Why Work Feels Empty and How Behavioral Science Can Fix It with Jackie Dube

Jackie Dube: So I think there's so many things that contribute to the emptiness of today time. I think that there's remote workforce and I know some companies are going back to work or have hybrid but there's a sense of loneliness looking at a screen and connecting with people. Don't be afraid of AI. I really think that it's something that we all need to embrace things that are other things. To answer your question, that employers, um, may be unintentionally doing is trying to hire fast. So lots of goals to hit and you need someone in seat is not taking the time to look at a full hiring process.

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 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 Listeners, let me ask you a question. Why do so many people today day say they feel empty at work? I'm not talking about being burnt out or disengaged, just, I don't know, disconnected. Because here's the paradox, right? We've never had more tools, more technology, more leadership training, and yet meaningful work feels harder to find than ever. So what's really going on? Today's guest believes the answer lives in behavioral science and understanding how people are wired to work, lead and connect. And she says if leaders don't understand that, AI may actually make the problem worse. And we're going to be diving into all of that. But first, hello and welcome back to the HR LND Podcast. My name is Nick Day. I am the host of this show. I'm also the CEO of JGA Recruitment Group and we're a global HR recruiter. Now, most importantly for this show, we want to raise the profile of people management. And we can do that by you helping us. Really Click us a follow, give us a leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you're on YouTube, leave us a comment as well. Those things really help the algorithms generate more listeners and more viewers. So together, as a community, we can raise the profile of the industry. Now, today I am indeed joined by Jackie Dube, who is chief People officer at the Predictive Index. Now, Jackie has spent more than two decades helping organizations unlock, uh, performance through behavioral science and talent optimization. Something that I'm really passionate about and something I know you are passionate to our listeners here. So today we're exploring a really fascinating topic. Why uh, work increasingly feels empty for many employees and what leaders can really do about it. So, Jackie, welcome to the HR LND podcast. How are you feeling?

Jackie Dube: I feel great. Super excited to have this conversation and look forward to it.

Nick Day: Me too. And it's a subject we haven't really tackled in great detail before, despite over 200 episodes on the show. So I'm really excited to dive in. Before we do, my first question, I ask all of my guests, which is this. What do the words human resources mean to you?

Jackie Dube: I always find it easiest to say what it doesn't mean to me, which is sometimes what it gets is human roadblock or the policy police. And so I do believe that, ah, human resources can provide a tremendous amount of value to organizations in connecting talent to business outcomes and really see setting up the organization from a talent perspective so they can look at their business goals and tie the people to achieving them.

Nick Day: Fantastic. Great place to start. And of course, it's something you've done your entire career, so we'll dive into that. Maybe to begin with, before we jump into the behavioral science part of the show, I'd love to start with your story. You spent more than 20 years working in HR and talent strategy. What kind of first sparked your passion for understanding people and workplace behavior?

Jackie Dube: Sure. Interestingly enough, when I was in college, I really wanted to be a marriage and family therapist. I come from a divorced family very young and I felt that I had a great experience growing up with my parents and I felt that it would be really beneficial to come from a positive place and help people in those situations. And then when I graduated college, I went to a recruiter and told her what my passions were and she's, I think you'd really like human resources because you'll really be able to help people at work. And this kind of really translates to what we do now where if people are happy and, and engaged in their day to day life, they go home happier and they are better siblings, parents, spouses, friends. And where we are now, we really think about better work, better world. And that truly means a lot to me. So through the years, I've just become more and more interested in how people show up at work and making that a really great experience.

Nick Day: Uh, fantastic. And of course, not just at home. If you, if you happy at work, you're more productive. And I guess we'll get into that in just a moment. Lots of benefits that come both sides. Was there a moment in your career when you realized that people strategy can also be considered as business strategy? I know you're so passionate about it and we could already talk very briefly about some of the impacts it can have that happen for you.

Jackie Dube: Yeah, sure. So probably about 13 years now I had worked at a startup company called Shape up in Providence, Rhode island and uh, the CEO at the time was hired as a, the 10th employee and really he was hired to raise series A financing and he had come off a project where he had acquired a company with 150 employees. And it was really hard at that point for him and his partner to, to create a culture, a performance environment for a company with 50 people. So when he got to this organization he was committed to making sure that he intentionally hired and built a culture from day one. And that's when he hired me. And he had to convince these two bootstrap startup, 26 year old medical students to make their first hire HR when they didn't have anyone, any employees really. And so that was the first time where I partnered with the CEO in using behavioral science and really intentionally creating a company to achieve our business results. And that's where it really clicked for me.

Nick Day: Sounds like a really smart decision. I've had so many leaders on this show and of course many people I interview aren't necessarily hr ah, practitioners. They may be business leaders that have an HR platform or something along those lines. And so many times I've heard people say if they could do things again, we may get there with the vault later. Actually the first hire they would make would be an HR professional. Really get that culture embedded really early. So what of drew you to the Predictive Index specifically? You've mentioned a little bit about performance and your kind of passion for that side as well. I wonder if that had an element to play.

Jackie Dube: Sure. This is really interesting. So the CEO that I just mentioned at uh, the startup introduced me to the Predictive Index which is a talent optimization platform where we use behavioral science to hire uh, people for the right job, inspire them to perform and design winning teams. And that was the first time I ever used an a behavioral assessment or even a cognitive assessment in hiring. And it really was the first time I realized if you can hire people that are behaviorally driven to do the job you want them to do, it all just clicks and they're more productive. You get the discretionary effort. And so from that moment on in any of the positions that I had taken, I needed to use behavioral uh, science. It was just unlocked, unlocked something for me that I had never seen before and it was so powerful. And so you Fast forward to 2014, my CEO from ShapeUp, uh, ended up acquiring, acquiring the Predictive Index. And at the time we had about 30 employees, a small 20 year old business. And when my CEO acquired it, they were like, we want to grow this company and we are going to need to do a lot of hiring. And at the time I had my own consulting company and I joined the Predictive Index as a consultant to help them hire and really reset culture and talk about company values and do some of that initial hiring. And then a year later I got my dream job working there full time. And to be a part of a company where you really get to influence the business and be a part of the product versus just supporting the business was like a dream come true.

Nick Day: I love the story for many reasons. One of those, of course, is because what you believe in terms of the product and the service you deliver to your clients is applicable to you. It feels to me like you're in the perfect position with the perfect company based on the short conversation you've had so far in terms of what you believe in and making sure those things fit and being productive. And I know that's one thing that really caught my eye in my research for today's show. I wanted to, to join me today to talk about behavioral science. Is that in your research there's the idea that many employees are experiencing what you describe as a sense of emptiness at work. I guess it's the opposite of what we just mentioned. Rather than just thriving, we end up empty. And I'm assuming that's because we're not necessarily culturally aligned. I'd love to explore that a bit further with the research that you've been delving into.

Jackie Dube: Sure. So I think there's so many things that contribute to the emptiness of today time. I think that there's the remote workforce. Right. So we're, and I know some companies are going back to work or have hybrid. But there's a sense of loneliness looking at a screen and connecting with people over a screen. And I think that, I think technology plays a large part of that, but specifically in the workplace is if in this generation really wants to have a connection to, to their company and wants their company to be value driven. And if those things are not defined and upfront and communicated in the very beginning of someone taking a position, you might be disconnected from the start. So we at PI, we have a very, uh, descript value statement. What we value as company. And it's integrated into everything we do, our rewards, our recognition. We talk about decision making, how we make Decisions. And we talk about this in the hiring process. And we have an acronym for our values, it's called Threads. It stands for teamwork, honesty, reliability, energy, action, drive and scope. And they all have definitions, but we have someone who's not on the hiring team give an interview to every single candidate that walks in that talks about our values and assesses whether one does this person feel that they would, uh, not only be okay with the environment and culture, are they additive to that? Does it resonate with them? And it gives the employee or the prospective employee candidate to understand what they're walking into. If they don't value those types of things, then they might not feel comfortable. So like we, one of our values is uh, about this, agreeing, commit. And we have a definition around that where at some point in time we're all going to have to agree, agree with a decision that we didn't make or might not agree with. And once that decision's made, it's like we own it. Right? And that might not be okay for some people, but we talk about that early on. And so when you have these values and you're upfront, people feel connected to what you're doing as an organization and how you're working, and then you add things like behavioral science and transparency and communication, and I think all of those things start to lead to more connection versus disconnect.

Nick Day: It certainly makes sense. There's so many studies out there linking purpose to performance, whether that's at home or at work. My recruiter lens had a hat on it. Something that occurred to me when you were giving that response and was whether companies, organizations unintentionally create environments that drain meaning from work. And let me give an example that I would give as a recruiter, and I'm sure there are many others, and we may have some statistics to either challenge me on this or to confer. But one of mine would be that a lot of organisations will advertise their roles heavily, which will encourage an active workforce to apply. Um, a lot of people in the active workspace. There are some fantastic talent in all types of jobseeker, but active often will be coming from a place of survival. They need a job, they need income, they've got mortgages to pay and therefore they may apply to more positions or any position sometimes. Whereas I would argue a passive kind of search process where people aren't necessarily open to looking, but would only move if cultures, values and other elements aligned. From the statistics that we report here and where we focus our search work as a recruitment firm, Is the sort of attrition rates are or retention rates rather much, much better for those that come from a passive search space. But I would say that companies are unintentionally, in that example, taking people in. They could be great people, but if those things aren't quite aligned, you can end up with attrition issues down the line. But that's just one example that I would see. And you may challenge that. But I wonder if there are any other kind of unintentional things that organizations do that sometimes drain that, that meaning away.

Jackie Dube: Yeah, that's really interesting. I think that advice that I have from to friends, much less than probably not as much in the workforce. But I do feel like it's easier to get a new job when you have a new job. When you have a job. Right. It's like you're in the workforce, you're more selective. So I do think that there is something there and I do think that there's probably a lot of employers that would rather hire someone who currently has a job because for the reasons that you just said, you want to make sure that someone's not just taking a job because they need to pay their bills. So I think things that, uh, are other things to answer your question, that employers may be unintentionally doing is trying to hire fast, having lots of goals to hit and you need someone in seat is not taking the time to look at a full hiring process. Just get someone in seat. I see that a lot and I think that creates emptiness at work. And once you start doing things like that, you have employees that could be cancerous to your own culture. And we've all seen that one person that's not happy or engaged can really start to pull other people in that direction.

Nick Day: Yeah, I love the saying it takes one bad apple to spoil a bunch. And it can happen that way around. I want to jump into the behavioral science element in just a moment. Last question is, are there any kind of common signs or signals that leaders listening to this show can look out for in their employees if they feel like identified disengagement early or emptiness at work a little bit earlier, Are there any things they can look out for?

Jackie Dube: One thing that I think every organization should do is to give some pulse surveys for their workforce. I think it is hard to tell, especially if you're in a remote environment, how every employee is feeling. You don't bump into them in the hallways. So I would say pulse surveys are really important and not just taking them or administering them, but looking at the Results, giving the feedback to your teams and taking action on them and then reporting back on that. It's a cycle that's really important for employers to one get early signs that there could be something happening within the organization. And it is something, an avenue where employees can voice their opinions and feel heard and be empowered to have an impact on the company and the culture and what's happening in the organization.

Nick Day: Yeah, fantastic. And it's always good to have quick strategies, quick wins, really. And this is something that is accessible to most of our listeners at the Predictive Index. Of course, behavioral science sits at the heart of your approach. And so for listeners that perhaps aren't familiar with what, what behavioural assessment models look like, I wonder if you can just explain how the science, the behavioural science can really help leaders better understand their people. I think at the moment there's a lot of mixed press sometimes and if one person has a bad experience, they seem quite compelled to suddenly publicize it. And yet the good experiences often stay quiet. And I'm a big fan of behavioral science, so I'm definitely someone that's keen to help our listeners understand the benefits. And it's so wonderful to have you on the show because hopefully you can do that for me.

Jackie Dube: Sure. So there are a tremendous amount of assessments out there and I think the common thread through all of them is that they need to be used responsibly. And so that means that whoever's administering them, HR department or whatever business leader needs to understand the science behind that particular assessment and then know how to apply it within your organization. And I think that's really important. And some of those bad experiences might lend to, uh, misuse, maybe not intentional misuse, but not the intention of that assessment. So our behavioral science measures four drives, so dominance, introversion, patience and formality. And it lets us understand what drives someone at work. For example, I would be able to understand if, uh, someone has a low introversion assessment that they take more time to process information. And if that is the case, and I want to have a brainstorming session with that, um, employee now. I know, okay, don't ask Nick to come into a meeting and brainstorm because I'm not gonna get the best work for him. I can get great work from Nick by being like, hey, Nick, I have this idea, I'd love to talk to you about it at 3pm today. Now, I've given you work where I'm gonna get great insights from you because I've given you time to think about it. So just knowing that One piece of information about Nick. I now be able to work with him in a way that inspires him and gives him the best way to feel productive and impactful in the work environment. Same thing if someone has. You're building a team, right? And someone might have high formality. And this means that they like attention to detail, they like structure, they like to be right versus someone with low formality, which is myself, who doesn't need a lot of data, doesn't like a lot of structure, and is more flexible. And so this is, uh, like exactly happens on my team. I've seen my senior HR manager is high formality, and I'm low formality. And so now we know how to work together. Because I'm like, oh, we'll just wing it. And I have to know, okay, I know you would like more information and more structure, so let's do that. And so now you can learn how to motivate each other and just that you both have to meet each other where you are. So behavioral science doesn't say anyone is right or wrong for having a certain profile or different levels of certain drives. It just, um, gives you information. So now you can work better together. And a lot of times these interpersonal problems at work come down to behavioral differences versus personality or interpersonal things. But they get construed as that, right? Is that someone feels like they're intentionally working this way. And it's usually not that. It's just that we're wired differently.

Nick Day: It makes sense. You mentioned a word in there how to motivate employees. I think we can also use this in the reverse, right? Reverse engineering from what? Things that demotivate employees. What stuck out then in your example in terms of some of high formality or low formalities, Some with high might. Might present something in beautiful tables in a very organized fashion. It might take hours and hours. And some of low formality may not necessarily appreciate the work in the same way, which of course then could be demotivating. You've put all this time in. You said, hey, great presentation, but it's not enough in terms of the balance of how much effort actually went in. They want that I spent all night on this kind of thing. So that's an example of where you can demotivate if you don't understand the difference in characteristics. But you mentioned the word motivation. So I'm quite keen to understand how behavior patterns can really influence motivation at work.

Jackie Dube: Imagine that you were, uh, you were in a job that you. The expectation was for you to own some initiative and you had to be the decision maker. And there was probably two varying degrees or sides of this decision that you had to own and make the decision on. And you're driven to really be collaborative and you're really motivated by taking other people's ideas together and coming up a situation that makes everyone happy. Right. So that's your, your dominance.

Nick Day: Yeah.

Jackie Dube: But you now have to make this decision that's adversarial, that people aren't going to be happy. That's pretty demotivating. And so you're going to go and have to make that decision. It's going to cause you angst. You're not going to maybe want to go to work that day because you know this is heading at you versus if you had someone that's. I love making decisions. I want to put my fingerprint on everything. My ideas are the best ideas. They're going to be like, I can't wait to go make this decision because it's my idea and I get to make it and I'm going to bring everyone along. That's pretty motivating for that person. The same work objective can be motivating or demotivating based on how you're driven.

Nick Day: Yeah, makes sense. I think that's where the power lies because the inverse is also true. So it's not just about motivating. It's preventing the demotivating side. I remember doing an energy audit on my own workforce and I looked at my own tasks, trying to get a better work life balance. And I realized loads of tasks I hated doing. But I made the assumption incorrectly as it happened that I couldn't hand these tasks out because no one would want to do them. And it was spreadsheet work. And I was like, look, my coach said, hand it out. See if anyone wants to do it. Offered them the opportunity. And I had several hands go, I love spreadsheet work. I love looking. I'm like, oh, my God, have it, have it now. I never knew. So what was de energizing for me was energizing for them. And I think that's a great example you just highlighted as well on collaboration. Sometimes we automatically think that no one's going to like the work. And because if it's not meaningful for us or not meaningful, us could be meaningful for somebody else. I think that's where it gets really interesting. And if we talk a little bit more about meaningful work, because for years we've heard organizations talk about, uh, purpose and culture. Culture in particular. It's dominated this show for many episodes. But Your research suggests that many employees still struggle to find meaning in their work. So why does that gap still exist?

Jackie Dube: Sure. One, I think we talked a little bit about technology, the remote workforce, and I think that it's more than the actual work. Right. It's more than your job. But for leadership, being able to connect every person in the company's work to the value it's creating in the output and the performance of the company. And so being able to say, I had to do this spreadsheet work, but what is it impacting? How is it making us better as an organization? And that needs to be. You need to be able to have that line of sight from your entry level employee all the way up to the CEO. And so taking that time to be. For an organization to be focused about what it's trying to accomplish and then having that cascade down, all the way down. So people feel like, okay, I am impacting the greater good of the company. And so we have a theory. What is the job to be done? And you should ask why, Right? So why are we doing this? And ask it three times. And if there's no, no one can come up with a reason that you're doing this to the what is the job to be done? Then question, why am I doing it? And so I do think having that from the work to the output and making that connection is sometimes missed for organizations, which creates a lack of meaning and purpose for employees.

Nick Day: Uh, I like that. Actually, the three whys is similar to a coaching technique known as the five whys. When you really want to get to the roots of a problem with an individual, you ask, ask them to say, you know, what's the meaning of whatever five times? And you start to answer. I can understand how powerful that could be. I think the one thing I really enjoyed about that response, and this is the insight I've taken away from it. So challenge me if I've got this wrong, but I think a lot of conversations I've been having, even on this show, and being led sometimes by myself, we're talking about trying to improve engagement at work, but engagement and meaning aren't the same thing. So I think for me, you just the way you just framed that was like, actually, I can get people to do things, I can get people to be engaged, but actually getting them to be engaged and for them to have impact or meaning is different. Do you think that, on reflection, I'm just thinking this in real time here because of the insight that you've just given me that we're focused too Much of our time as HR professionals on the engagement piece, employee engagement surveys engagement and trying to get the data without really understanding if they can be as gauge as you like, but they don't find that purpose, that meaning. M. I don't know. It's something obviously more in this world than I am. But it was an insight that hit me with that response you just gave. So I want to start the question.

Jackie Dube: Yeah. And I think it depends. You think a lot gets put under just engagement, right? And there's a lot of. We, um, talk about it, and there's four forces of engagement. And it's the job that I'm doing, it's the people I work with, it's my manager, and the organization as a whole. And if you can understand how employees are feeling about all of those things, those four things, they, that impacts engagement. So am I motivated and respected by the people I work with? Do I feel like people are treated fairly? Does my manager give me the autonomy or the empowerment to do my job? Is my job creating the meaning that I want it to? Are the processes okay? How am I feeling about the work every day? And then how do I feel about my organization? Do I trust leadership? Do I feel confident about the future of my organization? So all of those things together, I think help tie engagement and meaning to work.

Nick Day: Full disclosure, I'm a big fan of the US show Superstore, and I think this is, and I'm going with this at the moment, but it's quite a routine of operational type jobs they show in that particular series. But actually they all have huge meaning in their work because of the people they work with. It's the relationships, it's the boss, it's the trust, and it makes it meaningful for them, which, of course, makes it engaging an engagement piece for me to watch it. I think sometimes we can get lost in thinking an operational role, a routine role, something that may be quite repetitive, can't have meaning. But I think you've just explained why. Absolutely it can, because it goes beyond the work. I think that's really powerful. I think it's powerful at the moment because we're an age of AI and it's all about workforce readiness and how can we do more. I know that you've done a lot of work exploring the relationship between AI adoption and workforce behavior. So I'd love to dive into some of that and see how that's having an impact in terms of some of the, uh, results that you're seeing.

Jackie Dube: Yeah, we've, we've had a lot of probably ups and downs around AI and the impact that are at the predictive index. And we've been really going through this and learning over the course of the last year and we've taken a fairly proactive approach in talking to our employees about AI, how we view it and how we expect people to incorporate it into work and into our product. But there's a tremendous amount of fear for I think the workforce in general, especially as you look externally and these large corporations are having huge layoffs and people look at their own job and say, oh, is some of this work going to be replaced? AI, it creates job insecurity. And so we've talked about this, we empathize, it's a real thing. But we've really made a commitment to talk about AI, uh, efficiencies and what we're going to do with them. So for example, you can say yes, we are going to become more efficient which means we need less roles. Or you can say we're going to become more efficient so we can re reinvest those efficiencies and accelerate some of our goals and give you a better work experience. Because the day to day tasks that you're doing can be replaced by AI, but you can do more meaningful work or the work that gives the company and you more energy in your day to day because you're not stuck in maybe for you, the spreadsheet or whatever it may be, but really trying to be thoughtful about that. And back in July of this year we rolled out the, and I'll say mandatory, it wasn't described uh, this way, but mandatory use of AI encoding. So all of our engineers, we said you were required to use an AI agent in your software development. And that did not resonate well with a lot of engineers. But we were committed and we made a decision and we had to work through that. And so I think being thoughtful provide training and being honest about the use of AI in the workplace can be really motivating for some people and can create a uh, really efficient, impactful work working environment.

Nick Day: CHAR leaders, I know you're driving culture transformation, engagement and now digital reinvention as well, 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. 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 and 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 don't leave it to chance. Visit JJRecruitment.com or reach out to me directly and let's build the future of work together. Yeah, I'll tell you why I like that response and my comments are surprised unless you're familiar with my work. Well, I have a real passion for studying the psychology of fear and I'm writing a book on that at the moment. I've got my own sort of methodology for it. But I think you look at the neuroscience behind what you just explained as well. I think AI makes arguably makes our roles easier, as you mentioned, more efficient, more comfortable. But we're hardwired neurologically to be anxious and um, to be thinking about our survival. And every year when the world gets a little bit easier or technology evolves and we live in such a world of abundance now, it's almost encourages our minds to go into an anxious state or a fearful state. The fearful of change. With all that I can imagine your coders change had to start using AI. Would they go that imposter syndrome would start coming in. If I start producing the work, are they going to think it's me? Are they going to think it's the AI? And of course you have to overcome that and go through it. I think fear is made up of anxiety, uncertainty and imagination. And when those three things are at play, it's I think that creates fear. So the anxiety then of what's AI going to do, the uncertainty of whether they believe it's my work, then imagination does the rest of thinking. I know how they're going to view me now, what's going to happen for my role. But it is here. And I think that's the hard bit. AI is here to stay. We're all going to try and leverage it to the best we can. And long term, if we use the word growth and scalability, that should hopefully create More jobs. And I think for the M. World Economic Forum for jobs, you'll know from the talent side suggests about 50 million are going to be lost in the next three to five years, but it's going to be displaced by 85 million new jobs. And it's just getting to grips with that new world of work. And it's hard to find meaning, I think, when there's so much change and uncertainty, which I would have as a key sort of pillar within that fear method. But how would you see it? Do you think it's anxiety, uncertainty, um, something else that's playing a part? Is it just the natural order of things with the amounts of change we've got going on that. That can sometimes destabilize a workforce? Because AI is being adopted worldwide, not just within predictive ns, of course, we're doing it here at JGA as well. And it does come with a certain level of trepidation from those that have to start using it. Even though from a business owner perspective, I can see the benefits really clearly. Yeah.

Jackie Dube: So I think it's, you know, the way we talk about it with our company that's like, we haven't experienced probably this much of an innovation and change in the way we do work since the Internet. Right. The worldwide web. This is like the new Internet. And we've, when we ever go through change at, uh, PI, we talk about the J curve is like, you're very comfortable doing something here at the start of the J, and then the change happens and you're like, I don't want to do this. It's terrible. You feel like, I don't know how to do my work. I'm scared. And then you start doing it and then you start going back up and you're like, oh, this isn't so bad. Oh, I actually kind of like this. And then all of a sudden you're back to productive. And so with every single change at work, or just in general, you're always going through constant J curves and they go up and you get better and dip back down again. And so I think just acknowledging the change and the fear and doing things to help push to the out of the bottom of the J curve, to training and just, uh, small bits of expectations and not throwing everything all at once, but also really clear, if you don't get on board, your company doesn't get on board with AI and AI efficiency or even and adopting AI in how your product operates, you're just going to be left behind. And we also have to, as an organization Be fearful of that. And so we don't really have choice to not do AI. We just have to do it responsibly and figure out how to do it in an organized way to get the company moving in that direction.

Nick Day: Yeah. And I think that's really sage advice for our listeners. You've given something really practical there to understand. If you're worried about this yourself, maybe you're further down the journey than others. But have a think about where your own employees might be on that J curve. Might be. They're in that you're thinking it's all difficult to manage to get these initiatives out there, but maybe they're at the bottom of that curve and maybe others are further ahead. And this is why the HR community can be so powerful, because someone will be at a different stage of their journey. And it's understanding everyone's going through it. Recruitment firms, behavioral science companies, HR organizations, retail. It doesn't matter. We're all going through different levels of that J curve. But as you said, it's definitely leaving the station. It's coming. We can't really stop it. And I think it won't really replace those that embrace it, but it might replace those that don't. And I think that's the way I would put it. And I'm a recruiter. I don't want to give scary news, but I think if you don't embrace it, you're much more at risk than those that do. And I think that's the advice that I would probably provide.

Jackie Dube: Yeah. And we talk about it. One, There's. There's a behavioral science piece to it too, is that you can understand your employees who are uncomfortable with change and focus on those folks, and maybe you have to handhold them a little bit more.

Nick Day: Tell us a little about the service.

Jackie Dube: Sure. And so one. One of our differentiators, which I didn't talk much about, is we also have a job assessment where stakeholders, a recruiter, a hiring manager, some of the hiring team would take an assessment about the actual job and it'll come out with a behavioral profile that would ideally fit in that role. It'd be motivated by what the job is expected to do. Uh, one of the benefits of that is that you could have a key stakeholder and the hiring manager fill out the job assessment and realize before you even interview for a job that you're. You're misaligned on what you want that job to do. So someone could. Your stakeholders, I want them to own this and really drive the strategy and the hiring Managers I just want them to go execute on my plan. And so if you don't undercover that in the beginning of the hiring process you're interviewing for two different people. So yeah that's just one piece we haven't spoken about. But the Predictive index has three years of science backed behavioral science that helps organizations to hire the right people for the right role. So with a job assessment, behavioral assessment, aligning those. We also have a cognitive assessment that helps align people with their amount of complexity that a job requires. And then once they're hired we have a uh module which is called Inspire which inspires people to perform. It goes through manager relationship guide, one to one meetings, how people work together. We have team design so you can organizations can put their strategies into our platform and it'll allow you to plot your everyone on that team and say is this the right team to drive that strategy? Especially if you're hiring someone. Where are we misaligned? Do we need someone that's more, more process and data driven or someone who's more innovative on our team to align with that strategy. And then we also have uh whole diagnose with pulse surveys and OSP or engagement surveys. But uh, one of the things we're most excited about is we have uh, we are rolling out as a PI assistant which is an AI assistant that sits on top of our platform that you can interact with in a way where I could, you know it would know me and it would know Nick and say how we work better with Nick today or Nick and I are having this, this, this disagreement and I need to influence Nick to on my decision. Help me now that you know how Nick is driven. Help me have this difficult conversation with Nick. So really engaging with the assistant in a moment of need on how to work better together.

Nick Day: Nice. Nice. Of course Asians can work 24 7. Right. So they can be learning all the time. Which is one of the benefits of incorporating. If we get the opportunity to do. We've got open HR L and default in just a moment. I guess my last question before we do so would be if you could leave our listeners with one piece of practical advice around behavioral science. How they can utilise that maybe to help their organization or their employees find more meaning in their work. What would that, what the first step or first action perhaps that they can take to take their first step in that journey.

Jackie Dube: Sure. I think that identifying where your pain points are in your organization is the first step. Is there an organizational trust issue? Do you have a culture issue and really understanding where you want your organization to or where you see an opportunity to improve and then using the behavioral science to address that. So are you having a turnover problem? Maybe you need to use some behavioral science in your hiring to make sure that you're hiring the right people. Are people misengaged or are there lack of trust within the organization? Maybe you don't even know. So maybe you need to start with a, uh, an engagement survey. So really, like, where are your pain points? And I would say start there. It's really hard, I think, to just roll it out all together and try to address everything, but really take small steps steps and address your biggest opportunities for pain.

Nick Day: You've given us three great strategies there. Let me start with poll surveys. We talked about J curves and understanding where employees are. I'm finishing now with the pain points. I hope that'll help our listeners take that first step into the unknown. Maybe. And there'll obviously be a link for those interested to Predictive Index's website. In my show notes, you can go straight through depending where you get your content. So you can find that in the show notes for today's episode. Something we always do with our guests is we're going to open the HR LND vault. So we've got four sort of short, sharp questions for you to reflect upon. The first one is this. What is one leadership belief you held earlier in your career that has you completely changed your mind about probably that

Jackie Dube: culture's driven from the top?

Nick Day: Oh, yeah, Nice. Okay, I like that. That's a new. That's. I like that. Okay. If we had more time, I would explore that in more detail for sure. I'll let our listeners think about that one and ponder what is the best piece of leadership advice you've ever been given?

Jackie Dube: To listen. And I think listening in the deepest sense of not reacting and not, uh, really listening and biting your tongue. Young because it sometimes you think you're listening, but you're reacting to really absorbing. And listening is really important.

Nick Day: Yeah, I love that. It goes hand in hand with another skill I think is underutilized or soft skill, which is curiosity. And you know, if you're curious and you listen, someone said to me, I think it was Troy on this show from Franklin Covey who said that. Nick, are you an elephant or a hippo? Hippos have great mouths, love to be loud. Elephants have great ears. And it's not saying one is right or the other, but it's sometimes looking at workforce in an, uh, inoffensive way of just saying being a Hippo, an elephant. In that moment, it just allows us to stop and reflect and go, yeah, okay, I need to be an elephant right now. That always stuck with me. And I learned that on this show. If you could give one piece of advice to HR leaders preparing an organization for the future of work, what would that be?

Jackie Dube: Don't be afraid of AI. I really think that it's something that we all need to embrace.

Nick Day: I love that. And this might be similar to my last question for you today, which is if listeners remember just one idea from today's conversation, what would you hope it would be?

Jackie Dube: I would say that we're all, we are all motivated by different things and understanding people and how they're driven is a key to, I think, engagement, productivity, connection, all the things we talked about.

Nick Day: Yeah, amazing. That brings us360 and you mentioned the four drivers right at the start of today's show and you gave some great examples. So thank you ever so much Jackie for bringing this to life for us today on the HR LND podcast. I hope our listeners have got loads to take away. I'm going to give the links so they can find out more about the work that you do. There's also going to be a link in the show notes to the predicted index, behavior, behavioral science insights. So something worth checking out if you have an opportunity to look at that. And there's a great blog on the site so loads of resources, it's worth visiting whether or not you want to take the service on. I really would recommend having a look. This is as you said to years of science backed data that can really help your workforces and your objectives in hr. Check it out. It's worth having a look. And of course you want to connect with Jackie. I'll put the links in there to do so as well. Just leaves me to say a huge thank you once more to Jackie Du for joining me today on the HR podcast. I've been your host. My name is Nick Day, CEO at JJ Recruitment. If you do have any HR talent requirements, please do get in touch with my team. The links will also be in the show notes. Otherwise I'll leave you all to please Leave us a review if you can subscribe and follow us. And yeah, we look forward to being in the next episode real soon on the future of work and on human resources. Stay curious, stay human and keep developing. Great people Jackie. Thank you.

Jackie Dube: Thanks Nick.

Nick Day: Deal is the all in one platform to hire, manage and pay your global team. Giving HR one place to work instead of juggling disconnected systems from onboarding to offboarding. Deal brings payroll, compliance and even IT access together across, uh, hundred and sixty and fifty countries. All on infrastructure they built themselves. That means HR isn't wrestling with logins, tabs and tools all day long. Book your demo today at, uh, del.com nickdayhr. That's deal. Com nickdayhr.