective. We might have been the wrong technology. It wasn't effective. It was efficient, quickly on the budget, but it was the wrong thing, it wasn't efficient, you know. So the whole concept of talent management, workforce analytics, upskilling is a whole bunch of trends. That Cyber security is also on the plate of HR, oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:16

Yeah and the whole. That's the career journeys. There's another mindset that she had to embrace, not only identifying talent and the key employees, but also for those that are struggling or those that are unhappy and want a different career. There's now great software vendors out there that make it. Gamification is called to say, okay, miller, you're a janitor and you want to be the CEO of the company or you want to be the chro. We will not Debate that. You're a janitor. Now we will give you the steps to take from you being the janitor of this big company to becoming the chro of the same big company by following these steps and it may take you 10 years, but here's what we recommend other steps for you to go for a cafeteria worker or janitor to become the chro, and it's all in all serious. There are legitimate training and steps that can be done to get somebody like that.

Speaker 2: 25:15

And there's software out there. It's called career journeys, which is another new thing. That software is built for us to use. And also the predictive analytics. There's metrics and analytics say okay, what's that turnover? What's it been for the last five years, if that's cool. Now we know we have 150 salespeople, based on today, 20, 23 and say august 1st.

Speaker 2: 25:41

But we're strategic now as a function and we now know that us as the we, we staff the showrooms for BMWs in metropolitan New York and we have 100 salespeople. But we now know there's going to be a new electric car coming down the pike in january of 2025 Maybe, and our turnover rate is x. If we do nothing, we're gonna not have a hundred in a year and a half, we're gonna have 50 Because turnover is going to just drop it. So we better start. And we know it takes six plus to train people on the new features and functions of an electric vehicle versus the old versions of bmw, ford, christ or whatever. So HR is being able to raise their hands saying, based on our metrics, our predictive analytics, regression analysis and the people we have in our pipeline, we better start doing something today, in 2023, to hire new salespeople to be ready when that new bmw Electric vehicle rolls off the assembly line two years from now. And all of a sudden, people are saying, holy cow, hr, good catch, we didn't think about this, you're right, right.

Speaker 1: 26:51

Right, yeah, absolutely, you know, and I think it's it's where it's where we do have to take a leadership role in human resources, because I like to think about it like this Well, if not us, then who Right, like who else has has it? What I think is one of the more exciting Jobs within the, you know, their organizations, to see all this stuff intersects right, as we're here at the center of all this, because it's all people right, like, like, how do we keep people healthy? How do we keep people engaged? How do we keep people, you know, motivated? How do we make sure they have a great experience? How do we make sure we have enough? How do we make sure we have the right ones in the right seats? Um, you know it, it's, that's it, that's our job, and, and now we have some, you know, some, some cool tools, um, to think, to look at right we got what is called by bill gates is the transformational thing better than the internet with this general AI and yeah, and in 60 minutes.

Speaker 2: 27:51

Just a few months ago I had an interview with the president of google showing all this stuff that robots can do and it's just amazing and it's all. And listen, companies cannot survive without the workforce, no matter where they work anywhere in the world, and you got to keep the, keep people, and it's all centered on talent management, upskilling, career journey, predictive analytics, all the hr technology. Whether you're a small company and you buy adp for a mom pot candy store to do their payroll and simple data to pay the 20 people that work in the candy store or the small, the Retail hardware store, or you're 150,000 people working around the globe and you have an integrated system coming from SAP or oracle or work day or uk g. These are the top tier vendors or adp and it's all about the data and the, also the interface and the feeds from other data that ties into all this the financial data, the, the customer service data, the materials management data. So we get these big, the big SAP, oracle type of master files. That Only a piece is HR data, but HR is is centered on. Hey, this is the workforce. Here's what we got to do. We got to know where our people are working. We got to know who.

Speaker 2: 29:14

During when COVID first hit, we had to say where are they? They split where? Who knows where they went to their? They went to their country homes by a lake, out of the cities. They worked, or they went to visit or stay with their parents and grandparents. Well, they went who knows where, but they were still working for a company and the company had to know where they were and their health and their mentality. And there's one of the best things I saw about adp's website when COVID did was every dawn resource, a human being needed to get through the, the red tape to get money from the federal government for anything or to get help, which we did for all the federal programs when COVID hit, and companies had that ability to or programs. If you're feeling anxious, here's who you speak to, or and then also teaching people how to use zoom.

Speaker 2: 30:06

Yeah now people know what to do with zoom. You know it changed everything. Unfortunately, I had people that lost lotwins during COVID and they couldn't even be there at the end and they couldn't even have funeral services in person. It was a terrible time that we forget about how bad. And same thing with corporate America. You know Organizations that had a lot of people exposed to the virus. Forget the healthcare worker. But God, I have great respect for the nurses and the doctors who were in the front line. They couldn't take off and work from home.

Speaker 2: 30:38

Yeah, the bus drivers, transit drivers, yeah, so it was all. So everything was there and HR was at the center of everything. And everybody went to HR and say, holy cow, what do we do? Who has the data? Hr has the data. What do we do about the New York City mandates for vaccination? What do we do about building access? What do we do when somebody has a fever? How do we? What's that protocol? Do we fire people that don't show up? I mean, all of this stuff is ethical and interesting work issues.

Speaker 1: 31:10

Yeah, you know, and I think you know what's fascinating about this whole thing is you know we've talked about you know the pandemic and COVID and you know we had to step up there.

Speaker 1: 31:21

We've talked about kind of intersection of technology and analytics and big data and how that can be used. But what I have found at the center of this is the, the individuals and human resources and other you know corporate functions for that matter that the ability to truly interact with humans and like and understand that. You know what truly makes people tick and what people care about and what actually matters to an organization is it is the people and it's the it's, it's those that can kind of help bridge the gap between the technological need and everything that's changing there. You know that kind of the external environment that's causing risk or confusion or frustration, or you know social unrest and and and ultimately help an organization understand. Okay, how do I deal with this and how do, at the end of the day, how do we like, how do we help our team Right and how do we win and how do how does this all come together? And that you know.

Speaker 2: 32:22

For me, that's the exciting thing Underneath that big picture statement that you've just made is the issue of dealing with teams that are made up of four generations in the workforce. Right, right, and cultures have different ways of doing things, have different ways to interact and communicate. When you, when you have a company where they've got generation X, ys and Zs and the baby boom is still hanging out, everybody has different needs and a company says, well, you know what we like, having our older people be mentors and sharing the knowledge of the 20 years they worked with us. We don't want to get rid of them. And some younger people say, oh, who do we need? We don't want to work with an old guy anymore or an old person.

Speaker 2: 33:09

So it's all that understanding of the generations and having them through, it's all part of talent management, it's acquisition, it's retention and it's education and training, and then it's deploying and it's all based on humans at work and eventually, our robots going to take over a lot of the jobs. Yes, they will, but there's still going to be people that have to program those robots and get them to do it. But there are organizations that are saying, well, is your job vulnerable? And yes, if you're an administrative job based on these chat, gpt type of things. Your, if your job is nothing but writing job descriptions or a recruiter finding a resume that matches a job requirement, you will be benefited by these generative AI and should be happy about it instead of worried about it. It's going to save you time to find the top 10 candidates out of a pool of a thousand resumes in your system and then move on to other jobs and increase the speed to hire and help the company fill positions, because if you keep a generation Y and Z person waiting for more than two to three weeks to get a final job offer, they're going to go to some company that's way quicker. They're not going to sit around waiting for five levels of interviews to join the white or price warehouse coopers or any of these big firms that have, step by step, step by step and have to be interviewed six, six or seven times.

Speaker 2: 34:37

And not only that. Today, kyle, when you start the interview process and the quote on boarding, it's usually with an algorithm and the artificial intelligence makes the call, gives you sounding English like or any language like you're talking to a human screening questions, records you and then you decide, and then it's decided whether to take you to the next step. There's no human being involved. H-rot person is not calling Kyle Rode or Mark Miller. It's a robot on a video screen that maybe looks like a human or maybe talks like a human, asking you five questions what's your visa status? Where do you live, you know?

Speaker 2: 35:20

And then here's the reverse side. With fake photographs I could change my look. I can make myself look 30 years younger and say I'm Mark Miller, 29 years old. And who would know? That's another question about regulation. Who knows right and who's held accountable? When they hire me, they think I'm 40, when I'm 50 or 60, whatever. So when these things get into the hands of anybody fake news and all that stuff we hear about there's got to be regulations and we don't know yet what's going to happen.

Speaker 1: 35:55

Yeah, I mean, on this podcast I've interviewed somebody whose their job is to create AI-generated faces that look like people that work at the company and they train, but then you can take. But what's cool about it is that you can just take copy like what do you want to train on? And then a human, a human-esque annoyed.

Speaker 1: 36:16

I don't know what the right term but, then they train you right and it's like but like the future is here, right, like it's. So it's just a question of how do you, how do how do we apply this right and and I'm, I'm with you, like there's, there's so many opportunities here, you can't fight you can't. To get nimble. Yeah, yeah, like.

Speaker 2: 36:36

Yeah, Remember when ATMs first came out, everybody said, oh, every bank teller is going to be fired. Well, you know what? If you look at the staffing totals of bank tellers, it went up after they created ATMs. We're now a smartphone, so if I have to deposit a check, I use my iPhone and take a picture. I haven't walked into the bank in years, that's right, that's for a deposit, and it didn't affect that staffing of Chase Bank and Westchester County. They still haven't seen a lot of people.

Speaker 2: 37:03

But they're doing more strategic stuff. They're allowing the administ trivia to go from 60% down to maybe 20% and then they're doing much more strategic planning and and interdepartmental stuff. And that's the delivery model that. Oh, Rich and Josh Person and myself and yourself with the podcast, say hey, age up. People embrace the technology, know the talent management's key, know that generation X, Y and Z and the C generation I read the COVID generation that have been shaped by COVID who were maybe 10, 11, 12 and 19 in 2020. So now they're 15 and eventually, in a couple of years of the entry of the workforce, who knows what they're going to be wanting to see?

Speaker 1: 37:52

Well, if my, if my, my, my son is any indication, it's, it's. You know, I used to run around the playground and scrape my knee and, you know, just stay out till dark. Now he's on it. Now he's doing the same thing, but it's a digital avatar and he's sitting on, you know, playing Roblox or Minecraft with like six people on a, you know, on a video call.

Speaker 2: 38:13

And it's real, it's crazy. I'm worried about getting some fresh air, but not in the heat wave. I got you. You know the whole thing. Listen, if you want to go crazy, you can watch people walking into walls looking at their phone, and you know if you're walking. You know. There was one great clip I saw on YouTube. It might have been overseas, or when we just kept walking in a mall and hit one of those fountains, tripped over the edge and fell right into the water holding her phone. Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 1: 38:40

Yeah, I get it. There's a reason that, like on the manufacturing floor, like you know, no cell phones because we don't want people to like fall over. I mean because they're checking there. You hit me. It's amazing, I'm an older generation.

Speaker 2: 38:56

And I was raised that when you walk opposite people converging turn to the right and they should turn to the right you don't bump into each other. This new generation doesn't seem to understand that. I walk my dog, I'm going to the right with the leash and the dog, and they're going right back to the leash again. It's just so they say don't you know you should turn to the right, and I go to the right and we both ask each other. It's little things.

Speaker 1: 39:20

It is. Yeah, it's a brave new world, but I do think that you know I love about your approach and you said it a couple years ago and you're saying it again it's about evolving right, and it's about growing and being strategic and being valuable and calling out these things that are easy to be afraid of because they're changed, but at the end of the day, that's you know, we got to be ready for it.

Speaker 2: 39:51

So in the last minute. Let me just tell you about the key components of the mindset that Harry Rose Jopps went from being inactive and intractable. These are the shape of her new mindset. If I asked Google or Wikipedia what is the definition of mindset, they'll talk about innovative and agile and things. But within that from my book I said these are the things that Harry Rose Jopps had to understand and collaborate with each other, and one was to understand the difference between effectiveness and efficiency.

Speaker 2: 40:24

That's a key thing. She had to know about employee engagement. She had to leverage HR technology. She had to emphasize talent management when I say she, it's her and her collaborators. She had to identify future leaders and provide career journeys. She had to embrace workforce analytics. She had to know how to tell a story so that senior executives saw the big picture with data visualization. She had to listen with empathy to the workforce by doing post surveys and things like that. She had to again sell the whole ex UX DX of the workforce. So if you boil it all down, it's just a couple of these key trends upskilling and talent management and hybrid work and ESG, environmental, social and governance, and sexual harassment or workplace harassment concerns. It's basically doing whatever it takes to be the mother of all these workers, you know, make sure they're no longer disquieted, they're calm and they're working at their highest peak, I guess is the concept. So Harry embraced that new mindset. She became critical, she became immortal.

Speaker 1: 41:36

I love it, I love it, and with that I think we'll leave it right there. But that's, you know, from my standpoint, that's what's so exciting about where we're at, and we're at an inflection point in my mind where you know we've had the opportunity to rise to the occasion and now, you know, we can become immortal. You know if we can demonstrate that we can embrace these things.

Speaker 2: 42:02

So, Mark and immortal at least critical and well needed Right, and that's the key, kyle, and that's what I'm working on this for. We'll see how it all goes. I'm excited about it. I hope it'll be fun. Immortal HR will be a nice title. It is the title and we'll see where it goes from here. But I thank you for giving me this great encore opportunity to have to three years and I hope we have another one in the near future and we'll talk offline about things about that. But I'm just so happy for the success of Rebel HR.

Speaker 1: 42:39

It's great, right? Well, likewise so happy for your success. I love that you have ever written another book and, yeah, we'll definitely have you back, you know, for the next one. So can't wait, mark, always a pleasure, just absolutely love getting the opportunity to learn from you and just reconnect, and thank you again for putting the book out there. We will have a link to this in the show notes, so open it up, check it out. You can check out the rest of Mark's work and you know we'll have that in the show notes.

Speaker 2: 43:08

So thank you very much, Kyle.

Speaker 1: 43:10

You were right. Thank you, mark.

Speaker 2: 43:12

I'll be in touch and stay healthy and well and enjoy the rest of the summer.

Speaker 1: 43:17

Likewise, my friend. Thank you, Take care. Bye. All right. That does it for the Rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at Rebel HR podcast, Twitter at Rebel HR guy or see our website at rebelhumanresourcescom. Abuse and opinions expressed by Rebel HR podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast.

Speaker 2: 43:51

Baby.