Emma Bridger on building a better EX, asking the right questions and showing ROI

Kiran: 0:43

Emma, thank you so much for joining us and agreeing to do this and talk about EX. It's a it's a topic I'm really passionate about. And so it's really exciting to get your thoughts and perspectives having been in the industry and, with your experience in best practices. Looking forward to learning a lot more. So it will be good to just have a quick introduction, Emma.

‍Emma: 1:13

Thanks, Kiran. I'm really delighted to be joining you today. And really interested to hear more about Tydy as well. So it's like a fascinating project. project, a fascinating product. So just a little bit about me. I'm a classic Gen Xer. So that gives you an indication as to my age. I've been working in this field for many years now. Started life as a psychologist, behavior change psychologist as an academic in the UK. Fell into the corporate world by accident really. At the end of the nineties. Working in internal communication, employee engagement. Set up the company I was working with their first ever kind of employee survey. And I had this really weird portfolio of stuff that I was looking after with my team so we had corporate social responsibilities, it's called, but then we had well being my background was as a health psychologist. We did the survey, we did internal comms. And really all of that was about facilitating engagement and actually taking a step back from that. It was really all about helping our people to have great experiences at work. So I worked in house with big corporates for 10 years in the UK. Set up my company People Lab 14 years ago. We are employee experience and employee engagement experts. We work with companies large and small all over the world to help develop great positive experiences that unlock engagement and deliver business outcomes, business performance. So I've written a couple of books on the subject as well. One's called Employee Engagement, it's in its third edition now, and the other one is called Employee Experience by Design, and I'm currently writing the second edition of that as we speak. And latterly, we have just launched a really exciting new offer called the EX Space, and it's an online membership community. Predominantly a learning community to bring together EX practitioners, professionals and engagement practitioners, professionals from all over the world to provide them with a space to talk, share, collaborate, but also to really develop their expertise and what we think will be the gold standard of kind of development in this area. So that's just launched. We've got some really fantastic clients joining already and individuals joining. And we've got an advisory board- Bruce Daisley, who is well known all over the world for writing The Joy of Work and Fortitude was the best Sunday Times bestseller book. And he's just joined on the advisory board. He's ex Twitter as well. So really exciting things happening there. So lots going on, Kiran.

Kiran: 3:51

That's amazing. And that sounds like quite a lot as well. I'm really, again, even more excited now about this conversation and to get your perspective. If I were to ask you, what does the employee experience mean, as Emma, who's seeing, so many changes from a organization perspective. We've all seen fads come and go, I, in my 20 years, I've seen multiple terms come in, terms go. We all think it's going to stick around, but in, in your thought process today in 2023, what does employee experience mean?

Emma: 4:35

I think it's important to differentiate between the experience our employees have, right? Because that's always been around, and we get that. We know what employees are. And experience, as I said before, is something that makes you feel something. It was like, that was a great experience, or that was an experience. The tone can give a very different meaning. So employees have had and we'll always have experiences at work because we're human beings, we're going to experience our work life, whether it's good or not. I like to differentiate that from the practice, the profession of employee experience, which I think is a fairly new thing. And for me, that is about, intentionally, thinking about intentionally designing experiences that are good for our people. Now, when you do the research, there is no kind of universal definition of employee experience. And I think that's right because the experience we have at work is going to be very subjective. So the idea is of a psychologist or psychologist coming up with a kind of a here is a definitive tool to measure employee experience is nonsense because there's always going to be individual differences and subjective experiences. So I might think something was a great experience. You might not, we might go on a roller coaster together. I go, that was amazing. You might go, Oh, that was terrible. It's about how we experience something. So it's always going to be subjective. So the practice of employee experience for me, what we do as practitioners is about intentionally designing human centered experiences for our people that unlock engagement and positively impact the performance of our business. So that's in a nutshell what it means for me. It's much wider than just what HR traditionally did. It's much more than just your classic lifecycle experiences. But I, we do a lot of work with organizations where we help them figure out how they want to talk about it in their organization. So one organization with a big government, central government body in the UK, they talk about, helping people to have more good days at work. So I think we don't have to make it really complex. We can keep it dead simple. Obviously, what sits underneath that is going to be complex. How do we do that? That's a much bigger problem to solve. But the idea of what do we mean by employee experience is maybe making, how can I come to have more good days at work? I can get on board with that. I like that. There are loads of definitions out there. We share a load in the book. We share a load of the courses that we do and you can take from them what you will, but a lot of them are quite wordy and confusing. You have to read them about five times to understand what it is they're trying to say. So I just think keep it simple.

Kiran: 7:21

I was reading about your work with or rather a blog post or article about measuring employee experience at work at People Lab. So maybe you could touch upon that because you talked about the fact that, it's individual, it's very personal, but yeah how are you thinking about it when a business comes and says, how do I drive ROI for this?

Emma: 7:51

That's a brilliant question, Kiran. I love that. So as a psychologist and I started life as a research psychologist, I sit in the world of health psychology. I love measurement, right? So I'm, I'm all about measurements. But the idea that there is a definitive off the shelf way of measuring employee experience, I take issue with. And I think if we just track back to the kind of the the explosion of the employee engagement practice world concepts, 20 years ago. And I think, we're getting a lot of pushback. So it hasn't worked. Global engagement levels are still really low. But for me, I think that the problem with that was that lots of clever consultants came along and said, Hey, this is how we measure engagement. And my model's the right way. So when they're talking about Gallup Q12, I have a lot of respect for Gallup Q12, and they have a lot of science behind what they do, but Gallup Q12 versus Aon Hewitt versus Towers. They've all got different models, right? Which one's the right one? How do I know which one to pick? And there isn't a single universal definition of employee engagement. It's 50 definitions and counting. So I think that the reason that we haven't really made the progress with engagement is one, we all were measuring the wrong things. And two, we were so focused on measuring, we weren't focused on actually improving the experience, right? So let's fast forward now to where we are with employee engagement, sorry, employee experience. So we've done a load of research at People Lab using a tool that we call Best Experience, right? So we go out to organizations and we, really simple tool, we say, tell us about a time when you were having a brilliant experience at work. Tell us a quick story. You do that in five minutes and people talk that through. Over the years we've collected thousands of these stories. And as you would expect, there are what we call some kind of common themes that come out. We call them universal themes. More than you'd expect, actually. So we've run these stories, in China, in the Far East, in Australia, in America, all over Europe, pretty much everywhere around the world, apart from perhaps Antarctica. And there are a bunch of universal themes that come out. So we've analyzed it in lockdown. We had a bit of time on our hands, as many businesses did. Let's go back and analyze that data. Because what we've done is we'd always analyze the data for each individual organization, but never looked at it as a whole. And we had a hypothesis. There'll be some real commonalities and there are, and we call this our EX Lens model. So things like autonomy, things like connection, things like being appreciated, things like having the opportunity to grow at work. Everybody, no matter their background, their age, a generation, their culture, the job they do talks about these sorts of things, right? But, there's a massive but Kiran, it's only half the story, right? That data, those themes will only get you halfway there. Because in every organization we speak to, even at team level, there'll be differences, right? So let's just take some examples here. So when we did this with the British Council, who they teach English abroad. They go and do lots of cultural programs abroad. A lot of what they talked about when the universal themes all showed up, but they also talked about a'work hard, play hard' mentality, a real social aspect, a real, adventure. I never knew where I was going to be posted next. It was really exciting. A bit of risk taking in there. Who knew what was going to happen? You really get a sense of the sorts of people that work at the British Council. When you did this, when we did this with Rolls Royce in the UK, they talked about, didn't talk about any of that stuff. They talked about there was a really clear brief. I knew exactly what was expected of me. I knew I had to deliver. I was really focused on the work. It's about the work. They didn't talk about connection and socializing and not knowing where they're going to wake up and adventure. So in terms of measurements, we can get you halfway with the EX and the universal themes, but you cannot make assumptions about what'good' looks like for your people, you have to go and ask them, you have to go and find out from them. They will then tell you, and then you base your measures around that data. So then you know that you're asking the right questions, because unless you do that, you might be asking questions that you're getting poor answers to or poor performance on the answers to. And you might think we've got to fix that. Might not actually even match your people. So the Rolls Royce folks, if they were using Gallup Q12, and one of the questions is'Do you have a best friend at work?', and they might answer no. And you might think, oh, we've got to fix that. And then I go, I don't need that. It's not important for me. So you have to go find out what matters to your people. So a bit of a long winded answer to you, but hopefully that makes sense.

Kiran: 12:38

It does. I think the biggest problem that I've always seen from an employee experience perspective is forgetting about context. And the moment you don't look into context for each worker you start just broad strokes, right? And then you realize that it does not work for everyone. And maybe a small fraction it works for, but not for the rest. And so I think which is where we also talk a lot about personalization from an experience perspective. And one of the things we keep talking to our customers about is if you were to look at the consumer experience, there's so much personalization that happens, but with just a little bit of data that consumer company has about you, right? Think about Amazon or Netflix. They have data about you, but it's very limited. But if you look at the employer, they have 10x, 15x, the amount of data that, an Amazon or Netflix would ever have on you. So that personalization angle, do you think it is going to become a really big focal point in the near future? And if so, how do you see that kind of playing out from an employee experience perspective?

Emma: 14:02

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. We talk a lot about personalization. And going back to the point I made before about the EX lens, that's really about saying, don't, do not make assumptions about what your, what works for your people, and that will get you into trouble. And I think, the world of EX is so lagging behind the world of customer experience. And as you say, Amazon knows what I want to buy. Spotify can tell me what I was listening to when I was a teenager with amazing accuracy. And we like that it works and we go to work. Honestly, some of the companies that I speak to, I won't say who they are, they couldn't even tell me definitively who works for them. And I go it's not that easy to say, they haven't even figured that out. And it's this is not acceptable guys, and we're a million miles away and that gap in experience between, outside of work experience, which is getting slicker by the day, getting better by the day, because the brands we interact with know they need to get that right. And our experience at work, we turn up and, we, we worked with a company a while ago who struggled to get pay slips to people so that people didn't know how much you're getting paid. That's just, it seems crazy, but that's true. Day one, if I'm going to a physical office, my swipe card doesn't work or my tech doesn't work on day one. It's like the gap is getting bigger and that's causing a lot of dissatisfaction with employees. And I remember speaking to a customer experience experts a few years ago, we were writing that in the book actually, and she did a great piece of the book. And she said to me, I'm really jealous of EX professionals. She said, because as a CX professional, I have to work really hard to get to know my customer. I have to pay a lot of money. Yeah, maybe I've got a load of data, right? But if I want to speak to them, want to hear from them, want to get qualitative data, I've got to really work at that, pay a lot of money, make a lot of time and effort because I don't want to talk to me. She said, you've got your customers on your doorstep. So there's no excuse for not knowing your customers, your people, your employees inside out. And it really resonated with me. I thought it was such a good challenge. It's we're so lazy, not me, obviously, or you, but you know, lazy about getting to know their people. Yeah. And I'm not talking to once a year staff survey here. That's not enough. And I'm completely with you that we need to get way better at, A. Making sure we collect and use the data itself, because as you said there's loads of data out there. And there are some companies who are really good at this right. So a good friend of mine, a good work friend of mine works at Experian, as you expect, they're a data company, they are amazing at this right, but they're an outlier, there's very few that are. So I'm completely with you, we need to get way better at collecting the data, using the data. We need to bring in the experts to do that as well. I think HR are very guilty going, Oh, I can roll my sleeves up and have a go at this. Even myself as a, a trained psychologist, I would bring a data scientist in to do that. I wouldn't have a go at that. I bring an expert in to have a look at that data and tell you, pull out some key kind of insights for me. So I think, yes, I'm with you. We need to get better at collecting it and way better at using it. And we need to just get to know our people better and have conversations with them. Not the'best experience' conversation I mentioned before. Ask them what does a great experience look like for you? And I think, we talk a lot about, we do a lot of work developing behavioral employee personas. They're based on not demographics because often demographics aren't as relevant as you think they are, but they're based on needs, motivations, and behaviors of employees and where we we do that we really see the dial being moved on the experience then. It's being designed with, the personas are then used to step into the shoes of the people you're designing the experience for. So they're a great thinking tool to get that right.

Kiran: 17:55

As a communications, engagement, employee experience expert, and one of the premier ones that are out there, what are some of the biggest challenges you face when you go into customer ecosystems?

Emma: 18:11

Oh, where do I start? I think there's lots of challenges. I think there's still the world of EX is not really being taken seriously. We, very often when we go into organizations, we talk about the neuroscience because it's really compelling. So we say that this stuff isn't fluffy or nice to have. There's really compelling neuroscientific reasons to why when your people have a good experience they are, their performance is just dialed right up. Yeah. So basically when we experience positive emotions, we have a, a lovely cocktail of neurotransmitters that flood our brains and they switch on all our higher order cognitive functioning. So things like our ability to problem solve, to think creatively, to make connections with people. And that's why we see these wonderful business outcomes and we get it right with our people. This is why we see businesses perform, way more than, if we don't get it right with our people. And the opposite of this is burnout, fight or flight mode where we go to fight or flight, we're having a terrible time at work. Our brains don't know that, we're not about to to face off with a cave bear or mountain lion, they still feel that threat or danger and they shut everything down. They say, forget about solving complex problems. Forget about communicating effectively. Just focus on surviving. So why would any organization want that for its people, right? So when we get it right with our people that, the neuroscience shows that it's there. We've got a really good kind of case for change here. And yet still, when we go to organizations, we have to work really hard to convince senior stakeholders that this is the right thing to do. And then I think it's not, we're still a very immature profession and we're desperately working towards gaining that credibility. People. For example, EX data scientists, your EX designers who use design thinking, your strategists, they need to be taken a lot more seriously, rather than just simply rebranding HR as saying, well we'll just call you, an employee experience team and you can just have a go at it. Because they're very different skill sets that are needed to do this stuff. And yes, brilliant people working in the field, the people fields who absolutely can get good at this stuff, but it isn't a simple case of going, oh yeah. I'll watch a couple of Ted talks and have a go at this. We need to give people the kind of, recognize the kind of gravitas and the expertise of people who do this day in day out. In the way that you would, in customer experience, you wouldn't expect someone that's maybe been on the phones to customers answering queries, suddenly become a customer experience expert. Yes, they've got some skill capability, but let's help them get good at this stuff. But I think that's one of the key challenges is to get companies to take it seriously and invest in, in doing this right.

Kiran: 21:05

Do you think that's fundamentally because they don't know how to get an ROI out of it? Or is it because they don't know what would be the outcome of leveling up on the EX side?

Emma: 21:19

A bit of both. I think, you hear... Companies say our people are our greatest assets, and I don't like that anyway because it dehumanizes asset, calling people assets is not cool in my book. But you know, there's a lot of lip service. I think if that hope that translates to, you have to get it right with our people, but very few companies really put their money where their mouth is right. Everyone knows customers important. Without customers we've got no sales, whatever. And there's a kind of a, an acknowledgement that, oh, yeah, we need to get right with our people to get right with our customers, but still, that the investment, both in terms of, not just money, but time is given to the kind of the external stuff and not really the internal stuff. And I think that, I've worked with so many organizations over the years, got so many amazing use cases and ROI examples. An insurance company years ago we were working with and, they were, losing people left, right and center. They couldn't recruit fast enough and we, did a load of work with them and, were able to, retain people and you can put that into pounds or dollars very quickly. And they were over the moon. They really got it. But even then, even after that still is there any further investment? Oh no that project's done, let's move on to the next thing. And you go and speak to other organizations that go, yeah, but we're different. We're not like them. So there's just still this kind of real reluctance, even though you can show people the ROI, I think, unless they've been through it themselves. And I think, I'm hoping there's, that we're going to see a huge paradigm shift in the next few years to really put the emphasis on what happens inside an organization. Because we, you and I know it creates a huge competitive advantage. It's incredibly hard to replicate. People can copy your products and services. They can't copy what your people do day in day out very easily. And yet there's still this big reluctance, and I know maybe it's because we're talking a lot about, the types of people who end up in this sort of C suite, and I have huge respect for what they do. I'm not a finance person, it's not my background. But we need more people at that level who get the sort of work that you and I do, who are able to make that case at that level. So maybe we do a huge paradigm shift to really shift the emphasis to the internal focus rather than the external focus.

Kiran: 23:43

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think one of the questions I keep asking myself and I would love to get your kind of perspective on this is if we agree that, COVID gave that shot in the arm for EX and for looking internally and understanding the value of of the workforce. Do you think that's going to continue with the current state of the economy and where we are at today? There's so much of an unknown sort of situation, right? Where everyone's expecting this quarter and the next one to be a bit difficult. So do you think that EX would still get the investments and the budgets that it requires, or how do you see that panning out?

Emma: 24:31

Unfortunately, I think, no, I've already seen it with the clients that we work with. Oh, we, we're freezing budgets. Hearing it all the time. We've got a budget freeze. It's so short sighted, isn't it? We know this. It's so short sighted because it's saying, Oh, let's just not spend any money and keep our fingers crossed that we come out of this. Rather than actually, if we want to come out of this stronger, then we've really got to make sure we get this stuff right now. Otherwise, our best people are going to walk. Or they're going to become disillusioned with working here and they get the whole quiet quitting piece, the latest figures from Gallup on that very shocking. I think it's, over 50% of people in what they call the'quiet quitting', which, is basically just disengaged.

Kiran: 25:17

Yeah.

Emma: 25:17

Not spending any money, but you've got a bunch of people who are sat there doing the bare minimum, not doing a great job for you. And you wonder why you're struggling. It's very short sighted, but I said, I've been through it. I remember like 2008, the banking crisis then. That hit hard and I, there are those companies who, you know what should I do the opposite kind of mentality. Let's not do what everyone else is doing. Let's come out of this stronger and better. It's those companies that are going to really thrive, survive and thrive. But unfortunately a lot of companies have got very well intentioned people at the top saying we've got to do the right thing here and making the judgments that are right for what they believe is going to help save the company. But I think you and I probably both know that it's very short sighted. And be able to hit the ground running when we, when, because, you know we see this boom and bust, and also. I think there's been a lot of talk about post COVID and it's a really, around the world is interesting times, but it's some very interesting kind of, economic circumstances. Yeah, we knocking on the door of recession and yet we're still struggling to recruit people to fill vacancies. This is really unprecedented, right? It's like we normally knocking on the door of recession or in recession vacancies are very low and people are sitting tight, but we're still seeing. Both in the world of, for example, we work with clients in the world of tax and auditing who are having to bring in lots of staff from overseas because they can't fill the seats. All the way through to clients who work in health and social care who are getting special licenses in the UK to bring people from overseas because they can't fill the vacancies there. So it's affecting every industry.

Kiran: 27:02

It is. Yeah. And even in the US, the employment rates are at all time low, even though you're, yeah you're seeing companies tighten their budgets. So yeah, it's a weird space that we're in today from an economy.

Emma: 27:17

Really is. I'm not an economist by any stretch of the imagination, but looking at this with interest and saying, actually, I genuinely believe those companies that are going to really come out of this strongly are going to be the ones that do the work that we know they need to do on their employee experience. Because they're the companies that people are going to want to join and stay with and do their best work with, which means they'll get that competitive advantage. Yeah.

Kiran: 27:41

Yeah, no, absolutely. To round it off, what do you think, or what are you most excited about before, from an employee experience perspective, everyone's talking about AI and generative AI is all the rage.. It was bots a couple of years ago. What are you most excited about, Emma?

Emma: 28:06

Let's start with the AI thing. We're actually, I'm actually doing a ChatGPT webinar today. As an optimist. I'm like, a hardcore optimist, and I am really excited about it. Although there's a little bit of a kind of dystopian kind of fear in the back of my mind going, and I've done a lot of looking at AI, which bits of the jobs are going to help me and other practitioners with, and I can really see how it's going to save so much time and be that personal assistant in so many areas of my work. But there's so many areas of the work that we do that will not ever be replaced or not any, not now anyway, not in my years, by, by AI, because we need, we need people to do that. That kind of human aspect is always going to be relevant. I think in, in, in so AI can help me analyze some of the data for sure. And it really like qualitative data analysis, amazing. But I still need to look at it and sense check it. I still need to go, does that feel right? Does that match? I just give my judgment goes that kind of really resonate what I've seen and observed in this organization. So there's always going to be a place for us. I think within EX it's areas, we use it in a lot of different areas where I think it will really help. I think a lot of the areas that people really struggled with over the years is, for example, the strategy stuff. So writing objectives, setting measures. And we've been playing around with AI, where you can put in the context from your own organization, and it can really help you to do that. But what I've seen, and I'm sure, I don't know, great to hear your views, is that only if it gets you at the most halfway there. That's really helpful. So rather than starting with a blank sheet of paper, it's given me something to work off. Even if it's like no AI, no ChatGPT, you've got that totally wrong today, but it's given me some thoughts around what it should look like. That's where I'm finding it's really useful. But it is where I've used it. It's never really given me the whole answer, the full answer. There's still a lot of work for me to do, but it's getting me, it's saved me some time, which I think is dead exciting. I think where I get really excited about the world of big data is the point you made about personalization. I want to see that kind of big data approach. Again, I'm not an expert on this, but I want to see that approach taken internally, that your Spotify's and your Google's and your, your Amazon's and your Netflix's are using. I think that's really exciting when we can get much more personalization with our people. I think that'd be amazing. That will really transform their experience of work. So that's something I'm really excited about. But going the opposite end from AI, the thing that I'm most excited about is that people that are doing this and doing this well and understanding that at the very heart of taking, taking an employee experience approach in your organization is all about taking a human centered approach. It's putting people at the heart of this approach and using tech to help you to do that for sure. But it's got to be a human centered approach. So you start with the, the person you're designing for in mind. Who are they? What do I know about them? How can I get to know them? How can I get close to them? That AI can help you with that. You've still got to make sense of all of that. How can I design services and products, experiences that are going to work for them? So when they come to work and they are here, they can give their best selves and they can thrive. And they can say, yeah, that was a really great day at work. How can I help them to do that? Rather than, that was happening with McDonald's in the UK at the moment, which is, people having just traumatic, terrible experiences at work. So I think that's the most exciting point for me is the culmination or the combination of the human centered approach, but AI helping us to get to that much more quickly.

Kiran: 31:56

No, that's exciting. It's it's really what kind of excites us as well from a tidy perspective, and I think I keep echoing what you just said is that if if you think that software can magically come in and take away all your pains, then you're sorely mistaken. It needs to be something that can help build a better relationship. And at the end of the day, when you're evaluating technology, that's what you need to look at. It's not whether it eliminates the human touch, that human connection, but does it further enhance that connection? That's where technology can really play a big role, right? And like you said, we're also seeing, today, at least where we are at today, it's about AI is giving you 40, 50% of that kickstart to get there. But you do need to fill that 50, 60% on top with the human who can add that context, who can add that human feel. Even if it is something like writing JDs that became a big thing with ChatGPT, right? Where you could write your job description in minutes. It's great. It's amazing. You'd rather spend only 20 minutes rather than a full hour to write that JD, but you still need that 20 minutes..

Emma: 33:20

I completely agree. And that's where I think it's really exciting. So that frees you up to do... because at the end of the day, the work we do, you never get to the bottom of your to do list. There's always more to be done. You don't go that's it. We've sorted it. The experience is fixed. It's never going to happen. So I completely, I'm completely with you. It's good to hear you say that actually, because I think it's so interesting with the AI piece, because, all the people that I'm speaking to, none of us are experts, we're all just playing around with it, going, what are you finding? How is it helping you? I'm finding that. So it's really interesting to hear your view corroborates my experience as well. So yeah.

Kiran: 33:53

Yeah. And I think as a solution provider and as a technology company, we have hundreds of thousands of data points about hundreds and thousands of employees globally. Even with all of that data, all of that context. It really becomes impossible for technology today to do an absolutely stunning job of personalization. It can get to a certain level, but you still need that human interaction to come in and complete and round off the entire experience. Just an example, what we were able to do is understand what the individual was interested in from a career path. And therefore you can start using intelligence to automatically fire a journey for that individual. I'm super interested in robotics. Hey, by the way, do you know, we have a robotics division and, this is the kind of growth trajectory that you have within the organization. But here is a mentor who runs our robotics department, and you may want to reach out to him or her to engage and understand more. What's interesting is technology is able to give you that sort of leverage to get to a stage and then hand you off to someone else who can probably give you a lot more context that technology can't as yet.

Emma: 35:22

Absolutely. No, I love that. That's a great, that's a great example. I'd love to get you guys onto the EX space with our community there to talk about your technology. I think people would be really interested in that. So that'd be fab.

Kiran: 35:34

Thank you so much Emma for this. I think we're up on our time and so I'd like to again say thank you. And I really appreciate you taking time off to have this chat. Oh, you're welcome. I really enjoyed the conversation and great questions. And it sounds like we are really on the same page. Yeah, we are.

Emma: 35:52

And it's really exciting to hear about. I'm really interested in, what's happening in, the world of tech is really gonna help to as you said, accelerate what we're doing here. So it's really great to, to hear about the work you're doing. So thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today.