#HRTechChat: 3Sixty Insights Shares its Takeaways from the HR Technology Conference & Expo

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For those of you who don’t know, Jen Dole has joined the team at 3Sixty Insights as director and principal analyst to dive deep into talent management. Jen and I go back a little bit. The week before last, at HR Technology Conference & Expo, was the first time we saw each other face to face since the first time she and I met. When was that? It was when we were both at Cornerstone. Working in different divisions, we ran into each other at LAX on our way to the company’s 20th anniversary celebration in Palm Springs, Calif., and got to chatting. Later, Jen and I began to talk shop a bit more after she joined Fuel50, which is where she was most recently.

Before pivoting to working for vendors of technology for human capital management, where she focused on client success, Jen was a practitioner in HR — at Fortune 500 firms, no less. And she was there in the bad old days, when technology for HCM was relatively new, especially for talent management. She tells the story of running succession planning on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets at Liberty Mutual Insurance. It was a slow, tedious exercise in administration, and her job changed profoundly once her team finally got ahold of technology purpose-built for this. “I went from being an administrator to being a strategic adviser, because I wasn’t focused on collecting data anymore. The technology was doing that.”

It’s an idea taking hold. More than once earlier this month, at the event, Jen and I heard various renditions of the the idea: access to readily available, current data on the workforce is key to HR’s transforming itself into a strategic advisor to organizational leadership. As the focus, data can orientate even the most administratively hampered HR departments in the direction of the future of work.

And what is the fast-developing, primary dynamic going to be in the future of work? The focus has shifted fundamentally, already, to the employee experience. All anyone had to do was look at the themes of the booths in the expo hall and speak with the vendors and HR professionals in attendance: this train has left the station. As Jen likes to say, and I’m paraphrasing, “People’s definition of success has changed, and employers need to align their definition with this if they want to succeed, too.”

Agreed. And this isn’t just an aspirational HR-centric phenomenon anymore. We see C-suite executives, boards, line managers and just about everyone else clamoring to move in this direction, too. It’s almost as if the wake-up call of a worldwide pandemic jolted everyone into acknowledging that organizations are made up of people. Who knew? I’m thinking about calling it the rise of the sentient organization. The state of the art in technology for HCM is helping us to listen.

We heard plenty of other terms and phrases uttered often at the event: artificial intelligence, intelligent enterprise, FOMO (fear of missing out), empathy, and more. And, in contrast with HR Tech events of years’ past, there were some terms and phrases we didn’t hear all that much. Automation is one. What are some others? Watch the podcast. It is a real pleasure to have Jen on our team. We cannot wait to speak with as many of you as humanly possible and learn as much as we can about your thoughts about and experiences in HCM.

Our #HRTechChat Series is also available as a podcast on the following platforms:

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Transcript:

Brent Skinner 00:00
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to this the latest episode of the HRTechChat video podcast. And with me today is my new colleague here at 3Sixty Insights Jen Dole. Welcome, Jen.

Jennifer Dole 00:17
Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me here today, Brent?

Brent Skinner 00:21
Absolutely. It’s the least that I could do. So you’ve joined us as director and Principal Analyst covering specifically talent management, and I’m thrilled to have you on our team, this is a I mean, this is a real good cats for us to be honest with you. And you and I, we know each other from cornerstone. And that was great. We met at the I think we met at the the anniversary celebration, it was a pump spring.

Jennifer Dole 00:51
Yeah, we were at the airport in LA when we bumped into each other.

Brent Skinner 00:57
That was one of the coolest days of my life, to be honest with you. Maybe you could share with share with the audience, you know, some of your background. I know you have a lot of great ideas.

Jennifer Dole 01:09
Yeah, I’m so super excited to join 3Sixty Insights, it really represents kind of the second pivot of my career. And I’ve been working for about 30 years. The first third was in talent management as a practitioner, here in the Boston area, working for Fortune 500 Slike, Liberty Mutual, and BJs Wholesale Club. And my job changed using technology. I went from being an administrator to being a strategic adviser, because I wasn’t focused on collecting data anymore. The technology was doing that. So the way that I ran performance and succession and internal mobility changed, I drank the Kool Aid, I wanted to go be part of an HR tech vendor. And so I pivoted my career went into customer success at Cornerstone and, and then moved over to fuel 50 For the last couple of years, helping them grow their organization through customer retention. And it’s just been a great journey. And I’m so privileged now to be able to use the skills that I have, in yet another adventure as an industry analyst at 360. And, you know, last week at HR tech, there was such a warm welcome from everyone that we met. And it’s just, it’s an exciting time to be in this space.

Brent Skinner 02:52
It sure is. And, and I’ll just echo that it was a really warm welcome from everybody HR Technology Conference. And, and, you know, we’ve talked about this offline a little bit, it’s great, it’s really, really great to be in real life IRL, you know, and face to face F to F, I think I, I had IRL and F two F in the same sentence and a couple of emails recently with some of the folks that we work with. And, and if I want to just go back, I know that we have some things. So you and I, we’ve talked about this and we have some things we want to share with the audience in terms of our our takeaways, and what was their reaction in terms of HR Technology Conference, because there’s a lot going on, we got a chance to walk the expo floor. If you think swat away a flew a few flies, and maybe we’ll get that story and somehow

Jennifer Dole 03:44
wise today.

Brent Skinner 03:47
You know, it’s funny in my basement office, a finished basement but in sometimes there are quite a few flies and I’ve to spend the first 15 minutes killing them. Maybe TMI for audience, Brenda’s killing flies first thing in the morning, but in any event, you mentioned something that I want to kind of get. That’s a great segue, you mentioned that when you when you got technology, when you were able to really leverage technology and your as a practitioner, you find yourself suddenly able to be strategic. As an agent, your role is and your charter as an HR person suddenly and drastically changes. I mean, that’s night and day from administrative person to strategic person. And there’s a lot of that going on in the industry right now. Maybe you can share just a little bit deeper dive in terms of what did give us an example of what that looks like maybe.

Jennifer Dole 04:42
Yeah, so I was responsible for succession planning, and it would take weeks to send out an Excel spreadsheet to meet with the business leaders to collect the information. In, in a format that we needed, and make sure that it was complete. Before we did our analysis, it was weeks. And it was painful. And nobody wanted to spend time doing it. But it was mandated. And when we brought in technology, and we used it to collect the data and bring some insights, my conversations changed with the business leaders, it went from fill out this form to let’s have a conversation around these high potentials, and what types of experiences that they need to be able to continue to grow in their career and contribute to our organization? It was that day.

Brent Skinner 05:48
That doesn’t, that’s a really good example, one thing that stuck out to me is, you know, it was almost, and I think about, you know, design functionality designed for some of these solutions, right. He fill out this form. I mean, that’s, that’s your hobbled? Right from the get go when you’re entering a conversation with a business leader with that question. Right, as opposed to getting that out of the way and getting into those deeper conversations that that to me, that set it all in what you described right there. That that’s my,

Jennifer Dole 06:25
yeah, I mean, going to business leaders with insights about their business that are data driven. I was really lucky to do that 20 years ago.

Brent Skinner 06:35
I know, I’m thinking about, you know, how far we’ve come in terms of technology. And in sort of the conversation, the attitudes around what HR should be. And I guess this really is a good segue, we have a little game that we want to play here. And, and so let’s just let’s dive right into it. What are some of the words and phrases that that that we heard a lot last week at HR Technology Conference? Because there’s definitely different than before, but what were some of the words, some of the words, we heard a lot in phrases?

Jennifer Dole 07:12
I mean, more than once or twice in every conversation was the word intelligence?

Brent Skinner 07:19
Yeah. And, and, you know, and it’s kind of, you know, that’s a word that, that a lot of the AI based vendors have, sort of, sort of, you know, they’ve taken to, to describe what they do. And I think I think it’s a really good explanation. And it’s certainly a little bit more descriptive and readily accessible to folks then, then the actual term AI, which we also heard a lot last week,

Jennifer Dole 07:50
we did hear that a lot. Yeah. package that with data, right. And these data driven decisions,

Brent Skinner 07:59
data, going back to, you know, your examples, and even from 20 years ago, having data at your disposal is it’s really transformative for the HR for the HR role. FOMO, we heard, which is for the non millennials and Gen Z’s around there were Gen X, I think, but we’re kind of hip. So we know that FOMO means fear of missing out. That’s when we heard a lot of

Jennifer Dole 08:26
Yeah, and I think that was really kind of describing the buyer, right, so much of the HR technology has been for the early adopters, some of these really innovative ideas. And now they’re talking about how it’s changed to the customer having a fear of missing out in getting this technology and this process and this innovation into their workplace.

Brent Skinner 08:52
Yeah, there’s sort of, do you think about this, this sort of just, it’s this overarching, just feeling that we’re, that we’re stepping into the future of work every day. Now. And there’s this whole entire, you know, cornucopia of possibilities out there. And yeah, nobody wants to miss out on that. And it’s certainly a compelling argument to get your administrative sort of, you know, old style HR stuff under control. So you can be strategic.

Jennifer Dole 09:24
Yep, yep. Another thing I heard from a lot of people was that the vendors are eating their own dog food, drinking their own champagne eating their own chocolate pose to describe it. But they’re, they’re learning a lot by using the technology within their organizations. So they’re both the provider and the customer.

Brent Skinner 09:51
You know, what’s interesting about that is, first of all, right off the bat, if if, if I’m, if I’m looking at a vendor If they use their own solution, then they have automatically just earned so many brownie points with me, you know, that’s this, to me, that is, you know, not every vendor can use their own solution necessarily, they might be on something else. And it might be just an issue of getting the old plate the old thing off, getting rid of the old thing to use their own, so we get it, but, but whenever they’re using their own solution, it means a lot. And in to me, it almost fits into this whole idea that, you know, a lot of the vendors in HR, they, the vendor, vendors of HR technology, they, they talk a lot about blending their, their, their consumer brand, and their employer brand, right. There’s a we had a conversation recently with one of the players in the space isolved, and was actually one of the HR Tech Chat episodes, we spoke with the VP of marketing, and, and she has strategy meetings every single day with their chief people officer. And they and I don’t quote me on this, everyone out there in the ether, but I do believe they use their own solution. But they very much consider their employer brand and their consumer brands one in the same. And I think that’s really interesting in this space. Because a lot of employers, they look to the vendor as sort of the, the ideal of the employer culture that they themselves can be. If they use if they kind of if they incorporate the best practices and, and approaches that, that the vendor does. So I think that’s interesting. And when you can use your own solution as that vendor, it just it kind of solidifies and amplifies it and amplifies is the right word, that that that confluence of the of the two brands.

Jennifer Dole 11:49
Yeah, I think one of the best stories we heard was from the Chief Marketing Officer of vizier, and how by using their own technology, it’s really changed his conversation with the HR business partner in terms of the insights about talent that they’re bringing to Him. And to help help build the capabilities of the marketing organization. I thought it was a great story.

Brent Skinner 12:15
It was a great story. And what was also great about that conversation as we, we learned that he was from New Hampshire, and you and I were joking, that I always go to these events, fully expecting not to meet anybody else from New Hampshire. And this fellow is from New Hampshire. So I went to UNH where I went to school. And so that was kind of a funny, kind of tangent as well. But you know, the thing about data is that I think that what he said was that his VP of HR was presenting is has been presenting him with information, that he didn’t realize it that he pleasantly surprised, didn’t know that he should be paying attention to so it’s made him better in his role, which is really interesting. If you think about HR becoming strategic, right? It’s, it’s almost on one level, it feels like this huge lift this almost daunting task. But on the other hand, if you can just get a solution in place that produces and presents you with real time readily accessible data, then just draw on that and present that to your leadership. And it’ll almost happen on its own for you to become strategic. Right. Yeah, it’s about keeping the conversation going. Yeah, yeah. We heard about, we heard about empathy. We heard a lot about that last week, right?

Jennifer Dole 13:42
Yeah, balanced with efficiency, like, people are not just looking for efficient solutions anymore. They’re going beyond that, looking for ways to help their people, or people leaders be more empathetic in the process. Yeah,

Brent Skinner 14:03
yeah. You and I’ve had some conversations internally here around the idea. The ideas, excuse me of efficiency and empathy. And it’s really interesting. I love that that was a term that was sort of a duality that you that you came up with, which was a nice sort of evolution from what we’ve been talking about for a while concrete and abstract ATAR or HCM, some of this concrete stuff being or being based around efficiencies, right? Finding reductions in labor expenditure, like minimizing that administrative load through automation or through complex automation with machine learning and this kind of stuff, right? But at some point, you need to be as an HCM or HR practitioner, you need to be focused on on the empathy or the abstract stuff like building an employer culture, you know, being having being influential in terms of the employee experience, contributing to Whoo, strong positive employee sentiment, right? All this stuff that that cause draws on completely different skill sets than being a good administrator. Right? Caught? Yeah. Yeah. And in what’s really cool is that just like, just like every process in HCM really is concrete and abstract at the same time. In my opinion, you can’t have empathy without efficiency. Hmm. I mean, because you think about it, right? If you’re, if you’re focused, it’s really about emancipating, the HR leader and the HR practitioner, right, you’re mired in, in administration, you’re trying to get out of that to be something bigger to be maybe what you went into HR for, right? When it you had this vision you wanted, you’re a people person, you sort of a chief people officer, sort of minded type of person, even if you aren’t actually the chief people, officer. But if you’re dealing with all this inefficiency, there’s no room for you to be empathetic. Right. And yet, and you know, and so, what’s interesting, in terms of some of the terms that we didn’t hear as much during the show last week was that, in my opinion, we’re kind of we’ve crossed the Rubicon. You know, we I don’t think we’re really, I don’t think we’re ever going to go back to when we put it differently. And I’m curious what your opinion is here. I think we’ve solved for automation, there are a lot of there are a lot of employers that themselves in every instance they haven’t solved or automation, but the state of the art of technology today, in HCM has solved for automation for most of the HR processes that are out there. So if you have a good deployment of technology, then, you know, it’s no longer the yearning or the quest of our market space is no longer resting on this on this notion of well, we need to we need to improve automation. we’ve kind of gotten there.

Jennifer Dole 17:22
Yeah, I mean, we didn’t hear a lot about automation at all, at HR tech. No, at all.

Brent Skinner 17:30
I mean, it was Yeah, I don’t even know if I heard it once.

Jennifer Dole 17:34
Yeah, I think, you know, people are just expecting it now.

Brent Skinner 17:41
It’s perfunctory. Right. I mean, I’ve even had this conversation with what was who was it? plansource, which is a benefits and benefits focused? point solution. Right. And in the past, you know, just looking back and where I’ve been previously, what I’ve heard the vendors talking about, it’s a lot about, you know, making open enrollment, you know, a manageable process. If, if there’s anything outside of payroll that can potentially be just a real, just, you know, Snake Pit of administration and like too much to do and just overwhelming its benefits. Open enrollment, right. But that has been solved for a long time. Not every single employer has a solution in place. But that stuff is out there. And what was really interesting is that plansource, they, they refer to themselves as a benefits engagement platform. Hmm. Isn’t that interesting?

Jennifer Dole 18:46
That is interesting. And it makes me think about the shift now for moving away from just an automation focus, and going to this efficiency and empathy. It’s really about how people and technology work together to deliver on the outcomes. It’s not about replacing people anymore.

Brent Skinner 19:10
You agree. I totally agree. And in fact, was speaking with another Bennett’s benefits related platform yesterday, and I might be mispronouncing their name now. Yeah. But, but they talked about this, this idea that technology is not replacing people. It’s anything it’s you know, it’s it’s just, you know, this is not the sexiest word but I call it prosthetics right. For people. You know, it kind of helps extend our, our capability to be more human. Yes, yeah. Because you think about AI in the space, right? That’s kind of I don’t remember where I heard this. I wish I could remember, but I don’t remember the percentage either. This so this stat I’m about to share with you. Is going to be watered down at But I think it has some impact anyway, this idea that HR folks, you know, if you’d asked them, say 10 years ago, if they were afraid of AI, possibly replacing them, there was sort of just a, an a amorphous kind of, you know, fear of it, right. And they said, Yeah, like, I’m worried about AI replacing people, you know, you got the, you know, Skynet, and you know, Terminator and all that kind of stuff. Right. But more. I know, I had to work Skynet into this, but but but more recently, it’s almost like they’re they want AI, you know? Yeah, I’m looking forward to AI making my job easier. Yeah,

Jennifer Dole 20:46
I think it circles back to that whole idea of intelligence was such a key theme this past week.

Brent Skinner 20:54
And you think about in debt reminds me of intelligence? You know, that’s one of the things a lot of the AI players, they’re referring to themselves as intelligence platform providing intelligence, this sort of thing? And, you know, just from my perch, I would, I would, first of all, I would say intelligence is great messaging, I love that. It’s, it’s getting away from artificial intelligence, because artificial intelligence, it has a buzz, that’s great, but also can be detrimental, it can be sort of take away from your messaging, right? So AI is sort of the overarching messaging, right, that the entire industry can kind of get under that air cover, right. But talking about as it as intelligence kind of translates the conversation to something else, which is much more as much more colorful, I think, which is great. But I would challenge those vendors to take it even a step further and say, Okay, what is intelligence meet? What are the outcomes?

Jennifer Dole 21:54
And, you know, the conversation shifted from vendors coming to us talking about their features and their functions, to really talking about the big impact that they’re having on the problems in organizations.

Brent Skinner 22:14
That’s right. We didn’t really hear anybody talking about feature functionality. Something here there, it was, really, it was truly novel and innovative. And I would say, as a, as a blanket statement, right? If you have new functionality that truly is novel and innovative, and it’s going to, it’s going to really it’s going to resonate with your, with your total addressable market. And sure, you know, highlight that, right. But it’s, it’s the conversation is shifting in terms of why people are going to these various vendors for solutions, I think. And you’re making me think of all these things, right. So here’s another thing, right? There’s, there will always be an up and coming crop of small businesses that need to say, need to solve for efficiency sell for concrete HCM? Right. They, they, they have accidental HR people, right? That may be the founder or somebody else who came on very early, and they’re dealing with this stuff, because they have to, because if they don’t, they’re going to get in trouble with the law or something. A ticket to the game. Yeah, yeah. So ticket to the game. And, and so they’re at this point where they definitely are focused on just, you know, they’re crying uncle, like, you know, I got to fix this so that I can focus on my business, right. And so it’s almost see this duality, where they see HR see the efficiency thing, and they see the businesses, you know, all the innovation and all that, what I think they don’t necessarily grasp. And if I would, if I were in that situation, if I weren’t in some parallel reality, where I were living that, that life, I wouldn’t be thinking that this either. So I just want the audience to be kind of, I’m not up here, high and mighty, say, you know, they’re not thinking about the, sort of the, the, the togetherness of that is the mutuality of that, right? When you solve for administration, you can become more strategic you, you free yourself up for time. And so what’s really interesting about those companies is that, you know, small businesses, they are interested in hearing about automation and all that kind of stuff. And so, that’s, I guess that’s a word of caution to the space is that, you know, be be cognizant of those smaller companies that are up and coming that you can might be able to resonate with by approaching them with with a, with a more conventional traditional message, right. But But the other piece of it is that don’t be afraid to introduce them to the empathy to the app. abstract HCM to the possibilities, right? Because that’s exactly the time when, when that’s the best time for any organization to embrace that. You don’t want to be in a situation where you’re like, Oh, now you’re a three 5000 employee company, and you just looked at HCM is this caught hrs is cost center to contain the whole time. And now it’s like this big cultural transformation you need to undergo and toward in order to become, you know, fully realized, yeah,

Jennifer Dole 25:29
we have that conversation with Mike and eightfold. That’s right, the battleship and he’s like, No, it’s an oil tanker.

Brent Skinner 25:38
Biggest, you know, it’s an oil rig. I mean, you know, you know, yeah, like, how do you move? If you’re a small company, you can you move pretty quickly. Sorry to be so animated today, like, physically, but, you know, you’re if you’re a large organization, that’s absolutely right, you can’t move it that quickly, you can sort of, it’s more of a suggestion to move the organism to pivot. And when you get larger, as opposed to when you’re small, you can pivot pretty, pretty aggressively and quickly.

Jennifer Dole 26:08
And in my experience, the smaller organizations are maybe creating something for the first time. So you can get in there and help them to create the future, versus the larger organizations that have already had some practices. It is that that change that shift, and it takes time and intention?

Brent Skinner 26:33
You’re absolutely right about that. And in any no thinking about it, as long as we’re on this, right? When you’re a large organization, so I would put them in maybe two camps. And this might be too simplistic, but some of them they get it, they are they are kind of you know, they do understand that HCM is strategic, and that’s great. And some of them don’t yet. And so, with the ones that don’t yet, you know, there might be sort of the germ of a realization that we need to make a change some, maybe it’s been festering for a while. And, and somebody says, Well, you know, we got to change the technology, right? Maybe the technology that they have in place is just isn’t that great, they want the next best thing, or with the new the new stuff, maybe there’s hobbled with some sort of an old deployment or whatever. And it’s really interesting in those situations, because you know, that none of this happens in a vacuum, right? You know, you change, you’d go through a digital transformation. You almost can’t help but go through an HR transformation, if you’re going through a digital transformation. But you got to also make sure that you don’t have too much resistance internally, culturally to an HR transformation, lest your digital transformation end up, you know, not having the impact that you wanted it to.

Jennifer Dole 27:55
Brand. How did we get through this conversation? So far? Without talking about the employee experience?

Brent Skinner 28:02
Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, you’re right. My bad? It’s, I mean, it is the center, it is the gravitational force for everything right now.

Jennifer Dole 28:18
It sure is. And, you know, I think everyone is, is looking for that human centric design of process for the employee experience. And there are just some really cool ways that companies are, are aligning the individual and the organizational new definition of success.

Brent Skinner 28:49
Yeah, absolutely. There is a new definition of success. And that’s something that you’ve been sort of harping on for a while now. And I totally agree. And I would just add that if you’re an organization that thinks that, well, you know, we’re, we have the power and maybe you’re not necessarily thinking that explicitly, but maybe you don’t even realize you’re thinking that right, you kind of are just thinking you’re maybe in this mode, where you think things are gonna kind of come back or whatever, and it is not, it is not if you are an organization, you’re expecting the individual to recalibrate their definition of success to revert back to the old sort of definition. Your you are going to struggle, no matter, you know, this site of complete economic implosion globally, which I guess is possible. But,

Jennifer Dole 29:43
I mean, the best example, to highlight that struggle is in the companies that are mandating a return to office.

Brent Skinner 29:53
No. What are they thinking?

Jennifer Dole 29:56
What are they thinking? And why are they micromanage And J attendance in the office.

Brent Skinner 30:03
It’s weird. It’s weird. You know, I read some, it’s, it’s in one of our repo, it was in the return to work report that, that we published in January of this year, but there was they did some, some research where this sort of this, this chimera, if you will, of, of, you know, you know, impromptu spontaneous innovation that happens from you know, just being in proximity physically to each other in an office. Most of it is most of it is a is a myth. Mm hmm. It’s a myth. It is a myth. You know, we’ve all been in. We’ve all been in, in person office environments where, you know, that there’s just there’s a ton of anecdotal evidence out there in the ether, I’m sure of it, that just puts the lie to it. You know, I’ve personally have been found. To have I’ve, I’ve experienced much more gratifying sort of collaborative innovation. Working from home. Yeah. With the technology, we have now, run zoom today, for instance, right. You know, that’s, to me, that’s just, there is no compelling rationale.

Jennifer Dole 31:25
You know, culture is not the workspace, culture, and is how we come together as people and collaborate and tell our stories, and, and achieve our outcomes. And you can do that from anywhere.

Brent Skinner 31:43
You’re absolutely correct. Culture is not a place, that that’s a great, that’s a great thing. You know, one thing that struck me, that reminded me, I wanted to bring it up during this conversation. And this is a nice segue. It seems like, you know, collectively, that that’s always a wishy washy term, and I’m sorry, I used it, but collectively, it feels like the industry, and maybe, maybe it just in general, the business, the business, the world of business. We’ve reached this point where everybody kind of realizes that at a weird, deeper level now, what was always true, and that is that organizations are people to, you know, I like to call it like the sentient organization like you know, this, there’s, we’ve reached that point where we realize, oh, wait a minute, the business is not maybe it’s a better way of putting it businesses or people to the business is not just a bunch of numbers on the GL, right? Or, you know, the next quarter’s profits, or were revenue targets or whatever, those are all important. But everything else, literally everything. There’s not one single thing that does not go back to people, right. And we finally reached that point where we’re looking at ourselves as businesses, as comprising people, we wouldn’t have a business no matter what business you are, you wouldn’t have one without your people.

Jennifer Dole 33:17
Yeah. And experience, it’s about creating experiences for people to be successful. There’s their idea of success, along with the organization achieving their idea of success. Can the two live together? Well, they,

Brent Skinner 33:39
they, I would say that, that, that ultimately, they’re the they’re one in the same. Right? Yeah, we’re, we’re this is we’re talking about people, technology, we’re getting back to, you know, in fact, there’s some organizations, they’re renaming the HR departments and to something else, like people success and whatever. And I see that as a great sort of leap forward, you know, it’s, it’s not, you know, not getting rid of the idea of HR but calling it what it really should be called right. And creating the conditions for your people to be as satisfied as possible and they’re where they’re working with their experience their work their working experience, their experience on the job so that they can be that they’ll be most apt to devote discretionary effort right to to the betterment to the to the betterment of the organization, because they see their own their own their own stake in it right. This gets into all these terms like quiet quitting and all this stuff. If you have a problem with quiet quitting at your organization. Sure. There’s always there’s always going to be a certain sort of subset of people that are just kind of underperformers you know, are they you know, they have by their problems they get to where maybe they should go see their therapists. But that right, for the rest of the organization, most people want to contribute. And so you got to create the conditions where they’re going to be inspired.

Jennifer Dole 35:15
Yeah. And so we heard this from John at betterworks, talking about the focus on the employee experience is actually changing the manager experience. And how can we enable managers

Brent Skinner 35:36
to

Jennifer Dole 35:37
shift their way to be that internal coach, to have a drive those conversations that help people be successful? How do you have that more kind of performance feed forward? Is that Is that right?

Brent Skinner 35:59
performance, performance feed forward? I don’t know what it’s

Jennifer Dole 36:05
not about feedback anymore. Right. It’s really about like, How can I share some insight and observation with you so that going forward, you’re able to contribute? It’s

Brent Skinner 36:18
about encouragement. Yeah. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, giving managers the tools to be to be people to instead of managers to be leaders, right. And in also know, honestly, putting in place some measures to understand, you know, which of your people are the best potential leaders versus, you know, managers just by default or whatever? Right. There’s, there’s a lot going on there. We had a great conversation with John over betterworks. And I’d be remiss without saying that, that the people success department I was thinking about is that actually a unit for where Mike idling is? See, we had some great conversations around culture, and all that too. You know, that that that employee experience is just it’s, it’s absolutely central, it’s, it’s the people experience, your people experience is at your inside your organization, is. If it’s if it’s struggling, then you’re going to be struggling as an organization. And I’m looking at the time here, but I just want to say that I wonder if it even should be called employee experience anymore. Maybe it’s something else, maybe it’s employee? Well, we had there’s a narrowly defined narrow definition of something called well-being and their organ, there are vendors that address employee well being and that’s a great definition. But I wonder if the entire employee experiences is really about employee well being.

Jennifer Dole 37:44
I think maybe that’s a topic for another day. It could be

Brent Skinner 37:47
it could be maybe that’s our next. And by the way, we want everybody to know here that we’re going to be doing conversations like this agenda, and I on a regular basis. And so if anyone has suggestions, feel free to ping the organization. But um, but in the meantime, maybe that is the next the next topic. You know, what’s, what’s the next term from play experience? Good? Maybe we’re ready? Yes, we’re ready for that.

Jennifer Dole 38:15
This has been a lot of fun. Again, I’m just so excited to be part of 3Sixty Insights. And, you know, storytelling around how customers are achieving success with these innovations and technology. It’s just, it’s a really cool place to be.

Brent Skinner 38:37
Well, thank you. It’s exciting. We’re so pleased to have you with us. And, and we just, we can’t wait to do all this and just expand and expand and talk to as many customer users as possible and learn. Learn what they’re experiencing and tell their stories. Yeah, let’s get started. All right. Have a good day, Jen.

Jennifer Dole 38:59
Thanks, you too.

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