The Evolution of the Workforce with Janine Yancey

[00:00:00] Hide your kids, lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts.

[00:00:11] Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheez Podcast!

[00:00:19] Oh, yeah. What's up everybody? We're at Transform in Las Vegas Day 2. This is Steve Winn's favorite podcast, aka the Chad and Cheez Podcast.

[00:00:34] I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, the carrot to my top Chad Sowash is in the house as we welcome Janine Yancey.

[00:00:43] Janine!

[00:00:44] CEO and founder of M Train, Coltrane, Night Train. No, just M Train.

[00:00:50] That is the best.

[00:00:51] Janine, welcome. Welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:54] Thank you. Glad to be here.

[00:00:55] Excellent. Our listeners probably don't know who you or the company are. Give them the elevator pitch about you and what you do.

[00:01:02] Okay. So Janine Yancey, I started my career as an employment lawyer doing a lot of litigation and investigations and resolving a lot of conflict in organizations.

[00:01:13] And that gave me the motivation to start M Train because I was kind of like the workplace therapist.

[00:01:19] I'd see patterns of behavior over and over and over again and tell the managers, hey, this is what's going to happen.

[00:01:26] And they were always surprised.

[00:01:27] Gave me the motivation to get the hell out of my job.

[00:01:30] To get the hell out of my job.

[00:01:31] That's what I heard. After all of that, get the hell out of my job.

[00:01:36] No, to resolve conflict. I call it navigating around the rocks rather than going right into the rocks.

[00:01:42] Okay.

[00:01:43] So M Train specifically does what to support that vision?

[00:01:47] So M Train is online learning in ethics, respect and inclusion.

[00:01:53] So it covers a lot of your compliance topics as well as DEI topics, as well as really just kind of talent topics.

[00:02:00] And what we're doing, I think that's unique, is we're approaching this from a skills-based perspective.

[00:02:06] So all of our learning is developing skills and we're measuring skills.

[00:02:12] So we're embedding our learning experience with probing questions.

[00:02:17] The type of questions you'd get like in an annual climate survey.

[00:02:20] So think about like, you know, annual climate survey embedded into a learning experience and we'll show a scene of what good looks like.

[00:02:27] And we'll ask them, hey, what does your manager do? This, that, the other thing.

[00:02:32] And we're getting employee sentiment at scale that we can slice and dice to see where in the organization you've got some vulnerabilities, where conflict is brewing.

[00:02:43] And then plug the holes with education. Is that what I'm hearing?

[00:02:46] Education and management actions. So like your HR business partner team is usually way understaffed, especially these days after the last year of layoffs.

[00:02:55] So they're exhausted. So instead of boiling the ocean, we're giving them visibility into which teams they need to go and talk to.

[00:03:03] And you were founded when?

[00:03:05] So 2006 is when I stopped my day job.

[00:03:09] You've been at this for a while.

[00:03:10] So I've been out this for a long time. You know, 500 plus clients ranging in size from Chevron, IKEA, Cisco, Workday, down to a lot of the organizations we see here at Transform.

[00:03:23] I love this because this is the story you don't hear about. This isn't the startup that's raised a ton of money as a, you know, whatever founder.

[00:03:30] I mean, you guys have organically put in the work.

[00:03:33] Yes.

[00:03:34] Put in the time.

[00:03:35] How big is the organization?

[00:03:36] There's about 50 of us. So we're small. But what's interesting is we're all practitioners.

[00:03:42] So clients dig us because we've been in their shoes.

[00:03:47] We know how to solve their problems.

[00:03:48] We speak their language.

[00:03:49] We speak their language and we know how to solve their problems.

[00:03:51] Well, and you know what the real problems are because you actually walked in their shoes where a lot of other vendors are coming in from outside saying they think they know what the problem is.

[00:04:01] And they really have no clue.

[00:04:02] Exactly right. And Chad, they're trying to solve for less important things.

[00:04:07] So there are companies here that are spending most of their investment on how to make this as cheap and easy as possible, which is great.

[00:04:18] But they're actually not solving the big problems.

[00:04:21] And there's so much increasing regulation like our largest clients, their people are spending eight to ten hours a year in compliance training.

[00:04:32] Right.

[00:04:33] Yeah.

[00:04:34] If you just quantify that expense of their hourly rate at scale, that's millions of dollars to get nothing but a completion report.

[00:04:43] Like that's stupid.

[00:04:44] So to use this program as a talent strategy, as a listening strategy, and you're actually getting operational benefits is what makes the CFOs happy.

[00:04:55] There's a lot of competition out there upscaling learning some big players.

[00:05:01] How do you guys obviously a nimbler cheaper?

[00:05:05] Like what's the differentiator for you guys when you're at a sales call with so many big competitors with with deep pockets?

[00:05:12] We're in the market of the really the online compliance niche.

[00:05:16] So there's actually just a handful of companies that we compete against.

[00:05:22] So you don't consider LinkedIn Learning or others like that competitors?

[00:05:26] Or do you?

[00:05:27] No, so we partner.

[00:05:28] LinkedIn is a client.

[00:05:29] We partner with LinkedIn Learning.

[00:05:31] Udemy is a client.

[00:05:32] We partner with Udemy.

[00:05:33] Udemy business is right here.

[00:05:34] So you provide content to them.

[00:05:36] What does partnership mean?

[00:05:37] Oh, well, so first of all, they're clients of us.

[00:05:40] So they roll out our programs to their whole workforce.

[00:05:44] LinkedIn Learning.

[00:05:45] We're going to be supplying a M train course within LinkedIn Learning this year.

[00:05:51] How many courses do you have in M train?

[00:05:53] Oh, we probably have about 100 or so.

[00:05:56] OK, so one of many that you could prospectively be rolling out into LinkedIn, because I think this is a perspective partnership and revenue generator from a distribution company.

[00:06:06] From a distribution standpoint through a platform like LinkedIn.

[00:06:09] Yes, highly used platform.

[00:06:11] Yes, they need content.

[00:06:13] They want content.

[00:06:14] Well, and currently they do not do compliance.

[00:06:16] So that has been a strategic product decision they made.

[00:06:20] Yeah, I talked to their head of product last year, which is why you're perfect for this connection because they don't have to do it.

[00:06:26] Well, at some point they will do it.

[00:06:28] The answer from their head of product was it's not a question of if it's just when and who are they going to acquire to make sure that they have?

[00:06:35] I was going to say it sounds like they could just write a check and be done with it.

[00:06:38] I mean, that makes it a lot easier.

[00:06:39] That's a big smile on Janine's face right there.

[00:06:41] I'm not saying anything.

[00:06:42] Quick question around skills.

[00:06:44] So how do you actually analyze the jobs to understand what skills are in those jobs in the first place?

[00:06:52] We have created a skills matrix for every employee in the workforce to be their best selves.

[00:06:59] Right.

[00:07:00] So some of those skills are specific to people leaders.

[00:07:03] OK.

[00:07:04] So for example, going back to my kind of prior life as a lawyer, most of the harassment and discrimination cases stem from managers who are not skilled at managing their power.

[00:07:18] So meaning they will say something, they will do something, and they can't think through how that's going to show up to a direct report.

[00:07:26] And then they're just always shocked when they get this bias claim.

[00:07:29] Well, they haven't been trained to manage, so they suck at management.

[00:07:33] The heart of management training is managing your power.

[00:07:35] That's one of the courses we're going to be doing for LinkedIn.

[00:07:37] Gotcha.

[00:07:38] You know, Cisco is also a client.

[00:07:40] They want us to develop for all of their people leaders the inclusive manager series this year because there's just some tried and true skills you need to build to get better outcomes.

[00:07:53] Yeah. Yeah. Like diplomacy.

[00:07:55] Diplomacy means different things to different people.

[00:07:57] That's the hard part.

[00:07:58] Most things mean different things to different people.

[00:08:00] Right.

[00:08:01] You talked a little before we push record about comparing a team, a sports team, in this case basketball, to corporate where chemistry isn't there so the results don't happen.

[00:08:12] Tell that story to our listeners and how your product sort of manages or helps get chemistry.

[00:08:17] People that can actually work together in unison because I think that's a little bit of a secret sauce if you can do that in an organization.

[00:08:24] We have all these data analytics tools out on the market and none of them measure chemistry, the social dynamics within the organization and within teams.

[00:08:34] And when you think about the relevance of that, that's why I gave the example of a basketball team.

[00:08:39] So I'm from Sacramento. Kings are our basketball team.

[00:08:43] They had years and years of losing, losing, losing despite investing in top players, top talent.

[00:08:50] But if the talent doesn't play well together, you're not going to get the win.

[00:08:55] So you need a tool and you need a strategy to one, make visible and measure the chemistry that's going on in the organization.

[00:09:03] Like which teams have people that are spinning out because it's nails on a chalkboard for what their teammates saying?

[00:09:09] Like how do we figure that out?

[00:09:11] Yeah.

[00:09:12] And that's what we're doing here at M-Train.

[00:09:13] So we're doing it coming in.

[00:09:15] The beachhead is always, yes, it's a compliance course.

[00:09:18] Our preventing harassment course is our flagship course.

[00:09:22] But we're using it really as a talent strategy.

[00:09:24] It's like how do we play well together?

[00:09:27] But chemistry, you hire who you hire and that's what you get in.

[00:09:32] And if they don't know what the chemistry is before they actually land on the team, that's going to be hard.

[00:09:38] Right. So from a management standpoint, you can try to manage that as a team.

[00:09:43] But if you're hiring individuals who just don't have the right chemistry together, that's going to be hard.

[00:09:49] So I disagree, Chad, because yes, and you can create your own True North values and skills within a team, within an organization.

[00:10:02] So like one of our skills and our matrix is curiosity, starting with curiosity.

[00:10:08] So if you've got two people, they don't mix.

[00:10:11] It's like, all right, how do we start our interactions with curiosity?

[00:10:15] How can we inspire folks to wonder, hey, what makes that other person tick?

[00:10:22] And if that's embedded in just how we do business, it's kind of our operating guide.

[00:10:28] Everyone starts tracking to the same set of really kind of skills.

[00:10:33] That's how I think about it.

[00:10:35] I mean, you could say chemistry is a bias because people interview and like, oh, well, there's chemistry because we're alike.

[00:10:42] We're the same kind of person.

[00:10:44] And it can be a real landmine that organizations need to be aware of.

[00:10:50] Well, we've done that research.

[00:10:51] I mean, a lot of places have done that research and it is it is a bias.

[00:10:55] You are launching a new product here at the conference.

[00:10:58] Talk about that.

[00:10:59] Yes. So we're launching our second iteration of our people analytics tools after getting a year's worth of client feedback on how to make it more useful, more actionable.

[00:11:12] And so these are 150 million employee responses about the interactions on their team, how their managers perform, how their coworkers perform, how their leaders perform and show up.

[00:11:24] We're also giving a risk heat map.

[00:11:27] And we're starting to integrate with case management systems so that employee relations teams see proactively before there's an acclaim where there's pockets of conflict.

[00:11:38] Help me visualize that a heat map for what?

[00:11:41] So you're seeing you can slice and dice by business unit, by geography, by some of the more senior leaders.

[00:11:48] OK, right. Because we don't go down to the individual.

[00:11:51] You can see where people are saying like the respect score is low.

[00:11:56] Right. And so if you unravel the respect score, we've got four skills.

[00:12:01] It's managing our own biases.

[00:12:03] That's at the individual level.

[00:12:05] It's in-group out-group dynamics at the team level.

[00:12:08] Coworkers.

[00:12:09] A lot of harassment cases stem from in-group out-group dynamics.

[00:12:13] It's managing your power at the people leader level.

[00:12:16] Yep.

[00:12:17] And then it's ensuring equity at the organizational level.

[00:12:19] So we're asking questions at each of those four points and fleshing out how people are seeing and experiencing those dynamics.

[00:12:30] And so if we see a business unit where the whole team is rating that manager as they suck at managing power, OK.

[00:12:39] Defcon 2 or whatever.

[00:12:41] Exactly. Let's send an HR business partner to that manager.

[00:12:44] Interesting.

[00:12:45] So for example, we have American Eagle as one of our clients.

[00:12:49] I only wear American Eagle by the way.

[00:12:51] Well, my kids do.

[00:12:52] So we can slice and dice by district because that's how they're organized.

[00:12:59] They're DMs.

[00:13:00] We were looking over their analytics, which they actually presented to their board, the audit committee of their board.

[00:13:05] And we can see that while they were generally pretty healthy, District 52 was under 50 percent in their benchmark score.

[00:13:13] And I said, oh, so who's the DM at 52?

[00:13:15] And they all kind of chuckled.

[00:13:17] They're like, oh, yeah, we get it.

[00:13:19] That guy.

[00:13:20] It's Chad.

[00:13:21] That guy.

[00:13:22] I suspect if you talk to all of our HR friends in this conference, they anecdotally know what's going on.

[00:13:30] Their gut tells them, right?

[00:13:31] Yeah.

[00:13:32] But they don't have anything to help them have those conversations either with the executives or frankly the managers because they don't have enough street cred.

[00:13:41] You as a mature company has seen the rise of AI before there was AI.

[00:13:48] So you've seen it as it was born, particularly with the data that you're using, I assume.

[00:13:53] Yes.

[00:13:54] What's your perspective on AI?

[00:13:56] What it's meant to your business and what you think it means ultimately for the world of work?

[00:14:01] You know, I think it's going to allow us to do more with less, you know, less work, less headcount.

[00:14:08] Less people.

[00:14:09] Yep.

[00:14:10] Say it.

[00:14:11] She said it.

[00:14:12] It is.

[00:14:13] I mean, so we're a small, we're a small world, but we're already doing more with less.

[00:14:16] I mean, we don't need a QA engineer because we've got Cypress, which is AI.

[00:14:20] You've got Jasper, which is AI for marketing blogs.

[00:14:23] I mean, it is what it is.

[00:14:25] It is what it is.

[00:14:26] I'm speaking as an employer right now, not a CEO, not as an HR practitioner.

[00:14:32] Having said that, I think we need to have confidence that with every, you know, kind

[00:14:38] of paradigm shift in our society, doors close and new doors open.

[00:14:42] Right?

[00:14:43] And I do think that just in the last, let's just even call it the last 10 years,

[00:14:49] as we see Gen Z increasingly coming into the organization, they're changing the world of

[00:14:55] work in really good ways.

[00:14:57] I mean, there's some challenges too.

[00:14:59] Yeah.

[00:15:00] I think most Gen Xers would never dream of having the guts to ask for.

[00:15:04] They're just blithely demanding it.

[00:15:06] It's like, okay, all right.

[00:15:08] So I think overall we're trending in the right direction.

[00:15:11] I think the next probably five years are going to be rocky, but we'll ultimately

[00:15:17] get to a good path.

[00:15:18] Okay.

[00:15:19] So rocky, how?

[00:15:20] Just because there's a different thought process for, you know, the Gen Z is coming

[00:15:26] in versus, you know, what were you Sue?

[00:15:28] I think rocky because Gen Zs were generally raised by Gen Xers and us Gen Xers didn't

[00:15:37] have parents that were very present.

[00:15:40] So we overcompensated with our kids and we're seeing what that looks like in the

[00:15:46] workplace.

[00:15:47] It's like, oh shoot.

[00:15:48] So they have a bit of an awakening.

[00:15:52] They're going to have an awakening when life's not so easy.

[00:15:56] Life's not so easy.

[00:15:57] The work ethic is not necessarily what I think it needs to be.

[00:16:01] Well, yeah, but okay.

[00:16:03] So we were programmed to live to work, right?

[00:16:08] Yes.

[00:16:09] And their program worked to live.

[00:16:11] Right.

[00:16:12] Which is to be quite frank, I think a hell of a lot smarter, right?

[00:16:15] We're not on this earth to sit around and sit behind a desk and do a job.

[00:16:19] Chad agreed.

[00:16:20] But you make your choices.

[00:16:22] So you can't say I'm going to work to live, but I also want to be CEO in a week.

[00:16:29] Well, I don't think they want to be.

[00:16:32] That's the problem.

[00:16:33] They want the six figure.

[00:16:35] That's only because they're paying $100,000 to go through college when boomers paid

[00:16:41] like 15.

[00:16:42] I mean, the dynamics to be able to say what you said around rocky and the change.

[00:16:47] It should be.

[00:16:48] It's the evolution of the workforce.

[00:16:50] Right.

[00:16:51] And that's where your company and your product should also evolve and flow.

[00:16:55] You shouldn't hope that Gen Z magically becomes Gen X because that shouldn't going

[00:17:00] to happen.

[00:17:01] No, it shouldn't happen.

[00:17:02] I'm not saying it should because like, listen, we didn't have anyone showing us

[00:17:06] the way we did not.

[00:17:07] So we did the best we could do.

[00:17:09] Now, Gen Z has had a whole lot of attention care.

[00:17:14] So they should be the best generation yet.

[00:17:18] We hope we can always hope.

[00:17:19] You mentioned the world of work five years ahead.

[00:17:22] I want to talk about your business.

[00:17:24] Yes, you raised eight million dollars a few years ago.

[00:17:27] You're a mature company.

[00:17:28] What do you want to be when you grow up?

[00:17:30] So our goal is to change the world of compliance.

[00:17:34] So I always say laws follow people.

[00:17:37] People don't follow laws.

[00:17:39] And what I mean by that is when people screw up, guess what?

[00:17:43] A law gets written.

[00:17:44] So instead of optimizing for let's understand this law, screw that.

[00:17:50] Let's understand people.

[00:17:51] Yeah.

[00:17:52] Let's understand why Boeing after spending a million dollars a year for 20 years on

[00:17:56] their compliance program still has jets falling down from the sky.

[00:18:00] Okay.

[00:18:01] Compliance issues.

[00:18:02] They're not compliance issues.

[00:18:03] They're people issues.

[00:18:04] So I want to change the whole world of compliance and get it back to focused

[00:18:10] on people and people's decision making and their skills.

[00:18:14] Because the laws and the lawyers being a lawyer myself, sorry, we screwed it all up.

[00:18:19] We did.

[00:18:20] All I heard was get a hundred million dollar check from LinkedIn.

[00:18:23] That's all I heard in that.

[00:18:24] Sorry.

[00:18:25] Janine Yancey everybody CEO and founder at M Train.

[00:18:29] Janine for our listeners who want to connect with you or learn more about the

[00:18:33] company.

[00:18:34] Where do you send them?

[00:18:35] Oh, please visit us online at mtrain.com.

[00:18:37] That's E M T R A I N dot com.

[00:18:40] She's good.

[00:18:41] Cold train baby.

[00:18:42] Cold train.

[00:18:43] Cold train, night train, M train.

[00:18:45] We out.

[00:18:46] We out.

[00:18:47] Thank you for listening to what's it called?

[00:18:50] A podcast.

[00:18:51] The Chad.

[00:18:52] The cheese.

[00:18:53] Brilliant.

[00:18:54] They talk about recruiting.

[00:18:56] They talk about technology.

[00:18:58] But most of all, they talk about nothing.

[00:19:01] Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know.

[00:19:04] And yet you're listening.

[00:19:05] It's incredible.

[00:19:06] And not one word about cheese.

[00:19:09] Not one.

[00:19:10] Cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper Jack, Swiss.

[00:19:14] So many cheeses and not one word.

[00:19:18] So weird.

[00:19:19] Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[00:19:28] That way you won't miss an episode.

[00:19:31] And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com.

[00:19:37] Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese.

[00:19:42] It's so weird.

[00:19:43] We out.