The Real Reason Your L&D Team Is Overwhelmed with John Peebles

John Peebles: There's a lot of AI solutions being pitched to HR and L and D professionals and I think it can be difficult to navigate the AI tool selection without falling into decision paralysis.

Nick Day: I wonder if you had any tips

John Peebles: or any guidance you could help with. Some of the teams are listening to this who may be struggling with that a little bit and don't know where to start.

Speaker C: If you can basically use AI to do something that results in execution, you will get great results. And what I mean by execution, it means some sort of workflow or something where the AI is solving a problem and then you are shoving it through a deterministic gate of some type.

John Peebles: AI is great for coming up with ideas that have already been created, but they're not so great at solving problems with new ideation. That's something that no one's ever thought of before to a new problem. And in the world of work there's going to be new problems all the time. But I think it can also make us lazy and we don't want to take that problem solving ability away by relying on AI and everyone else's ideas when actually it's your ideas that are going to solve the problem.

Nick Day: What does it feel like when onboarding, payroll, compliance and even IT access all through one platform? It feels like everything finally works together and and HR finally has room to scale. Deal brings global people operations into one place. So new hires start strong, workflows, stay compliant and teams move faster. See it in action at d e l.com nickdayhr Most organizations think their training

John Peebles: problem is a technology issue. Let me tell you, it's not. It's operational chaos disguised as ah, strategy.

Nick Day: And the more tools you add, often the worse it gets. Which is why in this episode you're going to learn why L and D teams are overwhelmed. And it's not necessarily a resource problem. We're going to discover how AI is

John Peebles: creating more confusion than clarity in HR

Nick Day: and what high performing learning teams do

John Peebles: differently to drive real impact.

Nick Day: Hello and welcome again to the HR LND podcast. I'm um, your host. My name is Nick Day.

John Peebles: I'm the CEO at uh, JGA Recruitment

Nick Day: Group and on this show we try and bring you the latest insights and conversations with the pioneers who are shaping

John Peebles: the future of work.

Nick Day: If you do want to lead differently, think differently and build high performance organizations

John Peebles: then do remember to follow the show. Subscribe and leave us a review as well.

Nick Day: Now today I'm joined by John peebles who is CEO of Administrate. And John has spent over 15 years working with enterprise organizations tackling one of the biggest hidden challenges that I think

John Peebles: is still left in hr, which I was delighted to welcome him to the show.

Nick Day: That challenge is, of course, training chaos. So from manual processes and scheduling breakdowns

John Peebles: to schedule scaling, learning and proving ROI under pressure.

Nick Day: And what's more interesting is John isn't just talking about this. He's helping organizations to fix it.

John Peebles: So without further ado, welcome, John, to the HR LND podcast. How you doing?

Speaker C: No, doing really well. Thanks for having me.

John Peebles: No.

Nick Day: Super excited to get into this. I think it's a real hidden challenge.

John Peebles: I think we need to address it.

Nick Day: I think it's going to help our listeners today. Before we jump in, let me ask my first question, something I ask all

John Peebles: of my guests, which is this. What are the words human resources mean to you?

Speaker C: Nothing good, actually. Uh, you know, I think when most people think of hr, we're probably thinking, oh, uh, that's a difficult conversation ahead, or maybe, you know, bad news or something's in trouble or someone's in trouble. Um, but it's so important. And I remember a couple companies ago, I was sitting there and I was saying, you know, when I start my own company and I'm in charge, we're never gonna have hr. It's gonna be this utopia of, you know, people just getting along and whatever. But I've actually revised that view, and I actually think it's one of the most important functions we have as a business, and we're delighted to be able to support that function, despite all the mud that everybody, including myself, just slung at the. At the whole function.

John Peebles: Fantastic. I've got to ask the question, what are some of the things that made you revise that initial plan?

Speaker C: Well, you know, I think a lot of times people get frustrated by the idea of HR because it screams process and rules and things that you can't do and handbook that you have to say that you've read and sign at the bottom and boring training and things like that. But I think that can be the case. But I think when you try to flip a problem like that on its head and say, okay, well, these things can be difficult and boring and annoying and time consuming or whatever, but let's, let's figure out how to invest in it and actually turn it into an engine of change and a driver of the business, then, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't have to suck, right? And so I think that's just one of those things in life, right? You can view the gym like I do, which is A place of pain and suffering and you know, you don't really enjoy it at all. Or you can try to flip that, that feeling and narrative on its head and be like actually I'm going to enjoy this and try to do better than I did yesterday. And it does change um, when, when you're actively invested in something to make it, you know, part of uh, your mission.

John Peebles: I'm assuming that's going to be part of the mentality then that led you to founding administrator, obviously your CEO at the moment. What was the kind of, the thing that made you realize that training operations as we knew them before were fundamentally broken?

Speaker C: Well, it's a funny thing, right? We've all spent 12 plus years in school. Uh, maybe not in Scotland because you can leave when you're, when you're 16. But uh, you know we've spent a lot of time in school, we've many of us have gone to university and college and so forth. And um, you know, we've all been in a classroom but many of us have never spent any time thinking about what is entailed in delivering that type of instruction. You know, when you're getting people together in a classroom delivering high value, high quality training, it's a logistical nightmare. Uh, and there's a lot of effort and money and time that is spent behind the scenes that we never think of. And this problem, like most, I never really thought about it even though my mom was a teacher and my father ran a training company and I taught English for pocket money when I was, when I was growing up. And uh, where it got exposed to me was I was building uh, a healthcare technology company in South Florida and we had a very complicated product and it's not important what we did, but it required lots of training even if you'd been in the industry for a long time. And that responsibility for training our partners and our customers and our own team fell underneath me. And I remember at the understanding that we had some elearning components for sure in pre and post work but a lot of the real valuable instruction happened in the classroom or in a lab environment where they were using our software and learning how to do things with it and uh, managing that at scale as we grew to 150plus employees and had hundreds and hundreds of hospitals as customers was a nightmare. And we couldn't find good software to help us. It devolved into spreadsheets and so forth. And so when I saw this little uh, tiny company that had been a spin out of an internal tool that had been built by A training company. I really quickly understood the problem that they were trying to solve, uh, because I had experienced it and lived it. And um, so yeah, it got very interesting for me.

John Peebles: I get the sense you have a gift for identifying a problem and then maybe a passion for trying to fix that problem. I know in my introduction I mentioned the term training chaos. And I kind of have a feeling for this because as a CEO myself, I think this is probably what we have in our own organization. Fragmented. And I look at different solutions all the time. I don't find it very difficult as an owner to bring those things together. So when you look at organizations today on a much bigger scale than my own, what does that training chaos actually look like? Kind of behind the scenes.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean it's, it's effectively a, uh, really insidious fan out problem. Right. Uh, so if you think about, you got to get people in certain places at the right time and, and doing uh, the right things in the right order in many cases, uh, and you know, classroom training, which is the main problem that we solve. So we are really focused on helping large organizations solve the logistical challenges around planning, scheduling, identifying issues with training that is about to be delivered or is being delivered, and then surfacing solutions to those problems. You know, and this problem fans out very quickly. So if you've got, let's just say a dozen classes that you're running and all of a sudden there's a resource that you need, maybe it's a classroom, maybe it's a piece of equipment and it goes out of service, um, that, that problem will not only ruin the sessions that you have scheduled for it right now or today, but it could downstream cause a lot of problems. And then you multiply that by the scale that we're talking about, which is usually hundreds of classes a day running all around the world, different time zones, different teams, different locales, all trying to more or less be standardized. And it's, it just explodes in complexity. And so it's that the good news is, is that's a problem that computers are pretty good at solving. Uh, the bad news is that you have to have a computer to solve it really well. And that requires investment and products and so forth that, that uh, you just can't come up with on your own.

John Peebles: Yeah, I think I've seen that. So when I speak to HR L&D professional daily basis on that, on the talent side of things, and what I do know is a lot of L and D teams are very much overwhelmed. And you mentioned kind of computers being the solution I. More tools than ever, but I haven't seen it necessarily reduce that overwhelm. I think when you've got more tools, sometimes those above you just layer more and I guess, um, goals and objectives and responsibilities and that overwhelm becomes overwhelming. Right. It's really difficult. How do we start to navigate that? How do we know which are the right tools to select to help us kind of find a pathway?

Speaker C: Yeah, totally. I mean, this is, it's a counterintuitive thing, right? The more that we've invested in technology, the more that we've brought in different systems to, to try to build an ecosystem and solve this problem, the outcomes tend to be worse. They tend to be operationally worse. They tend to be worse even in the classroom. And I think the, the root cause of that is L and D, for years and years and years, has not really had a true system of record. Uh, the LMS has spent the last 20 to 25 years trying to convince everybody that they're a system of record. And some of them have sort of gotten to that point. But when you think about all of the things that HR professionals, training professionals, learning professionals need to be able to store, analyze, access, it's very rare that you have a system that's built to hold a lot, uh, of this type of data. And so when, when that happens and you're in the point, at the point where you're trying to shuttle data around that requires technical investments, uh, L and D tends to not be on the cutting edge of the budget line, if you will. Um, and even if you can move the data around, having a place to store it has been problematic. And so that's one of the things that we have to provide to our customers, is a system of record that can hold the data that they need to know about, um, traditional LMSs. Right. Um, we could package up our scheduling solution and give it away to an lms and they would have nowhere to access or put the data that you need because they just worried about E learning and physical training and skills and things like that tend to require an understanding of the world that is much richer than you would find in a traditional lms. So, you know that, um, I know that's kind of a long winded answer, but the, the more that I think HR training, learning leaders can think about this problem in terms of do I have a spot where I can put my data and access it easily? And well, that's not only really, really important for operational challenges and solving those things, but increasingly, if you want to jump on the AI bandwagon and find ways to leverage those technologies. They need a good, clean source of data as well, just as much as humans do. Um, and so loads of examples of where one system can't talk to another or just can't quite store the data that you need. Even silly things like dietary requirements that a learner might have. And it's like, thus a spreadsheet is born.

John Peebles: Right.

Speaker C: And, uh, so these things then grow arms and legs and you've got a spreadsheet for every region around the world in different languages. And that's just to track who's a vegetarian and who's not. Right.

John Peebles: Yeah, I've seen this. I spoke to a leading footsie organization and they have over 26 different spreadsheets, uh, running through their L and D sort of record keeping. And I was surprised, running on Excel. Right. I think there's a challenge. You mentioned a couple of things here and sort of something that I'm seeing reflected, I guess, in the market is we've got these old LMS solutions which are, uh, rapidly trying to catch up. So they're trying to layer on new technology on old tech stacks, and it doesn't necessarily quite work, but they haven't got the investment to start from scratch. Then we've got kind of these new players coming in which are selling all the AI bells and whistles, but don't necessarily have that storage capability or they don't have the foundation to make sure it's running correctly. And we're seeing loads of investment coming into AI as well. So people don't know where to spend the money, or they're stuck in contracts that they can't get out of. There's kind of loads of real challenges almost all coming together here.

Nick Day: And it does feel like complexity is

John Peebles: increasing instead of sort of decreasing. And I know that AI is really supposed to be augmenting what we do. Right? It's supposed to be simplifying what we do. And yet now we're kind of faced with all these challenges and solutions. It's kind of hard to know where to start. So with that in, if there's an L and D like the client I mentioned, I won't give the name away. What would be the, the best kind of next step? You've got 26 spreadsheets working, you've got an old LMS that's trying to, by all accounts, integrate new AI capability, but

Nick Day: it's not there yet.

John Peebles: They don't have the bench to help integrate that anyway. How do we move forward from that process, how do we start getting things streamlined again so we can start delivering effectively?

Speaker C: Yeah, look, I mean, I'm so sympathetic to that scenario, right, because it's a really difficult problem and the last thing I want to do is hop on a podcast and be like, buy our product and we'll solve everything. Right? Because, ah, it's just not true. Um, but I think, I think there are some overall strategies that can be deployed that, you know, regardless of the product mix and regardless of how, you know, you think about vendor A versus vendor B and what your organization size is and whatever can hold true. And I think the, the biggest thing is you need to have the right tool for the right job. I think what has happened is over the last 15, 20 years, the, the market has been really successful in convincing everybody that almost everything should be, uh, done via elearning or will be done by elearning if it's not today. Right. And I think that, you know, that's, that's something that is slowly more and more folks are understanding that that's just not the case. Right. So it's not only the right tool for the job, it's the right modality for, for helping people learn. If you've got something training on a topic, ah, that could see people injured or killed or, you know, huge amounts of equipment damage, whatever, the outcomes will be better if you put them in a classroom and so forth. Um, and so if that's true, right, um, we, you then need to figure out where is the spot that you are going to put and access the data that is important to you and your organization.

John Peebles: Right?

Speaker C: And that could be a data warehouse, that could be a system like Administrate, that could be your LMS if it has those capabilities. And then, all right, from, from that point, what are the tools that you are then going to try to use to solve the problems that you have? So, um, if you've got a scheduling problem, can it access that, that, that data warehouse or that source of truth? Uh, if you've got a lab provider, can it, can it do the same thing? And I think if you just take that approach and you know, I've got a technical background and so I just try to think very simply in terms of what are the jobs to be done. Do I have a spot that I can record things that have happened? Can I access it with these other tools? And if you get that right, um, the nice thing about that is the 10 top tools today for AI are going to be different than the 10 top tools in 12 to 24 months time, uh, and you can start to swap out tools along the way because you've got this kind of framework that you're operating within and you get more flexibility in that way.

John Peebles: I think you raised an interesting point that I've seen. I'd love to get your take on this. I mean obviously a lot of the clients you work with are enterprise level and um, I'm not just with enterprise clients but SME clients as well. So it may be slightly different but I find a lot of these things are cyclical. Not just in L and D, but of course all things right where there was a cyclical move to uh, moving everything away from instructor led training into E learning modules. Then they realized yes, it was great, you can get all this information in one place. But actually the absorption of that learning and the consistency of maintaining it post course maps wasn't quite so good. And we're now seeing a trend going back to more M instructor led training and we're seeing that in, in real time. I suspect the same will happen with AI. AI is amazing and everyone's using chatbots and everything else, but they'll suddenly be organizations in the future going, hey, we have humans now that answer your queries and there'll be that cycle back. I don't know when that will happen but I, I sense that that will be something that starts to take place. Where are you seeing the market at the. You mentioned something there where some of this training can literally be life and death. Now that's not the kind of training we deliver in recruitment, but I understand of course it could be elsewhere and

Nick Day: it's then from an HR perspective you can't just.

John Peebles: It's not just about ticking boxes to say we delivered the training right. You want that training to be effective because not just to cover your own back because you don't want people hurt, you don't want people causing accidents.

Nick Day: So what are you seeing there being

John Peebles: a bit of a shift in the market now, sort of coming away from some of those old platforms for whether training really can be quite literally life and death. Where is the market in terms of how.

Speaker C: I think it's a great question. Look, I'm super biased, right, because we, we kind of have this natural drift towards classroom instruction, um, whether it's virtual or physical. But I think what's interesting if you look at the data, at least in North America, which is where a lot of this stuff is published out of, you've got, you know, magazines like uh, Training ah magazine and atd as an organization and um, the training industry and so forth, they do these surveys every year. And for the last 10 to 15 years they've been remarkably consistent, which is about 70 to 80%. And it depends a little bit on industry of high value. Training is done in a classroom within corporate America. Right. And that is a number that probably most people would think would be the opposite. If you just actually look at the zeitgeist of where Mindshare is. And so I think Mindshare has always been elearning will solve it in just another week or two, you know, just in just next year. By next year we'll get this nailed and so forth. But I think it's just been remarkably consistent. And the pandemic was like the big test for this. Uh, we, we were like, I remember lockdown happens. I thought well we'll see now, right? If classroom training is as resilient as it always has been. And it was actually held steady and slightly increased because I think bizarrely people had more time on their hands, they weren't out and about and so they could do more uh, synchronous classroom training on Zoom or teams and platforms like that. And I think it's just for us, what we see in terms of highly effective organizations is they get really, really good at blending together these programs that have you know, maybe E learning as pre work and then they have some classroom training and then they do more E learning and then they have review training and then they have a test and certain. And they, they're just through that forgetfulness curve, uh, that you know, we probably all read about with the, the space repetition programs and so forth. They're, they are layering in very skillful ways various different modalities to help people retain and apply what they've learned. Um, and you're right, like a lot of this stuff, a lot of our customers, at least the uh, the ones that were obvious early adopter, no brainer customers, Maris training comes to, to mine out in Denmark. They've got their, one of their classrooms is a large pool where they load everybody up in gear and life preservers and so forth. They put you in a helicopter that they winch out over the pool, they set the pool on fire underneath you, they turn the helicopter upside down and drop it into the pool, right? And then you have to escape and that's. And the water is very cold, right? And this is simulating basically a uh, scenario that they train for all the time because most of their customers are working on oil rigs in the north sea and you know, this and that. So I think it's just that that type of thing is very difficult to replicate outside of a classroom. But they have tons and tons of elearning layered around that and a lot of products that are of a review nature and so forth that are really great, that don't require you having to fall into a pool. Yeah, they, they promised me, they, they promised me the next time that I visit that I will be.

John Peebles: I mean, I'd love that training. I'll be honest. I was thinking that's the kind of course I'd like to go on. Maybe that's the adrenaline junkie.

Nick Day: Right.

John Peebles: But it's a really good point because that, I mean, just from listening to that, you can see that's almost impossible to replicate through three learning for me. And I'm a micro example, but maybe it's a macro thing of the idea that I like elearning when I need to, when I need to tick a policy box, I need to get something done for legislation, for compliance and make sure that if I get, I can show that I've delivered the training. But I do know when I log into those kind of courses, like I rush through them because I just, I've got other things to do when I've got to be somewhere, when I'm all in, I know I've given the time away, I'm committed, my mindset's in the right place, I'm not getting distracted. Uh, for me personally, I find I learn much better and I'm more committed to the learning experience. Um, and I love then going back to the elearning resources afterwards if I need, as you say, I need a refresh, I need to dive into an archive to just double check something or whatever. I think that's where that hybrid approach for me works really well. But I was really interested to see if there was a bit of a cyclical nature to what he's seeing at a wider sort of market, broader level. And I turned. I mean, one of my weaknesses, right.

Speaker C: Is particularly with elearning work any other way.

John Peebles: Right. It's almost critical.

Speaker C: I think I know something or I think I've learned something long before I really have. You know, it's just an ego issue that I have, but I'll be like, yeah, I've got that right. And I kind of whiz through and then I need that kind of, okay, now do one, now teach one. You know, learn one, do and teach one, or go through these exercises and, and dialogue with an instructor to figure out where I went wrong. And that, that's very valuable for me is the type of high, uh, ego learner, I guess.

John Peebles: I guess it also brings into interview the idea of exposure therapy as well or exposure training. So I'll give it a, um, bear with me here. So I recently went through some fear based training to get over my arachnophobia. And I. The first part of that course was eight hours of class.

Speaker C: But you're not really training reading mean is gross.

John Peebles: Myself immersed in the fear. Right. If it's just. But I would never have got. No, it took the exposure, it took the classroom element. I never would have got over that fear without being in a room, um, holding the things right. And I wouldn't say it was easy. It was like eight hours of this exposure therapy. But I was all in. I got there, I was committed. And the classroom stuff was great. It was great as a preparatory tool. But I needed that exposure piece, I needed the classroom piece and I also need the instructor led element to it. That was the bit that guided me through and gave me the safety. I know it's kind of an extreme example, but this was quite recent for me and it kind of makes total sense of how they can work well as a hybrid, uh, relationship with the learner. But I want to ask the question, I guess in relation to that response. I know it's quite an extreme example.

Nick Day: I know you're driving when it comes to lng.

John Peebles: Now we're trying to get to the

Nick Day: digital reinvention, but none of that works without the right people in the right seats. I'm Nick Day, host of this podcast, but also founder of JGA Recruitment Group. And here's what I hear every week from top HR leaders. They say, nick, we can't find the talent. It's our biggest challenge. And when we do, we can't retain them. Well, that's where we come in. At, uh, jga, we specialize in HR recruitment and only HR recruitment. From executive search assignments, placing chros to contingency hires, finding HR pros to global HR transformational contract placements, and every people role in between. Across every vertical and at every single level, we know where the top people are, what motivates them, and uh, most importantly, how to get them excited about your opportunity, even if they're not actively looking. With engagement rates over 90%, we don't rely on job boards, we rely on relationships. We place fast, we place right. And we do it in a way that reflects your brand, your values and your goals. So if you're building a strategic HR function. Please, please don't leave it to chance. Visit jjrecruitment.com or reach out to me directly and let's build the future of work together.

Speaker C: So I think that one of the root causes of the lack of that type of training. Right. Um, it could be anything, right? I mean it could be for us with our sales team, you know, doing role play, right where. Objection. Handling all that kind of stuff. Um, I think one of the barriers is just the tools will often inform the way that you think about solving a problem. Is that that stupid thing that people, everybody says with the hammer was it everything looks like a nail and, and uh, and so with, with an lms everything looks like elearning. And, and actually it's painful to go in and type out all this stuff and a syllabus and, and then look at everybody's calendars and figure out who can teach this and get them on a plane, whatever that is. Very, very painful. And so without that, without that tooling, the barrier just becomes a lot higher. The, the perceived cost becomes a lot higher. Uh, and we sacrifice maybe some outcomes that we could have achieved, ah, at a much better way, um, just because of the tooling and the way that it's always been done.

John Peebles: So just for total clarity then for our listeners, tell me a little bit about how administrate fits into that problem. What are you helping teams do differently that most systems or approaches perhaps aren't currently solving?

Speaker C: Yeah, so I mean, probably the simplest way to talk about it is we have this concept of a template, uh, for a training or a course. And what we mean by that is we say what are all the things that need to be assembled and need to have happen in, in order for this training to be a success and to, to go ahead? And so it's all the kinds of things like, um, we're going to do, you know, classes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday at these times and these, you know, the Monday class that only needs a classroom. But the Wednesday class might need the pool where we drop the helicopter into. And then the Friday we'll need a proctoring station or maybe some simulator, right. To kind of relive that again. And for each of those sessions I might need two of this type of instructor and one that's uber certified. And um, I don't need as many of those when we're not dropping people into, you know, flaming pools. And then for the pool I might need to make sure the water temperature is cold.

John Peebles: Right.

Speaker C: Maybe it's normally heated, but I want to want that to be a certain temperature. I need to make sure that there's gas in the flame tanks and that we've craned the thing up and prepped all this stuff. And so all of these things live in spreadsheets, on whiteboards, in people's heads. We will put them into Administrate and then when I go to schedule, the system will walk me through the decision points and often just suggest, hey, pool 23 is free at the time that you're thinking about and these instructors are free and we integrate with their calendar so we can see that they're actually free and not at the dentist or something along those lines. And so it's kind of that, that decision making support. Um, you know, my, my team rolls their eyes at me sometimes on sales calls, but I, I think a lot. It's a lot like Luke Skywalker trying to blow up the, the Death Star, right? And he's go. Flies down the trench and he has the little targeting computer that comes alongside. That's what Administrate is for schedulers and administrators of this training, particularly at scale. The computer is there to help you, but ultimately our users are Jedi Masters, uh, because they've been doing this manually for years. And so they can ignore the computer like Luke does in the movie, and he can, you know, fire the torpedoes manually if he wants. But the computer is there to help assist and make sure that nothing gets dropped or falls through the cracks and that there's visibility to all this stuff. Because I might do all this work and then I get sick tomorrow and you come into cover for me and it's like, what, what is going on? And you can see.

John Peebles: So I can understand it. As a business owner myself as well, there's nothing worse than sort of arranging some kind of training and for whatever reason it goes wrong. And you've got, for me, I've got 20 staff, but 20 staff losing an hour, that's 20 hours of work just lost. And you scale at an enterprise level. You think actually you can't afford to get all potentially critical people the top 20%. Maybe they're delivering 80% of the work into a room m to give critical training and something isn't there. The cost of that loss is significant. Right? It's not just a lost training. It's adding up those hours across the number of headcount and all the different things that go into it. So I can understand the value here and why you need to get this right. It needs coordination, it needs a system. I understand. I think you're the number one training system for ILT and vilt, which is instructor led training and virtual instructor training. Right. So obviously you've got enterprise clients that uh, are using uh, this as a valuable resource. But if we think about then the truth about training roi, what's the thing that most leaders misunderstand?

Nick Day: Is it that, that the cost of

John Peebles: these kind of things going wrong in the example I've just given, is there something else we need to try and avoid? Where does the ROI come in?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's difficult to understand and think through the problem from that perspective, which is just what's my opportunity cost? Uh, what's the cost if my KPI or my metric is 10% worse because folks weren't adequately trained or trained enough? Um, or I didn't have uh, the ability to deliver the amount of training that I need. If we make an acquisition of a company and all of a sudden there's 10 new products, what is the opportunity cost of bad training for my sales team that I'm trying to roll this out to? Um, so I think that's one way of looking at it. I think the other way to look at it is something like 70 or 80% of the entire training budget goes to human costs. Right. When you look at the again these published surveys, um, and that's just a um, massive amount of money, right? And unfortunately a lot of that time and attention is put on what we call and I'm not trying to be pejorative at all but it's like, it's like really high importance but low value work. You know, like it is really important to make sure that everybody's calendars get the calendar invite for the training that's going to happen next week. But that's not high value work, right? That is just clicking through manually and it's difficult, it's time consuming, it's error prone and it's soul sucking. And, and so what we love is when we come into a customer, uh, we, our promise is kind of we'll automate 90% of this manual work within the, you know, after the implementation. And nobody ever believes us on this, uh, 100% of people do not believe us. And then we, I think we lowest we've gotten is like 85%, you know, and so it's usually 90, 90 plus percent. And then what happens is all of that time gets freed up from the training team and they don't go out and lay everybody off or anything crazy like that. What they do. And you can see this in the data is within the first 12 months after implementing, uh, Administrate, most training teams will double the. I mean most will triple, but the kind of minimum is double the throughput of training that they deliver in the next calendar year. And so, I mean that's just when you think about it, somebody comes in like, hey, if you just, if you purchase this product, then you can double the throughput and I mean really impact whatever it is that you're doing, whether that's customer training, partners, your own internal team. That's a huge roi. But it's hard to believe. It's hard to get your mind around.

John Peebles: Um, yeah, I can see it from a recruitment lens. And again, this is again hard to quantify and actually look at the data maybe a little bit later on. But I do know that one of the biggest reasons people leave an employer is because they don't feel invested in. They haven't got training to develop. So if you're able to automate some of that and make sure it's scheduled and I feel like I'm getting the training and the investment for my employer to have the skills I need to do my job and to elevate myself within. And I'm all like, to stay with that employer. So again, if you implement these things, it'd be interesting. I don't know if you do cover this because it's one of those sort of hidden metrics that kind of comes out later when HR suddenly going, well, actually our retention's gone up two years later. And what did we do two years ago? Well, we implemented maybe Administrate and actually we automated these processes and now everyone's getting training and people feel more invested. But it's kind of one of those hidden metrics, those hidden ROIs that come out a little bit later. But I can understand there would definitely be a value in that because I speak to people every time looking to change jobs. And one of the biggest reasons people leave a position is because they don't feel invested in or they don't feel like getting the training that they need in order to elevate their careers.

Nick Day: Do you?

Speaker C: Do you?

John Peebles: I mean, maybe not because it's a little bit further down the line, but do you monitor any of those kind of metrics as well from, uh, an HR perspective?

Speaker C: It's a great question. We don't monitor those metrics mainly because we, uh, we will integrate with HR systems, but we are not an HR system.

John Peebles: Yeah.

Speaker C: However, most. What we see is a pattern over and over again that when folks purchase the system, install it, become successful with it. Uh, they tend to have a lot more time to think about these things and they tend to get very good in basically playing I told you so with their CFO or their boss or whatever to how, uh, they are benefiting from this. And so, yeah, we have had customers say, look, um, corporate attrition, involuntary attrition is way down in terms of people leaving the company. We've, we've seen a lot of teams where they will take on additional non traditional responsibilities because they have the bandwidth to do so. Uh, one of my favorite examples is the training team within our customer Forge Rock. Uh, the, the company was racing towards going public and massive hyper growth mode and they Forge Rock and they've now merged with Ping, but they are the backhole, uh, security provider for all of the open banking transactions in the uk.

John Peebles: Right.

Speaker C: So it's a digital identity company. Um, a lot of security and compliance had to happen for that to come to pass. And the training team was like. And our champion over there was like, well, we've got the bandwidth, uh, we'll take that on board. And so, you know, you go visit and it's like, oh, here's our training center, it's amazing. And here's our high security knock, you know, where they were in charge of all the compliance and getting through all these audits and so forth. And you just don't see that happen traditionally when, when training teams tend to be overwhelmed and understaffed. So it's, it's stories like that that you kind of start, start to tease out. And that happened three, four, five years after they implemented our system.

John Peebles: Yeah, nice. And I think you gave a good example anyway, when people start to use it, they start to double down. Right. You start to see the value and use it more and more and more. And you can, as you say, it's not about letting people off, it's about being able to do more with less.

Nick Day: Less.

John Peebles: Right. Expanding your teams, having more, more bandwidth for strategic thinking and, and less of that overwhelm and less of that burnout. I want to try to pivot the conversation slightly because we talked a little bit earlier in the conversation around the kind of tools that are available now. There's a lot of AI sort of solutions being pitched to HR and only professionals. And I think it can be difficult to kind of navigate the AI tool selection without falling into decision paralysis.

Nick Day: I wonder if you had any tips

John Peebles: or any guidance you could help with. Some of the teams are listening to this whole. You may be struggling with That a little bit and don't know where to start.

Speaker C: Yeah, so it's, it's really interesting. Um, so I, the last couple years I've been an AI skeptic. Uh, I've been pretty vocal about that. And I'm like, you know, this is great that I can generate funky art and jokes and memes and all this stuff. Pictures, uh, and you know, I can generate a bedtime story for my sister's kids and things like that. But it's like I just, ah, just I'm, I was fairly skeptical. I think the key thing here though, and you know, it's, I'm, I'm uniquely susceptible, uh, to this because I got a computer science degree and it had a concentration in artificial intelligence 20 years ago. And so I, I, I'm like, I know everything about this and whatever. So. But I think, uh, there's a couple of interesting things that happen. The, the first is I, I didn't ignore it, it. Right. I refused to let myself just write this off. And so about every month I would come back and play with the latest thing or, you know, try something. And I would talk to folks that were in the industry and were also doing similar experiments. And what, what happened was for the first year or so, you know, 21, 22, that, 23, whatever it was, uh, I was kind of like, ah, yeah, this sucks. Uh, and then, but last year, in 20, uh, 25, kind of in the spring, I started using AI to code. And that has become pretty much the killer application, in my view of applying AI to a problem. I think LLMs are really, really good at a few things like summarization, sentiment analysis, transcription. They're pretty good at translation. They're great at, um, I don't think they're that great at creation. Uh, you know, and so for me, that's an interesting spot to be in because most of the L and D world is talking about content creation or deriving new forms of content from your existing data and so forth. I think they're okay. But the clue that we found, uh, with playing around with it, you know, using to code is there's this, I think there's this, um, important thing, which is if you can basically use AI to do something that results in execution, you, uh, will get great results. And what I mean by execution, it means, you know, some sort of workflow or something where the AI is solving a problem and then you are shoving it through a deterministic gate of some type. With coding, that would be the computer.

Nick Day: Right.

Speaker C: You're running Your code, um, with administrator. If we have the AI say, hey, you've got a problem over here, and these 10 students are now can't go to this class anymore because they got a scheduling conflict, we'll suggest this other thing. You can say, okay, execute that. And the AI will then use our API and if it's not going to work, our API will reject it due to all the various constraints and validations and so forth. And so I think that's, for me, the killer app potential is, um, and there's a guy that coined this on a blog post which is like, uh, it was basically an agentic shell deterministic core.

John Peebles: Right?

Speaker C: You use the LLM to, to do some of the reasoning stuff that it can be good at. Uh, but you always validate what you're getting back by running it through something and executing it. So I think. So those are kind of two things that I think we've learned. The third thing which is really interesting to me is, um, and I, we, we have actually have a whole talk about this and it's like, how do you get AI into the workplace? How do you get your team bought in? How do you convert the skeptics to non skeptic? How you learn, right? As an organization, as a team. I think one of the best ways to do that is to find a hobby, find one of your hobbies, start messing around with that, start playing with it and outside of work and get enough cycles doing something you really love, that is, you're really passionate about, that you're probably an expert in, and learn there first. And then you will start to tease out threads of, hey, this problem at work looks a lot like that problem that I was messing around with. Uh, for me it was trying to get LEGO trains to route appropriately. You know, um, that looked a lot eventually like a problem of how do we get students to route to objectives properly.

Nick Day: Right.

Speaker C: And so these types of the playing aspect I think is so important. Um, and it's something that I think AI uniquely allows itself or lends itself to because, you know, we as consumers, we can access these things in ways that we might not be able to at work. Initially prove out a few cycles and then, then you feel more confident and you can bring it into and show your colleagues and so forth.

John Peebles: Yeah, and, um, you raised some interesting points I would agree with. I'm, um, conscious I don't want to go down a rabbit hole here, but I think there's a great quote. It goes along the lines of, you can't say, solve a problem with the same thinking that created it. And ultimately AI is great for coming up with ideas that have already been created. We may not have them in our own heads, but they've been in someone else's. LLMs go and pick out all those ideas, put them together, but they're not so great at solving problems with new ideation that never feels something that no one's ever thought of before to a new problem. And in the world of work, particularly in the future of work, there's going to be new problems all the time that's going to require a new type of thinking that isn't going to be solved with LLMs pulling together old ideas and old thoughts and trying to sort of harmonize them. I think the beauty of it is the speed that it can come back with responses. And maybe we haven't thought about those things, but I think it can also make us lazy. And I got the sense from you right at the start of this show that you're a problem solver and we don't want to take that problem solving ability away by relying on AI and everyone else's ideas, albeit all brought together into one place, when actually it's your ideas are going to solve the problem. I think that sometimes it can make us lazy. Um, so I think, I think you made some interesting points. It's that teasing and I think it also misses the do right and learning is really important. So I can get an LLM to give me a great gym program, but I'm still going to do the. I can spend all day crafting. Well, I don't want to do that. I want to do this and making it beautiful. I've still got to do the work, right? And then when you do the work, you realize it doesn't quite fit because actually it doesn't fit in my schedule. I haven't got the skills or whatever. And then you have to adjust so totally.

Speaker C: And that's the execution, right? That is executing that. That is the. And the more, the more that I say, I read this essay like 20 years ago and it really, really left a mark on me. And it's actually a sad essay to love, I think if you're in the L and D training industry. But the title of it was you can't tell anybody anything, right? And it's this, it's this idea that like, until people experience it for themselves, like you just, you almost cannot teach people, as in tell them X, Y and Z. You have to, to tell them and maybe tell them a few times and then they'll listen and then they have to go do it and live it. And then that's when learning really happens. And so I think, yeah, what you just said is so important.

John Peebles: So let's bring it back in into context here. So is there is one of the real issues in L and D at the moment then? Not technology, but maybe a lack of operational clarity and maybe even a lack of discipline in L and D. Is that, is that maybe a bigger problem we need to try and solve?

Speaker C: Yeah, and I think, you know, discipline comes across as maybe a negative connotation or whatever, but it is, it's standardization. It's lack of standardization, it's lack of systems thinking, it's lack of the tooling that supports that. You know, I think about this all the time. Like, talk about your typical management meeting, right? Like some massive intergalactic public company. And the CEOs like, how are we doing this quarter? And the marketing guy comes in and says, great, here's all my marketing reports out of Marketo, right? And this, you know, uh, what were sales like? And the sales guy's like, great, here's all my stuff out of Salesforce, right? And you go around the table and the CFOs got their system, whatever you can get to L and D. And you're like, how many.

Nick Day: What.

Speaker C: What's the learning like, whatever. And they're like, well, uh, we've spent months cobbling together spreadsheets and we don't really know where all the money is spent. It's a horrible spot to be in and it's unique in the leadership team, I think, and I, I feel for that. And so one of the real problems of our industry.

John Peebles: Yeah, you've articulated that really well. Let me ask you then, last question before we open the HLND vault here for you. What does a high performing LND function look like then in 2026 and beyond?

Speaker C: Uh, I think there's a few layers. I think you need somebody that's got a strong vision for how to tackle these challenges and willing to go and articulate, hey, we need these things in order to accomplish these goals. So I think you need a vision. I think you need a strong ethos of. We're going to put in a lot of, like, what you said, discipline and rigor and standardization. And we're going to not experiment in the areas that we need standardization, but we are going to experiment in very high value, high payoff areas. So, you know, it's that, it's that kind of, let's have a vision. Let's make sure that we're being operationally very disciplined and getting the right tools do the right jobs and then let's make sure that the bets that we are making are going to really pay off, you know, order of magnitude. And, and we're not innovating on, you know, things that are the, the 20% of the 80, 20, you know, equation. So, um, yeah, cool.

John Peebles: Well, look, if any of, any of your responses, John's responses have resonated with you today and you're listening to this show, there will be a link in the show notes you can go straight through. To find out more, get administrate.com so you can click that link straight through. Uh, so do have a look at the show notes if you're interested in finding out more. But let's open the HR LND vault for a moment then. Four short, sharp questions for you, John. Uh, the first is this one piece

Nick Day: of advice you wish you had had

John Peebles: at the beginning of your career.

Speaker C: Enjoy the journey. I really wish that I had enjoyed the journey a bit more. You know, when you're young, you just want to get to the next thing. You want to get to the next thing after that and you start to just get in this. I won't. I'll be content when I'm 30 and I'll be content when I've gotten, uh, some title or whatever or making some amount of money. And I just wish I'd enjoyed the journey a bit more.

John Peebles: You've just described my journey. To be fair, that's exactly me. I think maybe you just realize this when you get a bit older. I don't know. I would have given a similar response. I think. What's one piece of advice you'd give to HR or L&D leaders in 2026?

Speaker C: You're not alone. There are vendors and solution providers out there that really do care, that will come alongside you, partner with you and get you to a successful outcome. I think it's easy to become jaded and feel like you're just out there with, you know, in a foxhole with no weapons. And it's a terrible feeling, I think, particularly in large organizations. But, but you're not alone. And, uh, there are plenty of great, uh, folks out there in the industry that are working really hard to, that will come alongside you and make you successful.

John Peebles: Yeah, I'm like, I've experienced this as a coach. I work with business leaders and senior HR execs and they give me in a crowded space and feel really, really lonely at the top Right. And it's that nature of imposter syndrome. And the idea I speak to, everyone's looking up, got no one to look as a peer. There's always support out there. You just got to look a bit deeper and reach out. I think it makes a really good point because there's a lot of. Loneliness is a real problem. It's a genuine, genuine business related problem that I don't think necessarily has been tackled. But we'll leave that for maybe for another show one belief about leadership then that you think really needs to change, change.

Speaker C: The more that we can have leaders just be more real with folks. I think that is really important. You know, there's, yeah, you want to come across as confident and you want to project, uh, the truth, which is we can solve any problem. Right. But we don't need to always be in this kind of, um, hey, look at me, LinkedIn influencer mode that I think some folks naturally gravitate towards. And I think people sometimes want that to be the, the idea of leadership. But I don't think that's real and I don't think that that serves us long term well.

John Peebles: I don't know if you, anyone listening or watching this or maybe you follow me on LinkedIn. I've got a number of followers on there. But, um, I made a commitment to myself. It's the end of my vanilla content. Like you do it for years. You kind of, you don't want to damage your brand, you don't want to, you want to try and be all things to all people and you get to a point where you what, like I'm holding myself back here and I've got real views on the industry and where it needs to go and shift. I need to be more honest with, more authentic with myself. And actually those may not like the content, but it's real. And I've made that with one of my 20, 26 resolutions of just going, I need to be a little bit more out there with, with what I really think and not, not hold back. So that resonates with me. But it's, it's a new year thing for me. So I get it.

Speaker C: Yeah, I get it. Well, good luck. It's hard, right? And I, I've done that as well. You know, you're sitting there writing the post and you're like, is this too smart me? Is this too, am I bragging too much? Am I? But I also, I want to talk about my cat that passed away and that's important to me. And I don't Want, you know, I don't know, it just, I guess it's, it's not easy, you know, so. Totally.

John Peebles: Well, a little bit of fun. Last question here for you. You can choose whatever you want it to be. But if HR was an LND was a, uh, could be summarized as a particular song, a particular film, a particular book, or even a quote if you want, what would it be and why?

Speaker C: I think it's probably the, the Nike slogan. Just do it. Right. I think that I, the thing that I do love about HR is, is um, when it's working well and you've got, you got a good leader there and, and a good team, they just get stuff done and they, they propel the organization forward. It's hard to see their impact on a day to day basis sometimes. M. Um. And they're very, it's very underrated when it, it's, it's like any utility, right. When it's going well, you never think about it. Um, and I think that's, that's what I, that's what we look for. Um, that's what our high performing customers exhibit. Uh, they just get huge amounts of stuff done. And um, and yeah, it's, it's, it's impressive to see when you've got a really high functioning team going for it.

John Peebles: Yeah. Fantastic. Well look, it's been a uh, fantastic show today. I think that there's one takeaway that I would take away. Maybe it's more than one. I think complexity is clearly killing performance. Right. We need to get clear on um, what we're trying to achieve. I think the organizations that win aren't necessarily the ones that are buying all the AI trinkets and tools. It's the ones that have the most clarity about what they're trying to achieve. Get people aborting, as you say, get the scheduling right so we can actually do the thing we need to do rather than get overwhelmed with diary management and all these different things, which takes us away from what we're trying to achieve. In L and D. We didn't go into that profession to be schedulers and there were tools out there that can help us with some of that management. So let's utilize them to allow us to really shine in the roles that we were born in to do. If you're listening to this and you feel overwhelmed by, by activities that were never what you signed up to do, right. There is a solution out there and I think you've articulated it really well in a very honest and authentic way which I really appreciate as well. So I think it's been a really interesting insight and I, uh, think you've given the audience a really good solution to some of those challenges as well. Because burnout and Overwhelm is a genuine problem in the industry at the minute and we need to find solutions to solving that so we can really start driving performance. For those that do want to find out more, as I say just one more time in the show notes, you can find out more about ah@getadministrate.com but there will be a link straight through in the show notes. I'll put John Peebles, uh, LinkedIn profile in there as well if you want to follow, uh, his content, which as you say, maybe a little bit controversial at times, but that's good. That's what makes it entertaining. And of course, please do remember to subscribe and follow the show. And if you've liked this episode, most importantly, share it with a colleague or friend. Share it with someone who may be struggling with overwhelm right now. Maybe this is the episode that can help them. Uh, I really appreciate your time. But John, thank you ever so much for joining me today on the HR LND podcast.

Speaker C: Thank you. It's been great.

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