Your Future Career Right Here In Northern Ireland | Workplus Ep. 14

Discover Career Paths Without Leaving Northern Ireland

In this episode of Workplus, host Richard Kirk speaks with Steven Norris, Deputy Director at Antrim & Newtownabbey Borough Council. Steven shares how his council is bridging the gap between schools and businesses, tackling Northern Ireland’s skills challenges, and helping young people see the rich career opportunities that exist right on their doorstep.

• Schools struggle to showcase the full range of modern career paths
• Work experience helps young people discover local opportunities
• Council’s role in reconnecting schools and businesses after the pandemic
• Volume of job vacancies versus low unemployment in NI
• Widespread lack of awareness about local sectors like engineering and logistics
• Challenges around economic inactivity and intergenerational worklessness
• Council strategies to reach people far from the labour market
• Real-world training that starts with confidence-building, not just qualifications
• Upskilling as a way to unlock entry-level opportunities
• Why purpose and fulfilment at work matter more than ever

BEST MOMENTS

00:01:36. “It came from our engagement with businesses on the ground.”
00:02:44. “All of that had kind of died away as one of the results of the pandemic.”
00:03:10. “We saw an opportunity to get involved in that gap between those two sides.”
00:04:09. “We’ve been so fortunate to have our partnership with Workplus.”
00:05:59. “All of that’s completely untrue, but there’s such an awareness gap of opportunities.”
00:09:17. “How do we lift them? How do we give them confidence?”
00:12:15. “We work with companies really, really closely to understand where the gaps are.”
00:21:04. “If you can bring one person into a job and then a better job, you’re affecting an entire household.”
00:32:07. “It gives people that structure. It gives them something to build a life around.”

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Transcript

0:00

Schools have a big, big challenge in understanding the breadth, the diversity of career opportunities, particularly in our borough. But you know, much further beyond that as well. Perhaps, you know, traditional industries, traditional career paths that schools are well versed in and know well are well covered. But those other areas, whether it be into engineering, whether it be into professionals services, whether it be entry IT services, are not as well-established within schools as potential career paths. And equally then from the business side, allowing them to expose young people to a day in the life, in any particular industry or any particular company, is really valuable for them to try and nurture and inspire young people to understand. You can have a career in pretty much anything here in Northern Ireland without having to go away. Welcome to work. Plus the podcast that shines a light on the people doing good work across Northern Ireland. I'm your host, Richard Kirk, founder of Work Plus, I've spent years working with employers, schools, colleges and universities, helping young people and career changers to make better informed career decisions. Each week I set time with real people doing real jobs to explore how they got there, what they've learned, and why their work matters. If you're a parent, teacher, carer, or just curious about what good work looks like today, you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Stephen, delighted to have you on the podcast. Today for having me. Let's start with yesterday. So there was a celebration of and for work experience program that you've been behind for the last couple of years at council. Tell us about how that came about. Well, like, we were just delighted to have so many people with us yesterday to to celebrate what was the second full year of our work experience program? It came from, our engagement with businesses on the ground. And it's something, you know, the council was very, very focused on in terms of getting out to businesses and, and here in the issues that they're facing on a day on daily basis. It's it's it's one of our core values. And, you know, it will come as no surprise at all that that skills pipeline, career development, all of those things where top of their list in terms of challenges they were having and I think during the pandemic at businesses that maybe had I had managed to develop relationships with some of the schools in our borough, and, and, and businesses that had garnered those relationships, struggled to rekindle them after the pandemic. And as part of our, labor market partnership, we had established a skills subgroup. And again, almost in a reciprocal way, we were hearing the same from from schools that they had new ends to businesses that couldn't get connections. What used to happen around you know, factory tours or business people coming in to talk to children about career opportunities. All of that had kind of died away as, as an, as one of the results of the pandemic. So through all of that engagement, we saw an opportunity to get involved in that gap between those two sides of that same coin and try and coordinate and develop a program that that looked at how we could maybe revisit the work placement, the work experience, area and get talent or future talent in the sense of school children into businesses. And there's a lot of reasons for that. You know, some of them are around a broad understanding. I think for us, schools have a big, big challenge in understanding the, the breadth, the diversity of career opportunities, particularly in our borough. But, you know, much further beyond that as well. And perhaps, you know, traditional industries, traditional career paths that that skills are well versed in and know well are well covered. But those other areas, whether it be into engineering, whether it be into professional services, whether it be into trade services, are not as well established within schools as as potential career paths. And equally then from the business side, you know, allowing them to expose young people to a day in the life, in any particular industry or any particular company is really valuable for them to try and nurture and inspire young people to understand, you know, you can have a career in pretty much anything here in Northern Ireland without having to go away. So we, we, we started it because of that. We started it because of this gap between the two sides and it's really grown from there. We've been, you know, we've been so fortunate to have our partnership with with Work Plus and delivering that, but also the partnership we have with the businesses and the skills bringing everybody together. And, you know, along with that continued. Yeah, yeah. And it's you're right that engaging with businesses all the time like what are the big the big talent challenges or skills challenges there that you're hearing as you as you meet with those businesses? Well let's start with the big one. It's volume. It's just it's just a sheer volume debate. We have very, very low unemployment. We have very, very high employment, which is great for the economy. But it means that the pool of people ready and able and willing to work is very, very small. And if you take our borough, for example, before we look at the night picture, we have somewhere in the region of, you know, 2% unemployment, which is about three, 2000, 3000 people. And we have somewhere in the region of 12 to 15,000 vacancies in the companies across our borough. Yeah. So short of developing more people, we need to find other ways of retaining and attracting talent into the companies in our in our borough. So that's probably the volume is the biggest challenge they're facing in terms of skills. There's no doubt about that. I think then more operationally it's it's, letting people understand the diversity of roles. So I think people still have this, reasonably singular mindset around what, what skills and careers looks like. And I don't know, if it comes from education system or if it's just developed as a kind of Northern Ireland psyche piece where if you want to work in creative industries, you have to go somewhere else. If you want to work in high value manufacturing, you have to go somewhere else. If you want to work in pharmaceuticals sciences, you have to go somewhere else. All of that's completely untrue, but I think there's such an awareness gap of opportunities and employers are really, really struggling to get that message out. They don't have that budget capability or resources even with even with in large companies, you have big HR departments to do that outreach to the extent where everybody, everybody in the geography would know that the a the company exists, B that there are hundreds of roles and see, this is how you would get into them. And here's all the pathways. So for us and particularly in the business room, right term you know the skills big big challenge over volume. But I think awareness is probably equally as important for them as well. And in council, the are you able to help attract you. So work experience is one of the ways to do that. But what are the other ways that you can get alongside a business to to support them with those volume and awareness challenges? It's a good, good question. It's a good question that there's so little we can do about the volume piece. It's it's one of these things. Birth right across Northern Ireland is really low and has been for decades now. So, you know, population change in our borough is about 100 people a year. So we're getting 100 people a year. That's not going to solve this, this issue. We've had a, a period of flux around migration and immigration question. And for lots of industries, that was a solution. And probably still remains a solution in terms of how they fill the gaps, fill the posts, and do what they need to do. Obviously, there are challenges around that, as we've seen recently, and it's not straightforward. And it's certainly not straightforward even logistically with visas and with work permits and everything else that's required around that. So that option that used to be reasonably fluid and reasonably open and available to them isn't as, as such as as such now. So we struggle with the volume piece. But what we really focus on then is how we can, get more people who are further away from the labor market into the labor market. And that is a big piece. And I, white as well, and department are very clear on on a strategy around how we need to tackle this economic and activity issue that we have. But we also have, you know, and our borough, we have somewhere, again, in the region of 15,000 people who could work, but for a variety of reasons, choose not to work. And those are the people now. Not our retired people, not our students, not our people who have, you know, care and responsibilities, but that that portfolio or that cohort of people that, that choose not to work. And there's a whole range of reasons which we we won't have time to get into today that they choose to do that. That's the challenge. That's the challenge. How do we get into those areas? How do we lift them? How do we give them confidence? How do we build their self-esteem? How do we do all of those things? First? How do we then take that, build them into a training program, even if this is essential mathematics, essential English and literacy, essential ICT, whatever it might be. And then how do we take them from that into into a baseline role in a company somewhere that that interests them? And then how do you balance that against their own financial situation, our own welfare and all the rest of it? So that is the challenge we face. Yeah. And we have a mechanism in which we, try and tackle that through the labor market partnership, which is solely focused really on on economic connectivity and how we can help those those individuals. And so we really need to bring more of them into the labor market. That would certainly solve some of our volume issue. So that's where we spend a lot of and particularly on the skills side, that's where we spend a lot of our capacity and a lot of our time. Are there any examples of that labor market partnership actually working? And in that sense you mentioned by these programs, but mathematics or essential skills. And then how do we get people into jobs where they don't have the qualification. Can you give us any examples of that? Absolutely. We have been so positive in terms of trying to develop courses that will interest people, firstly, but also that are required. So we have had a number of courses, and I suppose what we've tried to do, as I say, the first bit of the puzzle is access. And so you need to you need to work really carefully with community leaders, with people in those areas to try and bring about that change that we want to bring. So we have, run very successful courses that look at our training initiatives, that look at very simplistic things, like self self-esteem, team confidence building, how to present yourself, very simple stuff, like how do you show up at the same place at the same time, dressed appropriately every day? You know, ideas feed yourself for a day at work. Very, very simplistic. Yeah. Ideas like that. And then with with maybe Pat, I don't know, two, 300 people through courses like that over the last number of years. And then once we do that with them, they're then they're in a better mindset to take on a low level course, whether, as I said, whether it be in mathematics or literacy or whatever it might be. And again, we have really good examples of that working in some of our areas where you're bringing, you know, 20 or 25 in a cohort together to do a foundation course. And you find actually, if you can keep the community grip connected together, there's a almost like a peer and center to show up every day. And you get a cohort that really like working together from the same area, and they bring them through. And then the bit that we have, again, find reason reasonably successful in terms of how we've delivered it as what we would call upskilling courses. So we work with companies really, really closely to understand where the gaps are in their current talent pool and what we end up probably doing most of the time with them is giving them some financial support to upskill existing staff into more senior roles. So if I took warehousing, logistics, massive sector, not doing it now, probably the biggest in Northern Ireland in terms of proportionality, where we can take people who have been working on the factory or in the warehouse floor for 2 or 3 years and train them to be logistics planners, which is the big, big gap or logistics companies face, because there's much more complex world in terms of moving goods from one place to the other. And they need logistics planners. They need people who can map all that out. So you've got somebody in their facility who has been on the floor, knows this place back to front for a few years. What we'll do is we'll pay for their upskilling course, get them skills as a logistics planner, and then the company will move them into that role. That then creates an opening for us to fill at that baseline level where you're stacking shelves, you're selling facilement orders, and we can move some of the people that we've brought through those base courses and to those with the appropriate mechanisms around them to support employment, whether that be transport to the company, whether that be help with childcare, whether that be a whole variety of things, and we can bring them in at the bottom level and get them, get them work, which is probably the most important thing. Yeah, that's. Great because I often think about it like it's an employer's responsibility to upskill their people and then to to fill those gaps that are, that are created. So why like, why is the employer not just doing that themselves. Like what? Why is why is council to be involved in that. That it's probably comes down to costs for businesses, probably predominantly. And maybe a lack of vision. So for some of them, they think that the right route is just to continue to go out to the open market and try and attract the people at that middle management level that they might need. Obviously, we've just talked to those people don't exist there. They're not available, or if they are available, there's by ten companies looking for them. So the chances that you fell in that role through that, that process, that very traditional recruitment process is unlikely to happen. So we've been talking to the companies, talking to lots of companies about this. And instead of trying to create additional rules at a lower level, we've decided the better way to do that is to try and reward and incentivize some of the people that have been working with them for a long time to come into a more senior role. And to be fair, the companies really volunteered. And it's it is collaborative. You know, we pay some of it, the company pays some of it, but they equally have to then take on the the cost of the new roles and take on the cost of potentially additional roles at AD at a base level that they may have, may or may not have replaced. And the current economic climate that we're in. So the companies are committed and we need them to be committed to it, because we require them to create roles for people and employ people who come through our schemes. They can't they can't just go again to the market and try and sell these positions we've created. We want them to to use the pipeline that we have created for them to sell their roles. So the companies are really, really invested on it. And, we've we've had a lot of success with it. You know, that's great. It's a great way to think about it, as you say, not going out to the open market to try and get those roles, upskilling existing staff and then people in the para who maybe are adjusted the right level to come in and who's like that. Yeah, that's really, really helpful to think of it like that. Yeah. So we, we thought about about some of the things you've been doing right now and some of the let's take away back. Right. So we talked we talked about work experience. What did you do for work expression. My goodness. We question did you me any I did I did an appraise exactly why the thing is broken. Because I worked in a school okay. And a classroom and a P4 classroom for a week. And I knew within the first hour that it wasn't for me at all. Didn't have no interest in being a teacher. No interest in being a teacher, no interest in being in school. In fact, anybody who will know me will tell you that that's exactly the wrong thing for me to do. I'd either be locked up or there'd be children locked up by the end of the first day, and that would just it would just not work. So yeah, I did work experience. It must have been in fourth form or fifth form. And again, my mum worked in a school. That was the easy option. That's that, that made most sense. She could take me there, she could bring me home. And you know, if, if it didn't work, it wouldn't. No big deal. So. Yeah. Didn't work at all for me. Didn't work at all for me. And I got absolutely nothing from it. But I could confirm in the teaching and working with children was just not going to be where I ended up in life. There's just no way that that is going to work. Yeah. So what were the things that you didn't enjoy then when you're, say, back at school and how did you how did you start to think about your career when you were getting ready to leave school? Had good question. I suppose maths was always my thing. So, don't ask me to write anything down. Terrible handwriting, awful spelling. But maths. I could do miles inside out. So I always knew that I wanted to do something. And, mathematical area of of work. I suppose, for a small and very short time, I thought about sciences, maybe doing physics, maybe doing something like that and becoming the next astronomer. The next you know, and then my one of my best mates as school has now, I got, like, three comets named after him, went to Oxford and did all the do. So I'm glad I didn't do that because there would been nothing like living in the shadow of of of Doctor Massey. Neco. He is just, it's just brilliant. So astronomy and physics, right? So did maths again. Very traditional rate went dead. GCSEs and A-levels, post-primary went to university and yeah, my subjects who studied economics decided that I liked to. I liked how economies worked. I like to understand what created wealth and a society. And I suppose what really caught me about it was hired impinges on everything in life. There's a really, really good book series called Freakonomics, and I started to read them when I was in kind of lower sector Upper Sackville. I had a notion that this is something I wanted to do, and it's really a series of short stories that tell you how economics can basically underpin pretty much everything in life, from, what you name your child to, you know, any other sort of weird and quirky example. And it really captured me and really captured that, that something like that. And working in an area where you're trying to create wealth, and that's often described as a bad thing, you know, you know, wealth is very much sometimes portrayed in the media and in broader society as being a really bad thing. And it can be it can be especially if it's inequitable and, you know, there's a real issue, you know, in Northern Ireland with, income distribution, you know, the power in the rich and the gap between them. And I don't deny that at all. But I think the creation of wealth in this general sense, as long as it's inclusive, has such power to transform lives and transform lives and all areas of, of, of, of life that, that we're having big, big issues with, whether that be health, be education, whether that be your wellbeing and your mental health, you know, adventures and all of that quality of life, everything that that's that, that people value in their life, is impacted by economic. And that just for me was was the ticket. I was hoping that I might, might have a small part to play in that. So did you start you studied that after school, then? Yeah, I went to Queens, did my bachelor's in economics there, and then did a master's course in applied economics, which was basically taking the theory that I learned in my bachelor's degree and working out how that actually applies in the real world, because the bachelor's degree was literally just doing mathematics problem stand out, work and I what supply and demand ratios were, etc., etc. which is all well and good, but has absolutely no bearing on the real world. So the applied economics master's course that I did was really the first time it was grounded in policy development and how you might shape, programs and projects and, and what interventions and how you formulate interventions that might have an impact or how how you determine whether they will have an impact on the economy. And obviously, then what I've talked about, the broader kind of well-being of of society. Yeah. So there's kind of when we think about some like sustainability, we often think about economic sustainability, social and environmental. Those things are all are all interconnected. They're all interconnected. If you have you can bring I always think about it from a very individual perspective. So if you can bring one person end to end to job and to a better job and to a better paid job, you are affecting an entire household of people. You're giving them more disposable income and with more disposable income, with greater opportunities. You you know, all the research that's out there suggests that are educational choices and educational attainment of their children. It's improved. Their health and well-being is improved because with more disposable income, they can make better choices in terms of, what they eat, how they spend their leisure time, what they do as a family unit, they can maybe afford to buy a new house that that increases their their wellbeing and their mental well-being. They can go on, you know, there's just so much if you can just left one person in a slightly better financial situation. Because you've upskilled them, because you've given them tools to apply to a different job or that you've brought and your employer in who's looking for hundreds of staff, and you can get people into them. That's for me. That's what it comes down to. It's not not necessarily about the big picture, broad strategic stuff, which we do every day as well. But for me, it's back down to the reality of the one person that you've managed to help improve their life, and that is economics, economics that impinges on an all of those other areas. So, so clearly for me anyway, that, that it makes perfect sense. Yeah. Makes perfect sense. Economics is everywhere. It's everywhere. And it's everything. And I love. John McMullen, who used to head up, Bryson Griffin. He he said something very similar to what you just said, and he summed it up like they said, when someone has a job, they have resources, which gives them choices. That's required. I can I. Can, but it's it's the same. It's it's the same, it's the same meaning behind it in the same, just calling out. Yeah. Something which is, which is really great for our, for our society. So you talk a bit there to about some of the challenges in your, in your work in terms of helping people who are maybe economically inactive with disability, long term sickness, or maybe just are choosing not to work because the economic conditions for them, you know, so like I so how do we lever how do we lever some of that. How does that change? Stephen. Well, we've. Been trying for 25 years to change the dial on that particular measure, economic activity that Northern Ireland has not budged. And in all the time that I've been alive, it's sat comfortably at about 25% of our working age population. And when you compare that to to the rest of GB or, down to the Republic of Ireland, where it sits at about 12, 11, you can see the challenge, the scale of the challenge we have here and there have been multiple, interventions, multiple new programs and spearheaded that, you know, that's very senior level across executive, as well as at local government level that have tried to tackle this issue. It comes down probably to intergenerational cycles. And it's trying to break that. And that's that is the crux of it. We can give all the training. We we can go into every community. Can we offer all the training that we want. But if the financials for those those people do not stack up, then it becomes unviable. And that is probably one of the greatest challenges this is our society faces today. And you hear the the drama in Westminster at the moment because they're talking about welfare reform. And, and, you know, whatever side of that debate you're on, the welfare system across the UK and the Northern Ireland does need to be looked at because there as well, not only because the spending on it has has spiraled out of control to the point where it's unaffordable. So from a very and the supply demand for money, going back to my economics point of view, we cannot afford for the system to continue to grow and the scale it is growing. But in northern Ireland in particular, we have lots of historical issues that affect our population still to this day that mean that our our dependance upon welfare is higher than in every other region of the United Kingdom. And and if you look again down to the other comparator in the Republic of Ireland. So for us, it's probably getting to a point where it is better financially for people to work. And that seems like a really simplistic thing to say. It seems like probably a very, sensible, straightforward, logical thing to say. But at the minute that doesn't work. There's too many people who who are scared for their own financial well-being, because if they take on X number of hours of work for X number of pints, thus they'll be worse off because they'll have to give up X number of pounds of their welfare. And that's. And until we fix that, until we fix that big, big, big challenge, all of our all of our interventions will will not get the momentum that they need. And to make an actual dial shift change on it. And it's a challenge and it's challenging. But that, of course, does its challenge. And for those individuals as well, you're trying to encourage people to fundamentally change how they finance their lives and to, you know, and it's often seen as a punishment if you start to talk about taking a benefit away or reducing that or tapering it off over a period of time or whatever the mechanism will be, it's politically unpopular. Of course it is because their votes, their votes at the end of the day as well for different political parties, but also it's seen as punishment, it's seen as punishment, and that you can't have a blanket policy either. So there will be people who genuinely can't work, and there'll be people who genuinely have reasons why they can't work. So it's not a straightforward area. We are dipping our toe into the the surface of it really, in terms of what we want to do at a local level. We are trying to do it from a purely, employer driven perspective and that we need to try and find people. So even if I can find a cohort of 25 people and train them, that's better than having nobody try and and get them into work. So we're not doing massive numbers, and the numbers we need back to our 12 or 15,000 vacancies. We're not going to solve that problem, but we will try everything that we can to try and shift it in our local area around that. But the the broader challenges still exist. If, if think of the the top down approach and the bottom up approach to top times. You've mentioned we've been trying this for a long time. Policies, strategies, funding. And then you have, at a community level, someone on a street and Moseley or Antrim getting a job and talking to their neighbor about how much they love their new job. And that neighbor is then thinks about it has been inspired and all that. Like, what else could have the biggest impact, you know, is it going to be that continue to try and put a top down? Or is it other community? Because there's definitely a community element. You know, there's no doubt, as I said earlier, I think it's it's intergenerational. Yes. So it's within households. It's intergenerational, but it's also within communities. And there are communities and you know, they're well they're well documented. There's been plenty of research done to to identify them that that have particular challenges around economic and activity. And, and we work very, very closely, both at a political level with our elected members, but also as a team to go into those areas. And it is challenging to go into those areas and try and offer these people an alternative to to what they know and to try and encourage them to undertake training and skills. And, you know, almost with no guarantee of of what will come out of it and no guide, we can't offer any guarantee around the finances or what it will do for, for their families under their, you know, their home in some instances, because there'll be there'll be plenty of people in that. And then those categories who have help paying for their home and years talking about putting that at risk. They it is a massive, massive commitment for them and for people who aren't, aren't used to work, aren't in jobs, don't know the kind of routine that everybody else kind of takes for granted. It's a big, big step. So 100% there's a community element. And we will continue to to push really, really hard with the programs and interventions. We have as much as 400,000 pounds and from just knowing, you know, so in the grand scheme of it, it's about money. And we, we, we appreciate the finance that we get from the department. And we will continue to do as much as we can with that money. But that's not that money is not going to fix the problem. So I do think, if we don't tackle it at the top level as well, within policy around how we encourage or incentivize, maybe that's the better word is incentivization to enter work rather than, trying to make it sound like it's a, it's a negative thing. And the punishment, if we incentivize that, that does require a policy change and it does require, leadership at the top level. There's no doubt about it. Yeah, yeah. Well, just as we come there, close, you know, workplace scale, workplace because we, we believe work is a positive thing. And you mentioned about about the importance of having people in work and, but for you, what's so good about work? I love that question. That's a good question. So I am privileged because I love my job, and I think that in itself makes such a difference. I don't grumble. I don't have Sunday night dread. I don't have any of these things. I love my job. And and that sounds really cliche. And it sounds really, I know, parochial as to say it like that, but I genuinely do. And I love my job for all of the reasons I've talked about, today with you, about high impact lives. You know, we were saying that yesterday, you know, one of those young people come up to you and say, you know, you've made a difference to me. You've made a difference to my prospects. You've made a difference to my career choices. You've made a difference to my family. Like what more do you need? And in terms of reward for your for your work and for what you and your team are trying to do then. And then those young people coming at you or a person's and a new job and they're, they're, they're they're thriving on their new job and they're providing for their family and they're they're settled and their children have better. Right. So I could do that all day. That just makes me so happy. So I love my job and that makes that makes work for me easy. And I know it's not that's not a consistent I think work gives you purpose. And I think everybody what regardless of where you are or what you what situation you find yourself and you're driven my purpose, you're driven by a need or a desire to do better, you know, to try and to improve the situation. You find yourself and and I think a job gives you that purpose. It gives you something to work towards. It's good for relationships. It's good for your social structure. It's good for your mental wellbeing. It gives you an outlet for for creativity and innovation. It gives you outlets for, imagination. And it gives you outlets that you can that you maybe don't even know. You need to know in terms of trying to focus and on on stuff that you want to deliver and want to do. So yeah, for me, it's it's probably mostly around purpose. Yeah. I think it gives people that structure. It gives them retain, it gives them something to build a life around. And it's such an important part of your life, you know, if you're in work in you're in full time work. And, you know, I don't know what what retirement age. I'll get to the paper in 77 by the time I retire. But, you know, you work for such a span of your life, there's no point doing that if you're if you don't enjoy it and you don't, you can't find fulfillment out of it. If that's the case, you're in the wrong job. And you know, that is that is part of the problem as well. And, you know, it's not as easy. It's easy for me to sit here and say you're in the wrong job and should do something different. But, you know, you've only got one shot at this. That's existence. So you have to try and make the best of it. And as I say, I love, I love what I do, I love the impact we have as a team. I love that we're like the freedom to to be innovative and to be creative and to come with novel and weird and quirky ideas. And the members to, to, to their opposite credit come with us. And, don't don't say Stephen, what are you talking about? You know, so for me, that's that's probably what I love most about finance. Brilliant. Well, I wish you continued success and your work and all the impact that you're having. And thanks so much for coming in today. You know, thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to work. Plus, if today's story gave you fresh perspective or helped you rethink what's possible, leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform or hit like and subscribe. It really does make a big difference. For more stories, resources and tools to help guide the next generation, visit workplace Dot app. Until next time.