Driven by recent technological advancements and shifting workforce dynamics, the future of work is changing at an unprecedented pace. For Kate Bravery, Global Leader of Advisory Solutions & Insights, and Ilya Bonic, Head of Strategy and Career Business Leader at Mercer, this means adopting innovative strategies to navigate these changes effectively. As such, the dynamic duo have paired up to put these actions through their book, "Work Different: 10 Truths for Winning in the People Age." 

In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, David Green welcomes Kate and Ilya to unpack their 10 truths for thriving in the modern workplace. Exploring how their insights are transforming HR practices and helping organisations build more resilient and agile workforces, in this conversation, you can expect to learn more about: 

• The key concepts from "Work Different: 10 Truths for Winning in the People Age" and how they apply to today's work environment. 

• Key findings from Mercer's Global Talent Trends 2024 report, focusing on human-centric productivity, trust and equity, and digital-first cultures. 

• Real-world examples from the London Stock Exchange, Novartis, and Infosys, highlighting innovative talent management and skill development practices. 

• The role of AI in transforming HR processes and enhancing talent management, from predictive analytics to personalised employee experiences. 

• Practical strategies for HR leaders to build trust, foster transparency, and create inclusive workplaces. 

• The evolving role of HR in the age of AI and skills-based approaches, emphasising the need for continuous learning and adaptability. 

• Insights into how organisations can regain and build trust with employees in an era of rapid technological change. 

If you are an HR Leader looking to gain a competitive advantage in the future of work, this is an episode you do not want to miss. 

Support for this podcast comes from Crunchr, a platform that integrates an HR data lake with state-of-the-art people analytics. Whether you're an advanced user or just starting out, Crunchr's generative AI co-pilot helps you unlock insights with ease. 

You can learn more by visiting  www.crunchr.com

[0:00:00] David Green: Hi, I'm David Green, and you're listening to the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  The 2020s have, to date, been a decade of change and uncertainty.  The legacy of this period, which has been bookended by the pandemic and the rise of generative AI, is being felt across every aspect of work, the workforce, and the workplace.  The ability to adapt to this new era of work and mitigate the associated people risks will be crucial for organisations in staying ahead.  The role of HR is paramount in unlocking what my guests today define as the People Age, which I concur brings tremendous potential for our health, wealth, and career prospects.   

Kate Bravery and Ilya Bonic are two of the three authors, along with Kai Anderson, of Work Different: 10 Truths for Winning in the People Age.  Ilya is President of Mercer's Career Business and Head of Mercer Strategy, and Kate is a Global Advisory Solutions and Insight Leader, also at Mercer.  Our discussion today will centre around the 10 Truths highlighted in their book, examining how they apply to real-world HR challenges, from talent acquisition and retention to employee engagement and organisational agility.  We'll also discuss the key findings from Mercer's recently published Global Talent Trends Study for 2024, where Kate is the lead author.  In particular, we'll discuss the integration of AI into HR practices, the evolution of skills-based approaches, and how to leverage both effectively.  With that, let's get started. 

Welcome to the show, it's wonderful to have you on.  Please could you start by giving a brief introduction to yourselves and your roles at Mercer?  And, Ilya, I'll start with you. 

[0:02:03] Ilya Bonic: All right, thanks.  So, I get to lead the most exciting line of business at Mercer.  It's the one that focuses on helping our clients and their people navigate that journey of twists and turns, ups and downs towards the future of work.  We have an incredibly deep and broad portfolio of solutions that we take to our clients.  The business is called Career.  I get to work with my colleague, Kate Bravery.  That's also a very exciting part of my role.  I'm part of Mercer's Global Exec team and I'm Head of Strategy for Mercer.  So, a little about me.  Kate, what about you? 

[0:02:39] Kate Bravery: Well, obviously now I get to work for the boss who's most excited about the talent agenda, so that gets me excited!  I lead our Talent Advisory Practice at Mercer that sits within Career, and I also have a role that sits across our Career Business, and that's looking after our knowledge management and our thought leadership, which is how I do a lot of the insights that you and I often chat about, David.  But it also gives me a unique opportunity to look at how things like AI is impacting the workforce and our talent processes from an inside perspective, as well as the client work that we do, which is fun. 

[0:03:14] David Green: That's great, thanks both of you.  Yeah, and actually regular listeners to the show, two of your colleagues who have been past guests are Jason Averbook and Ravin Jesuthasan.  So, you said you had a great team, Ilya.  You really do have a great team there, not just with Ravin, Jason, and Kate, but that's three pretty impressive talent that you have there. 

[0:03:36] Ilya Bonic: Yeah, we do.  Well, we're a large firm, we work with a lot of clients and we have an ambition to shape the thinking in HR.  David, I know you do that as well and so we want to have the best talent in the business in ours, working with our clients, and so you're aware of some of our capabilities, which is great. 

[0:03:57] David Green: Well, along with Kai Anderson, I'm just sticking the book up here for those listening, Work Different, you are the co-authors of Work Different: 10 Truths for Winning in the People Age.  Please could you start, maybe Kate, start by providing our listeners with an overview of the book,  maybe why you wrote it, and maybe some of the core concepts behind the 10 Truths as well. 

[0:04:18] Kate Bravery: Well, I don't think it's going to come as any surprise to your listeners that the world of work hasn't been working as well as we'd like it to work over the last few years.  And I think there's a couple of things that have happened lately that really have sort of underscored that, most notably the pandemic.  I think we all took that opportunity to step back, reflect on how work was working for our own lives, and we certainly saw a real change in employee sentiment about what they wanted coming out of that period.  And then, of course, ChatGPT has got us all thinking about how work could look different in the future of work.  And so, our book is really bookended by those two explosive events, because I think in that very short space of time, we saw more change in people's attitudes to work and how people have responded to work than we have in the last three decades.  So, that's really what we're tackling.   

During that period, myself, Kai, and Ilya, we're often talking about, what are the things maybe we don't come off mute and say to our clients?  What are the things that we're having private chats about that we think are the real truths of our age?  And we thought it would be cool to put that down in paper.  So, we got thinking about why is this time different compared to any other time; and how are these forces changing the real truths that every business leader, HR professional, individual needs to pick up on?  Because talent's never been a premium.  We're wanting new skills every day, the cost of talent is going up, talent has more choices than ever before, AI's forcing us to say, what's a unique contribution of humans?  And so because of that, we wanted to put them down.  But it isn't just a book about us pontificating about what's not working.  We also did a lot about, what does the data really say makes a difference; and who are the companies that we've had the privilege to partner with that we think are doing things a bit differently?  So, there's a lot of examples there of people who are thinking different and working different.   

[0:06:13] Ilya Bonic: We had a perspective that, given that work had changed so much and that the employee experience of work had changed so much, and that people had seen and experienced things that there was no turning back, that the talent strategies that were successful in the past, they needed to adapt and change to be successful for the future, and that led us towards writing the book.  And we wanted to write it from a perspective that it could be used by obviously by our HR buyer, but by leaders, by managers, by individuals themselves to help think about how to navigate their careers successfully. 

[0:06:49] David Green: And Ilya, I know from personal experience, with co-authoring Excellence in People Analytics, that perhaps the biggest fear in writing a book is that it will no longer be relevant once people can actually read it.  Because for listeners that haven't had the privilege of writing a book, there's usually a four- or five-month gap between when you submit the final manuscript and the book actually gets published.  I'm wondering whether you had to cope with any emergencies with your book; and if you did, did you need to change some of the truths as you went along? 

[0:07:23] Ilya Bonic: Oh my, we certainly did, no worry about that.  We started writing the book during 2022 when employers, for as much as they tried, couldn't find enough talent to do the work, employees had the opportunity to pretty much pick and choose whatever job they liked for enormous increases in pay, if they chose to switch jobs.  And then we went from there into 2023.  October/November 2023, I went into Google Trends.  I don't know if you've used that before, but it's this app on Google where you can just type in any search term and it'll tell you how frequently it is being searched.  And so, I randomly typed in, "Great Resignation", and I guarantee you, I was the only person in the world that day that had searched for the term.  So, that just shows you how quickly the world of work moved.  We actually put our pens down on the book and ChatGPT was released, so it led us back to writing another chapter or two and revisiting.   

But to this day, one of the things I'll say is that the book remains relevant regardless of what economic cycle we go through, because there's an underpinning philosophy here that employers won't be successful without bringing their people along, and their people have different views around what they value about work and what they're looking for from employers than they've had before.  And regardless of whether that economic cycle goes up or down, those views aren't going to change.  And while we might take comfort today in the fact that our turnover rates, our voluntary turnover rates, have gone down, we also discovered during the last few years a concept, or the new term, of quiet quitting, like employees can hang on and not be as productive or make the contribution that we need to be, the contribution that we need them to make for our organisations to be successful.  So essentially, everything we've written in the book we feel remains relevant, even today given how much the economic environment has changed. 

[0:09:40] David Green: Which of the truths have resonated the most with the HR leaders that you're working with?  And Kate, I'll come to you first on that one. 

[0:10:44] Kate Bravery: There's probably three, and you can see if you tell me if you've got similar findings, that I am asked about the most.  I think the first one is -- and it probably depends what your focus and interest is.  You know Mercer has a big footprint in the Rewards Consulting space.  So no surprise, the chapter on, "It doesn't pay to stay", is the one that I think a lot of our clients were just a little shocked to hear us come out with.  Of course, they're relieved when we talk about lots on the stay versus the leave ledger, and actually, you're doing a lot of this good stuff today; and also when we talk about, "Well, it's more about staying in the same role, rather than moving around", and then we can link it to some of the stuff they're doing around skillset.  I think that one was a bit of a shock, so we always get asked questions on that.   

We were just chatting before this call about the new rhythm of work, how we're all working from home, asynchronously and across different temporal geographic boundaries.  That chapter I don't get asked on, but I do get asked on the next chapter, which is, "Trust and accountability is a team sport", because how do we work together when we're working in different locations, different timelines, and that's definitely causing some tension.  And I think that links to also more digital ways of working and how different generations and different partners want to work, so that one comes up a lot.  And the third one won't surprise you at all, the one on AI.  I think amplified intelligence is the one everybody wants to talk to, what's HR's role in that; what does that mean for the workforce; how can we embrace this next generation?  And I think Ilya would agree with me, that this really is about how humans work different, not necessarily about the tech that's coming in.  But Ilya, I'm also keen to hear what are you asked about the most? 

[0:12:32] Ilya Bonic: I've got those, plus I'd add, "Skills is the real currency of work".  And I actually think the AI and the skills one are linked closely together, because both of them point to the opportunity for organisations to build more agility into the way they operate, and that agility being critical to success in the future.  So AI, from the perspective of being able to improve productivity and the effectiveness of work; and then skills, David you mentioned our colleague, Ravin, earlier who's written a number of books on this, the ability or the thinking that if we can get more granular with skills, it can improve the fluidity of our workforce and therefore the ability to move people to the work that needs to be done in a much more efficient way than most organisations are organised today.  They're the kind of forward-looking issues that that our clients are really interested in.   

[0:13:34] David Green: Now, since you've published Work Different, you've also both been involved, and particularly you, Kate, I know in publishing Mercer's Global Talent Trends 24, which is definitely something worth looking out for every year, free to download.  Just type in, "Mercer's Global Talent Trends" and you'll find it.  I think it's required reading for anyone in our field.  There's a few standout reports that come out every year that are, and definitely yours is one of them.  What are the synergies, I'm thinking, between the truths that you've written about and this year's trends?  And, Kate, maybe you can start.  Maybe you might want to give an overview of the trends as well as part of that, for those that haven't seen it? 

[0:14:12] Kate Bravery: Yeah.  So, Global Talent Trends, I've had the privilege of working on it since its inception, which I think was about nine years ago now.  So, we track trends from, what executives are planning for the year ahead, how HR is prioritising the people agenda, what employees really want, and this year we also looked at what investors are saying about the talent agenda, which was fascinating, across 17 markets and 16 countries.  So, it's a really, really big study.  It won't surprise you, this year's title is How Do We Unlock Human Potential in a Machine-Augmented World.  I think that's what everybody's talking about.  And we have four trends for this year, so driving human-centric productivity; anchoring to trust and equity; boosting the corporate immune system; and cultivating those digital first cultures that we've just been talking about.   

You mentioned there about AI and personalisation, and it's so interesting because I think how AI is going to improve productivity very much steals the headlines at the moment.  Everybody is talking about that productivity list, rightly or wrongly.  And I think you and I get most excited about the other Ps, the opportunity for it to predict and scenario plan for us; and help us mitigate risk; and to personalise.  And I think those are the real benefits in the HR space.  Of course, HR also inherits those expectations from executives around productivity, which I think is probably where they're focusing on this year.   

If you ask me sort of what are the themes, both of them are driving at solving talent agility and people sustainability, and both of them have lots of case examples around how companies are putting what people really want and how they want their work experience to be at the heart of their redesign efforts.  Ilya, you were talking about skills and AI coming together.  Often, that is around redesigning work to get the best between humans and machines.  But when we do that and we get that productivity gain, are we also looking about what's maybe not working for work today?  In the study, when we ask people what depletes their productivity, it isn't not having access to a large language model or a small language model in my area, it's too much busy work, unsustainable workloads.  We've got some habits that are no longer serving us well.  I think it's more interesting to look at who's interrupting those habits and who's being bold about challenging how we've done rewards, how we've done talent, how we've structured our functions in the past. 

[0:16:45] David Green: Ilya, anything to add from your perspective around the trends?  And maybe it'd be great to share one of the case studies that you've got which maybe exemplifies what Kate was just talking about.   

[0:16:56] Ilya Bonic: Yeah, sure.  So, Kate talked about human-centred productivity, there's another which is about anchoring trust to equity.  I think that links very well to the chapter in the book that we call, "Trust and Accountability: a Routine Sport".  And I think it's also interesting to step back and think about the context of this report.  You survey executives and this year, most of them, from a risk lens of feeling that 2024 is a more risky business environment than say 2023 and it's influencing their view on everything, so when it comes to AI, you'd have some who are more optimistic and some pessimistic.  And on the pessimistic side, they're thinking of looking to AI for efficiency versus, because I think we say two in five executives reported that they're expecting 30% productivity gains through AI, and you've got that one of two ways: it's like, do the same amount of work with 70% of the workforce; or, do 130% of the work with your current workforce.  Either way it represents an opportunity.   

Then we move to this concept of trust and equity, and you realise that in a risky environment where there's probably more competition than ever, demand has maybe dropped from peaks of the last couple of years.  You can't navigate that unless you bring your employees along.  You can't have an agile organisation, you can't adapt unless your employees are willing to do that and they trust the direction which the organisation is going.  So, we find through our research the things that erode trust.  Some of you have heard or seen these things before, but broken promises, frequent organisation changes, unfair and unequal treatment.  And the unfair and unequal treatment, I think, is a fascinating one, because in the US where I'm based, one of the big topics at the moment is transparency around pay.  And what we've found is that employees place a higher priority and greater weight on actually transparency in pay than they do on competitiveness of pay, because it leads to a view on, "I can trust my employer, intentions are right, we'll do the right things, I've got something to work with there in terms of trusting and building on it".  And we find that those organisations that are more transparent around issues like pay are the ones that employees report that they thrive more, and the ones that report that they're willing to go and contribute that extra level of effort and energy required to be successful.   

[0:19:59] Kate Bravery: And in the global talent trends, I think there's some good examples from the London Stock Exchange, how they're trying to get underneath some of those disparities, and not just look at how do you close gaps today, but why do they occur in the first place; is it due to the type of experiences different populations get early on; what can we do to be monitoring that at every stage in the organisation, so that you always know whether people are stagnating or progressing?  And I think if you keep a handle on that, you can make sure that those pay disparities don't end up widening, and I think that's really important.  I also really like the case study in there from Avery Dennison.  We were talking about digital first cultures there.  And I thought they were very brave in saying, "Look, if we really want to enhance the employee experience, maybe we don't roll out the next bit of tech.  Maybe what we actually do is look at how HR today interacts with the different persona groups, which are completely different to as they were before.  And if people want a connected up experience, how do we work with IT; and how do we stop measuring tickets and how quickly we respond to them, but did people have a fulfilling experience; do they feel they were really listened to; would they come back to us; have we got the right balance of tech and touch?"   

I think that's a very different narrative to how we used to measure HR success a few years back, and I think that's pretty bold. 

[0:21:30] David Green: So, with the increasing adoption of AI into the workforce, how do you see the role of HR evolving?  I'll let the two of you talk.  I think, Ilya, you're going to tackle this one first. 

[0:22:31] Ilya Bonic: Yeah, thank you.  Let me kick off on that.  Have you come across an AI called Perplexity AI? 

[0:22:38] David Green: I haven't, no. 

[0:22:39] Ilya Bonic: It's a really cool search engine, if you can call it that, where you type in anything you're interested in and it will pull together and summarise the consensus view of a number of articles.  So, it's a great research engine, and then it'll point you to those articles if you want to go to greater detail.  And so, I did a bit of research and I typed into Perplexity AI a question that went something along the lines of, "Who's responsible for the AI agenda in most organisations?"  Not a single article pointed to HR.  You've got a new role, like Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, like we had the Chief Digital Officer, or Chief Technology Officer but not AI.  And the reason I think that's important, actually quite stunning, is that the productivity gains that we talked about that executives see and are interested in, they're not actually going to come from the technology alone, they're going to come from the workforce adopting and utilising that technology.  It's generalised intelligence, so it's how the people utilise and apply it in their day-to-day work.  Going forward, I think there's going to be a much greater role for HR to help provide input, or even drive the agenda of the adoption of AI, to help build a culture of AI within organisations so that employees, so the workforce, is taking full advantage of it.  That's just at a general level.   

Another point, and then maybe more detail, is we see the role of HR migrating from some of the transactional work, and AI will help improve efficiencies for HR, but into the more important work which Kate touched on, which is around work redesign, because we know, aside from the general productivity improvements that can be gained, by working on how to augment different aspects of people's work with AI, we'll get advantage to the individual employee, we'll also get advantage to the organisation.  And so there maybe, Kate, I'll just hand over to you, and if you'd like to talk a little more about AI in work design and what we see there. 

[0:25:04] Kate Bravery: Yeah, I think the good thing is we now have new challenges on the horizon, but AI is also helping us with those challenges.  So, whether it is AI being used in our strategic workforce planning to help us scenario plan and better predict future workforce needs, whether it is AI skills intelligence platforms giving a skills lens for that so we can get away from just headcount planning to actually skills planning, or indeed whether it is using AI to actually redesign the work of the future so we can more successfully nurture it, I think that's all really, really exciting.  The importance for the whole C-suite to work together has never been bigger, the Chief Digital Officer, Chief Transformation Officer, Chief Risk Officer, I think is really important.  And I'm happy to say quite openly, I don't think that's happening anywhere near the level that it needs to be.   

Ilya, you might have seen this, but there's a bit of research, and we haven't released it yet, that has just been done by some of our colleagues that came through the Leapgen acquisition, and they just did a study of, what are the organisations where there is higher adoption of using generative AI?  And what they found is that if executives are constantly talking about the positive opportunities of using AI, it's 50% more likely the workforce will use the tools; if CHROs do it, it's 70% more likely.  And I thought that was just fascinating, and I was just bursting at the seams, so I was going to share it with you today.  But I do think there's a really big difference in whether executives are talking about this, not just the Chief Digital Officer, the Chief Transformation Officer, and this is about a new way of the workforce working.  So, I'm not surprised that the HR voice is carrying further.  And I think that's a really good lesson for us all to take away today.   

Ilya, you've been very vocal at Mercer, if you don't mind me saying, on encouraging everyone to use it really early on.  And it's only now just paying dividends, because it took a long time.  But I do think any senior leader has a role to play on that. 

[0:27:10] David Green: And then arguably, AI also helps HR become more strategic, because potentially we can get away some of the repetitive tasks and automate those.  I know you've done some research on that.  I think actually a few weeks ago, we had Nickle LaMoreaux, the Chief People Officer at IBM, on.  She was talking about how they put digital assistants into some of the more onerous tasks or admin-heavy tasks that their HR business partners do, and they managed to reduce the promotion cycle, which usually takes 10 weeks in any 13-week period, down to 5 weeks and save 50,000 hours.  And I know you did some research early on last year and you looked at the HR business partner role as well.  I think you identified that there was a big scope for automation, and I'd love to share a bit more with listeners around that.   

[0:27:56] Ilya Bonic: So, okay, I'll just share.  I think this is funny, because I couldn't believe it when we found out.  The number one place that our clients go to with AI is in writing job descriptions!  And it sounds very simple and, like, why would you go there?  But it underpins so much of what we do, right?  You can't create a job requisition in any HRIS system without a job description; you can't move down the path of anything that's skills-based without a job description that's calling out the kind of capabilities.  And it's fascinating to see that that is one of the areas that organisations are really focused on.  It's just simple, but you know how many hours go into that kind of work.   

[0:28:46] Kate Bravery: But I also think AI is giving us the opportunity to look at how can we use them for other parts of that task, whether it is looking at how do we match skills to jobs so that we can build out our skills taxonomy, or how can we use AI to make inferences about the skills people have, or nudge them if you've got these two or three other skills, you'll be well positioned for two other jobs in the future.  And the more and more I think companies are bringing AI or thinking intentionally about what jobs of the future look like, they're recognising that that digital maturity journey needs to be matched with the skills maturity journey, because if you're not building the skills that's needed for people to move into those higher-order roles, I think we've got a real risk there. 

On the workforce in general, our data shows that about 34% of everybody's current tasks could be automated, and that's a staggering productivity gain, but also I think just gives the opportunity to do more interesting and exciting work.  I think in the HR function, we've still got so many Excel Spreadsheet and different platforms.  When you want to answer a really interesting question, "I've got an exciting job for someone here in London.  I want someone who's got experience working in Hong Kong, knows R and has worked on a large-scale transformation", I should be able to find that.  But I've got to go to three or four places for that, especially if I also want to target talent that because of a few indicators, is at risk of leaving in the next six months.  I think as we start to embrace conversational AI and we start to have AI going across our platforms, some of the clunky tech or the desperate systems that are occupying our time today will fade into the background.  I'm certainly waiting for that. 

[0:30:38] David Green: And that probably links into the second topic that we all hear a lot about; skills.  What are you seeing with regards to skills and what guidance would you offer to companies that want to move forward with a skills-based approach?  And do you have any case studies that you can share with listeners as well?  I think, Kate, you're going to start on that one. 

[0:30:56] Kate Bravery: Yeah, why don't I kick off on that?  All right, so we've been talking skills for quite a while now, and every year we have been auditing what skills are most in demand, what's the size of your skills gap?  And if you think back over the previous year, what was most effective in closing your skills gap?  And since I started asking the question, every year it's giving the problem to talent acquisition.  If we can hire the skills in, it's the quickest, fastest way to solve the problem.  This year we saw it changed.  Pretty much every market, the top strategy that helped them close their skills gap was actually incentivising their people to build new skills.  The third one was actually paying for skills, having a pay-for-skills component in your compensation.  And I think the fourth one was being really clear about what are the skills we will pay a premium for in the world.   

Now, because of Mercer's expertise, we've been talking about the opportunities of getting on the pay-for-skills agenda for quite a while now, but it was never right at the top of the list, so I think that shows a real step-change in maturity.  We also saw more organisations bringing in AI-driven skills intelligence platforms to understand what skills that we've got today, we saw advances in looking at the skills we have internally alongside the skills in our contingent workforce together, and we did see movement on talent marketplaces.  Saying that, it's still low numbers.  So, I agree with you.  I think for many, they're right at the beginning of the journey, figuring out if we don't want to blow up the way we've done it before, what's the best entry point?  And if we've got a great skills experiment, how can we scale?   

You want to some case studies.  A couple of ones that I think are probably most interesting in the book, you mentioned Tanuj, Tanuj Kapilashrami, from Standard Chartered.  There's a case study from her in the book where she talks about what's a net saving to the organisation when we move from retrenchment to then hiring a role, compared to re-skilling and re-deploying.  And I think that's really important because all eyes, especially investors, are looking at how sustainable your people practices are, and we've certainly seen a lot of reductions in force.  So, how do you get that right, and how do you quantify to your executive team that actually building a talent marketplace can actually pay dividends today?  So, I really like that case study. 

The other one I think is really good is when we talk about some of the work that Novartis has done.  There, they specifically worked on democratising learning before they democratised opportunity with the marketplace, so creating the culture first.  And then, what they found really useful was the skills-matching capability to coach people, so actually getting people who already are role models on the skills, coaching other people and opening that up.  They found that as really exhilarating.  And maybe a third example on the skills one, I really like what Infosys has done in nudging people to build from within rather than hire from outside.  So, what they have defined is three different time horizons and said only time horizon three, which is bleeding-edge skills, should we be hiring in externally, should we be paying a premium from; and if it's time horizon one and two, get creative with finding the talent internally.  And so, I think those type of very clear guidance and nudges have made a real difference to getting the mindset right for talent sharing.  But it's often why I think some of the skills-based processes haven't scaled in the way maybe we want them. 

[0:34:43] David Green: One of the main things, we've talked about it a little bit already in the Global Talent Trends, was trust, and I think it's something that runs through the book actually around the 10 Truths as well.  You highlight that how much an individual trusts their organisation to do the right thing by them, the right thing by society, has a multiplier impact on their intent to stay and their sense of thriving.  So, trust seems good all around here to me.  Yet at the same time, trust has actually reduced quite substantially this year.  Why do you think trust is eroding firstly, Kate?   

[0:35:16] Kate Bravery: Yeah, so you actually were just mentioning some research from some principal analysis study that we did this year looking at all the employee data and how well it predicted whether people had intent to stay, and whether they felt they were thriving in their jobs, and all of the other good outcomes.  And the one that came out the most was, "I trust the organisation will do the right thing by society, I trust the organisation will do the right thing by me, I trust the organisation will work with me to redesign jobs in the future".  So, trust was such a really strong determinant.  But you're right, at the same time, compared to the high trust that we saw in 2022, across all those dimensions I've just mentioned, it's dropped about 10 or 15 percentage points, which is pretty big in an opinion survey.   

Some of the reasons that people cite for that are unmet or broken promises, particularly around pay and promotion, flip-flopping on decisions around things such as flexible working, people having perceptions that the deal they're getting is not equitable to someone else.  So, maybe new hires are getting a better deal, or contingent workers are getting a better deal, or other inequities.  And they seem to have just really eaten away at people, which I think means that we've just got to work harder to bring in that transparency, because I think that transparency does engender trust.  I also think it's really important for individuals to be part of some of the design changes you've just heard Ilya talking about, so they don't feel that these new ways of working are being imposed on them, but that how they believe work could be done differently is being considered. 

So, I think that's what we're seeing in the data, but it is something that I think we need to tackle head on.  And part of the challenge is how much flexibility people want, their aspirations around pay, what experiences they're prepared to take; it's constantly changing.  So, managers need to be equipped to have that conversation on an ongoing basis.  And I think, back to that point that some of our once-a-year talent processes are no longer fit for purpose, I think some of that isn't necessarily helping. 

[0:37:37] David Green: Ilya, I was just wondering, any other thoughts about how we can maybe build that trust back up again?  Do we need to go back to some of the good practices maybe that companies were doing during the pandemic where they seemed to put employees first? 

[0:37:48] Ilya Bonic: Yeah, well, I think actually that's also part of the reason that trust has declined.  So, you think about maybe different economic circumstances and certainly in the press that I get exposed to, there's more headlines around organisations reducing headcount, adding headcount.  We've had the whole back and forth around return to work.  So, if employees had exposure to flexibility, I think majority still have a lot of flexibility now, just less than they had before and maybe not as much as they feel they could have.  So, to build trust up again, big picture-wise, the focus on purpose and belonging is important; command and control doesn't work anymore, we write about that; transparency is really important; the concept of psychological safety becomes important.   

At the same time, I'll say with the book, we try to balance both the employer and employee perspective.  And at the time of writing, there were three large organisations that had substantial problems because of, we'd say over-trust, if that's a word.  So, remember the crypto organisation, FTX?  There was a lot of trust placed in them by their investors that went south because of lack of accountability and visibility and transparency.  We had Silicon Valley Bank, same issue.  That went bankrupt for the same reason, there's a lot of trust placed in this organisation, not enough transparency.  And then even Credit Suisse, if you've taken a look at their background, in terms of where they've gone wrong for non-compliance which comes back to the people agenda, there needs to be a balance not only in giving trust to employees but also the accountability.   

[0:39:52] David Green: How have you seen companies use AI to personalise employee experiences, and as part of building up or regaining trust? 

[0:40:01] Kate Bravery: Actually, just listening to the two of you talk, before I come there I was just thinking, these topics we've been talking about, trust, skills and AI, I think some companies are trying to give the right level of trust to people and have them part of the process. One company that is in Global Talent Trends is Arcadia.  They're a global engineering firm.  And I really liked how they approached their skills journey, because they asked every Acadian, "If you were to disrupt your job, how would you do that?"  And I think that gets them thinking about AI, and there's always a more efficient or a different way to do your job.  And then they said, "What two jobs in the firm could the skills you have today be deployed for if your job went away?"  I think that's just a really healthy thing for all of us to be thinking about.  But I also think it places an enormous amount of trust in their workers to be part of that transformation journey.  So, yeah, just listening to you, it just popped into my mind. 

I agree with you.  So much of the, as I said before, headlines is around the productivity uplift, but I think the more exciting thing is the prediction.  Ilya, you brought up the corporate immune system, which is about ensuring enterprise resilience and individual resilience, and I do think AI has got real strides on both fronts.  On the one hand, being used to do scenario planning around risks, again we were talking about trust, we partnered with the World Economic Forum on the Global Risk Report and misinformation/disinformation was the number one near-term risk this year.  I mean that's a trust issue.  And that role of making sure people don't take action on deepfakes, that role in making sure that disinformation doesn't get spread in our organisations or from our organisation, that's just a whole set of new responsibilities we haven't had to grapple with before.  But scenario plan, how we respond and mitigate to them, I think is a really vital role that AI is playing.   

Then of course, the other one that you mentioned is personalisation.  So, I do think personalising development plans or AI that's your partner when you're giving performance management feedback, and then giving you real-time nudges and coaching on that, I think some of that is some of the ways that has entered into the reward space off the bat.  And I'm also loving some of the innovations, such as PayAI or pay for skills, that is also giving real-time information about how the decisions we make today can exacerbate some of those equity gaps tomorrow. 

[0:42:27] Ilya Bonic: I came across a fascinating organisation in the assessment space about a month ago.  They gave me a demonstration of what they're building in taking a personality profile.  And they apply AI to it, so not surprisingly, the AI can tell you how it works and what your profile looks like and what it means to you.  They've gone a step further though and created AI as a co-pilot that will coach you and nudge you on your strengths and weaknesses, as they're likely to just be displayed in difficult situations that you are placed in.  So, it's almost in advance, coaching you on how to deal with individual situations, or even in real-time, being a reference to be able to get you to have better outcomes from those interactions. 

Then a step further, which is kind of scary I think, is that if it had a profile of your team as well, it can coach you on how best to manage interactions knowing someone else's profile, and you're starting to get a sense that AI can really help coach and nudge people to better behaviours for the right relational outcomes. 

[0:43:44] David Green: How can HR leaders use analytics to uncover and address the inclusivity gap? 

[0:43:51] Kate Bravery: I think one of the most powerful tools we have is those internal labour maps, being able to look at who's coming in to your organisation at each level, who's leaving, and who's progressing or stagnating.  If you can cut that by generations, if you can cut that by high performance, low performance, those with high-tech skills, low-tech skills, those in different parts of the world or background, I think we really start to have power over, how do the decisions we make around talent management and reward management impact the workforce, and where do we need to have early indicators?  I do think that that's phenomenally powerful and it's been around for a while, but I'm always staggered by the fact that people don't know that map and they don't know who's progressing, who's stagnating and they don't know why.  Secondly, we've talked about our own data hygiene.  We now sit on so much really fascinating data about the people in our organisation, being able to model what are the predictors of burnout, you know, burnout this year, I think 82% people are at risk of burnout; what are the predictors of people feeling discriminated?  72% of people have seen age discrimination.  Now, we know some of that.  We can be a lot more on the front foot in recognising that before that becomes a challenge. 

So, I'm excited about this sort of new world that we're ushering in.  I think we've got old tools that are underutilised, and now we've got that opportunity to analyse big data in ways we've never been able to do before.  I think the real trick is, how do we take action on that?  And that requires a new level of leadership as well. 

[0:45:38] David Green: Very good.  Please can you let listeners know how they can follow you on social media, if you do social media, find out more about all the amazing work that you do at Mercer, and find out more about the book as well? 

[0:45:48] Ilya Bonic: Kate, you go first. 

[0:45:50] Kate Bravery: I think both Ilya and I are on LinkedIn and X, so find us and follow us, that would be great.  If you go to the Mercer website, we've got information on the book and all the different places you can get it; I know you can get it from Amazon, and any other retailer as well.  Also, you mentioned there Global Talent Trends.  It's free to download, it's out now, it's on our site as well.  Or, just type it into Google! 

[0:46:21] Ilya Bonic: There we go, I was going to say the same: LinkedIn, mercer.com and any search.  David, thanks for having us, it's been really great to spend some time with you. 

[0:46:30] Kate Bravery: Yeah, a lot of fun.   

[0:46:31] David Green: Well, Kate, Ilya, I can't believe we've come to the end of our conversation, I've really enjoyed it.  I'll certainly be listening back to this one.  Thanks again for sharing your research and insights with listeners of the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  Enjoy the rest of your days and look forward to seeing you both in person at some point, hopefully in the next few months.   

[0:46:48] Kate Bravery: Thanks, David.   

[0:46:49] Ilya Bonic: See you then.