In this episode recorded live from HR Transform 2024 at the Wynn resort in Las Vegas, we engage in a thought-provoking discussion with Janine Yancey, CEO of Emtrain. Janine brings her extensive experience as an employment lawyer and a seasoned corporate counselor to the table, sharing her expertise in transforming workplace compliance and culture.
Janine chats about her journey from practicing employment law to spearheading Emtrain, illustrating how recognizing repetitive patterns in workplace conflict propelled her to pioneer a more proactive approach to corporate compliance. Her emphasis on compliance as a skill set deeply intertwined with overall talent strategy offers a fresh perspective that challenges traditional views.
The episode serves as a reminder of the link between compliance, culture, and skills within the fabric of any organization. Janine articulates this connection with engaged illustrations of how Emtrain's solutions are applied internally to foster continuous learning and improvement.
Chapters:
0:00:00
Introduction to the conversation with Janine Yancey
0:00:30
Janine Yancey's background and the inspiration behind Emtrain
0:01:04
How Janine's experience as an employment lawyer shaped her talent strategy
0:02:27
Discussion on the myth about compliance being separate from skills
0:03:13
Example of Boeing's compliance failure and the importance of skills and culture
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Transcripts
Dr. Jim: [:
Janine Yancey: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Jim: Before we dive into it, I want you to set the stage. Tell us a little bit about your story, about M Train so we understand your perspective before we get into the myth busting section.
Janine Yancey: I started my career as a employment lawyer. Employer corporate counsel, if you will, dealing with a lot of conflict. And that was the backdrop for me starting M train. Because I'm the founder and CEO of M train and M train provides e learning. We call it compliance and culture topics and plus workforce analytics.
Dr. Jim: I think you're selling your bio a little short, but let's dig in a little bit on that. So one of the things that I'm wondering about is you started off your career, As an employment lawyer.
Janine Yancey: Yes.
Jim: What did you experience [:
Janine Yancey: So I called myself the therapist at the workplace because I would see the same patterns over and over again.
And a manager would come to me and describe, a certain conversation or exchange. And I would say, okay, in a month, XYZ is going to happen. And the manager would be like, how do you know? How do you know? I'm like, Just watch and sure enough, that would happen. And so it's patterns of behavior that, inevitably lead to conflict and then turnover and all that.
So I started basically pattern matching and saying, okay, there's got to be a better way and we can start approaching these as skills to develop, which is what we do at
edTrain.
w did all of that experience [:
Janine Yancey: Oh, I love it because. We have a couple tools in our solution that we use internally too. One tool is, it can't be polarized, . So whenever you're giving feedback, you have to do it in a way that somebody can hear it,. And the other tool is, we're always learning. So I'm saying that because we're always learning.
So we're applying the strategies internally, and sometimes it's trial and error, but that's okay.
Dr. Jim: Great stuff. All right. You're ready to bust some myths?
Janine Yancey: Yes.
Dr. Jim: There's a lot of HR and leadership myths that are out there. What's the one that drives you nuts and you wish would die?
Janine Yancey: It's the one that made me start up train, which is that compliance is It's just this other thing, and it has nothing to do with skills, and it has nothing to do with people strategy. That drives me nuts. Compliance, if you unpack it, it's actually skills.
It's people with skills behaving and making decisions in a way that are super productive. So when you approach it from a skills lens, you don't have any compliance issues.
Dr. Jim: Whenever people [:
It's actually deeply embedded into everything that's related to your talent strategy.
Janine Yancey: Yes, I would say, and I'm a lawyer, and so I'll just throw myself under the bus. The lawyers have so overly processed behaviors and skills into these rules that we've lost all of the goodness. So let me give you an example.
Boeing. Boeing spends over a million dollars a year on its compliance program. Over a million dollars. The Boeing plane, so a few years ago, plane fell out of the sky. Unfortunately, there are fatalities. Most recent with the Alaska airline, my brother happens to be an Alaska airline pilot.
lanes But is anyone speaking [:
No one's speaking up. Is anyone telling the leadership? Hey, we're prioritizing money over safety Wait, that's just a statement Not just a policy in a red that's skill. That's creating a culture that's actually people having the understanding, the experience to speak it.
Dr. Jim: That's a really great example.
And there's a much broader conversation when we're talking about the Boeing organization, because you have the impact of mergers and acquisitions in that relationship too, because Boeing, at the peak, they were an engineering organization and then McDonnell Douglas acquired them and did what a lot of acquiring companies do.
Which is, let's look at maximizing shareholder value and that's the only thing that we care about. You're getting me close to being on a soapbox and I'm not going to do that.
Janine Yancey: But Jim, also when you disconnect the compliance program from the culture and the skills and the behaviors, Then you just have overly processed food.
It's nothing. It gives you nothing.
Dr. Jim: You're making
the Doritos of an organization.
ngraining the skills and the [:
Dr. Jim: Awesome stuff, Janine. We appreciate you busting that myth and hanging out with us.
So if people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch?
Janine Yancey: So easiest is online at emtrain. com. That's E M T R A I N dot com or on LinkedIn just we have a Janine Yancey.
Dr. Jim: Thanks for hanging out with us. And for everybody that's watched this, I will have more myth busting to come.
