Mastering Leave Orchestration with Special Guest Keith Christensen

[00:00:08] Welcome everyone to another episode of HR amp, Payroll 2.0. I'm Pete Tilly-Aucac and as always, I'm joined by the legendary Julie Fernandez. Welcome Julie. Thanks, Pete. I have a special guest for us today from the Practitioner world who you want to hear who it is. Yes, we have company.

[00:00:22] Yes, we have company. So today I'm excited for us to have a little bit of a chat with our special guest Keith Christensen who I know as a former Senior Vice President of HR Corporate Services at CVS Health. Keith, um, glad you're here. Yeah, welcome.

[00:00:39] You can also a little bit about your background and where you come from. I'd Julia, Pete, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Long time CVS employee, long time HR practitioner, or it got to be a long time of all the sudden.

[00:00:53] I live in the great state of Rhode Island, although Rhode Islanders will tell you I've only been here 20 years so I'm not really Rhode Islander, native to New Jersey, and I'm happy to join you today. Welcome. Welcome.

[00:01:04] Keith, when we have guests on and then we'll at Pete get to the news and kick us off in news. But we always ask folks where they started in the term in payroll and was that at CVS? Or did you start even before them?

[00:01:15] Yeah, it was before then I started in a temp job at what was then fleet bank, now part of Bank of America. And I was doing data entry and it just happened. It had nothing to do with HR.

[00:01:27] It just happened to be managed by the HR team and that led to my first regular job, which was as an HR call center app, which exposed me to a ton of different questions, including benefits in payroll. Wow.

[00:01:39] Awesome. So that's an interesting serve but then what kept you in HR? How did you end up staying in HR all these years? So there were so many different things to learn and what I found over the course of time is

[00:01:54] you have a chance to drive business results in a peep on a positive way. I will tell you my relationship with payroll is a little more complicated because the many everyone's is. Right? And I'm at expectation for payroll is perfection.

[00:02:08] You can never exceed expectations if you're a payroll practitioner, you can never do better than pay everybody right and on time. Yeah. And so that's pretty intimidating as a practitioner when you're perfect and that's just meets expectations. That's a great point. That's a great point.

[00:02:26] Everyone's relationship I think is complicated with payroll. It really is a love that. My friend always likes to say the payroll or at least pay is a big part of why most people

[00:02:37] go to work. Oh yeah and it is your report card. So part of it that I love is that every week, every two weeks, every semi-monthly you get a report card. That's where you see everything that

[00:02:49] the whole HR function did or didn't do well comes out as a report card audited by thousands of employees. Yeah, they sound like me. I used to say that to my team. We'll find out on Friday how we did.

[00:03:00] Yeah. So in your day-to-day now are you over payroll as a leader today? So I left CVS at the end of 2022 but prior to that yes I was over payroll. I was over a payroll for my last seven years at CVS. Beautiful. Wow. Well thank you for

[00:03:14] their service of that. We appreciate you. Listen, Keith I just want to bring on that a little bit right and and call out because the magnitude of what happens at CVS is so huge. I don't know

[00:03:24] people just naturally would associate you know, associate with that. CVS is a fortune top 10 company right and so when you're when you're leading the HR organization there that's that's like 500 or more HR employees that are there in a huge budget right? Yeah so the budget was over 100

[00:03:43] million leading the HR shared services, talent acquisition and play relations teams as part of the bigger HR work and you know so we were we were paying in our case 320,000 people among a couple times a month we were hiring over 100,000 people a year and we were doing

[00:04:04] acquisition integration pretty much on a regular basis anywhere from 50 to 50,000 people. I think like just like Peter people just think about that because the folks at start in an HR payroll role might start in a smaller organization and as the careers evolve over time

[00:04:22] they find themselves taking on more responsibility or working with larger and larger organizations and and I don't know if you get much larger than that. That's why my comment in the beginning

[00:04:32] about the complexity at CVS I was being kind of funny because I have some familiarity with the company and you're right. I mean you guys I mean just digesting those numbers that's an enterprise in

[00:04:42] another self HR for an enterprise that is sizable and I can imagine the moving parts that have to go into that so yeah that's I have so many questions about what you what you've learned

[00:04:51] it's incredible. Well you know you asked what kept me there yeah yeah in HR and when you go into an org like that you're there is a new challenge something exciting and different to do

[00:05:03] every day so if you're curious and you like to do different things it's a great place to be. Yeah I'm sure there's always initiatives going on as well right keeps you keep your under toes

[00:05:12] Exactly. Well hey I know we'll get back to that why don't we since we do news up front Pete why don't we just kick out a few news items and then we'll get back to some

[00:05:20] digging into some cool conversation with Pete on leave absence and how that's such a pain point for payroll yeah yeah oh my favorite topic leaves but let's yeah let's talk about some news so

[00:05:32] a few few things around the around the space this week or last week um daily pay good friends at daily pay now valued at 1.75 billion congratulations to them congratulations to Irmway Jackson

[00:05:44] not just daily pay I mean I think they were the pioneers of it and obviously you know created an entire market that is I think just standard now in the payroll picture and from what I'm

[00:05:54] learning and seeing more and more it's becoming part of the benefits offering for organizations we were just talking about this yesterday on the source by daily pay where we were doing a webinar of

[00:06:03] some leaders and that came up about how it's part of annual enrollment now for some companies so that's very very refreshing but yeah so 175 million dollars in funding they received that brings their

[00:06:14] valuation now to 1.75 billion really impressive and they also used some of that money this week to invest an ounce of big investment 24 million pounds sterling in northern Ireland creating 293 jobs and I think I read somewhere it's going to bring something like 12 million in salaries to the

[00:06:32] to the economy so they're really hyped on that you know they're comments on that or you know they see it as a very key strategic investment point for you know tapping into talent but also

[00:06:43] as you know they've been eyeing new markets if you if you checked out their that funding story and new markets means beyond the US right where they're already very dominant so congratulations

[00:06:53] to daily pay and congratulations to burn wage access so I know you read the seridians s.k.o this week and they had some big big news so when are you talking about that yeah sure and in fact you

[00:07:04] had caught it it was actually announced in the market here just before I spent a little bit of time with them this week and that was seridians acquisition of a Denmark based company called looming

[00:07:17] does end and l.m.s solution really right so that kind of now is just before this week and was on our radar um e-looming does a learning platform with content and people develop

[00:07:30] men and skills intelligence and employee communications functionality so um so I did you know a little bit of day and round they were very excited about this kind of new relationship um at the seridian

[00:07:42] which is rebranding in a short nine eight maybe eight or seven days to day forps um they're they're productening they'll be rebranding formally but um just a little bit more context around the

[00:07:54] e-looming thing so it's the same platform they use the same platform foundations right and and uh when seridian brings somebody and they they really integrate it into the platform itself so pushing two of the same platform same foundational platforms together they think they'll have already in

[00:08:11] about six months um we heard that learning is kind of their fastest growing area of request from the customer base so you know obviously this was a strategic move in the works for them and uh it

[00:08:25] will include some selling of content so even though it's a let's put a phone there's content involves there um it'll be tied to the AI um with the skills through that skills uh um like engine

[00:08:37] and skills intelligence and um we think about employee communications area I think they're just on the verge of looking at some really cool social things um that tie into employee communications at community

[00:08:51] and that sort of thing and so there's there's there's a whole lot uh i think that we'll see of noise made around this particular um i think this position should be particular acquisition so

[00:09:02] yeah yeah it's nice compliments all the stuff they they released with the uh the skills area and i think uh just indicative of them you know matureing further up market and bringing their talent

[00:09:10] in line with their other you know base capabilities so yeah good stuff good very cool you got another one still like it yeah yeah yeah yeah compilience is back in the news another another acquisition uh the mirror tech group has acquired mineral which i think a lot of

[00:09:24] folks might be familiar with uh it's a compliance platform that is was integrated to a lot of the mid mid and maybe downmarket HCMs for compliance support for organizations out there you know operating

[00:09:35] on these HCMs and so they have also done kind of a kind of a two way three way merge if you will with sent uh sentrio so mineral sentrio uh mineral and sentrio excuse me have now combined

[00:09:47] under the mirror tech group a flag and so really a very comprehensive suite of tech enable compliance capabilities now um mineral was more on the compliance platform and support uh were sentrio was similar but it also brought more of some uh learning and capabilities around uh training for

[00:10:04] compliance so um yeah i think this is very indicative of how important the compliance is and i think you're going to see more of this type of mergers and acquisitions as we go through

[00:10:14] the year um for a number of different reasons but i think lemonade is going to be back this year for sure so cool to see some of these things getting together and power it up yeah yeah

[00:10:23] yeah uh is that in or you got any other tricks up your sleeve I got two things I got two things number one i want to say a big shout out to ramco they've got something really big coming up

[00:10:32] they've got everybody's uh interest peaked i know i've uh been begging them for for a view of it and so they've been keeping it very close to the vest and i'm hoping we'll see it soon but watch out

[00:10:42] for that there there's something coming and I and if you know them they always push the pace on innovation around payroll and HR so i'm really really excited to see what they're doing okay you're

[00:10:51] reminding me i know what your next thing is that's related to a guest that we had earlier on the show is a landmark thing come out to market and super congrats there we give him tell us what it is

[00:11:03] yeah yeah our good friend Jim Cole the payroll artist is uh is at congrats on his new book right he's uh humanoid resources the 30 60 and 90 day guide to the first 90 days of work featuring

[00:11:14] Jim's amazing art and i think you should check it out it's uh Jim's a great artist he's done a bunch around the communities doing more and um yeah shout out to Jim congratulations on that

[00:11:24] awesome yeah beautiful amazing work yeah let's do it let's talk leaves though i want to get into this with Keith because uh we've we've talked leaves here on this set these episodes before and

[00:11:33] you know how I feel yeah for sure and you know Keith i'm so excited to start to talk to you about Lee is because um we did i did a payroll survey in pizza where he helped me with it as well

[00:11:43] that that that really clearly showed that leaves and leave an absence was the number one top pain point for payroll and we all know it's messy it's totally messy and sticky and as you and i

[00:11:56] were speaking uh about a number of things i came to understand that you have a pretty robust experience with leaves so i just can't wait to dig into this with you thanks yeah i've been um it's a little

[00:12:07] surprising for me to say but i've been working with leave of absence since probably 2003 it's it's been a minute that's right well you know it before we even jumped into the leaves i just wanted to you know if

[00:12:18] you were at CBS in the heart of the whole COVID-19 thing right and in many ways when COVID-19 haven and just the earth came to a grinding halt you know that was supposed to be a 60 day or a short

[00:12:30] term type of a thing and it became a much longer thing and not only was CBS right in the middle with health care and everything else but also the idea of you know figuring out how to let workers

[00:12:43] work and stuff work and start work is everything that leaves about so like what happened in COVID-19 how did that all play out for you what sort of things inside of you might you have for us

[00:12:54] yeah so that was a humbling gratifying tiny bit intimidating time you know all those things at once of course it was a time of great pride in terms of working for CBS and I think how CBS showed up

[00:13:10] as a company really living its purpose so you know that was a great a great part of the response the need from people and business was just so great and all the stuff you didn't

[00:13:23] know was so high that it kept you pretty grounded when there's a couple things that stand out for me when the first school started shutting down I think Philadelphia and Ohio our colleague started

[00:13:36] calling the HR COVID call center that I was responsible for just begging for help and when I would talk to our our call center reps and debrief with them some of them were campsuit only

[00:13:47] been with us for a couple days and they'd start crying when they talked about how people were desperate for support so you know we were able to stand up a backup child care plan in a week

[00:13:58] literally from the first time someone said hey can we do something about child care to the the day we announced it it was a week and we were able to help 15,000 people find child care pay

[00:14:10] for child care that felt great you know the the organizational togetherness I think was incredible so as we were running this call center we literally started up in 24 hours we we had no

[00:14:23] people sitting around waiting to take calls I got calls from the people who ran our healthcare business so over at that night I got people calls from people in pvm and care mark saying hey what do you

[00:14:34] need how can we help do you want us to give you 50 people the need supervisors the need quality assurance we got call forecasting support so all across the organization and remember this happened the

[00:14:47] body year after CVS acquired atna so an organization that was still coming together and I think it came together fabulously across lots of lines and I felt it personally so that that was great

[00:15:01] we needed to build a vaccination tracking tool where we hoped to buy one and what we found was we didn't see anything in the market that met our needs so b-sweft which was at that time

[00:15:18] part of CVS health and was our benefits administrator they said you know this sounds a lot like dependent verification I bet we could build you one and they did so our art and they built the

[00:15:30] product for us so that we could track whether or not our healthcare colleagues were vaccinated once the vaccine came out and then it was a product be swifed started selling in the market to other

[00:15:41] customers as well but the the collaboration across the company was fantastic you know there were people I was close with before who I became even closer with there were people I didn't know

[00:15:53] previously who I now count as close friends and really helped support you through it and um the other thing I'll say COVID did is for me it really changed my outlook because as a lifelong back office person has most payroll and HR delivery practitioners are

[00:16:12] our work was so close to the business and to the customer during this time and to the employee so if we didn't have enough people stores what no can so hiring was incredibly important when we

[00:16:24] started doing vaccinations we had to hire 15,000 new immunizers in a matter of weeks so um that was a um a great feeling to contribute so directly when your team was hiring the people who were

[00:16:40] vaccinating your grandmother um which was literally true at the engagement from my team in 2020 2021 was off the charts and it wasn't because of the leadership it was because there was such a close

[00:16:51] connection to the purpose of the company and helping people so as I look ahead I certainly want to that feeling of directly impacting the business is something I want to keep having in my career

[00:17:02] yeah that's what more HR I think needs experiences that right like just that unity but also that impact and I don't know that everybody gets to experience it that way yeah right in the

[00:17:11] heart and the center of it and like everything if you think about everything that folks lived and learn from from the vaccines and the call centers and the tracking and um immunizations going out but

[00:17:22] then there was all the special pay associated with it right and we know we have a lot of folks that listen from a pay perspective many industries in healthcare had hazard pay and you know trying

[00:17:34] to get certain people to work and incentive them and reward them for doing work when everything else is shutting down um you know like you were right in the heart and the thick of it so

[00:17:45] we were and we had a lot of conversations about how to pay people and how to thank them how to incent them how to reward them and you know if you if you listed 10 things I'd probably say yes

[00:17:57] we did that in some way shape or form in some part of the organization so it wasn't one one solution and as you said up top right we thought COVID was going to be 30, 60, 90 days and

[00:18:10] I don't know what it turned out to be 12, 18 months so there were a lot of different things we tried through that time but I think throughout it it was making sure through pay in other ways

[00:18:21] that our colleagues knew we cared about them and that they felt supported yeah you Amazon right I mean they're a handful of folks that couldn't shut down and had to keep the wheels turning in

[00:18:32] unique ways so just a cool story yeah that is how about let's shift a little bit to leaves a talk about what we used to say no that's as sticky as payroll and in some cases so you know

[00:18:45] can you a deep deep topic but one of the things I know about EP from us talking uh and knowing each other over the years is I think that there are you know 100 ways to skin the cat in leave management

[00:18:58] and I'm pretty sure that you have tried all of them right we we have where we've at least tried to try them all there you go and the world has changed so much in this and in administration and

[00:19:11] technology and the woman in tracking you know in that same period of time so like what was it like how did you where did you first start touching leaves and what was the environment like that

[00:19:23] from an administrative perspective yes so it was it was a very different world right so 2002 2003 I was asked to take over the leave administration team it was an in-house team that was using a homegrown lotus note space tool to administer leaves for what was then 110,000

[00:19:44] employee population and it was just a database right it was a tracking system there was no whatever that's like where that's where so many people start right and honestly it's where many

[00:19:59] organizations still are today yeah and I can understand why right you you see why you need something to start with and then what I'd say is it's just gotten so complex and I'm happily the tools in the

[00:20:15] marketplace I think have really evolved since 2002 from where we started with our first attempt to put in a new system to where to where we got to over the last few years I think there's a lot more

[00:20:26] choices for people who are doing leave administration today happily yeah yeah and you know you like others I think early on in the leave journey or somewhere in the leave journey it became very popular

[00:20:40] and it was it was a comment topic for folks to say you know what this is messy this is really messy I don't really enjoy it can we just outsource this so that somebody else can deal with this mess

[00:20:52] what was your experience I mean like you ended up in those discussions as well right so how did that play out for you? I did so um you know the first time someone said a Timmy was 2003 and then um but really in 2005

[00:21:05] we did some serious due diligence three drivers right better technology we were looking for a purpose built tool that would help with compliance efficiency and communications beyond just tracking

[00:21:19] access to more expertise and I think this is a really big one you know I'm sure this comes up when you talk about outsourcing anyway but for leave of absence um having the expertise in house isn't always

[00:21:32] easy so we were certainly looking for someone who had the expertise and to give you perspective when we we started that outsource outsourcing journey in 2005 we had one implement lawyer for the whole company

[00:21:43] it was soon became too um right supporting all of our HR legal needs from an internal perspective so you know as you think about L.O.A. expertise and kind of figuring out how things different

[00:21:58] different things fit together we had limited internal support so the idea of having an outsource partner who had great expertise was very appealing and then the last part was between 2002 when I took over leave administration in 2006 when we signed an agreement to outsource it our employee population

[00:22:16] grew 50% off of 100,000 person base wow and my head count and leave of absence did not grow anywhere close to 50%. So we were the realities we were never going to get the head count we needed

[00:22:29] internal a or certainly not at that time we weren't going to get the head count we needed to keep up so an outsource partner was very appealing in that regard yeah you know that's I wanted to ask

[00:22:39] you that along the way and that that's sort of answer my question for your case but but I don't know maybe Julie you can say like what with leave's like where's that's where's the inflection

[00:22:48] point or the the point at which you say you need a partner like is it volume is it complexity is it like what size of the organization like obviously you had a specific needy of mass volume

[00:22:58] obviously but but what about just for the average company Julie what do you guys think yeah so there's definitely a volume play and I think now more than ever some of the some of the question is

[00:23:09] is that volume concentrated or is it decentralized right because you know usually we'll hear you know key volumes it's it's in the hundreds of leaves right that you need to have the type of volume

[00:23:22] to be looking at that and at the same time maybe that volume is it so big if you're concentrated in one state right yeah because the the complexity just across states has been huge the other

[00:23:34] thing that I think was happening in that same time frame that Keith was talking about is that a lot of leaves were kind of out of sight out of mind right so in decentralized environments we have

[00:23:45] HR generalists at the time of the business partners that are kind of handling leaves locally without the right type of technology to make things visible when you start doing things centrally and bring the in technology and establishing groups all of a sudden you you know like

[00:24:01] what you thought was a hundred leaves turns into a thousand leaves because they were just off the radar right yeah yeah interesting yeah look I personally have not seen a leave I'm mostly worked with bigger organizations when it came to leaves in my payroll adjacent solution days

[00:24:18] and transformation days and I never seen it easy for anyone and I don't know that there's a lot I mean I do know that there are folks that do it well firms that do it well out there but there's

[00:24:28] not a lot of options for outsourcing it entirely either if I understand correctly there there are some good solutions but it's not like it was an abundance like payroll or something else so

[00:24:38] this stuff is hard yeah I think was with anything you have options you know more complex options that evolve but but keep I think you were talking about outsourcing like like the whole thing right like the services and the technology together like in the nature

[00:24:54] row arrangement where you're you're shifting that responsible abilities someone and today has happened with all of HR you can do bits and pieces or parts you can just look for a tool or enabling technology you can get select services or full-encomprehensive services and so

[00:25:12] the whole landscape of what you can even do with leaves or any other part of HR is just gotten expansive yeah right so we we ended up signing to outsourcing under what I'll call a traditional

[00:25:27] full service multi tower HR BPO the kind you don't see very often in the marketplace anymore so we were we were moving payroll HR technology HR admin, Ben admin, leave admin all to one player

[00:25:42] yeah right you don't see that in awful out to you and when I say one player it was it was one master services agreement there was a subcontractor who is going to be doing the actual

[00:25:55] leave administration and I'll tell you you know that that was sort of part of the journey part of the learning but um during the the preparation outsourcing probably some of the real there were some benefits to just the prep period the getting ready period so pulling together all

[00:26:18] our documentation of existing policies procedures you mentioned there's a lot of companies when they centralize they don't know how many how many leaves they're really seeing they also might not know how many policies they have or what their procedures are. That's right and I bet they

[00:26:33] weren't all the same were they? No they definitely they definitely were not we also found some some people who were very strong who suddenly had an interest in L.A., so as we were doing the

[00:26:46] work to transition we had an influx of talent and and that proved to be really important for us and then we also started to see more support from legal and other parts of the company bringing internal expertise which was also important. Imagine saying you have an abundance of

[00:27:04] leave talent that's amazing key that's like that's one's an a million it's a unicorn moment right well that that's been so it was deceived Pete it was a journey of making right so oh yeah

[00:27:15] I'll spoil it the the outsourcing never actually happened. Oh we we never got to live figured a lot. So yes right so we we had some good learnings along the way and really it's simply right it was a complicated relationship from the beginning the overall relationship wasn't going

[00:27:36] well yeah and leave the implementation was going poorly part of the problem was the system we were going to go on wasn't actually built yet. You mean a vendor sold vapor? Well I would say

[00:27:50] what vendors sold the work in progress. Watch your mouth keep that this never happens what are you talking about? You know and then from you know from the implementation methodology was kind of a cousin

[00:28:04] to where the you know where the technology was in development so the implementation methodology was pretty immature the moment that stood out was that they produced leave letters from the test environment

[00:28:19] and mailed them. And we learned this one day when a 65 year old employee called us and said I love the maternity leave letter I received to my god but I'm not sure you meant it for me.

[00:28:32] You know so it was one of those moments so it was you know it was a fraught process that ultimately the maturity wasn't there for us to outsource so in the meanwhile you talk about talent peat we had

[00:28:46] gone from our staff was down to four regular employees because as people laughed we we just back filled with temps so we had four CVS employees in 19 temps administering leave yeah why but the

[00:29:01] people who were doing the implementation a couple of them had gotten strong and agreed to join the team as we we decided to keep it in house and rebuild the function that was the seeds for us

[00:29:15] having the right talent. In fact one of those people I'm thinking of in particular it took us another couple of years to decide she should leave the function she's been a key to all the

[00:29:26] progress CVS has made in the least space over the last decade she's fantastic along with her manager they've done a great job in this space yeah that's great and it's hard man that stuff is

[00:29:36] very complicated and like Julie said often there's so many moving parts and not everybody even knows about all those moving parts right I used to we used to find out about things in payroll all the time

[00:29:44] that no one knew anybody agreed to or where did this come for and would always pop its head up whenever you know we would you know especially when we were doing system conversions you know with

[00:29:54] rear its head like hey we didn't get our reporter you know we didn't get our this process didn't happen it was like well no one told anyone so yeah it's it's a gnarly gnarly process for most

[00:30:04] companies. You know maybe I'm the only one I'm a little bit of a geek this way but you know I think if you if you went back and listened to what Keith said about that journey and what they

[00:30:15] found and how they didn't even know what policies they had right like all this learning that goes into trying to get to a harmonized leave solution outsourcing this case that that's a that's global payroll journey or even a domestic payroll journey with multiple disparate locations of

[00:30:34] business use I mean it's this it's the same the same activities happening when you have something really complex and hairy and compliance driven that is decentralized and needs to come together and a more harmonized efficient way. I mean leave payroll fill in the line right so what it

[00:30:50] is but it's very much something that folks get exposed to in some functional way and then learn and build skills that they can apply to you know to their career career mom skills.

[00:31:04] Oh yeah yeah so Rubik's Cube right you're all we yeah moving parts it's you're right it's a very very very similar to a to a payroll global payroll transformation type process yeah yeah well so let's

[00:31:16] think along like just as the rest of the the market emerges keep then you know technology got a little fancier right it did and it was important for us so we we went out to market once we said we

[00:31:28] were going to keep doing it ourselves we really needed to get offload us notes so we we bought new clies from I forget where they were here at and here they were one of the two at the time but um

[00:31:42] we made a decision to select their nucleus platform great implementation partners good implementation you know really helped us to start to automate some things and improve our efficiency and the

[00:31:55] experience so that was a big step forward for us you know we think about our team. You know most folks when they hit that point have to go out and evaluate providers and players and find the best one

[00:32:07] and then you know sign up for them but at your scale I can see how you would go find find the one you like in the display and and then you know maybe to come full circle a little bit the technologies are

[00:32:18] out there but I think you then have some experience with kind of end to end right like you go through all of these revisions and different models and different delivery services but at what point

[00:32:27] of time did you did you have some experience stepping back and going I don't know let's look end and see the experience from colleagues and when did that come into play and how did that become

[00:32:39] so that really took a minute and it was um so it was something that came frankly out of COVID because the leave team was at the heart of administering COVID and you know in many ways COVID

[00:32:52] administration merely broke us you know so it was COVID remind of us we still had more work to do during COVID we we finished integrating our leave processes for the at-and-a-process for the at-and-a-pop

[00:33:06] location and we moved to a new platform so we moved to a SaaS solution with apps and soft which again great partner great implementation they did a lot of listening during during the implementation where they added functionality to the platform for us so we had this sort

[00:33:25] of table sappac COVID sort of arrested everything for a while and coming out of COVID I think COVID told all of us that we needed to refocus on the employee experience or remind

[00:33:39] that us and made that a much, much more of an organizational priority so coming out of it we did a full assessment starting from the employee experience and I'm sure you're not surprised that when

[00:33:53] we went and asked and did the focus groups that our colleagues told us we had a lot of opportunity to get better and you know and that was the filter we used and I would say this talks easy

[00:34:07] does hard but if you really consistently go back to it as your North Star it drives good decision making so we drove our work structure, it drove process policies, communication, education

[00:34:21] it drove all of it right and I think so for example for org structure we reorganized our team into pod structures so that if you're calling about maternity leave you're going to go into a group of case managers who are a man who handle nothing but maternity leave

[00:34:41] and we found a couple big areas like that and built around pods there so while you do get some efficiency as the case managers become more knowledgeable it really was about providing the right

[00:34:53] experience the other thing we did from an org structure perspective that proved to be huge is we hired a dedicated trainer and that has meant a ton for us because the leave space isn't standing

[00:35:07] still right there's always we're talking right now somebody else is dreaming up a new parental leave law in some state or city so having access to retraining really helps you to operate its scale it

[00:35:21] also helps you to continuously improve to better serve your customer yeah so so you know everything that I hear key those we talked just you know I could replace leaves and the complexity with leaves

[00:35:34] with any of the other complex functions that we deal with in payroll or HR and the whole idea of looking at it through the lens of process and end to end experience has been you know definitely

[00:35:48] heightened approach since COVID and coming back to work so no surprise I guess right that that we would be looking at leaves through the lens of experience and end to end journey is as much as

[00:36:00] you know as much as everything else we're trying to look at in HR and payroll through history yeah that that's always been my big complaint you know Julie we've talked about this keep I feel like

[00:36:09] it's not like there aren't systems that handle leaves there's plenty of systems to do that what what I don't feel like we do good job of is the orchestration around that and all the ancillary things

[00:36:17] that get triggered by leaves that's what I think we've got to improve for people and make it not such a painful experience right and the practitioner too but mostly the end the end recipient of it

[00:36:30] yeah and I think it requires you to when you embrace it it requires you to do things that maybe are counter-intuitive to what you thought in the past so it turns out you make

[00:36:43] the employees life better and you make frankly your practitioner life better if you if you communicate more and you increase your contacts with colleagues during the process right so we added contact steps you know said differently we added work and what it ended up doing was reducing work

[00:37:00] and improving customer satisfaction and I think it it some of this is a little rewiring of the brain so I'll pick on policies you're there's a lot of policies everybody has around leaves

[00:37:15] and I think one of the questions we need to ask is do I really need that one like if that one is intended to save me five cents does that make sense or can I simplify in the interest of making

[00:37:28] it easier for my colleagues to understand it and easier for my team to deliver it and explain it yeah it almost sounds like you're picking your battles so to speak yeah exactly right because

[00:37:39] you don't always get to return on some of those things you think you do there's bigger fill us off of go questions like hey we don't want a person to make more for not working than they

[00:37:48] make for working yeah you know when you play it talk interplay of state disability rules with your company disability rules but overall if you can make it simpler we we made it simpler

[00:38:00] in simpler not for us but simpler for the colleague yeah yeah I love your comment on counter intuitive and sometimes moving in those counter intuitive ways because as things like leave administration get more and more complex you end up finding more and more specialization right to be able

[00:38:20] to handle and understand compliance and and all of the complexities that apply and yet the experience gets you know required to take the complete opposite end right so the more that leave complexity

[00:38:32] and compliance gets specialized in sits and leave team which sits and see a we or special part of the organization the less in tune they are with the mechanics of a status change that's triggering

[00:38:45] I'll leave and how that data needs to flow and who goes to and how it relates to intake or how it triggers other things right you know so we we did a couple things around that so one is

[00:38:58] we put some emphasis on communication and education so we created videos to help people understand their roles in the leave process including importantly managers and employees because they're the ones who often have those kickoff activities and then you know I know Julie that

[00:39:18] on payroll always near and dear to your heart for how to look at this from a payroll perspective and get the flow better with payroll we went back to the basics we did end-to-end process mapping

[00:39:34] and review that included everybody under the sun so everybody who has a role in leave admin whether it's the man whether it's workers comp or it's payroll the disability providers we brought them all together in those exercises and got clear on the roles and responsibilities

[00:39:53] yeah and I say that happening in awful lot today but but if it's if it is actually triggered or initiated by a leave team right that that's there bread that's their day to day they think about that from the perspective of the leave team and the leave activities

[00:40:12] and the providers that are supporting them in that activity and and maybe as easily inclined to go into including payroll and IT and the employees and manager voices right and so that's where you can make things super efficient from for 60% of your end-to-end

[00:40:33] and forget about the stuff that might be causing all noise and this is the benefit of having great people you know in the leave talent where when your when your leaders are thinking about how to

[00:40:45] create a great colleague experience they do think more holistically and they and they stop thinking that's a payroll problem because the colleague doesn't see it as a payroll problem right the colleague

[00:40:58] just sees as the company didn't pay me right and my leave didn't happen right so when your leadership takes that same attitude they think it's their job to figure out that last 40% even if

[00:41:11] it's not delivered by their team how about what kind of metrics or what do we have you used over this the course of you know this multifaceted journey to measure or success is it

[00:41:23] how many of these how long folks are I mean what sort of things have you seen be effective metrics yes so the big one is you know so for for for formal metrics it's just getting rolled out

[00:41:35] so that they're finishing the journey with colleagues satisfaction service and that will be the real measure and there'll be corresponding the nature satisfaction service so those are going to be the key measures the informal measures where hey how do we look from an executive complaints

[00:41:52] perspective because the culture especially if you think about coming out of COVID where there was so much emphasis on caring for people and taking care of CVS customers and patients the culture is

[00:42:08] very much one where our colleagues if they don't feel like they're being cared for by the company they let our executives know and we've seen a significant drop and executive feedback since we implemented the changes but the more formal measure will be around satisfaction surveys and I think

[00:42:24] ultimately NPS that's awesome because it really does say that you know you're you're measuring what's important to you which is the experience which is where you read this last like a journey and of

[00:42:37] course there's advantages in number of these or duration of leaves and some of those more mechanical you know tracking elements but but the fact that the focus is on the experience is very consistent

[00:42:49] which is just that you know this last like a journey was looking on I think maybe the just as we're thinking about bringing this to a close a little bit I know I have shared with you that we had a

[00:43:02] a leaf survey that we were recently now just pulling together some results for and trying to get at the whole idea that leaf is painful and leave is one of the biggest contributors to pay well no

[00:43:18] ways and payroll issues and payroll problems and I'm sorry that we didn't have the results queued up ahead of this particular conversation Keith but I know I think thank you because I

[00:43:28] think you help me actually in participating in that and took a look at it. Yeah so what I say so I'm excited to see the results when they come out I thought the survey itself helped answer the question

[00:43:41] why is leave administration such a pain point when you look at hey the question being how many leaf types do you have and they're one of the choices is 20 plus or how many providers and carriers

[00:43:54] are involved in managing it and one of the choices is five plus you can very quickly see that there's a there's an exponential number of places where something can go wrong. So it's not hard to see

[00:44:09] why it's complicated I do think that if you keep thinking about it from a human perspective it creates a lot of opportunity to address some other complexities and get a better experience but

[00:44:21] I'm curious to see what your survey brings back Julia I think it'll tell us some great stuff. Awesome will it be fun and Pete was like a UTM you know we kind of we kind of thought about the

[00:44:32] questions together before we had we rolled it out so also looking forward to it and I think just even being able to hear your story and where you've been in the leave weeds has been

[00:44:43] probably inspirational to a number of folks who feel like they're in the weeds and you know why or there's no way out. And I will say there is definitely a way out it isn't easy for us and

[00:44:56] it was a journey but I will say there is definitely a way out. There you go words of inspiration to folks who are who are drowning and maybe trying to find the jobs satisfaction in what they're doing.

[00:45:07] Yeah, congratulations to those that love it you mentioned having folks that were really into it and got behind it I think that's great because it's always been the driest thing for me man.

[00:45:16] Pete says that and yet payroll is super deep. I know I know it doesn't make any sense. How many people have said that to you about payroll right? I'm sure yeah yeah I know there are

[00:45:27] people very excited about it and that is one of the things that was recently added is a certification program for the team so the case managers are doing all the bad so they can think about

[00:45:38] from a career path in perspective and a personal growth. Yeah, no it's important stuff and it's it's only getting harder with the way compliance is changing and all of that right and employee demands and expectations so yeah you got to nail this you got to get a writer

[00:45:50] or else it's going to be painful. Yeah so let's why don't we before we go Keith I think we're going to be trying to figure out how we can connect folks to you for other conversations and what's

[00:45:59] next for you where are you headed? That's great so the easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn and the ending part is Keith Christians in 379 it turns out there's a few Keith Christians

[00:46:10] ines out there but the easiest way again to find me is on LinkedIn and I'm more than happy to connect with people and help them strategically think through HR challenges. What's next for me

[00:46:23] is still a work in progress so I'm searching for my next HR corporate leader role whether as a CHRO at a mid to large size company or an HR ops leader and a big messy complicated company

[00:46:39] you know I'm looking for an organization where I am missioned aligned and can amplify the culture and positively contribute to impact the business. That's awesome yeah Keith you oughta really consider creating a leaves playbook you know like a guide for you know get sell that

[00:46:56] as a consultant for I'm sure it help people with this because this is a very hard process and not many companies get it right that I've studied to be honest with you and they always need help. You know there's some very smart leaf practitioners out there

[00:47:11] that I've had the benefit of knowing who helped along the way with some of this journey so that turning into advertisement for anyone but there were some really smart people out there

[00:47:21] and I was happy enough to go along on the journey with them and make sure we stayed focused on the employee experience. Yeah well good for you man and I'm sure you're better forward

[00:47:31] and it sounds like you've learned a lot man I've learned a bunch just being here so thank you so much for being a part of this man we'll make sure we share your contact information too in the

[00:47:39] description if people want to get in touch and yeah share your knowledge I think it's I think it's great great well thanks very much I was great yeah it's great being on thanks to both of you for having me

[00:47:48] I really appreciate it yeah Julie we're we're gonna be where we're we're we're we're we wrap up you're we're gonna head in next. Oh goodness let's see well I'm just I'm just off the road a

[00:47:57] little bit but I am actually working quite a bit these days with HR advisory HR company advisory leaves some of the all the stuff that I do and bringing that more broadly down

[00:48:09] market so I know folks know that I'm historically involved with some of the biggest in the messiest like like CBS and Keith but being able to bring that down market and I already do

[00:48:23] a third of everything that I touch is is smaller scale and so our organization has a lot going on there and I've been working a lot with down market clients like Lisa yeah that's been kind

[00:48:35] of my my jam. Yeah awesome you speak anywhere any time soon you knew events? I am but you know I'm just coming off the road so I can't even I mean I know I'm doing this so W in at the end of March

[00:48:46] that's the shared services now so we're seeing we can do that all the time. I'm jealous I've never been to that one and then you know paint like you're doing a lot of ADP stuff I have ADP people

[00:48:56] part or a little pertinent so I'm going at the end of February so I'll be hopping around doing provider things and industry things yeah awesome awesome well I got a few yeah I got a few things

[00:49:07] going on just did a earned-way jacksess discussion with some executives for the source by daily pay we did a webinar and that was fun we talked the change sort of element of this and you know

[00:49:19] adopting modern technology what it's like to sort of overcome obstacles from people maybe thinking that it's not gonna work or you know you know how it is right there's always an adversion to

[00:49:27] to staying with the way things are so we talked a bit of change and and pushing and dealing with push back and resistance to modern technology so that's a good one you can catch on the the source

[00:49:37] website the daily paid.com website ADP speak it I mentioned a baby p I'm headed over to rethink and London very soon so I'll have a good recap of that what I learned there if you're familiar

[00:49:49] without that ADP's multinational enterprise level customer base conference if you will so excited to see ADP in some of its partners I already had a few people reach out and ping me I'm

[00:50:00] hoping to do maybe some conversations for the show so we'll see if we can get some stuff recorded and bring some perspectives back from that and then yeah I'm doing the I solved masterclass

[00:50:10] I did a payroll masterclass on February 22nd so you can sign up for that doing that with I solved and there are people heroes group so yeah join in on that and one thing I just want to make

[00:50:19] sure everybody may have enough be aware of it looks like the HR tech virtual conference version of the HR tech conference which was slated for February 27 to 29 I was speaking at that doing a

[00:50:30] talk on the fundamentals of HR and payroll technology and kind of what's evolving with with HCM and payroll that's been moved it sounds like they're going to move that out to June so that'll

[00:50:40] be a summer virtual event so look for HR tech virtual in June and I'll be there same same presentation all the key notes I believe are going to be the same so be sure to just follow us over

[00:50:50] there a couple months later so yeah the number of events are kind of shifting around from the usual spots and more there's a lot more events I'm finding new ones I'm here at about new ones

[00:51:01] so I know when leashes is really expanding their stuff HR tech is doing I heard Europe now so yeah it's going to be a big year we're I think we're going to be on the road a bit so yeah be fun

[00:51:11] absolutely yeah well this is great yeah thank you so much Keith again for joining us and Julia as always it's great to see you and thank you for joining us we'll be back soon