3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Lina Tonk, Senior Vice President of Marketing at isolved

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Who should own the employee experience (EX)? “There’s room for everyone,” said isolved Senior Vice President of Marketing Lina Tonk during her guest appearance on the #HRTechChat video podcast. And she’s right. The EX occurs everywhere any employee is involved in work. “I do believe the final responsibility should reside with HR. And I think HR leaders will probably agree with that.” They probably would, yes. HR’s job is not to micromanage the EX, however; it is to shepherd, lead and help shape it. From this, responsibility naturally flows.

Speaking of marketing, have you ever wondered whether, why or how marketing and HR could join forces to bolster and improve EX? I know that I have. And it turns out that it’s an idea gaining steam….

In January of this year, isolved conducted a survey of 500 HR leaders based in the United States and from a broad cross-section of industries. The resulting whitepaper, “Transforming Employee Experience: 500 HR Leaders Talk Talent, Tech, Tactics & Threats,” is an interesting read that spans several areas of interest as they relate to isolved’s goal with the research: ascertaining HR’s top challenges of today and top opportunities for tomorrow. And the exercise unearthed some intriguing findings vis-à-vis an emerging role for marketing in the EX and HR’s sentiments regarding this.

According to isolved’s survey, 65 percent of HR leaders say they want their marketing team involved with EX. Specifically, 52 percent are seeking marketing’s involvement because the department plays an important role in how the company is perceived in the market, and another 40 percent want to leverage marketing’s creative ability.

HR and marketing work together in these ways at isolved. During our chat, Lina described her on-the-job relationship with her colleague Amy Mosher, chief people officer at isolved. “I’m super transparent with Amy,” with whom she speaks daily to align goals. During our conversation, Lina got granular in explaining what aligning marketing’s goals with HR’s looks like at isolved — where HR has its own goals for the employee experience, and marketing has some related to the employee experience, too, “and I believe that cross-functional teams can only work in that manner if goals are attached to them.”

Lina delved even deeper, providing a glimpse into what this kind of collaboration, between HR and marketing, looks like from an executional standpoint — something else I’ve always wondered about. For example, advocacy is incredibly important to isolved, especially for HR leaders because of its impact on retention, which is “key to everything that we’re doing,” said Lina. Related to this, isolved has an internal advocacy tool that it provides to all its employees. “We needed not only the creativity on the content for marketing, but also the insights and the drive from HR.”

Usually, several tangents will surface during the #HRTechChat video podcast, and this episode is no different. Lina and I got to talking about where EX possibly matters most. There’s probably no definitive answer to this question, but we both agreed: it’s hard to argue that onboarding isn’t critical to EX in terms of setting the tone for the long term. Incidentally, speaking to this is a soon-to-be-published report by isolved compiling results from a survey of 1,000 employees. Among the findings is this: 49 percent of employees say they’ve been tempted to leave a new job after a poor onboarding experience that includes limited transitioning, an unprepared first day and excessive paperwork.

Viewers of this episode may find the anecdotal examples of nightmare onboarding experiences that your host and his guest shared amusing. Please do view this episode. You won’t be disappointed. In many, many ways, Lina is thinking very progressively at isolved, including when it comes to marketing’s role in being a partner to HR. (And one last thing, I’d be remiss not to mention that the research findings we discussed are neither from employees of isolved nor, necessarily, from employees at customers of the vendor, which used a market research firm to conduct both these surveys.)

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Transcript:

Brent Skinner 00:00
Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of the HRTechChat video podcast. And I’m so pleased to have with us today, Lina Tonk, who is Senior Vice President of Marketing at isolved. Welcome, Lena.

Lina M. Tonk 00:15
Thank you for having me, Brent. It’s nice to see you.

Brent Skinner 00:18
Oh, it’s so nice to see you too. I can’t believe it. We’re coming right up on connect again. This time in Nashville, which I’m really looking forward to.

Lina M. Tonk 00:27
Yeah, we’re so excited. We’re so excited that it would be a largest connect yet. So yeah, it will be it will be last year was our largest and we bump it up even more this year. So we are about to have some record numbers there. And everybody’s ready to go at this point. We’re ready.

Brent Skinner 00:45
Wow, that’s fantastic. Sounds like the place to be glad I’ll be there. That’s fantastic. Wonderful. Well, I know, we’re here today to talk about something that’s really interesting. And let me just set the stage for our, our viewers. So this idea of the employee experience, who owns the employee experience, who can own the employee experience. HR is one of those stakeholders, obviously, but there are many others. And I want to get into that, and, and specifically some ideas around marketing, and what role marketing can have in this. And in Eisav, did conduct its own survey, I believe, of of your own customer base, this year of round that and what some of the attitudes are and some of the trends and so really looking forward to, to, to getting into that. Now, before we kind of dive into it any sort of sort of, you know, like, introductory sort of words you’d like to share here.

Lina M. Tonk 01:51
Well, I think this topic, and I was just telling you just recently that this topic is so interesting, and it is so it’s evolving every single day, not only did we attach a lot of what we’re seeing out there as a touch to our own research, but also, we just came from 18 roadshows where we’ve been in front of for all our HR leaders, all over the country, we still have a few more to go right after Connect. But um, I think it was in row two or three, this topic started coming out more and more, it was not only uniquely to the ownership and who was raising their hand to be an owner to or a partner to HR and all this, but also, okay, now everybody wants to be an owner, how we’re going to figure that out. And beyond that, the involvement in marketing, which is very, very new, it is incredibly new, and I do believe and based on the research alone is the future of work. And the way we have evolved within the HR industry, I believe, has led us to where we’re at today, we’re seeing all kinds of departments being involved. Within that. I mean, I’m excited to dive into with you, because I love to hear what you’re hearing from others still. And, you know, if we compare notes and see if you’re hearing the same things we are,

Brent Skinner 03:14
yeah, so just as to put a pin in that for a second here, you know, and this has been a, an area of questioning or, or of interest in this space for a while, but this idea that, you know, HR can’t be everywhere that the employee experience happens, right? That’s, it’s impossible. And it really does happen at the granular level, at the individual employee level. And it’s sort of punctuated by their, their interactions with their immediate managers and fellow employees. And so there’s a lot of talk these days around technology for HCM, and, you know, how much of it is maybe should be readily available and usable right at the individual employee level and managerial level as well. And I’d love to get into that too. But how about we why don’t we start here? What is your opinion on ownership of employee experience? Who, in your opinion, where should final responsibility reside? Or does it depend? And who should be involved? Maybe not in charge of it been involved? And you know, to the extent that maybe this is a question to who shouldn’t

Lina M. Tonk 04:31
be Yeah, so I’m gonna have popular opinions here on a very unpopular Tim so I my personal opinion and based on the research that we’ve done and speaking till or the HR leaders that we spoke to in person all over the country. There’s room for everyone. There’s also room for everyone. That is my number one takeaway on everything is, you know, should it be a chart Yeah. So I do believe the final responsibility should recite with HR. And I think HR leaders will probably agree with that. But final responsibility being a cross functional responsibility, meaning having other teams, being involved, provide their input, be part of it. At the end of the day, we should all be responsible for employee experience. So when I look at it from inside out, and the role that I play with HR as an employee, the feedback that I provide as a manager or leadership, it is critical that we’re involved. So I believe everybody should be involved. I think that’s critical. We have to hear from our employees, we want to know what’s working and what isn’t. I’ll give you a perfect example, onboarding. So we were here, our survey actually was showing one of our surveys that we did earlier on 48% of employees will leave, if they have a bad onboarding experience we’ve been, they will depart. So how do we shape onboarding? Yes, tools? Absolutely, you absolutely have to have that automated. But more importantly, as, as a department owner, are you providing the feedback that HR will need to make the necessary changes, to change the way you are conducting onboarding, if your employees are actually department because of the morning, while it belongs with several people and then bringing in it, it is the critical part. To me, it should be a cross functional team. Within the HR team, when it comes to employee experience, you know, if we don’t have the right tools, we were just speaking about this, we need outlook. We need our computers to be working. And we need teams in Slack to be active and I need my access. And, and it is a very important part of that experience that we have as employees. So to just kind of put it all in one brand. I believe there’s room for everyone. Yes, I believe everyone should be involved. But I also believe the sole responsibility. Yes, could be within HR yet bring other teams who have cross functional goals attached to employee experience, what do you think?

Brent Skinner 07:39
Sounds good to me. You know, you’ve I’m convinced, you know, I’m reminded of a story that my co founder, Nick Byron actually shares and I won’t share the actual company, but there was one place he worked previously where the onboarding was, was really botched. It was really bad. And I don’t remember the exact details, but I know that he was without a computer for several days, and even without really any kind of directions on what to do. And then so yeah, I mean, this is almost, you know, the, the caricature of a bad onboarding process. And I know this is a little bit of a tangent, but onboarding is really, really key when it comes to employee experience and, you know, a one to one chance to make a first impression and, and this first impression, might had a lasting bad impression, or him with this particular employer. And we’ve all been there. I’ll share just a quick story. The viewers will and you as well may find this funny. When I was in college, many years ago. There was there was a this was around the time that they were they were laying down the last batch of transoceanic oceanic cable for communications fiber optic cable and, and I picked up a temp job for the summer. And I went to this temp agency and they said, Oh, do you have a hardhat and stuff? I said, Oh, yeah, sure. So that hard hat and steel toed boots and I was very wet behind the ears. I didn’t realize what I was getting into. Next thing I knew I went to this company on on the dock the shore in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And we’ve just met up with some guys they looked ahead like they had just got out of prison to be frank, and we were wandering around the area looking for our for our foreman to show us what to do and we were just walking around and they finally they found us it brought us onto this boat and it was looked like a big cruise ship. But we were wrapping cable into these tanks. But I guess the story there is that I was wandering around the grounds of a shipyard with a bunch of malcontents looking for our Warman on the first day. That’s another boss onboarding.

Lina M. Tonk 10:06
Right, like I just onboarding with the onboarding to me is critical to the employee experience. And it’s the beginning of how you start feeling about a company. And then you take it a step down, and then you start feeling okay, well, my morning was good. And then what comes next? i You, from there, we’re getting that sense of belonging. And, you know, where am I going? And so that’s where I think it boils down to is everybody has to be involved, but there are certain departments that do need to have sole responsibility for it.

Brent Skinner 10:40
Now, let’s I’m kind of getting to the crux of things around the study that you got the survey that you folks administered and some of the findings, what is, what is marketing’s role in all of this, interestingly enough? And what can HR potentially have to learn from marketing when it comes to preserving the employee experience? And vice versa? And what’s that whole dynamic? Because I know, that’s sort of an emerging area, I’ve heard about it off and on over the past, you know, maybe five or so years, there’s, you know, just to add a little bit here, you know, there’s this idea, that idea that your employer brand, which is obviously an expression, at least partially of your employee experience, right, that the employer brand, often, you know, with a lot of companies is maybe the same as a consumer brand, or there’s a lot of overlap. So I’m really curious to some of your ideas here. And what you found from your survey?

Lina M. Tonk 11:41
Yeah, so you asked me on a loaded question, because I’m so passionate about certain part of this. Well, number one, ongoing marketing, right. So to me being able to, and we’re in the HR industry, to the to be able to have gotten to a point where HR and marketing are working as close together. And it is as informed for HR and marketing to work together. It’s kind of a beautiful thing right now. So within our roadshow site, one of my openings, I actually share this, I don’t think there’s a day that I go well, for sure, a week that I do not speak to our CPL to anymore. Sure. I work incredibly close to her. Our initiatives are super aligned. So there’s a few things. So I’m super passionate about that, and how we have evolved to gotten to this point, when we did our survey, HR leaders, actually, so they raised their hand to say, We want marketing to be involved. And as soon as we got that back, I’m like, But why do they want marketing to be involved? This is so exciting. And as we went on, uncover some of that is, it just goes back to the st employee experience the employee experience within the blank. So when I look at ISO, if I could do it all over again and brand in I’ve you know, I’ve been on brand for many, many years. And I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way. And one of the I believe critical mistakes that I’ve made along the way was to, like you said, separate the employer brand, from everything, I think we should be one brand. So when you look at us here at isolved, we are one brand. So we leave embrace the brand in here, as we leave it externally, I think you know us quite a bit by now, but our employees have to feel have to understand that excitement, but also that that importance of experience for us because if they are having good employee experience, I believe that they will be more willing to have that better customer experience partner experience as they go externally. So one brand, not separating them if like I was saying, if I had done it, you know, I did it many times before where we will speak of one brand internally on one brand, externally, absolutely not. And that’s one of the things that drives HR actually back to us. Because within marketing, we are out there in the market, promoting talking about our company sharing what we’re about, but HR needs to know what we’re saying. But by default, we have to be so ingrained with HR that we know that we’re out there speaking of our brand and saying all these things, we are all very aligned. So that to me is key. And this to the part departments are working so closely together.

Brent Skinner 14:53
I know you have a lot more to share, but I had a question about this specifically Because I agree with you, to a great extent, I’m wondering if in the HCM space is particularly important for the employer brand. For a provider, a solution provider such as isolved, for the employer brand to be tightly aligned, or be one in the same I guess, is the right way of saying it with the external brand.

Lina M. Tonk 15:25
I think it is, I really do believe it is I think, overall, every company should look at it that way. I do believe that we have evolved so much within the last few years where we tell our employees, and we tell ourselves, bring your whole self to work, be yourself. Like, that’s very, very important to us. And I think it’s now has become very, very important to every company. So when we’re telling employees to bring their whole selves to work, we’re also telling them to leave their whole selves to work as they drive the company with us. So when they’re in that space, where what is my brand value, what is isolated about so mission of ISIL being transformed an employee experience, what does that mean to me, so me may not ask the employee only not as a manager or, as the employee, if employee experience is important to me, as an employee, if and I believe and I breathe it, I believe I will be way more successful, I sigh go out, and I have external relationships. And this could be of any kind, it could be customer, customer success. For example, if I’m talking to my customer, or to my partner, that importance of being able to leave it from the inside out to me makes it genuine, makes it takes it back to I can bring myself to work my whole self back to work. But I’m being myself, but I’m also leaving, I’m breathing what my company’s about, and will probably make me more data. And I think the HR, the HR community has gone through such a transformation in the last years. And when you look at it from the outside, not only were they put into, they have so many challenges to overcome so many rules to follow so many, you know, return to office that are going on right now and everything you have to do about it. So there’s that component that is incredibly challenging. But I don’t think there’s any other community other than health care, that has the ability to not be so creative. They have this data at the table. And because, you know, sea levels now, sit by me, tell me what we’re going to get me down, tell me what we’re about. Because how our employees feel about us, it is incredibly important to us. Yeah. Right. And then when you look at it, also, the relationship between employee and employer completely transformed the way we used to interact. I mean, we’re working from completely different places in most companies, but the way we interact with each other, the way managers and their relationships have evolved from two years ago, it’s incredible. I mean, half allow HR to have more stage and have that say, where I also think ties into why HR needs other departments to be part of employee experience and marketing being one of them. I asked Amy this morning, because this is my, our study our perspective, their road shows and I said, Amy, we work together every single day. And I think I have the answer to this. But one of the things that she mentioned too, was creativity. She goes I love going to marketing, because I have gotten to the point that I have to become so creative. And marketing has that for me, like I can go to inform for them and be creative on what I’m going to go do.

Brent Skinner 19:37
So this actually gets into another question that I that I had and we’ve touched up. By the way we’ve touched on a lot of stuff that I know we wanted to this conversation which is great. Was gives us a little bit of breathing room to stretch our legs a little bit. What does that you mentioned that you worked very closely with Amy Moser. I love her. She’s great. I’m Chief People Officer of isolved CPO? What does it actually look like? Give me an example that you started to just then but an example of what it means to be working closer together and aligning your, objectives, and then putting something together that works together, like what does that actually look like? Because we hear about it, sort of theoretically and conceptually, and it makes a lot of sense. But I’m sure I’ve always been curious, what does it actually look like?

Lina M. Tonk 20:30
Yeah, so I have a few examples. And one thing that is key to this brand, I believe, is setting up goals by department. So now my goals within marketing, I have goals that are attached to HR as well. And I believe that cross functional teams can only work in that manner if goals are attached to them. So HR has their own goals for employee experience. And I have some of those goals that I share with them, once they’re in my goals. And I’m recording quarterly on how I’m doing within those goals. And when the year ends on whether I reached those goals or not. But more broadly, we do it on a quarterly basis, I need to make sure that not only do I have the resources available to be able to reach those goals that I promised HR that I was going to be part of and execute on. But also that I have the proper budget to do it. We can we can talk about initiatives, all we want, and say HR and marketing should be working together. But if we don’t have the resources, or the goals attached to it, I don’t believe it’s necessarily something that we’re able to achieve as fast as we would want to. So let me give you a few examples. The perfect example actually happen is when we started blending our teams together, when it came to employee experience, it was advocacy. Advocacy is incredibly important to us. Very important to HR leaders retention is, you know, key to everything that we’re doing. And we have, internally an advocacy tool that we wanted to provide to all our employees. But we needed not only the creativity on the content for marketing, but we also needed the insights and the drive from HR. So this was a year ago, a year ago, I met with Amy and I said, Listen, we’ve been talking about to what should we do with it? What are your thoughts, and we started communicating on it. So we built a budget, and attached to advocacy internally. So as the year so we released at the beginning of the year, our SATs anomic seat are incredible, because I think it was the fact that we work on it together. So he was an HR on their own. So we were getting employee advocates back faster than we’ve ever had before. We with hiring being you know, number one talent acquisition is such a big topic continues to be a big topic, allowing us to hint kind of like that talent acquisition referral side, which is very, very interesting and important to us as well. So we did it through our advocacy tool. But we, for us to be able to be successful with it, we had to come together so early on, so that that’s a perfect example on on something that we would work together.

Brent Skinner 23:33
That’s very helpful that yeah, setting common goals, having your own goals, but having some common goals, and also carve out corralling around congregating working together around an initiative. So determining what the initiative is and then working together. And that actually makes a lot of sense marketing having that creative side that HR might need help with. What was interesting to me to hear is that that I wanted to ask to what extent is I mean, this may be a pretty straightforward question, but internal communications like employee communications, do you work with you also sort of, do you align your efforts with, say the communications department at the at the organization is PR involved? These sorts of things?

Lina M. Tonk 24:27
Yeah, so that you hit right on one that is nearest to my heart and here at isolved. So we actually have internal communications but we also have external communications, internal communications, we HR handles, internal communication, all of marketing canvas that the beautiful thing is same thing. We both have goals attached to each others. So what it means is I fully support HR within their internal communications and HR that’s the same with In external communications for especially being on the HR industry, so for example, you feel that tremendous relationship with any culture already. So being able to, to have that access externally for Amy and being able to support her from the PR AR perspective is incredibly important to us. And I’ll tell you something very simple to from the marketing side is the output. Yeah. So it’s important to us not just what we’re about and what we, you know, what we do, but also how we output the brand. We, everything we do, the way we buy the things that we do we do them on mine and the end, you saw that HR tech as well. So the output of the brand is also incredibly important to us. I’m wearing pink today, so that that that’s the output of the brand I leave on brief my ping and or marketing to be involved to say, well, HR wants to send all these communications and you know, they’re going to send them yeah, oh, god no. Such a simple component offense here. But the output of everything that we do externally and internally is incredibly important, too.

Brent Skinner 26:22
I did notice you were wearing a pink shirt today. And I was gonna say something because that those are the ISL colors. Great colors, by the way. Would let’s kind of look at it from the other, just from the other direction for a moment what are the limitations of hrs or marketing’s ability to influence the employee experience?

Lina M. Tonk 26:44
Yeah, you know, so this, this has been a big one that I have been researching on with in our HR leader at our roadshows, because from my perspective, when I speak, depending on the size, it kind of changes, depending on the maturity of the company, and where they’re at. But I have to say, and here at ISE, we have experiences is one big limitations is no size fits all, and probably go back to the advocacy tool. So we launched it, it was great, and it’s incredibly successful. But we continue to grow. And we got to a point that it kept growing with us. But it was said to its potential. And we had to go revisit it and say, Hey, let’s take a look like we’ve grown so much like we’ve matured as much. So employee experiences, is so attached to maturity in or out. So saying, This is how we’re going to do it all in all size fits all, it’s not something that I would do. So that’s one and I think I mentioned this one earlier is budget and bandwidth. So that’s probably the first thing. So that was a common denominator. When I spoke to return leaders and our roaches, they said, Well, I’d love for my marketing department to be as involved as isolate this within the company. But, you know, how do I get them to be involved? How do I get them to just do this thing to more importantly, I know what they’re gonna say they’re gonna say you pay for it up so much in. So I think as a company, you have to look within and say, you know, is employee experience important to us? How important is it to us and here at isolved is incredibly important. So not important, do you have the bandwidth to attach to those cross functional teams? And do you have to necessarily budget to make the difference that you want to make?

Brent Skinner 28:48
You mentioned the bandwidth to actually work in a cross functional team, this, this gets to sort of the, the precursor to all this is getting your HR under control, right? You know, if you’re struggling with as an organization, if you’re struggling with, you know, administrative, just an administrative nightmare, which it can be for a lot of organizations that haven’t invested in modern technology for HCM, you’re spending all your time just dotting the T’s and crossing the t’s. Hopefully, you’re crossing the T’s and dotting the eyes, you might be dotting the T’s and crossing you guys who knows. But in fact, in any event, yeah, there’s apps, there’s no mental space even to start to even fathom a greater self for you as an HR department. You know, you know, I mean it just it’s, it’s so that’s really critical. And you know, and I imagine you know, I don’t I my domain experience expertise is in HCM but I imagine that there are similar challenges in the marketing space as well. So if you’re an organization may be raised CM is you got your HCM under control, but maybe marketing is lacking some out there, maybe not. Maybe they’re not under control yet. Although I do understand that that is typically the other way around. But what, what are your thoughts there?

Lina M. Tonk 30:19
So you’re reminding me of a conversation I had on an HR specifically. So I was, we were chatting on this podcast. And I said, you know, it’s so exciting. It’s so exciting to see where HR leaders are today. And like that sit they have that important seat they have at the table. And, and one of the attendees just like, started out saying,

Brent Skinner 30:47
wow. Yeah, yeah.

Lina M. Tonk 30:54
Yeah. So Right. He’s like, we speak about it so much, but I was like, You know what? I’ve never heard it said that way. But you were so absolutely right. Because it comes down to that is, now that we were making so many of the decisions, we’re being able to analyze things our employees, putting our employee experience at the forefront of everything that we’re doing, how do we build this thing? How do we how do we build this HR function to, to get this other teams to support us the way that we need to, and in most cases, some things are gonna say, Hey, I just, I am sorry, I don’t have the time. So I go back to and I know, I sound like a broken record, but it works really well. It works like magic. If you have goals attached to it, those goals will translate into budget needs, if you have some, whether that’s discretionary on headcount, but more importantly, is set clear expectations. I’m super, super transparent with Amy. And it’s probably how we will have mature in our relationship too. But I’ll say I am in the adult, we can’t do that right now. But we can do this, or she does the same to me. But having that, that close relationship on we know we need each other. But we also know that we both have goals, that we have to need to show the success of both of our support departments and, and all those goals and budgeting and all those things are very, very important. But what it boils down to is how they translate into how they impact the employee being impacted. Is their experience within the company being impacted from the moment we hire them. Like we talked about onboarding already? Through? Do I belong here? Do I have the tools? Do I have? You know, this subject topic for us at isolved? Right now is ISIL. University? Do we have all the education that we need for our current employees that are here? Are we providing them all the education that they need to be able to be successful on their roles? So clear expectations, mapping are the goals, which will translate into budget as well. So I think that’s the key to getting or starting to shape it up. And I know organizations are not going to be mature in that level. But, you know, we had this conversation and it was a very short conversation. We said, well, we’re moving we’re not there yet. And, and we started the conversation. And then we said, You know what, we’re there. Two years ago, we’re there. Let’s, let’s fill the budget. And then obviously future reports, changing and shaping everything in such a beautiful way to us in a way the negative of it. But the the positive part of how we relate to our employees made those goals more important than ever before. So if I was to if I was an HR leader, and I also asked marketing, well, can you support me with employee experience a few years ago, it will be more likely that they could either take a pass or say we’ll you know you, we’ll help you out. But today, and I had one of our customers was sharing this story with me. And I say, the most beautiful thing in the company, the biggest changes seen is that, she says, Well, who can support me when you know what this is for the employees and, you know, under experience and insight, all hands are up, you know, and you know, so great to be in a room full of leaders that they all want to be part of it for the employee. So it’s exciting, very exciting. It

Brent Skinner 34:45
is it is and it’s also a major, major sort of attitude and evolution and attitudes I think at organizations over, you know, over the past A few years, you know, and it needs to happen, you know, because they’re just to kind of put a fine point on it or to underscore what you’ve been saying that, yes, everybody is involved in the employee experience, right? That’s, that’s in ultimate responsibility for it resides with HR, but, but there are so many stakeholders, every stakeholder in the organization, conceivably, theoretically has a role in the employee experience. And, and you need all of these, these prerequisites sort of attitudes, yeah, attitudes, cultural premises in place in order to make it happen. Yeah, I’m reminded of a conversation that I had last year, actually, for the podcast on the person that was where they don’t recall who it was, I remember the, the topic, it was this idea of, you know, which comes first digital transformation, or HR transformation or cultural transformation. And, and, and I think that, I think that the sort of a conclusion we reached was that it’s, it’s not a, you know, like an intention or one before the other, they kind of, you kind of have to do them concurrently, almost right. You know, if you’re not going to really do this, you may have the impetus to embark on a digital transformation if you just sick and tired of the of the administrative load, right, okay. But, but to capture that moment in harness, see the seize the moment to start thinking, Okay, well, here’s what you’re going to be able to do, once you’ve got that out of the way with your employer brand new play experience, and all this and, and oh, by the way, you should really think strongly about collaborating with, with marketing on this. And, and oh, by the way, here are a few things to do that to kind of create that vision. See, to me, an HCM technology solution provider such as ice all this in such a wonderful position to help those organizations that it’s that it’s who uses is technology, help those organizations set themselves up for success. And so these higher level activities I like to call abstract HCM says this employee sentiment related self employed cultural related stuff that we’ve been talking about today. So that’s my very long winded way of saying you are you are singing my song, Lena.

Lina M. Tonk 37:39
I love it. I could speak about this for hours and hours. That is it. And I think we’ll have to keep speaking about it because it is a trance is transforming so fast. And it is it is so fun to watch the opportunity within HR and how they’re transforming themselves as they go along. It is absolutely beautiful to watch. Now, if I was in front of an HR leader right now, in being with them as I have in the last couple of months in person, I also feel the pain when they say, you know, we’ve transformed mature organization says levels and we’re thrilled because we’ve automated digitize this and we have all this things that you’re able to provide for us that, you know, we no longer do it manually. But at the same time we know where they’re at. And we know the challenges that they’re having in and they would if I was in front of them, they will say but oh my gosh, but we now have to you know, the next ones coming you know, we’ve been talking so much about return to office the last two months with them and they’re all different all kinds of different things and how they’re trying to be creative about it. And then follow their own rules when they’re doing it but it is so fun to watch and to see how important HR has become to every single organization because of role they play with the employee. It’s beautiful to watch.

Brent Skinner 39:18
It is beautiful to watch so encouraging and what a great sort of way to kind of conclude this conversation today. I don’t think I could have said it any better you very inspiring, very inspiring sort of developments in this space they thank you. Thank you so much Lena for joining us today.

Lina M. Tonk 39:37
Oh much thanks for having me. I you know I love getting to see you and why get to see you like an all week and a half.

Brent Skinner 39:45
I know it’s coming. Yeah, I know. September’s around the corner. Thank you so much, Lena. It’s been wonderful having you.

Lina M. Tonk 39:55
Thank you, Brent, take care. Take care. Bye bye

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