Name: Josh Bersin | Winning the Human Side of Business in the Age of AI
Uploaded: 2025-10-01T19:16:05.526Z
Duration: 42 min 31 s
Description: Josh Bersin | Winning the Human Side of Business in the Age of AI

Transcript for "Josh Bersin | Winning the Human Side of Business in the Age of AI": Okay. Well, hello, everyone. I'm Vanessa Kahkesh, and I'm the HR content lead here at Rippling. And today, we have a very special guest, Josh Bersin, who is a pioneer in the industry of HR. Josh is a world renowned industry analyst, author, and educator in the future of work. So it is such an honor to be with you here today. Thank you so much for taking the time Sure. To chat. And I'm really excited for this conversation and to discuss the future of work in this AI driven world we're in and learn more about your story. I think we're living in the future right now. Yeah. Feels like. That's what it feels like for sure. Amazing. Did I miss anything in the intro that you wanted to mention? Or No. That's great. No. Most people in HR know what I do and who I am, so let's let's talk. Perfect. Okay. So I'd love to start at the beginning. I know I reached out because I'm also a fellow Haas student or Haas alumni now. Mhmm. I guess when you look back to when you were doing your MBA at Haas, did you when you were in those days, did you ever imagine yourself being here today shaping the future of work and and in HR? No. Absolutely not. I had I have an engineering degree and a master's in engineering, worked in an oil company for a while, worked at IBM in sales and marketing, went to graduate school, thought I wanted to get a PhD, decided I didn't wanna get a PhD, and, then went to left IBM, went to work for a database company when the database market was really high, working in sales and marketing and business development and product management, and then went to a startup that was building something in online learning and got laid off in the 2,000 and decided there since there were no jobs, there were virtually no jobs in the Bay Area at the time, that I would do research on contract in the area of online learning, and that became fascinating to me. I was in my forties, so it wasn't certainly the early part of my career. Maybe I might have been in my late forties, I think about it. But, and then realized there was this huge space of human capital, leadership, recruiting, HR, pay, diversity, rewards, employee experience, engagement, all that that was really important to companies that I had never been aware of. It was a shadow, you know, world that I had never seen, and realized that, you know, having sort of a a researchy engineering approach to understanding this was useful to people, and that's how I became an analyst. And that was almost thirty years ago. And, it turned out that for me being I'm a very pragmatic person that I learned a lot, and I'm still learning a lot about HR and all the research and things that people do in human capital and culture and all that. But, by by not being schooled in it, maybe I had a little bit of a more neutral perspective on whether things were working or not. And so, a lot of the research we do discovers and uncovers things that people think are working but may not be working the way they thought, and that's, to me, been really an incredible career. You're essentially So there was no it was unpredictable. It was unpredictable. Yeah. I mean, I think, like, that's how a lot of the times it's just, like, life happens and you just explore unexpected paths. And I but it's interesting that you have that, like, engineering background. I think that totally shapes and, like, influences the way that you've been able to be so successful in uncovering those, like, hidden trends and, Well, you know, it's funny. You know? And, Vanessa, just to give you a sense for people that know me or follow us, even this week I'll get up early in the morning, and I will have an idea about something that's been bugging me because it's been going on with the clients. And I'll poke around and chat GPT or wherever, and I'll find something, some research that somebody's done. And I'll read it, and I'll say, wow. I didn't know anybody studied that. Maybe that's, you know, something we should do more work in. For example, I was just looking at national cultures, the difference between national cultures over over history, what why people in China feel differently about the world than people in The United States versus people in Finland and so forth. So there's no end to this because human beings are endlessly interesting in organizations. Yeah. And you're, like, sitting at the intersection of literally studying human beings Right. In the workplace. Human resources. Yeah. It's, like, it's like it never it never ends. And, like, I guess that's but that's, like, that's great that you're able to do work that you feel so excited about every single day. I think that's something a lot of people want to achieve in their career. Well yeah. And the advice that I give to people and this is something my father did for me. My father was a scientist. If you find something you really like in the business community somewhere and you do it, the chances are you're gonna be really good at it because you like it, and you're gonna get better at it, and you can build a career around it. So I know some people chase high pay paid jobs because they wanna make more money. But if it's not something you like doing, you're probably not gonna be super good at it, and you're not gonna do it for a long period of time. And you might be unhappy with your career over time. So your innate desires and enjoyment actually is a big signal of what you're gonna be good at in your career. No. I totally I totally agree. I guess okay. I wanna also tap into you mentioned we're literally living in the future. Right. So, Yes. I feel like we're just in such an interesting era, and there's so many changes happening. But and, like, I saw this report actually from McKinsey the other day that 84% of companies feel like they're unprepared for the future disruptions we're having it we're having. So I guess, what is the single biggest shift that you're seeing in HR leadership in the past six to twelve months? Well, everything's getting reinvented very, very quickly around AI. But AI is the enabler of something that companies have been trying to do for decades, which is to get rid of the bureaucratic hierarchical structure of organizations and liberate people to do better work in a more independent way. Now now there's lots of jobs that are very mechanical jobs where we just want people to do the same thing over and over again, and we just want them to not make a mistake. Mhmm. But more and more of that's getting automated. And we call this the superworker effect, where revenue per employee or value per employee or profit per employee is going up and up and up and up. And so the value of each individual human in the company is exploding and growing. So the the number one issue that HR people have is, what do I need to do with all of the HR issues in this world where people are moving around from role to role, getting hyper skilled and hyper powered with AI. The AI systems are giving us data that we never had before. You know, what does it say for job design, job architecture, performance management, succession, recruiting, learning and development, leadership pay. All these things that were very mechanical done in centers of excellence within HR are now stitching themselves together in this new super worker kind of environment. And, the job market is very competitive. People aren't having children. The number of workers in some countries is is either flat to shrinking, including in The United States. I mean, we just had sent one of our lead analysts to Japan last week, and she said the number one issue is they don't have enough people. There's nobody to hire. In Japan. Which yeah. Because the Japanese economy is shrink I mean, the the SIP the population is shrinking. So so so HR departments, you know, are worried about that that whole big situation with an added pressure that the CEO and the CFO is probably saying to them, we gotta do more with less because we're gonna spend a whole bunch of money on AI. So automate away as much work as you can in the middle of all this and help the rest of the company do it because a lot of the HR skills are needed in the broader AI transformation in the rest of the company. So it's a very, very interesting but dynamic and demanding time for HR people. And then, you know, add to that a few other sort of distractions, like in The United States, nobody wants to talk about DEI anymore, but it's still a massive topic. What do we do about pay and pay equity when, you know, we have people working from all over the world and various different economic conditions? So it's a very challenging job. I I think and also, if you look at the pay level and the role of CHROs Mhmm. There's an interesting study we have in our CHRO research. Somewhere around twenty five or thirty years ago, something like 1% of CHROs were paid in the top five pay of their executives. There's a there's a there's a a legal form that has to be higher filed for all public companies that the top five highly paid executives have to be disclosed. That was that there were virtually no HR people in that list thirty years ago. Now, it's something like 10 or 11 or 12%. So the the role and the pay and the importance of HR has been going up and up and up and up. So, you know, the people that are in HR are really becoming very senior strategic business people and HR experts at the same time. So it's it's a very dynamic and interesting time to be in this domain. And you guys know that at Rippling because you're you're part of this. Mhmm. Wow. Wait. That was you just mentioned a lot of things. Great things. It wasn't one thing, but it was kind of a whole nest of things. Yeah. That was I think that, like, encapsulated, like, everything that's really happening in, like, a high level overview. But that's really interesting. I think one thing I I was I I like that you mentioned that I was interested to learn more was you said there are certain skills that HR leaders are acquiring almost that are helping them extend beyond just HR. Like, they're going and tapping into influencing the business in other areas. Like, in the day and age where people are becoming these super workers, you know, we have so much of so much more skills or potential. What are those skills that are differentiating the best HR leaders? Like, what skills would you advise people to start acquiring and developing? Well okay. So anybody that's interested in that question, we have an assessment of 94 capabilities in HR. There are a lot of things involved. It's called our capability assessment. You can take it for free. So I'm not trying to simplify a complicated profession. HR is a complex profession. So anybody who says it's easy to do HR has never been in HR. It's much more complicated than people realize. But the big changes that are hitting most organizations right this minute are obviously understanding AI and what it is and how it works and the implications of it on individuals and teams and productivity. And we have a whole, you know, methodology for that. And I would say the other family of skills really have to do with really understanding how your business operates. Every company is different, and the things that drive success in company a are different from company b, even if it's in the same industry. Cultural issues, marketplace issues, product competitiveness, skills, competitors in the market, countries, geographies that you do business in. In some ways, I think of HR, great HR people, is they understand all of that. Mhmm. And then they take all of that context about the company, and they apply the human capital expertise they have to make sure that the hiring and training and development and internal programs are supporting that mission. Because what happens to people that have never been in HR or even me before I got into all this is you think you know what to do as a leader because you're a leader. You know, you you've managed people, and you've had a lot of experience, and you're successful. But there's things that you're not aware of that the HR people might wanna help you with. And so, there's this sort of tap dance of HR supporting the business in a consultative way. You know, if you go back twenty years, Vanessa, I mean, and even longer, HR was a cost center, and it was mostly compliance and administration. So you would call HR if your payroll if, you know, if your paycheck was wrong or you wanted to know what happened to your four zero one k or whatever, and that was it. Well, now, in some sense, it's flipped. That's all automated. So now, what HR people are doing is helping you as a business person figure out why are we underperforming, why do we have high turnover, why are we having poor quality of product, why are our deliveries late, whatever. And then, you know, when we do need to hire people or promote people or find new people for important roles, the HR people should be expert at that, and they should help you make those decisions very, very quickly and accurately, not not just take them off your plate, but, assist you as the business leader. So, we call this systemic HR in the sense that the HR function now is sort of like one giant consulting organization that, you know, works on different problems in different parts of the company at different points in time. Sometimes they're individual roles or individual departments, sometimes they're organization wide. For example, you know, a lot of things that's going on in AI right now is companies are investing in AI, and they're really, really pushing very, very hard to downsize or reduce headcount as a result, call centers, you know, certain routine jobs. But then the question comes along, well, you know, are we gonna lay people off? Are we gonna redesign these groups? Or or, you know, are we ready? Do we have the productivity improvements we need to reduce the headcount? And then you run into culture issues of, well, people don't wanna let go of their jobs. They don't wanna let go of their roles. We've never made these kinds of changes before. You know, these sort of broader organizational, dynamic issues are what HR people are supposed to be good at. So, there's just endless numbers of things that HR people are working on right now in all of these areas. It's interesting because I think, like you mentioned, twenty years ago or before, it's like HR was just this, like, little corner thing. Like It used to report to the CFO. Also, it used to report to the CFO. So it was not in any way a strategic function, you know, other than, you know, maybe in a few companies. But But now it's like, yeah. If you're in HR, you're not just in HR. You're literally you have to understand the whole business. And I I think you brought up a good point too that it's like every single business operates differently. So it's like HR leaders have to take the initiative to basically understand personally their own company and and to to use that knowledge to, like, empower themselves. Well, yeah. And one of the ways that I think HR people really do advance in that and this we get this in spades is by moving around. Like, if you've walked in worked in one company for a long, long time, you might be very, very, savvy at how that company operates, but you don't know what you don't know. And so when that company goes through some sort of kind of an interruption or disruption for some reason that you've never seen before, you're learning on the job. So, if you really wanna become an HR executive, it really helps to move around from organization to organization to see what different industry and cultures are like because because the scenarios are different, and you won't experience them all in one place. For those HR professionals who are or even just, like, young individuals who are, like, stepping into Yeah. HR right now and who wanna, like, rise, who wanna get promoted, but maybe within, like, their own organization or even even if they're moving around, Like, but what would you say are some of, like, the nonnegotiable things that you've seen have helped scale that strategic impact? Like, you mentioned the the the you mentioned, like, 10 to 12% increase in the was it the rise of, The the the pay level of the c level exec. No. No. It's gone up. It's gone up by orders of magnitude. That's that's incredible. But, like, so how like, what is driving that? Like, what is been like, what are the driving factors to that that people watching this can start to I mean, basically, what's driving it is that the human capital issues in companies are amongst, if not, the number one issue. I mean, look at Mark Zuckerberg spending a $100,000,000 per engineer for AI engineers. I mean, you know, I don't know that Meta is necessarily the perfect company in terms how they're managed. You can see a lot of complaining about what what's going on internally. But, that's a reflection that human capital value is an enormous competitive advantage, especially in the world of AI, where you have to figure out how to implement it, how to use it, and it's all new. So, you know, I think in the you know, I was born in the fifties. So when I came to work, I mean, I worked for Exxon and there were, you know, big conglomerate companies where in some sense, there was so much stability. The human capital was a replaceable part. Like, you come in out of college, you work there for a while, you get promoted up the track, eventually you reach the Peter principle, you're going no higher, and then you either quit or you somebody else replaces you. There was kind of a factory model to now every company is working is changing so quickly, and there's so much innovation in the economy that everybody is in a war for talent. Mhmm. I was on the phone with the CEO of H and M, you know, the big retailer, 4,000 stores. They are hiring 10,000 or more people a year or more every year constantly because they hire very young people and they leave. So their ability to find exactly the right people that understand fashion, that understand how to sell, that understand how to attract people to their products, is a make or break for that store. Even Chipotle, the, you know, the burrito place, they they they were on on CNBC, the CEO, saying the reason we hit our revenue numbers this year or overachieved them last quarter was because we were able to hire better people faster because we could open stores more quickly. You know, you go look at a downturn, you look at a company like Boeing or a company that's going through a turnaround, it usually has to do with culture. It usually has to do with leadership. It usually has to do with some human capital issues, some decisions that were made by some individuals. I mean, human capital issues are just so critical in every company. You can't be an administrative HR person anymore. That's all been automated. There's very little of it left. Wow. But that should be, like, inspiring because, like, now you It is. No. I mean, I I don't know if people you know, I've been in it so long. I don't know if people who aren't in an HR realize how exciting and dynamic this profession is. Mhmm. I don't think SHRM does it justice, frankly. I think SHRM tries, but they make it feel like a very compliance oriented role. It's not. That's a small piece of it. It's much more complex than that and interesting. It's, like, almost like how I see it is, like, a lot of the human stuff is getting like, all the human problems are the things that HR now gets to tackle versus the administrative and, like, the compliance work. And that human work is really interesting. That's right. And and, you know, at least from my mind, it's not as simple as liking to be around people and do I mean, you know, a lot of people go into HR because they're just very people centric, but there's a science to it. There's a lot of methodology behind this. And so great HR people have learned a lot over the years on how to deal with different situations, individual and team and organizational situations. So, and it's you know, by the way, AI is going to eliminate even more of the bureaucracy. And so the only thing that's gonna be left is strategic thinking and consulting and advisory and business related work in HR. How do you like, if you're if you're in HR right now and, you know, like you said, the trend is that all this administrative work is gonna get automated, how do you still leverage, like, data driven results? Like, what are the I don't know. Like, what are the skills or traits of HR leaders who are not just the people people but are are coming to the table with, like, the numbers that are gonna see Well, there's a lot yeah. Well, for a year, I wrote a book on on measure on training measurement a long time ago. So I could spend a lot of time on this over the years. But there's a massive amount of data in the human capital part of a company that in most places, in most cases is not that well organized. Not just how many people just how many people we have and how much we're paying them is actually sometimes hard to figure out. But then turnover rates and skills and readiness for leadership and progression and movement. But then there's, you know, labor relations issues, where are we having accidents, what's the sales productivity of this group versus that group. There's there's tons and tons of data to be analyzed here. So, you know, you can't really succeed in the HR profession unless you're comfortable with a lot of data. And then and then there's the issue of how do you organize it and use it effectively because all of this data comes from different systems. I mean, you guys have an integrated system for smaller companies, but most big companies have dozens and dozens and dozens of HR systems around the world. So a simple analysis like sales productivity versus against tenure might take months to get the data. So there's a there's a group of people in HR. They're usually called people analytics that specialize in this, but a lot of companies don't have a group like that. So, we have a whole course on this to just familiarize HR people with the data issues and the data the value of data. And then the other problem you end up with is, you're sitting on all this data about company performance, and you've gotta go to a business person and explain it to them in a way that they will believe you because it might be counter Yeah. To their their intuition. I'll give you a good example. We have a client in a battery company, which is growing like crazy, that did an analysis, a very sophisticated HR person. She did an analysis in one of their manufacturing plants that the, managers were overstaffing. They were hiring too many people and scheduling too many shifts, and the actual productivity or revenue per employee or per wage was going down, and the actual output was going down. But the line managers didn't sense that because they sensed that they needed more people, so they were hiring and hiring and hiring. So she had to do a big analysis and show them statistically that you're overstaffing. You're wasting money. And she said, you know, they didn't believe me until I showed them the data. And eventually, when I showed them the data, they understood what was going on. So, there's a lot of, data collection, data analysis, and then storytelling that has to happen in HR. Yeah. That's interesting. And, like, I mean, I I guess it kinda makes sense because it's if you come to the table without any, like, hardcore data, it is hard to earn that that seat, especially since HR sometimes doesn't get the best rep when they're not used to, like Well, the the other problem the other thing that's going away in HR is I think there has been a, mentality that I'm from h u HR, and I'm here to help you. And then, you know, somebody says, well, I don't need your help. Why are you here? You don't wanna be in that situation. Yeah. Like, you have to go to them with You need to be intelligent enough about what's going on that you kind of come in as a consultant and say, look, I understand this is going on. Let me give you some ideas of some things we could talk about on how we work on this together and then get involved. Because what happens with most business people, they're busy. Everybody's got, you know, stuff to do and the numbers to hit and whatever. If the HR person has a solution or an advice, you know, something that you feel as a business people is gonna help you, you're gonna say, hey, come on in. Do your thing. Mhmm. I'm happy to have you. So, the idea of being a service person waiting for people to ask for help, that those days are going away very quickly. Totally. That's yeah. Honestly, with every rule too, it's like you don't wanna be the person who's like, tell me what to do. It's like you go in. You're like, I I know what I can help you with, and that is where you add value. So it's like more HR people need Yeah. And and what you know, and what happens in really great companies, and I know I mean, I meet so many great HR people, is they're they're invited to be part of the operation. They want them there. They want them in the meetings. They want them in the operations. They want them to be part of the team. That's the ideal situation. Is that this is we're in a specialized role with specialized skills and capabilities, and we should be in the business with them, not waiting for them to call on us for a service. Exactly. You I wanted to ask you about irresistible organizations because I know you Sure. Wrote a book about that. What is really an irresistible organization? Well, the book has seven major themes to it. But just to summarize it Like, if you walked into a if you walked into an organization tomorrow I can find yeah. I'll tell you something funny, Vanessa. I've I've visited so many companies. I can tell within almost sixty seconds. No way. Two minutes what's going on. What? Because here's here's what's here here's the the reason it's relatively easy for me, not for everybody, is because usually I come into a strategic group of people who are talking about something already. But, I think there are companies that a bit usually, startup or young companies think about human capital as a growth investment. Let's hire more people, train them, and get them up to speed as fast as possible as possible so we can grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And that's the it's sort of early stage rapid growth mentality of of human capital. But then what happens is the company reaches a certain size, they become global, they become complex, they have multiple products, they have different customer sets, and all of a sudden, the growth rate slowed, there's a problem, there's a competitor, they're losing money, their stock price goes down to whatever. And now you look around and you say, do we have the right skills? Do we have the right people in the right job? Do we have too many people? Are we are we too nice to people? Do we need to have a more accountable culture? Or do we are are we too hard on people? Are we losing the best people because we don't have enough rewards for them? You know, all of these, more complex issues become very, very relevant. And then you realize that some companies say to themselves, well, if we take care of the people part of this company, the rest of this stuff will get fixed. So in other words, the philosophy of an irresistible company is, we trust the people. We're going to create an environment where the people can thrive. We're obviously gonna hire the people that are highly accountable and fit our performance culture. And and we're not going to discard them like their widgets that can be replaced. And I mean, I know that's a very sort of stark way of saying it, but there is a sole company's invest in learning and development. They invest in talent mobility. They listen to the employees a lot. They really work hard to make sure the human capital part of the company is strong because what happens was when the crisis hits, and every company has crises, I mean, every single company. I've been through it in our company. You want the employees to say, okay. I get it. Maybe I need to take a pay cut. Maybe a couple of us have gotta go. But I'm into this but I'm gonna take my human energy and I'm gonna help turn this company around. You want that to take place all over the company at all levels. So irresistible companies tend to have very high glass door ratings. They're they're very well reputed and well regarded places to work. People have long careers there. They learn a lot there. They have alumni networks. They believe in the human capital essence of their companies at their core. And I'm not saying everybody doesn't say this. Everybody does say this. But when times get tough, how do you behave? You know? And and you see it. So the reason I wrote the book is it's very complicated. You know, there's a lot of small subtle things that make a big difference in a high performing company. So, you know, when you spend more time as you get older in your career, Vanessa, and you decide what you're gonna do in your future life, you'll you'll experience this in different companies. Because I've worked for some companies that are pretty poorly managed. I'm not gonna mention any names, and I know what it's like. Wow. That was really inspiring, actually. Like, basically, it's it's like the human, the human enthusiasm and, like, the human spirit that has to go, like, well You know, I call it you you have to have a fundamental belief in the, ability of others. You have to trust people. You have to be able to hold them accountable. You have to listen to feedback because nobody's perfect. You have to sort of understand the motivations of people. People don't wanna work just for kicks. They wanna get something out of it. They wanna get promoted. They wanna learn. They wanna grow. You kinda have to kind of get all that, and then you have to translate it into the business you're in. Like, one of one of the companies I'm talking to later today is L'Oreal. I'm I'm doing an interview with the CHRO of L'Oreal. L'Oreal is a very, very, very successful company if you know all their brands. They are a human capital centric company. If you look inside that company, they take really good care of the people. You may not know that from the outside, but you do if you work there. So, you know, there are companies that you perceive on the outside as great stocks or great, you know, products. And under the coverage, you find out, you know, they're probably doing some great things in the in the HR human capital side to support that. It really all it all it basically, like, literally all comes down to the people. Like and that's only in, like, HR. It's, like, in life too. It's, like, it comes back to the people, but it's so true. Well, there are no companies without people. I have yet to see one. People. Together. Yeah. It's like a I mean, that's how companies start, a a small group of people who believe in something, some vision. Right. And, you know Oh, yeah. And, you know, the that's the other interesting thing about this whole issue of of human capital is the reason the company exists is some person or some group of people founded it sometime in the past because they had some idea to do something that nobody had ever done before, and they worked at it like a dog until they got it to succeed. Usually, that thing that started the company is still the nucleus of the company decades later. That's so interesting. It's real it is. You see this in j you look at Boeing, J and J, Nike. You pick the brand you like. Usually, the thing that started it, Starbucks, is still there. Wow. That's so interesting. I I always say that, like, some of the most successful companies are just simply extensions of the founder. Yeah. And then, you know, eventually, the founder leaves, and there's a different culture. You're like like Uber and others where, you know, new management team comes in. But, but but that's why the human capital issues are so important is the other way I think of it is in any business situation where there's two companies trying to go after the same market, they will never do it the same way. One company will be focused on service, the other one will be focused on innovation. One company will be focused on premium pricing, the other company will be focused on low cost value. I mean, all of those which you learn about in business school, you went to business school, all those subtle decisions you make about how you go to market are human decisions. AI is not gonna tell you how to make those decisions. So, you know, every employee is in some sense a human extension of the company's strategy. So this is why HR is so interesting because if we can get everybody to row at the same I was on the crew team in college for a little while. You know, when everybody rows together, the boat goes 25% faster. That's so true. That's wow. Yeah. It's like everyone needs to be aligned, and that's how you also use you you almost, like, maximize the energy that you have. Like, because at the end of the day, human capital is like a form of energy, and it's like, how do you unlock all of that energy within the company? Well, you gotta get everyone together, like, feeling like they're in this together, and that starts with HR. Like, it starts with the principles, the operations, the tech stack, all of that. Like, it's it's kinda like the backbone of the organization, and it's, like, hidden. Like, people don't always see it. But I guess you can see it in sixty seconds. Well, the only reason I I'm a little more sensitive to it is I've visited so many companies and, you know, I'm not I'm not saying I'm a perfect analysis of of every organization. But, you know, the thing that I've maybe the humility that I've developed over the years in this job is how difficult this is. And, anybody that thinks it's easy to lead a large company is probably misleading themselves. There are very there are very complex issues that come up in every business I've ever met. And, when there when there's a lot of respect for the people, there's more ideas, there's more creative thinking, there's more resilience from mistakes, there's more innovation. So, I mean, you look at Amazon, pick whatever company you love that's performed well over many, many years. Mhmm. There's some strong HR people behind it. I guarantee you. Yeah. One okay. One last question I have for you. From everything that you've seen and studied, all of the research, what do you think is wait. I sorry. I forgot the question. I it was a oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry. I'm gonna ask the question again. Sure. From everything that you've seen and studied, what do you know for sure about the future of work? I know for sure that no matter how smart or super intelligent or whatever we wanna call it, AI becomes, that the human value add will always be the most important differentiator in a business. I can guarantee you that. These debates and discussions and articles about 50% of workers disappearing because of AI or, software engineers being automated away by AI or whatever the word, you know, the latest, idea is is not gonna happen. We are humans. The human animal is an amazingly adaptable being, creature, whatever we call ourselves. And we are value seeking creative animals. We're curious. We're always trying to figure out how to do things differently. We learn, we have genetic history of emotions and intuition and things that are very subtle. So as much as AI is going to eliminate a lot of the friction in businesses and give us much better data and give us much more automation and get rid of routine work, I I twenty years from now, we're gonna be talking about human capital issues just like we are today. Fifty years ago, I may not be here, but there will somebody will be talking about it. And what legacy do you want to to leave? And For me? Mhmm. I mean, I'm happy to have been able to contribute as much as I have. I I I don't think there's any perfect answer to any of these HR things, but I think we've been able to advance the state of thought a lot, and we're gonna keep doing that as long as I possibly can. Amazing. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I know that we're a time. Wow. I I learned so much from this conversation and from you, and I'm sure that people watching this will too. And yeah, wow. Thank you so much for sharing all the Thank you, Vanessa. Wisdom and the insights. And I'm looking forward to the future of of this workplace we're gonna live in, and I think a lot of HR leaders are gonna be able to to continue rising in their roles and beyond. So okay. Well, thank you everyone for watching, and stay tuned for future interviews. Hi, everyone. Just wanted to come here again and say thank you so much for watching. I really hope you enjoyed this conversation, and took something away. And I, again, I really appreciate Josh for doing this. And so, yes, thank you all for coming, and stay tuned for more rippling events. And, also, if you are interested in unifying your HR systems, you can also, learn more about Rippling, which is the sponsor for this webinar, of course. And in exchange for booking a demo, if you're interested, we have a $100 gift card for you. And so to do this, just click the button on the top right corner if you're interested. And and, yeah, we'd love to love to help you along your journey and, help you, I guess, navigate this world of AI while still making sure that you're leading people in the right way. So thank you all again, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Happy first day of fall as well. And, yeah, I'm gonna leave this on for just a few more moments if people, have anything else to ask. Thank you, Susie. Thank you, Jesse. Thank you, Rohan. Thank you, Vicky. Amazing. Okay. With that being said, we're gonna end the session here. So see you all.