Transforming Business Success Through People Metrics and AI with Kevin McDonald

In the latest episode of the HRchat pod, we try to unlock the secret to turning people metrics into business success. Joining Bob Goodwin on the show this time is Kevin McDonald, VP of People Services and Insights at the EW Scripps Company.

Tune in to discover how a company that's been around since the days of the Penny Press has transformed its HR operations to thrive in today's digital age. Kevin delves into the tangible costs of employee turnover and reveals how HR analytics can provide the insights needed to steer organizational success. From managing teams to creating a culture that resonates even in remote work settings, Kevin offers a wealth of knowledge that every HR and business leader will find invaluable.

Listen as Bob and Kevin Explore the future of business operations with a special focus on the role of AI, both in the workplace and everyday life. Kevin shares a personal story about planning a family trip using AI, demonstrating its practical and transformative potential. 

Bob and Kevin also discuss how AI tools are revolutionizing areas like survey analysis and job description creation. 

Whether you're an HR professional, a manager, or just fascinated by the intersection of technology and human resources, this episode promises actionable insights and thought-provoking discussions. Tune in to learn how to empower your people leaders and leverage AI to elevate your business operations.

Chapters

• 0:03 People Metrics as Business Metrics
• 15:00 Managing Culture Through People Leaders
• 25:36 AI Impact on Business Operations

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom and visit.

Speaker 2: 0:23

HRGazettecom. Hey everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, and welcome to an episode of HR Chat. Thank you, bill Bannon, for allowing me to guest host here for a few episodes. It's really been fun getting to know your audience and it's been a pleasure for me to be able to guest host here for a little bit. So for that thank you, and everybody who's listening, thank you for taking a few minutes. So today I'm really pleased to have both a friend and just one of the most unique professionals in the HR space that I know, kevin McDonald. Kevin is the VP of People Services and Insights for the EW Scripps Company. He's a frequent conference speaker and industry resource on HR transformation. He'll be sharing his expertise on AI, which, of course, is on everybody's mind the role of analytics in HR, which is something I'm really keen on, and why people metrics are, in fact, business metrics, and so with that, kevin, welcome.

Speaker 3: 1:20

Bob, always great chatting with you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 1:24

No, it's so great to have you, so I'm super keen to start off on the people metrics or business metrics. But before we get there, do you mind explaining for people who may not be completely familiar with EW Scripts what you guys do, and then just a little bit more about your role?

Speaker 3: 1:41

Absolutely so. Scripts, or the EW Scriptpps Company, were, I would say, fairly unique. We've been around for 150 years, since the 1870s started out with the Penny Press, which was started by EW Scripps in Cleveland so just up the road from where we are now in Cincinnati and we've morphed and transformed and changed over the years, to you know, from newspapers to TV to radio, digital properties you name it cable networks, et cetera. But today, in you know, 2024, we own 60 stations and 60 local stations in about 30 markets, and we also have national brands like Ion, where you can watch the WNBA, and some binge, watch some of your favorite shows. We also have Bounce and some other national networks as well, and then most people, if you don't know us for, are being in one of our local markets or our national networks. You certainly know the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Yes.

Speaker 3: 2:53

That is a Scripps property as well. Another amazing event this year that that team very small but mighty team puts on every year. And yeah, so the goal is to continue to change and morph and be around for another hundred plus years.

Speaker 2: 3:08

About how many employees does Scripps have?

Speaker 3: 3:11

We're just over 5,000.

Speaker 2: 3:12

5,000. Public company right.

Speaker 3: 3:14

We are SSP.

Speaker 2: 3:16

Yep. So and then just a little bit about your role.

Speaker 3: 3:20

So I run People Services and Insights. I've been at Scripps now for 17 and a half years or so. I came in to lead an HR transformation that we lovingly called our HR remodel. We owned HGTV at the time, so it was a nice kind of a themed transformation and really started the HR operations function. We didn't have a centralized HR operations function. Everything was pretty dispersed out in the field.

Speaker 3: 3:48

So I came in to help lead that and established the HR operations group, which has now morphed into you know, we got to change names every few years to, you know, sound cool, but now we're a people, services and insights, and so really for you know, for Scripps and for my team, what that means is we are a big Workday shop for HR and financials.

Speaker 3: 4:09

So the team that administers all of Workday is in my group, led by an amazing you know, amazing leader there and an amazing team. And then I have the insights portion as well, so an HR analytics team of two that helps really with HR measurements and, you know, telling us, telling us about something about our people that we don't already know, which is kind of fun. And then payroll reports through me as well, and I would say broader, kind of just HR compliance activities, all the reporting and stuff that nobody really likes to do, activities, all the reporting and stuff that nobody really likes to do, but that group does so well. And then, finally, I have a senior director of employee experience that reports to me.

Speaker 2: 4:55

That really focuses a lot on listening. Well, you know, but that lasts a bit, the listening. But the insights piece tells some better people we don't already know. Let's sort of kick it off, because a phrase that you used with me that I think just does such a great job of teeing this up is that people metrics are business metrics. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 3: 5:14

You know it's funny and I think I told you this story before. So I sat down with a former CFO years ago and asked him if I could tell you anything about our people. Pretend I'm a genie and you could ask me anything and I could tell you. What would you want to know? This pause is not for dramatic effect. This was it, and I'm like, wow, this is interesting. And so you know one of the things that myself and the person that was previously in the role leading that analytics function.

Speaker 3: 5:59

One of the things that we realized is you almost have to create your own demand. You have to show people why they matter, and so you know, when you think about you know what's most companies number one expense People, right, what's it cost me to have to hire somebody and train them and watch somebody else walk out the door? Not just in the hard dollar costs, which there are plenty of those, but also in the watching institutional knowledge walk out the door, watching expertise walk out the door, watching skills walk out the door. There are, you know, actual and hidden costs all over the place when it comes to people and their impact on your business.

Speaker 3: 6:43

When you're in a business like ours and you have, you know people on air and recognizable talent, people that people trust in your communities. It matters when they leave, it matters when they're not on air. So how do we through data? Because, let's face it, companies speak, you know numbers and they speak data. I can't remember, I can't remember who this was, to give credit for the attribution, but basically it was I trust, I trust my spouse and everyone else. Bring data or something to that extent.

Speaker 2: 7:19

You know and we trust all others bring data.

Speaker 3: 7:21

There we go. So it's like that that kind of thing, like we have to apply that to ourselves in HR. And so you know, I'm proud to say we've been able to show why people, data matters and it matters to the company financially, it matters to the company from a performance standpoint and now kind of our next chapter is how does it matter from a cultural standpoint?

Speaker 2: 7:47

Oh OK.

Speaker 2: 7:48

Before we get there that's super interesting. You know, before we pressed record, you and I were just talking a little bit and you know this connection between people in real business results and how do we walk into the CFO's office, the CEO's office and build a real business case for something right, because I know the HR folks have all their policies and procedures and compliance and some of the stuff you know. And then there's the plumbing part, like payroll. Let's just make sure, like you know, everything works the way that it's supposed to. But you know, when we start getting into, you know, things that aren't just squishy and soft and nice, but it's. You know, productivity we have to hire five more people because our existing workforce, you know, for whatever reason, can't handle the workload. But if we were able to provide things that allow them to actually be more productive, we wouldn't have to hire those five more people.

Speaker 2: 8:48

At $100,000 fully loaded a person, that's real money. You know healthcare costs, like if people are stressed out and burned out and freaked out, everything that's going on. You know that is showing up in a very significant way in stress-related healthcare costs. Those are real hard dollars. Absenteeism but what do people talk about now, kevin? Presenteeism, coffee badging? I'm here, but I'm not really here.

Speaker 2: 9:15

You know, and you make such a great point though, like undesired attrition that creates its own new cost center of having to go find the talent, get them on board and blah blah blah. So I mean there really are like any number of hard business measurements Right that do impact the business, that aren't just like we want everybody to be happy and kind of again more touchy-feely things, right.

Speaker 3: 9:46

You know there's unlimited amount of research out there, from whether it's I4CP McKinsey I mean insert consulting firm here or research firm here that has done research that clearly shows that companies with more engaged workforces perform better Like that's not even, it's not even disputable at this point. So that research is there and you can go I mean you can go Google that and spend a day looking at, looking at all that research. So at a macro level, I don't think anybody really argues that that is true. But how does that manifest itself within my individual organization? How do I know? How can I quantify whether or not A do I even have an engaged workforce? And there's arguments to be made on you know frequency and surveys and how you do it, and there's a lot of science around that and I'm not an expert in that. So I'm not going to get into it or pretend. But what I feel pretty confident in saying is that if I only ask you as an employee population once a year, kind of how you're feeling about things, you know, one of the other things you and I were talking about is all the things that I bring to work. Yes, I bring my, you know my. I'm moving my daughter to college next week. So if you survey me today, I might be pretty stressed about that, right, if you ask me in six months, everything's normalized as far as that. So I'm not bringing that to work that day. So I think, asking you know once a year, even a couple times a year, you're getting people at these points in their life where things are going on that it's really hard to measure whether or not that was a blip or if that's the norm. And so I'm a big fan of you know, pulse surveys, where you're asking smaller amounts of questions but you're asking more frequently to figure out where my trends really are and how people are feeling.

Speaker 3: 11:50

And then from there, then it's up to us you know, on the HR analytics side in my opinion, but really as a company, it's up to us to A put that information in the hands of the people that have the most immediate impact, and those are the people leaders, right? I don't want this to go all the way up to the highest levels of the company and then have to be filtered and cut and, you know, all the way back down. I want to put that information in the hands of the people leaders so they know what's going on in their organizations and then give them the ability to raise their hand and say help if they need help. Like, hey, I have an HR business partner or I have a resource, you know that can help me, or maybe a colleague that's really good at this stuff that can help me figure out, you know, is there some tact that I can take? But from there, beyond putting that in their hands, it's us to then look at it at a company level and even drill down into parts of the organization and figure out is this lack of engagement or the presence of really strong engagement?

Speaker 3: 12:53

How's that impacting? Things like turnover, productivity, like what? What is the impact there of those things? So that we can show that higher engagement is leading to more you know, better results, similar to what the macro level studies show. Like, I can show that internally as well, and so that, to me, is kind of the exciting thing and where we are headed very quickly and I'm super excited about it because I think it's true. But I'm also humble enough to say, hey, maybe it's not exactly what you thought, and I'm going to let the data tell me. You know, along the way, and I think you and I've talked about this. Before you know, just you can have a hypothesis, but be humble enough to follow the data and see where it goes.

Speaker 2: 13:44

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So some people that I love the pulse survey I'm picking up on that for a sec in sort of this frequency and checking the temperature, because then you have a lot more data points and you can kind of smooth out, you know some of the roughness in it and kind of really see where's the through line here. Some people who are listening to this may not have the largest organizations in the world. They may not be a 5,000 person public company. Do you think that this is pretty actionable, almost irrespective?

Speaker 2: 14:17

of size of company.

Speaker 3: 14:20

So I do. And here's what I would say. It's really interesting, as we've been talking, I have an amazing person on my team who leads our employee experience and he's just, he's brilliant and just he just has a way about him that's just so inviting and he's great to talk to and I think he's just disarming, and really what I say that to say, yes, I think having surveys and being able to get data out of it is important, but what's really important is the conversation. Like that's what's really important. And you know, another thing you and I were talking about is just like people, we need people. You know we need each other to help us get through whatever those things that we are we're going through, and I think we discount that sometimes, especially in today's. You know remote environment as you can see, I'm in my home office, but it just makes us be more intentional about those things.

Speaker 3: 15:19

So, even if you're in a small company, I would just simply ask, like, are you being intentional about talking to your employees?

Speaker 3: 15:27

Are your people leaders? Do they see that as a responsibility of theirs to make sure that you know, yes, we're, hopefully we're getting the job done, hopefully we're helping people advance in their careers and those things. But are we actually just remembering that, hey, I'm a person talking to another person that you know and I've got a team of 16 here and I've got people with newborns, I've got people that are on the edge of retirement I've got you know they're all over the life spectrum. Retirement I've got you know they're all over the life spectrum, so not everybody's in the same spot. But like, are you having those conversations with them to understand what's important to them and you know what they need in the moment to be more productive at work? And that, to me, the survey is never going to capture. That the survey is only going to or the pulsing is really only going to maybe shed lights on areas where I can prod more, but that's the important part.

Speaker 2: 16:23

Yeah, and then. So such a great point. I was on the phone yesterday with the CHRO of one hundred and forty thousand person company Huge, and she made the statement that, just like stuck with me People experience the company through their manager, isn't that great? People experience the company through their manager. Now, we've heard that said differently. Like people don't quit companies, they quit bad bosses, right, so that's maybe the negative way of saying that. But just to kind of bring those ideas together, that you're saying is, yes, surveys are good, data is good, but it's the ability and this is really kind of where the rubber meets the road is being able to translate that and help managers do a better job of connecting with their people. Because, as we're saying you know what you and I were saying earlier people bring their whole selves to work. What you and I were saying earlier, people bring their whole selves to work. Well, it's more than just their political views or some demographic that they're bringing to work. And you know if my span of control is too big.

Speaker 3: 17:36

That's a problem, because how can you possibly know that much about 25 people or something?

Speaker 2: 17:39

Right, but go ahead, but go ahead to put a, to put a bow on that.

Speaker 3: 17:50

And this give total credit to Jason Aberbrook, who is somebody I've known for years and years and is certainly a thought leader and kind of my my space. And who is this, jason Aberbrook? He's just a brilliant guy and a great speaker. But I remember talking to him specifically about our surveying strategy and kind of what we were thinking in his first question, and this stuck with me. Sometimes the question is better than the answer.

Speaker 3: 18:09

But the question was who is this for? Why are you doing this? And it made us stop and think and was like, oh yeah, we're doing this for our people leaders was like oh yeah, we're doing this for our people leaders. This isn't. Yeah, it's a great byproduct that the company has this kind of macro set of data now that we can do things with. But ultimately, who this is for is for the people leaders. It's to make them more effective at their job and actually give them some data and not just have them have to guess all the time how people are feeling. And so you know that. To me, back to the point you just made, is how can I help people leaders be more effective?

Speaker 2: 18:47

Yeah, now I want to make sure I didn't accidentally wade into something or misinterpret something. You had sort of alluded to measuring culture, all right. So are we in that space or are we going to that space?

Speaker 3: 19:05

All right, have we already been talking about that? I think we've been talking about it, and so I guess one question is how do you measure culture? I mean, is it something you can touch? Is it something you can feel? Is it a tangible thing? I think it's something people recognize.

Speaker 3: 19:17

But I think what you just said is people experience culture, they experience the company and I would argue, people experience culture through their individual teams. But what I would say is we as a company you know, whether you're 140,000, whether you're 5,000, whether you're 500, it is up to the leaders of the company to set the tone in terms of what they're going to tolerate in the culture they want, so that our people leaders then can emulate that in terms of the way that they treat their staff. You know, it's funny. We focus so much, especially being in a corporate role, right? We focus so much on, like, the communications that come down from the CEO, or if something's coming out from the CHRO and we're wordsmithing it and we're doing all these things. And while that's important, don't get me wrong, if I'm somebody at a plant or a station in Bakersfield, california, that email I'm going to read it.

Speaker 3: 20:17

But really what matters is what my individual leader, what my day-to-day, the people that I'm working with, how we treat each other and how we behave and what we value in terms of our individual values and the standards that we set. That's what matters, because I'm never going to deal with the CHRO. Maybe once or twice a year or something. I'll see them in a call or maybe they'll stop by the you know the location or something like that, but that's rare. I'm with, I'm with my manager every day. So, again, you know. Back to the question of who, when we do start to measure culture and we measure you know how people are feeling and how they're thinking, whether it's a net promoter score or, you know, am I able to bring my whole self to work. Whatever the question set is who is that for? And you know, I would argue it's for the people leaders.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Are there some metrics that you guys have found that are especially helpful for these frontline people managers?

Speaker 3: 21:16

I would say we're working on that. I would love to know if anybody has a magic bullet so you can reach out to me at Kevin McDonald at Scrippscom. I am all ears, but no, I would say we're working on that. We're trying to figure out what are those things. A magic bullet that you know? Like I said, if somebody's found it I'm all ears, but we're in the stage now where we're trying to find that.

Speaker 2: 21:49

Yeah, one of the things that we've learned is when there's cognitive dissonance between what the company says and what the company does, and then the extension of that is in what I believe, that's where engagement really starts to take a hit right. It's because there's this misalignment of values, either stated or behaved, and then how does that align with what I believe and who I want to be and how I want to contribute? And when there's misalignment on that, that's when people start to get really stressed, because it's hard to be somebody else at work than I feel like I really am. But you know, I feel like the company is requiring me to do something or behave in a certain way, whatever that might be, and there's not even a right and a wrong in this.

Speaker 2: 22:36

It's just is and you know what they need and who I am and how do these kind of align, and so I know that there are some data points that would that there's a there's a root cause analysis kind of there that gets ultimately down to values. Hi everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president at Career Club. Imagine with me for a minute a workplace where leaders and employees are energized, engaged and operating at their very best. At Career Club, we work with both individuals and organizations to help combat stress and burnout that lead to attrition, disengagement and higher health care costs. We can help your organization and your workforce thrive, boosting both productivity and morale across the board. To learn more about how we might help you and your company, visit us at careerclub.

Speaker 3: 23:32

Well, it's interesting, I think the you know. To quote a former coach here in the tri-state area, marvin Lewis, I see better than I hear, right, so I can. I can hear everything you're saying, but what I see, what I observe, is what I'm going to believe. And so you know, ultimately, I don't care what your company is, I don't even care if it's a work setting the number one way. If you ask me, kevin, how can I erode trust really fast? Don't do what you say you're going to do. Like that that'd be the first step, right, and so that's exactly what your, your point is Like.

Speaker 3: 24:12

I can see the values on the wall and you know, we all post them up, we all put them on our internet week. But what am I actually observing? And that's what people are going to believe, that, and that's the difference between my values and culture. Right, my values are what I put on the wall. My culture is what I live every day, how I behave every day. Now, if that's according to those values, then they can be the same, but if they're not, guess which one's going to win? Yeah, Culture is always going to win.

Speaker 2: 24:38

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 24:39

Because it is how stuff gets done.

Speaker 2: 24:41

That's reality right and everything else is. I love that I see better than I hear. I'm going to remember that one Real quick, just in the few remaining moments. I would be remiss, given somebody who's very technology transformation analytics oriented. Where do you sort of see us in the AI journey? Where is AI really behind the hype?

Speaker 3: 25:04

Yeah, it's been real interesting. It's been about a year long kind of you know research project for me, trying to figure out is there a there there right now in terms of truly transforming the way we do things specifically within HR. I'm not going to try to get into you know IT's world or fight like I I'm sure they're looking at it too but, speaking specifically to our world, and I've talked to many people, been on many webinars and everything, and right now I think it's truly just an efficiency thing. And I was actually talking to a member of my team yesterday about this and she was asking me kind of, what do I see as the uses for AI in our space? And the thing that I encouraged her to do was go out. We have an internal, you know, basically GPT that our IT team has created for us. And I said go in there and start using it with something really personal and a fun example for this I'm going with my wife and my brother and sister-in-law to a long weekend trip to Maine in October and just messing around, I went into the prompt and I said map me out an itinerary and I want to stay at bed and breakfast within X miles of the coast. I want to eat at restaurants that have this particular cuisine and I typed it all in and it literally within seconds you should stay here the first night, eat here for breakfast, here for lunch, here. I mean it's that kind of thing. But when you, when you use something like that for something hyper personal, it kind of gives you a better framework for how it's going to work, and then I can apply it to other areas of my life, like work.

Speaker 3: 26:40

But you know some cool examples that we, I would say, used it for here at Scripps One, we did one survey a little while back and had 6,000 open-ended comments. There was four different questions that allowed comments and we ended up getting 6,000 comments. And so obviously the question is give me an idea of what the comments were, give me some overall sentiments of the comments. And it's like, wow, okay, I can read through that. Or I could take that file, load it into AI and say give me the overall positive sentiments and give me a couple of verbatim comments that represent that. Give me the overall negative sentiments, give me the top three things that I should be focused on if I were the CEO. Be very specific with your prompts. And it was amazing I mean amazing what it came back with, and of course, I mean the time savings. How long would it take you to read through 6,000 comments and summarize that? Days. So the time saving is immense.

Speaker 3: 27:41

So I think there's a lot of opportunity there. I know our comp team is using it and our HR team is using it for help with, like, writing job descriptions that are more skills based together presentations. I mean there's just a ton of efficiencies to be gained there. I am still, you know, I'm still on my hunt for where that kind of magic bullet is. All the vendors, of course. I mean, go to any vendor right now and they will lead with AI, I almost guarantee you, regardless of what they're trying to sell.

Speaker 3: 28:15

But I think there's a lot of things that are probably. I guess the thing that I would tell people to do is really understand the difference between gen AI versus machine learning, versus just robotic process automation, which has been around for years. Like, really understand the difference between those things and it'll start to give you a little bit. I'm a compartmentalizer and so I think people will. That'll help people compartmentalize and figure out you know where it can help you. But the best thing I could tell you to do start using it, and just you know have fun.

Speaker 3: 28:51

You're not going to break anything.

Speaker 2: 28:53

Yeah, it's. It's funny because you know, whether it's through our outplacement business or otherwise. I work with people in job search a lot and maybe it's not surprising, but it surprises me a little bit. But how many people are like I'm kind of embarrassed, but I really haven't done that much with it. To be honest, you can't break it, you can't make it bad, it's not going to be disappointed in you.

Speaker 1: 29:18

Right.

Speaker 2: 29:21

But, as you said, I love, love it. Start with something small and even kind of start with something that you know and understand too, that we are such an early days. Yeah, like you know, like we're in the, I'm not sure we've had the first out of the first inning yet you, you know this is like prodigy or America online, you know, coming to your house on a CD days.

Speaker 2: 29:45

You know it's so early and be flexible, be iterative. It's not a genie, it doesn't know everything, it's like well, that's not exactly what I meant. I kind of meant more like this I'm like, oh OK, right, and you know you can kind of guide it a little bit, but it's not just your complete, you know automated driving and you just sort of you know go to sleep and let it do its thing. But with the right use cases and you gave a great one, you know, just take all these open ends and basic modem for me and start to derive some high level insights. Super good use case. I love hearing what y'all are doing on job descriptions because, so many job descriptions just get thrown on the Xerox machine.

Speaker 2: 30:29

You're like. You know this is the same one from the same one, from the same one. It's like wait a minute, this isn't how we say we want to hire anymore. This actually doesn't require a college degree. We changed that policy.

Speaker 3: 30:44

It's funny, the one thing that the people you'll learn over time, as you use it more, is the more specific your prompt, the more specific your response is going to be, and then that's the way you can narrow it down. It's you know, you said it won't be disappointed in you and my response was going to be unless you ask it to be disappointed in you. And then it will write us a response. And it's funny. You know we say that as a joke, but it is literally true. Like, hey, I want you to write this on a real disappointed tone and it will do it. So, yeah, I I would say, just go play around and encourage your folks to to play around with it. You know, give them the space and the time to do it because, to your point, I don't have all the answers. This is so new, I don't have all the answers. Somebody else may come up with a use case that I hadn't even thought of, but give people the space to explore.

Speaker 2: 31:31

And is it cheating to use AI? Kevin, I feel like I'm cheating.

Speaker 3: 31:36

I don't think so, and here's all I would say about that, because it was so funny. You asked that. Somebody asked me that literally yesterday and I said do you feel like you're cheating when you Google search something rather than go to AAA and get a trick? Tick for those that remember those. So no, I don't think it's cheating. I do think where I would caution you is if you say, hey, draft an email to my CEO with X, well, it will do that. I would highly recommend you peruse that first, and I am not. I'm not advocating for you to just hit send.

Speaker 2: 32:15

That's an interesting example, because I had a difficult email to write the other week. And I said you know, here's what it's about. Please give me a draft. And it came back with something that was pretty formal and I think we're even starting to recognize ChatGPT's voice yes, right. And I said, to be honest, this is more friend to friend and I need this to sound a little bit more in that tone.

Speaker 2: 32:40

Dude, what it came back with was amazing, like like it needed very little kind of cleanup from Bob but, there'll be cases that I was in a dialogue with a wall street journal writer recently on this and he said sometimes it's like having a 12 year old intern. Sometimes it's like having a 12-year-old intern. Yes, I mean, I know some stuff, but you know, you really kind of got to watch this thing.

Speaker 3: 33:05

Right right.

Speaker 2: 33:06

It could get you into some trouble. I want to be mindful of your time as we wind this down. Anything just whether it's on AI, whether it's on analytics something that you'd just really like to leave the audience with whether it's on analytics, something that you just really like to leave the audience with.

Speaker 3: 33:21

You know, I would say just as an overall and you know, coming from the old HR ops guy, this you know may sound a little weird, but you know, truly care about your people, lead with empathy. We're all going through something these days. We're all going through different phases of life and lead with empathy and the worst thing we can stop doing is talking to each other and really listening. So I appreciate the space to have conversations like this. Love talking to you and I would just encourage everyone else to talk to your people. Talk to people and remember to care for yourself as well to talk to your people.

Speaker 2: 34:01

talk to people and remember to care for yourself as well. Wow, I can't do better than that. Kevin McDonald, thank you so much. Listeners to HR Chat, thank you so much for allowing us to be part of your day today and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks everyone.

Speaker 1: 34:17

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