How a Saks HR Exec Cracked a Favoritism Tip With Zero Names

Rebecca Taylor: Welcome to HR Voices, a podcast where people leaders share their side of the story. We talk about the challenges they're facing, how they're addressing them, and what changes they hope to see as the workplace evolves. This podcast is sponsored by All Voices, the all-in-one employee relations platform. Hello and welcome to HR Voices.

I'm your host, Rebecca Taylor, and I'm here with John Mezzo, a C-suite HR executive who's worked at a lot of different really cool brands that we're probably going to bring up a little bit as we talk through some of these things that we're going through now. So, John, thank you so much for being here. That's my pleasure. Nice to see you, Rebecca.

Nice to see you too. Thanks. I'm excited because I know that, you know, when we pick some of these scenarios on this podcast. We don't always know where they're going to start and where they're going to end.

And so I think this one is one that might resonate with a lot of folks. And so I'm glad that we're gonna be talking about this and you know, hopefully we'll be able to leave some nuggets of wisdom for anybody who's listening here. So Sure. We can try.

Absolutely. We can try. We can do our best. All right.

Are you ready for your scenario? yes. Bring it on. All right.

We're calling this the anonymous tip that names nobody. An anonymous ethics hotline report alleges widespread favoritism on a sales team but names no specific people, dates, or incidents. The VP of sales wants it closed as unactionable. HR pulls comp and promotion data and finds a pattern that lines up disturbingly well with the vague complaint.

HR has to decide whether to investigate a claim with no named complainant and no named accused, using only aggregate data as a starting point, and how to do that without triggering a witch hunt. So. I feel like this sounds familiar. Just like people are being paid differently, you gotta kinda figure it out.

Before we get into sort of the details of this, John, I wanna ask what stands out to you as the most vague or unclear in this scenario as it's laid out now? Well, clearly for starters, we understand people are nervous or concerned about sharing details like names and scenarios and so on, especially in favoritism scenarios where they would have fear of retaliation, right? But but for starters the you know, the vague and the unclear is is around is around that we don't have, you know, some of the meat on the bone, right?

We don't have who are the players, where where is this person feeling the wrongdoings are happening. And so we're we're kind of we're we're giving a little droplet, a little teaser, but we we we have to go into this without the the awareness of of who's involved. I'd say the other piece too is you're always as HR leaders and business partners, we are always conscious of when the work that we have to do can have an impact on the business because I've always been a s a strong supporter of the concept of we are we are here to help the business thrive and support the business.

And so to launch an investigation that will take time and energy and and and pull people away from the day-to-day business driving work is something that I take seriously and would want to make sure that it's viewed as value add. But with that said, we need to respectfully appreciate that someone feels there's something to look into and so we'd we'd wanna we'd wanna start to look into that. Yeah. And what do you think would be the value add to the business to investigating this?

Like if you're kind of looking at it as like what's the worst that happens if you do nothing and what's the best case scenario if you do take on an investigation? Well first of all I'd say, you know, favoritism It's also a little bit it's it's as gr the word can be as that word can be as gray as the fact that we don't have names and people involved in this. Like potential. Another weird word.

You know, what that means to me and what it means to you, and gosh, you know, for could there be a fear that it's driven in some ways by by emotion and oftentimes the linkage with things like favoritism are there are already pre existing relationships that you know, w often put us in situations where people maybe have had work relationships that have bled out into personal sides and and and now you're more fr you're friendly with this person more than you are with me and so on and so forth.

And so I think I think but the value of looking into it or the potential wins or losses would would be I I think A we would never want look, I I always go right to Any and every action of a manager is going to either drive positive engagement and keep top talented people engaged and there. And so if this is a widespread issue and we have high performing people who could be adversely impacted by this, you want to solve it. Because at the core, could you know it's worst case scenario, you could have leadership acting inappropriately or managers of people acting inappropriately, which, you know, the ultimate downside of that, of course, if it meaning assuming it doesn't cross a legal i action o you know of being inappropriate, it it simply at its core is going to create an uncomfortable or or sort of lower level of engagement type of environment.

And that always can have an adverse impact on on good people. And an in a sales team, that's the group that's touching the bottom line. They are bringing in the business, right? So You you do you I think there's value in wanting to know is there something you know, if this message is smoke, we we need to know is there some fire.

Yeah. I agree. 'Cause it's almost like you want to make sure that if there is some truth behind it, that the folks that are impacted aren't completely disengaged from the company, that you can sort of either make it right or, you know, I guess just make it right is really the only option there. and do you there's also sorry, go ahead.

No, no, no. I think you that is the goal. But to your point, to make something right, we would need to have greater detail and we would need more context on on what is actu what is the what is actually wrong. Because again, the my point earlier around favoritism, how is it showing up in in what way?

Right. And what is what is the actual impact that it's having? Yeah, yeah. Especially 'cause I think i if it does escalate into sort of the legal area, you could look at discriminatory promotion practices and compensation practices.

And if you find that, then that's definitely something that's worth solving for more than one reason. One, 'cause it's the right thing, and two, because it's the legal thing. Yeah, no doubt. That's why that's why you would typically you you know, I I you had mentioned something about the sales manager is thinking this is something that doesn't need attention.

Like I would I would not be aligned With that at this point, I would be respectful of the time we take of the business leaders and the sales team. But but yeah, I think the v is if we're gonna get to this, you know, with some actions, I would say it you know, doing nothing was is probably not an option right now. I agree. I agree.

And I think kind of digging a little bit deeper. So let's say we are doing something, we're opening up an investigation. you know. Because I mean, even in the scenario, we are kind of starting an investigation anyway, because we're pulling comp and promotion data and finding a pattern that lines up disturbingly well with the vague complaint.

So, you know, acknowledging that the scenarios themselves are sometimes kind of vague. What's vague about, you know, the disturbingly well with the vague complaint? Like I guess maybe, you know, what is the what patterns might you see in comp data and promotion data that could indicate favorite tape? Like what might that look like?

Well, so, you know, where where everyone is in their current state in a business, you know, what I like to think of it as they've they all had journeys to get where they currently are, right? And so if it's a sizable business and some of the businesses I've worked with, you know, you've had scenarios where there were businesses run independent of each other and then in an effort to kind of be more connected, we've pulled businesses together and so now they're kind of acting as one.

Well, one of the things we'd probably look at is, well, well, to your point, you start with, well, what are the actual facts, right? Who are the highest paid people? Who are the ones that are who have advanced the most? And you'd probably want one box to check around, does that comp awareness around where they sit within a range and the level of advancement that they've had?

Does it align with what what all the stories have been as we've talked about performance appraisals and and Peer group rankings and the ability to kind of scorecard and talent manage and understand who's who. So if if someone who has been wildly viewed as an underperformer shows up in the top 1% of the range, I might be like, all right, well, that's kind of a red flag. So, but my point earlier around having the multiple groups come together, I like to look at what are the journeys people took.

So is it just the newest hires? And so therefore, we maybe went after an initiative where if you're You know, maybe we discovered we were not competitive. And so the new hires are all wildly more highly compensated because we we woke up and made a discovery, like, wow, we're so not competitive. So we need to change that.

Or all the people who came from this particular brand, when we merged to be connected as one, they seem to have been the higher paid groups. And I've absolutely seen that. Like when you when you have independent sections of a company, they are sometimes run. you know, they're not something they're they're run by different leaders who have different perspectives and different budgets.

And so it's it it leads you to a point where it's like, yeah, the people that were from the legacy part of this business, they were regularly a little, you know, lower or paid differently because of the comp makeup. So, you know, you you're you're still in detective mode, right? So you'd you want to understand like the lay of the land, who's where How did they get there? What was their journey?

Are we seeing a read? you know, certainly obvious things like is it mostly the men who are overpaid or the age ranges of, you know, the 20 somethings, the 30 somethings, or the, you know, I think, I think those are all the right ways to slice the data and the beauty of the current state of the world, having done this for as long as I have, we do have, you know, regardless of your views on on AI and technology and and people analytics, like it's a wildly helpful. tool to just have it at the ready and be able to leverage it and and use it.

So yeah. So it helps you find all the connections that you might have missed if your systems are disconnected as it is, right? Like you mentioned looking at performance data, which I think is so smart because it's you're looking at, you know, how are people how are their reviews looking? Then you look at, you know, promotion data, which sometimes is attached to your performance system, but a lot of times that's just in your HRIS and Maybe the timing of when you do, you know, when you do performance to when that promotion's effective lines up.

But even then that could be like a vague connection. and then some kind of compensation could be in a different system. So it's like when you have when you're able to kind of use something that connects all those different, you know, data points together to find those patterns. I think that you're right.

There is a lot more power in kind of finding the truth there. Yeah, I mean you're gonna look at all the natural areas of the demographics, that's that's a no brainer, right? But Yeah, I think I think that's that's where you start. And then you you keep you keep saying, well, is there I like to use the expression, is there a there there?

Right. Well, okay, so we've determined that it was smart to look at it because regardless of an anonymous complaint or whatever, you want to have that awareness and as I might say, a view of your landscape. And it's like, well, however we got to this point, we made some great discoveries and we have some inequities we have to manage and we have some wrongs we have to right or whatever you want to say. oper and you don't necessarily always have the ability to alter that, but having a deep dive into your comp and to your pr your promotion history and how you've managed that before is never a bad thing.

You know, back to the initial point though, you know, whether you can make a connection to this group is more highly compensated and that's tied to favoritism. Yeah, I guess you could So you know, that's just a slightly more vague, more challenging way to kind of thread it all together. What is that link? What what brings it all together?

That might be the more challenging part of this scenario. Yeah. Especially in sales. And I say this like I've worked in I've worked in sales when I was in HR, I mostly supported sales teams.

I dealt with a lot of incidents like this in one version of another. Something that I'll say is the person who will submit the complaint is usually not the top performer. And sure. That's why they're saying something, right?

Not why, but like, you know, and for whatever reason. and you know, I know that I've been in scenarios like this where, you know, you'd hear that, so and so always gets all the best leads. And so of course they're gonna close the most deals. Of course they're gonna have the highest compensation, of course they're gonna get the most emotions because they get the best leads, they're the favorite.

And That's where something like this, I think, kind of starts to get sticky. Hearing the VP of sales wants it closed as unactionable to me just classically means like whatever, like this person whoever it is is not a top performer and I don't care about them. Which is right. And it would make me go to a place of like, is is that the person they feel who is driving the favoritism in some way, right?

I mean, I do have this belief that we do need to hold our leaders the most accountable in these scenarios, right? Like it's It's it's the price you pay to have a team, to be a people manager, to be more highly compensated, to be higher on the org chart. Well, with that comes the the need for us to to hold you accountable. And so, I think the this the sales you know, I I would you know, at some point would have a sit down with the sales leader and maybe help them understand that we're not going to s step on toes or stand in the way of your business, but we're we're we may have some questions about this and and And yeah, it I I agree with you.

It it could it could and might likely be the most, you know, un the one of the underperformers or person who feels disadvantaged. But but I've also seen it where it's a high performer who feels like the manager isn't doing enough to like, you know, s in in sales environments I've been in retail, you know, luxury retail environments, there there's that concept of there's a finite amount of the pie that's available and the great sellers want as much of the pie as possible and if they feel like there are others around who are are there to take some of the business, if you will, but maybe not doing it to the highest level, they may feel like, I don't why do you have that person?

I could s I could scoop that business and and drive the sales even better, but I I I'm I'm walking away from that customer because someone else who shouldn't even be here is taking the business. And so it could be that view too, which is why there's so many unknowns in this s in the story that we need to, you know, understand more. It's so true. It's so true.

Cause like I remember from my experience in retail, we did I worked at Lord and Taylor Fifth Avenue. I know we talked about that a little bit. And so at the time there was a bridal business and special occasion dresses and they were all commission based. But when you're looking at bridal and special occasion dresses, There's only so many people that are gonna buy those things every day, right?

and so if you're one of those sales associates that are there, excuse me, and you know, I would get complaints about the s floor being overscheduled. You know, they'd say, Why do we have these people here when like there's only 10 customers every day? Why do we have five people scheduled? Sure.

You know, just because you have these new people because they come from this store and that's why we have to treat them differently. So like you're right, it could be like a, you know, almost like a fear response, you know. Yeah, and yet you you'd like to hope the floor managers, the sales leaders, the HR department, the in partnership with finance and so on, have done the right work that we might call like a workforce management system to understand, well, we we tr we try to never really be overstaffed, right?

There's something not sort of fiscally smart about that. Yet yet too few people we could be walking business. And so I think I think you'd like to hope that the the the data that we have that provides us with, you know, this number of sales people are required to support the traffic levels and the peak the the peaks and valleys of the business in an average day. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And so if you're going back to the scenario, if you are the HR person who you found, you know, this You found these inconsistencies or maybe consistencies, right? It's like, hmm, some of this stuff does some seem to line up. It seems like the first person and really only person that we can talk to right now is the VP of sales, because that's the only person who we know is somehow involved, even just as a decision maker, right?

So how do you line up that conversation? Let's say you're like, Mm, you say it's unactionable. I actually found something that I think we do need to kind of look at and address. What do you say to this person?

Well, yeah, I mean, maybe even before I would share we found something. I might just start with just look, w we like to think HR is really tied to the business. However, we're not in it every day to the level that they would be. And so I'd start with, Okay, y you initially said you thought it was unextrable, but like let's talk about your team.

Let's talk about like if there's truly like a a hierarchy, like maybe the sales manager has some people reporting to them that have multiple people reporting to them kind of concept. And I'd say, you know, walk me through the landscape of your your org and your people and like w what what are, you know, maybe kind of getting that deeper dive or a double click, as we like to say, you know, in into who are the players involved and and where in any way could they have seen, you know, 'cause I mean look, the reality is people spend forty plus hours a week in these work environments.

Relationships build. I happen to know that those two people, even though one's the manager and one's the associate, they're good friends or they knew each other before the you know, so understanding some of the relationships, as much as we're not there to pry into that, you you do have to always manage the and and ensure that things aren't crossing a line and that he's that this manager isn't sort of allowing the team to kind of function in overly social ways and And you know, 'cause oftentimes that's where the you know, the the favoritism sug suggests that i it always felt to me like there's something beyond just the work environment that makes it like why you know, yeah, could a manager treat someone more favorably simply for pure and only financial and business reasons?

Sure. But I would just wanna understand the people landscape as much as I could with this manager. And then without maybe sounding as if I had come to some conclusion, I might say, Well look, so because this came to light, we we had a chance to look at some stuff and I might start with phrases like, Are you aware that and then give the data that like your top seventy percent of your highest paid people are all men, or they're of this group, or they're all the people who came from this legacy brand, or and you know, just kind of share some of the learnings and maybe have them be part of the the solution find.

Right? Like I mean the d we talked a lot about data and stuff today and I'm like, well I used have a great CHRO I used to work for years ago who would always answer those data stats with so what? Yeah. So meaning and I love that she used to say that 'cause it's like, well, getting the data and having the data and seeing it and reading it and trying to analyze it is great.

But like What's the takeaway? Like, where does this go? So and I and I do believe that ultimately all of these things are business decisions. So I spend some time with this person to get them to get away from the like, let's not look at this.

And to get them to sort of be in the room with me to understand what I now understand from a data standpoint and then go after it together because it it is really a business decision. And I want them to feel that sense of ownership. Yeah. I love that you're bringing them into the problem to form a solution together.

Cause that's where sometimes it can get really complicated in HR. It be it can immediately feel like us versus them, right? Like it can be very tempting to walk in with the data and say, look at what I found. You're clearly performing all these like people.

You're only promoting men. That's not gonna go very well. No, no. I don't like the phrase HR said or legal said or they won't let me do that.

Like it's From right from the start, a part of the cultures that I build are are this, you know, we are here to support. We are here to use our expertise. You must let us in and have a seat at the table and all those buzzwords around like HR's partnership. Yeah.

But but it's there because these are truly and ultimately and they end up being business decisions. So yeah, it's it's not gonna be yeah, sometimes we might have to say things like This is our strong recommendation because we've learned X and Y and Z. And the same will go for legal, who will say, you know, we don't support you doing this because we think this is too risky. However You know, you'd like to think that you built a relationship strong enough where the business will say, Okay, if John and his team feel that this is a problem, we need to work on fixing this.

Yeah. But sometimes they might disagree. Yeah. And I think that's the nuance of it is it's gonna depend on the manager, it's gonna depend on the specific situation, and it's gonna depend on the timing, right?

Like if you're trying to, you know, talk to a VP of sales about An issue like this when it's a crunch quarter or the holidays or something like that, like you're not gonna get the best version of them because they're so in the we just have to hit our numbers type of mentality. At least in my experience, like you had to know how to time these conversations just to kind of know when you're gonna get their focus. and something that you mentioned that I think is good to call out is that you're my interpretation of what you've said is that you're not assuming bad intent.

You're not assuming that this person is saying, That's my favorite. I'm gonna promote this person. Right. It's kind of just like it may just accidentally be something that we that they don't even notice.

May whether it's true, if it is true, it might not be intentional. It doesn't mean you don't have to, you know, talk about it, figure out, you know, is there risk involved? But you know, it diffuses the situation when you're not assuming that someone is purposely trying to sabotage, right? Which people are.

Yeah, it's usually it's usually not I mean, it's kind of rare that it would be, right? You're right. It's it could be all You know, in in things like sexual harassment training or or other things, we often say the words, you know, it's intentions are irr irrelevant. And so it's it's kind of like we you may not have intended to it, but the fact that making up a stupid exam that you do karaoke with th one third of the group every other Thursday and no one else feels invited like, you know, you need to know that that might be leading people to think that that you like you know, so I think s more often than not the The true win in something like this is what happens on the go forward.

I could see a scenario where if it doesn't amount to anything super tangible, and maybe this manager ends up being that they're a part of the problem, this is a moment where we're kind of just giving them like a little dashboard check of like, regardless of what you think or what you've done or what you inherited, the reality is that your team is sort of feeling this a little bit. And so maybe they just go into the next day with a little more consciousness awareness of like when you're gonna have the floor meeting, you do it at a time where you have the most people and aren't people aren't feeling like, he always does them at eleven and I don't get in until noon and I never get when we're standing on the floor and, you know, and, you know, they could find little things that they can do to kind of feel more inclusive of everyone and have things be balanced.

And maybe it pushes them to go back and check the schedule and make sure that, you know, Rebecca isn't just getting all the really amazing time slots and John is like right behind her in sales, but he's getting the the sort of you know less less desirable stuff. You know, it's just it's just helpful for leaders to to study their business. They study it financially and this would be like a help a a way for them to study it from a people fairness and equity standpoint. Yeah.

Spoken like a true coach too, by the way, taking the coaching approach to something I don't know. I do I do love I believe the concept of executive coaching is is just at the centerpiece of what makes yeah leaders and leadership teams thrive. And I think all companies should treat that as a place in which they invest and even if it's done with internal support, like wherever I work, I like to think that we are bringing a coaching culture. Yeah.

And that and and and 'cause I think Great people will f will wanna stay when they feel that you are doing things to help them grow and that sometimes growth takes the shape of I made more money and I have a bigger title and sometimes it takes the shape of just I'm in a constant learning mode. So yeah, I think let's hope we can get this manager to see this as a learning moment and not just an inconvenience. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think I think we could. I think we could for this theoretical person. I like to be an optimist 'cause I'm a big fan of coaching too, so I'm an optimist.

Right. And it doesn't mean that we take our foot up like if you discover look, the bottom line is if you discover something and look, I've I've been involved in investigations where we have determined, you know, inappropriate relationships and stuff like that. Like you just you have to call it out and manage it and say this is not okay. Yeah.

And and this behavior's not okay, or we've d determined, you know, that people have made bad choices about scheduling and so on. You if there's It happened. If there's truth there, then it needs to be you know, the coaching is sometimes just not the end all, right? It's it's gonna be a great part of the work that we do, but if there's anything that's determined as being actually a a a way of working that needs to be course corrected, we will we will say, Yeah, that needs 'cause it needs needs to be, you know, needs you can't just know it and not necessarily, you know, manage it and not solve it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I want to call out one thing before we're actually almost at time, which is kind of like why sure. What I think is so interesting about this scenario is something that we see a lot, even just at all voices, but something that also comes up a lot in HR is how HR kind of plays the role of interpreter.

where, you know, the this anonymous complaint comes through with very employee centric charge type language, right? It's like You know, employees are coming through, maybe they'll say, like, you know, they're favoring all these people, like this is favoritism, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, with they're speaking their truth, they're telling their perspective. And it's really HR's job to play interpreter, to kind of understand, like, you know, you can't necessarily take something like that, like a diagnosis of favoritism at face value, right?

You take it as like, okay, this is the language that this person has to express a concern that they have. Maybe the language is 100% accurate, though that those words are being used correctly. Odds are they're not, though. You're just using the best language that you have.

And so it's our job to kind of figure out, okay, what do you mean by that? Let's pull out this thread. Let's see, you know, if we have the opportunity to talk to the person, great. In this case we didn't.

But, you know, we still can interpret favoritism as a concept and like what would make an employee accuse someone of favoritism. It usually means that they're getting paid differently or they're getting treated differently. So I think that's kind of the interesting part of our role where we always have to kind of play interpreter, because then we'll go to the sales leader and then we have to go back and interpret things if we're closing something out with the person who submitted the complaint.

It's like we're owed that interpreter translator, whatever word you kind of use for that. But you know, what do you think about that? Yeah, I think I think we I think we absolutely are. Look, I mean, ultimately, ultimately what this is is feedback.

Mm-hmm. And Feedback comes in the f in lots of different shapes and sizes. Like I've been in companies that do annual engagement surveys. I've been in companies where we do them every other week.

Yep. And either way, however you're collecting this, it's rich data that you should be using to respond and react and as we said before, course correct or or you know, I think sometimes the solve is just to say to people, I I'm aware that there should be con some concerns about this and I'm here to tell you that I'm going to I wanna I wanna you know, maybe the One of the actions for this leader is to find out that they just in their morning meetings or whatever, they they share a reminder about I have an open door and you can bring me your concerns and so on like that.

It's like all of these things can be actions. But yes, the the thing that has been a thread through my entire career is this line that an HR leader has to walk between having a s a comfort level that leadership is confident to to bring you in. for anything and everything that's strategically being planned for, which can be very early stage. It's often about, you know, building something today for next year or three to five.

while you're doing that, you cannot be viewed by the masses in the organization as someone who's like only there to support the leaders. You have to y it's just it's just the ongoing challenge of any HR leader where you you can build that trust on on in both in both groups. Yep. And so no, HR shouldn't be interpreting.

but we we can we can look at the data and then in partnership with the business come come to a conclusion, an action, a recommendation. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

Very well said. Thank you. Sure. Happy to be here.

Yeah. And so as we're I have one final question as our last question. Okay. So what do you think is one myth about HR that needs to be debunked?

You could pick one, you can pick five depending on I mean I have to go with the first thing that came to mind and it kind of is really and maybe I kind of, you know, did my own spoiler three seconds ago because I do believe I mean even my wife used to joke when my wife was in the workforce, she was she would say stuff like, you know, I hear you with your people and you're you're great and I don't think I ever I never had that with my HR. I didn't and it's like most people tell me how much they don't you know like HR.

And I'm like Well we have work to do to kind of brand ourselves differently. But I I think the biggest what are you saying misconception or like the biggest The biggest myth, yes, or misconception or assumption. Yeah. I think I think the myth is a little bit of a mix of what we've talked about that that we are the sole and only drivers of things, like meaning, you know, HR said or HR won't let me or I didn't get the raise, and so that's because HR said I can't have the dollars.

It's it's that constant reminder to people that We are going to be the providers of the data of the range of the markets of all the policies and procedures and the the right steps for people to advance and the learnings and the development areas for them. But it's it's it's in partnership with the business. And so I'm I make sure leaders don't sit with that person who didn't get the promotion and I won't allow them to say things like, Well, I really wanted to promote you, but you know, gone you know.

So I think the concept of like the HR set is a big myth. And I think the other one is that I want in most companies, the larger populations sit out either in the stores or the DCs. And I would want the the myth to be busted that that I'm here only to support the president of the business and the leadership team. That you have to which is why I believe it's kind of, you know, maybe this is not popular anymore, but I like the on-site, in person, in office, on the floor of the store, on the floor of the DC to walk and talk and touch and be like in the face and people when they see you and they know you, they have a greater confidence to share things and to bring ideas and so on and so forth.

And you know, the remote has been wonderful and hybrid's been great and it's a nice added layer, but I don't think it's the I think there's so I think you have to constantly work on building the trust, you know, yeah of of the many and and and of the leaders that you that you support. Yeah. I could not agree more actually, especially in especially when you work in a place where if employees are on site somewhere, then HR needs to be on site somewhere too. We did a webinar about this actually about listening to the frontline and how sometimes, you know, that there can be a lack of trust sort of between HR and the frontline when it's not you know, when you're not out there and you're not building those relationships and that trust.

And I'll send it to you if you're interested because I think I'd love to also connect you with the people who are on it with us because it's one of those conversations that I think needs to happen as many times as possible. So also if you're listening to this episode, we can link the the replay in the show notes so you can check that one out too. So if it resonates with you, you can hear some good tips that even continue what John just said. So I love that.

Well thanks for beckoning this was so fun. I appreciate your time. Yeah. It's a lot of fun.

Nice talking to you. Yeah, likewise. And thank you everybody for listening and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Bye.