HR, We Have a Problem - Aligning HR initiatives with core business objectives to cultivate a dynamic environment.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the HR Huddle podcast presented by Sapient Insights Group, the ultimate resource for all things HR. It's time to get in the huddle. Hello everyone, welcome back to the HR Huddle. I'm your host, Terry Zipper, CEO and managing partner at Sapient Insights Group, and I'm

[00:00:28] back for another interesting episode of HR We Have a Problem. This is the show where we break down the big and most relevant HR issues of the day. We help you make sense of what they mean, and we talk about what you might do about them.

[00:00:45] Joining me today is Scott Mason. Scott is the founder and CEO of Life's Work Associates. I first met Scott a few years ago through a mutual friend and former colleague. When you work independently, it's great to know other independents and small business

[00:01:02] owners, whether it's to partner or strategize on the market, collaborate, or frankly just commiserate. It can be a tough world out there. Welcome Scott, thanks for coming on the show. No, thanks for having me. I'm excited about our conversation today.

[00:01:20] So you've got quite a varied background and I did not give your introduction justice by just announcing you as the CEO and founder. Can you give a minute on what you do to give people a little bit better sense of where you're coming from in this conversation?

[00:01:36] Yes, yes, sure. 25 years in the leadership and development space, consulting space. So I worked for an organization called Blessing White, and we were employee-owned. We actually purchased ourselves right before 9-11. And it was a good thing we did because we were able to manage that storm and everything

[00:01:54] that happened after that. But I learned a lot over the 25 years. I ended up running Blessing White and then we were acquired by a company called GP Strategies, but we really ran a global leadership and development consultancy.

[00:02:05] So we would help develop leaders at all levels within organizations and we ran a global team in which to do that. So I learned a ton through that experience. About six years ago, I went off on my own.

[00:02:17] And it's a journey that I probably should have done even earlier as you look back as a small business owner and starting it. And it's really been great. We really focus on three areas. One is helping organizations develop their leaders to make sure that they're ready for

[00:02:30] the future. And all the challenges that organizations have been through currently are going through and will be going through as well. And there's really four parts to my business. One is Life's Work Associates is connecting people that I've come across, and I'm a

[00:02:43] great network of people who are really passionate and experts in their space to those opportunities. And what I've found is more and more organizations are going with an outsourced approach to talent around filling these critical talent roles, whether it's an HR business

[00:02:57] partner doing a skills initiative or a project or doing instructional design, global program management, et cetera. So it's been a great journey and I'm like you connected to so many phenomenal people who are more independent but collectively what we come in and do for organizations is pretty special.

[00:03:14] So it's been great getting to know you and your team as well. So thank you. Yeah. And to your point, so much of the old guard, if you will, or the long term knowledge workers, especially in HR have kind of left the field.

[00:03:29] So more and more they're looking for people with the long term experience to come in and help them figure out what they need to do because a lot of their team is fairly junior or new in the space of HR. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Agreed.

[00:03:45] So you and I were recently talking about the way HR is run today. A lot of different approaches but some very specific ideas about the way we ought to think about it and run it. And I just thought that would be a great topic for our audience today.

[00:04:03] Does that sound like a good plan to you? Yeah, that'd be great. We'll forward to it. All right. Then let's get into the huddle. All right. So I've had conversations recently with some heads of finance, it's marketing, sales.

[00:04:17] I've had a few on the show as well and talked about their perspective. I know things obviously look different from different perspectives. You're in a unique position because I know you're coaching a lot of executives in the business, not just in the HR space.

[00:04:35] So you're kind of hearing firsthand what they think about, what they're most challenged with, not just from the business perspective, like what's happening in the industry and transformation, but other areas as well. And obviously there's a lot going on on people issues, but that's not their only challenge.

[00:04:56] Are there some common themes you're hearing from these executives and others that you're working with? Yeah, that's a great question. I'll give you some context. I do do a lot of coaching with executives. Primary is in insurance, re-insurance, financial services as well as advertising organizations.

[00:05:16] So I bring a unique approach to coaching. It's more of a consultative coach model where I am familiar with their strategy, their business plans, the financials of the organization, and then carrying that into some of the traditional elements of coaching

[00:05:31] is what does it take to be an effective leader, to lead for the sustained results and create a culture and environment that people are going to want to be part of and will help you be successful. Here's the frustrations that I've been seeing,

[00:05:42] and this goes across all of the different individuals. And it's been through COVID, a lot of the businesses that were part of actually did pretty well. Right? So they reduced a lot of their expenses, their numbers were pretty good, their productivity was pretty good.

[00:05:55] And then coming out of it over the last year and then going into this year, there's more challenges in the business. So you've seen people react different ways. One, I can't get the talent that I need, right? So they're saying I know where I want to go.

[00:06:07] I figure it out the complexity of our industry and how it's shifting. So it's not like they don't have the answer, but it really comes back to two areas with an organization that provides support. One is HR and the other is technology.

[00:06:20] So this is where our executives were really challenged and I find them extremely frustrated. And they would go about it in a certain approach that we shifted from. So they would complain that HR is not getting me the talent, we're not helping me develop the leaders,

[00:06:35] they're not helping them. So I hear the frustration here at BuildUp, they would try to start doing things independently. And then the same with technology, right? So if you think about how AI and these other things are happening, like their own internal technology organizations

[00:06:50] wasn't providing support from an operations perspective, they weren't leveraging some of the technologies so that we can scale the value of the associates that we currently have. So they're frustrated in both of those camps, but if we stay focused on HR,

[00:07:04] I said, what if we went about it in a different way? I said, what if you said to yourself, I'm going to partner with HR and we're going to have success and we are going to be the model of success for the organization.

[00:07:16] I said, what kind of response do you think you're going to get from the HR team and community? And in one organization, we also did their engagement survey. So I knew the results within HR we knew the results within the technology group.

[00:07:28] And they were poor, they were bad, their people were frustrated, right? And once we had that mind shift from an executive perspective and really invited them into the business, HR started to show up and they wanted to prove to the organization, they wanted to prove to the executive

[00:07:44] that they were working with in their entire team and also to their own team that we can provide value and we can provide a positive impact on the business, but it definitely needed to shape, it shape and change how they were working together. So it's really fascinating

[00:08:00] because from an HR perspective, I said, I need you to think like you're the owner of this business, right? And you need to be proactive and coming across to them on all aspects of we're talking about talent succession planning get ahead of it.

[00:08:14] If we're talking about comp, get ahead of it. So they're worried about the business, the complexities, the changes in the industry in which they're operating the financial pressures that they're currently under what if you were to go proactively to them

[00:08:25] and said, if I was Scott as an executive, I see your workforce. And if I look at the critical positions that usually take us time to hire in looking at your existing, there's 12 people within your organization I qualify for this area. We did a comp analysis

[00:08:40] and we've realized that some of them are underpaid during the market. So we want our recommendation is to make a market adjustment. We also know that if we involve them in development programs over time, we have a higher retention rate and really put together a strategic plan

[00:08:55] that the executive can talk to with them about and walk through and saying, yes, we have a comprehensive plan to grow the talent within our organization to engage the talent in our organization and to retain them. That way, I'm not worried about replacing

[00:09:11] or having to replace the talent and it could be really aggressive in achieving my business goals. Well, that changed everything, right? I mean, the excitement from HR, the coordination from HR because the other thing is HR wasn't coordinated. So if you look at it from a business perspective

[00:09:27] like all these people from HR are hitting me, we have to do performance review, we have talent succession plan and we've got this, that, and they say it's all HR crap, right? And we as an HR community weren't coordinated enough. Yeah. So yeah, it's really, it was fascinating.

[00:09:43] Yeah, to your point, the collaboration piece is so critical because a lot of times HR either feels like they're on an island, like we've got to worry about attracting the top talent. No, that's a business problem, right? And everybody has to be engaged

[00:10:01] on how we attract top talent. It's not an HR problem. Right. HR has to help solve that problem through their own, their things that they do, but it's not their problem alone. And I think sometimes we as HR professionals, if we're not collaborating with the business,

[00:10:19] we kind of feel like this is all sitting on our shoulders. 100%. So when I look back in the organization, they were successful, right? So they have a case study, they have a story around how HR has partnered with the business differently and the chain of tone and tenor

[00:10:36] with the executive and how he speaks about the HR organization, he's proud of the partnership that they have. They are critical to his team. So they have a seat at the table and he finally feels like we're getting ahead of it. Meaning we're not reacting all the time,

[00:10:54] like oh, so-and-so quit or this other person quit. We have to counter, we have to put in 10, 12, 13, 14 hours that they didn't have in their day or week to try to save somebody, right? So they're being proactive instead of reactive. And that's what they appreciated the most, right?

[00:11:10] And also a dashboard now, they look at it from a business perspective. So they wanna see what are the metrics and we have access to more and more data and information in HR, but it's not coordinated in a way that executives are used to seeing

[00:11:21] other data in their business. So what I'm also doing is helping them to evolve their dataset and their dashboard. So it's a critical report just like any of the other reports that the executive is gonna be looking through in terms of looking at their health

[00:11:36] and future of their business. Yeah, it's not just about looking at hey, did we recruit the best talent or did we, what's our turnover ratio? Are we paying people the way we should be paying them? It's how did we innovate? And what's our customer satisfaction rate?

[00:11:53] And all of those sort of competitive advantage business outcomes. When you look at, and we do research every year on the state of HR and HR technology, the talent, the HR and the business outcomes are so critical to the successful organizations

[00:12:15] and we see that over and over with those organizations where HR is viewed as a strategic partner to the organization. They have higher talent outcomes, they have higher business outcomes and they have higher HR outcomes overall, hands down. Without a doubt. So the more I'm coaching executives,

[00:12:36] I'm like how do they develop that level of partnership? And there seem to be they aren't, they aren't providing, they aren't. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, I said we have culpability in this. This is a relationship, relationship is both ways.

[00:12:49] And again, changing the mindset of what if we invite them in and what if we treat them as a team? What are we gonna get from them and how can we broadcast the story that makes our organization look good and their organization look good.

[00:13:01] This is a possibility that we can really be successful. It is a lot of hard work but it's just like any other part of their business. So the being agile, right? And the first dashboard that they developed and what it looks like today is totally different.

[00:13:14] Right, see, like you were mentioning it's like it's nice to know where our talent is maybe by year, by level, are they developing at the right place? What does the productivity look like in their business? What are their errors? Like all there's so much information and data

[00:13:28] that if we start collapsing, coordinating that and also to look at why is it going well here? Right, so they started to look at certain leaders had a highly productive group. What is that manager doing? Right, what can we learn from the manager?

[00:13:41] So being inquisitive around some of these topics from an HR perspective, what are they doing and what are they doing well and how are we sharing that across the rest of the leaders within the organization? Because we want everyone to be successful.

[00:13:53] And again, what leaders were most worried about is are we gonna have the talent needed to execute where the organization expects us to go. So we're making pretty bold commitments as the world changes, as the industry changes and how the organization changes.

[00:14:09] So how do we back that up? It's been fascinating for both sides because they're probably, they are, and not probably, they absolutely are more productive in their collaboration that are driving real results. So the amount of time that they're talking about these things that may have been considered,

[00:14:27] oh, I have to do this in the past from a business. It's like, no, this is a primary part of our agenda just like running the technical aspects of the business. Yeah, yeah, and you really have to ask. I mean, different parts of the business

[00:14:40] are gonna be looking for potentially different things from HR. Your sales organization is gonna be looking for one thing while your floor and operations organization is gonna be looking for something different, right? So how do you meet the needs of the various constituents and stakeholders in the business

[00:15:01] so that you deliver it at the top of your game? Yeah, one of my clients was a pharmaceutical organization. They were pretty large and a lot of it was rock, you're in cancer, right? So it was very patient, purpose driven organization to make that difference, right?

[00:15:18] We could all relate to the topic at hand. And what they looked at is they looked at the manager experience, say manager in the term of being a leader of others, right, could be a leader of a smaller team or the organization.

[00:15:32] And they put somebody in charge of how HR selectively impacts that population. And their point of view was saying, we're impacting from all these different perspectives like recruitment and talent, succession and career and all these different very important aspects of HR were not coordinated in a way

[00:15:52] where they actually broke down what is the impact to our leaders? And what they said is if we can find tune and create efficiencies in terms of how we're communicating and what we're asking from the business if we can give them time back,

[00:16:08] what can they do with that time? Could they better manage and lead their team that's actually trying to cure cancer? So they looked at it from a different perspective wouldn't appreciation from the business when they started to look at that more effective coordination because they felt appreciated

[00:16:23] and what the business responded with is we're gonna lean in now even more because we know the intentionality that you're taking with us. So we're gonna come in as equal partners when we have to do these things that are gonna help us drive our business.

[00:16:39] Totally different approach, right? To thinking about how do we contribute from an HR community to the success of the organization and we have a profound impact how we do it, how we partner and that's where I think we'll continue to evolve. How do you see change impacting

[00:16:59] what's going on in these organizations? Just from remote work and the generational workforce changes that we're seeing and new tech. I mean, one of the statistics that was in our research last year was the average employee experience 10 planned organizational changes in 2022 compared to two in 2016.

[00:17:25] Like that's a lot, that's a lot going on. How do I deal with that? And still think about the organization as a business and what the business requirements are to get the job done. Yeah, wow. I mean, were you surprised by that research? We were surprised, yes.

[00:17:45] It's just been exponential over the last six or eight years. And it's going to continue. So, I mean, this is just back to what we're talking about. Huge opportunity for the business and HR to come together and help that employee population manage change and embrace it.

[00:18:05] So if you think about change and a lot has been studied about change and there's different models around change but the faster we can create that agile organization that is embracing change because that's going to be the reality of our future

[00:18:19] when we talk about a little bit about AI and the impact of that on businesses and organizations. We're just scratching the surface there. I was with an insurance organization, Large Global and they're looking at AI and they said right now,

[00:18:33] we estimate this is probably about five years ago so the stuff's actually hitting right now. We estimate 25% of the activities that our underwriters and claims people are doing are going to be done through automation. So whether we want to call that AI or technology

[00:18:49] but these are things that are going to support them and their ability to do perform their role and job. And five years ago, there was a reaction saying are we going to get rid of a lot of people? Is this a cost reduction activity?

[00:19:03] They say no, it's a survival activity because we don't have enough people coming into the insurance space in order to fill the demand. So we need to offload non-critical the very important activities but we need to get our people doing their highest

[00:19:19] and best value which usually is the judgmental aspects that AI is going to take a long time to catch up with somebody with 25 years of specialty underwriting experience or 30 years or 15 years of claims experience. So they said it's quite the opposite.

[00:19:35] We need to do this in order to survive. So if you think about the changes to how even underwriting was happening or claims was happening or all these things, it's now in the integration of machine or AI with individuals to produce the job.

[00:19:50] So if you think about the change elements just in what I was describing there, absolutely massive changing the way they do business. So I'm not surprised, I was curious to see the number increase so much but I'm not surprised based on what I'm seeing

[00:20:06] from an executive lens when I'm coaching people how much is really changing within their organizations? It is a lot and I don't know how much of that is, hey, we're gonna do this change versus organizations really looking at what their goals are for the year

[00:20:25] and being very thoughtful about, we're only gonna focus on three big things, right? We're not gonna do 10 things, we're not gonna do 20 things, we're gonna do three and we're gonna do them really, really well. And that might be some of it, we've kind of gone well past that,

[00:20:44] we need to kind of bring that back a little bit but again, there's just a lot of things happening in the organization and some of it you just can't stop. We're not stopping, I just see it accelerating, right? So even more, yep. Yeah.

[00:21:01] How would you or what are you seeing in terms of data and some of the data that you see as very critical to this conversation and sort of sharing with the business or trying to figure out how you get that data

[00:21:15] because a lot of organizations have a lot of data but they haven't figured out what to do with all of it and how to interpret it in a way that it adds value. Yeah, I've seen a shift in terms of the structure of HR

[00:21:27] where data used to be all around us but wasn't coordinated, wasn't brought together. It was considered but not considered in the way it probably should. I've seen people invest in positions, people in data analytics practice or a person to start and really making sure that we understand

[00:21:45] the data sources that we have and what's the validity of those data sources, right? So sometimes that we had different systems that weren't capturing or the data wasn't valid or it wasn't communicating or we've done things on excels, right? So a lot of times HR,

[00:22:03] if you look at talent succession planning we've not made the investments in technology that would make it easier. So I've seen a lot of them move from Workday and some of these other, like a lot of these larger systems have tools that they can turn on.

[00:22:17] So I'm seeing HR turn on a lot of these tools and better capture and integrate the data where there, I don't wanna say struggling but the next phase in this is what is the data telling us back to our,

[00:22:29] the first question is how do we bring this data, all these data sources together? What stories are telling us? And if you were the executive of supporting, how do I bring this together to create a roadmap or a plan in order to support you and your business, right?

[00:22:46] We're not, I don't see us there yet. We're getting a lot closer and I believe like go back to the dashboard like we have to be monitoring this as essential elements of running the business. So from an HR perspective, we have to look at this data.

[00:23:03] We've gotta be curious about the data and we have to see how the data is being modeled so we can start taking action to impact future risks that we have. So we're losing people at a critical role or whatever the data is starting to tell us

[00:23:21] but data will be a data practice within HR will be a thing if it's not already a thing in most organizations. Yeah, yeah. And I agree with your earlier sentiment about thinking about how you would, what would you do if this was your business, right?

[00:23:40] And what are the skills that I need to do that? Like I need to know something about finance. I need to know something about marketing. I need to know something about the products and services that we deliver and how we make our money.

[00:23:55] And those are the kinds of skills I need to gain in order to get better at what I do regardless of probably what role you're in but HR is very critical because you're helping build the workforce, right? And that workforce is critical to blending into the culture,

[00:24:15] being able to do the things that you need them to do to deliver on the business promise. Just it's critical. Absolutely critical. And sometimes, not sometimes but a lot of times we're lagging in terms of the investments, right? So with the partner model,

[00:24:34] like what are we gonna fund first? Are we gonna fund the automation within say claims or underwriting or are we gonna make sure that we turn on these data capturing devices within our HR systems, right? It's usually it's a lagging indicator.

[00:24:46] But if you're partnering and you're starting to saying here's the data and information, it's a valuable tool. The business is gonna get on board absolutely quickly and saying this is a priority. Like I need to understand what the correlation is of performance, engagement, retention, succession plan

[00:25:01] like all of the things that we're doing. Imagine being able to visualize that on one's sheet. So if I run a team of about 100 people in the organization, how is that plotting out? What's standing out? What does that look like? And then for overlay,

[00:25:16] what are important initiatives back to we're gonna choose three things we're gonna go after and we're gonna win in the space. How is this gonna potentially negatively impact? How do we manage those risks? That's where data has to go.

[00:25:29] And it has to continue to evolve to that degree. Now, are you seeing the CHRO largely reporting to the CEO or are you seeing some differences there that maybe have a different impact on the way the business gets run? Yeah, it's curious they say that.

[00:25:51] I see both still, right? So I'll see sometimes they're gonna report into a COO role. So to look at it more operationally focused. I have seen the shift from an organizational transformation that the CHRO is part of that people aspect of driving organizational performance

[00:26:09] and in the CEO holding them more accountable as they would a business, right? So I think that's ideal is when that CHRO is at the table and really helping to from a people perspective drive that sustained organization through everything that we've talked about.

[00:26:30] It shouldn't just be seen as operational or transactional it should be seen as strategic. And I think it's person dependent to be honest with you because I think the business sees and recognizes the value and they'll be there. If they're not seeing and recognizing the value

[00:26:47] they're gonna make it transactional and operational and probably look to reduce expense in that area. Yeah, I mean, I would say for a lot of small businesses they're thinking about HRs almost strictly from a compliance perspective but if you're planning to grow to me

[00:27:04] your HR partner is critical to the success of that growth and should never be thought of as just. And there's so many complexities HR is complex right? I think you're an HR business partner the way you just described. How many things are running through their role,

[00:27:22] their desk, their job, their head? I mean, it's everything. You're like, what don't you see on a given any given Tuesday, right? You're gonna have it all. You're gonna have an HR issue or you're gonna have any different thing like sometimes the HR is like your internet provider

[00:27:38] if it's running well and running fast we've it's fine, right? We kind of expect that but as soon as there's one little hiccup then we lose credibility all these different things. So again, I think we should be educating around the complexities of HR

[00:27:54] and the things that we need to do from a partner group going back full circle but for a partnered approach. Cause I don't think the business really understands they just expect it all to work magically and they're always on the defensive. It's like, no, the complexity

[00:28:07] of what you're trying to do here say we're leaning into a new space we need to stand up at a country we need to stand up in other organizations and the complexities and doing that sometimes we just don't communicate effectively

[00:28:17] as a team of what it actually takes for that lift. And I think businesses like often if somebody else has to do something we assume that's gonna be a lot easier, right? So and I think that's a miss. That's a miss on our part. It is, yeah.

[00:28:31] And we talk a lot about on this show what HR needs to be doing but the reality is it's incumbent upon the rest of the business to understand HR as well and to be that collaborative partner if they really want to get the results

[00:28:46] that they'd like to get. Yeah, and that was the mindset shift I was talking about, right? So I said, hey, we can continue on this track you can be frustrated you can be upset you can be disappointed whatever else I said, what if we flip that mindset

[00:29:00] once they flipped it then naturally they're gonna be curious and they're gonna start getting into a conversation around Terry, what else can we be doing to help? What's getting in the way? And once that dialogue is open the power that can be released from that

[00:29:13] in the prioritization, right? So it's businesses are saying hey, I want to be focused on these one, two or three things. Well, HR we're doing a hundred things oftentimes and everything needs to kind of let's add this to it, let's add that to it.

[00:29:24] Next thing you know, we have like 25 or 30 and that's not, I'm not exaggerating that number I was with a CHRO we're doing an offsite and they had like 25 or 30 things. And I said, if I was facilitating the same activity in business we would never get to this

[00:29:38] and they were rationalizing all 25 to 30 as things that are absolutely critical and important. I'm like, how? Like how are you gonna get this done? So yeah. I did that in our business this year as small a business as we are

[00:29:51] we looked at what we tried to do the year before and I said, look, we've got to focus on three things. Yeah. And so let's define what those three things are and then if anything that we're doing anything big that we're trying to do

[00:30:06] is not in service to one of those three things then we're not gonna do it. Yeah, stop it. It really makes you think harder about where you're spending your time. Yeah, with executives always talk about their mix. So where does their time go as an executive?

[00:30:25] And this is HR should be doing the same thing when I coach HR execs as they say the same. It's like, right, so let's break it down. So what are the four or five areas that you're spending your time currently when I look at it

[00:30:35] a lot of times people get promoted and yet they're still their mix isn't their mix hasn't kept up. Meaning like their ideal mix of what you should be doing on a day-to-day basis on a week to week

[00:30:47] on a quarter by quarter year by year basis is not evolved. And that's where I've seen executives and other leaders not be successful, right? And it goes to like what you're saying is like that's like strategic thinking about your business saying that's really unpack and think about

[00:31:05] what are the two to three things that we're gonna focus on that we think is gonna drive what our clients want and need from us in an exceptional manner. Well, that takes time. So oftentimes when I say like to Terry,

[00:31:18] I'll say, well, what is your mix this past week? Is like, oh geez, it wasn't ideal. Wasn't ideal. I said, I get it. We all have those weeks, right? But it can't be two. It can't be three was can't be a month, right? So you've had to spend

[00:31:29] you're the spend some dedicated time thinking about all right, what are the three things and collaborating with your team and really think about one of those three things. That's part of being a leader. Right, if you don't do that, who else is Terry? Right. Right.

[00:31:43] And that's where I say to leaders that a coach is the same within HR and sometimes we wanna please or we wanna help or we wanna provide service saying yes all the time isn't necessarily the best thing you can do from an HR perspective, right?

[00:31:58] You'd rather say we can do all these things. Yes, but business let's prioritize the ones that'll have the biggest impact for you in your business. Right. And then let's deliver. Yeah, completely agree. Yeah. Well, one of the things I like to do on this show

[00:32:14] as we leave it is think about we talked about a lot of stuff today, right? These are big complex, hairy issues, challenges but if there was one thing you could leave the audience with today that they could do tomorrow or maybe even today

[00:32:32] that would start to get them on this journey of what we've talked about, what would that be? I would say be curious and be intentional with your business partner. So I'm going back there like I really believe HR did a great job through COVID.

[00:32:49] I'm not gonna take that away. I mean the complexities in that situation was heroic and I think sometimes it's underappreciated but I think this next part this next phase that we're in they're absolutely critical and I think they need to declare that through the business partner saying

[00:33:04] I wanna be a partner, I wanna drive the business and I wanna understand it and I wanna make sure we're aligned on the most important aspects, right? And I wanna have that conversation, right? And I think if they declare at the intent

[00:33:18] of what they wanna bring, what that could look like and then what they need or want back would go a long way and then we'll evolve. Like so it might be things that we've gotta get better in. So we're gonna listen to the business saying

[00:33:32] I'm disappointed that we're not able to return the quality of candidates, right? I'm disappointed in our recruitment process. Well what's impact that, right? So why like look at it from both perspectives. So I think we can do that right away

[00:33:46] is just saying this is what our intent is and this is the what we wanna be able to partner to provide and this is where we're gonna evolve and what we're gonna do but how can we meet the business where they are

[00:33:57] and how can the business meet HR where they are and start really coming together. And if they can form that relationship again that it was, I said it kind of ingest but I said what if you guys are the example for the organization?

[00:34:09] And we both got on board of that. Love that, yeah. Yeah that became their rallying cries. They wanted to be able to stand up in a future date or not even stand up, right? And be recognized. But it was more of like why can't we be that example

[00:34:24] of this coming together? And then it was a self-prophesy that came to realization because they both came into it with the outcome and expectation in mind. And then it was the how, like how are we gonna work together to accomplish this? And HR was able to be honest

[00:34:41] in what was standing in the way. Right? They're like, yeah we have one recruiter. Yeah, we got your back and then HR feels like somebody has their back. That was probably the biggest thing that provided the biggest emotional lift to HR

[00:34:57] is they finally felt somebody actually had their back or cared. And what did they provide in response to that? Discretionary effort and everything to the max. Yeah. To the max and they were successful. Is it hard every day yet? Because it's constantly evolving and changing

[00:35:14] but if they're in it together, it felt really good. So I would say it's just that like meet wherever you are from an HR perspective you're in the service of somebody in the business or support function. Yeah. Try to align to them that way

[00:35:28] and then evolve over time, both of you evolve over time to create that HR of the future. Cause we all from an HR perspective we know we'd want to be able to provide. So it's not like we don't have that idealistic view

[00:35:40] of what we can be doing to support them. It's really the how, how can we come together as partners? So that would be my way. That's great. Be curious, ask questions, get engaged, love that. Well, Scott, thanks for joining today. That's all the time we have.

[00:35:57] This has been a great conversation. Where can people find you online and on social? You can go to what, life'sworkassociates.com or leaderconnect.com or my LinkedIn, Scott Mason. And you can search me on the New York City area. But yeah, I would love to connect with anybody.

[00:36:14] Terry, just always impressed with you and in the service that you provide not only to your clients but to the entire HR community. So thank you for spearheading a podcast like this. That's what I am finding from an HR perspective.

[00:36:26] We're not connecting as much as we used to with each other because of the complexities of our job, the demands of our job, the life we have outside of work. So even if somebody just took their time to listen to a podcast,

[00:36:37] I hope it gives them some kind of connection, some things to think about. So thank you for bringing this to me. And sometimes we just have to do things that we are maybe afraid to do. This podcast for me was one of those things.

[00:36:50] So a year ago, I was like, no, I don't think I want to do a podcast. And here I am today. So do some things that you wouldn't think you'd want to do or you're afraid to do or you don't think you have the experience to do.

[00:37:05] Just do it. You can't know unless you try, right? Great, great way to end. I would end on that note. That was from my full set, Terry. Thank you so much. Thank you to our producers, brand method media group

[00:37:18] and our marketing team who will put all this together and get it out there to you. And thank you for tuning in. That's all the time we have today for this episode of HR. We have a problem. If you enjoyed this episode,

[00:37:31] you can subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app. And we'd love it if you'd leave us a review. We'd love to know if there's some topics that you want to hear about. Drop us a line or schedule some time on the website.

[00:37:43] We will be back in two weeks with another episode of HR. We have a problem. Thanks everybody.