Gen Z in the Workplace: Building the Next Generation of Financial Talent

Virginia Heyburn is back with another episode of Fintech Unleashed. On today’s episode, she is joined by Duncan Taylor, SVP, Chief Operating Officer at the Washington Bankers Association to explore Gen Z’s role in shaping the future of the banking industry. They discuss what financial institutions are prioritizing when hiring Gen Z, tackle common misconceptions this generation has about working in banking, and examine whether traditional recruitment models are equipped to attract the talent of tomorrow. 

Transcript

Virginia Heyburn (00:02.459) 

A big hello to everyone tuning in today. Hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of FinTech Unleashed. My name is Virginia Habern. I'm the Director of Research, Insights, and Advocacy at EngageFY. And today I'm excited to welcome to the podcast Duncan Taylor. Duncan is SVP and Chief Operating Officer at the Washington Bankers Association. And I've known Duncan for a while now. I always enjoy hearing his take on the industry. 

He's engaging, he's entertaining, and to use a term that I hear from my Gen Z kids, he's hella smart about banking. Today we're gonna dive into the fascinating topic of employing Generation Z in the world of banking. We're going to explore what financial institutions are prioritizing when hiring this generation. We'll tackle some common misconceptions that Gen Z has about banks and banks have about Gen Z. 

and examine whether traditional recruitment models are even equipped to attract the talent of the future. We have so much to cover, so let's get right to it. 

Virginia Heyburn (01:09.801) 

Hello Duncan, I'm so happy to have you on the podcast today. 

Duncan Taylor (01:13.666) 

Thank you, Virginia. am thrilled to be here. And with that intro, I think I need you to be my hype person everywhere that I go. I mean, you even dropped in Hello Smart. mean, yeah, yeah, I immediately going to play this for my 16 year old son when we're, when we're done. Maybe I'll finally earn some street cred with him and his friends. 

Virginia Heyburn (01:31.603) 

I learn new words every day from my kids. And I think that's why we're here to talk about, you know, what banks can do to connect better with young people, not as a way to attract them as customers, but to attract them as employees. And that I think is a little bit different. 

Duncan Taylor (01:49.166) 

100%, I think it manifests in a lot of different ways too. And some of the challenges that I think our institutions have experienced in hiring from this generation really start from the question of why, right? Why would a younger person who might have a lot of really attractive employment opportunities out there from their perspective, things they really might be interested in pursuing, why would they choose a bank or a financial institution over all the other things that are 

Virginia Heyburn (02:16.999) 

Absolutely, and this conversation is an important one. Before we get too far into it, can you tell all of our listeners a little bit about yourself, what you do at the Washington Bankers Association, and what you're passionate about? 

Duncan Taylor (02:29.664) 

Absolutely. So I've been with WBA going on 13 years as of our recording today. And in that time, I've gone from a consultant as I originally came to the association as an outsider to the director of operations and then the, the COO. And I'm also the president of both of our subsidiary organizations, WBA professional services, which provides products and services to banks that are 

outside of the scope of our membership initiatives, but really focused around providing things that banks use in their day-to-day business. And then our workforce development organization, which is a 501c3 subsidiary called CareerWorks. And we just completed that reorganization in August of this year. What I do on the daily is really overseeing and managing our day-to-day operations and also bringing a strategic perspective as to where do we go next. And that's been really relevant during the 

pandemic years, because when WBA was going into the pandemic, we were very focused on in-person events, classes, you things that brought people together physically in space. And of course the pandemic blew that business model out of the water. And in the Washington region, generally speaking, it's never really come back. In-person events are still really tough to get people to turn out. So we had to pivot. And in order to do that, we had to undertake a few 

things that were far outside of our wheelhouse going in and became part of our core identity coming out. things like building our own virtual conference platform and virtual content platform for classes, things like shifting our perspective from focusing on in-person to doing virtual, not just in the state of Washington, but now nationwide in partnership with over 30 other state banking associations. And of course, shifting our focus from just serving those who are currently in the industry with our advocacy and education missions. 

and expanding that mission to really grow the next generation of members and participants in our industry through workforce development. And I would tell you that reaching into communities that have traditionally been disadvantaged or underrepresented into banking and providing a genuinely inclusive pathway to meaningful employment is my greatest joy and the thing that I am most passionate and excited about for both today at the WBA and our future. 

Virginia Heyburn (04:45.021) 

And you've used the word shift and pivot. And I think that's really what our conversation is about. The world of banking is changing before our very eyes. We have a brand new generation of customers and employees. We've got brand new technologies. There is so much change happening. So against that backdrop, Duncan, what key skills are banks really looking for when they're hiring young talent today? 

Duncan Taylor (05:11.662) 

Yeah, we hear a consistent theme from institutions, not just that comprise the WBA membership, but really across the country as we collaborate with our peers around the US. And the consistent theme is emotional intelligence or colloquially soft skills. So when you think about the business of banking, no matter how technologically advanced it gets, it's still at its core people doing business with people. A company or a corporation is a collection of people, right? This was kind of... 

the tongue in cheek response to corporate personhood that was a big discussion in the fallout from the great financial crisis, was, well, corporations are people. And people would say that not really understand what it meant. And that was especially true of younger generations at the time. Corporations are comprised of people is probably a better way to say it. And that theme is readily apparent in today's banking landscape. When you think about how advanced technology has gotten, it doesn't eliminate the fact that the technology is in service. 

of people, right? Helping meet customer needs, helping to meet the needs of communities where we live, work and serve. And so that, that theme of soft skills, the ability to apply emotional intelligence, sometimes it manifests in things that we might call common sense, but what is common changes and evolves over time. It requires a level of emotional understanding in order to adapt with those changes. And frankly, in a highly technologically technological world, that's very screen-based. 

Some of those skills are hard to come by. don't form as naturally as they might in the interpersonal relationships that we typically have in person. And you've got to remember that this is a generation of school children that have a significant gap in their in-person learning. And depending on where they were on their scholastic journey, when that gap occurred due to the pandemic, their emotional intelligence skills could be, and we're seeing are in many cases severely blunted. 

Virginia Heyburn (07:02.664) 

So given that, Duncan, are young people reluctant to pursue careers in an industry like banking where those interpersonal skills are so essential? 

Duncan Taylor (07:12.3) 

I think that the reluctance doesn't necessarily come from the lack of personal skills. It's the unawareness that those personal skills are at the core of success in a banking or finance sector career. And this challenge you can look at from a couple of different. 

perspectives, right? On the one hand, you have a generation that probably doesn't have super positive feelings in general about banking and finance because of economic circumstances, because of the great financial crisis and its continuing fallout. Remember that we were at a zero lower bound rate environment for many, many years and that had economic consequences. 

that were not 100 % positive. And so when you look at the market effects for that, this is a generation that's now looking at those as they advance in their scholastic career and or enter the workforce, they're looking back with the benefit of hindsight and being able to say, hey, listen, I'm not so sure that the trade off was worth it as we see the resultant inflation over the last couple of years, as we see the shift in the job markets that globalization brought. And so I think there's some sense that for good or for ill and whether or not it's deserved, that 

the generation we're seeing in Gen Z specifically lays some blame at the feet of the banking industry for the state of things today. And you can see this in social media. You can see it in the way that things are described on TikTok and on Reddit, places where Gen Z are likely to commentate and congregate. It also manifests in a level of ignorance about the way the system actually works versus the popular perception, right? I'll use Silicon Valley Bank as an example. When SVB and Signature failed, 

you there was a huge dollar amount that was attached to that from the deposit insurance fund in terms of what was potentially at risk. But because of the way that the fallout was managed, that risk never actually manifested. The deposit insurance fund did not take a huge hit. It took a hit, but not a massive one, nowhere near as large as it could have been. And so by any reasonable definition, there was no bank bailout, right? The shareholders for Signature, for Silvergate, for First Republic, for Silicon Valley Bank, they got wiped out. 

Duncan Taylor (09:14.306) 

which is the opposite of a bailout. And yet on the front page of Reddit and elsewhere, there was a post that showed the quote, know, what 700 plus billion could have gone for instead of a quote bank bailout. And it was things like student debt relief and, you know, funding for affordable housing and things like that. And those were all great in the abstract, but the point is that... 

there was no bank bailout. Those billions of dollars never actually manifested. They were simply the risk quantification that we recognized in the financial system. That's a massive misunderstanding, Virginia. How do we counter that from a realistic perspective? And again, make the case that not only is that not true, but those that are working in the industry are not trying to reach into your pocket. We're actually trying to do what I would argue is a good and noble thing, which is build for the future. That's an ongoing challenge. 

Virginia Heyburn (10:06.513) 

And so Duncan, then how do we counter that? What are some things that the industry can do? What are some things that individual banks can do to counter that narrative and that misconception? 

Duncan Taylor (10:17.87) 

So I don't think that there's any singular solution to this series of problems. One, because they are not themselves a singular problem, right? They're a confluence. And like most things that result from multiple causes, the solutions have to be. 

varied and multifaceted. But what I will say is that we can move the needle significantly in a few specific ways. And we're starting to already see progress in some of the work that we're doing, both at WBA and again, in partnership with other state banking associations. And the first one is access, offering access to real. 

meaningful education opportunities that are not restricted to those that are already working in the industry, but are aimed at those who might want to work in the industry and making that access much more inclusive than it has been. So in the banking space, a common barrier to entry has been a four-year degree, right? A lot of positions are posted with an arbitrary four-year degree requirement. And yet the four-year degree is not germane to the specific position. In other words, a bank would accept somebody who has a history degree 

at the same level of validation as someone who has an English degree or someone who has a degree in a soft science like psychology or philosophy or something of that nature, right? Which tells us that the degree is not the salient point. It's just an arbitrary barrier to entry. And so we've posed the question to the industry, what if we offered opportunity at parity? So in other words, you would treat a candidate coming through an alternative pathway like the one I'm going to describe at the same level. 

of validation as you would a candidate that came in with an arbitrary college degree unrelated to banking or finance. And that pathway looks like reaching into career technical education classrooms, for example, providing banking specific education opportunities to students who might not otherwise have considered banking as a career of choice for them. But by eliminating that four year degree requirement as just an arbitrary barrier to entry, recognizing some positions do require a specific college degree. And we're not talking about those positions. We're talking about entry positions that 

Duncan Taylor (12:18.498) 

really can be trained up on the job and that are more, the skillset that are necessary for that position are more soft skills, emotional intelligence, a willingness to learn the work ethic component that requires, is required in order to come up to speed in a new role, those kinds of things. So we can provide banking specific training to students who might not be on the college pathway, but would otherwise like to work in banking. That's one mechanism, right? We can move the needle by reaching students earlier than we typically get to now. 

Frankly, if we're only recruiting from colleges, we're doing ourselves a disservice because by the time students get to college, there's often a bias against the banking and finance industry. And so they may disqualify working in the industry, even though it could indeed be a fit for their long-term goals and perspectives. So that's one example. Another example is financial education or financial literacy. This is a key skill, not just a personal skill in the 21st century, it's a professional skill, Virginia, because you can't really 

provide access to financial services from a professional standpoint, if you lack detailed understanding about how to leverage them as a consumer yourself. There's an interconnection there that we have to do a better job of establishing. And so providing access to formal financial education, and we know from data, the FINRA survey, for example, that goes out every three years, it doesn't matter what demographic slice you choose, it doesn't matter what... 

your exposure to financial education is in the home. If you go through formal financial literacy in the form of some fashion of classroom education, you do better on FINRA's five question test no matter what, no matter what demographic you come from, no matter what background you have, no matter how sophisticated your parents or family were in educating you on finance, you do better. 

when you're exposed to formal financial education. So we have to grow that, we have to expand it, we have to invest in it and do a much better job of engaging, whether that's using tools like ABAs teach children to save or get smart about credit or the FDICs programming or nonprofits out there like Financial Beginnings that do this kind of work in schools all over the country. Those are the kinds of things that we have to do more and do a better job of because the antidote. 

Duncan Taylor (14:31.384) 

to ignorance is education. 

Virginia Heyburn (14:34.227) 

Yes, and I think what I'm hearing you say is, let's hire for attitude and train for skill and let's get everybody educated a lot earlier. That's going to be good for consumers. It's going to be good for potential employees. It goes in both directions, right? 

Duncan Taylor (14:50.296) 

Beautifully said. 

Virginia Heyburn (14:51.817) 

Yes. So that gets me thinking then about the culture. I think there's an argument that we can do a much better job to go out and recruit young people. But how do we keep them? How does the culture of traditional banking, and I say that with purpose, traditional banking, how does it appeal or fail to appeal to younger staff? 

Duncan Taylor (15:14.062) 

So if you assume or agree that culture is a result of day-to-day activity and action, right? And that is the thesis from which we operate in our work in this space, that culture is not something that you set out to create. If you do, you're probably looking at it from a less productive perspective from the standpoint of achieving your stated goals. When you set out to quote unquote create culture, 

What you're often doing is really criticizing the existing culture you have without unpacking the root cause of why it's worthy of criticism, right? So if you look at it, if you look at the culture that you have and say, we need to change or improve our culture, what you're really saying is what we're doing today creates a culture with which we're unhappy. And that's really where the conversation should thrive. We should start with a root cause analysis and as Simon Sinek would say, start with why. Why is our culture not 

what we want it to be. What are the factors that are holding us back? What are the factors that are creating potentially toxicity in the workplace or creating friction in the workplace, creating less cohesive teams, creating a dynamic where people don't feel a high level of trust or comfort speaking truth to power? Those are the questions to ask and in answering them effectively, and in some cases, personnel change is the full answer that you actually need. 

And that's a hard conversation to have, but you have to be willing to have it if you really want to do change and improve your culture. If you're willing to do that, then you can significantly and meaningfully move the needle on what the corporate culture looks like in your organization or institution. But it's a challenge that starts with mirror introspection, looking at oneself and saying, what am I doing on the day to day that either contributes to or detracts from the culture that I wish that we had. 

A simple question that we encourage our leaders to ask is, am I the kind of person that I would like to work with? That's a hard question, but it's a meaningful one and it's critical to answer because that's the question that our potential and current workforce are asking. Are you the kind of person I would like to work for? If you're not the kind of person that you yourself would like to work with or for, how on earth could you expect anyone else? 

Duncan Taylor (17:19.832) 

to want to buy into your vision for the organization that you operate or for the team that you run, or just if you're another colleague for the interpersonal dynamic that you bring to the table, right? How could you expect anyone else to buy into that if you yourself wouldn't? And so that's the first set of challenges that we have to really address from a culture standpoint. 

Gen Z has been exposed to more information than any generation before it. And they're highly, highly skeptical for understandable reasons about corporatees, right? The corporate speak that many of us have kind of grown up being exposed to, stuff that goes back to the Jack Welch GE days that sort of ingrained itself into American corporate culture, took over and now is taught in an MBA programs all across the country, right? It becomes sort of the operating standard. 

Well, the problem with it is, that one, there's not a lot of data behind it to support it. And two, it creates really unhappy workers in a lot of circumstances. It's ill-suited for a culture that is heavily interconnected, where communication can happen literally at the speed of light and without any external control. So if we accept that that's the reality that we're in and friends, let's not delude ourselves. We must accept that's the reality that we are in. The toothpaste is not going back into the tube. So we accept that reality, then we have to deal with it. And 

Instant and complete and transparent communication to the detriment sometimes of our organizations and our mental health is the de facto standard of the day. That being the case, what we have to do is respond in kind. We have to be willing to be radically honest and transparent with Generation Z. If we're not willing to say to them, hey, you know what? I realized that this policy and procedure manual sucks. It sucks, donkey butt, and there's nothing that I can do about it because this is the regulated environment that we're in. If we're not willing to say it and say it in exactly those kinds of terms, 

they're not gonna believe us, they're not gonna trust us and they're not gonna buy in. So we have to start by reevaluating the way that we even use language to couch meaning and focus on the meaning and not so much the comfortable words we might prefer to use to describe it. That's a really strong integrity boost by the way. And it creates a lot more trust than any other single factor that you can do. Being willing to speak truth when it's uncomfortable, when it's awkward, when it... 

Duncan Taylor (19:36.396) 

when it's a bad look, but it is the reality, goes a long way to building trust with Gen Z. 

Virginia Heyburn (19:41.875) 

Yeah, do I hear the sound of some sacred cows leaving the building? 

Duncan Taylor (19:46.414) 

I did hear a faint moo in the distance. thought maybe it was just a farm down the street. 

Virginia Heyburn (19:53.855) 

think that's such a good point that you make and it coincides, I believe, with a broad urgency around transforming operational models in banking. There are a lot of things that simply don't work and I want to pick one of them out. Turnover. Turnover has been a problem for generations. And you think about contact center agents, entry-level personnel. What you're describing with young people is... 

turning the work environment essentially on its head to make it far more hospitable for people coming in and looking for way to build a career. 

Duncan Taylor (20:30.754) 

I couldn't agree more. And I think that we do such a poor job very often, and this is somewhat of a cultural trait with framing. So much of what we cling to, to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi in Return of the Jedi, depends entirely on our own point of view. And if we are accustomed to thinking of things from a perspective of, this happen to me, more of a passive mindset or maybe an external locus of control, if you'll pardon the HREs there. 

But the idea that things happen to us versus that we are participants or actively engaged in the things that happen around us, those are two very different mindsets. And you can't control what a person brings into the workplace, right? We are not a series of check boxes on a nice neat orderly list. Human beings are complicated, frequently irrational, emotional. It doesn't matter how intelligent or articulate we may be at our core, we are still emotional beings. And so acknowledging that, understanding it, and dare I say embracing it. 

is the key part. This feeds right into the culture conversation because this gets back to the results, right? We're chasing results, not necessarily a descriptor for our company culture. And I think one of the results that we are best off pursuing in terms of what the performance results tell us is an idea that no one at any level is above or beneath any action or activity in our company. For example, 

a company CEO who's willing to roll up their sleeves and spend time on the front line. That is a highly, highly admirable trait. And it's one that I think that we should encourage and cultivate in our organizations. And the data backs that up. I'll use an exemplar in this space, by the way, when I talk about what we do being what creates the culture. And I'm going to tie two things together here. I think that there's a really strong argument to be made. And especially in the case of Generation Z, 

to focus on kindness first. And if you want a prime example, dare I say an exemplar of this philosophy, I urge you to look no further than Sachin Adela. When Sachin Adela stepped in as the CEO of Microsoft, Microsoft had spent the decade in, if you look at their share price, a hammock. Where when Bill Gates retired and Steve Ballmer took over, the Microsoft share price dropped and then it stayed flat. 

Duncan Taylor (22:52.632) 

for about a decade. The Balmer years were lumpy, but they weren't growth oriented. And when Sacha Nadella took over, and this is over eight years ago now, immediately Microsoft share price started to go up and now it's higher than it's ever been. Microsoft frequently flirts with being one of the three most valuable companies in the world. And the number one characteristic, the number one descriptor that Sacha Nadella's team 

uses to describe him. And this is true at multiple levels within the organization from his fellow C-suiters all the way down to frontline staff with whom he engages the number one word that is used to describe him as kind. Think about that. Think about contrasting that with other well-known leaders and the words that were known for them. Contrast it with Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates who were both known as screamers. And Bill Gates was known to ask people, do we actually pay you to work here? That's... 

an amazing gulf between those two. And I'm not here to weigh in on what it's like to be a visionary or anything like that, but kindness clearly can work even at the highest level. And that's the takeaway here is that if we start with a sense of kindness, a recognition of empathy that the kids that are coming in, and I say kids because to me they are, but the generation that's coming into the workforce now is coming in in one of the most complicated. 

global marketplaces we've ever seen, one of the certainly by far the most complicated technological landscape the human race has ever experienced. And that change has happened in the shortest amount of time in literally recorded history. We have changed more as a species in the last decade than probably any time prior to the transition from hunter gatherer societies to civilized societies based on agrarianism. Think about that for a moment. There were literal species of, 

know, vaguely related humanoid creatures that died out in that transition because they couldn't keep up. And that's what we're in the midst of today. So let's acknowledge that and respect it and understand that this generation is dealing with things that the human mind literally has not evolved to do, to deal with, to manage, and trying to have a reasonable emotional response to that is complicated and not easy. So we start from that point of empathy and a recognition that things indeed have changed and our brains are ill-suited to keep up with it. 

Duncan Taylor (25:10.55) 

It helps us to see the workplace in a different perspective because the workplace is not some abstract thing. The workplace is where we spend a significant amount of our most valuable and unrenewable resource, our time. So let's start with that. And let's be honest with this generation. And now to come back to your example of turnover, you know, as somebody coming into a call center environment, that's very few people's ideal job role. We need to know that and acknowledge it. If we want to keep employees who come into the call center, 

Virginia Heyburn (25:10.997) 

you. 

Duncan Taylor (25:40.244) 

in our organization, we need to think clearly and define clearly for them pathways to the next step. What comes next? What are the skills that you will build in that role that will allow you to do the next thing? And if we're not approaching it from that mindset for every single role, then we're doing ourselves, our institution, and most importantly, our workforce a disservice. 

Virginia Heyburn (26:03.173) 

So Duncan, you said it's not the ideal job. Describe a dream banking job for a member of Generation Z. What is it that would really light their fire and how do banks need to evolve to stay relevant to this younger generation of workers? 

Duncan Taylor (26:18.35) 

Well, I'll caveat this by saying that I'm an elder millennial, so I'm not part of this generation and I was using the internet before it was cool, literally. But that being said, what I can tell you, the trends that we're observing, it's less about the dream job and more about the organization. In fact, there was a really great survey that came out from the American Bankers Association a couple of months ago that identified one specific key trait that was common across Gen Z respondents at multiple 

levels in different industries and verticals of interest. And that was Gen Z wants to work for purpose driven companies. In other words, the mission is what matters to them. It's amazing to see the kind of corporate nonsense that a Gen Z employee will put up with for a fairly long amount of time if they believe in the mission and the purpose of the organization. And as banks, our mission cannot be as simple as we want to maximize returns on a risk adjusted basis. 

Yeah, that might be literally true, but if that's all that we're about, we're not gonna inspire anybody and we won't be around in 10 years. The market forces out there that are competing against us that can generate higher risk adjusted returns than we'll ever be able to chase and achieve are staggering and only growing in competitive advantage. So we have to be realistic about that. And by the way, if you're paying attention, that's me. 

using that same kind of radical transparency that I just argued that we have to. Yes, I work for a banking association. I'm telling you all the easy days are behind us and they will never come again for us. Deal with it. But if we're willing to embrace that honesty and recognize that the workforce wants to believe they're part of something bigger and this is especially true post pandemic. 

What we saw come out of the pandemic was a shocking and startling realization for people who'd never before really truly considered the fragility of life. Let's not underestimate the emotional and psychological impact of that. We're seeing it play out today. We're seeing it in the level of mental health crises and suffering for both millennials and Generation Z in comparison to Gen X and baby boomers. We're seeing it in forms of 

Duncan Taylor (28:28.48) 

everything from suicide to self harm to mental health crises as reported in medical statistics, it's across the board, right? Let's not ignore that or pretend it's not out there, it's real. At the same time, while we're in the midst of all this upheaval and change, how do you define your purpose and your mission beyond maximizing your risk adjusted return? I think that we have to think about what the impact is of what we do, what our institution means to the communities where we live, work and serve because that. 

is our true purpose. Our business goes away if we fail to build and sustain strong economically resilient communities. I can prove that with data, but it's also intuitively obvious, right? Our businesses exist to facilitate the flow of commerce and invest in the future, invest in building what comes next. We can't do that without strong economically resilient communities. And so we have to step back for a moment and say, what's our why as a financial institution? And at its core, it has to be to serve 

community or communities that matter to us. We have to revisit the way that we think about that. And not for nothing, one of the ways I think we can do that effectively is by reshaping our mindset and perspective on the Community Reinvestment Act. Far too often we see it only as a compliance burden, and it can be that. But you can also choose to see it as a privilege and a badge of honor because banks are the 

only type of financial institution beholden to that standard. And it means that we at any time can prove our math. We can show our work for anyone who demands to see what the positive impact is that we have on the communities where we live, work and serve. It's called the CRA public file and we can celebrate it. And if you ever want to learn or hear more about that, you can visit bankerscare.com an initiative that we started. 

more than a decade ago to celebrate that exact fact that we are held to a higher standard and that is worth repeating and championing for Generation Z. If they want to be part of something that really truly matters, that should be the playbook that we show them. 

Virginia Heyburn (30:33.937) 

I love that Duncan and what you're saying is so incredibly important. I'm reminded of a book that I read not too long ago, The Anxious Generation. I believe it's by Jonathan Haidt and it just really reinforces the point you made that if we are going to be hiring young people, we have to understand them. And one of the main characteristics is this sky high anxiety and depression rate that really only in the last 10 years or since the introduction of the iPhone has 

skyrocketed. The data is astounding. So I'm so glad you brought that up. 

Duncan Taylor (31:08.558) 

Well, and it's one of those things where we don't operate in a vacuum, right? None of us are on an island. We're all part of this larger ecosystem that we call the economy, you the market, the nation. We're all part of these overlapping concentric circles. And we know from research that our brains are ill-suited for it. I'll pull out another example since you mentioned the anxious generation. The number of relationships that our brains have evolved to manage from our 

days as tribal hunter gatherers, which by the way, that was the majority for modern anatomically, excuse me, for anatomically modern humans. So for the vast majority, Jared Diamond, the guy who wrote Guns, Shrooms and Steel articulated it thusly. If you were to put humanity's existence as anatomically modern humans, so homo sapiens on a clock and say it's 24 hours of time, right, from the beginning to today is 24 hours for 

23 hours and 55 minutes of that clock, human beings were hunter gatherers who existed in tribes of, we now know about 150 or fewer members. And when tribes grew larger than that, they would split off because it turned out we can't manage relationships when they exceed that size. It becomes exceedingly difficult and you start to see some of the warlike characteristics of humanity take place. You see infighting, you see things that are detrimental to the tribe's survival. 

And so about 150 is the maximum number of interrelationships that we can realistically manage. And that was the case for the human brain for the vast majority of our existence. And then 15-ish thousand years ago agrarianism began and we started a shift that continues through to this day where we literally split off from what had allowed us to survive up until that point, what had contributed to our continual survival and. 

rising to the top of the food chain, we split off from that and replaced biological evolution primarily with technological evolution. And the problem with that is that our brains haven't really kept up with it. So now fast forward to today and imagine for just a moment, the number of relationships, whether they're direct, we'll call those social relationships or indirect, we'll call those parasocial relationships you might have as an individual. 

Duncan Taylor (33:27.142) 

The number could be thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, right? You think about social media engaging and interacting and, and I can't emphasize this enough, caring about the opinions of people you've never actually met in person who have no direct impact on your life in any other fashion besides psychological. That doesn't make it less real. I'm just saying that's the only impact. And we could have literally thousands of those relationships. 

How on earth could we not expect there to be an impact on our mental health when our brain is literally and simply not designed for that level of interaction? By the way, if you're wondering in the abstract, what does this have to do with banking? Those are not only our employees, they're also our customers. 

Virginia Heyburn (34:09.097) 

Right. Such an important point. Duncan, is why I love talking to you because I always walk away from our conversations thinking about our industry in a whole new way. Any final thoughts? 

Duncan Taylor (34:21.624) 

I'll just say that I think it's probably easy for someone to take away an impression, and I will say erroneously from our conversation, that there's any sort of fatalism in my viewpoint, and there isn't. I do believe that certain things are inevitable, namely death and taxes, but I firmly believe that we can impact positively those around us. We can make day-to-day actions, whether they're small or large, 

that do move the needle over time. We can't do it single-handedly and we probably won't live long enough to see the results or the fruits of our labor, but that's okay. I still think that it's worth it. For me, the day-to-day brings a lot of joy for one reason overall, and that is that with the incredible support and partnership of our fellow state associations, with the amazing team that we've assembled at WBA and CareerWorks that we continue to work together collaboratively, we are creating 

and building a more inclusive financial industry for all, starting with employment. We believe that if we do that well, that if we really, really focus and emphasize our efforts in creating pathways to employment for those who might not otherwise have entered our industry, that will shift the industry over time to also create opportunities for inclusion on the customer and community side. And that, is absolutely a cause worth celebrating. And I would say to anyone, 

in the generations out there that are coming into the workforce. If you want to be part of a purpose driven industry, this is the place for you. 

Virginia Heyburn (36:00.735) 

Duncan, thank you for inspiring all of us. And to everyone listening in, I want to thank Duncan for joining me on today's episode. I also want to thank you, the listener, for choosing EngageFI as your source of information for banking technology services. Please be sure to look out for the next episode of Fintech Unleashed by following EngageFI on LinkedIn. Until next time, have a wonderful rest of your day. 

Virginia Heyburn (36:28.116) 

Thank you.