The Josh Bersin Company

Over the last few years we’ve experienced a global affordability and income inequality problem and there are a myriad of policy issues at play. Yet at the same time something else is going on: wages and employee earnings have fallen way behind growth in GDP, profits, and productivity. What gives?

In this podcast, and the related article, I discuss how pay practices are changing and how we, as leaders or HR professionals, have a lot of agency to help address this situation. Without wading into politics, we have clear research on the way that pay operates as an “investment” not an expense, and how high performing companies actually reward their workers in exceptional ways.

It’s a complex topic and one that’s about to become more “systemic” and real-time with AI, so consider this some background to give you food for thought as more and more employees demand raises and accommodations for the high cost of living.

Additional Background

Why Has Cost of Living Become The #1 Issue In The US? It’s More Complex Than Inflation

The Rise of the Supermanager

Benchmark Your Pay Practices With Galileo: The AI Superagent for HR

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Compensation and Income inequality
(00:10:17) - Pay and the AI challenge
(00:12:39) - Three Things About Pay
(00:16:24) - Employee pay and the future

All organizations, whether they are profit-seeking companies, non-profits, or governments, have politics. And the issues of how we make decisions, the role of top-down vs. bottoms-up governance, and how we empower people to speak up… these are existential topics in any group of people.

As the USA celebrates its 250 year anniversary and we read so many articles about our history, I wanted to reflect on what our political history teaches us about business leadership, governance, and employee empowerment.

For those of you who study political science, I admire your craft and I think we have a lot to share.

Additional Information

The World Is Accelerating: What Has Changed About Leadership?

Organization Design: The Real Secret To Growth

The Big Reset Playbook: Organizational Culture & Performance

 

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Lessons from the United States
(00:10:33) - The American culture of accountability and forgiveness

What if every talent process you ran was AI-enabled — not to replace what you do, but to make you superhuman at it?

That’s exactly how Matt Hoffman, Head of Talent and Partner at venture capital firm M13, operates. In this episode Matt explains how his team uses AI to help early-stage founders build a talent-first culture from day one – across recruiting, compensation, coaching, and beyond.

The results are remarkable. Using tools like Findem for AI-powered sourcing, Matt’s team can pinpoint candidates who didn’t just work at the right company — they worked there at exactly the right stage of company growth. That’s a level of targeting precision that data accuracy and explainability make possible, and that simply wasn’t achievable before AI.

But here is where Matt’s perspective gets truly compelling. AI is often framed as a speed tool, a way to do things faster and more efficiently. Matt pushes back hard on that narrative: AI should make your hiring better, not just quicker. And in the startup world, that distinction is everything.  Every hire at a 10-person company changes the organization by 10% — so getting it right matters far more than getting it done.

That is the essence of talent density: finding exactly the right people for where your company is and where it needs to go, rather than simply finding people fast.

His advice to HR and talent leaders is as practical as it is powerful: fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Start with the outcome you need to achieve, then let technology enable it — never the other way around.

If you have ever wondered what a truly AI-augmented talent strategy looks like when it is built with intention, depth, and relentless focus on talent density, this one’s for you.

Related resources

Podcast: Why AI Is A Massive Job Creation Technology. Automated Integration. Findem. And Thank You.

Podcast: Understanding Talent Density And Ditching Integrated Talent Management

Research: Insights-First AI: Better and Explainable People Decisions

Research: The Talent Acquisition Revolution: How AI is Transforming Recruiting

Research: How To Create Talent Density

 

 

Chapters

(00:00:04) - What Works: The Future of Talent
(00:00:55) - What is the role of Head of Talent at Talented M13
(00:03:11) - How to Leverage AI in Your Portfolio Companies
(00:09:45) - Finding the Right Talent for a Startup
(00:14:18) - Talent First: How to Use AI in Companies
(00:16:56) - What's AI Impact on Talent Practices?
(00:18:35) - WSJDLive: Using AI in HR
(00:20:02) - How AI can help HR in the Talent Life Cycle
(00:23:01) - What Works With Talent: Matt Hoffman

This week Korn Ferry announced the $1.1 Billion acquisition of AMS, one of the leading providers of enterprise recruitment outsourcing. As I overview in this podcast, this deal demonstrates several things:

First, the talent acquisition space has become enormously important and is rapidly changing with AI, demographic changes, and internal productivity initiatives. AMS has become a global leader in recruitment process outsourcing and TA advisory work, leading to the $1.1 Billion valuation. AMS’s product AMS One is one of the only tech platforms that integrates almost every recruiting technology into one operational view, enabling AMS and clients to monitor, tune, and optimize all areas of recruiting in one place.

Second, Korn Ferry, as a leader in executive search and talent management services (including training offerings), sees enormous synergies and can add AMS’s revenue and $1.5 Billion backlog to their financial strength. While KF was not growing much, this now gives the company a new growth platform – including the opportunity to use AMS’s global service centers for other offerings.

This podcast is an overview of the deal, we’ll publish more after we get a briefing from KF’s management team.

Additional Information

History of Korn Ferry Acquisitions

The Talent Acquisition Revolution: How AI Is Transforming Recruitment

The Josh Bersin Institute Global HR Excellence Certification (inaugural cohort starts in September)

Understanding Agentic HR In Detail: The HR 2030 Vision and Architecture

 

 

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Korn Ferry vs AMS Merger Explained

Today I overview why the Frontier AI vendors are changing as they compete for revenue and how that opens new doors for corporate AI solutions. Remember, your personalization of the technology is more important than the model itself.

Then I discuss our new HR 2030 architectural research and how rules, policies, and security are so important in this new world of Agentic HR. It’s a new world and all focused on “Dynamic Enablement for Growth.”

Additional Information

AI As Fuel For Organizational Change: The Biggest Market Of All

Are Frontier Models Becoming A Commodity?

HR 2030: The Reference Blueprint for Agentic HR (sign up for info)

HR 2030 New Course in Galileo Learn

The Global HR Excellence Certification (GHRE)

Get Galileo: The AI Superagent for HR

Chapters

(00:00:00) - HR 2030: The AI Marketplace
(00:04:33) - The AI That Will Be Embedded in Your Glasses
(00:07:41) - HR 2030: A reference architecture for the technology
(00:09:37) - An Agent's role in the Company
(00:18:38) - The third layer of an AI agent
(00:21:16) - The Purpose of AI: Why Are We Here?
(00:23:58) - Employers' HR Vision 2030