Navigating the Future of Work with Libby Nicholson: Embracing AI, Mental Health, and Dynamic Culture

[0:00]  I I think people have an inherent and understandable uh fear that this AI is going to take their job mental health is really huge on my lifestyle and the things that I like to push forward because the way in which we navigate life has dynamically changed I want to be the first to say I'm not an expert and I have been a little intimidated to kind of jump into this and learn but we can't tackle something or see its potential unless we do engage I mean think about Amazon with you know we are all like wed like what do you mean it's going to take more than 24 hours me to get this thing that I want like we have no patience right I always had a real rub against being in the office cuz I was like it's not necessary and then the pandemic occurred and I saw how isolated everybody was and I to have to be honest with you I'm really itching to kind of figure out in the next couple years how we bring everybody back together I don't like the phrase work life balance I

[0:48]  think that we are holistic integrated people and we hopefully can be the same person that we are at work that we are at home and and share some of those things so all right guys welcome back to another episode of the heart and hustle podcast we're back for a specific episode in our new HR hero series and I'm incredibly excited because I've got Libby Nicholson here Libby thank you so much for coming on the show I really appreciate it yeah my pleasure thanks for offering for me to be here I'm excited to dive into today's conversation because we've got a lot of topics that we're going to cover

[1:34]  but first I want to start off with a quote education is the passport to the Future for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today Malcolm X what do you think about that quote well given that I work for an education travel company I think it's awesome I think that you know our company's slogan is opening the world through education so I resonate highly with that you know I was uh I had an interesting experience like many Millennials so I was born born in 1990 and I remember being in second grade and coming home from school one day and being like Mom how much longer do I have to do this whole school thing because it just doesn't Vibe with me I wasn't one of those kids who was intently kind of drawn to the education process but the one thing that I've recognized as I've gotten older is that I have become a ferocious learner I love consuming knowledge and I've realized

[2:23]  how many doors it's opened up for me as I've gone through kind of my maturity process have you had a similar experience or what was your education experience like when you were growing up um you know I think I was the firstborn of five children so there was a lot of that rule following pressure to like do and be the right things and uh I was very fortunate in my education I think I was had a lot of really good opportunities and great teachers um but there was a lot of what felt like just jumping through the Hoops to get where we needed to go and not as much pursuing something because you were really interested in it but because that was just the next item in in the curriculum so I think now people have so many more options to pursue something because they have an interest in it and they can go deeper um and they're more passionate about it and so they learn more and I

[3:10]  feel like education comes in so many different forms these days right I want to say that Elon Musk famously a couple years ago said that because there's so much available information on like YouTube as an example you have the ability to go out and really hone your skills around education that's readily available and I feel like the dynamic of education has changed but opens up the world like you were talking about in your organization from the very beginning which is kind of like a huge shift now one of the other shifts that we've seen over the last couple years is kind of a way in which the workforce is now approaching work life balance but also the way that we work as well and so the new work way of work has been transforming right in our eyes over the last couple years especially in our previous conversation you had mentioned you know some of the things that you and your organization are doing in changing

[3:57]  the culture especially as we have this new Young Generation who's coming into the workforce what are some of the elements of the new changing Workforce that you've kind of recognized um I think in my you know I have my own coaching practice too so it's not just at my organization but I think in general so many people that I see especially coming out of the pandemic the the tolerance that people had for some of the things that they used to just kind of suffer they just don't anymore they're like here's what I'm willing to do here's what I'm not willing to do and so I would say the biggest one is just uh moving you know we we all were very remote 100% remote kind of this return to hybrid work has probably been one of the biggest ones I like to use the phrase connection with purpose you know we we have people come

[4:45]  into the office for a reason it's not just to say you have to be here so many days per week as it is we have things we're doing on those days where we believe there's a lot of value in seeing each other and doing planning and working together and hearing the value I think especially for the younger members of the workforce of a question asked in a group that you're like oh yeah that's a question that I have too I'm really interested to hear how somebody else with more or different experience is going to answer that so that I can learn um you don't get those experiences in isolation and that's actually been part of my I would say entrepreneurial Journey when I started my company back in 2014 I've always been a work from home person right my team is remote we're across the country Seattle Arizona Texas Florida all these places and I always had a real rub against being in the office because I was like it's not

[5:33]  necessary and then the pandemic occurred and I saw how isolated everybody was and I to have to be honest with you I'm really itching to kind of figure out in the next couple years how we bring everybody back together because there's no replacement for being in the same space and being able to collaborate ask questions have things answered but also that in between time of just being able to spit off ideas to people and getting that collaborative nature I think is so interesting yeah Kanan I'm so glad you brought that up I think you know I worked for remotely for 9 years before I you know took this most recent job where I'm I'm in a hybrid environment and so I was the same way I was really milant like we don't need this we don't need that you know we can can do it all remotely and I definitely do see a lot of that value and even in a remote team the value of bringing people together whether it's on a quarterly or you know every twice a year or something just

[6:21]  gives people that shot in the arm of that mission purpose oh this is my these are my people this is why I do what I do and we all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves and so I think that that inspiration that comes from some of that Community unfortunately we just can't replace it virtually as much as we have all tried and I feel like our organizations have to be more Dynamic than ever and that's kind of a perfect segue into a study that I shared with you about the four levels of organizational maturity model now only 4% of organizations surveyed in this study actually are considered Dynamic organizations and here are some of the interesting criteria or characteristics of those organizations number one is focused on balanced outcomes number two is including Innovation and productivity

[7:09]  number three is focused on skill-based and cross functional team play number or four is data informed the fifth one which I think is very powerful is psychological safety especially in the world of mental health and burnout and turnover resiliency challenges psychological safety is so important the next is always transforming so like we talk about shifting and being able to meet people and organizational needs where they are and the last is a Marketplace for intent or internal mobility and career development what I want to kind of do is based on what I shared with you let's talk about including Innovation and productivity how many organizations do you see that are out there today really focusing on this Innovation aspect and how it can impact our productivity yeah um I definitely am

[7:57]  going to focus on that but I think a really important statement before we do that is the Gallup organization has a statement which is people don't leave companies they leave managers so on that psychological safety point I think it is just so important to remember that what we're teaching our managers just because somebody's been good at a job doesn't mean they're going to be good at leading somebody else doing it and the way we're setting people up for success and do we create those environments where people feel safe to come and ask questions and learn and and build and grow so I I think that you know we think about masa's hierarchy that we have to have that environment for some of that psychological safety before we can get to some of these other layers right so leaning into productivity assuming we have that great Baseline of people feeling psychologically safe that they

[8:46]  have a manager who is supporting encouraging their development I think that is great but I think getting into productivity there are so many different tools um and it's so interesting to me as we look at the different generation coming into the workforce you know I have a lot of employees who are are younger and have never they've only ever been on a tablet or phone so even coming into a Microsoft like teams or slack or some of these um you know windows-based systems they're like wow what is this you know I'm used to being on an iPad or a phone and so that's been an adjustment but I think we have so many different ways of working together and being product productive but I think we have to start with sort of each person's individual you know what works for you and it's SAR to you know asking people to commit to the same planner like there

[9:33]  are some things that work for you that might not work for me and we have to kind of meet people where they are with some of that but that's why going back to the the manager being skilled I think saying you know what is it that you need we all have these needs within us and how do I help get you what you need and what you need might be very different from someone else I feel like that is a a huge change that I've seen in the last couple years especially because of the the needs of our employees are so much more Dynamic than they have been in the past and I feel like business especially from a large corporation perspective through time has been very cookie cutter policies and procedures fit into the box keep moving do what you got to do and in our previous conversation you talked about this new generation of people who are coming into your organization asking questions and things of their managers

[10:21]  which in the past we wouldn't have even thought about so why don't you kind of share a little bit about that personal experience and kind of if that took you back or if that surprised you or that was something that you're intrigued by yeah I I'm incredibly impressed with the willingness of uh the younger generation to advocate for themselves in with regard to whatever that might be sometimes it's around a personal need that they have I think um you know coming out of the pandemic people are so much more focused on their workspace you know I was happy to get a desk wherever it was and and now I have people saying here's what I need to be my most effective self I'm like oh or you know sometimes it's I I challenging or thinking differently I have a question about a policy or procedure this doesn't make sense and things that I don't feel like I ever would have had the courage to do at a younger age I I think I would

[11:10]  have been like well the policy's here I'm just supposed to follow it and they're really comfortable with challenging the status quo and saying that may be this the case but I don't know that it makes sense and questioning that and in a respectful way but I've learned a lot from some of those really great questions that that they're bringing to the table and I think um great that organizations are now more receptive to allowing people to bring them their full selves to work um whether that's from A diversity Equity inclusion and belonging perspective to a neurod Divergent how do I learn best perspective or whatever those things might be I think we are much more open now than we were before to meeting people where they are let's take this back to kind of like a first principles perspective why do you think this new generation has the ability to stand up

[11:57]  and advocate for themselves when we and people who are in our same age bracket didn't think that that was a possibility what are some of the elements in that well I think they were taught from an earlier age that they have a voice that they have the ability to question things I mean when I was growing up my parents were you know they entertained a lot they had would have people over but it was a grown-up environment and we were there to be just you know behave and I think that things have really shifted a little bit more to not a kid-centric environment but definitely more open you see a lot more Partnerships of people raising children together and there's not a gender role or any kind of bias it's all everything is up for grabs and I love that um but I think that people have been taught like

[12:45]  you have a voice you can come to the table and also as a strengths coach I love the fact that I can say look here's what I do really well here's what I bring to the table you know what is it that you do and we don't have to have roles that conform to what our friends have done or what our parents have done or whatever have we've seen modeled for us we can find our own path forward based on who we are and I think that that is a very unique perspective from what what I grew up with yeah I know my mom always used to repeat a saying to me because her mom said it to her when I was a kid it said children are to be seen and not heard and I feel like that in itself is kind of an old school mentality and maybe that's where a lot of this kind of I would say origin of this thought process goes is I'm supposed to show up I'm supposed to sit in my desk I'm supposed to to be seen and not heard not create too much Havoc or you know turbulence if you will but

[13:33]  now the new generation is like hey if I'm going to be here and I want to be my best self then I'm going to have to have the things that I need and I feel like there's a dynamic shift by employers saying okay well let's try this out and if productivity and profit and you know everything else and collaboration and the culture of the organization improves maybe this is something that we can learn from as a way of the future and I I was very fortunate growing up to have parents who who fully believed in equal opportunity and uh had just as many chores as my brothers did and you know equally distributed but that also taught me you know even at a young age being fortunate to be in rooms of a lot of you know Mel executive teams that I had a voice and I could speak up and say that doesn't really feel right or make sense or have we considered this

[14:20]  perspective and um I see now that that was very unique and rare that not everybody did you know I'm seeing that shift I think with the a lot of that balance in you know coming into the workplace now but um yeah I think I think that environment has definitely shifted in terms of you know people learn and speak up in different ways yeah I want to take a a little bit of a detour really quick because I want to learn a little bit more about your coaching and you mentioned you're a strengths coach so what does that mean for the audience how are you helping people show up and exemplify their best strengths or are you helping people put up 315 pounds in the gym building their good question I am not a personal trainer yes yes thank you for clarifying um so I am certified as a strengths coach with the Gallup organization I've also done you know certifications with different systems and what I would say

[15:08]  is while I do love the the Clifton strengths assessment I am I don't think it matters so much which tool you're using it's the philosophy of how are you wired what do you need and how do you ask for that and set yourself up for success with it so I think helping I help a lot of times understand what people are good at and i' love to ask that question do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day now we're all going to have areas of our jobs that are not our favorite things you know people say well I don't love doing email can I get rid of that no we're all going to have some things that we don't love every minute of every day but I do think there are things that you do you know how can we get you to be 70% in your Zone where you are enjoying that work because that's what comes natural for you and you are going to

[15:56]  want to spend more time in those areas of strength strength we gravitate toward that so I do spend a lot of time with individuals and teams helping them understand um what are those things are we even aware that those are the strengths that we have and then how do we move into applying them so a lot of what I'll ask people is may have a talent to play the piano do you have an ability to practice you know you're not going to get better unless you're leveraging that so how are we moving into that application and ultimately achievement I'm so interested in this concept of strengths because as I've gotten more mature in my entrepreneurial Journey I've realized the importance of building out my team now when I first got started as many entrepreneurial do they say I can do everything but I heard um a influencer say something that really took me back have you ever heard of Mr Beast he's on YouTube he creates

[16:43]  these videos gets like 60 million 70 million views per video that he actually creates have you heard of him I've not heard of him okay so Mr Beast is a influencer phenomenon and he started off his journey very early by recognizing that I as the leader of of my YouTube channel don't have the ability to do everything and so he was having a in a podcast and he said I recognized that although I might be good at video editing I had to bring somebody in who had 100% of that strength because if I'm splitting my time 50/50 I'm only 50% as good as they are and you can kind of look at that in building a team so I love that approach of asking what are you truly good at and how can we put you in a position of strength so you can be successful long term I think that is the congenial glue that keeps a team moving forward and it's a challenge for a lot

[17:31]  of leaders out there especially in their early entrepreneurial Journey if that makes sense yeah absolutely and I think my goal is how do we find those complimentary Partnerships where you say God I you know I had a partnership one time where I I didn't love doing research and getting really into data and analytics and you know but I loved getting up in front of people and sharing ideas and being the mouthpiece for change and I had the opportunity to partner with somebody who was like my perfect compliment you know literally her bottom five strengths were my top five and vice versa it was like a match made in heaven and there were days where we were just trying to understand where the other one was coming from for sure but over the piece like it was such a great partnership because she could spend so much time doing things that she really enjoyed and I could spend time

[18:18]  giving voice and messaging things that she learned about or you know discovered so I think when we can find some of those things and that really to me is the definition of working smart and not working hard because I do see so many especially entrepreneurs that just I need to do it all and you don't you can find people who can do it in half the time I'm the first to say I am not an expert in Excel and I can partner with somebody who can do you know I could spend you know time and learn how to do it but I'm always focusing people on what is the best and highest use of your talents and how do we make sure you're in that space most of the time yeah I feel like um that Excel example is funny to me me because I always reference it you know everybody said back in the day that they were proficient at Excel on their on their uh on their uh applications and job stuff like that but

[19:07]  I feel like that's not everybody's bag which is really interesting and because we're talking about yeah my daughter's a data science and engineer and when I watch her do an Excel spreadsheet and a pivot table I just sit back and awe and go this is awesome but it is definitely not my St yeah my girlfriend's sister um is an accountant with a large gaming organization here in Las Vegas and the way that she navigates her Excel files is absolutely mind-blowing and I feel like I'm just you know somebody who's not going to understand that so that's all up to her which is great um because we've been talking about the strengths of organizations I want to kind of lean into the strengths of the dynamic organization CH or qualities that we kind of reviewed at the beginning of the call and just so everybody understands 7% of organizations surveyed were those Dynamic organizations we went through those characteristics but let's talk about some of their strengths and how they outperform perform other

[19:55]  organizations as well so this is broken down into three categories business outcomes these Dynamic organizations are three times more likely to Delight customers they're three times more likely to exceed Financial targets now from a people outcomes perspective 21 times more likely to be highly diverse and inclusive 20 times more likely to accomplish high levels of Workforce productivity 31 times more likely to engage and retain employees and then from an Innovative perspective 17 more times to or more likely to adapt to change and seven times more likely to innovate effectively and it really kind of talks about those strengths if you will of having a collaborative team being able to focus on outcomes and being data driven and I know those are some of the things that you've been

[20:41]  challenged with in your HR career how do we use data as an example to better weaponize you to make better decisions why don't you kind of talk about that data dichotomy a little bit Yeah and I'd love to Circle back to our conversation earlier of working remotely in hybrid and I think for a lot of organizations the fear that is rooted in that is well how do I know if people are working well if we have good data I can easily look at that in outcomes and I think you know I want to focus on not so much where you sit to do what you're doing but you know what are you achieving and are you doing it in a way that's working for you and the only way that I'm going to be able to see that is in that data so having some of those analytics and systems not to mention the fact that we all want to feel like we're

[21:29]  winning we all want to be able to point to something and say oh look what I achieved and having that data gives us that Foundation to be able to have those conversations I think if you look at Performance Management that's such a good indicator I I often see companies that Focus so much on well what's the rating going to be and it's like that can destroy people at times it's like if you say to somebody you know what you're a three out of five like they can't hear anything else except what do you mean I'm a three like especially if you're a highly engaged individual if you were to say to me Libby you're a three I would think I'd have to get my resume together like that's unacceptable right like I think if you're dealing with highly driven people they want to know how they're contributing what impact they're having and you have to be able to point back to that and we do that with data so having those analytics and saying

[22:17]  telling that story of someone's work and evaluating productivity and again I think back to the generational thing people are used to getting a lot of input very quickly and that kind of back to we don't want to wait once a year to give some of that feedback we want to give those quick hits much more frequently so having some of those resources where we can point to that and say hey today or this week look what we achieved either as a team or individually is so important I feel like you know all of the data points and stuff that we've talked about are kind of misunderstood by a lot of people unless they have a tangible example of an organization who's really doing this and one of the great examples that I pulled from that study was how Netflix is attacking kind of all of the elements of that Dynamic organization model and some of the things that are really

[23:03]  interesting because when we talk about business people care about output right so Google or Netflix has a employee output so in millions of dollar or 2.9 Million of Revenue per employee which is more than Google because Google has 1.5 million 1.4 million for meta 6 or 60,000 for Comcast and 450,000 for um Disney which is insane and their stock price has outperformed Google over the last or four times more over the last decade which is insane and if I think about the culture that I've always heard about and how they use feedback how they use collaboration how they use flexible working Styles Netflix seems to exemplify all of those things what's your two cents on how Netflix has been

[23:50]  able to dominate over the next decade by leaning into all those Dynamic business models well I think people want to do a good job they want to rise to the bar that you set for them so I do think it's really important to have a high standard but I also think we have to calibrate a little bit you know are the expectations that we're setting realistic and how people are doing and when people fall short of that how are we having those conversations because I think there's also nothing worse than setting a goal that somebody just feels bad when they don't reach like that can have catastrophic effects across the board that we want to be aware of so um I I think that there's a lot of tools out there for different employers to use but each one of them we have to be really clear that we understand what does that mean how are they using that because I

[24:39]  think uh that's a lot of Big Data examples that you shared and I think that those are great but there's so many more people stories behind each one of those in terms of you know great place to work environments and what are they doing but equally some challenging situations that I'm sure each of those people leaders could be sharing with you that they've overcome or navigated in the process so I think a big part of it is just um really understanding you know sometimes just setting goals for People Are People clear on what it is their job is I'm often amazed when I ask people you know what is it that you get paid to do and they give you an answer and you're like huh it's not at all what I would have as your manager or as a leader in this company expected that answer to be and I think I have a different expectation so that calibration of regularly just check in

[25:28]  and saying we're all on the same page about what we're going after what those goals are and having been part of some really Dynamic organizations that's the other thing is these goals change you know I've been in part of one where they changed six weeks later we would set a goal and so we had this great goal we're going to set goals and evaluate them after one year we were like they were all out the window in two months and everybody was like oh now what so we learned the value of setting them quarterly reviewing them and pointing back and celebrating success esses and also saying what didn't go well and instead of beating people up for that what can we learn from that what can we do differently as a result so I would imagine all of those organizations that you just shared probably have a lot of those types of situations embedded in there somewhere yeah and I feel like they're all really leaning into how they

[26:15]  can utilize the progressive landscape of technology and tools like AI as an example to be able to take advantage of some of the things that are popping up on a week- toe basis right I mean technology esally from the AI perspective has exploded in the last couple years and we've seen organizations leaning into Ai and how it can impact the organization I want to reference a quick study so the PWC organization predicts that a f$ 15.7 trillion impact from now to 2030 will be made by ai ai in HR specifically and some of the areas that you think it's going to touch might not be on this list but there is a ton that I want to share with you recruiting career Mobility Oregon job design Employee Self-Service Learning and Development rewards

[27:02]  employee experience is a huge one leadership succession and Performance Management now I know that you've also been somebody who's starting to dive a little bit deep into the AI world so why don't you give your perspective as an HR leader and how this new Innovative tool has impacted kind of your worldview and how you can get your do job done yeah I I think AI is fascinating and we're just starting to scratch the surface of some of the capabil ities um I want to be the first to say I'm not an expert and I have been a little intimidated to kind of jump into this and learn but we can't tackle something or see its potential unless we do engage so you know I took a class in you know chat GPT and how to use it specifically for HR leaders and you know a couple of the points that you referenced were were taught there one of them was Recruitment

[27:50]  and it was really great to be able to see how you know chat gbt can help you take the bias out of how you may evaluate candidates you can wait do weighted averages and put in your top criteria for a job and then compare and contrast different candidates accordingly and that was exciting because I think we're still people at the end of the day we have inherent flaws and biases that we bring to the table so I think that there's a lot of capability there um similar to Performance Management you know there are things where it gives us that objective view on how we want to you know evaluate people I also think you know there's ways you can ask questions to say I'm really scared I need to give feedback about this partic you know particular feed topic and what would you recommend and my favorite thing so far

[28:38]  about AI is that you're not starting from a blank slate which is so great I can't tell you how many times I've sat down to write a policy or procedure and I just like stare at a blank page and I'm like I know somebody else has figured this out like I don't want to have to recreate the wheel um so being able to enter into chat GT like can you give me a policy for a company in this industry on you know person paid time off and it will spit out like all of this stuff now a lot of it's not going to be relevant but you can then start to Wordsmith from there and say what pieces of that do I want to keep what might I want to change you can pull it into presentations so it's a great platform to jump into where again back to our talent discussion what is the best and use highest use of my time it's not going out and seeing what's already

[29:25]  there so AI is kind of Tak taking some of the heavy lifting out of that and I think that we're only going to see this really really grow and learn um I'm part of an HR round table that meets once a month and this was our topic last week when we met which is how is everybody using this you know what do we see and a lot of people were like ah I'm kind of I don't know I don't know where to start they feel kind of um stuck by that so I I just would invite people just jump in and start reading and learning and practicing you know just log in and play with it a little bit like you can't break it you can only learn from it which is exciting that's where that sense of curiosity comes from right because I feel like when uh chat GPT dropped in November of 22 many people were like this is going to be a good

[30:13]  thing or this is going to be a bad thing and it created that natural division right and there's also the perspective which I love that you touched on is everybody thinks you're either an AI expert or you're going to be somebody who's going to be left behind but it's that sense of curiosity that means let me dive into the system and see how I can use this to impact my job where the real benefit comes from and I completely agree with you chat GPT is not supposed to be a replacement but it's supposed to be an accelerator right why would I go out and look at all the policies and procedures that I have to find manually when I can ask a system to create a first draft that I can then iterate on right the objective for Innovation and collaboration is iterating on the ideas that we have and how we can become the best possible people that we possibly can so I love that is there anything else that from a concerns perspective in your HR round table that people have

[31:00]  brought up about HR about about AI in the role of HR I I think people have an inherent and understandable fear that this AI is going to take their job you know what we all have that like what does this mean for me you know what if if this can now do the work you know I I saw some software where it can record you doing different things on your screen from a machine learning perspective you teach it how to do it and then it can do it for you and immediately for people who have very transactional jobs I can totally see where that fear and that I'm coming from a place of scarcity is is hard and so I think uh being willing to look at that and say yes that there is a potential that it it may remove some of

[31:47]  those more administrative roles or things in nature but how can I use that to say well where where can I jump in and maybe grow my career in a way that it can so you know it's not ever going to probably at least in the short term replace a lot of our emotional intelligence like reading from somebody you don't seem okay what's going on today and being able to have some of that Insight in those conversations um you know we're we're ways off from that and so I I think that's probably the biggest um hesitation and anxiety that people have around it um and and I think we need to uh respect that but also just kind of be willing to come from a place of curiosity and yeah I mean of the organizations I shared with you that I feel like has a real Curious mindset about things like AI is Walmart which might surprise a lot of people and not

[32:36]  because of a logistics perspective and you know timing out deliveries and making sure supply chain and stuff is there which I'm sure there are elements of that but the use case that I shared with you for how Walmart's using conversational AI is how they can support their employees about getting information about benefits and some interesting statistics is Walmart of course like a large organization employs a lot of call centers when an employee calls the call center they're getting 75% accuracy when their questions are being answered by people but they're getting 95% accuracy from the AI tool and it's very interesting that might seem like a small jump but when we talk about creating a sense of security so or a psychological safety as well and understanding what benefits I can get from my organization that jump from 75 to 95% is incredibly important so what do you think about that use case and

[33:24]  have you seen anything else like that in business well first of all as a recipient of so many of those benefits questions over and over and O where you know you're just regurgitating a lot of the same ansers I find a lot of Peace in the fact that there's a tool there you know so I know that we have software that has a bot associated with it that you can say how much do I have in my vacation balance you know that's not something we need to bother the HR team with answering if it's something that an employee can utilize self-service to get on their own and that's really another area where I think generationally so many people are like I just want to go and type in something and get an answer I don't want to wait on hold and I don't want to wait for a person or send an email and potentially have 48 hours somebody gets back to me I want it right

[34:11]  now I mean think about Amazon with you know we are all like wed like what do you mean it's going to take more than 24 hours for me to get this thing that I want like we have no patience right so the same is true for information we want that right away so being able to work smarter and have a system where people are going to say when can I expect to receive my benefits card or when will I have coverage or a lot of these same questions that we receive um in the benefits team over and over again I think it's great because now I can put the human time and attention on the things that really matter which is that person that just found out they're expecting they need to take time off how are they going to care for their children like I want our time focused on those things and not on answering questions that potentially AI can answer for us yeah I mean there's so many

[34:57]  things I want to dive into there you know I've always talk about with my team the consumer Centric approach to society today right everybody wants when they want what they want when they want it now and there was a comedian who I thought was really funny and he was like you know I moved from China four years ago and I found that you Americans are so impatient you guys have Amazon Prime that will deliver anything to your door next morning but you're upset that that takes too long he like what do you guys want Amazon before so even before you think about it somebody's putting something in your hand and giving to you I thought that was really interesting and a unique perspective on kind of like the society that we live in as well which I thought was interesting um you know one of the things I think is really interesting that I want to kind of do another detour on is because people want what they want when they want it a huge element of how we can support employees

[35:45]  today is around mental health why do you think mental health and wellness are two emphasises for organizations today when it comes to attracting new Talent why do you think that's so important on the roadmap for being able to nurture Talent within the organization and make them feel psychologically safe like we talked about earlier well first of all I'm a huge advocate for mental health and I think that you know that's one of the reasons that I don't like the phrase work life balance I think that we are holistic integrated people and we hopefully can be the same person that we are at work that we are at home and and share some of those things so I that's another thing that I really love that I see a lot of the younger generation just advocating for themselves in terms of I I can't go at this pace I I need a

[36:32]  little bit of a break or or they work incredibly hard and say sorry I've allocated this time to make sure that I'm getting what I need from a wellness perspective or they'll say if it's okay I'm going to take 15 minutes I just need to take a quick walk or clear they know what some of these coping methodologies are that they need and they advocate for those and I I admire that so much because I think for a long time there was H situations in which people would just fog through and they would have nothing left in the tank at the end of the week and it's ex it's not great you know we want to make sure that people feel like they're able to do their best work and you know they have to be getting what they need at home as well as at work we're not just like oh this is you know this is the vacuum I think

[37:19]  that the show Severance is such a good indicator I don't know if you've seen that but it's fascinating to me where it's like people kind of turn off and I I like I want our employees to be able to be and bring them their whole selves to work all the time and feel safe to do that yeah I mean because at the end of the day there was a recent study that I was reading for another episode and it was talking about we're finding today that people are living to work not working to live or I'm sorry the Reversed opposite so working to live not living to work and I think there's a big disconnect with kind of the passion that people have because often and this is kind of a good example of my uh my girlfriend's sister she said my role as an accountant is literally just so I can live my life and do the things that I want to this is not something that I'm incredibly jazzed up about but it's a means to an end so I can live the

[38:06]  lifestyle that I want and I thought that was interesting but that seems to be a a perspective that a lot of the youth share especially as they go through kind of like their early professional careers as well and I feel like in order for the future of organizations to be as successful as they can we're going to have to make sure people show up heard seen validated and they feel support you know some of the work that me and the team do here at Francis is we started in the mental health space back in 2014 and during the pandemic we found that a lot of organizations were really having a tough time supporting people on a daily basis a lot of organizations allocate Mental Health Resources fractional counselors and therapists they give you access to an EAP program but unfortunately because we're so busy every day people don't take advantage of those things so one of our services here at Francis is we send a daily text

[38:54]  message of positivity encouragement support or a mental Wellness exercise that comes to you via text so literally there's nothing that you have to do other than receive your daily dose of positivity and we've seen some awesome impacts in the organizations we work with and so mental health is really huge on my lifestyle and the things that I like to push forward because the way in which we navigate life has dynamically changed and we need to be able to adapt to these new needs I also think that there is a responsibility though on employers um I for example I had an employer that gave us access access and paid for our access to calm to get the Calm app which I think is great you know let's focus let's do some of these things that's amazing what are we doing to action that you know to your point are we actually giving space and time to people to use meditation to be

[39:41]  intentional about some of these things or is it just well in the 15 minutes of downtime that we give you in 24 hours feel free to use the com app like I I think that we have a responsibility to make sure that we are checking in with people um um because I I and I also going back to what you said earlier on working to live I I have seen a shift where people are very Mission driven they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and they want to connect with the mission and purpose of that organization so they really want to understand what the organization does how how it how do they fit in and connect to it and I think that's a responsibility that employers have regularly and again not just once a year or every six months but regularly saying

[40:29]  here's how you fit in here's how you make a difference and connect to the bigger picture and what we do um because I think when employees lose sight of that they they get more disengaged so I think that people are willing to be really engaged during whatever commitment they're giving to their company but I think that we also have an obligation as employers to make sure that we're connecting them to that purpose what that really comes down to is a terminology which I take a deep dive into in a lot of my content which is the idea of agency right we start to feel burnt out we start to feel like we don't have an impact when we don't understand how we play into the bigger picture and that's a huge element of communicating with the team of like this is your job responsibility this is how you impact our customer journey and this is the overall impact you're having on our community getting people to buy into

[41:17]  that mission is just like a huge game Cher that I feel like so many businesses lose out on because we're so focused on the day-to-day survival of business rather than the the mission that we're on as well yeah absolutely well you know Libby this has been an absolute pleasure hopping on here and learning a little bit more about you and your unique perspective how you're being somebody who's innovating in your own Circle of Life by being someone who's curious enough to hop on AI use chat GPT I know that people who are listening to today's episode in general are going to learn a lot from you and we have so much that we can talk about continuously but we're going to wrap up today's episode episode I want you to give the last couple seconds of how can people contact you to figure out more about um you and the work that you're doing as a coach but

[42:05]  also an HR leader if that's on LinkedIn a website or whatever that is yeah thanks Kenan I appreciate that yeah LinkedIn is great um Libby Nicholson um and I I just would really encourage people don't be afraid to try out new things I think that we we get scared and just remember we're all in this together we're all trying to figure things out and I love it when people raise hand and say oh I'm a little scared I don't really know does somebody want to try this out like we're all in figuring it out at the same time nobody's nobody's an expert so there are some experts I am not one of them so I I think it's fun to have people to to network and try that out with awesome well thank you guys so much for tuning in to another episode of the heart and hustle podcast this has been a brand new segment in our HR Heroes section so Libby thank you so much again for coming in and sharing your insights I really appreciate it

[42:52]  guys we'll catch you in the next one take it easy