by Alex Funkhouser
âThis could destroy our business,â the CEO of HR compliance giant Mineral said after his first demo of ChatGPT. A year later, hereâs how the tech is helping the company re-envision its future.
A little more than a year ago, my CTO asked me to hop on an urgent Zoom. He had something he needed to show me, he said. It was OpenAIâs newly released ChatGPT. As the CEO of a company that delivers HR compliance content and guidance, I was alarmed. âThis could destroy our business,â I told him.  Â
Before any company sets out to implement its AI strategy, its leadership must ask themselves three questions to assess their cultural readiness.Â
Fast-forward one year, and weâre in a completely different place. Instead of distancing ourselves from artificial intelligence, weâve embraced it. We ran experiments on ChatGPT to see how well it could handle compliance questions we receive from our customers. We created an internal task force dedicated to understanding and incorporating AI across our company. Then, we started to build our own custom GPTs to test whether we could combine the best of what we do with this emerging technology.
Although we pivoted from a place of fear to one of enthusiasm, getting here wasnât easy. Setting the strategy was relatively straightforward, but creating the cultural foundation was a more complicated undertaking. It took countless conversations, some mistakes, a lot of self-reflection, and careful planning to reenvision both our company and the HR experience of our customers in an AI-enabled world.
Read the complete Fast Company article BY NATHAN CHRISTENSEN: https://www.fastcompany.com/91055270/how-we-moved-beyond-fear-of-genai-to-fully-harness-its-transformative-power
by Alex Funkhouser
Charles Duhigg, author of âSupercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection,â explains how to level up communication to forge better connections.
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and New York Times best-selling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School. Duhigg has been a frequent contributor to This American Life, NPR, The Colbert Report, PBSâs NewsHour, and Frontline. He is a winner of the National Academies of Sciences, National Journalism, and George Polk awards.
Below, Duhigg shares five key insights from his new book, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. Listen to the audio versionâread by Duhigg himselfâin the Next Big Idea App.
1. WE ARE ALL SUPERCOMMUNICATORS.
We all access our instincts and figure out how to how to connect with someone else. We all have the ability to ask ourselves, âWhat kind of conversation is actually happening? Is this a social conversation, practical conversation or emotional conversation?â We can then match the other person and invite them to match us. Within psychology, this is actually known as the matching principle. What it says is that we need to be having the same kind of conversation at the same time, if we want to connect with each other.
Read the complete Fast Company article here: https://www.fastcompany.com/91060964/5-techniques-to-turn-the-way-you-talk-into-a-superpower
by Alex Funkhouser
âFast Companyâ spoke with Dan Helfrich, CEO of Deloitte Consulting, about worker sentiment around AI, worker surveillance, and how we can all adapt in the age of AI.
According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 84,638 U.S. employers have laid off workers in 2024 so far. Of these layoffs, 15,225 were attributed to a âtechnological updateâ and just 383 were explicitly blamed on artificial intelligence.
It may be that AI is not yet capable of replacing many workers. Or it may be that transparently replacing workers with AI is a bad look. âIn light of the backlash some companies have faced for directly attributing job cuts to artificial intelligence, they appear to be framing this shift as a âtechnological updateâ rather than an outright substitution of human roles with AI,â suggests Andrew Challenger, the firmâs senior vice president and labor and workplace expert. âIn truth, companies are also implementing robotics and automation in addition to AI.â His firmâs data indicates that AI was the cause of 4,247 layoffs in 2023.
Read the complete Fast Company article BYÂ AJ HESS: https://www.fastcompany.com/91052435/ceo-of-deloitte-consulting-workers-arent-are-as-scared-of-ai-as-you-might-think
by Alex Funkhouser
Much like negotiating your salary when you get a job offer, there are a lot of factors to consider.
Q: How do I ask for a raise?
A: This is one of the most common (and tricky) workplace questions. In fact, according to surveys, some 50% to 70% of employees think they donât make enough money.
Wouldnât it be nice if you could just tell your boss âI think I should be making 10% moreâ and theyâd agree? Or better yet, if all salaries were transparent and everyone received fair and equitable compensation?
Unfortunately thatâs not how it usually works. Much like negotiating your salary when you get a job offer, there are a lot of factors to consider.
1. Timing. Know when raises are typically given. Is it during end-of-year performance reviews? Midyear reviews? Knowing when a raise pool is most likely a planned part of the companyâs budget sets you up to be able to pull from it. Itâs not that you can get a raise only at these times but it makes it easier to get a yes to your request for a pay bump.
Read the complete article BYÂ KATHLEEN DAVIS: https://www.fastcompany.com/91038028/how-do-i-ask-for-a-raise
by Alex Funkhouser
From adaptability to critical thinking to teamwork and collaboration, success at work involves skills you might not think to put on your rĂŠsumĂŠ.
Raise your hand if youâve gotten so familiar with some of your tasks at work that you can do them practically without thinking. Some rote tasks become this seamless nearly instantly, yet others require certain skills to start with and that muscle develops over time, the more you complete each one.
This became so clear to me this week when training two new team members on parts of our system. The good news is that it forced me to slow down and think through how best to explain each step and what skills are needed to tackle each project. The mix of technical skills and soft/creative ones were thrown into high relief and I couldnât help but wonder: What are the most basic skills anyone could use to accomplish the most mundane items on a to-do list as well as the more amorphous aspects of teamwork and collaboration?
For example, as early career expert Anna Homayoun noted, âBecause Gen Z members saw daily routines completely upended during key developmental years, many could benefit from more time, structure and support to build workflow strategies, manage distractions, and develop professionalism older generations might take for granted.â
There are myriad ways to develop new technical skills, some even at your current employer. According to Indeed, AI-related skills are helping workers who have them make bank.
Rean the complete Fast Company article BYÂ LYDIA DISHMAN: https://www.fastcompany.com/91034074/most-in-demand-job-skills
by Alex Funkhouser
One in three older job seekers say theyâve felt the sting of ageism when looking for work. A tighter job market and corporate cutbacks are making things harder.
They say age is just a numberâbut for older job seekers, it can complicate things, to say the least.
One in three workers 50 or over say theyâve experienced age discrimination when looking for a new position. And two-thirds have felt its sting in the workplace.
Last year saw continued layoffs, particularly in tech, while job openings fell to their lowest level since 2021 with the seeming end of The Great Resignation. Itâs a tough time to navigate the job market, even more so for those approaching the later stages of their careers.
But with age comes experience, which businesses desperately need as they look to cut staff while maintaining efficiency. Hereâs how older candidates can showcase their skills and demonstrate their advantages to stand out in the saturated job market.
Read the complete Fast Company article BYÂ SANDRO OKROPIRIDZE: https://www.fastcompany.com/91019090/9-tips-for-landing-a-job-if-youre-over-50