The workplace triple threat: Disengagement, RTOs, and Fake AI Applicants

This week, we're diving into three concerning workplace trends: First, employee engagement is declining sharply, with managers under 35 and female managers leading this downward slide—potentially because they're caught in middle management roles with high responsibility but little decision-making power. Meanwhile, BNY Mellon is increasing its office mandate from three to four days weekly by September 2025, again bringing up the question of if RTOs are actually solving the challenges businesses are having. Finally, tech CEOs are raising alarms about candidates using AI to fake their way through remote job interviews—with Gartner projecting that by 2028, one in four global job applicants will be using AI-generated profiles, posing serious security risks beyond simple resume fraud.

Connect:

With Lee Rubin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubinl/

With Stacey Nordwall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceynordwall/

Articles:

• Employee Engagement is Dropping and Managers are leading the slide
• BNY asks employees to return to office four days a week by September
• Fake job seekers are flooding U.S. companies that are hiring for remote positions, tech CEOs say

Transcript

Stacey Nordwall (00:00):

Welcome to Toot or Boot, where each week we talk about news related to HR and the world of work. We toot the news we like and boot the news we don't like. I'm your host, Stacey Nordwall, a serial joiner of early stage tech companies as their first in or only HR person. And joining us today we have Lee Rubin. Welcome Lee.

Lee Rubin (00:19):

Hey, thanks Stacey. I'm so excited to be here and toot and boot a few things, so thanks again for the opportunity.

Stacey Nordwall (00:26):

Yeah, absolutely. And let us hope that there is something worth tooting, which is getting harder and harder to find, I think. But I met Lee at Transform, which was an awesome experience. And so Lee, for those who don't know you, why don't you tell us a little bit about you and about Confetti?

Lee Rubin (00:44):

Awesome. Well, hi everyone. I'm Lee. I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Confetti. Maybe you've heard of us. We have over 10,000 customers ranging from all different shapes and sizes, but I would like to consider myself one of the world's experts on employee culture and just event planning in general, especially virtual event planning or remote event planning. And in short, confetti is the easiest way to discover plan and book unforgettable live hosted virtual experiences, think hosted games like escape rooms or classes with kits like a cooking class or a wine tasting. And we really are the only platform that takes care of everything end to end from the planning process. So if you haven't heard about us, we would love you to check us out.

Stacey Nordwall (01:38):

Awesome. And this is a very good segue into the things we're going to be talking about today. The first one being employee engagement. So we're going to start with an article from Inc titled Employee Engagement is Dropping and managers are leading the slide, the summary here, US workers have historically felt more connected to their jobs than workers elsewhere, but that bond is weakening and especially among managers. Gallup found that two groups had the steepest drops in engagement managers under 35 and female managers. And they're saying that as managers lose this sense of engagement and loyalty and belonging, that that disengagement is then influencing their teams in terms of morale and productivity. They also said there's data that only 52% of workers now say that they're thriving, which is a record low, and that feelings of sadness are at the high end since 2009. So what did you think reading this? What's your take on why managers are particularly experiencing this slide in engagement?

Lee Rubin (02:46):

Yeah, it's such a big topic. I'll start with the fact that this news is sad. So in that case it's a boot, but I think the toot that I agree that employee engagement is definitely declining. It has been four handful of years now, and just this morning I'm part of A CEO WhatsApp group and we were literally talking about exactly this. And there's been so much change over the last few years and I think employees and managers have been ping ponged around by the way my team included. I mean, we were one of the fastest growing companies in the United States in 20 and 2021. And then ever since 2022 with a return to office, we've had our fair share of challenges and having to overcome that. And I think what managers have had to experience is actually a bit kind of like the CEO life of sorts.

Lee Rubin (03:58):

They've had a very real look at the rollercoaster of what the last few years have had and you have a loyalty to your team and hopefully you like many of your team members and having to, I don't know, lay them off or do all these things, then the company's ever changing. I think that the managers are stuck being in front of, they're the face of these changes and they're not in control of the company. But in today's world, a lot of us feel like what is control right now? What does control look like for your average business after the last few years since?

Stacey Nordwall (04:48):

Yeah, yeah. You hit on so many of the things that I was thinking as well, that there is this volatility, there is this instability that has been, I think growing over the past few years in particular, like you said, that there's been a lot of layoffs and those kinds of things that have happened as well, which increases that kind of disengagement, increases this lack of trust that people are having. And to your point, the managers, I think especially when they're talking about managers under 35 and female managers, what that brings to mind is people who might be earlier in their careers, they might be more middle manager type roles. And those are the roles that are very often highly impacted by decisions made by the business and yet also have probably lesser influence on what those decisions are. So they're in that place where they have to lay their team, do these things. Maybe they're even because other middle managers or a layer of management has been laid off from the company, now they're managing even larger teams. And so they're kind of reacting to these circumstances in the same ways that others are and just don't, to your point, have that control. They don't have that influence. So to me that is huge, when you're in that position, and that to me resonates with being in HR a lot of times where you're just having to roll with the punches and use whatever influence you have, which may be limited. But yeah,

Lee Rubin (06:39):

I also have two things to add that really come to mind. And I was just speaking to an investor about this and I was like, are we going through a really hard time over the last few years? Are we special in that way? Or I was like, tell me some of the hardships that you had when you were, he wasn't a CEO, but he was in the C-suite and he dropped some big things. There was the.com crash, there was nine 11, there was the 2008 crisis. These are really big things. And I think maybe one of the differences is we, a lot of us have had a very privileged upbringing. We see Instagram, we see a lot of the grass is greener on the other side. And I think that us as a society, we're kind of struggling to deal with the difficulties and the turmoil and the volatility of the last few years.

Lee Rubin (07:47):

And then we touched a little bit on women specifically, but I'm a new mom and I think I had the worst night of sleep yesterday, ever since the baby was born. Last night was rough. So I hope I won't say anything that will get me canceled or whatever. If it is, we can just blame it on the baby, please. But I think a lot of the age ranges and women, I think specifically sometimes I see it on myself. We're trying to do everything. And in a work world where sometimes all of the work that we're doing actually isn't good enough just because there's larger macroeconomic challenges that are underway, that's a really crappy feeling. Are we allowed to say crappy debate? Yeah. That's going to lead to disengagement, that's going to lead to sadness and loneliness and all those things that are super valid.

Stacey Nordwall (08:50):

Yeah, and to your point, I mean, what stuck out to me when they said feelings of sadness are at the high end since 2009. That was right after the housing crisis, the global economic meltdown. And that says something that sadness is at a level or towards the level of where we were after a major global economic meltdown. And the fact that in my career alone, as you're saying, how many global economic meltdowns have we been through and we're in this cycle of trying to build a business, get to a good point, and then have it kind of ripped away in some way. And going through that cycle again and again is incredibly disengaging.

Stacey Nordwall (09:35):

The other thing I thought was really fascinating from this article is they said they surveyed people outside of the US and I think outside of Canada as well, and they said one in three workers said they'd quit their company if it moved toward US work styles. And they said that they take, this is a quote, take a collectively dim view of today's American workplace culture. And that kind of like, I don't know, sad laugh, what is that? What one year? But I just thought that was so fascinating that people in other countries are looking at our workplace culture and they're like hard pass, unsubscribe. Not totally, no, not interested. 

Lee Rubin: 

Soon, as soon as you go to Europe, you totally are like, oh, okay, cool. I get why a hard pass on these. But by the way, one thing that I wanted to touch upon what you said, and I don't think it's as obvious, but I think it's something that we should equip ourselves and know every, in the last about 250 years of data, every 10 to 20 years on average, there's a significant financial crisis that occurs somewhere in the world. We need to recognize that this is something that happens. History repeats itself, things happen. We need to be prepared for it. And yeah, I think the sentiment right now is very bad, but going back to what other countries think, I think that's actually, I know this is going to sound maybe a little contradicting, but I think that there's a healthy amount of both a toot and a boot with it because once you go to some other countries and you feel like they've got workplace work-life balance figured out, and I think that's a great toot. I think a lot of US culture has a need that our life and our purpose is around the money that we make. And I think that it's good to let go of that a little bit and not have our entire identity and our entire sense of worth being caught up in what it is that we're creating for work. And again, I think Europe has got it figured out, or many places in Europe, maybe not everywhere,

Lee Rubin (12:03):

And if you've ever been to Italy, they have a very hard nap culture in the middle of the day just during work. I think it's amazing. Subscribe me to that. And on the, I guess I don't know if this is a boot side, but I understand right now that it's really hard to build a business and that ultimately if we all take a step back and if we all disengage, there's a world where some of these companies literally won't exist. And then guess what? People won't have jobs. And then they'll need to reinvent themselves again and figure out their why and their purpose and who are they working for and how do they show up for work and how do they show up for their colleagues and what values do they have? So I feel like a renaissance of sorts is on the horizon, and I'm largely here for it.

Stacey Nordwall (12:58):

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. As you were talking, what I was thinking too is this disengagement, is this drop in employee engagement almost kind of like a workplace existential crisis that people are having where they are within the US? Are we having that because we've been through so much volatility lately because we've seen companies decide to just lay people off, or hey, we're doing AI instead, or roll back DEI and just kind of be capricious in all of these ways. Is that causing people to rightfully step back, examine it, feel this little bit more distance between themselves and work and say, okay, let me reevaluate the place that this has for me because so I'm not in a place of reaction to what this entity, what is happening in the macroeconomic climate, what is happening in the organization? I'm going to protect me a little bit more and I'm going to take a step back and reevaluate. So it feels,

Lee Rubin (14:07):

Again, if too many people do that, how many might not hit its goals and there's a consequence to it that we need to be aware of. But yeah, I mean it could be a very positive thing at the end of the day.

Stacey Nordwall (14:24):

Yeah, it could be. If we're lucky, maybe it brings us closer to the things that we want in our workplace to the kind of balance we want to, the benefits and the health insurance we want or all of these things. We find this balance where it's not just like everything is driven by capitalism.

Lee Rubin (14:50):

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Stacey Nordwall (14:51):

Exactly. It's not just about the dollar. It's a little bit more of a balanced approach.

Lee Rubin (14:56):

It's tough though because we're in a place where we're so many of us can't afford buying a home. We literally are in the least affordable housing market ever, and people are already sacrificing not having kids. There's so many sacrifices. And then you're like, okay, hold on. Do I also sacrifice my sanity? How far do we go? So I don't know, big existential questions to figure out.

Stacey Nordwall (15:29):

Yeah, I've been feeling very existential myself lately, so it is all fueling me.

Lee Rubin (15:36):

Me too. Oh my gosh, Stacey, maybe that's going to be a whole separate podcast.

Stacey Nordwall (15:44):

Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, on that note, I'm going to move us to the next article. Before we get to down the existential rabbit hole, we have an article from Reuters. This is BNY asks employees to return to office four days a week by September. The recap here is the Bank of New York Mellon is mandating that employees go from three to four days a week in the office starting September 2nd as per usual emphasizing, Hey, in-person collaboration. This move is following similar policies by other financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase. In a memo, they say, we believe that it is important that all of us spend more time together working, leading, and learning from each other. We're committed to maintaining personal flexibility and will continue to support remote work one day a week. We have no plans to return to five days in office unless circumstances were to demand otherwise. So they say they're moving from three to four because they believe it's important to spend more time together. They won't move to five unless maybe they decide to move to five because why not? What did you think about their reasoning? What do you think about this kind of pull back into the office because we got to spend more time together?

Lee Rubin (17:07):

Yeah. Well, there's a lot of toots and boots in between. So I'll say that I think that successfully running a remote company is a skillset and you need to know your skills. And if you don't have those skills and you own it and you're like, dude, I don't know how to manage you remotely, and the only way that I know is through face-to-face in person collaboration, then I toot it because you got to work with what you're comfortable with and what you believe in. And do I agree with it fully? No. I don't know if proximity equals connection. And I am curious how else are they cultivating connections besides physical presence and just a pattern in general that I've seen is two things. First of all, a lot of these big headlines are coming from very big companies, but remote work is here to stay. And a lot of the smaller companies that are sub a couple thousands folks, which makes the large majority of companies that exist, a lot of them have stayed remote first or hybrid and have continued to be flexible. And I've never managed a company for 51,000 people.

Lee Rubin (18:39):

I bet it's freaking hard. So I don't know. That's where I am trying to just empathize. But yeah, I do employees genuinely feel more connected and energized after being together in person, or do they feel drained from the commute? I think that these are valid questions that they should ask their team and find out. And I guess my last point that I'll say before I be quiet is that I think that there's just been so much pressure on C-Suite over the last four years for their performance. And sometimes you need an easy kind of, I don't know if scapegoat, again, three hours of sleep last night because of the baby. Sometimes you just need a thing to point and blame, right? It's so much easier to be like, oh, the reason why this company isn't doing well is because we're three days out of the week when we should move to four days instead of, oh wow, we don't have product market fit, or Our managers are really disengaged, we should do something. Those are harder questions to look at and be honest with ourselves with. So let's just bring everybody at the office for four days. Just blame that.

Stacey Nordwall (19:54):

Yeah, no, I think that is a really good point, and that is kind of what my pet peeve about all of these things are too, is exactly that. They're not looking at all of those things that you mentioned. They're, instead of thinking about it and trying to address the different problems that they're seeing, or if it is a performance problem, whatever it is, they're just saying, okay, bring everyone back into the office. And to your point, leading a remote company is a skillset. It is something you have to do intentionally. You have to build processes and ways of working and get your tools together and all of that kind of thing. And I think a lot of folks don't really want to spend the time doing that and building that intentionally. So they think just because they've worked in an office before, just get everyone back in the office.

Stacey Nordwall (20:46):

But the reality is you have to build that experience intentionally too. You can't just throw, like you said, proximity does not equal connection just because people are in the same place. And especially with an organization of 51,000 people, you're still working remotely anyways. Your teams are still distributed. You're still doing, like they're saying, they're talking about we want to respond more quickly to dynamic fast-paced financial markets. That stuff's all happening online too. That's not in person. So for me, it is still about, okay, every kind of organization has to figure out how it makes sense for them to work together and maybe for some folks that is all in office, et cetera. But you still have to do everything intentionally. And to me, the default is just get in the office and things magically happen, but that's not the case.

Stacey Nordwall (21:53):

Totally. It's not what actually, it doesn't actually work that way.

Lee Rubin (21:57):

Yeah, and look, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but I remember one of the articles that we talked about, which I don't know, again if I'm getting the horse above the cart, whatever the phrase is, but all of this in a world where you're also are the people that I'm working with even real, and what are they doing? Literally, how are they spending their time? And again, these are things that are difficult. You really need to know how to project manage and time manage and make sure that you're genuinely building authentic connections with people. These are, again, hard skills that need to be fostered and developed.

Stacey Nordwall (22:47):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let's dive into our next article. This one is from CNBC. It is Fake job seekers are flooding US companies that are hiring for remote positions, tech CEOs say the recap. There are tech CEOs sound the alarm about candidates using AI to fake their way through remote job interviews, relying on deep fakes, AI written resumes and real time AI assistance. The concern is that once the fake person is hired, they could install malware to demand ransom from the companies. They could steal customer data or trade secrets or funds. And it has apparently particularly been an inroads for North Korean spies or spies from other countries as well. So companies are now tightening verification processes to try to the rise in fraudulent applicants. So I'll say for me, I have seen in some of my HR groups people starting to talk about this, Hey, what's going on? Have you experienced this? It's not something I have experienced with. I find it fascinating though, because originally I was like, why would you go through the trouble of faking your way through a job interview because it’s so much work. 

Lee Rubin (24:13):

But there are reasons, and by the way, the first time that I was really exposed to this was actually at HR Transform. Okay. There were a couple, actually, a lot of companies now that were really helping essentially do this exact thing, which is empowering HR to combat fake employees. So in the article, what was it in the future there, assuming one out of four, something like ridiculous. I don't want to misquote. So it was some insane number.

Stacey Nordwall (24:43):

Yeah. They said one in four, and I was like, what? Really? They're saying, what was it? Gartner said, the rise of AI generated profiles means that by 2028, globally one in four job candidates will be fake. Which seems just, I can't even comprehend that that's accurate, but totally. That's what they said. Yeah. So what have you heard about this? 

Lee Rubin (25:10):

So look, I am also thinking to myself, what can I share about personal experience that won't get me in trouble? But the long story short is we hired once a candidate that he was real, we think. It wasn't ai, but it did get us to a point where we got very nervous and we were like, this is why people do background checks. We need to make sure that we're doing this stuff. And it sucks because we existed for many years and no issue with no background checks needed until one person sours the situation and now that's another whatever it is, $200 per candidate that you end up spending. And what can I say? Look, I think that this is a real concern, and you ask why would people do this? I think because especially in a world with remote work, you can technically apply for multiple jobs and collect multiple paychecks and just wait for people to fire you. That's possible. You could do that. Well, you can't really do that when you're showing up for work in person. Not yet. I don't know once those humanoids start going in places and then I don't know, there's the spy elements, which is beyond me. But yeah, I mean, what the two HR companies that got into really big public argument right now, Rippling and Deel. Yeah. I mean, I know this stuff is real life talking about Americans who take work way too seriously.

Stacey Nordwall (27:07):

When I read the article, I was like, okay, so I guess maybe there's varying levels of risk because some of what they were talking about were people who would come in and try to work at high security companies, cryptocurrency companies, things like that. And I'm like, okay, I could see why you might have some bad actors who are trying to get into the company and steal or take trade secrets or things like that. That makes sense to me from the perspective of people getting, I mean, I'd be really curious, I should get the data on this, but on people who have multiple jobs, I imagine that has to be a small number because I

Lee Rubin (27:57):

Just, it's much bigger than you think, is it? It's much bigger than you think. Yeah.

Stacey Nordwall (28:00):

Maybe I'm just exhausted because I just, the idea of going through so many hiring processes to get multiple jobs, just, yeah, no, I can't think.

Lee Rubin (28:14):

It's a lot more. I also think there is a good amount of people that take advantage of remote work and that kind of lifestyle, and that's why you really need to be output oriented and hold people towards goals and communication and making sure why are things not being completed if they aren't being completed, but I'll just take cute little confetti, like 50 person company, not that big of a deal. Every time we onboard somebody, I don't know how to be a scammer, but I know that person gets a text message within two to eight weeks of them starting a job with us and it says, Hey, this is Lee. Are you available for a minute? And then people is a new employee. They're like, yeah, I'm available. What do you need? And they'll be like, Hey, I need you to go to Sephora and pick up a gift card.

Stacey Nordwall: 

Oh no. 

Lee Rubin (29:12):

That's a thing. Now, I've had other founders who have had essentially clicked on the wrong link, and then they get access to all their information, and now they're negotiating with these scammers and being like, oh, well I have your entire CRM, I'll sell it to your competitors, or whatever it is. You're holding people hostage, company's hostage. I'm going to leak this data information. I'm going to do this. So any company can become a victim of this. It's just, it's like, what is it called? Why am I blanking? It's because I didn't sleep last night. Identity loss, what is

Stacey Nordwall (30:00):

Identity fraud. Identity theft.

Lee Rubin (30:02):

Identity fraud. Right. Identity theft. There we go. It's like identity theft for companies, and we're seeing this more and more with phishing, right? Actually, you got an email from Lee, but it's not@withconfetti.com. You didn't notice it's at with confetti Bob, whatever. You're like, oh, I didn't notice. I got an email. Hey, Stacey, had a wonderful time on the podcast. I wanted to see if you can click on this link and write a review about whatever. You might click on it and then all of a sudden it's like, Stacey, we've got your information. I dunno, I don't such cuckoo. And this is why we're all like, all right, maybe we should check out and go to Italy and relax.

Stacey Nordwall (30:43):

Yeah, I got to keep those Toot or Boot trade secrets tight. Exactly. I love that. Wow. This is really, I have to say, this is just really fascinating to me because I really didn't think like you're saying, and it makes perfect sense, that somebody could come in and just be a bad actor, get access to your CRM, steal all your information and ransom for it, or just sell it to somebody else or whatever, which is an interesting yet, I guess another interesting thing that HR folks need to kind of prepare and battle against, train against and

Lee Rubin (31:25):

Hundred percent,

Stacey Nordwall (31:27):

Yeah, there's so many things that keep falling into our bucket.

Lee Rubin (31:31):

Yeah, and I think we're all overwhelmed.

Stacey Nordwall (31:36):

Yeah. Yes. The world is getting, it is just especially more and more complicated, and I guess for every kind of side that you hear about what AI is going to unlock in a positive way, it's like it's also unlocking some of these things that now we're having to figure out how to deal with as well. So yikes. Well, Lee, thank you so much for joining. I really enjoyed your insights on all of these articles. For folks who want to connect with you or want to learn more about you or what you're doing, how can they do that? What are you promoting? What can they learn about?

Lee Rubin (32:14):

Definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm Lee Rubin. I think the handles Ruben L. I'm also very open with sharing my email, but just because we talked about security, DM me on LinkedIn and then I'll send you my email and we can talk about all things HR, culture, events, team building, or just existential thoughts. Yeah, I'm all for it.

Stacey Nordwall (32:41):

All right, fabulous. We will include those links in the show notes. And Lee, again, thank you so much for joining.

Lee Rubin (32:49):

Thanks so much, Stacey. I had a blast.