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Tony and Steve kick off the show in full Star Wars mode — it's May the Fourth, Steve spent $19.77 on themed donuts from Lehi Bakery, and the great AT-AT pronunciation debate is finally settled (hint: Steve is wrong). The real guest of honor is Albert Foster, founder of Express Evaluations. The episode digs deep into one of HR's most stubbornly unsolved problems: why performance evaluations, invented in the 1950's, still look almost exactly the same today. Albert lays out a compelling case for why most companies are doing evaluations wrong. From the one-size-fits-all form that means nothing to the employee who fills it out, to the trap of asking "how can you improve?" Finally, how does Steve use Vader's origin story to tie everything together at the end? Tune in to find out!
Listen for Opportunity knocking in this episode.
Learn more about Express Evaluations at: https://www.expressevaluations.com/
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven “Big Deal” Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn more about our sponsor MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Lean more about Jobs for America's Graduates (JAG) at: https://jag.org/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about the Thrive Life Project: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/
Albert Foster (MHR, SPHR) is an HR professional and the Founder and CEO of Express Evaluations. His passion in HR is to help employees find joy in their employment and to help employers retain their hard-earned talent. Albert earned a master’s in human resources in 2012 from Utah State and has been in the HR world for the past 15 years as both an HR consultant and an HR director. While working as the HR director of a special service district with about 500 employees he was tasked with finding a new performance management system. After several months of searching it became clear that a product didn’t exist in the current market that encompassed both the flexibility and affordability for his company, so he decided to create his own. Albert considers himself to be an avid mountain biker, marginal golfer, and recently converted ice bather.
Listen for Opportunity knocking in this episode.
Learn more about Express Evaluations at: https://www.expressevaluations.com/
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven “Big Deal” Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn more about our sponsor MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Lean more about Jobs for America's Graduates (JAG) at: https://jag.org/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/
Learn more about the Thrive Life Project: https://www.thrivelifeproject.org/
Albert Foster (MHR, SPHR) is an HR professional and the Founder and CEO of Express Evaluations. His passion in HR is to help employees find joy in their employment and to help employers retain their hard-earned talent. Albert earned a master’s in human resources in 2012 from Utah State and has been in the HR world for the past 15 years as both an HR consultant and an HR director. While working as the HR director of a special service district with about 500 employees he was tasked with finding a new performance management system. After several months of searching it became clear that a product didn’t exist in the current market that encompassed both the flexibility and affordability for his company, so he decided to create his own. Albert considers himself to be an avid mountain biker, marginal golfer, and recently converted ice bather.
Creators and Guests
Host
Fantastic Tony Benjamin
I am a unique HR leader with more than 20 years’ experience working for some of Utah’s oldest, fastest growing, and most well-known companies. My experience includes Superior Drilling Products, Air Medical Resource Group, Control4, Ovivo USA and Deseret Book. I am a regionally recognized authority on building successful cultures and am an alumni speaker at DisruptHR SLC and DisruptHR St. George. I have earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix, a Bachelor’s degree from Utah State University, and am a certified Professional of Human Resources (PHR). I'm married to a woman out of my league, have three brilliant kids I doesn’t deserve and, although I travel a lot, live in Vernal, Utah.
Host
Steven "Big Deal" Smith
Steve will be the first to tell you that recruiting is marketing. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Finance at Brigham Young University and started his career in recruiting in Feb 2005. In 2008, he took a risk during a recession to help start a new company with Ryan Kohler, called ApplicantPro, a full suite HR platform for small to mid-sized businesses. In March 2025, ApplicantPro became iSolved Talent Acquisition, now serving 177,000 clients and close to 9800 employees. Before the merger, ApplicantPro made the Inc 5000 list 12 years in a row, Top Places to work in Utah 3 years in a row, and Steve was named the Small Business Utah HR Achievement Award winner in May 2024. iSolved was also named an Indeed Platinum Partner in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and is one of only ten ATS platforms in the country to obtain that designation. SHRM-CP & PHR certified, Steve currently volunteers on the Utah SHRM State Council as the immediate past State Executive Director. His book, The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction, was released in early 2023, and has helped thousands of organizations across the country rethink their approach to hiring. If you need help understanding the principles and role of SEO, marketing, and AI when it comes to attracting job seekers, Steve provides a solid framework for hiring effectively.
What is The HR Life Podcast?
The HR Life Podcast is a show about the work-life experience of those of us in Human Resources and business leadership. This long-form podcast is a conversation, casual, and not always the corporate line. Hosts and guests touch on everything from serious or even controversial topics to the absurdity of modern American business practices. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of The Grange Strategic HR Consulting, and Steven J. Smith, Author of The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction and all-around important guy. Guests include the best minds in the HR world. Join the show weekly.
Tony Benjamin (00:08.352)
Welcome to the HR life podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are fantastic Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of the Grange strategic HR consulting, and Stephen Bigdeals Smith, who is the only person who could tell Emperor Palpatine all about Darth Vader's choking employee relations problems. Hey, Steve.
Steve-o (00:37.624)
That's right. That's right. Did you know he that he has several types of choking?
Like he has the pre he has the pre the pre covid choking where he's just right. He's he's got your hand on your neck and then he has the the the social distancing choking where you know he can do it from across the room and then he also has these the zoom choking so he's on a call with them and he can choke you from there. I mean he's he covers every angle. So there you go.
Tony Benjamin (00:45.311)
No, I did not know. Different kinds.
Tony Benjamin (00:59.465)
Right, right, right.
Tony Benjamin (01:05.161)
He does.
And that's the one where he says that apology accepted. Yeah, there you go. Well, it's it's May the fourth be with you day as we're recording this. So I just couldn't resist something. And since Steve, you're the you're such a big deal that you can tell all the head honchos all the bad news, then I figured that was fitting.
Steve-o (01:13.358)
That's right. Yep. He falls down.
Steve-o (01:20.59)
All right.
Steve-o (01:30.296)
Yeah, yeah, it's good.
Tony Benjamin (01:32.117)
Yeah, okay. There we go.
Steve-o (01:34.582)
You have to understand Darth Vader was like the ultimate bad guy back in the day. by the way, I have a really fun story. You got to hear this. Okay, so today I went to Lehigh Bakery. I went to Lehigh Bakery to buy some donuts. Okay. Absolutely. Well, unfortunately he wasn't there, but I did get some, some, let's see, what did they have? They had a Chewbacca, they had some Ewok donuts, they had R2-D2 and BB-8.
Tony Benjamin (01:43.219)
Okay, go.
Does it involve Darth Vader? Was he at Lehigh Bakery?
Steve-o (02:01.792)
Anyway, look at this though. Can you see this on the screen? Hold on.
Tony Benjamin (02:02.239)
Of course they did.
I see something. Oh, okay. I see the price. 1977. Oh, see.
Steve-o (02:07.788)
Look at how much I spent. Is it backwards? Yeah, so the total amount of my ticket item for my Star Wars donuts at Lehigh Bakery was 1977. So why is that date significant?
Tony Benjamin (02:22.921)
Because it's the release of Star Wars. Of course!
Steve-o (02:25.078)
That's right. It's also the year I was born. the things. Like, what are the odds of that? So I had to save the receipt.
Tony Benjamin (02:28.789)
and that just reminds me how young you are. OK. OK. With with with that having happened, now we want to welcome in everybody. Albert Foster is joining us today.
Steve-o (02:35.362)
Whoa.
Steve-o (02:40.628)
Yeah, Albert.
Albert Foster (02:42.627)
Nope.
Tony Benjamin (02:44.123)
All right, the crowd goes wild.
Albert Foster (02:47.309)
I love that live studio audience, it's great.
Steve-o (02:50.424)
Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (02:50.645)
Yeah, they're incredible. watch out. The girls in the front are getting a little crazy. They're trying to get to Albert on the stage. Steve, would you please hold up the sign? We got to hold up the sign. No, no sign today. Oh, there's that was a great sign, Steve. Yeah, yeah, security. The death. What are those? The death droids of the black ones? What are they?
Steve-o (03:07.266)
No sign. But I just noticed one of them passed out. And so it looks like they're taking her away. There you go.
Tony Benjamin (03:19.157)
What are the death aren't they the death troopers or something? Shadow troopers.
Steve-o (03:20.254)
You know what's crazy is that the Shadow Troopers, yeah, what's crazy is, yeah, I watched the Michael Jackson movie last week and it's crazy because there were actual people that would faint at his concerts and they would have to take them out. That just boggles my mind.
Tony Benjamin (03:38.013)
Albert, are you a Michael Jackson fan?
Albert Foster (03:40.399)
And Michael Jackson and Star Wars, this is all great.
Steve-o (03:43.214)
Yes.
Tony Benjamin (03:44.469)
Of course it is.
Albert Foster (03:45.443)
I'm not to the point of painting, but this is all good, yeah.
Tony Benjamin (03:49.557)
OK, Albert, here's the question. Is it at at or at at?
Albert Foster (03:57.301)
adder 8080.
I'm gonna say at at.
Steve-o (04:03.054)
Ha
Tony Benjamin (04:03.228)
AHA!
Steve-o (04:05.698)
Ouch.
Tony Benjamin (04:06.591)
There we go. See Steve? The world knows now. It's at at. The big Imperial walkers walking along. The little ones at at.
Steve-o (04:09.282)
Yeah, whatever.
That's it everybody.
The all-terrain armored transports. At, at. you guys are killing me.
Tony Benjamin (04:20.361)
That's right. I actually saw I was watching an official Star Wars thing the other day and they referred to them as at at and I busted a gut laughing and Rachel was like, why are you laughing so much? It's like, because Steve's wrong. That's why. So so Albert, it's good to have you on the show. I want the record. I wanted on the record that I have wanted you on the show for a long time. Did I not mention it to you?
Steve-o (04:35.342)
That's right, I'm totally wrong.
Tony Benjamin (04:48.938)
Well, way back in September last year, right? That's right. But it took the big deal, Steve, to actually get you on the show.
Albert Foster (04:51.663)
Yeah, that's right.
Albert Foster (04:57.881)
this. He put me in a headlock in person when I saw him in Virginia and he was like, you're doing that? I'm fine, fine, get me out of this headlock.
Steve-o (05:01.824)
It's very true. Yeah. You should have seen me when I laid him over his own table there by his one of his socks. That's how it worked.
Albert Foster (05:09.593)
where he went out socks and he was just like putting me in a headlock by my socks.
Steve-o (05:13.666)
I've never received socks from Albert and so I got to the point where I was like, okay, you're giving me one or else.
Tony Benjamin (05:21.843)
Wait a minute. So Albert, what are the. So if no one knows Albert's company Express Evaluations, they give away socks at their booths. Yeah. And I think it's really cool. The most popular sock you give away. What is it? Really?
Steve-o (05:28.206)
Yeah, let's talk about that.
Albert Foster (05:30.041)
Socks, yeah.
Albert Foster (05:36.013)
Wonder Woman. Yep.
Tony Benjamin (05:40.565)
There you go.
Albert Foster (05:40.995)
Wonder Woman, that's a hot item. We think what else everybody likes. We have some puzzle piece socks. People like the puzzle piece socks. Those that recognize that it's like an autism awareness sock, they'll come up and they'll be happy about that. And then other people just like puzzles and then we'll tell them, yeah, that's our autism awareness sock. then they really like them because everybody knows somebody.
Steve-o (05:41.036)
Wonder Woman.
Steve-o (05:59.885)
Mmm.
Steve-o (06:08.622)
Yeah, it intrigues them, yeah.
Tony Benjamin (06:09.759)
That's right, that's right. You need to virtue signal on your feet as well. That's exactly right.
Albert Foster (06:09.987)
with autism, they can feel support. do have Star Wars socks. have Yodas and Stormtroopers and R2-D2s and those ones go pretty well too, but we have some Princess Aerials. Everybody likes those ones. We have quite the variety. Everybody loves our socks.
Steve-o (06:13.859)
the
Tony Benjamin (06:20.117)
Who?
Tony Benjamin (06:31.637)
You
Yeah, well, I do too. I will say this. Yeah.
Steve-o (06:35.352)
They're good quality too, right? From what I recall.
Albert Foster (06:37.903)
mean, they come from the China and they're, but we get them in bulk on a slow boat. It has nothing to do with our software. Absolutely nothing to do with our software. And so everybody comes up and they'll say, oh, do you guys do like swag? they think that we like design, like we're selling socks. My kids think I sell socks. And then they...
Steve-o (07:00.747)
Hahaha
Albert Foster (07:02.543)
They'll say, so do you guys do like cups and stuff too? I'm like, no, we do software for performance evaluations. And they'll say, well, what does that have to do with socks? Literally nothing. We were trying to come up with an idea of what to give away at our booth as we started going to trade shows. And wow, we don't want to give out hand sanitizer or pens, right? Or like the little squishy things that you put on your desk.
Tony Benjamin (07:29.429)
Right.
Albert Foster (07:31.247)
what do people actually use? we thought, people wear socks. Well, let's look at socks. And at the time we were buying leads and there was like a dollar a lead and we found a place that could sell socks for like a dollar a sock, a pair of socks. And so that's a good trade. And so we bought those and we, we probably go through about 6,000 pairs, six to 8,000 pairs of socks each year.
Steve-o (07:32.514)
All the frou frou stuff. Yeah.
Steve-o (07:45.363)
That's a good trade off right there.
Steve-o (07:58.734)
Wow.
Tony Benjamin (07:58.965)
Holy crap.
Albert Foster (08:00.079)
And it's fun because people will come up to our booth and they'll say, Hey, look, I've got my Yoda's on from last year. Or look, I've got the lemons from last year or something. And I'm like, I'm amazed that they last that long. But
And then we have some corny dad jokes. So people will be like, why did you give out socks? And we'll say, well, because we give you socks, and then you book a demo of our software, and then we knock your socks off. And usually we get some eye rolls, you know, on that. That was not the reason why we gave out socks, but it's kind of a fun, unintended consequence. anyway, people come up and they just know us as the sock guys, and we give out socks.
Steve-o (08:27.875)
Tony Benjamin (08:39.701)
I think it's awesome. I want you to know that some of them of my favorite socks ever got were Bert and Ernie from you. Love those socks. Those were really good. Yeah, well see there you go. Anyways, it was it was awesome. Just tip of the hat socks. Who knew? Right? That was such a big deal. But there you go. There you go. Well, everybody. We've we've known Albert Albert once upon a time lived in the Uinta Basin in the in the vernal area. Where did you that were you in Roosevelt or vernal?
Albert Foster (08:55.843)
Yep.
Albert Foster (09:05.582)
True.
Albert Foster (09:09.839)
So I grew up in Duchenne and then I lived for 15 years in Roosevelt. I was on the city council in Roosevelt and we were well connected and loved our time in Roosevelt and then I got a job as an HR director in Provo in 2017 and that's when we moved outside of the U.N. basin.
Tony Benjamin (09:30.911)
Gotcha. Okay. So a recovering politician and you look so healthy for having recovered from that disease. That's pretty good.
Steve-o (09:31.054)
That's cool.
Albert Foster (09:34.787)
Yes.
Albert Foster (09:39.449)
been a few years and so I have no intention to ever go back to it.
Steve-o (09:41.962)
Wow.
Tony Benjamin (09:44.789)
Good for you. Good for you. Every once while somebody comes in tells me that I need to run for county commissioner. And I just say, you know what, if I'm going to do that, I got to be all in. And I'm not ready to be all in yet. So anyways, there you go. So OK, so that's Albert. Great socks. What an introduction. I can't think of any better way to introduce ever. But Albert, why don't you tell us other than growing up here in the base and tell us a little bit about you?
Steve-o (10:08.718)
Right?
Tony Benjamin (10:14.313)
how you got into HR and how you founded your incredible company Express Evaluations.
Albert Foster (10:20.057)
So I started out as a banker at Zions Bank. I was going through college and I always wanted to be a banker. I thought that would be the path. Banking kind of changed over the years. It changed a lot when I was there.
And that you don't sit across the desk and handshake with people and give out loans. It became a lot more statistical. my bank manager told me that if you do a good job for the bank, you'll always have a job. And he said, what I mean by that is it doesn't mean that the bank will always employ you, but somebody will. Somebody will see that you're doing a good job and you'll always have Yeah, he's like, if you're doing a good job for the bank, you'll always have a job. Well.
Steve-o (10:59.222)
At least they were honest.
Tony Benjamin (11:01.151)
Right.
Albert Foster (11:07.265)
One day a little girl came in to open a savings account and I helped her open the savings account. Her dad was with her and her dad liked the way that I was interacting and talking to customers and he offered me a job to go work for his insurance agency.
So if you do a good job, people notice. And so I took the job, went and started selling health insurance. And then that company got bought. It was a little local company in Roseville. got bought by a big, giant Gallagher. And Obamacare came around. And we all thought, all of these insurance agents are going to lose their jobs. They won't need agents anymore. I like working with HR teams. So I went back to school at Utah State and the Unibasin, did the executive program for their master.
Tony Benjamin (11:27.988)
Right.
Albert Foster (11:55.369)
So it was Friday night for four hours, Saturday morning for four hours, for two years. Did my masters in human resources and also I had a side hustle of doing a third party administration company for Cobra and Flex, Cobra and Flex for payments.
Tony Benjamin (12:13.544)
interesting. So did you do software for that or did you just manually do it?
Albert Foster (12:18.535)
we had we bought software we had a company in Arkansas helping us with that not a lot of rocket scientists in Arkansas but they did make great software anyway we I sold that company and then I realized like I wanted to start my own HR consulting company I've got the experience and the degree and all that so I did that
Tony Benjamin (12:29.301)
Well okay.
Albert Foster (12:45.551)
And I did that for a couple years just working with people that I knew, companies that I knew. then a larger one of my clients in Provo, their HR director, Ralph Barnes, decided to go work for the county. He called me and he says, you ought to apply for this job. And I thought, I kind of like being my own boss and doing whatever I want.
And my wife says, just treat it like they are a consulting, an HR consulting company that's paying you more money than the other ones and demanding more of your time. And they said I could still do my consulting on the site. So I took the job. This is a long story. It's getting longer. I'm trying to find a way to shorten it out. So.
Steve-o (13:29.505)
That's alright.
Tony Benjamin (13:30.601)
That's all, it's all the detail, man. It's all the detail. You're good. Go.
Albert Foster (13:34.191)
So I got to this place and they had a DOS based system for their performance reviews. We had like 600 employees. This is 2017, not that long ago. It had not been updated since 1999.
Steve-o (13:47.767)
Wow.
Albert Foster (13:48.853)
was DOS based and it was hot garbage. I had to use my learning management system to set up the email reminders for my performance evaluations. The systems didn't talk so when somebody completed their review, it wouldn't stop the notifications or anything. I had to go in and do that. And then I had to have a spreadsheet of all of my anniversary dates and who their managers were so that when that time came up, I could put it into the DOS based system. The DOS system was only good at doing the review and like.
that great at that. So I called the guy who developed it and I said, man you got to put this online. I don't want it on my servers anymore. Employees can only do it when they're at their desk. I want to be able to do it from my phone. He says, it's not gonna happen. We're not gonna do it. So I got on the Google and I looked at all of the great systems out there and they were fantastic.
Steve-o (14:33.998)
Hmm.
Albert Foster (14:40.111)
But I was getting quotes back for my 600 employees of more than $100,000 a year for the software. Which at the time, like, wasn't, they weren't paying me $100,000 a year. And I thought, why would I pay software $100,000 to do an aspect of my job? You know, I like for that, could hire employees to just manually run this.
Steve-o (14:48.632)
Wow.
Tony Benjamin (14:48.659)
Holy crap.
Tony Benjamin (14:52.467)
Yeah.
Steve-o (14:58.968)
Yeah.
Albert Foster (15:03.215)
And that's when the light bulb went off. Why don't we just build our own? So I grabbed my friend who had a code and we started working on it. it wasn't getting anywhere. He was working for the state and he had a side hustle and was an LDS bishop. And so was like it wasn't going anywhere. And then this was the tragedy struck. That little girl, I opened her account at the bank. So she passed away.
during childbirth delivering her third child. So it my old boss's daughter. And I'm good friends with her husband. This is the type of group that we're in. And she passed away and it was absolutely terrible. And at that point Gallagher, the insurance agency called me back and they said, hey, know, raise clients. Can we get you to leave your HR job?
Tony Benjamin (15:38.932)
Right.
Albert Foster (15:57.613)
And I said, no, a chance. And they said, you only have to come into the office in Salt Lake once a week. And that's when I was like, this is fantastic. Because I can get my calendar work done in like two hours. And that will give me all the rest of the time to work on express evaluations. And so her husband, my friend Nick, I went to lunch with him one day at Cafe Rio and I said,
Tony Benjamin (16:05.143)
You
Albert Foster (16:23.235)
This is all I can think about. Like I go to sleep at night and I think about how to structure the performance evaluation software. I'm driving down the freeway. All I can think about is how to run this company. Like it just consumes every thought. And my wife is getting sick of this because we'd be driving places and I would just start talking about like some things that we wanted to do and how it will do this and how it will do that. I said, I need you on.
Steve-o (16:44.11)
Sounds like an entrepreneur.
Tony Benjamin (16:46.122)
Right.
I was going to say it sounds like a typical wife who doesn't want to hear about her husband's great idea anymore. Been there a couple of times. Yeah.
Albert Foster (16:52.557)
Yeah, she's like, what else do want to talk about? And so Nick says, hey, my brother and know how to develop. And so we talked to him and he knew a guy that they went to a master's program with. And that's when it started. We just started coding this system and we got our first client, Dixie Power. Shout out to them and in St. George.
Steve-o (16:52.984)
haha
Albert Foster (17:18.831)
and then it just kind of started going and we got five on the system and then we hit double digits, we had ten and now we have I think this morning 253 in almost every state and a couple of different countries and we just keep growing. It's been fantastic.
Steve-o (17:39.182)
That's so cool. Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (17:39.573)
That's awesome. And all that growth because of socks. Right. Who knew. So just kidding. I'm just kidding. So this is when when you when I first became aware of your software. The reason I loved it was because I have a very particular way I like to do performance reviews. And we're going to talk about all this sort of stuff here in just a few minutes. But I have a very distinct way I like to do it with definitions and all that sort of stuff. And I had given up.
Steve-o (17:43.83)
Ha!
Tony Benjamin (18:07.061)
I had given up my whole career on finding a software that would do it the way I wanted it done, right? Because usually anything that I looked at, they wanted me to change my process to fit their software.
Steve-o (18:12.056)
Yeah.
Albert Foster (18:18.479)
I hate that. I hate it when like I have to change the way I want to do it to conform with the way that the software does it. No, I want the software to conform to the way I want to do it and and there are some that we can't we can't help you know but we can help 90 % of the companies out there with the way they want to do it but but not all and that's okay but for the most part it's super customizable to just fit how you're doing like we want to walk we want to move with you not against you.
Steve-o (18:26.264)
Mm-hmm.
Tony Benjamin (18:26.408)
Ex-
Tony Benjamin (18:47.635)
Yeah, no, and that's exactly what blew me away. I was there and I was I fell in love with your software. I thought it was fantastic. And then and matter of fact, we were on the verge of purchasing it and then we got bought out. So, yeah. So, but anyways, that's how I came to evaluate it. I want to get more into I want to get more into into performance evaluations and that sort of stuff. But before we do.
Steve-o (18:47.768)
Yeah, it's great.
Albert Foster (18:59.895)
and you'll pot out.
Tony Benjamin (19:16.593)
Sorry. No one could see this. But Steve's got on this goofy hat that says Dutch on the front. It's really cool. And I guess it's really cool. I'm just whatever. But it just distracts me every day. I don't know how to. No. No. Then I'll see your then I'll see your yeah your man bun will come out next. Have you seen him recently Albert. Have you seen this.
Steve-o (19:22.647)
I'm goofy.
Albert Foster (19:24.094)
As I am.
Steve-o (19:27.31)
Do you want me to remove it, Tony? Would that help you? So you can see my long flowing hair.
I don't have a man button in right now.
Albert Foster (19:38.199)
I've seen it, every time I look at the Dutch I just think like that's his that's just his billboard of saying like hey you're dating me we're going Dutch on this. Heads up heads up I'm paying for my half. He's happily married and so that doesn't work out but.
Steve-o (19:45.742)
Ha!
Tony Benjamin (19:50.239)
So.
Right. Well, you know, it's it's his money all the way around. So but OK, let's let's talk about the thing that we ask everybody who comes on the podcast and that we want to hit you up with is what is what is the state of H.R. You get to deal with and I think you have a very unique perspective on this. You get to deal with lots of H.R. people around the country and even some internationally. It sounds like what is the state of the profession right now? What do you how do you see a good bad ugly what?
Steve-o (20:09.154)
Correct.
Albert Foster (20:21.377)
I see it's in a transition phase right now. Because if you think of some of the things that had to be done manually, maybe even with more expertise, creating policies, right?
Nobody's writing their own policies now. You're going into Grok or you're going into Chat or Clod or something and you're saying this is the type of company we are, this is what I want to accomplish, this is the outcome of it and it's writing your policies. And then you're reviewing it and making sure it's great. Where before, like I've probably written policies for 80 public entities in Utah.
And now I don't write, I don't have time for it, I don't, nobody's, everybody's just using AI to write it. So it's in a transitional phase of the stuff that was manual and cumbersome and would really just bog you down and stop you from being strategic. Is that some word that we're supposed to say? Yeah. Yeah. Drink to that.
Steve-o (21:07.661)
Yeah.
Steve-o (21:13.581)
Mm-hmm.
Tony Benjamin (21:20.917)
there we go, that's the word we want right there. Yep.
Steve-o (21:21.166)
That's the key where we get a drink. Yeah.
Albert Foster (21:28.777)
that's stopping you from being high level those days are gone right you probably don't need as many specialists generalists are great and directors are fantastic like because they can get so much more done with with the technology that's out there and at their fingertips
Steve-o (21:33.442)
Yeah, yeah.
Tony Benjamin (21:49.909)
That's really good. When you talk to people, do you feel like HR is embracing that future and the more efficient model or do you think we're dragging behind? In what ways do you think?
Albert Foster (22:00.345)
Dragging.
Albert Foster (22:05.199)
I think there are some things that are easy to grab onto that HR people are, like other people are doing this and it's easy for them to pick up. And then there are still a lot of manual processes that it's, HR's not all, but some of them are just like, this is the way we've done it. This is the way that we've always done it. It works. And why should I, why should I change?
And I think that's scary in any aspect of business or life because things are just changing so quickly now.
Steve-o (22:40.066)
Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (22:41.511)
And not every I agree with that not everybody knows where the boundary is right. You know, referencing AI and all that it can do for us. see everything online from HR people being totally excited and stoked about it and look what I can do all the way to AI is evil and I'm going to resist it as long as I possibly can and I'll never implement it. It's it's shocking to me.
Steve-o (22:55.278)
Thank
Albert Foster (23:06.499)
So this is my take on that. I don't think AI is going to replace all of our jobs. There are those out there, know, they're saying AI is going to take over all of our jobs. Just like when we came out with the automobile and they said to all the people with horses, like, we don't need you anymore, jobs will change. But people will always have a job. But this is what I strongly believe in.
If you're good at HR, if you're good at working with people, if you can find new solutions and adapt, you'll always have a job. It's the people that are not great at what they're doing. They're not staying up to date with how to be a great HR person and affect change in the organization. Those people are probably not going to have a job in the future because it can be replaced.
Steve-o (23:41.784)
Yeah.
Albert Foster (24:01.689)
by efficiencies picked up through artificial intelligence. And that's going to be a lot of industries. I found that with my developers. My developers can develop so much faster now when they put something into cursor and they'll say, find that line of code where this is breaking and how we need to fix it. And boom, they can do it. But they know how to code. And so they can go in and find stuff quickly.
Tony Benjamin (24:06.293)
Yeah, I very true.
Steve-o (24:25.826)
They understand it.
Albert Foster (24:27.183)
they understand it and if you don't understand how to code and code with AI there's not really a place for you anymore today there's not really a place same thing is going to happen with with HR you're going to have to find ways to use this technology with understanding how to talk to people and to put things together with them negotiations and what not but you have to pair those two together or else you'll get passed by that's my take on it
Steve-o (24:56.118)
Yeah, I am totally with you, Albert. I don't feel like the human intelligence factor is ever going to go away. The fact that I know how certain things work in the recruiting world and talent acquisition and even software for that matter, that makes it so much easier to sit down with AI and not only to verify that what it's giving me back makes sense and it fits the parameters of what I'm looking for, but also allows me to prompt it better. Like with pull prompting and push prompting,
Albert Foster (25:02.958)
No.
Albert Foster (25:22.415)
Exactly.
Steve-o (25:23.766)
I know exactly what to say and how to describe it so that the output that I get is actually relevant to what I'm trying to accomplish. Otherwise, you're doing a lot of back and forth and still wasting the same amount of time as if you had done a Google search to go find it. And I see too many people that are still treating AI like a Google search, and they're just expecting it to do everything for you. And it's just not the case. So.
Albert Foster (25:46.639)
So do you want to hear my AI prompts for the day? This is off topic, but this is my AI prompt for the day. So the first one that I did, AI is like your best friend that will just lie to your face, right? It just will build you up and always say that you're fantastic. So you're like, Hey, I'm going to do 10 million in sales this year. We'll be like, Albert, you can do this. No, I can't. Like it's not, it's not going to happen. So I've gone into my settings and I've said, if my ideas are trash, push back and tell me why it's not going to work. And so I've, I've cut out a lot of that in my AI.
Steve-o (25:49.164)
Okay.
Tony Benjamin (25:50.645)
Go.
Steve-o (25:56.845)
Yep.
Albert Foster (26:16.733)
prompts and so it will push back on me but the new prompt I've been working with is I'll put in an idea so like we want to build a compensation module to our software so that you can see where people fit in on the salary chart and and where they're at in their pay range and if by giving them this rating what what type of a raise they'll get what not
And then you'll put in this prompt. It's just two words. And you put pre-mortem this. Have you heard of this before? Pre-mortem this. Pre-mortem this. And then it will go through and look at it as if it's already failed. So my idea has, it's not that it's going to fail, that it has already failed.
Steve-o (26:48.258)
I have not pre-mortem.
Tony Benjamin (26:48.446)
No, uh-uh.
Steve-o (27:04.686)
already found.
Albert Foster (27:06.145)
six months down the road it's already failed and it will tell me why it failed because the adoption rate wasn't there or like the cost was too high or it will go through and just give me the reasons why this didn't not that it's not going to work why it did not work it just kind of reads into the future not that it's a crystal ball and that it's perfect but it's very interesting because it'll shoot holes in your ideas that you didn't realize
Steve-o (27:23.054)
Mm-hmm.
Steve-o (27:33.302)
Yeah, I didn't even think about the I think that's genius because I hear a lot of ideas all the time that people try to bring up and even on the Internet. I mean, let's be honest on on Instagram, Facebook. You see so many advertisements today that, if you comment, you know what this certain word, I'll send you my playbook or I'll send you my scripts that I use or my prompts or what have you.
And I've done that a few times just to kind of see what they send you. And all it is is they just want you to sign up for a newsletter of some sort so that they can keep in touch with you in the meantime to probably sell you more stuff. It has nothing to do with an actual prompt or something that seems to work effectively. Or if it has worked for them.
Albert Foster (28:01.987)
Yeah. Marketing campaign.
Steve-o (28:13.07)
All they did was they fed it into AI and AI gave them something back that they thought sounded cool and they're like, oh, this will work for everybody. Let me make this the new thing. I'm going to make a post about it and make it all exciting. And the reality is, no, that's not even applicable to my industry. I just, feel like, like I said, that human intelligence factor is never going to go away. I have to understand what I'm trying to get at in order to use it effectively. I like that pre-mortem stuff because then if it pokes holes at it, chances are I'm very familiar with those holes.
Albert Foster (28:26.852)
Yeah.
Steve-o (28:40.622)
or they'll resonate with me so I can say, yeah, and if you don't know your industry well, then those holes won't make any sense to you or you'll just treat them like fluff, right? You're like, I don't get it. But when you know your business and industry really well, those little holes that it points out, it's like, exactly, I know exactly what that means. And so that's cool.
Albert Foster (29:01.901)
Not applicable in every circumstance, but try it out. Try putting it in board of this and just see what it gives you.
Steve-o (29:04.526)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Three more than this, there we go.
Tony Benjamin (29:08.255)
That's awesome. All right, give me just second here, guys. I'm going to do the ad read for us really quick. Running a business is hard. HR shouldn't be. Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR. With expert support and everything from hiring to handbooks, compliance to culture, need payroll help or recruiting power? We do that too. Fractionally and flexibly, no overhead, just results. Visit megastarhr.com and let's grow your business.
together. Shout out to Becca and all that.
Steve-o (29:40.91)
Yeah.
Albert Foster (29:42.051)
Becky's awesome, isn't she? She's like one of the most fantastic people you'll ever meet. Super positive, always fun to talk to. That's fun that she's sponsor. I love her to death.
Steve-o (29:43.852)
Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (29:44.255)
Becca is awesome.
Steve-o (29:54.306)
Yeah. That's right. No, you're right. You're right.
Tony Benjamin (29:55.047)
well, there you go. See, Becca got double duty this time. So that's good. Becca. Becca was like our what our second or third interview that we did on the podcast. And we're trying to get her back on. She's just kind of she's almost as big of a deal now as Steve is. So it's hard to get her back on. Yeah, but she she's decided to sponsor us early on and we're very, very grateful for that. OK, so let's let's do this now. Let's shift into.
Albert Foster (30:00.099)
Yeah, she's been.
Steve-o (30:05.678)
Mm-hmm.
She's so busy. she's bigger.
Albert Foster (30:11.927)
Nah, she's busy. That girl, she's busy.
Steve-o (30:14.776)
Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (30:25.685)
The thing that I am coming to decide and Albert, you tell me what you think of this, I don't think I think HR as a whole has not figured out employee evaluations yet. It's there's a million and one different ways to do it. It's I hear because I work with the law firm a little bit. I get to hear about all the horror stories and the terrible things that are done in performance reviews, all that kind of stuff. At best,
Steve-o (30:41.71)
Mm-hmm.
Tony Benjamin (30:54.745)
Generally speaking, they are a report card and at worst they destroy the culture of your company and open you up to liability. So what is the state of it and why haven't we figured that out? Just from your perspective.
Albert Foster (31:11.663)
Now let me give you a couple of things that I find absolutely fascinating with performance evaluations. If you think back to 1955, none of us, none of us are that old to be around in 55, but what was going on in 1955, that was kind of the year that the standard performance valuation was invented.
Tony Benjamin (31:26.111)
Not even me.
Albert Foster (31:35.919)
And it hasn't changed much since then. None of us would drive daily a car from 1955 or use any type of electronics from 1955. But for some reason we're still using the basic format in employee evaluations from 1955. And another statistic that I find very fascinating is
There's no state in the United States, there's not a federal mandate that says companies have to do performance reviews. Like when you get to 15 employees, right, a new law kicks in, ADA, you have to comply with that. When you get to 50 in the 75 mile radius, a new law kicks in, you have to abide by FMLA. There is not a mandate, there's not like an employee count or anything that triggers, oh, now you have to do performance evaluations. But Sherm did a study.
Steve-o (32:13.294)
Mm-hmm.
Albert Foster (32:28.625)
and they polled a lot of their members and so I believe this is statistically credible 72 % of all companies in the United States private public do at least an annual performance review in the government space in the the public space it's higher it's 94 % so it's dropped off a little bit in the in the private sector but still 72 %
Steve-o (32:53.518)
Yeah, it's a lot.
Albert Foster (32:54.807)
of all companies. So you hear about the company saying we don't do it anymore still. The vast majority still do at least an annual review. Now they've shifted. Some places call it performance management and some people are the cool HR and they call it performance enablement. Right?
Tony Benjamin (33:15.841)
Well, you know, you know, you you got to rebrand stuff every once in a while. That's right.
Steve-o (33:17.746)
It's like a sticker. just put this, yeah, you just put a new sticker on it and it's brand new.
Albert Foster (33:22.478)
Yeah.
And then some of say, we don't do performance reviews. We just do check-ins. And you know what? They're all very similar. And some of will say, well, performance management is way different than performance enablement because performance management looks in the past. What's happened? So we're going to look at their past goals. We're going to look at their past performance. And in performance enablement, we're going to look at their future goals. And we're going to look at their future performance.
there's flaws to both of those concepts and there's beauty when you put them together. You can't only look in the past and you can't only look in the future. You've got to look in both the past and the future. So I think probably the biggest mistake that companies are making and this is where the big evolution is going.
Let's look at the career path of the employee and how what they're doing ties into where they're going And when you connect the dots on that that's when you move the needle so if we just say we have 12 core values we care about Dependability and we care about teamwork and we care about initiative right you're you're missing the mark and
Nobody's really going to get excited about that. You're not really going to change behavior by looking at those core values. But yet they're still important. But then when we start to look at... Oh, go ahead.
Tony Benjamin (34:57.245)
So so why is that why is that like so because I'm a big fan of rating people on core values but I'm I and I think I know where you're going with this but why is that is it the way that you're evaluating people on those things that they're meaningless or why doesn't it move the needle for you.
Albert Foster (35:16.715)
It's not usually an ongoing conversation. think coaching happens better in the moment than in review. And so it should be a continuous conversation and not just a one-time thing. I do believe, though, however, that performance reviews have to be structured and built.
Steve-o (35:26.67)
That's a great point.
Albert Foster (35:38.317)
to the level of your lowest performing manager. The weakest link there, you know? So like, high performing managers, when somebody's not being a great team player, will have that conversation in the moment. As they should.
low performing managers will be like you know that's Albert he's going through some tough stuff right now and so I can see why he would yell at his co-workers and not be the or whatever you know whatever else and let's see what does next week and then they just kick the can and continue to talk
Steve-o (36:05.411)
Yeah.
They just kind of let it go.
Albert Foster (36:09.901)
So by putting it on a quarterly check in, a semi-annual review, an annual review, that manager has to have that conversation. So that's why I think they should be structured to the abilities of your lowest performing managers. But even with that, it's not going to change too much with the employee.
Steve-o (36:27.982)
That's interesting. Yeah.
Albert Foster (36:30.275)
So I think what changes more is when you start talking about the aspirations of the employee. So we can go through the core values because this is what it takes to be successful here. You're doing great, nothing to talk about here, or there's issues, we need to correct those. But now let's talk about how does your current role fit in with your career aspirations?
Let's have a conversation around that. part of the performance review. That in 1955 and really in 2010 and 2020 has not been part of the performance review, but it's showing up in 2026.
And that's a much better discussion with the employee to talk about how does your current role fit in with your career aspirations. Well, I don't want to be a laborer forever or I don't want to be a generalist forever. I would like to move into a director role. Fantastic. Let's talk about how we can get you that. We don't have that job open right now. We're not definitely promising this to you right now. But you would need to you would need to learn these skills.
Steve-o (37:19.756)
Yeah.
Albert Foster (37:34.031)
To learn those skills, you're going to have to have some of these experiences talking to current employees about their FMLA.
So let's start having you have some of these conversations or sit in on those conversations. if an employee knows that they have a future with the organization, that they have a manager that cares about them personally and professionally, guess what? That employee sticks around. That employee will not go look for a higher paying job. Maybe they have the highest paying job and so money doesn't matter. But they're not going to go out and look for that because they feel like,
the carrot that's dangling from my face where I can make more money here and I have a purpose and I have a future. That is where performance evaluations are going and they need to be.
Tony Benjamin (38:24.338)
That's really good. Steve, that fits right into what we talked to Troy Blanchard about too, right?
Steve-o (38:28.984)
Correct. I was just going to say, like, there are two things that I hear you're saying there, Albert. First of all, some type of succession planning where there is a pathway, because when you don't have the pathway and the employee cannot clearly see it, you're, yeah, they're going to leave eventually. The other thing is, is I really feel like that helps you better predict like retention issues or turnover.
Albert Foster (38:42.659)
I see a dead air.
Albert Foster (38:52.527)
Absolutely.
Steve-o (38:53.526)
Because when you can predict that, know, cause I think a lot about talent management, cause I've been involved in the talent management world for a long time. And if I can predict the odds of somebody leaving within a certain timeframe or the odds of somebody sticking around within a certain timeframe, it makes it a lot easier for me to keep those positions filled without having to spend a lot of money and expenditure from the organizational perspective to have to deal with it when the crisis happens. Because too often in HR we're reactive instead of proactive.
And I feel like if you're going to treat the evaluations in this way, that is a proactive approach as opposed to just waiting until all of a sudden Joe over here gives us two weeks notice. And now I've got to scramble to fill a role. And, you know, even though I tried to work with him a little bit or, I kind of got the feeling he was leaving, I, I, it feels like a lot of us are just like, well, I kind of get the feeling they might just leave. No, we should actually know. We should know what their aspirations are. We should know what they want so that these things become much more predictable.
Albert Foster (39:45.476)
Yeah.
Steve-o (39:50.658)
within the organization. So those are the things I'm hearing you say.
Albert Foster (39:54.511)
Yeah, and sometimes they don't want to move up. know, how does your current role fit in with your career aspirations? I'm happy where I'm at. That just told me, that told me like, know where my landmines are, right? I'm not going to step on anything. This person's content, very happy. Let's keep working on that. And then this person doesn't appear to be, they want to move up. So either we're going to find a way to do that or we're going to lose this employee. Maybe that's okay too. But at least you know what's going on and you have that visibility.
Steve-o (39:56.908)
Yeah. Yep. I'm happy where I'm at. Yeah. But I should still know that.
Steve-o (40:05.666)
Mm-hmm.
Steve-o (40:20.11)
Mm-hmm.
Tony Benjamin (40:25.011)
No, that's wow. This is this is exactly right. Regular.
conversations, it's frequent enough so that you know what's going on and you know what those things are, but you're not hounding them all the time, right? And to your point, Albert, something formalized, it can't just be all informal or else you end up with nothing, right? If you don't formalize it and whatever, then people never know that you're having a performance conversation. And then you're talking about their goals and their aspirations of things that they want out of their career.
Albert Foster (40:45.444)
Come.
Tony Benjamin (40:58.457)
I'm shocked how often employees don't know that. Like, I'm stunned how many people are like, I don't know, I just want to pay my house payment and make good money. Okay.
Albert Foster (41:01.636)
Yeah.
Albert Foster (41:08.623)
Well, you talk about frequency and I think that's where the variability comes in because we work with a bunch of companies. I've yet to see anybody do it the same as anybody else. There's so many different ways to solve this problem. And for some companies, it's a setup of informal and formal check-in and then there's some that...
Steve-o (41:21.486)
Yeah.
Albert Foster (41:33.475)
They just have formal once a year and it works great. It depends on the complexity of your workforce. We have some that have weekly check-ins.
But I think you have to have a happy mix of formal and informal. So we were working with one company and they said, you know what, we're just going to, we're moving away from the formal evaluations. It's just, it's not doing anything. And we're just going to have informal check-ins. We would rather just get in the truck and drive and talk with our employees and just do it that way. And I said, best of luck to you. That's never, I didn't tell them, didn't, but it's like best of luck. That's never going to happen.
Tony Benjamin (42:12.821)
Right.
Steve-o (42:14.926)
Yeah.
Albert Foster (42:15.055)
because you have high performing managers and they're going to talk to their employees because they want to keep their retention. They don't want turnover. They like who they have and they want to keep those employees. You're to have low performing managers that they just whatever happens happens to them and they're not going to have that conversation. if you're just going to get in the truck and drive or talk at the water cooler or talk as you're going and walking down the hall, you know what? You're going to talk about their family. You're going to talk about their
Steve-o (42:24.302)
Mm-hmm.
Albert Foster (42:45.069)
kids, gonna talk about the baseball game, you're gonna talk about the jazz being awful and never making the playoffs, you're gonna talk about stuff like that, right?
Steve-o (42:52.802)
Wow, that was personal.
Tony Benjamin (42:53.717)
Yeah, yeah. I was going say we touched a nerve there.
Albert Foster (42:57.615)
Something's going talk about little things. They're going talk about why they're wearing a Dutch hat. You know, what does that even mean? Is it a Dutch? Are you a descendant? Where's the Dutch? Oh, your daughter worked there. That's going to be the conversation. I only have five minutes to talk about it and they're not going to talk about. Yeah, it's.
Steve-o (43:05.315)
Right.
Steve-o (43:14.242)
And it's not meaningful. mean, okay, hold on, sorry. It's meaningful because you're developing the relationship, but it has nothing to do with work-related activity, much less behaviors, and so therefore it's gonna have no impact on the business. Yeah.
Albert Foster (43:31.127)
It doesn't touch on the things that employees really want, is trust, opportunities for growth, career advancement, things that they really want, that they need from a job. They can have friends anywhere they want. They don't need a boss that's their best friend. They need different things from a job. And by just jumping in the truck and talking about that stuff, they'll never talk about their career. won't happen.
Steve-o (43:56.76)
That's great.
Tony Benjamin (43:58.134)
No, that's wonderful. I always like to get to the, you know, we talk about root causes of bad things that happen, but I try to like to get to the root cause of why employees do certain things. And if you as a manager don't understand what the root cause of your employees' motivations are, then you don't know your employee. And again, you don't have to share all their intimate details or know every single thing.
Albert Foster (44:20.057)
Yeah.
Steve-o (44:25.336)
Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (44:27.871)
But you need to know them well enough to know who they are and what motivates them and what excites them, right? And there's a podcast I listen to that's really famous, anytime they have a guest on for the first time, they ask them, are you the thrill of victory or are you the agony of defeat?
Right. And what motivates you? Is it that I want to succeed and get out there and do really good? Or are you the person who's afraid to lose and losing is so painful that you'll do anything to avoid it.
And I think it's a brilliant question. Like what is it that motivates us all? And look, I'll tell you, I'm an agony of defeat guy. Man, that's what motivates me. I hate that feeling. I hate it and I'll do anything to avoid it. And that to me, right, but you need to know those kinds of things about your employees. And if you don't, you're missing out. And again, that's a piece.
It's a piece of the puzzle that helps you get to where you're talking about, Albert. I really think that.
Albert Foster (45:31.841)
And I have another saying that's similar to that. said, would you rather have a painful end or endless pain? You know, it's like, hey, this employee stinks. They're terrible employee. So would you rather have endless pain or a painful end?
Steve-o (45:42.306)
Wow.
Tony Benjamin (45:42.452)
Yeah, yeah.
Albert Foster (45:52.343)
And so periodic check ins, nobody's ever going to fire, please don't. Don't anybody ever fire somebody off of a performance evaluation. You should have loads of other documentation that goes along and the coaching and all of this other stuff with an employee that's not performing. But it's part of the equation. So you can either have endless pain or a painful end.
Steve-o (46:16.556)
I think that's great. That's a real, I mean, that's a great point. And I've seen way too many endless pains.
Tony Benjamin (46:16.863)
That's an awesome way to put it. Yep, yep.
Albert Foster (46:23.875)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (46:24.691)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it comes back to the expectation that lots of managers expect HR to provide the endless pain aspect of it, right?
Steve-o (46:33.742)
See, Tony, you strike a nerve with me on that one because one of my most biggest frustrations, and maybe we could even call it a pet peeve, are the managers who just simply don't want to deliver the news or they don't want to have the actual conversation. And the reality is when you took on your role as a manager, you took on that responsibility to have those conversations and to deliver the news. the employees absolutely want it.
Tony Benjamin (46:47.935)
Yes.
Albert Foster (46:48.398)
Okay.
Albert Foster (46:55.629)
Yeah, please, wanna?
Steve-o (47:01.544)
And so then the question becomes, OK, manager, why are you uncomfortable doing this? Do you need more training? Do you need more practice? Do you need more conversations from the executives? And I think we're missing the mark. When I did my research study several years ago when I was writing my book with managers and what one of their biggest pet peeves were, and a lot of them would complain about lack of training. They would not get the proper training. They would get in the role. They'd be really excited because it was promised to them or they were
producing enough that I said, I'm finally there. Yeah, it was a reward, if you will, which is not always the best reason to move somebody into management, but it happens. But as soon as they got there, it was like it was deflating because I kind of equated, you know, my daughter's just in the last couple of years, all of them graduated high school. They get done with high school and they've achieved this big thing. I'm done with high school. Now what? Right. And that's that's how managers feel. Sometimes they they finally get in the role. They become the manager.
Tony Benjamin (47:32.103)
It was a reward. It was a...
Albert Foster (47:40.665)
Huh?
Steve-o (48:00.554)
now what? Like they have no clue what the next steps are, much less have they been trained in that. And so I feel like training them is not only a crucial part of it. We actually talked with, you know, Ben Eden about this in his episode, but I feel like the valuations are such a critical piece of that. I was curious if in your software, in what you're doing, do you offer any type of training or options for
for managers to potentially go through when you're meeting and consulting with organizations, like what does that potentially look like on your side?
Albert Foster (48:34.123)
We prefer to train the HR people on how to do that versus training managers directly. We like to train managers on how to use our software, but we'd hate to get cross threaded on the culture of organization. feel like that. So we will train HR departments on that and then let them train their managers. Or we have trained managers directly after we've consulted with HR to make sure we're talking on the same wavelength
Steve-o (48:47.47)
Mm-hmm.
Steve-o (49:01.07)
Mm-hmm.
Albert Foster (49:04.037)
as HR, but we've added AI capabilities into the software with static prompts. So a manager can pull up an evaluation of an employee and then say, where do we differ the most? And it will read through the evaluation and say where they differ. And you can put in a prompt, how should I start the conversation with this employee? And it will read through the evaluation. say, start talking about their accomplishments and successes, then transfer over to their goals and then ultimately, you know, talk about
these days and it will provide them coaching at a PhD level. Yep, and it'll guide them through how and they can chat back and forth with this AI tool and it will give them PhD level consulting on how to have those conversations.
Steve-o (49:36.256)
Basically, guide them. Yeah.
Steve-o (49:48.526)
You know, I think that's cool. Yeah, I think that's cool because, you know, it's just like with assessments or with even with the interview process now, we're getting to a point where the ATS is starting to implement AI tools that actually talks with the candidate back and forth to tell them, are you even qualified for this job to begin with? Should you even waste your time to apply? You you see it on LinkedIn, you see it on Indeed. A lot of the major job boards now are also doing this where it's almost coaching.
Tony Benjamin (49:48.68)
That's pretty cool. That's a good crutch.
Albert Foster (50:08.111)
Mm-hmm.
Steve-o (50:14.594)
the applicant per se, and it's kind of like that. There's this coaching mechanism kind of involved there to help you see it and maybe think of things that you didn't think of in the first place. So I think that's pretty cool.
Albert Foster (50:25.775)
did a demo with a company today and they do pre-employment assessments and they can tell you know if you're a good fit for the job or not but their AI tool even took it a step further to show if the applicant actually took it serious or not and it will give them an indicator of like this person did not take the assessment serious and so maybe that would be a reason to not hire this person or you can tell that this person put a lot of time into doing this assessment and anyway
Steve-o (50:29.795)
Mm-hmm.
Albert Foster (50:55.779)
They can tell a lot about the employer.
Steve-o (50:58.382)
See, that's interesting too, because then it can also help the employer dig deeper if they need to as well. Like maybe there was a distraction, maybe something was going on with that applicant during that time that they couldn't take it as seriously as they wanted to. And so then it allows the employer to be aware so that they can potentially dig deeper as needed. So that's pretty cool. It's pretty cool.
Albert Foster (51:03.779)
yeah! Awesome!
Tony Benjamin (51:19.317)
Wow, fascinating. Okay, let me ask you this. What are some of the best and worst things you've heard about Albert in employee evaluations?
Albert Foster (51:28.591)
I thought you were say the worst things you've heard about me. was like, okay Steve, what do you got? Start with the best, don't even worry about the worst.
Tony Benjamin (51:31.765)
And we're all going to start with Albert's mustache is one of the best. There you go.
Steve-o (51:32.462)
Let me list them all off.
Steve-o (51:41.602)
Hahaha!
Albert Foster (51:41.635)
Yeah, well, so I'm going to Austin tomorrow to go to a trade show with the Texas Municipal League. And so we all thought it'd be appropriate if we wore our cowboy hats and had mustaches. And so.
Tony Benjamin (51:55.958)
Wow, that's dedication to marketing, man, right there. That's it.
Steve-o (51:56.408)
So you grew it out. That's amazing.
Albert Foster (51:57.783)
So here we are.
Steve-o (52:00.61)
Yeah, I was going to say you are you are dedicated.
Albert Foster (52:03.737)
Yeah. So we love her.
Tony Benjamin (52:05.225)
Yeah, so no, but tell us some of the best and worst things that you've seen companies do in this space in evaluations.
Albert Foster (52:13.039)
So, what should I start with the worst or the best? I'll start with the worst. we had...
one company come to us and they had one, they had like, I don't if can remember, 400 employees or something, and they had one form that they used for everybody. And it was so generic, it was so high level, and it didn't ask anything from the employees. It was all filled out by the manager, like you said Tony, the report card. It was a check the box thing for HR. It would add like 10 metrics on it.
and the manager would just go through and and they're all super high level core value type thing, attendance and punctuality, teamwork, dependability, you serve here. And then it had how could the employee improve and what are they doing well? was like, very simple.
Steve-o (52:56.994)
All this surface level stuff. call it the iceberg effect. Yeah, it's the iceberg.
Tony Benjamin (52:57.129)
Wahh! Yeah, yeah.
Albert Foster (53:11.009)
another soap box here. hate to see a question on there of how could the employee improve.
or even asking the employee, how could you improve? I think in a metric you could say meets expectations, needs improvement. That's okay to use the word improvement in that situation, but to ask how can they improve is a terrible question, a terrible metric for an employee because it's going to put them in a defensive stance. If I say I have to improve, it implies that I'm doing something wrong. I might not be doing something wrong. I could just do something better, more efficiently, right? I could, so instead of asking,
how could the employee improve, the better question is how could they grow and develop in their abilities here or something like that instead of work. Anyway that's what they were using and a group of their employees came out and said this has nothing to do with my job.
Steve-o (53:59.704)
Yeah.
Albert Foster (54:09.583)
This has nothing to do with the way that I treat my clients and my patients and whatever, know, this has none of this. It gives an accurate portrayal of how I am as an employee. So if we were to draw a chart.
Steve-o (54:15.278)
Mm-hmm.
Albert Foster (54:27.181)
And we have on one side of the chart employee engagement. And on the other, on the baseline of the chart effort by the company. And that effort could be from HR, from managers, it's effort by the company. Low effort would be one form for every employee with the same questions. We do it once a year. And guess what? That's low engagement on the employee side too.
So as you go further on the chart of effort on the company by the HR team, by the managers, and you do things like, let's make the questions and the metrics customized to the department or customized to the employee's job. So instead of asking questions like integrity, let's ask, this is an accountant.
if they're balancing the bank records every month on time or something like that or how are they doing with specific aspects of their job. That's more work because you're going to have to come up with a lot of different metrics and questions. guess what? The engagement side goes up for the employee as well because it actually pertains to what they're So what companies are doing well, think that by doing that more specific to the job, asking questions about the person and focusing more on goals that were
Steve-o (55:41.219)
And I.
Yeah.
Albert Foster (55:50.04)
better.
Tony Benjamin (55:51.541)
Now that's the...
Steve-o (55:51.758)
I feel like that develops more trust too.
Albert Foster (55:54.831)
Yeah, because we actually care about who you are and you're not just an employee number 358. Like, let's look at Steve.
Steve-o (55:57.966)
correct.
Steve-o (56:02.84)
Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (56:05.237)
Poor employee number 358. He's kind of like Mr. Irrelevant in the NFL draft. How would you like to be that guy? Unless you're Brock Purdy or whatever his name is. Yeah, I did for him. no, one of the ways I like to do this right is so like I have a five scale or whatever. But each one of those numbers comes with a definition of the behavior.
Steve-o (56:05.262)
Yeah, I know.
Steve-o (56:12.546)
Ha ha ha ha.
Albert Foster (56:17.273)
It worked out for him.
Tony Benjamin (56:30.781)
So like I do it under a value of the company, right? Whether that's integrity or whatever that is. But then I define if you're, and we have level three as the rock star in that process, but you say, if you're a rock star in this, this is what the behaviors of what that looks like for integrity within your job. And every department or maybe even every team has to have its own definitions because it's pertinent to their roles.
Steve-o (56:36.622)
Mm-hmm.
Tony Benjamin (56:59.941)
specifically and then you define what it is and everyone always says to me well what if they game the system what if they just do whatever that definition says and i'm like yeah that's exactly what i want them to do i'm defining what it means to be a rock star i want them to game the system yeah do it become a rock star and all those and you got to meet all the definitions to get that level score there's no you know 4.2 or something like that but
Steve-o (57:14.254)
Yeah, because if they do that. Correct.
Tony Benjamin (57:27.733)
you have to meet the whole definition. And when you do, it's relevant to you. And then there are certain things, right? And you do that across all of those things. So they know how the company values show up in their position.
Albert Foster (57:44.735)
I think that's fine if they game the system. In our software we can go through and we can check for bias. We can see which managers are rating themselves too high and you know which ones which employees are rating themselves too high versus where they should be in and you can check for that and then you this is another thing I believe in. If you expect your employees to grow and develop and let's even use that word improve
Well guess what? The process that you're evaluating them on also has to grow and develop and evolve and improve. So what you did last year might not be the same thing that you'll do this year or the next year. And definitely, I can't stand that saying of why are we doing it this way because that's why we've always done it. That's a terrible reason to do it that way.
So what you were doing with your employees ten years ago and you're using that same form and that same ugly PDF and the same metrics today, it's not going to work. It has to grow and develop and improve as well. Terrible.
Steve-o (58:45.986)
It's almost like a bad excuse, right? I don't have time to deal with it. I don't have time to address it. I don't have time to think about it. So I, we just do it the way we've always done it because we're not going to make time for it. I love how you say that. Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (58:56.703)
Well, and not only that, but because it's evaluating you, the employee, I don't have time to really discuss your performance. I don't have really time to care about your performance. I don't really care enough to spend time on it. why? And then the employee, right. then the right. And then the employee just hears, well, they don't care enough. So why should I? Right. I'm going to do whatever it takes just to get by, just enough to get by. And then I'm good. And a lot of people that is just stay out of trouble.
Steve-o (59:00.91)
Mm-hmm.
Steve-o (59:06.574)
Yeah.
Steve-o (59:10.862)
It's like a bad survey.
Albert Foster (59:17.987)
Yep.
Tony Benjamin (59:26.613)
I didn't have any scripts this year or whatever.
Steve-o (59:26.946)
Yeah.
Or do just enough. I see that a lot too. Like let me do just enough so that I can just so can go home at the end of the day and not feel like I'm doing bad stuff or what have you. I just I get it. You know, I just just the bare minimum. Get it done. Move on.
Tony Benjamin (59:45.845)
So Albert, what have we missed? So if we've had a good conversation about performance reviews now, what have we not talked about or whatever that you see or you think is important?
Steve-o (59:53.912)
Yeah, that you get passionate about when you're talking with companies. I'm curious about that too.
Albert Foster (01:00:00.239)
I think what I'm passionate about is the consistency of doing them and not making them cumbersome. We had one company and they said, we're doing annual reviews and they had this awful form that was like 26 metrics long. And they said, which I believe you really shouldn't have more than 12 like
Steve-o (01:00:19.054)
Wow.
Tony Benjamin (01:00:20.831)
Sorry, that's more than two a month.
Albert Foster (01:00:26.351)
metrics that you're evaluating your employees on because they start to just cross over and anyway they had like 26 and they said we're just not meeting with our employees enough and so we're going to start to do this quarterly and I said okay if you're going to do this quarterly take your 26 divided by 4 just have like four or five things that you're touching on every quarter by the end of the year you'll have all the ones but really it should be like three if you're doing this quarterly and they said no we're going to do all 26
Steve-o (01:00:30.222)
Mm-hmm.
Steve-o (01:00:48.11)
Yeah.
Albert Foster (01:00:56.305)
we're gonna measure all 26 metrics every employee quarterly and I said okay well when this blows up and sucks it's not our software that's doing this that this is your design just don't confuse the two so they did it the first quarter and everybody hated it because it took so much time so much time and then the second quarter like 30 % of their managers did it
Tony Benjamin (01:01:09.845)
You
Albert Foster (01:01:24.279)
And the third quarter, nobody did it. And was the joke. It was the joke of the company. So you have to design something that is going to be easy, meaningful, definitely not going to be cumbersome. And then you have to do it. You have to hold people to it. Like this is our culture. This is what we're going to do. We want managers to meet with our employees every quarter, if you decide quarterly, every six months, whatever.
Tony Benjamin (01:01:28.874)
right?
Steve-o (01:01:35.288)
Mm-hmm.
Steve-o (01:01:46.919)
Hold them accountable.
Albert Foster (01:01:54.231)
and actually have those conversations and you have to do it. But if you say, okay, well, we're too busy, we've got other priorities going on, you know, we've got these other things we have to plan right now, we don't have time for this. It's dead. It's dead. Why you let them off the hook? You know, it's like letting your kids stay up too late one night, then they expect every night. like...
Tony Benjamin (01:02:13.685)
Right
Steve-o (01:02:16.962)
That's a good analogy right there. They do, they expect it every night after that. Yeah.
Albert Foster (01:02:19.608)
yeah, I think last night... Yeah...
Tony Benjamin (01:02:23.111)
Yeah. No, that's okay. Thank you. That. Yeah, yeah. I like that. I like that. And what you're talking about finding a way to make it very easy for people is is the critical point of that. And it's a cultural piece of it, too. I hate the notion that hey, HR is just in the way. And and look, I'll admit my process for doing for doing performance reviews the first two times it's done because it's new. It's difficult.
Albert Foster (01:02:26.647)
How state is.
Tony Benjamin (01:02:52.905)
But the third, fourth, fifth, it gets easier and easier and easier as it goes along. And I'm a big fan of monthly reviews, but my reviews are 10 minute meeting. It's nothing, it's nothing more, right? It's a 10 minute. Yeah, it's, it's a really quick deal. You touch on stuff, they get a little piece of paper that comes out at the end and says what it was. It generally doesn't change month to month. It changes over time, but not short term, but they get, they get something every single month and
Steve-o (01:03:04.846)
Yeah, it's like a quick huddle. Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (01:03:21.621)
That's exactly right. And I always tell people, if you get into this six or seven months and you're like, hey, Tony, we don't have a ton to talk about every time. We just talk about a couple of little things and then we're off. They're like, man, it's just not useful. I'm like, no, no, no, that's how you know you're doing it right. Because the feedback is consistent and it flows over time. Your employees are matching what you want out of them. They know they're happy with it, that sort of stuff.
Albert Foster (01:03:47.705)
Yeah, that's great.
Tony Benjamin (01:03:49.65)
Anyways, there you go. See, that just gave me a chance to pump my own philosophy of this. That was awesome. OK, Steve, is that I do. I agree with anybody that agrees with me. Hey, thank you. I'm glad everyone's recognizing it. Finally, that's that's good. OK, let's let's let's hit this up really quick and quick, Steve. Well, I think we'll go with my thing with the HR life unless you got something else. You get with that?
Steve-o (01:03:54.734)
Pony loves it when people agree with him.
Albert Foster (01:04:00.911)
You're right Tony, you're right.
Steve-o (01:04:17.602)
No, nothing else right now. I just have my HR life idea.
Tony Benjamin (01:04:19.089)
Okay. okay. Okay. You're up then. No, I got one. I got one. But you you you go. We'll do yours this time. We'll do my that one next time. Here we go.
Steve-o (01:04:23.31)
Unless you got one, I got one on my own.
Steve-o (01:04:30.732)
I mean, it's Star Wars related. Are you OK with that?
Tony Benjamin (01:04:46.869)
All right, all right, all right. There's Steve with the air guitar. I wish everyone could have seen that or if I had been smart enough, I would have snagged a picture of that. Then I would have put. That's that's anyways. There you go. Albert is a guitar player. Hopefully you can appreciate that bumper music to there. So. Yeah. OK, Steve.
Steve-o (01:04:55.99)
Yeah, you get a picture, right? I do the air guitar almost every time.
Albert Foster (01:05:07.661)
Love that. It was fantastic.
Steve-o (01:05:10.326)
My air guitar is wicked, let me tell ya.
Tony Benjamin (01:05:14.101)
Steve you realize you're the only person on this podcast right now that doesn't actually play the guitar. Just saying.
Steve-o (01:05:19.212)
Yeah, I know that excites you, Tony, because that means there's something I can't do.
Albert Foster (01:05:19.343)
So, y'all are-
Albert Foster (01:05:24.719)
Yamaha Guitars is one of our clients and I have two Yamaha Guitars and I think that helped us get them as a client. But yeah, Yamaha Guitars.
Steve-o (01:05:27.979)
nice.
Tony Benjamin (01:05:28.856)
Steve-o (01:05:36.526)
So did you know that I took one semester, I took a guitar class one semester, and it was during a semester when I had this online class that I was like two weeks shy. All I had to do was take the final and then I graduate. And so I signed up, I had to sign up for one class in order for it to even count so that I could go take the dumb exam. And so I took a guitar class. And so I literally took the guitar class for three weeks. And then I finally passed my class and my semester is over.
Albert Foster (01:05:50.095)
you
Steve-o (01:06:05.942)
And so I dropped the class because I didn't need it anymore. I only needed it to actually take my test, which was kind of silly, but that's what I did. And I know it is a shame. I wish I had kept up with that and actually learned how to play it because even during those three weeks, yeah, it was just fun. It was fun. So anyway.
Tony Benjamin (01:06:12.565)
That's a shame, that's a shame Albert.
Albert Foster (01:06:19.118)
Never too late.
Tony Benjamin (01:06:23.103)
So Albert, as you moved the camera across there, I was impressed with the guitars. Let me just say that. let's see if you can, here let's see if I can get out of the way of my thing here and you can see. No, they can't see it, but there's my 5150 amp back there, the Eddie Van Halen design tube amp in the background. Anyways.
Steve-o (01:06:36.012)
As our listeners can't really see any of this.
Tony Benjamin (01:06:51.669)
We'll have to talk about that sometime. Okay, go Steve, HR in life.
Steve-o (01:06:53.644)
OK, so HR life. Here we go. The reason I thought of this is because of the subject that we're actually talking about right now. And so I think this is a good audience or at least a good group that we can talk about this. companies oftentimes are not obsessed with finding the right paths for people to grow who want mobility and providing constant engagement and things like that to make sure people are content with their role.
And it's always important to talk with their employees about their career goals and work with them on a plan to achieve them and such. Well, guess what? For those of who know Star Wars and it's Star Wars day, so I had to pull this up. This is an exact example why Anakin became Darth Vader. Okay, now go with me on this one. So Chancellor Palpatine spends years getting to know Anakin, talks to him about his hopes and his fears and his dreams and.
and just the things that were happening in his life. But when you look at the actual Jedi Order, the Jedi Order completely missed the boat here. I mean, they knew that he was destined for greatness, you because he was supposedly part of this prophecy. But Chancellor Palpatine was the only one who really offered Anakin a concrete promotion or serving at his right hand and all of these things. And so it was no surprise when he suddenly goes to the dark side and these Jedi promises.
didn't fall through. Now we're supposed to see the Jedi as this great group of people, right? But yet they were the ones that really missed a real opportunity to help Anakin learn and grow. So his experience with the Jedi was completely fraught with disappointment. And so their failure to communicate or even compromise with what Anakin was wanting in some of his options was constrained. And so as a result, Palpatine and the Dark Side win. They're the path forward for him. And that's why they win.
So that's my HR life. When you think about, you know, this movie, this was a really good example of the company, which was the Jedi Order, should have been working out a plan with Anakin for the proper type of growth that he should have had. And when that wasn't happening, he starts talking to other people who actually give him the growth that he wants, even though it wasn't the best path overall. But this dark side became the big rival.
Steve-o (01:09:12.846)
And so we shouldn't be shocked when we don't help our employee fulfill some of the paths that they want to follow and all of a sudden they decide to go to the dark side instead, which well, at least what might be considered the dark side for us in an organizational setting. So if you're an HR team, you're promising talent and you want to point them as a manager, point them to whatever and maybe keep.
things from blocking their growth, are you actually fulfilling that or are you letting them talk with other people? Anyway, so that's my thought. was really thinking about this, especially when they're being Star Wars.
Tony Benjamin (01:09:43.199)
That's your HR and Life. Albert, I want your take on that Albert. What's your thought?
Steve-o (01:09:48.686)
I know, because you're a Star Wars fan. This is why I like this, because at least you guys understand the storyline, right?
Albert Foster (01:09:54.593)
Yeah, I think keeping people away from the dark side.
Tony Benjamin (01:10:02.993)
Albert doesn't want to go there.
Albert Foster (01:10:03.343)
Unless your business is the dark side and then you want to keep them there too. So it's all about employee growth and development.
Tony Benjamin (01:10:07.283)
Right, right, right.
Steve-o (01:10:08.398)
So win-win.
Tony Benjamin (01:10:13.333)
So what Steve is saying that is that the ability to make your girlfriend immortal was the growth direction that Anakin wanted to go. He wanted to go, right? Okay, his wife, officially his wife, right? Although in secret. That's... Wasn't even a secret life. that's the secret life of Jedi wives. There you go. That's the new show right there.
Steve-o (01:10:23.02)
It was his wife. He was, yeah. It was a secret wife. Like nobody knew about it. The Jedi Order weren't supposed to be married and all that fun stuff.
Steve-o (01:10:36.854)
Mm-hmm. Total new series. I'm the one that came up with the idea. There you go. The secret lives of Jedi wives.
Tony Benjamin (01:10:43.957)
Wow, that's awesome. That's, no, okay. Well, you make a good point, Steve. You make a good point. I think that's good.
Steve-o (01:10:54.424)
I'm just saying the Jedi, this is where the Jedi failed. They failed to communicate. They failed to even listen to Anakin's ideas and options, even though he was a little off. They, because they failed to even communicate or listen with him, they lost him early on. And Palpatine was just genius at saying, Hey, you know, that's because you deserve this and you deserve that. And you should be having this and yeah, yeah. And if you had had that,
Tony Benjamin (01:11:18.805)
He did regular employee check-ins.
Steve-o (01:11:24.398)
with Anakin in that sense, it would have been a lot better. Instead, they just kind of went on their merry way, assuming, well, you know, he's going to be who he is. He's young. He's not a master yet. He's just a Padawan. so he's doing the Padawan things. You know, I don't know. Anyway. Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (01:11:39.957)
Bright.
Give up. Give up all your ambitions. That was what Yoda told him. Give up all your ambitions. Now I think I think that's exactly right. OK. Well Albert before we let you go. No for now. Back to the original message here. Albert before we let you go. Tell us what you're up to next and if there's anything that you want to promote that's coming up.
Steve-o (01:11:57.102)
Back to real life.
Albert Foster (01:12:05.337)
So what I'm excited about next, our next feature that we're coming out with is an AI chatbot where you can select.
number of different evaluations so maybe I want to look at this department of 15 employees and then I want to chat back and forth with it and say are there any common themes is there anything what are their high points of engagement their low points of engagement give me a give me an executive summary with four points on what our employees are thinking and how we can help them grow and develop and just get real feet so instead of just running a report and seeing scores I'm very excited because some
places like CEOs will say why are we even doing this? Why are we doing performance reviews? And now the CEO could pull up the chat box and say what do need to work on as a company with these employees and get real information back. So that's where we're going next. It'll be out probably in next two months. Super excited about that.
Steve-o (01:13:02.488)
That is cool, because I've seen some of those chat bots, like I said, work in real time with with situations like this that really give solid feedback. And it and it's cool because it's completely unbiased. It's just looking at the data and saying, look, this is what the data is saying. This is what everybody is saying in their surveys or what have you. So based on that, here's the actual feedback type stuff. And yeah, I think it's genius.
It gives you a synopsis of the data in a way that has not been possible up to this point. So that's cool.
Tony Benjamin (01:13:34.453)
That is good feature.
Albert Foster (01:13:35.427)
We're expanding our partnership with BambooHR. We are going to be live on Microsoft Teams in the marketplace this week. So that if you use Microsoft Teams, we can put our application right in Teams. Anyway, new cool things.
Tony Benjamin (01:13:52.16)
Wow, that's actually really cool. That's really cool. Okay, so Albert, the website is, your website is?
Steve-o (01:13:52.568)
That is cool. Very exciting.
Albert Foster (01:14:01.039)
Express Evaluations dot com. It's a play on words because we want employees and managers to be able to express their thoughts and feelings to each other, but it also needs to be quick. So it's Express. Express Evaluations.
Tony Benjamin (01:14:17.097)
Really cool. I love it. I didn't know that. That's the double entendre of meaning. I love it. OK. Well, that's that that's really good. Albert, thank you for being here with us. This has been awesome. All right. See now that the ladies in the crowd are even going wilder now. They've heard you talk and how exciting they are in the mustache has got everybody excited now. Look at that.
Steve-o (01:14:17.602)
That's cool. Yeah. Love that.
Albert Foster (01:14:28.131)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.
Steve-o (01:14:28.598)
Yeah, this is awesome.
Steve-o (01:14:40.162)
Hahaha
Albert Foster (01:14:40.429)
You're my real wife.
Tony Benjamin (01:14:44.125)
Sorry, I don't mean to get you in trouble. If Albert's wife is listening, it was my joke, not his. So there we go. OK. But Albert, thank you for being with us. We really appreciate it. Really, really appreciate it. This was this was good. And I think something that lots of people need to hear before we run out. When a child faces a serious illness, the entire family fills the impact. Thrive Life Project steps in to lighten the load.
Delivering nutritious meals and engaging STEM kids directly to families homes. Completely free of charge. It's more than support. It's a community of care. Learn more at thrivelifeproject.org. That's thrivelifeproject.org. And for those of you who follow us on Facebook, recently we posted a video about Thrive Life Project and what they're doing.
Steve-o (01:15:33.976)
Yeah, we posted.
Steve-o (01:15:38.552)
Mm-hmm.
Tony Benjamin (01:15:38.651)
And again, tip of the hat to Brock and all that he's doing, Brock Arnold and all he's doing for his community and people that are in desperate need to help. It's it's been wonderful. So I want to give a shout out to him. And I don't know, maybe we'll talk to Brock sometime about that. That'd be a good idea. But yeah, yeah, he is. Yeah, yeah, he is. He is in public sector. Yeah, yeah.
Steve-o (01:15:56.738)
Yeah, come on, right? He's an HR, isn't he? He could provide some good insights there. Yeah, that's right. And the public sector, no mind, you know, so we could get some insight there. Yeah.
Tony Benjamin (01:16:06.623)
Yeah, we should talk about that too. okay. Well, anyways, Albert, thank you again for being with us. Very, very much appreciated. We had a great time and.
Albert Foster (01:16:12.975)
Thank you.
Steve-o (01:16:15.586)
Well, and I would say for those listeners that would like to schedule a demo with Albert, you know, maybe he'll promise you some free Jedi socks or something.
Albert Foster (01:16:23.639)
No, we don't give out Jedi stuff. We give out Lulu Lim and belt bags for demos. What's in your Lulu Lim and belt bag?
Steve-o (01:16:27.374)
hey, even better.
Tony Benjamin (01:16:29.673)
Whoa. Wow. OK, everybody, the link will be in the show notes. That's we've set the bar the bar really high there. So that's that's wonderful. OK, fantastic is the word I was looking for. All right. Thanks, Albert. We appreciate it. And I guess we're going to head out the same way that we came in.
Steve-o (01:16:34.264)
You heard it here first,
Steve-o (01:16:41.614)
That's right.
Tony Benjamin (01:16:53.555)
May the fourth be with you and thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review on your favorite podcast app. Comments or questions for us? Email the podcast at the HR life podcast at gmail.com and we'll talk again soon.