The Workforce Institute Weigh-In

What is the Workforce Institute Weigh-In? 

Launched in February 2022, The Workforce Institute Weigh-In is a monthly feature from The Workforce Institute at UKG. Each month, we pose a top-of-mind question from the world of HR and include several perspectives from our advisory board. These are succinct, actionable insights that organizations can start implementing today.

Join Chas and Julie as they discuss a few of the features from 2023 along with their perspective on how it's effecting work.

Learn about the Workforce Institute Weigh-In Here.

Transcript

Julie Develin: 0:26

Hello and Happy New Year and welcome to the people purpose podcast. The first one in 2024, the show that explores all the ins and outs of the challenges opportunities that HR people, managers and all people face at work every day. My Why do you laugh every time I do the intro? Tell me what's funny. I need to know.

Chas Fields: 0:48

Have you memorized it yet?

Julie Develin: 0:49

No.

Chas Fields: 0:51

That's why I laugh because I know. I know you're ready to get and we've done this. By the way behind the scenes, y'all. You don't see this. But the intro and outro before every episode when we have our little episode Julie is like, can you just paste it? Please? Put it in there. I'm like, you don't have it memorized yet? We've done 72 of these

Julie Develin: 1:16

Chas. I feel shamed. I feel. I feel I feel like we're not starting off. 2024 on the right foot. I feel like I'm gonna need you to check your attitude.

Chas Fields: 1:30

In light of mental health Awareness Month. Julie coming up. Why don't you talk about? Well,

Julie Develin: 1:36

let's just talk how you did not help. Today.

Chas Fields: 1:41

I love you so much. It's good to see your face in this new year anyways, we

Julie Develin: 1:48

heart? Well, I can't wait to get you back somehow, someway. But it's going to happen. And it's going to be epic. And you're not going to expect that you can't. So no. So, alright, so we're gonna, we're doing something new for 2024. And should I do it? We're going to do more than 24? No, I don't know how many. I don't know how many times we're going to hear that. But that's hopefully the last time on this show. So normally, it would be tell us something good. And we've been doing that, and I like that, but I want to change it up. And you and I talked about this. We talked about changing it up for this this coming year. And who knows how long, you know, recognizing that the world that we live in is not always rainbows and butterflies. So tell me something good. I know that sometimes when you asked me that this year, this past year, I was like, I don't really know, I don't really know if there's something good, right. So in the spirit of what we preach, and what we talk about, right? Mental Health, awareness, all of that we want to be real with all of listeners, we want to be real with all of you just, you know, just as we asked you to be real with us whenever we see you out, etc. So it's not that it's always going to be bad. But on any given day, we truly don't know how we're going to feel. So I'm going to change it up chairs. And I guess this might evolve as we move forward. But the question is what's on your mind today? What's on your mind today?

Chas Fields: 3:09

Julie, I love this. By the way, when when we talked about it, I love this idea. You know, I'm the big gratitude journal, so on so forth to maintain the positivity. And I'm really excited for 2024 however, I am in the thick of it right now. And Julie, I am in the thick of it because my wife and I have decided to move during the holiday season. With a lot of travel and certain things going on. We have we're closing on one house on a Friday and closing on another the new house the following Monday. And then oh, by the way, it for those of you that don't know, we took a 10 day vacation in the heart of all of this going through negotiations and inspection. If you bought a home, you just understand that there's never really a good time or a non stressful time to do it. So this

Julie Develin: 4:10

sounds like the worst time.

Chas Fields: 4:13

Yeah, in fact, we had a colleague of mine that called me up and they were like, you really just don't plan things. Well, think about that. And I'm like, No, we did it. Because as you know, Julie, once february, march rolls around, it's like, I'll see you when I see it because it's conferences and so on. Right. So yeah, but I will say I'm grateful, very blessed to even have a home at the same time. Think through your schedule a little bit more thoroughly than what we did. But yeah, I'm in the thick of it right now.

Julie Develin: 4:46

Right? So let's see, it's not it's not always it's not always negative, and it's all not all negative. Because there's some of the changes you're gonna have positive changes, but you know what's on your mind today, right? It's not Just to tell me something good, you would have had to struggle a little bit for that.

Chas Fields: 5:03

Right? Oh, yeah, living out of boxes is not ideal. Let

Julie Develin: 5:08

me be clear. Right. But what I liked how you turned it to the point where you're like, but I'm very lucky to have a house, you know, so. Okay, so Chas, you are understanding and getting the spirit of this new question for 2020. And I know what you're about to ask me, you're about to ask me what's on my mind? And what's on my mind is, Wow, what a great idea to change this question. But the other thing that's on my mind is, you know, I just I'm, I do have something positive. And for me, it's a sense of gratitude for the year past. Now, when I say that, I think the year past was riddled with, you know, some challenges. And there's, what year is not riddled with challenges. But it was, it was really rewarding. And the amount of people that I got to meet and the amount of people that I got to talk about the world of work with and then life in general, really, really is, is awesome. So I'm looking towards 2024. And I know we're gonna talk more about 2024 as we move forward. And, you know, we have our megatrends episode that if you haven't heard, definitely go back and listen to the mega trends episode with Dr. Jared Conrad, talking about, believe it or not the mega trends. But yeah, yeah, but but today, what we're gonna do, is we're going to continue in 2024, because we get a lot of feedback that people love the business side of the day. Yeah, we got to keep the business side of the day. So I'm gonna let you go ahead and and tell us what today's is. This

Chas Fields: 6:48

is probably one of my favorites. By the way, as we all know, I love the business and financial side and the change side of what we do. Obviously, I love HR, you know, and all of those things that come with it. But this stat is really astonishing. They're 32 and a half million 32 5 million small businesses in the United States, they make up 99.9% of all businesses. And then globally, this is this is this blew my mind. Globally, there are 582 million entrepreneurs, Julie, thoughts.

Julie Develin: 7:27

What are my first thoughts? I love that small business makes up 99.9% of all businesses. I think sometimes when we talk about small business or when small businesses think of themselves, they don't think of themselves on that level. And small business is extremely important to our economy. It's extremely, extremely important to the global economy. And small business is very important to large businesses. Well. You know, there are a lot of larger businesses that do rely on smaller businesses for things. And of course, vice versa. But you know, it's in this whole ecosystem of the business world. It's just important that no matter what size organization that you work for, if it's a small business, etc, large business, you are important. And and if HR professionals need to know that, even if your HR department have one or even if your HR and other if you will, right, because there's so many HR folks who do HR, but they're also doing other roles as well, especially in small businesses, you are not alone. So yeah, so I just thought that was interesting to start off the year and with the entrepreneur thing, you know, that is something that we saw a rise in over COVID. But even prior to that, if you think back to the 2008 financial crisis, when people started to have job insecurity on a level that wasn't seen in a while, people started to have those side jobs. And that's where the rise of the gig economy really, really started. So,

Chas Fields: 8:59

yeah, I I like to comment on the on the small business thing being a major portion of our economy. That is a very true and factual statement, where I think we could do better as a society and this is my take is to not write off mentally, oh, you're just a small business, right? You don't really understand you. Here's what I'm going to tell you those large businesses started as small businesses at one point. And I've got several friends who have started businesses on their own and the painstaking hours and you know, tears and asking for help and all of the things that it takes to get a business up and running. Doesn't mean that everybody wants to be the next fortune 500 company. There are a lot of people out there that are comfortable, and being a small and mid sized business and operating efficiently and making a difference while making a profit, right. We do want to make a profit to some degree, but we need to do a better job instead. As society, they say, You know what, keep going, keep doing what you're doing, let us know how you can help. And the entrepreneur side of this. That's crazy. Like, that's crazy. That just goes to show how there is always niche things that you can be developing to it, whether whether you want to be an entrepreneur yourself. There's a lot of resources out there that you can Google. But things are constantly evolving. And there are new niche opportunities that it's like, oh, I have a little passion in this space. Maybe I can go chase that down. Right. And, and guess what, it's not that hard. You can start a business really in less than two hours.

Julie Develin: 10:38

So probably faster than that. I mean,

Chas Fields: 10:42

depends on the state and where you live and the regulation that comes with it. But the idea of, hey, listen, if you're unhappy, right, there are ways that you can go and do something different. And it's not as painstaking or as difficult upfront, as you may think that it is. Yeah,

Julie Develin: 10:59

but I don't want to say if you're unhappy, I mean, I would say if you're if you're inspired, or you have a passion, and you know, there's so many people that have their side gig as it's their passion, they love it. So anyway, I feel like I feel like this might be something we need to revisit another episode. Here we go. Great. Saying that

Chas Fields: 11:20

again. First one of the year, by the way.

Julie Develin: 11:24

Exactly, exactly. So in order for the spirit of this episode, I wanted to sort of describe what we're going to be doing here. And so we are our podcast is is housed one of the places on workforce institute.org, which is UK G's research arm it's a global think tank of researchers, business leaders, industry experts, who share information, thoughts, etc. On topic shaping labor market and the larger world of work. So if you haven't visited workforce institute.org Make that definitely something that you do, we will make sure that there's a link to that.

Chas Fields: 12:09

Oh 321.

Julie Develin: 12:19

For those of you who don't know, Chas, the workforce Institute is our research arm. Now. We've talked about it here before, right? We talked about the workforce institute.org here before, it's also where the the podcast is housed. And, you know, it's a global think tank of researchers, business leaders, industry experts, and they share smart, efficient coverage of critical topics, and break down nuanced topics into clear analysis and application, etc. So what we do, thanks to Brian Levine, who is and also Brandon bellick. He, they actually work hard on what's called the way in the workforce Institute weigh in. Now, I know you're familiar with that. But for those who aren't the weigh in is where we ask our board members. So really pointed questions on a monthly basis to get their opinion on what's going on in the world of work. So what we decided to do with this episode, is we decided to, we decided to take a look at some of the more interesting if you will weigh in questions and talk about some of the the answers that our experts gave and just get kind of give our opinion on them. And it really, the goal here is to get everybody else thinking a little bit more critically about some of these things. So I'm going to start with the first question. And the first one that we that we chose was actually from November of 2023. And the question is, it's my favorite Chas HR covers a lot of areas and we talk about them a lot with something HR doesn't talk about enough. Now. We know in the prior episodes that I've asked that question to my audiences for the past year, and the answer there is mental health. But some of our experts actually said something else that really interested me, and I wanted to just chat about it a little bit. So Charlaine lobby, and Dennis Miller, both of them said that something that we don't talk about enough in HR is emergency preparedness. And because the thing is that organizations they think about they think about how to protect their organization from aesthetic, you know, the the building, there's insurance on that, you know, the different electronics, what's inside, what's inside. But but but they think that more conversation needs to happen on the people side of the business. Now, if you think about everything that we've gone through over the past several years, have we learned our lesson?

Chas Fields: 14:50

It's a good question. One of the things that I think bothers me within organizations is how short the memory is right? And I will tell tell you that I think the answer is probably no, unless you are a risk manager. Right? I genuinely unless you're a risk manager, or you're on the security team, or you're on an emergency preparedness team that is constantly thinking about, okay, their job is to think about the what if. And I think that's really important. Because if you don't have those things, it's like I think about from a military perspective, or I think about from a safety perspective at a sporting event, you have to be prepared in those situations for those What if moments, and we could go down a major rabbit hole here from a mental health perspective, supporting the employee perspective, but I would, I would say, generally speaking, Julie, I think our memory is too short sometimes to say, hey, three years ago, two years ago, we had a massive pandemic. What is the outline of the fallout of that? Right?

Julie Develin: 15:57

Right, like, have organizations put emergency preparedness plans in place? I know, when I was in HRBP, we had an emergency preparedness plan. And part of the reason that we had that is because of the nature of our business. But I feel like I'm wondering if if this just needs to be a standard practice for every organization. But here's the other thing about it, Chas, the, the, the emergency plan, when we create that plan, we have to continue to look at it and make sure that it's still relevant. And, you know, as technology advances, so can our emergency plan, right? I mean, there's just, there's just so many different nuances there. But I do think that's definitely a topic that we don't talk about enough in HR. And I'm going to take that a step farther. We don't talk about it enough in business. We don't we don't talk about it enough in general, right. So like, like, like, I want, I want everybody who's listening to think about right now, if there was another pandemic, God forbid, and we had to, you had to close your offices, or you had to shift the way you do business again, what is different now than what was in place back in 2020 2021? Right. And hopefully, that answer is everything. Hopefully that answer is a lot of things are different. But

Chas Fields: 17:20

my thing is, my thing is, it's it, companies were so focused on just figuring out how to maintain the business that this was not the topic that came up, right? Like they were so focused on going remote or maintaining a line or making sure that their people stayed healthy, all of which is incredibly important. And there's also this publicity side, right? And we know with canceled culture, and if you go viral for the wrong things, how quickly that can plummet, an organization's reputation, which impacts their business, which impacts the bottom line, like you can see how these things coexist and are mutually reinforcing. And one of the things that we often don't see behind the scenes are the marketing and public relations, people who were saying, Okay, number one, do we have the foundation and ground to stand on to say, our culture is so great, and this is how we're approaching it. That that's a massive company and organization. I don't want to say problem. But if we don't have a good culture to stand on, then we can't really portray a message and say, Oh, we're really good at this. When everybody's like, Oh, God, no, no, no, we're not right. You know, and that's, that's a very fine line. But there's also Hey, Julie, if one of your employees happens to get in front of a camera, right? Yeah,

Julie Develin: 18:41

yeah, yeah. No, yeah. Media, right. If Yeah, if one of your employees is asked a question about your response to something or what the company's stance is, that's another emergency preparedness thing, you know, that we need to make sure that our employees are prepared to to, you know, tackle. And the thing is, you know, we have control over this, right, meaning, meaning we can take control over these things and have these conversations. And I think it's really, really important to not sort of put these by the wayside. So again, let's let's say this again, Chas, you know, this topic is very interesting. There's a lot to unpack with it. And I believe that we could probably do a whole episode on whether what have we learned from emergency preparedness since since the pandemic, Julie,

Chas Fields: 19:33

I agree with you 100% I also think I need to get a little piggy bank jar for every time we say that. They're that way you know, that's two in one episode, and how we do this right? Yeah. There's there's other things that the Wi Fi desk to and the second point from from the weigh in this one was from August 2023. I like this actually, digital wallets are starting to replace those traditional bank accounts for younger employees, right? What are some of the most important evolving HR and Payroll preferences of younger workers that organization should know about? And this came from our board member, Alexander Levin. And I think this is really the the next generation, right? And we don't, sometimes I get sick and tired of talking about generations, we really should refer to them as age groups, right? A troops because my age group is a millennial does adapt to a lot of the next gen things because I grew up with technology. I had this discussion the other day with my in laws talking about technology, and my son will No, no different, right, compared to what I know, when it comes to technology and evolvement. He's, he has his starting point already. And his purview is going to be completely different than what mine is. And last, I choose to continue to evolve with him as time goes on. And this is really important, because when it comes to our finances, in digital currency with the Bitcoin craze, and how we're approaching getting our money, or getting something to help us sustain our lifestyle has significantly changed over the last two years, I'll pause their thoughts

Julie Develin: 21:19

where I go with this and to think about technology and how we have to keep up with technology and how, you know, how your son is going to know something completely different than us. Right? I'm gonna really age myself here. But, you know, I don't know any of the current superstars musically, except for the ones that are constantly in the news. Right? Like, if I were to if I were to watch Yeah, if I were to if I were to turn on, I don't know, just MTV even have an award show anymore? I don't even know.

Chas Fields: 21:50

I don't think so there's like three shows that constantly. Yeah, like,

Julie Develin: 21:54

like an I if I if I turn on like the Grammys, or, you know, the music awards? I don't know any of those folks. And that's because it's not who we grew up with. It's not it doesn't stay in our purview. And that's the same thing with technology. So again, just the

Chas Fields: 22:15

same for our currency. Right, right. Right, right. Right.

Julie Develin: 22:18

Right. So right, so So what we're so you know, we think about how we share money now, what are some of the what are some of the ways that we share my how, okay, if 15 years ago, would you ever think that you would be sent you'd be able to send money from your bank, via your phone, to your to a to a merchant, or to your friend or to a relative? I mean, I

Chas Fields: 22:40

just remember when PayPal came out, and it revolutionized the transaction industry, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. We had drawdowns and reverse wire. And then we had, you know, I can now wire funds directly from my phone to someone else, right. Like it's all up in the cloud. The dancer question No, but yes, because I, you know, having use Pay Pal in the past, but to say that, like, Hey, I've got a, essentially a virtual bank account on my phone. And let me be clear, this is this is a massive argument for daily pay. I think daily pay is one of the most incredible and revolutionize things when it comes to people's sense of security from a financial perspective. And some regard that is digital wallet, right? That is me closing out my paycheck or to get an advance on my paycheck immediately. Listen, my money is my money. I have earned that money. And now I can get it here and see that it's here and that it's tangible. Oh, my goodness, I think that's yeah, yeah.

Julie Develin: 23:42

But same day pay has a couple of drawbacks, you know, everything right. It can help. It can help people to avoid, you know, increasing their spending and everything like that, and give them immediate access to their cash. But the disadvantage is that sometimes there's fees involved, sometimes people sometimes were helped, we need to help people help themselves by putting limits on those in which employees are able to do and I know, globally, this is not a thing. But in the US, it definitely is. So you know, I think that when we look at same day pay, and how it helps to reduce some of the financial stress that employees may experience. It can help with productivity, it can help with retention can help with a lot of other things. But as long as we put the self safeguards in place, because, you know, it's just another option for employees, it's so we don't want it to become the norm for them. If that makes sense. Well,

Chas Fields: 24:36

one thing from a digital aspect, too, is this gives us an opportunity to educate a little bit more on financial situation, financial stability budget, you know, I think that's, you know, we talk a lot about financial awareness and financial well being and what it takes to even the micro steps or the micro habits, but the reality of it is is that digital currency is not going to go away. Right and and again going back to the to the youngest age group that is what they are going to know if not already know. So what is your business doing to help prepare generations like myself? The xers the Boomers to think through hey listen, it's not always about cash any more of me handing you a Julio you 50 bucks, which I'm pretty sure you do owe me money and if there you have there but But setting that expectation that now, a multi age group are multifunctional. Not multifunctional, but multi generational workforce. This is a great opportunity to have some mentorship and reverse mentorship and reverse education on what the future could hold. Agree.

Julie Develin: 25:47

Yeah, definitely agree. So all right. So again, lots of unpack on that too. But just in the interest of time here, we'll talk about the next question. So what I thought would be fun is to look back at the first question that the workforce Institute ever posed with this series, and it was in February 2022. And it's pretty simple. You know, what are two ways companies can create a culture where employees feel safe speaking up asking questions, or providing feedback. And I think that it's important to look at this in the context of where we are today, from a psychological safety perspective, and how important it is for folks to, to feel psychologically safe in the workplace. Laurie Ruderman, the host of punk rock HR podcast, she's she's on our board. And she mentioned that vulnerability goes a long way in creating a culture where employees feel safe. So when leaders feel safe speaking up, and when leaders get to the bottom of sort of how their employees are thinking how their employees are feeling, maybe utilizing HR tech to understand those sentiments, using surveys, etc. That's where that psychological safety comes in play. Because if we if we understand that our leaders feel safe enough to express their concerns, then we're going to build a culture where other people feel like they can express theirs as well. Yeah, I

Chas Fields: 27:10

think that's that's so good. Julie, the idea behind this is it remember that your leaders are people, right. And I think if you go back and listen to the episode that we did with Chris Todd, our CEO here at UK, G, you know, we our goal in the E series, as you'll see more episodes come out is, hey, listen, these are people that carry weight of the decisions that they make at a tremendous depth and level. And they show you a little bit of that in these episodes. And I think that's really important for us to remember, because if we see them as a person, and not as that, you know, it's not personal, right? It's not personal for these folks. They're trying to do what's best by all employees, that that's the human side of the job that they carry. Right. And they are letting you in to that side of what they're doing. And I think Laurie summarized it too, is is to say, Hey, listen, there's a psychological safety here, we can be more vulnerable, vulnerable, we can be better about sharing those experiences, we can be better about letting you in on details that for years, we were saying, Oh, no, no, we can't do that. Because our people can't handle it. I hate to tell you, Julie, but our people can handle a lot more than we give them credit for. Right?

Julie Develin: 28:20

That is true. A lot of times when I'm working with customers or prospects who are rolling on our software, they're like, Well, how am I employees going to deal with this change? And I'm like, What do you mean, your employees deal with change all the time? How are they going to know how to utilize the app, I'm like, Well, when you download an app on your smartphone to somebody gives you a training manual on how to use it, right? It's all about it's all about utilizing things that are intuitive. And you know, trust is also really important here too. I mean, trust is really, in my opinion, the umbrella that's over everything else at work without trust. And, you know, so many other things are going to erode. So when we're talking about building a culture, that psychologically safe, and a culture where people feel safe to ask questions, but it's also where they feel safe to give ideas, you know, that they're not going to get sort of dismissed. Sorry. Yeah. So we can definitely look at more of these as we move forward. I would encourage everyone to go to workforce institute.org And subscribe to the newsletter. You'll never miss a question. If you if you do that. We also have something really cool coming up on January 17. You want to talk about it?

Chas Fields: 29:30

Well, yeah. So every year we do a twice a year, the HR and Payroll II symposium at UKG. Here's the deal. I can't remember how many credits truly that you can get. I think it's up to 10 HR. Don't quote me on that. But it's easy. It's virtual. And I will tell you, Julie, it is a phenomenal event that even though you're virtual, you get massive networking opportunities, and my favorite thing to do is go in and just watch the chat. because it does such a good job of people connecting with each other saying, here's where I'm at, what's your experience? Like? How are you doing this differently? And you wouldn't think even though we're virtual that it would be that great. And I'm here to tell you, it's one of my favorite events of the year to participate in by Yeah,

Julie Develin: 30:15

we get, we have 1000s of people register for this. So you're going to be in really good company, both HR and Payroll, people and also other, right, it doesn't just have to be HR Payroll, if you're in the business of people, definitely encourage you to join us. And we'll put a link to that also in the in the description description. So check this out, my friend. Oh, Julie,

Chas Fields: 30:37

what do you find your purpose? found

Julie Develin: 30:39

my purpose in weighing in on these questions? A lot of people have different. A lot of people have different opinions. But I think that, you know, wherever so many, so many of the answers to these things are going to be based upon your purview? What is going on in your industry, what's going on in your business? So understanding the trends in your businesses when it comes to these questions I think is most important. I

Chas Fields: 31:04

think I found my purpose and we work with a lot of smart people. And their differing opinions help us understand the broader perspective of the industry and the workplace. Based on what you just said, your version is different than my version, you may be in this vertical, but I'm in this vertical. And here's the reality. Having the privilege of working with people on our board and hearing their experiences just makes our job that much more fun, but also helps shape the messages that we portray. So a few reminders before we go. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe on social media sites. Hey, do us a favor, go drop us a review and rate us on the platform that you're listening on. It really helps us and be sure to check out the latest blogs and research from the workforce Institute by visiting workforce institute.org or soon enough, Julie, it will also be on ukg.com So read any of that. Did I read any of that? Yeah. The highlights.

Julie Develin: 32:07

Closing the closing. I changed it I had hooked it. Oh, okay. I was gonna say remember how you made

Chas Fields: 32:15

and there it is Chas embarrassed. Thanks for listening to y'all. Y'all. Have a great Day. Bye Bye.