Staff Retention with Dr Bev Kaye

Foreign.

Well, good afternoon, good morning, good evening. I'm Johnny Campbell, CEO of Social Talent and welcome to this week's the shortlist. It's Wednesday, 24th of June. Most of the world is coming out of lockdown in some way, shape or form, and many of us are returning to work. And we're going to be using that as the central focus of our discussion here today with our fantastic guest, who'll be joining us in a few moments. But first, before we get into the core topic of today's show and our fantastic guest, I want to remind everybody that the Shortlist is recorded and you can catch up on any of our previous broadcasts. And you can see what's coming up over the next few weeks by going to socialtalent.com the shortlist. And the show wouldn't be the show without you, the audience listening live. So wherever you are, whether you're on YouTube, LinkedIn or elsewhere, we'd love your live questions and comments. And our guest today is going to be a brilliant person for you to ask fantastic questions of because she has a wealth of knowledge, she's a wonderful way of sharing it. I think you're going to be in for a fantastic 40, 45 minutes. So use your fingers, type away, ask those questions. And our guest today is for sure gonna impress you with her encyclopedic knowledge and our beautiful way of giving that advice as well. So without further ado, I want to introduce our guest who I first met probably a year ago. Coming up on a year ago at an event in Philadelphia and we were going through a conference and there was a bunch of speakers and the first speaker, the key, the main keynote, I was like, okay, what's going on here? What's this topic going to be about? And wow, I don't get blown away that often and I see a lot of speakers, but I was blown away by this fantastic woman's practical advice, the way she told her stories, the way she engaged the audience and just how real the advice was and how relevant it was to the world of work today. And I think even in a post pandemic world, it's even more relevant. Our guest today is the fantastic Beverly Kay. Bev is the author of some fantastic books such as Love Them or Lose Them, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go. Hope it's not the Only Way. Hello, Stay Interviews. Goodbye, Talent loss. I just love the way you describe things and even your choice of titles, Bev, I won't do it justice. Please tell us, tell our audience a little bit about yourself. What makes you get up in the morning? What makes you passionate? And what do you love talking and writing about.

All of that? Actually, you know, I love that you said a wealth of knowledge. I want everybody out there to know the only way you get a wealth of knowledge is you live a long time so you can use it all. So I'm coming to you around the world from Laguna Beach, California. And behind me is the which way is the picture of Lucy. I'm on vacation and Lucy is saying nana to work. And I guess I never do that. I. You know, some people use the word workaholic. And I love my work and I always have. And for the past 40 years, I've specialized in three things in career development, which is where I really started and where I still keep reinventing, and engagement. How do we keep people engaged? And retention. How do we make sure they stay? And all of those are very, very interconnected. And I think maybe wherever I go, I look at life through those glasses, like what new stories bubble up and what easy way can I present what I know? And that's why people who know me laugh that everything either rhymes or has alliteration or something, so that it's easy to remember. I think I've always believed that managers have the will, just not always the skill in knowing how to develop, engage and absolutely retain their talent. And today, it's all about talent. As we become more and more technologically equal, then I think talent is the only real thing that makes a difference. So do you know your talent? Do you recognize your talent? Do you know how to talk to your talent? And all of that is critical and always has been. So I'm thrilled to be here. When I met Johnny, we were both keynote speakers at the same conference. And I want you to know I was as wowed by him as he might have been by me. So it was love at first speech.

You're too kind, Beth. Thank you. And I think I'm dying to get into your wisdom and advice that you're going to hopefully share with our audience. And hopefully those of you online listening are obsessed, as obsessed with talent as myself and Bev are and are interested by those themes because they are fundamental themes that every organization is exploring, particularly now. I want to start, though, Bev, with some of your thoughts on the news. I'm going to ask Niall to share with us our first news article of the week. Take it away now. So, first up, we have this article from Forbes from Jim Link, and Jim's the Chro of Ronstadt in North America. And Jim proposes three strategies for a smooth return to work in the new normal. Bev, I'm going to ask you your thoughts on these strategies. Are these strategies that you would agree with? Would they be the top three you would particularly choose? What. What did you think when you read this article by Jim?

Well, for me, the article was great. Thank you, Jim, wherever you are. It didn't have enough meat in it. It didn't tell me the how tos. And I think there are so many articles written that talk about the it, but now how to make the it happen. And his statement about teamwork was really important. His statement about health was really important. But the one that got me, I'm just looking at it, that got me the most was keep the lines of communication open. That's what I would put first. And I don't think that enough managers keep that line open when people are remote. I don't even think they keep it open enough when people are live and in front of you. I think we get so single task focused that we don't look at the periphery of the task that we're talking about. And I think that's critical in developing, engaging, retaining talent.

I think you're so right. I think back to your point about, you know, managers have the will but not the skill. It's one thing saying, here's what you should do. It's a very different skill to be able to demonstrate and excite someone to actually do it. And I think, you know, I don't disagree with Jim's point. Teamwork, mental health, resources, strong lines of communication, already important. But give me, give me the how. Give me examples here. And it's a short article. It's worth, worth a look for anyone who hasn't checked it out on Forbes. But that point about communication is really important. And I think this is you people kind of go, hasn't everything changed technology, these things? But I think what everyone forgets in our sector, Bev, maybe let me know if you agree with this, is that people don't change very fast. You know, we're fundamentally the same creatures we were a thousand years ago. So everything around us may change rapidly. But, you know, we need to be motivated. We need to feel secure, we need to trust, we need to feel loved. They don't change because you've got a fancy iPhone or you've got some automated X AI robot helping you. And as long as humans are involved in the mix, those fundamentals are universal constants. And through all of this stuff like communication, let me know what's happening, that's an important thing. Jim Stroud, Good old Jimmy. It's great to hear from you, Jim. Jim has commented here. Jim's based out of Atlanta, good friend of mine. He's saying with all the technology, talent makes the difference. Well said, Beth. Jim is someone I've, he's ex Ronstadt himself, but he's somebody I think would align with us in that view. And Jim is somebody who's asked about technology all the time. But I think the people part is what you forget. That doesn't change. We're the same. What do you think?

I absolutely agree. And you know a favorite book for the title. I love to look at book titles. That's why I get creative at my own. Was titled the Knowing Doing Gap. And what I see all the time, people nod their heads, yes, I should talk to people, yes, I should treat them well. But the gap is do I put that into action? I know it, but I don't quite do it. And so all of I guess the work that I do is around how do you move from knowing to doing and how do you make that gap as teeny as possible so that like from any books, articles, anything I want people to say, that's not so hard. Yeah, I could do that. Instead of another to do for my to do list. I want it to be that easy.

I'll give you a great example of that. Well, sorry. I think it's a great example because he's a great speaker. Good friend of mine, Joe Gersten, I don't know Joe. He speaks on diversity inclusion topics in in the US And Joe, Joe filmed some content for us a couple of years ago around inclusion. And he uses a great analogy. He's, he's a former Marine. And Joe's scary when you meet him, right? You think he's scary, but he's actually such a, such a beautiful heart and guy who's, who just gets, gets the world. And Joe talks about inclusion. He said inclusion is like exercise. He said everyone gets it. Everyone agrees it's good for us. Everyone agrees we should do it. He said, but you can't be inclusive without actually taking action. And people go, I want to get fit, but they're going to go, how do I get fit? What do I need to do? Give me the steps. Of course, everyone agrees that fitness is positive. Of course everyone agrees that we should be more inclusive, but you need practical steps. And he's somebody who, for me, in the inclusion world, which sometimes people get very confused as to how do you do it he lays out really practical steps, you know, I think like you do Bev, which is the how do I actually do it? 1, 2, 3, 4. Here's an example, here's how it works. And you go, I can do that. Speaking of which, I want to take one of your. I want to take our next article, if you don't mind, because it's by a fantastic author we both admire. Niall, what's your return policy by the fabulous Bev Kay. So this is something you published a couple of weeks ago with two co authors, Beverly. And in it I think what I love about this and it's really relevant right now because many, many of our listeners are either dealing with the issue of returning their staff to work or they're in an organization that are discussing or in the middle of or just return to work. It's a big theme. As I said. The markets open up and governments and states say go back to work, don't go back to work. And people open up their offices and workplaces. Again, factories. You outlined three kind of high level steps, a bit like the previous author in Forbes. Did you critically go one step further? Talk to me about the steps and talk to me about the, the connecting the dots between a principle and an actual action.

So the first step in that article is wrecking and of course everything rhymes or has alliteration. So the first step was recognize, respect and reflect. And there it is. And you know, they all get I want to say a word I made up Schmergled. They're all interconnected and if anyone pushes its head out, it might be recognized. I think noticing for a manager to notice something a person said and ask for more information or for a manager to recognize this has not been easy. Or to recognize this has been easy. I don't want to go back. It's all those things that are really interconnected. So maybe it's asking a question as simple as how's it been going? You know, what are the purpose of working at home? What are the minuses for those who came to work? What was it like not having all your colleagues around you and just listen? And I think what people want and it connects back to inclusion and diversity and all of that. They want to be known, they want to be noticed, they want to be recognized, they want to be respected. My favorite diversity and inclusion. The differentiator is that diversity means being invited to the party and inclusion means being asked to dance. It's like I want to be asked to dance and my manager can do that. And sometimes it's asking really easy, simple questions like tell me about your home environment if you're working at home. Like I really want to know. Well, I got Lucy right behind me over there and well, I got. It shows an interest in an individual. You know, in my research on retention, I remember talking to an organization who had a six foot rule. Now it wasn't six feet of distance, it was if you come within six feet of somebody, you have to stop looking at your iPhone and say hello. Now why do we have to tell people that? And we do and we do. So respect, recognize and reflect was the first step.

I think there's a, I was going to say there's a fantastic example. You give a downloadable or shareable template that people can use on scale to ask the questions. So actually you give specific suggested questions and even what the answers might look like. I think it's really, really, really practical and useful.

And I think we call that PDF Returning with learning because boy oh boy, are they ever learning from this period of time. And someone has to unpack the learning, debrief the learning. You know, the T.S. eliot once said, and I love this quote, the sad thing is to have the experience and miss the meaning. It's why I believe in debriefing people before, during, after a project, etc so that you understand what did that mean you. And it's not so hard to do. What's hard is to listen.

We did it ourselves, you know, we, we, we wanted to survey our staff about returning to work, gosh, about maybe six or seven weeks ago. And I looked around and there was some great free resources. There's one on Qualtrics provide on a return to work questionnaire. I said, oh this is so easy. We can just take a template there. Lots of those templates though, just to me weren't compassionate and they weren't, they were factual and they wanted to gather stats, which is great. But I found the most benefit. We had a question that was yes, no. So we could understand our three options and we could put people in categories to understand the big data. But I found the beauty was the narrative we gave narrative to. Just tell us what you think and write as much Texas want you want. It was all anonymous and I read through all of those and just found that was where the stories were. That's where the real feedback and the human story of how people are working, what they're doing, what their frustrations are, what their environment's like. And it was so powerful, you know, so yes, I have the high level stats that you can build a pie chart. Here's the numbers. But to be able to tease out the examples of the story, I think there's much more power in that small data, so to speak, rather than just the big data, where we can actually kind of really get. Get to grips with what are the real experience. What's underneath all this, what's. Or this big data, what's really happening. It's powerful.

And maybe that's a great line you just said, what's underneath all of this? You know, I used to tell my daughter there's a great Abraham Lincoln quote that says, I do not like this person. I must get to know him better. And so once you peel off that top layer, there's so much there to learn, you know, if. If your ears are open to it and if you're not worried about what am I going to say next? And I think that gets us into trouble.

So. By the way, we've got a Mason. Mason McLaughlin wants to. Wants to be heard. She wants you to know she's watching on YouTube saying, It's always great to learn from you, Bev.

So thank you, Lacey.

A big hi for Lacy. I wanna. I wanna move on to the second point in the article that kind of, if you remember that, and that's kind of like after the listening piece, to review, prioritize and revisualize. So explain that to me or unpack that for us, if you don't mind, Bev.

And again, it's. When you come back to the workplace, am I doing anything to make some shifts and changes based on the amazing amount of learning that must have gone on on the three months you were remote or if you came in during those three months, what was it like to be the only person in your office, et cetera? So I think the review part is. Let's talk about what that time was like. What was hardest for you to let go of, what was easiest? What do you wish you had at your fingertips? What have you come to appreciate that you had at your fingertips that you don't have when you're working remotely? And I really want to know in some priority too, here's what's important to me coming back. Here's what I really see my job being when I come back. And the more specific you can be, the better. So this is really a message for every individual out there as well as any manager. Do I take the time to sit back and review what these months have been like, prioritize what I've learned and double prioritize what I do? Not want to forget that I learned about me, about my work, and then how can I visualize it differently? And I think those are great questions and they'll get your people thinking. And I think what managers need to do is leave people thinking time, you know, stop for a minute, don't ask the second question till you drill down a bit on that first question.

So again, yeah, this is also a big part of. A big part of, sorry, design thinking. I was doing an exercise in design thinking last week and it's again, a fancy, fancy, newer, newish phrase around methodologies, but when it's boiled down, I was listening to a lecturer in, in a business school and he's a great professor and he said fundamentally it means ask more questions, ask lots of questions. Spend most of your time asking questions to your first point. Second of all, take time to think about the answers you've heard and then, you know, make suggestions or, you know, provide solutions. Last he said, most people just rush. They rush to just go, go straight to solutioning. And it's like, no, no, spend enormous amount of time capturing information, ask really good questions, which is your point. And second time is, is reflect, take the time to think. And third, you then propose solutions and, and this, you know, whilst it's been called design thinking in recent years, I'm thinking this is basically what you're saying because you go to 0.3 Nile here in, in the.

Would you just admit it before, just to make sure. Great thing for your audience to remember. I would wish I could ask everybody, how many of you have been accused of not listening? Johnny, have you been ever accused of not listening? I'll bet you have. So here's my one tip that you could all leave this with. Whenever we teach, deliver whatever, we talk about the idea of listen for the blinking word. It's like you ask me a question, I answer, out of my mouth comes a word cloud. If you see that word cloud and you ask a question about one of the words the person just said, you will automatically go deeper, not wider. And I think what we have a tendency to do is we ask a question, they answer, okay, thank you, next question. And really, you can't move to the next till you've explored the one word that pops. And the nice thing about that idea is if the wrong word pops, they'll tell you, well, I didn't really mean disappointed, I meant whatever. So for all of you out there, when you leave this and you go back to your homes, your spouses, your direct reports, and they answer one of your Questions. Listen for the blinking word and ask about it. So that's my big tip.

I love that. I've used a different version of that. The same principle with sales teams and recruiters. I go, listen, you have to do your discovery and find information. I said, you know, recruiters, particularly if they're third party or agencies, you know, they feel obliged to sell early in the conversation. I'm like, you need to ask 30 questions first. Like, I can't ask 30 questions. I'm a stranger. It's crazy. I said, no, no, right. Of course you can't ask 30 different questions, but you could ask five questions plus five sub questions. Again, that's the act of listening, you know, so you know, where were you born? I was born in Florida. Florida. What's Florida like? It's sunny and warm. It's warm. How do you find the heat? Oh, the heat's okay. You know, that's how you end up asking lots of questions. But somebody's really engaged because you have. You pointed at it, you listened and thrown it back at them. Those conversations go on for ages. It's. It's great. But the blinking word, you know, Diana's saying, you know, she loves that tip and I think it's awesome. Dan Pink, who I love as an author, I mean, if you read Dan Pink, but he had a great sales book a few years ago, and he said on the listening piece to give another tip. He said his tip was count to three from the minute when the person just stops talking. Count to three before you start talking. And he said, you do this, it could be 15 minutes before you get a word in. He said, but people, too often, you know, you start talking, they go, oh, I want to say something.

It's like, right, right, Shove it.

I was doing, I was doing it and talking over you about himself.

No, that's okay, that's okay. No, you know, the hell with the audience lets you and I talk, John.

Well, we got some good comments here. So palati riddle. I love how you make your messaging memorable, Bev. And it's fun to listen to you. And Jim is again saying, oh, wow, Bev is like the good angel sitting on the shoulders of a HR manager influencing wise people decisions. So true, so true. I want to close on the point three because it's really relevant on that, that article though, Bev, if you don't mind, because I, I think you mentioned in the article that point three is probably the most important point, which is reject, revise, or capitalize. And what really struck me on this Bev, you gave an example. You said you might have had a policy in place, and because of the pandemic and the crisis, the policy had to change. And now's the time to come back and go, hang on a second. Was that policy right in the first place? Should we change it now that we know what, we didn't need it, or we did something else? And that to me, was a great example of this concept reject, revise, or capitalize. So maybe talk us through that and the other examples you can think of.

You know, again, everything's a learning experience. And so if we have a learning experience that we say, I will never do that again, I think that's important. And it's part of the T.S. eliot quote I said before. The sad thing is to have the experience and miss the meaning. What was the meaning of that experience? And is it something I don't want to have happen to me again? And is it something that I could capitalize on? I realize that wasn't a good experience, but boy, did I learn it. Now how do I put the what I learned into real action? Yeah, like what have I learned from my own experience? You know, I am not good at technology, and I've always put my such a you must be on my head. And I've now I realized the heck with it. I have other people that will help me in the technology. I like the ideation part. I like the how can we do this differently? How can we turn this inside out so it's around really letting your people talk to you about what hasn't worked, letting your people talk to you about how they would revise it. And then I think revise and capitalize means let's spread it out further is. Is really important. So there's really an art to returning. And I think maybe we all can learn from that. You know, in. In the regular work cycle, I think people. Sometimes we let people go and we don't do it elegantly. And I think we have to get to having elegant exits so we can have respectful returns. And I think that's maybe something that is going to go on. Some of the people who have been remote may not come back. And then I have to do some revising. So I think the three steps are just reminders.

So that takes me on to another issue that I've heard discussed, particularly in the last couple of weeks, where employers have come back to work after three, four months of remote working or our heightened pandemic, and all of a sudden they've been landed with a host of resignations, unexpected resignations. Right. And to me, you know, I get why people are surprised this, but it does make sense. Right. So I'm keen to hear your thoughts because, you know, you, you've literally written the book on retention as well a few times. Right. So, so, so what is your advice in, in this post pandemic world that you think is still relevant or still as relevant today about retention, that perhaps those listening who are returning to work and maybe they're feeling a little bit, right, do I want to be here? Or if they have teams, what should they think about? Particularly if they have teams or colleagues going, what might be happening in the minds of your colleagues? And what can you do to make sure that you don't lose people who have gone through this crisis with you, that you, you focus on retention? Because maybe that's not your. Maybe you don't think you have to. But my suspicion is that people should be putting more attention on that right now than perhaps they're. They're going to.

Right. You know, one of the books that I wrote is titled Love Them or Lose Them, Getting Good People to Stay. And that was 20 years of research. And in a few months, the sixth edition will come out. And the word that's key is a number of key words, but the word love, you know, when we first said that's the title of the book, our publisher said, I don't know if you should use that word, because what manly man would buy a book with love in the title? And we really tried to find another word, but love really says it all. It says respect them, it says talk to them, it says smile at them, it says get to know them, it says all those things all wrapped up in one word. And sometimes when I do a keynote on that, I, I'll start by asking this question. When was the last time you said, I love my work? What was the moment? Who were you with? What were you working on? And when I'm live in front of an audience, I can look out at their eyes and I could see who has to go back in time, really go back to find something they loved. And I think that's a question that we should ask returnees to the workplace. What did you love about your time at home and what piece of it can we carry into your time back at work? And I know that a lot of companies, a lot of people don't want to go back and they're saying, I love this work at home. And how do we work with that if we need them back online? So I would want to know, like I want to know from you, Johnny, what do you love most about what you do as the CEO?

So what I love most is impact. I love hearing the stories of whether it's our team, our clients, customers, users of our platform, people who read a blog on LinkedIn or watch a video on YouTube. I just love hearing little stories of, hey, I completed this course, or I watched this video. And lots of them would be people that didn't pay money to do that. They just watch free content or whatever, and they go, inspire me to do this or help me do this, or I got a job doing this, or I now do this differently.

And.

And it's kind of. That's. I get. I get fuel from that to kind of go, you know, you, you. Because you, you know what it is? You, you, you. You sit on a stage or you, you're. You're talking to a camera, right? So me and you were talking to a camera. You know, you're in California, I'm in Dublin, Ireland. And I've no idea who's listening, who might listen to this. Maybe nobody, right? And you kind of wonder, did that, you know, you closed down your laptop at the end and go, I wonder did that help help anybody? And it's so nice to hear or sometimes years later, when someone shares the story going, that, that, that worked for me, that thing you said. And not everyone gets this, but to. To be able to do that, it's a privilege. And so that's what. Get. That's what, that's what I get excited as a recruiter. I got that, you know, you got somebody a job. You know, myself and my business partner always tell a story of. Of a guy we got a job for as a butcher in the Cayman Islands. A butcher, right? He was this, this grocery chain in Cayman, right? I used to live in the Cayman Islands. And we were recruiting for this grocery store, and they need to hire a butcher who could cut meats the European way. So we call strips of meat differently to the US So they needed all other. Right beside the US they had to hire somebody who could cut it and label it the European or British way, because they're former British colony, bizarrely. So we hired. We found some guy in Ireland, right, who was a local butcher, but who happened to, you know, for whatever reason, he had experience with. Also with American cuts and European cuts. And it worked. And we called him up and said, do you want to go work in the Cayman Islands? He's like, what, he's not full of bankers? And lawyers and like, yeah, but they need butchers, too. And he went. He took the job, got the injury, took the job, moved over to Cayman Islands, met his wife there, had kids, all this stuff. And like that. He doesn't remember who I am or who Vince is. My colleague. Right. He doesn't remember our involvement in that. But I just love that as a recruiter, you can do that. You could pick up the phone to somebody, you find their name or get their name and change their lives. And that gave me such a kick to be able to do that to people, to help them, to get them out of the job they hate into the job they love, or give them the salary boost that they wanted to do whatever it was in their life. So, yeah, that's always been it for me. Like, Kat sit here saying, let's put up Jerry. I'm sure you know the brilliant Jerry Crispin.

Jerry loves Jerry. Hi, Jerry.

Jerry does love his work. You do love your work, Jerry. He loves his wine. He loves his food too, but he loves his work.

And if I had Jerry in front of me, I'd want to dig deeper on the word work, because that blinked and I'd say, well, what about the work? Is it the people? Is it the job? Is it the. And we let those opportunities go right by us. Well, what else, Jerry? In fact, I'll say about opportunity. And I write a lot about the idea of up is not the only way. And there are many choices other than just vertical. And I believe people are either opportunity minded or opportunity blinded. They have these actual blinders on that don't see what could be possible. And if, if every interaction and everything you do and learn, if we were more opportunity minded, instead of saying, that doesn't fit my outline of life, that we, we'd learn a lot more. We'd even be a lot more happier. So seeing opportunities as always there and not close to us, I think is critical.

100%. I think, you know, it's. It's a mindset, though. It's somebody who says, hang on. Because the default is to go. This is a negative. This is a bad thing to stop and go, hang on a second. What's the positive? Right? You know, you know, you might have, you know, you know, people go, I've had to have take a pay cut, or, you know, I don't have to go see my colleagues anymore. Don't have that flexibility. It's kind of going, hang on a second. What can you do? What is the. What is the upside of this? And you're so right. Being able to find that is so important. Actually, I've got a great question here. Beverly Crow is saying, thanks for the practical advice in impractical times. I love that. Nice word play. In honor of the fantastic Beverly K. But we have Lindsay watkins. Lindsay on YouTube is asking, and it's a direct question for yourself, Bev. How do you best engage and retain employees that went virtual that have never worked remotely before? So what are your thoughts on that?

That went virtual but have never worked remotely before? I think you have to be really interested in what they learned and not just the business things they learned. Like what did you learn about yourself and being virtual? What new things opened up for you that you never realized was a skill in your skill bank that you had to do when you went remotely? Again, we need to unpack and debrief an experience for the person to articulate the learning. What did you learn from that? And I try to ask myself that all the time. And every time I ask it, I realize that was even, even in a failure that was worthwhile. So I think that's a great question to Lindsay, wherever you are.

So why don't we ask that of you, Beverly? So what have you learned about yourself? Or have you worked more remotely? Or was this something you always did? And if it's something that was relatively new to you, the intensity of it, because it's new to me. What did you learn about yourself?

Those darn zoom calls. Give me another zoom call. You know, I'm surprised. I am a great face to face person and that's changed in our whole field. And what I've learned is that, hey, this mechanism is pretty good for zeroing in on someone and learning more. So I've become not so rooted in my love of being in front of an audience. I think I can get my point across this way too. So that was a. That was a big learning.

Oh, that's right. I think you're right. You know, I've heard the flip side of that though, Bev, where people are saying they find that a zoom call is actually more intense than a one on one in person because somebody mentioned the eye contact requirement and they kind of. You. Yeah, I get it. I can't describe it, but I get it. In a normal situation, you've got more of ability to maybe switch off sometimes, which may be a good thing. But people have said to me that they found it just intense having to be so one on one. Actually, it's more one on one, perhaps than in person experiences.

I think so I think so. Right, right, right, right. And you know, it's again, it's being opportunity minded. How do we make use of this opportunity? And I see that Pahlavi said she loved the butcher story. The longer term impacts of our work change lives. And often we look at our work recruitment as a task or a job and you know, recruiters out there, yes, it's that next move is often life changing for people to move from position A to position B, even inside. I think we're moving much more to internal mobility, internal recruiting. And I think that the finders have to be the keepers, you know, and we all, we find but we don't really pay enough attention to how long is that person staying. And I think that's critical. I have to think, I think we have to link arms with a hiring manager and say here's what I've learned from my recruiting of Bev that I want you to know that should be important. So I don't think enough of those conversations happen.

I think it's a huge issue we have, I'm delighted to confirm only yesterday we've got Jan Akerman, who's the VP of recruiting globally for Oracle, joining us in about four weeks time on the show and he's going to be discussing that issue. Internal career mobility. It's become a big issue for Oracle. It's a big issue for so many companies that's been, it's been there for years, people saying we should connect the dots more. But you know, John's going to share the story of what he's doing with the Oracle business and his colleagues in the wider HR team to try and drive more internal career mobility. But I've heard it from so many senior talent leaders in the last number of months that they, they realize the connection. You got to connect the dots, that it's not just about getting them in, it is about how you develop them, help them grow, see them through the journey of the business. That's, that's how you get, get the real value. So yeah, there's, I think it's an exciting time, but I'm speaking of time. I'm running out of time. I can't believe we're nearly at 45 minutes already. I cannot believe it, Bev. And at this point in the show, what we always do is we ask our guest to maybe share with us one. And this is where you're going to struggle. One piece of advice that either you or would give to our audience about their careers, about recruiting, about talent, about developing people or that's been given to you that sticks out. So that one piece of advice you want to leave our audience, our listeners.

With out of all these decades of doing.

I know, I know, I know. It's hard. I know. Or what, what, what comes to mind today? Maybe it's not the biggest or best, but it's what comes to mind today.

You know, I'm hooked now on the word love and, and I, and it doesn't have to be that word if it makes you uncomfortable. But I think we need to constantly think for ourselves. You know, what was great about yesterday? You know, instead of moving on to tomorrow, like, which moment of time was did I really love? Like, I love when I can really ideate with a colleague, how can we redo this, think it through, do it differently? And I think maybe we all should, at the end of our day, say, what was special about the day? Which part of the day turned me on the most just to begin to collect that information? And for job applicants, I think they better know what they love and what they don't love. And recruiters had better find out and pass that information on. So the world of recruiting is changing. And I think what managers forget is to re recruit the people that are already there. So how do you make re recruiting a common theme inside your organization? So I'd like to ask everybody, what do you write down what they love? What did you love about this conversation? And what's going to stick in your mind like that?

You sound like a marriage counselor. It's like, why did you guys get together? Tell us the reason you love each other in the first place. You're 10 years together. Let's recap. Rekindle that. It's the same thing. It's a relationship. It's about getting back to what do you both love about each other? What is that thing? I, I, I love that. By the way, Jerry, Jerry's put in another comment. So, you know, it's a really good point, Jerry. Internal mobility requires serious planning and investment in upskilling, reskilling. To connect the dots, TA and talent management and workforce planning have to come together. It's a big, big chunk. Jerry, you're so right. I think it's, it's the time is right. Because as Bev is saying, you know, we are seeing the convergence of all these different things and seeing talent acquisition as separate to talent development, talent management, onboarding, internal career mobility. The fact that they have maybe for some time being so separate, we're going full circle back to them being just all one thing. Because it is the journey of the person and they are the constant. And you got to stay with them. Don't hand them off and think your job is done because you did your part. Heart, how do you manage that life cycle? How do you basically demonstrate the love to that person? How do you basically get the love from them? I love it.

You've got a book in you. You've got a book in you.

You know, not as many as you.

I just want to add one more because Jerry said internal mobility and that's a big issue now, at least here in the States, around the world. I just want to give you, the people, one more hint. Whenever you sit down with an employee and you're talking about ways they could move internally, think of the word leverage, because the first leverage is what we need. And leverage also stands for lateral enrichment. Vertical realignment, meaning moving down to get across, or relocation, meaning leaving The V for vertipo, is just one little letter of leverage. And so now all of you out there who manage others, you know about six different ways people can move if you just write down lever with two R's.

I love that. Bev, I gotta thank you so much. Our audience wants more. Niall, where can people find more about Bev or any more tips that we can share with our audience?

Yeah, I've got a ton and I'd say come visit. I'm going to put a landing page on our website. Not I'm going to. My wonderful technologically capable assistant is going to build that landing page and we'll make a number of articles available and the leverage concept will be on there. And I'm always glad to answer a quick question, guide someone, if not to me, to all my friends in this field who know more than me around their particular area of specialty. So bevk.com and my website is all.

There and if anyone has subscribed to the shortlist@socialtown.com the shortlist where you can subscribe for further updates on these shows. We're going to send out some info tomorrow with a bunch of links to Bev's fabulous material and you can find so much on her site and her books, et cetera, on Amazon and elsewhere. So do check out the Wonderful World of Bev K. It's a great place to be, a great world to be in Bev. Thank you so much for joining us this week. It's been an honor. Don't forget to join us on our after show chat. There's a link in our private chat for you to. Kat will send it on to you, but let's catch up in a couple of minutes when we close out the show. But thank you, Bev and thank you all for listening. But next week, please come back. We've got a fantastic, another fantastic guest joining us next week, a great friend of mine and someone that I think most of you will know. He is the author and the man behind recruiting Brain Food. So if you are like me and you check your inbox on Sunday morning, afternoon, evening, whenever it is for you, you're probably checking out your week's Brain Food. What's happening in the world of recruiting this week? And we thought no better man to join us and go through the news. But then the fantastic Hong Li, the man behind recruiting Brain Food. And that's going to be next Wednesday. That's the first of July and that's going to be 4pm UK Ireland time, which don't forget is 11am in the US on the east coast, 8am on the west coast. And if you want to know what we're going to be talking about, check out Brain Food this coming Sunday. Read the Brain Food. Hung is going to be live discussing those articles. We're going to tease out some of those articles and go deeper on them, but we want your feedback. So we read Brain Food on Sunday in your inbox. Come back to the show next Wednesday. Hong's going to be live to get to answer your questions or listen to your comments about this week's upcoming news. So we're really excited about that show and the comments keep coming in for Bev's wonderful talk, giving her fantastic feedback. It's been great having you, Bev. I'm really hoping, fingers crossed we're going to be able to bring Bev to the social talent platform over the next few months for those of you who have access. So stay, stick with us. We'll have more from Bev, but don't forget, you can read many of our fabulous books and our articles. They're all out there and I'd encourage you to get involved. Thanks for joining us. If you want to know more about the shortlist, go to socialtanta.com the shortlist. Thanks for joining us. Whether it's be on LinkedIn or YouTube or you're watching the recording, we have more shows back next week. Until then, it's been my pleasure. I'm Johnny Campbell. We'll see you next week.