LinkedIn's Steve Cadigan: Rewriting HR, From Performance Reviews to Remote Work

Gene Marks (00:00)

Hey, everybody, it's Gene Marks. And welcome back to the Paychex THRIVE Podcast. This week I interviewed Steve Cadigan. He was the first Chief HR Officer at LinkedIn and now he is the author of Workquake. This is where Steve travels around the world and around the country advising companies on these seismic changes in the employer/employee relationship. All things workplace is what he talks about. And we talked about a bunch of things in the workplace with Steve as well. Remote working, his thoughts on performance reviews, his thoughts on the multi-generational workplace that's out there, and some of his advice for motivating your employees as well. So great conversation with Steve. For anybody that's got employees, it's a great listen to. You'll learn a lot. Let's see what Steve has to say.

Announcer (00:45)

Welcome to THRIVE, a Paychex Business Podcast. Your blueprint for navigating everything from people to policies to profits. And now your host, Gene Marks.

Gene Marks (00:58)

Steve, thank you so much for joining us. We're excited to talk with you today.

Steve Cadigan (01:01)

Great to be here, Gene.

Gene Marks (01:03)

So, first of all, you know, you're known for your book called Workquake. It describes, you know, seismic shifts in the employer/employee relationship. There's a lot that's going on, obviously in the workplace in 2025. Give me some thoughts on what's sort of driving these changes and where we're at.

Steve Cadigan (01:22)

Gosh, there's so many big macro trends right now. And I think that's the big point that many of the business leaders I talked to today are facing, which is we've always had change in the world of work, but we've never had so many big ones. So the big drivers for me are more people are staying in organizations shorter than they ever have. More people are not only leaving companies, but changing career paths at a rate we've never seen before. We have the birth of more new industries in the last 10 years than in any 10-year segment in history. And with a new industry comes new career choices. And with new career choices, we also have greater transparency to what I can do with my skills education experiences than any time in history. And how that's playing out is we've got a university demographic that is changing what they're studying more frequently than changing majors and declaration majors faster than any time in history. So, prior to the pandemic, we had people changing majors about 1.5 times, and now we're at 2.4 in a four-year undergraduate experience. So, these are big, big shifts that are, you know, I guess I captured this under the umbrella of the psychology of the workforce and how they're thinking about working careers is experiencing a fundamental shift right now.

Gene Marks (02:38)

It's a changing majors, changing jobs at jobs for a much shorter time, changing industries as well. Like, what do you think is driving this?

Steve Cadigan (02:47)

I think several things, but the biggest one for me is the transparency that we have to see what's possible. When I started my career, it was a newspaper that was publishing what jobs were available. And it was the doctor, teacher, lawyer, policeman, fireman, business person. Today it's cryptocurrency regulator, it's drone operator. There's so many different choices right now, and I think with that comes fear of making the wrong choice for a lot of people. Like, man, am I, what should I study? What should I focus on? What's the right industry for me to spend time in? And there's a lot of fear that comes with that. There's a lot of many articles that have come out in the last year around this sort of career paralysis, if you will, and the concern that people chose the wrong place. In addition to that, Gene, I can also see what other companies are rewarding, you know, their employees with differently than what I'm making. Like, maybe someone's getting better perks, better benefits, better working conditions, more freedom, more flexibility. Who knows? But I can see more of what I don't have than any time in history.

Gene Marks (03:54)

Got it. So, Steve, tell us a little bit about yourself. I mean, you obviously being an author, I know you were previously with LinkedIn. You were the first HR director, I guess, at LinkedIn as well. So you were there right at the very beginning. But most importantly, tell me what you do now for your clients.

Steve Cadigan (04:11)

Right now, I really, I guess the best way to capture it is I help untangle the challenging future of work for businesses, for leaders, for organizations, particularly younger entrepreneurs who are experiencing some success. And they want to make sure that they're building the right culture, they're building the right strategy, and they've got the right talent, plan to be successful.

Gene Marks (04:33)

Makes sense. And so, you do engagements with clients, I guess, big and small, or is it mostly in the corporate world?

Steve Cadigan (04:39)

All shapes and sizes. I mean, probably the biggest source of my revenue today is speaking at conferences and teaching at universities around the world. And probably the domain where I'm spending the most time right now is the city of Lisbon, Portugal, which is trying to become the leading hub for entrepreneurs in Europe. And so, I'm probably over there six, seven times a year dealing with young entrepreneurs from all over the world who are wanting to figure out you know, how do we build the culture the right way so that we can realize the similar success that LinkedIn had really quickly.

Gene Marks (05:09)

Got it. All right, fair enough. You know, I believe this is. It's one of the very first times, if not very few times in history where we've got what, like four generations working at companies now, right? I mean, we have boomers, Gen Xers, like myself, millennials, you know, obviously Gen Zers. Then we've got another generation soon coming up behind that. It's pretty unique, I think, time and at least business history where we've got these different groups. Talk to me about building a culture. When you've got these types of people that come from different backgrounds and different generations, how do you bring them together?

Steve Cadigan (05:49)

Yeah, it's really insightful, Gene. And you know what, I think the classification of a generation is going to be captured in shorter and shorter periods. So, we're going to have, you know, maybe people born within, you know, 15 years, was a generation before, now it's going to be five years because the world is changing so quickly and the experience and the growth that we're all experiencing is going to shape it differently. So, the best advice that I can offer people right now around this is I think we over focus on difference and under focus on commonalities. And that's the biggest challenge that I see with leaders today is like they're trying to spend so much time of trying to see how people are different. And I think what we should be focused on is how we're similar and we're alike. And so when, you know, I deal with business leaders today and they say, oh, the biggest problem is people are not staying as long as they used to. And I said, well, why is that? And they say, well, that young generation. And I say, you mean your children that you raised with your values, like that generation is the problematic one. I said, you know, when have we ever had a generation that we all look down on and said, wow, they work way harder than we do and they've got a better work ethic and they're more loyal, they're always going to be different. And so, what we got to do is say, how do we find common ways to motivate and get people excited about a future? When I have to admit that the marketing campaign for the future work is one of the worst marketing campaigns in history. First, we were told the robots are going to take our job. Now we're getting convinced that artificial intelligence is going to take our job, and it's fundamentally demoralizing. And unsatisfying. And so, we got to find a better way to get people excited, I think in that, you know, when I look at the generational things, I'm excited there's so many different generations in the workforce. Because that's what I want as a leader. I want a big challenge to take on.

Gene Marks (07:26)

Right? Yeah. I mean, talk about diversity. I mean, that is certainly a big part of that diversity. So, you know, you mentioned you got to find some ways to motivate your people and find, you know, common eras or areas, regardless of the generation. Give me an example. You know, what do you tell some of your clients? Like, what are some of the ways that you've seen companies, you know, motivate their employees regardless of the generation they're from?

Steve Cadigan (07:48)

What I starting to see right now, which gets me really excited, is more organizations are recognizing that if we can understand the anatomy of skills better, we can help people architect a future for themselves that maybe they never even considered. I'm seeing this with Prudential. For example, they're using artificial intelligence to say, given your skills, experiences and backgrounds, do you know you're in HR, but you could really go into public relations, you could go into marketing, you could go into sales, you can go into customer service. Did you know that? And we will support you. So that's what we're starting to see is people committing to make people more employable, not just committing to keep you here. You see what I'm saying? So, we're seeing like, for example, Chick-Fil-A is doing something really interesting. They're saying, you know, on their company career website, they're showing people that used to work at Chick-Fil-A and saying, and they're saying, a testimony of thank you Chick-Fil-A for helping me realize my dream job of becoming an emergency room nurse or a fifth-grade schoolteacher. And organizations in fast food, for example, saying, we know we're not your destination, we're part of your journey. And so that, that kind of transition of being more thoughtful about caring for talent for their whole career, not just the segment where someone's working for you. So, it's a really interesting trend.

Gene Marks (09:02)

Yeah, you know, that reminds me a lot of, you know, I spent nine years at KPMG, you know, you know, out of college. And you know, those firms as big four firms, they pride themselves on their alumni. You know, people that, you know, they know that a very small percentage of people that join their firm are actually going to stick it out and make partner. But then their alumni leave, and they spread the good word and the good cheers and sometimes become future clients or at least referrals for clients as well. So, you're right. I mean, if you take, if you take the point of view that your business may just be a steppingstone, but you're interested in the overall long-term career of your employees, wherever they end up, I guess, you know, that does have a big impact on how an employee feels about the company they're working at, right?

Steve Cadigan (09:42)

That's right, Gene. And you know what I try to do to help allay the fears and concerns that leaders have around talent leaving faster than ever before. As I say, well, we can focus on why that's happening, but I think there's a bigger question. Do you think it's going to slow down? Do you think in the future people will stay longer? And 100% response is, no, they probably won't. And I said, okay, so then why are you measuring things like retention? Why don't you measure trust? Why don't you figure out how do I build value in an organization with a demographic that's not staying as long as it used to? Because you just told me, you know, they probably won't. And it's not because you're not nice, you don't reward people well, you don't have a good culture. It's because there's a lot more choice and people are taking different decisions. So, college basketball and college football for me are great examples of players used to stay four years. Now your best players are going to stay a year in basketball. So, I got to teach a simpler offense and a simpler defense. I got to accelerate team building. I've got to really improve my communications. And most business leaders are not ready to take that leap. We're still at the recognition phase that we have a problem, Houston, instead of saying, you know what, I'm going to build this so that if people leave sooner than I want, I'm going to be okay, I'm not going to be hurt. And if you've got Susan leaving and she's only there two years and no one knows what Susan does, well, that's on you because you know, Susan's going to go. And right now, the demographic age 20 to 35, Gene is staying a median length of time of 2.5 years in an organization that means half the numbers less than that. I sit in Silicon Valley, you know, software engineer tenure is, is around a year to a year and a half. And we also, what the interesting thing about that is even despite that high turnover we have enormous creativity and innovation still in Silicon Valley in the most fluid workforce in the world. Super interesting.

Gene Marks (11:36)

I want to ask you some of your thoughts on some of the sort of trends in HR and talent management that just, you know, as an expert in the field, I mean, I know you've got opinions on them. So, the first is performance reviews. You know, give me your thoughts on the state of performance reviews in 2025.

Steve Cadigan (11:56)

We are still in a period of organ rejection for that whole process. More, more harm is done with performance reviews than good, unfortunately. Ask any executive, was that pivotal moment in your career when you had that performance review of that XYZ company? And the answer is no. And so I'm telling my clients, step back and say why are we doing this and what value are we getting from it? But I'll also flip the script a little bit from the HR leader's point of view. I've worked in some companies or if we didn't have the performance review, the manager would never be honest with their employees around the true contribution level. So, you know, I think it's, I'm seeing so many different iterations and experimentations. For example, Cisco a few years ago went to team-based performance reviews, not the individual. And I think that's pretty interesting, you know, to sort of say, hey, the team's got to govern itself, not just recognizing the individual. Because if you think about it, Gene, all work is teamwork, right? So that's the issue-based performance reviews.

Gene Marks (12:55)

You're saying that somebody at a higher level is evaluating the performance and what achievements of the entire team together, not necessarily just individuals within that team. Is that, is that correct?

Steve Cadigan (13:05)

Well, that's a piece of it. The other piece is that team reviews itself, they review each other. And so you've sort of got this crowdsourcing thing. You know, there's been some interesting research around that those listeners who are interested in go check it out or talk to someone who's been in it because they're pros and cons. I've not seen a perfect system, but what I do know is an annual cycle of a dump of, you know, something that you didn't tell the employee the whole year is just a failed strategy. And what we need is more frequent, lighter touch, not so bloated and heavy, you know, is sort of my bias. Like quarterly check-in sessions is really, really helpful, especially in a world that's changing so fast.

Gene Marks (13:41)

Okay, that's great. Next topic. I'd like your opinion on: college degrees. Use or not?

Steve Cadigan (13:46)

Increasingly less critical. However, all the research is still showing us the earnings for people with college degrees is still significantly greater. I think there are more ways that you can make yourself become more valuable than having a college degree. And I think what, what, you know, I have three boys, one's a junior and two seniors in high school, one's a junior in college and two seniors in high school. And they keep hearing these people say, well, you know, all that stuff in college, I'm not using it in my job. I'm like, well, maybe not the academic portion, but how about dealing with a roommate that you don't like? How about dealing with a professor that's grading you unfairly. Those are life experiences that you need to face. You know, how about playing on those sports teams? It's giving you the, you know, the fabric of what's going to make you operate well, you know, in a team and so forth. So, you know, but what the challenge that I see with the world right now is where everyone's finger pointing at the education, institutional educations saying you aren't keeping up. And when I go, I speak it and deal with universities all over the world and I say, what's your biggest challenge? And they say a lot of the businesses don't know what we should be teaching the future generation of workers. So, they're, they're equally deer in the headlights right now.

Gene Marks (15:00)

You know, it's funny, I mean, I have three kids myself and one of my sons is a mechanical engineer. And he, you know, none of the stuff that he, he learned during his undergraduate degree is specifically applied to his job academically. But the, the companies that hired him, at least he's proved that over four years he can put up with that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? Like he can be in that environment and, and problem solve mechanical engineering related types of problems, problems. So, if you're an employer hiring a kid out of college, you're like, all right, it's not like I'm hiring a kid that's never heard of mechanical engineering before. He's got some basis, some experience in working with these kinds of things. And now we'll take that knowledge, we'll teach him what we do. So, I think it does have some benefits. I mean, there's some degrees though that is a bit of a stretch. Do you have any opinion on MBAs? I get that question a lot. You know, like should, should employee, you know, are MBAs valuable for most employees?

Steve Cadigan (15:52)

Well, as someone who received a Master of Human Resources Organization Development, yeah, what I would say is that there's two benefits that are grossly underappreciated with an MBA or a master's, and that is you raise your confidence level, and you get a great network. Those are very, very powerful, you know, and if you get a network that includes some professors, even better. I have some professors from my master's program. I had a class of like nine people, super small cohort. I have some professors that I brought in to do work with me in the companies that I've worked for over the years at LinkedIn and Cisco and other places. So that's what I would focus more on. Like, hey, am I going to get a great network of people? Because that's the power today is knowing people is almost as more important than knowing stuff because things are changing too fast. So I need to phone a friend if I'm in trouble. I think that's really powerful for me, as in HR, the greatest benefit I got academically was calling BS on a lot of strategies that are out there because I realized that this whole profession is really only like 50 years old in terms of theory and process. So, it's still, still evolving.

Gene Marks (16:57)

Yeah, that's a great take, actually. And I do like your opinion on networks as well, because really, college is the same. You can make the same argument for undergrad college. And some universities are better than others at creating those networks. But it's a really, really good point. Okay, obviously, major hot topic in the workplace today. I mean, you wrote a book, Workquake, by the way, guys. You know, that's talking about all these sort of seismic changes between employees and employers. Let's talk about remote working and working from home and coming into the office. Clearly, you've got some thoughts on that, as well. What are your thoughts? Where do you see it working? What do you think makes it not work? Give me some of your thoughts on remote working.

Steve Cadigan (17:35)

Here's the, here's the rub and why this is so hard. We do not have a longitudinal study and a long period of confidence that we know how to build greater teams, we know how to build greater cultures in a more remote world of work. We just don't have it yet. And business leaders who are running companies who have got board of directors breathing down their neck and investors saying, get me the results. What do they know? They know when we're together, we produce this outcome. When we're more apart, I don't know. And so that's the really, the challenge that we're... The sausage is getting made right now. And my clients asked me, Steve, remote/in-person hybrid. And my answer is yes. And they said, no, we want to know which one of those. And I said yes. They go, oh, we're going to have to try them? Yes, we're in this phase of experimentation. Listen, some organizations, let's take biotech, you got a lab there. In-person stuff's happening. Remote stuff's a little harder to realize. Okay. And some organizations where the team and the culture and the chemistry is so tight, introducing more remote is going to be a challenge. But I really like what Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, said. He goes, how could any company think that the brightest minds and the greatest contributors live within a 30-mile radius of their company? Like, how can anyone think that's true? And I think it's going to be a great advantage for the companies to get more comfortable with that and can, because they're going to have greater access to greater talent. Now, what are the long-term implications to culture and teamwork? We don't know yet because it's still early.

Gene Marks (19:03)

Right. So, yeah, I mean, I totally get that. And you're absolutely right. I mean, I always thought that about COVID you know, like, we're still not going to know, you know, what happened during COVID We still got years to go before all the data gets disseminated and researched and looked at. And I think you're right about remote working. We just don't know. It's too new in the workplace to really make across the board decisions. Unfortunately, that doesn't help today's employers. You know, I mean, right? I mean, I'm running a business and, you know, I've got 50 employees and some of them are demanding to work from home or I've got great talent. I want to hire some person in Kansas and I'm in Philadelphia, and the person, you know is a remote worker. And I just don't know what to do.

Steve Cadigan (19:40)

What do you tell your clients?

Gene Marks (19:41)

I mean, is. Is the answer just it depends? You know, it depends on the team, it depends on the culture, it depends on location, it depends on the person. Is that, is that the best we can answer when it comes to remote working today?

Steve Cadigan (19:52)

A little of that. But we have to expand the conversation here, Gene, a little bit, and then I'll get more specific with a perspective. If you look at every major city in America, for example, what do they want? Everyone to go back to work because they've got restaurants, they've got public transportation, they've got all kinds of investments in trains and buses, restaurants, shops, and they've got a payroll tax that's paying the bills. And that world of work is something that they've got a vested stake in. And so we've built a nation, we built societies around people going to work and those payroll tax dollars. I mean, how do you figure that out? When everyone ran to the remote woods and working out of a cabin in Oregon somewhere? Like, whose payroll taxes? Who's getting that money? So that's a magnetic pull that's kind of invisible, but it's behind the scenes and it's really driving it. So, the best advice I have for my clients is you're going to have to experiment. Because let's take my son, for example. He had his first internship this past summer, and it was remote, and it was horrible. He's sitting at our dining room table, and he wants to meet people, he wants to go have some mentors and so forth. And that was disabled. So, I don't think the whole world is craving for remote work. You look at Europe, their housing was not built for people to work from home. It's small. It's like you sleep here, the rest of the time you're out, you know, at a cafe, having a cigarette or whatever. So, it's just different. So, you know, and some, some teams work better. And if you just take hybrid, for example, people say, should we be hybrid? I go, if you're asking me, should you be hybrid, that's like telling a waitress who wants to take your order that you'd like some food. Like, there's a million different. It you want vegan food, you want hot food, cold food, what do you want? Like, hybrid is like, what day, week, how many days a week, what hours, what location? Is it in the office? Is it in a cafe? Like, is it in a shared workspace? There's so many iterations, and I think what we have to try to do is explain experiment a little bit and what, what... The reason that's so hard, Gene, is because we're coming out of a model of one size fits all, and we've not. We're not used to customization at scale.

Gene Marks (21:53)

Right. Yeah, it's just funny. There are so many things, you know, in, in our lives, Steve, that they're so new. I mean, mobile apps have only been out for, what, 20 years now? You know, 10 years now. Ten to 20 years. You know, AI is a new thing which we're going to ask you about in just a second. Working from home, you know, all these different things are just new to business. And, you know, I think people, maybe it's people in the media, I mean, like, they expect quick answers, like immediate answers to problems that really need to be thought out over time before we really can figure out what is best for the worker and for the company. And I guess maybe, I guess maybe the takeaway is just like, we all got to be a little bit more patient about this stuff and not, you know, be all up in arms, you know.

Steve Cadigan (22:32)

Yeah, let me rephrase what you're saying, Gene, this way. And I say, whenever we face something new in the world of work, or anything for that matter, what are we told? Go benchmark, go talk to people who've been through this before. Who can we benchmark with today? Like, who's been through a pandemic, who's been going through, like, global recession, all kinds of crazy. We have never been here before. So, my advice to people is, you're not going to get the benchmark. You know that. Just like every company is saying, Steve, tell us what companies like us are doing with AI right now. I go, they're in the sandbox playing around with a bunch of experiments and a bunch of toys. You are, too. So be the benchmark, because there is no benchmark right now.

Gene Marks (23:09)

All right, well, final question. You mentioned AI, so I feel like I need to ask you about this. I mean, again, when it comes to the workplace, how are you seeing AI impacting the workplace now in 2025? So. And then where do you see it impacting going forward? Will it be as disruptive as everyone says?

Steve Cadigan (23:29)

What I'm seeing right now is that most organizations are deploying AI like, they have other systems and tools that they've been using in history, which is, how do I use this to make people more productive and do more stuff? Right? And that's not what AI is really capable of. So sadly, I'm seeing more people use AI first to cut headcount and to lower expenses. And that's the missed opportunity, I think, that we're not taking advantage of, which is, how can I use AI to open new markets to allow my employees to make a bigger impact, to do newer, cooler things, to experience more joy, satisfaction, and success at work? And so, it's so new. I mean, it's not... I'm seeing lots of posts and lots of research out there right now. And by the way, every day, it's new with AI, it's not software that you're rolling out to do something faster. It's like a light bulb. It's like electricity someone was saying. It's just it's making you see things that you couldn't see before. And so, I love what Walmart did with their salaried employees, 50,000 salaried employees last year. They said, here's a generative AI tool on your phone. We don't know what it can do, we don't know how you should use it. Try it out as an experiment and see if you've got some insights on how you could lead your team better, maybe communicate with customers better, maybe see some retail insights that we couldn't see before. And then let's share those. And what did they find? Disproportionate, you know, innovation. And so, then they rolled it out to another 50,000 people. And that is from a very conservative retail organization saying, we don't know how to do this, but why don't you tell us? And that's not how we've done it before. It's like, here's the system, here's how you use it, here's the manual, here's the 5,000 Oracle consultants that are going to show you how to do it. And people are like, told how to use it. And now we've got this new, you know, resource which is unbelievably powerful. So, I think again, just like in the world of work, we've got to experiment a little bit more with AI to understand how to optimize for it.

Gene Marks (25:28)

Hey, great responses, fascinating conversation. I made it through like a third of the questions that I wanted to ask you in this short period of time. And obviously the area that you cover is so important to so many of us that run businesses that need to have you back in the future because there's other areas I want to cover. But I thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Steve.

Steve Cadigan (25:46)

Thanks for having me.

Gene Marks (25:47)

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