In this discussion I reflect on the significant events and trends of 2024, highlighting the impact of global conflicts, economic change, labor market dynamics, and the transformative role of AI in organizations.

What has changed? I discuss the evolving nature of DEI, the new model of leadership which emerged, and the transformation of HR into a more integrated and essential function within businesses.

I also describe the two-edged labor market, with severe labor shortages in hourly and blue collar work yet a lack of opportunities in white collar jobs. In fact I argue that our employment situation is not as happy as one may believe: the hyper low unemployment at the low end is masking unemployment fears among white collar workers.  And as I discuss, 77% of employees are now fearful that AI could negatively impact their jobs and careers.

I also point out the enormous opportunity for AI-driven change in 2025, which will not be easy or simple for companies to adopt. And I celebrate the central role of HR, moving to the Systemic HR© model ahead.

To all our listeners: stay tuned for our major report on “The Rise of the Superworker” coming in January, an in-depth discussion about the 15 imperatives for change and AI transformation in 2025.

This groundbreaking report and related tools will be available to Galileo users and our corporate members. Sign up for Galileo today.

Key Points

• 2024 was marked by global conflicts affecting employees around the world
• Economic growth has been uneven, despite inflation’s impact
• Labor shortages continue, particularly in hourly jobs, while white-collar jobs are hard to find
• The low unemployment rate is misleading: many workers cannot find jobs
• AI is barely beginning to revolutionize work processes and organizational structures.
• DEI initiatives are being reframed as business priorities rather than social agendas.
• Leadership has become a responsibility for every employee, not just management.
• HR is evolving from a support function to a strategic partner in business.
• Organizations must focus on data management and governance as AI grows.
• Well-being in the workplace has plummeted, yet it remains essential for business success.
• HR is now taking on a very different role in our companies.

Chapters

00:00  Reflections on 2024: A Year of Conflict and Change 03:32  Economic Landscape: Growth Amidst Challenges 07:32  Labor Market Dynamics: Shortages and Opportunities 12:05  AI Revolution: Transforming Work and Organizations 16:14  DEI and HR Tech: Evolving Strategies for Inclusion 20:35  Well-being and Leadership: Cultivating Healthy Organizations 24:52  The Future of HR: Strategic Integration and Transformation

Additional Resources

100 Amazing Use-Cases for Galileo, The AI-Powered Assistant For Everything HR

AI in HR: Certificate Program in The Josh Bersin Academy

The Road to AI-Powered Productivity: Four Stages of Transformation

Digital Twins, Digital Employees, And Agents Everywhere

Adecco: Adapting to an AI-Driven World of Work

Note: Systemic HR© is now a registered trademark of The Josh Bersin Company.

How has Deel grown from zero to 4,500 employees in 100 countries in less than five years? It’s an amazing story of hyperscale growth and passionate customer focus. In today’s podcast Alex Bouaziz, CEO of Deel, talks with Kathi Enderes about his own journey from environmental engineer to founder of an HR tech company.

Alex explains how he started Deel as an EOR (Employer of Record) company, and how the company has expanded into HCM and payroll around the world. He explains the EOR market and what global employment providers do, and also discusses their AI assistant, Deel AI, which can help answer any question by pulling from Deel’s knowledge base.

Additional Information

EOR Provider Deel Expands into HCM

HR Tech Workshop Certificate Program | Josh Bersin Academy

AI HR Tech Trailblazers, 2025 HR Tech Outlook

 

In this conversation I share insights from my recent trip to Europe, focusing on the Workday Rising event, the current state of talent acquisition, and the evolving role of CHROs in strategic workforce planning.

I discuss the importance of systemic talent acquisition, the emergence of “Precision Talent Acquisition” and the entire redefinition of this function. And I also explain why the term “Hiring Manager” is such a terrible concept.

Finally I share my amazing conversation with one of the most high-powered, inspiring CHROs I’ve ever met.

Takeaways

• Workday is integrating its products into a cohesive solution.
• The hiring cycle is slowing down due to economic factors.
• AI is increasing the value of existing workers, creating ‘super workers’
• Talent acquisition should be viewed as a growth function.
• Precision in hiring is essential in a tight labor market.
• Cultural fit is as important as technical skills in hiring.
• Strategic workforce planning should align with business goals.
• The role of CHRO is evolving to include strategic planning, not “workforce planning” alone.

Additional Information

Klarna CEO Explains How AI-Driven Headcount Reduction Fuels Superworkers and Growth

How To Make Productivity Soar: Four Stages of AI Transformation

How AI Will Revolutionize The HR Department, In Detail.

Galileo Professional, The Essential AI Assistant for Everything HR

AI in HR Certificate Program: The Josh Bersin Academy

Irresistible 2025: Sign Up Early

I know most of you have used ChatGPT, Galileo, or other AI tools in your job, but you haven’t seen anything yet.

In this podcast I walk through a complete end-to-end scenario to show you precisely how AI agents will automate, scale, integrate, and vastly improve the process of hiring, onboarding, performance management, internal mobility, and more.

As you’ll hear in this scenario, AI agents are going to revolutionize the talent process. Recruiters, HR Business Partners, and CHROs watch out.

And this is just the beginning.

Our upcoming “100 Use-Cases for Galileo in HR” will explain this in greater detail (Galileo is designed for all these use-cases and more.)

Every HR professional should listen to this podcast to see the future of HR. Join our certificate program to learn more!

Additional Information

Become an AI Expert: AI in HR Certificate in The Josh Bersin Academy

How To Make Productivity Soar: Four Stages of AI Transformation

Digital Twins, Digital Employees, And Agents Everywhere

Introducing The AI Trailblazers! HR Technology Outlook 2025.

Galileo Professional, The Essential AI Assistant for Everything HR

What do we do about the American Dream? This week I discuss the explosion of employee and citizen activation (NYC UHG CEO, for example) and how the US economy has not been delivering for 2/3 of the workforce.

And in that discussion I challenge HR and business leaders to re-engineer jobs and work around what we call Superworkers, all with a goal of using AI to increase customer service, scale, quality, and value. I try to warn and give examples of what happens when companies use technologies like AI to eliminate jobs and simply reduce labor costs.

• Employees will give you feedback, they can “rage quit.”
• Automation to reduce labor can backfire.
• Our job as leaders is to help build a company of Superworkers.

Additional Research and Reading

Donald Trump Will Do Nothing to Bring Back Our Dying American Dream (NYT research column)

What Gives Poor Kids a Shot at Better Lives? Economists Find an Unexpected Answer (Raj Chetty’s research on lack of upward mobility in the US)

How To Make Productivity Soar: Four Stages of AI Transformation

Digital Twins, Digital Employees, And Agents Everywhere

Galileo Professional, The Essential AI Assistant for Everything HR

Linda Kirchhevel, Director, Talent & Leadership Development at Sanford Health talks with Kathi Enderes about their leadership development program. Linda discusses how the organization’s frequent mergers caused them to prioritize creating a unique leadership framework centered around the mission of the organization. (Sanford Health is the largest rural healthcare provider in the United States.)

The Sanford Leader Framework (“The Sanford Leader”) is applicable to anybody in the organization, focused on developing behaviors and capabilities at scale for all 45,000 employees. Built in collaboration with FranklinCovey, the leadership development model, assessment, orientation, and development plan delivers a customized leadership program at all levels. (Leading self, leading others, leading mission.)

As Linda explains, this program has driven a 13 point increase in employee engagement measured through NetPromoter.  And the program continues to drive high levels of employee engagement, retention, and alignment during a series of acquisitions. It exemplifies the “Irresistible Leadership” model we highlight in our research.

Additional Information

Human-Centered Leadership, Certificate Program in The Josh Bersin Academy (Join today!)

Why Are Some Companies More Dynamic Than Others?

The Surprising Facts About Leadership Development (podcast)

AI tools are rapidly sweeping across our companies in every job function, and most of us see them as “productivity tools.” Well, that’s a very limited view of the future. While AI may make you 15-20% more productive, the big payoff comes when we rethink work entirely and let AI systems take over as “autonomous agents,” albeit with our support.

In this podcast I discuss the four levels of AI adoption, and help you think about the important job-redesign work we’ll do in 2025. And I would argue that “doing existing work faster” is going to become a commodity quickly. And at levels 3 and 4 we will be re-engineering jobs and work, developing new skills, improving pay, and empowering people to do more!

You can read more about this in our upcoming 2025 Predictions report, but the best next step is get your hands on Galileo, the AI Expert Assistant for Everything HR. (And Join the Josh Bersin Academy!)

Companies have been investing in People Analytics and Industrial Psychology since the late 1800s, going back to Fredrick Taylor (time and motion studies) and Carl Jung (psychological types). The original idea was to scientifically manage work, using data to measure labor, strength, motion, and later engagement, skills, and leadership.

All this effort resulted in thousands of books and tools to measure employee engagement, employee experience, productivity, and organization design.

Ultimately where we landed was a new domain we call People Analytics: using people-related data to monitor, improve, and optimize business outcomes. And this journey, which I’ve been a part of for 30 years, resulted in a massive investment in HR technology platforms, engagement surveys, sentiment analysis tools, and more and more models for trust, leadership, management, wellbeing, and employee growth.

All that energy, deep thinking, and investment now lands in a new world, one we call “Systemic Business Analytics.” We use this name because it’s time to stop isolating people data from business data and running this domain as “projects,” rather think about it as an integrated analytics system.

In other words, as I explain in the podcast, let’s move forward and take all the people data we capture and embed it right into our existing business measurement systems. Instead of creating a “people data warehouse” to run reports and analysis on HR information, we can use that valuable information and put it right in the hands of business leaders and managers.

Our new research, “The Journey to Systemic Business Analytics,” details this journey and shows you our four level maturity model. (You can view the maturity model here.)

Today fewer than 10% of companies are doing this well, but that’s still a large number. And as I describe in the podcast, AI is going to light a bonfire under this space and rapidly accelerate this direction.

Additional Information

People Analytics, A Complex Domain, Is About To Be Transformed by AI.

People Analytics Certificate Course in The Josh Bersin Academy

Systemic Analytics: A New Approach

Galileo, The AI Assistant for Everything HR

This week I summarize my meetings and discussions with clients in NYC and you can see we covered many topics.

Here’s the AI summary, which is pretty good.

In this conversation, Josh Bersin discusses the evolving landscape of AI platforms, particularly focusing on Microsoft’s positioning and the challenges of creating a universal AI agent. He delves into the complexities of government efficiency, emphasizing the institutional challenges faced in re-engineering government operations.

The conversation also highlights the automation of work tasks and the need for businesses to decompose job functions for better efficiency.

Bersin stresses the importance of expertise in HR, advocating for a shift towards full stack professionals who possess a broad understanding of various HR functions.

Finally, he addresses the impending disruption in Learning and Development (L&D) due to AI advancements, predicting a significant transformation in how L&D professionals will manage knowledge and skills.

Additional Information

Inside Microsoft’s struggles with Copilot (Business Insider Exclusive)

Hyper-Growth Through Efficiency: Theme For The New Era

Digital Twins, Digital Employees, And Agents Everywhere

Chatbot Architecture: MS Copilot, Joule, Galileo, and The Future of L&D

In today’s podcast I discuss the organizational, institutional, and societal impacts of AI. And I’m not predicting what “could happen” but rather sharing “what is happening now.” As you’ll hear, AI plays a role in our political issues but an even greater role in our careers, pay, rewards, organization structure, and culture.

A recent AI adoption study by McKinsey found that 74% of companies have at least one AI application in place, and 20% have 3 or more. So we’re already seeing the impact. As you’ll hear, this is a technology that people are worried about at the moment, so we need to consider many levels of change management throughout our organizations.

Chapters

00:00 The Rapid Rise of AI and Automation 05:13 Job Transformation and AI Impact 08:56 Privacy Concerns in the Age of AI 12:47 Organizational Design and Talent Density 20:48 Leadership in the AI Era 29:54 Embracing AI: The Path Forward

Additional Information

Hyper-Growth Through Efficiency: Theme For The New Era

How To Create Talent Density

Were These Layoffs Inevitable? Perhaps, But Here’s How It Happened.

People as Competitive Advantage: Certificate Course In The Josh Bersin Academy

After decades of effort and growth, only around 10% of People Analytics teams deliver strategic business value. Many are still focused on traditional analysis of engagement, retention, leadership pipelines, and other HR measures.

In this WhatWorks podcast I talk openly with Paul Rubenstein, the Chief Customer Officer at Visier, about how this market has evolved. And in the conversation you can learn about Visier and the role of integrated, AI-platforms for the important topic of managing corporate HR and work data.

Our newest research on People Analytics is coming out this month, stay tuned for much more detail on this topic.

Additional Information

People Analytics, Evolved: A Systemic Approach

Certificate Course in People Analytics from The Josh Bersin Company