New Week, New Headlines: Choices: CEO Pay Cut or Layoffs & Indeed's State of Workplace Findings

Hiya Friends!

We're back with New Week, New Headlines this week. And we're talking shop. Here's what we jammed about:

Topic 1: Choices: CEO Pay Cut or Layoffs?
Why do some CEOs and C-Level execs take a pay cut instead of laying folks off? Why don't others? We tackle the reasons. Plus a spotlight, from CNBC, on how former Nintendo CEO, Satoru Iwata's cut his salary to avoid layoffs.  

Topic 2: Indeed's State of Workplace Findings
The Indeed Survey with The Harris Poll, 2023 launched last week with some surprising (71% of people are looking for jobs), and not surprising (people want hybrid) findings about what workers are looking for in future employers.  They also listed the Indeed’s Best Jobs of 2024 and fun fact - mental health is big. Tech jobs? not so much. 

Hot Job Board of the Week!
On sabbatical? Need to just try something completely different? Looking to do your own Eat, Pray, Love USA-Style? Well, Mel found the site for you.
Coolworks Job Board

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.

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Transcript

Mel: 0:00

These are people.

Francesca : 0:01

Yeah, it's people. It's people, people who need people. Welcome to your Work Friends. We're 2HR Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel. We have no filter, but we're getting you through all this work shit. That's going on. Mel, how was your weekend?

Mel: 0:34

It was good. It was good. I ended up in a small town in Connecticut I think it's called Star's Hollow, gilmore Girls type little town, yeah, cutie Petuity town. But my husband and I just went for lunch. We were like, yeah, let's bum around, walk around the shops. And we sat down to eat and we're looking out the window and suddenly tons of people just start showing up in front of where we're sitting and I was like what is happening here? And we ended up in a tractor parade. So it was an adventure.

Francesca : 1:02

All right, like old tractors, new tractors. What kind of tractors are we talking?

Mel: 1:06

about Old tractors and new tractors. We saw some real oldies. They look like they might have been from the 20s and 30s, so that was cool. There was an old Texaco truck. It was fun, it was cute. Yeah, so bumming around, how about you Go ahead? Thank you this weekend.

Francesca : 1:22

That Lamborghini actually started as a tractor company. Oh, that's funny. Yes, virgilio Lamborghini started his career in tractors. So yeah, there you go, interesting.

Mel: 1:29

Yeah.

Francesca : 1:30

I'm like, all right, I'd pay good money to see a tractor go to a mile an hour.

Mel: 1:35

Those tractors were whipping around on the roads over there.

Francesca : 1:38

I was surprised how fast they go when we lived in Columbus, ohio, we went to lawnmower races one time, just because why not? And if you ever have the opportunity to go to lawnmower races, well, because these people like soup, up a cup cadet and just take off. They're like well, what's happening? So awesome.

Mel: 1:54

Little Mario Kart. This is so amazing.

Francesca : 1:56

I love it. I love it, Mel. We're back for a new week, new headlines. What are you talking about this week?

Mel: 2:04

Man, yeah, the news never stops.

Francesca : 2:06

I am.

Mel: 2:07

I'm going to cover a recent Indeed report on their 2024 workforce insights.

Francesca : 2:14

Nice and I'm going to cover when CEOs decide to take a pay cut versus layoffs. Oh yeah, I hear that, yeah it feels a little timely, so we're going to talk about it.

Mel: 2:25

It sure does. Okay, let's talk about that.

Francesca : 2:27

Okay. I know layoffs are happening this week for a lot of folks and one of the things that's been circulating is this story about the Nintendo CEO who once had his salary to prevent layoffs and wanted to talk about that story. And it also talked about when having your C level executives take a pay cut really works and why some C level executives may choose to not as well. Bse came out with this article this week. We'll link to it in the show notes, but the hero of this story is the old Nintendo CEO, saturo Awada. He was the CEO of Nintendo, the gaming company, from 2002 until his death in 2015. In 2013, he decided to take this 50% pay cut. Okay, mostly because by 2013, nintendo had a lot of success. They had released the Wii. Everyone remembers the Wii Everyone loves the.

Francesca : 3:23

Wii, wii Tennis, wii Tennis Wii.

Mel: 3:25

Bullying.

Francesca : 3:26

Yeah, but in 2013, they released Wii U, which did not do well. It actually had a pretty big commercial failure and it pushed the company into a few years of losses. And what Awada did was he took a 50% pay cut to help pay for employee's salary, saying that a fully staffed Nintendo would have a better chance of rebounding.

Mel: 3:47

I believe it. I recently attended a webinar that talked about the state of layoffs and they mentioned it used to take companies 12 to 18 months to recover from a layoff, but now that's shifted to 18 to 24 months and in some cases never. They never rebound. You're doing a layoff that's internally and externally Morale and productivity just crashes internally and then externally Depending on how you handle that layoff. Folks don't want to work for you, so you're losing in the talent marketplace.

Francesca : 4:19

Yes, your talent brand just gets destroyed, destroyed yeah.

Mel: 4:22

Yeah.

Francesca : 4:24

I want to read the quotes Awada gave for his rationale about why he decided to take this pay cut in 2013. He said if we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease, and I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world.

Mel: 4:47

Yeah, think about it, you and I have both been through layoffs. We've survived layoffs, yes, all the way to goin' home, not just hiding, and Control is the been laid off, and when you go through something like that, even if you're the person left behind, do you feel very productive or innovative?

Francesca : 5:01

No, not at all. I was on some of the board last night looking at how employees are doing. Layoffs for a lot of companies are going to be announced this week, so people are standing by wondering if they have a job or not, and there was one thread where employees were exchanging ideas on should you do edibles or get wasted tonight to help alleviate anxiety? And I'm like what the hell?

Mel: 5:23

are we doing? Yeah, the human impact of layoffs is significant. I'm interested to hear more about his taking a pay cut and what that did.

Francesca : 5:35

Yeah, what I'd be asking one is why is this story having so much traction if it's something that took place in 2013? It's because you have similar companies that are gaming companies like Riot and Activision Blizzard, who had layoffs this year, and C-level executives that did not take a pay cut. So people are looking at hey, why did this happen over here but not over there? And the thing that is really interesting about the story of Awada is that A he really took the idea of believing in his talent. The company's strategy was sound slashing his own salary allowed existing talent to keep working on a kind project and, to your very good point, enabled them to do that in a relatively stress-free and high morale environment. That's huge, because then the company went on very shortly after that to launch Switch, which has been a huge financial person for.

Mel: 6:26

Nintendo yeah that's such a great use case to show that humanity always wins in the workplace and it has to come from the top. You can't rely on your middle management to lead with humanity if you're not leading from it at the C-suite level.

Francesca : 6:44

I want to talk a little bit about why sometimes this works and why sometimes C-level boards don't make this decision to take a pay cut. One is if we're looking at layoffs due to overspending, then a pay cut is a really clear-cut way to alleviate that. We need $200 million. Let's find $200 million in comp, in bonus, in options, whatever, when it doesn't make that big of a difference, or in two different reasons. One is your strategy is completely off. For example, your go-to-market strategy is not landing. Your pricing is wrong. That's where a pay cut at the C-level is not necessarily going to make the difference it needs to make. We need to do a totally different strut yeah that makes sense.

Francesca : 7:31

The other is a reorg. We're a peanut company, now we need to be a chocolate company. We need to be doing something completely different. Okay, I would argue, in both of those cases, I think your C-levels still have massive accountability. In both of those cases, you can get through those. If you A, take a long-term view and then B, for instance, then the reorging, how do you have enough forethought to start rescaling your employees instead of laying them?

Mel: 7:56

off or maybe cut C-suite salaries to reinvest that money into doing things like rescaling your employees. What do you need to do to maintain the workforce you have?

Francesca : 8:06

Yes, there are options on the table. The article pointed out two other things that I wanted to talk about, which is sometimes CEOs don't take a pay cut because they have what's called locked-in contracts that prevent them from slashing their salary. With locked-in contracts, they don't have to keep them that way.

Mel: 8:23

I was just going to say they're locked-in. But can the CEO say I know I have this locked-in salary, but I would like to reduce it to save people.

Francesca : 8:35

Yes, there are outs to locked-in. That's one. I think you may need better approval for it, but there's lots for locked-in, especially if your plume or L trust is going down the tank. You might want to take that. The other is some boards might not want C-level executives to take cuts because they A they want to retain the C-level executives that are there because it looks bad for CEOs or C-level executives that may be coming into the company. That's a them problem. That's it.

Mel: 9:06

I just want to point out you and I have talked about this quite a bit Once you make that level of money, at the end of the day, we're all human beings with core needs clothing, shelter, food, community $10 million Just kidding.

Mel: 9:24

You do not need to make 10, 20, 30, 100 million plus dollars a year to have those core things. It's just interesting to me that any organization, if they're afraid they're going to lose their C-suite executives or that they won't be able to attract new C-suite executives because they're focused on humanity with their employees, then that tells me more about that organization, which is they don't really care about the people who work for them. If they have any copy at all on their website or marketing materials to stress that they care about their employees, they should probably just remove it, because the one thing that you can do is show your humanity. I think to Nintendo's use case. That goes a long way. You're going to attract the right leadership who also cares to make the right decisions Human-centered decisions. Time and time again, studies have shown that human-centered decisions around your talent strategies always come out better for you in your bottom line. Why does there continue to be a disconnect? I don't know.

Francesca : 10:38

It's a very good question Interesting. That's a really good question. Listen, O'Waid is not the only CEO to take a pay cut. There's a pretty long list of CEOs that have done that. We'll post it in the show notes. I think. What's interesting, though, are these are choice points, Even if it I will say this, even if it doesn't fully state the business problem at hand strategy reorg, I think people are looking for. Where's the accountability of C-level? Executives in, quite frankly, messing with people's careers In their lives, in their lives In their lives.

Mel: 11:14

In their lives. The story from, I think, a month ago a Wayfair employee on the way to chemo treatment, age four. I just cried hearing and reading her story because it's a real example. These are people.

Francesca : 11:29

Yeah. It's people, it's people, People who need people. All right, Mel. What did Indeed say?

Mel: 11:46

Indeed does this annual workforce insights report. This is a survey they conduct online within the US by the Harris poll on behalf of Indeed. This year they surveyed a little over 5,000 adults between the ages of 18 to 65. Those who are employed in the workforce or who are unemployed but have intentions of returning to the workforce. They're interviewing, searching, et cetera. The survey focused on workers' motivations to find new opportunities, their experiences with finding new opportunities and then barriers that stop them from exploring new opportunities when it comes to new jobs. I'm going to cover some notable findings. So a lot of percentages here. Get out your notebooks, friends.

Mel: 12:30

Next thing We'll link to the report so you don't have to take notes. But really cool, I thought there were some really interesting findings here. 71% of participants are open to new job opportunities 71% 71%. I love to hear it. I'm a firm believer in you should always have your ear to the ground. You should always be exploring new opportunities. You should always take that phone call to learn more. You just never know. You never know.

Mel: 12:57

I don't 69% of participants feel optimistic about their job prospects in 2024. So I thought that was a good sign that folks are feeling optimistic.

Francesca : 13:08

The labor market is still relatively strong. I know we talked about the behind the scenes things, but for the most part there's still a lot of job creation out there, so that 69% is warranted.

Mel: 13:16

Yeah, it makes sense, it's lining up and we'll get to the top jobs. But it all aligns with what we were talking about, where there are these kind of like mini recession pockets where people are feeling it, but there are booming industries where things are looking good. The top motivators people have for looking are what do you think is number one? Hey, baby.

Francesca : 13:38

Hi, hey, good morning.

Mel: 13:40

All right, you are spot on. 58% of folks want higher pay. That's their top motivator 34% Makes sense.

Francesca : 13:49

It makes total sense, yeah.

Mel: 13:52

They want better benefits and 26% want more flexibility, Greater flexibility. Those are the top three. Benny's babe Okay.

Francesca : 14:02

So money pay benefit and then flexibility Benefits is interesting.

Mel: 14:07

Yeah, I thought that was two. I thought it was interesting. Benefits are I don't know, they're not getting better.

Francesca : 14:14

No, in fact, there's a movement right now that a lot of organizations are thinking about not covering healthcare in-house and just giving you a stipend for healthcare and you're on your own.

Mel: 14:23

Exactly that and moving away from contributing to your 401K. Ibm just launched a new pension and now they're no longer contributing to your 401K. Yeah, it's going to get interesting folks. Gen Z those are folks that are 18 to 26. For anyone who doesn't know, Now you do. 45% of Gen Zers said that company culture and a better work-life balance is their number one motivator. Orgz, you need to pay attention to this because your boomers are retiring and it's millennials and Gen Z coming to take over pretty soon. Got to work on that. Company culture and flexibility those are key. I'm going to jump down to barriers for finding new opportunities. Two things were stopping people from applying to a new job. Can you want to?

Francesca : 15:11

take a guess it's got to be those dumb applicant tracking systems. I'm sorry, those suck Number zero, Francesca.

Mel: 15:19

49% answered that the job application being too long or too complicated makes them essentially abandoned immediately. 33% said having a clumsy application functionality. They just walk away all together and they're like no, we've all been through it. I have walked away from a million applications that required me to upload my resume but then essentially rewrite my resume within the application. What's the point? I'm wasting time. I'm wasting people's time. Okay, I move on.

Mel: 15:50

About 38% noted that another barrier for their applying to an opportunity is when the salary is not disclosed. People want pay transparency. This is gaining momentum. We've seen legislation in California. We've seen legislation in New York where it requires transparency, and 83% of workers said not having this information on competitive P ranges is one of their top three barriers they've had to overcome when they're trying to negotiate compensation, and so they want to see it. They want to understand where they are in the market, what their value is, what that range is, so they can have meaningful and thoughtful conversations up front and listen. As a former leader in talent acquisition, the more transparent you are, the less time you're wasting for everybody for yourself internally and for candidates externally and you're more likely to find the right candidates aligned to those roles when you're transparent.

Francesca : 16:46

I think this is another reason why people need to shut their resume at least once a year. One of the things I always give advice on is always know your market rate. Always know your market rate. Agree 100%.

Mel: 16:58

Indeed has a cool tool that you can use as well to see what your market rate is worth. You can also go on payscalecom and I know we're working on a whole episode at some point in 2024 on salary negotiations. That will be helpful. But how to plan for that, how to have those conversations and it's not just when you're interviewing for a new role, when you're in the role you're in annual review know your worth so you can have those conversations, yeah there are a lot of organizations that have done nice jobs on trying to get their pay bands, get pay equity established where they're at market.

Francesca : 17:31

Not every organization is there.

Mel: 17:33

Absolutely.

Francesca : 17:34

Yeah.

Mel: 17:36

Onto return to office versus hybrid versus remote.

Francesca : 17:39

Oh Jesus, RTO just will not die. That thing is like freaking weird. I swear to God.

Mel: 17:45

It's definitely a barrier. People are not going to take opportunities because of RTO. 40% of workers want a hybrid arrangement. Not surprising at all. They want a hybrid arrangement. Almost half of millennial respondents 42% of them said they desire hybrid work, and that was the highest among all age groups. But we also saw above. Gen Z is looking for greater flexibility and one of the top reasons for looking elsewhere is flexibility, which means hybrid work. Get on it, orgs Hybrid work.

Francesca : 18:20

Stop mandating RTO, not going to work for you, yeah, especially if you're also a company that's just done mass layoffs and you have a return to office mandate that's going to be a one-year punch, yeah.

Mel: 18:31

You're just killing your brand and, as we learned at 18 to 24 months, or you're just never rebounding. That's going to feed into that. 47% of respondents said their companies don't have a defined path for career progression at all, so another reason why they're going out to explore it. There's no defined path for career progression and it's a barrier for growth within their own organization, and so they're like I'm out, I'm heading out.

Francesca : 19:00

Listen, there's two things you should expect from your organization on a development plan perspective. One is on the macro and one is on the micro. Macro meaning your organization has engineered career patting. It's very clear on the directions you can go, the rules that you can have, the steps that you need to take to get there. It's pretty damn clear. The other is, if you don't have that and that's a pretty sophisticated organization that at least you have a leader or a manager that's helping you. You're defined. Where do you want to go? Do you want to get promoted? What's next for you? So either happening on the macro or on the micro.

Francesca : 19:36

If you don't have either of those things, let's go that way Then. Yeah, I absolutely understand that why people would want to leave. Because they don't see a path Right and it's not heard on the micro for a leader to be like. It really isn't. What do?

Mel: 19:48

you do Give a shit about your people, and sometimes that means supporting them when they want to go elsewhere because they have better opportunities, if it's not internally Like good leaders I've seen, I've always felt that good leaders let their people go, whether it's internally, to a new opportunity, or externally, because there's nothing internally but you support them through either change. That's how it should be. If you're doing anything else, shame on you. So now coming into research, how people are preparing for these opportunities. When researching a new company, 74% of respondents said they look for salary information first. 70% said benefits next no kidding. And then the third highest thing was employee happiness. 58% of people are trying to understand what the culture is like. What is employee happiness like? And 56% are consulting employee reviews, like on Glassdoor, fishbowl, thelayoffcom, all of these places. They're paying attention to it and those are the top things. Pay benefits what's it like?

Francesca : 21:01

If you're an organization, these people are your prospective buyer of employment at your organization. If you're not making it really easy for them to understand the pay, understand the benefits and also if you're not engineering your culture in a way that are there, are promoting it or are happy, you're not going to attract the best talent. You just won't. No.

Mel: 21:24

I was surprised in this ties into your CEO story. I was surprised to see two things. One only 28% of respondents actually look into what the interview process is. Folks, I'm just going to throw this out there and please go back and listen to our episode with James Hudson if you have not. But you got to ask upfront what's the interview process going to be. I have seen so many folks get dragged along for months and months or they're going through 16 interviews and don't do that to yourself and then only 25% research info on the CEO and org leadership, which I thought was really interesting, because CEOs set the tone of an organization, along with their board, and you really need to understand who that CEO is, what their past decisions are, how they lead an organization and how they make decisions. That's critically important to know and you should be researching it, if you aren't already, before you make a job decision. Look at, there's a CEO rating on Glassdoor for a reason. Look them up.

Francesca : 22:36

Reason why is to hear very good point. If you look at what they did in the past, it's a very good indicator of what they'll probably do in the future, especially at the C level, because they're brought in to do a job, whether that's bust the company, open and restrategize it, or massively reorgate or transform it from X to Z. It's potentially because they've done it before, especially in a lot of these bigger orgs. So I absolutely would agree with that sentiment. Look at your C level executives. I like to see who's the CHRO? Absolutely, yeah. That'll give you a good indicator of who's in the ear of the CEO talking about people.

Mel: 23:16

Research those leaders guys. 35% of workers said they update their resumes at least every six months, but more than half 56% said they update their resumes once a year or only when gearing up for a job search and look, updating your resume is a total pita paid in the ass, and so I get it. I'm guilty of updating only when gearing up for a job search, but if you can take a look every six months and just spurs things up, at least at a minimum quarterly you should be reflecting on your recent accomplishments so that you're not suddenly finding yourself trying to think of everything that you do in the day to day when you're updating your resume.

Francesca : 23:57

I also argue that you want to keep your LinkedIn profile updated as well. Absolutely Most recruiters are going to be doing a cold outreach to you based on what's on your LinkedIn profile. Keep that updated. Keep yourself active on LinkedIn as well. Interviews to come to you as opposed to you trying to pull them in.

Mel: 24:15

Absolutely. In the Indeed Report and a recent Forrester Report, job seekers continue to name fair pay as the number one factor that will increase their workplace well-being, with flexibility being the close second. So again, pay, benefits, flexibility, core things. Indeed also compiled the best jobs of 2024 list, which included jobs with an average base salary of at least 75K, 10% being remote or hybrid and the number of job postings per one million postings on the Indeed application. So that's how they defined best jobs. Based on these three criteria.

Mel: 24:56

The top five jobs for 2024 included mental health technicians, loan officer, mental health therapist, electrical engineer and construction project manager. Those are the top five. There's many more willing to it in the show notes, tech jobs are no longer the dominant job on the list of best jobs 32% are manufacturing and construction jobs, 22% are healthcare jobs and 18% are finance jobs, and there has been a massive surge in healthcare, specifically around mental health focused jobs. So we'll put the list out there. You can check it out. I will just throw out human resources manager for my fellow HR friends was number eight, was in the top 10. So still a good path being on the people route. But yeah, those are the findings. We'll link to the studies for everyone to pay attention to, but I thought it was some interesting stuff.

Francesca : 26:01

Mel, I know we're not going to do a hot jobs this week, but you said you had something fun for us instead. What is it?

Mel: 26:06

Yeah, I didn't have a hot job, but I had a cool job board of the week. I think we all lean heavily on the go-tos maybe didn't, but there's so many other job boards out there that folks don't really know about or pay attention to. So I am highlighting cool works, jobs and great places. That's their tagline. They are jobs and great. Yeah, cool work. I know it's like a water park or something. Yeah, this is something to make at first, but it's actually a really cool site.

Mel: 26:36

I told Robbie that when we retire, we're going to do this because I think it's pretty awesome. But essentially, if you are looking for seasonal work or full-time work in beautiful places, this is the job board for you. Primarily, a lot of these opportunities are found in national parks, in hospitality, in beautiful locations. So I think hotels, restaurants, tourism companies, farms and camps A lot of camps were on there too, which was really fun, and it's all types of jobs everywhere, from office parts of these jobs or being out in the field, but just really cool stuff. They have a search function to say if it's pet-friendly, so if you have a pet, you can search.

Francesca : 27:21

Oh you can take a dog or pet.

Mel: 27:22

Yeah, you can search to see if a job's pet-friendly. They also have an option that shows whether or not housing and meals are included. So some of these jobs, some of them are seasonal and might run from May to October, for example. But if you're looking for something that includes housing and sometimes those housing packages include a meal plan that goes into it, so saving yourself some money you could go out and do that. So if you're looking for flexible stuff we just did an episode on freelance work. If you're a freelancer who's also looking to do some other cool stuff in between, that's a nice mix. This is the job board for you, so I would check it out. So great for anyone taking a sabbatical. If you're just looking to transition.

Francesca : 28:06

I feel like you could go on your own Eat, pray, love with that or something. Yeah, or it's the start of some romance novel or something Like, where you're trying to get all their ideas for their movies.

Mel: 28:16

Yeah, Cool.

Francesca : 28:18

But that actually sounds a lot of fun.

Mel: 28:20

It does. There were some really cool jobs on there. I saw a Glacier tour guide You're taking people on glaciers. There was a Jeep tour guide. There was a personal assistant role out in Aspen Colorado, on a resort or there's some pretty cool stuff. So check it out. Nice, check it out Cool works. Cool, yeah, cool works. We'll link to it in the show notes so you can check it out. I love it.

Francesca : 28:49

Well, mel, amazing to talk with you today. As always you too, this has been delightful. Yeah, we'll be back next week with New Week, new Headlines. Thanks so much for joining us today. Like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriendscom. We're always posting stuff on there and, if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends. Thanks, friend academic.