Workvivo: Employee Experience, Engagement, and Open Communication with Gidi Pridor

[00:00:00] We usually see numbers that are off the charts, 80-90% of actual employees, and this is a tool that is rolled out to every employee, not just to a few, that is using Workvivo on a regular basis. And I'm talking companies like Dollar General, 200,000 people using the app.

[00:00:19] And Virgin, but not only one Virgin, 40 Virgin companies from Virgin Media to Mobile to Atlantic to Galactic that are using the same platform they call Virgin Family. Oh my goodness, bad touching, harassment, sex, violence, fraud, threats, all things that could have been avoided.

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[00:01:08] Really delicious, just deliver, always in full-time. Now download and order. GILBIS, 7th of July, 20 Euro order value, no selected partners and products, the AGB is valid. Hey, this is William Tinkoff and Ryan Leary. You are listening and watching the Use Case Podcast.

[00:01:26] Today we have Gideon and it's short for Gideon. So we're going to be talking a lot about him and his software. And so let's just jump right into it. Gideon, would you do us a favor and introduce yourself? Sure thing. Thanks, William. Hi, Ryan.

[00:01:43] My name is Gideon Predor. You actually pronounced that right. That was very surprising. So yeah, yeah. 12 points. I had marketing for a company called WorkVivo. We are a startup in the employee experience internal communication space.

[00:02:01] We have been acquired last year by Zoom that everybody knows and I'll be happy to talk a little bit about what is an employee experience platform, which is pretty bit buzzword. But what we mean when we say it.

[00:02:15] Why I think that this is probably the most competitive platformization that is happening in SAS today. And what does it mean that we're now a part of Zoom? What could people leaders expect in terms of how their tech stack is about to change? Yeah.

[00:02:33] Well, so Gideon, why don't we start there? Why don't we start with how did WorkVivo become part of Zoom? What does that mean for practitioners and TA leaders that are in the space that are looking for engagement? Sure.

[00:02:47] So everybody knows Zoom and since the pandemic, Zoom became a household name. So it became, it commoditized remote collaboration, big companies, small companies, even my mother micromanages our family with Zoom, right? You know what? I love the way you put that micromanages. You know, I saw it.

[00:03:13] I think it was a you might have thrown a joke at me the other day, William about Skype. You would do whatever it sounded. I was watching as one of the news local news stations.

[00:03:26] They were using Skype as their medium for their interview and I was blown away. I haven't heard Skype in years. Yeah. Just yesterday. Yeah. And some research into this. It's because they're a Microsoft shop and so they use Teams and they use Skype. They use Skype.

[00:03:47] It's the same thing if it's a Cisco shop and so you see. Doesn't make it any better. No, no, no, no. I haven't been on Skype in 100 years but that's why you see it. Yeah. That makes sense.

[00:04:01] So Ryan, remember like back like in the day when you asked me about like us in Zoom? Yeah. So I'm going to continue with my answer now. I'm just going to get back to my answer now. So he's micromanaging us over Zoom. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:04:15] So Zoom commoditized I would say like remote collaboration. It became a thing that every company, even traditional companies were using but I think that with time it was pretty clear. I think we all felt that as we were going more remote and even people that were always

[00:04:30] outside of the office 70% that work in the front line and the cashier in the front desk, expectations changed a lot in terms of what employees, the relationships between employees and work, people looking for more meaning.

[00:04:44] A lot of stuff I'll talk about later but the human aspect was taking a hit. It was pretty clear that like we're from Zoom to Zoom to Zoom and suddenly I forgot to eat lunch. Everybody could relate to that right? Yep.

[00:04:55] And these things, subtle things that happen in an office environment, kudos, recognition and you employees say hi to the team of town hall meeting, CEO feeling the pulse of the organization, being that culture agent.

[00:05:07] All of these things, they didn't really have a tool, a technology to run them. We sort of did that face to face. They were taking a hit. We all felt that. And then we started to read about the great resignation and then quite quitting and

[00:05:18] a lot of buzzwords that mean the same thing, people connect less. Unlike before it became a big, big deal with big business implications and you know that there are researchers, a lot of them that show that this is the number

[00:05:29] one concern, number one before productivity and quality of output of CEOs, especially in companies going hybrid. They feel it, they feel it diminishing. What's the first thing CEOs are writing about in their biography? Successful founders, culture team taking a hit and work we was built as technology

[00:05:48] around primarily employee engagement and open communications, more democratized community led communications, which was a story we had to sell before 2020. And it became very, very, very sought after since 2020 when this became an urgent problem

[00:06:09] to solve and CEOs were trying to sort of like build their airplane or their parachute on the way down, you know? And we saw a big, big spike in demand. We started to sell not only to very advanced companies but to the most traditional brands

[00:06:25] that you could imagine, right? Fortune 500 companies and all that. And we became that main employee app that every employee uses from the office, remote to the front line in order to engage, to connect, to give somebody a kudos, to read about

[00:06:42] company news, to collaborate in a community space, a lot of use cases. And then because it was the tool that people actually use, unlike most 99% of what we have in the HR stack that nobody uses. Especially intranets and stuff like that, right? Even that word intranet.

[00:06:59] So people use it and we got more and more demand to add functionality. I wanted to be the intranet. I wanted to be my surveys. I wanted to be my brainstorming. I want integrations to my HCM so my front line people in that fast food chain would

[00:07:16] see their shift management or see their pay stuff. And we added a lot of it but we ended in a place today that it's a very wide platform that we call an employee experience platform. Our customers call their digital heart.

[00:07:26] And if most other tools like intranets are built like functionality, a portal and then maybe it has a like button, we have this whole backwards. We've built this as an engagement, democratized communication community platform that really developed in order to do a lot of these other

[00:07:47] functionalities that for example, an intranet would do. We have a lot of companies, some of the biggest brands that run on WorkVivo as their main employee app today. So two things. Give us a timeline. When did you first start with the company? When was the acquisition?

[00:08:05] So that's one thing too. Can you sell it outside of Zoom? Meaning can someone that's a non-Zoom customer if you will, can they buy you? Yes. So first of all, yes, of course we have two main... First of all it's important to like notice that this...

[00:08:25] You asked why Zoom bought us? How did this happen? Zoom thrives to be the main communication collaboration platform. And they launched Zoom, we launched Zoom workplace two weeks ago, which is so much beyond video meetings. It has chat and it has whiteboards and it has a contact center

[00:08:50] and Zoom documents and a lot of stuff. And that's mainly in order to do work together, right? Adding that human aspect that is more asynchronous, that is longer living content, that doesn't disappear in a chat, where you could actually manage culture digitally,

[00:09:11] that is a big, big chunk of the digital employee experience and needs to be addressed technologically. It's by nature softer, so it's not in the realm of collaboration, but it was a perfect match to this idea of Zoom in building that like full platform

[00:09:26] that covers all aspects of communication, collaboration, employee engagement in one company that is going like digital first. So today you have two variants of the value proposition. First of all, you could buy WorkVivo as standalone. We are still running WorkVivo as a brand by Zoom.

[00:09:47] And most of our customers will be using Microsoft and Google, but they'd be using mainly WorkVivo for everything that has to do with employee communication, engagement, replacing their old intranet and almost in every case, all or most instances of SharePoint, which is a tool

[00:10:06] even if it comes free sometimes, nobody uses that. They didn't use it when they paid for it. Yeah. And then on the other side, you have a pass and zoom together where you buy one platform that is not an integration.

[00:10:19] It's a native part of a Zoom workplace platform where you could toggle in one client between sending you a chat, going into WorkVivo and giving you a recognition or putting it in a longer lasting brainstorm in a community space that is attached to that.

[00:10:37] Doing a town hall and Zoom webinars, but inside WorkVivo and seeing the engagement that people could chime in, right? Jumping on a meeting. So that toggling between synchronous and asynchronous, collaboration and engagement. People in the office and people that are remote,

[00:10:54] culture and productivity, all that type of communication happening in one tool for the admin it becomes sort of like an operating system for communication and engagement in one place. For the user, it becomes that one employee app where they could work together, but they could also be together

[00:11:12] and feel a part of something which is so, so important today and needs to be addressed by technology even if it feels softer and fluffier. As I said before, number one challenge. Yeah. So I love everything you're saying here

[00:11:26] because I think this is all obviously needed very much. What's the adoption like when a company brings this solution in? Are the employees reluctant to get off of, for example, Google Docs and share, you know, and Google Docs and tools like that

[00:11:47] and coming into workplace or in the WorkVivo? So, you know, probably you interview people, Ryan, and they always tell you, good question, right? So I actually mean this is a good question. Very good question. I'm saying your other question was this question was terrible. You're on everything else.

[00:12:08] It was horrible. It was horrible. Yeah. This is the thing, Gidey, when someone says, you know, I really like your haircut. What they were really saying to you is I hated your haircut before. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's what they mean, right? You just talked to me yesterday.

[00:12:23] You didn't like it yesterday. You know, you know, guys, there is this thing. I'm originally like a from Israel. I grew up in Israel and they're like, I always say, tell the story that there is a word interesting when you're and I spend time, I live in Europe.

[00:12:38] I spent time in the States in the States. A lot of times they say interesting, interesting, interesting. And what they really mean is I'm not listening to a word you're saying. I don't. Interesting. But then you go to the UK and the person is politely saying, interesting, interesting.

[00:12:55] What they mean is I'm listening to every word, but this is utterly the least interesting thing that I've ever heard in my life. This is not interesting. They go to Israel and the guy says, interesting. What he means is this is generally interesting. Yeah.

[00:13:10] I'm starting to feel like I have to watch what I say right now. 100%. 100%. This is really interesting. Continue. Right. Back to the question. Adoption is the most important thing. I am shocked seeing all these RFPs and I see hundreds of them. It's amazing people.

[00:13:29] I understand companies, they understand the problem. The CEO, one of the things that happened since 2021, I would say in bigger like with bigger customers, prospects, the CEO is involved because they're the number one power user that wants to connect to the people not through a newsletter

[00:13:48] and a million middleman, but like a modern age politician, even if it's not accurate. They just want to like do that on their phone and feel the pulse and be able to do that, especially like modern CEOs.

[00:13:59] So they're in and still it goes to IT and you get this huge RFP that you need to checkmark. Most of these are features that people just like develop, you know, vendors are developing in order to make the RFP, you know, and adoption is not there.

[00:14:16] Now, adoption is more important than the entire RFP. Are people actually fricking using this thing? How would you ever build impact if nobody's using this thing? And it bedazzles me, but it's being sort of outsourced to IT. They don't want to involve HR, People's Manager,

[00:14:35] Comps Manager because why would they, they don't want to get, they don't want them to confuse them with their emotions and feelings, right? So they're doing an IT like acquisition and you get this huge Excel and it doesn't even mention the adoption.

[00:14:48] So to me, adoption is more important than the entire RFP. And if there's one thing you need to do is prove to me as a vendor, prove to me that people are using it not because you choose two customers. I want to test it.

[00:15:00] I'll go to five of your customers and I will see how much they are in love with you and how much people are using it and show me the number like, you know what, like they like in the greatest movie in all time, show me the money.

[00:15:10] Show me the money. Jerry McGuire. Jerry. Jerry, yeah. And then like, so that's I think for us, it's the biggest thing that's driving the roadmap. The biggest thing we're measuring is adoption and actual daily usage. We usually see numbers that are off the charts, 80, 90% of actual employees

[00:15:28] and this is a tool that is rolled out to every employee, not just to a few, that is using WorkVivo on a regular basis. And I'm talking companies like Dollar General, 200,000 people using, you know, using the, using the app and Virgin,

[00:15:43] but not only one Virgin, 40 Virgin companies, you know, from Virgin Media to Mobile to Atlantic to Galactic, that are using the same platform. They call it Virgin Family in the store at home in the office. They're sharing the same brand or sharing the same Richard Branson

[00:16:02] that is a user on the platform. So you get that like layer and adoption is very, very high. So first of all, that is our number one like when they ask me, what is your differentiator? And in one word, it's adoption.

[00:16:15] And then the other message is that A, it's not just an IT decision anymore and B, nothing is more important than adoption. Do that, prove that and then go to the RFP. So GDI hates software categories and have for a long time.

[00:16:35] However, a lot of budgets are built in Excel as you well know. So in, in, in particular HR budgets are built in Excel. Where do people categorize you? Where do people put you? Where do they, a lot of budget from?

[00:16:53] So it's not easy when you're disrupting a category, but what we're seeing very clearly today is categories and budgets merging, consolidating in a big way. It's very hard to manage. You used to have two, we call it employee experience because I'm sure and I see it every day.

[00:17:15] The digital employee experience is a big, big SAS category that is being created. I think it's the most significant SAS category at least around workplace that is being created right now. What is it merging? And I see it in the budget.

[00:17:27] It's not like theory, intranets, internal communications, point tools like newsletters and stuff like that that platform like ours just like does employee insight slash listening slash employee voice. Surveys. Yes, surveys and stuff like that is in there as well. Engagement towards the recognition. Engagement recognition software.

[00:17:48] So think about it. You have 1400 work tech tools and you have two main centers of gravity. You have the HCMs like Workday that is about streamlining work, but it's mainly operational. You have recruiting, you have payroll, you have core HR.

[00:18:05] And on the other side, you have a big, big sun like center of gravity around productivity with productivity suites, collaboration suites and a lot of stuff that like connect to that. So they would do a lot of it and integrate to other stuff.

[00:18:19] It's like two suns that a lot of tools gravitate towards in the middle. You have a lot of tools around engagement, communication, everything that I just said that are point tools that sort of integrate to anything. All of them are struggling with adoption because if you have

[00:18:34] a recognition software who would be there in order to recognize if you have a survey platform or even like a Qualtrics or something like that at the end, where do you send the email? What do you send the questions in an email?

[00:18:48] So it becomes like an email tool in a way. Right? They're not there waiting to be asked the question. It's in their inbox. So, right. So these things are consolidating or what we're seeing is platformization

[00:19:03] is one thing that does most of it will never do all of it integrates into the other suites to the HCMs to the productivity and collaboration suites but in two, three years. I think it won't be about which employee experience if you have

[00:19:19] an employee experience platform, it'll be about which one you have just like when Hubs for the Marketo started. You had landing page generator. You had like email automation. You had a lot of stuff and then a few years after it became a marketing

[00:19:34] automation platform, fast forward three more years. Which one do you have? Are you on Marketo? Are you on Hubs? What happens to markets that's happening here and it's huge. Let's talk about your customer base. Who is your ideal customer here? We talk in enterprise.

[00:19:51] We talk in SMB everyone in between. Where are we going with this? So like a lot of companies. When he said RFP, that's code for enterprise. Yes, it's true. We started like more we started a lot more SMB and we thought

[00:20:06] that we're going to be one of these like SaaS companies that sells the SaaS companies. What we discovered is they need us less. So we have tech companies but they have a lot of tools and then you compete with you compete with chat. You compete with this.

[00:20:18] Are you competing with all those little ones? Yeah. Yes. And the or maybe they're big ones but you're running on slack and then even if I think it's hyperactive and overused and distracting for stuff that should be longer lesting

[00:20:31] and not like FOMO driven, it's a cultural change that is hard to push. You have a lot of options. Our ICP is most definitely bigger companies that have a strong frontline employee base people that don't have a desk or even an email.

[00:20:46] A lot of cases in most of the cases and companies that take culture and their employer brand seriously. It could be because they're big on culture and in the cases that I mentioned, it's usually also because of the case that they're plagued with ridiculous rates of attrition

[00:21:08] right with frontline employees and it's the number one business cost in the world. It's a trillion dollar a year in the US alone. It's it's it's insane. So how do you tackle that? The only consensus between every research company in the world.

[00:21:24] Nothing yields higher ROI or impact attrition more than engagement and if you think you could influence that with everything that I mentioned before by giving you a recognition, a shout out which is a feature in our platform and William chimes in and he says actually it's not

[00:21:45] deserved Ryan didn't do a good job. I'm kidding, but he says yeah, well, and more people chime in, you know, so that thing that would happen naturally in an office is even longer lived online and it's the happiest moment that person had the whole quarter.

[00:22:02] Maybe as a developer is writing code, he's doing he's cleaning the office doesn't matter but this connecting something that you post to a company value hearing your CEO. So when you meet that person once a year, you feel that

[00:22:14] you've seen him like 20 times just like when you talk to your family on WhatsApp or FaceTime, right? So because you've seen that exactly exactly. So yeah, this is exactly like what I'm talking about. Oh my goodness. Bad touching harassment sex violence fraud threats all

[00:22:36] things that could have been avoided if you had Fama stop hiring dangerous people. Fama dot I O what's the experience like for the employee? I'm assuming we're mobile first on this or maybe not. But what is the experience like for someone at a company

[00:22:58] that they don't have an email, but they're on the road a lot. Is it mobile? Do they have access to this all the time? So yes, it's mobile first and obviously there is like a mobile and a desktop like experience because it's not just

[00:23:14] for frontline employees or a lot of companies are dedicated to that, but they would be more focused on operates streamlining operations shift management stuff like that. Which is also important would be much more about the heart the culture the engagement the communication right.

[00:23:30] So a the main delivery would be mobile, but there's a very strong like desktop experience. Yeah. And what was the rest of the question? Well, so my when you were talking about the employee getting recognition and then once a year getting to physically

[00:23:53] speak with the CEO or seeing the CEO at a company meeting my mind immediately went to those maybe hospitality for example or you know the field service people field support people where they're constantly seeing all of this stuff on their phone or immediate gratification.

[00:24:13] They're on the job site or they're waking up in the morning or they're just walking around the house on a Saturday and they've got in that recognition. They're with their family, they're with their spouse or they're you know in laws or whoever and they get a thing

[00:24:28] on their phone and it's you've been recognized for something on a Saturday and they're seeing that immediately and they're getting that feeling of gratification. That's where my mind went to and so I'm curious how does that work? What's that experience there?

[00:24:44] So first of all is an admin because for the user it's this employee app but for the admin it's sort of like an operating system for manager the digital employee experience so you have a lot of governance. Some companies don't want to democratize everything

[00:24:59] and let everybody share content right and some companies want to have less restrictions or more restrictions so you have a lot of choice in how it starts and how it develops. If they see it on the weekend, if they don't we have digital

[00:25:14] signage as well as one of the products do you want to have that as like you want to have the in your Lululemon store custom you want to see like the you know the digital signage in the stores which show you the latest and

[00:25:28] most important things that you need to get updated about so you consume it there. So it's a combination of screens. It's your mobile and whether you use it outside of work or not is a definition that you have as a user and also your admin might have.

[00:25:44] There is the desktop. There is the combination of the two and companies that have frontline and desk employees. There is a digital signage in the factory as assembly line wherever that is or even on the plane we have Ryan

[00:25:57] there it's like becoming the second largest airline in the world now. Did you know that and air crews are using work vivo they're connecting with people at HQ and all that so stuff like on the planes. Anyways, that's how you consume it but it's not like a

[00:26:17] cookie cutting machine. It's changing between company and company depending on how much they leave to the user and how much the admin actually sets the rules. So talk me off the ledge. When you bifurcated or separated productivity collaboration digital employee experience and then basically core all the

[00:26:43] plumbing etc that happens in HR my mind has been thinking about why are there three because productivity and collaboration seems to me that it could fit nicely into the experience. Meaning instead of zoom powering or you zoom powering

[00:27:09] work vivo work vivo could power zoom in a sense of productivity as a part of experience collaboration is part of experienced it seems to me that there's just a waterline of what's below the waterline is efficiency and all the

[00:27:27] things that kind of fit into that payroll core benefits all this stuff and then there's above the waterline which is experience. And so I see the world potentially incorrectly but I see the world of you could consolidate performance and collaboration into experience again talk me off the ledge

[00:27:50] tell me why that's a stupid idea. Actually, I love that. And it's like you're a visual person so you visualize it very nicely. So these things are very connected like this is actually this is why zoom about work vivo because the zoom is as a vision.

[00:28:08] Zoom doesn't want to be a meetings tool like that's not commoditized a long time ago. And so we have a lot of ways to collaborate right from whiteboards to like chat and documents that are collaborative and other stuff and a lot of these tools

[00:28:23] clips like loom that you could do inside zoom clips today and you have the Swiss Army knife that is zoom workplace platform recently launched it is amazing but then add to that everything that is above the water and they're

[00:28:36] inseparable the only choice of how to go to market is how much you want to educate the market and push enterprises especially into a place that they're not ready for so right huge markets Microsoft shop. Sometimes that's not like a discussion that you could

[00:28:51] even have with the CEO that's not what they're looking for but we still want to give them the opportunity to do something extremely transformative and change their top down communication and you know like maybe that's the land and explain land and expand you go in through

[00:29:10] there change their world. Yeah, I think for some it would be like land and expand because zoom is the pace of zoom like development is amazing they develop new products faster than normal tech companies develop features. So it's so much more than meetings today and and it's

[00:29:30] just like a challenging old productivity suites already because it's so so broad you should have another like chapter like this just about the zoom part it's amazing but like add some enterprises would want to look at a bigger transformation and have that like you know one

[00:29:49] client that you could move from everything do that town hall think about where it's going at town hall inside work vivo with all the comments and engagement work we could offer you but running on zoom webinars which is an amazingly

[00:30:04] reliable and great technology for webinars for video right and this sink this sink and async right interchanging is nobody else in the market offers that today at least not in one package solution Microsoft would have stuff but it'll be over the place and priced under one package.

[00:30:22] So that's very unique for some customers are looking for the whole shebang and we're developing that and we already have that and for a lot of other companies we're helping transform something really big without telling them you have to change your entire productivity suite. Right.

[00:30:39] So questions that practitioners should ask about buying a digital employee experience platform. So what should they be asking that possibly they're not asking right now. Number one is what Ryan said before people freaking using this yeah like will people use this prove it to me because

[00:31:01] I don't think that gets asked at all. Not a lot. It's really it's worse than that. So. Business cases that are built in work tech. All business cases any HR professional listening this is going to both love me and hate me for saying this every

[00:31:21] business case has ever been written for a piece of software in our world and HR tech or tech whatever is the math is absolutely incorrect. It is a lie every one of them because every one of them are a sumative on 100% adopted.

[00:31:39] So if you build a business case you should punish the math by at least 50% probably 75% so that you show the return much longer down the road. Yeah you'll get there but you're going to get there way further down the road but they put a jack up the math

[00:32:00] because product. Yeah because they basically say we're going to install we're going to use something old we're going to install brass ring and everyone's going to use every single feature right on the first day. That doesn't exactly it's not realistic you ask yourself

[00:32:17] like really really like if you know what you think what why do most companies buy something like this because they need to comply with the RFP and they have a task to buy a tool like this this year so they want to make

[00:32:28] the best decision or because they want to drive amazing transformation that would improve their attrition and take their employer brand perception off the charts and it's option number one. Yeah but more and more companies are not making this

[00:32:45] strictly it decision I see it by the emergence of new titles like chief experience officers right there are not about the operational 90% the chief HR care about and I see it about chief it in the emergence of chief communications officer or communication not just reporting

[00:33:05] to marketing is sort of like a necessary sidekick but to the CEO or to the chief of staff a lot of different weird structures doesn't mean something that mean the same thing because this is becoming acute and come are you seeing

[00:33:19] a correlation I'm assuming the answers yes but I want to ask it for the audience are you seeing a correlation then between customers that you work with that maybe you sold in through a chief experience officer who cares

[00:33:33] about the actual experience versus you just filled out an RFP and wanted because an RFP writer is kickass at the company. I'm not I'm not sure I said I'm supposed to but I'm going to give you the most honest answer so it's hardest to

[00:33:49] sell work vivo as I said before work people in 90% of our customers we replace your intranet we replace your newsletter we replace your internal com tools. I didn't say that but we replace hundreds of homegrown websites for different legacy campaigns built on a loop

[00:34:08] and WordPress it still need to be secured maintained off with that they're in our pages in our wiki we replace a lot of tools with like this one platform and one like app that feels very consumer and delighting and not corporate

[00:34:23] will right now when the sales process is only it they're looking for an internet and they don't want anybody to actually share information they just wanted top down. Yeah, we're not going to win or a lot of them come back

[00:34:42] to us because whatever they chose like they just stayed with whatever Microsoft Microsoft they come back to us because you don't transform organizations with Microsoft like let's call what it you don't you transform that so right right if it's just that like siloed IT and they're

[00:34:59] looking for better resource management and governance is probably not us right when we see the other sides of the to the people managers the communication the CEO and like a C-suite involved. We hardly like lose but the easiest if these are the

[00:35:16] hardest the easiest would be when it comes through comps or new titles like culture hard and play experience because they want to seek that transformation. Even sometimes the and I and stuff like that they're seeking inclusion it happens in the middle right we have probably

[00:35:32] the most important persona that is not the easiest and that's the chief HR officer. Yeah, because they are very busy very burned out in 95% worried about HR operations payroll recruiting core HR streamlining the machine right and they're also tied to the business from a revenue as well.

[00:35:57] It's a good point like what but what a great opportunity to grow around the C-suite table from sort of like a necessary evil to a right hand to the CEO to a transformation change agent because who should own people

[00:36:13] engagement culture being all in if not the person that is in charge of people I see going forward either. Chief people's officer changing like modern chief people's officer that are that have a VP of HR ops but are very

[00:36:31] focused on this and are much more strategic or a separation between a chief HR and a chief experience that is all about that. Well, you can take a lot of the efficiency stuff call it which we will and you could put that in finance and in

[00:36:50] operations right what you're talking about doesn't doesn't belong in financial operations. It's the soul the heart you know this is something that's different but it's absolutely affecting the bottom line in every single way whether or not you retain whether or not

[00:37:09] you can recruit whether or not you can get the most out of your talent etc. So I can see that world the world that you describe play out the way that you think that some of these things I've questioned this for years.

[00:37:22] Why is payroll under HR like I don't understand the concept like why why is this a great point is a great question why actually really it's an operation like 100% so you know why because it's still cold and I hate this term to think about it.

[00:37:38] We're so used to human resources that's almost in. It is absolutely a freaking resource don't never call me a tree's we should just run a whole series trees love being resources oil we should have a six week episode series on asking CHRO's what are your thoughts here.

[00:37:57] What would you get rid of yeah would you get rid of you can get rid of anything because it's the 100 year old house yeah it's also is originally built the break all of a sudden then they started adding new things a garage another second floor that's HR.

[00:38:12] That's such HR as we look at today it's 100 year old house where you walk through today you're like what in the hell is going on. It's because it just kept getting things added to it by other departments right so let me so we'll let me let me

[00:38:27] build off of that real quick so Gini is and this isn't this isn't product related it's more team related and I think work people related is it more exciting or do you see more success going into a company that's similar to what Williams describing where the

[00:38:45] organization was built with 10 bricks and it's got 80 other bricks that are half fallen half gone the other way they're on stilts that aren't a code or do you like to go into a company that is already built out they have the

[00:39:01] structure it's running like a well oil machine it just needs work vivo to be better. Where do you thrive better. I think that like I think the different leaders in work we will and zoom would give you different answers to this question but I'm like

[00:39:21] a risk taker and I like you know I'm like I know that's no glory kind of guy so give me the shit show yeah you have you have amazing companies like Virgin is inspiring you see the power of a brand connecting

[00:39:37] 40 different companies going to fricking space selling mobile phone store and and like they have so much there's it's so inspiring it's a beautiful by the way it's the most beautiful work vivo environment than anybody else ever branded so

[00:39:51] it's amazing and then we take that to the next level because suddenly digitally they could have that layer of cross company Virgin they couldn't have before they share the same Richard Branson right it's amazing yeah but so that's

[00:40:07] nice but going to an oil and gas company fortune 10 company is our biggest deal today. Right and and like they're coming to us and actually the deals are not closing in two years that's the you know specific deal closing like five months it's amazing but

[00:40:24] yeah but it's because they feel they gotta do something they feel like there's something with yeah gotta give like they've got an aging population. Yeah well the aging population there ages out quickly and they're not being replaced since emergency.

[00:40:42] Giddy I think you for me it's if you can ever time the sale with your value proposition in their sense of urgency turns out that 18 month enterprise sale can happen in months. It's like it's we didn't we weren't I remember when we started

[00:41:01] to talk about a story guy you see this so I was telling the story I'm very connected to it. I started working with work people as a consultant like after success with my previous startup and it didn't want to commit

[00:41:13] but I got sucked in because I believe in everything I'm saying for real like no no no like you know no bullshit really be like and like and like yeah I would choose the shit show because like that's what transformation actually

[00:41:28] happens and they're feeling it now because they need to invest in something you know their use cases that I didn't even imagine big enterprise in the US that have a pre onboarding problem. I didn't know that that was even a thing.

[00:41:40] We onboarding you know that's people that it's like people signed it but they're just not showing for the first day of work because they're that yeah but they want so they want to use us so they want to connect that pre on boarded

[00:41:54] employee like from the beginning to feel like a team you know we have a feature called say hi it's a feature. We always have about 20% or 30% of the roadmap that is dedicated to something that like our customers were not

[00:42:11] asking for so we can keep ahead of the market a little bit say hi is a templated like sort of canned video that it instructs you through it through questions and you you introduce yourself when you join the company you say how

[00:42:27] very simple and you couldn't watch other people say hi from the CEO to like but again it's back to the experience that person now gets the thing it's like oh cool I know somebody yeah you know now I can actually and again because there's

[00:42:40] a platform underneath it the underpinnings it's now I can communicate with that person I can do something with that person so all three of us you know all three of us were extremely old people but think about like extremely

[00:42:51] some are some are younger than others William is I think he's a baby he's a baby yeah no I mean I don't mean mentally I mean like age wise. Real age but what I mean is like a 21 year old seriously speaking now

[00:43:08] joining a company remotely somebody says his name and an all hands me what a lonely sad experience when what would you expect of course they're like a record levels of disengagement these Gen Z's and all that so stuff like

[00:43:24] that that we're able to do digitally it's a language that they speak they take talk they do all it's like it calls for it so there is a huge opportunity. I think historically even to like get a more connected workforce and ever before take these traditionally

[00:43:42] unconnected people in the frontline that were resource that shouldn't be a part of the company culture yeah we're a fast food company turn will get me once you have one center interacting with your customers. Yeah he's not about necessarily during cancer meaning is

[00:43:57] about having relationships like about getting that kudos understanding the company value is not because they're in an employee book somewhere but because we have a feature for this work we vote I posted something and in a click of

[00:44:11] a button I connected it to a company value so you learn to see these like every day and connect to them you understand what they mean. And that's the human side is like you know it's the future and people say more because they feel at home they feel

[00:44:25] like they belong to something else you they're not selling their time anymore. You can't care about customer experience if you don't care about employee experience yeah like there's a disjoining yeah aspect to that when you mentioned frontline it gets

[00:44:41] me to think these are the people talking to your customers it isn't the people in Chicago at headquarters these are people that are actually interacting serving etc. And if they're engaged then the customer experience is potentially going to be better if they're disengaged

[00:44:57] it's absolutely going to be worse I feel like I feel like every CEO that participated in undercover boss would want to purchase work vivo for 100% right because they are the frontline you're dealing with with the with the customer

[00:45:15] head on I'm going to steal that one from you this is like this is like this is like an ad. Yeah it you know when you say out of all the great stuff and I say great because one I love the name work vivo

[00:45:28] sounds happy right you outside of obviously all the great things you guys are doing where your customers love you the you mentioned a few things one was it's a consumer he said something around consumer grade or something that effect from a usage perspective right so

[00:45:44] when I'm on my phone and I'm using it I'm familiar with it this isn't going into you know a large you know Microsoft for example and having to go through the old internet drop down like it's a it's a modern system.

[00:46:01] Well I have two versus one to right. I want to use it yeah a lot of systems historically you had a gun pointed at your head you had to use it yeah but this is we're talking about something different when you talk

[00:46:14] about soul in the heart you're talking about things that you want to use as an employee is executive. You want to I think it's simpler than that even I think yeah of course when you talk about like engagement and all

[00:46:25] that then for sure but I think that like the role of the CIO is also going through huge transformation because today is the work that employees get younger no one is using tools in general because they have the only use them because they

[00:46:43] want to that means that there isn't like a guy you know that you know a guy that's been there for 50 years and he has a mustache and he's telling everybody to use this thing and everybody's applying it's not the world anymore. They won't use it.

[00:46:58] They won't use it. It reminds me the conversation we just had you either either going to have a president in jail or the president on hospice and that's the CIO. Yeah that's Neil Brunnan's Netflix special I watched it

[00:47:13] last night and he was talking about the election and he just said you know here's I don't really care it's either gonna be Trump from jail or Biden from hospice whatever that's the CIO right the CIO the old school CIO to the mustache the hospice CIO right there.

[00:47:32] There's a struggle with the CIO struggle right now outside of all of the stuff we've talked about is AI is understanding data data flow and AI is future of that that all that's new but get it we need to get you on to your next best thing.

[00:47:47] Thank you so much for coming on the show this has been absolutely amazing. So hey guys thanks a lot and if I need if I can say like one thing out of all of this I think companies and people

[00:47:59] leaders I don't I'm not saying HR leaders and communication leaders have an amazing opportunity to move up in turn from from operational or like sort of like necessary evil to transformational and critical like right hands to the CIO because that is the number one challenge that

[00:48:18] technology should address today and we need to ask herself you know the adoption what would people use how do I actually make people happier about their work creating more connections things like that and they have an amazing opportunity to really elevate their importance

[00:48:34] their role their criticality in the company with seeking change and transformation and not submitting to more of the same.