HR Leaders Never Bought the AI Replacement Story

Scott Landers:

The way that society has handled the implementation of AI societally is gonna be a Harvard Business Review case study on how not to market, right? Because what is missing? There’s no real transparency, there’s not a lot of clarity, and so there’s zero trust in the system.

Hannah Yardley:

We’re really terrible at connecting things like engagement with growth and development, with recognition. All of these parts that create an employee experience, and we treat them as separate programs. And AI or not, people still wanna know, do I matter in this organization? Am I growing? Is there opportunity for me? Is my work connecting to something bigger?

Steve Smith:

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Work Tech Weekly. I’m Steve Smith, Managing Director of Growth at Rep Cap.

For the last couple of years, AI has gotten the budget. Investment in people kept getting pushed to next year. The assumption was that the workforce would shrink anyway.

It hasn’t. Employees are still here, and many of them are carrying more work than before.

My guests today are Scott Landers, CEO of Achievers, and Hannah Yardley, Achievers’ Chief People Officer. Achievers is an employee recognition and engagement platform. I don’t often get a CEO and a chief people officer in the same conversation, and this pairing is a big part of why this episode works.

We talk about how the two of them built a working relationship from Scott’s first weeks as CEO. We also get into why AI change falls apart when it happens to employees instead of with them, and why the way AI has been sold to workers made that harder.

Then we get to the budget question, and where people investment goes once AI spending has to prove its ROI.

If you sell into HR or run a people team, you’ll come away with a clearer read on the next two years.

Let’s get into it.

Steve Smith:

Scott, Hannah, welcome to the podcast.

Scott Landers:

Thanks for having us.

Hannah Yardley:

Yeah, great to be here.

Steve Smith:

Well, and I’m glad you can join us. And I don’t often get to do a two-guest episode, so this is gonna be fun, and I don’t often get to do an episode where we have a CEO and a Chief People Officer together. So this is an exciting conversation, because I’ve always felt like this is a dynamic that’s really important for success in any organization.

Hannah, first question’s for you. You’ve, you know, literally given advice publicly about navigating CEO transitions, you know, listening versus sharing, consistent communication, stability. You’d already been at Achievers for a while when Scott showed up. Did you take your own advice when he came on board as CEO, or how did that kinda work? Onboarding a new CEO there at Achievers.

Hannah Yardley:

I’d say a bit of hit and miss in taking my own advice, which is probably exactly what most people do when reality hits them, you know, pretty starkly in the face. So I think the thing that worked well for us in making our interactions really effective is, I think it revolved around communication. So open communication from the start, honest communication from the start. You know, I think that was really critical to building trust early on, and that there’s only so many ways and so many opportunities to build trust, and being open and honest with him and having those hard conversations and light conversations too.

I mean, we need to get to know each other. Along the way, it has built a foundation that’s made not only the start of our relationship, I think, work really well, but has set ourselves up for success in the long term. The second piece that I would say I probably didn’t get as good with was around the frequency of communication.

I talked a lot about, you know, making sure that you’re getting the right things in his hands. And I think when Scott and I first came together, I had so much going on in my head that I just wanted to get it all out. And you know, Scott would just be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Hannah. Like, I can only absorb so much in this moment.

And there’s that million things I just wanted to get out and share with him. So I needed to quickly learn what were actually his priorities and what was the most important things to communicate with. And when we got into that right head space around the prioritization and the frequency with which we were talking, then I think we started getting the ball rolling on what landed to be a great working relationship.

Scott Landers:

Yeah, I think, Hannah, actually, that second part, which you critiqued yourself, I would actually say was a positive, right? Because for me, the big thing is transparency. Right. And in any relationship, do I have to ask the right question to get the full answer? And so I actually appreciated, Hannah, you kind of getting everything off your chest and telling me everything I needed to know.

’Cause then I could work with you and the rest of the team saying, okay, if this is the full playing field, right? Which parts do we prioritize? Put first, you know, say it’s okay if that comes next and later. So I would give Hannah an A-plus on both fronts in that regard. And for me, like, this relationship, you know, is so important to the success of the company.

And I actually talked selfishly to the success of me personally. I remember going back to 2015, when the board first told me I was gonna have my first CEO opportunity, and the first thing they said to me was, hey, we’re giving you a coach. This coach, her name was Claire. She was amazing. And they said, she’s 100% there for you. We are not gonna talk to her. She’s not gonna report back anything.

And it really was helpful for me in that first year, year and a half. ’Cause you know, CEOs are riddled with insecurity, and they try not to show it. And they’re apprehensive. And it gave me such an outlet. And, you know, when that project ended and Claire moved on, any CHRO I’ve worked with, I really use them in two capacities. One is to help me run the business and get the most out of our leadership team and the people, but also, selfishly, you know, sometimes I need that ear, and Hannah, where I can tell you too much. Right. And that’s a safe spot for me.

And also telling me the blind spots. I appreciate this relationship tremendously.

Steve Smith:

Yeah, that’s a great way of looking at it. Scott, you know, another thing I was kind of wondering is, you know, you have, I guess as we’d say in Texas, this is not your first rodeo. You know, you have a lot of experience as a CEO coming into a situation where scaling is definitely job one. So, you know, you’re sort of like walking into a movie in the middle of it. And there’s all of these people who have maybe worked together for a while. There’s a lot of, you know, track record and stuff that you’re trying to figure out in real time.

How has that maybe changed in, you know, the age of AI, where on top of all of the other things that you have to deal with as a CEO coming into a new situation, you have to deal with something that is completely unprecedented and none of us have dealt with anymore?

Scott Landers:

Yeah, I think, you know, it is a great question. I actually think there are two separate things. Right. And I don’t think we should mix them. I think the first thing is, I have had the opportunity, or I guess my sweet spot, right? I’m not gonna be the CEO of Apple, right? But my sweet spot, where I’ve spent my career, is joining companies where they’re 50 to a hundred, and then they grow to 300 to 500, right?

That’s where my skillset is, and I love that sweet spot, because the companies that I joined are already great companies. So few startups can get to the 50 to a hundred million mark. So I come when there’s already a there there. But that also comes with enormous responsibility. ’Cause the way they got there was they had really good people, they had really good ideas, and they had really good cultures.

And so I come in with the enormous responsibility to keep all that goodness that’s there and all that momentum and have it continue to flourish, but also introduce new muscles. How do we mature and do things at scale? How do we not rely on a hero culture of one or two great salespeople or one or two great engineers?

How do we create the ability to onboard 24 new salespeople and have 80% of them be successful, and do that over and over and over again? And so, you know, I approach this as servant leader. I think one of the things that’s different for me personally, since it’s my third rodeo, is I don’t worry about being liked anymore, which was an Achilles heel for me.

I worry about being respected, so I lean much more heavily into the truth and transparency out the gate, irrespective of the audience I’m speaking to. But I think when you think about then maturing, and I’ll get into AI here. Anytime you’re maturing an organization, you are implementing new processes, new systems, new way of doing things, and that’s all about behavioral change.

And so that’s also an area that’s tried and true, right? How do you go about embracing change and managing it? And that’s where I lean on folks like Hannah, folks on the rest of the team, and how are we gonna pace that, how we’re gonna give people the support, make sure they’re aligned to why this is important, and then reinforce the wheel along the way.

I think to your last question, as it now relates to AI, that’s just another way to make your business better. Now, the difference is there’s no necessarily tried and true way to go and do that. We’re all learning at the same time. In fact, I think what’s astonishing, I don’t think I’ve ever seen, I’m not sure how many people are actually employed in the world, but let’s just say it’s 8 billion.

Basically, they’re all being like, hey, here’s an AI model or program. Just go use it and see what you can do. That’s really exciting, but it’s also really distracting. Really expensive. And so I think what companies in the world are dealing with today is, how do we take that amazing opportunity, thinking about the constraints and the human element?

’Cause the only way we get something out of it is if human beings can embrace it, can apply it to their job, can apply it to the company’s goals, and come out with a better outcome. So I think, you know, this is where Hannah and I, and this is great, like, we can openly debate, like, there’s really four different lanes for us where we can use AI.

Some are more mature and we should go all in, others are more experimental and we should provide the opportunity that, but then there’s the sticky part in the middle, which we may need to just kind of pace ourselves and wait for some of the tools to catch up. So I think it’s an exciting time, but like with any change, I think the best way to get through it is to communicate, tell them what you don’t know, right?

Because when you do that, you’re counting on them to help you learn as you go. And then take those learnings and then iterate, you know, every quarter, every month as you go forward. But it’s certainly an exciting time, and it’s an exciting time for everybody, irrespective of role, including, you know, the leaders who are playing catch-up.

You know, I’m 55 years old. There’s 25-year-olds that can embrace AI much easier than I can. So I’m actually counting on learning from them a lot more than vice versa.

Steve Smith:

And Hannah, a question for you. When I’ve been having conversations with other chief people officers, either on the podcast or going to conferences, one of the themes that has emerged is the, you know, CHRO, CPO sort of emerging again by default as the Chief AI Enablement Officer. How has it maybe played out in your organization?

You’re a tech company. But, you know, I think one of the values that I’ve seen that HR brings to the table is the advocate for the employee, and what has been, to put it mildly, a pretty disruptive period for employee experience. How has this played out at Achievers with you, and how have you kind of worked with Scott on enabling your own people?

Hannah Yardley:

Yeah, this is a transformational change. And transformational change doesn’t get done because it’s got an advocate sitting in one role, in one position, trying to force it through the organization. And so Achievers has taken a “we all own this” attitude when it comes to who’s thinking about the future of AI and where it might sit, both within our product but also for our own people, which is both a technical thing, how do you get more efficient by using this technology? But it’s also a very values-driven piece, both in our product and for our employees as well.

And the reason I think that that works is because if I was to come at it with just my perspective or my lens, we wouldn’t be creating a transformational change where we’re embedding this in, in massively overhauling the way that we do work along the way, or the way that our product is positioned. And so we don’t have a Chief AI Officer, and I’m okay with that, because when it comes to transformational change, we all need to own part of this, and we all need to be spreading the perspective and how we’re thinking about it together.

Now, I caveat that all with, we each kind of have different roles to play. I’m not gonna be, you know, the deepest in understanding how our MCP servers are connecting to other things to be able to bring that to light. But I do know people, and I know what we have to do to be able to bring them along in this journey. And that’s not announcing change for change’s sake, but actually equipping people to be able to go through that change.

People need to say, or employees need to say, I know why we’re doing this. I know when it needs to be done by. I know what this looks like in our organization, not every other organization, our organization, because AI is definitely specific by the organization.

It needs to be adopted and adapted based on what we’re needing to do. And my role is to look at when we’re over-rotating on the tools piece and saying, actually, we need to come back and think about what are some of the behaviors? How is my work changing? Where is human judgment still really critical?

Where are we losing creativity? How do we continue to collaborate? ’Cause that’s where innovation is gonna come from. Not just because of the tool, but because of the people that we have along the way.

Steve Smith:

Well, you know, one of the, I guess, unique challenges that Achievers has is you focus on employee engagement. You focus on employee recognition at a time when, I don’t know, to put it bluntly, companies aren’t investing in employees the way that they were maybe three, four, five years ago. You know, you’ve done a lot of research on that with your Achievers Workforce Institute.

And Scott, you mentioned this. I saw this quote from you: AI is not the problem, feeling replaceable is. How, you know, can you expound a little bit on that comment? ’Cause in this moment, when there’s no shortage of evidence, employers are definitely looking at AI to replace employees. You know, when you’re talking with your customers, when you’re talking with sales prospects, how are you, you know, talking about this point and talking about, you need to think about it differently?

Scott Landers:

My inside voice is saying, don’t go on a rant, but it’s hand in nose. When my inside voice wants to go on a rant, it just happens. So I’m gonna go on a rant, and before we talk about customers and everything else, I’ll just tell you, you know, I have children. I have children who are in their mid-twenties, and if I look at what they’ve heard from the world, they’ve heard these AI companies who have raised hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars, publicly go out and say over and over again that what they’re building is superintelligence that can replace people everywhere for everything.

But there’s good news. You can stay home all day and we’ll pay you, you know, a higher universal basic income, and you can do whatever it is that you do. They see companies making up for past sins, firing people under the umbrella of AI to score points publicly.

Then you read the articles, or if you were to go talk to the people in those organizations, say, oh, headcount’s just been reduced by 20% because of AI. Your job must be easier today. And they say, no. We basically have 20% more work to do.

Steve Smith:

Right.

Scott Landers:

The way that society has handled the implementation of AI societally is gonna be a Harvard Business Review case study on how not to market, right? Because what is missing? There’s no real transparency, there’s not a lot of clarity, and so there’s zero trust in the system. So if I just take conversations I have with my own children, then try to pivot it and be like, actually, if you embrace this. Like, I grew up in a world, my first job was with Coopers & Lybrand, before it was PricewaterhouseCoopers, and I was telling my son this yesterday.

I went to work doing auditing on 18-column ledger paper. We didn’t even have a computer. I did my term papers on a typewriter. There are more accountants today than there were 30 years ago, and there’s so many tools, right, to help do auditing or accounting or financial analysis. So if we treat AI as something else, which is a force multiplier, solving bigger problems, making the world better, I think we’re gonna be in a good place.

But that failure has created a very disengaged workforce, from the outside factors and then just from the inside factors. This is so hard to crow. It’s unlike any other change management piece.

Steve Smith:

Well, you know, Hannah, this question is for you. There’s also some more of your research from AWI that talks about how only 25% of employees see a long career arc where they are. There’s certainly, you know, no shortage of data points if you’re an employee trying to figure out where you fit into something, not seeing the math add up in your favor.

You know, looking at your own organization and how you’re approaching it, how are you addressing these, you know, workplace dynamics, these feelings that, you know, employees are having in your own organization? And what do you think you’re getting right about it in a way that then you are able to kind of bring into your customer conversations?

Hannah Yardley:

Yeah. AI or not, we’re really terrible at connecting things like engagement with growth and development, with recognition. All of these parts that create an employee experience, and we treat them as separate programs. And AI or not, people still wanna know, do I matter in this organization? Am I growing?

Is there opportunity for me? Is my work connecting to something bigger? And when we treat these things as being separate, we’ve got people who don’t understand, or are only getting solutions in one category, and we know where the problems are. And AWI speaks to that. And there’s a whole bunch, but I’ll label off a few that we think about a lot in particular.

Okay, the first one is being connected to our manager. So the AWI research says that only 19% of people feel connected to their manager. They don’t know each other. That is arguably, particularly in an AI era, the one person who’s gonna be able to help you determine whether what you are doing is the right stuff. And it’s so hard to know in an AI era whether you’re doing the right stuff, because the expectations have changed. You don’t know what your role is looking like, and so if you don’t feel that connection to your manager, how do you know whether the work that you’re doing is the right stuff?

The second one is that only 34% of employees find work meaningful or see how it connects to their goals. And when work is changing so rapidly, because we have this opportunity to be able to do so much more, or my job is pivoting, it is so critical to be able to understand all of that meaning behind what you’re doing. And I have a purpose in this world. The work that I’m doing contributes to other things.

And what I keep coming back to time and time again, the thing that I think we do well, is that we’re checking in frequently. It’s not just a once-a-year development conversation or twice-a-year performance reviews. Those are really important. It’s that employees need signals. They need signals that they’re focusing on the right priorities. They need signals that they are making progress and that their contributions are actually layering up into something bigger and more important. And so connecting that back to the things that Scott was saying around trust and transparency.

We are out in front of people all the time talking about what the organization is doing, and we are not shy about the direction that we’re going. So that’s just a leadership team. We allow employees to be able to share on a monthly basis the things that they’re bringing to the table through our One Team monthly conversations. So they’re the ones that are saying, actually, I think other people need to know about this. I think this is really important, so that we can start to create the connection across the business.

And the frequency of conversations, whether it is through our check-ins or things like the recognition platform, allow us to be able to do on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis. Have people go, oh, I get it. This is the right stuff. Or, interestingly, I wasn’t recognized for something that I thought was really important. And they’re able to shift behaviors so much faster and be able to make the connection between the what and the why. And that’s where I think success comes in for us.

And then also why we share that with our customers along the way.

Steve Smith:

Scott, what do you think about that?

Scott Landers:

I think it’s good stuff. That’s why I’m glad Hannah’s on my team. You know, the other organizations I had worked with were fantastic organizations. None of them had a recognition system. I had always prided myself in being a people leader. I was never the smartest person. But I love the people aspect of it, right?

I love the connecting the dots, storytelling, bringing people along. But, you know, the sign of a good culture is when it makes everybody better. When I walked into Achievers and I saw what the culture was, it immediately made me raise my game. So this whole thing about building muscles, right? Without the recognition system, I did all the things you should do.

I told people when they were doing a good job. I wrote personal notes right to folks. But then when you come in and you see actually how frequent you need to do it, and how people need to be seen, especially in this world we work in today, where people are all over. You know, we used to be co-located with each other, and we’re not anymore.

And I’ll just comment on a couple of things that popped for me. One was the reinforcement of the good behavior that I displayed. So I talked about wanting to go from being liked to respected. When I came into Achievers, I tried to be ultra-transparent right out the gate. I’m like, we are an amazing company, but we have to shock the system, because what got us here isn’t going to get us there.

And I laid out all the great things, but I laid out the two or three things that were missing that we needed to address immediately. I went back to my office. You know, I thought it was being bold, but the reality is, I was like, I don’t know how this is gonna go. And I went back to my office, and within two minutes I got a message that I had been recognized in the platform.

And it was from an individual who I had never met, was a line engineer, who thanked me for my transparency during that meeting. That then reinforced that behavior, encouraged me to do it more and more. So back to, I don’t remember what your original question was from Hannah, but the machinery that she and the leadership team have built prior to me coming, it’s just fantastic. And I think it’s the sign of a great culture, because if you don’t share the same values as our A players, the machine is gonna tell you, and you have a choice.

You can either get on that boat, right, or you can choose that, you know, you want to sail a different path. And as a leader who’s dependent on all these folks doing great work, that’s a huge advantage. I think when you look at all great teams, they self-govern in many ways. Achievers self-governs because of the people and what they expect and what they do for each other.

Steve Smith:

So, you know, as we mentioned earlier, this isn’t the first time you’ve been in a situation like this coming into a company. So obviously you’re bringing some perspective and some learning into it. When you looked around at the culture, what are the things where you said, hey, I can really build on this here? There’s something really good going on. I don’t want to come in and just change things for change’s sake. I want to double down on the things I see working. What was it that you saw working and decided that you needed to really amplify that?

Scott Landers:

Yeah, it was 99.9% working. So think, whether it’s One Team, Own the Outcome, you know, different values we have, but even just forgetting about the values, people are so passionate about our vision of changing the way the world works, helping thousands of companies, ultimately impacting millions of employees to feel seen and do better work, and ultimately have better lives, right?

Like, we are all in on that. And the other intangible here is just how much people cared for each other as humans, you know? ’Cause our job is to make the people around us better. That’s job one, right? Take care of your stuff and make everybody else better. The one thing that was missing, which we needed to build some of those muscles, the organization wasn’t that comfortable taking risks and owning the decision at the ground level.

And so it was interesting, one of our core values is Be Bold. And it was actually the least recognized value. And Hannah was so helpful to me here, ’cause she said, our challenge is we’ve gotta keep all the goodness. So we don’t wanna change our culture, we want to evolve our culture. And we said, okay, the thing we need is we need to push down decision-making and accountability closest to the customer, whether that’s the internal customer or external.

’Cause the bigger you get, I don’t have the answers. The people servicing the customer do. People implementing the product, building the product, right, and selling to the customer do. And so we actually talked about that at the company meeting. We prioritized it. We gave people the license to go and do it.

And we created campaigns around Be Bold, and wouldn’t you know it, it was our fastest-growing value that was recognized in the platform and in the engagement surveys. It just closed the full loop on how much more empowered people felt, and I don’t think it was a coincidence that our growth rate from a revenue perspective doubled in the year that those beginning changes take place.

But I will tell you, it was Hannah, right, which was the catalyst for that within our organization. Going back to the importance of this relationship that she and I have, and how she helps all of us, not only from a leadership perspective but across the company.

Steve Smith:

One of the dynamics that we’ve seen very much in the software market over the past few years is delayed investment, especially in sort of like people-based technologies. Just like, okay, we’re gonna put off investment.

And then when you do get a situation to sell into a company, you’re having to answer the dreaded, okay, what’s the ROI of this investment question? And it’s unfortunately, I think, been easy for too many companies to say, I don’t see the ROI in investment in my people. So I have no doubt that in your sales opportunities, this has come up and you’ve had to run into this wall.

When you get that question, you know, when you have to prove that, you know, recognition is gonna move the needle on value in my organization, how do you respond to that? How do you convince them that it absolutely will?

Scott Landers:

Well, I think we have countless examples within our own customer base. Like, and I think at this point, the people that know, know, right? Like, if you don’t think your people are important, if you don’t think being clear on what’s expected of them, recognizing them when they do great work, if you don’t think that’s gonna have an impact on your business, I don’t know if you should be in HR.

I don’t know if you should be a leader. Now, you can debate on how exactly do you go and do it, and how much money do we put behind it. But we think you gotta get there. I want to kind of take your question and pivot it a little bit. I was giving a talk to a group of HR leaders, and I asked them the question, because this goes back maybe four or five months ago, when AI was gonna just take every job.

And I said to those folks, I said, okay, if you have 50,000 employees today, or 10,000 employees, or 500 employees, five years from now, how many of you will have at least 80% of your current headcount? ’Cause, you know, so much is unknown. And I would say 95% of the room raised their hand. So I played it back to them.

I said, okay, well, if you had 50,000 employees, you’re gonna have at least 40,000 employees five years from now. And it’s gonna be more competitive to get great talent, those people that have embraced these new technologies and can move your business forward. Will you be an employer of choice if you delay the investment in these different HR-related technologies? If you don’t keep your employees top of mind, right, and engage them, reward them, retain them, grow them, et cetera, you are gonna be in a world of hurt five years from now.

And I think that’s part where I talked about that Harvard Business. I think we’ve got so much wrong here in the early days from the AI hysteria. I think it’s quickly beginning to normalize.

And I think when we get into ‘27, we’re gonna see a return to quasi-normal. What I found in my two years here, ’cause I’ve been to the Gartner conference both years, there’s a drastic difference between October of, get my years right, we’re in ‘26, October of ‘24 versus October of ‘25. In ‘24, you get a lot of people coming to the booth saying, haven’t heard of Achievers. Tell me what you guys do.

The next year, it was, we’re in the 50% of folks that haven’t adopted recognition. We know we’re behind. We know we have to do something. And actually, we’re coming to you as Achievers ’cause we know you can help us. Let’s now start the conversation. I think, Steve, we are seeing, we are gonna see pent-up demand behind some of these things that they should be doing that have been delayed, as people have completely spent, overspent unbudgeted monies on AI.

As that normalizes, they only spend where there’s ROI. And I think we’re gonna see the return to the things that matter, which are people. People created AI. People are gonna harness AI, and people are gonna continue to drive 99.9% of the businesses going forward. And I think we will see a return to normal.

Steve Smith:

Well, coming up on time here, I want to give you both one more question, and Scott, I’m gonna let you go first, and we’ll give Hannah the last word. I wanted to ask you each, since you’re a recognition company, what’s the most memorable piece of recognition you’ve gotten at Achievers?

Scott Landers:

Hannah, why don’t you go first? I’ll close this out.

Hannah Yardley:

Sure. The best one is when I got it just after joining Achievers. It’s so meaningful in those first couple of days, because it’s really hard to know where you stand. Information is new, you’re feeling really, really uncomfortable. And having someone recognize me and show why I was important, it felt so good just to know that I’d made the right choice and that they were recognizing me for who I was in that moment of time, warts and all, in a new company.

It was still having an impact even so early on, and that set the stage not only for me to feel like I had the ability to be able to make an impact moving forward, but it helped set me up to realize, if I feel that way, I need to be making everybody else feel that way as well. So it set me up to be a better recognizer in my days looking forward after that.

Scott Landers:

So mine was the transparency one, which I mentioned, you know. When I first became a CEO, someone recommended the book True North, which basically says you can’t change yourself, but you can become the best version of you. And that’s what I was trying to do, right? It’s like, all right, this is third time. What have I learned? So leaning into that and having that be reinforced was awesome.

But the best one I ever got, ever, was my father. My mother and father were raised by single parents, and I went out to dinner with my father. He’s now 80, and we were talking about life, and he talked about, you know, how he did the best he could, but that he learned the most about being a father by watching me.

I can hardly keep it together saying it now, but when I had dinner with him, I was like, whoa. You know, so I’ll never forget that one.

Hannah Yardley:

Beautiful.

Steve Smith:

All right, we’re gonna leave it right there. That’s a great way to end. Hannah Yardley, Scott Landers, thank you for joining me. Really enjoyed the conversation today.

Hannah Yardley:

Thanks for having us.

Scott Landers:

Sounds great. Thanks, Steve.

Steve Smith:

New tools ask people to work differently, and new habits only stick when somebody notices them. That noticing happens in small moments, like a manager checking in or a colleague calling out good work in front of the team. A once-a-year review can’t carry that load on its own. People need regular signals that they’re working on the right priorities and that their effort is adding up to something. It has to happen week after week, or people drift back to the old way.

That’s what gets lost when people investment goes on hold. The tools keep shipping while the reinforcement quietly stops.

Headcount isn’t going to zero. Companies will still need great people five years from now, and they’ll be competing harder to keep them. The ones that kept investing will have a workforce that still believes in where the company is headed. Everyone else will be recruiting against them.

Pausing that investment looked like savings on paper. The interest is about to come due.

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