🗞️ Here’s the Tea:
📈 CEO pay rose nearly 10% in 2024 as stock prices and profits soared.
The TL;DR: CEO pay for S&P 500 leaders jumped nearly 10% in 2024 to a median of $17.1 million, thanks to performance-based stock awards amid booming profits and markets. The average worker’s pay rose only 1.7% to $85,419, with some of the biggest gaps at companies like Carnival and McDonald’s. Despite some gains for women CEOs, the overall pay gap remains stagnant, raising concerns about morale and trust.
My POV: This isn’t just about optics, it’s about morale when teams see execs pocket life-changing money while their raises barely cover groceries.
🎙️ Mic Drop Moment:
“A condition of progress is to allow those that are suffering to speak their truth.”
On the mic this week: Torin Ellis is a powerhouse recruiter, speaker, and diversity strategist, known for helping organizations operationalize DEI, build trust, and unlock the potential of high-performing teams. With a fierce commitment to addressing bias and fostering equitable workplaces, Torin brings both head and heart to conversations about what it means to lead in today’s world.
Pin this:
- Traditional HR prioritizes shareholders over people too often, and that has to change!
- Bias in AI isn’t about the tech, it’s about how we train it and who’s accountable for it.
- Real leadership means creating safe spaces for truth, not just productivity.
- The question every People Leader should ask: “What can I do differently to push humanity forward here?”
My H*ly Sh*t Moment: Hearing Torrin frame bias in AI as a human problem, not a technology problem? That’s the kind of reminder we need CONSTANTLY so it can be as useful as we want need it to be!
▶️ Press Play
📊 Data Is My Love Language:
Stat: The labor force participation rate has trended downward for more than 20 years.
My spiral: We’ve lost millions of workers since 2000, and the pandemic supercharged the bleed with early retirements, childcare chaos, and immigration drops!
That 4% plunge? That’s basically your talent pool evaporating.
Even the slight rebound now doesn’t undo the damage: HR has been frantically playing catch-up in a game where the rules (and workers) have fundamentally changed.
