October 19, 2021
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Description
In this episode, Chris talks with Trung Tran about the shift in the workplace culture and how employers should adapt to the change. They discuss employer to employee relationships, remote work and recruiting, supportive work environments, and the benefits Amplio offers.
Trung Tran has spent his career in silicon valley working for companies such as HP and Intel. He worked on the development of 72 products worth $2.2B in revenue. His interest in AI stems from his work at DARPA on next generation Ai systems and algorithms. He remains passionate to the idea that AI should help people reason better and not replace them.
Transcript
Chris:
Welcome to the talent tide podcast the show that ensures that you have the information you need to adapt and change your workplace culture as you ride the wave of change in talent management. I am your host Chris Nichols and today we’re going to be talking employee retention with Trung Tran of Amplio. The Talent Tide Podcast is sponsored by endevis. endevis is a full service recruiting firm offering a broad range of solutions from professional contracting to retained and contingency search to recruitment outsourcing endevis prides itself on its core values of being bold, accountable, help first passionate and results driven to ensure the talent we bring to our partners matches their own core values and overall mission. For more information, please visit endevis.com that is e-n-d-e-v-i-s.com. Welcome, Trung, I’m gonna give you a quick bio, and I welcome you to the call. I’m excited to to have this conversation today. Mr. Tran has spent his career in Silicon Valley working for companies such as HP and Intel, he has worked on the development of more than 72 products worth 2.2 billion in revenue. His interest in AI stems from his work at DARPA on next generation AI systems and algorithms. He remains passionate to the idea that AI should help people reason better, and not replace them. Trung is an Air Force Academy graduate has spent 17 years serving the United States. Thank you for being on the talent tide podcast,
Trung Tran:
no problem. Thank you. Just real quick, I was 17 years Silicon Valley I was five years serving the country Oh, five years, sorry, five years. Yeah, no worries,
Chris:
even amount of time, any amount of time, there is probably plenty of time spent. Thank you in that in that environment. So you, you’re going to bring an interesting perspective to our listeners today Trung and I’m excited for you to get to share at the end what the goal of amplio and your company is, but overall kind of as we set the stage, we’re going to be talking about employee retention, and it is September 28 2021, as we record this, which we’re all experiencing massive turnover. A really difficult hiring market individuals are is I don’t know that it’s ever been more of an employee centric market, candidate centric market that we’ve had. And we have today, there’s been some phases that have happened since the covid 19 pandemic, we started with layoffs, we started with some rehires, then then some more hiring and now we’ve we’ve kind of evolved back into this place of trying to get the economy back to work. And I have a friend who compares the current nature of the hiring environment to the end of the very big movie, Avengers endgame, where at the end, half of the people disappear, and nobody knows where they went. And that seems to be what hiring individuals is like today, Trung, so it’s gonna be a great conversation, but tying that all together, how have the rules changed between employer and employees? Not just in the covid 19 pandemic, but over the say, the last five to 10 years?
Trung Tran:
Yeah, I think you know, when you look at that, you know, you you think you like the traditional employee employer model, as you know, everything is a Scrooge in the, you know, the Christmas story, right kind of thing where you have a boss, everyone goes to the office, and there’s like a work like culture built around the office, that you know, is very much ties everyone together. And there’s a sense of like, sometimes family, but sometimes, just missional, right? We work a bit with the San Antonio Spurs and top of the Spurs way and how, like, over the course of the pandemic, because not everyone wants in the office, they lost a sense of cohesion as a culture, right? That you know, we’re one reason why people stay right as opposed to just chasing next paycheck or whatever it is. And so when you don’t really have the sense that culture I know you can build the car remotely but it’s a different way to approach it that you had before we actually knew people right and have lunches you had drinks with them and actually sat down with them I think everything is that you know employees aren’t chasing out traditional things I think we’ve we’ve kind of evolved a little bit from like the 70s through days where you work because you if you didn’t work you starve right that’s the whole problem with with the character main character in a story is that you know, he didn’t have his job and everything’s screwed his family would starve right and so now you know, loyalty the company really came down to you know, making sure to stay paycheck and you weren’t you had security in that paycheck, right? But I think As the things evolve, now the security of paycheck, you know, came at a price sometimes when people weren’t with their families, they know they didn’t really know, I look at the Japanese as the, the worst case is Apple and that were recently it has been called wive syndrome, right? where literally the band would work for 30 years, never see his wife never interact with her, she had her own life. And when he retired, he basically introduced himself back in her life and started yelling at her, as she got very ill, they got depressed, upset and stuff like that. And, you know, that’s kind of the price you paid for, we’re trying to move up the ladder to make money. And I think a lot of people don’t want to pay that price anymore. The money’s not worth it to them, right. And we’re very sad and what their goals are and what their objectives are. And so I think, you know, over the course of time, you know, the compensation on ways to kind of Tice employees to come is not you pay more than the next guy, salary surveys, stuff like that, or you have the cooler office, right, or we got perks that have to do with like parking spaces, and those kinds of things right. Now, I also think that, you know, there is also a change, in kind of the problems people have, I think, you know, when, when we were much more industrial, or even like a commercial, side way to come like gene, all that kind of dominate things, there are a lot more physical things to do, right. And you’re limited by how well you can do physically, right. And so a lot of the emphasis of benefits and taking care of employees, were making sure they got exercise, and they were able to physically do that to do so workers comp was around that throw my back out, or you know, this or that, when you start moving to the knowledge economy, or the information economy had now the physical work is in there. I actually, you know, when we work with the military, I always say, you know, this easy to figure out who’s the better employee, Captain America, or Steve Rogers before we came to America, right? So who’s the better soldier is probably gonna be Captain America, right? But we have a knowledge worker is very much different. But their skill sets are, you know, how they perform how they form under pressure, you know, it’s not like, he can only live so much weight. And so he needs to kind of bend his knees before he lifts, right? How you know what will help somebody mentally emotionally, right? But things that are going to impact them more as a knowledge worker, than any kind of physical fitness thing till we talk about ergonomics and make sure people sit well, stuff like that. But that’s a small part of what the everyday people have to do. So I think, from a standpoint of what the rules are changes, a, you don’t have the tight culture anymore, right? It’s more distributed, be that the idea of what is important to employees has changed quite a bit, right? And then c, you know, what they need from a benefits health standpoint, is very, very different than what then what we did traditionally, where healthcare vision and you know, death, though, you’re good to go. Right, and you were healthy. You know, we learned recently, especially during the pandemic, there’s more to health than those three things, right? There’s mental emotional health and I think those are the three things that really change being an employee, employee and employer doesn’t address those things. They’re gonna be left behind.
Chris:
You mentioned the knowledge economy that we’re in today and we have we still have manufacturing jobs throughout the country right? But it’s less it is it’s less duty so I guess today than it was at one point right, it’s less assembly line and more technical skill. Sure. So I think for for listeners, I just want to make sure that there’s a clarification here of manufacturing is still always going to exist but how technology is is is input into that environment is always going to be about how do we make this job more simplistic? How do we make it more available to to create the product that we’re creating streamlined? And and because of that you’re going to reduce the number of roles that you have possibly but you are also going to have an opportunity to teach people new skills as well.
Trung Tran:
Yeah, I think that’s very true I mean, the examples all these t gaslighter now you have a guy run around the streets in turn lite the gas lamps and then when you know electricity came in light bulb he had to find another job right i think there’s there’s there’s certainly that i think you know, there’s a artisan economy coming up, where people are very particular things made by hand, I think but all jobs like even a couple of artisan jobs right? I mean, you have a 3d printer now, right? There’s there’s like equipment that’s highly technical, hard to use. It’s enable us to be more creative. That’s what artisan jobs really come into. But, you know, if there’s still a certain amount knowledge you need to have, right? Again, it’s not as physically demanding. Hey, if you’re on your assembly line worker back in the Model T days you actually were doing work right now you watch over robots. You got to make sure that they’re there, they’re doing the right thing and writing the right code and all that stuff, to make sure no one gets hurt, stuff like that. So I think there’s definitely different types of training. And that’s a huge thing that has to occur. Because, you know, anytime we have these kind of mass, economic technical transitions, a lot of people get hurt, right? Because there is a transition. And the question is, how fast can we move them to the next thing? Right? And, you know, I don’t think it’s all in tech. I think like saying, there’s lots of things to do. There’s a lot of things in the, the economy that we’ve just ignored, or gotten cheaper frontier places, and I think there’s, there’s a desire for better quality products, more creative products, right? That, you know, back in a one size fits all, you know, this is the burger you get, right, you know, subway and Berkey said you get your way, kind of chased out. So mass customization means people have to have the creativity to be able to handle that customization, I think that transition slowly occurred. But I think the, there’s always gonna be holdouts and groups that don’t want to transition. And that’s going to be the tough part.
Chris:
I love what you said there, because somebody that’s in the recruiting space, the marketing space, sales space, we are going, there’s some different levels that we went through as we’ve evolved into more of a technologically savvy group of an industry. So the difference between customization and personalization as well, right, there’s a difference there that exists. And that, that also plays into how we we view our work and how we are interacted with at work, right? Because I am accustomed to a solution is different than a personal solution. Right? Right. Because when you’re speaking to me, personally, that’s different. A custom solution fits a wide group of people like me, but not me necessarily,
Trung Tran:
right
Chris:
So how do you? How do organizations move to a system that allows them to treat people with the kind of empathy and respect that employees are looking for today, while also not losing, you know, reducing their bottom line or, you know, cutting into their profitability, which is what, you know, the end goal of every company is to make money, right? They’re not making money, none of us have jobs, either, right? So there’s this there’s this, there’s this battle that’s taking place between what employees want versus what the company needs to be able to even provide the basic standards of living for the employee.
Trung Tran:
Yeah, I think that’s a that’s an interesting thing. We think about that. And I like your comment about personalization versus customization, I think that really speaks to the employment situation today. People want to personalize your gallery, they want to personalize where to work, when they go to ours, you know, what they get out of it, what the benefits are. So what that companies are very much a customization game. Now they’re going to take these surveys, they may occur once a quarter, once a year, ask the employees how they feel and what they need, right kind of thing is and then, you know, you’re not gonna get a real good sense of what to actually do. Right? And so but you can do some generalities, right, and a lot of the HR groups we talk to, you know, they, they go look at Glassdoor and make sure they have the exact same benefits or better benefits and next person, right? making their beauty contest. And again, it goes back to the customization theme, I’m going to customize it. So it lets this go someone else. I’m not sure for you personally, we use angels benefits, or angels benefits are actually good for you. Right? I’m just again, I think that the focus is mostly from a customization standpoint, we’ll work on your salary. Right, we’ll work on your salary or some kind of additional compensation, right? And I don’t think people are into that, right now. They want to feel like someone cares, just like you said, you know, when we sell products, somebody, right? You sell an iPhone to them. You want to say, Hey, I care what you want. So I’m gonna let you chase the app, the screens, and you know, what’s present, you know, change the lighting, you know, anything that, you know, makes it more cost for you to use. And I think, you know, what you’ve seen is that that personalization has led to better revenues. Right? So the question really is, is, you know, how do you get personalization, from a job standpoint to get to more productivity to get to higher revenues, right? Because I’m happy, productive employee is so much better than someone that’s burnt out. You know, and the productivity levels are is night and day. I mean, we look at workout play, see three or seven and look for a new job. That’s a that’s not worth producing for your company. That’s for sure. Right? Yeah. And the thing is that the HR approach this always been to ask the frontline manager to kind of build a relationship, that kind of work, the whole balance and those kind of things. I say to frontline managers there too, to make money, right, and generally speaking, especially in tech, the frontline manager was not promoted, because he’s the best, you know, HR, you know, friendly guy in the world, right? He got promoted, or she got promoted, because they’re really good at their job, right? whatever their job is, right. And so, you know, especially tech, you know, we’re all introverts, and we’re not touchy feely people, you know, he’s not going to be equipped, or she’s not going to be equipped to handle things like personnel issues, or those types of things, right? And so there’s that disconnect in the company and customization, they think, hey, we’ll have these broad policies that kind of work for a group of people, right? Have you want to keep and then we have to add other issues will have the frontline manager deal with it, right? Who’s not equipped to deal with it, right. And what employees want to do is they want to get back to like going back seminary screws, where you knew the boss, he knew kind of what’s going on, they knew what your life was, right? You’re not just a number of face? on a screen, right? You’re actually someone Hey, that’s Chris, you know, Chris has on how many kids you have a couple kids, you know, dog, he likes this and that three kids. But you know, that’s idea, right. And the idea is that I want to feel valued as a person, not as a number, right? That is how much money or revenue I generated, right? Or what my, my efficiency is in regards to work versus pay. Right. You know, I want people to know that I’m different. And I need some, some help, right? Or some of those kind of things. There was a paycheck study recently said that 60% of people who are employees today are looking for mental health benefits. And they prioritize it right. 80% of millennials said they were prioritized number one, next job search. Right? So you know, again, Oh, is it? Is it mine, it’s gonna bring by if you don’t have good mental health benefits? What are good mental health benefits? Right? Yeah, how you actually helping out with the things that we’re talking about that are really kind of core to knowledge worker, and, and the problems you’re facing today? Again, I see workers comp, eventually evolving into like, things like mental breakdown, and PTSD and stuff like that, you know, there’s so much trauma working in a certain company, right? I think that, you know, those kinds of things, I think, will evolve. And, and I think, you know, we’re just not equipped, because we don’t feel that personally, right? to actually deal with it as companies.
Chris:
So off air, we had a conversation about how humans are equipped. And, and you had a great analogy. And I want you to share that analogy as well. But I think that you bring up an interesting point around people and in what they value as a millennial myself. You know, this is where this is where it gets interesting, right? Because 80 80% of millennials would say that they value their, you know, mental health in their next job. That 80% Not me, right? I’m part of the 20%, that says something different, and I want my own personalized, and my own personalized, next opportunity, you know, you know, the things that I want are the opportunity to be part of a team that is pushing toward a centralized goal. That gives me work life balance, so that I can be home with my kids on the nights and weekends. But we’re trying to do hard things, right? Like, I don’t want an easy job, I want a hard job. But I also want work life balance, and I want to be paid competitively, etc. So it’s it’s always interesting, and how we, and this is this is just whether it’s media, or how we create it, it really comes down to the unfortunate pieces of the internet, right? Because if if you’re using the internet to disseminate information, the way in which you do that is by by creating a headline that draws people in, right? And so we want to put everyone into a box, when nobody actually is there. They’re all there. There were 7 billion individual boxes.
Trung Tran:
Yep. Yep. I agree. I think the other thing is, you know, what makes you happy? Right? I mean, like I said, earlier, happy employee is a productive employee, right? Yep. I think Mm hmm. It’s aren’t that they need a counselor, right? It’s like, they’d like to have it as a backup, you know, as you if you feel valued, and you feel like you’re part of a team that’s doing something great. I don’t think you need mental health benefits right. But if your your boss is a jerk, right? Your your project that you’re working on, even those of the great thing gets canceled every other week, right? And yet, you get jerked out to another project, you know, those kinds of things are hard to deal with. Right? And the question is, you know, oftentimes I find that you know, it’s, it’s not how you fall down how you get up that matters, right? And so you know, a lot of times people get this solution is a project you work for me. I see this video game companies, I see other tech companies like when we do a massive chip designs and stuff like that at Intel, you can have up working three, four years on a project, like a video game. And the next day is canceled. You spent four years here like pouring your heart and soul and the team into that whole thing. And, and you’re frankly just told to deal with it. Go to the next thing, right? Don’t complain, right? Suck it up, Buttercup, I guess is the best way to put it right? And go next, whatever we tell you to do. And so you’re like, well, I just spent all my my energy and my, you know, I sacrificed time with my family sacrifice time and weekend. And it means nothing to the company, right? Because the next day, they can just cut it off. And so I think those times he can kind of develop skills to kind of deal with that and compartmentalize it a little bit right? And get up better, right? is important for a lot of people, right? I think the, they’re always see that the exceptional people that can roll with the punches,and just not care. And this compare rounds it out. But a lot of people can’t. And the question is, you know, again, go back to the personal experience, how do you help the majority of the people, but by helping them individually with every problem to have, right? Because they won’t have different problems if their reactions to events? Right. And so the question is, you know, what is there for them? And the alternative can’t be suck it up Buttercup kind of thing. Right? You know, walk it off stuff. And so that’s the that’s the long term question, I think. But you know, it’s true, you know, everyone wants to feel value, everyone wants to be happy, right? work life balance thing, right? And, but happiness is different for different people. Right? And being different people, right? And so you need something that’s very individualized. And one of the things that we strongly believe in and what I hate about the the current era technology is the idea of big data. If I get enough data on every American, right, everyone on Earth, right? I can come through the statistics and come up with like, this ground truth answer. Now people should run or how people should do anything, right. And we rejected out a while back when we were doing work with long distance runners in Colorado, we’re doing human forms there. And the guy here it was six four his curve was like five, six, he’s like, I can’t run like her. My running mechanics can’t be like her. my legs are longer at different genes, you know, we just species different right kinda thing you need help me run the way I run. So I can perform better? Don’t tell me what everyone else is running or how they’re running? Because I’m not them. Right. It makes a ton of sense. You know, we look at the precision medicine movement with epigenomics. Where your genes and your environment affect how you deal with medication. So not a 30,000 person study or 100,000 person study that says this medication is good for everyone. Right? all 7 billion people on earth? Is it targeted towards a certain population? A certain genetic type of stuff like that? I think work has to be the same way. I mean, I think you can need to understand how people individually react to medicine or your policies, right? And make sure you tailor your policies in a way that no not necessary, you know, you know, gives away the farm, right? You lose money as a company. But I think there’s there’s no customization, a lot of medical death is stuff like that, that usally guide people to the right solution, right? So that they they get the most out of it, or guys the right training classes right? Now to help them where we’re a problem to deal with, right? And you got given the way for that they can do it privately. So they’ll feel like they’re their boss is looking into their life. Right? And so those are kind of things you have to deal with a little bit for the conversation we’re talking about.
Chris:
So kind of hitting back to the analogy that you mentioned. off air, you said a few things that aligned to it, which I think is now time to jump to that topic. But you Why are we not equipped as humans to deal with burnout? And why are we Why are we not wired to just move on from it?
Trung Tran:
You know, we’re talking about the sky with Dr. Michael Platt. From u Penn. He runs a neuroscience initiative over at the Wharton School. And he is talking that you know, as hunter gatherers, we’re just not equipped to deal with long term chronic stress. When you think about you know, back in the day, you know, you’re, you’re with a saber toothed tiger, if you run enough that they they they’ve given up on you and eventually you’re safe. Or you punch them in the nose enough that they run away, right kind of thing. And so the episodic where you know all your your fight or flight, all your energy, everything is consumed in that one moment, right? Again, normally those moments don’t last like days or weeks. Otherwise, you know, you’d run forever, right and die running the last maybe 10-15 minutes, right? And the thing is that you know, when we look at the our flight uh fight or flight response was a stress management, right? We’re dealing things that we’re learning on top. It was constant stress. I mean, we worked a lot with us cyber operators, right and keeping the US network safe and secure from foreign attacks. That’s a lot of pressure. Right? You can’t make a mistake, right? You can’t do something stupid, you can’t have an off day. And so you’re always worried. It’s like you’re constantly staring at the lion. And he’s sitting there on your shoulder staring you didn’t tire tire your life, you take it out your kids when you come home, because you haven’t dealt with it work, right? You know, you know these this lions there. And, and I think if our ancestors were constantly watched by a lion, I don’t think they would have survived. And I don’t think we could survive either. Unless you get the lion off our back. Right? Because we can’t always be afraid. We can’t always be in fight mode, right? There has to be a time when we recover from it. And that’s the thing that people don’t do the job of
Chris:
how do we make that transition? How do we how do we get there Trung?
Trung Tran:
I think the thing is that, you know, especially in America, you know, we were joking the other day that we’re probably not the right product for Europe. Right? But you know, there’s a sense like America and Asia you know, you talk about the the jobs in China where people committing suicide and black companies in Japan, you know, what, the Western society or the Europeans, they, they, they emphasize work, you work hard, you accomplish something right here. And the best way to find happiness is to work in something you love and work really hard at right be excellent at right thing. And what you if you’re a singer or performer, there’s a lot of pressure. Right? You look at Simone Biles, right, she had pressure not just to perform, she had to not just win a gold medal. She had to like break world records. I mean, how about pressure? Right? And so
Chris:
her her own records, right? Like, you’re now up against yourself?
Trung Tran:
Yeah. And that’s, I mean, think about the pressure, right? You know, and she can’t take a day off either right kind of thing? she does, she gets criticized for it, right? And so the question really is, is you know, you have to force yourself to take those breaks, right? You have to realize that it’s a it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and that you can’t get hurt 20% every day, right? You can’t just work. So you have to get the time to recover. A lot of us are never taught that a lot of us are just, you know, you look at gamers that game all night long, right for like a week. And they’re, they’re just like a puddle of like, goo. But then the week, I think, you know, we like what we’re doing, we were excited about what we’re working on, right? And we just don’t look to see in the eyes, of course, those breaks. So we need something that monitors us and tells us, hey, it’s great that you’re used to this one time, but you need X number of days to recover, right? He kind of spaced out your work space out what you’re doing. So that you can finish the marathon, you can finish the race, and not get burnt out. Because that’s usually you quitting the race you’re not actually doing and performing the way you want to right. And that’s kind of the thought process for us as to how, how do we build something that monitors us, so we listen to ourselves, and that’s the biggest problem. When you’re high performer, you’re into your job and you’re, you’re running 100 mph, you believe that your initiative to the first order, right, and you’re not listening your body, you’re not listening to the fact that you know, you know, you’re groggy, and your head’s clouded, or wherever it is, right, the next day, you’re think that you can go in that meeting with no sleep, right? And kill it. Right? And I think, you know, back in your 20s, you might be able to do that. But I’m pretty old. And you know, it gets harder and harder as you get older. Right? And so that standpoint, you know, that’s that’s the thing has to change is that you know, a we have to give ourselves permission to recover. We don’t have to constantly run the race. Yeah, we have to build in time in our schedule to kind of relax. Let’s build our time and our schedules cognitive reset. So before you walk in your house with your kids, sit in the car for 10 minutes, and deal with whatever work issues you deal with that. And switch mindsets, right? To being know Chris dad versus Chris worker, right kind of thing. We have to give ourselves time to do that with us was permission to do that. You know, just because no giant next door is never sleeps, and he just keeps working right? Doesn’t mean that I can’t be just as productive, but work smarter at it right. I supposed to work harder. And that’s, that’s the key thing. I think those are the two things you’ll give her. Give yourself permission to take a break, right? And then you know, build those breaks in so that you actually can recover and try to listen to your body as much as you can.
Chris:
So I know what the answer to this question is. But my question to you is that why is that the responsibility of the employer versus me personally?
Trung Tran:
Well, I think as you know, the, the reality is there’s two things right The first is that at least in America 80% of us get our benefits from our employers. Right? If you’re looking for help, like, we worked with Major League Baseball players as they went through the season, to try to prep them for when, they go pitch and stuff like that. And, and, you know, make sure that you know, everything’s taken care of for them right kind of thing. And that’s really, you know, when you’re the best, the best, everything’s taken care for you, right? You don’t think anything, right. And you have doctors on speed dial, and your Neale kajaani of moral sweat and $5 million getting shape. And you have a guy for that you have a guy for everything, right. But most of us don’t have guys that you might have a back issue. I don’t know, the classical medical doctor and all this other stuff, recommendations, and your company has to provide you the benefits of go do that. Right? Secondly, you know, now there is just the idea that, you know, your most important asset these days are your employees. Right? Like, so if you had like, the big assembly line robot, right? And you wanted to work 24-7 costant work, you have to do maintenance? Is that the response to the robot to do maintenance, right? The responsibility employer, the owner, that’s trying to get something out of them to do the maintenance and take care of them a little bit. Right. So, you know, are we equipping our employees to actually do the maintenance, stuff like that? And that goes back to what we said earlier? How do you know you care about me as a person? how, you know, you helped me You gave me the right maintenance that I need, right? Thats what the other guy gets right? And you have to pay attention to it, right? Because you want the employee to work as hard and and be happy and to be as productive as you can be right? You don’t expect a robot to take care of itself. And you’re pushing employees as your problem? No, you put in that situation? Now he’s working 24 hours or, or she’s no taking weekends off? Because you need something done, are they perceived that, you know, if they did that you you promote them right kind of thing. So you’re just like you setting up the robot, you set them up for what’s gonna happen, hey, you can watch them fail, or you do some maintenance on them to make sure they perform for the long term. Right? And that really what comes down to.
Chris:
So is that what Amplio’s mission is?
Trung Tran:
Yeah, I mean, our misAmpliosion is, is you know, Amplio is that is Latin for amplify, and we want amplify your body’s messages to you. So you are aware of what your current mental, emotional state is, before things go bad. So there’s still an opportunity for you actually, to do something about it. And so we use, like, you know, wearables, we’re partnering with aura, we’re partnering with Fitbit, Garmin, a bunch of wearable companies, right. And we have API’s, we’re taking directly from the site, we build a, we have psychometric data as well tests, a cognitive tests, as well as surveys that we give a key basis to you. So we take your mental and emotional scan, we build a model that says, Okay, this is what the numbers are, when Chris is, well, right? He’s happy, everything’s going well, this is when Chris gets burnt out, he’s tired, and he’s not doing so well, then we have to come up with routines that help you get from state B to state a again, right? And we want to integrate that we call him repeat, because we want to integrate into your life, right? In a way that you know, they don’t become a thing, you know, right, you know, like a, you have to go schedule it and think about it, you actually never do it, right. But it’s something that’s just in your schedule in your calendar, you know, you know, what five minutes is? And more importantly, going back to the personalization part, the AI actually, because we’re continuously monitoring you, the AI actually knows what the outcome is. So if we suggest you sleep more, like I always get that from, from some wearables. so easily two more hours Trung, like, in my life, if I could have slept two more hours, I would have, right, yeah. Right. And where’s because I worry too much, or whatever it is, right? You have come up with other solutions to just say, Go sleep four hours, possibly two hours earlier, right? I’m never gonna go sleep two hours early, right. And so. So that standpoint, you know, if we suggest something to you and doesn’t work, we start tailoring it to recommend things that actually are targeted to what works best for you. Because we eventually want to learn what works for you, and doesn’t work for you. And the nice thing about us is that we only collect your data. So we’re not comparing you to anyone else from that time where you do what the average employee does right? Now what is Chris when he’s happy? And what is Chris he sad? And what are the things that have worked for him in the past? That got back to happy right? Now we’re constantly learning that that’s where you call it a digital twin. But it’s basically an AI that kind of learns you as yours forever. Right? You know, so you know, because if we don’t mark it off, if we don’t give it to anyone else, like what would I do with Chris’s AI, you know, kind of thing. I have my own AI because I’m different thn Chris. And so so it’s kind of things that you know, are we that’s what we try to do. So once we teach it, the employees manage it. We do it in an employer situation because employer has to take the ball with things get bad. What I mean by that is, you know, you know, one of the defense contractors here, I had to bring back their employees in, in the September of last year. And over 30,000, those employees said that I’m sorry, 3000 employees said that they, they experience anxiety, some so bad that they’re shaking their car 15 minutes before they were in the office, because this was the height the COVID stuff, right? You weren’t sure how he got it. And all sorts of stuff. And eventually, you know, the best contractor to have some anxiety experts and kind of brought in better health to help them. That’s the thing for us, we’re going to help you cope and manage yourself. But if things start really going off the rails, we want to hand off to an EAP program, we want to hand it off to other benefits, so you actually get the help you need. Right? So we call the whole thing, your mental health journey. Yeah, routines in there, right. And we’re kind of monitor where you go, you know, sometimes you have a bad day and things go off the rails, right? It doesn’t mean that you can’t ever recover can’t come back, right? But you want something that kind of monitors you says, okay, Chris, you’re really going off the rails here, right? And you need to talk to somebody, right? That’s what we want to be we want to he kind of buddy that helps you do that. And we want the company be involved in that, because the company has to also realize that Chris needs a break. He’s a great performer, he deserves a couple days off, to just reset, you know, you know, and those kinds of things. So, you know, we don’t give you we don’t give the day to you. But you know, we want you to self advocate for that. And the company has the policies in place to support you on that, right. I think that’s how you take care of your employees, right? Because we it was just you coping, you can only cope with so much. If the job sucks and you’re your boss hates you kind of thing. But we want you to be aware that you gotta get out of that environment, your boss hates you, right, your classes stress and your your work security. You need to go ask HR or go after some method for for getting some relief from a company standpoint as well. So we can see that’s kind of a dual dance. We’re helping you Yeah, no, I
Chris:
love that. Yeah, that’s a very cool tool. A clarifying question. So it is it does well the tool allow to say, I’m on a team of 10 people, we report all the same leader. Is there an ability? Because I’m saying I’m guessing No, but I thought you said but is there an ability to aggregate the overall happiness of a team?
Trung Tran:
There is this. So we were thinking about organizational dashboard. You know, and we talked about, like HR directors and stuff like that. And so frontline managers, and they said, honestly Trung, I wouldn’t know what to do with this. So what we’re trying to do is we’re kind of try to work with, you know, some, we realized that we have to say the same thing we’re doing with the employee, because basically, our philosophy employees that you don’t want to know, your data, you know, all your data is going to tell you is that you know a bunch of charts and numbers, you have to interpret it right? You want us to interpret it for you. And then we want to give you recommendations, you still look your data, because you own it, right. But from a standpoint, you need to find a solution. Now, it’s great to know that I have cancer, but what do I do about it? Right? kinda thing, I think a safety issue for an organization. But I don’t think like say the organization is during this big transition are archaic at best. Now they have these yearly surveys, these policy procedures that are not very tailord to the employee. Right. And they’re scrambling, right right now. They don’t know what to do. And I think, you know, as we provide more data to them, and we can kind of explain how they can use that data, interpret for them, right, so that they, they know how to react. I think that’s good. We have to make sure anonymize so that your data gets leaked out. And no one says Chris is the problem, right kind of thing. You know, but, you know, there are things like, you know, if you know, this number of people, like, half your employees are experiencing anxiety, or half your employees are sleeping, or under like contant stress, or just one team never sleeps, right kind of thing. And they’re all like, you know, you go, Hey, that team needs to be cycled off, right? That team needs to, because you know, sometimes showing a business, you just got to dump it on the best people all the time until you ride them to death right? And the question is your, hey, these groups need to kind of get the time off. And I think that’s management and HR has to learn how to do that. Right. And, but the thing is that we give them the fidelity, they never had the fidelity before actually understand what the issues are, right? And so I’m hoping over the next 510 years that we can help work with HR departments to really help them understand how to make that transition. But right now, they tell me, they don’t want the data because they don’t want to do
Chris:
that to deal with it, right? Like there’s so much track in front of us on this topic. And I think we probably most most often view it from the lens of I can’t even accomplish what I need to accomplish today. That’s less hard, right? Because people’s feelings and emotions are difficult. And it is it is very hard to personalize and, you know, HR managers did not go to school to be psychology majors, right? They went to school to work in human resources because they wanted to help people. But that doesn’t also automatically make them the most prepared to have conversations with people about their their feelings and their emotions.
Trung Tran:
Right, right. And that’s the thing. That’s why with AI is reputation is that we work with clinical psychologist, upang, USC and Colorado, right? Yeah. They’re looking at, hey, this interpretation is what they need. But again, like if it gets bad, I think a 90% of us can just have coping mechanisms. And we’re fine with power if you’re a guy thing. But you know, if it gets bad, you know, you don’t want that employee to come down with a gun and shoot something off. That’s right. Yeah, won’t be able to you know. I think just from a liability security standpoint, you need to have a good sense of what’s going to happen, right? Because you do know people are super unhappy, especially during the pandemic, right? I mean, yeah. And so the,
Chris:
I think just this week, we saw that last year was the most murders, I think, maybe on on record, or the biggest increase year over year. It’s a really difficult time right now. And I think that your technology, I’m very hopeful for Trung, I’m looking forward to you all, making waves over the next few years at different conferences, and getting your name and things out there. I hope this can play a role in it. But I think that it’s wonderful what you all are trying to do, trying to give us give employees the power to help themselves, which I think is also the most valuable thing that you can give someone is the ability to help themselves. So Trung, thank you again for coming on. Check out Amplio if you’re interested in learning more about their software and their AI and what it’s doing organizations. And Trung can be found on LinkedIn Trung Tran. And that’s another wrap on the Talent Tide Podcast. Please be sure to like, subscribe, and rate wherever you listen or watch the podcast, from Apple to Spotify to YouTube. And remember, success is on the other side of fear. Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you again soon. Thank you