Name: From Gut Feeling to Hard Data: Quantifying Toxic Employee Impact
Uploaded: 2025-09-16T17:03:12.738Z
Duration: 43 min 6 s
Description: From Gut Feeling to Hard Data: Quantifying Toxic Employee Impact

Transcript for "From Gut Feeling to Hard Data: Quantifying Toxic Employee Impact": Hi, Kim. Hi. And hello, everybody in the chat. We've got folks from Virginia, Massachusetts, Arizona, it looks like. Welcome, everybody. We had planned to give folks just another minute in case they're running from another meeting to this session, but appreciate everybody being here right on time. And we're really looking forward to our discussion today. Yeah. Nice. I see some folks from, Northern Virginia. I'm calling in from Washington, DC. So hi to my neighbors. Alright. Well, we're at the two minute mark, so I think it's safe to get started. Again, welcome to everybody joining. We're really looking forward to today's conversation. My name is Alex Lovely, and I am one of Rippling's HR solutions consultants. And I'm joined today by Kimberly Williams. Kim, do you wanna introduce yourself? Yeah. No. Happy to do it. I'm a a long time Rippling customer, a very happy one. So, my organization, Walker Advertising, signed on. Gosh. Guess it's going on three years now. And then I had the great pleasure of meeting Alex a few years ago where we came up with this idea for Brilliant Jerk. So just really happy to be here today. Great. Thank you so much. Now in today's session, we are gonna do some brief housekeeping at the top of the call. We're then gonna chat through what a brilliant jerk is. Who is this kind of employee? How do we identify them? And, ultimately, how do we then attribute cost using real data to determine the impact of a brilliant jerk at your organizations? We'll then cover a framework to have productive conversations internally when these individuals are identified and, ultimately, what the impact to your business and career might look like should we sort of move forward with the brilliant jerk and associated frameworks. Now by way of housekeeping, I am seeing that people are using the chat feature already. Feel free to continue doing that throughout the conversation to post comments and connect with other attendees. If you like what you see on screen and you'd like to chat with a Rippling representative about it, feel free to book a demo using the button on the top right. And finally, if colleagues were not able to attend the session today, which I'm sure everybody was kind of buzzing around your office office about this particular webinar, we'll make sure to send you the recording after our call today so that you can share it out with those who might be interested. Now one thing that I wanna cover quickly is just who Rippling is in the market for anybody on the line who might not be familiar. Rippling is a global end to end human capital management platform. It was built with the goal of freeing smart people to work on hard problems. Now the entire platform is built on top of an employee graph, a unified set of employee data, which allows updates made on the employee profile to propagate out into the entire system. So an example here might be if we were moving an employee from a work location in San Francisco to our office in Chicago, that would mean not only a change to the employee's profile, but an update to the compliance trainings they're assigned, the collection of new withholding information, and perhaps assignment of a new laptop or spend policy. In other platforms, that might be a very disparate process, but it's peeling because we're built on top of that employee graph. All you have to do is make an update to the appropriate field on the employee record and the system automatically ensures that policies and permissions are assigned correctly downstream. And one of the benefits of that kind of unified platform is an ability to report on information without silos. And today, we're gonna see how impactful that can be when we're trying to determine something like the cost of a brilliant jerk. So with that out of the way, Kim, let's start at the very beginning. Can you talk us through what led you to focus on the business impact of toxic employees and, was there, like, a specific situation that made you realize this was a problem worth solving? Absolutely. So unfortunately, for a lot of us, if you work long enough, you're gonna, encounter a a toxic employee or a difficult personality. And for me, this happened many years ago with a former employer, where it happened to be a chief executive, and I was a chief of HR. And I was like, you know, I I was really kind of struggling with how to engage. Like, I knew this wasn't right. I had tried to sit down with inside counsel. I had gone to board members, and there was just kind of, you know, a lot of uncertainty about exactly how to respond to this type of situation. One board member actually asked me, is there a way to quantify this? Is there a way to show the impact of this? And I thought it was such a great question and I didn't really have an answer for that, but it was something that just stayed with me for years that I thought about. Yeah. And I think, one thing that we should probably define for the audience is what a brilliant jerk looks like. What exactly do we mean when we say brilliant jerk? Can you paint a picture for the audience on who it is? Yes. Yeah. So this is basically like a highly valued employee that doesn't contribute to a positive work environment. And so, you know, a lot of times if we see someone who maybe is like, you know, the janitor, the hourly employee, the frontline employee, if they're really difficult, we tend to fire those individuals. But say someone is an engineer who came up with some key product that the company really needs or leans on or that high performing salesperson that brings in a great deal of revenue or perhaps they're just a family member. So they tend to be protected individuals who are protected by somebody above them, so that they're able to get away with maybe more than others would. Understood. I am it's so funny that you say that this is something that stuck with you from that employment experience a few years ago. I can think of at least two, really. Yeah. Most of us can. Second that you define who this person is and what they look like, I think an example comes immediately to mind. I am curious for those listening. Can you think of brilliant jerks that you've encountered before? Like, is this a widespread enough problem that everybody can think of a brilliant jerk as being time score. Yeah. Nobody's asking for a friend. It looks like people are like yeah. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. So we all know who we are talking about. Can you walk through, Kimberly? Before you had the data to back it up, what were you seeing in terms of the impact these employees have on their team? How do Brilliant Dirts kind of affect the people around them? Oh my gosh. In so many ways, particularly if they have impact, say, in a like, in the HR arena. So, you know, the organization I was with at that particular time, we were running massive shortages. And so, you know, we had a vacancy rate of around 25%. We had department heads that were terrified to engage with the chief executive and even let them know what was really going on in their own departments. And so, you know, it it was just a lot of lost information, a lot of lost people, and, no organization can really function when things go on for that time. And in my case, we're talking about somebody who had been around for many, many, many years. So it did, you know, a significant amount of damage. But just the chilling effect on bringing up problems that need to be addressed, or just losing amazing talent because you're too afraid to deal with that difficult person and have huge repercussions. Yes. It's and I think that that fear of interacting with the brilliant jerk is so true. It's something that I have felt personally, like, oh, this is not a safe person to have a discussion with or have a productive kind of conversation with. And as we've seen from the full results, many HR leaders have encountered this kind of toxic high performer, but I think the first step is that gut instinct. I know I'm talking to that kind of person, but I'm kind of unsure what to do next. In your story, it was a executive leader who brought up the idea of quantifying impact. But as you kind of thought through that in the years following, how ultimately did you determine that we can quantify that BrilliantJerk impact? What were your initial thoughts there? Yeah. So I kept chewing on this question. And and one of the things that I was really focused on was performance and engagement metrics. Mhmm. And so, you know, there's the big four consulting firms focus on this a lot. There's been, you know, a number of talks on LinkedIn and other places where people just try to really lean into this space about, like, you know, how do we really come up with a a hard number to say, you know, like, wow. You know, if someone is really, really engaged, what does that look like? And, you know, what does that return on investment that we see? And so one good way to think about this is if you're paying someone a salary of a $100,000, a good employee is gonna give you a 90% ROI. So you're gonna get $90,000 back after vacations and dentist visits and water cooler top. Mhmm. Your average employee tends to be around 60% and and the employee that is just miserable, completely disengaged, quiet quitting is probably around 30%. So I knew that there was a path there, but I wasn't sure how to come up with a way to automate it or or maybe completely apply it in a way, that wouldn't be overly manual. Yes. I think that's the the key piece there. Because if I think about how we turned this from the theoretical into the the actualized, the biggest hurdle was that manual ness of the report. Correct? The combined compensation information and the calculation there with the performance data. Were you managing to do that before Rippling? No. It was something that I just kinda chewed on in my head, but it really wasn't till I met you, Alex, that I've I've began to actually think about a way we can put it into practice. Just fishing for compliments. I'm like, I'm like Yeah. Well well done. Yeah. Well, some of the folks on the call, the reason Kimberly and I originally met was, at a rippling on the road event in DC. And you spoke with me and my colleague, Tim Manning, about this issue, the issue of quantifying impact of the brilliant jerk. And we ultimately just took what you outlined for us and made it into a report within Rippling combining performance metrics with compensation data in a single report. So it was very easy to see what that compensation impact would be to peers and folks who report into the real intern. Would you mind walking us through the formula that we used to determine there? So in terms of the inputs from a performance review and the input we're thinking about from the compensation perspective? Absolutely. And the first time I went through this exercise, I used myself myself as an example. You know, I I I wouldn't call myself a brilliant jerk. I was just a jerk. And so we went through a three sixty process at my work where I gave myself a stellar review. I asked my boss to give me an amazing five out of five review because we tend to see that. Usually, if if someone is in that brilliant jerk category, they have a boss that protects them for whatever reason. But then I asked my peers and my direct reports to give me terrible reviews, to give me, you know, one out of five, you know, with not nice color to go around that. And so what Tim and Alex were able to do is set up something in Rippling that would automatically flag me out of all the three sixties to say, hey. Something's going on here. We need to look into this a little bit further. But then it went one step further because Rippling already had all of the salary data baked into it that was immediately connected to all of the individuals. And so what we did was we took a 30% pay cut from my peers. So in other words, if if someone is working with me, they're probably having to, you know, manage me some way. They're having to work around me in another way. Maybe they're just trying to avoid me because I'm so difficult to work with. And so the theory is that we're losing about a 30% return on those salary investments. And so we took two peers for this sample and took 30% of their salaries, put those two numbers and set them aside. Then we went to my direct reports and we cut that number in half. And so with that, you know, we I think we used a sample size of, like, three employees and we took their salaries, cut them in half and move those over aside. And then we added up all those numbers and it showed that just by me being a difficult person, it was costing my organization $240,000 a year. And so by coming up with that concrete number, we now had a way, to really change that conversation and engage with it in an entirely different way versus some nebulous, this feels bad to this is actually hurting you and and ways other folks might be able to understand a little easier. Yes. And I think one question that I'm seeing in the chat that I think is, particularly poignant here is that often, as you mentioned at the top of the call, brilliant jerks have had significant impact on the business. It's why they're being protected by upper level management. How have you seen this kind of quantified impact change, the way conversations go with leaders when we're talking about somebody who has been impactful from a bottom line perspective? Yeah. I think one of the things that really does is it really empowers HR. You know, I can see from the chat, you know, some of the folks, who are comfortable enough to mention some of their own bullying experiences. And I think that that is kind of a big open secret that people don't realize, how much HR can engage with different difficult personalities. Because a lot of times, we see that the most protected people tend to be higher ranking. And so sometimes it would be challenging for HR professionals to engage with those individuals, or they may also be getting blowback themselves. Sometimes too, we're dealing with leaders of a subsection of an organization or perhaps even a chief executive that knows that there's a problem. But there's they're really struggling with the consequences. Like, hey, if I address this difficult person, what's gonna happen to my engineering team? What's gonna happen to this part of the company that, you know, we all heavily rely on and how do we engage in that? And so, you know, for me in my past experience when I'm talking to different individuals, I try to talk about this as, you you know, framing of HR is not just someone who's dealing in the feeling space, but we're talking about very tangible things, things that, you know, hopefully can change, how they're respecting the opinions of HR, what that they're, you know, bringing to the table and the concerns that they're raising. But also to engage in a conversation where you're wrapping around this number, the idea that HR is on your side. They're on your side at every level of the organization. And so even if you've got a leader that's in this really, really difficult spot that you're able to come to them and say, you know, we see this. You know, engaging in this is really more about not just dealing with one difficult person, but it's actually dealing with protecting the company. It's it's not just about, you know, the other employees that are there, but there can be real liability that is tied to this. And and offering up that support and using this as an opportunity where we can for HR to shine and show that these are the gifts that we bring, and not just identifying the jerks and the impact that they make, but also being part of that solution. Yes. I think that that's that's such a great way of explaining how the quantified metric kind of changes that conversation and reframes HR's role when we're dealing with these kind of employees. From your personal experience, as you presented these kind of figures or this, you know, your own experience with the review cycle to your leadership team. Did you find that the quantified impact was sufficient, or was there more information that you needed to bring into that meeting or potential meeting? Yeah. So I, you know, I work closely with my, CFO at the time who I reported up to when we were doing this exercise. And, I I really love that experience and the conversations that came out with them. And and going with this whole idea that HR is not just dealing with the nebulous stuff, but, you know, he was incredibly supportive. He really liked the outcome of it. He really liked the thinking and the approach that came there. And, and so I had a lot of internal support by, you know, just having these conversations and showing up. And and I I felt really fortunate at that time to have leaders that, you know, really wanted HR to kind of shine in this way and to be able to have conversations that were more numbers driven and not feelings driven. And so, for me, these conversations were really positive. And and, you know, I think one other possible lesson or takeaway from some of these things too is, you know, when we were doing this, this was an exercise without a particular problem that we were immediately trying to solve. Yes. And I think that that's an important point because a lot of times when these problems do come up and they will at some point or another, really starting to have those deep, honest, open conversations with leaders and, you know, talking them about the way you think about things and the logic behind this and approaches that we take, can be really, really helpful so that you you have some sort of established relationship before a problem, presents itself. So it's it's not at the moment that things become difficult, intense that you're trying to build a rapport, build trust, or engage with a leader, but a lot of that work has already been done ahead of time. Yeah. If there are other HR leaders on the call who are interested in implementing something similar, I know you speak with a lot of HR leaders, at various conferences and in the work that you're doing. What would you say are some of the biggest challenges that they should expect? And are there any recommendations for maybe how to overcome those? Yeah. So, as, you know, I probably should have mentioned at the start of the call too. I'm also a spokesperson for in workplace abuse. And so this is, my heart and soul. I spent a lot of time volunteering and and speaking around this. And a lot of time speaking with HR folks who I do know, suffer in silence a lot. And so, I think it's really, really important for HR folks, to look at the tools that are available. This is a great tool that I know Rippling has, packaged up in a in a pretty nice way. But I also think it's really important to also remember, you know, as an HR professional, you're also an employee too with the same rights and protections that anyone else has. And so, you know, as you engage with difficult conversations or brilliant jerks of any kind, to make sure that you're documenting your experience as well, whether it's through something like this that may be like calculating the cost of it, but also the impact that things may be having towards you and your ability to do your job as well as the impacts it may be having on others and pulling that altogether to create one story so that you can advocate for yourself and others. I am seeing a question in the chat that relates to this issue that I think might be good to address, which is ultimately that it's especially difficult when that person, the brilliant jerk, targets HR personnel with bullying tactics because it makes any action taken appear biased. It seems like a lot of folks in the audience are relating to that comment and feel like it is that happens a lot. It sounds like documentation is one step that we might take to ensure it doesn't appear like a retaliation effort. But is there anything else that HR leaders might employ to kind of avoid action being seen as biased? Yeah. I know. And I love this. And I think one of the points about retaliation is, that can even be coming from the company itself. You know? So if an HR professional is speaking up on behalf of other employees and they're trying to protect those other employees and and then they are you know, somebody is bullying them, that's a form of retaliation that needs to be documented. You know, depending on where you are in in the specifics of your case, you may also be looking at whistleblower claims, when you're trying to raise things that go against company policies. It may even be illegal. These types of things are are really important to be educated on and aware of. But I think one of the best things that you can always do when you're dealing with bullying of any kind is take it outside the walls of your organization. And so, you know, if if there's a conflict at a high level or HR and, you know and and that happened to me years ago. Right? You know, I I have a complaint against, chief executive. I can't ask my own team to investigate because, of course, it's gonna look, tainted. And so there was really no other choice at that point but to put it in someone else's hands. So sometimes that can be inside counsel or if you're a smaller organization or if it looks like that might be tainted or, you know, that a reasonable person might find that suspicious, then working with outside investigators, outside organizations, outside law firms, can be really, really helpful, for protecting yourself, in in a space like that. Yes. I think that's excellent advice. I have in the slide deck as well, a note about the fear not framework. Can you talk to us a little bit about this framework and how it might relate to the conversation we're having right now? Well, yes. Yes. No. And and so glad to see this included. I came up with this years ago just to help victims of bullying no matter where they are. So whether they're an HR pro or the the frontline employee or an executive, you know, because we we do see this at all levels of organization. But there's actually a formula for, you know, how we navigate this space, how we kind of survive these things. And, you know, fear not. It's, you know, kind of an acronym for some of the steps that are outlined, in the screen here. But, you know, the the one I actually focus on the most is the fear. Mhmm. All of this stuff can be absolutely terrifying. And so it's really important to, you know, treat it like the life threatening situation that it is. Because what I see, and I'm sure everyone here who's been in HR long enough will see, is someone who's bullied, things can begin to break down. You get a lot of cortisol that is physically pumping through your body. You know, if you if you speak with, like, trauma experts, they talk about, you know, moments after you've been, say, screamed at in front of all of your peers, profoundly humiliating, something that is really, really traumatic, it affects your memory right after. These things can actually leave scars on the brain. We're seeing research studies that show that workplace abuse is just as traumatic and impactful on the brain as what vets go through, the same degree of PTSD. And part of that is because when our jobs are on the line, it can feel like our entire life is on the line. And so if we're not managing that cortisol, if we're not managing that stress, we can't show up in a way to best protect ourselves. And so it's really, really critical, that we focus on this and and make real efforts to, you know, burn off that stress. I get on an elliptical all the time. That's where I burn off my sad angry feelings, you know, whatever, yoga, whatever that is that helps you. That's really, really important. But then also making sure that you're collecting that evidence and that you're really doing that important work that a lot of HR pros remind everyone else to do, but we don't do the same self care for our for our own sakes. And to make sure that, yes, even if it was major donors or boards in my past, I have had to do investigations into board members. I have had to do I've had to help other folks, work with, major donors and, you know, very, very political messy situations. And a lot of times, as soon as I think there's even a hint of something that's beginning to take place, I'll go ahead and I'll start documenting all of that with just very simple timelines of, you know, who, what, when, where, time stamp it. There's apps out there like, highly, work receipts, wrkreceipts.com that, will help you document these things very quickly with apps on your phone. And so not just having that timeline together, because if you do have to engage with an attorney, that's gonna be really, really important. But then also pairing that with evidence. And, yes, external counsel may be something that you you definitely wanna look at. But in order for external counsel to really be able to evaluate your case, you really wanna make sure that you're showing up calm, that you're collecting your evidence, that you're putting that timeline together, and that you're preparing yourself for some form of an investigation and potentially even an investigation that may not always go your way. You know, sometimes we'll see organizations where they'll do an internal investigation and they it's really just to limit liability and they're gonna find that they haven't done anything wrong, and and a good attorney will help you navigate those pieces as well. So all of that is is kind of critically important. And the software we mentioned for the timeline, I can type that really quick work receipts. And then there's another one, highly. And then also too, I'm on LinkedIn, you know, so I'm more than happy to share. You know, I'm, LinkedIn forward slash Kimberly dash e dash Williams. I get calls 10 times a day from folks who dealt with workplace bullying. So if this is really big for you, please feel free to reach out, and I'll do my best to to help you as well with that. Thank you so much, Alex. Yeah. You're more than me. And so, but there there's way more help and resources out there than it may feel like. And, you know, once you go through this yourself as I have, you almost become like an evangelical. You're more than happy to help, anyone else. But, but, yeah, really being careful about, you know, how you piece your story together just like anyone would and, making sure that you're you're showing up as calm as you can during that process is ultimately really, really critical. Thank you so much. I think those applications are gonna be very helpful too for people from a documentation perspective. I am curious whether you can talk about your work within workplace abuse because I think the work you're doing there from a legislative perspective is meant to address people who are going through this at a very kind of what's the word? Like, a universal level ensuring that everybody feels safe and protected. Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah. Because and I'm happy to talk about in the context of, Rippling too because one of the things I've shared with Alex and others there over the years is that it doesn't just help HR pros by saving time. It changes the the entire profession. It changes the value you bring. It frees you up. And we actually calculated. It was, like, tens of thousands of hours that we save simply by using, you know, so much automation like this is able to offer us. And so what we do with that free time is we get into some of these deeper problems. And and since we kinda came up with this idea of, you know, brilliant jerk and I began talking about this more and then building on this, fear not framework, I've testified now, in front of the DC City Council in front of the Joint Labor Committee for the State of Massachusetts. I've testified, with the Rhode Island Senate, for the Workplace Psychological Safety Act, which is a bill being put forward by in workplace abuse that will give a private cause of action for an employee who's been abused at work. And the reason why that's so critical is because folks on this call are obviously well, should be familiar with the the civil rights laws that are in place, protected characteristics that, you know, someone is being harmed at the workplace, because of their gender, because of their race and ethnicity, or any other protected characteristics as they exist in your area or just the federal ones, that, you know, that's lawsuit material. And so this would basically expand this concept to include anyone that's being harmed whether or not protected characteristics is at play. And and the reason why we're starting to make such great headway in dozens and dozens of states and, here in DC, we'll be very active, tomorrow meeting with US senators and their staff as well as the DC council again is because it is very physical. You know, it it it leads to high rates of divorce. It leads to higher increased rates of attempted suicides and successful suicides. Terrible financial harm, like so many things that are, you know, wrapped up in all of this that can become an enormous pain point for folks that is all connected to the workplace. And so, yeah, Rippling has been a real champion for this this effort and is, really allowed for folks like myself and others, to go and and and speak for these and and push for legislative changes that could really, make life better for the tens of millions of people who have been bullied in the workplace. Well, thank you so much. I know we've got about thirteen minutes left. I did wanna ask before we kind of move into q and a. If there's one key message that you'd like every HR leader on the line today to leave with, what would that be? That you're awesome and you deserve good things. And so not everyone gives us love. Not everyone gets excited about calls for HR. And so, I always joke that we're still fun at parties. But there's a lot of quiet work that HR does that helps people day in and day out. And, we do deserve support of good organizations like Rippling, which really has done an incredible job of, you know, making life easier. But then, you know, also just as professionals, we suffer a lot in silence, and we don't share our stories out there. But we're just deserving as any other employee, for respect and dignity in workplaces where, you know, we shouldn't be mistreated. Yes. And I agree that HR professionals are fun at a party. I've seen that at home. Thank you. We say it's a good time. Okay. Last poll, I promise. Now that we've reviewed the metrics that Kimberly used in the methodology behind quantifying a brilliant jerk, who here is kind of excited to replicate these metrics after the webinar? Are people excited to give it a try using rippling or combining data from the softwares you are leveraging today, or people are still feeling a little bit lost? We are the party. Oh, yes. Okay. Okay. I'm seeing some a's, which is wonderful, a couple of b's. So what I would like to outline very quickly before we move into q and a is just some of the specifics around how we were able to build that report in the rippling platform. Again, this is a method that you could replicate without rippling. I think using the software makes it a little bit easier. I am biased. But we can do it with external platforms as well. So the concept here is that we launch a three sixty review. We can do that in Google Sheets. You could do that in, performance platform that's a stand alone. You could do that in Rippling's platform. And what we are looking for are individuals who are rated highly in their downward review. Right? So their manager thinks that they're awesome, but they're getting poor results from their peer feedback and from the teams that report into them. So what the report should look like is something like my downward review is a five out of five, my peer review was a two, and I'm seeing ones for this individual from the folks who report into them in that upward review. Once you have that data collected, you will combine it with the compensation information for those peers and direct reports. So it is just, an Excel formula that we run, which multiplies the annualized salary by whatever kind of ROI percentage you'd like to input. Kim outlined, I think it was 60% and Yeah. The typical, is, you know, 90% for high performers, 60% for average, and 30% for low performers. But every culture is gonna be a little bit different. So some of it can be more of an art than a science. And so, you know and you can also weigh like, okay. This person's a jerk, but maybe they're not, you know, a complete terrorist. Mhmm. And so, you can, you know, move these around or people do take some liberties with them. Yes. I think once you've identified what that percentage should look like for your business, Rippling can then calculate what that impact is, right, in total. So it's three steps. Run the review, determine who reports into the Brilliant Jerk or who works with the Brilliant Jerk, and then ultimately calculate what that impact to their annualized compensation would be. And that's where we get a final number that we can present to an executive team. Now for those of you who are Rippling customers, if this is something you're interested in building, I would recommend contacting your account manager. They know how to build this kind of report or your technical account manager depending. If you are not a Rippling customer, there is a wonderful article on the Rippling website that kind of walks through this process phys physically, that walks through the process in writing. So it might be a little easier to digest for visual learners like me. And in cases where a three sixty review might be difficult in a for example, Theresa outlined in a smaller firm, it might be more difficult to do that. I would argue that you can achieve something similar with anonymous surveys, where we're not actually looking at the employee who submitted the review, but rather an anonymous engagement survey to sort of use sentiment based questions like, do you feel supported by your manager? Do you feel like there is upward career progression opportunities available to you to back into a potential brilliant jerk? I think we could see those as red flags as well. Alright. With that out of the way and, again, happy to send you oh, perfect. Thank you, Mikaela, for sending the blog. That's the people are on it. Mhmm. We can pivot into a more formal kind of q and a portion of our conversation. I will open it up to our audience here. Are there any questions that feel unanswered or topic areas that we have spoken about already that we'd like to dive into in more detail? If so, feel free to ask those questions in the chat. I believe that there's a q and a tab that allows us to ask questions. Oh, and there are already questions in there. So I'll start I'll start asking some of these, but feel free to ask more as we continue. Can you talk about, Kimberly, how you determined that percentage for the ROI? I know you gave some recommendations there. I believe that that is, metrics we're deriving from external research. Is that accurate? Yeah. And so, because it's been years since I looked at it, it was coming from, you know, some of the the large consulting firms that spend a lot of time doing research on, performance and engagement. And so, you know, I'm sure, like, a quick, Google search, you know, from some of these, big groups would be able to to tell you some of these. I know that there's been different articles on there. I actually found a video on LinkedIn. That was so old that there was a guy with a chalkboard writing all of, this, that talks about that. And so some of them vary a little bit in terms of what, they were talking about. And a lot of it came up kind of around, like, the height of the d e I. Where I think that they were really just kind of focused on folks that were, you know, struggling with different issues. That this is how much productivity that they're losing, because of that. And then so we kind of took some of that and, you know, try to come up with a way to talk about it in bullying, more generally. Okay. And I'm seeing a lot of interest around recommendations when the brilliant jerk is a leader. And I assume we're talking about somebody at the executive level, c suite level, kind of, maybe more middle management. Is there specific recommendations that you have, for folks in that sort of situation? Yeah. So the the fear not framework that I recommended, because that was my situation where, you know, I have had, unfortunately, you know, a number of situations where it was down to me and a leader. And, you know, for me, I think some of the things that helped me personally get through that is just the idea that, my daughter is gonna enter this workforce and what kind of workforce do I want her to be in. I I you know, I'm very open and transparent about how scared I was during this. I love to tell everyone a story about how, when I realized I was on my own, with the chief executive, how I had to draft a letter where my hands were shaking and and I I didn't even hit send from my computer. I went out my car, drove out of the parking lot, and then hit send from my phone. And, because I wanna normalize, like, how serious this can feel. And I honestly did believe I was gonna get fired in that moment. And for me, it was a lot of it was just wanting to be able to look myself in the eye. I feel like I had integrity. And because I care so deeply about people and wanna protect people, I knew if I couldn't protect myself in this situation, then I wasn't gonna be able to protect anybody else. And if I am in this room and in, you know, this arena, if I'm not gonna say anything, who will? And if I'm not gonna say anything, what am I doing here? And so everyone has their own path. I never say that there's, like, a right or wrong answer. But one of the things I have found over the years is that HR is safer than they feel. You know, odds are a lot of you are aware of who has sued the company before, what law firms have did this, for how much money that they've done that. You tend to know where all the bodies are buried, all the violations are. And so some of it is just coming to a reckoning of, you know, your own information, you know, what you have in terms of leveraging a conversation so that you can attempt to engage, and it doesn't have to be confrontational. You know, I always try to bring calmness, to situations just to say, look. We we have very serious challenges here. I wanna be a partner in addressing them. Here's what I'm seeing. I don't want this to be adversarial. It doesn't have to be. And then it's their choice. If they if they're afraid and they decide that they wanna go in a different direction, then you've already taken some really critical steps by documenting all of that, preparing all of that, and then seeking an attorney if needed, to make sure that, you're not trampled in the process of trying to protect yourself and others. Thank you very much. Any other questions for Kimberly? Not seeing anything new in the q and a, but let me look at chat. Alright. If there are no further questions, then with two minutes remaining, I think that we can maybe give everybody just a little bit of time back in their day. We truly appreciate the participation on the webinar. I think the chat was very informative of our conversation today, and we appreciate everybody taking time out of your busy days to join us. If you have further questions after the webinar about rippling, I would recommend, again, reaching out to your account manager, technical account manager, or using the button to book a demo. If you have questions about Kimberly and the work that she is doing, I've posted her LinkedIn within the chat. Feel free to connect with her, ask questions, feel free to connect with me and ask me questions. And with that, I hope everybody has a good rest of their Tuesday. Thank you so much.