right. We will go ahead and get started. Well, welcome everyone, and thank you for joining, why talent acquisition change fails and how to ensure yours doesn't. The goal of our session today is to keep the conversation practical and actionable. And hopefully by the end of this session, you'll walk away with a clearer framework on how to implement talent acquisition transformation with ideas and examples to bring back to your own teams. Before we go ahead and get started, one of the realities we want to acknowledge upfront is that most transformation initiatives do not struggle with the technology itself. Most often challenges happen because of the change management side of transformation, because the transformation itself is underestimated. It's delayed or sometimes it's treated as a secondary item alongside that implementation itself. And ultimately, we would want to have an honest conversation about why that happens and where organizations commonly run into difficulty and what those organizations do that are successful in navigating that transformation and how they're doing it differently today. That being said, I want to briefly introduce our panelists and thank them for joining us today. Each of the members that you will hear from brings a different perspective and role within talent acquisition and the HR transformation space. It's really our goal that it's going to give you a well rounded view of what change management looks like in practice. So I will go ahead and get started, and then I will pass off to our panelists today. So my name is Nicole Tetfer. I am a lead portfolio manager here with PageUp in our professional services team. That being said, I will go ahead and pass over to Sue Ann. Thank you, Nicole. My name is Sue Ann Burkle. I'm the executive director of workforce and compensation strategies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and I served as the project sponsor for our page up implementation project. Thank you so much, Sue Ann. Let's go ahead and pass it over to Jamie. Hi, Jamie Jamison Tancrawl. I'm the assistant vice president of employee experience here at Gonzaga University. And for this project, I was the, business sponsor. Thank you so much. And Ray? Good morning. Ray Cleaver. I'm vice president and chief human resources officer at Gonzaga University. And for this project, I served as the executive sponsor. Thank you so much. And last but not least, Carol Ann. Hi. I'm Carol Ann Lawson, and I'm the senior consultant of workforce and compensation strategies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and I served as our projects change manager. Thank you so much. The reason why we wanted this to be a panel discussion and not just a presentation is because of the leaders who these leaders themselves have experienced the transformation firsthand. They've navigated implementation changes, challenges, resistance, priority shifts, adoption hurdles, and ultimately the realities of implementing change with new technology. And those experiences really live to their insights, and we're really excited to have them share what worked for them, what they did differently, and what they learned along the way. So just some housekeeping before we dive into the session itself is we will leave some time for questions and answers here. So just note that if you do have questions that come up along the way, pop them into the chat. We'll grab those at the end and we'll talk through them after our panel session. That being said, we'll try to answer as many as many as we can within our time today anything after we're happy to pass along and come back to you with those answers post session as well. All right, let's go ahead and move over to the next slide, which is the unavoidable truth of change management here. So the rate of change, and the biggest indicator as to why talent acquisition is looking to change, is our priorities are accelerating, and the change is happening so fast. Those who view transformation as optional are really already falling behind in the curve. So, ultimately, this is going to lead to stagnation in your organization, but then also to loss of talent. And there are three key drivers that we at PageUp have seen that are really behind the change and the need to change. One is going to be new technology. As you know, we're in a really interesting season, with AI and, and automation just reshaping how we work in our day to day, not only here at PageUp, but you as talent acquisition leaders are experiencing this. This is increasing both for speed and expectations around how you work, to ensure that we have the most efficient process as possible. Next is evolving expectations. Candidates and employees now expect a seamless and consumer grade experience throughout their hiring journey, and that is requiring teams to look at how talent acquisition operates in their organization. And the last but not least is really business alignment for unity. Talent acquisition really is no longer a a team or a department that should be operating independently from a broader straddle business strategy. Talent acquisition leaders really are expected to align to executive priorities, that workforce planning and organizational growth. So the cost of not changing is not standing still, and it's going to ultimately cause our your users or your your organization to potentially lose top talent to those who actually have taken the time to modernize and create who are creating less friction in the day to day processes that they're having at that point in time. Alright. We can move on to why talent acquisition change fails. So transformation often does fail before the implementation begins. Most organizations think that just getting the technology is it, and they're done, But it ultimately isn't. What you will see is that the hard part is actually around implement is the people and the politics around changing here. So there are key areas that you want to be sure that you are aligned to as you continue to work through change, and these are really these four pillars of failure. One is going to be stakeholder alignment. If you don't have genuine buy in from your executive leadership team and those key and other key decision makers, you before you start, your resistance to change with your product is going to kill it mid flight. So right in the middle of the implementation. So buying it, having that buy in isn't just an approval to a budget, it actually is active sponsorship and engagement from your executive leadership as they walk through. The next one is poor communication. People resist what they don't necessarily understand, and the why not communicating the why clearly and repeatedly and tailoring it to the individual audiences who may interact with the technology can leave people to fill gaps in with their own assumptions. And sometimes assumptions lead to often negative or thoughts that are based in fear, because they ultimately have a fear of change because they don't know it. The next one is the human element. As I said, tech doesn't tech projects don't fail because the technology doesn't work. It really fails with people. And being cognizant of that idea and that thought process is is really key to all implementations, whether it's something small or large at the end of the day. So every change initiative that you think about, think about it from two perspectives. You have your techno your technology work stream, but then you also have your purple your people work stream, and you have to find a way to merge both of those in to that change as you work. And lastly, I had said it before, buying new people over tech. Buying new software isn't transformation. Transformation really at the end of the day is how people work within the system, how they think and how they make decisions based off of their day to day. And that's where you see the transformation truly happen. Your tech is meant to be a partner and a supplement to those changes. So what ultimately does strategy for a successful TA change management look like? Let's actually walk through the framework right now. All right. So we have four key steps set for change. So this is really the foundation that you want to look at whenever you're implementing a change. Successful TA transformation doesn't happen because an organization implements new tech. It happens because there's a deliberate strategy for guiding people, your processes, and leadership throughout that change. These four steps represent a framework for managing that transformation from initial alignment from building the case through long term adoption. Each step is going to build upon the next one, and it ultimately is going to help your organization move beyond simply launching a new system or a technology, creating that creating something that's sustainable from a cultural and an operational standpoint. The goal is not just to implement. The goal is to create lasting impact for your day to day users. All right, and we can go to step number one. All right, So the first step is really building the case for new technology, and this is ultimately where teams can start a little too late and think about it from a too narrow perspective. A business case for transformation doesn't just sit with HR. It sits and it goes beyond HR at this point in time. And within that, there's three key elements that you do want to think about. The first one is having measurable return on investment. The case for change really starts with your own data and not just relying on benchmarks that you may see from a generic or an industry benchmark. Using your current metrics, such as time to fill cost per hire, if you're using agency spends as your baseline, then demonstrating how to connect those metrics to a platform can improve those outcomes. The executive buy in or buy in from you know, your finance teams or your finance decision makers really starts with building that measurable business impact. We've talked about our having buy in from our executive teams. That's really where we bring in our critical stakeholders. If you're looking to make a case, building it in isolation and socializing it too late can impact whether or not you will get that adoption from your executive stakeholders. Engaging those teams early or those who have a say in business decisions related to technology helps really early in the process. And having that feedback from those particular stakeholders actually helps define your success. The more that they can be involved in the process, the more that they're invested in that outcome, and ultimately are going to be far more likely to advocate for that transformation. And then lastly, it's having a unified vision. Transformation for intel and acquisition cannot just be positioned as as an HR initiative. You really want to think about how you can connect it directly to broader organizational priorities. Things like your workforce strategy, operational efficiency, your candidate experience, and DEI initiatives also help build that case and can be relatable back to strategic goals that you may have within the organization itself. These items can help elevate the types of conversations that you are having based from just looking to replace the system, we're looking to bring on new tech to, hey, this is how we want to ultimately transform our business far greater than our own department. So think about it from a theme. It's really a successful business case solves a business problem, not just an HR problem at the end of the day. That being said, we're going to lead in to our first panel discussion. I'm going to bring in our panelists to help answer some key questions related to this first step. Caroline, let's go ahead and start with you. How did you approach identifying and aligning your key stakeholders early in the process, and where did you see the biggest challenges in aligning in that alignment? Thanks, Nicole. So it was pretty easy for us at VCU to identify our main stakeholders. Those were our system end users, who we call our HR professionals and associates. Just for a little bit of context about VCU, we are a large, decentralized university, so we have a lot of our, system users out in our schools and units, not within our central HR office. So we knew they were going to be the ones in the system using it the most and were going to be the most important to get in early and really be as transparent as possible about the change. Leading up to the implementation, we actually had a year long process where we really looked at our current system that we were in prior to page up to see if it was the right system for us, to get feedback from our HR professionals and associates, as well as with some hiring managers and folks who served in roles like interview panels or search committee members. So that was a full year before we even launched in the implementation. And throughout that process, we were really able to learn what was working, what wasn't working, garner trust, build relationships. And so then when we when it was time to shift in the implementation and we had a lot of data and feedback as to why that was a good idea, we were able to do so, with no really no pushback at all. So we, really were very intentional about engaging early on. We also once we decided we were going to move into the new system, were very intentional about creating a change management strategy, identifying a change manager, and really building out a robust document that had our communication plan, our stakeholders. And, the stakeholders were very important. And as you talked about, leadership was key. And so, Sue Ann will talk a little bit more about this, I believe, but we created a management sponsor group with a lot of our leads in HR, both in our faculty and our, staff world to make sure that we could meet with them regularly and talk to them and get feedback with them, about the project. So that was how we got early buy in and how we identified, important stakeholders. We also partnered with that management sponsor group to really think about who we needed to share the the change with, and we created this huge list of stakeholders, you know, all of the different people who might be impacted and worked with them to figure out the best way to get the the news out to them. So, it was a very, inclusive process, that we got a lot of feedback just to identify who should be involved. One big challenge that I will share is just, you know, we really did want to make everybody's voice heard equally. That's very important to us in HR, and we really want to give, you know, the same attention to everybody. But as we were identifying those stakeholder groups that I mentioned, we felt like we really needed to pay special attention to our school of medicine. That is a very large entity on our campus, and they operate with a lot more complexity than a lot of our other schools and units. So as we were creating various work groups and, you know, different ways we were going to communicate things, we really did have to put a special focus on school of medicine. So we created their own special work group. We had a something called our page up work group, and we had more members from school of medicine than we did from our other schools and units. And, again, this is an area where we really tried to have a lot of, you know, quality and consistency, but we really did have to give a little bit more focus just based on how the school of medicine operates and their, you know, their special needs. So, it felt a little bit different for us because we really wanted to treat everyone equal in the process, but we did have to give a special focus and have some conversations with people, you know, saying, I know this group has more people involved than your group, but this is the reason why. And just be very transparent about that. So that's a little bit about our approach and and a challenge for us. Thank you so much. Sue Ann, I know Carolyn alluded a little bit to this in her response, but, ultimately, after all that planning, what do you feel helped you secure your buy in for this implementation? Was it date the data? Was it urgency? Was it leadership influence? Or, ultimately, was it something else that prompted the change? No. Thank you, Nicole. That's a great question. And as Caroline mentioned, we built relationships and trust through our thorough and transparent process of assisting of assessing our now former system and potential new system options, which gave those stakeholders a voice. But, ultimately, I would say that two key factors impacted our ability to secure buy in, and those were data and compliance. So for us, we had collected the net promoter score of our former system, our users, our end users measure of satisfaction, and that gave us a starting point, for advocating for the change. And, additionally, the page up product allows us to automatically flag applicant answers to specific application questions, ensuring compliance to some of our regulations that we need to adhere to. So those two factors ultimately, in addition to everything Caroline mentioned, allowed us to secure that that final buy in. Perfect. Thank you so much. Jamie, from Gonzaga's perspective, what helped you secure buy in for your your chain your transformation to PageUp? Yeah. Thanks, Nicole. One of the biggest elements that I will speak to was the current challenges we had with our system at the time. It was very clunky. It was frustrating. It wasn't very user friendly and intuitive, and we had been with that system for about ten years. So I I was quite lucky in the fact that most everyone was very ready for a change absolutely with to be upgraded into a new system. However, we were a little bit strategic in how we wanted to kinda get everyone excited about the product that we chose. So when we were going through the, kind of the the phase of data gathering and figuring out what we wanted to see, what would work best for us, what was the limitations and aspirations of the current and future systems. We strategically chose kind of, like, our early adopters to be part of the process, and we also went outside of HR and tried to get some of our really, kind of our biggest champions in in the time in the terms of change to kind of speak to the elements of the the new system that we would like to implement. And that really helped sort of grease the wheels to kinda get everyone excited for the implementation and ready to go. And much like Carol Anne, one of the biggest things we did, and I'll get to talk about this later, was kind of set up a change management committee. But I, there's a lot more to that than just just speaking of it. But that was those are kind of the biggest key elements to help secure buy in in terms of ready for implementation in a new system. Thank you so much. Back to Sue Ann here. With leadership involvement showing up, how did it show up in practice, and where did it make the biggest difference for VCU? Thank you, Nicole. So we had two distinct leadership groups to to speak of. One was our management sponsor group, which was made up of HR leaders across the university, and our HR advisory committee, which was made up of leaders across across the university, both HR and not, where our internal page up leadership team brought forth updates to keep them informed, but also to seek their feedback and guidance. So the opportunity that we gave them to weigh in and provide feedback on a high profile, high risk, or complicated issues naturally led to their buy in throughout. So those being very intentional about the creation of those two groups and what we brought to them, I think, helped ensure success. Perfect. Thank you so much. Ray, as a leader at, Gonzaga, what did you really expect to be straightforward that ended up requiring more change management than you anticipated? Yeah. That's a that's a great question. There were a couple of items. I think for context, it's important to note that our technology or TA strategy was a strategy within a strategy of a larger HR transformation. And so, you know, in our case, we actually did multiple implementations over the course of a year. Actually, I should more correctly say, Jamie and her team did multiple implementations over the course of a year. And as Jamie mentioned, we had very robust ground level support for this. Right? Grassroots was really strong on this. At the cabinet level, it was a little more tepid in in terms of making a change. We've had this for ten years. It, you know, it doesn't seem to be a problem for me. And so leveraging relationship with the CIO, leveraging relationship, frankly, with our staff assembly to create some voice for them to explain about their experiences was a way we kind of leveraged the explanation of why as part of this. So, absolutely, the, you know, ROI metrics, the, you know, great business case for it, but also some well placed testimonials from those that are influencers from, know, the the trouble maintaining the system from an IT perspective to the actual usage on a day to day perspective, really to create that case in a very visceral sort of way with our cabinet was a a piece of work that required a little more effort than I thought it would. Perfect. Thank you for that, and it's really great to hear how your VCU and Gonzaga's feedback really aligns to how we have identified potential items for building that case here. Now that we've heard from the panel, let's actually talk about what happens once you go ahead and get the green light and you are in implementation. For those who have already implemented new technology, you may feel this right now. But managing the implementation is really where a lot of transformation projects begin to struggle. Success during this phase really depends on people and alignment as much as it does the technology itself. And there are four areas that you will want to be mindful of as you continue to work through how to implement change when you are in the implementation of the technology itself. And the first one is going to be the communication plan. Change communication needs to be ongoing, intentional, and very much audience specific. A recruiter and the CFO both need to understand the why, which we just talked about in building that case. But those messages are going to look very differently compared to depending on what is important to them. And strong communication plans define what what is shared, when it's shared, and how it's shared across all of your stakeholder groups from the top at the C suite all the way to your end users who are in the system or using technology on the day to day. People adopt change faster when they understand that purpose behind it here. That leads into stakeholder alignment. You're still going to go through and continue to get alignment from your stakeholders, even when you are in implementation. Alignment early helps build the case to move forward, but it also helps continue to build the foundation that will help prevent confusion later. Successful implementations really share ownership across all of the teams that are involved leadership, the project team itself, and those operational stakeholders. Having trusted champions or change agents who may not necessarily be a part of the project, but are working alongside the technology or know of it, really can help support a project team, reinforce that change. They can help provide feedback from just an end user perspective. They can help be those boots on the ground in terms of answering questions and helping build confidence to other users who may trust them and come to them for questions that they may have. Key areas too, and these are really more from an operational standpoint within the implementation itself, is going to be avoiding late stage changes. When we start moving into the latter half of an implementation, you may start bringing in other stakeholders, and they may bring new ideas on how to implement. The biggest piece that you want to remember is to trust your gut. You've made decisions along the way to help shape the technology that your users are going to use. Stay that course. Keeping the scope clear and you moving your path forward in terms of the decisions you make helps your not only your project team stay aligned, but also to it's going to keep those end users aligned and avoid unnecessary weary work or project delays that come along. Encouraging feedback does help create a better implementation outcome, but we want to just be sure that you have a good balance of when we are taking feedback from users who may not be a part of the project team to ensure that you do not have delays as you move closer to your goal line. And the last one is UAT testing, leaving enough time to test. Testing is really where the confidence is built. I like to personally tell clients that testing is to validate all of the decisions that you made, not to change your system. You need to stay confident in terms of those decisions throughout UAT. Going through and validating and reconfirming the decisions that you make help support your system and ensure that it's strong for go live. So that's going to help ensure that your your your day to day workflows aligned to the business process that you've built within the system And also having strong participation within UAT is going to be critical to make sure that it helps set the stage for role based learning, but then also to start putting in that early adoption from that perspective. So the key takeaway that you should take from this stage is that implementation ultimately succeeds when you prioritize the people involved in the implementation alongside the process and the technology. So that being said, we're going to move into panel and talk through what worked well from a change perspective during the implementation itself. Carol Ann, when you think about your communication strategy during the implementation, what worked well and what didn't land the way that you anticipated at VCU? Thanks, Nicole. So what worked well is, as I mentioned, we had a very intentional change management strategy. And within that, we created a very robust communication strategy. We partnered with our communications manager on that and drafted out a plan. We were very detailed about timelines, tailoring messages, what would come out when. And we knew there might have to be a little bit of wiggle room within that, but we really planned out very, very methodically what we wanted to be sent and also through what media. So sometimes it would be an email. Sometimes it would be through a meeting. We would often try to get on existing meetings, that we knew the right folks would be in the room and and use that time to present updates. So we really sat and thought about that. The core team partnered with the communications lead and myself to make sure we were, you know, tailoring our messages appropriately. We were also creative in our approaches, but but simple. Not all change management has to be elaborate. So you'll see our Zoom backgrounds. We created Zoom backgrounds for anybody on the core team or anybody who is excited. We call our system VCU jobs within the within the school. So we, you know, made sure that we all had our Zoom backgrounds if people had questions or wanted to talk more or just to support the change. Anybody who was involved in the project who wasn't within the the core team, we created goals for that they could add into their performance evaluation plan or something that they could add into their career development plan about the extra work and energy that they got to spend being a part of this exciting implementation so they could just copy and paste that and put it straight into their into their work. You know, it could be something like putting something in your signature line. You know, ask me about VCU jobs. We also got the VCU HR community to help pull the name of the system. As I mentioned, we always create our own internal name, and we got them to provide feedback on that. So, that engagement and buy in with these simple yet fun, measures really helped and landed well. What didn't land as well for us, and it wasn't anything that I would not do again, but we created a change champion program. We knew we had really been involving our HR folks very strongly, but we wanted to make sure we could really champion the change with all stakeholders at VCU. And so, we really believed that if we gave them some high level information about the change, you know, the timeline, the main things that the system would be providing, you know, some infographics that they would be willing to be change champions. And this these were folks that were, involved as testers or, you know, had some sort of interest in the project. It was all volunteer based, but we wanted to make sure it wasn't just our HR folks who are change champions. And so we had some meetings and provided some information. And, while I'm glad that we did it, the we did receive feedback that people felt like they couldn't really be a true change champion until they were deeply in the system. And so there was a little bit less comfort than I had anticipated about being a change champion on a system that you don't yet feel an ex you're an expert. So very understandable, but I I think in my mind, I thought, well, we're giving you all these resources to share with your schools and units. You know, and it just so it didn't quite land the way I thought. I still believe it was an effective measure, but might have done it a little bit differently if I did it again. Sounds good. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Jamie, with Gonzaga, I know you guys started a lot of planning and you built some change management groups. But, really, at one point, did change management as a thought like, as a process really become critical for Gonzaga? Was it during the implementation, or once challenges started to surface? Yeah. Thanks, Nicole. I am going to say the second we chose page up is when it started. Unlike VCU, we actually did a larger implementation of ATS, performance management, and LMS. So we had a larger scope of a project to to go through. And as much as everyone was like, yay. We're moving from our antiquated system. The second you start going into things, we knew we were gonna get a lot of, like, no. What are you doing? So we ended up, building a a change management kind of team, and that was the core team that carried throughout the entire length of implementation. And it started with building a very, very strong robust communication plan as well as a change management plan and and as well as a training plan. And what helped was having this, as Ray said, the staff assembly president as our project manager. So we were able to start well before implementation to start talking about everyone being prepared for this change, and that was probably the most critical thing that I would say for GU that we had to do. And then in addition to that, utilizing some of the change management theories, we had a couple people who are, who do who were used to ProSci. And so we took that approach as well in change management. And I wanna say that that was really helpful in the end is kind of trying to prepare everyone, and it really started the next day when we chose PageUp. Thank you so much for that. Sue Ann, for VCU, where do you feel change management became critical? I think it was, like Jamie said, critical throughout. I would share that because we had such a long runway in terms of system configuration, our main change management emphasis prior to go live was to make sure that no one could say that they didn't know change was coming. So we communicated early and often. During the actual go live itself, I would say that about a week before go live, the day of go live, and a week after was very, very critical for change management for our HR end users. We had a lot of cutover activities where we needed a hundred percent compliance and adherence to specific dates for specific activities. Like, you're gonna stop posting in the old system on this date. You're gonna start posting in the new system on this date and those types of things. So I would consider that two week, one week either way around go live to be extremely critical in terms of those cutover activities. Thank you so much. Ray, thinking about, change management and communication, how did GU tailor, the messaging, from the project team or the change management team across the different audiences? And where did you where do you feel like that could have made the biggest difference for your end users in terms of adoption? Yeah. It's a great question. And I think there's there's several things to think about. We had very distinct communication streams with faculty and staff. We actually secured invitations to faculty meeting, to actually come do a high level presentation of what this meant for them. Same thing with staff assembly. We did a number of things and it kinda I think it's a request to kinda talking about, you know, written communication. We did town halls. We did we did a number of one on one meetings, you know, all of those sorts of things. I think there's one particular space that was pretty interesting, and and it's in our adjunct recruiting. We moved from a very informal read friends and family. We like you going to make you be an adjunct to actually moving that inside the page up process. And we sold that in a couple of different ways. One, that that process in its informal state was very mistake prone. And so we talked about mistake proofing this process, making it easier. We actually for all of all of our work in PageUp, we actually have a very robust transfer process where we've automated the transactions that come out of there into our HRMS. And so we actually said, yes. We need you to take this work on upfront, but we're gonna relieve you of work in the background that you don't have to do. So it kind of washes out. And and so I think in that workflow specifically, it's pretty successful in in that. It was a very focused, very kind of niche thing that was a little bit of a pain point for everybody that wasn't truly just a TA technology implementation. It was really Solving for us as an institution. Perfect. Thank you so much. And lastly, Carol Anne, kind of driving home again on communication, especially as you think about that strategy that you guys built at VCU, where do you feel like how did you tailor those messages to be different? And where do you feel like it made the biggest difference? On mute. So thanks, Nicole. I think it we I mentioned we tailored based on whether or not it was the person was an end user or leadership or and we created groups of folks that we knew would be, both proponents and maybe also be, have con you know, constructive feedback. So we were very intentional about, pulling in all these folks, and we really, I believe, utilized our end user groups, our HR professionals, associates, to give our feedback and thoughts about the weeds of the system almost. And back and to your point, I mean, we were making the decisions as core group, but we did want their buy in and input on the way some of the system would operate. And then we were going to our leadership more on a strategic level, on a large policy level. You know? Are we creating the system in a way that's going to meet the needs of the university? And I think it it made a big difference everywhere, but I received a lot of feedback at the end of the implementation from our HR users who told us they'd never been through an implementation where they felt more informed, where they felt it was more transparent, and where there were just no surprises. So to Sue Ann's point, I believe we did meet our goal. Not that it was perfect, not that it met the system met every person's needs, but we were so, we were at so many meetings. We were sending out so many messages that there were no surprises for folks, and they really appreciated being looped in that heavily. Perfect. Thank you so much. So as you can see, both a GU and VCU got their teams to go live there. So implementation, ultimately, the end goal is go live. Adoption continues to happen after that. So you don't want to declare victory quite yet because we still have a couple more steps that we want to make sure that we're aligning to. So go live, again, is not the finish line. It's the beginning of adoption. And the real test really comes when your teams are using the system day to day. Long term success really depends on three things: whether people can do their jobs without friction and easily, whether they feel supported when challenges arise, and whether they see the evidence of change, that the change is delivering value. So in terms of how you can help support adoption, the first one you can do is find your change agents. It's going to be your core project teams and those change champions that you've identified throughout the implementation, but you're going to continue to see more of those agents appear to help support in in drive adoption. Really, they're gonna you're gonna end up using them as opposed as coaches as opposed to just communicators at the end of the day. Their role is really to model how the system works, how can use the system in a new way, answering questions, and trying to gather feedback that arise that they can circle back to the project team. Visible champions in peer support really play a valuable role in adoption over time. One key piece is not only finding those agents, but also recognizing not only the early adopters, but those agents who are helping support post go live. Public recognition is one of the most effective ways to reinforce change. It demonstrates to those who may have questions that the new behaviors are actually valued, and it encourages broader engagement across your organization. The next one is going to be training support. Adoption that depends on users feeling confident in the system. You likely did training leading up to your go live or as you approach go live, but continuing to support through role based training post go live is critical to help make sure that those users feel confident using the system. We all know learning doesn't happen in one day. It's through muscle memory and continual learning to help support. And those training models, along with a clear support system, really are important in terms of being able to adjust questions that happen at the ground level in terms of utilizing new technology. And the last area is mitigating resistance. I talked about this earlier in our session is resistance often reflects uncertainty as opposed to straight opposition. The most effective response is being able to be clear, supportive, and visible in the evidence that change is improving your day to day outcomes. So going in and recognizing your users, sharing wins that you are seeing across teams, it helps with that perspective, and pairing it along with training and support helps ensure that resistance is as less as possible as you continue to roll out this new tech. So think about adoption. It's not a one time event that everyone attends. It's really an ongoing effort that requires reinforcement, visibility, and ownership across all of your teams and your key stakeholders. Moving in to our panel discussion. Let's talk through training, and I would love to hear from both Gonzaga and VCU for this. Jamie, from Gonzaga's perspective, what role did training play in your change strategy, and how did you ensure that users felt confident, not just informed, going into going into go live? Yeah. Thanks, Nicole. It was a a very large and an and a very important piece of our change management. We would start with webinars and larger scale training, and then we can drill drill down into sort of targeted training. And one of the things that helped with that was also UAT, where we had chose strategically particular people in different areas to go back to their their departments and start that conversation and that training. And so it ended up being sort of a larger scale, very long process in order to say, okay. This element, these teams, these budget officers, we're gonna do targeted training to them. We're gonna do it to hiring managers. And it cascaded into kind of our performance management and also our LMS. And one of the elements to that was, in order to be successful in it, we did a lot of one on ones as well. Some individuals had a harder time kind of getting into the system, so we would just kind of slow walk a little bit more, and that really helped in order to kind of meet people where they were. Perfect. Thank you. Sue Ann, from VCU's perspective, what role did, training play in your strategy? Thank you, Nicole. Training played a critical role in our strategy, and one way that we ensured both confidence and confidence in the new system was to require that all of our HR end users attend training. It was mandatory without exception to gain access to the system. We broke the training into manageable chunks of activities that mimicked their day to day work, such as creating a position description, creating a requisition, managing applications, managing the job at the end of it, closing closing everything out, onboarding, new hire stuff. We also offered multiple modalities. So folks could attend training in person or they could attend it online in our different sessions. We made sure that they were staffed with subject matter experts who could answer their one on one questions, either standing over their shoulder with their laptop and helping them go through a scenario or in a breakout room online, to give them that one on one support that they needed to feel successful. Great. Thank you so much. Ray, I know Jamie gave a really great example of how training played a role. But from your perspective, where do you feel training like, what did training play from that level, from an executive sponsor level? Yeah. I I think one of the one of the things that the team was able to do was ground our training actually into a a cultural touch point for us. As a Catholic Jesuit institution, we really value the idea of accompaniment and meeting folks where they are. And I think throughout our training process, we held true to that value that's an institutional value. And so that made that comfortable and approachable for people, and that's drive you know, that drives our relational kind of feel of the institution. We're able to build relationship through the training process as part of this. And so it's we're going on this trip together, not you must do this. Perfect. Thank you so much. The final step is often the one that organizations tend to skip or shorten or defer, but it's also really the step that determines whether transformation delivers value. So measuring your key metrics is something that we would like to end as our final step. So we can go over to the the last slide related to our steps. Perfect. Thank you so much. So like I had shared, baseline metrics really, you may establish those early, but you want to continue to measure those so that you have something later to define value with. Organizations need to understand their current state, like I had shared earlier, and at the end, you want to be able to demonstrate an improvement from that perspective. So, how do we do that? The first place is going to be aligning goals. So, defining success upfront and aligning on what outcomes matter the most of your business. Transformation efforts should easily connect to those priorities and have a measurable business impact. That being said, establishing your measures. So building your baseline metrics before implementation begins so that progress can be measured over time. Visibility into your outcomes is going to allow your teams to move from assumptions to evidence at the end of the day. Going through and reviewing ongoing your metrics is going to be key. So measurements should continue well beyond your go live, almost six, twelve, eighteen months past your go live of a new transformation is critical. So having that ongoing review helps organizations identify what is working, where do you need additional support, or how can you improve your processes as you continue to evolve here. So measuring really turns your antidotes into evidence, and it changes the conversations from we implemented a new system to here's the impact that we had when we had that transformation delivered. We will move over to our final panel discussion of our day here. So let's talk through what metrics you are currently using today to drive adoption and success, and which ones have been proven to be most meaningful to you? Let's go with Jamie. I'm sorry. Not Jamie. Sue Ann from VCU. Thank you, Nicole. I mentioned earlier that we collected the net promoter score as one of our key metrics. We collected that intentionally during the UAT process and training for each item that we were testing and training on, and we intend on collecting one final NPS score to measure end user satisfaction next week, actually. Even though we went live in October, we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to experience the life cycle of the applicant tracking system from beginning to end before hopefully capturing a very positive net promoter score next week. Fantastic. From Gonzaga's perspective, Jamie, how what metrics are you using today to drive, measure adoption and success? Yep. Thank you. Very basic ones at the start. The first one for ATS was basically from requisition to posting or, in our previous system, it could be upwards of three to four months. We shortened that to about a month to maybe two, and that was just, like, a huge win, all across the board. And then in addition to that, it was the percent of utilization as well. Because we did all three implementations, there was kind of a larger sort of metric that we were looking at as well on campus wide. Not everyone is in ATS, but everyone is in performance management. And so we actually saw a a very huge uptick of almost about almost fifty percent utilization up like, uprise from our previous system to our new one. And those are sort of the basics of what we were measuring for success. As we go into our iteration, we're we're gonna dive deeper into that, and we're in the midst of that right now. So Perfect. Thank you so much. And as we're coming up to the end of our session here, I I would love to hear from everyone in terms of what piece of advice would you give to teams that are looking to start their own change management journey. And, Jamie, I know you just answered this question, but I'm gonna flip it right back to you to get your piece of advice for those organizations. Thanks. The biggest thing I will say is that change management, group, like, having one focused on the full implementation to build out your communication strategy, your change management strategy, as well as your training plan. I think those are I cannot stress the importance of that and how that was so integral to our success of implementation. Fantastic. Sue Ann, from your perspective. I would say that while we all know that it's easy to identify our change champions, take the time to identify and engage your harshest critics and those who you know are going to be change averse early on and engage engage them in your change management journey, involvement solutioning, the build, and decision making wherever you can. Great. Ray, for you? Yeah. I I think it's all of that plus centering in communication. Our our rule of thumb has been when we are tired of hearing ourselves communicating about this, we're probably seventy percent of the way there. It's it's more than you ever imagined. It's never enough. Right? So communicate, communicate, communicate. Fantastic. And lastly, Carol Anne. Nothing groundbreaking to add, but just be intentional and really think as much as you can through in advance. As Jamie said, create a change manager or a team. Have a dedicated person or people. System implementations are so huge, and there is so much unpredictable, you know, so many unpredictable things that may happen or that may shift the course of the project. But the more you can have laid out and plan in advance, the better. And also just be transparent about what what you can do, what you can't do. Just keep everyone looped in and be honest, and that really garners trust and leads to a successful outcome. Perfect. Thank you so much. So we'll actually start to conclude our session today here. So when Susan, when you're ready and pop up the slides. So as you heard today, successful transformation just is not about implementing new tech. It's about creating lasting organizational change. And the one the organizations that succeeds are the ones that are building strong business cases, managing their implementation intentionally, investing in adoption beyond the go live, and continuing to measure impact over time. And we've had an opportunity to hear that from both Gonzaga University and VCU as well. So, these four steps that we've talked through along our entire time today really work together. Without alignment, implementation struggles. Without adoption, technology goes underutilized. Without measurement, value becomes difficult to prove. And sustainable transformation requires strategy, ownership, reinforcement, and a willingness to continually evolve alongside the changing landscape. So think about that as you're going in and thinking about that next transformation you're looking to take within your organization. Just remember that transformation is not a single project milestone. It really is ongoing capability that organizations must build in order to remain competitive. And I know that we're coming right up on time, so we will not be able to do the live Q and A. But if you do have questions, please throw them into the chat and we will be sure to make sure that the team is able to answer those post session as well here. And lastly, just want to hit on the page up difference for those who may be new to PageUp. So our customers are consistently calling out these areas that make us stand out as a partner. The first area is customers are the heart of what we do. There are a lot of value in terms of how we choose to support, how we choose to implement with our clients, and their ability to help shape our roadmap from that perspective here. We take a purposeful and thoughtful approach to how we drive innovation in our platform, making sure that we're focusing on the right technology or functionality to solve our customers' challenges. Third, our powerful configuration and our self-service capabilities give our clients control and flexibility to customize that hiring experience across different brands, regions, or even departments. And lastly, our end to end talent suite is led by our powerful recruitment marketing platform, and it gives our clients the ability to create compelling candidate journeys that really start at the time that a candidate comes to your site, all leading up to the time that they apply, giving you the ability to create a powerful talent pipeline for your navigation. That being said, want to thank you very much for your time and your time with us. If you have any questions, please feel free to put those into the chat. We'll be able to send those off to the appropriate people, but I hope that you have a really great day and want to thank our panelists for joining us. Thanks everyone. Have a good day.