On this episode of Transcending Workspace, our host Matt Watson talks with Ringo Nishioka, SHRM - SCP, SPHR. Ringo Nishioka is a Human Resources and Operations executive with experience spanning Fortune 50 and high-growth technology companies. He builds award-winning company cultures and creates rapid growth through a hyper-focus on leveraging culture and performance management programs. He is currently the Chief People Officer at MoxiWorks, the intelligent productivity system for real estate brokerages.
Check out his blog at https://hrnasty.com/
Connect with us:
www.apexfacility.com
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn
On this episode of Transcending Workspace, our host Matt Watson talks with Ringo Nishioka, SHRM - SCP, SPHR. Ringo Nishioka is a Human Resources and Operations executive with experience spanning Fortune 50 and high-growth technology companies. He builds award-winning company cultures and creates rapid growth through a hyper-focus on leveraging culture and performance management programs. He is currently the Chief People Officer at MoxiWorks, the intelligent productivity system for real estate brokerages.
Check out his blog at https://hrnasty.com/
Connect with us:
www.apexfacility.com
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn
00:00:03:12 - 00:00:40:04
Matt
Todays guest is Ringo Nishioka as chief people officer Ringo is responsible for all things H.R. and facilities at Moxie Works. Moxie works is a software company in the real estate technology space brings responsibilities to create a workspace environment that recruits retains employees who appreciate the workplace. They are building elements to attract and retain their team good compensation, diversity benefits and of course, the culture of the workplace both in-home and remote, in-office and remote Moxy Works is just under 300 employees based in downtown Seattle with an office in Melbourne, Australia.
00:00:40:23 - 00:01:05:10
Matt
They have employees across the US, Canada, Australia and UK that are currently working remotely with offices open to all who want to collaborate and work in the office environment. Ring also writes a blog, H.R. MasterCard, with about 50,000 weekly subscribers. The blog reveals the unspoken rules and the insider information your H.R. department executives and manager probably are not sharing.
00:01:06:02 - 00:01:14:01
Matt
This includes job interviews, company culture, and career advancement, all so you know the real rules by which you are being judged and why.
00:01:14:07 - 00:01:31:12
Ringo
Welcome briefing at How are you, man? It's good to be here. Thank you so much. Apex has helped us work through five companies and probably 1517 years of of the rewards so yeah. Thank you I'm flattered thank you.
00:01:31:12 - 00:01:49:19
Matt
And you know what your intro doesn't really do you justice let's talk a little bit about that. So you've been in the technology space working on as a people person as a people officer on the on on the executive team for four or five different companies over about 25 years is that right.
00:01:51:05 - 00:01:54:22
Ringo
Maybe 20.
00:01:55:03 - 00:02:10:12
Matt
20 years. OK what do you I know it's been a while and you've been really company even you're like the guy, the secret weapon that's been brought in here. I want to grow my team from 20 to 75 and six months or a year and you figure out a way to do it.
00:02:11:18 - 00:02:19:20
Ringo
Yeah. No I've been really fortunate and I got lucky with the first company we met through CEO there, Keith Smith, and.
00:02:20:06 - 00:02:21:03
Matt
Then we, we.
00:02:21:03 - 00:02:35:18
Ringo
Had a lot of success and we were able to grow companies build out and yeah, that, that gave me a lot of experience and, and I think without that experience I wouldn't be where I am today. So really, really grateful.
00:02:36:06 - 00:02:57:24
Matt
Yeah. Yeah. You've, you've worked with some amazing technologists and people who are just unbelievable entrepreneurs. So let's talk a little bit about what's the works now, how and the big question, and this is where I think you can really provide our listeners with a lot of insight how is Moxie works evaluating their workplace or workspace in today's current environment?
00:02:59:16 - 00:03:23:22
Ringo
Good question. It's the million dollar question and had I figured that out yeah. I haven't figured it out. I don't know who has figured it out. I am. I said yes to this one. Obviously we go way back, but to I was hoping I could learn what other companies are doing. Happy to share where we are so we moved into a new space.
00:03:23:22 - 00:03:53:08
Ringo
You Apex helped us obviously move into this new space just before COVID hit. And then the city went down to lockdown and we were literally still unloading boxes from trucks, but we ended up buying everybody's second laptops and desks and sending them home and have only come back in the last three or four months. And when I say come back, we're I don't know.
00:03:53:08 - 00:04:19:00
Ringo
There might be six or seven people in the office on any given day. The execs we're trying to meet in person for exec meeting once a week and then quarterly. Most of the teams have their cube hours or their KPI meetings, and those are in person and we're flying people in. Yeah, but it's a wacky world. I, I joined when I joined, I guess I had a couples we couple of other h.r.
00:04:19:00 - 00:04:39:10
Ringo
People we, we got a group together because and no offense to the city, but we didn't feel like we were getting much guidance from the city when covid started. And so we were just trying to talk to each other to find out what is going on. So it's been flip flopping back and forth. To get to your question, where are we now?
00:04:45:03 - 00:05:10:00
Ringo
We're all over the board. So some of our some of our execs want to be in the office. Some of them don't want to be in the office. Right. Some of them want to collaborate. Some of them want to escape their households because they've got a spouse and four kids running around. But we're we're right now currently we're on a voluntary basis.
00:05:10:00 - 00:05:33:24
Ringo
You can work in the office or you can work remotely and I don't know what's going to happen in another month. Right. And so we were trying to take cues from the larger companies in town, the Microsoft schools, Facebooks. And right now they're calling people back into the office, I think two and three days a week. Right yeah.
00:05:34:02 - 00:06:04:11
Ringo
And again, that's kind of why I wanted to talk to you is because I'm not I'm not really agreeing with calling people back to the office. And and so I'll just try to lay out my thought process on this I think there's a little bit to do generationally that the leaders and decision makers in most of these companies are our my age.
00:06:04:11 - 00:06:05:12
Ringo
50 plus.
00:06:05:19 - 00:06:11:03
Matt
Yeah. You don't look 59 but you're almost 59. I just turned 59 so we know how old we're getting.
00:06:11:19 - 00:06:39:12
Ringo
Yeah. And I, and you, we grew up working in the office ten to 12 hours a day. That's how we proved ourselves. We had to be seen. And so if you're a decision maker today I think you're used to that and that's a 40 year track record that's going to be hard to break I, you know, I, I negotiate the leases here and we've got building here, building in Australia yeah.
00:06:39:17 - 00:07:09:19
Ringo
And I get it. People are paying rents for empty, empty offices. I get that but I, I don't know, I just feel like calling people back is, is not, is not productive right now.
00:08:02:13 - 00:08:13:07
Ringo
And I think I think there's so that that that has to do a lot about employees getting called back is building relationships and maturation. Yeah.
00:08:13:07 - 00:08:40:06
Matt
Yeah, connection. I mean it's really hard to have a relationship. You I mean we've all done it the last couple of years and sustain somewhat of a relationship or resume. But it's I mean, we have people who knew people who were coming on just at the beginning of the pandemic and the growth for those people has been slowed dramatically because they haven't been able to be next to one another and connecting and collaborating with their teammates.
00:08:40:17 - 00:08:49:08
Matt
And that's how they learn our business. Our business is to learn by doing business, not to learn by, hey, we tell you what to do business. So I know that's a that's a big. Yeah.
00:08:49:15 - 00:09:13:09
Ringo
It's it's it's messed up. And, you know, at the end of the day, the people making the decisions on our raises, on our promotions are our people later in their careers. They're the decision makers. And if they're used to working in the office and that's how they like to collaborate, it, it it's, it's a tough go, but I don't know.
00:09:13:09 - 00:09:45:19
Ringo
So I've been asking myself a couple of questions why do we want to bring people back into the office? And then also thinking about what is the hiring market right now? Right. It's unemployment is low. An all time low. Yes. 10 million jobs open out there. And and if unemployment was high and employees did not have any options. Yeah, call them all back in.
00:09:45:19 - 00:09:49:03
Ringo
I'm I get it. But right now.
00:09:49:08 - 00:09:57:23
Matt
It's almost a benefit. Yeah, right. That flexibility that you're you're intuitively one of the benefits that you're offering now is flexibility.
00:09:58:06 - 00:10:05:02
Ringo
Yes, absolutely. Yes. And I think it's one of the ways we were able to scale out, you know what, just under 300 employees now.
00:10:05:02 - 00:10:35:06
Matt
And have you have you been taking office? I mean, you have to compete and people really probably don't know this but really has to compete in a market with Google Amazon Facebook which is now called meta and that's just some of the larger ones. You know, Apple's got a big office up here. I mean, there are and in addition to that, there are multiple, multiple startups and many you know, billion dollar startup Valuate valuation startups up here that you're competing with every day for talent.
00:10:35:06 - 00:10:39:12
Matt
And, you know, I guess there's got to be something you got to offer that the other aren't.
00:10:40:04 - 00:11:09:02
Ringo
Yeah, it's it's funny. You know, we're interviewing people and in since the pandemic has started, we've probably hired over 150 people. I haven't met very many of them in person. If any and one of the first questions that we get in the interview process now is how flexible is your work situation around remote work. That is, I mean I'd say 19 out of 20 interviews.
00:11:09:02 - 00:11:30:15
Ringo
Those are the first couple of questions and then they'll follow up with I'm looking and we're always asking, why are you looking for a new job? And I'd say, 75% of the people are saying, Well, I've been with my company five years or seven years. I thought I was going to retire there. I worked remotely through COVID and now my CEO wants everybody back in the office.
00:11:31:02 - 00:11:56:07
Ringo
Might be two days a week, it might be full time, but they're like, There's plenty of places that I can work remotely. And, and so I'm looking and I get it. I mean, I'm in the office today, but Seattle's an expensive place to live. I live 30 miles away. It's an hour commute one way I got a truck 15 miles to the gallon.
00:11:56:23 - 00:12:18:11
Ringo
So 20, 20 bucks in gas and 30 bucks in parking and 2 hours a commute, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and I have no as an exec, I have no room to be complaining about the costs, but I need to take that into consideration for people earlier in their careers, like 50 bucks a day in 2 hours. That's just crazy.
00:12:18:14 - 00:12:39:23
Matt
Yeah. And I think in our, especially specifically in Seattle, people probably don't know we're like a top five in some cases the top three worse traffic congestion in the country, you know, including San Francisco and York, Manhattan and all these crazy places. And what people don't realize is that Seattle is kind of built like an hourglass where the downtown central business district is.
00:12:39:23 - 00:13:03:22
Matt
That is the squeeze point into this hourglass. And from north and south of I-90 to the east. But there's there's two there's a big lake on one side and Puget Sound on the other. And there isn't a whole lot of ways to get to Seattle other than north and south and a little bit from the east. So yeah, your point really is now people recognize the challenge that commutes created, also the cost of living in Seattle with all the tech talent.
00:13:03:22 - 00:13:22:18
Matt
And, you know, generous salaries that tech folks are making. It's really pushed affordability way out of whack. Many of our employees struggle with that. And we have to be conscious of how we schedule teams that have to drive an hour and a half, 2 hours each way just to do 8 hours or 10 hours worth of work. So you're point's well made.
00:13:22:18 - 00:13:42:13
Matt
I think that people who have the luxury, I guess you'd say, to have a nice office at home and not a lot of disturbance and that sort of thing will probably want to continue that way. And, you know, your workforce productivity in the last two years, it's been pretty darn, pretty darn good at Moxy. Where did you get that accomplished up time?
00:13:42:24 - 00:13:44:00
Matt
And during focus?
00:13:44:09 - 00:14:05:20
Ringo
Yeah, no, thank you. Where we feel like we have made a lot of progress. We didn't have to cut anybody's hours or lay anybody off. And there's a lot of companies out there. We're we're no Google but Google had a record year and and we were very, very fortunate. We had a record year last couple of years. And so, you know, I think we've all proven you can be productive working from home.
00:14:05:20 - 00:14:31:23
Ringo
And and when I think of bringing people back into the office, I'm wondering why. What is the specific reason I don't think it's to see butts in seats. I think it's for collaboration and developing relationships. And so I I'm trying to think of other ways to do that. You know, we're I think this is a whole new era of working in the workplace.
00:14:32:09 - 00:15:21:03
Ringo
COVID just started, and it's forced everybody to change their mind about how we're going to work, how we're going to communicate. And and and we're only second year into this. And it it feels like there's going to be this way for the next 15 or 20 years. I might be exaggerating there, but for the foreseeable future, but there's a lot of great online tools for collaboration miracle Monday dot com Trello time management pieces and I think as this continues companies are going to find more and more develop more and more collaborative tools whether it's you know we've got a guy that is who's death he's my like he's our benefits guy here and and before
00:15:21:03 - 00:16:10:04
Ringo
COVID the closed captioning on these video conferencing was not good so so and he's reading lips and you know so but now it's amazing right in 18 months zoom and teams have just killed it with with closed captioning so I think companies are going to be developing more sophisticated tools to help brainstorming sessions collaboration sessions and we as execs have got to just raise our game we've we've all yourself included had to keep up with technology as in the last 1015 years and if we don't keep up we get left behind and and I think it's the same with developing relationships we've got to figure out new ways to develop relationships.
00:16:10:14 - 00:16:39:24
Matt
So really what I'm hearing is that Moxie works really is standing in the question of really what they're going to do and trying to obviously adapt to, you know, the got the meeting, meeting the potential employee and the current employees where they are in terms of the preferences have you done any survey? Have you reached out and talked to the teams in terms of trying to figure out kind of what their preferences are and what you think the direction of that team?
00:16:40:05 - 00:16:48:10
Matt
I know a lot of people probably want to think about it, and I'm sure like me, I don't answer surveys, I don't respond to that stuff. So, you know.
00:16:49:04 - 00:17:10:19
Ringo
Yeah. So I, I wanted to before we get on to the survey, I just wanted to touch on a point. You said we got to meet them where they are. We got to meet the employees where they are. And I think that's a big point. You know, you and I are later in our careers and I think you and I will both agree developing relationships with your manager and with your peers will help you progress your your career.
00:17:11:23 - 00:17:41:20
Ringo
If somebody doesn't know who you are, it's going to be hard to promote you or give you a raise. But at the end of the day, I don't have kids, but, you know, you have kids. And and I'm convinced and when I was in my early career, I'm convinced I as somebody later in my career, I'm not going to be able to tell somebody earlier in their career you really should be in the office if you want your career to progress.
00:17:42:06 - 00:18:05:09
Ringo
Right. My father told me that and I thought it was backwards and old school and then when I turned 45, I was like, wow, my dad was pretty brilliant when it came to navigating office politics. Right. So, yeah, we might think we know what's best, but we got to meet people where they are. And right now, there's a great resignation.
00:18:05:09 - 00:18:12:24
Ringo
Unemployment's low, employees have choices and and before I get to collaboration, I want to retain employees.
00:18:13:04 - 00:18:13:10
Matt
Yeah.
00:18:13:12 - 00:18:44:04
Ringo
So if we don't have employees, there's no collaboration so. So, yeah, we are trying to be flexible, and I hope that people comment here and and share what their companies are doing to, to get collaborate like we're so, you know, we're flip flopping almost every other month here. But most recently where I've been thinking we need to go is and I want to be careful how I say this because I don't want to scare off any moxie employees.
00:18:45:14 - 00:19:02:14
Ringo
We have space for 100 year I got seven or eight people coming in every day and we're based in downtown Seattle I think what we're looking at is two small, small offices, four collaboration spaces, and we'll be reaching out to Apex.
00:19:02:23 - 00:19:11:08
Matt
This is going forward right now. Going forward this next strategic concept of what office in Vermont same might be. It's one of. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:19:11:08 - 00:19:37:16
Ringo
So two small offices, maybe 20 people each and it's going to be for the people who say, Hey, I want to, I like to work in the office. And we welcome that and, and to have the collaboration meetings and the quarterly KPI QPR meetings and, and just a meeting space and not probably not 20 desks but more conference heavy on conference and collaboration light on desks.
00:19:37:16 - 00:19:55:23
Ringo
Whereas I think you know when we were four with Apex, it was heavy on desks and we had, you know, different collaboration rooms with different personalities and color themes and et cetera, et cetera. But it was heavy on desks and and so I.
00:19:55:23 - 00:20:12:01
Matt
So the focus work is really going to be probably done outside. Yeah. The collaboration meeting and learning is going to be an office in the environment you set up. So my work lounge, semi-serious conferencing, indoor communication, culture, building, that sort of thing.
00:20:12:07 - 00:21:02:00
Ringo
Yeah. Yeah. And and if we need space for a large meaning, we'll rent something at a hotel because we're spending a lot of money on rent. Yeah. And it's kind of like, hey, I could buy an RV for 440 grand or I could spend a lot of money at hotels. Yeah. With that 40 grand. And I think instead of spending the money on rent, we could, we could pour that, pour that some of that money into the culture of the company hosting functions where people are face to face, you know, not necessarily movie night because nobody talks during movie night, but events so yeah, you know, the thought is, well, my, my, my most recent
00:21:02:00 - 00:21:31:20
Ringo
brainstorm is let's just get people together and that's not in the office. So hopefully I think we're going to try and sponsor a couple of mixers or social gatherings, but not in the office. They'll be at a bar or some golf place in town or bowling. And I just want people who haven't met to meet because until they meet, they're not that's the first step to the collaboration.
00:21:32:14 - 00:21:50:20
Ringo
And then, I don't know, I might. The latest thought is maybe each department has a day reserve for them to come into our current office, which has plenty of space. One or two days a month will pay for parking will probably pay for lunch. I mean, I don't.
00:21:52:07 - 00:21:52:24
Matt
Got to get them there.
00:21:52:24 - 00:22:25:17
Ringo
Some. Yeah, got to get in there somehow again. And, you know, we're, we're not spending much money on, on our lunches and our snacks the way we used to because we have, you know, less than 5% of our employee force here and yeah, I'm really curious to what some of these other companies are doing. We're I feel like we're we're, we're getting plenty of candidates because that are coming from big companies, because they're getting called back in.
00:22:25:17 - 00:22:29:11
Ringo
But how do we retain them? I'm wondering what your other companies are doing.
00:22:29:16 - 00:22:55:02
Matt
Right. So you're really what I'm hearing is you're really seeing the the recruiting grounds fairly open for you for your more flexible approach to this process, that workspace. And you are picking them off a little bit as far as. Yeah, I mean, other than and so one of the questions I had chat about this briefly is, you know, Moxie Works has been on a serious growth curve for the last couple of years.
00:22:55:02 - 00:23:11:13
Matt
And I've doubled headcount, I think, over the last couple of years as well. Some of this has been through acquisition and merger. And, you know, this is a pretty tough environment as just with the mergers and acquisitions that you've done, has it been easier.
00:23:11:20 - 00:23:12:09
Ringo
Because we.
00:23:12:09 - 00:23:26:19
Matt
Are working from home and kind of already accustomed to zoom communication and meetings that way? Or I mean, you've done a lot of M&A work in the past, companies that you work with, what's your what's your thought? Is it been has it been smoother because of that.
00:23:29:04 - 00:23:59:04
Ringo
I don't feel like it has. I'm getting more 50,000 level here or 50,000 level here. But I think we're as a society, we're just a little more tense, right? We got whether it's the social issues going on, it's COVID, there's a war or a conflict. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on. And now you got working from home, people have kids that they're trying to take care of.
00:24:00:07 - 00:24:19:02
Ringo
I think people are just I don't want to say tense, but the level of stress is not what it was four or five years ago. And so when there is change, I think that the threshold and the tolerance for changes is actually a little less right.
00:24:19:24 - 00:24:20:21
Matt
They've used up all.
00:24:21:12 - 00:24:34:14
Ringo
Yeah. So our patience is day. I'm in the parking lot and people are pissing me off because they're not yeah. Yeah. You know, the little things are setting us off and so.
00:24:34:20 - 00:25:06:01
Matt
Very short fuzes. And yet people look in looking at people on flights. I hear this mass mandate came down today or. Yeah, so that maybe they'll be lots you disruption on the flights. But I, I, like you said, I think you know, two things we have here at Apex is embracing changes. One of the aspects of the DNA of people who are very successful working here, we found over the years people who are unwilling or resistant to change don't make it very long here at Apex because we are a change maker for our clients.
00:25:06:01 - 00:25:31:17
Matt
We, we help our clients transition in their workspace in whatever direction they need to. But I also would say that as a 59 year old white guy, I'm relatively I'm relatively inoculate. I mean, kind of away from all the madness because I mean, 80 miles out of Seattle, you know, where I live. Yeah. And you've kind of left that crazy day to day energy that's kind of in Seattle.
00:25:31:17 - 00:25:52:02
Matt
And then we also have a whole nother level of challenge on the streets of Seattle with both mental illness and drugs. And but I think that the the new mayor is starting to take control of that situation. And hopefully that's going to start changing because I know workplace safety, just getting to work for many of your people could be an issue.
00:25:52:10 - 00:26:16:20
Ringo
Yeah. You know, you moved us to this new space or Apex did and in a way moved a large part because we had a string of homeless tents in front of the building right there on the front porch and on the side. And and people just I think for the most part, homeless people don't want trouble, but it's not a comfortable place to walk to work.
00:26:16:24 - 00:26:41:01
Ringo
And it's it's not the comfortable place to wait for a bus. 95% of our people take take a bus, obviously provide a public transportation card to everybody. And it, you know, it's it's not just the commute now. It's also do I want to walk down the streets and it's not necessarily get harassed. You just don't feel safe. Right.
00:26:41:01 - 00:27:10:08
Ringo
There's also the mental illness thing. And I don't have a solution for any of this. I'm just trying to get people working collaborating. And at this point, I don't want to say I've given up on getting them into the office, but I want to be realistic. So you know, if we can find a couple of smaller spots, maybe in one of these business parks where the parking is free and relatively safe, close to a bus line, I think that will help us.
00:27:10:08 - 00:27:17:11
Ringo
But I hope that but I don't know yeah.
00:27:17:21 - 00:27:43:14
Matt
You know, I talk a lot about how challenging this time is with my guest and my clients and the folks I work with. And one of the things that I kind of come around to really seeing that's kind of opening the door on optimism for me is the fact that this environment we're in is is going to push us to think differently about the norms of the work space and maybe try something different.
00:27:43:16 - 00:28:08:13
Matt
And what I've always proposed and what Marlene and I have done at Apex for many years is what we call mini experiments. I've talked about this in other podcasts where we engage our team, and this is the engagement is at the core of this opportunity, in my opinion, because many workspaces in places are designed without any input from team, from non executive employees.
00:28:09:03 - 00:28:33:24
Matt
And so you engage. And what now has happened is there's this opportunity to engage employees to maybe test run a workplace idea or a workspace idea. And or, you know, we've heard of everything from people for commuting you know, to young guys and gals being able to be issued a ban by the company. And then they have to pick up three of their employees and bring them to the office every day.
00:28:34:02 - 00:28:49:05
Matt
And the van's theirs and they can drive. It's free and the gas is paid for. We just it just an idea out of a tech company in San Francisco. Right. That, you know, basically it gets people to work. It incentivizes connection between employees and it's an experiment. Yeah.
00:28:49:08 - 00:28:54:06
Ringo
You got them trapped in a van for 45 minutes, right? That's right. It's perfect.
00:28:54:11 - 00:28:54:20
Matt
Yeah.
00:28:54:21 - 00:28:55:09
Ringo
I love that.
00:28:55:17 - 00:29:16:02
Matt
So little ideas like that I've been hearing about as I talk about engagement and the opportunity. Do you guys think that this might be an opportunity rather than, you know, I mean, it's it's causing stress and there's some concern, but obviously it's an opportunity to get greater engagement by perhaps your teams that maybe in a way that they haven't been engaged before.
00:29:16:24 - 00:29:32:24
Ringo
Yeah, no. And let me just say, you know, it it is stress, but in the in the grand scheme of things, these are high class problems. Right? We're still plugging away. We still have a company. We had growth. So these are high class problems. You did mention the survey earlier. And I think this kind of relates to it.
00:29:32:24 - 00:30:04:05
Ringo
We do ask employees, hey, on a scale of one to ten, how many are you thinking? One, two, three days, zero days. One day. We're trying to make those neutral quite scale versus yes or no. And yeah, I do think it's it this is a very opportunistic time. Because the field is so wide open. You know, if we can come up with something new and interesting and appropriate for our culture, it doesn't have to be a universal thing.
00:30:04:05 - 00:30:27:12
Ringo
It just needs to be appropriate for our culture. We can get a head start. And, and so, yeah, it's, it's an exciting time and we're in the it's like the, the gold rush. Right, right. First people in the gold rush, they struck it big. And that's where we are. I think we're early in this new opportunity era with remote work.
00:30:28:00 - 00:30:53:15
Matt
Yeah, I would, I would agree. It's kind of a it is kind of a goal. I think that's really achieved from a specifically the perspective of a people CEO who's involved or the leadership involved with people. I mean, you're the people we call people officer, the chief people. Officers are really at an engagement level now. They're an opportunity level now where it's kind of an interesting gold rush for talent.
00:30:54:00 - 00:31:06:02
Matt
We didn't talk a lot about the great resignation that it will or will on for people with that. But I know your perhaps harvesting from the great resignation more than you're losing, I'm assuming.
00:31:06:12 - 00:31:30:12
Ringo
Yeah. No, I mean, we have grown and hired a ton of people, so yeah, the net result is good we haven't we haven't we've been fortunate. We haven't experienced much with the great resignation, but I don't want to think that, oh, the last six months were good. Because this workplace is changing every month and you just don't know.
00:31:30:12 - 00:31:48:06
Ringo
You know, some of the FANG companies had initially said, hey, we want you back in three days. A week. And then they started to back off and now they're back, back on the couple of days a week, and now it's, oh, it's up to your director. And so, you know, nobody can afford to sit on their laurels when it comes to talent in this time.
00:31:49:09 - 00:31:49:16
Ringo
Right?
00:31:49:23 - 00:31:58:07
Matt
One gets the change. The rate of change is expedited. Now, it's got to be really what's in, what's in it, what's in for this week. You know, it's like almost like your.
00:31:59:00 - 00:31:59:22
Ringo
Quarterly.
00:31:59:22 - 00:32:13:17
Matt
And yearly planning is now shrunk to weekly daily weekly meals, biweekly planning. We have to course correct so much going into the next navigating the next curve that's being thrown at you. You know.
00:32:14:17 - 00:32:38:14
Ringo
Yeah, i, you know, i never thought I'd work from home being in h.r. I always thought, oh, i'm going to be with the people, but this is a pretty exciting time, because if i was early in my career, I probably wouldn't have much influence on what what we're doing. But and but early in my career, I was in corporate America or, you know, some small startup, and everybody's kind of doing the same thing.
00:32:39:00 - 00:32:57:00
Ringo
Whereas here, I think it's exciting because we can reinvent the wheels every year, every quarter. And if you're a little later in your in your career, you can have some influence. So to me, high class problems.
00:32:57:05 - 00:33:17:13
Matt
Right. Hey, so we're almost at our at our at the end of our conversation enjoyed it. Appreciated your time. Wait, one quick question. And I know I didn't tell you I was going to ask this, but what's going on with H.R. Nasty and what's coming up for H.R. Now? So what have you been thinking about? I know HR Nasty is something of a passion you pursued for 15 years.
00:33:17:13 - 00:33:19:17
Ringo
Yeah, ten years, probably. Yeah, i know.
00:33:19:17 - 00:33:28:12
Matt
Yeah, yeah. And with 50,000 followers what? I mean, what have you been up and posting lately and what what's come what's coming down?
00:33:28:13 - 00:34:02:18
Ringo
And so there's, there's not, there's not too much new coming down, so it's funny how these pet projects kind of follow your personality. So yeah, I went through COVID, and with all the social issues, it's all I could think about was all of these social issues. I'm Asian-American, and, you know, there was Black Lives Matters and there was Asian hate and, and it and being in H.R., that's what we're faced with on a daily basis.
00:34:02:18 - 00:34:27:22
Ringo
How are you handling Black Lives Matter? How are you handling diversity? And I ended up not posting for probably nine months just because I wasn't there since. That's a personal project. I didn't want my personal feelings because I wasn't in a good headspace right around what was going on. It was so new or the way we were looking at it was new and the way people were responding when you.
00:34:27:22 - 00:34:53:15
Ringo
But now that we're coming, now that things are settling out with COVID, I'm writing a lot about how to be on a zoom call, right? How to manage your manager from a remote situation. I see so many people on Zoom and they don't have their camera, they just have a black screen or they have an icon that's a puppy dog or their favorite team.
00:34:53:15 - 00:35:11:15
Ringo
And I'm just like, nobody knows who you are, people you're not going to get promoted or establish relationships or get new opportunities if you're just a black square on a zoom call. So sorry, I'm getting all excited here, but I like that jazz we have to get you fired.
00:35:11:15 - 00:35:34:17
Matt
Before we close out. But what I think is really interesting, my wife is the CEO of Apex. You know, we've grown tremendously over the last many years and this is our twenty-fifth year anniversary, as a matter of fact. And you've been with us the whole way. You go back way back. But she reads H.R. Nasty, and I see her on the sofa cracking up sometimes.
00:35:36:02 - 00:35:36:19
Ringo
I appreciate it.
00:35:36:23 - 00:35:47:20
Matt
When she's like, you got H.R., H.R. Nash's it's a good one. This is we get to know. So I do. And I hope that you fulfill your promise of one day creating a book.
00:35:48:09 - 00:35:51:16
Ringo
Yeah. No, I got to get I got to get on that. Thank you. Thank you for the publicity.
00:35:51:16 - 00:35:55:11
Matt
Acknowledgment and a little poke to get. Yeah. With that, I appreciate it.
00:35:55:11 - 00:35:56:03
Ringo
I appreciate it.
00:35:56:04 - 00:35:57:01
Matt
Well, thanks again.
00:35:57:01 - 00:36:05:06
Ringo
Ring for all. Yeah. Dude, I'd love to keep in touch on this topic because we're all learning. And if you if you get some nuggets, please, let's let's get them out there for everyone.
00:36:05:10 - 00:36:13:20
Matt
We'd love to have you back as you get closer to recreating what that new vision is for your office and maybe share a little bit about that. So absolute good.
00:36:14:03 - 00:36:15:00
Ringo
All right, man. Thank you, Matt.