So if you are taking a coffee break, would you advise putting coffee break on your calendar? [laughs]

That's a bit overkill, and this is where I-- one of the things I was really trying to drill down on, on this story was like, so what is the expectation here, right? Because we can get in our own heads and think, geez, well, can I ever just chit-chat in the break room? Can I go to the bathroom? You know, you don't wanna become paranoid.

And so, you know, I asked the chief executive of one of these companies called Insightful that makes some of the software that, that businesses are using, and I said, "All right.

What are your clients actually looking for?" And I was struck when he said, "Actually, most of my customers are looking for between 60 and 80% activity level during the day," which was lower than I might have expected, but it's because they understand that people take some time away from their desks.

So you don't have to put every single coffee break or bathroom break on your calendar, and you don't even have to necessarily sweat watching the occasional YouTube at your desk.

Most reasonable employers understand that even their best, most productive workers do need to take some mental breaks during the day.

What they're really trying to guard against is the people who are walking away for hours at a time and not staying on task at all.

What's behind that, and what's the right amount of AI usage?

What technology in particular is being used here?

I think facial recognition is a big one to be aware of.

I talked to a company called Ferretly, which is a third-party business that other companies hire to do this digital background searching, and they warn that, you know, the AI facial recognition detection is getting pretty good.

An, an example was maybe you're one of the many people in recent years who has opened an OnlyFans account, let's say, and maybe you're careful about using a, a screen name, and you keep any explicit photos and videos behind a paywall so they remain private, but your profile photo could be public.

And if facial recognition can match that profile photo to another image on the internet, it's going to get flagged.

And oh, by the way, Ferretly, for example, uses a 70% confidence threshold, so they don't even have to be 100% sure that it's you.

At 70% confidence, they're at least going to tell your employer, "Hey, this is Bill.

Are there any legal protections that job candidates have, or is it just another area that hasn't yet caught up to fast-changing technology?

Callum says the AI future means we'll need to rethink how we define ourselves at work.

I think a good way to think about it is that we're all managers now, right? You may not have direct report humans coming to you, but if you're outsourcing any of those tasks to a bot, you're now the manager.

And so I think that's a skill in its own right, right, is that ability to critically evaluate somebody else's output and judge it to be good Bad, somewhere in the middle, needs some tweaking.

And so I think that is gonna be a big test, I think for a lot of people because a lot of rank and file workers don't fancy themselves managers, but really, you know, mentally you need to function more like that.

He calls them AI power users, and they're impressing their bosses and leaving coworkers in the dust.

And you, I think that the biggest thing that distinguishes them is experimentation.

It's the lay folks who have just spent some time experimenting, and so what they do is just a lot of trial and error.

The power users are very good about tailoring their prompts and then following up, right? Instead of just taking that first draft or being disappointed because it didn't live up to your expectations, you come back and you re-prompt, "Hey, that was good.

What happened with him?

Yeah, Joe's a good example of somebody who sort of got bitten by this process, uh, if it's not done well.

I mean, he says he thought he had a job in the bag a little while ago, and, uh, didn't end up getting an offer.

And the only reason he found out what has happened was that a, a third-party recruiter he had been working with let him know, "Hey, you know, the, the company called one of your former direct reports, somebody you used to manage, and that person really gave you a scathing review." [laughs] And Joe was like, "Well, geez, it's 'cause I fired the guy." [laughs] And he, and he insists that it was, it was for a good reason, but that, you know, this was kind of the, the person's opportunity to take revenge.

And so, you know, his, his feeling about it is, look, you have to have some, some nuance that goes with these, right? I mean, some of the people who use backdoor references told me they'll do it, but then, without naming names, they'll go back to the candidate and say, "Hey, I heard this criticism about you as I called references.

What do you have to say for yourself?" And at least you're giving them an opportunity to, to answer for themselves.

So, I mean, that said, is trust an issue here?

Yeah, and it certainly goes both ways.

Like, what happened here?

That's right.

That, it was such a good example in my mind because I had gotten some good advice in the course of reporting this column about not being fixated on, on the big, shiny brand name, right? And I did.

I had first-hand experience with this where after school I took two offers at the same time.

One was at ESPN, which of course sounded very glamorous, and for a sports guy like me, wow, that's, that's the dream job.

But it was very much kind of a behind-the-scenes role.

And fortunately, you know, a manager on day one really made clear, like, "Hey, this, this is a behind-the-scenes pathway.

What about, uh, gut feelings here? How'd they come into the conversation?

That and the rest of the day's news after the break.

Okay.

When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice.

I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community.

Ooh.

Then it's the vacation of a lifetime.

I wonder if my out of office has a forever setter.

But far from those A's teeing up an easier job hunt, Journal On the Clock columnist Callum Borchers says that new grads are likely to find the corporate world unimpressed.

So how does something like a corporate ski event be beneficial for you?

Well, it's one of those things that's a chance to kind of change the way people see you.

Right.

If you've got a desk job and people just, you know, see you as, you know, a kind of a mild mannered, you know, bespectacled figure, all of a sudden you could look, you know, daring and athletic when you're out on the.

On the ski slope.

And, you know, that's what that's what happened with a guy named Gable Brown, who I I talked to, you know, he's a software engineer, you know, kind of an unassuming fellow when when you when you meet him.

But he's a really, really good skier.

I guess places like the Lyft or the Gondola or perhaps the Lodge, these are what, the moments where you might network to like perhaps you could on a golf course?

Callum, what are you hearing about these things?

Well, what I heard was that they had sort of been either suspended or re-evaluated several years ago, not only because of the pandemic for obvious reasons, but also because, remember, companies were making a big push for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

And yeah, let's face it, skiing is kind of an exclusive sport, right? Not everybody grows up going to posh ski resorts or knows how to ski.

So if that's going to be kind of your corporate team building effort, you might leave some people out.

What's changed in recent years, I guess, is that the businesses that organize these retreats and the The resorts themselves have gone to lengths to make them much more inclusive for beginners or even the folks who don't want to ski.

They just kind of want to go and ride the gondolas or go tubing or do a wine tasting or try to have broader offerings.

So how does something like a corporate ski event be beneficial for you?

Well, it's one of those things that's a chance to kind of change the way people see you.

Cal, explain this.

Yeah, the term is called hybrid creep.

And as the name suggests, it's slowly creeping back to the office.

The hybrid becomes a little less at home and a little more in person.

And it's more of kind of like a chipping away, right? So I think we've sort of plateaued.

Remember a year or so ago, we had a lot of companies saying, okay, back to the office four days a week, even five days a week at some places.

I'm sure we haven't seen the very last of those, Gordon, but I think for the most part, businesses have said what the policy is going to be.

What do you mean? What does data tell us?

Tell me about some of the differences between those two actions.

Some of the common steps that companies are taking are just tinkering with the DEI acronym itself or scrapping it all together.

For example, you know, I met recently a former DEI chief who is now called chief impact and inclusion officer.

You see businesses that are trying to keep that inclusion element, tying it explicitly to the business impact and trying to signal to, to potential critics, "Hey, we're doing this for bottom line reasons." You've also seen companies that have disbanded their DEI departments keep many of the same components, and they'll just call them, as you said, the top employee engagement efforts, or something a little bit blander like that.

You know, and another strategy is partnering with a third party when you're hiring.

So for example, there's a nonprofit called OneTen that matches employers with people who don't have four-year college degrees, but do have the right skills for the job, and the group's CEO pointed out to me that people of color are disproportionately large shares of the non-college-educated job seekers.

So, that's one way that businesses can indirectly access a diverse applicant pool without explicitly saying that's their goal.

Right, Calum?

How did they do it?

They did it by thinking about what was really important to them and what was realistic.

What could a company potentially offer even if they said, "We can't really do better on salary"? So for example, Cynthia Thorpe, she told me she recently started a job as an HR executive.

The base salary was really not gonna move, but she said, "The title was important to me." They were advertising for a director of human resources, and she said, "I really want to signal to everyone at the company that I'm here to shape workplace norms, so how about we call me the director of people and culture?" And the company said, "Sure, we like that." She also said, "This is a company that works in office.

I'm fine with that, but I also want some flexibility.

If I travel out of state to visit my grandkids, I wanna be able to remote work on those days." Okay, fine, so maybe negotiating a work-from-home day or some occasional flexibility is another point that you can potentially negotiate.

And then there's the base salary, but then there may also be incentive plans or bonuses, either a signing bonus or a performance bonus down the line.

How can you open up that dialogue? Like what should someone say?

So do you think it was a good thing for workers to seek out jobs that offered a big pay increase? Are they being punished for that now?

I mean, look, far be it from me to say people shouldn't have taken big raises, but I think the second guess is this.

Were you realistic about your income trajectory? So some people I talked to say they knew all along that their offers were inflated by this once-in-a-generation hiring frenzy.

They sort of figured a correction was coming, and so they've played it pretty conservative with their personal finances.

But others say they sort of thought their paychecks were on this, like, rocket ship that was gonna go up forever and ever.

And I think those are the ones who are sweating a little bit.

I spoke with more than two dozen of these people who job-hopped during the talent war, and some of them do think they're being punished now.

So what's an employee to do, especially those who bought homes, cars, or other big-dollar items, on those higher salaries?

So all of that chaos is happening, and then these execs are stepping down in the midst of it.

Yeah, I mean, you mentioned some of the big reasons why they would want to head for the exits, Julia.

I'll add a few more.

I mean, layoffs take a toll on leaders too.

It's not just the people who are getting the pink slips.

I mean, nobody likes to be the villain.

DEI is another one.

So what's happening there?

How does that work?

Yeah, this is a development I hadn't thought about.

If you think about how a layoff and a rehire would traditionally play out, it- it would be kind of an ad hoc process where a manager remembers, "So-and-so used to be really good.

Let's try and get her back." Well, now the process can get an AI boost.

I talked to an HR software company called Visier that helps businesses track their employees' performance, compensation, skills, et cetera, and they encourage their customers to keep those records on hand after someone leaves.

Well, now there's a good body of work after several years of doing this, and so if a new role opens up at the company, they can use an AI tool to mine this database they've been building for years now of these old employee files, including those ex-employees.

So, you might find a good match and then you can reach out with a little bit more science behind it.

Sometimes when you start with a new employer, you start from two weeks or not as much vacation time as you would have had before.

Have companies said anything about this?

Not much on the record.

[laughs] You know, it's very delicate for them, and really nobody wants to be in the position of refereeing who is really disabled enough.

But the managers I've talked to who will quietly talk about this, they're particularly torn about the mental and emotional health conditions.

I don't hear any managers objecting to, "Oh, I mean, I have to install a screen reader on my computers because I have a blind employee." Like, nobody's complaining about that stuff, or nobody's complaining about installing ramps and elevators and making sure that you're ADA compliant.

It's the workers now coming out of the pandemic saying, "Working from home was really life-changing for me because I have depression or I have anxiety or I have PTSD, and going out or at least going to an office every single day is triggering for me, and I do my job better in the comfort of my own home office." And really, it comes down to, in some cases, just how good the employee is at what they do.

I spoke with a man named Vincent Martin, for example, who is blind.

Joe."How can the employee navigate those gray areas you're talking about and approach their employer with this?