RHR 106: People Analytics for Action with Ian White

Ian White: 0:00

To be able to jump quickly from looking at data from being able to see what your org structure looks like to being able to model out different scenarios or plans, you can model out all your workforce planning in the same place where you're on a daily basis understanding the data. So I think shifting from planning being this sort of annual painful process to something that can be continuous and can move as fast as the business is the way I think the future of people technology should look like.

Kyle Roed: 0:28

This is the rebel HR Podcast, the podcast where we talk to HR innovators about all things people leadership. If you're looking for places to find about new ways to think about the world of work, this is the podcast for you. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast listening platform today. And leave us a review revelon HR rebels rebel HR listeners, welcome back to the show. Thanks again for joining us this week. This is gonna be a fun one. We have with us this week, Ian white. Ian is the founder and CEO of chart hop. Charter hop is the leading innovator in people analytics that helps companies improve organizational health, drive alignment and accountability. And save a little bit of time and money, which I think all of us in HR could use right now previously, Ian has founded other companies is called sail through a marketing cloud delivering billions of personalized newsletter emails per month, for top publishers in E commerce, he has felt the pains of planning and building a team. And that led him to build something better than our spreadsheets and legacy HR systems that we all love so much. Welcome to the show, Ian.

Ian White: 1:40

Great to be here, Kyle,

Kyle Roed: 1:42

we got a lot to talk about. And, and a lot that I could probably gripe about as we as just as I read legacy HR system, just reading that in the intro for me, it just, it puts a bad taste in my mouth. And so I can only imagine that that was your inspiration. But behind founding chart hop, am I on the right track there,

Ian White: 2:04

you're on the right track, we've all felt the pain. I mean, I think anybody who's built a company or manage a company has has has been there. You know, my my sort of journey into this space really began, when I started a company that you mentioned in the in the marketing tech space, we scaled up very quickly got to a couple 100 employees in a couple of years time. And, you know, when you when you start a company, I think it's maybe initially about a product insight or maybe about a, you know, it then becomes about your distribution strategy, maybe but really, what makes you or breaks you as a company, like all a company is, is people, right? Like the the the organization you build is the foundation of what you create. And so I really, you know, struggled with even just keeping track of a rapidly scaling team, I had a million spreadsheets and, you know, was was tracking things all over the place, because the HR systems were not really built to help me solve the problems that I needed to solve for my business, they weren't really built to help me retain my employees or help think about how we were going to more successfully create a great organizational structure or hiring plan, or how we were going to make sure we had the right people in the right skills for the right roles are how we were going to build a great culture and a culture of inclusion in the culture where everyone feels that they belong and matter, like HR software, you know, wasn't going to help with any of that. It was going to help, maybe at most with storing some, some some data from an helping me fill out some forms. But when I when we had to do any real kind of planning, you wind up on spreadsheets, you wind up on a whiteboard. And it felt to me that if you created a transparent system that would actually help everyone alive, you could actually empower the HR team and empower every manager and every person in the organization with access to the right data at the at the right time. And so I started building charter, we're now about about 200 people little north of that we're we're about to get a little bigger company actually, which is which has been exciting over the last couple of years. You know, we have we've hundreds and hundreds of customers ranging from you know, sort of often people start to feel the pain of people data as soon as maybe 50 people in the organization and And obviously, the further you grow, you know, our largest customers are in the 10,000 headcount zone. So, all all up and down the map.

Kyle Roed: 5:13

Absolutely so much, so much there to talk about, I think it's, it's, it's a big problem. I mean, you know, and I do think back, you know, in my role as an HR practitioner, you know, I always try to stay focused on what does the business actually need from me? Right, you know, like, do they, yes, we have to do the blocking and tackling make sure people get paid, you know, make sure that you have good headcount tracking and things like that. But the problems that my CEO comes to me with are not those problems, the problems are, how do I improve the culture? How do I make sure that I have the right people in the right seats? How do I retain people? How do I know how engaged people are? You know, and, and at this point, most of the tools that I've ever used have been focused on reporting, and, and tracking. And then if you want to do anything else that is critical to my CEO, then you're doing that outside of the system. And you're you're exporting a bunch of, you know, big data into some other system, or, you know, you just, you throw up your hands and say, I forget it, I don't know what to do, and then you go pay a consultant to try to help you figure it out. Right, so So how does how does chart hub kind of addressed that problem? Because you know, you still have to track but then what's that next level up to really help you focus on some of those things that the business really needs you to focus on?

Ian White: 6:44

Yeah, I mean, that's really what it is, I think, people leaders and HR leaders today are being, you know, asked to do more than they've ever had to do before. I mean, you know, human health this, right, like, over the last the last two years, like the toughest and the most challenging that has ever been. And the people leaders are being really asked to play this key strategic role to help, you know, build and shape and culture outcomes, and also, you know, business outcomes. And they're not equipped with the tools to do it a lot of the time. And so from a tech standpoint, and so what we really wanted to do was create a platform that first would have to bring everything together, right? Every, you know, average mid market company has 10, different, you know, HR systems or people related systems that they're using. So bring all that data together in one place, so that everybody has an understanding of it, and make sure that they're strong access controls on all the different types of data. So you can actually share with every manager, a view of how diversity on their team is trending, or what their turnover rate looks like, even just giving people a clearer sense of what is the actual headcount on your team, and what are the open roles and positions that you're, you know, authorized to recruit for, giving that transparent view across the organization starts to empower the, the the managers, and starts to take all these day to day questions off of the HR leaders play, and help them empower everybody, and help be able to really level up the strategic nature of the function, which is what everybody wants to do. And so, you know, so bringing the data together is one important thing, but you don't just want a bunch of, you know, dashboards to look at data is only as good as how actionable you can make it. Right. So you want to have the ability, I think, to to be able to jump quickly from looking at data from being able to see you know, what your org structure looks like, to being able to model out different scenarios or plans. So you can you know, jump into jump into chart hop and say, hey, you know, what, I need to hire five more sales reps and to, you know, to, that's gonna leave too many people reporting to a manager. And so I'm going to need a sales manager or maybe there's someone who has the right skills to move into that position. You can model out your all your workforce planning in the same place where you're on a daily basis, understanding the data. So I think like, you know, shifting from planning being this sort of annual painful process to something that can be continuous and can move as fast as the business is something that that you know, the way I think the future of, of people technology should look like. I love

Kyle Roed: 9:57

that and you know the term you used earlier Which I thought was, it was so appropriate was, you know, real planning, right? Like, you know, like, it's one thing to have a bunch of pretty dashboards and spreadsheets and you're like, Yeah, I feel really good that we've got this nice, beautiful turnover spreadsheet. And it was pretty pie charts and stuff. But if you spent, you know, 30 hours of your week, putting together this beautiful dashboard, and you only have like, two hours left to figure out, okay, what the hell do I do with this information? You know, you probably not great time spent there, right? So, you know, I just think it's so important to make that pivot from look at all this big data that we have to now what does this actually mean? And I actually think that's one of the risks that we have in HR is any system can give you data, and reports like, and you can go on, and you can finagle them however you want, and in many cases, you can make them look however you'd like them to look, depending on how you slice and dice. It's the I think the biggest risk is then, you know, how do you how do you leverage that, you know, how do you actually do the real work that that you are needed to do in your organization?

Ian White: 11:10

Yeah, no, that's right. And that I think, you know, we're in a world where we have, you know, there's so much data, it's being able to make sense and take action on data that is that is, you know, the real value, like data alone is worthless, right? It's what do you do with it? How do you understand it? And I think it starts, like, people are always sort of saying, hey, how do I, how do I start, like, where do I begin? Right? Like, my day goes a mess, like, what? Like, can I like, you know, I don't know how many people leaders I speak to who actually don't know off, like, you know, immediately what their current headcount is, right? Because, you know, they're growing or scaling or things are changing so fast, you know, and so, so making, making, pulling your data together is very important. And making sense of what can sometimes be, especially like, in the last couple of years, companies are hiring remote workers, there might be folks split between different payroll systems, or different sources of truth, being able to pull it all together and visualize it is, I think, the important step one, and making it very easy. You don't want to spend a ton of time pulling together information, you want that to be at your fingertips. And I think you can start really, with some basic, basic metrics that make sense for your organization, right? You know, obviously, you want to understand something like attrition rate or turnover rate, being able to, you know, assess where your top talent or top performers are around the organization and using, you know, engagement surveys and getting that data in so that you understand if there's some, you know, turnover is a backwards looking metric, right, what you want to do is really get ahead of it. And so, understanding if there are parts of your organization that aren't engaged, and on a compensation lens, understanding if there are parts of your organization that might be under compensated, or might not have the best retention incentives in terms of equity grants or other incentives to, to make sure you're retaining your your top talent, especially with as quickly as sort of the the market is moving in this in this last year. So, you know, starting with kind of a few pillars of thinking about retention, thinking about diversity, equity, inclusion, compensation, engagement, performance, those can be some basic lenses, to just get in front of get in front of you, but also get in front of all the managers in the organization, like, every manager should have a clear window into their team. And that takes the ownership off of like, it's not just an HR responsibility to prevent turnover, right, like HR can't do that, right? Like HR can, can only provide the, the, the, you know, the resources to help managers succeed because people are not, they're not leaving because he because of HR, they're leaving because of of managers or compensation or their motivation in the role. So so, you know, really empowering yourself and your organization with data's is how I think is the place to start

Kyle Roed: 14:48

apps. Absolutely. I think so much great content there and you know, some things to call out. So first of all, thank you for for, you know, letting us off the hook a little bit like turnover is not just an HR thing, right? You know, if anything, we are like the last line of defense when somebody quits. And yeah, really the the only way that we can really impact turnover, in my opinion, unless it's specifically on our team is make sure you have the right. Yeah, comp and benefit strategies in place the right policies, the right like ecosystem for a good employee experience. And make sure you have great leaders. Yeah, and the right seats. And you know, you don't do those two things, like you said, like, start somewhere, like, if you try to figure out where to start, start there. Because I think probably, you know, the overunder is probably 90% of your challenge is probably right there. And that's really easy to say, on a podcast, but you know, a lot harder to do in real in the real world. But I think, you know, some of the some of the things that were really interesting, and I think, warrant digging into a little bit, you know, you called out turnover as a backward looking metric. And that's something that we don't talk about enough, you know, we all, we all complain about turnover. And it's hard, and retention is hard, and every in the great resignation, and everybody's kind of throwing their hands up. But, you know, if all you do is look at your turnover, it's it's lagging, you know, the people that leave, they've probably already made the decision to leave a month or

Ian White: 16:22

two ago, a month ago. And not before.

Kyle Roed: 16:25

So where's the leading indicator? Right, you know, it's like, and that's why I look at things like exit interviews, versus like a stay interview, the, you know, one is reactive, one is proactive, and if you're, if you're still reactively, responding to turnover, you know, you you're missing an entire piece of data, that's really critical and pretty important employee engagement, you know, measurements, you know, some sort of survey some, some 360 feedback that gives you, you know, actionable information. By the time you do an exit interview, it's just too darn late, you know, and, you know, I think that's a great example of, like, that's, that's really not real planning, that's reactive. Response. Right. Right. It was a great call out and then you know, and and I did laugh, you know, if you asked me today, you know, what, what is your like, what is your hour by hour turn, headcount? I would I, I'd be like, Give me a minute. Because it's like, I don't have I don't have that dashboard. Like, I don't have like that speedometer, saying, This is where you're at. This is where you're, you know, this is where you are today. This is where you are left yesterday, it's it's always backward looking. And it's always kind of like, well, how many positions do we have open? Well, where's that one? Where's this one? Where's that one? So just short hop does it? Does it kind of tie it all together? You know, how I guess I'm curious to understand a little bit more about the mechanism here. How do you how do you link everything

Ian White: 17:52

it does. So you know, where we really start is we'll, we'll plug into usually the payroll system or hrs or multiple such systems, the applicant tracking system to get a picture of certain open roles, things like the equity management system, like Carta, or E trade, you know, we'll pull a lot of that data together. So it's actually really powerful to just be able to see, hey, what's my, you know, I'm gonna see my people, the people who are starting, who are upcoming, and the open positions, like see all that together in one place, which usually you don't, you don't get a clearer view of, in most systems, your payroll system will tell you, you know, potentially how many people you currently have on payroll, and maybe in your applicant tracking system, or maybe somewhere else, more likely a spreadsheet that, you know, is shared between your your CFO, and in the recruiting team, you've got some list of what the approved open roles and headcount are, we actually pull it together. So we visualize everything in one place. And so if I wanted to, you know, answer at this exact moment, you know, I, I just go into charter off, we've got 190 People 15 People starting, like, that's, you know, that becomes an instant answer that I that everyone just knows on a daily basis, and we've got 49 open positions, too. So we got a lot hiring to do. But, you know, that becomes something that is just trivial to know the answer to and you just know, every day and it's it, you know, because it's not backed not, that's not hard data to know, it's just not often surfaced in a great way by the systems because our data is spread out, spread between different systems. So we try to pull together one view and we do that with integrations with a lot of the different systems that folks are using.

Kyle Roed: 19:55

Got it. That makes sense. So so just so I'm understanding how this works. So you would take like Uh, you know, a namely, or an ADP or workday or something like that, you would take that you would populate that. And then you would go take a, you know, applicant Pro or Jaz HR or some sort of an ATS and or any other system, and you and you give us a one stop shop somewhere to go to get a single source of truth is that kind of what I'm what I'm hearing here, that's right,

Ian White: 20:21

it becomes, it becomes super visual. So we have lots of visualizations, you know, you can see that you can see your whole org layout laid out as an org chart. And you can actually superimpose data on that org chart, right, you can say, hey, you know, I want to visualize my employees by what their satisfaction level is, on their most recent, you know, one on one check in and actually sort of visually see if there are hotspots in your organization that are, you know, struggling for one reason or another, or you can superimpose, you know, something like, calm for quota attainment for reps, or, you know, any kind of metric on this on this visual, you can also jump into like a map, and just see, you know, visually, your remote, newly remote organization, like literally, where is everybody in zone, what we really tried to do is just make one place to visualize and understand everything in your in your organization. And because we're really set up with strong access controls, that don't share data with people who aren't supposed to see, you know, something like compensation or things like that, you can actually share chart hop with every single person in your organization. And it starts to become sort of the shared, shared, like virtual office space for a distributed organization, because everybody, your whole org is there. And you can, you know, if I'm a, you know, new employee, right out of school joining, I can quickly navigate around and understand like, where, you know, what's the structure of the organization, what are the open positions were hired for? What's the history, I can actually go back and forth on a timeline slider and see how things are changing over time, that gives people especially if you imagine, joining a new organization, remote, perhaps, you're just to give you a little bit of a sense of belonging of the company you've joined is very powerful, to really be able to see where you fit in to the larger organization, you're part of.

Kyle Roed: 22:41

Very cool, you know, it's, it's fascinating that you mentioned that, because this is a problem that we're trying to solve right now. So my organization, for those that aren't aware, it's that we're global manufacturing organization, and we're spread out 11 different countries, 26 locations, a lot of them are small. And a lot of them have disparate systems, you know, so some of our regions have good systems, some have Excel spreadsheets, and, and one of the things we're trying to figure out is, how do we collaborate? How do we connect this person who's doing a very similar job to this person in another region of the world, that are probably facing the same problems? How do we foster that, and one of the biggest problems we face is they just don't know who's who, you know, and in these in these disparate systems, the only way to really do that is to, you know, intentionally focus on some sort of a collaboration, you know, platform for that to occur. So, you know, not to turn this into a, into a sales call. But, but help me understand how, you know, how you foster, you know, that the connection between coworkers, you know, how does this work?

Ian White: 24:33

So, there's a lot of things right, one thing is we have, and this is all configurable, right, different companies can approach this in different ways, but you can have someone on their onboarding not just fill out their you know, their ID nine and their, you know, sign up for health insurance, but you can have a fill out in about me, right, you know, learn a little bit more about someone what what are their what are their skills, what are they hoping to learn? Where are they hoping to grow? We like to ask you a question, you know, what's your superpower? What's the one thing you're you're best at? We you know, and was something that would surprise surprise other people about me. And so we actually have in this is, you know, you can set up chart hop to ask those questions on someone's first day, it shows up on their profile, so people can kind of browse and learn more about their their co workers and we actually have it wired up to post automatically to a Slack channel and about me channel as soon as someone fills out that form. And so people you know, emoji You react to something people will have shared about them, and you start to build this sense of virtual connection, even, even if people aren't in the same room together. And so there's a lot of lot of things like that, that that we try to set up, you know, we also have it set up. So when we make a new hire, the person that automatically goes to a Slack channel from from chat with the, you know, the role in the position, you can click through and see exactly where that person is on the, on the org chart. And people celebrate, right, like, people are usually excited to see someone's joining. And so again, like, if you think, you know, if you're in a, if you're all in the same office, maybe you see the new person come in, and their manager walks them to the desk, and, you know, introduces them to everybody. But in a remote or distributed or, you know, virtual environment, you want to have other ways that people can get to know each other. And so we try to create that sense of connection.

Kyle Roed: 26:49

I love that, you know, I'll tell a story. So we did, we did an event, a training event here a few weeks back, and, and one of the icebreaker questions was, you know, tell me something that would, you know, surprise others, right, you know, and it was just one of these groups, everybody hates icebreakers. Right. But it's an HR thing. So we have to be nice. But the, you know, the fascinating thing that resonates exactly what you just shared is, you know, the content that came out of that was like, we had somebody who like played in a Metallica cover band, we had somebody who was like a video game champion, we had somebody who, like caught a fly ball and an Orioles game, you know, and it's, it's like, and the the conversation and the connections that that fostered, like, we were still emailing about it after the thing, you know, and it was because we humanize each other, right? You know, we're not just a name on an email, or a signature block, or a floating head on a, you know, Zoom call, where people, right and it's, that connection was so important and kind of goofy and fun. But at the end of the day, I'm going to remember that Metallica cover band guy that was pretty cool. You know, like, I'm gonna see him when I go to the facility, I'm gonna see him, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the, you know, the, the devil horns be like, rock on Metallica, you know, Enter Sandman, that's, you know, but you know, stuff like that really does matter. And, and especially in this, like virtual and distributed age of work. And as we continue to see more and more of this, you know, working from home and, and virtual work. HR needs to make sure they're thoughtful about the ecosystem, to foster that to happen, right. And if we're not intentional about it, eventually, it's going to be a requirement, because our CEO is going to say, hey, this needs to improve. So, so So figure it out now, right, let's, let's, let's figure it out before we, before we get too entrenched in our work habits in this new world of work.

Ian White: 28:49

Yeah, no, I go ahead.

Kyle Roed: 28:51

I was gonna say so you know, it's, it's just fascinating, and I really appreciate your perspective. You know, and the tool and I think the problem you're trying to solve really obvious, clearly, it resonates with, with me, I'm curious to learn, you know, a little bit about you personally, and your leadership and your experience and kind of your, what you're seeing in the world of work, because, obviously, as a founder and a CEO, you know, you're seeing all aspects of the business. So as you look at the, at the workforce, and you look at some of the challenges that you see within your teams, and within your culture, how are you ensuring that your team is getting the support that they need, and that you're, you're kind of building the culture that you want to continue to build through a lot of, you know, the disruption that we continue to see.

Ian White: 29:46

Yeah, I mean, you know, when I think about building a company, I think it starts, it starts doesn't end, but it certainly starts with culture. And I think people you said earlier, and you nailed it, like, when people leave a company, it's usually because of leadership. It all comes down to, I think the authenticity of, of leaders of, you know, people's people's willingness to, I mean, look, different people have different leadership styles, but ultimately, everyone wants to work for leaders who are going to be transparent with them, we're going to be honest with them, like, you know, tell them tell them when there's challenges that we need to work through. And, you know, I think, ultimately be worthy of have employees trust. And you know, I think that's, that's something every leader needs to be thinking about, especially in a world where employees great talent has options, there's always great companies that people can join. And, you know, I think people are really looking for their their leaders to bring, bring transparency to where the child where the challenges of the company are. So I, the way I've approached things, first, the leadership team that I think is just, we all really have a diversity of styles and perspectives and experiences. But really, together as, as Team One has a really transparent, trusting team. And I think that alignment, you know, I've seen some companies with executive teams that weren't super aligned. employees feel that, right. When, when it's, I think it's incumbent on the CEO, to really help ensure that the executive team is operating with with real true alignment. And then there's alignment, and then there's transparency, I get up in front of our company. I mean, you know, we only really been in business two and a half years, but every month, I get up and say, How much cash do we have in the bank? What are how are we executing towards our revenue goals? Where are they, you know, I go through all the objectives, we're trying to hit as, as a company, team by team and talk about talk about where we're succeeding, and where we need to improve, and try to really like create a, create a culture where it's okay to, obviously, celebrate wins, but also be be transparent and honest about challenges. So I think when people have context, then they can work to solve challenges. But the mistake I sometimes see leaders make is want to hide bad news from people. And what people forget is when you, when you when you, like, people know, like, if something's not right, people know about it. And people will always fill in their imaginations, with their, like, worst imaginings of what's going on. And so I think, as a leader, if you can just share good news and bad news and get in the habit of doing it, it creates a much, much healthier organizational culture, and one where people like, feel they can be transparent with each other.

Kyle Roed: 33:24

100% I love the statement be worthy of employees trust, you know, and I think that, you know, such a powerful statement, you know, from a CEO, and I think that there's so much power in being authentic and transparent. And honestly, like you said, like, yeah, opening up the financials, and, and, you know, talk about alignment around a common goal, right. Like, if people feel like they're part of the team and receiving all that information, then they're going to be aligned around what you're trying to do or not. And if they're not, then then you can have the honest conversation about well, maybe this isn't, you know, maybe this isn't right, right. You know, but, but at the end of the day, you know, I mean, that's really, you know, that it's such an important thing, and I think something that that has been a challenge, especially for many companies who are dealing with bad news over the last few years, and, you know, trying, being completely transparent could be could be scary, and, and very uncomfortable for, for some, but if you don't, like you said, they are going to fill in their own blanks, right. It reminds me of, you know, a conversation we had on this on this show with a about employee experience. And, you know, employee experience is happening, whether you want it to or not. And so if you're not intentional about what you want that experience to be, it's happening, but it's happening unintentionally, and it's probably not what you want it to look like, right? So if you're not, if you're not thinking about it, and you're not, you're not thoughtful about being transparent and creating kind of that, that culture of trust, then, you know, the, the alternative is you'll have a culture of distrust and and eventually, potentially disengagement and, you know, some risk to the business, right?

Ian White: 35:23

Yeah, no, that's right. And, you know, I mean, ultimately, every company, every company creates its own values and culture. And, you know, not not every company is right for every every person, right? You want to make sure people have sort of the match for the right, the right role and the right company, but the company's values and what you actually like what behaviors do actually reward are like, actually really important. And so, you know, we, we, we sort of codified our values sourcing them from employees really about, you know, maybe a year ago, we asked everybody, you know, what is? What do you think we value here? What do you see in your coworkers? And what do you think, is important here. And we, you know, we came to fast, inclusive, transparent and optimistic, which are all things that I definitely feel like, have a lot of meaning to me, but they really they came from, they came from the employees and how they felt about how they felt about what we valued at the company.

Kyle Roed: 36:37

A love that, you know, I think it's, it's, it's such an interesting conversation. And, you know, as you know, I mean, as we talk about culture, there's, there's so many different ways that you could go with that as an organization. But, you know, you do have to have that balance between, like, what you say and what you do, and to have that circle back with your employees, like, what do you think we value? Right? There's your feedback, right. So and if that's incongruent with what you're telling him, that you care about, you know, it might be time to do some soul searching. Right.

Ian White: 37:17

Could be back, no, people, people will know, you know. And that is, I think that is what, what builds trust, ultimately, is doing the things you said you would, right, and what breaks trust is not doing those things. And so for leaders to build trust with employees, I think that's, you know, that's, that's what it comes down to is building a track record of listening of, you know, sharing transparently what you what you, you know, what you plan to do, and then doing those things,

Kyle Roed: 37:51

absolutely. And to bring this full circle, one of the aspects of listening, is making sure you're reviewing the right data points, and doing like, like what you said at the beginning, doing the real planning, right, and not cherry picking that data to feel good about you? Well, you know, our turnover rates up but you know, in this department, it looks, it doesn't look too bad. And then two months later, you know, three people quit, you're like, well, now it looks bad, but of this department, isn't it like, you have to be honest with it. And, and that is, you know, that is a form of listening, in my opinion. So I appreciate, appreciate what you're doing with, with chart hopping, you know, it's, it's a cool platform, we're gonna have the information in the show notes, check it out, if you want to go, you know, take a look at the website, you can, you can see, it's, you know, I, I got an HR, you know, because I didn't want to be in Excel spreadsheets all day long. And it's like, I love a pretty picture. And if you show me a map, and I can like, click on a map, like, you know, sold, so it, but very, very good, good looking system, good user interface, you know, check it out. With that being said, and thank you, again, for being so gracious with your time today. I do want to shift gears and go into the rebel HR flash round. So you ready? Right, let's do it. All right, we've got a new question that we're pitching our guests. So first question, Where does HR need to rebel?

Ian White: 39:22

I think HR needs to about way they share data in a new way, like empower people with data, and don't lock it all down. You know, in HR, we, we are often very cautious, appropriately, because we're handling a lot of some of the most sensitive data but if you put the right information in the hands of your your people and your managers, then you can empower them to do their best work.

Kyle Roed: 39:59

I love that. We're having that debate as we speak, you know, as we look at things like inflation and and, you know, some of these macro trends. You know, something as simple as, hey, candidates are asking for pay ranges to be posted on job descriptions. Well, what's the ripple effect of that? Right? There's all these questions that we have to think about and answer as an organization. But no, I think that's powerful.

Ian White: 40:27

Yeah, I mean, we've done we've done that from day one, we've we've put the pay ranges on the job postings. And, you know, I mean, there's there are certainly times it can lead to You know, a hell ultimately healthy conversation. But, you know, we haven't, we haven't had any challenges with recruiting because of it, it's ultimately helped us push everyone to make sure that we're paying in a fair way across the organization.

Kyle Roed: 41:02

Yeah, well, that's probably a whole nother podcast, we're not. Alright, here we go. Question number two, who should we be listening to?

Ian White: 41:12

I think we should be listening to our employees, I think they often know sometimes before senior leadership knows what what is happening with an organization is culture. So I think really listening to employees, taking it sometimes with a grain of salt, it's important to, you know, understand perspectives, and where people are coming from, but listening to a diversity of perspectives from many people around the organization will give you the pulse of where you are and where you need to go.

Kyle Roed: 41:49

I love that. And I, you know, one thing we haven't touched on that I, you know, I think is maybe something to call out for all my fellow HR peers out there is listen, we, you know, for some of us data is like, a foreign language, foreign concept, right. But many of us are interested in psychology, and biases and things like that. And one of those critical biases that we all face, is what you see is all there is. So if you don't have robust data, to confront that bias intentionally, and that bias within all of your leadership team, you are missing a big piece of that picture. You know, do you think that senior leaders know exactly what's happening? at the ground level every single day? In an organization with a couple 100? People? 100%? No. No, you're the last to know, right? It's like, and they're and you're the one that's supposed to come up with a strategy. So it's yeah, it's, you know, well said and, and, and, yeah, something something to call out. All right. Final question here. How can our listeners connect with you?

Ian White: 42:57

Well, I'm easy to reach, Ian i A n chart. hop.com. Or you can follow me on Twitter, I'm Aeon white, EONW a chai tea. And you can look for us at chart hop.com. You know, it's, we've been remote these last couple of years, but I recently went to HR transform, and it was great to see people in person. So definitely, definitely always game to connect electronically, but, you know, love to love to meet up with customers and, and folks in the industry, in person as we as we get back to a hopefully post COVID world.

Kyle Roed: 43:43

Hopefully, yeah, we Fingers crossed. So this is coming out, you know, a couple of weeks after we record this. So who knows at this point? I don't think so. With that. Yeah. Well, you know, at this point, we're just we're just living in with it. So. But yeah, we will have all that information in the show notes. So open up your podcast player, click in there. And just really appreciate the time of day and some really great work that you're doing there and appreciate the problem solving endeavor that you're going on. So thank you.

Ian White: 44:14

Really appreciate it. Kyle, this is great.

Kyle Roed: 44:17

Thanks. All right. That does it for the rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, Twitter, at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast are those the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe