Building a Skills Based Organization: Megan Bickle on Skills, Technology, and Future Work Trends

Helena 00:00

Megan. It's so nice to meet you. Thank you for coming and joining me today. I know you from a podcast, and we'll talk about that in a second. But first of all, could you introduce yourself and tell me a bit about your background and your journey in skills?

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Megan  00:17

Yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I'm very excited for today's conversation. So a bit about my background. I like to say that I am an organization development practitioner at heart, and really how that shows up is I'm constantly connecting the dots of where's the organization or the function or the team? Where are they today? Where do they want to be a year from now?

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Megan  00:44

And what lever or intervention? How do you close that gap? Like, is it leadership development? Is it culture? Is it performance management? There's this whole arsenal of plays that you can leverage. So I'm constantly connecting the dots and really just hoping to leave people and teams and organizations in a better place.

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Megan  01:08

I've specialized in talent management, and so I've had plenty of fun in redesigning performance management so at another time we can nerd out on ratings. No ratings. I've seen it all. I've let it all. I've let employee engagement, culture, employee listening. And then you and I are going to talk more about my work skills. And then, on a personal note, I'm based in New York City, and I'm an avid runner, so I recently ran my 6th marathon in Tokyo.

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Helena 01:43 

Congratulations.

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Megan 01:45 

Thank you.

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Helena 01:46

Now, I know you from the Red Thread podcast. That's how we came to meet, is we heard you on that podcast, and we reached out and said you look like an interesting person. We need to talk to you. So you've had a background and you've been on a skills journey, so could you tell us more about that?

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Megan  02:04

Yes, and I'm so happy to hear that you listen to the podcast. It was definitely a fun one to record with Sasha and Dani. I fell into skills back in 2017. I was just lucky enough to stumble into an amazing opportunity at GE Digital, which was the software organization within the conglomerate of general electricity. The premises for GE digital going all in on skills, or we call them capabilities. So just a higher level of those skills in architecture. The premise was really strategic workforce planning.

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Megan  02:49

We started as the software center of excellence and really needed to understand what are the skills that we have and what do we need? Like, what do we have to hire for? Like, you know, we're trying to hire software engineers, but not really knowing, like, what specific skills. And so our skills journey really started with strategic workforce planning.

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Helena 03:13

And that's so interesting because you had a goal in mind. Would you say that was kind of a painful problem? Because let's talk about this for a second. Skills is kind of a relatively new trend, right? You started in 2017, maybe earlier than most. Do you think this is a sort of a fatty thing, or do you think that this has got longevity? What's your view?

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Megan  03:40

I love that question. I definitely feel like right now, in the last year, skills is the. The buzzy thing in HR. And, you know, to take a step back, you know, as I mentioned, like, I've been in performance management for. For a decade. Like, I fell into performance management when everyone was redesigning performance management thanks to an article titled kill your performance ratings. And so, like, it's that balance of having, like, stepping back and being like, oh, there's this thing.

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Megan  04:11

And companies are going all in on, like, we have to do this thing, but we don't really know what problem we're trying to solve. Right. And so what I'm seeing from skills is this bet is you've got some companies that have been doing this for a while, like Schneider Electric, and then you've got this mix of other companies that are like, we're not doing this. We're hearing about this. Do we need to get on the bandwagon? And. I think it's both fuzzy and the shiny thing, but I also feel like their longevity skills are just a more granular version of the competency models from the nineties that we're all very familiar with.

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Megan  04:57

And so I think what will stand out is how companies can future proof this and use technology to have a grip on it, because it's very easy to be like, we want to do skills and realize it's a whole heck of a lot of work. And so as we'll get into more throughout this conversation, I feel like it's a yes, and like, yes, it's the new shiny object. However, I don't think it's going away.

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Helena 05:31

I think, personally, some of the why now is because you can. Because technology's caught up a bit. And this would have been. I wonder how much harder this was for you in 2017 compared to how hard it would be for you today, for example. Because then in 2017, I wonder if there was the sort of tech and the capability or even the appetite to do this. So the why now, for me, is a little bit because the technology is caught up in a way that makes it easier. There's tools out there that can do skills, inference.

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Helena 06:02

There's more, there's better employee experiences to capture this thing. How did you start out at GE? Like, what was the first thing you did to start this journey? Can you give us an overview of where the heck you started?

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Megan  06:17

Yeah. From scratch. So the beauty of the story of GE digital is we really had the freedom from General Electric to kind of go rogue, and I create design as we saw fit, meaning everything, such as job structure. We didn't just have to inherit. Well, here's the job structure across the other eight g businesses. Like, here you go. So it was like this multi pronged approach of bringing together subject matter experts.

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Megan  06:54

Like, let's say, for software engineering and getting them in a room and talking about things such as, what are all the jobs someone would have as a software engineer? The leveling. Right. Like, individual contributors versus a people leader. And GE's job structure is things such as, like, professional band, senior professional band aid, executive band. Right. So we're creating this job structure simultaneously.

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Megan  07:24

We're talking about, like, well, what are the capabilities that somebody would need to be successful? And we started with, we had four different categories, personal attributes, business, action, technical, et cetera. And you having the group co create on, what does that look like for our function? And then doing the mapping of what. How does this map to the job structure? Like, what level? And we had four levels of mastery.

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Megan  07:54

So we really, like, co created of. What are the roles? What are the capabilities? And what's that level of mastery which then gets into, like, what are we hiring for? How when somebody wants to be promoted, like, what's the difference between where they are today and where they want to be? And, you know, having others, you know, bringing others along, that's innately like, your change. Management of HR wasn't doing this to others.

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Megan  08:24

Rolling out. It was. We were co creating it. One thing that we did was we kind of locked down these capabilities, meaning. Let's say your group was the first one to say we want strategic thinking a the definition had to be written broad enough of what a strategic thinking look like of these four levels of mastery that perhaps marketing if they want strategic thinking too like they're going to use that. So all in all we had around 200 capabilities that were used across the organization which then allowed us to do more things in aggregate capabilities was the right approach for us at that time because it was higher level versus if we had tried to start with the skills taxonomy and like defined under strategic thinking like what are those ten skills like it would have easily spiraled and so this kind of allowed us to have a framework so building like the models, getting the buy in, having the job structure then it becomes well how do we assess people? And I know that that's a question that comes up today around the skills work of do.

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Megan  09:42

Devise your strategy or your understanding of where is your company today based on, is it self assessments? Is it leader assessments? Is it peer assessments? Like, how? What is the right makeup for your organization? And then what's the frequency that you need the data refreshed? So, for us at GE, we went with leader assessments.

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Megan  10:04

We built out a tech platform that also encouraged employees to do self assessments. However, because of self rater bias, we decided we weren't going to use self assessments for any of our talent management strategy or data. We would only report on how many people are doing self assessments. And so everything we did was based on the leader assessment. And our position was we wanted leaders to update the assessment at least a year to ensure the freshness of data. And then you built in some rules around when do we drop data from our data set? Like, when is it considered out of date?

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Megan  10:47

And how to track movement?

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Helena 10:50

What answer did you come to there? When? That's such an interesting question. When does it become out of date?

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Megan  10:56

What do you think? And part of that was just, like, as we got more and more data and, like, as, you know, time went on, like, the questions that my team was asking, you know, the sophistication of the questions became different, right. Of, like, okay, Megan, as a leader, is doing, you know, a team assessment every single month. Like, how do we drop, drop some of these or. Somebody new joins her team. Right. Like, so just accounting for all of that, we had quite a lot of, it was just kind of taking, like, hypotheses around when does this data become out of date?

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Megan  11:38

And so that's where we started building in the rules of every. Anything that was longer than seven months dropped out of our data set because as we were looking at, you know, people that were hiring into the organization or people that are attritting, and we built skills, models and frameworks into everything we were doing. So, for example, on a quarterly update to the CHRO and the executive team, mapping our talent mix of here's what's joined the organization, here's what's attritted, here's the learnings that people are participating in, here's how it ties back to what are our critical capabilities, like, what are the things that we want people to learn? And so just a lot of it was like the evolution of, as we got more and more data, what and what were we able to solve for and how to really help the business continue to move forward. So we started from scratch. And, you know, like, to your point, yes, there's new technologies today. Where could we have bought, you know, a job structure and then.

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Megan  12:50

Use our internal teams to like to massage them, of course. But we felt like the change management of we are a digital company. It was really important to involve people in that journey, in that story as part of, like, Ge Digital, you know, standing up within itself.

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Helena 13:11

And so I guess the part of the change management, like you say, is having multiple people involved in this and understanding what's in it for me. I think maybe the what's in it for me, for the organization, and maybe the HR or people function is a bit more obvious. How did employees respond to being asked for their skills data? And was the what's in it for me really clear for them?

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Megan  13:39

Yeah. Fabulous question. Because we had this tool that we had launched that at the start. It was really an assessment platform for leaders and an assessment platform for employees. And then it connected to a learning repository where we took all of our learning content and we mapped it to our capabilities and we mapped it to those levels of mastery. And so for employees, it was. Here's the capabilities that tie to your job and what level of mastery is expected.

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Megan  14:17

And so I could go in and I could assess myself. I could also ask for feedback on my capabilities. And then where I had gaps, I could immediately click on some buttons and be like, show me content. That's going to help me get from a level two to a level three later. One of the features that we built out in this was around career exploration. And so it overlaid your self assessment of, hey, Megan, based on your self assessment and any other capabilities or skills that you've added that you think are important, here's other roles in the organization that we think that you'd be a good fit for. So using, you know, so designing an algorithm to match and show different roles that weren't just in my, my function.

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Megan  15:04

So let's say I'm in HR. It wouldn't just show me HR roles, it might show me marketing or sales or maybe, you know, operations if my skills were a good fit. And then I could also share that information within the platform with my leader. So as we built it out more, the career exploration, I think that helped become the so what of k employee. If you're looking for clarity around, like, what's expected of you from a skill perspective, this is it. One of the things when I was doing some user research around building out the career explorer. I found out that employees really just wanted to be told, what are the skills that matter to the company so then I can go develop them so I'm relevant.

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Megan  15:51

And so that piece of feedback helped us put, like, a flame icon in front of the capabilities that we deemed important to show, like, these are in demand. And so just, like, little touches of connecting the dots for employees of here's where you are today. You know, where, like, what's the next job for you? Or. Or you're looking for a promotion? Okay, well, here's the capabilities that you need to develop, and here's some content. And so, really, just putting that all together in one package helped encourage employees to.

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Megan  16:26

Have the self awareness to take the assessment. And because we never reported on that data again, we would only say, here's the number or percentage of employees that have done a self assessment. So we really carved that out as, this is your safe place. If you go in and self assess and you find you're awful, we don't know. Right, right. This is on YouTube. So it's interesting because after that work, I joined a different company, and I had a fresh college grad reporting to me, and company didn't have any kind of, like, capability or competency or skill framework.

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Megan  17:07

And I found myself thinking, like, I'm gonna have to make my own because I don't have anything to anchor developmental feedback for her. Like, I. I can tell her, oh, I think you really need to work on your strategic thinking. But I didn't have anything to ground in. Like, okay, your coordinator today, in order to move into a specialist role, here's that gap. And so it was interesting just having that exposure at GE Digital and finding that framework, like, how well it worked. Especially in those career development conversations.

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Megan  17:40

For managers to have that and the transparency, and then to go to a company that had nothing, it was like, I'm going to have to make my own.

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Helena  17:49

That's such an interesting point. And that's come up really heavily in all of the user research we've done as well. So we've met hundreds of employees, managers and so on, and that's come up really heavily in our research as well. There aren't many managers who kind of don't want to be helpful. Who. I get that talent hoarding is a thing, right? It's inconvenient, let's say, to lose your best talent elsewhere in the organization if they do want to move.

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Helena  18:14

But the vast majority of managers really want to support their people, but they're also running blind to a degree as well if they don't have, like you say, the map against which to guide people, the visibility of the resources to, let's say, to get person from point a to point b, it's cognitively effortful and it's hard for those managers as well. So that's such an interesting point that it benefits the manager as well as the employee.

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Megan  18:42

Oh, wholeheartedly. Yeah. And just you having that information accessible. I mentioned these capability models. Another document that we had created in the inception was called a scope impact influence document. And really what that broke down to is role to role. How is the scope of the role getting bigger?

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Megan  19:09

Or what is the impact of the business, or the level of influence needed? And so that was like another anchor point that was used for any promotional conversations. Right. It's like, okay, Megan's amazing. Like, I assessed her like, she's, you know, she's exactly where she needs to be. She's ready for the next level. It's like, well, does the company have a need for that next level?

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Megan  19:31

Or, hey, Megan's leader, are you really clear on how the scope of her role is going to get bigger? And so just having some guiding principles to help both managers and employees understand it's not just your titles changing. It's like your role does have to fundamentally.

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Helena 19:51

Get prepared. And you also mentioned earlier on the whole, what does the company need question. That is a big question that I hear, asked a lot, is what are we going to need in the future? What approach did you take and maybe what would you do now if you were doing this again, what approach would you do now to map out what it is that the company is going to need in the future to be able to build this blueprint?

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Megan  20:20

Yeah, yeah, that whole like future state. And I think something that came up a lot for us was what are we at GE digital uniquely positioned for internal development versus what are the skills that we actually have to go external to source and recruit for. And so, you know, again, having a framework and having data that's accessible, you know, for HR, for business leaders, for talent acquisition because everyone has a different view on, you know, is this something that we can teach people versus like, nope, we have to go buy it and it's like 100 people in Seattle that have it and it's going to cost us a billion dollars in order to acquire that skill. And so I think, you know, that also plays into this narrative around skills of the future. Like what are the things that we can develop now or that we've got the resources or we have internal talent versus we have to go external. But getting at the like, how to really keep that forward eye. One thing that we didn't account for when we were designing all of this was that how do we make sure that we've got the room?

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Megan  21:39

Or we're actively seeking the inputs of our business leaders to help co inform. Like what are the new capabilities? On one hand, we built things broad enough for flexibility. So for example, one of our capabilities was development methods and software development methods and practices. And the way it was written, it wasn't granularly written to list out agile waterfall c like Python. We didn't do that, so it gave us some room. However, I think.

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Megan  22:18

As things evolve, we would have had to reconcile what of our capabilities. Where might we need to start building out more into that skill taxonomy to get more in depth information around what we have and how to really crowdsource and get the information from TA and from business leaders around what aren't we accounting for in our models? And we.

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Helena 22:47

So we've been building some interesting models here, and I'd love your view on this, is that we've been looking at labor market data. So we partner with an organization called Lightcast, and we have a mixture of algorithms and models that we built, and we also have this amazing source of data with our partner, Lightcast, and it allows us to look at labor market data to see what other companies are doing. So what is a competitor or a talent role model doing that might be different for you as inspiration? And it's really interesting. On the one hand, it does give you, like, we're working with a retail company in Australia, and we've been looking for us retailers not in the same flavor as them. We've been looking at other role model companies doing who are, you know, a bit further along with their journey or bigger or more established as a bit of inspiration for the future of this organization and the talent or skills that they should be potentially investing in. But I do wonder if we will kind of end up looking.

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Helena 23:52

Looking to each other for inspiration. We're all looking over our shoulder at the next role model and without anyone doing anything really interesting, are there, where did you look to for inspiration for what might be, what might come for your company? Were there other sort of sources of inspiration for, I don't know, what skills you should that aren't on your radar or what new technologies like, how else did you look at the skills that you should be building or buying or borrowing? How did you do that?

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Megan  24:25

A lot. So at the time that I was at GE Digital, we had these capability gaps, and so we had some critical gaps in our technical expertise, and so a huge focus was really on upskilling to close those. So being really mindful of how are we creating learning paths and of all of the content, how are we able to discern what's the right mix of learning content? And that became a really interesting challenge of cool. Like, we know we need to get 100 software engineers from a level one to a level two. We think it will take about six months of all the content mapped to this capability. How do we whittle it down to what's the right, like, five courses that we can then just roll out some lunch and learns to get us to where we need to be?

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Megan  25:27

So for the majority of the time, like we were operating at, you know, in these gaps of, we need to close these gaps. So as this balance of trying to focus on closing the gaps, we didn't really have the airspace to be looking at what aren't we accounting for? Or what are the new skills? And what was unique in Ge digital Washington? It was this mix of digital technology plus industrial knowledge. So Ge Digital's first customer was General Electric, and at that time, General Electric. There was GE aviation, there was GE healthcare, there was Ge renewables, Ge oil and gas, et cetera, et cetera.

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Megan  26:15

And so the product that GE Digital was making was really how to infer the data and awareness from these industrial organizations. So, for example, jet engines. You know, using the data on the sensors to understand, at what point does that jet engine need to go in for a foam wash versus a water wash to maintain fuel efficiency? And so building the tools that take the data from those sensors to then bring it back to the airlines to understand, like, here's what you need to do. So it's not just pure software engineering. So we were always operating in this, like, weird environment of, yeah, it's digital technology skills and capabilities, but they also have to have knowledge and awareness of these highly industrial sectors.

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Helena 27:11 

That's wild.

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Megan  27:13

I know, it was. It was so fun. Like, renewables was one of my favorite businesses because it's all around, you know, like, the water turbines or, like, off the coast of Amsterdam, you know, the. Oh, goodness, the windmills that are in the water that are generating enough power for, like, tiny german towns. But, yeah, it's the perfect story of, like, where industrial is meeting digital and, like, the power of leveraging this data and then creating those tools that provide those insights to the various businesses.

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Helena 27:52

We love when we come up with surprises in the data at go figure. So we have one customer who we also capture skills I most want to learn as well. So that's one of the questions that we capture. So it's not just what can I do or what connects to my role, it's kind of what's going to give me energy. Now, often it is connected to the role. Right. But it's really fun when you notice some surprises.

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Helena 28:19

We had one organization where something wild, like 80% of their staff wanted to learn project management. And that was a gift in one way. It wasn't expected, but it was a gift in one way because they knew if they laid on training and development in project management, they would make an enormous proportion of their workforce happy. Were there any interesting surprises in the data when you had the mapping done?

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Megan  28:46

One thing that was both challenging and interesting. So I mentioned. We started from. Scratch with GE Digital. Then we realized in these other businesses, aviation, healthcare, renewables, et cetera, there were people doing digital work at that time in the job structure. It was coded as, I don't know. Like, mechanical engineer one.

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Megan  29:14

Yeah. So we then went through this exercise to, like, remap all these people in. The other businesses, and we're like, you are now a part. You're a digital. Employee. So now you fall. Under these digital tools.

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Megan  29:28

You know, the assessments, the learning, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah. So. What was interesting is my role was both GE digital as a vertical and then the digital population as a horizontal across all of GE. So I'm working with HR business partners in GE aviation that they now support, essentially digital employees and non digital employees. Right. So there's like, two different sets of rules, right?

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Megan  30:01

Like, you've got digital ta, digital compensation, um. So. And because our models, like, all the language had to be written broad, you know, there were some times where, like, tension would come up, where I'd be having a conversation with a business leader or an HR business partner for a business, and like, wow, the data says, like, this is a huge capability gap. Like, do we need to get on it? Like, do we need to flag this with recruiting and maybe like, eh, that one doesn't really apply to our business. And sure enough, like, I dig a little deeper and see the number of times that people were clicking, not applicable. Like, oh, but because of how our mapping was done, like, I couldn't just remove it from the model for ge aviation.

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Megan  30:50

So, like, that was some of the nuances of where does everyone have to agree, right? Like, a soften software engineer. A software engineer in GE Digital is a software engineer in GE healthcare in aviation. We weren't making any nuances, but there'd be times where there would be a nuance. And sometimes we had this catch all around domain expertise. But that's where, like, the tension of, we took a broad approach versus a very delineated. And I think that's the struggle today for organizations of any size of, like, how do you balance out when you go abroad versus when you have to, you know, delineate?

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Megan  31:35

And I think that's where, you know, in the taxonomy. Right? Like, is it, is it competencies versus skills? Is it something in the middle? Like, where can you have broad language? Like, I remember, like, my first performance review, you know, the company values and behaviors, like, those were broad and they were applicable to all versus, like, what were, you know, the five things that were really specific to the job that I had. So I think some of just, like, the challenges were around, like, when, you know, things would show up and I'd look at the data like, oh, my gosh, this is, this is on fire.

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Megan  32:14

And, you know, have the conversation. They're like, it doesn't really matter to us. But this other one over here, that matters.

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Helena 32:21

If you had to do it again, what would you do differently?

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Megan  32:28

So since this was back in 2017, one thing to do it all over again. I would want to have a plan earlier on in terms of how to keep these models up to date. What is the refresh rate, for example? Right. Because, like, all these skills, like, have to bubble up into something. Right? So I'm an HR professional, and I need to understand, like, what are the skills or capabilities that tie to my role, but somebody's overseeing them.

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Megan  33:05

So how do you communicate to the business? Or have a plan of, like, these are going to be updated once a year. Like, we're going to validate them with external. Like, having that plan versus getting to a point where it's like, oh, they haven't been touched in 18 months. Like, how are we going to check for relevancy and what we did. Was so labor intensive, I had my people analytics guru pull the data of what are all the capabilities that employees and people leaders are clicking not applicable on, like, and then aggregate up to the ones where, you know, it was statistically significant. And then I had to curate new subject matter experts and then sent them a survey of, like, what capabilities should we get rid of?

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Megan  33:54

Which ones should we add? Which ones do the definitions need to be re add, like, and then try to, like, merge all of that, come back with proposals. Because what was core to us was that all of this, like, the business owned, so I couldn't just, you know, wipe out half the model. Like, I needed them to sign off on it. So then, like, I could point the finger of, like, nope, the marketing sneeze. Like they said, this is. This is what it takes to be in marketing.

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Megan  34:23

So to do it all over again, would definitely want to have a plan around. Like, when we get to that point, how are we going to keep things fresh and up to date? How. What's the regular interval of, like, checking in on? Does this still apply for us? You know, and I think it's the same problem as competency models that. That we're familiar with.

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Megan  34:45

Like, a lot of hard work went into them, and then if they sit on the shelf too long, they get people use them and say they're not relevant. I think another thing. That would have been interesting is to find a way to bring some of that skill mix information into talent review assessments. And what I mean by that is, like, we were already using them for design of, like, as things were shifting. Like, how will that impact our capability mix? Like, what will it look like? But I think it could have been interesting in, like, talent reviews to highlight leaders that were a bringing in.

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Megan  35:27

Like, did the leader, does the leader have an updated team assessment and what is the capability mix on their team? Because I think there's something around, like is the leader, you know, if I'm the leader and I've got huge gaps on my team, like, what's my plan?

Because it's not just call it HR, right? It's like, what's Megan's plan of, like, am I bringing in L and D for lunch and learns? Like, am I. You know, Friday afternoons. Am I encouraging everyone to spend an hour, like, in the LMS taking courses?

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Megan  35:56

So that would have been an interesting thing to, like, bring into that robust conversation. I mean, ultimately, like, all of this strategy we were doing was based on leader assessments, and it requires fresh data and consistent data. Right. And then lastly, more around HR accountability. So what always kind of flabbergasted me was I recognized at this time, like, how the work we were doing around skills. Like, it was unique, it was cool, it made sense. It was this cool thing.

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Megan  36:39

Like, not a lot of companies in 2017 were doing this. My HR colleagues didn't really get the like, this is a big deal. This is really cool. We're a part of something really unique. And so there were times where. Rather than HR using their access to the data when having conversations with their leaders. I had to step in, and it was more of leaders not knowing this data existed.

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Megan  37:10

And I'm like, hey, I can help you figure out what's your hiring plan or your l and D plan. Or again, it's kind of framing it of less of, hey, leader, I need you to do your self assessment, your team assessment. Hey, leader, what business problems are you trying to solve this year? Like, how can I use, like, our skills information to help you? Like, the sales team loved it because we were able to triangulate. Of the twelve sales capabilities, what three were the difference in somebody hitting their quota versus hitting their quota? 150%.

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Megan  37:46

Right? And so it's like framing it. But HR, for the first year I was there, I just, I found there was this gap. And so I would tell business leaders, and it's like your HR person has access. Later, I put together a bootcamp class for HR around like upskilling and people analytics to try to make it more friendly and approachable. But to go back in time, I would have had conversations with the CHRO around what does HR accountability look like to using these tools? Like to using this as a strategic lever and using it in conversation with leaders versus Megain having to be broadened, all these conversations.

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Megan 38:31 

Yeah.

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Helena  38:32

And maybe a kind of last question for you is what about predictions for the future? Now it can be related to the topic we've just been talking about or go as crazy as you like. What hopes or predictions do you have for the future of work?

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Megan  38:51

It's a big questions like this, right? The whole, like, if I'm gazing into my crystal ball, I'll give a few. I definitely predict, you know, people, people. Analytics will remain, like, as a function today, but also will become a critical skill for HR, right? You can't be an HR unless you have some level of analytical savviness. I think looking at everything that's happening with hybrid versus remote and rto mandates, I definitely think that there's going to be hybrid work is going to normalize and we'll have less of this RTO tension. But with that, there's gonna be something around like remote work infrastructure where hopefully, like HR can help lead the way in, you know, the digital collaboration tools, seamless communication, you know, and also how do you bring in time zones from a strategic workforce planning standpoint?

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Megan  40:00

Right. Like, so I think HR is gonna be a great voice in that. And then maybe lastly, more around like human centric leadership. Like, I think coming out of the fun of the pandemic, you know, for a hot minute, there was a huge focus on empathetic leadership and it kind of feels like that's fallen away. And so I'm hoping that. Hoping that, you know, with this prediction, HR will champion human centric leadership, you know, prioritizing empathy, compassion, you know, well being like, really getting at the human element, so. We'll see.

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Helena  40:35

Fantastic. Well, I'll wrap it up here. Megan, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. It's been a delight to meet you and talk about this topic. And let's do this again.

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Megan  40:46

Absolutely. It's been so much fun.

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