Rethinking Cost Management: Strategies for a Resilient Workforce

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to the new Shape for Work podcast. I'm Kate Bravery, talent advisory leader at Mercer. Ah, and today we're going to tackle a question that I think a lot of clients have been asking us most of this half year. Um, and that's the tricky topic about how do we manage costs in this climate? I think we all know that we've had, um, an unexpected first half of the year. Um, and as a result of that, there is a real desire to make sure that we are reducing cost, optimizing costs, thinking about how we can reduce costs from the run rate, as well as dealing with some pretty lofty expectations from last year. The end of last year, um, expectations around the productivity gains from AI, expectations of M and A and growth were pretty high and many of those just didn't pan out. And that's left us many, left many of us in the position of figuring out how best to cut into our current cost base and what can we do differently or innovatively to have enough to invest next year? Um, it's a tricky one because no one wants to come on a podcast and tell you how they're cost cutting. Um, and so we're going to take a different approach to this one. Um, we thought, since it's the half year mark, why don't we pause? Um, and I've invited three of our experts who are tackling this topic day to day to have a very honest conversation with me about where are companies seeing opportunities to save costs, but also where are they maybe thinking differently, which, uh, will bring in some cost savings in the future. Um, so let me introduce my colleagues today. I've got Will Self, who's our workforce strategy and analytics global leader. Will, great to have you on the call. Katerina Sikopedia, practice leader for employee experience across Europe, and Sean Connolly, who's the US and Canada total rewards preference research leader. Cherry pick the three of you because I know you're all doing interesting work in this space and let's dive in. Will, I'm going to start with you. Um, day to day you get questions on how can I contain costs, and you, uh, sit in a very privileged position of seeing a lot of the data that our clients have and trying to make sense of it. Um, so I would love to hear from you. What are some of the insights about how people can use their data to direct their cost containment efforts? And also, has there been any sort of surprises from some of that work that you're doing with clients at the moment?

Speaker C: It's a great question, Kate, because I do think cost containment is the story of the day, right. I don't think I go through a single client conversation without somebody bringing up that they've been asked to pare down their budget or to find some in quarter savings. And so I think the one theme that's uniting everyone at the moment, um, I think the biggest insight that I've brought away from the last couple of years is number one, you have to be intentional. I think, you know, we open the newspaper every day and we see headlines about the next company that is executing a layoff. And, and you, you connect the dots, right? You know, they're, they're trying to get some savings and they're trying to get savings that they can recognize, capture, publicize very fast. But it wasn't that long ago that we were coming out of the pandemic and we saw a very similar cycle come through with folks trying to cut costs and get those short term wins. And then we saw them show back up 612 months later telling us we don't have enough people and our systems are suffering from lack of people and we lost some of our most talented tenured specialist talent, um, out there and what the heck are we going to do next, right? So we can't forget that, that recent less of quick um, cuts also often bring some quick pain later on. Um, the second insight is that there actually is a lot of opportunity for cost cutting out there. Um, and I think, you know, I'm m biased, I'm a data scientist. So you know, as you mentioned, I tend to go straight to the data first to find opportunities. But I do think there are low hanging fruit in most organizations where if you follow the data they take you to these opportunities to really cut back and often in ways that don't, don't feel painful on the ground. Um, so for example, even though I just said quick non intentional layoffs are a bad thing, I do think it's true that most organizations have overhired in the last few years and that if you follow the data you can find pockets of your organization where there is, for lack of a better word, bloat. Right. You've overgrown, you could probably cut back without sacrificing outcomes. Um, and so it's worth the effort. The other thing that I can't remember the last time I talk seriously with clients about vendor spend, like how much they're using third parties to augment labor. And in fact it gotten to the point where I think a lot of HR departments had actually stepped out of that conversation. They had Allowed, you know, it, or procurement or finance, uh, to sort of run the game on, on those third party expenses. There is opportunity there, I don't think. I've worked with a single client trying to wrangle and cut back on vendor spend where I haven't been able to find at least 10 to 15% savings without removing people. Right. Just optimizing how you use third parties. Again, I don't want to say painless, but much less painless than some of these other levers people run to. Um, and then, you know, I think the reality is a lot of our industries are really focused around teamwork right now. And so in order to be successful, whether you're in healthcare or manufacturing or hospitality, it's about bringing together people from different roles, different skills, different experiences in order to create an experience or product or deliverable. And yet when you ask companies, how do you decide how to form the team, you often just get crickets. Right. There's not an answer to it. Or you get something like, well, we've got some planning ratios that we've been using since I got here. That's not the right answer. This is an opportunity to go back and actually use data, science, AI to think about how to optimize what that team looks. And what you're going to find is that you often can actually do more with less. Right. Getting the wrong group of people together actually gets people in each other's way. It creates a worse experience for everyone if you can get that optimized. It lets people really operate at the top of their expertise. It lets them contribute in the best way. Um, it's better all around. Um, and then the last thing I'll throw in there is benefits, because I think that is just such an important topic on the ground right now. And we all know that in the evolution of benefits in the last few years, we have thrown things at employees that they had never even heard of or asked for or know what. And it's just such a great moment to kind of step back and think, what have we done and what are we trying to do in the benefit space? And how does that.

Speaker B: Refreshing, right?

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: Well, I agree with all of your points. You gave me so much to what they had to work with. So I'm going to pick up on some of, some of them and we'll hold that point on benefits because I think, Sean, you've got some great comments to add to that, but I agree with you Will on that whole. We've got to invest with intent. And I think for me that's been a bit of a mantra this year. Um, and I, you know, you and I have been around a long time. We've been through a lot of those cycles. And we know you don't want to cut too deep because when you come out of it, you want to go as fast as you can. And so if you don't have the right skills to capitalize on the growth coming out, you will be caught short against your competitors. And I think that's certainly, um, where we've got some concern. But also, it's not just about numbers. I still think when we do, um, reductions in force or we look at rightsizing or labor arbitrage, we use, It's a very blunt instrument. I don't think we are doing it with anywhere near the precision we could be. And so I think it's not just about headcount numbers, but it is the right talent to take us through. And I think we can have more of a data science around that moving forward. But you've got to balance that psychological, uh, safety when people are worried that there isn't a job and engagement and productivity levels today. So you, you know that that is a bit challenging. I love your comments around purging the bloat and vendor spends. Really interesting. You know, um, just this morning I was talking to a client, even on the assessment side, and they were saying we have different assessment providers for every single line of business. We separate talent acquisition from internal mobility from talent development. And actually, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just consolidate to two or three providers? And where they're coming from is not just about saving costs today, but as they want to get the type of predictive analytics you live and breathe, you can't do that when your data is all over the place. So we can do lots of complicated work around some, you know, a clear architecture for their data and then getting it into the data lake and cleansing it. But actually reducing vendors would, off the bat, make a, make, uh, a big inroad. So lots of great points there.

Speaker C: My gosh, Can I bring you around to just talk to all of my clients about that? Like, that is so small.

Speaker B: I'm not here just to make your life easier, Will.

Speaker D: But you're right.

Speaker B: I mean, it's funny, you know, the unintended consequences of the decisions we make. And everybody feels their job, their department, their talent is unique. But actually when we start to look at things like our career architecture, our skills, uh, taxonomy. Greater complexity brings greater complexity. But anyway, enough for another. Another day, another Podcast Sean. Um, Will ended by talking about benefits and was very open about the fact that we've added a lot of benefits, often for good reasons, many of it through the pandemic. But now maybe there's a chance to rationalize. What's your advice around? How can you rationalize and not leave people feeling? Well, hang on a minute. You gave me this with one hand and now you're taking it away with the other. What's the strategy to make sure this is a win win for everyone?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. What is the win win? Uh, essentially the conversations I have with clients around this are trying to understand what do people really want. Right. The more you can understand what they want, what they need, you can better invest. And often our clients are not listening enough to what employees say. I just go back to something Will said earlier on. You talk about the balance of power as it shifted so drastically with the pandemic. And then right after the pandemic it goes back and forth. And I feel like now we're at this place where there's kind of an equal balance. Uh, the employers I'm talking to, they're all saying same thing. Uh, we've got to cut costs, we've got to cut costs. At the same time, they're also saying we need to attract and retain people. Different times in the economy, it's been leaning much more one side or the other. They're both hitting that. And at least in the US I see this in a couple of industries. In manufacturing, in healthcare, in retail, we've, uh, all sorts of data. There's just something the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we're missing about 400,000 workers in manufacturing. And everything that we're focused on is to build more and more factories. Who's going to fill those jobs? So you can't cut your way out of something where you need to bring all those people in. And so the idea is to think about all those investments, looking at them critically and saying, where is it actually rational to spend money and where can we save? And there's a lot of different ways to figure that out, but one important one is actually understanding from employees what their needs are, what's going to be important for them. And if you don't ask that, then how could you possibly know? And the theme I'm seeing from a lot of clients is they want to make sure they can make these decisions in a very, uh, kind of proactive, smart and strategic, data driven way. And they're kind of scared that leaders, you know, the cfo, the CEO will come down and say, make this change, make that change, which may be wonderful, but it may not be based on data, it may not be strategic. And so uh, we work with a lot of clients to understand, uh, employee preferences and the cost around potential changes to optimize those investments. So just as an example, I work with a hospital recently and, and they were dire straits because all the benchmarking says everything you're doing is right, you're on par for everything. But they're in a major metropolitan center. They had kind of war for talent. It was very tough to find people and they knew their healthcare costs were going up. So how is the best way to invest and help people share in some of those things? And we did a survey and we looked at cost and without getting into massive detail, we were able to identify opportunities where they were able to reinvest, reallocate their investments across programs. And people had a higher appreciation for that and they would have been able to save nearly $8 million. And again, the reality of them doing everything the survey said and process said is probably limited, but it showed them that opportunity that if you are listening to your employees and better meeting their needs, you can move money around and actually save even as people have higher appreciation. And so I think this whole idea of really understanding what that need is, engaging them in that process, it's going to help you make better decisions on those cost cutting versus just, hey, I don't know, it seems like we're spending a lot on this. Why are we doing that?

Speaker B: And Sean, you've got some really good points there about um, what employees want and are companies listening enough? But it's not as simple as that because if you ask employees what they want, there's a whole range of things that they want. And listening sounds like such a generic term. But there is some kind of science there around what you listen, how you listen. Do you mind just saying a few words about, you know, some of the ways that maybe some of the more sophisticated techniques like conjoint analysis, it uses, because there is often that kind of say do that say do gap that we talk a lot about.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great point because there's uh, all sorts of listening and you know, there's different things that are appropriate for different organizations depending on how big they are and the changes they're looking to make. But, but the process that I was talking about, the real conjoint, really forces people to make trade offs. Right? They may see things that look better but they may see things that look worse. And there's a message to people that says, if you want something more over here, you have to give up something over there. So it's not just, what do you want? I want more. You know, we know people want more pay, they want lower healthcare costs, they want more retirement. So the question is, what is the combination of things that they're most appreciative, uh, of? Right. So it's looking at a package basis. When you put the portfolio together, what is the best way to spend that? Which again, we look at areas where you could save significant dollars and have people maintain or even increase, uh, their overall preference for the organization because you're better meeting people's needs. So that is that conjoint trade off. It's, uh, you know, there's different even forms of conjoint just to confuse people.

Speaker B: But there's something called, that's enough.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's fine. You want to get them lost in that. But there is ways. And we support clients through that, obviously.

Speaker B: And I also know on the listening front, some of that listening is passive listing and active listing. But also some of it is combining the sentiment data you get from surveys with actual behavior data. And I know, Will, that's where you got some examples, which I am going to come back to. But maybe Katrina and I could bring you into the conversation because I think we have sort of, uh, drifted into the space of, um, um, the employee experience. And how do we maintain the employee experience during this period? Um, there's a lot of transformation going on. We'll already flagged. You know, you're sort of telling people we're downsizing. You know, that's going to have an impact on engagement and potentially productivity. How do you manage that? Um, you heard from Sean that we might be cutting into benefits, but we've got to do that with precision. Um, but I'm also hearing clients saying, you know what, Kate? This is not the time for us to be surveying our clients. You know, it's tough times. There's a lot of uncertainty. We don't have all the answers. And so actually we're going to pause on listening or we're going to push our engagement surveys to next year. Is that the right strategy in this climate?

Speaker D: No, I don't think so. And I think that's where my bias as a psychologist comes in. Will said, I'm biased. I'm a data scientist. I'm biased. I'm a psychologist. In fact, we're asking people to stay with us throughout turbulent times. We're asking them to do more with less. We're asking them to invest in the future of the organization and in their own future. Um, unless you have what you said before, Kate, the psychological, psychological safety, in order to do that, people are not going to come with you. So in order to understand how to take people with you, how to get them to do more with less, you really need to listen to them and more than that to make them feel heard. So no, I wouldn't say stop listening. I would say maybe listen differently during these turbulent times. I would say first of all, listen more purposefully. Maybe if your census survey that you do every year has become this like really long survey that everyone piles on and adds irrelevant questions because politically that makes sense, maybe delay that a little bit. But ask purposeful pulses. Ask things in a, in a, uh, sampling way that are of the moment that you're collecting data that you will then act on immediately in order to get the information from where it's mostly relevant. You know, your people know how to shift right now, how to pivot your strategy, how to do things differently, better, more efficiently, faster. So ask more purposefully continues to continue to listen more intentionally. For example, if you already have started lifecycle listening, where you're um, listening throughout moments that matter, those moments continue to matter to your people. So continue to listen during those moments and collect that data. Um, and then listen more inclusively. For example, listen more throughout through ways of dialogue, not just a one way asking questions, uh, with multiple choice answers. But for example, use digital focus groups where, where you invite people to join an online conversation anonymously and you can talk about topics that are very sensitive. Like a lot of topics have come up right now around, well, being around inclusivity, uh, around new ways of working. So open up the dialogue with more inclusive ways of listening where you can collect a lot of quantitative, qualitative data very quickly and turn them into action. And through these ways of listening, you have to very good outcomes. First of all, people feel heard, so you get them to be on your journey together with you and then you get the best data at the best point in time from the best person to tell you so. And one example most recently that I have is from a bank, which is not where you are, um, expecting to have this kind of ways, uh, of listening more democratically and more inclusively. But they were going through a restructuring, a global uh, bank that we work with. And instead of doing their normal pulse, they started uh, listening through digital focus groups on topics that would help that restructuring that would ask people, how are you feeling through it? How what does the new normal look like for you? Would you prefer to go this way or that way? So, um, more democratically and inclusively asking through digital focus groups and their senior leaders outside of HR have really appreciated that kind of feedback and the timeliness of the feedback throughout, uh, this whole process.

Speaker A: Just to jump in there, I'll tell you, I've just completed a digital focus group project and it was around benefits and you know, a client that, you know, kind of struggles. They know they're below benchmark on a number of things and they were trying to get a sense of what's important to people. And we made the very brave decision at the end to ask for direct feedback on the process. So, you know, hey, anything to say to add as we, you know, think about this kind of, ah, research protocol. And fortunately the client was sitting with us and it ended up very positively. But people were incredibly appreciative of the process of just being asked of, you know, thank you for listening. We have comment after comment that that people were just, you know, in this time when there's so much going on that you took the time to stop and really listen to us, that that buys you a lot of value.

Speaker B: It does. I mean, I think they say, you know, if you can't have, I can't have certainty. You must have trust. And we're definitely in that climate at the moment. Um, and our research has shown time after time that even when the company is downsizing, restructuring, or facing just keeping that dialogue up has a huge difference. So I agree with you, Will. I see a lot of parallels from when we were in that pandemic period to now. Interestingly enough, what we did really well in the pandemic was that executives were getting on a call once a week doing all town halls and saying, I don't know, you know, but at least I'm in the dialogue with you. And I think we need to get back to some of that. Um, I also loved your point there around investing in the future of the organization, Katerina, because the other thing we see in our global talent trends research is people have trust when they think that the organization is making the right business decisions, even if they impact them negatively. Uh, because I think in these times where there is so much transformation happening, people want to hitch their wagon to a company that they think is going to be here. And so actually being more transparent around how business fundamentals have changed and being more open about the challenges that are ahead. And to your point, Katerina, then getting the workforce to contribute, um, can actually galvanize everyone together on how do we build tomorrow. So I agree with you. There's the upside. The other point, I would say, and we were just chatting about this yesterday, um, clients are nervous about asking that in a more formal way. But, well, there are other ways in which you can almost run an engagement process silently. Do you want to share some, some words around how companies are maybe thinking a bit differently about getting the data so they can still run it and process, which means that, uh, people are kept engaged through this. And also your ex has evolved during this period.

Speaker A: Period.

Speaker B: Because again, you mentioned the pandemic. You and I both know there was other things that happened after the pandemic, like, uh, quiet quitting and the great. The great resignation. I mean, there were some other things that happened.

Speaker C: It was so long ago. Right.

Speaker D: Well, it wasn't that.

Speaker B: It was five years ago. We want to make sure that those aren't the things that when people have choice, they don't choose us. So how else can we be getting some insights?

Speaker C: Uh, uh, absolutely. I mean, I, I was sitting there cheering during what Katarina was saying, because, you know, one of the things I noticed is I'm not sure I heard her say anything about once a year engagement surveys. Right. And that is just so great because the conversation has moved well beyond that. Right. It's now about always on, always listening moments that matter. Right. Like, it's not. It's not a once a year kind of thing. And I think the next step of that is really having more options for what it even means to. To listen. Um, and I know, Kate, you and I are talking a lot these days with clients about silent listening. So what if, truly, because of everything that's going on, you don't want to disrupt what's going on on the ground. You don't want to ask people questions where they're going to expect you to act. And you might not be able to. Right. But you still want to be listening, and you still want to make sure people feel heard, and you still want to keep a pulse on the ground. And so there are just so many options right now to kind of think about alternative ways of collecting data. Right? Thinking about all the ways your employees are out in the world and on the Internet, talking about your organization, talking about your brand, talking about their experience. And now we can more systematically analyze that data and come back with a real understanding about what's working and what's not and what people care about. The other side of this is, I think, Kate, you brought up the sort of science say do gap. This is real. We've talked about this for a long time. Like I, I'm not always convinced people know why they do the things they do or have an opinion until you ask them a question. Right. And so being able to systematically use your own data to connect things that are happening on the ground, policies, procedures, benefits, total rewards packages to how people vote with their feet, like are they leaving the organization, are they taking leaves of absence, are they performing, performing well. And connecting those, it allows you to give people a voice without actually having them use their voice. Right. Which I think is a much more interesting and future oriented way of listening.

Speaker B: Yeah, we were just chatting before, um, before we opened up the airwaves on this call today, that the employee experience is a perception. You know, you want the reality to live up to what you promised when you hired them, but the reality is it's through the eyes of your people. So getting a read on everything they've been talking about for the last year and benchmarking them to their two or three competitors, you know, is getting pretty close to what you want to get a read on. Um, and if it can pinpoint areas that you can make progress on. And I know that we often, uh, triangulate information. So people are saying, oh gosh, you know, you pay a lot less competitively than your two main competitors and we know they pay at the top quartile, so they got a communication problem there. And I think that's where we can be a lot more targeted. I'm going to push all three of you, if you don't mind, to be really specific on areas that, um, through the research that you've done, because you all do different types of research, um, what have been some of the areas that people have cut and cut for good reason, um, and Will, maybe you could also have a think about. You know, I know you do a lot of analysis about why, why do people stay and why do they leave? And there's always some surprises in that and maybe you could share a couple of them because every time I hear you talk, they make me think, uh, but Sean, maybe come to you first from the last five or six projects you've actually run, you know what has been some low hanging fruit that really wasn't as valued maybe as much as the company thought it was valued.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, and you know, I would love to say there's a consistent theme, like everyone we talk to, it's all this issue or that, but it's not because it's very specific to each organization, the kind of employees they have, what their values are. I mean, Will was talking before about, you know, some of the health things, the benefits, you know, really around well being. And so certainly even before the pandemic, there were a lot of organizations that were saying we need to add more well being programs and we need to put them in. The reality is people, there's just so much that they get overwhelmed and people don't know what's out there. Uh, we did one life before the, uh, pandemic focus group project with a client that they just, they said, we have a bunch of well being programs, we need to add more and let's go talk to people about what they need to be added. And everything that people suggested they already had, but they had no idea it was out there. And when we said, well, why don't, you know, because we've communicated this or that or did you even bother to look? They said it was very important. They said, not only did we not know these programs were out there, we didn't even imagine you would have them. So we never bothered to look to see if you could. And so I had one organization that really pushed very hard on the wellbeing front. They'd made a lot of investments. And going back and talking to people, we found that they didn't, I cannot even understand, they didn't have awareness of probably 80% of the programs they had out there. And so they went and they said, you know, let's really focus and consolidate to the things that people are utilizing, that they really are making a difference. There's all sorts of other things which all seem nice but just didn't make a difference. Another organization where we saw, um, you hate to say this, but on a retirement front, uh, they knew they were below benchmark and they said, you know, we probably have to increase that because the competitors are way up over here. What we actually found in the research is people didn't seem to care about it. We thought we'd be hearing people yelling and screaming how bad it was. It didn't really move the needle very much at all. And they said, well, maybe we should just reallocate that into something that does matter, that really does make a difference. So it varies very much based on what the employees are saying, what they're utilizing, what they care about.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Um, will, anything from the most recent studies, I mean, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is retain the top talent, uh, that are going to Take us into the future or the talent we want to invest in as we reskill and redeploy them. And we need to make sure that they don't inadvertently leave as we come out of this period. Any interesting insights from.

Speaker C: Yeah. So while I of course agree with Sean that every organization, organization is different in context matters, I will say I see the same two themes pop up over and over and over again. One is that it's not all about wages. Right. We focus and spend so much time on pay, but chasing wage inflation is not a winner's game. Right. And then the second thing that pops up again over and over, organization after organization is challenges with your manager or supervisor. There's an old saying that people don't leave companies, that they leave their manager. And we see that when we listen. Right. And it could be something structural like asking our middle managers to have ever increasing spans of control where they can't spend that one on one time with people and nurture them and develop them. Right. People feel that there's pain there. Um, but it could also be that we're not training and preparing managers to be good managers or we don't even have an organization wide point of view on what a manager's job is. Right. Um, but it shows up when we listen to.

Speaker A: So I'm sorry to jump in just real quick.

Speaker B: Oh God.

Speaker A: I have a client example that perfectly highlights this. It was a healthcare organization, very high turnover. They were losing like 1200 people every month. Every month they lost and they had a higher 1200 people. And we actually did something interesting. So after the survey was done about a year later, a little less than a year, we went back and said, well, we know who left from hrs. And we just said, let's look at the people who stayed versus the people who left. What was the difference? And the assumption was, and this is in the great resignation. Well, obviously number one issue is pay. But what's number two and three and four that we can go look at? What are the next things beyond that? And let me tell you, pay was not in the top five issues that at least that differentiated the people who stayed and left. Now there's no question the places that they went to, I'm sure, uh, the pay attracted them to option A or B. But we think what came out of this was there were other issues that made people pick their heads up and look around. And it wasn't pay, it was about their experience. It was, you know, career development. It was around timing, uh, a lot of things that managers have A big influence on that was much more of a differentiator than pay in terms of literally who stayed and who left.

Speaker D: I love that.

Speaker B: I also like that thought that that point about where do people go next? Because I think where people go next tells you a lot about your employee experience. But will your point about performance? Um, management is key. I mean as you know, in global talent trends this year it was the number one area where HR said we gotta make progress on this. The performance management system's just not working. We, we've atrophied these skills probably since the pandemic and we need a new way. But I do think that AI is offering some very viable alternatives to support, support managers in being more effective from helping them set, um, performance aligned goals through to even giving them feedback on their skills in real life conversations. So that is evolving and we do actually have a point of view on that that's just out. So we'll flag that um, with the podcast as well. Um, we are fast running out of time. Katerina, maybe I could come to you. Look, we've talked a lot about, um, some of the things we might be able to cut without um, negatively impacting engagement and productivity too much. But what are your bets about the things that are going to rise in importance and we might need to spend more attention looking at in the coming months?

Speaker D: Yeah. Ah, I think as Sean was, uh, was explaining what, you know, people are looking for for the next employer, I think what I see, um, beyond the, the ones that you can expect. Right. I think what is rising through the trends is help me understand how I can grow. We're out of living crisis, more or less is not back to basics, back to pay and so on. It's now how, what's next for me? I hear a lot about AI. Is it really going to take my job? How am I going to integrate and augment my skills using AI? Who is going to help me through that, make me feel more safe so I can experiment through everything, all the changes that are coming through. Um, and I think the personalization is still very key. I think we're talking again a lot about generational differences. I was uh, around when we were talking about millennials, the way we talk about now, about Gen Zers now, exactly the same. I remember they're so different. They don't really care about base pay and about bonus is all about, you know, well then they started having mortgages and kids and guess what? They started caring about what everybody else is caring. So I think let's just go back to um, you know, what's really what really matters for everyone, how to personalize it not based on generations or on genders, but a combination of different demographics and or Personas that you have in your organization. Empathizing very well with what is everyone looking for, what are their expectations when they join and when they go through their journey. Because expectations change when they grow up, when they go through their life cycle in the organization, when they go through events, external, internally. So this kind of empathy and personalization is the second trend after the AI and how do we live through it all?

Speaker B: And I couldn't agree with you more, but I think the two are intertwined. I think to actually deliver on that, uh, personalization in the total reward proposition, uh, to your point, Shawn, making people aware of the trade offs that they can make, uh, and really tailoring the employee experience to different Persona groups, wants and needs at different times in their lives really is only just being unlocked now because I think AI is enabling it for the very, very first time. And Katrina, you've mentioned one bold move there. You were saying, look, if we can start measuring moments that matter, maybe with like an AI chatbot interface, as opposed to doing this sort of once a year cycle that is really on the HR schedule rather than on the employee schedul schedule that's already beginning to get fast out of date. And I think that's a really bold move. I probably have time for one last question. Will, I'm going to give it to you. Any other bold moves? Like if we do like Katerina was just mentioning there with let's not think about this as an annual cycle, let's think about it as an employee cycle. Um, anything else that we could do differently if we ripped up the HR playbook.

Speaker C: So this is probably going to be controversial, but going back to that cost containment question that we started out with, the number one thing I want to see us all pushing right now is changing our mindset in HR from being a cost center to being an investment in our people assets. And why I think that is so fundamental and important is that it changes the conversation to talking about return on investment. And if we start thinking about every HR program, everything that we're pushing out to our people as ah, an investment in our people assets, that is it has an expense expected financial return, then we can start optimizing everything in a more direct way that we just don't see enough of on the ground right now. So there's my hot take.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And I love it because there's so much talk about how much should we be investing in our digital assets and, you know, and how are they emulating human assets? Actually, I think we need to be thinking about are we investing enough in our human assets, given how much we're investing in our digital assets. Assets. Um, so, um, fascinating. And of course, there are some HR that now have both of them under their purview. Uh, we are at time. I'm not going to summarize because I think Will, uh, you did a lovely, uh, a lovely job there of just reading what we all need to keep front of mind. Um, listeners, if you've enjoyed today's webcast and want to learn more, do reach out to any of our speakers directly. I know that, um, Sean, Will, Katarina, are all active on LinkedIn, happy to continue the conversation, uh, if you want to follow up with them. I did mention that new performance management point of view, which I think is just coming out. So, um, we will make sure that we put the link in for that. Um, but you can also find it on Mertha.com where you can also find other editions of our podcast series. Um, or of course, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, Katarina, Sean, Will, thank you for such a lively conversation today. I learned lots. Uh, really appreciate taking your time out of your day to talk to us. And thank you to those listening in for giving us the opportunity to speak with you. Thanks everyone.

Speaker A: Sat.