When HR is in the way of WFM | Marianne Withers

In this eye-opening episode of WFM Unfiltered, host Irina Mateeva engages in a candid conversation with Marianne Withers, Managing Director of The Verity Centre. The discussion centers around a critical yet often overlooked issue: the obstacles HR departments can pose to effective Workforce Management (WFM). With over two decades of experience in leadership roles across various sectors, Marianne offers an insider’s perspective on how HR's control and rigid processes can hinder operational efficiency and growth.

Marianne doesn't hold back as she recounts her experiences where HR's overreach and insistence on unnecessary bureaucracy resulted in significant delays and operational inefficiencies. Drawing from real-world examples, including her work in scaling up contact centers, she argues that HR should be a supportive partner in the decision-making process rather than a gatekeeper. She also emphasizes the importance of a collaborative approach, where HR and WFM teams work together to align business needs with legal compliance, thus fostering a more agile and responsive work environment.

Irina and Marianne further delve into how empowering WFM teams with the right tools and autonomy can lead to better resource management, improved employee satisfaction, and ultimately, higher customer retention. They discuss how outdated HR policies can stifle innovation and why it’s crucial for HR to evolve from being a ‘blocker’ to an enabler of change.

If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated by HR’s interference in WFM processes, this episode is for you. Marianne’s practical insights and Irina’s probing questions will leave you rethinking the role of HR in your organization. Don’t miss out on this engaging discussion that could very well change the way you approach workforce management.

Watch the full episode on 3/9/24 and be sure to subscribe for more unfiltered insights: https://www.youtube.com/@WFMUnfiltered?sub_confirmation=1.

Show Links:

• Marianne Withers’ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianne10/
• Verity Centre: www.tvc15.co.uk

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like to contact me about the show, you can email me HERE.

If you have questions about working with me on WFM projects and Consulting, you can find The RightWFM website HERE.

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Transcript

Irina: 0:18

Hi everyone, and welcome to WFM Unfiltered, a podcast by RightWFM. I'm your host, Irina Mateeva, and we have an incredible and very interesting topic today in relation to HR being in the way of WFM. Thank you for tuning in. My guest is incredible and she has so much knowledge and today we're traveling to the Midlands in the UK. So I cannot wait to introduce you to Marianne.

Marianne: 0:50

Hey Irina, I'm very excited about our conversation, especially after the other day. I think we could have gone on for hours and we must meet up very soon.

Irina: 1:02

Yeah, just to let everyone know what happened, Marianne and I had a catch up actually a couple of days ago, so we ended up chatting for, I don't know how long, but it was such a ranty session that we said, You know what? We're absolutely changing the topic of today's conversation to mirror our run. And we're going to be talking about HR, sometimes being in the way of WFM and resource management. But before that, Marianne, I am so impressed by your knowledge and your background. So I have to ask you to introduce yourself.

Marianne: 1:41

Okay I'm Marianne Withers. I'm the Managing Director of the Verity Centre. Very grand title because I'm the least important. I'm here to support and guide everyone else within the company. But my background goes, God, such a long time over the years that, being in outsourcing and also being on the client side And, if I have a look at all the different types of things that I've done from being the whole channel partner for British Gas and managing, 11 sites, which was like five B2B companies and Sorry, 5 B2C companies and 3 B2B companies, but over the 11. From being, Sales and Marketing Director for a global corporate business gifts company, to the fact of being on the outsourcing side itself, and, God, working for the listing company and hedging up their site in Portsmouth, which was 1100 people for, three years, and then going back to them as their consultant to help their kind of buyouts when they were about five and a half thousand. People and they sold out to Serco, which is what actually then put me into the world of doing it myself with some people. And I was a CEO of a company for six and a half years. And then went completely out on, on my own, which is where the Verity Centre was set up. And it was very thoughtfully I thought very carefully about the name of it. And what, and that it had meaning and it means truth and principled, because it's one of the things that I've always looked at is. And I have very high integrity which, like earlier, me saying I won't promise not to work on a Saturday because the fact is that actually a promise means everything to me, down to the integrity part is that if I promise you something, I will absolutely do it. So the whole philosophy and Culture of the company had to be based on that. And our values come out of the name Verity. And the Y, I think is the most important because it means yourself. And it is about allowing your people to be themselves. The complete self and feel comfortable in their own skin. I wrote a post yesterday about why we calling performance management, performance management, and it should be called performance development, because we are talking about unique individuals. And that we should be looking very carefully how we nurture and develop and guide people. Not actually, management is in your toolbox, now and again, you have to manage, but if you look after people in the right way, they go and do amazing things. So that's what we were all about. And we joined. The ATM group last September which has been a very exciting part of our journey. And, we're very aligned on our beliefs and our culture and values. So, this is the next part of the journey.

Irina: 4:57

Thank you so much for that introduction. And believe me when I say very honestly that I love everything about you. You're so smart, so sharp. You have such a versatile skill set. But the things that intrigues me the most about you, is exactly your values and how you don't shy away from defend and communicate them and you raise awareness about those values. And it's not like empty words for you. Like, I've been working with so many companies that have their values or their mission, but it's like empty words that you put on the wall and nobody can relate. Nobody's following them. And it means you. Absolutely nothing. So even during our previous conversation, when we just get to meet each other and talk, you instantly struck me as, Oh, wow, that that's a person that everyone should talk to because she knows her stuff. She can do stuff. She can really help you. And she is following through what she's saying to you. It's not just, empty promises or blank phrases.

Marianne: 6:07

I'm probably one of the most honest people that you will ever meet. I can't, I can't lie. I'm no good at it. I lied once when I was about 13 and I was playing tennis in the street. I broke a window and my dad Asked me if it was me and I said no, it wasn't. Anyway, he found out it was me he stopped speaking to me for a month. But his last words to me before that was and just looked at me and said, I am so disappointed with you. That is the last time I lie, because I was so, he was my hero, absolutely, my John Wayne, massive hero, and I just went, no, I can't and to put it like this, if, if I was lying, he would, he would know I would go very red and look very stupid. So no, and. I put everything on trust and values and, and honesty. And, if other people don't want to be that way, that completely up to them. I don't like it. I don't agree with it. I agree with people being honest, we live in this world. We know that people aren't. So yeah I'm very down to earth and. It's again, it's like I won't call myself an expert because every single person calls themselves an expert these days. I'm just here every single place and the ridiculous thing is if everyone's an expert, then we have no experts. Years ago, expert meant something. We had a small amount of people that were absolute experts that you would go to. The majority of people who call themselves experts, I wouldn't go to. My whole point is I have a lot of experience. I have a lot of knowledge I think I've become, I have definitely become quite diplomatic I've been told and I'm quite, I'd like to think I'm quite wise about certain things but I have no problem with talking about reality. And I think a lot of people talk about idealism and what you have to do is put the factual information in front of you and make the right judgement. And I think that's certainly, definitely a problem out in the industry at the moment is we all kind of wonder why there is such a problem with our customer experience. Considering that there's so many experts out there that all their point about what should be done. If we've got all these experts. Why are we in such a problem then? Or maybe it should be that some companies look, are looking down the wrong avenue and stop using the big, huge consultants out there and actually go and find people who know what they're talking about, who have been successful at it, and to be honest, have rolled up their sleeves and done it themselves, and really appreciate what they're doing, and I know quite a load of people out there who are amazing, and can do things like that.

Irina: 9:36

Cheers to that. I don't know where to start because this one is That's one that's so tricky, so sensitive, but let's lay out the topic out there. Have you ever been in a position or do you have any kind of stories that if you have been in a company that would like to introduce a workforce management solution or any type of approach to resource management that you're getting? And the wall from HR perspective.

Marianne: 10:08

Yeah, many.

Irina: 10:10

That's all, sir. Thank you.

Marianne: 10:12

many. I think it's really difficult. There's some absolutely fabulous HR departments out there. There's also quite a lot of HR departments. I'm not going to say that they don't have the capability and skill, that's nothing to do with it. It's more to do with the control that they want to have on running the company. But that goes back into what we discussed last week of silo based organizations. The difficulty, we all know a company. Whatever touches the customer is the operational element. That is the heartbeat. And nice and simple, the actual cog in a wheel, or what I was going to discuss earlier that I went off and going, which is to do with the centralarchy. And the centralarchy is about the fact of taking it away from the hierarchy and that's what you don't want in silo based organisations that you have functions that become hierarchical and they perceive that they run their departments and they make the decision on how the company actually runs. Where centralarchy is, and the best example is An orchestra. When I was in any company and being the, the leader. I perceived myself as the conductor. I was there to wave it around and bring everyone together from a very centrarchical point of view, very team orientated, to get them all playing absolutely beautiful music and then you all succeed. Because, In an orchestra, every section has to play its part, otherwise the music's crap. But every section

Irina: 12:07

Outsourcing,

Marianne: 12:08

comes together to be part of that overall team. They play absolutely beautiful music. The problem is in silo based organisations that you have, a HR department that perceive that they run the company, and that they They become very risk adverse and they start dictating to the C suite on what you should do about absolutely everything. And they come up with certain things that you will just shake your head at. And in a company I work for, A company that I used to be in, and basically I worked there for a while, went away, I came back as a consultant and I remember sitting down with the HR and they had a massive problem to do with a person and I had a, and I was asked to take a look at it and I looked at it and went right okay this is being managed totally incorrectly and I sat down with them and they Spouted some law stuff to me because of my background and I have head, headed up HR by being things like COO and that type of thing is the Office Director and I've led a lot of those things. And basically, I said to them, What you've just spouted to me is not law. And they went, Oh yeah, yeah, it's legal. I went, no, it's not legal at all. I said, so what you're doing is putting in process and policy. For you guys, not what is actually legal in our country and how we can act. So basically what you're doing is moving us so far away for the legal line that you've now made this particular situation that we're discussing commercially not viable and we're ending up paying loads of money because you haven't wanted to manage the situation. So this is what I found. With a number of HR teams that they will come up with things and I just sit there and shake my head and go, That's not actually true. That's not the legal stand in the country. And I, I follow. All the time, and I, make sure that I'm updated on everything that is going on, whether it's on the HR side, or GGBR and compliance side. And that is your difficult, I probably, I could spend, I could spend the next 10 hours going through so many different, situations where HR have made it commercially difficult and when you bring workforce management in, there's always the, the, the part of, yeah, you can't hold that information in there. Cause it's personal. And it's like, like, okay, do we have a HR system? Yes, we do. Integrated with that, it means that people in your department can see information about us. Okay, only give them access to their names. Oh no, we can't do that because GGBR won't let them. And it's like, GGBR does not stipulate that. If you're going to give them full information of, their background and where they live, no, they can't have that information, but they can have their name. So, I'm not sure What it's about, is it a controlling thing? But I, I, I get very confused by why they are making it difficult because also, again going part, back to the central hierarchy and the orchestra and also the cog in the wheel, is things like compliance, and HR and IT are there to facilitate everything being done correctly within the law. That's it. They are not there to make the final decisions. They're part of the decision and they are there to be able to, especially in HR and compliance, tell you exactly what the law is. And then it is up to the other appropriate people to make the right judgement, with them part of the team. So, as you can see what I'm saying, I'm not saying that HR should not be part of this, what I'm saying, they should be team players. What they shouldn't be doing is dictating. They should be giving you accurate information to allow you to make an informed decision. And my problem, what I've seen in places over a number of years, is that they work on the perception that you don't know. So what they're giving you is their policy of what they want, not actually what always the law is. And I find that quite difficult because I want people around me that, we, we can't know everything, can we? The whole point is that I can't know every single law in the blinking country, and we don't want to work like that. We want to be part of a team. We want to use other people's knowledge and experience. So, what you would hope is to have a team that is facilitating the right information for you and not actually following what they actually want and their opinion.

Irina: 17:57

Right, I, oh gosh, where do I start with that even? I would admit I have a very critical and extreme opinion on this topic, and let me take a step back and mention that, likewise, I have And still am, fortunately, working with absolute, incredible HR professionals. And this conversation is not to say that they suck and we don't like them. No, it's not about that at all. It's about the fact that in many companies, unfortunately, HR is perceiving themselves as the ultimate decision maker about absolutely everything that operations should be doing. And I can only comment on the Workforce Management part because that's where my expertise and strength is. What I have seen is beyond ridiculous in situation. So, in Workforce Management, we work with very limited set of information about the employees. It's only for the purposes of creating their schedules and saying to them or creating what they should be doing for their daily work. That's all. And we need to have a very limited set of information. Location, name, email address, how many hours per day you work, and what can you do. Right. Whether you do that in Excel, whether you do that in WFM to ABC, whether you do that in paper, the information that you require is the same. Now, if you want to do a very good planning, I actually insist my planners to be familiar with the law that's impacting. scheduling data, so not to abuse the breaks, not to to make sure how many hours per day you can schedule these people. If they have some kind of special conditions in place, we need to ensure they are compliant. What I have very hard time with is if we would like to introduce A process, a new ways of working if we want to schedule more flexibly or we want to introduce WFM system. The number one thing that we start off with, we need to ask HR. We need to make sure HR are happy. Then we start having those kind of months long conversations with HR where they're very important and they need to say, Yes, you can do that. No, you can't do that. Send us all the information. Decide on A, decide on B, decide on C. And then you actually realize that they have no information about the law. That,

Marianne: 20:45

can I ask you a question then?

Irina: 20:46

absolutely.

Marianne: 20:47

Just something that you said,

Irina: 20:50

Mm hmm. Mm

Marianne: 20:51

they said that we have to go to HR to make them happy. Okay? I find that a really weird thing for anyone to say. My whole point would be is We need HR to work with us through this.

Irina: 21:07

Yes.

Marianne: 21:08

They will hold information and we can integrate workforce management with the HR system. But to be honest, a lot of people's workforce management system is part of HR systems these days anyway, so there shouldn't be a problem. It's just a tiny bit of access. But the concept of, we need to make them happy. No, They're there to be part of the team and guide you on the role to make you make it go. You guys feel comfortable that you are doing everything on a regulatory basis, and it's not about making HR happy.

Irina: 21:49

But the reality is that that's exactly how a lot of companies operate, which is the setback, which is why I'm so annoyed and irritated, which is why so many companies actually have poor results. The one thing that Troubles me deeply is when we kick off those conversations about, okay, we're growing, we're scaling up, we need to introduce a system to allow for that growth to take place because business is heading to direction A. we are actually supposed to ask for permission for HR and HR have a bigger say than your contact center manager even. How is that even possible? You're gathering different stakeholders. Those different stakeholders can assess the business case, and they need to ensure we're compliant to rules and regulations. And if you are compliant, I just, I don't, I'm honestly, I don't understand how we can drag these conversations for a certain group of people to say, we're not happy with that, or we're not happy with this. And the amount of time when I have seen Poor operational results, simply because you have enabled a group of people to decide based on nothing, to be the decision makers, is ridiculous. It's beyond me.

Marianne: 23:11

It, it's, it's actually, I think quite fascinating is the how any company. And I think this is where companies are having problems, is where you allow people to rule the place on opinion. Because the whole point is, we all have opinions on so many different things and, sometimes we're wrong, sometimes we're right. What you have to do is lead a company. And leading is about bringing a bunch of people together and utilizing their skill sets to support. And the whole point is that, as an example with the contact center, so let's, let's The, AI part of it. Don't worry about that at the moment, let's not talk about that. Let's just talk about people. So, you've got a hundred people, okay? Let's say, cause it's simple. And they are routed from 8 o'clock in the morning to 8 o'clock at night, seven days a week, okay? As you said, we used to do this on paper,

Irina: 24:30

hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

Marianne: 24:31

and then we did spreadsheets. We used And then we got Workforce Management Systems. The whole point is that it's very simple, as you said, you have a person and you have a location. You don't need a full address, so you know they need. To be honest, if you want to throw it into the air and actually make it very compliant, Use the three word thing, you could actually, HR could actually, oh god I've never thought about this, this could be ingenious, so, in a HR system, you'd have their address, if you had three little words attached to it, all they would need to do is give you the three words, So your whole workforce management system could, on understanding where they're all coming from, with direct information, without having to know their address at all. That is really quite, oh, sorry, I just said there's a moment of just, wow. And you would, yeah, and you would have a pinpoint of exactly knowing where they're coming from. How long it took them to get into work, how they came into work from just three little words and so no attachment to address at all, which is really, really simply done. But the whole point again, they are there to, when you are the contact centre manager, what you want is, because you are running that, I think everyone forgets in places, especially BPO's, a service industry. Okay? You can basically get rid of all the functionalities around the support functions, and you can still run the operation. Because all you do is, people within the operation, you get to do those roles. In a BPO, you get rid of the operations, you don't have a business. So, it gives you clarity completely in a BPO and it should do, doesn't always, that the fact is that your whole business is about those people because they touch your client's clients. Let's go out of them into corporate. All of the people on the phone are still the heart of the company because they touch your customers. The people who write the journeys. For those, have to take it into consideration that person on the front line and how simple the journey is because they touch your customer. So it's going back to the fact that everything should be written from a point of what you want to get out of it completely. And your biggest thing is you want a hug, you want to maybe not kiss your client your customer, but that's what you want to do. Hug them, make them feel very, very special. If they ring in, you answer their question and it's done. So, HR, IT, Compliance are there to facilitate that happen. So, if a customer contact center manager is moving from Excel, which probably they had all the names in anyway, and no one's arguing about that, You move into a workforce management system that basically you're putting in the same information that you had on the spreadsheet.

Irina: 27:45

Sorry for interrupting you just to mention one aspect that we're not discussing about is it's even better for your employees when we're making those changes often because then we're empowering them to have more control over their schedule. So rather than making it very difficult for them to go ask person A, B, and C, can I swap my shift? They're able to do that immediately. With another agent, they can do it even when they're at home, but then we're saying we can't really introduce a system because HR and

Marianne: 28:20

Okay, I can throw in a great argument you can use in the future. All these people we're talking about that we need to do workforce management for All have logins, don't they, for the telephony and CRM?

Irina: 28:33

Mm

Marianne: 28:33

hmm. So, as HR, this is my conversation, so HR, so are you telling me that basically our IT department cannot have names of people to give them logins because there's no difference whatsoever? How far do you actually want to take it? Because it's a name. John Smith is a name. Rachel Jones, Marianne Withers, it's a name, it goes into system, and basically, my god, if you use my three little words absolutely brilliant, you know exactly where they're going to get their bus and everything, but you don't know their address but you have to have all of those informations to be able to give people logins. Logins that are going in cloud situations. So where's HR's argument to that?

Irina: 29:27

And you know what, to make it absolutely crystal clear, we're not saying that there should be a disregard towards data privacy. I just think it should be a rather much quicker exercise that, okay, this is what we're gathering and this is how vendors work, to be honest. That's why I'm so confused about sometimes those lengthy discussions. This is what the solution consists of. This is the data that we're gathering. Those are the parallels with your current Excel or paper and the solution. Are we compliant? Yes, we are. And in my opinion, there, there is the conversation stopping. Like what is it else that we need to.

Marianne: 30:08

Irina, it's a control thing, it's nothing that, that, and your point is, I am, and if, God, anyone who's known me over the years, I am one of the most compliant people that you can meet, because it goes with my honesty and all that, but, the whole point is, this is the line of the law, you should, Be working as close to the line of the law as possible, but always on the positive side, doing everything. Absolutely. What you don't need to be is over here because that becomes uncommercial for it's, it's just not viable for some of the things that people bring in. Also to elongate it. It's a really simple thing. As I say, I've studied and gone through GDPR and I've had Quite a number of hearty discussions with organisations whose HR departments have stipulated no you can't and they're compliant. And I've sat down with them and gone through it and gone through the law and gone and then taken it and highlighted it and given it to them and then they backed down. My whole point is I will protect. Anyone and everyone. My point of this is that follow the law, do it legally, but that is what you're there to do is to be able to, again, not be difficult and challenging to you and elongate it. They are supposed to be there. And again, bringing the whole point. I've worked with some absolutely outstanding HR teams, but a lot of HR teams there are challenges with, and they seem to like the control that basically we have to sign it off. It has to pass through us. And my whole point is, no, you should be part of the team and you should facilitate the answer, the answers. If we ask questions, Then give us precise legal information for us to make the right judgment. They're not supposed to be there to make decisions on it. They're supposed to be there to give you the precise information that together you can make the right decisions. So stop making it difficult.

Irina: 32:32

Love that so much. And maybe before we wrap up, I just want to throw one example that's unfortunately so often in organizations. I keep on saying, currently we're talking a lot about contact centers, but you know what, WFM is basically everywhere. Whether you're in healthcare, retail, banking, what have you. You are usually on the verge of being understaffed or being understaffed. So, attrition is high, the pay on frontline is not the best, there are a lot of pressure, a lot of challenges. So, what happens is that you introduce kind of static schedules that serves you nothing, because your coverage then sucks. Sucks big time. You start losing customers. You start in decreasing service level, increasing backlogs, what have you. And you start the conversation. Okay. From workforce management perspective, we need to be more flexible. We need to spread our resources, which is what you're saying about, is that legal? Yes, that's legal. You can create different shifts that are basically compliant to different set of rules, but we can't. Because they've always worked these shifts. So we need to recruit more. Then you don't have a business case. Then your cost is skyrocketing. Then you start sucking people. Then you start losing customers. So that's what your decision about not allowing us to create flexible scheduling leads to. Okay.

Marianne: 33:58

Again. The law doesn't actually stipulate that because you can, however, you need to follow the right process. Anything like this is about a process of doing it. If you will use the word consultation in this country, there is an automatic view that you're talking about redundancy. Okay. No, it's not. Anything to do with structural change in a company You go through a consultation process, okay? So, if you want to change the rules to do with what people are being voted on, what you do is do a consultation. And so you bring everyone in, And then you talk to them about what you want to do and the fact is then you go through having individual conversations or if there's too many people, they'll be led by a group. All the same, it's exactly the same process, but it's about change. And the whole point is that you go through that because this is what you are going to do and people will get given the chance to come forward, to be able to go, maybe if you did it this way and that way and you look, you look at all the things and options and all that, and then after a while you get to, cause you structure it, how long it's gonna take. You go, actually no, we are making this change. And this is what's going to happen. And you might have some people leave the company over it because some people may not agree. However, it's then legally done completely. So the whole point is that there is no law that stipulates you can't change actually anything in the structure within an organization. What you just have to do is follow the rules. and law of how to do it correctly and it's also, in those meetings about getting their buy in and giving them clear understanding why this needs to happen. So I give you An absolute example of this, a very, I think it's a good example. So, a number of years ago I was asked to go and help a site. It was in this big group that I was doing work with, and they had about 350 people in their contact centers, and It was mainly outbound and let's say that they had a very low contact rate and their conversion was very low, which is why I was brought in and, the contact center manager said, I really need help on, on doing this and seeing what the problem is. So I looked at the problem and first of all, especially at that stage went 98 percent of your staff are working 9 till 5. 30. I can tell you that's one big problem. Then there was like data management and, how it was being analysed, how it was being segmented, how it was running in the dialogue. But one of the biggest areas was that the majority of people Worked, 9 till 5. 30. Now, considering we're talking about around 2012 Around, it's very clearly that we could ring because also we were ringing our clients Customers. This was retention. It was renewals. So we could ring them if we wanted till 9 o'clock at night Also, because it was our clients customers, we could also ring them on a Sunday. Oh, and on a Saturday. On a Saturday, we could probably do 9 till 6. Looking at that when they weren't doing a Saturday, They weren't doing a Sunday, but to be honest, I don't really like the Sunday outbound anyway. Gotta have one less day. And basically, as I say, it was mainly there. So I put my kind of proposal through and said, I'm not saying you shouldn't be doing any nine o'clock shifts, but what we should be is from nine o'clock And I said, we won't go as far as nine. I said, I think we should do it till eight o'clock in the evening. And what we should do is rotor over there on a Saturday. I said, I'm not going nine till six either. I think it should be 10 o'clock till four. So I put the proposal together and, looked at it and it was all agreed. Yes, that would be the way to go. So we just followed the law because HR threw us Completely can't do that. Absolutely can't. They've been working these shifts for all of this time. So I sat there and did what I do normally and made a poignant remark, which was That's fine. I don't know what law in the land you're looking at. However it's not the case. We can't do that, but we'll go into that in a moment. Let's look at the main point first. We don't do this. We do not make the change.

squadcaster-d98f_1_08-15-2024_130540: 39:15

You

Marianne: 39:15

are about to lose 350 outsource seats because the client will pull it. You should be doing double the amount of work and conversions that you're getting. And it is down to completely how it is being managed and run. So HR went away, came back and went, and your point about the law, Marianna, and I just went yeah. So my point about the law is I can do this. This is about a consultation going through, bringing everyone together, blah, blah, blah, blah, what I said to you earlier. They went away, came back and went yeah, Marianne's completely right. So, we went ahead, we did all the stuff, we made all the changes, we actually didn't lose! That many people because also the fact is that we wrote it very, very well and used our lovely workforce management team to be able to do it. I cross analyzed it on, because I did it on Spreadsheet, cross analyzed with what they did and it showed very, very clearly it was working very nice within the system, what they brought up, and I Yeah, we made all the changes and I'm not joking, once we made the changes, within, listen to this, within one week, we had doubled the decision maker rate and doubled the conversion.

Irina: 40:45

I think that explains it all. Literally, that's, that's a brilliant wrap to this conversation, and thank you so much for joining me, because honestly, this is one of the most sensitive topics, and the one that I think a lot of us can relate to, because it's, it's a recurring theme of control, maybe, as you mentioned, and again, maybe this is just our conversation, so a scream for support from the HR teams and to be a part of the team and a part of the solution rather to be in the way of the solution. So thank you so much, Marianne, for this conversation. I can't wait to have you back and to share more of your knowledge with the listeners.

Marianne: 41:28

Absolutely loved it, Irina. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you.