Fireside Chat with Angela Bailey

And thank you for joining us today. Welcome to Part 2 about the series, successfully addressing HR challenges. I will serve as the moderator for today's session. Before I introduce guest speaker today, note that we will accept questions during this chat at gwmentoring@opm.gov. Due to time constraints, if we do not get to your question on air, we will buy e-mail. We have Angela Bailey joining us today, the associate director of employee services for OPM and the chief human capital officer or chico. She has dated 32 years to public service with 26 of those years and human resources peerages responsible for the design, development, and implementation of governmentwide human resources policies, systems, and programs. She began her career with the Social Security administration and worked at DOD and several different components. With her experience, we are eager to hear her insights and experiences and how you address HR challenges. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. This is really a good thing that we are doing for the HR community. To kind of get started, I look back and think about the fact that it has been 32 years that I have erred for the federal government, and that seems like a really long time ago. You mentioned Social Security. What happened is, and maybe this is from the whole opinion of human resources -- who the heck knows? But I really wanted to become a prosecuting attorney whenever I was a kid. Absolutely, that is what I wanted to be. When I went to my mom to tell her about going to college for that, she said you can go to college but you need to get a job. I said, a job, what? So I went down to the unemployment office and apply. I take a test in about three years -- about three weeks later I got a card in the mail saying congratulations, you've got a job. I thought it was at the unemployment office. I went back down and she said, no, sweetie, you got a job at Social Security. So I was a gs2. I went in and paid my way through college. I got a bachelors and Masters degree. That was kind of my introduction to the whole thing called hiring, you know, the hiring process. There was like 20-some years later, actually doing hiring for them. It was kind of interesting to think back whenever you were 17 and how you actually applied for a job. Anyhow, I think you often bring a lot of those experiences with you as you are starting to map things out. That is how I got started with Social Security. After the Social Security administration come actually -- administration, actually I was a clerk. It did not work out very well because was a horrible typist. I left there and went to Maryland and got involved in housing. I was a budget analyst. And then personnel management specialist. From there, I went to Letterkenny Army Depot and got involved an employee or relations. It kind of felt like going home a little bit toward those roots of being a criminal prosecuting attorney, because we had arbitrations and MSPB. It was a death blow environment, so it was very different from Washington, D.C. -- it was a Depot environment, so it was very different from Washington, D.C. I moved around quite a bit to the different installations. One of the lessons learned or at least one of the things I think has helped my career be perhaps a little bit more successful is actually moving around a lot. You know, having lots of mobility and moving from location to location. You learn something different every place you go. If I were to encourage one thing, it would be for the HR community to take the opportunity to work really anywhere in the world, whenever you think about it with the federal government, but take the opportunity to get out and learn different organizations, their cultures, their missions, and things like that. I think it will make you a much better HR specialist. That is just kind of like a quick recap of how I got to hear , you know, from going from the different locations. Then when I was at the Defense content management agency, I finished up my Masters. I thought, maybe I will look and see what this whole seSES thing is all about and I applied for a job at OPM and got selected. That is how I got here. I looked at OPM as being the mothership for personnel. It is kind of like the pinnacle of your career. I have heard different people talk about that. If you are in the acquisition Corps, what is the pinnacle of that career? I think the pinnacle of the career for HR is really office personnel management. So it is a neat way to progress and have a career path to something important. That is just some of the things that I think helped shape my career, the relocations, and taking on different challenges. For example, when I worked with Defense contract management agency, I ejected -- I'd shifted out of Labor Relations a little bit. I was in housing at Fort Ritchie and a budget analyst. All those different experiences I think help make you a better HR specialist. You kind of see things from all these different perspectives . There are things that come out in the work-life policies that I strongly believe in. When you are working and paying your way through school and trying to raise a family and trying to travel all over the world, like I did with the Department of Defense at the time, you begin to appreciate this thing called work-life talents. I do not know if I really ever had it, but I am trying to do a better job of working toward a work-life balance. Those are some of the things I think you begin to appreciate maybe, how hard it was to get to where you are. Some of the things I believe that might help people be successful in this is I think one of the things is that you need to be quick, curious, and inquisitive. I think you have to really open up your eyes and see the world around you. You cannot constantly -- constantly be looking straight down. I think the new saying is "walk out onto the balcony." Take a very broad view of what is out there. I think it helps you see things a whole lot differently and helps you map out efferent solutions then if you are just constantly looking down. -- map out different solutions Van if you're just constantly looking down. Sometimes you look at what careers you would have if you could peer nae be I surprise myself, but I say I would love to be a professor or a CEO of a startup or a novelist. Or a CEO fixer, where you go in and fix something and then move on. I just think having these wide interests and reading broadly as important. Sometimes you get stuck only reading about HR and HR issues and HR magazines, and I think that is a mistake. Like I subscribed to "inc." magazine. I love that because it is all about entrepreneurial ship. Constantly making me dig about fast, quick start ups. Many of the things we were gone are kind of like a startup, like getting mentoring off the ground is a start. What are some of the things and it makes that we do? That is why I really encourage people to expand their reading and stuff so that you look at things differently. Another one is I think you have to seek new approaches. Sometimes when we are really good at something or we are doing really well, we say to ourselves, I do not understand why we have to change it. I am not sure it is really changing. I think it is getting with the tines are seeking new ways of doing something, making sure that we're constantly on the cutting edge -- I think it is getting with the times. It is not saying that what we're doing is bad. It is saying that we can always, not even really improved, but we can be more innovative in the way of delivering something. One of the other things I think is incredibly important is being comfortable with ambiguity. So you are never ever going to have enough answers in front of you or enough information in front of you to be able to make a decision, never. So I think those who can take ambiguity and can't kind of sift through it and see where they need to go will be far -- and can kind of sift through it and see where they need to go will be far more successful. We may never know about attrition and the cause being bad supervisors or bad work-life policies -- whatever the answer might be, sometimes you just have data that is coming in at you at all different directions and we have to figure out ways to trend that data and pull it all together to see a picture and make decisions and move out on them. You can always clean up after yourself. If you get the 80% solution, I think you can clean up the other 20% as you go along. Know that you're going to change your thinking and how you look at things over time. Because you just -- I think if you expose yourself to a whole lot of different things, you are thinking more changeover time. An example, a few years ago I was speaking to a group of SES 'and I said you're not going to have work-life balance, and you need to get over it. Your life will be chaotic. You will be working all kinds of hours, and I think you're not going to. And then what was interesting is I got back the result of the customer feedback, and this one comment really kind of floored me. It said -- wow, I cannot believe she would say there is no work- life balance. That is her own fault. She needs to figure out how to get some work-life balance. At first I was a little ticked. Now I will tell you that I really take the time on the weekends to put the devices aside and absolutely not look at them. I admit I look at them Sunday night because I cannot stand coming in Monday morning and not knowing what is going on. That and our acting director has often already sent me five e- mails saying -- where are you? I answer those. Definitely. But I really have taken a kind of to heart, what those comments said, and really trying to kind of scale back a little bit. For those of you that are in leadership positions out there, the one lesson I would say to them as well is when I scale back, my deputy associate directors are not getting e- mails for me that they can't then scale back. And turn, they are not writing to you and you can scale back. It is a cascading effect of improving worklife that just because when the boss stops, the trickle-down effect stops as well. You know, I just throw it out there -- I do not know, maybe you're still getting e-mails on the weekend, but we will work on that. I am just saying that I have changed my thinking over time as to how to really address those. We're digging into the problems and finding the root cause. Behind every story is a story. Behind every issue is a story. There is a root cause and we need to find out what it is. Too often we try to immediately fix the HR issue, slap a Band- Aid on it, and then move on. But we do not dig to find out why we are not able to hire I.T. specialists in Boston and peered we can look of the data and go -- I do not know, maybe we need to ask for more pay because Boston is the issue. It could be that the supervisor in that unit is causing such a ruckus that the employees want to leave. Asking why is hugely important. And I think we need to, in HR, help the managers solve problems but not necessarily do everything for them. I had a conversation with a guy one time. He said to me on my you know, it is your job to go out and recruit and get me the aerospace engineers that I need. I thought, geez, that is odd, because I cannot imagine giving up my recruiting to an HR specialist, and I am one, but having it up to an HR person and say you go find the next policy expert. That seems like a bizarre way to handle recruiting. In HR, I have always believed this, if we take the attitude that we are really trying to put ourselves out of business -- in other words, we are trying to educate the managers and employees in such a way -- like, always say to yourself that I am going to educate those managers so well that they will not need me, then what you are doing is you're constantly pushing yourself to educate them. If that makes sense. Because I think it is a mistake for us to want the managers and stuff to be so dependent on us that they cannot do anything without us, and then we create this culture of frustrated managers and frustrated HR specialists. I really do believe that knowledge is power, even though it is a cliché. I really think it is and we need to push that out to the managers. We will never ever not have a job. I mean, they are always going to need us. But it just seems to me that that is the path we should take with the hiring managers. I also believe in, and this is for our HR staff, I believe in inspiring people to perform at a high level. I have always found throughout my career that people can and will achieve great results when you set the standard height. When you set the bar low, that is where everybody gravitates to. But people love to have high bars set, and they love to achieve them, exceed them, and then set it higher . It is not meant to be mean. It is meant to raise the level of performance for everybody. I have always believed in setting really high expectations for myself, but more importantly, for the staff as well. And then, another one, and maybe this is just for the Washington, D.C., crowd, I will put it that way, but you have to be politically agile. In this town in particular. You have to understand the political implications behind every single thing that you do, whether it is the consequences, unintended consequences of every decision. The most simplest things that you thought, you know, the advice you might give a manager that seems so simple, when put inside a political environment, it can actually come back to haunt you. So that is one thing that I try to do, be very politically mindful of what is going on. And I mean political little p. In fact, because it does not matter who is in office, we really have to be apolitical and did not really have an opinion. We need to find ways to help that particular administration or that particular commander or that particular assistant secretary carry out their duties at that time. The other one to my leveraging diversity. I think we have to look -- the other one is leveraging diversity. We have to look beyond race and gender. I am totally anti-diversity of thought. In different perspectives -- I am totally into diversity of thought. Bringing in different perspectives. I love putting engineers together with artists. You have different minds they come to the table. When you take an artistic mind, they are very abstract, thinking out here, where as an engineer is very methodical, often. When you combine those two, you get better and stuff. Even if they know nothing that you are working on in HR. My advice to the HR community is when you're designing a policy, I would reach out into it and I would not just do it with the HR professionals. I would bring in people from different backgrounds. Again, not think of it as race, origin, gender -- I mean different diversity backgrounds, even field versus headquarters, that kind of thing. Because they just have different ways of thinking and seeing things. That is one of the ideas of one of the things that I would do. So this one is kind of funny, but be open-minded. I think we need to listen more than we are talking, even though I am doing all the talking right now. [LAUGHTER] but I am listening. I do think you have to be open- minded. I will tell you I sometimes struggle with this, because as people are talking about a particular issue, I do find myself sometimes just -- I am already preparing the answer. I just really cannot wait for them to shut up so I can say what I have to say. So I have to restrain myself and really just kind of listen. I have been to coaching and SES, and I said that you really need to learn to be there in the moment. Whether it is for family, kids, staff, or for your boss, you kind of have to be there. You can tell once a but he is really there in the moment. They have a glazed over look and are not really paying attention. I think this whole blackberry -- crackberry is what you should practically call it. Everybody is so interested in looking down at their black area that they are not paying attention -- looking at their like Barry and they are not paying attention. Some are not allowed to have them. If they are allowed to happen, they better be taking notes on what rear talking about. It better not be the grocery list or checking their e-mail e- mail or Google account or whatever. They need to be paying attention. Otherwise, what is the point of us all kind of getting together? Those are just a few things. Did you want to ask me some questions now? Wax I was thinking about your background in management. Did you ever encounter situations where you had resistance, and how did you deal with that as an HR specialist? I remember a case, I think I was a GS11 specialist at the Defense distribution Center. One of the commanders that I was dealing with was a contracting commander who did contract acquisitions. He just truly thought, because he had a background and was certified and stuff, because he had a background in contracting, he truly believes that he knew far more than I did about contract negotiations when he came to union relations or Labor Relations. And so as I was trying to give him advice, he kept telling me he knew more than I did, that he was a certified contracting Officer, that he had four more years of experience, he was a commander in the Navy. Autumn line, he was smarter than me and I needed to just back off. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways to look at his situation like that, but here is the thing that I always took and this is what I think for the HR profession. I think we give advice and managers can take it or leave it. But you cannot take it personal when they do not take it. So when he did not take it, my parting words to him were -- it is fine, since you clearly know more than me, no problem. So when you get that unfair labor practice charge, and you're going to, or your grievance, just give me a call and I will bail you out. I will figure out a way to bail you out, so does give me a call. A couple weeks later he had like five ULP's and probably 15 grievances. It was a mess. He had himself in a mess. And he did call, which was interesting. I just kind of chuckled. He said, you know, aren't you going to say -- you told me so? I said, no, I told you what I was going to do was bail you out and get you out of this mess. By letting him fail him and he then came back. I never really raised it with him. I just helped him get through all of this. From that point on, we had a great relationship and he took the advice that I had to give him. So I think the number one thing with resistance, and I still practice that to today, but now the stakes are much higher and the audiences are much bigger and they are more powerful, but I still take the tact, this is my advice and you can take it or leave it. And I am here for you when it is not word out for you some of that I'm still here for you to help you fix it up and clean up after it. I appreciate hearing that, because we encounter resistance in the HR community. Some of the things he talked about, like going with ambiguity , a lot of times in the HR community we have a lot of things coming at us. It can be ambiguous. How do you sort through it to be able to make a decision if you have to make one for customers? I think whenever you have a lot of ambiguity or a lot of data and stuff, often times what I do is just step back from it all. I rate it all, kind of a rate in your mind. But you have to step back from the issue in the problem. Said to yourself -- OK, why are they coming at it this way? Remember what I said about the story behind the story. So I keep asking why. Explain to me why. I'm not sure I entirely understand. You know how people will just talk, talk, talk and go -- you know what I mean? And those people do not want to say no, but I usually say, no, I have no clue what you're talking about. Timeout, let's start over. Let me pick at it until a fully completely understand what they are trying to say or what the issue really is so I can offer them the best advice that I can. Here at OPM, we get a ton of requests that come in. Like we need direct hiring authority for this or we need to do a comp waiver. You say, what are you going to do with the direct hiring authority? Often it is like, I do not know, but she said I need to have one so that is why I want one. Really? OK, so are you going to change your job announcements? No. OK, so why do you need this if you're hiring nobody? If you do not change your recruiting practices and unit not -- you do not change your job announcements, giving you direct hiring authority is not going to -- you're just going to more quickly hire nobody. The underlying issues are still going to be the same. I think the saying is it is helping them peel the onion back. It is like taking a layer at a time and talk about why you are really not able to get that aerospace engineer. Where do you go to recruit them? Well, I am going to Walmart. Well, you are not going to find them at Walmart. You need to go to Texas Tech, or something like that. Those things really help with the ambiguity, just do not be afraid to ask questions. I appreciate that. We are not going to open it up for questions from the field and we have a couple of questions -- let me check my iPad here and see what we have going on. The first question we have is, especially in these times of furloughs and decreasing budgets, it is affecting morale and the HR community. How are you dealing with that and how are you hoping your staff? That is from Philadelphia. You know, that is kind of a great question to ask right now. Often times when we think of morale, we only think of the employees. I think that the SES leadership and the leadership itself, they are employees as well. I will be perfectly honest with you, sometimes I do get tired -- not sometimes -- I am tired of all of the federal bashing. I am tired of this belief that somehow we are not contributing to the whole or we're not making the nation better when, in fact, we are Americans, too. Not only are we Americans, we're taxpayers as well. It is interesting that it is as if we are separated. Add on top of that the HR community, and it is absolutely, I think, my quest to really help the HR community be seen as the professionals that they are. I think that that is one way to really help the HR community as a whole I'm a by focusing in on them and making sure that they had the kinds of tools that they need to do their job, that they have the kind of education or training that they. To really let them know that, yeah, there is somebody here, not only in Washington that throughout, really actually here to support them. I will tell you that when it comes to morale, this may be controversial to say, but here is how I see morale -- I think every employee has a responsibility to come to work with high morale. I think that that is an employee responsibility. It is my responsibility. It is your responsibility. It is the questioner's responsibility. I have a responsibility when I get to work to not destroy it. Meaning, do not destroy your morale whenever I get here. That is what I think my responsibility kicks in. One of the lessons I think the HR community can do is rally together, pull itself together and really, you know, make sure that they are there for each other. And sometimes maybe it is getting together after work and going bowling or happy hour or whatever, whatever your vice is in you enjoy doing. Sometimes it is like, you know, take it outside of work and get to know each other and enjoy each other's company. I think that that is helpful. I appreciate that response. We also have another question from Crystal from DOD in Albuquerque. Again, with budgets being tight and sequester and everything, HR specialists are looking for training. What are suggestions and things they can do to become professionals in their field? One of the things we did within OPM is, working with the CHICO Council, we have HRU. It has free training. You can register and take training. Every course is not on demand, but we're really starting to build the number of courses. The cool thing about it is if you go on there, you can be assured that the courses are OPM-approved. It is not just this hodgepodge of stuff here and actually come in from the agencies for many agencies have done a fantastic job with some of their courses, but we put our seal of approval on it so that they can get training that way. That is one way. This second way is, just frankly, learning. You know, on the job and actually being able to work with someone who is more senior or get together together with some of your colleagues. Have a brown bag lunch may be and say these are the issues we're dealing with today. I have both policy and the operating officer at OPM, and we created the village concept. So policy and operations must work together to solve some of these issues. They have brownbag lunches together together. Operating can understand policy. Policy can understand operating. I strongly recommend that you hook yourself up with someone who is really good at their game, knows what they are doing, and is willing to teach you. Some people are really good and their terrible teachers, so make sure you hook yourself up with someone like that. Plus, the online learning. There are many ways to learn that do not cost money. One of the best ways is to really find somebody who is just an expert in their field and ask them, will you spend time with me and help me really understand and learn my trade? I like that. From working in the organization, I can see the difference between the policy and organization working together. Sometimes in field locations, they feel out of the loop when HR policy decisions are made. You have recommendations for better communication with our headquarters locations? That comes from Brenda in Philadelphia. You know I have spent the vast majority of my career in the field. I can understand that. In fact, when I got to headquarters are used to say there's nothing that a field office can do that I have not already done to a headquarters, which includes ignoring policies. So I do understand that. . It is interesting how policy is made. I do not have a real appreciation for how policy was made until I got to OPM. When I was in the field I would often think, gosh, you know, OPM a sit there and make up these crazy policies and then they send them out to us and we cannot implement them and they do not make any sense. But when you are here, what is fascinating is it is the art of compromise. So you may start out with, honestly, the same idea the field had as to what made sense, but until you get the negotiating with a special interest group and/or getting it through Congress Congress, your policy does not look anything like what you first started out or it has so many nuances to it that it is almost impossible to implement. I think many times what is helpful, and I do not know if it in the field as this kind of access, but if you can find the person who wrote it, and often in the Federal Register you will see the person's name who is responsible for the policy or that regulation or whatever, but call them and ask them to walk you through the intent. Not so much what is written, but what was the intent? What were you really intending whenever you wrote this policy? What did you really mean to say? And what is it that you are hoping that we do with this policy to make it more useful in the field? Again, I understand the chain of command and people kind of freak out if you call OPM directly kind of thing, but you are welcome to call us to ask for help walking through the policy so you understand the intent. That make sense. Another question, how does one break the paint with HR width -- break the pane in HR. I think it is like a window pane. With an MBA and HR accreditation but no experience. Well, our classification system kind of drives us to not necessarily being able to take some of this education and stuff and map it over into some of these career folds. So HR is probably one of them. With an MBA and HR accreditation but no experience, we would probably still go back to the person and say, well, that gets you a GS7, maybe a GS9, depending on her grade. There is someone I know that is about to do this and that is -- if you want to break into a new field, sometimes you have to take a downgrade to do it. And I did it twice. I wanted to be a budget analyst, I stepped backwards. I wanted to get into personnel, I stepped backwards. Because I was lower grade, did not really affect my pay. I am impressed with this lady I know he wants to be a Labor Relations specialist. She is in communications now. We sat down with her and explained to her as she has the potential of losing over $15,000 making this career move, and she still -- she has a Masters in human resources, but she is willing to do that because she wants to be in this particular career folds. So sometimes breaking in means swallowing your pride and saying I am not necessarily just taking a downgrade step back, and instead I want to purposely improve my career. This is the path I am going to take to do it. I have done it. I have a nasty question, what does it look like -- I have been asked the question, what does it look like on your resume? I can tell you, no one has ever asked me about when I stepped backwards, ever. In fact, I think probably more people see it as taking the initiative to do something that is to benefit your career. OK, so we have another question from Stacy from Baltimore. She mentions that you set the stakes much higher now. In what way are they higher, and who are you servicing now? The stakes are much higher -- I'm not sure what context I said that. Talking about Labor Relations, SES, and now CHICO. Dealing with problems and issues. OK, the stakes are higher. So when I was in the field, a Labor Relations specialist or employee relations specialist, your sphere of influence is down. I mean, it was the commanders and stuff right there on the installation. And the local press was not picking up what you had to say. Congress was not calling you up about it and stuff. When I say the stakes are higher, it is like now whenever I am in Washington -- it did sing me a long time to get used to this and it is still, quite frankly, great pain. Now everything I say and do -- and this webinar, it will be live streamed. It tends to hype you up to a point where you start to get scared. You do not want to be risk averse and not do anything. Everything you say -- it is not just that it is reported, it is taken out of context. They will use one sentence and drive a story that is over here. One time I get a call from -- actually, I do not know if it was a CHICO or deputy CHICO, I got an e-mail blasting me for what she read in the paper. Just blasted me. I was like, but it is not what I said. It is so taken out of context. I still believe the people we serve are the people in the field. The HR specialist in the field, the headquarters or did we absolutely serve, they are our customer or the HR specialist, from an OPM standpoint, but so are the managers. We had both agencies, HR specialist, and the managers, that is who we serve. I constantly say to myself, for every policy that we put in place, how is it going to be implemented in Illinois, rock island, how is it going to be implemented in Los Angeles? How are they going to be able to do this? We are not always successful and meeting their needs, but I guarantee you that it is often thought about. There you go. We will take one more question. This is from Larry in Washington, D.C. Especially now that you handle multiple responsibilities, so in the HR field, specially HR specialists and staffers, they get a lot of different projects. How can you focus on your core responsibilities instead of taking care of those ad hoc ad hoc projects that come up? That is a great question. I think over time I am getting better at it. What I noticed is when I went from being a Labor Relations specialist to an executive director, I struggled immensely with gearing up and being in action officer. I still wanted to get in the weeds. You have to learn agility and all these things. At heart, I am in action officer. Even today, there is this juggling act and forth between managing programs and people and being in action officer, I had to find ways, believe it or not, to satisfy that. So I do things like make hunting -- make hummingbird feeders on the weekends -- I find creative things for me to do, but I paint or some thing like that. I used to be someone that had to reply to every single e-mail within 24 hours, read all of them, that is just what I did. I just cannot do it even -- anymore. I do not feel guilty about it anymore because it is just not possible. So I look at the main things I need to pay attention to, and those are the things I pay attention to while it needs paid attention to. When it is up and running and doing OK, then I let it go -- just walk away. I let it go and let it run on its own with its own SES. Biggest advice, just let go. You cannot do it all. Makes sense. One of the things that we have been talking about a lot today is your career, how you started out, and how to deal with certain challenges. As we wrap up for the day, what are some takeaways that HR specialist around the country and in the fellow community can really focus in on the information that we share today? Here's my advice, keep your head up, put your shoulders back, and be proud of the profession you are in. Sometimes we get heat up often, not only as federal employees. Even more so as HR specialists. Sometimes we just need to say, you know what, enough is enough. I know of my job is, I am a true professional, I am here to help you as best I can. I am going to learn my craft. I am going to know what I need to know. You cannot be a slouch. Have confidence in yourself. Have confidence in your to actually deliver. Learn your trade. Nobody is going to respect you or put any value and you if you do not know the answers. If you do not know the difference between the different hiring authorities or you do not know the difference -- if your trade is Labor Relations, between chapter 75 and 43. If you do not know your trade, nobody will respect you. Learn your trade. Learn your mission of the organization you work in. Know everything about it. If you are only servicing one commander, know that commander. If you are seeing a region, know the region. If you are servicing a whole being, know the whole wing. For me, it is OPM. I cannot just know about personnel. I have to know about retirement. I have to about health insurance. Federal investigative service. Because I cannot do my job and I cannot be a benefit and they will not take me serious if I do not know what they do. So learn to speak their language. Then I think they will keep inviting you in more and more if you learn to speak their language first. Know your trade and have some confidence in yourself. Wow, very wonderful today. I appreciate your insights. I know the HR community is very thankful as well. Thank you for your time. I know you're very busy. I have learned some things today. Thank you for that. I want to thank everyone who submitted questions. We appreciate that. Like I mentioned before, if we do not get to address your question on and, we will respond by e-mail. I want to thank you again. We will send you a survey immediately following the broadcast peered we really want to receive your feedback. It is important as we host future sessions. I want to think the government wide mentoring team and OPM's technology team who put a lot of work into this. Please stay tuned for the concluding part of this mentoring series Emma --, the situational sessions in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New Mexico. Thank you so much for your time today and we look forward to seeing you may be in person. Have a great afternoon.