Navigating Workforce Challenges and Building Employee Connections

Navigating Workforce Challenges and Building Employee Connections

Hosts: Trish Steed, Mervyn Dinnen

Guest: Ben Eubanks, Chief Research Officer at Lighthouse Research and Advisory

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Trish and Mervyn were joined by Ben Eubanks to chat about the changing workforce landscape and how organizations can best navigate it.

– How to hire and retain a shrinking workforce

– Commitment and creating core memories

– The importance of the connection between leaders and employees

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Learn more about Talent Scarcity

This was a really interesting show, thanks to Ben for joining us! Remember to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript follows:

Trish 0:29
Hi and welcome back to the HR Happy Hour Show. We have a really exciting show for you today because first and foremost, I have one of my favorite guest co-hosts, Mr. Mervyn Dinnen, all the way from the UK. Mervyn, hello.

Mervyn Dinnen 0:44
Hello, Trish. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Trish 0:46
So okay, we’re recording this in the morning in the US about what time is it there in the UK? Is it like dinnertime?

Mervyn Dinnen 0:54
Yeah, in the UK. It’s kind of four o’clock in the afternoon. I’m I’m based in London as listeners might know. And it’s very hot in London at the moment. So we’re heating 80 degrees plus every day so it’s, it’s a bit warm.

Trish 1:08
So okay, let me ask you this. I know here in the US obviously, it’s hot as well. We have air conditioning is that I feel like not everyone has air conditioning in London. Is that still correct? Or am I just that I know that?

Mervyn Dinnen 1:20
Uh, no, no, that is still correct. It’s I would say the majority of homes don’t have air conditioning or although I think very modern apartment blocks probably do. Obviously commercial buildings do offices, shops and things but it’s one of those things we just we just sweat it out here I’m afraid.

Trish 1:40
So you mentioned shops and do you like find somewhere to go? Do you go like work in a coffee shop? Because I think yeah, I think it’s above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I think it’s pretty hard to work.

Mervyn Dinnen 1:52
It is well I work primarily from home so I’ve got a couple of phones here in the room I used as an office. So it’s yeah, I’ve got those on the go and it’s Yeah, drinking water and just you know, seeing when it gets far too hot then it’s it’s too hot to work but I you know, if I go back to the early days of my career before offices had air conditioning, it’s kind of you just turn it could be 100 degrees outside and you’d have shirt, suit and tie. Were a bit more enlightened now.

Trish 2:23
We’re soft over here then because yeah, if it’s, you know, 90 degrees with the air conditioner in the air conditioners on I’m still hot. I’m like still complaining probably. So anyway. Well, good. Well, I’m glad thank you for co-hosting with me today, we actually have a really special guest, our friend Ben Eubanks. And before I bring him on, I just want to kind of give a caveat we recorded with Ben at the UNLEASH event and had a little audio snafu. But I think this is actually really good because we get to dive in a little bit deeper. It’s not nearly as loud as it was recording at an event. And and I really want to talk a lot about what Ben’s been working on, and specifically, his latest book. So before I welcome to the show, I want to welcome Ben Eubanks, Chief Research Officer at Lighthouse Research and Advisory. Ben, good morning.

Ben Eubanks 3:10
Hey, Trish. Hey, Mervyn, glad to be here with you.

Trish 3:13
Wonderful, well, why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about you. And that can be professional, personal. And then we’ll kind of get into the meat of the show.

Ben Eubanks 3:23
Awesome. So as you said, I’m a research nerd these days, but like you I started out as an HR leader years ago. So now I get the chance to do research on the tools technologies that we use to serve our people, as well as the trends was changing in the workplace, all those kinds of things, and really trying to bring some insights back to all of our friends in the HR world in the recruiting world to help them make the next best decision. So I don’t love the data for its own sake. I only love it for what it unlocks for us. I have a couple of books Artificial Intelligence for HR, and Talent Scarcities the newest one, and love to run, have four kids 12 And under all kinds of crazy stuff going on at my house at any one time. You may hear a scream at any moment. So just fair warning. It’s a blast. I love the summertime I love being able to unplug and go for a bike ride with the kids whatever else after we’re all done here and lots of air conditioning rocket in the house Mervyn because here in the south, southeastern US. So it’s 90 plus and scorching and wet blanket up your face humid, pretty much every day.

Trish 4:24
Wow. So you’re obviously I’m glad you shared all that because you’re a busy person. My dad always told me when I was growing up, like if you need to get anything done, you go to the busiest person, you know. So I feel like that would be you. Because they’re the ones that always make time right and work at it.

Ben Eubanks 4:39
They just fit it in, but know how to manage your schedule. That’s why I love in the past when I was hiring. I look for someone who’s like a mom who wants to work part time because you’re like really, really great at compartmentalizing their schedule and getting the right things done in the time they have available. It’s not like oh, I’ve got 12 hours. I’ll take 10 to just do whatever and then work in two and like no, I’ve got two hours to do this and I’m going It died. Yeah, absolutely.

Trish 5:02
That’s a great point. Before we get into the book, which you mentioned, I want to make sure that we take just a second, as you were kind of describing your path to the current career that you have. You know, you did start out as a practitioner, I met you actually right after college, right. And I know there are listeners who kind of stay and do a whole career within HR, which is wonderful. But when I was in HR, I didn’t really know that becoming an analyst was even a path quite honestly, it seems like this whole separate thing, I would love you to take a second to maybe expand on your path and what opportunities if you’re sitting out there listening, and you’re in HR right now and you’re thinking like, I’d like to try something else aligned? Maybe How did you kind of make that transition, and what really prompted you to make the move to being an analyst in the HR?

Ben Eubanks 5:45
Its’ all your fault. Oh, that was a joyous time to have a chance to work alongside you for a while that was a blast, right? I’m gonna find the, the thing is, when I started, in my career, in HR, I started writing a little on the side about what I was learning how was growing this, this new thing I was experiencing at work. Because when I’m a planner, like prepare for things, and when I got into the field, I was doing all this reading, trying to understand and everything was written for someone with like, 15 years experience, here’s how you do your budget, like, I’m not touching the budget for a long time, buddy. So I wanted to understand those things. And I couldn’t find good stuff. So I started writing about what I was learning to blaze a path sort of and help others that were following. Over time, though, I realized I really enjoyed that piece of giving back to the community of being able to pour being able to share things I was learning and decided in 2014, to try that full time. Knowing full well like if I hate this, I’ll just go back and get an HR job again. And then I’ll just continue do this on the side, because plenty, but I realized I enjoyed it so much more because I wasn’t just having an impact on the people that were under my purview. As an HR leader, I was able to impact literally millions of employees by serving the HR leaders of every one of those companies. So for example, last week, we just finished our big HR summer school event, 1000s of attendees, 15,000 comments over three days, and people are super engaged in this. And it’s not just a bunch of here’s your content, here’s your credits. But here’s some encouragement on why this is the best possible career path, I believe that anyone could take, we get to serve people at this level. That is incredible. And that’s what I love about this profession overall. And why I do what I do.

Trish 7:18
I love that. And Mervyn, I want to I want to ask a question that I’m gonna be quiet. So you can do the same. But, Marvin, I think you had a very similar path. Right? I mean, you were a practitioner more in the recruitment space, but absolutely, you know, sort of paid some dues, and then became an analyst as well. How, how is Ben story either similar or different from what you experienced?

Mervyn Dinnen 7:39
Um, I suppose the differences before I was in recruitment, while I was actually an accountant. So I suppose I had two careers before this. Although I can’t even think back to the accountancy days now. I don’t know what possessed me. The No, it wasn’t dissimilar. I think with me, I mean, the first time I met both of you really was over social media back in about 2009. And I was approached at that time, I was recruiting HR people, I was consulting with HR. And I was just approached about, I started writing a blog about maybe doing some writing. And if you remember the job site I worked for, they wanted me to write about their research and their data and you know, write for job seekers, right for hiring companies. And so I kind of got very weird diet, and then going to conferences and standing up on stage. And so you know, what I, I want to, I want to understand more about what goes on in the world of work. Because I’ve been in the world of work, I’ve done two, three different careers. And I don’t, you know, I don’t have that much of an insight into how things change what the trends are. And so I was very interested. And I started working with a couple of tech companies to kind of analyze some of their findings and write about them. And he kind of went from there. It was nothing like a lot of things with me. It wasn’t planned. It just happened. degrees, I went with it, because it felt really good.

Trish 9:07
I love that you shared that story. Because I think that for all three of us, right? We had very different paths to get us to a very similar place right now. But I also love that it doesn’t I think sometimes when I talk to people, they get very hung up on Oh, I don’t have enough years of experience to do XYZ, whatever. Right? Then you’re a good example of you know what fresh out of college you had all these ideas and ambitions and you saw that you wanted to write for you for your own curiosity. And that led you down a certain path right of expertise. But also you don’t have to wait until you’re actually an expert in every single aspect of a topic before you can get out there. Because if you are curious, you’re writing you’re researching, you’re learning as you go. So I feel like you’re a good example of that. From a career long standpoint. Marvin, I love that you had two separate careers right before you were like, Oh, I’m actually going to Right, because I’m curious, I don’t know something. So I think in both cases, and I’d say the same goes for me. When I started blogging about the time bended, it was the same way I was writing for me, I was writing. So I would remember things as an HR practitioner that I wanted to remember, or I would research something that I wanted to know for my job. Right? So I think that if you’re a listener to the show, I would say if you’re someone who is kind of curious, like, I’m not sure what to do next, or I’m not sure how to change my career, or expand my, my, my views of things, just be curious, start writing just for yourself doesn’t have to even be a blog. Right. But the more you learn, the more people want to hear what you know, right?

Ben Eubanks 10:40
A really quick example to throw in there and give you like bit This is heavy all in either by the way, right. There’s there’s variations of this lots of on the spectrum. There’s a there’s a wonderful lady named Molly Shelton out there, she actually works, I believe, currently for Sugar CRM as an HR manager. And I had met her during the pandemic, she had lost her job like many of our friends in HR during that time. And she said, Hey, I’m just looking for something to keep, keep me warm, keep you plugged in. And so I had her doing some writing a little bit of logging, things like that, just to keep her in the space, she joined me on a couple of briefings to learn about technology companies. And for her like, that was such a joy, she enjoyed it, I’m still waiting for my job back in HR. And she now she’s doing that. But during that time, she was like, I just want to kind of dabble in this and get a feel for it and see the other side what’s going on there. I never planned and make this my full career choice. It’s just what I want to understand more about that, because I want to get more up on the technology side of what’s happening in HR, and she had not had any exposure in previous jobs. So there’s lots of options out there for you listening in to test to experiment to try without having to feel like you have to hold your nose and jump in and see what happens. Because that can be a big change a lot of a lot of pull there a lot of a lot of friction, potentially. So there’s some choices, right?

Trish 11:51
I think to the people in our space, who have either become bloggers or even analysts if that was the next step. They’re very open. So I think sometimes too, you see maybe you see like Ben Eubanks, right, you’re you’re an author, you’re doing summer school, you’re doing all these, you know, presentations across the globe. Now, Mervyn, same with you, you know, you’re working on what book number three.

Mervyn Dinnen 12:13
As we speak, so hopefully. So. Right.

Trish 12:16
And again, they’re seeing you, you know, they’re seeing you on many different platforms, right, whether it’s video, audio, whatnot, sometimes you feel like those people are not approachable, I have found the opposite to be true. I think that people like you, Marvin, and you, Ben are very open to talking with practitioners, even if it’s just out of curiosity, like how did you get where you’re going? And so I do appreciate that you both share that. I know, we didn’t plan that. But that’s often the best, the best way to do things. So, Marvin, why don’t we kick it off on Ben’s book? I’ll let you start because I know you’ve got several things you want to ask about. But the book is talent scarcity, how to hire and retain a shrinking workforce, obviously important from a global perspective. So I will hand it off.

Mervyn Dinnen 13:00
Thank you, Ben. In fact, the first sentence I’ve seen you write was Where have all the people gone? And that’s the first question I want to ask you, where have all the people going? What’s going on?

Ben Eubanks 13:13
So that that question I kept getting in 2020-2021? Like, where are all the people we were trying to hire and like, we were encouraging pay, we’re trying to adjust this thing, our benefits are better than ever. And we still can’t find enough people, right? Any one of us went to a restaurant, like, hey, half the tables are empty, but it’s going to be a half hour wait, because we have, you know, all these openings. And so once I heard that enough times, I’ve gotta figure the answer to this. So I started really digging into the data, what’s changing what’s happening. And some of these things, interestingly enough, have been happening for a very long time. And we’re just now feeling the repercussions of them. Right? The the demographic changes, for example, America, as a country has not been at the replacement birth rate. So number of people being born per family, we have not been at that replacement birth rate for about 40 or 50 years. So we are producing less people than we need to keep our population at a sustained level. The way we’ve made up for that, because we continue to grow is through immigration. But that’s a short term answer to this. So the number of people who are reaching retirement age are increasing every day. So we’re seeing more people, fewer people entering or leaving the workforce. That’s like a really big trend. If we narrow that lens a little bit, the other things we’re seeing are more people saying, You know what, when I took a pause, and 2020, or 21, because the world changed, I took a pause, I realized I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to be at this company, this job, this type of this type of manager, whatever it was, they said, I’m going to step away, either for a little while or for a long while and reevaluate what I’m going to do, I may just, you know, drive for Lyft or Uber for a while, I may just do something else casual, but I don’t want to do this thing. That’s all I do know. And so we’re seeing a lot of those different things ebbing and flowing and changing. There’s other if we get like super nerdy for a second like looking at some of the things the economists were looking at, there’s this term called nylt. And I LF, not in the labor force. There are millions of people right now. prime working age no disability, no other reason they couldn’t work. And economists have no clue why they are not currently actively working. They, they can’t figure it out. And so there’s lots of things like that that are contributing to this, some of them things we can remedy some of the things that are still a little puzzling, and some things that we can’t actually solve for, like demographic stuff. That’s not a quick fix. But all those things are contributing to the fact that when you go to a restaurant, you’re waiting longer, right? You’re, you’re having some of the same kind of things we’re experiencing in our consumer lives, we’re seeing that driven by the lack of people available.

Mervyn Dinnen 15:28
In the UK, one of the things that they’re hot on, I suppose, is the early retirees, people, particularly with the pandemic, people who maybe had a lot of equity in their home, decided, you know, we didn’t know how the pandemic is going to play out, but it’s time for a different life. I know that government like the last budget, you know, that little things aimed at trying to get people who’ve already maybe cashed in their pension cashed in their equity, and don’t really want to work trying to get them back into the workforce somehow. I mean, are you finding that in the US? Or is that a slightly different thing?

Ben Eubanks 16:05
It absolutely is. So one of the things we saw in the data is that the number of people who retired, they were predicted to retire, the number of people who actually retired was multiple times higher than that surprised the heck out of a lot of people. Because as we know, during COVID, if you had higher risk factors, and age is one of those, then people were more likely to say, I’m just gonna stay away from this stuff. And so more of them retired than were expected. The good news is, like women who left the workforce, anything, almost all of them come back, statistically, the same thing we saw, not every retiree came back. But when wages kept creeping up, vigilance was like, You know what, I will come back for that pay rate, I’ll be right there and go back on Monday, you know, they’re coming back and fill in some of those jobs. Again, not all of them. But some of that is, is kind of balancing out a little bit. The thing that’s hard is, that’s a short term fix that that person is not working for us. 15 years from now, probably, if they’re 70 years old, it’s not not likely to happen. Can I give you a fun example of a company that’s doing a great job of this? So in the book, I pulled out a lot of examples and things I don’t want to talk about this, just in big terms, abstract can be completely detached, right, that go back to my roots. It’s an HR leader.

Ben Eubanks 17:08
So for anyone listening and thinking, Okay, this sounds neat, but when we do, there’s a company that I write about in the book called aerospace Corp. And what they’ve done is actually have a return program, where the day after you retire, you can come back and work for them up to a maximum number of hours a year, but 1000 hours a year. And the way it works is you get ultimate control over that you can say I want to work on this project for two months, and I’m done for the rest of year, call me back in January, or I want to work a couple hours, every week, I’m gonna stay plugged in stay contributing. And they’re doing this for engineers or data scientists who are really specialized, really expensive, hard to find. People who have relationships with our customers already know the projects they’re working on. So they’re getting all the benefits of being able to access this talent pool that no one else can access, because they’re saying, hey, you’ve retired from us, you may be completely unplug from the world, or you can stay with us. And they’re want, they’re choosing to do that most of their employees are opting back in to continue working for them on some part time reduce basis. And what I love about it, not just for the benefit to the company, to the individuals themselves, but socially, there’s some research that shows when someone retires and just disengages from everything, their chances of dying early, go up dramatically. So these people unintentionally, are impacting the social good as well, by saying, We’re gonna keep these people plugged in contributing, reminding them that they have something valuable to offer society. And so everyone’s gonna get the benefit of them sticking around for a longer period of time.

Mervyn Dinnen 18:28
Okay, can I ask one more question? Trish?

Trish 18:31
You’re doing great.

Mervyn Dinnen 18:32
So from from what what you said there, which I think is is is replicating itself in the UK? And definitely, if not across Western Europe. We’ve been talking for years, obviously, about employee engagement, employee retention. And there’s obviously been a drift. Certainly over here since the pandemic, about giving people more agency over how when and where they work and choice. Are you seeing this as well as a kind of what what people are doing or what organizations are doing to maybe to keep people or to bring people back in who maybe had taken retirement, this plays out into the wider kind of, you know, if we’re offering this experience for these people, we’ve got to offer it for everyone else too.

Ben Eubanks 19:17
So the flexibility piece has been one of my favorite things to talk about in the last two years because we actually have done some survey work with the workforce to say what is flexibility mean to you? Because in my head as an HR person, it’s where you’re sitting when you’re working. That’s what we’ve been trained and all the headlines only talks about remote and nothing else. And we find we ask the workforce broadly, what does flexibility mean to you where I work is number five on the list. The other things that rank higher than that are flexibility means choices and how to get more work done. Choices and when I work so having some some decisions either days or hours, some some choices, their choices, the benefits choices, and when I get paid like choices and all these, the training opportunities, I have all those rank higher than where I work where my rear end is, and I’m getting paid to do my job. And I love that book. it for those employers that have a frontline workforce or have people that are like, I’d love to offer flexibility. But you’ve actually got to be here to meet with this customer to do this job. For those companies, they’ve been kind of left out of that. And this gives them a way to give some flexibility, give some tailoring to each of their people to say, hey, Trish, I know you can’t, you can’t work from home, it’s not possible. You’re not driving this forklift in your house. But we’re going to give you a little span of control over this next project that we’re working on, we want you to contribute your best ideas, because we think you have good things to offer here. And we want you to know that we appreciate everything you bring to the table, not just doing this one task, but we appreciate everything you have. And to doing those kinds of things is what flexibility means to the workforce. And someone tried to educate employers out there listening in that we have other levers we can pull to really engage and connect them like you’re talking about.

Trish 20:48
I feel like everything you’re sharing. But first of all, some of those stats I hadn’t even heard yet. So thank you for that. I didn’t realize it was that far down the list. Right? So that’s shocking. And the first thing I’m thinking is, again, back with HR head on is, oh, my gosh, what I’m hearing you both say but especially you Ben is, if I’m an HR leader, or even just you know, in an HR department, I really have the ability to use that knowledge very strategically, right? We’ve complained for years, we did not have the ability to be strategic in HR. I feel like what I’m hearing, both from the economic standpoint to some of these, these actual research data points is we actually do and it’s pulling and pressing those levers that you’re talking about in a way that we wouldn’t have done before, or even had reason to think about doing even a decade ago. Right? Yes, I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about because I know you do talk with a lot of HR professionals. What are you hearing about either their readiness to be that strategic person finally, right in this way? Or are we still seeing that maybe we need to be encouraging HR leaders more and giving them that agency, like we’re saying to do for the employees? Do we need to do more for our HR teams, so that they understand they can make some of these strategic suggestions.

Ben Eubanks 22:08
One of the things that’s all of us saw in the last couple of years is that when things hit the fan, right, everybody turned HR to say, Okay, now you’re the expert in masking and social distancing. And all these other things. Like, let’s just layer all these things on top of you, when when new challenges new troubles have popped up. They don’t say, hey, marketing, Can y’all figure that one out? No, it’s a people problem. And so HR is the first one to say, but another brick in my backpack, I’ll just carry the heavier load, because that’s who we are people get into this space, because that’s just a personality they have. I’m here to serve. I’m here to support our people. Yes, it’s hard. But it’s worthy. It’s important and it needs to be done. In the last couple of years, the spotlights been on HR more brightly than ever. It’s hot under the spotlight, right? There’s some challenge there, there’s a difficulty that comes with that. If you’re not ready, like you’re talking about Trish, then you may miss your chance to really have the impact that you want to the way I’ve been talking about it is the reason I got into this space in the first place. And for many people listening in, this may be the same thing you may have accidentally like, oh, HR, great. But you may have said I want to be in this because I want to impact people in a positive way. And unfortunately, there’s policy, there’s process, there’s culture, there’s leadership limitations, all these things can hold us back from having that impact. We want to have to create the workplace that we’re so proud of, that we can’t wait to tell people about because it’s such an amazing place, we take care of people so well. And we now have the chance to do that. Because the pressures are so high, it’s hard to find amazing people, it’s you got to keep the very best ones, there’s a lot of competition. And all these kinds of things are driving the importance of focusing on talent. And we have the impact, we have the opportunity now to have an impact we’ve always wanted to. And the stage is kind of set for that the table set, it’s time for us to step up and really take the action or mistake.

Trish 23:52
Yeah, I agree with you. One other quick question I had related to something you said a little earlier was when you’re talking about this is really not just a pandemic issue, right? This goes well before that across the globe, right? Because of birth rates changing and things like that. And I would say this I even having been in, you know, the work world for gosh, almost like 30 years now. It’s not something I even think about and so I wonder, are we not paying enough attention to some of those economic factors that Do you know, that we’re experiencing the outcomes now of things that really changed 20 3040 years ago? I actually saw this on tic tac oddly, but it’s it’s shocking that they were taking data from the Great Depression, which in the United States, of course is, you know, horrific, right. People were out of work. People were feeling like they did not have enough money to survive quite often. And they took the the years of the Great Depression, and they looked at the year which they boiled down to one year where people Well, we’re feeling the most negative impact right on salaries and things like that. And they took that salary, that average salary of a person in that time in that year, and used inflation rates to say, what would that person be making now. And what they found is that the average salary in the United States right now is lower, comparatively to what the worst year of the Great Depression, what someone was making. And so I think that’s where when you really use data to start comparing, right, we have a perception that a certain time was better or worse than another time, and it’s not always true. I guess my question in all of this is, as someone who uses data quite often, as you’re talking with leaders, not just HR but other business leaders, do you find that we are collectively as business people aware of some of the accuracies of data out there? Or are we just kind of like, working off of assumptions and theories? I fear it’s the latter.

Ben Eubanks 26:05
Yeah, humans are wired to react is hard to be proactive. And the there’s a great book out there called upstream that talks about actually planning for things and looking for stuff that’s going to change and trying to prevent that that person gets no rewards for preventing something from happening in the future. But the person who solved the big chaotic mess in the middle of it gets all the all the applause gets all the praise and recognition and rewards that come with that. And because of that, it’s really hard to get leaders to buy into, we need to make a change. Now, if it’s a small change or investment over time, to impact that, like, No, we got something else more pressing. And then suddenly, it’s a raging dumpster fire in the backyard. Like what? Who didn’t raise the issue? We’ve been talking about this for five years, but it’s yeah, now it’s out here. So someone recently I heard, heard someone recently say that we are really, really terrible. As a population at responding to something that’s been a long time coming. We’re really terrible at running, because it seems like it’s slow, slow moving this conversation about people retiring here in the States. Like that’s not a new thing that’s been Bucha been talking about that I wrote a case study on in college a bazillion years ago. So all those things have been coming for a long time. We’re just bad about responding to them. Because I think I’ll have time I’ll have time, I’ll have time. And I liken it to the the blockbuster Netflix, for example, to say, you know, Blockbuster actually had everything’s that Netflix was online, Blockbuster had an online version, where you could rent something, and you could take it back to a store. So they even had some, like benefits Netflix in half. But they didn’t have an algorithm that was very predictive and recommending things specifically to you. And because of that, they waited on that piece of it.

Ben Eubanks 27:42
And that’s what ended up kind of catching them, they thought well can’t, we’ll be able to invest in that we’ll be able to catch up later. And you can’t suddenly say, Okay, now we’ve waited Mervin, I need you to run twice as fast to catch back up to everybody else, because we prioritize everything else. And now we’ve decided this is important. I’m sorry, poor planning on your part does not suddenly make everyone’s super human and able to adjust to change that quickly. And that sort of thing happens all over the place. I was speaking to a big healthcare organization in Montreal, about two months ago. And I’m hearing this amazing speaker from Harvard talking about what’s changing in the space and how leadership works. And like, why am I even in this room? Like, why am I here talking to these leaders, you know, head of cardiology, and all these other. I’m about to talk to them about down scarcely the book and what the principles are. And after I finished talking about some of the challenges and the limitations on talent, how to hire and keep them, their CEO gets up and says, here’s our SWOT analysis, weakness, threats, lack of talent, lack of talent, lack of talent, okay, now, no alarm here, because they start seeing these things. And they’re starting to say, Okay, now it’s really a problem. But unfortunately, when it’s a small problem, no one wants to pay attention to it, because there’s something else that they think is more important. We’ve got to be using this to make decisions, make adjustments now. And let’s goodness, let’s actually reward someone that’s solving a problem that hasn’t happened yet, versus just focusing on the people who are who are solving the big, big problems that are in front of us right now. Because that’s not the only thing happening out there.

Mervyn Dinnen 29:04
I mean, it’s not 100% on what we’ve just been discussing, but I know that, Ben, you’ve also been involved in research recently about SuccessFactors in attracting and hiring. And one of the things is about the kinds of things job candidates want to see they don’t see an ad. I’m fascinated by this research all the time, because it’s something I’ve done a couple of projects on. And it’s one of those things that if I think back to the days when I was an agency recruiter, you know, candidate experience is is never fixed. So I’m interested in kind of your findings, having looked at it, maybe not, most recently, what what did you find with that kind of areas where were organizations, particularly in terms of talent scarcity, or just not getting it right.

Ben Eubanks 29:50
So this is one of the things I’ve really enjoyed talking about. I know things are things are hard, it’s hard to find good people. And a lot of the advice in the industry revenue contested this is you should talk to candidates more, share more things. Okay, great, but what do I share? I can’t just keep sending the job description, they’re gonna tune me out. And so one of the things we ask them to research is what sort of things do you want to know, as a candidate? What things do you prioritize what you care most about. And so things like knowing the starting salary before they even apply for a job, that’s a very high priority, especially for women. By the way, we see that in the data that people want to know what that is, before they go three conversations deep and find out that they’re so far off, they’re never gonna make it work. When we look at our data on ghosting, and why people are ghosting employers, one of the things that stands out is two of the top three reasons are related to speed, how quickly can we turn this around, I don’t want to turn you into a robot and just turn into a process. But at the same time, I have to respect your time enough for the candidate to say, we’re getting back to you. We’re communicating openly, we’re trying to share the stuff that makes you feel appreciated, so that you don’t bail out on us and go somewhere else. So having a recruiter in that process that makes you feel appreciated is really, really important piece of that. And then one last one I’ll throw in there. That was really interesting to me, is we asked and our research around, do you want to know what sort of career paths what sort of opportunities are ahead of you, as you’re going through the hiring process? And seven out of 10 candidates that absolutely, I didn’t want to wait until my six month review, and sit down with Trish, like, say, Hey, you talked about, you know, career ladder and path. And what’s what’s next for me? Oh, well, we’ll get to that later. And then the conversation never happened. So candidates want some commitment to that during the hiring process, because they’re using that as a factor to weigh different offers different companies different opportunities, and they want to know what sort of path you have for them. The number one reason frontline workers ghost employers is because they see another dead end job, they don’t hear anything about a career path, there’s being stuck in one more job where they’re not gonna expect to grow, expect to have any sort of advancement. And they don’t want that anymore. They want an opportunity to grow. So lots of stats throughout your day really quickly. But some practical things in there for anyone listening, that wants to create a more connected, engaging experience for candidates out there that really shows them that you care who they are and what they’re about.

Trish 32:01
I like that you use the word commitment. I think that’s over my career. That’s always been when I’ve struggled with like trying, you know, gosh, this’ll date me myself. But when I started it was we were doing like happiness surveys. How happy are you at work right now? We’re like, oh, maybe it’s not about being happy. It’s being satisfied. Okay, so we’re gonna change the world. When he satisfaction surveys, right? Then it went to engagement surveys, how engaged are you in all the time, I kept saying, it’s about commitment, right? Because commitment is something that you have over a long period of time, and it ebbs and flows, at least in my mind, right? You’re in, like, if you’re in a committed relationship with any one or anything or any place, right, it’s over time, and we’re gonna all have these sort of a roller coaster of sometimes we’re more engaged, and sometimes we’re not. And sometimes problems happen. And sometimes they don’t. But like at work, if you’re committed, if you know that you’re your boss, and their boss, and they’re committed to you, you’ll stay.

Ben Eubanks 32:55
You’re a big Disney fan. Trish, I share this example with you perfectly aligns with that, like any Disney trip, okay, there are highs and their lows. When you think back about your last your last visit, you don’t say you know what I remember, like that two hours standing in the sun to ride the ride, the Dumbo thing that last 25 seconds. That was that was pretty wild, you know, great. Like, we don’t think our minds gloss over those things. Because we remember the high moments like that really fun thing, we got to do that piece, we’re looking forward to the peak moments. And just like you’re saying here, this, every employee, in their experience, has peak moments has pit moments, things that are amazing that they love that really touched an emotional value or unexpected in a positive way. And there are things about it, they’re not great, right, that time that you accidentally stepped in it at work and someone you know, whatever else like those things happen. But the peaks have to outweigh the pits. And we have the chance, as you can let earlier talked about the strategic piece, we have the chance to orchestrate some of those moments to really connect with people create moments that that that make them feel committed, that show that we’re committed to them. And that creates the relationship we’re really looking for in the workplace.

Trish 34:01
Yeah, my daughter, she’s 19. And she’s started interning with me. And she said something the other day, I didn’t even call it out when she said it, but it’s like been sticking with me a little bit. And she said, It’s about creating a core memory, and that you have good core memories. And I’ve just not thought about working that way. But it’s true. When you think back over your career now that we’ve all three been working quite a while. If you if I asked you about any one of your employers, there were probably some good core memories, right? That really made an impact. And that really might have helped on those days when it was a harder day. Or maybe you had a bad experience. Right. And I think a lot of times we don’t focus on enough. One of my former bosses used to also talk about it as traditions, right traditions that you can count on at work, so that it creates that core memory, right. So it’s just interesting to me that that still kind of is important as you think about your workplace in the workplace culture. It’s not just about giving someone more money. It’s not just about giving them training, right? Those things are important. but it is about that connection, that core memory connection that you’re going to create with someone.

Ben Eubanks 35:08
I’ll throw one more, if you want to hear it really quickly actually got a number, just just just a thing that’s relevant here. When it comes to the work we’re doing with HR leaders, it’s really easy. I said earlier, the backpack metaphor, like it’s easy to feel like it’s all on us. We have partners in the organization as managers, and unfortunately, sometimes we point the finger they’re the ones that are caused the friction, things like that. But what we find in the data is that they are also the potentially the enablers of this connection, this commitment, because we can’t have a connection with every single employee, but those leaders can have it with their people, if we’re enabling them and empowering them and giving them the right, the right track to run on. And one of the big things that came up with our study last year on on that was it is statistically impossible for someone to say my manager supports me, if they don’t first understand me, really getting me and who I am not just my job title, not just my pay rate, but they know what makes me tick. They know when I mentioned Disney and Trish his eyes light up, right? They know if I’m talking about something British and Marvin gets excited, right? All those kind of things like they know the things about us that really bring us to life or the things that drain us and can tailor how they lead to our perspective. Those are the people that are tremendously more likely in the data to say, my manager supports me. And that leads to all kinds of good outcomes, like feeling like you belong, having high retention, better performance, all those kinds of things. So you’re you’re definitely on the right track there. And the data backup, what you’re saying, Trish?

Trish 36:29
That’s great, Mervyn, I mean, do you are you seeing that? I’m assuming it’s the same right in Europe? Are you seeing that in the UK and in some of the European countries because I know you actually travel and speak quite a few places really around the globe? As you’re talking to leaders, are you hearing that they’re kind of feeling that same way about that connection piece with whether it’s connection with a candidate that leads to employment, or whether it’s connection, once you’re an employee?

Mervyn Dinnen 36:56
I think it’s certainly a dialogue that’s growing. And probably not least, because people like like me, and Ben and Eurodollar are talking about it a lot. And a lot of the research we all get involved with shows it that people don’t just come to work, you know, I mean, historically, you came to work for a pay packet. And that was it. If you happen to get on with the people you work with, it was nice. But you know, you didn’t keep that. But now it is the connection. And this is what’s important. And even people who are working remotely, they still want that connection, they still want to feel a part of it. And I know that initially because it was a pandemic we couldn’t physically meet. But so at the beginning of the remote working and working over zoom and things like that, people felt they were losing touch. But I think that we’ve got enough data now and enough research, particularly from I would say the companies who specialize in like well being recognition in those areas, to show the importance of the connection. And and that I love Ben’s point about, you know, how can you help me if you don’t know me, and I think that we expect, we expect? We, when we manage your level, we don’t think we need to know all of that. But we do. And I think that’s the realization that’s maybe changed. I mean, it used to be said that, you know, all people will remember about you is the team you support the sports team, you support it. And and that’s about it. But it’s I think we get to know people a lot more we bring our whole selves to work a lot more and and nobody stops us. So it’s kind of been was smiling.

Ben Eubanks 38:47
They’re smiling really big something because I was actually so my leadership style is not the personal relatable, like I’m very focused on the tasks and getting things done. And so when the data came back to that I had a big frowny face like Oh darn it because that means I’ve got to adapt, calm leading my team, how supportive not, you know, right, my group of people that I’m working with, because I can’t just say hey, have you got these things done? What’s next on your list?

Trish 39:13
But how can I argue with you on this? Can we have an argument about this I’m going to argue with, here’s my take on that. I don’t think you have to change your leadership style but I think you need to do is make sure you have someone else on your team who picks up that other side. I think that’s an example of how you and I always worked well together. I cannot stand planning I hate it. I am mad is it the details? If I have to be I can be okay. If it’s interesting I can be but I would prefer not to be so I think as long as you have a blend in your organization or in that department or whatever your you know, whatever segment you’re talking about. If you know like I always knew when I when it comes to HR and I was telling someone this the other day she’s she’s an HR Leaders manager interesting. Like, oh my gosh, you know, these people eyes come they cry in my office, whatever. And I said, Do you have Kleenex? She’s like, Well, yeah, of course, I said I never had Kleenex in my office. I said, here’s why. Because if they came to me, I wanted them to come about the solid business issues that were going on, right? The high level stuff, we were going to handle big things. If they needed to cry for a long period of time. It’s not that I have no heart. It’s just I would say go next door to Courtney. Courtney has the Kleenex, right. We knew which one of us was going to be the more wrap my arms around you person versus the one who’s going to be like, Okay, now you’ve cried with Courtney, let’s figure out what we’re going to do to move on. So Courtney and I were a great team, and that we were able to do that together. So I would just offer that as an option. Now if you’re the only boss then okay, you got to probably change.

Ben Eubanks 40:48
Not changing fundamentally everything. But it’s just I’m going to intentionally stop and catch our breath for a second. Unless you’re volunteering to do do some of those relational things. And then you’re welcome to take up that slide for me at any time, Trish, I would completely appreciate that.

Trish 41:01
And now I wouldn’t, but I think that changes over time, too, because now I wouldn’t be that person, I’d be like, Oh my god, let’s go cry together. Let’s hug it out. And I think that’s another thing too, whether you’re a leader or you’re a worker, you never going to be in management. I don’t think it matters. I think we change over time, the way that we relate to others. And I think the way that we need to be related to with different phases of our lives, right? So now that you know I might be much more attuned to someone’s emotional needs in the workplace than I was before. When I was in my 30s. I was like, keep moving, go next door. The kinder gentler Trish is here.

Ben Eubanks 41:40
You have evolved over time. Like people like Mervyn will do that to you. I think it’s makes us a little bit nicer and more pleasant. There we go.

Mervyn Dinnen 41:49
Enlightened management styles. That’s a whole nother discussion

Trish 41:56
And we’ll do like a quarterly the that’ll be our next topic. Well, I know, look, we’ve been talking for a long time. First of all, thank you for coming and sharing, not just about the book, but some of the research you had that really ties to it, I want to pose a question to both of you more than you can think about it, we’ll put that on the spot right away. You’re not a futurist, you don’t at least you don’t want to be a futurist. Exactly. But I’m gonna make you pull out the crystal ball. You talk about a lot of things with a lot of different sized organizations and a lot of different leaders of varying levels, skills and abilities. My question for you is this. Is there something that we’re not talking enough about yet? Maybe it is that sort of, you know, slow moving train versus the high speed train, right? We’re so focused on COVID. We’re so focused on what’s after COVID? Right? That’s the immediate, what would you say? I’m an HR leader, I’m the business leader, what should I be kind of focusing on? Is it the economy? What are you? What are you telling people?

Ben Eubanks 42:51
One of the things we started measuring in the last year or two, the commitment, engagement, satisfaction and happiness comments made earlier, one of the things we started measuring last year is someone’s sense of belonging at work, whether they feel truly connected, and to what the definition of that scientifically is. I feel accepted, respected and appreciated. And if someone says they feel those things and the outcomes, how they feel about work, their willingness to take on additional responsibilities is dramatically different than someone who says I don’t feel that way about the work relationships, I have that Well, I feel connected at work. And I was having a talk yesterday with someone about this, like engagement hasn’t moved in 20 years. And the numbers are all the same. Like, well, maybe we need to let something else. And so I think this comes back to what you’re talking earlier. I have been talking more about that my teams and talking more about that. Because we feel like this is a way to talk about work in a very practical sort of way. Ask an employee what engagement means like, say, Do you feel accepted, respected, appreciated at work? Well, they’ll give you answers to that question pretty quickly, how they feel, right? Right in the moments, and they can tell you what drives that what what drains that.

Ben Eubanks 43:55
And from that sort of thing we can we have a foundation for a conversation for that commitment we’ve been talking about that creates that foundation for it. It’s really hard to ask someone commit if they don’t feel like they’re accepted or respected or appreciated when it comes to the work that they’re doing. The fun stat for all of my recruiting nerd friends out there talk about the talent scarcity thing, when someone is high belonging, they’re about six times more likely to say that their company is a great place to work. So if we’re like, how do we are recruiters or burnout that we can’t find any more candidates? How will we turn all of our people into recruiters for us by treating them so well, they want to tell everyone about this amazing place that treats them so well. They feel like it never felt before and work relationship. I’d say the belonging piece is one that we’re really seeing pop out in the data as something that we should be emphasizing more as HR leaders, and for a long time it’s hard to do. It feels just saying that it feels so fluffy and hard wrap your arms around. That’s when we narrow down to that definition. And we can really get an answer from people and how they feel about that. We can start acting on it to create those greater tethers and connections when it comes to work.

Trish 44:56
I love that I think to what you said could be for our personal relationship as well, right? If you have those components, you’re gonna have a stronger connection with anybody. Really? Sure. Yes. Mervyn, how about you? It doesn’t have to even be about anything we’ve talked about today, just from your perspective, right, your your globe tracking every single month? What is it that you think is important that people listening to this show really need to start focusing on that maybe we’re not spending enough time on?

Mervyn Dinnen 45:23
I think, I mean, most of the things I would say Ben’s probably covered off. Visibility, I think it’s important to people. I mean, I’ve seen research at two or three presentations about people feeling invisible at work, they don’t feel notice, they don’t feel. And if people feel invisible, if they feel that they’re unseen, then they don’t put in the effort. They don’t. It’s like a relationship, I suppose if it only works on one side. At some stage, the person who’s doing all the work begins think, why am I doing it? You know, where’s the appreciation? So I think that the, and it might be, as I say, takes quite a bit. The research recently I’ve done is around things like well being recognition and those things. But it’s, it’s what it’s those are the things that during a harder economic times, people think is the easiest thing to cut back on. And I was having a discussion with somebody at the CIPD festival of work last week. And we were saying that things like good well being initiatives within organization. There’s a general feeling that, you know, in harder economic times, they’ll just be dropped. And of course, we both said, but you need it more. That’s right. That’s when you need it more if there’s a crisis. Yeah, you need to support people. So I think it’s just it’s, it’s understanding people for who they are. And, yes, connection is important, and belonging is important. And it’s I think, you know, it’s getting managers leaders to understand that.

Trish 47:02
Yeah, I agree with you. I think for me, like when, when you were talking about that, it reminds me so when my kids were little, you actually even probably today, they’re 19. Now, but when the twins were little, if they did something naughty? I would say, Oh, I love you even more right now, because you need it more. Right? And I think that’s true, even as adults, right? When we struggle when we have these times of uncertainty, or maybe we don’t have all the resources or tools we need in a job, right? We need to love our employees more, because they need it more. And that pull that back. But you’re right, both of you, we pull that away, because we think it is soft, and it’s not. Right. Measurable? Well, it is it’s just it takes longer to get that measurement over time, that might come over a whole employee lifecycle, before you get that measurement from that person. I’ll just say like, for me, I think the topic that that I’m talking about a lot with people, that’s maybe just now starting to get more traction is around a little bit than what you talked about at the beginning about the economic piece. And you were sort of talking about, you know, the changing in demographics of the birth rates, right, so we’re seeing that at the front end of employment, I would say we’re also now seeing sort of the effects of the baby boomers globally. Now retiring, or being close to retirement, or they’re having health issues, they’re having other, you know, aging, elderly issues. Just did a show with, with someone about the, I guess the the mental and physical strain on our employees right now, who might be well, millennials or Gen X, who have aging parents and or grandparents or relatives that they are now responsible for. And so what we’re starting to just see a little bit is really that pressure, the results of that pressure on our workforce. And so I would say if I’m an HR, I would be starting to really pay attention to that. And what tools and resources can you put into place for your employee population to help address the pressures they might be having at home? Right, providing them resources, whether it’s financial, emotional, medical, right? And just understanding that that is going to be having a bigger and bigger impact as this population ages. So not only is it going to get us from the standpoint, we don’t have enough of us now to do the work and support them. But now the workers that we do have are going to be completely stressed out because they’re going to be handling elderly and potentially children at the same time in a way they’ve never had to do in several generations.

Ben Eubanks 49:44
Pulled on both ends. Right, which is not a pretty picture.

Trish 49:47
No, it’s unique because do you think about it, the baby boomers didn’t really have that. That was, you know, medical tech and technological advancements were as such the people were passing away earlier. Right so they weren’t taking care of parents. up into the 90s are hundreds, right? So yeah, that’ll be interesting in the next 2030 years, I think of how that plays out for the workforce because it’s going to absolutely impact every single person in some way.

Ben Eubanks 50:13
I’ll throw quickly in there, if anyone’s curious about this, this economic stuff, the demographic stuff, some of the bigger shifts and changes to the books that I read in preparation for writing talent scarcity, which is a very HR focused or business focused perspective on this, by the way, so if you want just science and nerdy stuff, there’s there’s more practical stuff in there than that. But two books that are a little more academic on this one is called What to Expect When no one’s expecting.

Trish 50:37
I like the play on words, though there.

Ben Eubanks 50:39
The other one is even more creepy. It’s called the empty cradle. So there’s two different books on the topic that talked about just fewer people being born. And in case anyone’s listening and feeling like Mervyn’s left out, I told you, the US birth rate was like 2.3 is the rate for replacement. The US at 1.6. And the UK is at 1.5. So if you’re listening and thinking, Oh, well, we’re moving out. I did not start there. If they’re doing.

Trish 51:06
like that’s very those steps are scary. And that’s why I’m saying like, we don’t always really look up, we have an idea of what we think of it that is so much lower than I thought that was going to be.

Ben Eubanks 51:16
The thing is, though, the the the US government came out recently and said, there’s no scarcity of talent, there’s plenty of people everywhere, look, our population stayed the same. Well, they went said, well, they will you actually look at the numbers. And it’s because we’re importing people through immigration so quickly, that it looks like the numbers are staying stable. But that’s not a forever solution. Right? Once this country realizes, hey, everyone’s leaving, we’re gonna have to change our policy make it harder to leave, we’re gonna do something to limit people going. Like they’ll start changing their own policies to keep people from leaving. And that sort of thing is going to be happening out of every developed country in the world. The numbers are below that threshold. Some of them are alarmingly low. Everybody hears about Japan, how scary things are there are India right now is one of the only countries that’s pretty well developed that has a number above replacement rate, they are going to be the China of the future. China’s right now is facing a lot of repercussions. If you follow the headlines about their one child policy, they enforced for so long, they’re starting to see some some struggles, some challenges, and it’s just gonna get worse over time. So it’s wild, because in those books I mentioned a minute ago, you see governments like Russia saying, oh, gosh, we’re below that. What would it will incentivize, we will pay someone to stay home and have babies, and they won’t do it. You can’t reverse it hard. And once it started. So it’s a it’s a wild and potentially scary trend. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade out here. The book talent scares the air for HR leaders, if you’re listening, and you’re like, how do I recruit the example I gave earlier? And lots of others? How do I keep people? There’s lots of great examples. And they’re so very practical. But there are some bigger things that are outside of our bubble that we all don’t have the influence to fix right now. Other than Jonathan having one work yet, I guess.

Trish 52:53
You’re saying that I’m doing my part, because I’ve already told my kids and my niece and nephew who are right at that same age, I’m like, we don’t like the family is getting smaller, right? And I wish I did. I told them that I said, I want four or five from each other. I like what I’m like, oh, yeah, have four or five kids. I want to have lots and lots of kids that are See, that’s what it is. Well, there’s another strategic thing a company could do. Right, encourage longer.

Ben Eubanks 53:18
I talked about fertility benefits in the book a little bit just to say, Hey, there, thanks coming you’re trying to do to adjust it from their perspective when they can. But I have yet to see the evidence those actually increase, increase the percentage of people doing things because it’s companies offering that it’s an attractive benefit. But I don’t know how much is actually impacting the broader world would be good to know.

Trish 53:36
Well, I think because, again, we’re in a little bit of a phase where the people who are coming into the workforce are still working for Gen Xers like me, and we were raised within the workforce. As you know, you come in you work hard, you pay your dues, you worry about getting promoted and things like that before you ever start a family. So we started much later, statistically, and I think we maybe not on purpose, but we’re expecting that of our workers.

Ben Eubanks 54:06
it’s cascading. It’s the average age of a woman during giving birth to a child is higher than it’s ever been. So it’s continuing to trend upwards. And so yeah, see, this is fascinating. To close the door on this before I get any more like sadness out there into the world, you know,

Trish 54:19
like we’re in

Mervyn Dinnen 54:22
and you’ve got more and more grandparents now as carers, because once once you’ve had the kids, you’ve got to go back to work. So yeah, the I can see just amongst people I know and hear of that the kind of dropping out the workforce, maybe five, six years when you have your kids to raise them to they begin to go to kind of junior school. That’s changed now. It’s kind of like the grandparents who are doing the raising because the mother and father have to go back to work almost immediately.

Trish 54:54
Hey, I’m in.

Ben Eubanks 54:56
A quick happy example if you want to close this out right tied into what You’re just sharing their moment. I’ll give you another hat tip to my friends over then UK. So in the book I talked about companies that want to retain or attract people who are at that retirement age people who are older, maybe even not quite at retirement age, but that are saying, You know what, it’s time for my, my second career or I want to change something I’m kind of bored or burned out with this. EasyJet, their US or their UK airline. One of the things they’ve started doing in their campaigns is to say, Hey, are you an empty nester? Have your kids kind of moved on? Are you trying to start what’s next? Have you always wanted an adventure and you had to put your put your head down and just do the, you know, the responsible thing and just work in a job and take care of your kids? Now they’ve moved on? Would you like to try something for you? We’ve got a job for you. You get to travel the world, you get to see new things, you get to explore stuff that you’ve never seen before? And will we have the job waiting for you just give us a call. Here’s how you apply for a job. And so EasyJet using that to target people who are thinking about that next phase of life. And I think it’s a brilliant campaign goes back to we were saying earlier about giving the candidate something to hook into that they care about not just saying there’s a job for everybody. But for you. If you’re in this persona, we know you we respect you. We see you we want you to want us.

Trish 56:08
Yeah, I want to go to work for EasyJet. That sounds awesome. Actually. There you go.

Mervyn Dinnen 56:12
No, I have to, I have to say it’s a little bit misleading because EasyJet don’t do long haul flight. Their flights are all around Europe. But yes, you do get a chance to explore.

Trish 56:25
Yeah. That’s all good. Hey, we could talk all day, we’ll probably have to do a follow up to this at some point. But first of all, then Eubanks, thank you for coming on the show and sharing all of your insights, where can people find you? What’s the best place for you to connect?

Ben Eubanks 56:41
To find out more about the book is talentscarcity.com. And if they’d like to see any of the research and the work we’re doing at Lighthouse, some of the data I talked about today, that’s LHRA.io/access, will let you get into the resource database and see all the reports and good stuff we’ve been sharing.

Trish 56:57
You mentioned HR summer school just happened, but I’m assuming it’ll happen again, so they can get all the information there about that as well. Read all your other research your other writings for many years, right? You’ve just celebrated a 10 year blogging career, right? So are no more than that.

Ben Eubanks 57:30
Yep. Only human show.com. I didn’t run a podcast called we’re only human because we’re HR leaders. But we are only human. And we we need to keep learning keep growing. So I talk to leaders just like y’all do here and have a blast with it. So in one of the enjoy hearing from you today, we’ll get to hear from the more they’re perfect.

Trish 57:48
And Mervyn, thank you for coming on, co-hosting with me. You you want to mention the books where people can connect with you. And also you have podcasts HR Means Business, here on the HR Happy Hour network. What maybe give us a little insight on what are some of the recent topics you’ve either just done or are going to be covering on the podcast and then tell us about books real quick.

Mervyn Dinnen 58:10
Thank you for Trish. Well, first the books. There are two books co authored with a guy called Matt Alder, and it’s exceptional talent and digital talent. And we’ve we’ve been doing research and writing around how I suppose the lifecycle from from candidate first hearing about the job to the relationship that you have with an organization after you’ve left, and how that’s changed and how tech underpins that. And then the second book was much more about digitization, huge investment in digital transformation and how that was impacting the work experience. My podcast is hosted on the HR Happy Hour Network. It’s called HR Means Business. We’ve had some recent conversations around culture and kind of how it impacts business the most recent one was looking fondly an organization in the US and how the the the mission, shall we say of the business is somehow is some often touched by negative external narratives and things and kind of what it means to the people internally and how how leaders really understand culture. Firstly, why they should and how they do. We we’ve talked about kind of, you know, remote, flexible working and maintaining connection. And I’m about to record two more podcasts next week. One is interesting about the hourly worker experience, because it was I was doing some research on this. And of course, it’s most of what we write about when we write about employee experience candidate experience. We’re looking at permanent workers. We’re not looking at the hourly workers, but your hourly workers the experience is key. Everybody assumes that they just want someone who’s going to pay pay them and on time but it isn’t and also I’m going to be talking about employee value proposition and and and the engagement equation. And kind of again organizations don’t often realize that that you know, even once they’ve nailed their EVP what what it really means for longer term engagement and retention.

Trish 1:00:21
Very good. Well, I love that. Well for all the podcasts, you can get them on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you get your favorite podcast. Please be sure to subscribe to all three of the podcasts and want to thank also our sponsor Paychex for always making the shows possible for all of you. Thank you all for listening. And join us next time. Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai