Salary.com's Senior Consultants - Predictions for HR and Comp in 2025
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Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources.

Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data, and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by Salary.com, your source for data, technology, and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now, here are your hosts, David Teretsky and Dwight Brown.

Hello and welcome to a very special HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Teretsky, alongside my co-host friend, BFF, partner in crime, Dwight Brown from salary.com. Dwight, how are you? I'm good. Probably more partner in crime than anything. Statute of limitations isn't up on that yet. That's true. We have an extremely special podcast episode for you today because we're going to be talking to our buddies on the senior consulting team,

the salary.com experts in compensation and HR consulting. And I'm going to go around the horn and say hi to each one of them. First, let's start with Courtney LeCompte. Courtney, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Good. Welcome. The next person, Eric McMillan. Eric, how are you? Fantastic today. Greg Wolfe. How are you, sir?

You know, it couldn't be better. You know, the Chiefs won yesterday, but I promised I wouldn't bring it up. So sorry about that. That's okay. Just let it slip, didn't you? You just let it slip. For those of you who don't know Greg Wolf, he is a rabid Chiefs fan. And of course, you could say this about most weeks where they won on Sunday or Monday or whenever. Gary Straker, how are you, Gary? I am terrific. Thank you. Nice to see everybody.

Good to see you too. And Angela Bailey. Angela, how are you? Hello. I'm great. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Yes, we're recording on a Monday morning and we're all excited about this. So, Dwight, this is going to be fun, don't you think? I think it's going to be a blast. The last one was a blast, so I expect as much or better from this team.

Well, what we're going to start with, everybody remembers this. If you've listened to one, you've listened to many, you know, we're going to go around the horn and ask what's one fun thing that no one knows about you. And yes, Courtney, you're up first. Oh, gosh. One thing that nobody knows.

I'll tell you one that I'm not super proud of. A small circle know this about me. I've tried multiple times to have pets and it never works out. We don't have any pets. Hopefully they're fish. Yeah, my son had a bearded dragon a couple years ago and

The pet store person told me to take it outside to give it some sun, and I ended up killing it because I just took the whole cage out or whatever, and it died. Oh, my God. So, I don't know. We're not good at pets. Was that during a snowstorm or what? No, look up greenhouse. No, it was warm outside. I wanted it to have some sun, but it was in the glass. Oh, my God.

I just got this feeling of being in a sun lamp for hours. Okay. Oh my God. You killed a lizard. We don't have any pets. But then afterwards you had barbecued lizard. So yeah, exactly.

That's a good one. Eric, can you beat that one? I don't know. I know that I'll never try to cross Courtney, though. Hey, why'd you put me in this greenhouse, Courtney? Exactly. In the heat. Who needs waterboarding when you've got the sun technique for torture? That's right. Magnifying glass with grasshoppers, yes.

So that's Eric's. He has used a magnifying glass on grasshoppers. Wow. I was probably six years old. Yes. So that was a good one. I think, you know, what I think of something nobody knows about me. This is kind of more nobody from work would know this.

Everybody knows that I like to ride a bicycle and things like that. But I actually have a club name, right? Nickname in the cycling community. And it's Dutch for Dutch diesel. If you know who that is from cycling. But that's something that very few people know about me outside of this other club.

that I have outside of work. Eric, as long as it's not Lance Armstrong, I think we're all okay. Yep, I think we're good. Is this because you look like Dutch or are you fast like Dutch? It's a longer story, Angela. Oh, yeah. We'll do that next time we all get together, Angela. Greg, how about you? You know, I think most people know I have nine grandkids. Wow.

One on the way. Another one on the way. And, you know, I started out where my oldest daughter says, well, Dan, what do you want him to call you? I said, how about Greg? Yeah.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. But in a grandpa type stage. So I agreed to Papa. Oh, so Papa Wolf, Papa Wolf, Papa Wolf. I have a granddaughter. It just says Wolf. So now it's a standing joke. She's older now. Hey, Wolf. And I'm like, OK, fine. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's that's a really cute one. I like that. Yeah.

All right, Gary, how about you? Yeah, so I, as you know, I lived and worked in London for many years. And after living and driving in London for about eight years, I had to take a UK driver's license because my US driver's license expired. During that driving test, I almost hit a pedestrian.

But I still managed to pass the driving test. And the only reason I passed the driving test is because I hit the brake sooner than the inspector, as they call them, hit the brake on his side of the car because there was dual pedals on the car. And I spent almost the entire driving test looking at...

in the rear view mirror and my side mirrors because someone told me that the way you pass a driving test in the UK is to always be aware of what's behind you. So I did that pretty effectively, but nearly hit a pedestrian in the process. So there you go. And as long as you don't kill the pedestrian, you're fine. It's only when there's great bodily injury or death involved that they pay you for it. Yeah, that would have been a failure, I'm pretty sure. But

It would have been, yeah. I got lucky. Wow. Okay, well, I actually have my UK license too. Someday we should compare them. No pictures.

Angela, you're next. I'm such an open book. Something no one on this team probably knows is I did live theater when I was in college. Oh, awesome. Singing or just acting? No singing, only karaoke. Now we know one of our activities next time we get the team together. Yes, I do love karaoke.

Really bad karaoke. You guys may not have known that either. Well, then we're definitely going to do that next time we all get together. Sounds good. What was your best role in that? You know, so you have a leading role? Were you a tree or something? Yeah, kind of like a tree. No, I always played a person, Greg. Okay. I was in a two-act play or two-person play written by one of the other students who

who played a soldier and actually played a prostitute. Oh, oh, juicy roll. We're going to move on. Given the fact that this is an HR podcast, what's, what's one fun thing that no one knows about you? Well, so I revealed on the season eight, my, the fact that I used to sing soprano in the Rochester boys choir and,

But I was pretty musical when I was younger. So I played piano. I actually won a state competition in piano when I was, I think I was 11 when I was a kid.

when I did that. That's cool. Wow. Awesome. Yeah, and I couldn't even begin to read or play a note anymore because I gave it up at the age of 13 and haven't touched it again. I would love to hear you try to hit a soprano note. I think we all would. No, you wouldn't. We'll try that during karaoke. Yes. Right. Okay, and so I'll skip mine given the fact that everybody knows everything about me and it's

It's so hard to scrape another thing off the floor to be able to tell you. So we're going to go right into our topic today, which is predictions for 2025. We're going to start, though, with this team reviewing their predictions for 2024, because we did this episode, wow, probably late 2023, where we talked about what was upcoming for 2024.

And so we're going to review those for right now and see where they've taken us. See how accurate we were. So Courtney, we're starting with you. Their 2024 prediction was traditional benefits being restructured with more mental health and wellness offerings. I think this is a hard one, but what do you think? What's your opinion about that one?

Yeah, I think it's hard for us to gauge. But my guess is that many organizations probably did restructure their traditional benefits to enhance health and wellness offerings, you know, and have more focus on holistic well-being for their employees. But I didn't hear as much about it as I thought we would. So I don't think it was as much of a trend as I originally anticipated. Not saying that organizations didn't do it. It just wasn't as much of a trend. Right.

I'm still going to give you a passing grade because I think most companies have actually focused on it, given some of the claims history they've been dealing with, especially around mental health. So I'm going to give you a B plus on that one, even though it may have been under the radar. Well, David, I was going to add, I think in the past year is when I noticed that, you know, there's apps for mental health and wellness. I'm sure they were there before. I just kind of

They actually have commercials on TV for them now. So somebody is buying that service enough for them to advertise. So, yeah. Well, for those of us who tried to get mental health counseling during the pandemic and knew it was a nightmare, especially given licensing issues in our states and because everybody was asking for those kind of services.

Those things have been godsends, Eric, especially when you've been able to get much more telehealth than we used to in the past, especially with mental health challenges. So, Eric, we're rolling into you now. Your 2024 prediction was remote work struggles for organizations and employees. And got to be honest, my friend, that's not true.

That was really top of mind for most companies. Yeah, I think I've paid attention to that. A lot of clients were still asking questions about that in terms of how do we deal with all our remote workers? Some organizations were completely remote. Other organizations, probably in the last six months, started the return to office approach.

And probably got with mixed reactions there from the employees who now have to report to an office several days a week or something. So I feel pretty good about that one. Yeah. Yeah. Spot on. I think that one was an A plus. What do you think, Dwight? Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think the you know, my feeling on it was that.

That genie isn't going back in the bottle, but I think the reality is that some of these corporations are forcing it back in the bottle. And so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out over the next year or two as some of that volume takes place with it. Absolutely. Greg, you had a really interesting one, which was lower salary increase than 4%. What do you think?

You know, you could kind of feel it happening in the market where it was just being pulled back a little bit. And even though for a while it was much higher and there was such an emphasis, you know, you just kind of felt the kind of fatigue setting in that, okay, we've got to kind of take a breath. We can't keep moving forward. So I don't know. I mean, you can kind of look and see what they were. I guess they were under 4% in kind of most kind of predictions and

And it'll be interesting to see how it plays out this year. But, you know, I don't know. It's still up in the air. The surveys are definitely pointing to lower and we don't have the inflationary pressures anymore. So that's not we're not getting the pressures from the employees or the the unions as much. I mean, we did. Maybe the unions is still to a larger extent. Yeah. But yeah.

we're definitely not seeing inflationary pressures pushing on the merit increase or the total increase budgets. So yeah, as we get the surveys back and as we start to reconcile what's actually going to happen in 2025 versus what actually happened in 2024, I think you were dead on with less than 4%. So what do we want to give him? How about a A on that one? Yeah, I'll go with an A. Yeah, good one. Gary.

career progression line of sight as best practice. So we definitely saw a focus on this during the discussions around pay transparency. Yeah, we did, David. And there were two states, Colorado and Illinois, that introduced as part of their pay transparency laws a requirement for career progression disclosures. And I thought maybe this was going to be a trend. I thought maybe we would see more states requiring that. Certainly, we expect more states to continue to

you know, consider increased pay transparency legislation, mostly focused on, you know, wages, right, and providing some visibility into salary ranges for various jobs. The career progression, you know, line of sight, you know, I don't know that we're going to see a lot more legislative activity around that. Certainly, even that exists in Illinois and Colorado has very limited enforcement action, right? So it doesn't have a whole lot of legs. But

You know, anecdotally, we are seeing a lot of organizations who we work with

begin to focus on internal equity. You know, we've historically as consultants, we've always sort of relied upon market pricing as have our clients to sort of develop job hierarchies. But we are seeing a lot of interest in understanding the relationship of jobs and the hierarchy of positions. And that's, I think, going to, you know, probably continue to be an area of focus and challenge for a lot of organizations. Absolutely.

And for those organizations that actually have to operate in Illinois or Colorado, we would hope that they would utilize this opportunity to use career progression or career frameworks across the board, right? As what we were calling the highest common denominator or, you know, however you want to look at it, lowest common denominator. All right. So what do we want to give them on this, Dwight? I think it's a B.

Yeah, I'll go with B plus B plus. Oh, yeah, you're you're a greater. All right, Angela, you didn't give us a prediction last year because you weren't with us. So what would your prediction? I got a good one. And then we'll grade you based on that. I see a Republican takeover of the House, Senate and presidency in 2024. No, I'm kidding. Oh,

kidding. You know, I did have a prediction that pay would start to level out. So kind of along the lines of what Greg said, but not just pay increases, but, you know, chasing the labor and chasing, you know,

recruitment efforts with higher pay and higher incentives, I thought that would start to level out. And I think it has. I think it will continue to level out. Okay. Well, in retrospect, what do we think, Dwight? That seems like an A+, but...

Yeah, I'll go with you on that. All right. All right. We definitely saw that trend happen. Okay. Hey, why did I only get an A then? I mean, I know the presentation was better, but it's... You know what? I'm actually going to make Greg's an A-minus now, given the fact that he is challenged. Yeah, exactly. You had been graded down. As long as it's an A, you know. If I got an A, it's not very common, so I'll take it. No.

The overachiever. Well, there were some fascinating follow-up predictions. And Dwight, you actually had a good one. And it was on recessionary pressures. Did you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I think we were starting to see little blips on the radar of potential recession and

And, you know, even though we haven't we haven't gone into a deep recession, I think we're seeing just in the job market and the leveling out of pay, the spending, the credit card debt. Oh, yeah. You know, a lot of a lot of economic signs that we may not be in full recession, but we definitely have kind of pulled back into a little bit of a recession. And hopefully we're going to bounce back out of it. But.

It's going to take a bit. Yeah, that's definitely an A+. Sorry, Greg. But we definitely had recessionary pressures. I think all of us felt it, not just on the business side, but also on the consumer side as well. And yeah, we definitely had seen something, but it was much more of a slowdown than it was a full-on recession. Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry, Greg. I hated to be right on that one, but Dwight was right on that one.

So I'm going to give you an A on that one. So that closes off on 2024. And I think we're all kind of sad. We're coming up on Thanksgiving here when we record this. And I think all of these predictions portend to an interesting 2025 discussion. Let's get into that now. Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by salary.com. Now back to the show.

So 2025 prediction topics, instead of going from Courtney, because I see the angst on her face. Why don't we start with going from the bottom up? So Dwight, I'm going to hit you up first on these predictions. Let's start with you on your 2025 prediction topic. Okay.

I want to talk about health care for a minute. You know, in the wake of the pandemic, there was a mass exodus of workers from health care and the industry really hasn't bounced back from that. There's you know, there are some indications that things are getting a little less tight in terms of staffing, but for the most part, we're

are still struggling. So the state of California, in response to this, actually enacted a healthcare minimum wage law that went into effect October 15th of this year, October 16th, I'm sorry. And that is really designed to kind of combat some of these staffing pressures that healthcare organizations have. So my prediction is that

California was first out of the gate on this, but I anticipate us at least seeing legislation introduced in other states. You know, how long it takes to get passed, we don't know for sure. But I think we're going to start to see some of the same. So over the weekend, Dwight, I heard a radio commercial multiple times for a health care company in Palm Springs recruiting nurses and nurses.

all levels of nursing and offering relocation bonuses and really promoting, you know, the work life experience, the employee experience. Here I am in Kentucky hearing these commercials, trying to recruit nurses and soon to graduate nursing students to Palm Springs, California. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it is incredible. I mean, the pressures that they're feeling and the, the,

pay and the incentives that they're having to offer just to get people in the door uh just like what you were hearing in those commercials it's just phenomenal and i you know they're they're hit with this other pressure of um more of the more of the um

aging population coming through. So the demand for services is increasing at the same time as their staffing is decreasing for the most part. You'd think that the healthcare industry was dealing with this through the market, meaning change of wages,

As Angela pointed out find new sources of recruitment and be able to recruit the right people but going the legislative route is using the hammer instead of using the market so Maybe it'll change. It's a really good focus area and it's a really good prediction So let's follow up on it and see what happens with that. Okay, excellent. I

Angela, you are next. What is your prediction for 2025? I hate to lean on politics, but I'm going to have to. I think I'm going to have two topics here. Is that okay? They're related. As long as they're quick ones, yeah. Yes, yes. So I think we're going to see a lot more focus on civility in the workplace. I think we're going to have a lot of conflict in the coming months and years.

And then, you know, this mass deportation that we're hearing about is going to impact the workforce. It's going to impact the labor market. It's going to impact workplaces. It's going to impact supply chain. I mean, if this happens, it's going to, you know—

It's not going to be good news. Let's just say that. I don't want to say disastrous, but it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough for our country and tough for our employers. But you can imagine that there's also going to be some civil pushback, like potentially strikes, potentially shutdowns. You'll see people who are going to get out ahead of this and say, this is inhumane and kind of stop up the works a little bit. So

It is going to be problematic. I think the first one about civility is going to be tremendously important, given the fact that there have been so many divides in neighborhoods, you know, people living next to each other with the signs on their front lawns. And so it's going to extend into the workplace and it's going to cause trouble in the workplace. So I totally agree with both of those. And I hope you're right at

There's more civility and I hope you're wrong that we don't have those deportations, but that's just me.

I do, too. I think you're spot on with those. I mean, even with what we were talking about with the health care staffing shortage, one of the biggest contributors is burnout due to harassment by health care workers. And I think that that isn't only specific to health care. I think it's across the board. People are feeling it. Well, especially when you're dealing with people like travel industry. Right. They're facing a lot of burnout, too. Yeah. Yeah.

All right, Gary, you're up next, my friend. Yeah, so I'm going to kind of stick with my theme around internal equity. And, you know, I think, you know, as a result of the election and the political climate we're in right now, I think we're going to see some potential upheaval in the workplace and maybe more.

you know, a number of different dimensions. Of course, you know, the big thing that's catching the headlines is there's sort of a rollback of DEI initiatives, you know, pushed by activist shareholders and political agendas. And I think, you know, for some organizations, they're going to double down on their DEI efforts. But I think, you know, how we think about

internal equity and how we address internal equity is going to be a challenge. And I don't know if there's any one way or a right way. I think every organization has to decide what's right for them based on their culture and their organizational values. But I do think that we're going to need to spend a lot more time...

doing the work around what we used to call job evaluation, which is really sort of building a job hierarchy, being real clear about how we define roles in an organization, and also developing, you know, more efficient and consistent processes around performance evaluation. And, you know, we've seen and heard a lot anecdotally, again, about, you know, skills-based hiring. And certainly that's an area that we focused on in supporting our clients and sort of

skills, competency-based models. But I see this as going to be a real challenge for a lot of organizations of all sizes. I think we're going to see the headlines for some of the large national, multinational corporations who are being pressured to

you know, to roll back their DEI efforts. But I think in a lot of other instances, you know, organizations are going to double down because it's inherently important to them in terms of their culture and values. And I think it'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out. That's a good one. We'll be watching that one very carefully and closely.

Greg, how about you, my friend? Is it a Chiefs win in February? Yeah, no, don't jinx us, please. But, you know, it was kind of a little bit. Mine's that I thought a lot about, especially since we had our family Thanksgiving dinner yesterday and the kids and spouses and grandkids were all over and father and

It really focuses on remote work versus a return-to-work business strategy. And, you know, it's pretty much become a permanent feature. I mean, it's almost like, hey, I'll quit this job to be able to get a remote job. And it's kind of interesting because half of the kids and spouses work every day outside. The other half have different options. But

You know, kind of for obvious reasons. And Dwight kind of mentioned earlier, you know, he kind of let the genie out of the bottle. It's not going back in. Right. But with that said, my prediction is that in 2025, you know, there's kind of a strong sentiment that, you know, 2024 kind of found its way and remote work is going to become more prevalent. And there's a lot of good reasons for that.

especially when you look at Amazon, Apple, Disney kind of saying, hey, we're coming back to work. But I really think in 2025, we're going to see more of getting people back to work. It's going to become more commonplace.

You know, I know we're not into 2026, but I think it's going to be back in 2026, not to pre-pandemic levels, but really kind of more an exception if you're working remote than vice versa. And I'll leave it at the main reason for that. Employers aren't going to try to get the genie back in the bottle totally, even though they, you know, there's enough surveys that say, you

you know, getting them back in the office improves productivity, da-da-da, on and on. I think it's going to be pushed by employees. Right. Meaning that they're going to kind of get into, you know, I kind of like the social aspect. I kind of like learning. And also the main thing, and it's kind of interesting because it came up yesterday during dinner, is that, you know, in some ways,

We only have to go in as a hybrid, but you almost feel that if you don't go in, you might be missing out on opportunities. You might be missing out on networking. So I think it's going to be more of a push the other way, more from employees with the help and nudging of employers. By the way, Greg, the return to office, remember all the problems we used to have being in the office? They're still there. Yeah.

What are you talking about, David? Nothing. I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying that I think we have a short memory on the things that were problematic when we were in the office, when we all worked together. And I think there's a romanticism about when you come into the office, everything's going to be fixed and everything's going to be better.

And then when people do it and they go, this place is a dump and no one wants to talk to me. And by the way, I'm not saying our office. I'm just saying. Just to be clear that, you know, my coffee is better at my cup for my coffee brewer. Let's just put it that way. Hey, David, I think your point's a good one in that. But I think employers are kind of realizing they're going to make adjustments. It's like, hey, we want to get back to work.

And when you come into work, we want to make you want to be back. We want you to kind of get into the positives and maybe eliminate some of the negatives. And I think kind of we talked about benefits a little bit. I really do think organizations are going to focus more on, you know, maybe child care benefits, maybe commuter kind of support, those types of things just to make it, you know, that that

Exactly, Greg. And that's what would make this more successful, which is not just telling them you've got to, but saying, hey, we're going to help you do it, which is very different than a get your butt back in here or you're gone, which is the way some of the communications had been going. So.

Yeah, especially with some of the larger high profile. They can get by with it. But for a majority of companies, it's like, no, they don't have that kind of leverage. So it'll be interesting. That's kind of what I just didn't talk to folks and hearing it. Have we solved the child care problem? No, definitely not. No, that's going to be that's going to be a big rock to move.

I agree. I think some of these employers are putting in their own child care centers for that very reason. I've seen that in the last 18 months. Yeah. So Angela's advice is buy stock in Bright Horizons right now. Yeah. Yes. Okay, Eric, it's yours. What is your 2025 prediction? My prediction kind of goes along the same lines as what Gary mentioned, right? But I think there's going to be...

continued obligations from organizations around pay equity and transparency right we know it's it's a compliance exercise in some areas um and other organizations are doing it just from a uh they think it's the right thing to do or they know it's the right thing to do or there's that demand from people they're trying to recruit um and the general kind of workforce just kind of will

I think, start to put more pressure on employers of all sizes to be a little more transparent around, hey, what's the actual opportunity here? What's my next step? How do I get there? Those types of things. And just an increased focus on internal pay equity, because it's just going to be something that you talk about every week. And I think outside of the US, right, that's kind of going through the EU right now,

Different countries have different timelines, but it's definitely a focus there. And I think we're going to see more of it. Totally agree, Eric. And actually applaud that one. And I'm already pre giving that one an A plus. That's an easy one. Yeah, that was good. It was an easy one. All right, Courtney, you're up. Okay. So a year ago, I remember Eric saying,

predicting his trend that we're going to see more return to office. And I remember my reaction to that being no way. Remote work is here to stay. There's no way. So, however...

We've actually seen this year in-person work increasingly make a comeback. We've seen it all over the news, big companies, you know, like Amazon, Salesforce, pushing for employees to return to work. And they're doing that in various ways, right? Like the hybrid models, some of them are pushing full-time return to office mandates, right?

And then we saw in September, KPMG published their CEO Outlook survey, and it showed nearly 80% of CEOs plan to have their employees back in office within the next three years. And so my trend looking into 2025, my prediction is that

We will continue to see companies drive return to office with the aim being to boost productivity and also strengthen company culture.

Another thing I've noticed right now, I think there's this window of opportunity as we shift from, you know, COVID remote culture to this in-office culture. Candidates that are in the market for a new job and are willing to work on site have a huge edge right now in the job market.

If they're willing to go in office, there'll be a cut above. Interesting. Yeah. I agree with that. I do. Yeah.

Personally, I give that one an F. But you actually know it's an A. Yeah, exactly. Professionally, I think it's an A, but personally, I hate it. Scoring bias. Hey, a year ago, I was like, there's no way. But we've seen it this year. So I think it's going to continue. I think there's definitely a note for a trend here. I think it's a little bit between, and this is just my personal opinion, between what Greg was saying and what you're saying.

I don't see it being so straightforward. I think there still has to be that hybrid approach, at least in the interim. And I don't agree that we are going to see productivity gains for being back in the office. I think we had lots of productivity gains. That's the aim. I'm not saying that it will. Oh, no, no, I know. Yeah, I agree. I just wanted noted for the transcript, though.

The aim, not the result. Yeah, exactly. All right. I think what's going to become clear is there's a right way of doing it and there's a wrong way of doing it. And I think we're going to see some companies fall completely flat on their face and some companies are going to have raging success with it. And it'll be interesting to figure out what those right and wrong ways are over the next year. And I do think it depends on what you're...

your job family is and where you are in your career. If you're in an early stage of your career where you're still learning and developing, I think that happens more effectively when you're in office around colleagues to learn and develop from. If you're in a job where you're just doing data entry or programming and you're not learning to do that more effectively in an office,

You're going to be better and more productive remote. So I think there's a lot of caveats there. And I do to what Greg was saying, I think because I've talked to a lot of younger folks to mostly in the HR arena here in Kentucky and

And they want to be in office because that's where they're learning. That's where they're growing. That's where they're making an impact and a brand for themselves. So I do think there's a lot of caveats.

Absolutely. Yeah. I don't know if you all remember, but before the pandemic, there were lots of outsourcing and, and, and actually there were lots of, um, organizations who are taking groups that didn't need to be in an office and they were putting in other places and,

I know that especially Idaho and Iowa and lots of those out west, Midwest and west, those states were actually getting the recipients of call centers, for example, where the call centers didn't need to be back east where they were relatively expensive. And so mix that with the need to not necessarily be in an office. And to me, that seems like there will be a right sizing of who needs to be

in which office. And so there may be satellite offices created in order to have return to office make sense and not force people into coming to an office. So that's not a prediction. That's a comment on Courtney's strong return to office prediction. But now my prediction is,

So I originally was going to say, to be honest, because everybody knows on this podcast who listens to me that I'm an honest guy. I initially was going to say there was going to be no rollback of FLSA changes in 2025. Actually, I get an A on this. You know why? Because the rollback happened in 2024. Yeah.

And at least I can make myself laugh on that. Technicality. I won on a technicality. Yes. Cause it happened already. I'm going to go with an F on that. Yeah. My podcast, my rules. Sorry, Eric. Come on, Dwight. Back me up. Dude. I'm with you. Wow. Mutiny on the bounty. You heard it here, folks, but that's not going to be my prediction.

I'm being honest. That was my prediction, and I was right. But my prediction for 2025 will be there will not be a major shift in how HR does its work with the advent of AI. Not yet. We're going to start to see more awareness of AI. We're going to start to see potentially more adoption of certain pieces of AI in the HR world, but not a wholesale change to HR.

Because after just having seen all this at HR Tech in 2024, there's going to be a longer cycle for adoption here. So my prediction for 2025 is no major change, major change in how HR gets done within 2025. Almost status quo, huh? Potentially. I think that's a good one, David. Still, though, and Dwight's putting up an HBR statement.

about embracing AI at work. Totally agree, Dwight. I'm saying there's not going to be a sea change yet. I think we still in HR need an adoption curve for AI in HR. And HR is so sensitive and personal that...

We're going to need to digest it a bit to figure out what's the right thing. Now, if we're talking about bots taking on process change, okay, I get that. That's not major. That's outsourcing, which we've always been doing, outsourcing little processes. Where I'm coming at it, and it's not going to be this major thing that happens in 2025 where we look back in 2026 and go, holy crap, do you believe that happened?

Not yet. I'm with you on that. I think you're exactly right. I mean, it's so young on the adoption curve, and there's so much unknown with it. It's going to help in some ways, but yeah, it'll be interesting to look back at the prediction, but I agree with you mostly on it. Well, I'm going to get all of you together next year at around this time, right before Thanksgiving, and we're going to go through all of these and see how we did.

I have a question. Yeah, go ahead. How often are all of you using AI?

Every day. Every day. Well, I mean, we're using it every day for changing our text as we're typing or texting. So it's tough to say, Angela, what do you mean by using AI? Are we using chat GPT or some other generative AI? Yeah, it's just a generic question. So I don't disagree with you, David. I don't think it's going to have a huge impact on changing HR as a function. But I do think...

but individually it's impacting the way we're doing work. Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Listen, I mean, if you go to LinkedIn and you put in a post in LinkedIn, there's a little thing there that says, do you want AI to check to see if it can fix what you've written? So, but those things have been happening for years. We've just not realized that that's actually an algorithm, you know, going through our grammar or going through the words we're using and making sure that they're accurate. Yeah.

Um, so yeah, we've been living in it for a long time. We've been swimming in it. Problem is, is that it's, it's,

Those are very, very small changes to how we've been doing things. We're impactful, but small. Yeah. Great. Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, man, I wish I could talk to David about this? Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind.

Go to salary.com forward slash HRDL consulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. All right. Anybody want to give a backup or a follow up on what they've said? If there's something that's burning from a prediction perspective that you wanted to put on the record? All right. Look at these faces. I'm looking at a bunch of faces and they're like, no, I've actually said my piece and we're good with what we've said. I'm solid. Yeah. All right.

Courtney, you know, I don't. Hey, I'm just going to support yours, David. That was going to be mine. Seriously, because I think I think this year was the year that like at the incumbent level, people increase their familiarity and comfort around AI. And so I think slowly it'll progress to systems and it'll be more on the macro level. Yeah. It's just the pace. Right. So for adoption. There you go, Gary. Yeah. But you.

Yeah, I just think 2025 is going to be a year of some uncertainty. And I think it's going to be a bumpy ride. And not that we haven't been through a bumpy ride in the last few years, let's face it. But I think the workplace environment is probably going to change and evolve for a lot of organizations and remains to be seen how it all shakes out and maybe differently for different types of organizations. But

you know, we're going to have to pay attention, right? And hopefully not shoot from the hip. And, you know, before we make any sort of substantive changes, hopefully they're well thought out and reasoned and, you know, to try to find the best solution for those organizations we work with. Well said. Greg, anything from you?

Maybe the only thing I really think probably the main indicator on return to work is really the unemployment level. If it gets above four, four and a half, 4.6, I think that changes the dynamic and the balance a little bit where employers have a little more of saying, hey, we really want you in the office. If you come here and with the limited opportunities, potentially that that's going to kind of help drive it other than,

employees kind of seeing maybe the benefit. Yeah. Good point. Angela, anything else? I don't think so. I'm just really concerned about the impact of our political environment. I'm with you, Eric. How about you? I don't think I have anything to add to my prediction. I think it's solid. Oh, that's for itself.

And I'm going to end with my buddy, Dwight Brown. Dwight, how about you? Oh, I've said my piece. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out in 2025. I'm going to end in advance, give myself an A+.

That's common. You heard it here, folks. Yeah, that plays out in 2025. Yes, you heard it here, folks. He's going to get an A- on his prediction, but he's going to get an S on his doubling down on that prediction.

Thank you all for joining. You're all awesome. I am so blessed to work with such an incredibly talented group of folks like yourselves. Thank you very much for joining our podcast as guests today, including you, Dwight. And I look forward to getting back together with you next year and going over all of these. It's going to be fun. Look forward to it, Dan. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. And thank you all. Take care and stay safe.

That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe. And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week and stay tuned for our next episode. Stay safe.