--- title: "Inclusion Starts With Recruiters" episode: 173 date: 2025-08-29 guest: "Jo Major" canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/173-inclusion-starts-with-recruiters audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-173/audio.mp3 --- # Inclusion Starts With Recruiters Joanne Lockwood is joined by Jo Major to explore how inclusion in the workplace is shaped long before someone starts a job—at the point of recruitment. They examine why DEI can become performative in hiring, and what it takes for recruiters and agencies to move from statements and checklists to practical, systemic change. The conversation looks at the constraints recruiters face—speed metrics, contingent models, limited access to hiring managers—and how these pressures can undermine equitable hiring. Jo argues for broadening the recruiter’s role from “filling seats” to consultative talent partnership: auditing job descriptions and career pages, improving employer branding and EVP, rethinking shortlisting and assessment, and using technology and AI to free up time for the human parts of recruitment. They also spend significant time on age bias and the growing challenge of experienced workers, particularly women, struggling to re-enter the workforce. Joanne and Jo discuss confidence, job-search wear and tear, the need for better candidate coaching, and more innovative pipeline approaches such as mature apprenticeships, alumni programmes, and community-based talent development—so recruitment can better reflect and serve the communities it hires for. ## Chapters - 00:00 — Introduction and Welcome - 01:30 — Supporting Recruitment Industry Evolution - 10:21 — Reimagine Recruitment as a Career - 13:12 — Rethinking Recruitment Career Development - 18:12 — Rethinking Recruitment: DE&I as USP - 26:43 — AI Transforming Recruitment Processes - 33:12 — Unemployment Frustrations and Job Market Challenges - 36:59 — Career Struggles and Support Gaps - 40:46 — Revitalising LinkedIn for Career Growth - 50:06 — Embracing Age Diversity in Teams - 51:17 — Career Entry via Retail Roles - 01:00:37 — Long-Term Investment in Diversity - 01:02:33 — Streamlined Appointment Booking Process ## Key takeaways - The necessity of evolving recruitment from a sales-driven function to one centred on consultative partnership and strategic talent development. - Challenges and opportunities in shifting the recruitment industry away from box-ticking diversity practices toward genuinely transformative inclusion. - The importance of diversifying the demographic make-up of recruiters to reflect the broader talent pool and foster organisational representation. - How recruitment professionals can, and should, proactively consult on employer branding, inclusive practices, and accessible candidate experiences. - The value in repositioning recruiters as experts in areas such as technology, social media, and workforce planning to meet the changing demands of the talent ecosystem. - Opportunities for agencies and organisations to support candidates—particularly those facing long-term unemployment or mid-career pivots—by offering coaching, reskilling, and career advice. - Why mature and experienced workers must be actively included in talent strategies, and how addressing age bias and upskilling all demographics is essential for workforce sustainability. ## FAQs ### Why is the recruitment industry pivotal to inclusion and equity? The recruitment industry holds significant responsibility and influence within the job market. As gatekeepers to employment, recruiters—especially those in agencies—shape which candidates are represented, championed, and ultimately hired. By embedding genuine equity and inclusion practices at every recruitment stage, the industry can dismantle barriers, broaden opportunities, and help ensure workplaces reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. --- ### What challenges do agency recruiters face in implementing inclusive practices? Agency recruiters are often measured and rewarded based on speed, time-to-hire, and placement volume. This operational pressure restricts the capacity to slow down, reflect, and integrate more inclusive practices; there’s a tension between commercial demands and the need for deeper, more human-centred approaches. In addition, many recruiters are not trained in the technicalities of inclusion, accessibility, and equity, which hampers their confidence in changing existing processes. --- ### Is inclusive recruitment just a box-ticking exercise for many agencies? Too often, diversity and inclusion are treated as performative exercises—statements included on websites, or actions undertaken only after clients demand demonstrable inclusive capability. Some agencies adopt a surface-level approach, focusing on compliance or market trends, rather than genuinely transforming their hiring models or internal cultures. --- ### Are recruitment agencies reflective of the diverse talent pools they serve? Despite access to highly diverse candidate pools, recruitment agencies themselves often remain demographically homogenous. This lack of internal diversity impedes their ability to fully represent or understand underrepresented groups, resulting in invisible barriers and narrowing the possibilities for both the agency and its clients. --- ### Why is recruitment typically seen as a career people ‘fall into’? Recruitment has often been framed as a temporary, transactional, or sales-driven job, rather than a consultative or strategic career. Agency culture frequently values sales ability above advisory capability, leading to a narrow professional identity that rarely appeals to those seeking long-term, skill-based development. --- ### How can recruiters move towards being valued consultants, not just intermediaries? To be valued as true business partners, recruiters must engage strategically with clients. This entails going beyond fulfilling job briefs to advising on employer branding, workforce planning, inclusive hiring, and talent development. Recruiters should take proactive steps, such as reviewing clients’ job descriptions for bias, critiquing careers pages, and initiating conversations about long-term demographic and skills strategy. --- ## Transcript Joanne Lockwood: Foreign. Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging and societal transformation. Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world? Remember, everyone not only belongs, but thrives. You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge the status quo and share stories that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in? Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show. So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites. And today is episode 173 with title inclusion Starts With Recruiters. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Jo. Major Jo is transforming the recruitment industry by equipping professionals with the tools and mindset to embed equity and inclusion at every stage of the hiring process. When I asked Jo to describe her superpower, she said it is inspiring recruiters to care more deeply and to think differently about people. Hi, Jo, welcome to the show. Jo Major: Hi, Jo, thank you so much for having me. I should say welcome Joanne Lockwood: back because we did actually record this episode with two months ago and silly me, I was in the cutting room studio and I cut too deep on the track and erased you and I gave you a rather sheepish email back and said, I'm really sorry, do you forgive me? And you've said anything to have another chat with you, that's fine. Yes, exactly. This Jo Major: is a privilege to get to do do this all over again. Joanne Lockwood: Another conversation, and it's been so long since we actually recorded that I really don't remember the conversation. So it's a ideal opportunity to maybe update our thinking based on some of the BS that's going on in the world right now and some of the challenges that recruiters are still facing. What a difference a month makes, Jo Major: right? It is, yeah. I mean, what difference breakfast Joanne Lockwood: makes on one day? You know, you start by eating your bowl of cereal and then by the time you finished it, you're no longer enfranchised in the country. Yeah, stuff happens really rapidly. We live in very, very interesting times. So you hang out predominantly in the recruitment space and it's mainly what, I guess agency recruiters rather than in house. Is it? Jo Major: It's more of a mix now. But when I launched the business, my mission was to support the recruitment industry just because of the responsibility I felt and saw that the recruitment industry had and also the power it has given, how much it's responsible for in terms of the job markets and moving people around. So that. Yeah, that's where it all started. And that's my sweet spot as well. Having been an agency recruiter for such a long time, over 17 years, it felt like a sensible move to start in a space where I was familiar and I also could use myself as that kind of case study because I'd. Although I was an ethical recruiter, those ethics had been built in me from day one. I didn't really understand anything about inclusion and accessibility and equity. It was just that kind of natural part of me that wanted to do the right thing by humans and for humans to have a good experience of me, but without that kind of that technical knowledge and. And confidence. That makes sense. Yeah, no, it does. And I did work in the Joanne Lockwood: recruitment sector as well as, you know, and I see so many just talk about agency recruiters here wanting to be ethical. They wanted to do the right thing, they wanted to create opportunities for everybody because, let's be honest, it makes good business sense as well, you know, broaden your. Yeah, it's hard finding good talent to give to clients on your slate of options. So it does make sense. But I still get frustrated sometimes. It is a bit performative. It's almost like a tick. Yes. We're a diverse and inclusive recruitment organisation. It seems to be a bit of. A trend that, doesn't it? It does, yeah, Jo Major: yeah, yeah. Some of them are. I think the will is that, and I think a lot of them have taken more of an interest in D and I because they've been held accountable for it from their clients. It's not unusual for a recruitment business to approach me, as I'm sure you've experienced this as well, when something's gone wrong when it comes to the commercial side of it, they've been kicked off a preferred supplier list or they've been rejected for, you know, for a big retained project that they were going for because they've not been able to demonstrate their experience, inclusive recruitment competency and capability. There is a. There is a lot of. There's a lot of talk. There is some box ticking stuff. Unfortunately, you know, we get as much box ticking in the recruitment industry as we do in the employer space. I think one of the biggest challenges is the capacity and the resources to be able to actually change the hiring model that recruiters use. And I think if you look at, you know, the metrics that recruiters are measured on the environment that they've got to, you know, got to work in, given a, you know, for example, from a, from a time perspective, it's not supportive of a proper inclusive recruitment process unless you're doing or operating a retained model. It's very, very different to class recruiters who are their successes measured and their performance is rewarded based on time to hire and speed and it may be minimal human resources, you know, and maximum output and then asking them to then integrate inclusion and accessibility and equity into that process, to change the way they hire, to change the way that they make decisions, to change, to add extra layers into that process. This is difficult for them to kind of understand because they've got all these other responsibilities going on around them and they're like, we need to slow things down and they're like that. That doesn't make sense to us. We need to speed things up. I get it, I get that. Joanne Lockwood: One of the questions I often when I'm having conversations, not just with recruiters, other organisations, is what are you doing for yourselves? You are trying to offer these services to your clients, but look in the mirror yourself to start with. What are your own processes? What does your demographic look like? How can you evidence? Because if you're trying to show a better way to your client and you're not matching that, that lacks the authenticity, doesn't it? I think sometimes we're recruits themselves are very narrow demographic. Jo Major: Yeah, absolutely. I think representation is a real challenge for the recruitment industry. It never fails to fascinate me as to why we have such a, you know, a diverse talent pool as an industry and yet we are pretty. We can be one dimensional as an industry ourselves and we don't. We are not representing the communities that we're here to serve and to recruit, recruit for as our clients and to place. And I think that creates a lot of invisible barriers for the recruitment industry and our success. You know, we often wonder why certain roles, certain areas, certain certain areas of expertise are hard for us to recruit. And it's like, well, do your recruiters reflect the talent pool that you're wanting to bring into the organisation? Usually that's a hard no. And I think that we've moved on from an industry where the key factor that we looked for in skillset was the ability to sell. And I think now that what we're working with is the ability to develop relationships, to have the expertise of hiring strategy, a market Job marketing strategy, to be able to think strategically, to understand how a business operates, to understand how all those pestle factors impact our clients and our industry and the movement of candidates. And I think that now more than ever we need true business partners and true talent consultants who properly consult. Because I, I think we're moving away while tech's replacing recruitment as a process. And if we, you know, this, this continual, if we're continually selling the basics, I think that's where we're really gonna struggle. And I, I don't want the recruitment industry to just be a place for young homogenous groups. It should be a career for everybody. There's no barriers to getting into it. So why do we all look the same? And I think a lot of that is down to the, the working environment and the culture and the stereotype that we've buil. Joanne Lockwood: I remember a friend of mine who, you know, Bill Borman always said to me, nobody leaves school to aspire to be a recruiter. It's one of those careers you kind of, Most people, I don't want to stereotype. Most people drop into, they got a salesy background, they've got this background or they somehow get into recruitment. Somehow. Is that part of the problem? People naturally gravitate and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Recruiters attract recruiters in their image and it's how to break that image down. Jo Major: Yeah. Isn't it sad that such an interesting career path is seen as something that you fall into? You know, why do people not choose to go into recruitment when recruitment itself can be an incredible profession and an incredible career? And it's like I said, it's something that you don't necessarily, you know, the barriers to it, the entry and the entry levels to it are relatively straightforward to get into. So. But I think it's because we built this caricature of ourselves and in reality, who want, who would ever want to step into that as a role? And it's my belief as well that we're seen as a temp, as a stepping stone, you know, a role that I might do for a temporary amount of time. And it's like why, why, why has it become so transactional? Why have we created this career opportunity where you come in and then you go out and you, you know, when you tend to come in at a certain point in your life and you tend to leave at certain point in your life, you know, why, why are we not professionalising the recruitment industry enough so it actually becomes a, you know, a genuine career option? And I think A lot of it is, like I said, this sales caricature when my belief has always been that, you know, we. Yes, it is sales to a degree, but it's also a lot more technical. You know, you can sell a concept. Can you sell human beings with their own minds and their own behaviours and their own, their own agendas? That's really difficult. Yeah, because it's. Joanne Lockwood: If you talk about sales, you know, the high street sales would be cars, used or brand new cars. You've got estate agents, letting agents, those are the sort of caricatures that pop into your head. But we've got to realise that people are not inanimate objects, are they? They're all unique, they're all different in the same way. A second hand car I guess is unique to a, to that car. You're trying to find a fit with it. But humans are different. I think often do. We think as recruiters there's a whole evolution. You know, I look at the recruitment industry, the sourcing people who source they are technical geniuses with searching and the deep research and investigators. It's a unique skill in their own just sourcing, finding candidates, finding opportunities for people. Then you've got workforce planning, you've got OD teams, you've got talent management, talent development. All that kind of fits under the TA banner if you like. In a big organisation, agency recruits is just a small element of that. It's the combination of sourcing, placing and evaluating candidates, isn't it? But in a whole strategy, Chris, are far more than that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think Jo Major: I'm seeing. It's interesting, isn't it? Which I'm just reflecting on what you just said then. It's like you have like a, you've got a very, very interesting dynamic career path as an internal recruiter because there are so many moving parts to it. And yet as an agency recruiter I feel that there's just, you know, there is just one, one pathway. I mean some would argue you could do client facing or you could do candidate facing or you can manage people or you don't have to manage people, you can build out divisions. But it's strange how we just see it maybe as this like one dimensional role instead of actually investing in the professional developer development of our recruiters to go from that, you know, that job specification piece to the recruitment, marketing, talent attraction, you know, through to the, you know, to the, to the filling of the roles. And actually why are we not, how on earth are we not sitting down with recruiters and talking to Them about organisational design, workforce planning, dynamic employer brand development, EVP development and all of that. All of that human stuff, all of that. The things that are instrumental in attracting and retaining great people. Why do we. Why are we still just plugging into the very basics of what a recruiter does? Joanne Lockwood: You mentioned earlier about the consultative approach. That's where every agency recruiter wants to be. They want to be seen as a value add, not just a shifter. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we add value. We do this. I think what you just said there is what a lot of agencies, and I'm not criticising anybody here is what they're not doing is they're not interfacing to the business at a strategic level. They're just fulfilling a hiring manager's desire. I want this without asking why or can we help? Or can we. Can we understand your brand values better? So we can. We can look at the candidate profile, as you say, the evp, the recruit marketing based on who you are, rather than just putting out this bland. I want a Java developer, I want a DevOps programme or whatever it may be without understanding the context of the brand. Jo Major: I think a lot of it has got. We've also got to think about, like, who's created this and I do think it is. It's the fact that recruitment agencies are devalued, I think, by a lot of clients that, you know, paying them an awful lot of money just to source CVs. Essentially. It's not unusual for me to sit down with recruiters and for them to, you know, we talk about the, you know, the job brief stage and for them to not even be able to have a meeting with a client about the job, let alone meet the hiring manager, let alone get more than 10 minutes with them. And yeah, that client's paying for a service. The payer, you know, they could be paying anything from 5, 10, 15 to. Depends on what rates are. And yet the relationship between the recruiter and the client is. Said it before, is so transactional, you might as well. Well, you will be able to. You might as well just feed in a command into a piece of recruitment technology and pay it 10k. And this is. And I do think the recruiters have got. They've got. We need to think about how do we actually change the perception of where we fit in to the talent attraction strategy. It's. We can say that we are. We add value and we're trusted partners and splash all that stuff across the, you know, our websites, but that won't be happening with each and every role that we've got in. There'll be a degree of that, but not with all of them. So how do we change that relationship between hiring manager and client and recruiter and for us to truly be seen as business partners? I believe it's when we start to evolve and change our services and what we actually do and what we actually consult on. Because taking a job brief over a five minute conversation with a client is not consultation, it's not advisory work, it's not expertise. It's something that could be picked up like that by recruitment technology and it's my belief that it will be. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, certainly you look at some of the ATSs and some of the AI integrations out there, the platforms are doing a lot of this work for you. And Even the way LinkedIn is changing its recruitment platform within LinkedIn it's making it more easy to self serve, more easy for candidates to amplify themselves and look at fit better. And yeah, I think we're seeing an evolution where if not careful agencies will just be a, it will just be going back to being a bucket shop if they can't elevate into that consulting. Do the hiring teams want that? Does the in house hiring manager actually want the agency to consult or are they forcing them into that transactional relationship? It's a good question, isn't it? It's almost like we've got to do a Jo Major: PR job on a lot of the industry and change this perception. I think it will take recruiters talking to hiring managers about something different and this is where I feel that I really try to push the whole DE&I and inclusive hiring expertise as your USP. For us to actually keep on top of trends, for us to truly understand all the factors that are influence that, that are influencing our clients hiring decisions, the stuff that's truly keeping them awake at night. Because I sometimes listen to, you know, go to the conferences and nobody ever really talks about what's keeping clients awake at night. And when they do it's like where did you get that from? Because that's not an a deep dive survey. It's understanding trends and understand actually sitting down with an organisation at the beginning of the year and asking them a question about where they want to be from a diversity and demographic perspective. What, where it, what's their weak points in their hiring strategy? What upskilling do their hiring managers need? What about, you know, without even being invited to do it, doing a, you know, an audit of their website and their careers page, you can easily access your client's job descriptions at the click of a button and critiquing them and rebuilding them and saying, I know you've not asked me to do this, but I've done it and I'd really like to have a chat with you about the results. It's that kind of like proactive. And for some reason recruiters are terrified of stepping into EDNI and recruitment because they think it's political. We know it's political, but they see it as this conversation that they've not been invited to. They don't see it as an enhancement of their service capability. And that for me is, you know, is, is, is wild. You know, if TA is saying we can't make decisions on CVs because candidates are using technology far too much and Instead of having five CVs that fit the bill, we have 500 CVs that are a perfect match of the JD. And we don't, we cannot shortlist. Why are the recruiters in that conversation going in and going, shall we have a conversation around how we can change the sifting process? What can we do to. Why don't we do a pilot where we take the CV out of the process? Let's look at the other things that we can do to help you with this. And I don't know whether or not they just feel that it's out of their capability or it's, you know, I think there is this tendency to stick to what we've done over the last 10, 20, 30 years instead of really ramping it up and being at the same level as the tech providers trying to kick us out. I'm going down rabbit hole with this, but. Joanne Lockwood: You'Ve probably must have worked more hiring managers than I have in my time at Are we, Are we setting this hiring manager up as some sort of super expert on talent management branding diversity? Often a hiring manager in my experience has been a department head or someone in a department who has an empty seat or wants to grow his team or her team or their team, and they may not hire daily, they may hire once or twice a year or maybe every other year. They're not necessarily match fit in the hiring process. Should, should our agencies, should our external recruiters be interfacing at a different level in organisation? Interfacing with the DNI team, interface with the HR team, interfacing with marketing and branding or a general talent overview team and encouraging the organisation to maybe have professional hirers? And that's a TA business partner, for one of a better way of describing it, where people are professional recruiters. In house as well. Because I think too often the hiring manager is an amateur hirer. They're a professional person but an amateur. Hire a recruiter, right. Their job isn't a recruiter and Jo Major: they, you know, you're right, you get, they're often given that role that you know, through promotional or hiring in and not actually given the skill set. And so the ideal scenario for me would be to, you know, to even just send check the basic capacity of hiring managers and see that as an opportunity to, you know, as recruiters we claim that we are experts in interviewing. What can we do to share that expertise and also just being able to audit the capability of the TA team and seeing whether or not we can bring in our professional services that way. There's often pain points, there's often, you know, gaping holes in a, in our clients recruitment and TA playbook and again we pride ourselves on being recruitment and TA experts. What are we doing to be able to seek to identify where help may be needed and then adapting our services accordingly and moving towards offering a whole suite of professional services that go beyond just advertising a role, emailing out the database and going through the recruitment process. Not to simplify the hiring process because I know it's a lot more than that and I don't want people throwing rocks at me after they've listened to the test. But I get, you know, I get it's more than that but I think that we're not even having the conversation Joanne around. This is what we do and these are our capabilities. Have you ever thought about working with us in a slightly different way? Is it worth exploring? Is that nudging into the RPO space where we are trying to Joanne Lockwood: be the outsourced partner on this rather than an arm's length agency that is that, is that the blurring occurring there? I mean maybe we will see more capability Jo Major: building through, you know, in that RPO offering. I've heard, you know, I've heard noise around that being, you know, being, being a thing. But then I guess, you know, an RPO model's not, it's not what. They're really good on paper, right? They're really good on paper and they work for some organisations but they often don't deliver on their promises. It's not this transformational silver bullet that we always expect it to be. And I don't think you necessarily need, you know, an all singing, all dancing kind of like RPO model. I just think it's about just in its most basic form, just thinking about what level of expertise You've got in your organisation what's missing, bringing it in and then packaging it up. So you are almost that one stop shop for everything modern recruitment needs. You know, you've got. You know, you've got tech capability. You know, recruiters, I feel, need to be recruitment technology experts. Right. I know if some recruitment businesses who are not, you know, where things like ChatGPT are getting banned and they're not allowed to use things like Otter AI, and they're actually being moved away from recruitment technology instead of embracing it. If it was. If I ran a recruitment business today, I'd be sending all my recruiters out, I'd be getting them trained fully on the. They'd know everything about the future impact of AI and recruitment technology. I would be wanting them to be the people who have conversations about where clients can go to and talk to them about that stuff. Not every recruiter, it's not realistic, but a person within the organisation whose side hustle is AI and technology in recruitment. Yeah, I agree. I think if you're not using things like Joanne Lockwood: Otter Read Fathom to capture your meetings, your conversations, and then using AI to process the client requirements, process the candidate requirements, summarising conversations, keeping meeting notes. If you're not doing that consistently, then how can you offer that consultative service? Because you're just relying on that individual point of contact to make adequate notes. I know people are parochial. If I kept all this and I make it too transparent, then I'm expendable. I always look at the other way, that the more you should do it, the more you embed yourself because you become a trusted person inside rather than a. Rather Jo Major: than a. Yeah, but we've spoken a lot, haven't we, about how we feel about using technology and AI and whatnot. And I just think that, you know, in its simplest form, it helps to. Could help to transform the recruitment process and free people up to do the important stuff, which is the human. And I just think this goes, you know, hand in hand with a whole range of different roles that I think should be within a recruitment industry from. I mentioned it before, advisory on things like career pages and employee value propositions and, you know, all those things that we tend to look at when we may be doing a retained search, actually looking at that retained model and thinking like, what can we have? Just as a. You know, we might still be running contingent, I don't think for long, but what can we have on our suite of product offerings for that particular client's social media? You know, we. We've probably got People within our organisation that are absolute experts in tech that I probably don't use from a social media perspective, you know, and they're, they're absolutely, they've got an incredible amount of followers on TikTok and they can create content in five seconds. You know, if you're working with an SME who don't necessarily have that capability within their TA team, that is a, for me that is just an absolute no brainer to be able to say, look, we've got a, got a social media expert. It focuses on candidate engagement through TikTok. We want to show you some of the campaigns that we pull together for some of our clients, you know, and have that in the cell. I'm getting carried away with my ideas here but here's our tech person, here's our social media person, here is our Edna, you know, inclusive, accessible hiring person, here is our skills based, you know, interview training expert, you know, and you've just got this suite of people that just go beyond salespeople, job fillers, contingent recruitment. Joanne Lockwood: I'm with you though. I completely agree that you need to meet candidates where they're at in the medium of format and the messaging that they're going to respond to. And if you look at best recruitment marketing it is using things like Snapchat, TikTok, these modern social media tools to get into markets where traditional, you know, putting an advert at the Times may be good if you want to hire a board level non exec director in a specific sector because they sit there on a Sunday morning reading the vacancies but the average person doesn't look at the evening paper anymore or even in specialist job boards. They're on TikTok, they're on these things and if you want to penetrate intermediate psyche, those are where you need to be. And if you're not doing that now, you're missing out on that talent because somebody else is, you're not there, you know that somebody else is definitely doing that. It's getting people to broaden their thinking here in terms of where do I have to go to find the fish I'm looking for. I can't just put it in the pond over here. I've got to think about the entire landscape now. Jo Major: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's why we need to be instead of just constantly hanging out in our echo chamber as an industry. That's why we need to be like stepping out and actually spending time outside our industry, just really, really understanding how marketing's changing, how tech's changing. I did a piece. I think it might have been after Weeds Birken last time. It's just something that I'm really interested is the different generational attitudes, but between buying and selling. And I'd been asked to do a talk at a conference and I thought, you know what? I've done this conference several years in a row. I don't want to talk about the usual stuff. I want to do something that people won't be expecting. And I know that it's a real pain point of the industry at the moment, you know, to retain, especially early careers talent, you know, to get them selling in a way that is deemed success for us as older generations. So I did a load of research into it. I came up with this, with this, with this session on understanding, you know, buyer and seller behaviour between all five different generations, actually. And it was fascinating and it went down really well. And off the back of it, I developed a workshop. And it just really, really kind of almost just surprised me in a way because I'm not some, you know, I'm not some amazing brain that's just thinking outside the box constantly. I just think about basic stuff. And it really surprised me that it was so different and it was like. And we'd never. Actually, nobody else was really, really talking about it and that we were still profiling clients as though they were boomers or Gen Z xs, you know what I mean? And it's just like, that's me. Joanne Lockwood: Gen Xer. Yeah, Gen Xer. Yeah, me too. And it's like, Jo Major: I think sometimes we need this diversity of thought. We need to, as an industry, hang out a lot more with our clients and we actually need to get on, you know, to smash down this echo chamber of people. The industry's telling the industry what it needs to do. This is wild. This is group. This is a large scale group think case study. And I think those that are doing incredibly well are the ones that have got that board that are full of, you know, are not full of recruitment industry folk, you know, who have their advisors from their client base who hang out with their clients. You know, I still find it unbelievable that some of the big conferences that we see, we never see clients on stage. Jo, why do we never see leading TA experts on our stages? At the Recruitment Expo, for example, Let. Me just turn this Joanne Lockwood: around. You talked about getting a client. A client is the person paying the money, which is the company you're providing the resource to. Well, I always get frustrated there's not enough work in helping develop candidates. Jo Major: You know, as soon as you said. That I was like people I know Joanne Lockwood: all happen to be women in this particular case are what I would call now long term unemployed six months plus going on 12. One of them has picked up an entry, Enrol, a short 10 week contract, fixed term contract in the middle of their now back end on the market. And I see their frustration on LinkedIn. I see them just thanklessly posting that They've applied for 400 jobs this week. They've done this, they've done that, they've had interviews, they're not getting callbacks. If you keep doing the same thing, you're going to get the same result. If you're not being hired after six months, you have to start looking in the mirror and saying actually it's about what can I do differently? No one's really investing in people to make them either more marketable, upskill them, make them more match fit, job ready or even help them explore different opportunities. Do you think recruiters should also look to the talent and coach them more? You know, because I've always, whenever I've been in the market I sort of said to the recruiter, what more could I do? What is wrong with my cv? What is wrong with my submission, my cover letter? They go, yeah, it's all right, it's not my, yeah, almost saying it's not my job to coach you sort of thing. You've got to do the hard work yourself. So who is going to coach those people to get them into work? Jo Major: I think it's a very, very, very interest of job centre. Crikey, can you imagine? We would be in trouble. Careers, coach, Joanne Lockwood: whatever we. It's a very, very interesting point and I'm really glad Jo Major: that you brought it up. And you know, potentially I don't talk about this enough. It reminds me of I've actually got an ex recruiter, ex hr, moved into HR equipment and Nair's now set up on her own incredible woman called Faith Phillips Jones and she's set up her own this exact. Because this is missing. She set up a coaching company to work with senior HR professionals. You know, the majority of them tend to be, to be women and she's taking them through that process where she's looking at, she's not just looking at the cv, she's looking at their personal brand, their social media activity, their interview techniques, really kind of critiquing like their jobs, how they're looking at their job search, how they're managing their job search, who they're talking to, who they're not talking to. And I Absolutely. Think, you know, it's. She's external to an agency and making a business out of that. And the interesting thing is people are prepared to. Even when they're not in work or when they're gearing up for a move, they're prepared. Prepared to put in that personal investment. And maybe there's this just. It goes back to that, the metrics that we work on as a recruitment industry, where we see ourselves making money out of the small percentage of candidates that we can place and the clients, rather than actually thinking about this other area, potentially untapped area of professional services for candidates, because there's definitely a market for it. But maybe it's because of, you know, we don't necessarily see the value or it might go back to. It might go into that kind of grey area of we don't charge clients, candidates for our service, you know, and we're governed on that. But it, you know, I don't see enough of it even just from a, you know, from a. Just a candidate support, apart from the basics. Read this downloadable. Watch this video. And actually, if we are seeing what I'm predicting is large gaps of unemployment for particular demographics, there's an opportunity for us to really step in there and coach that group because that should be part of our responsibility as well. Joanne Lockwood: What's there now? You look at the local colleges, the training programmes, the government initiatives, which tends to be where it's free because you've got no job, you haven't got huge sums of money to invest, you've spent your redundancy money quite quickly, or if you had any in the first place, and you're living hand to mouth, you're on benefits almost, and the job centre or the benefits want you to be actively seeking a role, taking whatever's going. You think, well, I don't want to work in a checkout, but I have to take this job, which means I can't then invest my time in finding out. It's chicken and eggs. The government want you to be in work and not paying you benefits and you then hold out because you want your ideal role. And sometimes you think, hang on a minute, I'm not going to get this. So you've got to think about your career pivoting, what you can do quickly, haven't you? And it's people need career coaching, I think, and they're not getting it. Not getting it. And being an entrepreneur myself, I always say to people, are you sure you're sure you want to work for somebody else? The amount of effort you Put into trying to find that role. You could have started a business and you could be earning 300 quid a day. Yeah, you must be able to earn 300 quid a day at doing something. I think, oh no, I couldn't work. I gotta, I gotta work for somebody else. I want someone to feed me, I want somebody. I don't want the risk, I don't want stress. Okay, go for it. In a year's time we'll have this conversation. I can say the same to you. You could start a business by now and done this on your own. I know, I know. You've got to try and encourage people to think differently. You know, if you take a, let's say people earn 40,000 a year. If you're not earning £40,000 for one year, that's what I was. My math. Three and a half thousand a month, whatever it is, how long is it going to take you to recover that three and a half thousand a month over the next 10 years of your career? It's going to be ages. So are you better off compromising your charge what you need to earn and get in and then grow your career again? Re baseline yourself £500? £500amonth cut is not actually a 500amonth cut. It's two and a half thousand pound you've earned. So you're always thinking, I'm worth more than that. And it's helping people become more realistic about their own expectations, isn't it? Without devaluing them. Jo Major: Yeah, absolutely. And it's a conversation that I always have as well with people that I've, you know, that I've seen especially, especially more experienced candidates because this is, it seems to be that kind of, you know, over 50 zone where that I'm seeing the biggest challenge with, you know, if there's much, much harder, especially, you know, maybe it's just my, you know, my people I'm surrounded by, but especially women. And these are people who have the skillset to be able to be going out there and setting up tomorrow and the networks to be doing it as well. But I think it is challenging. You become institutionalised into the world of employment, don't you? And it takes an awful lot for you to believe that you've got the capability to run your own business. And I always say to them, crikey, if I can do it, if I can do it, then you can do it. And you, you could be, for every month that you spend waiting to get a job for somebody else to employ you, you could be doing Your own thing. And you could be. All that marketing you're doing to market yourself as a candidate, you could be marketing yourself as a, as a, a career coach. If you spent a year trying Joanne Lockwood: to find a role, you know how to be a career coach, you just need to look in the mirror and apply that career coaching to yourself. So you've been through that pain. I think there's lots of opportunities out there and I'm not saying everyone's cut out to be an entrepreneur. It doesn't suit everybody. And I'm not trying to. I don't want to give that. If I can. You can sort of privileged sort of mindset thing. Yes. Yeah, you're right. Jo Major: Yeah. But we have to be honest to people and say, look, actually Joanne Lockwood: it's not that you're not employable, you're just not packaged. Jo Major: Yeah, and we should. Exactly. And that is in the package, whether we like it or not, that, you know, it, it can have a, you know, a massive impact. If you're somebody that has neglected, say, your LinkedIn profile for the last 10 years and all, you know, and let's face it, that, that, that is the window to you and it is for a lot of industries. If you're not on that, if you're not on, you know, you can't expect somebody to find you if you've not got an active profile, you know, on LinkedIn. And I do think there is definitely some, the scope for recruiters, recruitment agencies to take responsibility definitely for that coaching and give that investment. And in the same way that I think that we should be where we see, you know, hiring strategy that focuses on the potential, a lot of the potential on young people. We should be taking this approach of seeing the potential of people over the age of 50 and, you know, and really looking at, like, how can we, how can we take people from the world of work and from different industries and how can we help them to realise their potential by investing for all that time. The vacancies are empty and we're focused, you know, we're scratching our heads wondering how the heck we retain our Gen Z's and our alphas. We could be investing in the reinvention of this talent pool here. And you know that they, they, they could be the future of our business rather than, as, you know, as, like I say, continually trying to reinvent the reel around wheel around early careers. Perhaps we need kind of like a rethink on that. But it is, it's scary. It's worrying me massively that this increase in people over the age of 50 day that I'm seeing really struggle to get back into full time work. Joanne Lockwood: It's interesting to say that I spoke at a LinkedIn Talent Connect conference, I think it was back in April this year and one of the keynoters there, I can't remember her name or her company but I remember what she said basically is that we are globally the population. We're not having as many babies as we once were. In order to grow the population globally you need to have something like two babies per woman. I think we're now at 1 or 0.75 babies per woman now. Globally our newer generations, our Gen Zs and our Gen Alphas are smaller than our millennials and our Gen Xs. We will be millennials will turn 50 in 2032 or 2030, something like that. So at that point there over 50s will become the bulk of our population or working population. So our population is ageing. We can't retire at 65 anymore. We're going to be working to 75. Retirement was designed to be something where you can't work anymore. Not to I've worked hard all my life, now I want to give up and have a rest. It was meant to be retirement pensions were all designed abound. You have to retire because you have no more capability. So I think we're going to be pushed back into that world where for the majority you're going to have to keep working as long as you can. So that means we're going to end up with a workforce that's between 25 and 75 as being our biggest area. Why do we focus on early careers? Because we're investing. We'll get more out of them. They'll stay here for longer. Well if you're 55 you might want to work for a company for 5, 10 years. You're more likely to stay longer than, than a 20 year old who wants to career acceleration So I don't think we're look we're giving the elder generation or the Gen X and the millennials the credit where it's due. There are lived experience, capability, retraining opportunities and they've still got 10 years on them. So why? Because it boils down the Jo Major: reason why I guess connects in with what we do. It's bias and stereotyping and a lack of like education and maybe we need to, we need to completely do a thing, you know, a complete turnaround of our future talent programmes. Maybe we are like looking, putting all our eggs into a basket where we're missing like this Massive opportunity. And also, you know, we maybe as, as businesses we've got a social responsibility because if we, if the biggest generation in the workforce or you know, you know, we all, we all, we're all turning, we're ageing at the same time, you know, that is a lot of economically inactive people in the uk. If we don't get on top of, I think changing our mentality and attitude towards mature workers. Mature? Is that even the right word? Experienced worker? Vintage, Vintage, Joanne Lockwood: Classic. Yeah, I don't know. Classic. I mean Jo Major: I'd employ me at my age, I mean, crikey, I mean, I think we said this last time, there is no I would employ the 25 year old me. Joanne Lockwood: I mean I was a nightmare Even as a 40 year old me and you know, partying, drinking too much, socialising, gaming the system. I turned 60 back in January so I, I'm a vintage worker. I'm in that sort of right in that sweet spot of opportunity and I know that as a 60 year old woman who's trans, I'm way down on the employability scale now. So running my own business, really the only option I have because I can't walk into a, a hundred grand a year job, whatever I want, they're just not there and I wouldn't be considered, I'm not. If I was 35 maybe, yeah. But yeah, we've got to start looking at it. That's such a Jo Major: missed opportunity, isn't it? It's a wild scenario to be in, you know that and I think that's why there's so much work to do, you know, in, in this area and we, we really need to get on top of what I see and accept experience as the, one of the most commonly accepted forms of discrimination and prejudice. Age discrimination. It is, yeah, ageism. I mean I know as someone who's Joanne Lockwood: of my age that my, my day, my working day is different than it was when I was 20. My brain operates in different ways. It has activity at certain points, it does thinking at other points, it gets really creative at other points. But I've learned how to structure my day better, how to do things and have conversations and I'm more mature and more rational, more able to mentor. So I think we just have to look at that again, that career arc and that career curve, how you want to describe it and say where do people who have lived experience, are more mature, have a change in the way their brain works, their needs? We're not trying to buy houses, have families, what we're now trying to do is consolidate and stability. So we're looking for different things in our careers as well. And so we're not necessarily go getty growth people, we're maybe bedrock, we're maybe staying. Jo Major: This is the thing that keeps a business together is that bedrock of people that I call us call them the steady eddies. I thought it was being a steady eddie, but maybe a wild steady Eddie. But yeah, we need these people in our organisations to, to. And I think we just need to grow the confidence of recruiters and to be able to have really sensible conversations with clients when the focus is on, you know, is on age, whether that's direct or whether it's coded language, you know, and I think there's a big, big part, you know, we need to be brave enough to be able to push back. And I know that, I know that that's not happening and it's that one thing I think applies to all of us because we all age. I'm going to Joanne Lockwood: stereotype hiring managers now. In my head I'm thinking 30 to 35 year old junior manager in a department and being 30, 35, they're likely to be less age inclusive. Just purely, they might be more age biassed against somebody who is over 50 because of their own maybe imposter syndrome, their own sort of confidence. They wouldn't want someone to come in who is much older than them for feeling they'd be undermined or et cetera. There's a hell of a lot of bias going on in that, in that higher manager's sort of mind around older candidates. They would rather see someone junior to them in age and experience than someone who's more senior in age and experience. And does that, do they feel threatened, do you think? I think Jo Major: I've always come from the mindset of always hire people that are better than you, you do a much better job. But yeah, I think there is, Yeah, I think there is a. It's all down, isn't it, to a lack of exposure to, you know, to age diversity and, you know, the stereotype as well. And I think there's got to be, there's got to be some investment in training and culture of an organisation. You know, it's not that just because you're of a, of a, of a certain age and experience, you know, make a decision to come in at a certain level because you've made a decision to come in at a certain level, you're not going to, you don't. Who joins an organisation going, I'm taking your job, I'm going To sneak in through the back door and I'm going to take your job, I'm going to be better than you. I mean, who'd have the energy for that? I know, I know, yeah. And that Joanne Lockwood: pressure, that pressure to deliver that. But often it's a Jo Major: lack of confidence in the manager and it's like, you know, how do we get rid of that? How do we enable them to see the positives of an age diverse team? How do we get them to, you know, to, to learn how to manage and communicate with, you know, different generations in their, in their, in their team? And that's why I'm just like, I'm a little bit obsessed about generational workforces at the moment because it's just, I think it's got the power to, to, to solve a lot of organisational problems, staffing problems and social challenges as well. And maybe it's on my mind because I'm massively conscious of my own age and you know, it shouldn't be, I shouldn't have to think, should I write? Okay, things don't go right with diversity and recruitment. My only option is to go and work in Morrisons. I'm working in Morrisons. It's lovely but you know, I don't, I could bring really, really bring my skills elsewhere but then would I get, would I get a job with a startup for example? I mean I'd have to probably put a bit more Botox and filler in Jo, and pretend I'm certain of the younger. I mean what I would Joanne Lockwood: probably do is take the thought if I can get a job in Morrisons doing a very worthwhile role that gives me an entry into their career structure and then explore what options there were. So rather than claiming benefits I can get minimum wage doing something I can for doing a part time role there. Suddenly I've got an in in their career structure and their career development. So maybe I, maybe I think more technically I'm looking for a foothold in an organisation that I want to grow in. Maybe I, I then forge a second career in retail and become talent management or use my IT skills or get into it somehow. So I think we need to as say coach our, our candidates as to how they can use what they have got to, to leverage opportunities that are not ideal but a foothold. And I remember a friend of mine ran a recruitment business 20 years ago and it all went wrong. He went bankrupt and he ended up working for whatever it was, the Department of Social Security. So he was working on that desk processing people's Benefit claims. And over the last 20 years, he's now grown as a civil servant and he's now a senior manager in the civil service in the heart of government. But he navigated that career growth himself from whatever that junior role is in December. I can't remember what the grades are now, but it was basically a second level upgrade. And sometimes you just gotta take your pride off the shelf. And I was gonna say a lot Jo Major: of it. This potentially down to your pride and your ego, isn't it? And also this, you know, this social hierarchy of careers and jobs, you know yourself, don't you? I know that. I mean, I'm not dismissing work at Morrisons. I genuinely sometimes go there and I love the vibe so much and be like, this would be a joy to work here. It's just so community based and I just love talking to people and it'd be great. But I also know me, I know I might go in at, you know, I might be going at the kind of like shop floor level. I mean my, my roots are in retail, but I might go in at that level. But then I know what I'm like, I won't be able to stop myself. You know, I'd be putting my ideas forward, I'd be suggesting different ideas and I'd be, you know, probably in rooms that I shouldn't be in, you know, stuff. And I think, yeah, it's partly, it's a two way thing, isn't it? It's getting people to like rethink, you know, doing a whole 360 in your career. And it might mean you have to start at a different level and you've got to leave your ego at the door and not think about that and also just focus on like what that could, what doors that could open up and then making sure that it works both ways, you know, with the employer and hiring managers. And they're a lot more open to a broader, more diverse range of candidates and talent. Joanne Lockwood: If you're not careful, it's too easy to become unfit in your, in your working career. You know, if you're out of work or you're not out of work, you're looking for work for a whole year, you'll lose that sort of social interaction, you lose that sort of employee kind of vibe about you and you become less employable the more it goes on. And I think, yeah, confidence and other things. And also the world changes a lot in a year. You look at AI and all the other things that change in a year, system upgrades, whatever process you're Using you become quickly you erode your value by being out of the work environment for a while as well. And I remember my father in law, he was a firefighter for most of his career. I think he retired in his 50s and he wasn't looking to hang his hat up. And he went to the local supermarket, I think it was at Asda before it was Asda. And he knocked on the door, the manager and said, look, I'd like to be your backpacker on the checkouts. You know, you don't have a backpacker. I noticed that sometimes you get the scalps or you get other people along at certain times of the year and they pack bags. As a shopper myself, I really like going to the checkouts where there are backpackers. I'd like to be your permanent backpacker. And they went, okay, so he gave him a trial and before long he was kind of embedded in their culture. He was the cheeky chappie, he was the, the people used to queue up, just have a conversation with him. He used to help him put the bag in the trolley, take it out to the car for them. So it's that real value add service he used to do. And then he ended up moving to, I think it was to Morrisons or another supermarket and took his services there as well. And I think that's all died off since COVID and other things and health and safety and bag and stuff. He, yeah, he created his own career as a backpacker and he had a great time as a 55 to 65 year old. He got him out of the house, gave him purpose. And I think that's what we're talking about here is giving people passion and purpose, giving them a worthwhile. Because that's what a role gives you, is you need to feel you contribute to society in some way. You're not just sat on sofa, you get up in the morning, I've got something to live for. That's, that's what employment gives you. Yeah, it does, it does. And let's face it, the Jo Major: job, searching for a job can chip away, it can chip away from your, you know, your self esteem and your confidence and rejection and the lack of communication. It can, you know, you, you can leave your current role there, you know, from an emotional and mental health perspective and then, you know, and be much, much lower down on the scale as, as the months go by. But I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, I think from really thinking about this, it's very much, there's a lot of work to do. And I think from a, both a candidate and from a client perspective and, you know, going back to the role of, of agencies and actually I would ask the recruitment industry, what are you actively doing to create communities within that more mature, more vintage workforce? You know, I know recruitment businesses that spend money on upskilling early careers, talent and giving them qualifications in technology and et cetera, that could, that, that, that blueprint could be transferred to any community. I've Joanne Lockwood: seen organisations b. Marie, other organisations talk about talent academies. So you, you, you know, if you're trying to recruit into, you need more people in this sort of sector or this part of your business. Bring people into an academy, develop them like a mature apprenticeship. You pay people properly, you pay people to learn. So you're giving them a decent wage, a living wage, not treating them as 2 pound 50 people, you're treating them as 15 pound, 20 people and then help them develop their career. And then what you're doing is you're not. Not developing people for your organisation, you're developing better people in the community. So you may bring on 50 people in your talent development programme each year and you only want 10 of those yourself, but you've got 40 people there you've put into the community. If you and other organisations network locally and you pool your talent development programmes and you co sponsor with some NHS trusts or with some infrastructure, public services or the organisation, then you're providing a valuable community service benefit. Not just apprenticeships, but mature workforce. I think someone needs to take responsibility for that, that kind of community engagement. I think, and also really, really Jo Major: have their eye on the data as well and really understand where people go and how long people stay. And I think that you could track your return on your investment and very, very easily in this particular area, with this community, Without a doubt, I've been. Retention, retention, retention. Yeah, yeah. If you Joanne Lockwood: just look at retraining, cost, retention, empty seat stability, lost knowledge that walks out the door when it leaves, all these kind of things. Have Jo Major: you seen, I mean, when you just said something then about like, you know, almost like an apprenticeship model for people looking to transition in their careers, you know, and I'm wondering, have you seen, have you, have you seen that happen anywhere? I've seen organisations doing it. I know Joanne Lockwood: I've been to a lot of conferences where they put people on the stage and they talk about their own internal talent development, looking at alumni programmes, people who did work there, they keep in touch. Ten years later, where are you? You left to start a family. How's that going big career pivots, returning mothers, returning fathers, returning people in their workplace, in their 45, 50 bracket. So I think I have seen organisations start to focus on this later years talent development, mid career pivoting. So, yeah, it's being thought about. And I think when we talk about diversity in recruitment, which is what your organisation is, we can't just try and solve our bit of the problem. We've got to solve the pipeline problem as well and nurture that. Otherwise all we're doing is. I hear so many people tell me it's so difficult to find, it's so difficult to find a great black lawyer. I said, well, you ask a black lawyer where to find a great black lawyer, he'll know or they'll know. If you ask a white lawyer where you find a great black lawyer, they may not know. So you've got to ask the people who are in those communities. So if you're not reaching deep and reaching out, you're missing out on opportunity. And I think we all want to develop talent, we all want to create the best workforce. How can we be more innovative about creating those talent pipelines in our communities and not just expect the talent to walk through the door? It doesn't. Or if it does, we don't recognise it. Yeah, Jo Major: yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't. It never, if it was that easy, our organisations would be fully representative of everybody in our communities. Right. And it's, I think that's where it lies is the fact that there has to be an investment. There needs to be resources and it needs to be, there needs to be, you know, it needs to be treated as a long term project. It's not just a, you know, you can't just put your, I always joke, you can't expect to put your job description through a gender decoder and then all of a sudden having your door being banged down by loads of like senior women wanting to work for your organisation. And you know, in some of it, I, I, you know, I've, I've worked with businesses where they're a particular employer. I'm thinking about where they're absolutely laser focused on women. And yet when, you know, I deliver the idea around, okay, this would be a long term strategy. It's almost, we just need more money, you know, we just, you know, and I can, I can, I can tell the responses, I've just given you a lot of work to do and that's going to be really difficult. But gender decoders, as useful as they may be, they don't change the world. Jo, it's been absolutely Joanne Lockwood: fascinating chatting to you again and I really enjoyed this conversation. So we spun it around from diversity and recruitment, from an agency perspective, an in house perspective and also the talent development of what we as talent professionals, if you like, can do to reach out to nurture better talent. So I've really enjoyed this. It's been fascinating. Thank you. How can people get a hold of you? LinkedIn is the place that I tend to hang out. So Jo Major, Jo Major: you'll find me with various opinions about a lot of things. And Joanne Lockwood: I follow you and yes, your opinions are great and I love, I love seeing your posts. So yeah, do follow Jo. She is amazing. Thank Jo Major: you so much and right back at you. In a way, is it wrong that I'm kind of thinking, just don't be too sharp on the editing, I might want to come back. I always welcome guests back. If you listen to Joanne Lockwood: this or yourself, there's a process. You click on the button says Apply, you fill the form in, you get a link back in your inbox, you click on it, you book an appointment. Let's do it. And so yeah, always. And maybe what we do, we'll do a live stream sometime. Just, we'll just get on LinkedIn and just do a live stream and we'll just do this live rather than recording. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love that. Thank you and thank you. Take care. See you later. As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to Inclusion Bites and become part of our ever growing community driving real change. Share this journey with friends, family and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter. Got thoughts, stories or a vision to share? I'm all ears. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.