Prepare for a lively discussion between our host James Mackey and Colleen Ferrell, the Chief People Officer for North America at BCW Global, about the importance of investing in the right systems, harnessing the power of data and analytics, and crafting a robust succession plan.
Their conversation takes an intriguing turn as they dive into the world of talent assessment and succession planning. Colleen shares her insights on performance reviews, the nine-box tool, and talent mapping. She gives us a fresh perspective on how to remove bias from the performance review process, fostering a people-first culture.
James and Colleen talk about attracting and retaining exceptional people, demonstrating ROI, and budgeting for a people-first culture. Finally, we take a sneak peek at the thrilling partnerships on the horizon with leading companies. All of these and more in this episode that's sure to jumpstart your journey in building and engaging top-notch teams. Don't miss it!
0:31 Colleen Ferrell's background
1:33 High-level thought leadership on best practices for building and engaging great teams
13:27 Talent assessment and succession planning
25:44 Employee Satisfaction and ROI in HR
30:33 Budgeting and proving value to employee
Thank you to our sponsor, SecureVision, for making this show possible!
Our host James Mackey
Follow us:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/82436841/
#1 Rated Embedded Recruitment Firm on G2!
https://www.g2.com/products/securevision/reviews
Thanks for listening!
Prepare for a lively discussion between our host James Mackey and Colleen Ferrell, the Chief People Officer for North America at BCW Global, about the importance of investing in the right systems, harnessing the power of data and analytics, and crafting a robust succession plan.
Their conversation takes an intriguing turn as they dive into the world of talent assessment and succession planning. Colleen shares her insights on performance reviews, the nine-box tool, and talent mapping. She gives us a fresh perspective on how to remove bias from the performance review process, fostering a people-first culture.
James and Colleen talk about attracting and retaining exceptional people, demonstrating ROI, and budgeting for a people-first culture. Finally, we take a sneak peek at the thrilling partnerships on the horizon with leading companies. All of these and more in this episode that's sure to jumpstart your journey in building and engaging top-notch teams. Don't miss it!
0:31 Colleen Ferrell's background
1:33 High-level thought leadership on best practices for building and engaging great teams
13:27 Talent assessment and succession planning
25:44 Employee Satisfaction and ROI in HR
30:33 Budgeting and proving value to employee
Thank you to our sponsor, SecureVision, for making this show possible!
Our host James Mackey
Follow us:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/82436841/
#1 Rated Embedded Recruitment Firm on G2!
https://www.g2.com/products/securevision/reviews
Thanks for listening!
Hey everyone, welcome to the show. This is your host, james Mackey, really excited about today's episode. We are joined by Colleen Farrell. Colleen, thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, James. Good to be here.
Speaker 1:Let's do it. So let's start off with your background. Could you share a little bit about yourself with everyone?
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. So I am currently the Chief People Officer for North America at BCW Global. We have had kind of roughly 1,000 people in North America and we are a public relations firm. So we focus on mostly corporate and public affairs, but we do have practices in brand and technology as well. So I am kind of broadly responsible for talent attraction and retention across North America. So basically everything that falls into the HR umbrella rolls up into me. So really everything around the employee life cycle, from talent acquisition to kind of talent management and even managing kind of the exit processes and all of that HR ops, all of that kind of, is under my purview. I've got about 15 years or so of experience and I went to Georgetown University for my master's degree in HR management.
Speaker 1:All right, good stuff. And just to follow up on the current environment that you're in at BCW yeah, so North America, 1,000 people. How about holistically? What does the org look like globally?
Speaker 2:Holistically, I believe we've got about 3,000 in total, so North America is definitely our largest market.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, good stuff. Well, so one of the first topics that we talked about today is just going through like high level thought leadership on best practices that you've learned over the past several years when it comes to people, teams, possibly talent acquisition. What are some of the highest leverage focus points for somebody in your position or for really any executive that is focused on building great teams of people and engaging with great teams of people and ensuring that people are empowered to do their best work Like? I would just love to hear some of the best practices from your perspective.
Speaker 2:Sure, it's interesting because I've worked at a number of different types of organizations, different sizes, but I think that there are some things that kind of are applicable kind of across the board. So one would be kind of investing in your systems. Right, your people team is only as good as your systems are. If you have good data, if you have systems and technology that you can leverage, that means you can have a lower head count on your people team because they can leverage technology to kind of deliver really solid people programs. So that's probably one of the most important things. Another is ensuring that you're leveraging your people team in the right way.
Speaker 2:So I've seen so many times that HR or people teams are seen as kind of like oh well, I completed my forms with them or I can go to them and ask them benefit questions, and yes, the people team is there for that.
Speaker 2:But I think that kind of the real value is aligning your business strategy with people strategy and executing on that strategy, and that's where your HR business partner should really be spending their time, not on the transactional stuff, so to speak.
Speaker 2:And then I would say probably one more would be kind of no focus on analytics or numbers or data. I feel like HR is an art and a science and you need to be able to marry the two, and without kind of the analytics and the numbers and the data driving your decisions, you're kind of flying blind. So I would say that's another really important aspect. And the last one that I kind of will highlight too is ensuring that you have a succession plan for your people team or your CPO or your head of HR or whatever. I think oftentimes companies will recruit externally, when in reality, particularly for CPOs I think this would probably be a more applicable comment Make sure you're hiring people that can hire people and you're developing them so that way they can kind of take over for you in the event that you leave or retire or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. I think there's a lot of points to speak to here. I think we could talk about systems first. What are the things that you mentioned? And the prep call that we had was related to having the right tech stack in place really will help a lot of the HR team move out of more of this transactional role and to focus more on the strategic aspects. I think that that's probably true of almost every department.
Speaker 1:That's something that we think about a lot in town acquisition as well, and I'm sure that's absolutely about like there's, like we want to be building relationships and understanding priorities of our candidate pipeline and people in the pipeline and really evaluating fit at a deeper level. And so what are some specific use cases there of technology that you've built out and things that you've tried to either automate or accelerate so that your people and talent acquisition teams can be more strategic and impactful in their role?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I mean, I think there's a few things that I've seen over time. So one, having a really strong HRIS in place. So basically that's. That's your system where kind of all of your people data is kept. You should be able to, at any given moment, know what your population looks like, know what the makeup is of your population. If you have your HR teams kind of focusing on pulling that data and manually manipulating that data, that is a huge time waster. So I would say that is that's one thing that I've seen is making sure that you have a really strong HRIS with really robust reporting capability. I think that's incredibly important, yeah real quick.
Speaker 1:Sorry, hris, do you use?
Speaker 2:So at BCW we are in the process. We have our kind of homegrown system, which is really great, but we are in the process of transitioning over into a work day and, you know, depending on the size of your company, it really that kind of will drive which direction you go in for your HRIS. I've also used Paycom, which was really fantastic and a much smaller firm but it was great, really liked it. And you know ADP also has some capability in in some of its product offering. Again, the reporting and kind of the dashboards that are provided really help with being able to capture what your population looks like.
Speaker 1:So that's like. So reporting is probably like it's one of the primary evaluation drivers for looking at a system.
Speaker 2:Yes, and ease of use for the team right, Because it's one thing if you have this really amazing tech stack and it's really robust, but it takes your team forever to figure it out or it's really clunky and tough to use, then it's not doing what you need it to do, Right? So I would say that's probably. Number two is how easy and what is the user interface and how how friendly is it in order for your team to actually use the systems.
Speaker 1:For sure when you have the right systems built out. Let's say, on the HR side, what are some of the more impactful things that you are freeing up your people team to do? Where do you want them to be spending their time? I mean, I know there's different roles within the company. Sure, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think, in this scenario, if we look at the HR business partner role because I would say that pretty much every organization has that either an HR business partner or an HR manager or an HR director I would say that they should really be focusing on people. What is keeping your people in the organization? Where are they? What are the pain points? Are there any barriers to great work? Are they? What is your customer experience? And how are you aligning your employee experience and your customer experience? So I'd really like I like my team to focus on candidate experience, employee experience and also just being a really streamlined, high performing team in the organization. So I really want them focusing on our talent and hyper-focusing on our talent. Where are there gaps? Where are we not doing well? Where do we need to improve and what is kind of what is in the way of developing a really solid employee experience? What you know, how do we get to being an employer of choice?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. I would like to talk a little bit about the town acquisition technology. Is that still in the homegrown side or what are you leveraging on the town acquisition?
Speaker 2:We currently use Workable on the talent acquisition side and you know I've used a number of different systems. I would say I have a few favorites, but we all do right. What's your favorite?
Speaker 1:Yeah, mine's greenhouse.
Speaker 2:Me too.
Speaker 1:I love greenhouse.
Speaker 2:They're so good, like really robust, they have amazing reporting. It's super easy to use because, like. So another piece of like leveraging technology is also ensuring that your employees can have some self-service aspect right, and even, like in the town acquisition space, right, you want to make sure that your managers are able to, like get into your TA system so that way they can help review candidates or give feedback or whatever, and we and you make it really really easy. So, greenhouse I'm a huge fan. We use that at AKQA and they were just, and I think in certain pockets around WPP, who you know, that's the parent company, the holding company of BCW. I think they use greenhouse, but I'm a huge fan.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, it's kind of cool, is we're actually? So Daniel, the co-founder and CEO, and I actually we haven't officially announced this yet, but he's actually coming on Greenhouse is coming on as a partner to the podcast and Daniel's gonna be running. That's super cool. Yeah, I'm so pumped. I'm running a quarterly recurring episode where it's going to be me, daniel, and he's going to be bringing on a guest, like a really high caliber guest, and the three of us are going to be riffing on different topics. But, yeah, that's pretty cool. So I've been working with the greenhouse team and getting that set up. It looks like we're going to be giving this a try. He's already come on the show.
Speaker 2:Yes, I heard, yes, I listened to that because, again, huge fan of greenhouse which, like that, might be the you know that's such an HR thing to say. Like oh yeah, it's a really, really solid ATS.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So for everybody tuning in, like, just make sure to check this out, I think we'll probably release the first of the series in September and I'll be doing an official announcement soon. But we'll do September and then we'll do one toward the end of Q4. But that's going to be. I'm excited about that one.
Speaker 2:Super cool, that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Well, so I you know, I think, like the skin is a succession planning. I'm actually I'm really big, big into this as well. I think you got to be like companies have to be very careful about knowledge gaps, and it's important at every. It can be incredibly difficult at any level of the organization, but if, specifically, if you do lose a leader, you don't want any of the process to live in the leader's head and that's the only place it resides. Because even in the transition period of the last two to three weeks, it's really, in my experience, impossible to get everything that you need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not half time.
Speaker 1:I've been hyper diligent about requiring process documentation for everything. I mean to the point of if I had to hand somebody for their role a process doc and I couldn't answer any questions that it's like a step by step guide to how everything is being done and of course it's never going to be perfect, but the idea is that there's like monthly or quarterly updates as things evolve to outline that in the process documentation. I'm curious, if there's now hearing you think it like, about hiring plans, one things that we haven't done maybe we should do is know what the recruiting process would look like for those roles as well. I mean, I guess if they were open before we would have that knowledge. But anyway, it's curious to get your thoughts on succession planning, how you go about doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I completely agree with you.
Speaker 2:Like. So ultimately, particularly if you're leading any function, really your responsibility is to build out the function and make sure that it can run independently of you, the leader. That's like bare minimum, right. So totally agree with you on ensuring that you have really solid process documentation, you're sharing information or even like pulling people from your team into conversations. Like I can't stress how important it is to hire really smart, strong people in behind you and don't be threatened by it.
Speaker 2:Like, make sure that you're bringing in people that are that can, that can do your job, because you're not going to be there forever and your responsibility is to, in my opinion, leave the function better than we can always. So totally agree with you on the process documentation and, in terms of succession planning, identifying people on your teams that can elevate into that role and figuring out what they need in order to do that, because so often we see companies that are leader leads and they have to go out and find somebody to replace them, which probably means you need to look at your talent Right. Do you have the right people in place and what are your plans for the team that's in place, for your high potentials? How have you evaluated your staff and done your talent mapping to determine and who could potentially succeed that role and how long it would take them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is really crucial, Right? How do you go about evaluating team members that can move up? So like, let's say, you're looking at people that could potentially move up your role, or like you're underneath, like you're talking to your directors or your managers and from the perspective of like hey, if we move you into the next stage in your career here and level you up to a manager, to a director role, we need to know who the players that can move up into the management role. Is this partially done through performance reviews? I mean, so is that the primary structure for how you evaluate who can move up, or how do you get that info?
Speaker 2:I think it's a combination, and I think in every organization it's different, right, like what works for BCW might not work elsewhere, but I think for us a combination of performance reviews, and then also there's something called a nine box have you heard of this? Where there's like performance on one, access and potential on another, and those who have high potential and their high performance generally are your, what we call high pose. But I think so I love the nine box. There's a lot of criticism of the nine box, which is fair, but I think it tends to be really useful as long as you're kind of defining what does high performance look like and what does high potential look like, right? So if I'm saying someone on my team has high potential high potential for what? High potential to become the CPO, high potential to become an SVP, what does that look like? So I think, ensuring that you are applying the nine box with the appropriate lens, it's a great tool. I love using that for talent mapping and succession planning, for sure.
Speaker 1:And so I think one of the challenging parts with performance reviews too, and this is a topic that I think it's just hard and I think to do it right is hard I'll just put it this way Like it's easy to put together some kind of survey or like a one type of metric.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That maybe isn't necessarily ideal, like I think. On talent acquisition, it could be really hard, for instance, to do performance reviews for recruiters, because recruiters might be recruiting for different roles, so you can't just have like a metric like number of hours Time to fill Right, because if you're hiring executive talent, it's going to take way longer than it's going to take mid or junior level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's definitely nuance that has to be built in. But I think too, it's like there could be manager bias, there could be different things where it's like not necessary or the managers may not understand the nuance that we just discussed, or maybe they understand it but they haven't built out like a measuring system. So from a CPO perspective that's running a large organization, like, how do you kind of ensure that the way that those like performance management, performance reviews are being done properly so you can actually truly identify the people that should be moving up within the organization? Do you have any advice there?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, I would say there's a few things. One would be make sure that the tool you're using is easy to use, because, like here's one, like one thing that I see a lot in terms of organizations is that they have, you know, a fully built out performance review process, but then the tool is really hard to use and clunky to use and it will take a manager forever and then they won't do it.
Speaker 2:So like that is like step one. If you have a tool that's like just you know, moderately okay, I would still say focus on training your managers to make sure they understand the vernacular, the you know potential pitfalls for bias in their reviews, making sure that they understand kind of the rating system and how to appropriately assess their staff and then also ensuring that they don't have like some sort of like recency bias. Right, like John performed really really well over the last month, so they give them this glowing review, but the you know the other 11 months not, it wasn't so great.
Speaker 2:So I would say just kind of like a refresh in terms of how to conduct a performance review and the vernacular and kind of like the terms that we're using and how to avoid bias in your assessments would be probably the best.
Speaker 1:I think that that's the hardest. Like you have people that aren't like managers, aren't necessarily qualified or trained on running performance reviews properly, or are they on talent acquisition, and then it's like, how do you and the larger the organization, the harder it is to, I feel like keep thing in line and like to me this is what a people first culture means. Like I think sometimes CEOs, for instance, might think people first culture is this kind of fluff thing that doesn't yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's like, well, no, there's actually like there's execute, like there's things you can execute on that are people first that are gonna directly impact the performance of your team. And a lot of it's like how, if you're you gotta remove bias from performance review process. Bias could take a lot of forms, you know, when it comes to you could look at everything from unconscious bias with DE and I efforts to performance biases, to recency biases. I mean there's a lot of things that you have to like look for that are actually gonna directly impact how effective your team is at achieving the North Star metrics. I think that there's just, you know, so much opportunity from a people first perspective. I mean hiring, best practices, the quality of your team.
Speaker 1:I mean like, if you look at like a sports team, like everybody understands, like the concept of, like a draft and the concept of you need the best people to win championships, like it's not nobody, like I don't feel like that is lost upon anybody, but like think about the amount of recruiting and effort it takes to get those amazing people on the team so you can win the damn game. And I don't feel like we put that same like companies aren't, like we need to get somebody to do this. It's like no, you want the high leverage value creator in the role that can achieve, like, incredible results. Like, and that takes a lot of intention and it requires buying from the entire organization and hiring. New managers need to be doing their stuff and that's. I think that's so hard for people. It's like people teams. It's like we're accountable for hiring and talent management. Like literally the core of the business is the team, but yet our results are tied to the hip with how the rest of the organization is run.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know I see you had said something interesting there about you know, with sports we know that we have to like find the best players. But also, right there's, I've read something about if you have a monthly, you know, let's use basketball, for example, if you have five superstars on the court, right, they actually don't win as many games as if you like if you don't have like your utility players in the game, right. If you don't have like a, what's the name John Hardin in the game, right.
Speaker 2:Like if you don't have him then your team might not perform as well. So I think, also as part of like your talent acquisition strategy, what is the makeup of your team? Where are the gaps? Like before you even hire? So, like, this is one of the like, one of the biggest things. I feel really passionate.
Speaker 2:And if you can't tell them, one of the big things is like, okay, somebody leaves and you need to hire somebody into the role. You need to replace the role, actually assess the role. Is this what you really need, based off of the current team makeup and what your clients need and what your like? Is this the right role or do you need to change it? Cause you can do that? So I think there's like there's part of that, but you're absolutely right. I think the talent acquisition teams can get really frustrated with hiring managers that are kind of showing up and doing their best because, even though it's like so crucial to the success of the business, if there isn't full buy-in from the CEO down, your talent acquisition is going to strallow for sure.
Speaker 1:So I guess, like, do you have any other advice, just to slow down on this, on how to ensure that hiring managers? Daniel Chait said the funniest thing on his episode you probably heard. He was like there's two things that hiring managers struggle with it's hiring and managing. And like you know and both of them are great Like you know and both of them, like you need them to do effectively so that you can run in effect to people Do you have any other kind of advice on how you can ensure that your managers are delivering on the performance reviews in the right way, delivering on hiring in the right way or aligned with the initiatives that you give to the organization?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think I'm really big on giving context and like share again information, sharing why doing something is important and how it benefits you manager. So I'm really big on that. I'm also big on ensuring that you know we're training people in the appropriate way. So if you're going to be, you know, involved in hiring, you're trained up on it so you understand again the context behind why you need to get back to us with your feedback and why we can't just like wait forever because the candidate's going to accept another offer somewhere else or whatever.
Speaker 2:And I would say also, probably like one of the most effective ways is how are you incenting your managers and your leaders? Are you incenting them based off of candidate experiences? Are you assessing them and incenting them based off of employee experiences and engagement? And are you looking at turnover on the team, right? So like there's a lot of different ways and a lot of different levers that you can pull, but I would say, ultimately, look at how you're incenting your people, because if you are incent, particularly your leaders, if you are incenting them to do the right things, then you will often see a positive result.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it, and so let's go into. I would love to transition for the next segment. Yeah, parallels between excellent employee experiences and excellent customer experiences. You know high level philosophically. We'd love to get your thoughts on this and then dive into some more specifics.
Speaker 2:Sure, one of the things that I have seen, particularly where I am right now, is that I think when I first came in, there was almost a disconnect between employee experience and customer experience and in reality they should be tied at the hip right, Because oftentimes great employee experiences lead to great customer experiences and it impacts the bottom line in a really positive way. So that's kind of where, philosophically, I feel like your employee experience needs to be tied very closely with customer experience for sure.
Speaker 1:For sure. What are some of the things specifically that you can, that people should be thinking about when it comes to employee experience, and what are some of the highest leverage wins right that we can, as executives, do to provide a solid employee experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So like back to your point about, you know, sometimes executives or CEOs, you know, see this as like a fluffy, like puppies and rainbows thing. It's actually not. So this is not about necessarily making employees happy. While that's important, yes, it's more high value than that.
Speaker 2:I would say, understanding what your employees' pain points are in order to deliver for the client or the customer. So, you know, an example might be, again, I really like, focused on systems. If you can't tell if the you know system by which they need to deliver or something to the client is not working properly, if they have to go through a lot of you know, jump through a lot of hoops to kind of deliver great work, that can be a huge pain point. So one of the things that I will say is that I feel like oftentimes HR is very focused on employee happiness. Well, yes, that's super important. We want to make sure our people are happy because we want to retain them. We also want to make sure that we are removing those frustrations and those pain points. So what are they? And I think a lot of times HR doesn't focus as much on things that are outside of the traditional HR purview, but they really should be right, because that is where you're going to have the highest level impact, particularly with your customer's complaints.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really love that distinction, of course, like we want folks to be happy, but just like in life, like with our, how we prioritize on an individual level, it's like, yeah, we want to be happy, but there's other things that we're thinking about too. Like we're thinking about impact and relationships, and sometimes we're balancing all of these different things to try to produce a life of fulfilling life, and so it's a balancing act. I think that that is a true disconnect. I think sometimes I do speak with people leaders not as much at like the CPO level, but when you go down a couple of notches to maybe on the director level, I still sometimes see a disconnect where it's like too far in the direction of being, like an advocate for the people, and I think it's like as a C level. We need to remember that your team is the executive team, your goals are the North Star metrics and, of course, you want to provide good experiences, but it's through the lens of what experiences do we need to provide in order to achieve our North Star metrics?
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think it's like we did a panel episode with a few of my team members here at SecureVision and my team, just for background. Like we do contract recruiting and better recruiting and RPO We've done it for 150 companies and so that's just my perspective, right Like, and where I'm coming from. So for my team, like we offer a fully remote. The team loves it and you know the team.
Speaker 1:I think somebody on my team was just like hey, I love that. That's a part of our culture and a value that we have. And I just level said I was like look, I appreciate that, but, to be clear, it's not necessarily a value I have. The reason that I did that is because I need to attract the best people. The best people are going to produce the best results for my customers. The decision was made based off attracting and retaining the best folks and in our industry, it's a lever that I can use to attract great people. And so it's like through the lens of like you know that it's not an inherent value. I'm just saying like that's not how decisions should be made. I think.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:One of several reasons why people may not make it from a director to a VP level is 100%.
Speaker 2:Yes, Like there needs to be also. Like when you're making your case right, you are able to decide that for you, right For your company, James. But in terms of like how I have to operate right, For example, at BCW in North America, we have two days well eight days a month in the office, which is a huge selling point for us. But again, it's from a talent attraction and retention standpoint. Am I glad that everybody really likes it and I get to take advantage of it too? I'm worried from home today, right, Like I get.
Speaker 2:I take advantage of it too, but I it's about flexibility and attracting really great talent and keeping really great talent.
Speaker 1:Flexibility is a huge lever that we can pull yeah and like, and that's, that's the executive mindset, and so that's like. As much as I love the praise from my team, I was like, well, look, I also want to be transparent with you. Like I am very happy that you're happy, sure, and also, at the same time, I'm going to make a business decision based off what's ultimately going to drive us forward, and I think you want a leader that's thinking that way. Like, you know, how are we going to grow? Because, ultimately, when we grow, employees are going to thrive. They're going to have more growth opportunities within their role. I think one of the things that we talked about is is and the prep call was getting in like to a little bit about budgeting, yes, and I think that that's another area where HR, people, teams, town acquisition can have a hard time showing ROI 100%.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:That's like the potential value creation or opportunity cost or I'm curious like how do you, how do you go about preparing budgets and making sure that you have the right financing to deliver on what a people first culture actually means, which is like what we're getting to. It's like like a people first culture is about doing the right people things so that you could achieve North Star metrics. So how do you go about proving that value in like a relatively accurate dollar amount?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say it's essential for a CPO particularly to be as aware of the numbers as our CFO, right, like, I work very, very closely with our CFO and I. Everything we do there's a data, there's a data component too. So, like again, kind of going back to that part in science, balance, right, we might be making the case to kind of implement different people, programs or, you know, have new systems or or enhance our systems, but there's a reason for that and there's always a dollar amount attached to it, whether it is the cost, the opportunity cost, whether it's the return on our investment, whether it's potential turnover numbers and what that would cost. There's a way of making a calculation. You have to be careful, right, there's a way of calculating the cost or the benefit of everything.
Speaker 2:So I work very closely with our CFO because I want to make sure I'm calculating it the best way I can, but I would say that it's it's super important for a CBO to be really, really well aware of your number like, know your numbers, or any HR leader really Like. If you aren't making your case using analytics and data, that's a problem.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah, it's not like I need more budget because we're behind on a hiring plan.
Speaker 2:It's like Right, or I need more budget because I want to do you can pick anything I want to have a party for people. Okay, why, what is the reason? Like what? What is the kind of return on that? So I would say, kind of like critically, looking at all of your expenses and also your strategic plan from like a business standpoint how is your people plan and like that strategic plan, and what funds do you need in order to get there? And then, how are you making that case? Everything, I mean everything we do, and my team is probably they've gotten used to it now, because I've been there for for a while, but I'm constantly, you know, especially when I first joined. Okay, well, what's the reason? Why do you want to do this? What's the benefit? What's the numbers, what's the analytics behind it? And they're now, they're just like they know if they're going to be proposing something to me. I want to know the numbers, I want to know the data.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. And it's like, if you can't prove a true ROI, then it's not the right project and you shouldn't be straight up, you shouldn't be doing it. Yeah, it's that simple, totally Well. Hey, carly, this has been a great episode. I'm really happy that you were able to come on today and I hope everybody tuning in Make sure you're taking this episode, dropping it into Slack channel sharing with your team. We really appreciate the support and there's a lot of good stuff in here to to to implement. So, carly, thank you, I appreciate you. Thanks for coming on the show today.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, James.
Speaker 1:Cool, cool, all right, and for everybody tuning in, keep a lookout for official announcements on some partnerships that we got coming out. I already kind of leaked the greenhouse thing today, so that is coming, and then I'm working on a few more strategic partnerships. I don't have commitments yet, but they're with, like, category leading companies that are affiliated with basically the mission of building great organizations through hiring the best possible people and making sure that they're empowering them. So from a technology standpoint primarily. So, yeah, anyways, more of that to come. It's going to be really, really cool. We're going to continue to elevate the show and add even more value. Next year is going to be crazy cool too. We're going to start doing live recordings with audiences of top executives in the world that are passionate about these topics. So there's just a lot of a lot of cool things happening. So, anyways, we'll see you next time, take care.