You're Tracking Employee Data. Do Your Employees Trust What You're Doing With It?

Badge swipes. Hours online. Emails sent. Meeting activity. Websites visited.

Organizations can measure more about how employees work than ever before.

But there is a management problem hiding inside all that data: employees may not trust what leaders are doing with it.

New Gallup research published September 24 found that only 20 percent of employees who regularly use a computer or device at work have "a great deal" of trust in organizational leaders to use employee data responsibly. Another 43 percent trust them somewhat, while 37 percent have little or no trust. 

The management lesson isn't necessarily to stop measuring.

It's to stop assuming employees understand why you're measuring.

What counts as workplace data?

Gallup examined two broad categories.

Activity data can include hours worked, badge swipes or email volume.

Content data can include emails, meeting content or websites visited.

Those tools can serve legitimate purposes: cybersecurity, compliance, workforce planning, workplace safety and understanding how work gets done.

But employees can interpret the exact same technology very differently.

Leadership may think:

"We're trying to understand workflow."

Employees may hear:

"We're checking whether you're working."

That gap is where trust begins to erode.

Measurement without context feels like surveillance

Managers should distinguish between collecting information and creating understanding.

If employees don't know what is being collected, who can see it, how long it is retained or how it affects decisions about their performance, they will fill in the blanks themselves.

Usually not in management's favor.

Gallup's findings show just how closely this issue intersects with engagement. Among engaged employees, 40 percent reported a great deal of trust in leaders' handling of workplace data.

Among actively disengaged employees?

Just 4 percent. 

That doesn't establish that data practices cause engagement or disengagement. But it does show that trust in leadership and confidence in data use are deeply connected.

Before collecting data, answer five questions

Managers don't need to become privacy attorneys.

But they should be able to explain:

What are we collecting?

Why are we collecting it?

Who can see it?

How will it be used?

What won't we use it for?

The fifth question may be the most important.

Imagine telling employees that badge-swipe information is being used to understand office utilization.

Employees may reasonably wonder whether it will also appear in their performance review.

Leaders should answer that question before employees have to ask it.

Don't turn proxies into performance

There is another management risk.

Data can make something measurable without making it meaningful.

An employee sending 80 emails isn't necessarily more productive than someone sending 20.

Someone attending more meetings isn't automatically more engaged.

Someone who spends more hours logged in isn't necessarily producing better work.

Managers should therefore be cautious about turning activity metrics into performance metrics.

The question shouldn't be:

"How much activity can we see?"

It should be:

"What evidence actually tells us whether this employee is delivering the results the role requires?"

In many jobs, outcomes remain more meaningful than digital exhaust.

Transparency is a management practice

Gallup found employees who had discussed workplace-data use reported greater trust. Gallup.com

That points toward a relatively straightforward intervention:

Talk about it.

Don't bury workplace-data practices inside an onboarding document or privacy policy.

Managers can explain what systems capture during team meetings. HR can provide plain-language guidance. Leaders can describe how aggregated information informs workforce decisions.

And employees should have somewhere to ask questions.

Transparency won't make every employee comfortable with every form of measurement.

But secrecy almost guarantees suspicion.

Why This Matters

Trust affects how people interpret management decisions.

An employee who trusts leadership may see workforce data as a tool for improving work.

An employee who doesn't may see the same system as evidence that management doesn't trust them.

And once that perception takes hold, the technology itself becomes part of the employee experience.

Organizations spend enormous amounts of time deciding what they can measure.

They should spend more time deciding what they should measure—and how they will explain it.

Management Signal

If you can't comfortably explain a workplace metric to the employees being measured, reconsider why you're collecting it.

CTA

Ask your management team to identify every source of employee activity or content data currently being collected.

For each one, answer:

What is it for?

Who sees it?

Do employees know?

Any question the leadership team cannot answer clearly is a conversation worth having before collecting more data.

How StrikeForce Can Help

StrikeForce helps organizations strengthen workforce strategy and management practices around the people behind the metrics—supporting employers as they build productive, engaged teams and make better-informed talent decisions.

Your Next Job Offer Is More Than a Salary. Negotiate the Career Path, Too.

When a job offer arrives, most candidates immediately look at one number: salary.

They should look at something else, too.

What will this job make you worth two or three years from now?

New workforce research suggests employees increasingly recognize that career development has tangible economic value. In a Q3 survey of 2,100 workers by Aerotek, 83 percent said their career plans include learning new skills. More strikingly, 68 percent said they would likely accept a lower starting wage in exchange for a defined training and advancement program. 

That doesn't mean you should voluntarily underprice yourself.

It means compensation isn't the only return you receive from a job.

What is career capital?

Think of every job as providing two forms of compensation.

The first is obvious:

What does the company pay you?

The second is easier to overlook:

What does the job help you become?

That second category is your career capital, the skills, credentials, experience, relationships and responsibilities that increase the range and value of opportunities available to you later.

Two jobs paying $70,000 today may have dramatically different long-term value.

One could have you doing essentially the same work three years from now.

The other could give you a certification, supervisory experience, exposure to a new system, technical training and a pathway toward a $90,000 role.

Salary alone won't show you that difference.

Ask what "growth opportunity" actually means

Employers know candidates want advancement.

Consequently, phrases such as "great growth opportunities" appear frequently in recruiting conversations.

Don't stop there.

Ask:

What happened to the last person who held this position?

What position could someone successful in this role move into next?

What training would I receive during my first year?

Does the company pay for certifications or continuing education?

Can you give me an example of someone who was promoted from this role?

What would I need to demonstrate to be considered for advancement?

Those questions turn a promise into something you can evaluate.

Negotiate development the way you negotiate money

Suppose the employer cannot meet your salary request.

That doesn't automatically mean negotiations are over.

There may be other things worth requesting:

A certification paid for by the company.

Attendance at an industry conference.

A formal salary review after six months.

Training on specialized equipment or software.

A stretch assignment.

Tuition support.

A defined pathway toward supervisory responsibility.

None of these should replace fair compensation. But they can change the long-term economics of the offer.

The key is specificity.

"I'd like professional development opportunities" is vague.

"Could we include the XYZ certification during my first year and revisit compensation once I complete it?" is actionable.

Don't pay too much for "potential"

There is an important caution.

Workers shouldn't accept substantially below-market compensation simply because an employer promises future advancement.

A promise is not a career plan.

If you're considering trading some immediate compensation for development, determine whether the opportunity is concrete.

Who provides the training?

When does it happen?

Who pays?

What happens after completion?

Have other employees followed the same pathway?

If no one can answer those questions, discount the promise accordingly.

Why This Matters

The latest hiring environment makes career trajectory particularly important.

LinkedIn reported that U.S. hiring increased 1.9 percent from July to August, but remained 6.5 percent below August 2025 and 25 percent below its February 2020 pace. When job changes are harder to make, choosing a role that increases your future options becomes even more valuable.

Your next job should ideally do at least one of three things:

Pay you more.

Teach you more.

Position you for more.

The strongest opportunities do all three.

Career Signal

Don't evaluate your next job only by what it pays you on Day One. Evaluate what it can make you worth by Year Three.

CTA

For your next job opportunity, create two columns:

Compensation Today and Career Capital Tomorrow.

Score the opportunity from 1–5 on salary, benefits, training, certifications, new skills, responsibility, mentorship and advancement potential.

Then decide whether the total opportunity—not simply the salary—is moving your career forward.

How StrikeForce Can Help

StrikeForce helps professionals identify opportunities that match both their current capabilities and where they want their careers to go, connecting talent with employers where skills, experience and growth potential can create long-term value.

The Holiday Hiring Rush Isn't Rushing. Employers Still Can't Afford to Wait.

By Michael Stephenson, President and CEO of StrikeForce Staffing

For employers accustomed to scrambling for seasonal workers every fall, 2026 is sending an unusual signal: the hiring rush is considerably quieter.

U.S. employers announced plans to hire 90,787 workers in September, 23 percent fewer than in September 2025 and the lowest September total since 2011, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. But quieter hiring does not eliminate workforce risk. For employers in retail, logistics, warehousing, manufacturing and operations, it creates an opportunity to plan staffing around actual demand rather than simply joining the annual hiring race. 

Why is seasonal hiring slower in 2026?

Companies appear cautious.

September job-cut announcements fell to 43,281; the lowest September total since 2022; while hiring announcements remained restrained. Challenger described employers as being in a "wait-and-see period" amid higher costs and economic uncertainty. 

The broader labor market tells a similar story.

The latest employment report, released October 2, showed employers added just 29,000 jobs in September, while unemployment edged up to 4.2 percent. At the same time, layoffs remain relatively low. In other words, this isn't a mass-layoff labor market.

It's a cautious-hiring labor market.

That distinction matters.

A slower market isn't permission to hire late

Employers may look at softer hiring numbers and assume candidates will be readily available whenever demand appears.

That can be a mistake.

Operational hiring is rarely just about finding a person willing to work. Employers may need people with particular schedules, certifications, equipment experience, transportation access or physical and technical capabilities.

And seasonal work extends well beyond holiday retail.

Monster's analysis of seasonal job postings found opportunities across delivery, logistics, fulfillment, hospitality, tax and accounting and other categories. It also found that September and October historically account for nearly half of seasonal posting activity between August and December.

By November, much of the recruiting window has already passed.

What should employers do differently?

Instead of asking, "How many people will we need?", workforce leaders should build three scenarios:

Baseline demand: What staffing level will normal operations require?

Peak demand: What happens if orders, production or customer traffic outperform expectations?

Disruption demand: Who covers the work when absenteeism, turnover or supply-chain disruption hits during peak operations?

Then identify which roles are hardest to replace quickly.

A warehouse may be able to add entry-level fulfillment workers relatively quickly but struggle to find experienced forklift operators.

A manufacturer may have sufficient production workers but lack maintenance technicians.

A healthcare operation may have enough general support staff but face shortages in credentialed positions.

Recruiting resources should follow operational vulnerability, not simply headcount.

Build the bench before you need the player

Employers can also use a slower hiring environment to build candidate pipelines rather than filling every position immediately.

Reconnect with qualified candidates who previously interviewed.

Ask managers which former employees left in good standing.

Develop relationships with technical schools and workforce-development programs.

Identify candidates who could move from temporary or seasonal work into permanent roles.

And shorten unnecessary steps in the hiring process before peak demand arrives.

The objective isn't to overhire.

It's to reduce the amount of time between "we need someone" and "someone qualified can start."

Why This Matters

The costliest workforce shortage isn't necessarily the one with the most vacancies.

It's the vacancy that interrupts production, delays shipments, increases overtime or forces your strongest employees to absorb additional work.

A quieter seasonal labor market gives employers something valuable: time to be deliberate.

Don't confuse that with permission to wait.

Hiring Signal

Don't forecast seasonal hiring by headcount alone. Forecast where an unfilled position could actually disrupt the operation.

CTA

Before your next workforce-planning meeting, identify the five positions that would create the greatest operational problem if they remained vacant for 30 days.

Build your recruiting pipeline around those roles first.

How StrikeForce Can Help

StrikeForce helps employers anticipate workforce needs, identify hard-to-fill positions and build recruiting strategies that connect qualified talent with critical roles before staffing gaps become operational problems.

Before You Look for Your Next Job, Look for Your Next Opportunity Where You Already Work

When people feel stuck professionally, the default response is often to start looking elsewhere.

Sometimes that's exactly the right move.

But there's another option employees frequently overlook: moving inside the organization they already know.

That could mean transferring to another department, volunteering for a cross-functional project, taking on a new responsibility, moving laterally into a role with greater potential, or developing a capability that positions you for a future opening.

And in today's slower hiring environment, internal mobility deserves more attention.

LinkedIn's September workforce data show that U.S. hiring improved 1.9% from July to August, but remained 6.5% below August 2025 and 25% below its pre-pandemic pace.

Meanwhile, an Indeed-commissioned survey found an interesting disconnect: 43% of U.S. employers say they source agile talent internally, but only 10% of U.S. job seekers say they're looking for opportunities within their current company.

There may be opportunities closer than you think.

Stop Thinking About Your Career as a Ladder

The traditional career model looks simple:

Analyst → Senior Analyst → Manager → Director

But careers don't always work that neatly.

Sometimes the move that creates the most long-term value is sideways.

An operations employee might move into project management.

A technician might take on training responsibilities.

A customer-service employee might move into sales.

A communications professional might join a product team.

The immediate title may not look dramatically better. But the employee acquires new skills, relationships and business knowledge that expand what they can do next.

Indeed describes this broader approach as building a "career web" rather than simply climbing a career ladder.

Look for Exposure, Not Just Promotion

If there's no promotion available today, ask a different question:

What can I learn here that makes me more valuable 12 months from now?

Look for opportunities to:

Own something. Take responsibility for a project rather than simply contributing to it.

Cross departments. Volunteer for work that introduces you to another function.

Solve a visible problem. Find something the organization struggles with and become someone who helps fix it.

Learn from someone ahead of you. Don't wait for a formal mentorship program.

Ask for stretch assignments. Tell your manager what you want to learn, not simply that you want to advance.

These experiences become career capital—even when they don't immediately produce a new title.

Don't Wait for Your Manager to Design Your Career

A good manager should help employees develop.

But employees should also take ownership of that conversation.

Instead of saying:

"What do I need to do to get promoted?"

Try:

"I'd like to be capable of doing X within the next year. What experiences am I missing, and where could I get them here?"

That's a much more useful career-development conversation.

It moves the discussion from wanting a title to building capabilities.

Why This Matters

Leaving an organization can create opportunity, but it also resets some of what you've accumulated: relationships, reputation, institutional knowledge and credibility.

An internal move can allow you to leverage those assets while building something new.

And there's evidence that employees may be overlooking that possibility. When 43% of U.S. employers report sourcing agile talent internally while only 10% of job seekers report looking internally, there's a substantial gap between where employers may be searching and where workers are looking.

Career Signal

Your next career move doesn't necessarily need to be up—or out. Sometimes sideways is the move that gets you further.

CTA

Before searching externally this week, spend 20 minutes looking inside your organization.

Identify:

One department you'd like to understand better.

One skill you'd like to develop.

One person doing work you'd eventually like to do.

Then have one conversation.

You don't need to ask for a job.

Ask how they got there—and what experience you'd need to make a similar move.

How StrikeForce Can Help

StrikeForce helps professionals understand where their skills can take them next and connects talented people with opportunities where their experience, potential and career goals can create value.

Don't Wait for the Resignation Letter. Your Best Employees Usually Signal They're Leaving First.

Employee churn can feel sudden.

A strong employee schedules a meeting. They say they've accepted another opportunity. Two weeks later, they're gone.

But the resignation may be sudden only from the manager's perspective.

Gallup research found that 42 percent of employees who voluntarily left a job said their manager or organization could have done something to prevent their departure. Yet 45 percent said that during the three months before leaving, neither a manager nor another leader proactively discussed their job satisfaction, performance or future with the organization.

There's another problem: employees don't necessarily announce that they're thinking about leaving.

Among voluntary leavers who discussed their intention to leave with someone, 44 percent didn't discuss it with their direct manager before deciding to go.

By the time a manager hears, "Can we talk?", the retention conversation may already be too late.

Churn Usually Has a Story Behind It

Pay matters. Gallup found compensation and benefits accounted for 30% of the actions employees said could have prevented their departures.

But that means most of the reported preventable reasons involved something else.

Employees cited better interactions with managers, fixing frustrating organizational problems, creating career opportunities, and addressing workload or staffing concerns.

Those aren't problems a manager should discover during an exit interview.

They are problems managers should be looking for while employees are still there.

Replace the Exit Interview With a Stay Conversation

Exit interviews ask:

"Why are you leaving?"

A better management habit asks much earlier:

"What might eventually make you leave?"

That's the idea behind a stay interview: a proactive conversation designed to understand what's keeping an employee at the organization—and what could push them out. SHRM recommends using these conversations to uncover frustrations and retention risks before an employee has decided to leave.

It doesn't need to become another HR process.

A manager can periodically ask:

• What's working well for you right now?

• What's making your job harder than it should be?

• Is there something you want to be doing here that you aren't getting the opportunity to do?

• What could make you consider leaving?

• What is one thing I could change that would make your experience here better?

Then comes the important part:

Do something with the answers.

Asking employees what frustrates them repeatedly without addressing anything can be worse than never asking.

Watch for Friction, Not Just Disengagement

Managers sometimes look for an employee who has mentally "checked out."

Churn risk can be much less obvious.

A high performer can remain productive while becoming frustrated about workload. An ambitious employee can keep delivering while realizing there's nowhere to advance. Someone can like their manager but believe their compensation has fallen behind the market.

Managers should therefore pay attention to accumulating friction, not merely poor performance.

Gallup found that nearly a quarter of preventable turnover was associated with organizational problems or staffing, workload and scheduling issues.

Why This Matters

Replacing people is expensive, but churn has another cost that doesn't appear immediately on a spreadsheet.

When experienced employees leave, they take institutional knowledge, relationships, productivity and sometimes other employees' confidence with them.

Gallup estimates replacement costs can reach roughly 40 percent of salary for frontline workers, 80 percent for technical professionals and 200 percent for leaders and managers.

The objective isn't zero turnover.

Some turnover is inevitable—and sometimes healthy.

The management objective is to stop avoidable churn among people the organization wants to keep.

Retention Signal

Don't measure retention only by who left. Pay attention to what is making good employees consider leaving.

CTA

Pick three employees you would genuinely hate to lose.

Over the next two weeks, have a 20-minute conversation with each of them.

Don't ask whether they're planning to leave.

Ask:

"What would make this a place where you'd want to keep building your career?"

Their answers may tell you more about your retention risk than your turnover report does.

How StrikeForce Can Help

StrikeForce helps employers strengthen their workforce strategy by identifying retention risks, improving talent planning and helping organizations build teams they can attract—and keep.

Your Candidates Say They're AI-Ready. Do They Mean the Same Thing You Do?

By Michael Stephenson, President and CEO of StrikeForce Staffing

AI proficiency is quickly becoming a hiring requirement. But employers and candidates may be using the phrase “AI skills” to mean very different things.

A new Harris Poll commissioned by Express Employment Professionals found that 93 percent of U.S. job seekers say they have the AI skills employers want. Yet only 35 percent of job seekers believe employers are looking for advanced or expert AI capabilities, compared with 41 percent of hiring managers who say candidates need skills at that level.

The disconnect matters because simply asking a candidate, “Are you comfortable using AI?” increasingly tells an employer very little.

Nine in 10 hiring managers in the survey said they look for at least basic AI skills, while 54 percent considered AI proficiency very important or essential when evaluating candidates.

And demand continues to accelerate. An analysis of Lightcast job-posting data by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that postings mentioning AI skills were up 165 percent year over year by August.

Define What “AI Skills” Actually Means

A hiring manager recruiting an accountant, engineer, recruiter and operations manager probably shouldn't be looking for the same AI capabilities.

The better question is:

What should someone in this particular job be able to accomplish with AI?

That might mean analyzing information faster, automating repetitive workflows, interrogating data, creating a first draft, identifying patterns or knowing when an AI-generated answer cannot be trusted.

Then interview for those capabilities rather than for familiarity with a particular AI brand.

Why This Matters

Employers risk creating another vague résumé requirement.

“AI proficient” could become the new “excellent communication skills”: nearly everyone claims it, but the phrase itself provides little evidence of capability.

Organizations that define the actual AI tasks required for each position can make the requirement measurable—and give candidates a much clearer understanding of what is expected.

Hiring Signal

Stop hiring for “AI experience.” Start hiring for specific AI-enabled capabilities.

CTA

Choose one position you're hiring for and finish this sentence:

“Within the first 90 days, this employee should be able to use AI to ______.”

If you can't fill in the blank, your AI requirement probably isn't specific enough yet.

How StrikeForce Can Help

StrikeForce helps employers translate changing workforce requirements into clearer candidate profiles—identifying talent with the practical capabilities needed to succeed as jobs evolve.

Stop Applying for Every Job You Could Do. Start Targeting the Jobs You Can Win.

When a job search isn't producing results, the natural reaction is often to apply to more positions.

Twenty applications become fifty. Fifty become one hundred.

But more applications don't necessarily create more interviews.

One of the most useful things a job seeker can do is become more selective.

The question isn't simply:

"Could I do this job?"

It's:

"Can I make a compelling case that I'm one of the people this employer should interview?"

Those are very different standards.

Build Your Target Zone

Before applying, evaluate the opportunity across four areas:

1. Can you do the core work?
Ignore the long list of secondary requirements initially. Identify the three or four responsibilities that appear central to the position. You should have credible evidence that you can perform most of them.

2. Can you prove it?
Experience becomes much more powerful when attached to evidence.

Instead of:

"I managed projects."

Think:

"I coordinated a six-month project involving five departments and delivered it two weeks ahead of schedule."

Your résumé should contain proof, not merely responsibilities.

3. Does your background make sense for this employer?

Imagine a recruiter looking at your résumé for 15 seconds.

Would the connection between your experience and their problem be obvious?

If the recruiter has to figure out why you're a fit, you're making the hiring process harder for them.

4. Would you actually take the job?

This question is overlooked.

Before spending 30–60 minutes tailoring an application, consider compensation, location, responsibilities, seniority, schedule and career trajectory.

If you already know you probably wouldn't accept the position, that application may not deserve your time.

Use the 70% Rule Differently

You've probably heard the advice that you should apply if you meet roughly 70% of a job's requirements.

That's useful—but which 70% matters.

Meeting seven minor qualifications while lacking the position's three central capabilities doesn't make you a strong candidate.

Conversely, you may lack several preferred qualifications but possess exactly the experience the employer needs most.

Read job descriptions hierarchically rather than treating every bullet equally.

Create Three Application Buckets

A simple system can dramatically improve your search.

Priority A — Strong Match

You possess most of the core capabilities, can demonstrate results and genuinely want the position.

Spend your time here. Customize the résumé. Research the organization. Find relevant connections. Prepare carefully.

Priority B — Stretch

You're missing something significant—perhaps industry experience, seniority or a technical skill—but have a credible argument for why your experience transfers.

Apply selectively.

Priority C — Possible

Technically, you could probably do the job.

But there isn't a compelling reason the employer should choose you over candidates with more directly relevant backgrounds.

Stop spending most of your time here.

Why This Matters

Job searching creates a dangerous illusion:

Applications feel like progress.

Submitting 15 applications can feel more productive than spending the same amount of time identifying three excellent opportunities.

But the objective isn't applications.

It's interviews.

And ultimately, offers.

Your job-search strategy should therefore optimize for conversion, not volume.

Career Signal

Stop measuring your job search by applications submitted. Start measuring it by applications that turn into conversations.

If you're sending dozens of applications without interviews, don't immediately increase the number.

Change the targeting.

CTA

Look at your last 20 applications.

Mark each:

A — Strong Match
B — Stretch
C — Possible

Then look at which applications generated recruiter responses or interviews.

That tells you something extremely valuable:

where your experience is actually resonating in the market.

Use that information to decide where your next 20 applications should go.

How StrikeForce Can Help

StrikeForce helps candidates identify opportunities that align with their experience and capabilities—connecting qualified professionals with employers looking for the skills they already bring to the table.

AI Is Flooding the Hiring Funnel. Employers Need Better Signals.

AI has dramatically reduced the effort required to apply for jobs.

Candidates can use AI to rewrite résumés, tailor experience to a job description and generate application materials. Indeed itself now publishes guidance showing candidates how to use AI prompts to revise and tailor their résumés.

The next development goes even further.

Indeed recently tested an "Apply For Me" system designed to use AI to help job seekers submit applications. The company ultimately paused the fully automatic application mode while continuing to develop a version where candidates review applications before submission. Indeed specifically acknowledged employer concerns about tools encouraging high-volume, low-relevance applications.

Employers are already feeling the volume problem.

An Indeed/Harris Poll survey of 300 U.S. hiring managers at companies with at least 500 employees found 71 percent said higher application volume was making it harder to find qualified candidates, while 72 percent worried that strong candidates were getting lost in the volume.

We're potentially entering a strange hiring environment:

AI helps candidates create more applications.

AI helps employers screen more applications.

But neither necessarily tells the employer who can actually perform the job.

Why This Matters

The value of a polished application may decline as producing one becomes easier.

That makes evidence of capability more important.

Depending on the occupation, that might mean structured interviews, portfolios, skills assessments, certifications, references or realistic work samples. Indeed notes that employers already use work samples to evaluate candidates against predetermined criteria and demonstrate actual abilities.

Hiring Signal

When everyone can produce a polished application, proof becomes more valuable than polish.

CTA

Review one important position you're hiring for and ask:

What evidence do we collect that this person can actually perform the work?

Instead of automatically adding another interview, consider whether a short, realistic job-related exercise would tell you more.

How StrikeForce Can Help: StrikeForce helps employers cut through application volume and focus on qualified candidates whose experience and capabilities match what the job actually requires.