Estee Lauder Hit with Minimum Wage Judgement, Walmart's Acquisition, Home Depot Fires Employee for BLM Apron?

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[00:00:21] Hey, this is William Tinkep Ryan Leary.

[00:00:23] Welcome to the bar.

[00:01:25] the cliche, I want to say whatever, however you want to say it. The robots are coming for our jobs, right? But actually, it's true this time, right?

[00:01:28] Yeah, I saw that.

[00:01:30] Yeah. So there's a company called Nuo robots. So it's a Silicon Valley based company shop.

[00:01:41] They've been working on what they call digital employees of business. So retail, one of the use cases that I found really interesting was, and you can convey this or parlay this into recruiting and however you want, but there's a spa that's currently using this and this is out, I'm assuming it's out by them somewhere, but there's a spa that's

[00:03:03] using this as a is really interesting. If you read the article, we'll link it in the notes. It was a VentureBeat article. The numbers on this are pretty staggering though. So they're saying that this,

[00:04:21] the founder of the company says,

[00:04:23] this will replace 300 million entry level jobs.

[00:04:28] That's a lot of jobs. Like, you know, this is Sandra and Sandra is going to go through your actuary table and look for mistakes. Um, and, and you buy Sandra or you buy Billy or whatever the bet is. I'm going to rename it. Yeah. I, I find it fascinating because they call them employees. And, and so like I'm thinking about the future of that is like, okay, what, what part of employee are they like?

[00:05:43] Uh, do they start getting rights?

[00:05:45] Do they start taking breaks?

[00:06:49] had written on their Home Depot apron BLM and first of all I side with the NLRB on this one in the sense of you know well you gave them an app a an apron and

[00:06:56] I think about the office space and flair you know so I swear it kind of gets my

[00:07:00] mind like again if you want to support BLM No, I didn't read. I didn't read the article article. What is

[00:08:23] was this a violation of workplace code for

[00:08:26] right uniform?

[00:09:25] I, I don't, unless it's curse words or something like that, you know, like I can see where something really, really offensive.

[00:09:27] There's vulgar.

[00:09:28] Yeah, sure.

[00:09:29] There's a line.

[00:09:30] BLM, you know, not vulgar.

[00:09:33] Not vulgar at all.

[00:09:35] I feel like this is a Texas thing, right?

[00:09:37] Like you guys always have something going on down there.

[00:09:40] You have recently, you guys have been in the way of education? Like really the length of someone's hair is getting in the way? No, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, again, teaching to the test. It's not paying teachers enough money, not having enough assistance in the room,

[00:11:02] like not dealing with special needs or learning differences. The three that were spotlighted was Greg's Estee Lauder and EasyJet. So three among 500 employers globally, which vowed to pay their lowest paid employees the national minimum wage. Anyway, turns out it comes out to more than $20 million in unpaid wages.

[00:12:22] That's insane.

[00:12:28] Yeah, yeah, I kind of feel like there's these you, when you look at payroll, you've got federal laws, you've got state laws or employment law in general, you've got federal state and then you've got municipal. So these payroll liability, uh, libraries that go on in ADP or

[00:13:44] Serena, the inner I solved or whatever, they keep track of the changes. Yeah.

[00:13:44] So like, no, it's all digital.

[00:14:43] business owners saying we're gonna keep as much money as possible and say bitch about it well we'll get other people that won't I could see that I could see

[00:14:47] that with 10 20 30 person company we're talking to companies that have a hundred

[00:14:53] thousand employees I mean this is that's that's here here's another issue that

[00:14:59] that that comes out of this and if you rules and so you just just because you're big you don't not get to play By the rules so they're they're hammering them and they're getting them on these with with fines and additional fines as well

[00:16:21] for that so it's really interesting as they should as they as they should so in the last story that we kind of talked about for

[00:17:28] is they should sort of public or private companies start thinking about hiring another C-suite player. So when you initially you think, okay, yeah, sounds good.

[00:17:32] Somebody's got to be like the CIO, CTO.

[00:17:35] Somebody's got to be thinking about AI all the time now, right?

[00:17:38] But what it really got me to think about is, okay, where are we going to source this talent?

[00:17:44] Is this going to come out of academia? Justice Department has hired a person for this position, you know it's legit. They do things, usually the government is a decade behind private enterprise, corporate interest. So, the fact that they've got someone there, that's a tell. This is actually something we should be paying attention to.

[00:19:01] But again, you've now got a person, you've This is anybody who is competent in technology that in AI and technology around AI, they

[00:20:21] say you can expect roughly $174,000.

[00:20:26] That was the trades. You always have a job. You'll make, this is the new trade. I mean, we all know this, right? This isn't a me thing.

[00:21:40] This isn't a you like, it's common sense at this point, right?

[00:21:44] AI is a new trade. programs as you're picking courses parents next year, which we just did this week, which we were not included in because the kids decided to choose their own courses. What's a pick complete opposite right on what I would have picked by the way, if you care well, I can tell you around this when they complain about not being able to get a job.

[00:23:04] There's your there's your there's your they're going to

[00:23:07] complain about it and they're going to be living here.

[00:24:05] This gets back to a discussion 20 years ago. If we over-index and train people, then they'll leave. Or they'll ask for more money, worse than that.

[00:24:10] But here's the deal. There's too many ways to get upskilled. If you don't do it at work,

[00:24:15] you can do it at home. You can get on Khan Academy or YouTube.

[00:24:19] And you can learn. If you want to learn AI, you want more general AI, you can add some human touch and we can also do this. The, the, I mean, that article was terrifying. Uh, when I, when I got to the, uh, the part about cost, so like to say the receptionist again, the, the spa receptionist average salary is $50,000. Yeah. Average salary for the bot, uh, the robot is $20,000.

[00:25:44] Yeah.

[00:25:44] All the way.

[00:25:46] And that's buying the robot and the software.

[00:25:48] Yes.

[00:26:46] to, it can have facial recognition so that, you know, if I walk into that salon, it then knows who I am. And then oh, by the way, the way can personalize my entire experience.

[00:26:52] Start playing songs from my Spotify account, all that type stuff like, Hey, William, how

[00:26:55] you doing today? Listen, last time you were here, you did X, Y, and Z. Like, you can do

[00:27:00] all that with facial recognition to the, the experience. But we also have to remember, human beings are training these things. And human beings have preferences and biases and all this kind of baggage. So I like first of all, not just during black history month, I like the fact that we're that they built this. And then we're having this discussion like, okay, your biases are there.

[00:29:25] study between 2018-2023 and it looked at resumes.

[00:29:28] And if you go to livecareer.com, you can find the resume changes.

[00:29:32] And so a couple things from it,

[00:29:34] there's tons of nuggets, it's actually really worth

[00:29:36] downloading and pawing your way through it.

[00:29:38] But long and short of it is that

[00:29:44] resumes are longer, two page resumes, clearly, but more succinct so that you don't have to use more words. Uh, and so generative AI, you take those words, take that resume and say, okay, make highlight the important parts and make it 500 words or 300 words. And then it becomes smaller, but it's still carrying the same messages. Eh.

[00:31:06] So live career.com take a look at it.

[00:31:08] Resumes.

[00:31:09] Resumes. And so people might say, why did Walmart acquire Vizio? Well, it took me a while to figure out, I'm reading this and I'm thinking, huh, that's pretty interesting. And like, they're not going to be selling anybody else's TVs. That's why. Well, so they're so I don't you might know, I don't know about this, but retail media

[00:32:24] networks.

[00:32:26] There are retail media networks.

[00:32:28] Yeah. like, well, why the hell would William care? William used to work at Walmart. So, yeah. I just, I just want to talk about this. They did that when I was there, they bought McLean, which is a distribution, small distribution for, um, for convenience stores and they bought McLean. So they've been in the vertical

[00:33:40] integration business for a long time. And so this makes platform. So what's that? So Timeforge is a people operations business and SurveyConnect is 30 years of expertise and surveying and things like that. So it's got huge libraries onboarding, you know, surveys, you know, surveys for every point the employee

[00:35:03] experience and Timeforge customers are focused on early careers. Now they can kind of, they're probably not allowed to overlap in those two things

[00:36:22] in terms of features of functionality,

[00:36:24] but now they can get those students prepped for what's next. because they have graphs, they list the companies, they have Google Docs with employees that were affected. So you can use it as a sourcing tool, you can go and find that talent, et cetera. And again, it's showing statistically where the layoffs are happening, what industries are being

[00:37:40] impacted, how they're being impacted,

[00:37:42] who's being impacted, which was really, really fascinating.

[00:37:45] And again, in a very the people in the world, they're gonna be like, yeah, it makes complete sense. But here in the US, they're gonna be like, what the? Like what? So we get 12 weeks, I think

[00:39:03] it's 12 weeks, right? 12 weeks. And then all parents, moms, dads, I wasn't able to find and I and I did message out that in here back. If it if mom and dad both work at the company, can they both take it at the same time? I'm assuming yes. Or they get six months.

[00:41:41] Yeah. That tracks for me. Yeah. So they both a half years. Yeah. Right. Not full pay, right? There's graduated pays, right? Germany, you're guaranteed daycare slots for children over the age of one, plus your leave

[00:41:47] and all that stuff. business. It inspires loyalty. Yeah, it inspires loyalty and a lot of the countries that I mentioned and among others do this as well. One, because it's just the right thing to do You should be able to test it. I may not have passed that test. But I'm doing good. All I'm saying, no, no, you're, you, you, you, you all are great parents. No, I'm just article, this is a Marsh McLennan. It's marshmma.com. And so you kind of, it's an integral report. So it's in their employee health and benefits trends report that they do annually.

[00:45:42] Go in Joe and take a look at it.

[00:45:44] So that was one of the nuggets wanted to talk about, which is emotional salary. And it's, it's, you know, I labeled it

[00:47:01] emotional emotional salary takes a backseat's on Achievers, but it ties into what you're talking about because, I mean, let's be real, right? Like if you just do the basic things, take care of people, recognize them, essentially give them the feels, right?

[00:48:20] Give them the love, give them the benefits, right?

[00:48:22] Show them that they're caring.

[00:48:23] And then write a check, yes.

[00:48:25] And then write a little check, yeah.

[00:48:27] So anyway, so what Achievers found, that just want more money. They don't care. Okay, you got a Starbucks gift card. I did a good job on the project. Someone recognized me like that. That stuff's great. And I think it speaks to all the good things about doing good to work with employees and feedback and making them feel better and us recognizing the little's nothing worse when the economic, when you can't buy gas, you can't get milk and say stuff like that. Then you start looking at recognition as the enemy and it doesn't do the things that you want it to do. It actually works against you because it's like, yeah, I got a recognition.

[00:51:00] Thanks for the trophy.

[00:51:01] That's cool.

[00:51:02] I can't, I can't make my mortgage payment this month.

[00:51:05] I love my president's club trophy, okay, let me give you six tools. This is who's who they are. This is what you can find them. Click the link. By the way, these are the things that it does and it will help you in TA in particular. So that's, that's fantastic. Um, I got two funding news. If you want to be added to other functionality. And so it's something that will get acquired and Series A around 3.4 million that further makes me think that it's going to get acquired. Not right away, but as they gain traction, it just makes sense for other companies to

[00:53:43] go, I love what you've done here.

[00:53:45] Let's put thati or nettle. And why I thought it was important to bring this up on this bar is, you know, first of all, PMS is a much bigger issue than, than one single

[00:55:00] pancasies attack in HR.

[00:55:03] It affects all women.

[00:55:06] You know, there isn't a woman's just do it. That is nice, yeah.

[00:56:20] That is nice.

[00:56:21] I've got one more.

[00:56:23] All right, bring it.

[00:56:24] I don't know where we are in time, but I got one more.

[00:56:26] We're good, Mark.

[00:56:27] Don't look at time. Who cares? like Walmart, Delta, T-Mobile, Starbucks, like big significant companies are using AI to analyze text and images that are shared throughout the organization. And so the idea here- That's fair. Yeah. Well, there's a risk. There's a risk associated. Yeah.

[00:57:40] Exactly.

[00:57:41] And that's the idea is that there's risk associated

[00:57:42] with that, even though they're just internal conversations.

[00:57:45] And so the risks for those I just, I think this is one to watch because I think this is, this is an actual use case, uh, across talent and across how we run organizations. All of our productivity tools, everything, email, Slack, whatever we're using. I think that the easy stuff is when someone's doing something illegal, you

[00:59:02] know, that's, that's something super, super easy, but also, you know what? I'd love to know that because then let's wrap a program around it. Let's do something and make it fun. Yeah. Well, and you know, it's so it's interesting. I didn't get to talk about this today. Well, I guess I will now. So it's the sales force and I always mispronounce this name. Tableau. Tableau. Tableau. I know.

[01:00:20] I know.

[01:00:21] I know.

[01:00:22] I know.

[01:00:23] I know.

[01:00:24] I know.

[01:00:25] I know.

[01:00:26] I know.

[01:00:27] I know.

[01:00:28] I know. prevent the thing from happening before it actually happens. So to notify you, William, as a leader in the company to say, Hey, you've got an entire development department over here that's talking this way. There's sentiments in the shitter, right? Like they're bad, they're not doing good. Or sales aren't doing so well, or the sales team doesn't have the activity that's

[01:01:43] needed based on the economic conditions. And based on this advance and tell you, oh, by the way, this is happening. Here's the recommendation engine that's tied to it. Here's three things that you can do to change that. That's powerful. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, have we, have we barfed out? I think so. We went over time by a bunch. So, but fantastic Sunday morning with