Brodie Meyer - How Yourco is using AI to close the communication gap between HR leaders and frontline employees

[00:00:08] Welcome to the HR Data Labs Podcast, now part of the Work Defined Podcast Network. Join us as we explore the vital role of compensation, strategy, data, and people analytics in navigating today's complex business world. With the resources of Work Defined, we're now bringing you deeper insights and actionable ideas from top experts. Now, here is your host, David Turetsky.

[00:00:32] Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs Podcast. I am your host, David Turetsky, and I have alongside me one of the best and brightest minds upcoming in the world of HR, HR technology, from Yourco. And we're going to talk about that a lot. Brody, how are you? I'm doing well, David. That's a fantastic intro. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Appreciate it.

[00:00:58] So, Brody, for those people who aren't familiar with you, nor your branding and your company, tell us about Yourco. Tell us about Brody Meyer. Yeah, Yourco is a SMS-based frontline employee communication and intelligence platform. I am the co-founder and CEO of Yourco. We work with mostly traditional industries.

[00:01:22] So, manufacturing, construction, transportation, hospitality, ag, retail, oil and gas. Any of these industries with a more frontline, blue-collar, gray-collar, labor-intensive type workforce we're working with. Awesome. Now, how about you? Let's talk about you. Who's Brody? Who is Brody? Who's Brody? What motivates him?

[00:01:48] Yeah. Honestly, like, I think one thing in my life that I have gotten on me far is that very much what I'm doing at work is very aligned with what I love personally. I don't think that, you know, I've had jobs and career paths in the past that, you know, haven't felt like that.

[00:02:11] But this is something that is very aligned with what I want to be doing with my life because I grew up in a more blue-collar family and grew up around a print shop, a print manufacturer in Chicago. And these are my people. Right. And I'm very interested in business history. And for me, I get to do that on a daily basis because we're working with organizations that are 100-plus years old and bringing technology to them.

[00:02:40] So, you know, you asked about me, but really me is, you know, aligning with our Yourco and our customer base. And, I mean, I also have two sons and a wife and baby Nolan, born two weeks ago. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. So you're still out sleeping. Is that what you're telling us? My wife and I have been decent at balancing. So we're both getting okay sleep.

[00:03:07] But, yeah, we have a two-and-a-half-year-old Leo who he's wild right now. He's running around the house and very, very different having a new baby in the house. So I think he's getting adjusted there. For those of us who've been through this, Brody? You will look back on these days fondly. And then you're going to say, thank goodness I'm not changing another diaper. Yes. The diapers change. They become other things. They become a car.

[00:03:37] They become a college payment. They become other things. But, dude, we're always going to be knee-deep in diaper stuff. So, yeah. New challenges to look forward to. Yes. Yes. With two kids in college and one that's in middle school, believe me, I look back fondly on those days where diapers were the biggest concern I had. That's great. That is great. So, but Brody, before we get going on our topic, which is going to be a really cool one today,

[00:04:05] tell us, what's one fun thing that no one knows about Brody Meyer? It can't be that you had a son. Yeah. I've already used that one. Oh, well. I do like to cook. I don't think people know that about, but I do really enjoy cooking. There you go. Yeah. That's awesome. And, like, particularly Italian food. My team will tell you that they know I like Italian food. We do a quarterly team dinner.

[00:04:35] Oh, that's cool. And we go out and find a restaurant in Chicago, and it's typically an Italian restaurant. But I do like to cook Italian food as well. Very cool. Well, hopefully one day I'll be able to go to Chicago. We'll meet up, and I'll buy you an Italian dinner, and we'll talk about it. That sounds fantastic. Would love it. So our topic for today is really cool. It's about how is HR using AI to close the communication gaps between HR leaders and frontline workers?

[00:05:04] And for those of us, like Brody, who have a frontline worker past, there's a big gap there. But we're going to get into that in just a minute.

[00:05:13] Hi, I'm George LaRock, and I'm looking forward to exploring the critical trends shaping the future of work and technology with you over on the WorkTech podcast. Now, this podcast is a little different.

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[00:06:00] So, Brody, we know you have a past that has frontline workers as kind of your thought process and your history. But when did it become clear to you that there was this disconnect between leadership and frontline workers, and how did this all come about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At a small scale, before we recognized it in large enterprises and that this was happening, you know, this was actually an issue across the board.

[00:06:30] My brother, before Yourco, my brother and I were building custom software together for businesses, mostly manufacturers. And one of the companies that came to us was the family printing company. My aunt runs human resources there, and she said she was having trouble communicating with the plant floor employees. She knew we built software, so she asked us if we could build something to help with that. That's cool. Yeah. And we said no. That's a great way of having family reunions. Yeah.

[00:07:00] He said no to me. But we were like, you know, we don't want to recreate the wheel. There's a lot of communication platforms out there, Slack and Teams and you name it. We had always used Slack, my brother and myself, the folks we're working with. So we said we think Slack will work really well. Let's try it out at the shop. Yeah. No, because, and from my perspective, but sorry, Bertie, but from my perspective, you know,

[00:07:28] that's assuming a lot of things about those frontline workers, like they have a device that actually is Slack compatible. Yes. And therein lies the issue. So we tried to help with the implementation and it failed. And we went and asked the employees, you know, why? And they said, we don't want to download and use a mobile app that our employer is making us. Yeah. We don't pay for unlimited data plans. They spoke different languages, mainly a Spanish speaking shop. Right.

[00:08:00] They're not giving a company email address. So ultimately the Slack tenant couldn't recognize them as part of the organization. Right. So we're like, okay, this is not going to work. And now that we understand more about the frontline worker, many of these tools aren't going to work. So we observed them further, saw that they were on their devices, on their phones, but they were texting with their family, their friends, their managers.

[00:08:28] And that's really where the, you know, kind of sparked our idea to meet employees where their attention currently is. Well, an SMS and, and texting has been around for a very long time. Almost as long as the phones have been around and using voice. Because obviously people, there are some people who couldn't use their voice and use texting. Even in the old days when there were only 10 keys on the keyboard or actually, maybe there were 12 because there was the star sign and the pound sign.

[00:08:57] We actually texted anyways because all the input sucked, you know, it actually got our message across. But now this is a new world, right? And so the new devices with these new attributes, but still many people are still using older phone technologies, right? A hundred percent. Yeah, we still have groups that have people using flip phones. Yeah.

[00:09:21] Which, which is very much going away, but we still want to make sure we can serve those folks that do have the flip phones. But it's just this, this base technology that it's like, it's like the cockroach that just continues to live on through all of these. Well, I wouldn't use cockroach necessarily because it has very bad connotations. But I think one of the reasons is cost, right? I mean, it costs very little to get a flip phone these days and you can get them. They're still being sold a lot actually. Yeah.

[00:09:50] Because they're so damn cheap. Yeah. No, a hundred percent. I meant more like the cockroach. It just won't go away. Yeah. Through anything, it just continues to persist. Brody, there was a time when a flip phone, especially the StarTAC, the Motorola StarTAC was the shit. It was literally the phone to have. It was the status symbol. I mean, it was literally like, like tiny. It was like this big and you'd flip it open and it would be like, oh, there are colors inside.

[00:10:20] It actually had color screen. How cool is that? But, but seriously, it was the coolest. In fact, there are still videos of the nineties, the roaring nineties where that was the most popular thing. And it still is today for a lot of people who just can't afford, you know, an iPhone. iPhones cost a thousand dollars now. Yep. It is ridiculous. Totally. Yeah. So. We want to meet those.

[00:10:49] No matter what someone's using, you know, we, we, we want to be able to communicate and engage with them. So. So, but, so you learned about how to engage those employees and it was through SMS. What was the major aha moment there with the SMS? Now you mentioned that they text their bosses, they're texting their families. So it just seemed logical. Use SMS. Yeah.

[00:11:15] And you know, it, it, it wasn't evidence right away that like, this was going to be the solution that was going to work super well, but we, we wanted to test it. We're like, well, this is where your employees attention is. We're going to build a product on top of this channel. And, you know, base your co functionality is a web app on top of this toll free SMS. Right. That allows HR managers, supervisors to communicate with those employees.

[00:11:44] All they're seeing is a text message from their company number, but it's translated to their preferred language. That's a, actually a key component to success in these industries. The thing though, that was like the aha moment or like, okay, this is actually super interesting and we got to, you know, maybe other folks are experiencing this pain. Was we built it as a two way platform and it, it's not only about real communication. Isn't about just talking at people.

[00:12:13] It's about also having an open channel and open dialogue to have communication back or having folks send messages in. And that's what we enabled frontline workers to do is send a, send a reply back or send a message into the company number and in their preferred language for it to then get translated back to the preferred language of management or human resources or the executives and routed to the appropriate people.

[00:12:39] That was like the, once we saw, you know, the data at the shop of this is being used every single day for many different uses. This is the backbone of communication here now. Wow. So that, that was like the magic moment of seeing the, yeah. What was the most surprising thing that you saw in terms of the communication, not just the back and forth, but what, what did you see?

[00:13:05] That it was the, the, the feedback, honestly, like the actual human feedback in those early days, like it was just a test, right? And MVP at this facility hearing HR and managers say, well, this is our preferred means of communicating because it can be super documented.

[00:13:25] But then also talking to the employees and hearing that it is their preferred means and they're talking, you know, to folks at a different scale. This is, we've heard this many, many times now, but that they're able to speak to management and they've never been able to like either comfortably by going to walk into their office or. Right. You know, just the, the, how far away they are from each other.

[00:13:52] Like it, there was just never some easy, easy way to do that. Um, so it's really cool to hear, hear that feedback from both the employers and the employees. So there's literally a measurable change in the tenor, as well as potentially even the engagement of these employees, because now they know how to get answers to questions that they've needed answers from for many, many years, but they could never find the manager.

[00:14:21] They did never access them, but now they can. Yeah. So is that what you're saying is there was a palatable or a physical even almost, or an emotional engagement change with being able to reach them? All, all the above, all the above. We we've heard stories of, so, so that was the, you know, we give it to the print company goes really well. We're like, well, this is being used a lot, but maybe other manufacturers don't experience this.

[00:14:46] So we went out and did a lot of customer discovery and found pretty quickly that this was a problem and there's going to be demand, um, which is when we actually launched your co as a standalone product. And 2021, we, we, you know, grew up in those industries from small business to mid market and large enterprises today.

[00:15:07] Um, and we've heard even at that level at more of our, you know, thousand, 2000, 10,000 employee level, we're able to maintain that magic of, that was like the, probably one of the biggest engineering challenges. How do we maintain that two way comms engagement and magic and the feeling that the end user, the frontline employee is, is getting that we saw at that small.

[00:15:34] Um, and we've heard stories of even execs and managers saying, well, I've never, you know, I've worked with this person for 10 years, but not really because I've never talked to them. And now I'm having a conversation, a dialogue with someone in a, you know, a different state, um, that they never would have otherwise. So it's facilitating a lot more conversations and probably higher quality conversations. But have you measured it?

[00:15:59] Is there like some metrics that you use to be able to say to, you know, not just ROI, but also in terms of the outcomes? Yeah. So from an engagement standpoint, like one thing that we're tracking is first of all, we want everyone to, to immediately be reachable across the organization. So we say from day one, a hundred percent are reachable.

[00:16:23] Eighty percent are two way engaged, meaning that an employee is actually communicating back or answering a poll or a survey opening on a document or a file within their text messages. On average, 90 days later, we're looking at 86% two way engagement. So, you know, not only was there not a baseline of two way engagement to start, but 90 days later, we're seeing an increase there on average. Yeah.

[00:16:52] I don't think people realize that how important it is for managers to actually have that two way conversations with employees. Employees sometimes are asking the most mundane questions and sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're really important questions and not getting answers, which they've dealt with a lot in their lives. But not getting answers is not an option.

[00:17:12] So that kind of support, especially at those percentages, is just amazing, especially given the potential reach that we're dealing with here, because we're probably talking about different time zones, much less different languages. A hundred percent. And the thing is, it's the communications are gems because the hidden gems, because who knows your customer and your product and your operations the best, but the frontline employee who's working there.

[00:17:40] Right. So it's an unlock for both sides. It really ends up being an unlock for both sides there. And so you're almost able to mine business problems more than even just employee problems. Now, they're both the same thing, obviously. But if an employee is having a problem and they're highlighting things to execs, those business problems can get taken care of and that employee can feel less stressed. And it just solves a ton of problems. Right. Yeah. Wow. That's freaking cool.

[00:18:11] So that's the other thing we've identified is like the engagement piece is like the magic and the core and what we needed to do, what we needed to figure out how to scale effectively. But the second part to like outcomes and ROI on something like us is, you know, does it does it drive retention? Does it drive productivity? Does it drive increased safety? Like those are the three things we're really trying to do from a business outcome and for the organizations we work with.

[00:18:39] And we are seeing in case studies, it is driving all three of those things. In a recent case, we've seen annual turnover in a 5,000 employee, large, large business in their manufacturing facilities drop turnover by 10 percent annually in their manufacturing facilities, which is actually like it does hit your bottom line. Like that, you know, to keep those those employees happy and engaged, it really does make a difference.

[00:19:10] But is that correlation or is that causation? Right. I mean, is the change in conversation or the change in engagement really driving that? Or is the fact that this labor market sucks and they don't want to leave and try and find a different job? So no offense, dude, but I think the reason why I ask this is an econometrician is because if you're driving 10 percent, that's a gigantic business difference. You're talking about different economics because it costs so much to not only hire and train people, but to keep them around.

[00:19:40] So if you're dealing with that, that's just great. Yeah. And I think that that's, you know, what what is is all this engagement like really enabling for for the end customer besides getting all this hidden data from the front line? And it's like it's actually keeping your people happy, keeping them engaged, keeping them at work. So and happy and happy. Yeah. Which is, you know, we'd love that. That's solving a gigantic magic problem.

[00:20:06] Let's go to the third question where I'll make up this third question because it's really on top of my mind. And I really want to hear this. We haven't really talked about AI at all. We've been talking about improving employee communications with the managers. I haven't heard any AI in that right now. What does AI do in this? And could it be getting in the way of that really cool manager and employee interaction that you were talking about before? Yeah. So that's that's part of the scale.

[00:20:33] How like how do you maintain that in a 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 employee organization? AI. And our first foray into AI really is besides the translations component, which we realize AI for is something we call frontline intelligence.

[00:20:57] Because in these larger organizations, folks are so far away from the front line and they can't manage all the day to day two way communications. That's typically managed over your co at the local level. But executives in a large corporation still want to understand what's happening.

[00:21:15] They can actually use frontline intelligence, our our AI reporting capability to surface up details, to surface up an understanding of what's happening on their front lines through their frontline employee communications. Are there any safety issues that they should be alerted? You know, there has there been a reduction in employee sentiment after a certain campaign or something that they've done where it could turn into some turnover?

[00:21:43] And so that's really where we apply AI right now is on the reporting side, helping them uncover the secrets from the frontline that we talked about a moment ago. And sentiment analysis is something that I think a lot of us in the econometrics world are familiar with. And for those people who do people analytics, they love it. It's, you know, they're bread and butter. The problem is, is that it needs to be accurate and it needs to be, it needs to have really good solid foundations.

[00:22:12] And so one of the things I wanted to go to in the next conversation is the data underlying these. How do we make sure that the data is accurate and that we're really getting what we're supposed to be getting from this? How do we keep it up to date? How do we keep it pristine? For our, what we did from a product perspective is what we call citations.

[00:22:34] So if there is something that, you know, maybe someone has a question around, why did AI produce this report the way it did? You can actually dive into citations, like actual things, communications of why it built it the way it did. That's, that's our best way to do a check on the sentiment analysis. Like, okay, well, why is it, why did employee sentiment go up or down? Let's, let's check the citations. Let's understand.

[00:23:01] So it's just, it's like a sanity check for people actually utilizing the frontline intelligence piece. And so if you were going to give advice to someone who's in a large manufacturing organization, and I'm not saying just buy your co. I'm saying, if you were going to give advice to people in manufacturing organizations or frontline worker situations, hospitals, healthcare, whatever, we're talking about restaurants. What would you say would be the way in which they should start thinking about this differently?

[00:23:29] Is it, because I think I heard you say before, meet them where they are, whether it's, you know, texting, whether it's WhatsApp. Is that, is it really the secret sauce here? Meet them where they are? Meet them where they are. Meet them where they are because it's already in their habits. It's already in their workflows. You're not needing to train them to do something new.

[00:23:50] If you're meeting folks where they actually are, then you're actually going to be able to accumulate the data to help you make well-informed decisions within your business. If you're not meeting frontline employees where they actually are and you're trying to force them to do something that is unnatural, you're not going to get the beautiful outcomes. That'd be my advice. I hope that was helpful. That's great advice, Brody. In fact, I don't know if I can say anything to that.

[00:24:17] I think we may have to end on that note right there because that's a mic drop moment. Perfect. Perfect. Brody, thank you so much for being here and telling your story and the story of Yourco. It's really awesome. And for those of us who've been in the world of frontline workers and been a frontline worker or been in that kind of industry, we know how critical their roles are in making this world work. So thank you very much for being here and telling your story. Thank you, David. It was a great experience. I really appreciate you having me on. My pleasure.

[00:24:47] And we'll have to get you back and talk a little more about the frontline workers. We love frontline workers here. Let's do it. I'm in. All right. Cool. Thank you, everybody. Take care and stay safe. Thank you for listening to the HR Data Labs podcast. Don't forget to hit subscribe and share it with your network. You can also check out the recordings on Spotify or the HR channel now on Roku and Fire TV. Thank you. Take care and stay safe. Thank you. Thank you.