You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. I have to say I love the first line of a recent essay that was written by our next guest one is the year our relationship with work change forever. This is something I agree that we're gonna be looking back ten years from now and saying this is when it all started to change. The question is the question is what the what changes stick and what to what extent do
we go back to the old normal? Hey? Those words were written by Dan Shapiro, the chief operating officer of LinkedIn. He joins us once again on Bloomberg Business Week from the on the phone from Palo Alto, California, Dan, how are you good? How are you Hey? We're doing pretty well. Um. It's really great to have you back, especially after such a wild year when it comes to the way that that people feel about work and the and the relationship
and the changing relationship that they're they're having with work. Uh, you write about something that you call the Great Reshuffle. What is that? The Great Reshuffle? Is this idea that right now more people are reconsidering what they want to doing their jobs and what they want to do with their careers at any time in recent memory. We run a survey at LinkedIn that suggested that of professionals in America are going to rethink what they want to do.
And what's interesting is that that is happening at a time when there's hasn't been a tighter labor market for professionals in recent memory. The economy is growing again, there's a massive imbalance in supply and demand for digital skills.
And what that means is that as we come out of this pandemic period, as the world becomes more endemic and companies reconsider their policies for how they're going to work in this new world, that employees have a much stronger voice than they used to in this resetting the expectation. So it's gonna be a really interesting year. So I do wonder too, though, Dawn, like I feel like the pendulum can swing big time and workers do it does feel like they are in the driver's seat right now,
as so many employees pick your employees. They're all scrambling for workers. So employees in many ways and set their terms. Does that stick when the labor market corrects itself and a more normal labor market is back with us To do workers continue to have that leverage and that power. The only time will tell that. I think there's reason to believe that digital skills in particular are going to
remain very tight for the foreseeable future. If you look at what's happened over the last few years, we were already on this journey around companies going through this idea of digital transformation really digitizing their businesses, and the pandemic
only accelerated that. If you think about the expectations consumers have now about what they expect when they interact with a restaurant or a retailer, it is a much more digital experience, and that's placing more and more burdens operationally on the companies that need digital talent to make those things real. So that is likely to continue for quite some time, and that will likely drive some of the policies and practices that many companies adopt. So I think
that there's some real staying power here. What about for elements of this that that don't stay do we? You know, we're already seeing companies call their workers back to work right now, but we're seeing some shifts. You know, Carol and I talked about Apollo for for for private equity employees offering that one month of remote work. That's something that Carol, I mean, you've covered this stuff forever. That's that was unthinkable a few years ago, right, Yeah, exactly.
It's really fascinating to see, like even the financial firms have been pushing back, saying, okay, you can work from home. So Dane, where are the things that go back to what they were where they were before? What are the changes that don't stick? I wish I had a crystal ball. I think that the thing that is most resonant with employees right now is this concept of flexibility. Uh, people are happier, They report being happier when their jobs are
more flexible. You see that looking at remote jobs is something that if you look at all the jobs on LinkedIn and how many people were viewing different kinds of jobs. Just a few years ago, less than ten percent of
the jobs were remote eligible that people looked at. That number is now for a percent of all the job viewing as people curious about remote roles, and so I think that the idea of flexibility is something that has staying power exactly where the lines are drawn about what kind of flexibility works such that businesses can meet their needs and the teams can be functioning. I think that's going to be something where everyone's watching everyone in time
will tell you know. I recently UM caught up at the CEO of Cisco and Chuck Robbins, and even he conceded, and a company like Cisco, they have been doing hybrid work, you know, for years pre pandemic. That's just the way many of the tech industry have been working. But even he acknowledged Um being a little surprised at how innovative everybody really could be during the pandemic. Technology has made
that much more possible. Like I think about, you know, as much as we make fun of all the zoom calls and things, you really can almost feel like you're with people. Yeah, I think we're going to see a tremendous amount of technological innovation in this space. Every leader has likely gone through a journey of being skeptical about how teams would operate when they were from home or in a hybrid capacity, and things have worked in a
lot of ways better than expected. And that is coming at a time when there's more investment from software companies and trying to make this better for people. So if those things come together, I think, I think there's a lot of optimism. At least I hold that these working styles will be effective. But exactly where we land, I think, is it's going to be something we'll have to see. Do you think, Dan, honestly, anything is lost without being in person with one another because I do what I can.
What I can say is that we have, on occasion at LinkedIn had opportunities in a way that was safe and in compliance with health guidelines. We've had opportunities for some teams to spend time together in person, and it is like a spark of energy. It is a breath of share. People love having those moments. Now, whether that becomes people something people do more periodically as opposed to every day, it's interesting. Um, But I think you will continue to see the power of being together and creating
connection is being really fundamental to how great teams work. Uh. Dan eager to talk to you about this story that we highlighted a little earlier in our broadcast about New York City requiring employers to list the minimum and maximum salaries on job postings. That's going to start this spring. According to the Wall Street Journal, it's getting some opposition from business groups. Can you talk a little bit about the way that being transparent with these positions when it
comes to salary can empower workers? Absolutely? Well, it's a broad trend. Um. The trend towards salary transparency has been happening for years, and I think one of the guiding principles behind it is that there's evidence to suggest that it helps remove bias in the process. Um. Some people of different backgrounds negotiate differently, and oftentimes the transparency that you can bring to the conversation yields outcomes where there
is less bias in terms of pay um. And so I think that's one of these is driving it, and it's it's something that we think it's a positive. Are you seeing more companies post on linked in those salary ranges for jobs that are being offered, Like, do you have any data that that that shows that the trend is happening on LinkedIn too? I don't have any data myself right now, but I know it's a broad trend that's going on in the industry. So it's no please continue, please.
The other thing that's going on is Obviously we're an increasingly inflationary environment and companies are trying to figure out how that's going to play out in their in their compensation packages, and particularly as it's a tight labor market, workers are asking questions around how does that what does that mean for my pay? And similarly, companies are grappling with as employees are working in different locations in the same job, how do they reconcile whether they pay different
amounts in different cities for similar work. So what we're going to find as we enter two is a world where executive teams are gonna have to think through pay policies um as one of the core questions that they asked themselves. Yeah, that's an interesting one because you know, we've seen over the last few decades Americans just don't
move around anymore. And this flexibility of being able to work at home, if you think about it, even on a global scale, you can kind of potentially work anywhere, raise your family anywhere, um and maybe work for any company. I mean, that's kind of mind blowing, Dan, if you think about that, it's opening up a lot of opportunity for people, and honestly, it's opening up a lot of opportunity for companies that are able to adapt to these new working styles and tap into labor pools that weren't
possible in the past. So I think this is like any moment where the rules are changing, there are going to be winners and losers. And I think companies and people that adapt to the new norms are going to do quite well well. And so that's something I want to just push you a little bit because there are companies that are like, Yeah, this is just a temporary thing. Do you think they're wrong in thinking that? And those companies that don't embrace more flexibility in their workforce where
they can, will they be left time? Will they be penalized? I think that flexibility is here to stay. I think what that means in a given industry or for a given company, I think we'll learn over time. But the reason the flexibility I think it's here to stay is because they're continue to be core talent in digital areas, technical skills that are going to remain an incredibly high demand, and those are some of the loudest voices that are asking for this kind of flexibility. And so until we
see a market where those dynamics aren't in play. I think flexibility in some form is going to be part of our future. Dan, I'm I'm wondering about what you think about how employees can help shape the future of their workplace. If somebody's listening right now, are watching us right now, what advice would you give them about how they can use this as sort of this rare moment in the history of us work to really shape the
workplace how they want to see it. Well, I would, I would uh encourage everyone to think about what it feels like to be a manager right now. It's a hard job to be a manager. The playbooks that you probably learned over the course of your career. Two, connect with your team to help them learn their job, to onboard new employees. It is a very different environment than
we had just a few years ago. And so I would start if I were at a UM, you know, if from a company perspective of think about the roles that your frontline managers are playing, Interview them, listen to what they're going through, and help bring them tools and frameworks to help them be successful. Because the greatest companies and the greatest employee cultures often are built off of exceptional frontline managers, and I think that's a place where
every company can focus. All right, we're gonna leave it on that note. Hey, so nice to catch up with you, Dan. Thank you so much. Have a good weekend. Dan Shapiro, he's chief operating officer at LinkedIn, on the phone from Palo Alto, California,