About this episode

Mike Coffey discusses the Great Flattening of middle management and the future of AI in HR with guest Blair Doran.

In episode 258, Coffey talks with Blair Doran about the “Great Flattening” of middle management, AI adoption in HR, and the thawing job market's impact on employee retention. They discuss the Great Flattening and the causes of middle management cuts; the risk of losing institutional culture and coaching capacity when middle managers are eliminated; poor selection criteria for promoting individual contributors into management roles without leadership training; AI adoption shifting employee self-service away from managers and freeing them for strategic work; HR's evolving role in understanding business operations rather than acting purely as a compliance gatekeeper; state-level AI employment law developments in Colorado, Illinois, and New York amid federal disparate impact uncertainty; confidentiality and trade secret risks when employees use AI for brainstorming and content creation; a recent study comparing passive AI cut-and-paste use versus active AI collaboration on employee engagement and output quality; job security concerns and the thawing job market's effect on long-tenured employee retention; and proactive employee engagement strategies to prevent turnover before it…

People in this episode

Host: Mike Coffey

Guest: Blair Doran

Topics covered

• Great Flattening
• AI in HR
• employee retention
• middle management
• job market
• employee engagement

Keywords

• middle management
• AI adoption
• employee retention
• job market
• employee engagement
• HR strategy
• leadership training

Sponsors

Imperative

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Colorado, Illinois, New York

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