HR, We Have a Problem - How to redirect your career path and transition beyond retirement.

[00:00:00] I retired the first time at 70. What I learned was I was a failure at it. And so the second time, I did a lot more thinking about what really happens when you leave paid work. And for me, what I did is I redirected. It's like, I'm not going to die. I'm not going to go away. I have skills. I have passion. I have purpose.

[00:00:30] I have, you know, things I want to learn and things I want to share. And so my notion of what I did this time is that I redirected. You know, I just pivoted from a paid job as head of research at Vizier to an unpaid but well-supported job as someone. And I decided to focus my research on how do people successfully pivot? You know, how do they redirect towards

[00:00:59] retirement? Welcome to the HR Huddle Podcast presented by Sapient Insights Group, the ultimate resource for all things HR. It's time to get in the huddle.

[00:01:21] Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the HR Huddle. I'm your host, Terri Zipper, CEO and managing partner at Sapient Insights Group. And I'm back for another exciting episode of HR We Have a Problem. This is the show where we break down the big and most relevant HR issues of the day. We help you make sense of what they mean. And we talk about what you might do about them.

[00:01:45] Joining me today is Lexi Martin. I'm not sure Lexi needs much of an introduction. She's kind of an HR tech legend and inspired a lot of people, particularly women, to go into tech, I think. She also originated what we know today as the annual HR system survey report that Sapient Insights now puts out every year. Welcome, Lexi. It's great to have you. Oh, thank you so much. It's always interesting to hear what people think of me.

[00:02:13] Yeah, I had no idea what I was going to say about your history because it's a very long and storied one. So I thought some of it will come out during the conversation. But I have to imagine that a lot of the people listening know who you are. And I think you're on your second retirement at this point and still working pretty intently, obviously, and working on some things that are your labor of love.

[00:02:42] So what I'd love to do is do a little bit of a history lesson on some of your prior work and lessons learned and, you know, kind of what's new and different. And then spend as much time as we can on what you're doing today, because I think that story is fascinating. Does that sound like a good plan to you? Sounds like a great plan. All right, then let's get into the huddle.

[00:03:05] So, well, I was serious when I said you inspired a lot of people to engage with and get interested in HR tech. How did that happen for you? Like, how did you get into HR tech? So first of all, I've actually been in tech all of my career. I started working as a programmer in the payroll applications. Hey, that was my first foray into HR was also.

[00:03:35] At the Bank of America in 1967, I was one of the first women, you know, like less than five of us out of 100. And I've just been in tech all of my career, you know, either working for a tech company or doing tech work. And, you know, so I think I was the first woman at just about every job I had for the first 20 years of my career. Destiny. Destiny. Yeah.

[00:04:05] But, you know, real HR tech, I think I really got into that in the early 90s with a foray as a software company that was developing self-service solutions, you know, kind of before their times. Yeah. And we did these, I have a funny story.

[00:04:28] We did these touchscreen kiosks for people to record their benefits and their address change and, you know, even more than that. And we called it easy. Employee access system. E-A-S-Y. And this is probably inappropriate so you can take it out later, but I remember giving a presentation about it.

[00:04:51] And I was talking about this touchscreen kiosk and I said, touch me, I'm easy. Totally inappropriate. Did you have an audience, like a live audience or? Well, I mean, it was a group of people that was working with. Oh, my God. And so then we made these pictures that said easy, you know, touch me.

[00:05:19] The easy button before it's time, right? Exactly. Oh, my God. I mean, that's when I really got into HR tech per se, although I'd worked in it as a practitioner. Well, and you did some early things on this. So the annual HR system survey, which I have to imagine, and I'm hopeful that all of our listeners are familiar with, they may or not be familiar with kind of the history of it.

[00:05:48] So I was hoping you could give us a little bit of a history lesson. I mean, it's over a quarter of a century of research at this point. And you kind of started this thing. Yeah, I did start it. And the history is that I went to work for a company called the Hunter Group that morphed into various other companies, Renaissance, Cedar, Sierra Cedar. There might have even been some others in there.

[00:06:14] But and I was asked to join them because of the work I'd been doing in self-service, because as a consulting company doing system implementation, they were starting to hear from customers that they wanted to explore self-service. But they didn't really know, you know, how to do it. So they hired me. And because I had been doing research for, I don't know, 10, 12 years by that time, I went from being a practitioner to a researcher.

[00:06:44] I said, well, let's go talk to companies that had been doing self-service for at least a year. So the first year of the, quote, survey was actually a survey of 25 companies done by interviews. And it was all these organizations like Southern California, Edison, Chevron, that had had some form of self-service, typically call center, maybe kiosk. There wasn't much web, you know, self-service.

[00:07:12] There were green screen type of, you know, solutions. Yeah. So it was companies that had just been doing self-service for a year. So that was the first year, 25 companies. The second year, we did a survey, but it was a paper survey that we sent out. People returned it to us and we had to key it in. Oh, my gosh. And Irem helped us that year. And we had 150 responses.

[00:07:38] And then thereafter, we turned to a, you know, a self-service kind of kiosk because we were talking a lot about self-service. And I had, I grew to have 90 distributors, you know, so from Irem, we added other associations, we added vendors. And I know Stacy, you know, has, you know, probably added dozens and dozens more.

[00:08:07] But yeah, we went online in 2000. Oh, wow. Yeah, I don't think I even knew some of that history. So that was, that was fun. And it was, it was because, you know, we really kind of needed to understand what was, what was going on. And I think one of my early lessons learned from the survey that I think continues to today is that change management is like the critical success factor.

[00:08:38] And, you know, and involving people that are going to be impacted by a change is critical. And, you know, what I see needing to happen now is that it needs to be really fast. Because, you know, the emerging technologies that are coming on board now are having such a big, fast impact. So we have to be really agile, but, but we really need to involve more people.

[00:09:03] And, you know, understand what the impact is going to be and where the, where the technology can, can have pushback. And yeah. So change management is critical. Change management is critical. And, you know, I, it's so easy to believe that just because you put the new tool in front of people, they'll actually use it. And I think that's, I see that happening a lot today with organizations who don't even know that they have capabilities, right?

[00:09:32] They're actually, you know, asking us to help them find capabilities. And it's like, well, but your system already does that, right? So there's just so much change happening in these tools and technologies. And the fact that people aren't, don't know it just points to the fact that change management is, is a real challenge, not just for the organizations, but for vendors who. Right. You know.

[00:09:56] I think what you're saying, though, brings up another issue of any new technology and that's integration. You know, you said that people don't necessarily know what they have. And sometimes what they find is they have multiple solutions. And so those multiple solutions, you know, need to be brought together. I think that's another trend. I think we're starting to see a trend towards centralization again.

[00:10:22] But the integration, you know, continues to be kind of a challenge for any new technology that's brought in. I think it's a real impediment. And it really requires a lot of collaboration, which is part of change management. You know, you need to involve finance if you want to bring in financial figures to juxtapose to, you know, your HR information so that you know what's the impact of what you're doing with your people on finances. What's the reach for non-investment?

[00:10:51] You know, you need to work with IT. So integration continues to be an issue. You know, the technologies that I'm excited about continue to be people analytics. I saw that early on, maybe as early as 2000. It wasn't called people analytics. Then it was workforce analytics.

[00:11:11] And then over the years of running the survey, I found that it was the one technology that when adopted, organizations with it outperformed those without it. And while that was all correlation analysis, you know, we eventually were able to do some, you know, kind of causal analysis. People analytics actually improved financial performance. So I think that's a real key technology. But I'm starting to see some consolidation of those solutions now, too.

[00:11:41] Yeah. Yeah. Well, you spent some time at Visier. And I'm sure. I was the first time. And then, you know, I knew I was. Visionary voices. Bold breakthroughs. This is Shally's Alley, where top recruiting minds spill their best kept secrets live every Friday at 1 p.m. Eastern. Raw, unfiltered conversations on sourcing, hiring, and the future of talent, where we ask the tough questions no one else will. Tune in and level up.

[00:12:11] And I turned the survey over to Stacey. I was asked to find and hire my replacement, and it was Stacey. She's done awesome. Great job. Great, fabulous job, you know, beyond anybody's wildest dreams. But I knew that I wasn't finished. You know, I was 70. I took a year off and traveled. I took care of my husband, who had some health issues.

[00:12:38] And I did a project with using, you know, the benchmark data. And then one day, I picked up the phone and called somebody I knew at Visier, and I said, you know, I've got some time. I'd like to do some work. Have you got anything for me? And he hired me on the spot.

[00:12:58] And so I headed research for seven years at Visier, you know, looking at the both the impact of people analytics on the corporation and its people, as well as, you know, looking into how to implement it effectively. Yeah, we're just doing so much with analytics today.

[00:13:19] I don't know if you're a sports fan, but I was just reading this morning that Amazon, the Amazon analytics that go along with the NFL, they have all these sensors in the shoulder pads of the football players and in the ball. And they're, they're like measuring all these statistics of everything that's happening on the field, like every movement, every play. I thought that was just crazy. Yeah.

[00:13:46] My husband is a neuropsych guy and has done brain research all of his career. And recently, he's been bringing in physiological measures to, you know, add to the cognitive measurement work that he and his company did. And it's, it's fascinating, you know, the integration now of physiological and. Yeah.

[00:14:13] We're finally going to get to do something with all that data. Right. I think it's finally going to happen. I, I remember we got like RFID tags and the, all these things at the store. And I was like, how is the grocery out of these things? Like, isn't that, wasn't that supposed to be the whole idea behind these, these, these things that, you know, they'd never run out of stuff and they're always out of stuff.

[00:14:36] But, you know, now there's just, there's so much data and there, and now there's real ability to try to put that data together and measure it and tell a story with it. So I'm hoping. Yes. Yeah. It's pretty. Before we switch gears, is there anything that you see missing in HR tag?

[00:14:55] Like, or, or what, you know, do you have some predictions for the area that you see coming down the road, obviously beyond the, what's going on now with AI? Yeah. I think, I think we're probably in for another round of deep focus on being more cost efficient. And so I think we're going to see more centralization of solutions.

[00:15:20] We're already seeing it would benefit solutions, you know, to a single common employee experience. I think, you know, we'll probably see consolidation of systems, you know, just a real focus on, on cost efficiencies. I think, you know, I'm, I'm seeing something else that's probably going to happen.

[00:15:42] Back in 2008, with the financial downturn, implosion, you know, recruiting solutions kind of went away and companies focused on learning solutions. And while recruiting solutions are still being, you know, acquired and deployed, I think that's going to stop. And I think we're going to see more organizations focusing on learning and, you know, developing their, their, their internal employee skills.

[00:16:11] You know, I think we're probably going to see a downturn in hiring. So, you know, keep the good that you have and make sure that they're, they're well skilled. So I think we're going to see that coming up. Yeah. It's not a very popular prediction, but I think that's going to happen. Well, I mean, it's a really good point. And, you know, you can plug in all the AI you want, but unless people understand it and know how to use it. And I think that people are hungry for that.

[00:16:40] Like they're, they're using chat GPT and Claude and all these other technologies on their own. And they're probably using them for work related stuff, right? Whether the company wants them to or not. But I think there's going to be a big learning curve. People are going to want to know how to do more. And I feel like there's one big thing that's missing, even though you have your chat GPT asked me a question.

[00:17:07] There's not a real good interface for the general population right now to interact with it. Similar to my iPhone 16. You know, I do, you know, ask it a question and said, would you like me to use chat GPT? It's like, it's as easy as it comes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still think there's more to come there, though.

[00:17:32] I'm kind of thinking about the, the old days of going to the, you know, when we first went to the World Wide Web, right? I think there's some turning there coming. So we'll see. And probably consolidation, you know, of solutions being used throughout the organization. Yeah. Cost efficiency. Yeah. Even now you're not really recognizing sometimes when you're talking to AI, right? You don't know, you're probably pretty sure you're not talking to a real person, but you may not even know that.

[00:18:02] I am a real person. Me too. Me too. So you, let's switch gears because I am, you know, really interested in the work that you've been doing. Obviously research is near and dear to you. And the thing that you've been doing a lot of research on since your second retirement is. No, no, no. Okay. Wait a minute. Let me stop there. I retired the first time at 70.

[00:18:29] What I learned was I was a failure at it. Okay. And so the second time I did a lot more thinking about what really happens, you know, when you leave paid work. And for me, what I did is I redirected. Okay. It's like, I'm not going to die. I'm not going to go away. You know, I have skills. I have passion. I have purpose.

[00:18:55] I have, you know, things I want to learn and things I want to share. And so my notion of what I did this time is that I redirected. You know, I just pivoted from a paid job as head of research at Vizier to an unpaid but well-supported job as someone. And I decided to focus on how do people.

[00:19:22] And I decided to focus my research on how do people successfully pivot? About, you know, how people make successful pivots.

[00:19:51] So that's what I'm doing now. And I have a website called redirecting.work. And I have some ideas about, you know, based on my history about what really works effectively as well as what I'm hearing from others. And if you want, I'll share a few ideas. Yeah, I'd love to hear them because I've read through some of the stuff on your website. And it's just, it's fascinating, right?

[00:20:18] And actually, you know, people don't really talk a lot about retirement anymore. They do. They talk about what's next, right? And, you know, I think the word retirement is kind of, you know, maybe outlifts some of the usefulness. Retire retirement. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, people sometimes have to need to work longer, you know, and hopefully they can find work that is personally satisfying.

[00:20:47] But, you know, people like you and me, when we leave the workforce, you know, still have things to say and things to contribute. And so, you know, finding what really works for you, I think, is important to a lot of people. And that's what I've been finding in talking to people.

[00:21:08] And I think what I learned, and I learned this in my early 50s, my husband and I did this seminar a couple of weekends called Life Launch. And it's now called Life Forward. But it was developed by Frederick Hudson. And he is an adult development person. And he had this framework.

[00:21:35] And imagine a pipe, a pie with four quadrants. And it was that people were either in a job that they loved and they were passionate about and really going for it. Or they'd get laid off, burned out, stressed out. And they would just go back and get another job. You know, and they just keep kind of going back and forth between having a job, losing a job, being burned out.

[00:22:02] And his idea was that instead you need to take time out to cocoon and to get clear on what's your purpose, what are your values, what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses. And from that, explore your options and go back into a job, a life that you can be really committed to. And when I did it, I actually, you know, I've been doing research and I committed to it.

[00:22:31] It's like I stopped hating aspects of it and I just committed to it. And, you know, decided to love it as opposed to not always caring for parts of it. And, you know, I think that that for me was a real turning point in my life. So that cocooning is really invaluable for me. And I've got a lot of information about cocooning on my website. And I think that really can help a lot of people at this point.

[00:22:58] I think there's another thing that, you know, this is my thing. Every time I've made a change, I clean. It's like, and this has served me really well in my life. What it does is it creates a space for the new to come in. You know, it creates a vacuum. And like, I wanted to learn some new things this time around.

[00:23:27] And so, you know, I've created a space to not only do things that I used to do, but new things as well. And I think during a time of cleansing, the other thing that can go on is that you really recognize yourself for what you have accomplished. And, you know, what may continue to be valuable. I have to tell you, Terry, I still have 15 boxes of survey summaries.

[00:23:56] Oh, my God. You know, the questionnaire and the report and the presentation for the 15 years that I managed it. Oh, wow. It's like, I can't give it up. But I've also consolidated stuff into one box that's just the survey report. So I may get rid of those 15 boxes at some point. I remember seeing some of those sessions at HR Tech. So, yeah, I can understand why you want to hang on to them.

[00:24:27] So, you know, a couple of other foundations, I think, for redirecting are financial stability. You know, really, my husband and I have always lived within our means. And one of the stories I tell on my website by Amy Wilson, she really makes that clear. You know, live within your means. You know, maybe even if I talked to someone yesterday who retired at 50.

[00:24:57] And in order to do that, she set herself up by moving to, you know, away from the Bay Area to a place that would be less expensive. So, you know, sometimes you have to make financial decisions that enable you to be able to take time out to cocoon and not have to feel frantic about getting your next job.

[00:25:21] You know, so really set yourself up so that you're financially stable and, you know, don't have to stress over having a new job. So that's a big one, because I know I just saw a statistic the other day. Is it something like 60% of the U.S. population couldn't come up with $1,000 for emergency? And so that just, that hurts my heart, you know? It hurts my heart too.

[00:25:48] So, you know, it needs at least six months, maybe even a year. Yeah. I have talked to so many people in certain, you know, aspects of our field that it's really hard to find new jobs in. And, you know, they're going through their health pretty darn fast.

[00:26:04] If I could give anybody advice on that, it's save early and often, because I remember when I first got my first professional job, nobody talked to me about the financial side of it. Like, I was just a saver by nature. Yeah. But I missed out on some opportunities to get into, like, early 401ks and stuff, because I didn't really understand it. And I didn't think I had enough money to put into it, right? And that was a huge miss.

[00:26:34] That was a huge miss, yeah. Invest in that and, you know, work for a company that matches it. And, yeah, no, really good point. You know, having financial stability to whether, you know, what can go on in your life is really critical. You know, along the same lines, I think, is being healthy. I've always been, my husband's a lifetime athlete.

[00:27:00] And, you know, I used to play tennis and run in my, you know, 30s. And I've always been pretty healthy. And even now, I do Pilates three times a week. And a lot of the people that I've spoken with, you know, health is a catalyst for a change in some cases. Unfortunately, sometimes people get unhealthy and they have to make a change. But I think, you know, get as healthy as you can. You know, exercise, lose weight, you know, get your mind healthy.

[00:27:31] Do whatever it takes to also weather, you know, what could be going on in this day and age. So, you know, and I talked to a lot of women in their early 50s where they really paid attention to, you know, weathering menopause well. So emotional and physical well-being is really a critical foundation for any kind of redirection. It really is. It's a really good point.

[00:27:57] I always hearken everything back to when you're sitting on the airplane and they remind you to put the mask on yourself first. Before you help anybody else. And we don't do that a lot in daily life. I mean, we're always, you know, wanting to help the, you know, our kids or our friends or our family or and not thinking about, hey, if I'm not healthy, I can't do anything for them.

[00:28:22] And so, yeah, I that that's a that's a life lesson for me. I yeah, I love to just stay in shape and stay focused on keeping myself in a good place. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think along the same lines are healthy relationships.

[00:28:40] You know, I've always had a kitchen cabinet when I ran this survey and it was people that I trusted and trusted me that I could go to and ask, you know, is this question going to work? And, you know, can you try it out? And, you know, I would get lots of advice from my kitchen cabinet with some people that you probably know.

[00:29:03] And I've kept a kitchen cabinet in my life, you know, people that are trusted advisors, friends, colleagues to me. So, you know, I think, you know, during COVID, maybe we lost track of our network. I think we need to come back and be in community and make sure that our network is, you know, really well served by us so that, you know, you have the support of those if you if you need it.

[00:29:32] Now, you know, there's there's one final key learning that I'm getting from the interviews that I've been doing. It's a really interesting one. You know, I guess I was always known as a thought leader and thought leadership has always been about a an expert, you know, espousing. What I'm hearing now is that thought leadership is being done in community. And I suspect that you guys are doing this.

[00:30:01] You have a, you know, a group of people that are learning with you. And I think that's really important. It's like, you know, being an expert isn't enough anymore. You have to do it in community with others. And, you know, I think we need to learn with others and, you know, kind of share our wisdom. Yeah. We're always learning and trying to learn.

[00:30:27] It's interesting, you know, in coaching and helping a lot of younger consultants coming in to, you know, do the kind of work that we do and just how nervous they get about not knowing something. And it's like, you're always going to know something. Like, they're not expecting you to know everything, right? It's your perspective and how the things that you bring to the table about the overall topic.

[00:30:54] You don't have to know everything to be a good consultant or to be a good leader or to, you know, to be the leader of a department or a product or a solution. You just have to be. Yeah. Obviously, you have to know about it, but you don't have to be the smartest person in the room. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's huge.

[00:31:16] Was there anything you noticed in your, because you interviewed a lot of different people from a lot of different areas and probably 50-50 when it comes to men versus women. And was there any differences you saw in terms of the redirection from the woman's perspective versus the man's or, you know, was it pretty similar across the board? Age difference, anything from a generational perspective?

[00:31:44] I mean, obviously, you're living proof that it's never too late to make a change. You can make a change whenever. You don't have to, you know, I hear people all the time say, oh, I'm in my 40s and it's too late for me. And it's like, what? You're what? It's never too late to make a change. I started out by just talking to people who'd retired, but I have done all ages.

[00:32:09] So I have, for each of the sections in the research that I've done, I have analyzed results by gender and by age cohorts. And it's interesting. I will tell you, I also use ChatGPT to support me. And she's very biased and I have to constantly correct it.

[00:32:32] For example, women often pivot because of lack of inclusion and bro culture and issues. ChatGPT wouldn't pay attention to that until I said, look at this example, this example, this example, this example. And it apologized to me and said, I will correct myself.

[00:32:58] And it gave me another look at what I was, what I knew I had been hearing. So, you know, be careful with ChatGPT. I'm going to publish the differences between what I saw before I did the correction. But, you know, women seem to pivot more for wanting to have more satisfying work. You know, something within what they currently are doing is not satisfying them.

[00:33:28] Either, you know, management direction is inconsistent with their values and they want to do something that is more congruent with who they are. So that's one big difference I see. Yeah.

[00:33:41] In my head, I'm imagining a lot of times there because I know for me it would be I want to make a difference or I'm not learning anymore or I want to make a difference or I want to take what I know to something else to help them change what they're doing. Right. Yeah. You know, it's not there. There's a section of the research on purpose. And there's something about that.

[00:34:09] I think women kind of have a more clear sense of purpose and wanting to be a value. So I think I think, you know, your own reaction is spot on right here. And it's not that men don't have a sense of purpose. It's just not as, you know, kind of focused on wanting to be of service, be a value to others.

[00:34:38] One of the things I learned with, you know, questioning people on purpose was, you know, there's some anxiety about that. And I heard this podcast by, I think it was Robert Leiter, that if you don't have a purpose that you're really clear on, use give and grow as your purpose.

[00:35:05] You know, give back and grow. You know, it's like if you just think about those two words, you know, what is it that you as an individual can give to others that can be of value? And then how can you continuously grow, continuously learn and grow? And it's like it's a good purpose statement to try on if you don't have one of your own. It is a good it's a good purpose statement.

[00:35:32] It's also a good I was going to ask you if there was, you know, we talked about cocooning. We talked about sort of thinking about where you want to go, making sure you've got financial security, keeping yourself healthy because you're not going to do anybody any good if you're not. With relationships. Yeah. And and so, you know, those are some of the I think the big learnings from today.

[00:35:57] But I was going to ask you if there was, you know, any anything else that you would leave with the audience that especially if they're considering redirecting and doing something different that give and grow is a really good one. But is there anything else that that you that you'd want to leave the audience with?

[00:36:16] Yeah, I mean, again, I just I want to go back to this idea that I've been hearing kind of more and more lately, that people are understanding that they need to learn and grow and give in community. So, yeah. You're not in this alone. You don't have to do this alone. Yeah, I agree. And I think people are looking for that.

[00:36:44] I think that's, you know, even my mom, she's she'll be 90 this year. She's gone back to going to a gym for, you know, older people to because she wants the community. Right. She wants to be with people more often than not. And so any way that she can do that and, you know, it's just things we have to decide to do. Like, where can we go to get that community?

[00:37:11] And don't close yourself off from those. You know, I mean, some of us work out in gyms, you know. Yeah. Be open to conversations. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Thank you. This has been great.

[00:37:29] I think, you know, for anybody who's thinking about their next move, whether it's more financially stable or less financially stable, should be thinking about what they heard today and what they should do to plan for that. Because sometimes we don't know. The redirection happens without us doing anything. Right. And that's happening a lot. We're seeing to you. Yeah. Yeah. So you may be redirected.

[00:37:57] You may be forced to be redirected. So the sooner you think about, you know, what might happen at that point, I think, you know, plan. Yeah. So maybe just, you know, paying attention to some of the ideas that I've posted about cocooning, you know, and having a clarity on your purpose and your values and your strengths, you know, because if you're forced to make a pivot, it's better to be prepared.

[00:38:27] It's much better to be prepared. Chance favors the prepared mind, right? Absolutely. Tell us where they can find you, Lexi, online. Like what's your website? My website is redirecting.work and it's organized into, you know, cocooning foundations and then the stories. And there's lots of stories there. So I continue to tell stories. If you want your story told, get in touch with me.

[00:38:56] And I'm Lexi Martin on LinkedIn. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been great. And I know people will come check that out. I want to remind everybody that the annual HR Systems Survey Report is out there, but also coming soon will be the 27th annual. So get ready to take the next round of survey.

[00:39:22] And be sure to listen to Stacy and Cliff while they spill the tea on HR tech. That'll be coming up in the opposite weeks of my podcast. I want to thank our producers, Brand Method Media Group, Kelly Kelly, and our marketing team, Summer and Cindy, who do a fantastic job of getting this out every week. And I want to thank you for tuning in. That's all the time we have for this episode of HR We Have a Problem.

[00:39:48] If you enjoyed it, I hope you subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app or leave us a review. Drop us a line. Schedule a chat on the website. We'd love to hear more about what you want to hear about. We will be back in two weeks with another episode of HR We Have a Problem. Thanks, everybody.