Increasing Compensation Costs and the Great Resignation
Session Leader: Alec Levenson
Wednesday December 1
4:00pm – 5:45pm GMT / 11:00am – 12:45pm ET / 8:00am – 9:45am PT

The business news headlines in 2021 have been dominated by the continued impacts of Covid-19 on supply chains and back-to-work plans. Two emerging labor market trends pose particular challenges for long range business and workforce planning: rapidly increasing compensation costs, and record-high quit rates.

This session will review these recent developments in the market for talent from both a historical and current-day perspective:

• Are we returning to a period of sustained wage inflation, or is this a more temporary adjustment in labor costs? How should we be optimizing our recruiting and staffing models for now and longer term?
• Why are people quitting? Do we know? And does it matter, in terms of how we should be responding?
• If wages are going to keep rising, does that tip the scales in favor of more and faster automation of tasks and jobs? Where does this kind of strategy make sense?