But where are you seeing people miss the mark or overlook the value of people analytics, whether they're large or small? What are some common things that you see?

Well, let me talk about SMB here for a second because it's kind of one of the reasons why I'm at HR Bench is a lot of SMB companies are either going to have a one person or a zero person analytics function to service what they're doing.

And if you know that that is the ground truth, then you have to make the usage of data, the connection of multiple systems together with that data, and then the analytics that are going to be on top of that, not only for HR leadership, but for the board and also many times for the investors in the company.

that are wanting to see this information, but there's not a lot of, you know, people power behind the ability to make this happen.

You've got to be AI native.

You got to be technology native, like it's table sticks.

And so the expectations of the HR function are increasing, but that not the manpower behind it isn't necessarily corresponding with the same level of investment.

Am I far off too sci-fi? I don't think

How far off from truth is that?

There is no daylight between what you just said and, and my perspective.

I guess to my credit and to those organizations' credit, when I was brought into Motive and Booster Fuels, it was to change that fact.

But again, I would say it's just a small minority of organizations that have really made that type of investment, have gone through programs like PLA in the past that equip you to have that type of viewpoint beyond just those metrics.

Because, like, I, I actually might even be more critical than you to say like how many times when HR reports a metric like turnover or like time to fill or like their headcount, does their audience even agree on the definition of what they're reporting to them? So they may even be reporting in, they may be off in HR la-la land, but even then, the business is hearing it, and they're not even hearing the fact as what it may be because they're making assumptions about when HR says turnover, a lot of times they just mean voluntary turnover, and the business doesn't look at things in terms of voluntary, involuntary.

They're looking in terms of units that are leaving the organization.

To your point about total cost of workforce, is that even encompassing all the contractors that they just let go or all the contingent workers that, you know, are no longer in the organization that really make up how the business gets done depending on the nature of that company? And then I always say my definition of business acumen, which again, most HR leaders fail this definition, at least historically, and I hope this is changing, is can you explain to your CEO in words that [chuckles] that would not embarrass you how your business makes money? And if you can't do that, first, go fix that before you try to do people analytics.

I have a team over here that has 50 people, and I have some HR tech stuff that has some stuff in it that I can leverage, but what do I need to start doing at this 50-plus group size now that I have this critical mass? What should I be putting in place or thinking about or preparing?

So how do you go about that?

I'm a little bit different than most because I think I just try to choose a forcing function of like doing something else that forces me to do this.

So writing the book was one that in the Academy was another, what I'm doing at HR bench is frankly another that I'm kind of undergoing right now.

And it just forces me to be up to date.

Right.

I mean, I'm like you in a lot of respects.

I talk for a living and you've got to be doing what's on the bleeding edge.

No,

Yeah

... you hate when I say things like this.

But the reality is like, man, we don't ever need to build another dashboard, another report.

Like the technology exists.

It has existed for some time now.

Like it just doesn't need to be done.

And so the, the people that are out there that have made a whole career out of doing that, you know, I...

Mm-hmm.

What is Lightcast and how does your data help people understand what jobs are out there and how to get them?

Yeah, so Lightcast is a labor market data firm.

And one of the things that we do is we support the government, higher education, and private enterprise with the data, depending on what their needs are.

And I was curious about how this was framed up, Brian.

I pulled some data really quickly from some research that we partnered with the National Governors Association in late 2024, and we found that 70% of private sector job postings right now still require a college degree.

But if you're looking at state government jobs, it goes down to 61%.

And federal government jobs, again, in late 2024, was only 43%.

Cole, can you offer any advice to Justin?