3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat: Multinational Luxury Fashion Brand Shares Details of its Success with Workday

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Leaders from a major multinational luxury fashion brand joined us for this episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat video podcast: Chief People Officer Abigail Wilmore and Vice President of Global People Operations Jay Barrett, both members of our Global Executive Advisory Council.

This introduction is shorter than the usual. Our guests did a great job of describing their challenges and success in detail, and I encourage readers to view the episode. The fashion retailer has found immense value in Workday’s solutions as an indispensable tool to support and protect its employee experience over the course of the now nearly two-year-old pandemic. Abigail and Jay explained why this is so — and how it all came to be. Had they and their team kept the disparate, cobbled-together, unintegrated HR systems in place that predated Workday’s implementation, they honestly wonder whether they would have even been able to manage lockdowns’ impact on the employee experience. Such was the magnitude of the new software’s impact on their success.

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Transcript:

Brent Skinner 00:00
Welcome, everyone to this episode of the HRTechChat video podcast. And I am very, very happy to have with me today as our guests, the Vice President of Global People Operations, Jay Barrett, and Abigail Wilmore, who is Chief People Officer, both from Stella McCartney, very well known retail brands global. And I just would be remiss without saying right off the bat, like to welcome you both to our global Executive Advisory Council here at 3Sixty Insights you both recently joined. Thank you for that. Welcome. And I looking forward to our conversation today. You folks have a very interesting story. And it’s a it’s a, I think it’s a rendition of, of what a lot of people have, have been experiencing over the past two years at the intersection of technology, people culture and in everything else, and some of the challenges around that stakeholders in the organization and decision making around what technology to use. So without any more vagueness from me, welcome, and why don’t let’s start with your culture, I, you know, we have this pandemic that’s happening global pandemic, I think a lot of people are, are a little bit weary of the term this wanted to be over. It’s, it’s fine. But that doesn’t mean it is we have some issues around, especially for certain business models are pretty, pretty challenging. And I know you folks have we’ve spoken previously. What was that? Like? What was your What was your culture? Like? How did the How has the pandemic affected it? And, and what are, what are some of your, your prime directives? What are some of the things that you’re doing to, to, to recapture re establish your culture?

Abigail Wilmore 02:13
Oh, thank you for the lovely welcome. Stella McCartney is a really values led organization with a really strong purpose in the world of fashion and in the world at large, to kind of change the way the fashion industry works. It’s a vegetarian company, set up on vegetarian kind of philosophy. But it’s become so much more than that, over the years, it’s 20 years old now. And so we have a lot of people who really, really, of course, believing in the values of the of the brand and kind of, you know, wanting to input into changing the way that the fashion industry works. So it’s kind of one big family. And I think the, the pandemic affected us greatly, like a lot of retail companies a lot, all our stores were closed across the world at different points, you know, during the pandemic, so it affected us a lot. But one of the kind of, I guess, advantages that we had, was the fact that we had set up this kind of system, universe of people tech. And so we were able to really listen to our employees during the pandemic, and kind of navigate our way through that by really listening to them. And because we had a lot of these kind of feedback loops or systems in place, to hear from our people already, before the pandemic, it wasn’t something entirely new. So we already had a social platform, we already had ways of, you know, engaging with people anonymously, and we already had that within our kind of system of working with our people. So that definitely helped us to navigate our way through the last 20 months.

Brent Skinner 04:07
What What kind of systems, maybe you could give us a little bit of, for, for, for the audience, a little bit of insight into what kind of systems these are.

Jay Barrett 04:22
So we the the feedback tool that Abigail was talking about is econ. And it was something that we implemented well in advance of the pandemic anyway, but so we were already using it and our people were quite used to using it by that point. But it was something that became extra valuable during that time. So Workday Peakon was the survey tool, and not just empowering us to understand how people are feeling and what they’re seeing, but also our managers and our leaders of people to think about how their teams are feeling and how to address some of those Key Points for them. And then in terms of the other systems that we had, in terms of an ATS, we had lebuh, which we had introduced quite early on as well. And then we have workday as our kind of core HR system. And we introduced labor in advance of work day. And then we have them all connected as well, so that we’re trying to, you know, work days our place of truth, and it’s feeding on our other systems and our, you know, network.

Brent Skinner 05:29
What was it what was in place previously, before? Before the is I know that you folks made a decision to go with work day, if I’m recalling correctly from our previous conversation? What was what was this scenario like, before that?

Jay Barrett 05:46
The scenario before that was a complex web that didn’t really speak to each other. And that’s mainly because, you know, we went for a transition project that started in 2018, to move away from the group that we were part of, and to set up an independent structure. And so in the group, we will have, we were relying on shared services, in the regions that we operate, they each have their own different suite of Systems and Processes and ways of working that we’re all kind of unique by country. So as we went through the transition process, the first thing that we knew we needed to solve was the HR tech. And so we wanted to bring in Workday and really take that as an opportunity to modernize our processes and ways of working, but also just have it connected to everything that we need. So we really revolutionized the way that our employee databases were working, you know, versus where we came from. And we were able to just really design how that would add value to us as a department going forward. And the business.

Brent Skinner 06:57
So a lot of flexibility and latitude found in the in the implementation and the the breadth of the of the configuration of Workday.

Abigail Wilmore 07:08
Yeah, that was partly because the, you know, pulling away from a group, we had been set up with that group from the very beginning 20 years ago. And so at salutely, every single part of the infrastructure was pulling away. So there was, you know, the opportunity for us to sell weekend, we’d love to, like manage this part. And, you know, we know, kind of what’s needed and where we would like to get to. And so we were, we were able to do that which is, which is great. There’s a lot of trust in the system. And there’s a lot of autonomy at that time. And so, as long as we’re in budget, of course, and the kind of milestones of the project were rolling along smoothly, and there was, of course, a lot of updating and ensuring that all the stakeholders and the boards were on board with it. But we were, we were able to really select the products that we wanted to have. And we had to back that up. But once it was approved, then we were able to go ahead. And that meant that we were really agile, because we’re, you know, a tight team. And we could just move forward really quickly.

Brent Skinner 08:17
Oh, great. Yeah. Maybe you can share, you could share one example maybe that stands out, this may be illustrative of, of how difficult it was previously, and how much easier it is now, it’s give viewers a sort of a sort of a peering, little glimpse of what that’s been like?

Jay Barrett 08:42
Well, I guess before, you know, we didn’t own those systems, we were users of them in the region. But each system was so different and tailored to its own market. And it was covering a wider population than just aren’t our employees in that region. And so I guess we didn’t really have much say in how those systems worked, or how the data was recorded, or the processes and we were very much just receiving some information from that. And so we would have to take information from 10 different places, probably, and then merge it once a month just to get a list of employee of current employees. So it was very manual work. We did run a kind of, I would say, like a shadow HR system where we try to keep just some basic information on our current people in one place. But it meant we were doing a sort of double entry because we were maintaining the systems in country but also our kind of central system. So it didn’t really give us the benefit we needed because it was just sort of more operational work. But then where we are today and the big wins that we saw through making that change was having that data but also now being able to do some analytics that, you know, before we’re using our time just to get the information into a format, we can use it. Whereas now we’re starting to build dashboards so we can really quickly see information about people, different trends, you know, look back at how that looks previously. And just at a no, we’re continually evolving now, how we’re using the information, what information we’re capturing, I’d say, since we went live with Workday, as we were getting ready for it, we had a lot of ideas about how we wanted to have things work. And then now that we’re kind of three years in, nearly working with Workday, and kind of rethinking some of that now, so that we can do it in a more valuable way. And in a way where we can more quickly get our system in a so it’s really revolutionized just the access to the information that we needed, that would run all of our, our processes. And we’re really starting to move most of our activities that were always done in Excel into the system. So that review process, salary review, all of the compensation processes, for sure, sign off processes as well, in terms of hires, that was always very manual, by etc. Excel,

Brent Skinner 11:19
you said Excel for all that stuff.

Jay Barrett 11:22
Pretty much before everything that we were running globally for our people was, was done in Excel, because we didn’t have a tool for it,

Brent Skinner 11:30
in how many how many employees sort of fell under your purview for this.

Abigail Wilmore 11:35
At the peak, it’s like 1100s. So we’re not we’re not quite that sized now, after the pandemic, but we were living around 1100 people globally, and kind of really dispersed as well, because we’ve got, of course, stores in many locations. So yeah, I think from my perspective, you know, going to board meetings or top level management meetings, I just don’t see how we would have been able to come through the pandemic as successfully in terms of giving the board and management what they wanted to see in such a quick turnaround time, because that, you know, there was so much happening at once for every, every business, but you know, there was a real reliance on not only people cost, but you know, understanding what’s really happening in the business. And as Jay was saying different trends and things from the past and where we’ve come from, and what you know, projecting into the future, we just wouldn’t have been able to do that at all, if we didn’t have this set of systems. And that was really integrated. So we could pull really high level information and be really, really sure about, you know, validity, which again, it just raised our credibility so much.

Brent Skinner 12:51
So we’re talking about confidence in the information, which is, which is increased, you know, significantly tenfold or I don’t even want it also, this is this is honestly, this is this is a classic, you know, the classic, fundamental story of sort of escaping an administrative hellscape, if you wish. And actually having technology that, that that that takes a lot of that away, because we’re talking about a massive simplification of the process before you were dealing with I forgot how many regions it was, but how many different systems but I think you said 10, or something like that. But yeah, in trying to just having to sort of take all that data, reconcile it and put into one, one place, one repository. Me that, that just, that just blows my mind. I don’t think I would survive in that type of. Maybe that’s why I do what I do. But anyway. I mean, my hat is off to you. You guys. And Jay, I think I think from our previous conversation, I think I understand that, uh, that you were sort of leading the charge on a lot of this data sort of just reconciliate or just the collection of the data. If we were gonna put a if we were to ballpark, it doesn’t have to be super accurate. But if we were to ballpark it, how much time would you say that you’re saving a month just in terms of not having to receive all this data from different sources and get them into one place? Where you can actually do anything with it, and we’ll talk you know, just that piece of it. How much time are you saving?

Jay Barrett 14:56
I mean, that probably took us a good day and a half to get that Information and consolidated in cleanser and get it to a point where we could use it. I guess in a way, it’s really hard to compare because our operating model changed so much in that period where we were receiving information from the regions, we had shared services, doing, you know, the transactional activity for us. And then we just need the information to consolidate probably just some basic information on our people. Whereas with the transition project, we went through, everything changed. And so our department was now responsible for paying reward benefits on top of everything else. So we, there were things that we, that we save time on, like, during that kind of activity. But the technology helped just in so many ways, because also, you know, if we talk about payroll, we were now suddenly responsible for that, we chose a global vendor, we connected that. But now we had to kind of not just set that up. But think about the future of you know, how the information is going from workday to payroll, and how we’re getting the information back. And then how we’re actually loading some of the actual data into workday to, to other analysis. So it’s really hard to compare the periods of time because what we’re responsible for now, and what we’re analyzing now is just so much more advanced than where we were, but back in those days, it was definitely about a day and a half, probably a month to clean the data, go through it line by line, standardized things like job titles, you know, how we wanted to categorize people to do any kind of analysis?

Brent Skinner 16:40
Well, this is a Go ahead, Abigail.

Abigail Wilmore 16:42
No, no, I was just gonna say, and that was just really basic information, like the reports that we’re providing now in, you know, less than a day if needed to actually be presented. They’re just, they’re just vast in terms of the elements of information that is now in there. So yeah, that was just basic information, as Jay was saying, like job titles that would take a day and a half. So yeah, we would probably need about months lead time on some presentations that have been given over this last 20 months.

Brent Skinner 17:14
Yeah, I will, this is a perfect example of where you know, a time savings can be, you know, a day and a half’s worth of time, at this level is, is nothing to sneeze at. That’s, that’s a significant amount of time. But at the same time, thinking about it through that lens really, really falls far short of, of capturing or encompassing, you know, the full, the full weight of the change. I mean, what you’re doing now, what you’re analyzing now, you literally would not have been able to do without the new system in place. So there’s, there’s that recalibration of, of your, the scope of your domain, for instance, right, of what you do a B, there’s been, you’re operating under an entirely new calculus now, right? Where, where you’re able to your, your, how your perspective or your strategy, right? The technology has enabled you with a modern technology in place a consolidated streamlined, modern technology in place for HCM? Right, and I know there’s couple pieces to it, you’ve been able to actually think more strategically about your people, or you probably had these strategic thoughts definitely had these strategic thoughts previously, but now you’re actually able to act on them and provide information that that to help, you know, build whatever case you’re making at any given time. And that’s, that’s the bigger picture. In my opinion. Now, we have 3Sixty Insights, we talk a lot about concrete and abstract HCM, right. And and there’s they’re always kind of, you know, interrelated. But you know, the, the straightforward time savings that we talked about a moment ago, that’s, that’s real concrete HCM. As a time savings, financially quantifiable can definitely, you know, put a number to it and say, yep, that happened. Whereas some of this other stuff, which has potentially or not just potentially does have far more. Much more far reaching impact on the business is what we call abstract HCM. It’s not so it’s not necessarily as quantifiable from a financial standpoint, right away, because a lot of things that that you’re able to achieve from a from an abstract HCM standpoint, or we can call it from a strategics from a strategic from your strategic perch, now a strategic perch that’s gonna have a that’s gonna cast a far greater impact over the business over a longer time, which, which is probably making sense, you know where I’m going with this?

Abigail Wilmore 20:11
Yeah, I think it’s enabled us to provide the entire picture now, it you know, we can we have all the kind of pieces of, of the experience at Stella McCartney, whereas before we had pockets of information, but now we have a way to make it all. Seem, you know, one story. And so we can add in, you know, the engagement data and, and well being data and, you know, subjects that were abstract, as you say, in some ways to put to quantify, and now much more quantifiable because we have we have the systems in place to be able to paint that that narrative of what’s happening,

Brent Skinner 20:57
can you share, share with us? Maybe one or two examples of strategic thinking you’ve been able to, sort of follow through on because of the of the new, the new landscape that you’re working under?

Abigail Wilmore 21:22
I think it’s probably, Jay, tell me if you have some other some other good examples, but I think probably in terms of hybrid working, you know, and understanding, moving from talking about the fact that people would like more flexibility in their work from, you know, the last few years, all the way to being able to actually provide, you know, that the statistics around how many people, you know, want the various different options that we’re gonna have to, you know, envision as a policy and create for people. We’re not there yet, in terms of hybrid working, but again, before, it would have been very much about what I think or what each HR person is picking up, as opposed to now we have valid data, we have valid comments from people and, you know, we something, something like that. I think it’s been, it’s helped us dramatically to figure out, can you think of other, I mean,

Jay Barrett 22:35
it’s just also helped us on the visibility, who’s actually in the company, which we always had been HR, but the rest of the company didn’t necessarily have when we, yeah, people’s information was in different systems. And it was, you know, leads now with everything being connected, you can see who sits within which department, you know, I guess there’s like a feeling of more transparency about the structure of team than the business as well, which we didn’t really have before. And this, we were providing maybe all charts to someone seeing you who needed it, but for the wider business, they would never really have access to anything like that. So I think it’s definitely helped in terms of who does what, and how to find the right person. And then having that link with our internal comms platform as well.

Brent Skinner 23:28
Sorry, interrupt, I just wanted to say that that helps with workforce optimization, obviously, right? Yeah.

Abigail Wilmore 23:34
Yeah, definitely. I mean, we’ve had so many reports, on, you know, headcount information, and again, how many vacant positions we have in the business at any one time, you know, which again, has become more critical in the last year where we’ve seen so many people resigning across the industry. And then I thought of the other kind of big strategic advantage that this has given us having all these systems is, is a bit more trust as to why we might ask our employees about their backgrounds. So yeah, we still can’t do that in every country, legally, but where we can, the fact that we’ve got this social platform to be able to communicate why we want to collect data on people, and then the, you know, the system to collect data, and then also Workday Peakon where you can input that data anonymously to then be able to, you know, to look into and have visibility on what different demographic of our organization is caring about the different initiatives that we’re doing? That is, you know, invaluable.

Brent Skinner 24:47
Yeah. In the United States, I don’t know anything about being asked about my background at work. Anyway, I think so. But yeah, that That’s a great example of, you know, sort of the fluidity of the regulatory landscape or the or the variation in it. Excuse me. By the way, Abigail, you’re based in the UK, right? Yes. You’re speaking with us from the UK today. Right. And, JJ, you’re in New York City, right? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m about four hours or so away from you and Southwest and New Hampshire, just but as far as you two are concerned, I mean, this is a great example of just how global Stella McCartney is, how many how many countries? Do you operate it?

Jay Barrett 25:38
We are in nine countries.

Brent Skinner 25:41
Yeah. Is it? Is it mostly AMEA in North America? Or is it other reasons? It’s

Abigail Wilmore 25:49
across Asia, Japan, Japan’s actually one of our most mature markets. So we’ve got a lot of doors across Japan and Asia Pacific.

Brent Skinner 25:59
So there’s, I mean, this is a very geographically dispersed company. Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Barrett 26:06
And even on top of that, in some of the markets, our stores can be very far from another store or so is, you know, even within country very dispersed.

Brent Skinner 26:17
Yeah, well, this, this kind of information is absolutely critical that you’re talking about, you know, one of the things that’s, you know, it always amazes me how many large companies literally don’t know, who they have, you know, there’s, there’s no one way to figure out, you know, it’s a big process to figure out who they have, and the skills and it makes it almost undoable to, to be to be agile in the way that that you’re that you’re describing J. And just going back to your example, Abigail around strategy and having the information to back it up. You know, we talked about the 3Sixty Insights around again, concrete and abstract HCM and how every aspect of HCM has a concrete and an abstract element to it. So you know, you have a strategic idea that’s legitimate, valid, and rational. But the goal, the objective is to find some way to quantify it, you know, some way to show when I say, quantify, to show some data in support of it. And that’s, and that’s really the key for, for HCM, people working folks working in People Operations and culture or whatnot, right? To be able to advance their ideas they need, they need sort of hard data to back it up. So this just another, I say was an I would say, it’s another argument of one of just myriad, many, in favor of having a modern system in place for that. Yeah.

Jay Barrett 28:10
So I know that I would also add to that, sorry, just that the for us and the project we were going through, and where we suddenly became responsible for payroll, which is something you can’t get wrong. There’s a lot of checking, you need to do audit process, to be able to control that process efficiently. That’s what the technology did. And we didn’t, we tried to keep a kind of global approach to that. So we didn’t go market by market with this is how we’re going to work in in this country, we really came up with this sort of global framework of how we will organize that, to have the control to have the sign off to have the audit checking to have the analysis. And then from there, sort of regionalised if we needed to, but we took one global partner for that as well. But yeah, we really use the technology to just help us absorb those new responsibilities as well, that that came our way.

Brent Skinner 29:11
Yeah, I know that. If and I want to get into this because I know that there’s been he’s one of the things that we do with 360 insights. We’re very keen on learning about, you know, how stakeholders work within organizations and the decision making around what type of technology to use and, and whatnot. Maybe you could have one of you or could share a little bit about what’s on what’s, what’s on the horizon here. What’s, what’s in the future. What are some of the future plans around workday and this sort of stuff at the organization?

Jay Barrett 29:48
I’d say we’ve got workday to a fairly advanced stage now because we have quite a few modules and we’re in our third year about going to our fourth year of having of having at all. And because we’ve come through that transition project now and everything is settled and fully kind of joined up, we move one of the final payrolls, during this year, that had been more of a complex project. But it’s really just now I think about the other enhancements and other business challenges that we can answer. And then really about how we use the data, and what kind of insights we can create is, you know, going back sort of four years ago, we weren’t doing anything very special with data and analysis, but now we’re in such a different space. So I think it’s, and now that that transition project is over, and we’re kind of back to business as usual, in a way. It’s really how we’re using this data, what stories it’s telling us, and then how we’re going to influence decisions with that, rather than any kind of big next phase for us. With the systems, it’s kind of there really, I think it’s a pretty established phase. So now, it’s just how we continue to, to pull value from it.

Abigail Wilmore 31:10
We haven’t had, for example, like an HR scorecard, like some businesses have, we could, we could easily do that. Now. We could have really, you know, set KPIs for HR that we are communicating on a regular basis, we just, we’ve had to work in a very kind of reactive way over this last 20 months, because of the needs of the business and just providing what, you know, what we thought would be valuable, but also what we’re being asked to provide in really short space of time. But now kind of through that, that period, it would be, as Jay said, about setting up a more maybe a more structured way of providing the business with what it needs to make future decisions. Because it feels like we’ve been, we’ve had to be quite reactive.

Brent Skinner 31:57
What how was the use of Workday, how’s it sitting with some of the other stakeholders that that you work with in terms of deciding what software to use, and in these sorts of things.

Jay Barrett 32:14
We’ve been quite self sufficient HR function, which I think is not the usual set up, we have, in some ways where we have some financial responsibility, because we also manage payroll, as I mentioned, but also everything to do with the personnel budget. And we chose and implemented workday ourselves. And really, going back to that transition project where everything changed in our business. We didn’t necessarily have people out IT team as a partner, in the beginning anyway. So it is unique that we’ve completely owned that project. And I would say the whole business is definitely reliant on the system. And it’s connected to it through the Active Directory. But definitely as those teams have, have changed and grown out, because it was a new function, just probably the understanding is, you know, slightly different as to why we made certain decisions, and why we have this tool and why it works in this way. But there is obviously the whole story as to why which is where we came from being in a place where we had to rely on 10 systems that we didn’t even know.

Brent Skinner 33:27
And using it using a tool like Workday Peakon that’s not really that you can replace that with, with a sort of other off. Yeah. I see you shaking your head J. Yeah. What is it about that, that tool that? Maybe we could just give me a little bit more, give us a little bit more insight into that? Why, just why it’s so useful.

Jay Barrett 33:57
Yeah, I think we were quite early adopters into Workday Peakon. Obviously. Now it’s part of Workday. But I think what was so great about it was prior to that we had relied on a kind of annual survey that would then take maybe four or five months to get the data back. And then we’d have to analyze all of that in Excel and then come up with an action plan. And by the time we were really doing anything with it, so much time had passed it just kind of irrelevant. Workday Peakon just gave us that kind of immediate answers as to how people were feeling what was important to them. The way it categorized, you know, the questions under the drivers really helps you to pinpoint sort of areas that you need to focus on. And I think the fact that empowers the managers as well which not something we did, we get right away but eventually we gave it to them and Workday Peakon also provides some guidance for them so they can have more responsibility over the engagement team and kind of support on how to action plan on some of the issues. So I think it also took it away from just being the kind of assumption that HR needs to fix all the things that everyone is not happy with.

Brent Skinner 35:13
This is, I love it. So you know, this is essentially an employee sentiment gauging tool. And it’s in it’s real time, or it’s or it’s continual, as opposed to being annual. And you’re absolutely right about those annual surveys by the time you collect them and analyze it, it’s old information, it’s, like you said, irrelevant. Being able to gauge the pulse of your employee sentiment right now. Given how much your operating model has, has, has evolved, because of the pandemic, with a hybrid working and all this, to me, that just seems indispensable. And one other thing that’s super interesting for me with that is, you know, also with the annual employee engagement survey or employee Sentiment Survey, that that puts the, the onus of responsibility for it solely, like you were saying solely in an hrs hands, right. Whereas with this, with this sort of pulse, it may not be referred to technically as pulse, but with this sort of pulse survey tool, right? You’re, you’re pushing that the responsibility for that out are closer to the front lines, where we’re frankly, the employee sentiment actually happens. Right. So it’s, it’s pushing that out to its more logical, residing place. So to me, that’s, you know, just hearing you to speak about this particular tool, it seems to be very strategic.

Abigail Wilmore 36:55
Definitely is a business tool now. And it means that people feel heard, because, you know, the other thing about taking six months, and it not even being relevant information anymore, is that people are like, well, they can’t connect what they’ve said, with the initiatives that are happening in the company. So yeah, it means that people feel something is being done. And, you know, and it makes the engagement in the system higher. So going back to any other kind of way of, you know, hearing from people, I mean, we still hear from people in different kinds of networks and forums as well. But that’s obviously not anonymous. So the fact that this has their anonymity, you know, attached to it was definitely quite apprehensive to go all in. Because we survey people every two weeks, or every two to three weeks, we asked two or three questions. And initially, that can seem quite overwhelming for managers to suddenly have insight into, you know, what their employees are thinking in real time. But over time, if you do actually take action as a manager, then yeah, becomes invaluable.

Brent Skinner 38:09
Yeah, one thing you mentioned was the immediacy of it and help employees, you know, the aspect of being heard is, you know, if there’s no immediacy to what you’re communicating to the other person is, it’s like not being heard. Right. Yeah. You talking about fostering a strong employer culture under, under, you know, more challenging circumstances than normal? Right, then, you know, one of those things is, you know, one of those components is trust, but the other is, you know, employees want to be heard. So, so this is just, it’s, it makes absolute sense. Yeah. Yeah, yes,

Jay Barrett 38:53
to respond quickly to what’s happening. And, you know, if you have to wait six months, before you can take action on feedback, it’s probably too late is either a bigger issue now, or a person is just disengaged and maybe even moved on. So it just allows you to take action more quickly. And the fact that you can actually have a conversation with an employee through the tool as well still or anonymous, but, you know, you can either acknowledge or you can actually respond to some things. And I think that as well, you know, goes back to that, that feeling heard and, and sometimes it is a great suggestion, and you can say, Yeah, we’re ever working on it, or we’re gonna take it on board. Or actually, maybe you miss this because we did already address

Brent Skinner 39:39
but it’s so important to be responsive. You know, in this, you know, where we are right now as a planet, right? So important to be responsive. For an organization like yours, that’s, that’s really, you know, doing everything It can every day to retain its people you know given the nature of your sort of high end retail, and you want to have you want to have those well skilled folks who know your business being you know being those emissaries for your brand to your customers. So it’s important to have that, that strong, that strong link there. I was just looking at the time and we’ve been talking for a while and we’re almost out of time. It’s just this you know, this is so interesting and you have such a such a, such a big challenge that you that you’re that you’re surmounting, surmounting very well. It’s so exciting to hear about how workday is helping you with that. And with the employee sentiment tool with Workday Peakon and everything and I just, I just want to wish you luck at the best of luck with those tools moving forward and think things are only going to get better for everybody and including Stella McCartney. And, and also want to wish you all happy holidays and thank you for joining us

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