Global HR Challenges and Strategies: Insights from Jeri Hawthorne, SVP, CHRO at Aflac

[00:00:00] . Hey, this is William Tidc. And you are listening and watching the Practitioners Corner podcast. We have a special guest today, Jerry Hawthorne from Affleck. And we can wait to hear her story. And so Jerry, how are you doing today?

[00:00:20] I'm well thanks. How are you? I am doing well. It's bright and sunny here in Texas and so we're not being hammered with hail which is always a nice thing. It's always a nice thing. That is. I don't think Jerry gets hail in Georgia. You'd be surprised.

[00:00:36] You do? Yes. Stand corrected. It comes across and just goes, yes. Not a good thing. So Jerry, why don't we do a quick introduction. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself and introduce yourself? Sure. Jerry Hawthorne, I am the

[00:00:52] CHRO here at Affleck. I've been with the company for almost five years and have worked in HR either directly or indirectly for more years that I am proud to say. Over 20 under 30, I'll leave it at that. Over under, I love it. You over under. And have worked across

[00:01:16] multiple industries in the US and globally and have had a really I think when I look back on my career really interesting unique career. So I'm excited to I guess share that with folks today. Yes, for sure. Well, William, since you brought it up

[00:01:32] Jerry, was it titled the personnel department when you started? It was not. See, that's good. Not titled the personnel department when I did. I get it. Not when I was here. They had one many years ago. And then you got rid of that. I get nervous.

[00:01:52] I mean, we were talking the other day to somebody and I said, you know when we go through J. So JC Penney is at the local mall here. And when you go through to the restroom area, there's a door and it just says personnel. Yeah. And it gives

[00:02:08] me the heebie jeebies every time I walk through it. It just sounds wrong. Nothing good. Nothing good happens in the personal department. If you're in that if you walk through those doors, you're walking out with a box or a pixel. One or the other. Room 101. So obviously

[00:02:28] let's start with the current job right now, C.H.R.O. Yep. You've seen the movement. Some people say chief people officer, people operations, things like that. Why C.H.R.O? Why was that? Why is that important

[00:02:44] to you and has been important to you? Well, why here at Affleck it's because it's the title. It's the title of the job that I applied to and was hired into I guess. I've seen a lot of different titles,

[00:03:00] you know C.P.O. C.H.R.O. head of people. Right. You know when I think about it, I think it's really the role to me is really about the person who is probably the most responsible for thinking about

[00:03:16] the people of an organization. And when I'm saying that, I'm saying do they have the right skills? Are they well? Are they engaged? Are they organized in a way that makes the organization succeed? So I'm thinking about it through that lens. Perfect. Perfect. So

[00:03:36] let's go back and Tom, let's just say 15 years old. What did you want to be outside of a C.H.R.O.? What did you want to be when you were 15? So 15 years old, I don't even think I knew that this was a function.

[00:03:52] Nor did I. Yeah, I think it was, you know, that was like outside of the, you know, outside of even my knowledge about what exists from a career perspective. I think at the time

[00:04:04] I wanted to be an attorney but I don't know that I actually did. I think it was one of those, you know, you were naming jobs that you knew. You know what a teacher does, you know what a doctor does, you know what an attorney does.

[00:04:16] So I don't know that it's actually what I wanted to do but it's what I thought I wanted to do. Yeah, law and order comes on, LA law comes on and that's what you want to be? Yeah, that's right. It is kind of sexy. It looks fun.

[00:04:28] Yeah. Sounds interesting. Yeah. The irony is modern H.R. so much of it has compliance and employment law. So you actually, you're way ahead of your time. That's I was, apparently. Yes. Yes. Where did you go to college? What was after

[00:04:48] high school? Yeah, so I went, so after high school I actually joined the military. I was in the reserve so I was not a great soldier but I did it and I'm proud of doing it, you know, as I look back on that

[00:05:04] I think, ugh, you know, you probably could have been a little bit better at that but I was 18 so, you know, you do silly things. But I did it, I finished, I was there, I was in the military reserves for six years. So right after I

[00:05:20] graduated that's what I did and then after I got done with all of my basic training that stuff I went to college at a really small private college in West Virginia called Wheeling Jesuit and it was one of the only, I wanted

[00:05:32] to go to Georgetown, I wanted to go to a Jesuit university and my parents said I wanted to go to Georgetown. Santa Clara, Santa Clara in California wasn't on the west. Santa Clara, they wouldn't let me go that far, we lived in Ohio so, Wheeling it was

[00:05:44] and so that's where I went to undergrad and I majored in political science because again I was still taking law school when I entered college and it was sort of like what's the right path to that? Where in Ohio were you? Southeast Ohio near, on the Ohio

[00:06:00] West Virginia Pennsylvania kind of intersection right there I guess is what I would say about 45 from Pittsburgh? Not the Ohio State but the Ohio University is somewhere down there, right? Ohio University was probably about three hours south. Got you.

[00:06:16] Something of us, southwest probably. Got you. It's a really good school for PR and communications. Yes, great school, yeah excellent school, yeah. I lived north in Cleveland for three years when I was doing my MBA

[00:06:28] at Case Western so. Nice, I have family who lives in Cleveland, yeah it's a nice thing to do. I learned during that process being from Texas that I'm not a cold weather person. That's cold weather area. Lake effect. Not a good place

[00:06:44] for you. Whenever someone says lake effect, I actually kind of start to kind of shiver because it brings back memories in that way. It's funny because we live in the south now and you know my kids they close school here if it's storms

[00:07:04] badly enough. I mean you know that in Texas you get to storms and it's sort of like I have a niece and nephew, they're older now but when they were younger and they would have like 12 inches of snow

[00:07:16] and my sister was like yeah I just set them up for the bus. That's how we are here. Yeah, my dad was convinced that the meteorologists and the grocery industry were in cahoots because in Texas conspiracy theory 101. So he thought that basically

[00:07:36] if you want to know the weather in Texas, walk outside. That's how you'll know because it changes so frequently. But in Texas, similar to Georgia, if it's just the hint that there's going to be bad weather coming, everyone goes in.

[00:07:52] Everything, everything. It's the craziest thing in the world, right? You would not understand this because of where you live but if today, my wife says oh listen, AccuWeather says we're going to have snow tomorrow. Let's just say everyone, the entire city goes to grocery stores.

[00:08:12] Yeah, that is our statement. We go out in the store to get stuff here. That's right, best sports fans in the world. I think I just touched the nerve. So where did HR come into play? How did you go from law and transition and military

[00:08:36] and all that? Yeah, so graduated from college, had a couple jobs after college, didn't really know what I wanted to do. Ended up going to graduate school in social policy or for social policy looking at things like social security, social welfare systems

[00:08:56] in different countries and what governments did in other countries compared to how in the US it's very much of a private market driven social welfare system outside of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. And so that was kind of where I started

[00:09:12] down that path and then I ended up getting a job with at the time, it's Berlitz, I don't know if you remember the training company. Yep, the language company. So they had a cross-cultural training organization and I had gotten my graduate degree in

[00:09:28] the UK and so ended up taking a job with them where we were designing and delivering cross-cultural training programs for people who were becoming expats, people who were being repatriated to the US or for business folks who were working internationally. So that was kind of my entree.

[00:09:48] I sort of got into HR from a bit of a side entrance, I would say, almost from the vendor side of things and then I moved into global HR looking at expat assignments, global relocation and kind of got

[00:10:04] steeped in that. And then at the time I got married all of that stuff in the middle of it and we actually ended up through my husband's job we moved to Denmark. He was working for our bank at the time and so we moved to Copenhagen and I

[00:10:20] worked for a company there, Novo Nordisk. It was happenstance that I got a job with them and you may know them now because they are the makers of. Do you know what Novo Nordisk is the makers of? I know the company

[00:10:32] I don't know what they do but I don't know what they make. They were diabetes, well they've been diabetes care for years and years and years. So is it Zempik? Yeah, Zempik. Interesting thing about them is they care about their employees. They don't overwork people. The demand is

[00:10:48] insane. It's an amazing company. But they only produce so much because they're not going to overwork their employees. Normal farmers who come to the United States, hey we're running 24-7. Keep going, keep going. That's exactly. They are amazing. Yeah I was lucky. I was really lucky

[00:11:08] to get to work for them and I worked for them for almost four years while we lived there and then we got repatriated back to the U.S. and that was when I stepped out and took a little bit of time at that point, stepped out entirely

[00:11:20] for a couple years. I did some project work for folks I had worked with in the past but really kind of took a step back and had small kids and moving back and just wanted to focus on that for a little while. 100%. So when you were doing

[00:11:36] the global work, there was all the stuff that technology and all the stuff that we have today, like paying people in Brazil or delivering some type of services to people, health insurance, things like that. All that stuff was in its infancy. That's right. How did you do that?

[00:11:56] How did you deal with the complexity of global HR? Well so I would tell you when I was at Novo it was really expats. So we had entities set up in those different countries and we were

[00:12:08] sending people back and forth. But I did that, what you just talked about when I worked at a company called US Pharmacopeia, they are a standard setting organization for generic drugs. They work very closely with the FDA. And when I was there we opened up laboratories

[00:12:24] in India, China and Brazil. And that really was the, we're opening up a lab in Brazil in Sao Paulo, GO. We've done market research. We know it's what we need to do. We know this is the right thing.

[00:12:40] Now we need to go set this lab up. And so that was really how do you do that and how we did it. I don't know if this is how you do it at the time. The internet did exist. So we did a ton, I would do

[00:12:52] a ton of research on vendors. And then typically when you start working with some of the global vendors, the corn fairies, the Spencer's, the Hydric, they have relationships in those locations. And so you start to find vendors in those different countries. ADP, God bless them, they exist

[00:13:12] worldwide. They, you know, my experience is that, you know, they're very reliable payroll provider regardless of where you are. But it would just be a matter of identifying the vendors, you know, kind of the staffing plans and then just starting working through sort of step by step

[00:13:28] with the, okay, how do you set this up from a legal entity perspective? How do we hire people? Do they need employment contracts? How do we compensate them? How are they paid on a relative basis to the folks in the

[00:13:40] U.S.? So it was really what I actually loved about it was it was about asking questions. You know, I didn't know the answers, certainly. I didn't know. You know, you don't know the answers to those questions. But you know, it's really about

[00:13:56] knowing questions to ask and then kind of asking the next question. So, okay, well, okay, you don't have health insurance here. Okay, so do you have a federal or you know, a socialized healthcare system? Is there supplemental health insurance? You know, do companies offer

[00:14:12] that? So it's really sort of that there's the question and then the questions behind the questions that really inform that. At least that's how, that was my experience. And because of your time at Berlin, you understood cultural appropriateness. It helped. It definitely helped. It did.

[00:14:28] You could go into Chile and say, okay, I don't know what I don't know. But I know it's different than Berlin. So that's exactly right. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. How do you go into a lot of people that will listen to this are following a similar path

[00:14:44] at some point and maybe they're going it'll be different now for sure because there's tech and other things to help. How do you go into a different country and build a team to ground yourself within that area to help you move forward

[00:15:00] and open up new locations? Yeah, I mean it really for the way we did it and the way I did it was it was literally relationships. So in the relationships started with the vendors. So identifying the vendors that you trusted

[00:15:18] and kind of that came back from the who are the vendors that I trust in the U.S. Do they have an entity in that country? So starting and building the relationship with them

[00:15:30] and then what I found was there were a few key hires that we would start with. So one was who's the site head, right? You've got to have that person identifying the scope of that role making sure that you're hiring

[00:15:42] the right person who can collaborate locally on the ground as well as with the team in the U.S. who's been sent there to set things up and then for me personally it would be the now I need my local HR

[00:15:54] person on the ground and once we got those two roles hired, the other stuff just kind of came in around it for lack of a better way to say it because those were the most probably stable state roles and you know at Afflack

[00:16:10] I wasn't involved in this because I wasn't here but we opened up a tech hub in Northern Ireland a few years ago and one of my colleagues was really the site head and drove the whole thing

[00:16:22] and he's a guy from the U.S. and we had sent him over and his first hire was the head of that office and then I hired the HR person and then they filled in around it and so it's interesting

[00:16:34] because I didn't know him, this gentleman Keith at the time and like I say it was already set up but it was interesting for me that the tact that I had taken in the early 2000s was pretty much the same

[00:16:46] that he took when he went over and said I've got to start here and we're going to build around Yeah and that was where my question was rooted was is it the same which obviously feels like it is and technology is not really affecting that. No, I think

[00:17:02] it is the same and I actually think probably now it's, I don't know that I would call it simpler, I would probably call it easier to find options than it might have been back then because with the Internet

[00:17:18] you can find so much more information, I mean in the early 2000s the Internet existed but I would say it wasn't as mature, that's a great way to say it, it definitely wasn't as mature. Localization is what I've heard, Brian

[00:17:34] it becomes a game of finding the gal or the guy in that space that's just really awesome and then building from there. So when you came back after your break with kids and the what not, what did you do next?

[00:17:50] That was when I went to US Pharmacopeia so I went from not working for a few years to jumping in and traveling about 80% of the time and I had two little ones at home and my husband and I did

[00:18:02] a really, throughout our careers we've really balanced. We've been kind of lucky it hasn't, sometimes it's been by design, a lot of times it's just been by circumstance but so he had a job where he was able to work from home

[00:18:18] and be remote most of the time and then I was traveling and it was, I always say it was probably one of my favorite jobs, it was just at the wrong time of my life because my kids were so small and I felt like I was missing

[00:18:30] so much. So I was there for just a couple of years and then ended up trying to find a job that was closer to home where I had a better work-life balance. I just, I was burning the candle

[00:18:42] at all ends and felt like I was just missing some pretty significant milestones and so ended up taking a different job that was a domestic focused HR job at T-Row price in Baltimore which is where I lived at the time. It didn't funny how people view business

[00:18:58] travel as sexy? It's awful. There's no glamour to it. There's no glamour to it. It sounds great. It really does. You see those people who get to get on the airplane first and their automatic

[00:19:14] upgrades that I'm always a little jealous and then they think well what do they have to do to get that? That takes a lot of travel. They just traveled 100,000 miles last month. That's it. Yeah, it's funny. On the travel piece

[00:19:26] I don't know about you guys. Food, the amount of food that I eat and the type of food that I eat for the next three weeks after I get home. It's a recovery. Awful. Yeah, it is.

[00:19:38] No matter what I do or how long we've been doing it. It's just... Bring the buffet close with you because you're going to need them on the plane. That's just how it is. I want to go back to your time with services.

[00:19:50] Which branch were you in? I did the Army Reserves. My son's going to Texas A&M and he's going to be in the Corps Cadets. He's already signed a four year. He's going to be commissioned after. You were early on in I'd say desegregation

[00:20:10] of the military, if you will. No, we were still... I was in the military in the late 80s, early 90s. Yeah. How was that experience? When I mean desegregation, I meant early in that process of men and women serving together.

[00:20:34] We served together but everything was... depending on the basic training was completely separate. It was still pretty separate. When I got into my unit that was desegregated. It was men and women. Women were mostly at the time, my experience was they were in nursing, medical corps.

[00:21:02] They were in administrative roles. Some engineers, some in communications but mostly more in that kind of office administrator roles. I don't know if that's the case anymore and I just don't follow it as much but that was when I was back in...

[00:21:18] Did you do any HR back then? I was a legal specialist. That's how I knew it wasn't for me because I was like this is not it. That's why a lot of people do internships. What you love and what you don't love but it's interesting

[00:21:42] it's actually probably served you because of so much of HR does come down to compliance. It definitely has. So that's interesting. While you're on your break sabbatical, whatever how did you keep up with what was going on with HR? I had some projects and I would say

[00:22:06] I don't know that I did in full transparency. I really stepped back to be a mom and I wasn't even sure that I would go back. It was one of those that I had worked in Denmark. We were very, very fortunate. It's a socialized system and so

[00:22:30] the childcare there was unbelievable and then when we came back to the US it's different than that. It's more expensive. You have to figure it out on your own and so I really wasn't sure if I wanted to go back to work

[00:22:46] or I didn't and so I did project work but it was more of the yeah, I'll keep doing this and then I ultimately decided to go back in because quite honestly my husband's career kind of took a left turn

[00:23:02] and so we both sort of looked at each other and said well one of us has to figure this out or both of us like how are we going to do this and so I said well I can look, I'll start looking too

[00:23:14] and ended up going back and I've worked consistently since then. I'm probably a better mom, a better working mom than a stay at home mom. Just, you know, that's like, just love my kids. I love them there. However, however, they probably

[00:23:30] like me better as a working mom. I'll just say it that way too. We will make sure that we cut this snippet out and post it all. This will be the title of the show. But the thing is I can relate because when I was traveling post

[00:23:46] COVID, my kids, my kids loved it. They loved seeing me, you know, weekends this that and the other and through COVID man I think they would like for me to be on a plane. Yeah. It's almost like too much. We're getting

[00:24:06] ready to travel next week. We're doing live shows. The first thing they do, they planned it already. They go out to eat when I'm gone. The very first night that I'm gone and I don't know how to take that. I'm kind of like that's a celebration.

[00:24:22] That is a celebration. Like if you go out the third day that I'm gone, okay you just didn't plan dinner. This is the first night. This is a celebration. Or you could flip it on its head and you could say well they have to do something

[00:24:34] fun so that they're not sad. See, I like that better. Silver liners. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. The pace of HR now especially the technology but it really kind of deals with candidates and how candidates are different and processes being updated more

[00:24:54] frequently, etc. Just the velocity or the speed or the pace of HR. How have you adjusted to that through the time? Because you know it's like JFK had what 12 days to evaluate the Bay of Pigs before you made a decision today we have like eight seconds. Probably

[00:25:14] yes. Right? Yeah. So you know different but similar in the sense of there was a time in HR where you could be you could really sit down and think and be strategic and be thoughtful and intentional and all this other stuff. You still want to do that

[00:25:30] but the pace is so quick now. Yeah. So how have you dealt with that? Have you come to grips with that? Well, I will tell you I like change. You know and so I think that helps. It does. I'm not afraid

[00:25:46] of you know taking risks. I'm good, bad or indifferent. I try to be very measured with them in a particular with my job. I'm very measured with them. You know there's the personal risk taking versus the professional

[00:26:02] and the you know the role and I think about those differently. But so I think liking change helps because I have a higher level of tolerance for ambiguity than people who may not like change and so I'm very comfortable

[00:26:18] operating in the gray when it comes to those types of situations. Not everybody is you know some people prefer a lot more certainty. So I think that helps. Having said that I also think you know my background is exceptionally

[00:26:34] varied. You know I've worked in global HR, I've worked in X-PAP management, I've worked in training and development, I've worked in talent management, I've been an HR business partner and I think and I've done you know global comp and band and I think that breath

[00:26:50] I think it gives me a good foundation when it comes to looking at the pace of change and things coming quickly because I think I have I think I have a variety of different experiences to draw on and to you know kind of consider different

[00:27:06] options. And I mentioned before about asking good questions when you're doing global HR. I mean asking good questions is critical when it comes to this kind of stuff so you may have less time to make a decision

[00:27:18] and to move left or right and I think when you when you're in those situations it's even more imperative to ask good questions and to make sure that you're trying to maximize the questions that you're asking. How do you communicate that change then down

[00:27:34] into the organization as the leader of all the people how do you communicate that in a way that doesn't create anxiety among different groups of people because people take change differently. That's right. That's right

[00:27:50] and you know it depends on the change right if I was communicating that I'm giving everybody a raise that's an easy communication that's you know that's the those are the ones that people are very you know happy to hear. You know I surround myself with

[00:28:06] people who have really different points of view than I and I think that's exceptionally important and even before I came over here today I had a meeting with the person who runs our corporate communications and her style is very different than mine and so

[00:28:22] we're getting ready to work through some things with the organization with some of our benefits and you know not negative but just different and we've got a group of an organization that we've had some leadership changes over the last year the pace of change externally

[00:28:38] so we've got a lot of employees who I would say are probably pretty saturated and you know my innate way is well let's go let's go so with her I'm like what do you think about this you know here's what I'm thinking let's talk

[00:28:54] about this so I have her she's a communications professional I trust her point of view I also have folks I've been an Affleck for about almost four and a half years now and I have a group of people who I work with who have been here

[00:29:06] 10 years 15 years 20 years we have a strong organizational culture and so I'll go to them you know hey we're thinking about this here's what I'm thinking about let's talk about it you know how do you think this will land on this population we have a global investments organization

[00:29:22] in New York City how do we think it will land on them how do we think it's going to land on the people who work in the mailroom how do we think it's going to land on

[00:29:30] the people who are working in our call center so I try to I try to cast kind of a wide net to get different points of view and take an approach that's not necessarily a one size fits all you know so a great

[00:29:46] example is we the organization made the decision about a year ago to freeze our pension we were one of the you know remaining organizations in the US publicly traded companies that have a pension and so it had been frozen

[00:30:02] to new entrants in 2013 and last year we made the decision to freeze the pension that was a massive shift for our population the perception of that was massive and even though only about 60% of our employees were

[00:30:18] able to participate in it because of the turnover and just since we had frozen it it's the people who have been here the longest and the people who have the most history and the people who you know have given everything to this company and so communicating that change

[00:30:34] and our approach for for that was one that we're still going through that is very very very high touch and so we just had a session on Thursday or Friday last week to talk about here you know we said we committed to

[00:30:50] we're going to communicate with you every step of the process so you know what's coming and what's coming next and what actions if any that you need to take so we had a big session on Friday we had almost a thousand employees who

[00:31:02] participated in that session where we went very deep on here's a letter you just received here's what box one means here's what box two means you need to take action if it says this by the way we're going

[00:31:14] to have these individual sessions and I talked to my head of global investments and I said you know we're planning to have people from our pension from our 401k provider sit on site at our different locations do you want

[00:31:26] someone there and he was like no you know we don't need that here where this is a different type of population okay perfect we won't do that so we're going to do this educational session for everyone but

[00:31:38] how we're going to treat this population will look different than how we're going to treat this population that is you know we have a group of people who sit on the phones you know eight hours a day and have scheduled you know breaks that are

[00:31:50] down to 15 minute increments and so if I want to help that person I probably need to do that either before they start their day or after they end their day but I want to make sure that I'm available at a time that is accessible to them

[00:32:02] right so if I did the math correctly you're either pre-COVID hire or a COVID hire so where are you at? I was pre-COVID but just I started in October I started in October and we exited everybody at the end of February in early March of 2020. Test number one

[00:32:26] so glad you have all these strategic plans anywho we're going to change the business model and everyone's going to be remote that's right we don't need to rehash like all the things and all the trauma but I would like to ask

[00:32:42] the question of how do you recuperate because HR and all companies in the United States well over the world they were leaned on heavily especially the comms department but everyone in HR was just and I think they did

[00:32:54] an exceptional job by and large of just getting their organizations to a place that they never even considered but then there was also towards the end of that year 20 and into 21 there was a high burnout because people had just intellectually emotionally otherwise

[00:33:10] exhausted because it's all coming at you from every angle at this point now how did you recharge your battery from that experience? So are you asking me personally or asking about the organization? You personally. So you know I'm a big believer, I like work so that's

[00:33:34] like let me start there I think that you know in jobs the kind of job that I'm in and the level and intensity that it is you have to like what you do or you can't give it what you need to give it but I think you know

[00:33:50] burnout is something that started heavily during the pandemic it is still significant we do every year it's called Affleck Work Forces Report every year we have done this I can't remember how many we've done but we've done it for the last 14 years that's

[00:34:10] a lifeline there we've done this for the last 14 years and you know we're still finding that almost 60% of American workers are feeling burned out my guess is that that was probably higher during the pandemic I don't know that off you know cold but

[00:34:26] I would assume because of myself I think when you're in a situation where you're burned out and what I did in particular during the pandemic was you try to find moments of joy and I'm going to talk about the pandemic and then I'm going to kind of pivot

[00:34:42] so the pandemic was a little bit different because everybody was locked down right and so there was a novelty I don't know if you all experienced it in the beginning there was the novelty of the hey you want to do charades

[00:34:54] a virtual charades game let's do a virtual happy hour so let's do virtual teams for banana bread and I think people were really they were trying to make the most of it it was novel

[00:35:10] but then as it dragged on I think by the end we were all sort of like can I please stop looking at myself for 8 hours a day and I feel like I'm not stopping working and it all is bleeding together

[00:35:30] and so I would tell you during the pandemic I made a point of it sounds silly but walking every day I made a point of some sort of physical exercise I was one of the thousands of people who got on the waitlist for the peloton

[00:35:46] and got a peloton so that I think physical exercise is absolutely critical it helps me personally I was getting some form of physical exercise I made sure that I tried to read something that was not work related every day every day and I tried to just

[00:36:06] disconnect from work you know my kids were teenagers and so I think Ryan you may have said it like they don't really care if I'm there or not like they were sort of like yeah so I wasn't one of those people who were

[00:36:22] they didn't even have to make sure that homework was being done or that they were logged in and you know and I'm fortunate I don't know how those parents did it quite frankly God bless them all and God bless all the teachers

[00:36:34] who did that and kept the educational system moving during that time because I don't know how they did it and if my kids had been small I don't know what I would have done because I'm a good working parent I'm a good working parent

[00:36:50] I'm a good working parent and I would tell you that I kind of carried that through even now because my job is intense and you know so five days a week Monday through Friday I'm pretty rigid I you know I'm in the office before seven

[00:37:02] I usually leave around six I make my meals on Sunday my husband and I so we cook for the week so when you know we eat I get home we eat I walk the dog I exercise I read for 15 minutes

[00:37:14] something non-work related at least and then I usually watch a half an hour of some Netflix something just to disconnect I'm a little bit of a Bravo fan small because it makes me feel a little bit better about myself so I watch a little Bravo I'm average person

[00:37:38] and then I decompress on weekends but I take PTO I encourage my team to take PTO you know take time off and that was during the pandemic that was a big thing too that we found nobody was taking

[00:37:50] PTO everybody was just well you know I'm going to work for eight hours but it's just upstairs and so take PTO take time disconnect completely disconnect I think that's really really important and I definitely I try to do that I try to

[00:38:06] encourage my team to do that because especially in the HR world you talked about it William that people are you know HR really kind of helped to carry organizations through and one of the things that we

[00:38:18] with my team really tried to do was to say if we're not taking care of ourselves you know it's sort of like put your own oxygen mask on first right if you're not if you're not taking care of yourself it's really hard

[00:38:30] to be there for people it's really hard to be at your very best for employees and for leaders in the organization and your own teammates so I think it's absolutely you know I used to think it was selfish I don't think it's selfish I think

[00:38:46] it's important in order to be fully engaged when you're engaged in your job right Jerry last question on my side and I know William will have one as well where are you looking forward now in the area obviously of HR and people

[00:39:06] what are you planning for in the coming years and I know it changes so rapidly are you excited like what she's excited about or not excited just planning just like what are you looking at on the horizon and saying

[00:39:22] okay I need to prepare for this good or bad and I know it changes so quickly but it does kind of what's keeping you up right now well you know I would tell you they employee wellness I mean we're an insurance company

[00:39:38] right and so we want to be best in class with our benefits and our wellness offerings and so for me we have a lot we have a lot our biggest area of opportunity is how we package present and make sure that

[00:39:58] our employees know what we have so that they can access it when they need it right and so you know actually use it so it's not you know if we have all of these and it's not just benefits like it could be our learning and development programs

[00:40:14] it could be our mentoring programs it could be our you know we have a daycare on site if people aren't using the things that we're spending time researching as best practice if we're putting all of these things together

[00:40:30] and people aren't using them for the fact that they don't know that we have it or that we have it but they don't know how to access it to take advantage then shame on us and so it's one of those that actually sounds easier than it is

[00:40:46] right and you know myself included it's that you know you have all these things and you want to maximize you want to maximize health expenses continue to climb that's a massive area focus for us so we want our employees to be well and healthy not just

[00:41:02] because it's really good for them as human beings but it's also there's lower absenteeism they are our insurance costs are lower so our own costs as a company are lower so you know when I think about it what I like about HR and my

[00:41:18] job in particular is I get to think about how do we do these things for employees to help them be healthier be smarter and more capable be more engaged all of those things

[00:41:30] and then I also have to think about it through the I will I got to convince my CFO about why I need to spend this money to redo the day care or to add this benefit or to not pass this additional cost onto employees but to carry

[00:41:46] that cost you know but for us to carry that cost for our employees and so that really is when I you know it's something that probably should be well that's just BAU and yes it is BAU but for me that's sort of low

[00:42:02] hanging fruit that's not as low hanging as people think so that will that is and will continue to be an area focus as we sort of move on and we you know when I think about my role and that of the HR organization we try to

[00:42:22] think about yes we have to do everything that drives the business the humans are what drive we're a white collar organization so the humans drive our organization and so when I think about them I think about humans in a

[00:42:34] very holistic way right people bring themselves to work as they say and so how are they feeling mentally are they are they engaged do they are they burned out if they are do they know the resources that they can use you know

[00:42:50] are they engaged in their communities do they have opportunities if they want to volunteer what's our stance on that we have a good one let's make sure they know about that are they physically well are we giving them tools do

[00:43:02] they have access to a gym do they have access to an app if they don't have access to a gym so they can do things that they want to do you know are we helping them to maximize their financial benefits right so are they maximizing

[00:43:14] the 401k when we when we made the decision to take the pension away part of what we've done is a massive education about how can you better leverage your flexible spending account how can you better leverage your 401k in order to save so let's educate them on those

[00:43:30] financial wellness so that they're getting the benefits of that as well so it's really about the we've got all these great things how do we actually move the needle on ensuring that they're being better used and that our employees have

[00:43:46] access to them kind of in the moment when they need them and not they spend a thousand dollars because they went to urgent care or they had to go to the ER and by the way had they gone for preventative care

[00:43:58] three months ago they may not have had to go to the ER for whatever you know for whatever issue I love that you're thinking about adoption usage consumption because every year you get new things that people will pitch you that's yes it's almost

[00:44:14] and if you don't look at those things you get bloat you get feature you get benefit bloat and a benefit isn't a benefit unless people utilize it that's right so you have an EAP so you have to continue looking forward too and you know everybody talks about AI

[00:44:30] I feel like every HR article and you know generative AI and what's happening with that and how will that impact the workforce and what are you doing as an organization and that is something that we absolutely pay attention to and that we're mindful of and how can we

[00:44:46] as a company leverage that so that we are becoming more efficient and automated in the tasks that are less customer impactful or that are more repetitive so they're not the you know address changes

[00:45:02] you know kind of those basic things but it's not about are we going to replace our workforce with AI no it's that we want to be able to pivot our people to actually focus on the more value add work

[00:45:14] for humans that they're dealing with because you know we have as an example we have cancer insurance so if you're dealing with someone who has cancer you might be talking with someone who has had the worse news of their life so you don't want AI involved

[00:45:30] in that you want a human to do that you can have AI involved and you know hey I need to update my address and I'm just a you know a policyholder I need to have this fix that's okay but we want

[00:45:42] to have our people focusing on those really important moments for our customers and so that's how we're thinking about it but it becomes it's an ongoing conversation about what are we doing how are we using it will it impact our workforce how will it impact our workforce

[00:45:58] how can we reskill our employees and those are things that continue to be top of mind as well because I think it creates thanks for employees you hear about AI and people say we're going to become obsolete and I would say you know we're not

[00:46:14] not you know no I think that you know people need humans and I think it's about how do you purpose the humans to do the value of work that's the highest kind of emotional touch with other humans that's what Ryan and I have come to is where

[00:46:30] where's that moment of humanization and it might have been in a different place at a time but where does it need to be now and that's right last question real quick advice you'd give your younger self in your first HR job

[00:46:46] what would you say to Jerry I would say take on things that you don't like it's and that's okay so you know I had a tendency to sort of pivot away if there was like I don't really like

[00:46:58] that I don't really like that and as I got further in my career I was less afraid of trying those things and so even when I talk to our interns or our new hires at early career I always say that

[00:47:10] like go broad like it's the like it's important I think it's important unless you want to be an actuary or something very narrow which God bless the people who know that because I didn't know that when I first started my career

[00:47:26] go broad and try things and I also I would also say you know roll up your sleeves and be willing to try what comes at you like don't have a preconceived notion about why you shouldn't do something just roll your sleeves up and try

[00:47:46] well soft stage Jerry thank you so much we know how you are thank you for coming on the show and educating the audience and thanks for the audience for being here