Name: The New Rules of Workforce Execution: Why Talent Intelligence is the Foundation for Better Business Performance
Uploaded: 2026-09-29T18:30:08.133Z
Duration: 1 h 29 min 32 s
Description: The New Rules of Workforce Execution: Why Talent Intelligence is the Foundation for Better Business Performance

Transcript for "The New Rules of Workforce Execution: Why Talent Intelligence is the Foundation for Better Business Performance": Hi, everyone. So excited for today. Welcome to the new rules of workforce execution, why talent intelligence is the foundation for better business performance. We're glad really glad you're here. And as we give everyone a moment to join, why don't those of you who are here awesome. I see you're already doing that. Let us know where you're calling in from. And, y'all, it's Tuesday, so maybe even in the chat, share one word about how your week is going so far. My week has been surprising. I feel like I wanna know more about that. Exciting. Crazy. Yeah. Quick. That too. I'm feeling all of these words. Oh, somebody's calling in from their vacation. I love it. Well, we hope to make this time well worth your lead up into your vacation. Oh, across the world, we've got folks joining in. I love it. Alright. Well, let's go ahead and get started as we've got a few folks still joining. I do want to lead in by saying that we really want this to be very much a conversation. For those of you dialed in, thanks again for joining. Please share your reactions to things, in the chat. If you have a question that comes up, throughout the conversation, feel free to add it to the q and a. And if we have an opportunity to, we will answer the, the questions that come up in the panel. I will say if we don't have an opportunity to answer the questions that come up, don't stop asking them. We will follow-up on any unanswered questions that come in. I also wanna make you aware that we have three audience polls that that we're gonna be running during the discussion to make this very interactive. So, please join in and respond to those when they appear on your screen. You'll have a few seconds to do so. I am Andrea Lagan. I am the chief operating officer here at Better Works, and, I have the great pleasure of moderating today's conversation. I am thrilled to be joined by two very experienced leaders, whose work spans business operations, organizational design, talent strategy, and human performance. And, let me start with Deborah Squires, who is the chief operating officer at Solarex and has led human resources, customer success, operations, and customer experience organizations through growth and significant change. So, Deborah, can you tell us a little bit about your background and maybe some of the workforce decisions that you help organizations make today? Hi, Andrea. Thanks for having me. Yes. I have really built my career at the intersection of people and talent and customer facing leadership and back office operations. And I just have really enjoyed the opportunity to bring those two together to drive business performance. So some of the decisions that that we really are focused on, as it relates to, making people decisions is how do we deploy the talent that we have faster? How do we understand the capabilities that we have in seat? And what are the gaps that we need to close in order to execute on our business strategy? That's awesome. And all of the things that I think we're gonna have an opportunity to talk about today too. Thank you, Deborah. And Caitlin Collins, you're the director of program strategy and. outcomes here at Better Works, and an organizational psychologist who serves as a strategic advisor and solutions expert for the largest and most complex organizations that we work with. Tell us a little bit about your background and, the workforce decisions that you're helping organizations make today. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here with you both and everyone. So my background is has been all things per performance. I spent about twenty years in HR in the field of talent performance building, global programs for large organizations and everything it takes to drive human behavior to make sure we're achieving the right things for the business. I think, the focus of where I kinda sit today is helping leaders across organizations really make sure that they're executing on an ever quickly changing talent strategy and driving the right outcomes for their business priorities. So it's merging human behavior with data and results, which I find so fun. Mhmm. Indeed. Well, let let me just set the conversation today. You know, as many of us have come to realize, organizations have more workforce data than we've ever had. Yet as leaders, we're still struggling to answer some pretty basic business questions about, you know, what both of you were saying. Do we have the right people focused on the right priorities? Where are the capability gaps that exist in the organization? Who in the organization is ready for greater responsibility? And how quickly can we move talent, when the business changes and we need to make those those changes quickly. So today, we'll explore those questions, that are getting harder. We're gonna, talk about what organizations need to understand about performance and skills and potential readiness and how HR can turn all of that workforce information into better decisions without removing the human judgment that is so absolutely critical to all of it. So, you know, let's think about workforce intelligence as a business capability. And, Deborah, and if we could move to the next slide, please. I think let's start with you. What are the business leaders asking HR to help decide today that they weren't necessarily asking, you know, three, five years ago? Yeah. I think that's a great question, Andrea. And I think there are a few areas that, that we're asking HR about that we weren't, a few years ago. You know, a few years ago five years ago, we were in the midst of COVID and trying to engage in remote. environments and and navigate that. With what we've seen over the past few years with the speed of innovation and the pivots that you see in most companies, it's now all around, deployment. How do we deploy the talent capability that we have on the right work to achieve business outcomes? How can we gain confidence faster that we've got the right people assigned to the right work? And how do we close the gaps, that we see or that we know that we have in order to achieve those business outcomes? The pace of skill development and upskilling has increased significantly, alongside the pace of innovation and the speed at which we see companies move and pivot. And so it's it's really around having that HR partner to help you discern all of this and move quickly in the direction that the c suite or that the board is pushing you to execute on. Yeah. A lot more orientation around business outcomes than previously, I think we've seen. And Caitlin, you know, what's changing in the organizations that you're working with, relative to their organizational design strategies? I think it's understanding the decision. Do they have the data to make the decisions that they make? So, yes, it comes down to I totally agree with you, Deborah. And, like, pace of execution, can we keep up with our ever changing strategy as quickly as we can, but do we understand the decisions behind that? So what I mean by, like, today's date versus being ready for tomorrow is are we developing skills at the pace we need to be ready for the changes that will happen? But do we understand equally across the organization what that means or leaders interpreting that data individually by themselves? So making sure there's a coherence, I think, across the organization, not just for their orgs or their structure, but what does that look like at a macro level, And are we enabling people at the same pace for execution? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Deborah. Were you gonna add to that? No. No. I was just nodding in agreeance. The, you know, the the combination of the those changes, these expectations, it gives us a really, I think, useful starting point, for the conversation. And I would love to see how the organizations in our audience are currently approaching these workforce and talent decisions. So we've got our first poll, and question, which best describes how your organization makes workforce and talent decisions today? Is it mostly reactive after a need or a problem arises? Is it periodic, primarily during formal planning or talent cycles? Is it proactive, guided by future priorities, but information gets assembled manually? Is it connected with current performance and skills information regularly informing decisions, or is it predictive, meaning data and AI are actually helping anticipate the needs and evaluate the options. Give it a second for everybody to share their results. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So 67% of those voting are saying it's the first one, mostly reactive after a need or a problem arises. And if I even look at the answers in the chat, lot of, similar answers. So, does that match what you're seeing in the organizations that you're working with or in even in your organization, Deborah, the organizations you're working with? Uh-oh. Did we lose her? We lose Deborah? We might have. She went black. Alright. We'll give her a second. didn't Caitlin, oh. oh, is she back? Did we lose you? Okay. Did you hear the the poll, Deborah? The, I heard the question, but I got disconnected briefly, so I, apologize. all good. All good. Caitlin, how does that, match kinda what you're seeing with the organizations that you're working with today? I think this is pretty representative of a lot of organizations. I wouldn't see it out of the norm on where we're at. I think what we have we've we're moving from collectively this model of really understanding what the data that we're looking at to make successful decisions or determine that our program's working or our business is driving in the right direction. And what I mean by that is we're so used to looking at reactive data and activity and compliance based measures, so, like, systems of record. And what we're moving towards and trying to figure out is how do we evaluate systems of engagement and what really drives the behaviors that we're looking for. So there is this bigger collective shift that's happening, but most organizations, I think, are really at this space right here today. Yeah. Awesome. And I, you know, I think this, this gives us a pretty good picture of how decisions are being made. What I'd love to now lead into is what can leaders actually see, about their workforce? And if, you know, if we talk about where current workforce visibility breaks down, and, Caitlin, I I'll start with you. When leaders try to understand the skills and the capabilities already in their workforce, what are they seeing clearly and what are they missing? I think pretty commonly what is easy to see and what we can see clearly is what's what is a backward looking evaluation and the role that somebody occupies. So in you know, whether we're evaluating skills or competencies or capabilities and what is in an employee's job description, like, there's some really clear on the surface details of what we can see an employee, what they represent. But what we miss is really the context of their contributions and how they show up, the environment that they're showing up in, and really, like, different elements of how they're engaging with other people and what that looks like. So I think it's become super critical to make sure that we're not just looking at surface level information, especially as we're doing our, you know, performance reviews and look back and trying to evaluate employees on limited data. But how do we gather enough information to really assess, are they mastering something that we need? Is it within an environment where they get a lot of support or a little support? Is it knowledge or information they hold, or is it something that they are influencing their department or the team at a different level? So I think there's a lot more to their contribution of work that I think that we need to make sure is taken into consideration as far as evaluating different levels of employability. And, Deborah, where, in your role, where are you seeing kind of the the formal view of, your workforce visibility diverge from, like, the operating reality of, you know, the organization, especially if you're in the midst of a growth period or even a a restructure or even an m and a, activity and integration. Yeah. I think the the m and a activity, resonates quite well for us. We acquired three companies over the course of thirteen months, and we've spent the first nine months of this year integrating those companies and those teams. So that is pretty near and dear to my heart right now. I think from a leadership perspective, typically, what we see is exactly what Caitlin was referencing. It's the outcomes related to the function or the role. So you see what they delivered. What you don't see is how did they get there, what context did they have in getting there, what skills and capabilities, All of the other things that they're doing to move things forward that may not show up in outcomes that they are responsible for. I feel like managers are often at a disadvantage because they see a small sliver of what an employee does, but not how they've done it. What other things they've done to move the business forward and how that all comes together into the impact that they can have on the business. And in an m and a environment where you're bringing organizations together that haven't worked together, you have even more blind spots, which makes it really difficult to understand the true talent, depth, and breadth within the team. Yeah. And and those gaps at that point in time, I mean, they become the most visible when a real decision has to be made. And so, like, having the answers to the what's causing those gaps is really critical. Deborah, can you walk us through, the next question, which is, a consequential workforce decision that you've seen and, even, like, talk a little bit about the information that the leaders relied upon in making those decisions. As leaders is who to promote into people leadership roles. And, oftentimes, we rely on seeing how someone performed in their individual contributor role and don't have a frame of reference for what good looks like as a people leader. And and so what happens there is we don't necessarily choose the right person to move into a leadership role, or we don't recognize the support that they need in order to be successful in that people leadership role. And we spend a lot of time, coaching and correcting as opposed to building the foundation so that people can be successful. I've always said that manager moving people into a manager role is like throwing them into the deep end. In most companies, we are woefully unprepared to make those decisions confidently and to support the people moving into those roles. And that is not a function of people lacking the capability. It's a function of the environment in the companies where we're making those kinds of decisions with slivers of information and no actual plan to help people be successful in that role. Yeah. Yeah. And, Caitlin, even, you know, when when we think about, you know, AI native organizations, right, and, the nature of being born in AI and, you know, the assumption that things are super efficient and super effective in an AI native organization, even when we're working with those organizations, I still have these challenges. Is there anything different that you've experienced with some of these organizations? I wouldn't say different, but on that note, like, AI is only gonna be as good as what you feed it. And if we feed it bad information or incomplete information, it's gonna double down and be very emphatic on the response that it gives you, which is gonna make it sound really convincing, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's right. And I think even at, like, continuing, like, Deborah, your example, which is such a good one and so, so common. If we look at when I'm talking to, like, executive leaders across different organizations, I see this quite commonly. So even beyond the manager is what does it look like then across the organization? And I've seen the results of that show up where we've got executive leaders who see that they're achieving their business priorities, but everyone they don't have an indicator of high performance. Or the opposite is true, saying we're not hitting our KPIs as an organization, but everybody is marked as a high performer. How is that happening, and what's the disconnect? And you bring AI into the middle of that, and it's just gonna double down and reinforce the gap that exists. Did I I've lost my sidetrack because I've gotten so, like, curious about. that. Hopefully, Yeah. that answered the question. You did think it question. it is. like, we're relying on bad data in a sense because we don't have an equalizer of what it means, and we're leaving the interpretation up or it's created a gamification of managers that are doing something just to try and protect their employees without it being as objective as it needs to be. Yeah. Well, I think you answered the question, and it's an the both answers are an excellent lead in to, I think, the next poll, which is really about, you know, which workforce decisions are hardest for the people, joining us today. So, you know, the question, which workforce decision is hardest for your organization to make with confidence? Number one, identifying internal talent for critical work or roles. Number two, deciding whether to develop, redeploy, or hire talent. Number three, targeting development toward future business needs. Number four, assessing readiness for succession or greater responsibility. And number five, responding quickly to restructuring or changing priorities. Give everyone a few minutes. Lots of fours in the chat, I see. All of them. Alright. What do we have? All of you know, it's interesting. You look at the spread of answers, 16%, 25%, 22%, 22. It is literally spread across the board. And, that's in that's is that is there anything about that that's surprising to you, Deborah? Honestly, no. It is hard to make people decisions with confidence or to make them quickly because we don't typically have access to the insights that we need or complete insights that help us be confident about how to move forward with these kinds of decisions. These all resonate for me as a as an operational leader for sure. Mhmm. Excellent. Well okay. So now let's, maybe talk about, you know, where we've talked about where the current picture falls short or is most challenged. Now let's turn to kinda what makes workforce information more credible and useful so that there's some practical application to, you all as you leave today. So when you take, performance data and turn it into talent intelligence, Caitlin, how can leaders know what someone can do, and what they may be ready to do next. So good. I think this comes down to, like, two elements, which is having real type of conversations that are quite continuous and making sure you're taking in the right context and the right information. I mean, it's important to really understand, like, evidence of the work that we're they're delivering, but I think the more beneficial information is how are they doing it, who are you know, what supports needed under what environment, and where are they at against the benchmark. The other part is what are they ready to do next. I think it's really important for us to be really clear on what we're what we mean by next. And for a lot of organizations, we define that by a level of potential, but, you know, I think it's it's really making a design decision around understanding what that means is it's not potential becomes this ambiguous term about what next means or their readiness level instead of really assigning something more tactical to it that they are ready to lead a cross functional team, a global team, or in in you know, different aspects of what that next role is. So I think clarity around the design of it, but also making sure that there is enough contextual information that the manager has access to to be able to use from a coaching opportunity and discern, like, really where they're at. And, Deborah, what evidence are you trusting when you are thinking about assigning, you know, critical work or, selecting a new leader for, you know, something pretty important, pretty strategic. Yeah. There are a few things. The tendency is to look at the performance review, which looks back in different circumstances. What I really, try to dig into is what is the pattern underneath the performance? What skills are they leaning into when things get tough? What are their superpowers? What are their interests? Because interests and passion go a long way to helping people bridge the gap between where they are and where they need to get to as well. If it's an area that somebody's not passionate about, it's going to be very difficult for them to stick through or to retain the motivation through the more challenging times if you're assigning them to something big. I think the other area that I, like to get into is, like, what are the coaching conversations that have been happening on an ongoing basis? What, what stretch assignments have we given them? Where have they excelled, where where are they flexing muscles that maybe are unexpected in that particular role, but that have applicability in other environments. It's all of the details behind the performance that we typically look at that are more critical than the actual performance and understanding if they're gonna be successful in that next assignment. Yeah. All of that completed work, the goals that they had, stretch goals, aspirational goals, the completion of those things, all of that data is really, I think, good signals for us to lean into. In fact, when when we think about identifying those signals, and how we go about doing that, that is one challenge. And then and then there's the next step. Okay. How do you take those signals, make them useful when a decision has to be made. And, Deborah, when you think about the workforce information that's useful enough for leaders to act on in a talent decision? And and then even more importantly, like, what ensures that those people are owning the decisions that they're making? You know, what what what makes that happen for you? Yeah. I think there are a few things. One, I really lean into gathering insight from multiple sources, not just one source. So a person's manager is not the only source of insight into their capabilities. And if we're if we're deferring only to a manager's assessment, we're going to miss a lot of the key elements that would help us be confident in putting them into a new role. I think there's also the context behind the business priority that we're looking at addressing. So, oftentimes, you see like, you'll hear people are are referred to as they're really strong. They're an a player. They're a varsity player. That means nothing in the context of the problem that we're trying to solve. So I really, try to put words and framing around why we believe that they're strong, what environments are they strong in, how do they show up in those circumstances. And when putting them into something that's high stakes, what percentage of what they already bring matches what we need? Because if it's, you know, if they've got 25% match versus 70% match, they're gonna have a really big bridge or gap to fill. So if we're setting people up for success, if we're breaking it down into the skills and competencies and the context in which they perform well and can match that at a high percentage to what the new opportunity is going to call on them to deliver, you you have a better chance of success. And then the final piece of that is given that we know that there are gaps because there's nobody that is perfect for every opportunity, What is the plan to help them be successful, to bridge those gaps? It's not, hey. You got 755% of what you need. Good luck. It's, how do we get there? What do we need to do organizationally, or what does the leadership team need to do to support them bridging that gap to be successful? So it's the path of the plan. Mhmm. Yeah. And those things are are what's really gonna lead to the ownership of the decision. And that's, Correct. you know, the tough place to to, you know, force yourself to go when you're potentially working with some unknown. So, you know, to have as much as you can to own the decision that's being made is key. Caitlin, when you, when you are, advising, organizations on, you know, the systems, the behaviors, and especially the change management conditions, in these scenarios that, keep the information that's necessary current and useful? How are you guiding the organizations through with, you know, kind of that three pronged approach system behavior change management, which is, of course, your forte? The latter, I like to call that, is I think it's always starting with the end in mind, and I think that carries through a lot of different elements of what how we would make decisions and what we need, because it is very common across the board for us to have more, like I had said earlier, reactive data on activity of what somebody is doing or what the workforce is doing, but not necessarily do we have a way or most have a way to be able to attribute it to outcomes or results. So I think really making sure that we have outcomes defined with the end in mind. What do we want to have happen even at an individual basis? So workforce down to the individual. What's the results? What makes this person successful? Or what makes this department or organization or the program successful? What are the behaviors that are needed to evidence that? And then what's the activity that would then reinforce those behaviors changing? That creates a really strong pathway for us to to develop in a change management strategy to understand, you know, current state versus future state. What's the gap that we have to fill, and how do we get people to enroll along with this? We want people to come with us. We don't wanna push them into it. We want them to volunteer into it. And then making sure we've got a clear purpose. So many of times, we've got really strong infrastructure of our programs or the, like, the plumbing or the mechanics, you will, of how we identify what what a good performer looks like, what are the elements to take them into the next role. But it is the context around that that we're missing that often makes it fail. So making sure there's a really call strong strong purposes constantly reinforcing today's strategy and the future strategy and that we've got the elements. Once we've got that dialed in I know it sounds like a lot, but it's really not that much. But once we have it dialed in, then everything else starts to fall in place where we have really clear line of sight about what we measure, what do we what's the throughput on that data that we use and how we fold it back in? How do we make sure our leadership is really owning part of that program and taking responsibility for those behaviors? You know, like, all the different elements of it start to really more easily shape themselves. Yeah. And how current, you know, do you advise that the data is, in supporting these decisions? Very current. What we what we always like there should be the way I think about it is, like, you know, if we are looking at too long of a bridge, so if we're same with perform at annual reviews. If we've got a year look back, if we're looking at the past year of our data, it's we're looking at a camera shot or a snapshot that's not really doing us any good. But if we've got consistent snapshots along the board, what were they talking about an individual's performance or the organization as a whole, now we're developing a film strip where we can start to see trends of what is really driving reactions and behaviors. Where are people showing up really strong? Is there things within the organization that caused it to, you know, advance or dip? You know, like, where are we at? And I think having that film strip, so making sure that there's real governance and accountability around understanding the decisions that we have to make, but also what is happening in its current state so that we can better predict what we have to do tomorrow, I think is super critical. Yeah. The relevance of the data is key. And in fact, if we get more specific and, lead into the next poll, how current is the information that each of you and your organizations, are using to understand your workforce workforce skills and capability. Number one, it updates continuously through all of the signals from ongoing work. Number two, it's refreshed monthly or quarterly. Number three, it's updated mainly during annual reviews or talent processes. Number four, it's assembled as needed for specific decisions. Or number five, we do not know how current or complete it is. Three and four is coming up in the chat. Give everyone a few more seconds here. K. We've got 40%, 44% updated mainly during annual reviews or talent processes, and 36 assembled as needed for specific decisions. Small percentage on we don't know and an even smaller percentage on it updates continuously. So, you know, the middle of the pack on updated mainly during annual reviews and as needed. Yeah. It gives us a a very useful picture, of how current I think all of the underlying information is today, out there in real life. Thank you for participating in that, these polls. It's been really interesting. And, I'm gonna go into the next question, taking all of that information. Caitlin, what role, in your view should AI play in workforce and talent decisions? I think AI will continue to get better and better and better at being able to aggregate data, but it should never be the decision maker. I think it will is a good way to be able to gather context that we can't see, drive more continuous information, surface more information that we need to the top so that as a manager or a leader, I have a lot more data to be able to react from and make decisions from. But it also that's caveated with making sure, are we feeding it the right information and the right data? Because because what we don't wanna do is be overreliant on bad information confidently. So making sure that there is guardrails around what it is offering or what it's suggesting and making sure that leaders and and managers remain enabled on how they use that information to make decisions and understand gaps in what they're seeing or follow-up questions that they should dig into. So I think it's I think it's a tool that's gonna help, like, do a lot for us. I've I've had a lot of fun with it myself, but it still requires our judgment in the center of making sure that it is effective. Yeah. Yeah. And, Deborah, I'm gonna come back to one of the comments you made, Caitlin, in a second. But, Deborah, I'd love to hear, from your operator's view of, you know, accountability and adoption and the consequences of acting on AI supported information, you know, what's your view of the role that AI plays in, you know, workforce and talent decisions? Uh-oh. We've lost your. audio. Not yet. Oh, no. I think AI got upset. Uh-oh. about the answer. We'll give her a second here because I think she's got a really good perspective here. No. No. Well, we'll give Deborah a second to, see if we can get her audio back. You know, I think one, opportunity for us to think about is, you know, the the I'll I'll just share from my own operator's perspective. The the value of the data that gets provided, the information, the data that gets provided from AI is all about gathering all of the evidence, capturing all of the signals. Do we have you back, Deborah? Oh, shoot. But capturing all of the signals, for us to make AI supported decisions, but not to replace the human judgment that's a part of, our being able to run our businesses, capably and, you know, effectively. And, it's the human judgment powered by, all of the things that AI enables that really elevates our, ability to drive outcomes within our business and within our organizations. How about now? Can you hear me now? Yes. Yay. Yes. Welcome back. I'm very. excited to hear you're this month. stressful. Well, let's hear your operator's view. Everyone heard heard mine, but I think everybody really wants to hear your yours. Yeah. So I'll I'll dare I say, I'll caveat this with, I'm a huge advocate of the use of AI in the workplace in the right ways. I am not an advocate of the use of generic AI in people related decisions. AI is very powerful in synthesizing information and surfacing potential trends, but it does it is all very much context based. So I'm an advocate of using AI in purpose built situations when it comes to talent intelligence and people decisions, but AI should not be making the decision. AI should make it easy to make better decisions faster because it's been provided the right context. It has the right guardrails, and bias assessment included. So I'm a little bit, less bullish on the use of AI and talent decisions unless it is purpose built for that because general LLMs are very dangerous. Mhmm. They will agree with, whatever it it thinks it's smartest at. And if you don't provide the right context, you end up with the right in or or sorry, the wrong insights, and that can lead you down a really horrible path. Yeah. Couldn't agree more, and that was worth waiting for. So thank you for being able to figure out how to get your audio working. That was good. And I think gives us a very, balanced view of, you know, the picture for how HR leaders ought to think about, leveraging AI and, what they can be doing now. In fact, if we go to the last question, we obviously have a lot of HR leaders in the audience today. So let's give them some practical takeaways. And, Deborah, I'm gonna start with you so we hopefully can take advantage of the audio. If an HR leader has ninety days to improve workforce visibility, what would you tell them to change first, and what potential business outcome should they be looking to achieve? Yeah. I think, if if you've got ninety days to do this, I would focus on surfacing, broader insights into what's happening behind the outcomes. So surface recognition that's happening. Make sure that you're collecting that in a way that is easy for people to see how people are showing up, whether it's living the values or how they're approaching the work. Surface the data and the insights that are happening in meetings, in individual one on ones, in, working groups. We are so tied to only the outcomes that people deliver that we don't gather the right inputs to help us understand what they're capable of. And so I would eliminate all of those blind spots because there are more blind spots than there are actual insights or visibility into what's happening. And if you can eliminate that, you increase the ability of the company to understand the true capabilities of the workforce and then support them in moving them into the right roles and put pointing them at the right work to deliver tangible business outcomes. Yeah. That's so well said. And, Caitlin, thinking about the inputs and, you know, elimination of blind spot leading to outcomes, is there a suggested sequencing and stakeholder involvement or change management step that would make the improvement sustainable? I think it comes down to, like, the business case you're making and how you're creating buy in. So I would do the same thing and starting with the diagnostic around is is what we're doing driving a value? My favorite thing is to take, like, elements of a program and throw it out. If the questions that we're asking and the pieces that we have aren't driving a certain value that we need in alignment with our talent strategy, is our program doing what we want it to do? Then it goes out the door it goes. So really, like, what are our gaps? But I think, and and what do we need to fill in, or what's taking up space that isn't needed? But as far as, like, making sure that leads into a change management process, I think it's really create it's using all that to create the business case. Is our program driving value? Do we have a way to measure it? If not, what's the value it should create, and what's the change we need to make in order to do that? And so our program should be making sure that it is really in service of our talent strategy and our business priorities. And if it's not doing that, then I think that becomes a really easy bridge or gap bridge to gap plan to establish. We'll put it that way. Gap to bridge. Yeah, on really understanding, like, if not, then what do we need to do? And then that is where I would start at the executive level is really selling that plan. Yeah. Deborah, is there a business decision that you would recommend as kind of, like, the first use case? You know, this is probably my recency bias, but, we had to spend a lot of time getting to know the talent that we had in the companies that we acquired to determine how do we organize going forward. So I am a huge advocate right now of having those insights to help drive org design and, and positions that people should be moving into in the new org, to support that. Yeah. That's a good one. That's a good one. Alright. Well, I think we, have answered the last question. And, Deborah and Caitlin, I thank you very much for, being a part of this panel today. You know, I think both of you have really helped connect, the business questions that leaders are asking to the workforce information that organizations need, and some, you know, practical, aspects to what information should be used to support those key decisions. You've given us, I think some really useful ways to think about AI, as a source of context and preparation, and yet still holding, people responsible for the validation, the judgment, and ultimately the final business call that's made. I'm I'm now going to introduce, you all to Bruce Walcroft. Bruce, if you'd? love to join me on stage. Bruce is our director of solutions engineering here at Betterworks, and we'd like to spend the next few minutes showing you what this actually looks like in practice. Thank you very much, Andrea. And, I have to say, I've I know I've got about seven minutes, but I feel like I could talk for two hours on these subjects that, everybody has raised here. So many insightful things. Deborah and Caitlin, your insights really have informed the way that I'm wanting to show some of the product today. So I'm just gonna share my screen and make sure that everyone can see that first of all and jump back to, where Deborah was really highlighting the the need for getting hold of data and the fact that so many people nowadays are losing out on those important discussions that are happening rather than just that once a year activity. Everybody's having meetings. I don't I know. I don't know. Talk with my manager solely when we have a year end review about my aspirations, my interests, the things that excite me. It's in every single little conversation that takes place. So within Betterworks, we have the facility. We call it conversational intelligence that allows you to load directly from Zoom or from Microsoft Teams. If you've had a discussion with your manager in a manager in a one to one or with any of your colleagues or anybody within the business you have discussed with, you can load up the transcripts of those into the tool. And it will then start using AI to give you insights around what's been discussed, telling you when you come up to your next meeting, how you can prepare effectively as a as a leader or as a participant in that discussion, making sure you're focusing on the things that have been raised. It also will allow you to, to track, throughout, any agenda items. So any discussion points that you have or any action items that have come from the process there. And it will also give you a recap of anything that's discussed so you don't have to sit there taking your notes all the way through that discussion. You can just have a proper normal conversation with somebody and rely on the fact that the AI tool will be picking up everything and then really, putting it together for you. And what's really great, it then takes that information and starts to surface other things for you. It starts to surface details. Like, maybe there's particular things you've highlighted that will can be turned into a goal. Maybe there's feedback that's been highlighted that you should be feeding on to somebody. This will all start to inform downline processes. So when you go and start thinking about the goals that you're gonna create, Betterworks is already there saying, well, you had one to ones with all these people, and these were the things that were highlighted as part of them. It's not to surface that for you automatically. So you're aligning on the business priorities, and you're aligning on things that are important from the peers and, your leaders that you're talking to. And then alongside that, if I just move over to Michelle's own talent profile, the system will use that data to start building up things like a performance summary highlighting things that you've informed throughout the year. So when it gets to that year end process, there's already a lot of data there supporting the discussions that are taking place. But what I will also do, and I've probably done this a lot with Michelle, so we'll probably see a great number of them, is it will start to surface suggestions around skills. Because as both of the the panels have highlighted, you know, you've gotta make decisions on people. If they're gonna be a a leader, what kind of skills are they showing that they're showing that they have those appropriate things? We can see from Michelle, who I've loaded lots of data against, it will start to surface really key skills that often are missed. You know? Michelle's probably just doing her normal job and doesn't think these are things that need to be reflected. But the tool will highlight and say, we believe Michelle has shown that. It will give you evidence of where those have been highlighted. And when we we do that, we can then make the decision of whether that skill is something that they hold. We can highlight the level that they're, showing. It can be, signed off by other people to to, accredit that. But more importantly, this might be a key skill that's been highlighted that we think, actually, it's not something I'm holding or it's not something that I really am showing or it's something I need to develop further. And Better Works will allow us to take that and then use it to actually create a new goal and also give us data from, LMSs and tools around how you can surface this that goal and bring it in to, to, you know, bring in courses, for example, that can help people to train and fill the gap on that goal. So you're naturally finding the skill levels that people have. You're also finding the right ways of filling the gaps where those are identified. So this is just one of the the the small elements I wanted to, reference as a part of the, discussion here Yeah. to think high there's, like, some really great tie ins too as far as, like, the ensuring that the human stays in the loop, very effectively supported by the AI capabilities, but ultimate decisions, about, you know, some of this information is still made by the manager, by HR, supported by the AI technology. And I think going back to the point that both Deborah and Caitlin made earlier about the recency of the data being so critical is that. all of this is very, very recent data. Absolutely. And and that's even reflected if we go through to look at something like a year end review process. So if I go into a a year end review, obviously, we're we're concerned that the manager and the employee is just gonna have that recency bias in place. But the tool starts to surface in really useful ways all of the key information from throughout the year. So the goals that somebody's completed. Or when we look at feedback, yes, we've got all the feedback that they've been delivering we can look into. But we can also just ask AI to summarize that, give us a quick high level overview. So you're not missing any key data that's happened throughout the year. You're getting all of those important strengths and areas of improvements that have have been identified throughout the year, and and you can choose the time frame as well to to reference, for this. But it means that you're really bringing all that important data in. We send helps you to inform the right decisions that managers are making when it comes to the talent decisions. So this is where we can then start talking about how we're gonna set the appropriate performance or potential, statuses for the employee or where we start looking at their promotability. We can highlight from all of the data we've gathered through the year where we think that they're promotable and and use that as part of the talent conversations. And importantly, this is something that that is sitting along the employee, sorry, along the manager, throughout the the year cycle. It's not something that just appears when you have a a year end review. So if we have a discussion and I think there's something clear that that's been indicated, that means we should think about this person's promotion. We update it there and then. We don't wait until that talent process. So that's how you start getting real time performance data driving your talent discussions and your talent decisions that you can take at any point in time. Mhmm. Like, with with Deborah's example with the acquisition and integrating the talent into the new org and where do you place your talent, you know, thinking about that internal mobility and succession planning, you know, the maybe you could, you know, talk us through the information that's supporting that in a little more detail. Yeah. Sure. Absolutely. And and and for me, I think that that the shift in view that I've seen a lot of organizations take is actually viewing calibration as a tool not just to look at performance, but to look at all of the key talent data that you're surfacing and using this to drive some of the important decisions that you make. So you can surface all of your talent's information as part of your talent's calibration discussions and use this to then place people into different boxes based maybe on cultural reasons, not just on performance and potential. Or maybe looking at things like, you know, how do managers rate themselves versus employees rating themselves? Do we have a big congruence on how people are rating, or or is it very different in the organization? So moving away from seeing talent as just being a single rating of a performance and looking at all of these different dimensions supported by not just data from Betterworks, but also data that's coming through from your HR tools. And where AI steps in, it gives you a whole another layer, which, again, I could talk for hours on, around taking that data and actually bringing bridging it and bringing it in with other data from your organization to make ton decisions that are not just about the employee's HR record, but also about how they've been showing up in, you know, their sales record or in their, engineering record or any other tools that they're using, pulling that data together to help to inform these kind of decisions. Spectacular. Thank you, Bruce. No problems. Well, I think we have reached the end of our hour. If you'd like to connect with any of us, and continue the conversation, learn more about Better Works, You can use, the information that's here on the screen to do so, and, we'd love to hear from you. Before we close, we would like to take a moment and have you respond, to a poll that we are gonna share now, and your response will help us, you know, think about what's most useful, as far as the next steps after today's conversations. Alright. Well, thank you again, Deborah, Caitlin, Bruce, for being with us today. Thank you to all of you in the audience who chose to spend the last hour with us, bringing our conversation to life. And, our next event is scheduled for November. We will share the exact, details for the event, and registration information in a follow-up email that you will receive, and, we hope that you'll all be able to join us. You will also receive, today's recording and any related resources, any answers to questions that we didn't answer, in that follow-up. So thank you for joining us, and have a great, rest of your day, everyone.