Newsletter #2 (July 29, 2024)
Welcome to Business Thoughts and More from an HR Guy, Newsletter #2! This is my twice-monthly, long-form newsletter post where I write about all things HR and L&D, the business world, and/or other current events I find interesting. LET’S GO!
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1. What the hell, Cloudstrike?
Days after Deloitte breathlessly announced business travel was nearing pre-pandemic levels, Cloudstrike had to go out and do a thing.
I was caught in the middle of the fallout two days after the event, attempting to fly Delta Airlines to Detroit. After over 4 hours of delays and all the other flights going to Detroit cancelled, I gave up and booked a flight on Southwest to Chicago, and then got a one-way rental to make the drive to Detroit, arriving at 3:00am (instead of 8:00pm as originally hoped).
Two days later, while waiting for a seriously delayed Delta flight to Atlanta from Detroit, I took up a chat with two other guys who looked raggedly tired. One was on vacation in Taiwan and was due to fly home the day of the Cloudstrike event. He ended up being stuck there for four more days by numerous Delta cancellations, finally giving up and taking a cheap Chinese airline flight to Tokyo, and then hopped on another airline to fly to the US. The worse part is he said the only available destination he could get on that Japanese airline was Detroit, even though home was Atlanta. He was beyond ready to be home.
The other guy had been attempting to get home to Atlanta following traveling to Wisconsin for a friend’s funeral. He said several of the ushers and pallbearers were unable to make the trip due to all the chaos with Delta (which spilled to other airlines). Like the other guy, he had hopped a trip to St Louis on another airline just to make progress towards home, but ended up in Detroit from St Louis. He, too, just wanted to be home.
And those are just the two stories I heard. There are tens of thousands of stories likely worse than that out there. But, hey, Cloudstrike said $10 was the appropriate amount of “I’m sorry” to the IT employees dealing with all of it. Sounds right. Delta gave me 10K SkyMiles and offered to reimburse extraneous travel expenses as a result of the situation. Your move, Cloudstrike.
2. John Deere joined Tractor Supply in appearing to pick a side on a politically fraught topic.
Following Tractor Supply’s controversy a few weeks ago, John Deere decided to publicly give the axe to its DEI initiatives and more. The timing of the announcement from John Deere seemed odd, considering their current financial picture and within days of two separate rounds of layoffs. The public DEI shift is likely a hedge against the impact to the bottom line of many variables impacting their business right now, rather than a reaction to social media chatter.
Leaders of a company should decide what is best for its customers, employees and shareholders, but that does not need to include public political statements. Other companies like Microsoft are figuring out how to navigate the DEI boogeyman by remaining focused on the benefits of staffing a diverse workforce and offering supportive environments, rather than just cookie cutter programs. Baking DEI into processes like ensuring equal career path mobility and access for employees, for example, is more impactful than non-specific public statements of support or posters in the lunchroom. In other words, don’t talk about it, just DO IT.
3. More AI hype. Sigh.
Two more weeks of breathless AI hype from seemingly everywhere and about anything.
Again, do I want my team, or any team in any company, to eliminate 10% of their manual, non-value-add tasks from their jobs by using a cool new tool? Hell yes!
But the reality is the technology is still largely unproven on a broad scale. While there are actually solid companies out there pushing cool new AI tech, some are just trying to cash in on the AI investment bubble. They will crash and burn. Some AI tools claiming to be game-changers are really just fools gold and will not radically change how you operate (or in some cases, may actually cause an unexpected increase of manual tasks). Do your homework is all I’m saying, whether it is a tool for the workplace or an investment in your portfolio.
As more challenges enter the legal arena on AI, the US government ramps up enforcement efforts, and more people research the data powering AI, you can bet that the bubble will be popped at some point. There are already signs it is coming internally first and with urging from the US government directly.
But, hands-down, this was my favorite reading about AI in the last two weeks. Enjoy.
4. What a couple of weeks in government affairs. The FTC non-compete ban ends in a tie (for now), the NLRB throws the baby out with the bathwater on their joint employer rule, and for some reason, OSHA attracted unneeded attention because it wrote 1,100 pages of regulation to tell employers to protect their employees from the heat.
What initially seemed like some progress was being made for worker rights on three fronts ended up, for now, roughly right back where they started.
The FTC’s attempt at banning most non-competes is basically a wish sandwich now. Somewhere in the middle of that attempt is likely the right answer, but it is just not there for the time being. Companies should be able to require non-competes for executives, certain categories of sales positions, and employees with significant proprietary knowledge, but no way should companies be permitted to blank-slate prevent people from climbing the career ladder elsewhere if the offer is better. Make it make sense please.
The NLRB made a lot of noise about the joint employer rule for over a year, only to literally end up where it began. I don’t think there is much else to say about that, besides “I think I have seen this movie before.”
Finally, OSHA got read the riot act in a House hearing in Congress this past week about their proposed rule on heat illnesses. This was my favorite part: “The proposed rule is 1,175 pages long, and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs spent only 14 business days reviewing it…”. Seriously, OSHA? Do you really need to write 1,175 ridiculous pages of regulation to just say, “Hey, umm, take care of your people when it is 100 degrees. Give them more breaks, supply water, etc.”? Of course that would attract a lot of scrutiny and public comment. Please make it make sense and figure out a way to simplify things for employers, OSHA.
5. Oh dear, Dell.
Ouch. Dell’s annual employee engagement survey results revealed some harsh truths on how their employees feel about recent changes at the tech firm, including their return-to-office (RTO) push. Look, remote work is not for everyone, nor every company. But for many companies and roles, it makes complete sense. If you are going to require in-office work as a company, explain very clearly why to your employees with specifics, without condescension and without the typical parental tone. That said, if you are shifting your RTO policy because of a few bad apples, purge those bad apples. Don’t do wholesale policy changes and create a retention issue. Be surgical instead.
6. Despite recent GDP growth and other news, there are still clouds on the horizon for the economy.
It seems our national economy largely keeps on humming, but context is important for the fuller view of how things really are.
Last week’s 2.8% GDP reading for Q2 of 2024 was definitely surprising, but dips in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq recently are being attributed to “lackluster ….. earnings (that have) undermined investor confidence in megacap names.” There is evidence of a shift in consumer behavior affecting those earnings. In short, the bill is coming due for the historic COVID-era stimulus, inflationary spending and overall marketplace pandemonium, so it seems naturally earnings will be softer, comparatively speaking to two or three years ago. We are adjusting.
And despite a still-decent return year-to-date for the S&P500, businesses are still being somewhat cautious for future planning, especially with an uncertain political environment going into Q4 this year. While layoffs continue at a nominal level, with no significant spike typically associated with a significant recession right now, a WTW survey concerning 2025 budget planning found employers are largely pricing in smaller wage increases for next year. This follows a drop in 2024 wage planning from 2023.
In short, earnings are trending downward, layoffs are holding steady but are anecdotally popping up more in the news, and employers are planning to slow wage increases next year. As long as the Fed continues to hold interest rates where they are to continue to throttle back inflation, we can bet the economic clouds on the horizon may start to produce some rain. Belt tightening is coming at the corporate level, folks.
7. Damn, Delias, say it isn’t so!
Delia’s Tamales, a staple in South Texas, was raided by the FBI last week in connection to allegations of a Social Security fraud scheme that allegedly impacted employees of the chain. Among other allegations of unpaid overtime and paying less than minimum wage, the firm allegedly paid Social Security employment taxes on their employees using fake SS numbers and then got the money it paid to the government routed back to them. A refund, if you will, but a completely illegal one at that.
8. r/LinkedInLunatics strikes again.
For the uninitiated, Reddit’s subreddit LinkedIn Lunatics is a veritable gold mine of social media ridiculousness (a close second is r/recruitinghell). You can get quite the kick out of Redditors taking snapshots of LinkedIn posts from users who are either very snarky or take themselves (and their posts) way too seriously. I don’t begrudge anyone from using the site to further their business goals, because after all, it is a lead generating goldmine to connect with other B2B service providers. That said, this is not a new phenomenon with cringeworthy posts happening on LinkedIn. But there is a reason there is a irreverent subreddit called LinkedIn Lunatics, as it almost always celebrates the most ridiculous posts from LI. Enjoy this nugget.
9. The Houston Astros’ season has been bailed out by a combination of their return-to-form team, as well as the real-time meltdown of the Seattle Mariners.
Let’s face it, before they got the opportunity to destroy the Chicago White Sox over this past weekend, the Seattle Mariners have imploded. Barring a miracle, they will finish July with a losing record for the month. They have forgotten how to hit and get on base (again, before the White Sox series). For a team with a great pitching staff, their offense has just disappeared. We’ll see what they do at the trade deadline but giving up a 10-game division lead may really hurt their postseason chances, currently sitting at a 40% probability of making the playoffs.
10. Shout-out to Whataburger for their career pathing and skills-based development process.
I went through the Whataburger drive-through last week and saw something interesting. On a standalone segment of the interior of their drive-through (where the employees work inside taking payment and handing out food) were numerous posters and binders displaying their career pathing options, along with a menu of QR codes to open up specific role skillset lists. I tried to take a picture of what I could see but the pictures were terrible. For a glimpse of what I am referring to, visit their website here, and in the meantime, I’ll see if I can do a better job of showcasing what they offer their employees in the next newsletter.
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And now, that’s a wrap for this newsletter. I’ll be back in two weeks. Let me know what you think!
© July 2024 Brandon Caldwell, all rights reserved. Hyperlinks are used frequently to reference source materials for proper credit to the original authors on their websites, news articles, social media or other sources. While it can be a useful tool, no ChatGPT or other generative AI was used in the production of this newsletter. Opinions are mine and do not reflect the opinion or policy of others including employers past or present.