Human Capital Intel - 4/8/25
Leading through uncertainty | Tariff tactics | GenZ job tenure | Unlearning the fear of employees | Skill shifts force rapid re-learning
Welcome to the latest edition of Human Capital Intelligence, your weekly brief synthesizing over 250 leadership, HR, and people sources to filter out the noise. As always, we would love to hear from you at ken@reyvism.com with questions you’d like answered or topics covered.
Sent this by a friend? Sign up here to receive HCI in your inbox every week.
By Ken Stibler; Powered by Reyvism Analytics
Turning uncertainty into leadership opportunity
Uncertainty is no longer an anomaly—it's the norm. While many executives remain trapped in "wait-and-see" paralysis, the traditional coordinates of work are dissolving, turning the indecision that once passed as prudence into a clear liability.
Yet as Deloitte’s 2025 Human Capital Trends report underscores, uncertainty isn’t just something to survive; it’s something leaders must strategically leverage. This opportunity-focused approach reframes leadership as an "and" equation rather than a series of “either/or choices”. Forward-thinking executives no longer choose between agility or stability, automation or human augmentation—they harmonize these apparent contradictions.
Organizations that empower workers to grow and act with purpose are reporting 1.8x stronger financial performance, demonstrating that uncertainty can be transformed into value when leaders provide both anchors for stability and systems flexible enough to evolve.
“Everybody hates uncertainty, whether you're talking about executives down to front-line workers. Everybody's just kind of frozen, waiting and seeing.”
— Joanne Hsu, the director of consumer surveys at the University of Michigan on why employees are skittish
This means shifting from merely managing ambiguity to institutionalizing decision-making discipline within it. By reconsidering data valuation, redistributing decision authority, and restructuring systems that undermine bold action, CEOs are establishing rigor precisely when conditions are most uncertain.
In an accelerated and destabilization operating environment, leadership has the higher return on their time from storytelling through strategy—crafting narratives where uncertainty becomes the arena for innovation rather than an obstacle to progress. For forward-looking organizations, uncertainty has become not just a condition to manage, but the very context in which leadership creates its most significant value.
What’s Next: From AI adoption to adjusting to a new economy, leaders with the tightest command-and-control grip are going to find it hardest to steer. Deloitte found that strategic slack—unscheduled, worker-directed time—are demonstrating the highest preparedness for uncertainty, resilience and financial outcomes.
Small business tariff playbook
It is tempting for service firms, and less directly exposed small businesses, to respond with general apprehension or a selfish relief that “we’re not exposed.” But as a global trade war kicks off, all firms will eventually find themselves dealing with disruption.
Tariffs affect economic growth through their tax-like impact on real disposable income and consumer spending; their tendency to unnerve markets and tighten financial conditions. While the personal and corporate tax changes that Congress is likely to pass will modestly boost growth, inflation is expected to rise by about 0.1% for every 1 percentage point increase in the effective tariff rate.
Rather than a one paragraph “what’s next”, HCI has put together a simple playbook of the What, Who, and Why of small businesses’ tariff response. While it will not substitute for a good trade attorney or strategic CFO, it can jolt you out of resignation or inaction about the market turbulence heading for your business, whether sooner or later.
Read the Simple SMB Tariff Playbook at KenStibler.com.
Quote of the Week: Mid-career turbulence
“My peers, friends, and I continue to navigate the unforeseen obsolescence of the career paths we chose in our early 20s. The skills you cultivated, the craft you honed—it’s just gone. It’s startling.”
—Chri Wilcha, a 53-year-old TV and film director, on the feeling among Gen Xers in fields that new technologies have made them obsolete.
Reading List:
Skill shifts bring struggles as re-learning trumps all
Skills obsolescence is for everyone, with one-quarter of American jobs already experiencing a 75% skills reset that has rendered decades of expertise and career building worthless. In turn, continuous re-learning is supplanting experience as a primary career currency, with the financial burden of perpetual skills acquisition falling increasingly on individuals rather than employers.
What’s Next: It’s time to take action on the upskilling problem at all levels of the organization. A simple start would be a per-employee education stipend with a ChatGPT-generated list of suggested skill needs across the organization. Connect it to some kind of “lunch and learn” to check and socialize progress.
Shedding Covid-era fear of the employees
A frozen labor market offers a reset opportunity for executives who have spent years tiptoeing around workforce demands. Declining employee willingness to ask for raises and promotions, and sentiment indicating workers are prioritizing job security over advancement creates space for executives to abandon the paralysis that characterized management during tight labor markets.
What’s Next: Leaders can, carefully, harness this swing by demonstrating precisely the decisiveness that both organizations and, increasingly uncertain, employees desperately seek.
No return to normal for job tenure
Generation Z workers average job tenure has fallen to just one year per employer —a stark contrast to Baby Boomers' 7.5-year average tenure. This looks like a longer-term recalibration of employer-employee relationships with tenure declines seen even in high demand and mission-driven fields. As predictable career progression gives way to ‘portfolio employment’ that prioritizes immediate advancement over institutional loyalty, change is coming for everything from compensation structures to knowledge transfer protocols.
What’s Next: It is no wonder companies prefer ChatGPT to the college intern. Still, with the ‘boomers’ aging out, workforce planning means either 1; figure out how to better target/incentive/refine GenZ workers, or 2; start investing in agentic AI adoption to automate the entry level like many Fortune 500s are doing.
Data Point: Same as it ever was
3 years
The average job tenure of baby boomers before they turned 50, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics — looks like the image of the single company career was more an outlier than common reality.
In Other News:
3 Mistakes to Avoid When Setting Incentives for Sales Teams. (Harvard Business Review)
Emotional Intelligence at Work: Why It’s Not Just About Being 'Nice. (Mindset Matters)
Workers want more training on AI use in the workplace, a report said, including soft skills that can help them apply AI more effectively. (HR Dive)
While workers need skill development, managers still lack support, Deloitte says. (HR Dive)
‘I felt like HR didn’t have my back whatsoever’: Dissecting the profession’s persistent perception problem. (WorkLife)
The latest niche workplace benefit? Helping workers get a mortgage. (Fast Company)
How this recruiter realized she was interviewing an AI deepfake. (HR Brew)
Telework rates increased over the year at all levels of educational attainment. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)