Preventing Burnout In Real Time w/Danielle Owen Whitford

Over half of the 86% of Australian’s struggling with stress and burnout at work suffer in silence and Danielle Owen Whitford is out to change that.

Recognised as a World Changing Idea in 2021 by Fast Company, Pioneera is using linguistic analysis and AI to detect and prevent burnout in real time.

On the latest episode of The Digital Village Show, we spoke with Danielle about her transition from Executive General Manager of Transformation at a large insurer to start up founder, the ROI of wellbeing for organisations and creating positive productivity.

Guest

Danielle Owen Whitford: www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-owen-whitford
Pioneera: pioneera.com

Hosts

Luke Fabish: www.linkedin.com/in/luke-fabish-a1003a7
Josh Tai: www.linkedin.com/in/josh--tai

The Digital Village Show is presented by Digital Village, a network of over 300 digital specialists that form high impact teams to solve business technology problems all the way from strategy to development and scaling.

www.digitalvillage.network

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:04:13
Unknown
Welcome to the next edition of that Digital Village Show.

00:00:04:15 - 00:00:37:14
Unknown
Today we have special guest Daniel Owen Whitford from Pioneer, and she's the CEO and founder there. Pioneer uses AI to help identify and prevent burnout in employees. In 2021, Pioneer was recognized as a world changing idea by Fast Company. And in 2022, you won the social impact category for the Australian Good Design Awards. This is getting intimidating. Welcome to the show.

00:00:37:16 - 00:01:07:16
Unknown
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Josh. Yes. Yes, I am Luke And today we have Josh Digital Village, M.D as well represented in the shirt. Thank you for that. My thank you. It's good to say yes. Good. So we're super looking forward to talking about Pioneer and hearing more about that and what you've been up to. But first, it's been quite a journey for you massive barnstorming corporate career.

00:01:07:18 - 00:01:37:21
Unknown
You were executive GM of transformation. Yes. Yes. At a national insurer. Yeah. And then you made the jump into running a startup founding and running a startup. What happened there? Yeah, not quite as a straight line as it sounds like, actually. But yes, my background is retail networks, call centers and large scale transformation. And I was executive general manager of transformation for a very large insurance company.

00:01:37:21 - 00:01:56:21
Unknown
We shall remain nameless and loved it, loved everything that we did, and particularly that we could add a lot of value to our customers and develop people along the way. But I didn't see any of the warning signs of burnout so burnt out myself in 2006, very unexpectedly, and I wasn't hidden away in the organization. I was quite visible.

00:01:56:21 - 00:02:16:04
Unknown
I reported to the exact high profile role. Yeah, I was in front of the board and yet none of us saw any of the warning signs. So I up and left. One day. I just thought I couldn't do it anymore. And it started to reflect on my situation and what had happened. Started talking to other people, realized it wasn't uncommon what I had experienced.

00:02:16:04 - 00:02:33:21
Unknown
It just wasn't talked about. And then started looking at the research to say, well, was there a way that this could have been prevented? And I realized that there was an opportunity in language to see that someone's starting to escalate and then intervening because there's always a path. You just need to see those warning signs on the path.

00:02:33:23 - 00:02:59:19
Unknown
And so I thought, you know what? I could just build that. You know, why not? I'm not a technology person, but why don't I just create a spell check for stress? Microsoft's done it. Surely that can't be so hard. Rolling my eyes for those that are missing and then started down a startup path. So I met a woman who was running an accelerated program specifically for non-technical female founders wanting to solve large global problems.

00:02:59:19 - 00:03:26:12
Unknown
And I said to her, I've got this concept, and she's like, my God, that's startup. And I said, What's the startup like? That's very corporate girl. And so, yeah, five years ago I went into the She Starts program and then started building Pioneer from there. Can I, can I just go back So when it when you're experiencing burnout as an employee and then you thought and then this and then there's the next step of like I'm going to solve this.

00:03:26:14 - 00:03:46:07
Unknown
What, what was currently there in place at the time that you experienced within the workplace where you were like, they they had some tools, but they weren't, you know, was there. You obviously saw the problem. But what what was there as a solution before you jumped in to pioneer the solutions? Actually, a very similar to what we have today.

00:03:46:07 - 00:04:13:15
Unknown
So organizations have surveys, they have wellbeing programs. There's probably more wellbeing programs today than there were then, and they have employee assistance programs and really there was a lot of reliance on the manager to identify that someone had something going on and help them. And what I observed that in my or the problem statement to your point was that none of those tools were able to say someone's escalating in real time surveys a point in time.

00:04:13:20 - 00:04:31:00
Unknown
Everything else requires an individual to know that they need help and then know where to get the help. And that's the break down point, because where the psychology research tells us that unconscious bias also relates to ourselves and we don't see that our state needs a bit of help unless a third party says, Hey, how are you going?

00:04:31:02 - 00:04:47:14
Unknown
And that's why are you okay? She's been so powerful because another person says, Hey, I'm going. And so that was the problem I was trying to solve. How do you see someone needs help in real time? How do you get them the right help in real time? And how do you make sure that's private and confidential to them?

00:04:47:20 - 00:05:10:22
Unknown
Because nobody wants their boss or h.r. To know that they're struggling. No. There's the future of work report. I think that looked at stress and burnout in the workplaces and australia's has about 81 or 82% of people experiencing that. But 50% of those people. I never really say anything about it or they prefer to keep it secret. Yeah.

00:05:11:00 - 00:05:40:12
Unknown
Yeah. So it is something that people are very conscious of and I'm curious about how you went around actually talking to people about it. Yeah, I think the one benefit of having a, you know, relatively long corporate career is I had a pretty good network, so I just kind of started calling up people that I'd worked with. Friends of mine was conscious to try and get a broad perspective, and someone had said to me, early people like you, so they'll tell you what they want.

00:05:40:14 - 00:06:05:15
Unknown
Yeah, what you want to hear. So I started reaching out to people that I didn't know as well or having, you know, referrals. People connect me and then just talking to people like, you know, really honest conversations about how they were feeling. And so it became the very, very quickly, like literally within maybe five or six conversations, it became clear the problem was the same, the problem that people didn't see the issue, but then also they didn't feel safe to ask for help.

00:06:05:17 - 00:06:26:04
Unknown
They didn't feel confident that it wasn't going to negatively impact their career. So they didn't say anything. There was just a lot of fear and shame associated with it, and I don't think that's changed. We talk more about mental health now than we did before, but as it relates to an individual and the impact on the individual, I think that fear and shame is still there.

00:06:26:06 - 00:06:52:17
Unknown
Yeah. Now that's amazing. And so maybe jump forward a little bit, but I'm curious, how do you go about, I guess, maintaining that confidentiality, anonymity because it is important to people? Absolutely. And it it it is not an understatement to say that we're obsessed with privacy and confidentiality, actually, because without that, there's no trust. And without trust, no one uses the system to their benefit.

00:06:52:17 - 00:07:17:14
Unknown
So we've got privacy and confidentiality at a number of levels. But for an employee or a user of the system that can be an employee or a manager, everything that they do is private and confidential. So nobody sees their private and confidential data except for them. And managers can only say aggregated anonymized groups. And the biggest thing we introduced last year, which was a game changer for us, was consent and opt in.

00:07:17:16 - 00:07:40:10
Unknown
So if the organization buys the product, they invite whoever they want to use it, but the employee has to opt in and consent and that's been a huge step forward for us, but also for employees and feeling that they have some power and that they have a decision agency really in using the system. So that's how we manage that and that has proven to be extremely successful.

00:07:40:12 - 00:07:58:18
Unknown
Yeah, what was happening before then, before consent. So before then managers or organizations could buy the system and implement it. And we were always very transparent. So the second they put into the app is called Indi, they put India in. India would announce itself and say, Hey, I'm indie, this is what I'm here to do. So you could never be big brother to people.

00:07:58:18 - 00:08:13:14
Unknown
It's say, can you Big brother B You can never be Big brother because it was always announced, but you didn't necessarily get the choice about whether or not you want it there. And now you have the choice about whether or not you want it to work. And it works much more on a one on one level. Yeah. Okay.

00:08:13:16 - 00:08:46:17
Unknown
Sure. And so just how does that work actually say Indie is announcing itself? Where is it announcing itself? What what's the actual mechanism there? Yeah, yeah. So India's a, it's an app, so it's a microsoft teams or a Slack app and it connects to teams all slack and works like a spell checker. So when you opt in, it appears as an app in teams or in Slack and it uses what you do in that system really to understand your mental state and then see, you know, what sort of coaching or what sort of support that you need.

00:08:46:17 - 00:09:04:11
Unknown
So it's fully in the flow of work. No disruption for individuals. And as I said, it's private and confidential. So India will dm you in that channel if it thinks you need something or to coach you so that way no one's saying it. Your boss isn't saying it is not saying it, it just DMS directly to you. Okay.

00:09:04:12 - 00:09:23:17
Unknown
You know, it's interesting. I'm wondering whether people change, like knowing that India sits over the top of Slack or teams, whether they actually change how they communicate as well. We've not seen a lot of evidence of that and we looked for it really closely in the beginning and we kind of called it the reality TV effect because people would know it was there for a while.

00:09:23:19 - 00:09:49:12
Unknown
And then after like a couple of hours, they'd forget and go about their everyday work. But like me holding this microphone, like the way you make it look, I think also because the way we roll it out, so, you know, a big transformation. I spent a lot of time helping people move to a different future. And so we've put a lot of, you know, processes and not really process, but we've got steps in place now to help bring people on the journey.

00:09:49:14 - 00:10:06:23
Unknown
And the most important first step is showing them what their manager sees. And I do that straight up. I'm like, This is what your manager sees. Yeah, that's correct. hang on. Okay. Well, there's no individual there's no sentence in there that identifies me. And as soon as they see that, then they become curious about, could this work for me?

00:10:06:23 - 00:10:32:07
Unknown
So that process again has has really engaged probably a lot more comfortable to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. Fantastic. So just in terms of that transformation, when you're going to organizations and talking about, this is who we are, this is what we do and, and this is how it works, and you saying you're presenting that future to them, what is the future that you present?

00:10:32:09 - 00:10:53:17
Unknown
Yeah, really good question. The our objective really is to create wellbeing. But in the back of my head, I just want to change work because, you know, we go to work and we it's a means to an end for a lot of people and it's tough and I think we can make it a bit better. So that's our objective really is to make work better.

00:10:53:19 - 00:11:16:18
Unknown
So that's the future. We pay playful, we paint for organizations where they're using the technology in the AI for good, and the technology is actually augmenting their management, It's augmenting their people. It's not replacing people, but it really is like a coach. And I talk about the fact that we use spell check now for our or, you know, grammarly if we're, you know, or autocorrect, whichever one you use.

00:11:16:20 - 00:11:38:01
Unknown
We don't remember the phone numbers anymore because they're in our phones. So why would we not allow ourselves to support around, you know, burnout, prevention and stress that a coach like this can provide? So that's kind of the future that I say, look, in future I expect that the cognitive load it's taken to manage our own mental state can be done with these technologies like a kind of made of yours.

00:11:38:03 - 00:12:04:22
Unknown
And in that way, individuals are more productive, they're more creative, they're more innovative, they're more connected to the organization, and then the organization prospers. So the organization performs, you know, high shareholder performance, blah, blah, blah. Everyone wants to work there. So the war for talent becomes much easier because you're an organization that people want to work with. So that's kind of the future we paint for organizations that they can achieve.

00:12:04:22 - 00:12:32:02
Unknown
Quite simply, I believe that, yes, of course it could be. Yeah, that sounds really, really good. And I guess is that the vision that most organizations what do you think? Do you think there's any kind of tension that surrounds question like, yes, you want people to be happy that can we just make them work as well? Yeah, I think organizations want strong commercial outcomes.

00:12:32:03 - 00:12:57:21
Unknown
Yes, they want to perform commercially really strongly and they will do mostly whatever requires is required to get to that outcome. I think on the whole, everyone understands like intellectually the importance of wellbeing and action and stuff, but actually translating it from the intellectual, I think this is important to the practical to get an outcome is, is a really big gap.

00:12:57:21 - 00:13:13:23
Unknown
So most people, I think, and organizations do default to can they just work a bit harder like, yeah, or pay more? When will I see this on the bottom line. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They want to, they need to pay them more. Sorry. I think they need to pay them more because yes, they want to say it on the bottom line.

00:13:14:01 - 00:13:33:14
Unknown
So the approach we've taken is kind of both sides of the coin. We look at how we reduce costs. That's kind of important. But then we're also looking at how we can improve revenue, how we can improve performance. So a couple of our clients we've got now quite interested in that. So we're trying to develop some use cases that links wellbeing to productivity, to profitability.

00:13:33:16 - 00:13:56:02
Unknown
So then we can say to organizations like how you want to increase revenue. He's a way of doing that. And I don't know any organization that says no to improving revenue. Yeah, yeah. And I was going to ask that question around ROI and, and going in, whether it's as part of that sales process that you're talking to potential customers or or during, you know, a customer's journey with fine era.

00:13:56:04 - 00:14:14:12
Unknown
Are you able to show that return on investment at the moment or what sort of, what sort of things are you showing? Right. Yeah. So there's a couple of so from a hard measure point of view, we've seen increases in engagement, we've seen a reduction in burn out, you know, improvements in productivity. So it's kind of hard measures that we have.

00:14:14:14 - 00:14:37:19
Unknown
And a couple of our clients now we're doing more focused on specific use cases so we can, you know, put those numbers against it like a dollar value. Like a dollar value, absolutely. And a percentage value, you know, productivity uplift and equals is in terms of dollars. So that's what we're working through. And also using other measures. So measures that might be sales results or, you know, GitHub closes or whatever.

00:14:37:19 - 00:15:07:04
Unknown
So you can put some tactical measures against it. So we're doing that with a couple of clients now. But the other thing is we've seen quite an interesting impact on the intangibles. And I'd like to say I'm smart enough to have thought of this upfront, but I did things like collaboration, connection, engagement, yeah, putting it an app like Indy in which is specifically about you know, wellbeing, burnout, productivity, it creates a language and permission for people to start talking about stuff they hadn't before.

00:15:07:05 - 00:15:24:13
Unknown
Yeah, and that's been quite interesting to see across the team. And one of the earlier teams we worked with, I remember I sat in a meeting where they said to the manager, What does Indy say? And I was like, that's, that's awesome. Yeah. And, and I think they did it because no one wanted to speak up Like it was too tough to speak up.

00:15:24:14 - 00:15:48:11
Unknown
Yeah, Yeah. And I was like, okay, that's really interesting. So, so that's been quite an impactful that's actually yeah, I mean, quite impactful. Yeah, it's very, it's quite funny. I've seen that effect in a in other domains as well, particularly around code quality. It's very hard to criticize your mates like that and say hey the tool says this is Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:48:13 - 00:16:06:01
Unknown
That's right. Not me. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And some people have been really like some people are very, you know, keep it very close to their chest. Others have been super open. So I've been again sitting in meetings where someone's like, my God, Indy keeps telling me to meditate and we don't do that anymore, by the way. But it helps.

00:16:06:03 - 00:16:22:09
Unknown
And then other guys like Indy telling me to eat healthy. What is it, you know, that I'm eating? Like it was quite funny. They were all comparing Indy notes and then another client of ours, one of the leaders, because we provide a dashboard so you can have a look at your stress and wellness in real time and look at your trends if you're interested.

00:16:22:11 - 00:16:46:01
Unknown
He took a snapshot of his dashboard and his stress and wellbeing trends and sent it out to the team, which was super interesting. Yeah, so different people will kind of deal with it differently. So yeah, it's very fascinating. Yeah. And so I guess that that's all sort of like moving towards that, opening up that conversation around typing out what it is and what the effects of it are and just going back to the like the arrow, I think.

00:16:46:01 - 00:17:09:16
Unknown
I mean, what is the if somebody does have probably burn out at work they're out for Yeah. On average 26 weeks. So the most recent data from come talked about something like 40% of worker's compensation claims are due to stress, workplace stress. So the mental health claims, workers compensation and people are out for an average of 26 weeks.

00:17:09:18 - 00:17:34:06
Unknown
Yeah, so it's signified as massive is massive, particularly as you're talking about, you know, knowledge roles which have a much higher salary base. So that impact is not just long term, it's it's a higher impact. Yeah. And then this is covered under worker's compensation. It is, Yeah. And so there's like to an extent there's a you know, large organizations have this duty of care, don't they.

00:17:34:06 - 00:17:59:13
Unknown
Yeah. Well, not only does it impact their insurance premiums, so that becomes very expensive. But secondly, the government has now changed the Fair Work Australia regulations to include mental health as well as physical health. So if organizations had a requirement to your point of duty of care to create a physically safe workplaces so you know the slips, trips and falls, I'm sure you've all seen the posters and stuff everywhere.

00:17:59:15 - 00:18:30:16
Unknown
Now there's a requirement for organizations to create a psychology, psychosocial safety, psychosocial safety, which is the social environment that people work within, needs to be safe for that person and that now, you know, it's a regulation. It's a requirement that organizations deliver that and they have to show how they're delivering that. And so it's a completely different ball game now for organizations because it now has become a risk issue, becomes a people risk issue that they need to do need to have Indi, they need to all have indeed.

00:18:30:17 - 00:18:52:14
Unknown
Exactly. They need to all having. That would be the solution. I'm sure that's going to like headline it for a lot of large organizations that do have people like looking, it's their job to make sure that those kinds of risks are being covered off. And do you find that it's different sort of approaching smaller organizations? It may not have those that kind of focus.

00:18:52:16 - 00:19:14:14
Unknown
Yeah, small organizations in two ways. Firstly, they don't have the resources that large organizations have. So it's not like I mean, we all know we're small businesses. It's not like anyone sitting around waiting to do this. You're running and you're trying to do so much. So there's a huge lack of capacity in small organizations, but also a lot of smaller organizations aren't even aware of this.

00:19:14:16 - 00:19:27:14
Unknown
So when I'm talking to them about their requirements as an employer, now they're like, What? What do you need? And I can't tell you how many times I've sent out things. So now we just created a blog and we put it all on a blog and I send it to them and I say, Here's the things that you should know.

00:19:27:14 - 00:19:48:08
Unknown
So they're not even aware of the requirement and they're not they're not aware of how they deal with it, because they don't have they haven't had the leadership training that lots of big organizations. You know, it's an educational piece for them. It's an educational piece. So indeed helps tick all of those boxes for them. So it's a it's a, you know, cost effective digital solution that can keep them compliant.

00:19:48:14 - 00:20:09:14
Unknown
And that's when they go, okay. So I joked with a small, you know, SMB the other day, you know, your accountant keeps you out of jail from a, you know, finance perspective and we can keep you out of jail from the table perspective. I yeah, that's great. So I using Pioneer internally we do. Yeah. Yeah we do.

00:20:09:16 - 00:20:31:18
Unknown
We use indie and we use our positive productivity score, which is our measure of productivity finally. Charles Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. And with those smaller organizations, you know, you're talking to people about their awareness, you know, around that kind of thing. Do you find that your you have to be a bit of an educator around burnout as well? We do.

00:20:31:18 - 00:20:53:07
Unknown
We have to be an educator around burnout. We have to be an educator around performance. We do a bit of leadership coaching because a lot of the time the leaders don't know what to do with the data best of intense, like they want to do some good stuff, but they're not quite sure how. So we do a bit of work there and the beauty of using the product is we start to say what happens for us that then I can share with others.

00:20:53:07 - 00:21:11:06
Unknown
So an example is, you know, as looking at my team's data a couple of weeks ago and I saw lots of weekend work, so I pulled the team together. We have a monday get up to there and I showed the dashboard to the team and I said, Let's talk about this, everyone. Is it that we've just got like deliverables that we need to do in the next couple of weeks?

00:21:11:11 - 00:21:28:04
Unknown
Or is it that we've got so much work? We've just decided that there's six days in the week and I said, it's too late. And I said, Well, that's not okay that so let's reprioritize. So we prioritized and that was good. The weekend working went away because I wasn't aware they were working on the weekend. And then a couple of weeks actually last week I was sick.

00:21:28:04 - 00:21:45:04
Unknown
Last week I wasn't in the office. The leadership team realized they were heading towards that again and they prioritized themselves. They pulled it up and said, We need to prioritize. So they prioritize and they said, Dan, this is what we've done. And I was like, I was super proud of them because great, Yeah, they did that without me, which is, you know, ultimately what you want.

00:21:45:06 - 00:22:02:22
Unknown
And it was because the data started to show them that. So yeah, we can use those examples and the very tangible examples for small business owners, they go, okay, actually I get this, this is not complex. I can do that one thing and I show them in the data where to look for productivity. Okay, if this is the day that's productive, what are you doing to enhance that?

00:22:02:22 - 00:22:22:11
Unknown
Like, yeah, I can do that. So we keep it simple so they can implement it. No surprise there wasn't an option seen there of I love my work so much that I just want to. Yeah, well, so I did give them that obviously. Naturally I didn't. They are very passionate, you know, we have an amazing team. They're very passionate.

00:22:22:12 - 00:22:47:21
Unknown
Yeah, that's great. It could have been a little bit of that. I'm still I still want them to to have a break because we know that overwork is one of the key inputs. So burnout kind of has a couple of hallmarks. One is overwork. You just simply work itself into the ground, the other one is overwhelmed. So emotionally, mentally, there's stuff going on and there's so many people in overwhelmed right now because of coming off the back of COVID and the challenges economically and, you know, lots of downsizing happening.

00:22:47:21 - 00:23:08:08
Unknown
So, yeah, there's a lot of overwhelm right now. And then the third thing is something going on outside of work that then, you know, people are coming into work carrying whatever's happening in that some trauma in their personal life. And where we see burnout manifest, this is anecdotally from my observation is really where the work and the personal life sort of collide.

00:23:08:10 - 00:23:33:02
Unknown
Yeah, so people are going along at work. They're doing a lot. They're feeling slightly overwhelmed, but they're okay. Something happens in their personal life and it's just like, cool. So that's, that's what we've seen manifesting. Yeah. And just quickly on that, I think it's easy for people to spot overwork. You notice when you're working long hours, what do you think the signs for Overwhelm are?

00:23:33:03 - 00:23:53:04
Unknown
Yeah, I think the overwhelm obviously more emotional kind of signs. I think the main one I would say is that you lose the joy for what you're doing. You stop. To your point, people love the work. You just stop loving what you're doing. And then the second step is you start to lose the tolerance and the patience for things.

00:23:53:04 - 00:24:22:05
Unknown
That's what I've kind of observed in terms of overwhelm. And you find yourself saying no more than you're saying yes. So that's what I would that's overthinking it. Maybe say yes. But you think your immediate response becomes No, but really, you've lost the joy. And if you can get some of the joy or to the passion or the excitement, whatever word you want to use back into elements of your day, then you can recover and right through it.

00:24:22:07 - 00:24:41:22
Unknown
And one of the things we talk about for people is finding that even in small parts of your day and if you just introduce one thing that brings a bit more joy into your day, it improves your wellbeing and actually improving your being well, improving your wellbeing is what gets you through. If you focus on reducing stress, you actually just create more stress.

00:24:42:00 - 00:25:00:00
Unknown
You need to improve your wellbeing to get you through whatever the cycle is. Yeah, and that's amazing. Yeah, I think, you know, we spend a lot of time, you know, we talk about work life balance a lot and but now we want to call it work life integration. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I took that from you. Yeah.

00:25:00:03 - 00:25:20:22
Unknown
good. That's busy. Yeah. Well because work and life aren't separate. That's a part of your life. So you can just tell. I'm telling you jumping in. Yeah. Yeah. But I wanted to say tell us work life balance versus work life integration. Yeah. Yeah. I think switch. Yeah. The work life balance indicates to me certainly that it's a trade off between one or the other.

00:25:20:22 - 00:25:39:16
Unknown
Like you need to sacrifice one for the other. You can't have both because balance is always going to be, you know, like the scales one will be more than the other, which I think is probably not a healthy way to look at it, because we all work. A lot of us work, and we most of us have to work financially, but some choose to work, and that's a part of your broader life.

00:25:39:16 - 00:26:01:20
Unknown
So if we follows a theory that talks about bringing your whole self to work, then work is a part of your life. And then you say, Well, how do I manage this as part of my broader life? Because there's some great things we get from work. And if we talk about mental health, if someone's struggling mental health wise, actually being connected to people in a workplace is positive and can help them with their mental health.

00:26:02:00 - 00:26:29:23
Unknown
You don't want to be very isolated if you're starting to have mental health issues. So there's positives that come from work as well as all the pressure. So that's why I like to think about it in that sense. Gotcha. Yeah, I think that's a great distinction to have is yeah, I think it's yeah, sometimes we are enthusiastic and passionate and I think we do want to do is just like work on this thing right now because it's really exciting and interesting.

00:26:30:01 - 00:26:49:08
Unknown
But yeah, I guess it's, it's just like maybe one source of, you know, value and wellbeing in your life and yeah, maybe don't let it grow larger than the other sources. Yeah Yeah. Or it has a, a Yeah. A love role to play with the others and sometimes it will play more of a role or less of a role.

00:26:49:10 - 00:27:10:00
Unknown
I mean, I started this business, I used my work to try and you make a difference in the world. So for me being quite purpose driven and wanting to do something, that was the way I did it. I did the, you know, the vehicle I chose was business and work. So for me, I do work a lot, but I'm working because I'm trying to, you know, create an outcomes or.

00:27:10:02 - 00:27:37:16
Unknown
Yeah. That's, that's, that's really great. Yeah. I guess you know, I think about that a lot. We work with lots of teams who are external to us and we conscious of putting them into situations where they're asked to deliver certain things in certain ways within certain times. And I guess we always want to be conscious that, you know, even though they're not our employees necessarily, that they're going into it.

00:27:37:18 - 00:28:05:22
Unknown
Yeah, situation is not going to make their lives worse or terrible or be a source of overwork or overwhelm or major stress. Yeah, but yeah, so it's good to hear about that. And the integration is a good angle. Yeah. Thank you. I think that yeah, I think if you're providing a space or an opportunity for people to come to you, if they feel concerns like so it's safety, really caring is so critical.

00:28:06:00 - 00:28:37:02
Unknown
And then people have a vehicle like they have a pathway. I think when we start to get really, really challenged mentally is when we feel like we don't have a pathway like all of our options are taken away from us, we lose control. So agency is so important as humans, but particularly as we're talking about work. So if I have if I can come to you or come to you and raise some of the issues that they have even with customers and have the opportunity to talk to you about that, that creates a lot of mental safety for people, which really, you know, prevents is that like psychological safety?

00:28:37:02 - 00:29:06:19
Unknown
Totally. That's exactly what psychological and psychosocial safety is, really the ability to have an environment where you feel safe to speak up, safe to ask for help, safe to be yourself. So that's the core of it. Yeah. And so with you guys scaling psychological safety, yes, that's a really good way for. Yeah, well, yeah, we're we're scaling psychological safety and psychosocial safety because psychosocial is kind of the tamer, the environment and then the psychological safety is the individual.

00:29:07:01 - 00:29:38:20
Unknown
So yeah, absolutely. That's the intent of it being able to deliver it at scale, but also in a private and safe way, because I think that's important if you're feeling if you're struggling, you're not going to go to your manager unless you feel that you're safe too. Yeah. I was going to ask, so based on your experiences and having India out there and in these learning all the time for, for us having these conversations with, with teams and specialists at in the network, what, what are some of those signals or signs or, or words even.

00:29:38:22 - 00:30:14:17
Unknown
Yeah. That, that could help us identify if someone is experiencing or, you know, burnout or on the way to being better. Yeah, well, other than using Hindi, which would be of course the best the best thing to do, there are I would say there's a couple of things behaviorally as well as language wise. So when you start to hear language like hard, tough, stretched, you hear people talk a lot of times that they, you know, they're crazy and that sort of time to start looking at, okay, okay, if you're saying that reggae one off is fine, but if you're saying it regularly, if every time you speak to someone and then you ask them how

00:30:14:17 - 00:30:33:14
Unknown
they are, they're like, God, it's a match. And that's what I would start to pay more attention to. I think behaviorally to some of the things we see is that you're in Zoom meetings with people. They no longer put their camera on or they're sitting at their desk and they like slumped at their desk or they don't take breaks like they're not going out and having lunch, whatever.

00:30:33:14 - 00:30:57:16
Unknown
What else goes has lunch there, The sorts of things behaviorally I would be a little bit mindful of. I would be looking if they're sending messages or emails at ten, 11:00 at night routinely. Okay. Yeah. So they're probably the signs I would look for. And then also how are they behaving in conversation? So that negative language, but are they not volunteering to do lots of no's?

00:30:57:21 - 00:31:26:01
Unknown
Lots of no's, Yeah. Not putting their head up for things I would have been involved in before. Not proactive. Yeah. And quiet. You know, you see people, some people like I wouldn't say attack, but some people become very like aggressive, almost others withdraw. And so if they're withdrawing and they're not saying anything or they're not doing much and previously they would, then that's a sign we look for changes in behavior like that's what he does in the besides an individual then looks for variations from that baseline.

00:31:26:06 - 00:31:44:04
Unknown
So I would suggest do the same in real life. What's the change from the behavior that you used to? Yeah. Okay. That's really helpful. Now, we spoke earlier about you touched on, you know, going for lunch or those breaks in between meetings. I find in today's world working remotely, you can just go from meeting to meeting to meeting back to back all day.

00:31:44:04 - 00:32:05:19
Unknown
And all of a sudden you look at your calendar, you go, I actually didn't I didn't even get 5 minutes in the day. So I'm wondering is and India gives nudges. So is there something in there? Does India say, you know, at 130 or 2 p.m., hey, how was lunch? Yeah, we did for a while. You know, it did for a while and then we took it out because not everyone has lunches at the same time.

00:32:05:19 - 00:32:24:22
Unknown
Is that challenging? India does two things. So one thing is, and I'll give you the tip right now, but India would give you the same tip. Microsoft and Google both have this facility where you could set a meeting for 5 minutes less than the time. So if you send a half an hour, maybe a book's 25 minutes. If you setting a one hour meeting e-books, 50 minutes.

00:32:24:23 - 00:32:40:17
Unknown
And so we've switched to that. And so that's actually a tip that India gives everyone and I give that tip to everyone. I'm a huge advocate of that. Yeah, you've got to stick to it. So that's the thing. You've got to like at the 20 minute mark, you got to start to wrap up. So that's one thing that we do and it definitely does.

00:32:40:19 - 00:32:59:09
Unknown
The other thing India does is because India sends nudges throughout the day, it sends you prompts which just cause you to think differently for a minute, even if you don't do anything, if you just read it, your brain's going in a slightly to and it's given your brain a little mental break for that period of time. So they're kind of the two ways that we do it through India.

00:32:59:11 - 00:33:15:09
Unknown
We're looking to say, can we start to build more of that stuff in? So we're trying to figure out how do we do it when some people have everybody has lunch at different times. One of the things we're looking at is if you've been continuously working for like 3 hours, then we say, Hey, is it time to? So we're looking at those sorts of things.

00:33:15:11 - 00:33:32:15
Unknown
But the other tip I would give completely separately from India, having, you know, worked for a long time is I block the time out my daal. I could just put lunchtime in for 12:00. Yeah. And that's just like a recurring meeting. I don't know, I stick to it, but at least it forces me to think about it. So yes, some of those techniques work well.

00:33:32:16 - 00:33:53:09
Unknown
You know, it's good advice. Now I have an app I've put out of office sort of entries in my calendar that automatically reject meetings. Yeah, I mean, I heard that's often them. That's good. Good ideas. You like saying, hey, why are you do you by that. I don't really. that's a good idea. Haven't thought about that. That's a next step again.

00:33:53:11 - 00:34:10:13
Unknown
okay. So otherwise people just book over the top. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's that recurring meeting. He's never been that one. There you go. Well, we talk about at the table again, you know, leading by example, I say, everyone, you have access to my calendar. You can see what's in there. I color code things, they can say things and I'm transparent.

00:34:10:13 - 00:34:23:05
Unknown
This is my lunch time. And like I said, I don't always stick to it. But, you know, I'm taking the kids somewhere. I'm a parent. You know, I put it all of it in my diary and I'm very transparent and I say to the team, please, if you want some time with me, have a look at my diary and ask.

00:34:23:05 - 00:34:40:22
Unknown
So I'll frequently have people say, you know, this day looks crazy. Can we do something? Or what do we do? And I'm like, okay, well, I'll move this or let's put another day. So we kind of share that with each other so we can all support each other in making healthy choices. Yeah, and that's important, isn't it? That support?

00:34:41:00 - 00:35:02:19
Unknown
Okay. And you mentioned earlier that in this learning all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And so that the more people interact, you know, the better, I guess, you know, feedback and advice and suggestions. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that I approach that we have to we have natural language processing and we've had algorithms and an expert system.

00:35:02:19 - 00:35:27:20
Unknown
We'll keep the expert system and then we're implementing machine learning. Yeah. Next year. And so machine learning really learns all the time, continues to evolve. And we've now scored 1.7 million conversations over the last five years. So We've got Wow, you have an amazing pool of data. Yeah. Yeah. And different, all different organization sizes. So we've got a really good set of data and we also give people the opportunity to respond to India.

00:35:27:20 - 00:35:46:00
Unknown
So thumbs up, thumbs down. So we know what people like. You know what, not just do they like what do they not like? And India can learn. Okay, well, I'll present more of that. And so we've got all of that data and that's how it evolves. That's awesome. And so that and you've been using AI technology from more or less the beginning, right?

00:35:46:00 - 00:36:04:06
Unknown
Yeah. Is that right? From the start? It's been obviously a crazy year in the world. Has that changed conversation? Have you noticed a difference in conversations that you Totally. I'm like, totally. So when we talked about a lot of people thought we were the Terminator here, I would like, my God, are you going to take over the world?

00:36:04:08 - 00:36:21:05
Unknown
And I love the Terminator movies, especially the beginning. And I'm like, No, no, we're not going to be the Terminator. But now it's almost like ever since it came along, everyone sees A.I. as kind of warm and fuzzy, and they all want your friend. Yeah, Yeah, it's your friend. So in some respects it's great because people are much more open to it.

00:36:21:10 - 00:36:46:17
Unknown
But in another respect, people are far too, I think, trusting of one part of A.I.. So that's generative. A.I. is one part of AI, and it's pretty amazing, right? Like you can do some pretty amazing things, but it's not the only part. So people are going down the track of everything having to be Gen AI and we use predictive with other sort of parts of A.I., So there's pros and cons to it, but people are definitely more open.

00:36:46:19 - 00:37:04:15
Unknown
I do think though, because, you know, people are hopefully listening to this. One thing I would say as consumers we need to be really well aware of is the ethics and the responsible way it's been built. So I say to everyone on every panel that I'm on now, as a consumer of AI, you need to be asking what's going into these?

00:37:04:15 - 00:37:28:10
Unknown
Like, what are the ethics? How has this been trained? Where's the transparency? Because only as consumers, when we demand that will we have organizations be accountable for creating responsible AI. And have you approached that internally at Pioneer? So we've done that from the start. So Data 61, which is part of CSR, had ethical AI principles back into 2018 when we started.

00:37:28:10 - 00:37:53:08
Unknown
So we adopted those principles right from the start. So we make sure, you know, AI doesn't do any harm, it's transparent. I can say transfer. Well, that's wrong, it's transparent, it's helping do good. All the stuff that you would expect. It doesn't have bias built into the system. So when we're doing our scoring, we make sure that we're using multiple people to score and we're very deliberate on, okay, well, what's the age of the person and the gender of the person and all that?

00:37:53:08 - 00:38:14:13
Unknown
So, so, so we build all of that into our system and then we make sure that we're super clear with what the AI is doing. As I said, that consent piece is really important and we only present the data to those individuals and we even keep it site. So if an organization buys our product, the all of the analysis that we've done is in our cloud.

00:38:14:18 - 00:38:33:09
Unknown
So a clever CTO can't hack in and get the data, which is what someone asked me in the beginning. So that's how we've approached it and it's now paid dividends because companies go, okay, well you kind of get to show why this is important. A strong awareness of that. Yeah, very strong awareness. Yeah. We won't sell the data to anyone.

00:38:33:09 - 00:38:50:22
Unknown
We don't license to date around. The only thing we do with the data is research. So we do research with the data and we work with, but we work with, you know, University of Sydney, RMIT, like well-established, respected research institutions. It's great that you're thinking like that back in 2018 as well. Yeah, Yeah. When you're embarking on this.

00:38:51:03 - 00:39:19:17
Unknown
Yeah. I want to touch on a couple of things because you talk about chatbots open, open AI and the impact that that's had if, if you look back at so 2018 launch in 2021, you recognize as the, you know, a world changing idea fast company and then in 22 you won the social impact category. So I look at those two and then I think about and then open I come out and chat.

00:39:19:17 - 00:39:40:20
Unknown
JP To talk me through the changes to the business as you hit, you know those three? Yeah, the first two awards and then we chat. JPT Yeah, the actually open. I approached us in 2019 to use some of our data. That's the first time we'd heard of them. We're like, Wow, who is this? Who is these people? Yeah, yeah.

00:39:40:20 - 00:40:01:22
Unknown
So it's quite interesting. We they were on our radar right from the start. The awards were interesting because customers value, the credibility that the awards provide to you. So when we could say we're a fast, you know, world changing idea, all of a sudden people were like, well, that's cool because fast companies are very, you know, respected publication.

00:40:01:22 - 00:40:36:05
Unknown
So yeah, it provided us with a level of credibility that and our first customer was ANZ. So those two things provided us with a huge amount of credibility. The Good Design award was also quite interesting because whilst we believed we were doing socially good purpose driven things, that was a recognition of social impact and social good. So then all of a sudden investors that were impacting and that were investing in social impact and, and organic like sustainability teams and stuff in organizations that were looking at social impact were interested because they're like, okay, this is an important and a design.

00:40:36:10 - 00:40:57:06
Unknown
The Good Design awards are very much about product design, so it's less about the concept itself and it's more about the execution of the design. So they were interesting, opened up to different conversations and then the chat JPT kind of just really brought every opportunity that we ever had to the fore. So Indi was originally a chat bot.

00:40:57:09 - 00:41:16:18
Unknown
We turned off the chat function because people didn't want it. Now everyone's asking us to turn on the chat function again. We're considering would we build our own large language model for that We have we will have LMS the other predictive. Yeah. And we'll hopefully give the ability to people to buy their own data through a chat bot next year or indeed indeed next year.

00:41:16:20 - 00:41:38:01
Unknown
But doing an LLM like a generative AI lab is hugely labor and time intensive, cost intensive because, you know, I was reading Sam was saying the other day for my birthday, I the compute costs for them are eye watering and they've raised what, $10 billion? And if it's eye watering for them, what's it like for the rest of the world.

00:41:38:01 - 00:42:07:22
Unknown
Yeah. So it's cost prohibitive to do right now. So we're hoping to be able to do something like that. I mean, they gave nearly half the company to Microsoft to get the compute really. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so it does seem intimidating to get involved in that and in a very hype driven cycle around that technology. How do you, I guess, go about it, think about like planning the future road map for that technology.

00:42:07:22 - 00:42:31:11
Unknown
Yeah. So we're very customer driven from day one. We co-create with our customers, we, you know, get feedback from customers. So if customers are asking for it, which they are now, yes, yes. Then we say, okay, this is something we should consider. So we do a little kind of two by two matrix in terms of and it sounds really formal, but it starts really conversations to say, well, if customers are wanting it, what's the value to them?

00:42:31:11 - 00:42:50:06
Unknown
What's the value to us? And then how feasible is it is us, is it for us to do and do we have to do it ourselves? So we've spent a lot of time building integrations into Slack into. So yeah, in hindsight, if I had my time again, I would have gotten someone else to do that and I would have focused a lot more on the data because that's actually what our call is.

00:42:50:09 - 00:43:09:00
Unknown
Yeah. So we now take that approach into do we have to do that? So we're working with RMIT on building and testing the models because that's their area of expertise, not ours. And we hope we can work with you on that. So that's what informs the future roadmap and a process like that. Working with RMIT, I find amazing.

00:43:09:00 - 00:43:27:18
Unknown
I'm, I tell you, have been very cool because they have a, a research question that they want to answer. So they want to answer the question about how they can do these things. Actually, sorry, I was wondering how that came about. So we, we were connected to RMIT a couple of years ago. I can't even remember how we got connected to them.

00:43:27:20 - 00:43:54:12
Unknown
We meet so many amazing people and Haitham, who were working with Dr. Haitham at RMIT, is better when it was Facebook. Yeah, and they did. He did amazing things. He's really focuses on multimodal multimodal models, essentially, but also focuses on compromise. He calls it he calls it compromise datasets, which can be small datasets. And so if you're looking at anyone who's done anything in ML knows you need really big datasets.

00:43:54:14 - 00:44:11:06
Unknown
So we've always struggled to do that because our dataset big enough and he comes along this amazing man who's just a great guy. Yeah. And is like, I think we can help you with a small dataset. And then I think we can build a model for you that will test how do we build a model for you that has small enough compute power.

00:44:11:06 - 00:44:33:01
Unknown
So that's the research question we've got. Yeah, and he's working with us on that. And then of course we'll take that and commercialize that with his permission, of course. So that has proven to be really effective. We're having conversations with Sara doing the same thing, to say, okay, there's something over here that we want to see. So we've learned how to partner, I think, a bit more effectively.

00:44:33:03 - 00:44:49:15
Unknown
How's that research piece? So the work that RMIT are going to be doing. Hello. Yeah, it originally was going to be 12 months, but now we eight months because we're a small team and we had to do some stuff to get that sort of moving and took a bit of time to get that. So RMIT themselves moves quite quickly.

00:44:49:15 - 00:45:09:14
Unknown
We've worked with other universities that don't move so quickly about these things take time anyway. They do, Yeah, they take time, yeah. So I think with research, if you can find an organization or an institution that is agile moves quickly, but also the researcher understands that you want to commercialize the output. I think that's pretty important rather than it just being a research piece that can't be used.

00:45:09:16 - 00:45:29:14
Unknown
Yeah, I mean, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's really great to hear about that. So I guess that collaboration as well going on has extended kind of benefits. Well. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Because there's lots of we want to brigade in terms of further data sources too. So the chat bot is a way of engaging people with the system.

00:45:29:14 - 00:46:02:14
Unknown
But so if we can get a better view of that individual and support that individual, like, you know, with both data and different data, then we can support them. So there's lots of partnering we're looking to do in those areas too. Yeah, that's amazing. And so is that just you? Yeah. Coming back and maybe putting your founder of a startup hat back and I'm sure it never comes off, but that particular part of it is how do you manage the I guess the question around IP coming out of those kinds of collaborations.

00:46:02:16 - 00:46:25:15
Unknown
Yeah. Which are with these, you know, universities or federal agencies. Yes. Kind of thing. And is there expectation around or pioneer it must somehow hold on to all the IP Yeah it's interesting part of the founder journey because I never considered that until we were talking to a large research institution, which is not one that we're working with now back in 2019.

00:46:25:15 - 00:46:40:07
Unknown
And they had engineers that wanted that they were happy to loan out to start ups to help the startups, you know, get going when you didn't have a lot of capacity. And of course, that's amazing. You can give to an engineer. Thanks so much. And just somehow in the contract, I happen to say IP and I just drew my eye to it.

00:46:40:12 - 00:47:15:01
Unknown
But they would keep all the IP that the engineer and I'm like, what? Like our core IP? So thankfully I noticed it before I signed the contract and then that became like IP, that rise to the top of my mind in terms of, yeah, so with most of the research institutions you can negotiate IP. So we go straight into a conversation conversation idea, so Bizzaro you know, a really good example where we straight up let's talk about IP and we talk about who's going to own what and what part of it, and then how we and then I come back to the team and we discuss what is important to us as a business because

00:47:15:01 - 00:47:32:16
Unknown
essentially our IP is our value and that's what our investors are investing in and expecting to grow. So we need to ensure that we have that IP in a way that we can commercialize. But with research institutions that don't necessarily want the IP, they want to be able to do the research, publish the research and continue in that area.

00:47:32:16 - 00:47:50:07
Unknown
So it is to whilst you might do something together, you go into different directions. I'm going to lose the microphone, I'm going to do the thing I was telling today. You can go in two different directions, but it's it's important to be clear about the route the university will keep the research and use research and we will commercialize the output.

00:47:50:07 - 00:48:15:00
Unknown
So we are we do ensure that that IP stays within our business. Okay. Yeah, really important. It's very important. Yeah. And for any startup founders listening, really important to hold on to your IP and hold onto your data. Because the other thing was I had no idea back in 2018 how important data was going to be. So we were doing this because we were, you know, helping people and now we've got this data set.

00:48:15:00 - 00:48:54:05
Unknown
So the data's important as well. Yeah, really, really, really interesting. I guess it's really encouraging to hear that you can do both things like access, like amazing, I guess, knowledge and experience in these other organizations, but you still not have to give up that. Yeah, I feel because there are a lot of programs out there that invite that collaboration, right, Even if it isn't a way of necessarily grabbing IP, but yet out of a genuine desire to advance research and help the research questions.

00:48:54:05 - 00:49:10:01
Unknown
Yeah. And so knowing that you can do both things, yeah, I think it's wonderful. You have to be very deliberate and very careful about it, is what I would say. Yeah, because universities and someone from a university said this to me, they love like collecting it, like they take it all, but then they don't do anything with. Yeah.

00:49:10:01 - 00:49:45:11
Unknown
So you've got to be very, very clear and specific. Okay. I noticed we're almost at time. I was just wondering. That's. That's like, wonderful. Hello. But your question. Chris, please. So are you as currently on market? Welcome. Welcome. Ian. I was trying to ping you guys with this because this might be where my question was going. I have a question that was leading into like, do you go okay, So I was going to I wanted to ask you about the wrap up point.

00:49:45:13 - 00:50:25:21
Unknown
A jump in your current market is very much in Australia and looking at the customers that you currently work with, ANZ in the works, obviously the Australian market in terms of openness to a lot of that in the way of working work life balance, integration is a little bit more open to stuff like that. How what are your thoughts around the scalability to the global market considering countries like Japan, Korea and even the states to a large extent, and how they're very, I guess, traditional but also very aggressive in how they operate with people and less care towards, I guess, work life balance, etc..

00:50:26:01 - 00:51:00:01
Unknown
Yeah, we primarily work in Australia, but interestingly are getting a lot of interest from overseas. So we did a course with the Federal government actually as part of receiving a grant on purposeful international expansion. And the plan was we were going to, you know, consider it and pilot and we probably will still do that. But right now we've got proposals out in Canada, in London, we have a customer already in the Philippines and we're talking to another person in the States, and we're probably about to do what every company says don't do, which is lots of bits there.

00:51:00:01 - 00:51:19:02
Unknown
But going to use all of those as test cases. London The UK is interesting in Europe because they have the same approach to workplace laws as we have in Australia and Canada has passed that. So New Zealand, Canada and parts of Europe have already passed the same legislation in terms of psychosocial hazards. The perfect market. Yeah, so definitely.

00:51:19:02 - 00:51:55:17
Unknown
And we're using our ability to scale with a big client, a big customer, and we've got one now we're starting to scale with as a test case for, say, how would you scale internationally? So that's something that we're looking to the states is interesting because obviously the states is like 51 markets. It's not one market. Yeah. And whilst people have made comments that they just work people into the ground and they don't really care about wellbeing, what we're hearing in the last 12 months is there's been a bit of a shift because they're starting to lose talent and because of the focus on ESG reporting, there's a lot happening in the ESG space and so

00:51:55:22 - 00:52:20:22
Unknown
that's created a bit of a conversation in the States to do things differently. And hybrid work hybrid works kind of thrown a massive spanner in the works. So, yeah, people looking for support, thinking, you know, tying it back to what you said earlier around work as compensation and the fact that people leave. And if they do leave based on stress, it's on average 26 weeks, which is really costly.

00:52:21:00 - 00:52:45:06
Unknown
Is that an angle that you've looked at in other countries? So you think America, for example, even though, yes, there's this belief that they get worked into the ground, is there data out there that says, well, actually X percent of the workforce takes leave because of stress and then therefore, that's an opportunity for Pioneer to be coming in saying, well, you know what we can reduce that by.

00:52:45:08 - 00:53:08:13
Unknown
Yeah, absolutely. There is some data I think that says 33% of people will take an extra week off a year due to stress. So the opportunity for the states would probably probably look at some sort of partnership, maybe with an employee benefits or an insurer, because that's the thing. The upshot for them is reducing the premiums. And we're talking to insurers in Australia for the same reason.

00:53:08:15 - 00:53:31:16
Unknown
So that would probably be the way that we would do it. But yeah, there definitely interest. The thing with insurance, I was interesting and my background is insurance is that insurance is often hidden in the penal, so it's not an obvious way for people to reduce costs. So here in Australia, if you're talking about worker's compensation, who's looking at that number in a large organization?

00:53:31:17 - 00:54:03:18
Unknown
That is a very good question. Sometimes it's h.r. Sometimes it's employee relations because they then maybe flow on effects, sometimes it's forwards, sometimes it's safety. So it it varies depending on. Sometimes I don't even know like I've asked companies and the like, that's a very good question. So it's, it's not the obvious line item just yet. What, what's more obvious in terms of savings is sick leave turnover, that sort of institutionalization kind of obsessions, right.

00:54:03:23 - 00:54:45:06
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good question, Chris. Thank you. Thank you for anything else. What's your target industries at the moment? So obviously you can be focused on all companies of all sizes, but are there obvious sectors that you are looking at and saying, you know, we can really shift the dial? Yeah. Where we typically focus is organized nations that have a higher propensity or proportion of knowledge roles that are working in a hybrid way, usually very highly skilled technical people.

00:54:45:08 - 00:55:14:05
Unknown
And so if you lose those people, it's a long time to get a new person up to speed. So, you know, developers claims claim offices, so people they wait times that sort of staff services, people that provide services, you know, return to work services. If you're if you're a provider that helps people get back to work because they have highly skilled, specialized roles that have right now a very shallow, I call it talent pool.

00:55:14:07 - 00:55:34:04
Unknown
So if you lose someone in that space. So they're typically the industries that we work with. So professional industries, service based industries, technology industries, we work a lot with, we work a lot with finance. Yeah. So they, you know, work in all of those vise knowledge roles hybrid working, highly skilled, shallow talent pool. So that's where we get quite a bit of demand.

00:55:34:07 - 00:56:00:02
Unknown
Yeah. Okay. And working with a company like ANZ as a as a starting point, it must have been amazing. What are the other banks doing? it's so funny. I think all the other banks are aware of the challenge, so we've spoken to most of them and again, good people with good intent in all of the banks. I have to say the challenge then comes down to two kind of things.

00:56:00:02 - 00:56:20:10
Unknown
Firstly, they're already doing a lot of stuff. Yeah, they're not necessarily doing the stuff in our area. So the conversation with banks, not just banks, but that we big organizations has become, well, let's map what you're doing. Right? So it's almost a bit like a puzzle to put a puzzle together for them and say, Well, here's all the stuff that you doing, here's yabba hazy overlap, but here's the gap.

00:56:20:12 - 00:56:40:22
Unknown
And as soon as they see the gap, they're like, okay. So that's the one thing that I would say. The second thing then is most large enterprises are not just banks are set up to be safe and secure. And so to implement a new technology in a big organization takes some time. And so we're looking at from a tech point of view, how we can make that easier.

00:56:40:22 - 00:57:03:09
Unknown
So what permissions we have in the system and how it works, and then also helping organizations themselves navigate that one pilot we did with a large organization took them two years to get approval through technology and h.r. And the person who was the champion was like, literally begging on doors for that period of time. So we support that individual as as we can.

00:57:03:15 - 00:57:20:02
Unknown
Yeah. What is good is that organizations are starting to realize that they need something and they're trying to fast track processes, and as soon as you throw risk, you know, I've throw the word risk in a conversation, they're like, okay, I got this. We have an urgency here. Yeah. So I said, in trouble if he doesn't pay attention to that.

00:57:20:02 - 00:57:53:12
Unknown
That's right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And people now talking about, especially in a business context around productivity improvements and. That's right. You know, what can we do quicker and better. Yeah. So with something like Pioneer, I like to refer to it as Indi. So, you know, bringing India in and you talk about overlaps, is there, is there a conversation that you're having around what you currently do, all of these things, But if you had Indi, you can remove some of this stuff so that productivity improvement be interesting.

00:57:53:14 - 00:58:15:09
Unknown
Yeah, okay, maybe not so much. I think I need to bring you into my sales team. Josh Good question. Not so much. I think that's probably the next step. We focused more on what we could augment in terms of utilization of existing tools. So wellbeing and AP programs mainly, but we haven't necessarily talked about what else we could remove for them from a productivity perspective.

00:58:15:09 - 00:58:52:21
Unknown
So I think that's a good question. It seems like the chat that's happening around AI's is yeah, a lot of it's around productivity. That's right. Yeah. And it sounds like with all the knowledge you have now pushing Pioneer into into organizations, the adoption of that. So yeah certainly we could conversation activity the measurement of productivity is like almost the first thing we start talking about because when companies are implementing goals and you I particularly like the chat about your copilot, Microsoft, copilot, a few people looking at, they want to know the productivity uplift and all of the literature is saying 40%, 50%, 6%, which is just massive, huge.

00:58:53:00 - 00:59:12:18
Unknown
Wow. And they're like, well, is that really possible? So they're a little bit skeptical. So what our talk and do what India can do, how positive productivity school it can give them a measure. Yeah so it can and that's what we're talking to a lot of organizations about. Let's do it here before you implement the AI and let's do it again and see what the productivity uplift actually is for your organization.

00:59:12:18 - 00:59:30:20
Unknown
Yeah, it's the double sided productivity. It's that using the and your people are more productive and then also use India and you have to do less of the That's right stuff The other stuff. Yeah yeah. The third thing for the banks I guess in particular but again large organizations is their boards want ESG measures. They need to be reporting.

00:59:30:20 - 00:59:55:09
Unknown
They've put a huge amount of effort into the A everyone has, but not a lot into the. Yes. So we're seeing the market now swing more towards s and say, well, what are the measures that we can put into place where we're seeing productivity? I guess you talk about productivity gains, they have sustainability or are teams pulling together reams of Excel spreadsheets to say this is what our position is on wellbeing or engagement or turnover?

00:59:55:11 - 01:00:22:05
Unknown
We're like, my God, that's insane. You know, you could have a number here that just tells you. And I was going to say it's productivity, right? Yeah, exactly that how it's it's so interesting that productivity is so loosely kind of measured. Measured. Yeah. Yeah. Before, you know, you're turning up and it's sort of like doing that. Yeah, well, it's hard for knowledge roles because the traditional measures of productivity is how much you've done.

01:00:22:07 - 01:00:38:20
Unknown
So if you're a throughput, it is totally which applies, you know, if you're in a contact center or you are a bricklayer or something, you guy can do it. But most of the roles don't have most knowledge. Roles don't have that endpoint at the end of every day to measure. So that's why they don't measure it, because it's actually really hard to measure.

01:00:39:01 - 01:01:04:12
Unknown
And we've taken two years to design this instrument, which we're about to then go and, you know, design further with one of our university partners to really measure that knowledge role in terms of productivity, wellbeing. And we look at the things you'd expect like, you know, satisfaction and engagement and leadership and purpose and challenge. Challenge is really important to mentor like performance and flow state.

01:01:04:12 - 01:01:36:02
Unknown
We measure flow state resilience, but the big thing also we measure is safety. So what's the psychosocial safety and what's the good stress for that particular individual? So we're putting all of that together in a really unique way at an individual and team level, and that's how we measure productivity. Wow. And I'm curious, do you have to do I've I'm kind of curious because I imagine a lot of people have like their own kind of idea of what productivity is and their own way of measuring it.

01:01:36:04 - 01:02:00:15
Unknown
Yep. I know Luke is in at his desk. Unproductive. Yeah. Yeah. So do you have to do a bit of, I guess, selling or education or convincing around looking at productivity in that way? We do. We do. Because you're right, people measure it in very different ways. So that's one of the things we do with this tool. We talk about what is productivity.

01:02:00:17 - 01:02:20:22
Unknown
And we have done a piece of research with University of Sydney that interviewed people about productivity at multiple levels. So, you know, senior people, middle people and people doing the roles to understand how they thought about a measured productivity in the absence of productivity measures. So we've got some really interesting data for that. But the other thing we do is we link productivity to risk.

01:02:20:22 - 01:02:40:19
Unknown
So my point about risk before with our positive productivity score, the high the score, the lower the people risk you have, the lower the score, the higher risk you have to your people. Yeah. And so we educate them on productivity itself, but also the potential impacts of productivity. It's like the Pioneer Productivity Index pretty much we call it.

01:02:40:19 - 01:03:03:10
Unknown
Is that coming? Well, we call it the positive productivity score, we call it pips. So we we believe that the way people are measuring productivity now, it's toxic, like it's toxic productivity. And so where we want to steer people towards positive productivity, so the product has been modeled on the Net promoter score. Yeah, it's been very effective at helping change like it's changed the whole focus of customer.

01:03:03:12 - 01:03:24:22
Unknown
And so what we're trying to do is do the same here, change the whole focus of wellbeing and mental health to be actually a commercial outcome for business. And that commercial outcome is productivity. So that's the, the design of the product and how we use it as well. Wow. Awesome. Yeah. that was funny. That see like the in the future, like a positive productivity index slide.

01:03:24:22 - 01:03:52:05
Unknown
Yes. Organization. Yeah, absolutely right. Employee You know, I'm applying for a job. I'm going to choose the one with the high. Yeah. Total standard measure. Yeah. And that's what we're wanting to do. That's why we're creating it as an SJ measure. So and we're look, we're doing next year we're inviting companies in actually. So if anyone, you know, wants to be part of it, we're inviting them in to work with ourselves and our research partners to actually validate this instrument that we're building.

01:03:52:07 - 01:04:08:10
Unknown
And we can then use it as a baseline. We can use it as a benchmark for Australia. We'll have an Australian, you know, a positive productivity school, and then we can look at a global positive productivity score, which then would be a part of the S, and then you've got a playing field that everyone can kind of aspire to.

01:04:08:12 - 01:04:28:13
Unknown
So how do you get it to become the standard? How do you get it to become what is it like the green tick? Is that what we used to have? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good question. The so first, the first thing that we're doing is again, partnering with a respected research institution, because if you've got a solid base behind it, people are going to find it much more credible, but really it's going to be usage.

01:04:28:13 - 01:04:50:18
Unknown
So how many people buy it and how many people use it? Because that brings credibility. You one thing I know about organizations is they have a lot of FOMO. So you talk about the banks. You know, if someone's doing this over there, then they they're all doing that. I better jump on board. So I think bringing those organizations on and you don't have to use I mean, Indi gathers the data, but also it's right now a standalone survey.

01:04:50:18 - 01:05:12:21
Unknown
So it's a super simple way for people to get started and that's helped large organizations as they go through the tech assessment or the tech approvals. So that's I think the way of doing it. Then we'll start talking to maybe the ASX and other, you know, CSB and GW. Why the global benchmarks for ESG to say, well, how do we get this as something that you recommend?

01:05:12:21 - 01:05:36:02
Unknown
You know, the government puts forward? Australia doesn't actually have an ESG standard that they expect to deliver to. We use different ones. So if we get to the point of having a certain change that we would like to put it in there, we'll do our best. We'll do our best, we'll do our best. It's amazing. I'm looking around.

01:05:36:04 - 01:06:05:12
Unknown
I'm a bit. Yeah. See, be conscious that we're over time. I'm getting anxious about time on your behalf. Yeah, I'm just getting hungry. That's good, because this has been really interesting and great chat. Yeah, it really is. It's good to hear about, I guess, such a purpose driven company just doing great work. Is there any way that people should go online to find out more about what you do or around these issues?

01:06:05:15 - 01:06:25:12
Unknown
Yeah, absolutely. So if you come to our website, which is pioneer on pi0n double a r i dot com, I'm one of those crazy people that put to us together. A lot of this information is on our website. So we have a resources section where we have research and we have we've written a lot of blogs on this, so you can easily find the information that you need.

01:06:25:12 - 01:06:44:06
Unknown
So absolutely jump on there. We're also on LinkedIn, of course, so Pioneer, a group on LinkedIn. Again, we post quite a bit on there so people can use the knowledge that we've acquired. We have no interest in keeping it to ourselves. And yeah, just, you know, message me on LinkedIn if it, if you want more information and yeah, we'll share.

01:06:44:07 - 01:07:02:20
Unknown
Fantastic. Yeah, that's amazing. It'd be great for people to find out more and also maybe start a conversation. Please do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, please. And we're always open to ideas and feedback and because some of the greatest things that we've done in the system have come from our customers and from conversations with potential. So, yeah, reach out. Fantastic.

01:07:02:20 - 01:07:10:06
Unknown
Thank you so much for your time. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. It's been great. I've enjoyed it. Thank you. You're welcome.