[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side By Side".

My guest today leads the world's largest professional human resources society.

He's a lawyer, an author, and advocate for business leadership.

Today we'll meet Johnny C. Taylor Jr., the President and CEO of the Society for Human Resources Management, an association with more than 300,000 members in more than 165 countries.

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[empowering music] - Johnny, welcome to "Side By Side".

I've been looking forward to chat with you because we're living in an ever-changing global marketplace.

And that's your business?

- Yes.

- You are the CEO of the world's largest society for human resources professionals.

- Yes.

- The acronym is SHRM?

- Yes.

- And it stands for what?

- The Society for Human Resource Management, SHRM.

- How many members?

- 340,000.

- 340,000?

- Yeah.

- In 180 countries.

- All in the US?

- No, we're based here, but we have offices in India... Several offices in India, Saudi Arabia, Dubai.

So it's a global outfit as you might imagine.

HR is a global thing.

Human capital is a global asset.

- And what does SHRM do?

- So, a couple of things.

We focus significantly on workplace policy.

So all of the issues that you hear around, things that end up in the courts, we are hopefully on the front side of those.

- Every- - Regulations?

- Yes, regulations, policies, from Title VII, as you might imagine, ensuring that people have safe and comfortable workplaces free of harassment, to wage an hour.

You know, what is minimum wage, what's the right way to do it?

So all policy related matters.

The other thing we do is we represent the profession.

Imagine if you were a physician, you'd have something called the American Medical Association.

Or if you're a doctor, a lawyer, the American Bar Association.

We represent the profession to ensure that it's elevated properly and recognized and that we certify HR professionals so that anyone can't just walk in and say I'm an HR professional.

Those are our primary responsibilities.

- And you have members in North Carolina?

- Oh, of course.

This is actually one of our biggest states.

I was a member in North Carolina when I joined the board.

I lived here 17 years in Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina.

I was born here, I wasn't born here.

My child was born here.

I was married here.

My wife played up the street, played professional basketball, and is now a coach here in the state.

So, yeah, I'm a North Carolina, North Carolinian, as we say.

- Yes, well, we're glad to claim you, that's for sure.

- That's right.

- You're a lawyer?

- Yes.

Forgive me for that.

[both laugh] - We'll forgive you on that one.

- I'm reforming.

- And you went to the University of Miami?

- Yes, gotta do- - For law school or undergrad?

- Undergrad.

I'm a University of Miami guy.

- Undergrad?

- Yes.

- And law school?

- Drake University in Iowa.

- Drake, yes, yes, okay.

And I'm trying to understand.

SHRM has meetings, and issues publications, and has consultation.

I mean, when you have 240,000 members, - Yes.

- how do you communicate with them?

How do you come together for fellowship, for networking, for circles of influence?

- So you've really nailed the business challenge of the day.

So we have members who are 65, and we have members who are 25, as they're entering the HR profession.

And as you know, better than anyone, running an amazing institution like this one, is that they consume information differently.

They build communities differently.

We, older generations, we like to go to places and engage.

They do this virtually now.

They're far more comfortable receiving information and building community online.

Funny story, I was with a couple of our younger members and they were at a conference and every one of us, you know, the old heads, we were sitting in a room consuming the information.

They were in the hallways on their PDA.

So you'd like to think they would've convened with us, but they actually...

So what do we do?

Multiple ways that we communicate with them.

We still have magazines.

We still actually put paper in hand for all of our members four times a year.

But what we use primarily is our online capabilities.

The website, constantly evolving.

And I used to think a website's a website, a website, but no, no, no.

How they interact with it, is it intuitive?

So we use a lot of our virtual capabilities and online technology to engage with our members.

They're now having these, they call them assemblies.

And I thought we'd go somewhere for an assembly.

No, people all over the globe.

We had 40,000 people convene for an assembly to discuss a particular issue.

So that's how you communicate with them, where they want, how they want, when they want.

- Does that save you money in terms of administration?

Or does technology demand so many resources that it's sort of a washout.

- It's almost awash.

You know, we thought that we could save.

Now, do we save on printing?

Yes.

But if you've ever had to pay for these tech stacks... You know, running a huge institution.

- Yes.

- You end up spending more, sometimes as much.

The difference is you can be more nimble [snaps finger].

You know, you can respond on a dime.

So if I had to wait until a magazine was printed, the information might be a month or two late.

Whereas, I can go to market right now.

But I don't know that that you save a lot more money.

- Give us two or three trends that are happening in employment today that someone watching us today can say, "You know, I'd like to learn from that."

Maybe it's a business, a small business owner?

Maybe it's a leader of a large enterprise?

What are some of the trends that you believe we should be aware of?

- Right, so there are three.

And they're really, and lawyers, we talk in terms of three anyway.

But the first is this real issue related to wage inflation.

And it is for all business leaders, whether a small business or a large business.

At the end of the day, your employees want more money.

And in fact, they need more money because cost of living has gone up, gas prices, food prices, et cetera.

So we know it.

And so, they're very angry at times with business leaders because it's as if we're holding it back.

You and I though, as CEOs, people who have to meet payroll understand, "I'd pay you as much as you want."

The problem is my consumers won't take that hit.

So at the same time that employers, employees, employers and employees are at battle over money, the consumer is also pulling back.

So we're in this tension right now where you want more money- - And you have global trade to worry about, right?

If our prices are higher here, then you're forcing manufacturers to go overseas to get things done.

- Well, and as we're sitting now talking about the work stoppage on the west coast, you know, at the ports, it's exactly the point.

It's easy to say.

And the labor lawyer in me knows, I'm not anti or pro-union, but I will say this.

The more you pass, you increase your wages, someone on the other end has to pay for it.

- [Nido] Yes.

- It's not just... You know, it doesn't just happen.

And so that's wage inflation is a real issue for us to talk about right now for business leaders.

And again, it's not one sided.

I understand people need to make more money 'cause things are more expensive.

- It's normal, it's normal.

- It's normal.

- For people, yes.

- But the tension is fever pitch right now, and we've gotta figure out how to solve it.

- So what is the solution to all that?

- Well, you're seeing a lot, which segues to my second issue.

We're seeing a lot of technology come in, automation and AI.

So companies are saying, "If you want more money, I've gotta get more productivity out of you, or ultimately use fewer options."

- So we're losing jobs?

- We're losing jobs.

- Mm.

- You know, be careful what you pray for, right?

If you want a 77% increases, we're seeing in some of these negotiations, the trade off is then, "I'll have fewer people."

And if you walk into some of the fast food restaurants right now, increasingly, you can't find someone at the cashier.

No one's taking your order.

You go into a machine, you place your order, and that's it.

So we're saying, "Fine, if you don't wanna pay more for the burger, and the people who are working behind the counter wanna make a lot more, we've got something has to give."

So ultimately, you reduce the number of people that have- - Meanwhile, the price of supply is going up.

- At the same time.

- Raw material's going up.

- Yep.

- Freight going up.

- You got it.

Shipping, that's right.

- So I wanna stay with that point for just a second.

So, do you see America losing its competitive edge?

I mean, you think about China, for example.

I think about furniture in North Carolina, how post-NAFTA, it all went overseas.

- That's right.

- So a lot of these companies shut down.

- Yes.

- I think about hosiery.

- Yes.

- The same way.

Textiles, you know, all textiles and so on.

Are we about to enter another cycle like that?

- Yeah, it scares me, but I think so.

You have to be careful what you pray for, right?

To your point, you take these prices too high, unfortunately, because the world is now flat, we can compete for business and products, wherever anyway on the planet.

- Anyone, yes.

- And that is now creating a real...

I worry that we are pricing ourselves out of the market, to your point.

- We did in the automotive industry- - That's right.

- In the past.

- Yep.

- And that's why so much of it went overseas, and the consumers didn't seem to care as long as the price is right.

- That's right.

- They don't really care where it's made [laughs].

- Until those consumers can't find a job.

- Yes.

- That's the issue, right?

I don't care if the price goes up, but you can't pay for whatever the price is if you don't have a job.

- Mhm.

What's the third one?

- It's a touchy one.

This whole conversation around diversity, - Diversity?

- in our country.

It is something that we are wrestling with.

We've wrestled with for 30 or 40 years.

You're hearing the backlash against DE&I, for example.

And it's one of those topics where we've been sorting it or trying to sort it for 30 or 40 years.

We are as diverse as we've ever been, yet it's divided.

- Define diversity for me.

- Right.

- Are we talking about... Are we talking about race?

Are we talking about religion?

Are we talking about sexual orientation?

What is diversity to you?

- So that's the crux of the problem.

Back in the day, it was the protected categories of Title VII, race, gender, national origin, age, disability, those sorts of things, right?

- Yes.

- Got it.

Now, believe it or not, there's some 30 dimensions of diversity.

- Wow.

- Socioeconomic status, LGBTQ, your orientation, disability status, but to the next level.

Not just the disability that we've seen, the hidden or invisible disabilities.

So experts now say from our research team, there are 30 or so different definitions of disability.

Here's the problem.

We built the construct, the construct for diversity at work 30 or 40 years ago, was in a world that was fairly binary.

You were male or you were female.

You were Black or you were white.

You were old, or you were young, et cetera.

Now, none of those things that we took for granted hold.

The diversity construct can't respond to an increasingly diverse environment where people have intersectionalities.

We don't even now deal with the... We didn't have to deal with the subtleties of race and ethnicity.

You can be a white Cuban or Hispanic, or a Black Cuban or Hispanic.

And again, we get into generations where gender is not as clear as it used to be for us, right?

So you take all of that, overlay that our construct was built to design with a fairly binary world and it's gotten really complicated.

- So how do businesses deal with all that?

I mean, a business making chairs or bearings for a machine, they have no expertise to deal with all of that.

- Not only do they not have the expertise, some of them don't even have the interest in doing it because it's complicated.

Dealing with human beings is complicated enough, and then when you layer on all of these nuances, it becomes difficult.

The response has been, a number of companies have just said, "I'm not engaging in this.

Come do your work.

I'm not interested in any social issues, all of these movements-" - And many states now are eliminating DEI, for example, as a pattern of... - That's right.

- An administration.

- And listen, I don't know that eliminating a focus on diversity... We're as diverse as we've ever been, and we're not nearly as diverse as we're going to be.

When I walk around college campuses, yours included, you see the strength of diversity.

So diversity is coming whether you like it or not.

- Well, diversity is international now.

It's no longer, you know?

Yes.

- That's right.

So if that's the reality, if your workforce, your students of the future are gonna come in more diverse, then you've gotta figure out how to manage that diversity.

But the key is to get to diversity without division.

That's the problem, is we've essentially managed diversity by putting people at odds.

"I'm different than you."

Focusing on our differences as opposed to our commonalities.

And as a result, everyone now, "We're diverse," but no one's talking.

So we are working really hard in bringing people back together.

Let's use unifying language, unifying concepts, appreciate our diversity, but really focus on our commonality.

That's the work that we're trying to do is redefine.

- And you're on the White House American Workforce Policy Advisory Board.

What does that board do?

- Yes.

So that board was appointed back in 2018 by then President Trump.

And we were focused on these very issues.

We're doing three things in particular.

We've gotta tackle the diversity issue.

It's a competitiveness issue, a talent competitiveness issue in our country.

But the big one, especially with IT, and all of the advancements and AI, which everyone's talking about right now, is potential for displacement.

- What would we do with those people when they lose their jobs?

- Well, you just nailed the issue.

And those people are starting to feel that stress.

So if you read the headlines, Elon Musk would suggest 30 or 40, 50 million jobs in this country will go away on account of AI.

And these aren't blue collar jobs.

Automation impacted blue collar jobs.

- Yes.

- These are white collar jobs, when machine learning and AI and AGI takes over.

And so, what do you think you're saying?

You're educating students who come out, they invest in a college degree, invest in specialized training, and tomorrow [finger snaps], the machine replaces them.

That's the topic of the day, displacement.

And I don't think it's a horrible ending to the story, because we've seen this before.

You and I lived through generations when before there were teller machines or ATM machines, and what did those people do?

We trained them to do the next job.

- Or service stations.

- That's right.

- You know, restaurants, et cetera.

- That's right.

So I'm hopeful, but I gotta tell you, this technological revolution, and it's not an evolution, it's a revolution, is literally changing the game.

And our employees are nervous about it.

Our students are nervous about it.

"Why should I invest in an education when four years later, everything that I invested in no longer matters?"

So we're struggling with this notion of displacement, and I don't know where it ends.

Some people, you know, you look at the coal mines back in the day, the folks in West Virginia.

You take a group of people, you knew the industry they were in was going to be impacted, and what we now know is technology is going to impact in that way, what do we do for those people to get them prepared for 21st century jobs?

- And what is it that... Let's talk about colleges, for example.

You were talking about college education versus no college education.

Obviously, I'm a believer that- - Me too.

- You have to have a college education to do anything, because you're competing internationally, not just nationally.

Now the question is, what do we do with these people in preparation?

How do we prepare them to be resilient, flexible, adaptable, instead of just, "I know how to do X," right?

What are some of the, like the advisory board has come up with some recommendations along this way?

- We have in SHRM, our work, we ultimately are the consumers of your product.

- Yes.

- You graduate a student, - Yes.

- we hire them.

And so, you're spot on.

For too long, in higher ed, we focused on the technical skills.

"I'm gonna teach you how to be an accountant."

And that's exactly what you need to do.

But you'll appreciate this.

Life skills are as important, if not more important to employers now.

Can you think?

Can you creatively solve problems?

Can you work on teams?

Except, those are the things that we're looking for higher educational institutions, colleges and universities, to deliver us.

We can actually teach you the technical stuff because the language, the IT language that you learned today, four years from now, may not even be relevant.

We'll teach you that.

What we need is really well reasoned, critical thinking, articulate people.

We can then take it from there.

And that's what higher education should be doing, is preparing us to have people who can live through five or six different types of changes.

- That's hard to do because most of the people in higher education, stellar as they are, have come up through the academic, you know- - That's right - Highway, right?

- That's right.

- So you're asking them to absolutely turn upside down what they have learned.

- [Johnny] Yes.

- And try to teach it in a way that's useful to others and purposeful.

Johnny, you know, every survey I've seen of employers looking for employees will say that the number one reason why they fail, especially new employees, they're not coachable.

They don't have emotional intelligence.

It's not technical skills.

That's the lowest of the five.

- Absolutely.

- And I would suggest to you that risk management is probably the greatest skill we can teach anybody.

Because if you don't know how to manage risks, you'll never take a risk.

And what you're talking about is a new world in which we must step up and step out and know how to take appropriate and responsible risks, to survive, if not thrive.

Well, tell me about AI.

So, what are you telling your members about AI?

- It's coming fast.

- And how quickly?

- Really fast, that's where I was going.

Well you know, we have these notions.

First of all, ChatGPT, believe it or not as we speak, it was just introduced fewer than two years ago, November 29th of 2022.

So it's still a relatively new phenomena for us.

Now researchers had been working on it for decades, of course.

But for the average person or public, AI was not even a term to be used.

But in just [snaps finger] that short period of time, they're like on ChatGPT version 4 or 5.

We've seen Perplexity, we've seen all of these brands come out, Gemini, and blah, blah, blah.

So the advancements and the amount of money that's being like literally poured into funds to do AI advancement work, you've seen it, means it's gonna move fast.

People don't put trillions of dollars behind something that's not gonna move fast.

They want productivity, they want efficiency, they want creativity.

So what concerns me is what will the regulators do with it, right?

Because it can really transform things.

So I'm gonna get very wonky for a second.

So there's AI, there's Generative AI, but there's this thing out here called Artificial General Intelligence.

And that's this theory that says we can teach these machines to do 99% of what human beings do.

So essentially, singularity to replace human beings.

And as scary as that sounds, it could happen.

The question is, will we allow it to happen?

Just because it can, will we?

And what I will say is, well, I don't think any part of a good society is gonna let the machines take over.

We are gonna do things differently.

So I would argue 20% to 30% of the jobs will forever go away.

Go away.

And so the big question for us and on college campuses and we as employers, have to say, "What do we do for those people who were doing those jobs?"

- How does one embrace that challenge?

- Yeah, it's a mindset thing.

It literally is a shift.

You just talked about, in the higher education context, how the faculty members have to think differently.

Well, all of us have to shift the way we think about this technology.

It's not your enemy, it's gotta be your friend.

So use it as a copilot.

And that's why we talk in our work about AI, artificial intelligence, plus HI, human intelligence, will lead to the new ROI.

So it's either- - I've never heard the term HI before.

- Yes, human intelligence.

- So SHRM came up with that term?

- I was at a conference that like two weeks after they rolled out AI.

It was actually April, at a big Silicon Valley conference.

And everyone there, all of the engineers were talking about what AI is gonna do.

And the unions and the other people were saying, "It's gonna eliminate jobs and people will no longer be necessary."

And I said, "Guys," and I said, "I'm no mathematician, I'm a lawyer, a reforming lawyer, but I think we should think about this differently."

AI, artificial intelligence plus HI, human intelligence, will equal the new ROI.

And the room erupted and it became a thing.

- [Nido] Yes.

- Again, that's as much math as I know, you know?

- But that's a great statement.

I mean, it makes perfect sense.

- Yes, at the end of the day, what we've gotta do, it's new and people are generally xenophobic, right?

They're afraid of the unknown.

This is a really big unknown.

What we're doing and encouraging employers to do is show people how you can become more productive.

Not to lose your job.

We don't wanna replace you, but it'll free you up.

You don't wanna do that tedious stuff that you have to.

Who wants to work on spreadsheets all day?

Who wants to code, right?

Now think about this.

This is a really important shift.

Three or four years ago, we were encouraging, "Everyone go out and become a coder in high school, middle school."

Remember the coding camps?

- [Nido] Especially in healthcare.

- Hell, everything was coding, coding.

And now all of a sudden, AI [snaps fingers] can do most of that and pretty darn well- - Faster, better, cheaper.

- Faster, better, cheaper, et cetera.

So we've gotta pivot now.

Four years ago, we prepared all of these, this war room of coders, and now we've gotta have those people do something else.

But I do say, this is our friend, but we've gotta help our employees deal with the fear and take charge of lifelong learning, which is I know, something you talk about.

- How old is your son?

- My son is 34.

My daughter's 14.

- [Nido] Okay.

- So I see both.

- So what are you telling them?

- Embrace this.

Like run into the storm.

- I mean, how do they embrace that?

- [Johnny] Right.

- You're telling them to learn certain things, to adapt certain ways.

- Yes, so the first thing I do is I force them.

And force is a big word.

We've been talking about this in AI circles.

I mean in HR circles, we're actually encouraging our employees.

"Here's free time every day to go play with the tools, learn the latest technologies."

You know, if you don't interact with it, your fear builds.

And it's something, a phrase that I love that you use, "Manage the risk."

- Yes.

- That it's gonna take your job, but ignoring it won't solve for anything.

If you really wanna do it, you go in, learn this technology, learn what new jobs will be created as a result.

That's a way of managing risk to your profession.

- You have to have a growth mindset, - A growth mindset.

Without it, running away or denying it, putting your head in the sand doesn't mean the sand isn't coming down.

- What's the most exciting part of your job?

- Getting employees to understand how important it is for them to manage their own careers.

The company doesn't control me.

I control me.

Taking agency of your career- - [Nido] Personal responsibility.

- Personal accountability and responsibility.

That excites me and that's a different mindset.

Generally, HR took care of people.

Now I'm like, "No, no, your job is to make sure you let us know what you want out of this life, and we will remove any barriers for you or help you remove those barriers."

But this notion that it's my job to prepare you for what's next, is an old model.

- You know, Johnny, I use the term that everybody renders value.

But fewer number of people render appreciated value.

So what you're talking about is we've all run that value by having an education, - [Johnny] That's right.

Doing something.

- Knowing a trade to do et cetera.

But appreciated value has to link to what the future brings.

So if a company is focused on AI, for example, productivity, et cetera, then you've gotta adapt what your value is to that if it's gonna be appreciated.

- [Johnny] That's right.

- Otherwise, if you don't help me achieve my goals, my aspirations, fulfill my needs, then your value is not really appreciated by me and therefore, you devalue your presence in the marketplace.

That's what we have to teach young people.

- Yes.

- That you have to rise and not just be a person of value, be a person of appreciated value.

What excites you about what lies ahead?

- Believe it or not, I tell everyone, I've said this to you, my dream job is what you do.

At some point in my career- - You're gonna be a president of university?

- Yes, absolutely.

- You know what?

You're crazier than I thought you were.

[Johnny laughing] - You make it look so fun, right?

No, but seriously, after you think about it, - Yes.

- Everything, and I studied- - Why does that appeal to you?

- Preparing them for the future?

Take all of what you've done.

And I literally and not just because we're here.

I'm saying this and I would say it in news circles.

You took all of your business experience, the wisdom of just waking up every day and getting whited hair and all that good stuff.

And at the end of it, you can bring the lessons learned and look for the future for young people.

It's motivating.

- You know, the difference is?

I love what I do because of impact.

- Yes!

- The impact you have on the life of others.

That's different than legacy.

Legacy is what people think about you.

That impact is how people, - How you feel.

feel because they crossed your path.

So I admire you for that ambition.

You'd make a great university president.

If you wait long enough, eventually I'll step aside.

[Johnny laughs] And you can take over.

Johnny, thank you for being with me today.

You do such important work.

You have such a vertical and diagonal understanding of what the future demands of employees and employers.

We need people like you leading our country and the world.

Thank you my friend, and good luck.

- Thank you, my friend.

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