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I'm Kate Bravery, Mercer's advisory and insight leader, and today, we'll be talking about how the HR model is evolving-- especially important given advancements in technology and a rising appreciation of the role that it plays in shaping the employee experience. For today's discussion, I'm joined by two of Mercer's leading experts in the field of HR transformation and digital transformation. They're helping clients today strategically plan for winning EX tomorrow. Armin and Alex, wonderful to have you join. And Armin, would you like to just share a little bit about your role at Mercer?

Sure, I do. Thank you, Kate. Well, yeah, with the so-called CoE I'm leading for HR Transformation globally, we're actually looking onto the HR function itself-- how the function is evolving, how the function can be transformed, and what are the future trends for the HR function-- to keep up with the promises we're giving to the business. And I've seen both sides. I worked on the HR space as an HR director, but also multiple years in consultancy, and now super happy to have this role and support both sides again when it comes to transforming the HR function.

I love the fact that you say "super happy"-- which is fantastic because I think transforming HR is a naughty area, and it is constantly evolving. And Alex, I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about your background because I think some of your digital and EX experience is such a great complement to the work that we do, and, of course, you are from legacy legion.

Thank you, Kate. I'm Alex Zea. So as you mentioned, I am leader of Digital HR Transformation Practice. But similar to Armin, I actually started in internal HR in HR technology and data roles. And what I learned at that point was, we're never going to get more HR resources in HR. The days of additional head count are over. And if we want to be able to deliver new, innovative, exciting services to the workforce, the only way we're going to be able to deliver that at scale in a way that still feels personalized and meaningful to employees, is to leverage technology. We have to harness technology to be able to do that.

And at Mercer Leapgen, that's what we do. We work with clients to take the great strategies that they've built with folks like Armin inside of their teams, and we help them deliver them effectively at scale to have meaning and to also be able to do it with the resources they have access to.

Alex, I couldn't agree with you more. And I think, particularly this year, we're getting even more pressure on budgets, and, of course, the promise of digital transformation does play into that. And Armin, maybe I can actually kick off with you today.

Yeah.

You very closely track and research some of the trends that we see across the HR function. And there's no doubt that digital, yes, is a new way of doing things, but also, digital, particularly AI, is burrowing into some of the HR teams. We saw that cited as some of the reasons for recent reductions in force, and we're constantly hearing that there's that quest for greater optimization and cost efficiency.

Then on the other side, there's never been a bigger premium on attracting talent, retaining talent, and the employee experience more broadly. So how do you reconcile those two? And I'd be curious how that's shaping leading practice today.

Well, first of all-- I mean, over the last, let's say, two to three decades, HR transformation is very often more a different color of the pig lipstick exercise, right? But this time, we have a real sustainable transformation ahead of us. And this is what it can sense already and what also resonates already with the organizations. And it's starting with the most obvious-- is that the complexity we see in operations is now being encountered by AI, generated by generative AI, and supporting us here to make things easier.

We come a bit later, potentially, about the differences between Europe and the US. But generally speaking, everyone senses already that this is a big shift, and it's different than all the promises we had in the past with-- this cloud system, you're going to be quicker, faster, more effective, whatsoever. This is something everybody can try out themselves. You can go in ChatGPT and create an employer-ready proposition for your company. And that's different this time.

On the other side, we see the enhancement of the work. So there was this billboard commercial talking about "AI took my job to the next level." And this is what we also can see now happening or impacting the HR organization. It's working much better with data, working much better with more content, having more reference points when it comes, for example, to how to find the best talent, how to look for the right skills, and such.

And also here, this is something we can immediately start. You don't have to have a two-year plan, and investment, and budget, or whatsoever. It's something where you sit on your computer and key in something into an AI and get started. And this is what's turning around the HR function right now.

But it's also threatening. And that was the same problem in the past. In the past, very often, HR protected their complexity because that was something they were needed for. And therefore, they were not really surrendering it to the organization.

And now we take care of that. Now, we can actually see that there is no alternative. So yes, there's major change. I see almost every HR role being affected. The ones being affected first-- clearly, the ones in operations, because this is where we still burn a lot of money, if you're honest with ourselves, because it's not much value-adding there. But also in talent acquisition, talent management, workforce planning analytics. This is the area where we, now with the tech support, see a very different level of quality and the different speed in delivery.

And clearly, that comes with a new requirement with regards to skills to the HR function. And at least in the German and European sector, 10 years ago, the majority of people came with a [? teristic ?] background. So lawyers, and labor law lawyers, and whatsoever. No number crunchers, no data scientists, nobody who is actually putting together the context here in regards to data. And that means a major shift to the HR function.

Yeah, absolutely. Lots of trends impacting the design of the function. But also, the skills that HR needs has been evolving in front of us. And maybe I'll come back to that in a moment. You mentioned there about the promise from vendors about quicker, faster, smarter. I still think they offer that.

[LAUGHS]

So maybe [? you ?] could come across to Alex, because I know that you partner very closely with some of the vendors. And I'd just be curious. What are some of the digital trends you're seeing, particularly as it relates to enhancing the employee experience, not just delivering the faster, quicker, lower-cost outcome?

Yeah, Kate. That's a great question. And I think at a really high level, there's one big trend that I would emphasize above all others. And that's this idea that transformation, as a linear process with a fixed start and end, those days are over. The days of a CHRO being able to go in front of a C-suite and argue for a three- or five-year transformation, those days are over. And what we're finding is that we have to change the story.

We have to change the investment. And we have to do that because technology is allowing us to and employees expect it. So when we think about finally adopting cloud solutions that are releasing new enhancements, new capabilities every day, we've had that access for years. But what generative AI and other technology advances are doing is they're really forcing us to reevaluate on a very regular basis.

The days of taking the smartest people on your team, putting them in a room for 12 months, and having them implement a system, and then going back to their day jobs, that's over. Transformation is now something that we have to do every day, every week, every month, and putting in place new systems, new digital solutions. The most important thing is the day that we essentially launch them to the workforce, the day that we go begin those new capabilities with the workforce. And what we have to do is listen every day, enhance every day.

And transformation becomes more of a way of working. Change becomes part of every day. And I would say that's the biggest trend that we're seeing-- is we can no longer have these big initiatives and take a step back and then go back to our day to day. We have to meet the pace of change. And honestly, I'd like to see HR get excited about it because that's what technology is offering us. It's offering us an exponential way to continue to deliver better, more exciting, more efficient, more effective services to the workforce. And we just have to step up now and think about it differently.

Well, Alex, I couldn't agree with you more. And actually, it was exhausting presenting two executive teams and pitching to them for that investment. So I do think there's some real benefits on this new approach of living in a climate of perpetual reinvention. If there are listeners that are facing that future and want to reorientate their time and energy, is there a couple of recommendations you can offer them today to get started on that new mindset?

Sure, I'm happy to share. And I'd love, Armin, for you to share as well. I think the most important thing from my perspective that I would share is that the technology is actually probably the least important part of your digital transformation. And I say that with air quotes over this podcast because, as I just said, transformation is what we should be doing every day. But realistically, buying the systems, configuring the systems, that's the least important part of seeing the changes and delivering new value to the workforce that we'd like to see.

You mentioned mindset shifts, Kate, and I think that embracing mindset, embracing unlearning-- HR is one of the oldest professions in the world. And the more that we can unlearn, the more that we can take a step back and ask ourselves, what's new, what new value can we create, what should we be doing differently, and let go of the way that things used to work in the past, the more that we can think about our people to deliver new services to them, the more that we can step back from HR processes and embrace experiences and journeys and then bring the value that we want to deliver there to the technologies and say, how can we do this together, rather than the other way around.

But Armin, what would you add there?

Well, I would add to that. As you said, technology is one dimension. And what we should never forget also now when gen AI is a bit hyped-- it's always a multi-dimensional transformation. We always have to think organization, process, system, content, strategy around the experience. At the very end, it's the adoption of the employee. It's the adoption of the workforce or whatever we offer. And if we are not able to align these four dimensions around the experience part, then it's, again, only buying, or acquiring, or introducing new technology also in a different speed.

And this is also where some of the reservations still comes from. Yeah, that's just the next mega trend. And next year, nobody will talk about it anymore, and it'll pass like all the other technology inventions before. But I'm deeply convinced that this time it's different because everyone can experience right away.

Well, Alex and Armin, thank you for sharing that. Alex, just listening to you then, it's always wonderful when we have people who lead on some of that tech saying that tech is the least important. But I totally agree with you on the unlearning. And that becomes really critical as we continue to see employees that say they're depleted, they're distracted, they're disengaged, they've got just too much on their plate, which is leading to burnout. I just read a quote this morning that said, the best managers are the ones that cut your work, not add to your work. And I think that's very, very much aligned there.

And Armin, your comments, they just make me think that we need to shift our thinking about what success looks like as we start to embark on these transformations. It also makes me question whether transformation is the right word--

[LAUGHS]

--given the context. But can we get a little bit more nuanced about maybe what's happening in different markets and industries. Both of you have an incredible vantage point seeing across many different clients.

Armin, you mentioned earlier that you're sitting in Europe. When I think of Europe, it's a much more unionized environment than the US. We've been talking about data security and data protection for a long lot longer, and that, I know, is influencing how we think about HR transformation design. Maybe you can share a few words on that and what HR practitioners need to be thinking about this year as they design their [? function. ?]

Well, you're right. There's a major difference, I think, in two dimensions. One is, let's say, legal and governance framework or background we are seeing here in Europe. So literally, where in other regions of the world there is [INAUDIBLE] labor law, here, almost every organization, every company can have this little-- very own law book, so to say, their contracts agreed with the workforce council, whatever. Which makes it much harder for technology which is sourcing globally or regionally data to bring something up significant, because if this data is not in Axis-- and this is where we talk data protection now-- then AI cannot generate anything for these organizations but the ones which are fairly known, which is labor law.

And this is where we see there's still some hesitation. But I always say it's just-- you only have to grant access. But just digitize all these documents, and the moment the machine can read it and that machine can refer to it, and the more, let's say, frameworks and agreements the machine knows, the better the proposal will be.

But there are also areas where gen AI already is helping. One thing-- I just recently spoke to one of the largest car manufacturers about their shift models. They have so many different shift models in the plant environment. But just for transmission building, they have literally 400 different shift models that just made a trial run and fed the machine with it and said like, OK, optimize that and broke it down to 14 coming from multiple hundreds. And this is super interesting.

So yes, it's influencing the work already a little bit, but it's going in a little bit slower. On the other side, AI has already been there when it comes to talent acquisition, for example. This is where we are using AI for quite a while already when it came to screening CVs and making proposals, whatever. So it's not that new here. But with regards to talent marketplace, it'll lead to the next level.

But here's one organizational barrier too. Most of the European organizations are still very job-based-- so job architecture, job-based. And I think when we talk about skills being the new fuel for growth in the organizations, it'll be almost a gross barrier, potentially, for the European organizations that they're still stuck in this job thinking.

And here, the only way to unfold the potential will be the usage of technology and AI to quickly learn about what skills are available in your organization and how can you connect them to work, which has to be done in the future. And this is clearly some of the HR roles not being taken yet.

It'll be interesting to see certainly how this plays out. I do think that those skill-fueled organizations, a lot of them are anchoring to jobs and matching the skills to jobs today as well as those that are right over here in moving away from that architecture. And we do see some good delineation between what should be sort of "fixed" and what should be "flow." So I think we're seeing some different models come up, but it's definitely a fertile ground for learning.

But thanks for sharing some insights around Europe. What about from an industry perspective? Are you seeing any differences globally in HR design that we should be cognizant of?

Well, one thing to consider here is the so-called people dependency. There is a different people dependency of each and every organization. Take industries like ours-- the service industry, professional service industry. It's almost a 10 out of 10 when it comes to people dependency. No employee with the proper skills means less or no revenue, where in the manufacturing area, you might have some leverage effect [? through ?] machines you can run or by buying things or combining things in a different way. And being aware of that and bringing this into the design of an HR organization is critical.

And this is where this one-trick pony of many consultancies doesn't work. There is no one way. There is no-- the target operating model, which is right. The first have to connect, what are the must-win battles for the business? What are the people dependencies you're seeing in your organization? How important is the people factor for the success of your organization? And with that knowledge, you start designing first the interaction and then operating model. I think this is something which clearly comes up now and becomes more and more important.

Alex, maybe we can come across to the US. What are some of the trends you're seeing in the market in terms of how organizations are evolving their HR function?

Yeah, Kate. I think we're seeing a number of the same trends that Armin is referencing. So skills are obviously a large topic of conversation. There are continuous conversations around that people dependency and, do we have the talent that we need? What we are seeing evolve-- and I believe this is happening in other parts of the world, but I think it might be leading in North America-- is this broader conversation around talent intelligence or the complete talent life cycle. And it's not necessarily a new conversation.

But what we're seeing now is that the vendor landscape is catching up to the ability to support the entire talent life cycle. And as Armin mentioned, because computing powers have changed, because large language models are becoming more predominant, we're actually able to analyze these incredibly large sets of data, like skills data, like employee data and people data, and even external labor market data. And we're able to begin to connect the dots that in the past would have been really difficult to do with people or with multiple technology systems.

So as we see that landscape evolve, the conversation is taking place at executive levels. As folks are saying, I'm building my strategic workforce plan. How does that impact my performance management? How should that actually be focused on career development? How do we shift from, as you mentioned, fixed and flex or flow roles?

And so what we're seeing is organizations, HR organizations actually changing the structure to help create more connection points between teams that we would have historically called "talent management," "talent acquisition," "learning and leadership." And we're seeing things like-- I have an organization that I work with in retail that's built a talent activation team that brings all of those capabilities to life and looks at it as a complete life cycle, including workforce planning as part of it.

And so it's really becoming-- it's not that it wasn't important to HR professionals in the past. It was just such a stretch to be able to accomplish. And we're not only seeing that we now have the data and the ability to do the analysis with some of the technology, but we're also able to deliver it to the workforce in a way that we're seeing higher adoption rates than we might have in the past because systems are designed with a more interactive, easy-to-use type UI, because we're seeing a more comprehensive investment in this talent activation space.

And so what I will say, in terms of the technology trends, is if you looked in a CORE HCM or-- I'm sorry. If you looked in an organization's HR tech stack in the early 2000s, for example, you'd really see a CORE HCM and a payroll environment. You'd see niche vendors, of course, and you'd see maybe something here for a recognition, something here for some other function. But we saw in the last 10 years was the introduction of an experience layer-- something case, knowledge, portal-- that was as important as CORE HCM.

And what we're seeing now just in the last two and three years is a third player in that space that's just as significant. It's CORE HCM, your experience layer, and that talent intelligence platform. And that shifting landscape is really important. And it's something that we're educating CHRS on regularly, because they're not necessarily expecting that. They're still looking at sometimes the power of one-- should we be buying these individual capabilities across different vendors? And so it's changing by the day. And I'm personally just really excited to see how it continues to evolve in the next 24 months.

Well, I'm as thrilled as you are. As an organizational psychologist, I love the fact that we have more data at our fingertips within organizations. But I think we've also been part of the challenge because I think there was a while there where everybody was looking for integration and was looking for what would be the panacea, the one that can do it all.

And I think you're right. Over the last couple of years-- the last 10 years, I'd say-- as talent intelligence and talent marketplace platforms have come in-- they've moved from being talent acquisition plays into talent deployment plays and spreading to other areas-- people have started to think more differently and said, what should be our system of record for skills? What should be our system of intelligence for skills? What should be our system for experience? And sometimes they rest in different places. So I think it is really interesting.

But I love the point that you brought up that that's actually spurning different teams because that data allows you to look across your talent ecosystem in new ways. And you mentioned the talent activation team. And I was hearing you chat, Alex. It was reminding me of some of your early thinking around, we need to move away from just having centers of expertise to centers of competence that actually can deliver some capabilities at an enterprise level.

And previously, you did mention on the call the target interaction model. I know you talk a lot about "Tim before Tom" [INAUDIBLE] uninitiated on the call. This is about defining the target interaction model, the target interaction between HR and different persona groups or use cases before looking at the target operating model.

I know that's steeped in our philosophy. And so I'm wondering if you could chat about, how is this discussion that we've just had Alex talking about, which is new technologies coming on the market, new ways of doing HR-- how is that influencing those "Tim and Tom" discussions?

Well, actually, having "Tim before Tom" is always a catalyst thinking. You have on the one hand side, as we spoke about, the internal target groups or the reference groups, and we have the service portfolio. And Tim always tries to find out, what's the best way to have this intended interaction between here's the portfolio, there's our target group-- or service recipients, to use a technical term.

And every change happening either to the portfolio or to the needs of the target groups resonates in this interaction model, which is why this is an exercise you continuously try to repeat because you always try to find out, are we still connected well enough to our workforce, yes or no? And we started this target interaction model thinking almost 10 years ago.

And already back then, we started to talk about new roles instead of just having an HR business partner-- which was almost like David Copperfield, the magician, and knowing everything, doing everything on a fingertip-- and found out that a more specialized model in many areas is actually needed. So for example, back then, we came back with the leadership part and said like, OK, good leadership is the 100% guarantee for good business success because if you have good leaders well supported, performance will go up.

Now, we are talking about how to distribute the right skills and the right talent to the organization. So new roles like, for example, a talent broker or a skills broker might arise, flexing how an HR sets themselves for this transformation-- an agile pool in HR things coming up. But also, what are the basic needs of the regular employee? And that leads into different thinking.

For example, when we look into shared services or HR operations, most of them are still designed in a very reactive manner. And this is when you start with Tom. We put a shared service somewhere where it's cheap-- labor cost arbitrage, [INAUDIBLE]-- instead of asking first, OK, what are the things we could expect to happen, because we own the [? MP ?] lifecycle? So starting with an anticipated service design, the portfolio, and then select, what is the proper way to handle that?

And that leads us quickly to the question of, hey, people do everything on their mobile phone. And we know what's happening in 8 to 9 out of 10 cases. So why do we actually sit people somewhere waiting instead of proactively providing the information and give the answer before the question arises? So these are things you can dry run with this target interaction model before you have an organizational decision to make and say, do I need 600 people in here? Yes or no?

And more and more often, we come to the point that we say like, no. We need a smart combination of an anticipated service design and most likely something like an HR operations network-- here someone, there someone connected by technology in a very hybrid manner. And these are new ways of connecting the dots through this interaction model thinking, before we even draw a box in line, put a name on it, and an FTE number on the head of it.

[LAUGHS]

Some of that is so ingrained in a lot of our processes. It's a lot, as Alex said before, to unlearn. But I love that concept that, can we turn HR from being a reactive service center into one that anticipates? And I think that does change our metrics and our thinking. Fascinating. Yeah, Alex, we've talked a lot on this call today about skills. And I know it wasn't the main focus of the conversation, but we've talked about talent intelligence platforms and, now, talent and skills brokers.

And I think you mentioned talent activation teams. So clearly, this shift from the more traditional talent approaches that very much centered around jobs to some of the more fluid approaches, which, I think, benefit from being centered around skills.

And maybe we could just pause there, because there's no doubt that technology is really bringing a lot of that to life-- the things that were impossible to do before because we had them on multiple Excel spreadsheets, now at our fingertips. And, of course, AI is allowing us to crawl across that data in more human ways. And from the work that you're doing with clients, implementing these technologies in service of this pursuit of skills-fueled organizations, is there a couple of tips, or watch outs, or recommendations you can share?

Kate, that is a very big question. And I'll share a really short personal story that I hope helps illustrate some of the mindset. So I actually started my career at an organization called Time Inc. And I sometimes joke that I went through the digital gauntlet. It was a print publishing company. We owned multiple magazine brands like Time magazine, People, Fortune, Money. And we were trying to turn it into a group of digital media brands.

And just because I knew our PeopleSoft data, and I knew how to do PeopleSoft coding and report, I somehow ended up in conversations with our C-suite regularly. And they'd ask me things like, tell me the people who are qualified. Tell me the print editors who are qualified to learn how to become a digital media brand leader. And I would say to them, well, what skills do you need to be a digital media brand leader? And they'd say, well, what skills do we have in our print editors? And I'd have to say, well, I don't know the answer to that either.

And so what we ended up doing was laying people off and hiring other people into new roles. And we're at that precipice again where we're starting to see jobs change. And it's up to us if we want to let people lose those jobs or reskill them into the jobs of the future. And my number one personal message here as well as what we focus on with clients is it has to start with mindset.

It has to start with understanding where the business wants to be, a mindset of accepting that there will be new skills needed to evolve your business, starting to articulate what we need in skills instead of jobs or FTEs, as Armin mentioned. And then let's create that path to build those skills. At Mercer, we use the term "sunset" and "sunrise" roles. And if we can identify some of those sunset opportunities before they go away and help reskill folks into those sunrise opportunities, we're going to be able to change the industry in a way that we couldn't have in the past. And the technology is here to help you do it.

I have sat in probably 10 hours of technology demos this week with incredible systems that can absolutely pinpoint to that. But the question is, are your leaders ready to receive that message? Do they know what to do with it? And so I would always start with mindset here. That's been a theme throughout our conversation today. And it's going to be, again, a bit of unlearning to shift from those jobs to skills. But if we start to take a step back and articulate what we need in skills, we can make this change a much more positive one in the world.

I agree with you. And I think, sometimes, that mindset can be nudged by the technology as well--

Absolutely.

[INAUDIBLE] you're doing strategic workforce planning, which is based on FTE and jobs to some of the more modern platforms that actually allow you to look at it through skills or modeling the impact on capacity of internal transformation products, you do land in a different space. But I hear you on the unlearning. And I agree with you. The mindset shift is absolutely critical. And we are coming to the end of our time. So Armin, just before we close, I've got one last question for both of you.

But Armin, we have hugged very much kind of the AI and the skills piece, which I think are two of the biggest trends impacting the world of work. But for those that are embarking on an HR transformation this year, what are the two or three things they really need to think through to get that blueprint right?

Well, I think, more than ever, it's important to connect the transformation efforts to the actual people priorities, the must-win battles of the business, the things driving the business. There was a lot of positive feedback in rallying in the pandemic where for everyone, it was clear, why are we doing what?

And we're a little bit back to this perception that, what are you doing this transformation? Is there-- what is the saving? And we're still not always able to connect our doing with the business purpose. I think this is the major thing to learn again and to bring up again.

And the second one is, data is everywhere. Data also has [? to land ?] in HR. So justify your transformation by what are the things you are going to achieve, not in a way that it feels like you're making this up. Come up with numbers. These are the 10% less XYZ. These are the 20% more we're going to see. These are the hours we're going to save.

Take tangible examples. And it might go down to some nitty-gritty details like, OK, manager hour is $35. And then we skip this process, it'll be 10 hours, which is $350. That's one.

And the other one is embrace technology or this transformation because it's a helper. And it's not-- I don't mean just by buying the next great system, or next [INAUDIBLE], or something like that. Embody it into your transformation process. Use it where it's useful but still control the technology. By the way, feed it with the right questions. Feed it with the right data. Take multiple perspectives. And then discuss this perspectives because the human factor in this transformation in this, let's say, hybrid approach of transforming the function is still super important.

We are still looking for good leaders. And I haven't seen a gen AI telling me what's the best leader or how to support good leadership. But I think the combination of data and gen AI plus, let's say, the empathy we are still sensing and the creativity we are sensing and the culture we are sensing is something. When we're able to bring this closer together in a way that the business leaders understand that this is a tangible combination, this can be a good start and will open doors for transformation.

And Armin, while I still have you, why don't we just very quickly jump into the future? It's 2030. How has the HR function evolved? What will be different for future HR practitioners?

So first of all-- I mean, right now, if we look into the FTE contribution of the HR function, 50% to 60% are still doing transactional operational work. Till 2030, if everything goes right, this will be melted down to 15% to 20% max. It's still some complexity we have to encounter, but it'll be much less.

The other HR roles will be very business-focused. Every HR role will be able to say, what is my business impact instead of what is my HR role. So equalizing HR and business, bringing this closer together, will hopefully happen up till then, so that it's less of a support function. I always hear this. There's a HR support role, or business partnering. I hope in 2030 we see HR as a business driver as the other functions are too, like operations, or finance, or whatever.

And what else will we see? We will still see a lot of regulations, and laws, and all these things because we also have to protect people. Our economics are aggressive, and we still have to ensure that people feel well, that well-being, diversity, inclusion, equity is not thrown in front of the bus for technology. I think safeguarding this or be the guardian for that is also something what we will see. And I truly believe that only very diverse organizations with the right organizational empathy in 2030 will be successful. And I see distinct roles for that in HR for sure also in 2030.

Well, what an exciting future, HR being a heart of those business discussions and being the custodian of ensuring empathy and economics is balanced. Alex, bring us home. It's 2030. What's going to be different about the work experience? So what can we all look forward to as workers?

OK, this might sound a little Jetsons like. But I think what I'd like to see, and what I believe is possible, and what I see in some of the budding HR technology vendors today is a shift from closed to open. And what I mean by that is today, your experience is very much within the walls of your organization. And when you leave that organization, you leave behind what you built in that job in many ways.

You might write a resume, a CV. You might list out those responsibilities. But you leave behind your connection points on a daily basis. You leave behind often your health and information, sometimes your wealth information, and also your career, and your opportunities. And I think what we'll see is more of an openness, more of an expectation that folks will move from one role to another.

I work with a client whose goal is to be the number one place that people come and grow as leaders-- not to keep you there, but their metric of success is that they're on the resume of every single CEO, government, and nonprofit leader in the world. And I think that openness, that idea that we can be a stepping stone, a part of your role, what it will result in is technology solutions that are less about your relationship with your employer and instead your relationship as an employee.

And I believe that you'll actually tap into solutions that you can take with you. Build the history of your career. Build the history of your health. Build the history of your wealth. And employers will begin to tap into the solutions that you choose to bring with you. And it'll shift from this push model to much more of a pull model where the employee can invest and engage and really be a part of our organizations with as much as they choose to while also potentially having that relationship with others before, after, or even during.

Alex, I love those comments. They fit so well with the latest evolution of the employee value proposition, which we see is moving from what used to be the engagement contract to the [INAUDIBLE] conscious. And now, it is a lifestyle contract. But that lifestyle gets very anchored in the past when you can't be portable. And I think that's what you're sharing there. Well, I'm certainly excited, and I can't wait for 2030 to be upon us.

And Alex and Armin, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share some of your thoughts. Some of the big takeaways from me was, transformation is not linear, and tech is not the most critical component. What really matters is looking at the target interactions, looking at people dependency index, and unlearning the way that we think we've done things before. If we want to get it right, we've got to embrace AI and skills. But what's really going to make a difference is the mindset and culture. And I hope you've been inspired, listeners, as I have to relook at your HR function today and envisage what tomorrow could look like.

If you're keen to hear more on the subject of HR transformation or, indeed, the employee experience-- and do take a look at what we have on mercer.com-- and if you're interested in other topics like this or related to the new shape of work, please check out the rest of our interviews on mercer.com or sign up for the series wherever you get your podcasts. Alex and Armin, thank you so much for your time today. It's been great having this conversation. Listeners, have a great day.

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