Steve  0:15  
Welcome to the HR Happy Hour Network, sponsored by Workhuman. Business strategy is becoming less about what you do and more about who does it. Your people are your biggest differentiator–and Workhuman’s leading employee recognition platform is challenging leaders to rethink what they know about performance and what really drives value.   The world’s first employee recognition AI harnesses daily appreciation flowing through your organization to see who’s really moving the needle. So orgs can find their next leaders, develop skills, and match talent to the projects that push humans and businesses forward. Workhuman is unlocking the next era of workplace potential – and they invite you to join the movement at Workhuman.com. A proud supporter of the HR Happy Hour Network. 

Steve  0:59  
Welcome to the At Work in America show. My name is Steve Boese. I'm with Trish Steed. Trish, good morning, good afternoon and good evening. How are you?

Trish  1:08  
It's afternoon here. I'm in the afternoon. The Snowy afternoon. How are you?

Steve  1:14  
I am well. Thank you. Yes, it is snowy. It is cold. We're in December now. We won't say specifically. We'll keep that air of mystery around what date we're actually recording this, but certainly turned into winter here in the US, but I think it's, yeah, it's a good time to just like, hunker in and listen to your favorite podcast.

Trish  1:39  
I want big sweaters like every day. So it's big sweater weather here, just outside of Denver, and I'm gonna go tubing for the first time in a couple of years. So that's gonna be fun. It's tubing weather.

Steve  1:51  
That sounds like fun. We look forward to the report back on that we're back. Yeah. Hey, have a we have a really interesting conversation lined up today. We have Matthew Daniel with us, and we Hi Matthew, how are you?

Matthew Daniel  2:05  
I'm well, thanks for the opportunity to come chat with you all.

Steve  2:08  
Yeah, Matthew is the Senior Principal of Talent Strategy at Guild, and man, we have not talked about learning and development. And, I mean, we've not talked about it in a while, and I'm ashamed we have it right, and we're here to talk about that. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about licensing, certification, but maybe a little bit more broadly, about, hey, investing in people. Why: A, it matters still, and B, kind of how you can best get the return on those investments, both for the development of people and for the benefit of people and for the benefit the organization. So lots to cover here, but first, Matthew, again, welcome. Maybe we could start with, hey, besides you and I having the same barber, I think let's learn a little bit more about you and and then a little bit about Guild.

Matthew Daniel  2:56  
Well, I first, I'm happy to be a part of the conversation back into the learning and development world. So thanks for the invitation. Well, I'll tell you a little bit about me. I'm a practitioner by background. I've spent the past 20 plus years in the learning and talent space. I did it, you know, early on in my career as a consultant through G-P Strategies for a number of years, I went in house at Capital One for six years, and let a lot of the learning function there, which was great, because I love consulting, but I think a lot of times, folks who live in that advisory space are a bit disconnected from the reality of what it looks like on the inside. And boy, did I get a lot of harsh lessons on how hard it is to stand up programs. You know, I had to implement a dozens of systems before joining Capital. One, it's a whole different experience on the inside. And so it was such a valuable time. It was rich. I learned a ton, and then it continued in this, maybe not as deep into the learning world, but ultimately finding a lot of energy around talent development, and so ended up, through a series of steps and acquisitions with a company called Guild, and I get the distinct pleasure of solving just super gnarly problems with we don't call them customers around Guild. We call them employer partners. So if I do that, you know what I'm saying that we have customers who come to us every day who are trying to figure out they've got critical roles to fill, they've got pipelines. They need to build of talent that are integral to their business strategy, and they're looking to leverage education and skill building development to get there. And so I love showing up with data, working with economists on our team, figuring out what the data is telling us, and then showing up with the kind of insights to help our partners inside the business figure out where they need to be building talent, instead of buying talent and then giving the supports and education that people need to do that. So that's. A little bit about me. I love that I spend about a third of my time on research what's happening in the industry. I spend about a third of my time in advisory work and then helping to shape the core messages that our research lends back to the market, is where I spend the majority of the rest of my time. So thank you very much for the opportunity to come and chat, and that's a little about me.

Trish  5:26  
Well, thank you for coming. We met at HR Tech this past fall, and that was some of what drew me to not just you, but Guild in general, because I think that I love the practitioner angle, and you're right sometimes you I started at PwC, and once I became an HR practitioner, it gives you a whole different perspective on how long some of these decisions take to come about, but then also how to do the actual process of making value happen, right? So I love that you bring that along with that excitement to guild. And what struck me, and what you were just saying, is that like as I'm thinking about talent, right from the time it enters your organization till the time it leaves, it's often very siloed. And one of the things that really struck me in talking with you both back then and kind of what you're talking about now, is there's, there's a link, right? It's not about just looking at learning and development in a silo, right? You're also thinking about the whole strategy of how we move people through an organization, right, and building some talent from within and some externally. So for me, I just love that you sort of have that perspective of both. I almost look, do you see that when you're talking with your employer partners. I mean, you're almost, like, to me, building that connective tissue between acquisition and retention, right? 

Matthew Daniel  6:50  
I mean, you are spot on, and I think it a lot of times, unfortunately, there's, there's a better reflection of, like, the the HR executives that you have, and whether they should have scope across talent development and talent acquisition, talent management. Then there is a strategic decision around the org structure, which I have found fascinating over the years. As I've seen it actually, literally, I just got off a plane 40 minutes ago. It was in New York this week, and I was sitting down with a number of HR executives at a particular organization. And one of the things that I loved about this conversation sitting around this table, they were the heads of talent for all the different lines of business. They've completely changed the way that they think about that they're not operating in silos. So they think about their segments of the business, or lines of business, and they are responsible for all things talent, underneath that, learning, development, management, and so, of course, at dinner last night, I was pelting them with questions, because I loved seeing that kind of integrated, systemic thinking about how you build talent. I think I didn't cover this, and I probably should, which is that Guild started about 10 years ago with the idea that we should use tuition reimbursement more strategically in the talent development space, that historically, it's been treated only as a benefit, and it's been from a legacy of, you know, people spend their own money, and then the company shows up and reimburses them Two months later, and that that means not everybody can participate in those programs. It makes those programs skew towards masters programs and towards more senior executives, when, in truth, we could build a lot more talent if we were thoughtful all the way from the front line through the rest of the organization. And so Guild really started thinking about, how do we change this model so it's not just tuition reimbursement, it's not free for all on content and if you can front the dollars yourself, but instead, how do we do it as what we call tuition assistance, which is the employers directly pay for the programs, and the reason they're willing to do that is because the programs that They're directly paying for are directly tied to talent strategy. Where are the places that they need to build new talent pipelines? Sometimes it's skills in the role that you have, but often it's thinking about those things kind of in an integrated way. So I love a conversation Trish, just to get back to it, where talent acquisition, talent development, talent management, are all at the table together, actually solving this problem. Because I think as long as we operate in those silos, those legacy silos, then ultimately we can be really good at how it looks inside our organization. But those handoffs. I think the irony here is how much we have heard about employee experience for a decade now, and yet, in many of our HR functions, we're not operating in this kind of systemic way where the experience gets called through I'm going to say maybe something a little more provocative; we've reframed in our industry that redesigning experience means like one platform as the front door and. Instead of actually saying no, after we help you build skills, are we helping you pipeline into the next role? That's what employees mean by their experience. We tend to think of it in something we can better control, right? We want a system, and if we have that one front door, it'll fix everything, except for it's still not fixing everything. And so yeah, I love that ability to kind of integrate, to work with all those partners at the table. But it also means that, like the tools that you work with, have to work a little bit differently, they actually have to feel integrated, which is what we've been working deeply on for the past decade with employers. Is once you reinvent that idea of what tuition reimbursement should look like, how do you then get the data into the right places around the skills being built and the talent that's being built, so that you can make decisions on that? And the thing that we spend a lot of time and energy on is we're heavily invested in manufacturing and healthcare and Trish. That's what you and I talked about at HR tech. And so we built, actually, another product called navigator, which is essentially, now that we've built a pipeline, you've actually got multi layered you've got different regulatory bodies in some of these roles. It's not just enough to say to talent acquisition, hey, we've got talent. You actually have to get all of those certifications. We've got to get the board, the state boards, to say you're good to go, you've got to get practicum. You've actually got to be hands on in the field. And systems aren't really built right now to manage that, and so we built it to go along with that education benefit. How we wrap it in support and services to make sure we're pipelining people and getting all those necessary steps to happen.

Trish  11:37  
Yeah, two, I have two quick things, and then I want to get to Steve, because I know Steve's got a ton here to ask you about, but as you're talking, I wrote down it's a real evolution. One of the things I think, as HR leaders, I'll speak, even when I was one, we always think about innovation means coming up with the next great idea, coming up with a new way of doing something. But what you're describing is, and I would think you could do this about all parts of HR, is like looking at something like tuition reimbursement, which we just think of it is what it is. You all have reimagined that right by not making a reimbursement, right? So that it's assistance. So I think it's that first struck a chord with me, and then also I think it really resonated when we spoke first, because I have worked in HR, in manufacturing and in healthcare, and while very different, that population of just frontline workers don't either, don't get that same sort of experience throughout their career in terms of learning and development and when they are offered it, it's not done in an effective way. So Steve, maybe you can jump in there.

Steve  12:48  
And, yeah, thank you. I think it's, yeah. I think it's a fascinating subject, because there's, there's a lot to peel back here. And one of the things I was thinking about getting ready for this show today was, just because I'd been talking about it the other day on one of our other shows, which is around, hey, we're, you know, a lot of folks in across the country, in the US, both adults and even younger folks, are doubting the value and the return, I guess, on their time and investment of the traditional four year college degree, right? And there's lots of reasons why, and that's a whole nother show to talk about that, I suppose. But sort of the byproduct of that right, if fewer people are seeing the value right in these degrees, translates to maybe fewer folks emerging into the job market possessing these traditional degrees. Therefore organizations then have to take a different approach to both hiring development and aligning right the abilities of the people with the tasks that need to be done and the skills that are required there. It's a long way of saying, like, what I'm concerned about a little bit is we're just throwing people to the wolves a little bit, or to their own "Hey, go figure it out yourself. We don't really value that four year degree anymore." That's not what's maybe going to get you in the door. And maybe you don't want to get it anyway. But I maybe I'm a little bit lost. I'm worried we're going to set some people kind of just swimming a little bit trying to figure out where their development is coming from, and what should they, how they should be focused so, and then the other side of that, and then I'll, then I'll shut up and let Matthew give us some perspective. Is a lot of the roles that you're talking about Matthew, very structured, very strict requirements, right? These are not, hey, you can do marketing assistant work like, you know, in if it goes wrong, right? So what? Right? You know, the the advertisement color is a little bit wrong on it, or something, right? Who cares? If you're a certified nursing assistant, you make a mistake, right? Someone's in real, real trouble, right? Or a commercial truck driver, and you mess up on the road, there's damage, and maybe people hurt. So. Uh, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how you guys are approaching development in a world where people are thinking differently about about acquiring skills and manifesting these skills in workplaces. And then, then maybe we'll talk a little bit about some of these very structured, very highly regulated roles as well. So let's start there. Let's start with the bigger picture, about skill, of acquisition and learning.

Matthew Daniel  15:29  
Yeah, I do want to go. You said it's a separate show, and I'm going to give my 45 second version of this, which is because I literally have been in the room with two Fortune 50 chief town officers this week, and that same exact phrase came out. And the only thing worse than the value of a degree falling is to be someone in the job market right now without a degree, the unemployment rate of folks who don't have degrees is about 2.25x those who have degrees. And so I think there are two separate issues here. Is it better to have a degree? Does that open up more job opportunities? Absolutely unapologetically, and we need to get that message right. I think a lot of us in HR are trying to innovate ways to use skills as better signals to hire people, but I think there are millions of people around the nation who are without access to good jobs because they don't have degrees. And I think it's a message we don't want to send while we're working on making the system better, is that you don't have to worry about it, because ultimately, the data still shows up over and over again that those with degrees are preferenced for jobs. We should fix that, and the reality looks like that. So that's my 45 seconds on that. Now you said a second thing, which is, the ROI there for me as a learner in a degree, and that's a secondary issue, which is, it helps me get the job, but does the job I get help me pay for the education I have, which I think is where this incentive of aligning employer dollars through tuition assistance makes so much sense, right? I think this is also one of the other things, like, what you're hitting on is that there is a pipeline mismatch. And the folks over at Lightcast write about this all of the time, that there is a mismatch from where we have pipeline from higher education in institutions, and where we have greatest job demand, and the greatest job demand is in trades, so you're right about that, not the things that have the greatest tie to degrees. And ultimately, we as employers have got to do a better job of sending signals back to whether it's 18 year olds who are just starting their college education, or 30 year olds who are trying to figure out how to grow in the company that they're in. We've got to send better signals about where opportunity is going to exist. But Steve, like, if we're if we get to the heart of it, a lot of companies don't have a Strategic Workforce Plan where they can actually articulate right. They know where the pain is right this moment, your hrvps are going to immediately go this is the call I'm getting. I don't have enough people in the pipeline. I am talking to again, both of those chief talent officers this week. We're both talking about getting better at articulating where the demand is in the future so that they can send the right signals to talent, and in my case, fund the right programs that are going to build the right pipeline. And I think, I think the thing that gets missed here sometimes is that this is a math problem. Some people walk into it with like a It's a heart thing, and we want to create internal mobility because it's so good for the world. And you know what? I got to be honest, that's what gets me out of bed in the morning, is how it does that. That's not the conversation I'm gonna go have with the CFO about why we should jump into this. It is a math problem. And if I can build AI skills, white cast puts the premium on AI skills at $18,000 ahead, if I can build those skills for, you know, less than that, then I've got, I've got a math problem that I'm solving, and the ROI gets better for both me as an employee to spend my personal time developing myself and then also for the employer to say, I'm spending these dollars. I think right now, we got a lot of people who are spending a lot of money on, like, throw away stuff and like the market learning and development especially, has been historically just kind of, let's buy content libraries. I think we've got to be more thoughtful about directing dollars, directing learners into the places that are going to better marry the way that they're building skills with our organizational strategy, our talent strategy, our skill strategy, and ultimately, our business strategy. Now I think nowhere is that's more prevalent, and Steve, you hit it right on the head when you talk about the beautiful thing about health care, especially health care, but also manufacturing, is that a certificate, the credential, equals a job. It's a really clean mapping between getting your Associate's degree in nursing and an RN job. Those things are tied together, or getting that CCMA or CNA or phlebotomist cert, those things are tied to jobs. I mean, all this market is so terrible, like there's so few, so little talent for so much demand in healthcare, that ultimately, getting that credential largely is a ticket into a job, because companies are so hard up for this right now and so, and from what we see in the data, going to be hard up for it for a couple of years. And so I think the way that employers ultimately can't leave it to chance, not only by just like letting people go to any program they want. I had. I had my budget at Capital One in tuition reimbursement. I was responsible for signing off for it and learning it was in the eight figures. Is what the numbers were, yeah, and I had no way to use that as a part of my learning strategy. Zero, none. And I think this is a chance to to reallocate dollars to the places that matter. And then I think Steve, where you're talking about is like in these roles, where we have complexity built in a lot of rigid requirements that people have to fulfill so that they can actually go stick somebody with a needle, or so that they can be a CNA, or they can be an RN, then in those situations, we as a company can do better at managing those processes, so that the tasks that are happening, I think, if you've been in this space and Trish, I'm guessing You've been here before. There are a lot of people using a lot of spreadsheets to track all these different programs to know whether or not they fulfilled it. And there's just a lot of what do we call that, like leakage in the funnel of talent, where people are just falling off because it's not being proactively managed. And so if we can get to kind of this task management system and get these people in cohorts and help them socially move together, we can handle the payments behind the scenes so they're not getting hung up on that themselves, and give them wrap around supports to help them both be clear about the steps they need to take and raise their hands quickly if they need help, and get a coach to show up alongside them. If we can do those things, the math works out for us as a company, for for an employer, to actually make a good investment in education, because, you know, it's going to align with talent, so that you can keep more beds open in your hospital.

Trish  22:34  
Well, and what you're talking about, too, I love that you're saying it's a math problem, because it is. And Steve, you kind of, you know you're alluding to, people are not thinking that degrees are that important. I think it's, it's a cost factor, Right? Steve and I both have kids that are college age, right? And it's expensive. And so yes, I by what you're doing at Guild, and you're thinking of it differently, right? So it's not a reimbursement, it. I can't tell you how many kids college age right now, would gladly go take a job and get their degree or finish their degree with assistance. So it's like, you had to flip the script. So it's not like, Oh, you go get this degree that you've now paid for. Like, I was having this conversation with my daughter. She graduates in three weeks, University of Nebraska and and she's finding this out. She's like, Well, I really want to continue on to get a master's, but I'm going to have to wait until I find a job that will then reimburse me for like, Wouldn't it be cool if we were all thinking more strategically about the spend making it a math problem at the front so what you're talking about, and what I love, is that you're very much forward looking and not rear view mirror, which is how we've been doing it wrong for the last few decades. Right? At every job I've had, it's been rear view mirror. It doesn't work.

Matthew Daniel  23:52  
I love, I love one of the things that you said. I actually am going to give you an anecdotal story, not a big data point, which is one of the CHROs that I started working with years ago that was a customer, her daughter. And you can imagine, in HR, we're white collar workers, and we expect our kids to grow up and be more white collar workers in these great jobs. The daughter ended up working at the company so that she could access to education benefit. She came in like that is like seeing that it becomes a talent acquisition tool, right? It's an attraction and acquisition tool. And so I think that's it's so important, and I am with you that often we're not doing the kind of predictive work. And I know everybody right now feels the uncertainty that comes with AI that saying what jobs are going to matter, what skills are going to matter. I think we I just worked on a report with Lightcast for about six months on the skills and jobs that are are most resilient looking forward, and I think we can clearly articulate the kind of skills and jobs that will be resilient in the future. And we should do that, and we should build the kind of talent development programs where it makes sense, where building is a better financial decision than buying talent off the market. We should be building the right ecosystem, the right infrastructure, the right development programs, and smartly funding it from the right places so that we can add more value to the business.

Trish  25:25  
And by doing it with that approach, then you also take more control over the way that you're retaining and valuing your employees, which, again, we've always wanted, but in silos, it wasn't happening, so now it's starting to happen. I remember when I worked at PwC, for example, like we were seeing a shortage in accountants with people of color. Well, it's because they didn't have the same opportunities to go to college. And what we would do is we would partner with the other three firms and go together to reach these kids in high school. We train them together to help them get to college, to help so I think it's that was a very rudimentary way of doing it back then. But again, we were, we didn't have data, we didn't have funds set aside. Imagine if you did, imagine if you just took, like you said, that big amount you had at Capital One, if you actually had ability to tie that in a very personalized way. So I'd love you to talk a little bit about you mentioned navigator, right? But talk about how even AI applications when it comes to us thinking through some of these talent strategies that can really make or break your organization. I think, is that what you're seeing as well?

Matthew Daniel  26:39  
So I want to talk about two things, first in this whole concept around navigator. So let me let's do numbers over the next few years. Well, let me give one year at a time, there will be 2 million jobs per year in this trade space, if we just think about healthcare and CDLs alone, in America, there will be 2 million job postings per year over the next few years. The challenge, Trish, with what you were talking about at PwC, which I think, is what a lot of people have done in the past. They've been they've gone to their local community colleges, or gone to a specific school that serves as a good partner to pipeline. And you know what? Where that makes sense, people should start doing it, but we're not going to get the scale of 2 million people pipelining into critical jobs if we're not building the technology to help us get really smart about everything from, is this the right talent to go into the program? And some of this involves AI, and some of it is just like, hey, are you okay with blood? Because if you're not okay with blood, you shouldn't be sticking people with a needle, right? We should help you understand that up front, but then we should also look at what's happening in your journey, and we should say to you, we should do that kind of prompting and say, hey, look, it looks like you're not hey, let's readjust your milestones here, it seems like you're having a hard time meeting the goals that you have, so let's be really smart about readjusting so that you don't feel like a failure and give up. We would call that a persistence rate. Persistence rates are everything to us at Guild. We're outcome driven from top to bottom, and so if people don't persist through the problem the program, ultimately, that's a financial problem for us. We're not like a library. You sit on a shelf and you know, you pay us every year whether or not you use it. That's not the way it works in our business. You don't have outcomes. You don't get paid. And so we need people to persist, which gives us the opportunity for us to use AI to potentially examine where the risks are in terms of like at Capital One, we call it breakage is that moment that you have to get a new credit card, is the time that you're most likely to actually move from that credit card to start using a different one. There are breakage points in the in the pipeline and and we can use technology data to see where the breakage points are, and get a lot smarter about how we nudge learners along that journey so that we can make sure employers aren't losing the dollars as they're going through.

Steve  29:12  
So, like, maybe an example would be, hey, when they hit a certain assessment that they've got to pass, right? You know, to move on to get a certain certification, or to be certified in a certain skill, and if they maybe fail on the first attempt, right? And then so many people are just never going to go back. They're going to give up completely. Whereas now we, you know, we may not know that, right? We may have some idea, but now we have a much better idea of not only what is the likelihood that they may drop or have leakage, as you said, and what kind of interventions might be the right ones, right to help them navigate their way through it? I think that's just one simple example, but it's really it's one that I think that we'll see some of the power of AI in this space, because in the past, as Trish said, you were just kind of guessing some of this, I think, without the appropriate level of data and technology behind it.

Trish  30:07  
And what you're talking about. I mean, this is increased in terms of understanding really rapidly. So when I was, you know, back working at Infor in product, it was like us talking about use of AI, I mean, we're talking like 2016 maybe 2015 it was like, you know, can it write a job description? It this is this part of what we're talking about, having that really highly personalized, innovative touch, wasn't even available when I was working in manufacturing or in healthcare. That would have solved so many issues. Like, it's my It's mind boggling. And so I get people are hesitant on AI, but when you really start digging into what's just the tip of the iceberg at this point, what you're able to do, and, like you said, it's that whole employee journey, right? It's from the time they're required as talent. And you're right about breakage points. I wrote that down because you're making me think about it like you're you're like, diagnosing what was wrong with what I was doing years ago, and I didn't know, but you're right. There are those moments where people will leave, and it's those in between shifts, right? And we were trying to do it, I have to. I had like, two humongous whiteboards in my office, and I would try and map this on whiteboard, or you're saying people are using Excel, right? It's like, it's not enough. So we knew we needed something. We knew we needed something visual, personalized. We just didn't have the, we didn't have any technology to do that back then.

Matthew Daniel  31:34  
Yes, and I think that is the problem that we have set about solving, and we've we have that product. We've talked about it now a bit, and we're seeing the first learners come through the other end of that program and get placement in those jobs. And so some of those early customers that were just pilot for us, you know, alpha pilot, have come back and said, Hey, thanks for helping me get these, you know, CNAs in place now I'm ready to do it for every talent development program I have in the organization. I need you to help manage it. I think the other thing that we've been trying to build in it again, this is there's so many things when you say it, I just like want to branch in so many different conversations. 

Trish  32:19  
Matthew. I love it. 

Matthew Daniel  32:22  
Let's talk all the time. This industry, it gives me life. I know not everybody loves it, but man, it's my heart. So one of the things that that we've seen is like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back to a core about Guild from the very beginning, intuition, reimbursement. Now, as we look at how we use it navigator. We have human coaches, like human coaches are the heartbeat of our programs, because ultimately, people are going through them, and we have coaches who are picking up the phone and saying, Hey, or they're dropping, let's be honest, more than anything, people are saying, don't, don't call me, text me, right? They won't pick up, but then they'll reply back and text just like your kids do, and so they'll text back, and our coaches are texting with them about what are the supports that you need right now? Like you're going through this program, it's a lot. How are you handling child care? How are you handling transportation issues? How are you getting all the way through this? How are you having conversations with your manager about how you're developing? And so we do that now, Trish, this is where I want to give that intersection with AI. For us, we have found so much richness in the human connection. We're continuing down that path, but we're arming our coaches with AI tools in the background so that they can get more efficient and run better in their coaching cycles, both from knowledge of like potential risks or issues, how to respond to people who are on the phone with them. So I think there is a way to like both intersect the humanity that is so important to people who are on these kind of development journeys. Y'all have listened to these coaching calls, and they are going through like they're going through hell sometimes in their personal lives, and they're trying to figure out how to bring their families on board while they're taking big risks, to go out and be a welder, to go out and drive a forklift, to go out and work in advanced manufacturing, they're scared. They've known a career for a lot of time, and it feels safe. And they need words to use to say, this is where I want to go. These are the kinds of skills that I want to build, and here's the support I need to get there.

Trish  34:21  
Yeah, and do you know who I this just happened. I'm so glad you mentioned forklift and welder. Kids in college are now using those type certifications to differentiate themselves. So for example, my daughter got forklift certified. I'm like, she's a PR person. I'm like, oh my god, she goes, because I'm going to be up against every other ad, PR person. And I'm also forklift certified. If you need me to go down and drive that forklift, I'm going to go drive but I also just met the most fascinating young woman about two weeks ago, and she is one of the top welders. She's 18. I believe top welders in the state of Illinois, and they've now, like, elevated her to be like an ambassador to get more women interested, not just in the trades, but in welding specifically. So. Again, if organizations think a little bit differently, hire these kids when they're 18, 19, years old. They're so passionate, they just want someone to help them. And if you have a way through Guild of managing your money differently to get them both skills and education, what a win like that's a that is a revenue driver right there. 

Matthew Daniel  35:37  
Yeah, thanks for that. 

Trish  35:38  
And they didn't have those abilities before.

Steve  35:42  
We've covered a lot here, and there's probably a lot of different directions we could go follow up. Shows probably a good idea. Well, because, you know, there's a lot of other things we only kind of sniffed her out at, which is kind of this very complex mixture of workforce development right between federal, local, state, yeah, different types of educational institutions, the role or the responsibility of the employer and and then the individual and their you know, how they fit into all of it?

Trish  36:13  
I feel like a whole series is coming, Steve, don't you?

Steve  36:16  
We've ta;lked about this topic in the past, but like, I swear, the last time I did it, I had a couple of guys on who and we were talking about, like, what they were doing in Charleston, you know, to help get the BMW plant built or something like that. And that was, like, seven or eight years ago. That's how long ago I think that conversation was. But I think that, I think the way I want to kind of wrap this Matthew is sure, for folks who are out there listening to this show and thinking about, you know, hey, the changing nature of talent, and some of these very, you know, potentially hard to fill roles. You mentioned 2 million open roles coming up, just in health care, in CDL, right? There are a lot of folks out there, even, even in a labor market that's kind of tightening up, right? Those roles in particular, right, are still going to be going to be challenging ones for organizations to fill. Maybe we can point them in the right direction of some resources, whether they're guild resources, or other things you can think of that, hey, this is a good idea for you to think about, maybe over your holiday break, while you're mulling things over as you head into 2026, for folks who are struggling in those areas, maybe a couple couple words for them.

Matthew Daniel  37:26  
Yeah, I'll give a couple thoughts. The first is, of course, come see us @guild.com Right? Like we are trying to solve this problem. It's gnarly. And I don't think there I haven't seen many organizations who go out alone, who can do it at scale? And I think the better that we do, this is a systemic problem. We should be sharing how we're solving these issues, all of us together. We should be bringing best practices to each other. We should be telling the stories about how we're partnering with local and state and federal government and to be successful. And so we love to be that connection point. We want to be partners to people all right. Now that I'm done with that, I'll say another good read if you're on your holiday break, we just put out that Talent Resilience Index, and this is one that I am particularly proud of this body of work where we have set about really getting into the meat of the skills that are going to have the most durability and resilience. We looked deep at health care. There are cuts of the data specifically for health care in the report. I would encourage folks, if you're in health care, for sure, take a look at it. I also just released a report, maybe in August or September, on manufacturing, transportation logistics, on that vertical, the skills that are happening there, on strategies around building and so, you know, hit me up on LinkedIn, drop a note to us at Guild. We will get the research to you. I'm very fortunate that that's part of what I get paid to do. I love to go out and do it, and I want to share it with as many people as possible, because ultimately, I think it can help change the way we think about these problems, and we can solve, not only talent problems that change the lives of people, which is why most of us got into HR in the first place, right? We didn't get into HR because we loved, you know, HRISS and data feeds and API's and like that wasn't the thing. We didn't love performance plans. And you know that we got in it because we thought we could make the lives of people better. And this is it. This is such a great way to say how we can make the lives of people better. Come hit me up. Let's let's work on it together. Let's solve these problems. Take a look at the research that we've done and see if you can get some practical ideas about ways to make the world better here.

Trish  39:40  
Yeah. Also, can I just give you a plug on that talent resilience index? I downloaded it as soon as it came out. I've already read through the whole thing. One of my favorite things I love to do, because HR doesn't always have a lot of funds to train ourselves. Take this. Read it. Take it to your team. Break it into multiple meetings. Every single section in that report can be used to have further discussion with your not just your HR teams, but your other leadership people that you're working with, right from the other departments, and start having these discussions too. I think that's just such a good resource.

Matthew Daniel  40:16  
Can I plug something here? This is not this is something I've learned if I don't want to create competition for you all on your podcast, but Google notebook will create podcast for you if you feed it. So I often feed it research papers that are, frankly, deeper than I conceptually get, and I will feed it in and get a 30 or 45 minute podcast out of it. So if you see these reports like, plug that into something like that Google notebook, get a podcast spit out of that thing, because it's such a learning tool.

Steve  40:50  
That's a great idea, Matthew, because I feel the same way once I see equations with Greek letters and numbers in the same thing, and I have to check out. 

Trish  41:01  
We all learn differently, too. So, it's a good tip just to, like, if you don't have time, you don't sit there and read through things, right? Just make it a podcast. I mean, it's all types of learners. We need it all different ways. So, yeah, love the idea. Thank you.

Matthew Daniel  41:21  
Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Steve  41:24  
We'll certainly invite you back for sure. I dig this stuff for sure, and we'll talk about it some more with Matthew, where, this is Matthew Daniel from Guild. We'll put links to, of course, Guild.com, that's an easy one, but the report Matthew talked about, and we would love for you to dig into that and learn more. Trish, this was super fun. Thank you for getting this organized, by the way. This is, I love this conversation. Matthew is super passionate, which is a fantastic, good, kind of optimistic kind of thing we need that we need that

Trish  41:56  
for sure. Oh my gosh, when I met him, I'm like, you've got to meet Steve. Steve has to hear you. Matthew needs a bigger platform.

Steve  42:07  
Great, great stuff. So we'll be in touch, Matthew. We'll reach you. Back out to you soon. Trish, thank you so much. Put all the links in the show notes. Go to hrhappyur.net, subscribe. Tell a friend all the things. Winding up, 2025, lots more to come. Trish, our trends report is in review right now. It's 186 pages long, which is shocking.

Trish  42:29  
But much like the talent resilient index, you can chunk it, we're going to make it so easy to like, love it all, but we're going to have sort of a little cliff note version so that people can break it down.

Steve  42:44  
It's coming out super soon, so look for that on h3 hr.com. Okay, that's it all right. My name is Steve Boese. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks, Matthew, thanks, Trish. We'll see you next time and bye for now. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai