LIVE! Employee engagement in times of crisis (why bother?), with Jeffrey Fermin and Kristien Turner

Hello and welcome to Truth Lies and Work. What you're about to hear is from one of our

recent LinkedIn lives, a live panel discussion where we dig into the big question shaping

modern work. If you'd like to join us for the next one, just search for Leanne Elliott.

That's me on LinkedIn and hit follow. We announced them their first and we obviously launched

them their first. Right, let's go into it after a quick message from our lovely sponsors.

You know that feeling when you've decided on a content strategy. The brief is written

everyone's aligned and you realise someone's still has to sit down and actually create all this

content. That's someone of you and it's due tomorrow. That's someone who's often me. But

luckily, Breeze Assistant can help. It works right inside HubSpot, drafting campaign copy and

blog parks and e-mails all in your brand voice. It's grounded in your actual customer data too.

So you don't just create content. You create content that convert. What a line. Check out

HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

Okay, okay, okay, all right, all right, all right.

Me.

Welcome everybody. We're going to leave it just a minute or so to make sure as many people can

join us from the beginning as possible. But yeah, nice to have you here if you're already with us.

If you're watching the recording, you missed it. But luckily, we recorded it. So you are right.

What was more important than this? Well, while we wait for everybody to come in,

should we just all shout out where we all are in the world? So Jeff,

which one to start off and tell us where you are in the world and what the weather's like because we're

British. I am in warm and sunny Tampa, Florida where it's around 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

There's a nice little breeze out. And as I was bragging, I felt like when I went out for a stretch

earlier, I could have sworn I heard squirrel singing and I felt like snow white kind of getting up

this morning. I was like, wow, I can't wait to join this podcast. Then I came in here and heard

about your weather situation and kind of felt bad bragging. Well, I mean, yeah, so I'm in

Mexico City, beautiful sunny weather today. But we've had all full storms the last couple of days.

So definitely hasn't been living up to the the Mexican stereotype. But beautiful to be here with

you all really excited about this podcast today. We're going to get into it with some really

timely topics. And yeah, can't wait to get started. Fabulous. And Georgia, we're about to you

in the world. I am in the UK in all places, Leicester. I'll be supporting on the text slide today.

Fabulous. And regulation is nowhere we, Ali, aren't they?

Yeah, we're in Bosnia and Herzgovina. It's really windy today. We were just saying to the guys

before we came on. We've had two power cuts today. So there was a chance that we both might just

disappear at any moment. But if that happens, Georgia, Jeffrey and Christian have said they're fine

to just crack on with ours. So yeah, well, someone will be here.

And if anyone's from re-streams watching us, then just tell us what happens when the host's

computer just shuts down? Does that mean the whole room holds someone else who will find out?

Yeah, definitely nodding. Yeah. So we may all be taken off off live. Georgia, have you got any news

on whether we are live or not? We are, we are live and we went live just halfway through Jeffrey's

weather announcement. Oh, we're not going to ask for anything in the night.

It was sunny, okay? Yeah, we get it. Okay, Lee.

Well, welcome, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Truth Lies and Work Live. If you haven't heard

of us, we are the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture and we

are brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals.

My name is Leanne. I'm a charge occupational psychologist. My name is Al. I'm a business owner.

And together, we help you simplify the science work and create amazing workplace cultures.

Today, we are talking about employee engagement in times of crisis.

The world is in a bit of a strange moment right now. I don't want to say that

it's all doomed, but there's a sense of, of, of that.

More of our escalating and economies are under pressures and layoffs keep making the headlines

and a lot of employees are doing what we call jobhucking. They're staying where they are and it's

not necessarily out of loyalty. It's more of fear, which raises a slightly uncomfortable question

for leaders. Does employee engagement even matter right now? Because when businesses are focused

on survival, things like culture and trust can quickly slip down a priority list. But how

organisations behave during difficult periods, tends to stick for better or for us. So in this

episode, we'll be unpacking what uncertainty actually does to trust motivation and retention.

And what really matters if you want to keep people engaged when things feel stable.

Because let's be honest, the research is pretty clear on this.

Organisations that continue to invest in their people during downturns come out stronger.

And it's not in like a feel-good way. It's in a real commercial way. It's productivity,

retention and how quickly they recover. To help us dive into this today, we are joined by two

phenomenal guests. We have Christian Turner. He is the CEO and founder of TK Talent Group.

He has been around two decades working at HR globally, including leader and player brand at HSBC

and has been involved in over 100,000 hires. He also has a master's in organisation

psychology from Harvard. Nice. And he's got a perspective on things that I think is really

going to challenge how a lot of leaders think about employee engagement right now.

We are also joined by Jeffrey Firmin, regular listeners. Well, no, we've had Jeffrey on very recently,

actually. Jeffrey has spent over a decade working at the intersection of HR and technology.

He was part of the founding team at Office 5 and has worked across a number of HR tech companies.

He now leads demand generation at all voices. It's a platform built around the idea that

employees need a real voice at work, not just a selection box, selection box like it's Christmas.

I wouldn't mind that. We are also joined by our associate producer, George, she'll be moderating

the comments section and we'll be sharing your thoughts and questions with us throughout the panel

to do pop anything on your mind in the comments section. Everybody, welcome. Welcome.

You said it up very nicely. Fantastic intro. 10 out of 10.

Thank you very much. I want to dive straight in because we've got a lot, a lot we can talk about

on this and Christian, I want to come to you first. You've said engagement isn't the same as

commitment and actually that the people planning to leave can often look more engaged in the ones

who stay. Can you talk us through that? Yeah, I think that's really basic psychology. That's

that moment where people just go and I'm not going to start swearing on LinkedIn live, but they just

kind of give up. They just go, we don't care anymore. We know what's going on. We've seen this

happen before. We've seen this blueprint. We're seeing our colleagues getting fired with a moment's

notice. We're reading the news headlines. We are disengaged, but you know what, that employment

survey comes around once a year and I've got to give my scores out of 100 and I'm going to just put

95 because why rock the boat? Because I think a lot of people assume and rightly so that certainly

in small teams, that's identifiable information. So I think when companies talk about the confidential

employee engagement survey, we've got to make sure that it really is confidential. If you want

a surface, what's really going on in your org? Because I've seen a lot of times certainly in mid-size

and smaller organizations where that supposed confidentiality does not exist. You put on your

scores there and guess what? Two weeks later, you're out of a job. So I think people are starting

just to kind of cocoon. I think they're starting to shut down. They're not really saying what's

happening behind the scenes. And that becomes a pretty complex situation to manage through because

your employees are kind of lying to you, but they're saying, hey, what? Management's lying to us

as well. So why do we need to be the ones speaking up here? There's this kind of real disconnect.

And I think as we go through the conversation today, we're going to talk about, you know, from the

candidates viewpoint, I'm coaching, you know, I've coached hundreds of people through these

situations, but at the moment, I've got kind of 15 incredible coaches and senior positions that are

all thinking, what's next? Many of whom are looking to kind of ditch out on corporate life. They're

saying, you know, there's got to be more to life than this. We want to go into the gig economy. We

want to go into, you know, doing fractional. We want to open our own business. The candidates

feeling this. They're being ghosted. They're applying to a thousand jobs and getting no responses on

any of these kind of AI-infused ETS platforms. That's the candidate. And then the companies are

saying to me, Christian, we can't find talent. Where's the talent? There's a war for talent, but we

can't find them. Where are the technologists? Where are the data scientists? So both sides kind of

have their very strong viewpoints on what's happening in the job market right now. And they're not

meeting. We're not meeting in the middle. Everyone's going in kind of a separate direction.

It's a tough old time out there. Doesn't matter if you're in Mexico City, if you're Miami, Florida,

you're in London. This is happening everywhere. This is not a localized problem. This is not a,

this is not an America's or a European thing. This is global. Everyone is feeling the pinch in the

job market at the moment. The employers and the employee, Jeff. I want to just add by saying in my

experience, when I, you know, we saw these large data sets at Office 5, found that like high

engagement scores didn't really necessarily mean that you had a healthy culture. And when it's a

fear-based economy and employers market, you know, people might mark that they're satisfied because,

you know, the alternative is really unemployment. And that's not really engagement. That's really a

matter of just like living in here and saying like, I'm going to stay as long as possible. I'm

going to hug this job for, you know, as long as I can and write this thing out. And hopefully

that next opportunity. The other thing I'd like to add, and God, I'm going to be the one to drop a

morbid analogy here in a group of roots. I can't believe I'm the one to do it. But it's almost like

that whole notion of like before someone feels like they're about to pass, they kind of have like

all this energy in the world. So as you're kind of ready to leave an organization, you're like,

hey, I'm pretty much done. Yeah, I'm going to do all these things. I'm going to knock them all

out. And employees just kind of navigating under that same kind of psyche where they're like,

my time here is done. I'm pretending to be engaged and care about the organization and do all

these things. But the reality is they're probably on their way out. And I could assume right now that

folks, you know, given all the uncertainty in the world and the doom and gloom that we get from

the news, the 24 hour news cycle is just constantly pushing all this negativity towards us.

I'd say that yeah, like right now we're in a not given F kind of mood as employers kind of

navigating the market. And we're just kind of saying like, what's the worst that could happen?

Let me go out. Let me do my job hunting stuff. Let me work with folks like Christian and help get

me out there. And when the time comes, I'm just going to like, you know, bring my positive attitude

elsewhere. So yeah, I think, yeah, that's all I got on that one. I need to call out the elephant

in the room because obviously we're on LinkedIn. And I know people would have seen some of the

posts I've written on LinkedIn. And Jeffrey and I met initially because of a post I put on

calling out office vibe for not doing what it it said it was meant to be doing to be fair though.

My experience with office vibe was was post Jeffrey firming. So there is that. But we then had

you on the podcast and we taught very openly about this. If anyone hasn't heard that, go and listen

to Jeffrey's episode, we address the kind of office vibe story head on. So I don't want to repeat

that here. But what I do want to ask you Jeffrey is, as you say, if people are kind of in that,

I think it's called the surge isn't it in medical terms when you have that surge of energy before

before the end, if people are kind of having that that energy boost, knowing that they've, you know,

that when the time's right, they're going to move on. What should lead is be measuring at this point

to understand what what is going on and how people are thinking and feeling in the workforce?

Yeah. I'd be getting ahead of ourselves with this one, but right now, engagement levels are at,

you know, a COVID level rate when it comes to engagement rates. And I always like to say the

foundations of employee engagement really comes down to, you know, listening to your employees.

Truly, that's it. Like we try and overcomplicate these things, even at office vibe, we had 10 different

drivers for employee engagement and we tried to put a lot of science in there. I'm going to leave

that up to what I call the big brains. You, you know, Christian, all the org-site folks that really

understand the science behind it. At the, I guess, the most foundational or fundamental level,

it's really about listening. And I think managers and HR folks alike should just, you know, not have

notes, not have documentation, just go out there, talk to their employees and really listen to

concerns. Let's go human to human, right? What's the main, main word over in human resources,

right? Like the human component of it needs to be really maximized within these turbulent times.

And we need to start having conversations and really understand you want to have a productized

version of that, that's fine, but just make sure everything is kind of written down and you're

understanding what's going on on the day to day in your workforce. And, you know, really like,

I can't stress it enough. Really sit down and talk with folks and understand what are some of

the things that are bothering you? You know, what are some of the things that we might not be offering

you as an organization to help you, you know, do your job effectively?

To, you know, are we providing a psychologically safe environment for you to thrive in?

Are we meeting all your needs, your expectations? I'm sure we're going to get into it in a little

bit, but are we, are we doubling down during this turbulent time to make sure that you are engaged,

you're satisfied with your job? And can we keep you beyond what's now become commonplace, a three to

four-year job period or job cycle, right? Like, I feel like there's ways that we can really extend

that average life cycle out of job from three to four years and get back to that point where

you're a career person at an organization. And I do think the foundation at very base level,

we just need to get back to listening and talking and communicating with that said, you know,

I don't want to sound too cool in my eyes and like we're in a fireside. I want to open it up to

you, Organizational Psychologist, I'll hear and see what you all have to say.

Look, I've been involved, I think there's some great points that I've been involved in these

dashboards where you've got like a hundred different elements and the data's flying around and

there's 150,000 people and I want heat maps and I want pulse checks and I want to measure,

you know, every single indicator that's known under the sun. And I think there's really now two

things we should be looking at. You know, you can make it super complex, you can bring in every single

HR consultant from around the world, every big four accountancy firm to put kind of a really

sophisticated, there's two things that any small, medium or large business should be doing.

I think the first thing is are we attractive? And I think the best pulse check, the best

acid check for are we an attractive organization? Do people want to join us? Look at your hiring

metrics. Like, can I, can I convince people to come and work here in the first place?

That for me is just such a great way of looking at, you know, is this a great workplace?

Have we built the right culture? Is this somewhere that people want to come and and participate?

Look at your hiring metrics. If you're struggling to find people, now, well, you know,

I'm going to be honest here, if you're looking for a thousand full stack engineers at the moment

and you're looking for 500 data scientists, I'm not sure, you know, if you're, if you're finding

it hard to find those particular characters, that might not be a reflection of your company

organization, it might just be around supply and demand. You know, there's certain job families

that are unbelievably hot that had these opportunities to work remotely from one corner of the world

with another earning huge dollar, dollar ice salaries. But generally, you look at those hiring

metrics and you're seeing that you're getting a 68% offer decline or you're seeing that it's

taking you 80 days to get, you know, applications for these 50 jobs you're trying to fill. You know,

you can look at any of those hiring metrics and I think that gives you a great idea as to whether or

not your organization today is attractive or not. And we're going to get into that a little bit

later because I'm really passionate about employer brand. I'm passionate, Leanne around, you know,

HR need to think a little bit more like a marketing and a communications person because we're selling.

You're selling. You're selling a product. You're selling, you're actually selling the most important

products in somebody's life probably after their family because this is where they're going to

spend the lion's share of their existence. So you've got to think about what you're selling

externally. So we'll get into that a little bit later. But look at those hiring metrics.

If you're a company founder, if you're ahead of sales, if you're a commercial director,

if you're ahead of HR and you're struggling to find people, something's going wrong, something's

going wrong. And that second metric, and I love this, this is so much better than a retention metric,

I'm going to say go and glass tour. Go and glass tour is your trip advisor for the job market,

right? So I love it. You go on there, you're going to get a rating. So out of five stars,

a bit like a hotel, if you see that that company's at 2.7 stars and they've got four and a half

thousand comments and everyone's talking about horrible work like balance, everyone's talking about

awful leadership, everyone's talking about horrendous benefits package being exploited.

Well, yeah, don't go. Don't sign up for it. And as a company, you've got to then get

you've got to get some real talk going on in your organization and you've got to say,

hang on a minute, we're sitting here in the Kumbaya kind of meetings in house saying that everything's

great, that our retention's at an all time low at 9%, but externally on the equivalent of trip

advisor on glass tour, we're at a 2.3 or a 2.4. Something's wrong. And so what I love to do as an HR

professional, and I'm sure there's lots of HR professionals watching us now live on LinkedIn,

go and glass tour, look at your company, start to go down into the team that you work with or

represent that part of the business, take some of the comments out and next time that you go to

an ex-girlre meeting, bring them out, talk about John Smith, talk about Susan, let's talk about

Susan, hang on Susan, by the way, there's five comments that have gone up over the last three

months about you and your leadership style. Now, I know that some people don't feel psychologically

safe enough to do that, but I've done that in the past, it's good to be provocative, it's good,

this is the employee voice problem is they're not employees anymore because they're ditched,

they're left. And now they feel like they can really say what it is they're feeling. So I think

I think today, you know, you can over complicate this, we've got so many different data points,

we know that AI will, you know, measure all of those hundreds of data points. I think look at

two things, can you hire easily, and in a decent period of time and decent quality talent

as an organization, and over here, go and look at what they're saying about you after they've left

the premises. Best place to do that at the moment, I still think is on glass tour.

Chris, you know, I think that's such, such, and when you said it's like marketing, man, I could have

just jumped over there and and and giving you a hug. I just, I am so 100% behind that.

Now, one thing I think which is really important to think about with glass stories,

if you have got a negative score or one star, someone pairs enough to go on their right

a review about you. So potentially, they care enough about your organization to, they want it

to be better and a disappoint, bitterly disappointed. So I mean, they sound to me like the one

star sounds to me like the ones that really, really are like the most important thing,

but school me, is that right? Well, kind of, right. I mean, they're obviously the most upset.

They're the ones that are going, my goodness, this was a disaster. I signed up for something and

I got something totally different. You know, if this was a trust pilot review, yeah, you're,

it's awful. You know, they're going on there and manifesting. They've had a horrendous experience.

But you're kind of right. I guess the lower the score as well, and the scores get broken down.

So you get to see what's sitting behind some of those scores. You'll see the emotion behind it.

And I do think there's an element of people that go on there and do this. They're doing it because

they genuinely want the experience to be better for the colleagues they left behind. And maybe for

those friends or graduates in the future that are going to join. So I do think people are doing it.

You know, I don't think it's out of spite. I don't, I don't think many people go on there and

decide to talk about a three, four, five year career with malice or malintent. I genuinely think

they're doing it because they're like, hey, we try to speak up. We try to be honest. We try to manifest

in those different scores and those different forums. Whilst we were employed with you guys,

now the only way that we can share that is taking this to Glassdoor. So you're right. I think

there's a lot to unpack there. But do you know what, a little secret? Most companies don't look at

Glassdoor. They don't care. No, Al, like 95% of HR teams, I don't think have looked at their

Glassdoor scores the last year. They're not looking at those inputs because we're going to use the

employee survey that we spent half a million dollars putting in place. We're going to use what we

did. But we're not going to look external or we're going to find ways to say, oh, there's only

three and a half thousand data points there. So there's a little bit of a, you know, a shutdown

and a bit of a denial going on. My invitation is go and look, feedbacks, a gift, go and see what

they're saying about your organization and take it to your leadership team. Take it to the CEO.

Go and take it to a founder. As a founder, if I was to see comments like that and somebody talking

about my organization that I built with so much, you know, passion and emotion, I would be gutted.

I'd cry. I'd literally have a breakdown and go, how do I improve this? How do I turn this around?

And I kind of want companies to do the same. I want them to go and read what's on there and get

real about it. I don't suppose you've got any good podcast recommendations. Do you know what I do

and coincidentally, this podcast is on the Hobbspot podcast network. Who knew anyway?

The audio professional. We're going to come to that. This old marketing is hosted by Joe Politi

and Robert Rowe and it's brought to you by the Hobbspot podcast network, the audio lian together,

the audio destination, the business professionals, where all podcasts, good podcasts live.

Exactly. Joe and Robert are two of the most well known experts in the content marketing space.

And they talk about the latest content marketing trends and discuss how businesses can use content

to attract and retain customers lovely. Yeah, I've actually been listening. Each podcast show

features a discussion of content marketing headlines. We like headlines. Rants from Joe and Robert

on what's going on in the industry. We like that too. And this old marketing example from the past

that we can learn from is always useful and turning in never more than 60 minutes. Yeah, I love the

recent episode about alternatively influential. These are the micro influencers who have real impact

but they don't have massive follow accounts. Listen to this old marketing, wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, there is an kind of an opposite side of that. A bit of a sneaky side that if you are,

if this is one of your competitors who's got bad scores, you're already there. You were saying

that you want to create the place where someone wants to live. You've now got to check this

to all the things that you can be great at. And then you are going to be somewhere they want to go

and they want to go and work. Jeffrey, you look like something to say. Oh my goodness, I just

wanted to say Christian, you absolutely nailed it. At one point, we were even considering

back in the office five days finding ways to kind of show like how improving certain scores and

certain metrics would tie into glass doors glass doors, horse improvement or decrease, right? Like

I really have nothing else to add. I thought that was fantastic. And I think more HR

practitioners should be looking at their glass doors scores to find issues that might have not

been served surfaced within either engagement surveys or in their relations platform. All these

things could really benefit an organization. And like, yeah, if you're able to like solve those

issues granted, you're getting it from an exit interview or a review system. It's a big win

right there. So massive unlock. I recommend it to thumbs up. There you go. You've all got your

money's worth so far. Leanne, should we get a truth? Should we get some comments and see

you're up to Georgia? They're all rolling in for now. Perhaps we'll come back to it later.

No worries. No worries. I can see some up here and they're old. I think everyone's getting a lot

of love. People talking a lot of the same. You're talking a lot of sense there. Lee, what are your

thoughts and everything? I also love those those data points. I think, yeah, it's getting

honest for you people that have access to the business because nobody's ever honest in

interviews for the same reason. They're moving on. So I think that's really smart and I think

you're absolutely right as well in terms of attracting people into our business. There is of

course the people in our business that we need to think about as well and especially in times of

of crisis. I want to go back to this idea of of job hugging and it's been talked about more and

more. You know, people are staying put not because they're engaged so that, you know, that low

turn of it isn't reflecting high engagement. People are staying because now is not the time to move

on. They feel they have to. I think we all agree that that's a real thing. And what I'm wondering

is as a leader, how might I be able to spot the people who are job hugging to try and intervene

before, you know, that resignation letter comes in. And you're right. Oh, sorry. Jeff, go for it.

I was actually going to say, Christian, you know, you know, the last one I want to piggyback off

of you. Look, let's just start like why are they job, why are they job hugging? Well, because people

are confused. Some are upset, some are angry, some are nervous. I think there's all those kinds of

emotions linked to job hugging. We're trying to look to the market to see what's happening. We're

looking to world wars. We're looking to volatile exchange rate fluctuations, which is affecting

people certainly here in Latin America. You know, there's so many factors where you go, I don't

know what I want to do, where I want to do it under what format, you know, because people are saying,

you know, under format, they're saying, I want to be part of the gig economy, but I also want

health insurance and I also want paid vacation. So is that gig economy the right place for me?

I want to start a business. Do I have the capital? Do I have, do I have the means to start my own

business? So people are kind of just confused, upset, angry, and I definitely have seen over the

last year and a half over the last year and a half really ever since we've been kind of talking about

AI and every single news article and every single business meeting and every single, you know, every,

you know, the AI domination, people are confused and they're nervous. And so they're just kind of

like sitting back going, God, what do I do? Where do I move? What do I do next? How can you spot one?

I think as a leader, you start to see maybe, you know, one tell tell sign is they start to get

involved in too many extracurricular activities. And so definitely, I think a sign is, if you're

your top performer and your team is suddenly, you know, really involved in some incredible charity work

or is suddenly, you know, suddenly decided that they're going to go and do a masters in org psychology,

for example, or they're suddenly decided, I think you can take that as a sign of, not always,

but you could take that as a sign of, we're not giving them, we're not stimulating them enough

here. They're getting bored. They're getting anxious. And so they're upskilling. They're going,

they're going to study something different. They're getting involved in community stuff because

that's actually something that happens. When you start to feel like you don't belong anymore

in the workplace, you're going to look to build your community elsewhere. And so back to that

example of charity work or volunteering or, you know, you're suddenly the one that's going out

and, you know, doing a bunch of financial education masterclasses with children and underprivileged

schools as a leader, you've got to look and go, what are they searching for? Why are they doing that?

Why is my top performer? Why is my top team? Suddenly, half the time on the job and the other half

of the time studying something in preparation for the future, building community elsewhere outside

of this team. Or frankly, maybe they, you know, maybe they just aren't showing up to the office,

right? Like, you know, we might have a hybrid policy and they might be kind of doing two or three

days at home in a couple of days in the office. And I've certainly seen a trend again where people

are going, you forced me back into the office, but I've got a little flexibility here. I'm going

to, I'm going to stay at home. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to

stay out of this environment. So I think as a leader, if you look around, you've got a team of 50

and you go five or six of these people feel like they're building something outside of work,

five or six people here are studying something totally different. Five people over here are

volunteering on suddenly you've got to go, oh, wow, half my team are doing other things. And

they're not, they're not, they're not engaged. They're not, they're not here in present. And I

think that's how you go, oh God, these people are kind of just plotting along these, these colleagues

of mine are plotting along plotting for their next move. Um, I think there's some of the tells,

I think in real life, there's some of the telltale signs. Um, cause I, I don't think the people that

are job hugging are getting angry. I don't think they're getting, I don't think they're getting

restlessly. And I don't think they're getting provocative. I don't think they're the one sitting

in a meeting being the contrarian with their boss going, I don't agree with this. That's a horrible

annual plan. I'm not going to deliver $100 million towards your plan. That's not how it works in

that corporate business setting. That's not how people like react. I think you've got to look

for some of those more subtle signs of they're going in different directions. And that direction

is away from us. And it's away from me as a leader, not towards me. What do you think, Jeff?

So amazing points there. Uncertainty plays a massive role right now. But I want to speak on

the manager side and the leader side of things, right? In the last employee engagement report,

we saw that manager engagement actually dipped from 30% to 27%. Now I'm going to land the plan

here. I promise, but let's go to that famous quote, right? People don't quit their jobs. They quit

their bosses. So a lot of these stress could be coming from the fact that leaders managers,

just like employees feel uncertain about the future. There's a lot of negativity in the news.

And I felt like last year was an insane year when it came to some of the CEO memos that were dropped.

They were practically openly saying like, hey, 996 workforce is the new norm. Everyone needs to be

so you need to be so part of our workforce that you need to sleep under your desk and do all these

things. And if not, you know, we're going to have the AI come in and replace you. Essentially,

that was kind of the big theme last year. And that's what kind of swung the, you know, the pendulum of

employee to employer markets, kind of like all the way to the employer side. You had leaders openly

advocating or sea level leadership saying like, hey, we want to make sure that we get every ounce

of productivity from our employees. Now, granted that that also falls on the managers as well. And

they're probably undergoing the same levels of stress as the employees and their engagement levels

are suffering because of it. So I will say, if an employee is stressed, it's likely because their

managers also stressed. And it is, you know, stress doesn't more like we're just adding stress

on top of stress without kind of having a plan for it. And I feel like that could be leading to a lot

of job dissatisfaction. You know, I myself have seen stressed out managers kind of taking out on

employees and what that means for the workforce. I don't need a metric to define that. I've seen

people's faces and how they react to getting yelled at, getting screamed at, being told that if they

don't hit, you know, certain goals, their jobs are on the line. And when you have that message

permeating from senior leadership and, you know, sea level employees of some of the largest

organizations in the world saying like, hey, your employees are born. We could get rid of them and replace

them with AI, which by the way, Christian, amazing job. We went 28 minutes. That has to be a record,

right? But for mentioning AI, we did not mention AI for cool 28 minutes. So kudos to us. But

yes, I do feel like a lot of the issues are stemming from, you know, sea level folks and they're

kind of going on on ensuring that we have to start looking at AI as a employee replacement,

which shouldn't be, should be an amplifier and we should be empowering people to use all these

new tools similar to like what our, I guess grandparents got calculators for the first time.

That's a whole different subject. I want to stay on point with this one. And yes, a lot of great.

I think that's a really interesting point, though, Jeff, when you mentioned kind of the managers

don't have it figured out either. You're right. Like the leaders of leaders that, that leader that I

mentioned of the 100 person team, they're also potentially job hugging. They don't know what their

next step looks like. They're getting the pressure from the top to meet the numbers. They're

getting the pressure from the top to cut heads. And then they're the ones that actually are putting

the face to the wider team of 100,000 people. They don't have it figured out either, which is why

I think the best companies out there at the moment are investing in, and this is a little bit of a

plug here, Leanne, for profiles like yourselves or mice, you know, organizational psychologists,

but they're actually bringing in proper coaches, real coaches, not life coaches, but not necessarily

executive coaches either, but kind of the, the Wendy from billions kind of character, right? We're

bringing in here the coach that can help those leaders in both directions, manage that team and

the message that's flowing down, and also manage the messaging and the relationship with the leaders

above them, because they're in that crunch position as well at the moment. If you're a leader of a

team of 100 people, it's not a fun, it's not a fun time. It's not like a, it's not a fun, you know,

moment. And so I think companies that are investing in like really awesome human coaching programs

with those kinds of leaders, I'm going to see, I'm going to see the benefits, they're going to

see those leaders stay, those leaders be more productive, fabulous glass door scores, because we talk

about investing in our people externally, but coaching has never been more important for that

population that just needs someone to talk to. That leader, that leader of 100 can be really,

really lonely, because you know that you've got to cut 30 heads in three months time, you know,

you've got to meet your numbers or your head will be cut. Who do you go and talk to? Who do you

get vulnerable with? And unfortunately in today's corporate world, we don't allow for those vulnerabilities

to necessarily be surfaced in those exchanges, in those team meetings. And so you need a coach,

you need a little bit like, I call it professional therapy, but you need to go and just kind of

decompress and let it out, because those guys are struggling as well. And so I always, I always feel,

you know, we always like to beat up the leader or the middle manager, they kind of got a tough job

as well at the moment in corporate life, right? Because they're in the middle of this, of this

sandwich and it's not, it's not pleasant. And it's a, it's a media narrative that's being pushed

too. Like can AI get rid of the middle manager? Like that is one of, there's, if you google that right

now, there are, yeah, it dozens, if not hundreds of articles trying to push managers out of the

equation entirely. So I don't know, there's a lot of negativity towards managers, that stress,

I'm sure it's permeating, it's going downwards, it's trickling down to employees, and it is just

adding on to this employee and huge increases. That's kind of going on right now. So yeah.

I could not agree more, I think I've said more than once on this platform. If you do want to think

train your managers and support your managers, I agree. Coaching is such a wonderful way of

supporting our, our leaders and our managers. And I, I also think there's so much more we can do.

And as you said, Christian, feed into that, you know, we're investing on people personal

development. I was reading some data from the charge institute of management the other day,

and they were talking about accidental managers. And I've never seen this, this bad before,

I've seen data on accidental management, never this high. In this survey of around 3000 people,

82% of new managers who'd been in the role were a couple of years had received no formal training

or support in that role. And it went on, you know, it made drops maybe like 52% of people who had

been in management for 10 years plus. And even our senior leaders, we were looking at about,

I think it's around 30, 35% don't quote me these numbers. I can't remember all the

months on my head, but it was a significant amount that still hadn't received any training. We're

asking so much of them without giving the appropriate resources to do it. What I want to move on to

is why businesses should care, because like you say, there's so much going on, there's so much to

think about, there's so much pressure. When a business is under this type of pressure,

and turnover is low, engagement, is it feeling like a nice to have? And if it is, how do we,

as as HR leaders and practitioners, make a case for continuing to invest in employee development

in a time like this? Look, I'll take that one and I've got a really strong viewpoint on this. And

back to the marketing analogy earlier, your team and your employees are an extension of your consumer

brand. So gone are the days where you could invest, you know, 50 million in a new product launch

and have an under invested, horrible team sitting behind it, representing customer service,

after sales, whatever. You've got to think about your employees as an extension of your consumer

brand. It's what we talk about all the time when we talk about the magnetic eight in employer brand

and the different lenses through which you see if your business is showing up externally

with power, with my and is resonating with your target audience. So for me, do it, you know,

if you're sitting there as a business owner, as a CEO and you're going, I've got a cut costs,

I've got a, you know, I'm worried about the economic, the macros, you know, just do it selfishly

because by investing in your employees, you're also investing in how your product and your services

are showing up externally. I don't think there's any examples out there anymore of, you know,

an incredible product and a horrible team and a horrible kind of set of HR policies. And I'm

going to use an example, let's name one, Lego. What a resurgence Lego has had the last 15 years.

And I'd invite some HR practitioners here today that might not be so familiar with the new,

I think the new head of people at Lego was announced yesterday. But look at the Lego people team,

look at the initiatives they have, look at the onboarding with new hires, look at their benefits,

their paternity leave, their, I mean, it's just incredible, like the way they create a stickiness

and an engagement in their employee base. And then you then go, wow, but all these new products,

all these new associations with the World Cup with Formula One. And you know, is it, since when

did a 50-year-old or a 60-year-old want a Lego set for Christmas? When I grew up, it was like

something you had as a seven or eight-year-old, like Churoster Lego, I think they've tripled,

quadrupled their sales the last few years. But look at companies where you go great product

innovating, great quality, great values, and then look at the team that sits behind them.

And I think that's when you start to go, I don't think you can have one without the other.

And that's a physical product. But if we went to any of the airlines, any of the hotel,

chains, any of those real service-orientated brands, I think that just gets even stronger,

that message of just do the employee engagement piece, maybe not because you want to be a fantastic

gator or the best place to work or win lots of awards, just do it because you want your

products and service to be number one. You want to sell more? So I just think there's such a

commercial crossover there, Leanne. I just don't think you can disconnect them. Final idea here,

and it kind of links back to that point before. I read an incredible article a couple of weeks ago,

how in Scandinavia, and it's always the Scandies know that I always, ahead of the game here,

are spending 6% of their payroll, their total payroll cost, on performance development,

on coaching, on learning and development, on developing their people, 6%. In the US,

in the Americas, it's less than 1%. And then you say of that 1%, how much of that is being

spent on AI upskilling academies, techy stuff? So you go, hang on a minute.

If we're investing less than 1%, if we're spending a million dollars on payroll,

but we're spending less than 1,000 a month on learning and development, something's got to give.

That's pretty bad. So maybe we should look to our friends in Sweden and in Copenhagen,

in Denmark, and say they're doing something, right? They're investing 6% of that monthly total

cost of your employee base, and they're investing it back in them. And they're saying, and again,

that links back to our Lego example, right? Back to Denmark, back to Copenhagen.

You're saying, investing your people, you'll get better product, better sales,

a bit more successful company. I actually was looking into some data on this, sorry,

Jeffery, or we'll come to you, because it was feeding nicely. It's a natural research around,

and I thought it was really quite, quite powerful, actually. And there was a research,

looked at over 8,000 businesses before the financial crisis,

drawing in an afterwards to see how they invested and what happened in kind of recovery years.

And the organisations with high employee engagement,

drawing the economic crisis, grew earnings per share faster in the rebound than by a huge margin.

Organisations of the top 25% of engagement scores,

enjoyed a 22% higher profitability, and 21% higher productivity in recovery,

compared to the bottom 25% of organisations. So, as you say, Christian, even if you want to be

really cold and commercial about this, employee engagement is really good for business.

You're really good for business, totally. I just wanted to give you all the praise in the world.

You absolutely nailed it. One of the big things that we would pitch early on at office vibe was

employee advocacy. What is the downside? In fact, when you have high engagement rates,

can your organisation do well enough and have your employees become advocates for you on social,

on all these different platforms, so much so that there is that kind of commercial crossover,

where it's like, oh wow, these people love their organisation so much that they're willing to go

above and beyond to kind of market it for free. And it's organic, and you are constantly seeing

photos of teams at an office, teams at an off site, whatever the case may be, that some folks might

even skip going to glass door like, well, I want to work there and it's happened at my organisation

at all voices. We have several employees that have come in because they established relationships

and we just kind of like talked up and truly mean that we love it over there. So, with that said,

I want to say you nailed it. Employee advocacy, please invest in some of these engagement platforms.

I also want to just tie it back to a data point, right? When you are investing in employee listening,

whether it's an employee engagement tool, an employee relationship platform, whatever the case

may be, you tend to see a nice little uptick on those engagement scores, right? Companies that

collect employee feedbacks year round, I want to say eight to 10% engagement gains. So, if you do

want to actually start getting more advocacy online and really on your side from understanding

your needs, getting that promotion online, start investing in feedback, start collecting it,

really start getting energetic about listening to employees and doing the best you can to

address them. And you're going to start seeing, you know, those engagement numbers creep up,

and hopefully it leads to that nice effect of employee advocacy online. I also want to highlight

that, you know, my organisation, it's only 40 people, but people tend to 40 person headcount,

but it does appear to be a lot larger because we're actively talking about how we love work

in there and we're actively talking about everything that we're doing. So, we'll say,

if we're doing that as a 40 person organisation, I can't even imagine what a company the size of

LEGO, you know, with probably tens of thousands of employees are benefiting from having all their

employees kind of just like post about them and this is truly one of the best places to work.

And I also want to highlight that yes, LEGOs sales are probably up because, man, the demand for them,

it's intense. I think I saw like one of these DevStar ones go for $500. So, if anyone out there wants

to gift one, please feel free to send it. PR packages are welcome. Yeah, so glad.

But it's so interesting, Jeff, that you mentioned that LEGO actually do do a really good job

about showing up and showing off externally and using the power of their real engagement internally,

externally, but actually of the big companies, that's another huge gap and miss. They don't have

employee advocacy programs because for the last 10 years, we were so worried about what our

employees would say about us on social media. We had everyone sign disclaimers in their contract

saying, if you say something that's out of line, we will fire you the same day. Now, companies are

kind of easing, easing back on those social media guidelines, principles, rules and saying,

actually, wouldn't it be great? We've got 350,000 people working for us around the world,

and of which 260 are on LinkedIn. And if they posted like once a week, wow, what would we have to

spend on paid media to get the eyeballs on that content, both for our product, but also for our

workplace vibes, engagement, come and work here message. And so again, 90% of companies over

50,000 people worldwide do not have an employee advocacy program on LinkedIn. And I know there's

other platforms available in the moment we move to China. There's different platforms over there,

but they just don't have a clear sense of content pillars. What are we encouraging people to post?

How are we, frankly, how are we asking our leaders to set the example, right? Because if you're

the leader of a team of 1,000, 10,000 people, I want to see you visible on LinkedIn. And I don't

want selfies. I want to see, I want to see your team. I don't want to see selfies of you at

Can's Lions or at CES in Vegas kind of having the free work trips, staying at a five-star hotel,

because that's going to switch me off. You're talking about tough economic times. There's no,

there's no bonus this year. There's no pay rise this year. But then I see my leader flying first

class around the world at all of the conferences. Not the best look. What do you do? You start to

develop content where you recognize the top performers on your team, where you focus on individuals

that have gone above and beyond. It's not rocket science. It's about putting the spotlight as a leader

on your team members that are just doing cool shit. And if you can get that right and that sticky

source right, I think you're on to something. And again, other leaders out there doing this really

well, but I think using one of our one of our great British entrepreneurs, Richard Branson

did this, started this 20 years ago, right? And Richard Branson with Virgin Group is always putting

the focus on what an incredible team he has across the portfolio of companies. For me, he's like the OG

kind of leader influencer on LinkedIn. There's others, but I just think Richard does such a great

job because it's not about him. It's about him on the flight, but he's going to talk about Shelley,

who's the head flight attendant, who gave the best service on the Vegas, the London flight.

Or he's going to be in the hotel in Chicago talking about the new opening, but talking about the

general manager that went above and beyond. Or on the cruise ship talking about the entertainment

team, but the focus is on your people. It's on your company culture. It's on how we live the day

to day. It's not about you as the leader. And it's not beautiful selfies with professional makeup

and lots of professional lighting. And so those employee advocacy programs can be so powerful.

They can be so cheap to stand up as well because you don't really need infrastructure to do this.

You just need a leader that says, Hey, I trust my people. I trust them with our customers. I'm

going to trust them with their own voice on LinkedIn. And we're going to encourage them to post

and post frequently and post authentically, but we're going to give them some ideas and we're

going to give them a little content to work with. It's not rocket science, but so many companies

today are missing that opportunity. And so then when they go, Oh, no, I need to hire 10,000 people

in Miami over the next three months. And they go, where do we start? You go, well, you've had a

team there for 25 years, but they're just silent. They're, they're gagged. So, you know, I think today,

what we spoke about the first kind of 45 minutes was how do you build a real culture, a real

engagement in your organization? But once you've built it, let's communicate it. Let's like live the

lid open access. It doesn't need to be behind closed doors anymore. You don't have to lock it up.

You need to open, open it up, share it with the world. And it can really pay dividends,

can really pay dividends. Why is it not happening in the past? Because HR didn't really get on with

marketing. Marketing doesn't get on with comms. External comms want to own all the channels. And we

all kind of in the past used to kind of raffle each other's feathers. We're in 2026 for goodness

sake. Let's all just get in a room and make this work, make this happen. And let's leave the

egos. Let's leave the ex go egos out of the door and go, we've got an incredible employee base here.

Let's use it. No. Fabulous. Fabulous. I'm so sorry. I just want to quickly. First of all,

we need to george and we just need to check on our questions. We've just got carried away.

That is absolutely fabulous. For those people who are wanting to learn more, obviously come

full of these amazing people, because they're telling more and more stuff like that. A little plug

for our little show in about four weeks time. We've got some local Rachel Harris who's coming on

much smaller than Lego, only about 50 or 16 employees, but she talks about employee-generated content

EGC, not UGC, basically exactly exactly what these guys are talking about there. So,

Georgia, have we got anything that any burning questions that the people want answered?

We have indeed. We've got about four. So first one, and it's playing a devil's advocate to the

previous conversation about job hogging. And when is employee at the point of job hogging

too late? In terms of is it too late? I think what they're asking is, is it too late once they're

at that point and too late to reengage. I think not. It's as simple as just having a conversation

and my boss over there, Emily left a very nice comment saying, leave it to Jeffrey to have the

empath type of response, but it's really just a matter of having an open and honest conversation.

There it is. It's really a matter of having a conversation. Even though I come from a tech

background and I built feedback systems up, I truly believe that I just have that all these systems

there are almost like a safeguard. The reality is you just need to hop on a Google Meet chat or a

face to face, mind for a coffee, and really have that heart to heart. The same way that Christian

was kind of mentioning that managers need mentorship, employees need that mentorship, and what better

persons to do with their managers that are actively working with them, having meetings with them

once a week. So you have to have a part of my friend here, a no bullshit conversation and say like,

hey, this is how I'm feeling. Why are you like this? What can we do to really like understand,

how can we meet your needs here and make sure that you could get back on that hypothesis and

really be a productive member over here? Yes. Right now, times are tough. Job hugging is little,

it's becoming the norm because of all these external things going on, but a real great manager is

really going to know when they'll know how to spot like when their employees stress and have that

one-on-one conversation and really drill down to whatever it is that's truly bothering an employee.

Also, I want to say I have a psychology background, so maybe I'm biased. I always like to see where I

could help people. I know that might not be the case for every manager, but I think at the end of

the day, it really just blows down to communication. And I'm going to answer the question slightly,

welcome, slightly differently, which is I think you can drop hug for a year. I'm going to put

I'm going to put a time I'm going to put a time limit on it. I'm going to say do it for a year

because after that year is going to be detrimental to you your career. It's going to be detrimental

to your mental health. If you kind of stand that job longer than a year and you're just not

enjoying it, not having a good time, sometimes you're going to have to extend that a little bit,

it's not binary right? It could be longer than a year because frankly, you need the benefits,

you need the paycheck until you've lined up the next job. But I think sitting comfortably for a year

is fine. Any longer than that is just not good for either side. So like if you're sitting there

going, oh my goodness, I've been in a job for like five years that I've been hugging and I want to

get out of probably it's time to make things happen. Yeah. And just to add on to that,

like I brought up the phrase actively disengage, right? Around 2011 when I first started my

my employee engagement software, that phrase was kind of a new phrase. And I want to say back then,

it was like 12% of people were actively disengage, meaning that they would go out of their way

to sabotage their company. They would be willing to like, you know, push out data stuff.

But like once you go past a year of job hugging and you start getting to a point where you go

from disengaged to actively disengaged, you're just going to want to just, yeah, it becomes

dangerous for the organization and for your mental health. Good point. Absolutely. Oh, we've

been there from the research of certain types of leadership transformation, transformational,

for example, can weaken the link between intention to quit and somebody actually handing in their

notice. So it's not too late if somebody you're noticing somebody is job hugging if you approach

in the right way. And I totally agree with what Jeffrey is saying is well in terms of

of having those conversations and those conversations really need to focus around how do we make

this work meaningful? How do we improve the resources you've got to do your job? But that includes

training and development. Is this role stretching you in a way that is is purposeful to you? And do we

you know, fit long term into the broader goals that you have in terms of outside your life? And if

if you can't do any of that within your power as a manager, then there's probably nothing you can do

but it's not too late camp. So have those conversations and focus on those things.

Georgia, there's a question here from Jennifer Martinez. Do you think we've covered that

on? Should we? Should we put this to the panel? I know it's we've touched on it. It says I'll put

it up on the screen. But basically it's saying being in such trying times having the threat of AI

taking over the workforce. How does one keep employee engagement high at work? Now, now we've

talked around this and be fair. We did go 26 minutes as you said, Jeffrey, without talking.

Guys, got any thoughts on this particular question? Can you both see it by the press? By the way,

the question. Yeah. I have a doom and gloom one. So maybe you want to start with the positive one?

You can start with the doom and gloom. Okay, perfect. Yeah. Spin it up and do something positive.

I'm very positive as an individual. My team will tell you this. I don't like where certain things

are heading. And I was doing a little bit of research leading up to this. And I was like,

I think how about what these AI enthusiasts are now calling like the next kind of big jump,

where we're going to have this underclass that serves people that are working those 996,

learning everything about AI, becoming prompt engineers. And I just want to start by saying like,

I don't think that's the way where we're going to head as a society. And I know a lot of these

sea level folks that brought up all these memos last year. And all these nonsense that's being

pushed on by the media is kind of saying like, it has going to take over everything. You have to

work 996 hours. You have to do everything you can to become this next like superstar and the

underclass are going to work all these trade level jobs. I wanted to bring all this stuff up to say

like, I don't think I do think that people hopefully like everyone on this call are going to

step in and ask for more governance, more rules, more regulations. I know that the UK is already

having like AI regulations. If I remember correctly, I do think the United States will

hopefully catch up and get to a point where we're starting to say like, okay,

enough is enough when it comes to what AI can do and how it should impact workers.

You know, we saw Oracle lay off 30,000 people today or some absurd number and they cited AI as

one of the main reasons. I think they're sorry if anyone hears from Oracle, but I do think that's

going to have a little bit of backlash and let me land the plane here and say, we're seeing

something that I believe is very temporary and I do think that society will heal and it will

eventually that pendulum will swing back towards the employers and we'll start seeing AI more as a

tool and amplifier not a replace of employees and eventually there will be leaders that stuck off

and say, hey, the future isn't going to be folks that are buying and selling things with AI

agents. We need employees. We need workers. We need people that are going to benefit the economy and

actually provide value and provide meaning for why we work. So like, you know, there has to be

some kind of limitations on the growth and expansion of AI. All that to say is right now it does

appear to be a threat and there is a doom and gloom scenario where there is this AI overclass

and the other class of tradesmen. I know a lot of folks in the tech community want to believe that

that is the future but the reality is we're going to go back to being somewhat of a normal state

and I do think that going, answering that employee engagement part once we kind of put those

revelations in place and once there are certain laws and restrictions on what AI can do and what

it can replace, it's going to help benefit the employer marketing. So yeah, I hope that made

a little bit of sense. No, as Breen, I just want to jump in and ask you, Christian, because I think

that's a really good angle. I'm not sure if we have time otherwise, but in terms of this whole,

as Jeffrey said, with AI and the layoffs and how there was some backlash to that, how does this

play with employer brand? What organizations do now going to be telling of their employer brand

in the future? What are your thoughts? Yeah, strong thoughts. You've got to be Razer. You've got to

be super sharp and honest about what's happening internally and what you're selling externally,

because if not candidates smell a rat. And so there are examples of brands out there that have

beautiful consumer brands and have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their employer brand

over the last couple of years and they're promising incredible career paths and graduate programs,

etc. And then you hear they're just laid off 10,000 grads and you go, oh, well, what about this

career path? I'm a year in and you just, you just sat me, you just fired me to a critical point.

So I think as a candidate, the candidates are getting far more educated and far smarter,

distinguishing between what is marketing the S and what is a true representation of what it's

like to work there. And they're getting smarter. They're going out to more sources than ever before.

They're looking at the leaders on LinkedIn. They're going to Glassdoor there, googling their,

you know, going to careers fairs. They're talking to ex employees. They're talking to family members

that know somebody that like everyone's doing their research to really uncover what it's really

like to work there. So you're right. It's all about congruence. You've got to, you can sell it

externally if you've got the goods to back it up. And I think that's where we're headed. And the

companies that are frankly lying externally about a promise that they can't deliver on are going

to struggle in the future. Back to that question. That question left me thinking, I loved everything,

Jeff said, but two other kind of quick points there. I worked closely with Udemy and Udemy are,

I guess, the world's largest now upskiller on all things AI. And I had a great conversation with

them last week at a San Francisco. And they said, yeah, number one is our whole AI suite of academy.

And we've got 800 different courses. Number two, three and four on the list of most on in demand,

courses and upskilling is public speaking. Creativity, but creativity, along with graphic design

and thinking about actual like designers is all of those kind of actual human skills. And so I think

there's now going to be a little bit of a bit of a change again. The wind is going to swing and

going to go, it's great that you've done your prompt engineering kind of 101. And you've kind of

delved into the tech and the future focus. But actually companies are now going, oh my goodness,

but those leaders can't speak in front of a room of 100 leaders. And oh my goodness,

that presentation we saw was awful because they had Claude do it. And it just looks like AI

gobbledygook. So I think we are going back to actually saying we've got to invest in some of

those kind of, we used to call them soft skills. I don't think we, you know, I don't know what we

call them anymore, but it's just, yeah, some of those basics, right, that we all should have

in the workplace. So that reassures me because it shows me that we're still, we're still,

you know, giving a little kudos and putting a little weight on those skills which are so important

in life in general. And then I think back to Jennifer's kind of comment there, my only other

little nugget would be rather than worrying about what the companies are doing and what society

society are doing, take your own control of the situation. So I would say, Jennifer, what are you

studying? What are you interested in? If you're an incredible creative graphic designer,

like let's focus on the artistic side, like let's, let's continue to develop that flair,

like focus on what you can do in this situation where the world seems bleak. We mentioned doom and

gloom. We mentioned world wars. We mentioned tens of thousands of layoffs today, but like as an

individual, as a candidate, what can I do to stay alive, to stay relevant, to stay active? And

it normally comes back to linking where you're good at something with where you're passionate about

something. And that's kind of, that's, that's kind of my advice really to any candidate that's

sitting there going, oh my goodness, am I going to be a relevant in 10 years? And I go, but what are

you great at? No, but you're great at this today. Focus on what we're good at and develop that and

make that a super skill. Because if not, you're going to spend the next 10 years looking at Instagram

and looking at, you know, the news cycle, and you're not going to sleep, and you're going to

worry about it. And then we probably are going to be a relevant in the job market in 10 years time.

So focus on what we can do today to stay ahead. Human skills. That's right. That's right.

Human skills. That's it. Yeah, it's human skills. Totally is.

I love this. I love this. I mean, Lee, we run out of time.

Well, we're good. I think we have hit our mark, but I did check in with Jeffrey and Christian

before we started, they said they got an extra 10 minutes or so. So if we've got any more questions,

Georgia? Yeah. So I think the one by Jacqueline Durrett has probably been answered. We say that AI

should be an amplifier, not a replacement, but when companies use it as a replacement, how can

we encourage pop employees to see it as a collaborative tool? Oh, I've got to find this.

Where was this buying? You got it. It's all right. That's the one.

There we go, guys. So who wants to start off with that one?

I'll lead off with this. Yeah. I feel very fortunate to work within

an AI native platform and employee relations platform. And we're, you know,

they taught Lee. I think what's the adoption rate? Like it's 100% AI adoption at this,

obviously, but like we find waste and we articulate them in meetings to kind of make sure that

everything that can be automated is automated by AI. You got several different service providers do

that. I feel like the best way to tell employees and even employers alike is just to let them know,

like, this is saving time. This is really here not to replace me, but to save time doing

X amount of manual tasks, you know, if it takes 20, 30 minutes a day, it's going to do it in a

couple of seconds. So that's always the number one use case for AI. It costs $20 a month to have

something that's going to save upwards of, I don't know, 20, 30 hours a week. Well, it means it's

a smart choice to make. And I feel like that message of time saving. What's the number one

product pitch line that's always used, right? You get back to doing what you actually care about.

You get back time in using certain systems, whether it is AI and automation tool.

If you're knowledgeable with Excel and you can make all these calculations and don't have to

write them down in paper, it saves you time so you can get back to what you're good at. And hopefully

make time to attend podcasts like this, right? So like, that's really the number one thing I would

I would encourage, you know, when you're communicating with either employees or employers,

let them know that these systems are really there to save time to hopefully work on those

human skills and connect with other people and maybe other organizations that internally and

establish those relationships that are going to benefit your organizations and the individual

long-term. So yeah, that's how I would go about it and also love to see that phrase. AI should be

an amplifier, not a replacement, picking up steam. I used it on our podcast and I drop it on LinkedIn,

I think once a week now. So I love it. Amazing. Then I just add there, I go back to that

prior point I made knowing your worth, knowing what you're fantastic at, what you're incredible at.

You can't be gray anymore in the office. You can't be kind of like just plodding along. You've

got to have a super skill, a superpower. So are you the best presenter in your team? Do you create

the best presentations? Are you the leader of other leaders? Do you bring together employee resource

groups? So are you the person who is leading the committee and have a following? Like, you've got to

have a position. And by position, I don't just mean the corporate job position. I mean,

you've got to have a place in that workplace that makes you stand out for the right reasons.

And AI is not replacing that at the moment, right? And just know your super skill, hone it,

continue to invest in yourself, but know that increasingly, that average performance that we

might start to see with kind of the job hugging phenomenon that we've mentioned today as well.

Well, only last so long. You've got to stand out for the right reasons, know your worth,

and do stuff that the AI can't currently do. And I think that's how you retain a little bit of

confidence, a little bit of swag in the workplace, because you're not replaceable at the moment.

And I just like to build a little bit more harp on that, because I too sometimes find myself

questioning my relevance at times. One of the things I always think about is the future job

report that came out by the World Economic Forum. And it talked about skills that are going to be

more and more important over the next five years. And there was a whole quadrant in those results,

it was personal skills that are in the human. So it's things like critical thinking, empathy,

all those things that AI can't do. So go and have a look at that as well. And yeah,

make a little list of other ways you can invest in yourself, because that's as Christian said,

it's going to make the difference. Absolutely. George, if we missed, I mean, I know there's been a

few questions. It's a lot of them have been answered already. Is there anything you feel that hasn't

been answered already? Let's leave it on this one then. Sarah Belendane said, those are all indicators

people have already decided to step away. What are some indicators where leaders can have

earlier notice and what early indicators have we got? Just pop down the screen.

I think we touched on that a little bit earlier. We kind of said, where you realize that in that 40-hour

work week, they're finding ways to go and do volunteering, go into new studies, go in different

directions, explore new avenues. I think as a leader, you've got to read the writing on the wall.

I think we touched on that earlier. We're missing anything else, guys.

The thing I might add is this can also come into a Christian mention. It's a mental health aspect

to this as well, particularly if somebody's been job-hooking for a little while. It is these symptoms

of burnout that are going to come. We're going to come to touch from our work. We're going to get a

bit cynical and that masking is going to become exhausting. I'm showing up as if everything's fine

and it's not. It's looking at any changes in behaviour. It can be useful. Any changes in appearance,

how somebody shows up to work, if it's subtle, can be signs as well that somebody is

job-hooking or more really disengaging. Looking for those signs as well could be useful.

I have to think from an engineer standpoint, if they're not hearing out tickets or if they're

not the productivity component to it. If they're not being able to complete that, mostly because they

feel glum for lack of a better phrase there. They don't just feel like working because they feel

so disengaged that they're wearing this mask and the quality and quantity of their work. They're

not as productive as usual. That's always in early give away, but I feel like that one's pretty

here, I say obvious. Just a final thought here, guys. Can we just go back to basics? Can we just

speak? Can we just communicate? Can we just see our manager? When I started out in work,

I had a one-to-one every week with my manager, an hour. Just let's communicate. Then what happened

is they all went virtual during the pandemic and then it went from once a week to maybe this is

by weekly, but maybe it's monthly, but no, we've got the summer holidays, but we've got these

holidays. I've got friends that say to me, they speak to their manager six times a year and I'm

going six times a year, but you work 60 hours a week. The math doesn't math. If we just went

back to having a little bit more communication, a little bit more contact, I think we'd be able to

be able to on both sides figure out what's going on a little bit quicker. We wouldn't need to wait

to the annual engagement survey to figure out that our team's disengaged because you're speaking to

your team once a week. I think we've got to go back to some of the basics, guys. I think that's

where we're, you know. Now I have a question for you. Do you think the more time you spend doing

heads-down work and not communicating with your managers, could that create a little bit of

disengagement because you're kind of operating in a silo for 50s? Yeah, 100%. That weekly touch in

manager and colleague kind of session is just so important and the cadence of that is important.

And actually one of the worst things I've also seen is a manager that will put that in weekly

and then we'll just cancel them. The worst thing is the canceler because actually now we go back

to the earlier piece about being you're going to promise something, you better deliver it. So if

you're going to promise me a weekly one-to-one, even if it's 20 minutes or 30 minutes, don't cancel

it on me 10 minutes before the session every single time because my goodness, that's a sure

fire way to get that person wanting to leave or resigning or quite quitting whatever we're calling

it. So yeah, let's just go back to communicating. Let's just sit down. Let's have a weekly one-to-one.

Let's go through objectives. Let's talk about what we've achieved. Let's talk about where we're

headed. And when that doesn't exist and when that goes a month or two months between each

occurrence, that's when you're going to get people leaving. Yeah. Fantastic. I see Emily and Rebecca

on the comments. If you all, those are my teammates. If you ever canceled meeting, I'm going to be

very upset and I might cry. So please don't ever cancel on me. You've been warned.

Wow. I mean, we could, I think we could keep going for another hour easily on this, but I think

we could with some really important, important areas of topic. And I think we also gave some,

I think you both gave brilliant advice in terms of practical things we can do to support

employee engagement and advocacy on a budget. It's just having these conversations. It's using

the resources and how to spot people who may be job-hugging and how we can help them. So thank you

both. So much, Jeffrey and Christian, you are absolutely welcome. Thank you. Yeah, you really

go go and follow, go and follow. Jeffrey, I've got my head people first your podcast, but I think

you've just changed the name of me. People first, we're going to have Christian on here this quarter.

Christian, I got to get back to you and yeah, tell Stephen I say hi by the way.

Well, I'm excited to have you on and it should be a blast.

I'm waiting. It's an early promo, right?

And for those people who want to learn more about you, buy the best place for them to go Christian.

LinkedIn. Yeah, come follow me on LinkedIn. Yeah. Very active on there. Fabulous. And Jeffrey,

I'm guessing all voices in LinkedIn as well for you. All voices on LinkedIn. We'll be posting

clips on our people first podcast. Check us out. We're doing some amazing stuff for MD,

realm of employee relations. So once that's got it. And if you want to hear more about Jeff,

anything flip back about two weeks here, we've got an hour of him on our podcast. And we,

Christian, we definitely have a new one. I can't remember we booked you in yet or not,

but you are 100% coming in whether you want it on the one to come on or not, you are 100%

coming on. Anything else to add before we before we wrap up Lee? Only to say we will keep this

video up. So if anybody came halfway through, it will be up to go back to the beginning.

And the audio will actually be on true lies and work podcast feed from tomorrow afternoon.

So you can check it out there as well. Thank you very much to associate producer George as well.

They're helping us with the comments and the tech side a bit. Thank you all for joining us.

And we will see you very soon. Yeah, see you soon. Bye guys. Bye. Okay. Thank you.

That's it for this one. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to get any of our

panelists, you'll find all their details in the show notes. If you'd like to be a future guest

on one of our LinkedIn lives, we would love to hear from you. Drop us an email at podcastattruthlivesandwork.com.

And if you enjoyed this, please do leave a review. It genuinely helps more people find the show. See you soon.