EP 45 The State of the Hot Tub Workplace in the Empty Red Seat

Tony and Steve break down parts of SHRM's annual State of the Workplace report, but only after venturing into stories of strange women playing footsies with Steve on a cruse.  Who is the most optimistic that employers are meeting the needs of their employees?  Employees, HR professionals, and HR Executives, are all in agreement that the second biggest need n the workplace is...?  Want to know what is happening now in HR?  This is your episode. 


Find the study at: https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/research/state-of-the-workplace-summary-and-report/2026-sowp-full-report


Join us at Fuel HR on May 14.  Learn more at: https://hracu.starchapter.com/meetinginfo.php?id=88&ts=1744305292


Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven “Big Deal” Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn more about our sponsor MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Lean more about Jobs for America's Graduates (JAG) at: https://jag.org/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/


Join us at Fuel HR on May 14.  Learn more at: https://hracu.starchapter.com/meetinginfo.php?id=88&ts=1744305292

Creators and Guests

Host

Fantastic Tony Benjamin

I am a unique HR leader with more than 20 years’ experience working for some of Utah’s oldest, fastest growing, and most well-known companies. My experience includes Superior Drilling Products, Air Medical Resource Group, Control4, Ovivo USA and Deseret Book. I am a regionally recognized authority on building successful cultures and am an alumni speaker at DisruptHR SLC and DisruptHR St. George. I have earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix, a Bachelor’s degree from Utah State University, and am a certified Professional of Human Resources (PHR). I'm married to a woman out of my league, have three brilliant kids I doesn’t deserve and, although I travel a lot, live in Vernal, Utah.

Host

Steven "Big Deal" Smith

Steve will be the first to tell you that recruiting is marketing. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Finance at Brigham Young University and started his career in recruiting in Feb 2005. In 2008, he took a risk during a recession to help start a new company with Ryan Kohler, called ApplicantPro, a full suite HR platform for small to mid-sized businesses. In March 2025, ApplicantPro became iSolved Talent Acquisition, now serving 177,000 clients and close to 9800 employees. Before the merger, ApplicantPro made the Inc 5000 list 12 years in a row, Top Places to work in Utah 3 years in a row, and Steve was named the Small Business Utah HR Achievement Award winner in May 2024. iSolved was also named an Indeed Platinum Partner in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and is one of only ten ATS platforms in the country to obtain that designation. SHRM-CP & PHR certified, Steve currently volunteers on the Utah SHRM State Council as the immediate past State Executive Director. His book, The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction, was released in early 2023, and has helped thousands of organizations across the country rethink their approach to hiring. If you need help understanding the principles and role of SEO, marketing, and AI when it comes to attracting job seekers, Steve provides a solid framework for hiring effectively.

What is The HR Life Podcast?

The HR Life Podcast is a show about the work-life experience of those of us in Human Resources and business leadership. This long-form podcast is a conversation, casual, and not always the corporate line. Hosts and guests touch on everything from serious or even controversial topics to the absurdity of modern American business practices. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of The Grange Strategic HR Consulting, and Steven J. Smith, Author of The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction and all-around important guy. Guests include the best minds in the HR world. Join the show weekly.

Tony Benjamin (00:08.171)
Welcome to the HR life podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are fantastic. Tony Benjamin owner and founder of the Grange strategic HR consulting and Stephen big deals Smith, who is such a big deal that old women make passes at him on cruise ships.

Steve-o (00:32.259)
man.

Tony Benjamin (00:34.968)
Hey Steve!

Steve-o (00:35.714)
You had to bring that one up. This is why I don't go on the HR cruise. Like I'm really scared to. Somebody asked me one year to go speak on the HR cruise because they have an HR cruise every year. Yeah. And I think I've been asked like two years in a row, please, please apply and you know all that stuff. And I am scared to death to do that.

Tony Benjamin (00:45.149)
really?

Tony Benjamin (01:00.05)
are you going to tell the story behind this or you just that's well, you know, I got you cornered. So.

Steve-o (01:01.887)
I'm gonna have to now, I have no choice.

You do have me cornered. you know, cruises have little hot tubs that you can get, you know, step into and they're I don't I can't even really call them a hot tub. They're more like a lukewarm tub. You know, they're just at that temperature where you know somebody peed in the water. Yeah, you just know they peed in the water, right? I don't know. It's just it's just this weird lukewarm ish anyway. So.

Tony Benjamin (01:24.174)
the McDonald's liability. Oh, oh, oh.

Steve-o (01:34.018)
So that on this particular cruise, I think I believe this was our 10 year anniversary, if I'm not mistaken. I'm sure my wife will correct me later, but I'm pretty sure this was our 10 year anniversary cruise. And there's the hot tub, right? So we said, let's go get in the hot tub. Well, the hot tub was completely full except for one little spot next to a very young couple. mean, this this couple was probably in their very early 20s. They look like they were newly married. This was probably more than likely their honeymoon.

And so we walk around the little hot tub and step in and I sit next to the girl that's there and then my wife sits on my right. And so we sit down and we're in the hot tub. All of a sudden, as soon as we sit down within, I don't know, a few minutes, the entire, everybody left the hot tub that was there. I guess it was a group, except for this young couple and us who are still sitting very much close to one another. Okay. Well, this older woman,

Tony Benjamin (02:27.63)
yeah.

Steve-o (02:33.09)
is, you know, the music's going and she's doing her little dancing and, you know, the shoulders are swaying and she's doing all these things and she moses on up to the hot tub area and goes up the little steps. Now, the steps were opposite of us. So we were on the other side where there were no steps. The steps were opposite. She walks, you know, does a little shimming down the steps and then she walks towards me and this girl who's sitting next to me and literally turns around and shimmies her little bottom.

in between us and kind of bumps her over bumps me over and literally sits in right between us. And let me tell you, there was probably not more than than a maybe a dollar bill's length between us. But she shimmied herself in there and then sat right next to us. The whole tub was completely empty. So I so at this point, I'm just like, this is a weird. This is just weird. All of a sudden, I feel her.

Tony Benjamin (03:17.869)
Right, right, right.

Steve-o (03:30.754)
going up my leg.

And I freak out. I'm like, what is going on? I kind of jump a little bit and my wife is like, what is going on? was like, leg is like literally, her foot is going up my leg right now. And as soon as she hit the end of my swim trunks and going under my, I was done. Under my swim tracks, I'm done. I'm out. So we get out, we exit. And I'm like, what is going on? yeah, so awesome.

Tony Benjamin (03:54.264)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (03:58.35)
That's awesome. That's awesome. That's it. Well, well, you know, you are a big deal. And not just in the HR world in the cruise world to, you know, just saying so.

Steve-o (04:05.664)
I guess so.

Steve-o (04:11.542)
You know, I was hypnotized on a cruise once too. That's another story. We'll talk about that later.

Tony Benjamin (04:14.846)
that's even worse. Yeah, that is another story. That is another story. I need to see Steve mumbling statistics in his hypnotized state. even better. That's right. That's right.

Steve-o (04:23.636)
In Chinese, by the way. Anyway, like I said, story for another day. I believe it may have been the same cruise. no, it was a cruise with my mother-in-law, which made it all the more fun. Anyway.

Tony Benjamin (04:37.198)
yeah, yeah. No, I, yeah, that's okay. Wow. And everything I know about your wife and your mother-in-law's relationship, that's had to be an awesome cruise.

Steve-o (04:47.692)
Well, it was much better back then, yeah. Maybe I'm the cause of it.

Tony Benjamin (04:52.684)
that's I see. I see. Yeah, yeah. No, that's that's that's funny. So my wife and I spent it was it was her birthday this week and we we spent some time in Grand Junction. It was really cool. If no one's ever been to downtown Grand Junction in Colorado, it's a fun place. You get a hotel and there's probably a mile or so of just small, cool businesses that are there.

Steve-o (04:56.403)
dear.

Steve-o (05:06.7)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (05:22.702)
There's a vinyl record shop and there's some, you know, vintage clothes and furniture place stuff you can get there. And there's Italian gelatos and classic sodas and sandwich shops. And there's a Lego store, which is really cool. That's along there. But yeah, anyway, so when we get to the HR in life segment, I'll talk more about that too, but we spent some time there. It was really cool. So there you go. If anyone is looking for that.

Steve-o (05:22.816)
little shops.

Steve-o (05:40.469)
Way cool.

Steve-o (05:50.69)
Grand Junction. Nice.

Tony Benjamin (05:52.418)
Yeah, Grand Junction, Colorado. It's a great getaway. The rates were pretty good. I think with taxes and everything included, I think I paid 155 for the night was all so not too bad. Yeah.

Steve-o (06:02.85)
Wow. Yeah, not bad at all. Most hotels nowadays are in the 250 to 300 range, you know, starting out, you know, that's before like the fees and the parking and the all. But I don't know. I feel like there's so many itemized fees now that it's just like five dollars here, twenty dollars there, twenty dollars here, eight dollars there. Wow. Heaven forbid I drink the water because then they charge me twelve.

Tony Benjamin (06:08.94)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (06:15.757)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (06:21.504)
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Right. Exactly. Hey, now, no one can see this, but behind Steve is Steve's Christmas tree with all of these Star Wars ornaments and everything on there. We got to ask for the for the routine update. We have not found the tree topper yet, I'm guessing. Right.

Steve-o (06:37.278)
Always.

Steve-o (06:44.426)
We have not. No. And I. I found a few more bins downstairs that had off Steve office stuff in it. I have not opened them yet. I I almost suspect, that they're there. And so I I need there's three of them and they're they're the big you know, you go to Sam's Club or maybe people go to Costco. I go to Sam's Club mostly, but.

The yellow top bins, the black bins that with the yellow top, you know that they all they're very stackable, very commonly seen right now. So it's three of those that are completely full. And so so I've got to yeah, I've got to go through them, but I wonder if that's where they are, because it says Steve's office stuff. So. Fingers crossed, we'll see. I haven't had a lot of time to go through a whole lot right now, but. Yeah, anyway.

Tony Benjamin (07:14.468)
yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (07:21.367)
Tony Benjamin (07:31.01)
very descriptive stuff.

Tony Benjamin (07:37.174)
Yeah. Well, there you go. Well, the reason I thought of that is because just over your shoulder is a stormtrooper and he's pointing a gun right at me. So I'm intimidated and scared.

Steve-o (07:43.18)
His Grogu. nice.

Good job, buddy. Yeah, he's standing there kind of like a sentinel. So there you go.

Tony Benjamin (07:54.883)
Yeah, yeah, over your shoulder. That's your shoulder angel or whatever. anyways.

Steve-o (07:58.594)
Yeah.

Well, you realize I could take.

This version of the Grogu has that little magnet, so you put it underneath your shoulder right here. And he literally sits on the shoulder because it's a magnet, so I can move my shoulder and he won't fall.

Tony Benjamin (08:10.731)
shoulder grogu. This is shoulder grogu.

Tony Benjamin (08:16.834)
That's right. And it's very cute. For those of you who cannot see what I'm seeing right now, it's cute.

Steve-o (08:20.158)
It's cute. It's fine. Obviously, this is one of those Disney treats you can get. I think I have a hey hey and a few others around somewhere.

Tony Benjamin (08:29.198)
Right, right. In addition to the Indiana Jones hat and everything else, he got floating around. So you know what?

Steve-o (08:36.468)
Right. I even have Indiana Jones or Henry Jones diary. So.

Tony Benjamin (08:43.18)
Hey, I just I just want to say this to to our friends at the Georgia State Council and all the other state councils that are now I'm starting to interact with on Facebook and other places that you know we interact with. I just want to say you guys only to step up your themes a little bit. We here in Utah. We had the adventure theme a few years ago and it was Indiana Jones was the focus of it and our t-shirts read.

You can't spell Henry Jones Jr. without HR. And it was.

Steve-o (09:17.606)
fun. It was a lot of fun. Well, we even had whips on stage, so there you go.

Tony Benjamin (09:23.02)
That's right. That's right. A bunch of us on staff had our Indiana Jones hats and we had whips on our hips and, and Johnny got up Johnny Katziannis, the current director, the executive director, whatever his title is. He got up and used, cause where did he learn that was in South America on his mission or something, right? Wasn't it there? I can't remember. Maybe it was Portugal. I can't remember now. But anyways, he had, was it that?

Steve-o (09:27.562)
In fact, yeah, Johnny Katsianis. Yeah, he's the current. Yeah.

Steve-o (09:44.092)
I can't, no, it was like Mongolia or something. was some, it was some, yeah, I can't even remember. Johnny's gonna hate us. He's gonna hear this episode and he's gonna write us. He's gonna tell us.

Tony Benjamin (09:51.649)
Anyways, but he learned how to use a That's well, next time I see him, he'll he'll chastise me for my lack of memory. But yeah, he anyways, he got up on stage and showed a demonstrated how to make a whip crack and all that sort of stuff is fun. But the other day, I was looking in my closet and they're they're right next to the swag shirt I have for you, by the way, the next time I'm down there, which which will probably be on the 14th when we're at Central Utah Sherms.

Steve-o (10:16.258)
fun.

Tony Benjamin (10:20.975)
annual conference. That's probably where that will be. I will bring your shirt to you. So you will be branded with the Grange.

Steve-o (10:25.73)
fun.

Boom, baby. Just what I wanted to be branded by Tony.

Tony Benjamin (10:29.868)
That's right. That's right.

Well, you're lucky I don't do the heated brands. just do the shirts. So, you know, I've thought about that a lot. So anyway. Yes, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Stacked on top of each other. And because it's a heated brand, it would be nice and red, just like my logo. See that. There you go. Anyway, before we do anything else, though, obviously today is another empty red seat. We're.

Steve-o (10:41.942)
Let me guess, the letters would be H-R.

Steve-o (10:53.642)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Tony Benjamin (11:02.626)
We're coming up, Steve and I have been meeting and have meetings scheduled like several over the next week with all the guests that are coming up and they're all getting lined up. So we're really excited about that. That'll all be good.

Steve-o (11:12.544)
They are. Oddly enough, this time of year has been really hard to pinpoint a few of them, just the season, right? So, but that's fine. Yeah, well, not only first quarter, but I feel like April between Easter and conferences and just stuff that's happening, it's kind of a crazy month for sure.

Tony Benjamin (11:18.604)
Yeah. First quarter.

Tony Benjamin (11:32.482)
Yep. Now, with that said, however, Steve and I have some really cool stuff to talk to you about today. And who knows what we'll call this podcast when we post it up there or something like really cool stats or something.

Steve-o (11:40.023)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (11:47.406)
Really cool stats. We could call it state of the workplace. Just think thinking out loud.

Tony Benjamin (11:50.435)
before

Tony Benjamin (11:54.051)
we could. Yes. Okay. State of HR slash workplace. Before we do that, however, running a business is hard. HR shouldn't be. Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR. With expert support and everything from hiring to handbooks, compliance to culture, need payroll help or recruiting power. We do that too. Fractionally and flexibly, no overhead, just results.

visit megastarhr.com and let's grow your business together. All right, shout out to Becca. Thank you again for doing that. Yep. Hey, and make sure before we get into anything too deep here, make sure that you all come to the the fuel HR conference Central Utah, shirms annual conference, make sure you're there, we will be there. And we'll be recording, we'll be recording live from the place.

Steve-o (12:31.926)
Shout out

Steve-o (12:49.068)
We will. We will be recording, so we want all the scoop.

Tony Benjamin (12:53.698)
It'd be really cool. That's right. That's exactly right. So anyways, come make sure you come by and see us. And we are bringing podcast swag. So we don't want to say what it is, but it's really cool. I won't have enough for everybody. We'll just say that.

Steve-o (13:06.645)
yeah.

Nope. Nope. No, it'll be first come first serve. Actually, what we probably should do is give it first to the people that are willing to speak to us and then we can. Maybe I.

Tony Benjamin (13:15.597)
That's right.

Tony Benjamin (13:21.614)
Yeah, yeah, a little bribery always helps. So anyways, we were not going to say what it is, but I promise you've not seen this at a conference before or at least not.

Steve-o (13:34.176)
And it's not a, and you won't be Rick rolled or anything like that.

Tony Benjamin (13:38.958)
Rick rolling, not at all. And you don't have the people to listen to, so like, what is Rick rolled? What is that? That's right.

Steve-o (13:44.478)
I know, right? Especially the younger folks. I went to a swim class this morning. So my wife likes to go to these swim, not swim aerobics, swim zumba. Sorry, if I say aerobics, that's horrible. It makes it sound like the 80s. But we do this swim zumba class and they played one of Rick's songs today. So one of the people in the audience is like, we're going to get Rick rolled. And some people were like, huh?

But see, most of the people in that class are like in their 90s. And so it was to complete opposite. It was the generation that didn't know it because they were too old as opposed to the too young. There you go. I'm stuck in the middle.

Tony Benjamin (14:19.234)
right? Instead of too young. That that's funny. That that's hilarious. Here I am stuck in the middle with you. All right, today we want to go through shirms annual report the 2026 shirms state of the workplace. And shirm does this. Yeah, and we're not going to go into everything here. But we do want to touch on it. We

Steve-o (14:30.018)
Hmm.

Steve-o (14:38.345)
Yes, it released.

Steve-o (14:43.66)
Mm-mm.

Do they do it annually? I feel like it's not annual, it? Maybe it is. Okay.

Tony Benjamin (14:50.338)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they did one in 2025. And at least well, they were. That's right. Part of the research. And if you're a member of Sherm, you can go there and we'll include a link to it in the in the show notes and you can go there and you can. Yeah, you have to be a Sherm member first. Yeah. And I was trying to download a PDF copy of it and then we were going to.

Steve-o (14:55.446)
Part of

Steve-o (15:07.034)
Just know it will prompt you to log in, so you do have to be a member. So just FYI. Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (15:18.082)
pirate it because as Carissa says, you don't always have to be a pioneer, just a pirate. But then my conscience got me. And since Johnny C. Taylor, hint, hint, is such a good friend and always says hi to me whenever he's in the state, hint, hint, I'm you can sponsor this podcast if you want. I won't rip it off. That's right. That's right. I don't know. Yeah.

Steve-o (15:29.324)
He was just here.

Steve-o (15:39.51)
and hit Wink Wink.

No, we get sure I'm full credit. They they've been doing some research like this for several years now that I'm aware of and probably well beyond that. But some of the research has been it's been it's been interesting to see where things are at. And it's not research that is like 10 years old. Like it is this is literally information collected in October and November of 2025. So this is literally just the most update updated research available on this particular subject.

Tony Benjamin (16:00.259)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (16:12.288)
So there you go.

Tony Benjamin (16:13.568)
Exactly. Matter of fact, Steve, do you want to give us the five questions, the critical questions? Yeah.

Steve-o (16:17.398)
Yeah, yeah, let's talk about this real quick. So basically at the beginning, there's an introduction by Alex Alonzo. He's their chief data and analytics officer. Great guy, I've actually met him before and so he's just full of, you know, yeah, yeah. When I was a state director, you you go out to SHRM and you get to meet all these people. Anyway, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (16:30.198)
Wow. Wait, wait. You've you've met him too. OK, everybody.

Tony Benjamin (16:40.11)
I'm just going to say, well, maybe instead of the intro that I do every time, we're going to start like just dropping a name and see if you can go. yeah, I met them. I just met. Yeah, I met them. Steve Smith. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly right. OK, go ahead.

Steve-o (16:46.594)
It's just random. The seven degrees of big deal, Steve or something. But he, you know, you know, unlike most analytics officers that I'm aware of, he he actually has a great personality in that sense. I think that helps when you're telling a story. Yeah. So it's just kind of fun. So he does a little video. You can watch the video. But here are the five questions that the report was seeking to address in essence. So the first one is.

Tony Benjamin (17:03.18)
Wow, that's high praise.

Steve-o (17:15.446)
What are the top organizational needs identified by workers and employers? The second question is to what extent do workers and employers agree on those needs? Which I think is really important because again, that you're looking at perspective, right? What HR sees compared to what, or the employer sees HR. They actually have a section on HR. I'm surprised this isn't part of the questions, but in the data, it's not just employers and the workers, but they also ask HR directly.

And so it's really three categories, even though the question is only addressed to you. The third question is how effective are organizations at addressing those organizational needs? The fourth is what is the benefit of sufficiently addressing organizational needs and meeting those worker expectations? And then finally, what areas do US workers want HR to prioritize to meet their needs? So one thing to note about this, there you go, insurance, absolutely. It's always pet insurance, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (17:43.191)
Yes.

Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (18:04.256)
And the answer to that one is pet insurance. It's always pet insurance. That's right.

Steve-o (18:11.638)
Hey, I just took my dog. She, cut her foot really badly. We had to go to get stitches and I have pet insurance and they covered over half of it. So kudos to pet insurance. Cause that was pretty cool. Yeah. And when she had cancer, they, had to remove half of her jaw and covered that too. It was almost five grand. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty grateful for pet insurance right now. So.

Tony Benjamin (18:19.256)
Wow.

All that stuff.

Tony Benjamin (18:28.942)
Wow.

Tony Benjamin (18:34.24)
I bet you are. And a nice guy.

Steve-o (18:35.34)
But a quick thing, there were 2000 US-based workers that were polled for this, as well as 1800 HR professionals, and then 350 vice president role or higher within the organizations. And so that's kind of where this data is coming from, which is why they really have three categories, even though the questions seem to only address two. But that's where the data is coming from, just to kind of give everybody a heads up. So there you go.

Tony Benjamin (18:56.142)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (19:01.346)
You know, the only thing I wish they would have done in this report, and maybe this is just some feedback for sure, it would be really cool to find out how large these companies were. You know, how many employees, if they could break it down even further, because sometimes I feel like depending on the size of the organization, this kind of data can be a little bit skewed or maybe not even skewed, but just not 100 % accurate to maybe my personal situation, right, depending on the size of the company I work for. So anyway.

That's something I was curious about as I was going through this, it would be cool to have that broken down even further. I imagine they have that data. Maybe they just don't reveal it, but it would be cool. It'd be cool to see.

Tony Benjamin (19:43.969)
Now, and at the bottom of the report, there are several other listings of other research things they've done. So that will help. But you know, and maybe just to say this to Sherm, some of us are data heads and we would love to see the cross tabs. Just saying. We love to see the cross tabs. So.

Steve-o (20:01.986)
Tony Benjamin is all about the cross tabs Tony enlighten our listeners as to what cross tabs are again because There may be some people that are like, what is that? They're probably googling it right now

Tony Benjamin (20:13.816)
What is that? right, right. So what you do is you take every single question. Think about this in a spreadsheet. You take every single question and you list it in columns, you know, going left to right. So every single question is there. And then you cross that with down the left side, every single question. So what you can see is the people who answered for each question.

how they answered all the other questions. And it just, what it does is it provides you the opportunities and you include demographics and other stuff like that in it so that you can see exactly those kinds of things. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're gonna see...

Steve-o (20:56.64)
Which is why I was asking about that stuff, you know.

Tony Benjamin (21:01.868)
are there differences between small and large employers like and where's the breaking point and all that sort of stuff. But that way you can see so you'd say everybody who says that salary is their top priority. They also said these things. And it gives you a better perspective. And look, I get why Sherm can't put all that on their website, right? Because because they're going to you know, it's just it's huge, right? But come on, Sherm, you can give us a

Steve-o (21:30.732)
Well, and the thing is, I feel like, yeah, and I feel like AI could probably really help facilitate some of that a lot more, a lot quicker. Obviously, you you have to be careful about what AI tells you sometimes because it might tell the wrong story and make inferences and all that. Yeah, very shocking, I know. But anyway, so so anyway, cool, cool report if you want to go look at it. Like I said, the notes are in the show report, but we're going to talk about a few of the items today and kind of go through.

Tony Benjamin (21:31.032)
data set we can download. We would love that.

Tony Benjamin (21:39.778)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (21:44.802)
That's shocking.

Steve-o (21:59.022)
perspectives of it and mainly because Sherm calls this the state of the workplace. know on this show we always ask all of our guests about the state of HR and this is Sherm's official announcement if you will about the state of the workplace and and so the state of the workplace obviously has an impact through HR and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to address this today. So there you go.

Tony Benjamin (22:22.222)
That's right. So they start out with three things that are kind of their perspective they see on it. And this is the way we only need to do one of these. But I think this is a good thing to start with. It said nearly three quarters of HR professionals, 72 % believe workers have higher expectations of employers today. So the thing I like about this, again, this is a perspective.

And HR people are saying, wow, their expectations are going up and up and up. yep.

Steve-o (22:55.35)
Yeah, and this is from the workers, right? The workers are the ones that filled out some of these surveys and I think it's... They have their perception.

Tony Benjamin (23:01.688)
Well, but the HR people are noting that right. The HR people that, yep, they're they're saying from our perspective, more and more of these people have higher and higher expectations. And as we dive into this more, I think you'll hear that a little.

Steve-o (23:09.1)
is what we believe.

Steve-o (23:14.624)
Yeah, well, and you know, the other one of the other points which talks about the workers that the employee experience is one of their top priorities that workers have that they believe that HR needs to address better, which I think is why HR believes that those workers have higher expectations because they are higher. They really are. I mean, it's not just we believe this, but when you look at how the workers have responded here, they think that HR needs to prioritize employee experience. So, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (23:23.48)
Right.

Tony Benjamin (23:39.956)
That's right. That's right. And so as long as we covered two of those three, let's get the other in stress and burnout levels are among the most pressing needs that workers HR professionals and execs HR execs agree organizations must address.

Steve-o (23:43.458)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (23:51.49)
Yeah, that was one where all three actually agreed. It was like number two on the list for all three of them. So all three of them had their top five priorities and all three of them, their number two priority was the employee stress and burnout levels, which is kind of intriguing. I think that obviously that goes that goes to the employee experience. Right. I mean, because the experience leads to that. mean, Andrea talks about that on her episode multiple times. So.

Tony Benjamin (24:13.23)
Exactly, exactly. So.

Tony Benjamin (24:19.062)
Right, right. So if we take that from the workers perspective, the top three needs, right, are number one, employee salary or wages, 24 percent. employees. Right. I want more money. Employee stress or burnout is two for workers and employee work life integration is three. So that's the that's the classic right work life balance, which Steve and I bag on all the time.

Steve-o (24:29.26)
Imagine that.

Yeah.

Steve-o (24:43.842)
Tony, gotta do your line about work-life balance here. Because think about this is in the top three, this is what workers want. They want this work-life integration is what they're calling it, which oftentimes is translated into a work-life balance. But we all know Tony feels like balance is not even possible. Maybe that's why they changed it to integration. It's no longer balance.

Tony Benjamin (24:55.085)
Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (25:03.904)
A stupid word. That's a stupid word. No, it really is. Yeah, maybe. But that well, but no, I think I think the perspective is there. Right. So this notion that you can have a work life balance is just ridiculous. You don't balance your work life and, you know, at work and at home, you don't do that. You find ways to integrate them to work. And especially the higher you go, if you're not doing blue collar work that requires you to be on site.

You can't just go home and forget about it. You can't. And if you're an engaged employee, you won't anyways, no matter what you do. But that notion. I think it's interesting that. Go ahead.

Steve-o (25:43.02)
Well, I like that they use the word integration here. Go ahead, what's your interest?

Tony Benjamin (25:50.423)
No, no, I was just the point. I think that workers mentioning that is third, I think is a big deal because it tells me they're trying to figure it out. They're trying to figure this out and they're not getting the help they think they need.

Steve-o (26:06.846)
Not only are they not getting it, and I think this is where us as HR professionals and HR executives need to make a note, like a mental note, the top five for, yeah, strategic note, the top five for HR professionals and HR executives didn't even include employee work-life integration. And so while this is extremely important to the workers, apparently for the HR professional and the HR executive,

Tony Benjamin (26:16.887)
A strategic note.

Tony Benjamin (26:26.52)
Ta-da!

Steve-o (26:35.88)
not even on their radar at this point. And so I think that's worth noting because if that is so high for the workers, and this is why surveys like this I think are really valuable, because they open your eyes. When I do my presentations, I talk about this acronym called IDEA that I created, and the E stands for enabling perspective. And I think one of the things that employers often miss the most is they don't enable perspective.

They assume that the manager is the only perspective they need when they're posting a job or finding out about the department or what have you. And they completely miss the opportunity to get the perspective from the employee, which is always going to be different. No matter how many ways you try to look at it, it will always be different. And I think that's critical. I think it's important to just recognize this perspective here. I kind of liked, I just liked that aspect of it as well. I was looking at these stats. So yeah.

Tony Benjamin (27:27.948)
Yeah, no, no, that's really good. That's really good. Okay, so those are the top. So top three again for workers, employee salary wages, employees, number two, employee stress or burnout levels. Number three, employee work life integration. Number four was employee mental health. And number five was fairness of pay at your organization.

Steve-o (27:43.266)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (27:48.076)
Which I thought it was interesting that I was separate from the employee salary wages. In my mind, I was thinking the salary and wages is kind of a very general, where fairness of pay would have kind of been coupled into that. I don't know, that's just my perspective or how I would view it initially.

Tony Benjamin (27:54.85)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (28:04.046)
And without diving into all that, it makes me wonder a fairness of pay. And I'm sure there's some protected class considerations included in this. But I wonder if a lot of it isn't the person in the next cubicle sucks and they make more than I do. Right? Directly. Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (28:06.818)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (28:15.84)
Yeah, yeah, females especially. Yeah.

Steve-o (28:28.002)
I mean, this is realistic. So one of my previous organizations that I was working with, one of the frustrations that some of the workers had there was that some of their salaries were lower than the people that were already in the department and they were being paid lower. It didn't make any sense. in their minds.

Tony Benjamin (28:48.578)
You mean they were getting paid lower than the new hires, right? Is that what you mean?

Steve-o (28:51.572)
No, no, no, no, no. What happened was is the company merged, right? They bought them out and the current employees were at a certain wage, right? That the company had, but they bought the other company. They bought applicant pro. I'll just throw it out there. And the applicant pro employees, their their structures and everything were changing and they weren't even their base salary wasn't even the

up to par with what the current employees in those roles were already making. Now, maybe they've made adjustments since then because I've been gone for a while. But but, you know, even as recently as a month ago, it was it was it was an element of frustration for people. Right. And so it's just important, I think, that we pay attention to this because fairness of pay. If you think your employees are not talking about pay with one another, you are grossly mistaken. Period. You're just grossly mistaken.

Tony Benjamin (29:41.955)
Nope, they are. And no matter how much you wish they wouldn't or even fringely, of course, none of you, course, listening to this would ever say, Tony, that you shouldn't talk about that stuff to people. But but with that said, they do no matter what you no matter what you do.

Steve-o (29:45.046)
Yep, they will. They will and they are.

Steve-o (29:59.618)
They do. They do. And I know because I even had people talking with me about it, right? So it has been discussed, right? So there you go. Anyway.

Tony Benjamin (30:05.216)
Mm-hmm. Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (30:10.67)
Okay, so HR professionals, their top five. Managers and supervise, number one, managers and supervisors ability to effectively lead their direct reports. That's their number one. 25%. Yeah.

Steve-o (30:20.77)
I am so glad that was number one. I'm glad that was number one. Yeah, because that goat member Ben Eden. So if you listen to the Ben Eden episode a couple episodes ago or so, he talked about the importance of the fact that there's a lot of managers today. And we were talking about the PMQ that's offered by Sherm. There's a lot of managers today who have never even been trained. It wasn't what the 70s, I think 70 % or so had never even been trained, period.

Tony Benjamin (30:45.262)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (30:48.448)
So I'm glad that HR professionals are seeing this as number one because there is definitely a gap there. Absolutely.

Tony Benjamin (30:57.218)
Yep. Number number two is across the board with everybody employee stress or burnout levels that 19%. In number three, though, is employee salary or wages, and that's at 18%. So that's interesting. That's third for HR professionals and first for workers. Number four is trust between workers and executive leadership at your organization. 15%.

Steve-o (31:00.586)
stress or burnout.

Steve-o (31:11.148)
Hmm.

Tony Benjamin (31:24.044)
That's interesting because that's not even on the worker thing.

Steve-o (31:25.462)
That's, it's not, it's not on the workers thing, but that is the roots of my analogy of the hiring tree. This trust between workers and executive leadership at the organization. It's part of the roots because when the roots are not functioning properly and taking the nutrients to the rest of the tree, the tree dies, period, right? Such a big one. This is such a big one. I was impressed to see this one on there because it's so critical. I think it needs to be discussed more, you know.

Tony Benjamin (31:44.856)
Trade out, yes.

Tony Benjamin (31:52.431)
Well, it's, yeah, no, I agree. And again, that's where the rubber meets the road in an effective culture. and it's, well, it's the direct frontline manager who bridges the gap between employees and executives. that's the, okay. So then the number five of HR professionals is employee engagement, i.e. feelings of enthusiasm and commitment, 13%. So, well.

Steve-o (31:58.728)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Steve-o (32:07.447)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (32:16.354)
Basically warm fuzzies. Tony loves this one.

Tony Benjamin (32:22.318)
No, well, I wonder if that doesn't mean right in and again without reading cross tabs and a whole bunch of the methodology. I wonder if that doesn't mean that we're worried about people being engaged, but frontline workers aren't there. They're just that doesn't even cross their mind. Of course, we're engaged. We're working here.

Steve-o (32:41.536)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking to my coworker over here. We're engaged, right? And yet burnout is number two for everybody. So because burnout is part of engagement and trust and all the things. So, yeah, anyway, interesting.

Tony Benjamin (32:44.802)
Yeah.

That's right.

Tony Benjamin (32:56.652)
No, no, that's good. OK, so for HR executives, then their number one is managers and supervisors ability to effectively lead their direct reports. So there you go for HR professionals. Let's see. yeah, the top. Yeah.

Steve-o (33:08.418)
Yeah, it was the same. the top, the first three for the HR executives are exactly the same. So executives and then just the HR professional in general, their top three are exactly the same.

Tony Benjamin (33:19.384)
That's right. And exact same levels. And so managers, the number one is managers and supervisors ability to effectively lead their direct reports to his employees stress or burnout levels. Three is employee salary or wages for for HR executives is the quality of feedback that employees receive to improve their work performance at 13 percent. And number. Yeah. Well, I think this is.

Steve-o (33:21.056)
Same order. Yeah.

Steve-o (33:43.478)
That's interesting. The quality of the feedback.

Tony Benjamin (33:48.919)
I think this is because we're coming to realize that the HR profession has not cracked the code on employee reviews. I think this is what that is.

Steve-o (34:00.072)
Albert Foster, if you're listening to this episode, please, please reach out to us. I would love to have you on the podcast. He is the owner of Express Evaluations and he would be phenomenal to talk about quality of feedback. He has some incredible presentations. I just saw him at the show in Virginia that I was at last week. He was there, him and I got to connect once again. just, I've loved my conversations with him over the years and we definitely need him on this.

Tony Benjamin (34:18.593)
he was there.

Steve-o (34:29.698)
cast to talk about this subject. This would be a phenomenal subject.

Tony Benjamin (34:32.14)
Yeah, Albert knows I love the guy. He's awesome. Andy, Andy gives away the best socks, just to say that his booth he gives away. does. Yeah, yeah. I have Bert Nerny socks that he gave me and they're awesome. So and then number five, your organization's readiness for the future of work, i.e. automation, AI industry, industry specific shifts. So

Steve-o (34:36.226)
Yeah, Albert's amazing. he does. He has some pretty awesome songs. All you got to do is schedule a demo with him and I promise you it's worthwhile. yeah.

Steve-o (34:50.05)
That's cool.

Steve-o (35:00.416)
Yeah. It makes sense that that would be an executive thought, right? Because those are very high level. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (35:01.452)
That that's what the HR executives. Right, right there. They're looking ahead. Strategic thoughts, right? OK, so next we want to talk about this effectiveness gap that they're reporting on our organizations delivering employee expectations. I agree. Go ahead, Steve. Do you want to kind of lead out on this one? This is.

Steve-o (35:16.576)
This was intriguing to me. Yeah.

Okay, so in essence what happened was is the people answering the surveys were asked to evaluate how effectively their organization was actually addressing workplace needs. And what's crazy, which still boggles my mind, out of the workers, the HR professionals, and the executives, guess who was the most optimistic?

The executives.

To me, that is almost unheard of. Most of the time, it is the HR professional who is the optimistic one. The workers are extremely less optimistic oftentimes. And then the HR executives are close behind that. But in this scenario, the optimism was actually coming from the HR executives, which I kind of like that in part because it tells me that the state of HR in that sense

Tony Benjamin (35:53.773)
Right.

Steve-o (36:20.886)
The executives are really getting more seats at the table, if you will, and the strategic side of this. And I feel like they're seeing the big picture for the first time. Well, OK, maybe not the first time, but they're they're seeing the big picture, which leads to the optimism that they've expressed in this survey. In my mind, again, this is without looking at all the cross tabs and all of those things. And what's crazy is the workers also had similar confidence in it.

Tony Benjamin (36:41.398)
Right, right.

Steve-o (36:51.212)
But the HR professionals themselves, not so much. So let me explain this. So on this particular rating, if you look at the effectiveness of addressing workplace needs, you had a very effective, effective, moderately, slightly, and not effective at all. Workers, well, first of all, HR executives are the most optimistic. Very effective and effective was about 43%. So almost half of them felt like we're either very effective or effective at doing this.

workers were only at or workers were at 41 percent. So they were close behind the executives, very close, right? So the workers and the HR executives, half of them are extremely optimistic. But then you get to the HR professional and it's only a measly 29 percent.

Tony Benjamin (37:40.942)
29 % say they're either very effective or effective, right?

Steve-o (37:44.576)
Yeah. So, so less than a third of the HR professional felt like the workplace needs are being addressed effectively, right? That, that is phenomenal to me. And, and, and again, I, I think back to Ben Eden's episode where he talked about the importance of believing in yourself, knowing yourself, like how you see yourself. Yeah. Self-perception, how you see yourself.

Tony Benjamin (38:09.346)
Self-perception, yep.

Steve-o (38:13.474)
Because here in this example, we see the workers see things as fairly effective and so do the executives. So in essence, what we're seeing in this survey is the executives think you're doing a much better job than you think you are. And guess what? The workers do too. And yet here we are from an HR perspective, we are not seeing the same thing. In fact, our percentage is about 13 to 14 % lower than what the executives and workers actually think.

And so our optimism is not as high. And again, I have to go back to Ben Eden's episode about how we see ourselves because too many HR professionals today are not seeing themselves in a good light. And this survey absolutely supports that view in my mind, just based on the data that we could see.

Tony Benjamin (39:01.038)
No, I think that's the case too. workers, 5 % of workers thought that it was not at all effective, right? So 5 % of workers, only 3 % of HR professionals said not effective at all, right? So 21 % of HR professionals felt that it was slightly effective. So what that tells nearly a quarter of them felt there was only slightly effective.

Steve-o (39:04.535)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (39:28.076)
So what that tells me is that there's a, and this I think goes back to burnout. I think a lot of HR professionals at that mid level point feel like they're beating their heads against the wall. They're not getting anywhere. They feel like they're beating their heads against the wall and all that. And again, it would be interesting to see this within an organization itself, right? And the difference between one single organization because

Steve-o (39:39.926)
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (39:51.362)
and I would love, like I said, to break this one down by size of company and things like that. I think there would be some huge value there for this one. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (39:55.234)
Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So but but what you're seeing is that HR, I think HR professionals are saying, hey, a lot of us 21 % of us, it's it's crap. It's crap. We're putting a bandaid on this, but it's crappy. Right, which is about a quarter. Now, HR executives, they're only about 12 % of that. Now, some of that might be self flattery. They're pat themselves in the back.

Steve-o (40:15.382)
Which is about a quarter. Yeah, which is about a quarter.

Steve-o (40:26.274)
Right. Sometimes the executives don't see the big picture. You know, it's kind of like when you're not on the front line, you don't see it as much. And so and maybe that's why the executives are a little bit more optimistic in this survey than what we typically know, because and this might reveal something. Yeah, they have a broader picture because they're seeing the big picture. But, you know, it makes me wonder, too, if they're not seeing the front lines as often as they used to because they're being more.

Tony Benjamin (40:27.69)
say we're doing a better job than they think. Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (40:42.51)
They have a broader picture of it.

Steve-o (40:54.626)
place in these executive roles and they're thinking more strategically, where's the communication between the executives and the professional?

Tony Benjamin (41:03.638)
Yes, absolutely. And again,

Steve-o (41:04.386)
I'm just it's just it's just a thought like you know this survey obviously doesn't address that but it's it's a thought so.

Tony Benjamin (41:11.286)
Right. Well, and that thought process assumes that they coexist in the same location. Right. So smaller companies, which there's a lot more smaller companies and there are big companies, the smaller companies only have an HR professional. They don't have an executive in addition to that. And so maybe what you get in a lot of that, the reason why HR professionals quote unquote are less optimistic is because they're working in an HR shop of one with a company who doesn't value it.

Steve-o (41:16.386)
Correct, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (41:38.305)
or very slightly, or they put a Band-Aid on it and think that, So anyways, if you guys want to look at that graph, I think it's insightful and I think it tells you a lot. And I think you can, and again, and to your point, Steve, to break this down by employer size would be really interesting to know kind of really what's going on.

Steve-o (41:40.918)
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (42:04.354)
Well, you know, whenever I look at data like this, another thing that I often would think about and I would do this when I was a recruiter, I used to do this with one of my organizations. I love to know what questions were asked because I love creating my own survey internally and sharing it with my own employees to use this as kind of a platform, if you will, to say, OK, this is what general it is, because this gives me the benchmark. Right. So here's my benchmark now.

I actually interview and I actually ask my own employees from my own organization to try to gather this type of data and then see where we stand as a company. Are we the same? Are we way lower? Are we way higher? Which again, which is why I would be interested in breaking this down by employer size and things like that. But it would be really cool to actually have access or know what some of the questions are, because I think that's where this becomes the most effective for us, is if we can actually institute this internally.

and get some answers from our actual workers, here's the benchmark and now we do the comparison. I don't know, I just feel like there's heavy value there in that sense.

Tony Benjamin (43:04.29)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (43:14.446)
No, and okay. And so this goes down into their next segment that addresses this really well. So now we're just talking about workers. This is their perspective only. Right, right. So they're, know, in talking about this among nearly nine out of 10 workers, 89 % who reported that their organization has a defined HR department or function, 60 % agree that this department cares about sufficiently.

Steve-o (43:24.438)
Yeah, this was so enlightening too.

Tony Benjamin (43:44.492)
meeting workplace needs. However, this reveals a significant gap when compared to HR professionals and executives, 89 % of whom said they believe their department cares about addressing workplace needs. Think about that for just a second.

Steve-o (43:57.698)
That is a 30 % difference. That is absolutely a gap, right? Shurm nailed this one on the head. That is a gap.

Tony Benjamin (44:00.591)
Yes, 29%. That's crazy.

Tony Benjamin (44:10.23)
No, and it's it's this is the Toby factor. This is the I hate you. This is the transactional factor where people hate HR. That's what you're seeing. That 29 percent gap is that that's that's what they're that's what they're doing. So, man, that data is so significant, right? That tells you what the average worker thinks about HR. Now, I'm shocked.

Steve-o (44:15.244)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (44:19.554)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (44:33.769)
I agree.

Steve-o (44:37.664)
Yeah, only 60 % agree that the HR department cares.

Tony Benjamin (44:41.08)
Right now I'm shocked it's that high. Frankly, I'm surprised it's 60%.

Steve-o (44:46.786)
Of course you're shocked. But you know, I think in general, though, workers do realize that HR is not just transactional. There are some industries that probably feel like that all the time. But I, you know, when you're trying to get answers about open enrollment, I mean, think about it. This took place in October and November. What is typically happening in October and November in most organizations at that time? Open enrollment, right? And that's why I worry a little bit about

Tony Benjamin (45:11.819)
Open.

Steve-o (45:16.224)
the data here because it could possibly be skewed simply because of the timeframe in which the questions were asked. Because if you were to ask these questions right now in April and May, I am curious to know if you would get similar responses from the same people. You know what I mean?

Tony Benjamin (45:33.506)
that you know what? Yeah, I do. I do. And that's it. That's an excellent point. But maybe a counteracting thing, an argument against that, Steve is this. Most companies are terrible at open enrollment meetings. Bad. It's right. It's bad. I just gotta say it. It so disappoints me.

Steve-o (45:46.242)
That's true. I probably didn't help him a whole lot. See, my problem is for years. Yeah, my problem is for years my open enrollment was with Tracy Calmar. She's already she's been a guest on the episode. For those of you listen to episode, that was my experience with open enrollment for a good solid decade. And she was so good at what she did. I just yeah, open enrollment to me was not only a breeze.

Literally almost the entire company would have it done within a week and a half. And she had a way of doing it. I don't know how she did it. One year I was so behind on it, hadn't got it done because I was at Disneyland or something. I was gone. Got home and it was like 24 hours and she was just on my tail about it. Right. But she was really kind about it too and said, well, what questions do you have? Let's schedule a call. Let's go through this together. Like she was so good about making sure I was taken care of.

And that was my experience with open enrollment. So I'm a little skewed in that sense, but yeah.

Tony Benjamin (46:46.69)
No, and I think that's not only the thing, right? And I'll admit that I'm not that great at that. The one thing I think I do really well though is explaining benefits to people. One of my pet peeves is when at open enrollment, you get a booklet emailed to you and says, here you go, here's one paragraph on a few changes. It really bugs me, right?

Steve-o (46:58.87)
Yeah, which is critical.

Steve-o (47:12.79)
And that's it. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (47:14.978)
And it really, really bugs me. Or if you want to watch this three minute video on what has changed this year, it really, really did. I have, said this really bucks. I hate it every year in the companies I work with. Yeah. Just here's your change. No, in the companies that I work with on an annual basis, you go in and you do a full

Steve-o (47:27.98)
Hey Tony, tell me what bugs you.

Tony Benjamin (47:41.793)
meeting that's an hour to 90 minutes explaining benefits. And if you're not capable of doing that in a fun lighthearted way, it will be a drag. But I explained what is a deductible? What is an out of pocket maximum? What is a copay? All of those things that they need to understand. That's right.

Steve-o (47:56.948)
HSA, FSA, PPO, like all the acronyms that exist there, because those are daunting for people. And I'll be honest, my wife, because she's in health care, like I usually give that to her and let her handle it because I don't even want to know it. So it's kind of sad that I do that all the time.

Tony Benjamin (48:08.418)
Ha ha ha!

So no, no, but see, that's just it. I invite spouses to go to those meetings as well. And not very many do, but I try very hard to do it. I try to say, yeah. But the thing is, stop thinking that your people remember this from year to year because they don't. Now, it's my experience after three or four years of doing that consistently, your employees, it starts to really sink in their head and they begin to understand their benefits better.

Steve-o (48:18.529)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (48:22.178)
I think that's important. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (48:40.93)
Having said that, however, yeah, a new plan or yeah, yeah, something like that. but freaking at a minimum, give them a sheet of terms so they understand what if you have an explain. And look, this may seem trivial, but if you haven't helped your employees understand what an embedded deductible is, they're not going to understand deductibles. I mean, they may even understand what a deductible is, but they

Steve-o (48:42.09)
until you change all the benefits because there was a new broker or something. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. Yeah.

Steve-o (49:05.995)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (49:08.632)
Unless you tell them what a per person and a per family deductible is, they're going to be confused by that. so explain this every year and go through with them. And then what I do is I take each one of the plans, assuming you offer more than one plan. And I say, if you spend this much in March, this happens to little Johnny breaks his arm, he goes and gets x-rays, blah, blah. And then I, and then I run the costs. And then I take those costs across all three plans that are option to everybody and say,

Here's what your cost would be under all three plans. And so anyways, we, you know, we should do an episode on this once on open enrollments and how open enrollment meetings should go. But there you go. Sorry, I got us off on a tangent, but let's, and we're almost out of time. So I want to make sure that we're, reading this. I want to go through these. Maybe this will be the last section we cover in depth. So workers agreement on organizational efforts to address workplace needs. The, the statement, my organization.

Steve-o (49:46.242)
Hmm.

Tony Benjamin (50:06.126)
attempts to strongly or my organization attempts to understand employee needs. 19 % strongly agree, 44 % agree, 23 % neither agree nor disagree, 10 % disagree, and 4 % strongly disagree. So think about that for just a second. My organization attempts to understand employee needs. Only 20 % say you attempt.

They strongly agree that you attempt to do that. So now the next one is my organization makes an effort to address employee needs. So the first is just, they make an effort to understand? Are they trying to understand? Are you addressing it? And here's the funny part. It almost matches perfectly. 18 % strongly agree, 46 % agree, 20 % neither agree nor.

Steve-o (50:45.29)
Yeah, do they understand it? Yeah, now are you actually addressing it?

Steve-o (50:53.858)
Dad does.

Tony Benjamin (51:02.062)
11 % disagree and 4 % strongly disagree. It's almost identical. In other words, if you're trying, you're probably effective. That's their view of it.

Steve-o (51:14.31)
And that's kind of how I saw this when I saw this particular stat, right? It's like just making the attempt alone helps the employee feel like you're addressing my needs. So big deal.

Tony Benjamin (51:25.87)
So I want to read two more of these. The next one is, my organization's senior leadership cares about meeting employee needs. 18 % strongly agree, 38 % agree, 24 % neither, 14 % disagree, and 5 % strongly disagree. So the numbers of

Steve-o (51:53.57)
creeped up a little bit on the lower end, right?

Tony Benjamin (51:55.391)
Strongly agree, strongly agree and strongly agrees about the same, but the agree is much smaller. It's 8 % smaller. And there's a bigger neither. They don't know. And the disagree and the strongly disagree are higher by another 8%.

Steve-o (52:04.524)
Yeah.

Steve-o (52:11.372)
Yeah, I've always felt like neither agree or nor disagree. If you're if you're taking a survey and that's how you're responding. One, it doesn't really help the data, but it's very revealing, right? Because if you if you can neither agree or disagree, then you are on the fence. You are on the fence. And if you are on the fence, it's because you've probably had moments where, yeah, I felt like that was addressed.

Tony Benjamin (52:28.822)
Yes.

Steve-o (52:40.758)
But then you have other moments like that. Well, I remember that experience that was not addressed. And so you're on the fence because you're like, well, they do and they don't. And that's a problem. I think these fencers, we I don't know, as HR professionals, we need to be much more proactive about at least getting people. I I don't want you to be on the fence. I want you to either agree or disagree. Period. Right. I don't need any of these fence sitters, but yet you do have quite a few of these fence sitters. And, you know, 24 percent, that's

quarter of your people. That's just too many on the fence. Yeah, that's too many on the fence to me.

Tony Benjamin (53:12.526)
quarter of you people don't know, a quarter of the people don't know, 14 % disagree. And that, by the way, that's the highest out of all these questions, and five strongly disagree. So what I'm understanding, right, all of exactly one fifth of all your employees don't believe that senior leadership cares. Just take that into a heart for a second. As an

Steve-o (53:22.914)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's almost 20 % there. It's a fifth.

Steve-o (53:37.526)
Yeah. How often does your senior leadership actually talk to the employees? I think that's a huge factor. I've been in organizations where senior leadership talks every quarter, right? You know, one of the things I loved about Ryan Kohler at ApplicantPro for years and years and years, we would have monthly company meetings and he would just, you know, shoot right from the head. Here's what's going on, guys. Here's where we're at. You know, right now this year is really hard or right now this quarter is harder. This month is harder or hey, we're having a great month and this is going well.

Tony Benjamin (53:44.27)
That's a huge factor.

Steve-o (54:04.342)
He was always there talking and so you felt like senior leadership actually cared because they were present. And I feel like simply being present can help a ton.

Tony Benjamin (54:15.48)
here is something else that you can do as you in HR. This is something you can do. When you do company activities or anything like that, take a moment and thank the executive who authorized the activity or the perk or the benefit or the bonus or whatever it is. Take a minute and do that. Now at smaller companies, I really like this because you go to the activity.

Steve-o (54:34.092)
That's a great one. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (54:42.22)
Like when I was at Superior, we had a movie, right? We went and saw the the new Indiana Jones movie all together. Anybody who wanted to bring them or their family dial a destination. Yeah. And so anybody who wanted to could go to the theater for free. And they got they got a small popcorn and a drink for everybody who came. OK. And so right before the movie starts, you stand up and you say, I want to thank our two owners for making this possible today because they're the people who did it.

Steve-o (54:49.162)
The dial destiny one or the nice.

Tony Benjamin (55:12.328)
And just look, HR people, if the owner or the CEO or whatever wants to talk about you and praise you and say how cool you are, that's awesome. But your first instinct to help with this, and obviously you don't want to lie or mislead people, but if you want to help this statistic, help them know, do this. Thank them publicly for what they're authorizing you to do for employees.

And look, even if it was your idea, you pushed it, had all the blah, give credit to executives for authorizing and making it possible. And I promise you, you will find that your employees will start. Maybe they see the CEO in the hall and like, Hey man, thanks for that party last month. We really appreciated it. Hey, thanks for this or wow. Thanks for the, you know, the pet insurance. don't know what it was, but get the idea. The pet insurance.

Steve-o (56:04.32)
Yes! Rally around the troops on that one.

Tony Benjamin (56:07.904)
So, okay, I'm gonna, the next one on that list is HR's department, HR department cares about meeting employee needs. And I think that you're all just gonna have to read the report to get that information.

Steve-o (56:21.526)
Yeah, you'll have to go find your answer to that one.

Tony Benjamin (56:24.226)
That's right. So, and Steve, I think this has been a good rundown of the stats here. And look, again, this is just a shot into the report. Right, right. Right, right. We just went through about half of them. There's some effectiveness impact on worker perceptions, effectiveness impact on likelihood to leave your current employer, HR function workload staffing comparisons, that sort of stuff, top rated priorities.

Steve-o (56:33.11)
And this is maybe half the stats guys. You know, this is not everything by any means.

Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (56:53.378)
There's some really cool. There's some really cool stuff here. So anyways, take some time, look through it. And again, thank you to Sherm, who should be sponsoring this podcast for for all that they've they've done in putting this together. So for whatever else.

Steve-o (57:08.95)
Well, and shout out to Alex Alonzo and his staff and his team that pulls this data together because, like I said, I've met him before. It's amazing what his team tries to do to effectively pull this data for us. know, polling HR professionals and workers is not a that is a difficult task. That is not easy. Right. Because you have to have enough data to make it significant. And if you don't get enough, it becomes a moot point. Period.

Tony Benjamin (57:13.218)
That's right.

Steve-o (57:37.759)
And so shout out to Alonzo and his team for what they do to gather this kind of information and make it available.

Tony Benjamin (57:45.39)
Agreed, agreed. So anyways, thank you to Sherm for that much, much appreciated. Okay, you know what this means, Steve, next is the HRN life.

Steve-o (57:56.936)
I can't wait.

Tony Benjamin (58:15.468)
All right, all right. Every time that music just gets me, I'd love it. So that's good stuff. It is, it is. So I wanted to talk about this trip that we made to Grand Junction, my wife and I. And there's some really cool places out there. There was a bookstore. went into an old bookstore. It was fantastic. It was really cool. I bought a book on the history of the CIA while I was there, which I find fascinating.

Steve-o (58:19.97)
I think it's your turn this week, right? So.

Tony Benjamin (58:43.854)
If you don't know if I've never mentioned this before, I had a professor in school who was an officer on loan from the CIA and I took as many classes from him as I could. It was really cool. Anyway, so we're going down there. My wife and I, probably walked that length of the mile, mile and a half or whatever it is of all those little shops and the cool stuff. There's vinyl stores and everything there. We probably walked that seven or eight times and we went back back and forth. We found this

Steve-o (58:52.641)
Nice.

Steve-o (59:09.484)
Wow.

I hope you guys are tracking your steps.

Tony Benjamin (59:12.898)
Beautiful. Yeah, I had like 11,000, something like that. It was quite a bit. Right. But anyways, we walked up and down. And one of the things I'll say there is that all the shop people in that were very nice and very cordial. They're all small businesses. They're all just dying to take care of you. They some really cool things. I mentioned I bought my wife this really cool 50s dress or 40s dress and it just, she looks awesome.

Steve-o (59:17.558)
Nice, nice, going to Disneyland.

Tony Benjamin (59:42.367)
a minute. But it was part of her birthday. But anyways, and the lady who checked me out was like, we've been wondering who's going to get this dress. This is incredible. It was really cool. anyways, there's, there's all that. So we get done there. And my wife and I, we were going to go do walk along the river, the Colorado River there in downtown, and we were like, we're too exhausted. Let's just head home now. It was like three in the afternoon. Let's just go.

Steve-o (59:50.722)
That's fun. That's fun.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:08.788)
And so I was like, okay, before we head out on the road, because I was a little tired, I'm going to go get some gummy bears, you some sugary, and a soda to kind of perk me up a little bit. So we stop at the gas station. And we are literally maybe a half mile away from Main Street. And the customer service level was nothing. Like the lady was talking on her phone to her boyfriend while she was checking me out.

And she, she might've just said, she might've said, thank you. Maybe. Yes. It was crazy. And all I could think about when I came out of there was the difference in that half mile, because in that walking area downtown, where all those cool little shops were that those people were training their employees to give a crap, to really care because you only get this one chance, probably with all these tourists to make a good impression.

Steve-o (01:00:38.21)
So it was very noticeable, obviously.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:04.588)
and they were on it. And just off that was here's the thing. And she could care less. She could care less, right? I don't know. There you go. I don't know. as an like, to me, that's what an engaged employee is. If you want a definition or whatever, that's that's where it's at. And I think you see it all over. And it isn't just when people come in, you shout from the other side of the store, hey, welcome, or whatever else. Right. It's being genuine.

Steve-o (01:01:11.01)
Wow.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:33.6)
And to go back to what we talked about with Andrea, it's authentic. Be an authentic human being.

Steve-o (01:01:38.882)
Yeah, you know, I'm going to I'm going to do a shout out for Dutch Bros here real quick. My daughter works for Dutch Bros and what's been really cool about her experience there, you know, sometimes you have to wait in the line with Dutch Bros a little bit longer than what you would probably typically wait at like a Swig or a coffee shop or what have you a Starbucks. But but the people genuinely take some time to get to know you. Sometimes they have your drinks memorized at that point. If you're a continuous customer.

And they just know, they know what you like and they know what you want. I think it's, again, it's attributed to the employee experience. And when your employees are happy, they are going to display that happiness right there on the sleeve to every customer they interact with. And I think it makes such a huge difference in the experience. So.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:29.96)
Exactly. No, and that's, and by the way, you HR people. Yeah. Yeah. When you HR people, right. They're listening. This is part of our job. This is what we do. And I know that there's some people not mentioning anybody on the podcast right now who think that we do not completely own culture, but we do. This is us. This is us. This is what we do. We own this stuff. So no rebuttal to that.

Steve-o (01:02:32.29)
That's a cool experience, Tony.

Steve-o (01:02:58.622)
No, I have no comments. I plead the fifth.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:01.682)
Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Anyways, all right, well there you go. That was HR in Life.

We just knocked it out of the park.

Steve-o (01:03:13.9)
We did.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:15.672)
Good stuff. Here, let's see. Does. No, clapping still doesn't work. See, there you go. Well, that's almost as important as Grogu.

Steve-o (01:03:24.475)
Someday Tony's gonna fix some of this stuff, but you know, what do you do?

Tony Benjamin (01:03:28.206)
That's right. Someday we'll we'll have crickets to love crickets.

Steve-o (01:03:31.532)
By the way, The Mandalorian and Grogu, the movie's coming out here pretty soon. I am so excited.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:37.646)
Isn't that just in a couple of weeks? Like May 8th or something, right? is it on May 4th?

Steve-o (01:03:39.372)
I think so, May 4th, right? mean, the 4th is with me. I don't know. I probably should know this because I'm so excited to go see it. I've seen so many versions of the trailer and all that stuff. I just get excited.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:57.775)
Cool. OK, just recap a couple of things here. it's May 20.

Steve-o (01:04:00.674)
it's May 22nd. that makes sense. May 22nd. Yeah, because May 22nd is a common release date for Star Wars movies. That makes perfect sense. Cool. Yeah, yeah, a lot of their. Yeah, anyway. Cool. So I'm excited for that one.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:08.199)
Okay, I didn't know that. There you go.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:15.246)
Cool. Okay. No, that's there you go. And of course, now I'm starting to see the leaks of the trailers for Marvel Doomsday and stuff. And that's got me going. And what's the other one that there's another movie that comes out that same day as Doomsday. What is it?

I can't remember, there's two giant movies coming out that same day. Steve's typing away, he'll come up with it here and just say, yeah.

Steve-o (01:04:42.738)
Yeah, I can go check real quick. Doomsday Avengers Secret Orders.

I don't know, nothing else is Dune Part 3 maybe?

Tony Benjamin (01:04:54.836)
that's what it is, Dune. Yeah. So Dune and Doomsday are coming out the same day. So that'll be cool. Right. So anyways. So I don't know, we got to we got to think of something along the lines of Barbenheimer for that, you know, for that sort of thing. All right.

Steve-o (01:05:01.526)
Say that three times fast, there you go.

Say doom without saying doom.

Steve-o (01:05:15.327)
Wow.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:20.558)
Pucks for autism proves that when communities rally families win their hockey tournaments raise local funds that support autism programming inclusion and connection for kids and adults everywhere. Join the team that plays with purpose. Visit pucks for autism.com. That's pucks for autism.com and get involved today. Here we go. Shout out to Claire doing good work.

Steve-o (01:05:46.122)
Yeah, I hope the mammoth does it out here. I don't follow enough over out here to know, but.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:51.887)
But they're in the playoffs, right? They're in the playoffs is my understanding. So there you go. Yeah. and I did hear this just for those of you who have typos out there, because of course, that's never happened to me. But the the NHL released some special commemorative t shirts for the Utah Mammoth making it into the playoffs for the first time. And they misspelled Utah instead of UTAH.

Steve-o (01:05:54.146)
I mean, I guess, I don't know.

Steve-o (01:06:19.743)
What?

Tony Benjamin (01:06:21.344)
It was U-A-T-H.

Steve-o (01:06:24.449)
Ha!

Tony Benjamin (01:06:28.573)
So, tip of the hat to the NHL and your proofreaders. But their HR executive thought they were doing great. anyways, there you go. If you're having a bad day.

Steve-o (01:06:31.18)
That employee was burned out that day.

Steve-o (01:06:38.614)
Absolutely.

And what's sad is if you get a hold of one of those, they're going to be like way more expensive because it's an error.

Tony Benjamin (01:06:47.598)
Well, yeah, there'll be collectors item, the big collectors item soon. That's exactly right. Say that commercial with Andrew Andy Reid, right? It's the Snickers commercial. And he's like, wow, that end zone looks great. But who are the chefs? Have you seen that? The guy who's painting the thing? Yeah. Anyways, there you go. Okay. Well, we don't have any giant earth shattering announcements like we had last time at the end of the podcast. But if you if you hung in for that last one, good for you.

Steve-o (01:06:52.707)
funny.

Right.

Steve-o (01:07:03.938)
I

Steve-o (01:07:07.938)
Okay.

Steve-o (01:07:17.217)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:17.482)
Otherwise, go ahead, Steve.

Steve-o (01:07:20.414)
We're gonna go out just like we came in. Here we go.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:25.826)
Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review on your favorite podcast app. Comments or questions for us? Email the podcast at the HR life podcast at gmail.com and we'll talk again soon.