"We can make the case. Research is out there that prioritizing connection over productivity is the fastest way to get the productivity. When people have the sense of belongings and feel valued and be part of something, the productivity goes up." Junko Fukuma, AVP of Talent, Healthesystems We're Only Human -- Episode 175 In this episode of "We're Only Human," Ben Eubanks interviews Junko Fukuma about the importance of creating connections and fostering belonging in the workplace. They discus...

"I also enjoy the face to face with employees. And I think I really have chosen this field of benefits, this discipline, because I want to help employees maximize the benefits that are offered to them." Summer Martin, Human Resources Generalist, STRATA-G Solutions We're Only Human -- Episode 174 The episode features a conversation between Ben Eubanks and Summer Martin about Summer's journey in pursuing the Certified Employee Benefits Specialist (CEBS) certification. Summer shares her passion ...

"And someone says, 'I don't think management's for me.' Celebrate that! When somebody says that to you, you need to celebrate and say, 'Great decision!' As an individual contributor, you have joy in your job by being excellent, by being a subject matter expert."Cheryl Gochis, Chief Human Resources Officer, Baylor University We're Only Human - Episode 173 In this episode, Ben Eubanks interviews Cheryl Gochis, the chief human resources officer at Baylor University. They discuss the im...

"My refrigerator broke one day and I didn't call a repair person. I didn't go to refrigerator repair school. I went to YouTube, found a person who had a similar problem, followed along, fixed the problem, moved on. And then we go to work and suddenly you can't do that anymore." JD Dillon, Chief Learning Officer, Axonify We're Only Human - Episode 172 In this episode, Ben talks with JD Dillon, a learning leader and advocate for frontline workers and the use of technology to support learni...

"I would be remiss to tell our employees 'you have the power to question your doctors' if I didn't tell HR people 'you have the power to question your consultants and brokers' the exact same way." Melissa Cassidy, Human Resources Leader, Valpak We're Only Human -- Episode 171 In this podcast episode, host Ben Eubanks engages in a conversation with Melissa Cassidy, focusing on the topics of benefits, HR, and employee wellness. They discuss Melissa's background and her experience in the field. ...

"So when it comes to training and learning as a viable solution for helping people be the best that they can be in the roles that they serve, I believe that that's always been important. We've just not always been able to illustrate impact in the past the way in which we're able to now. That is because of the different types of tools and resources and knowledge that we've gained about the science of measuring the impact of training and learning." Kevin M. Yates, The L&D Detective We...

"So it's really designed to be a two-way street and to create that conversation from the very, very beginning points. So we're setting the expectations for what employment is going to be like, especially as a leader at our company." Nicole Hirsch, Sr Recruiting Manager, Lattice We're Only Human -- Episode 169 Teaching hiring managers how to interview... It sounds like a foregone conclusion, yet data from the 2023 Lighthouse Research & Advisory Modern Screening Practices Study of mo...

"Like a lot of people, it's something I fell into. I don't think there's anybody out there that woke up and said, "When I grow up, I want to be an HR tech/HRIS person. So I had a background in social work, counseling, and nonprofit, then got into it and then ended up working in an HRIS role implementing a learning management system. That was my first kind of true HRIS and I'd never worked with learning management before. I'd never worked in HR before. So it was a learning experience for me. B...

"Pay transparency is here (or coming) depending on where you're located and where you're hiring people. It's kind of like a snowball rolling down the hill getting bigger and bigger. It's something to really stop and think about and prepare for now, because it's not easy. I think the biggest thing around transparency is thinking about what your education plan is for your people." Megan Nail, Vice President, Total Rewards Practice at NFP We're Only Human -- Episode 167 In our research with empl...

So we're looking at how the words are actually formed. When you're hiring for a technology manager, what does that mean? Are you looking for a technical technology manager? Are you looking for someone who grew up in the chops of software development, knows all of the full delivery life cycle, or are you looking for someone who's more project focused? If your job description isn't conveying those skills or that type of clarification in the job description, you're not gonna get the right person...

" I do think that there is so much hidden talent inside our organizations, and we don't even realize it. How do you find that? How do you leverage that? How do you build and develop that? This is what I find so interesting about the skills conversation. Everything that we've just been talking, about the potential and impact for any one of us is huge." Heidi Perloff, SVP, Global HR Strategic Initiatives and Delivery Solutions at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. We're Only Human - Episode ...

And so that doesn't happen overnight. But over time, as people bought into it and we started to see over the course of one year, we gave the business back 1500 interviews. Imagine the extra time that was available for our product managers. They could do their job, and then when the quality of hire goes up with that, you start to get this [positive] cycle. You've now made a better hire, and because you started with listening, there's a high probability that [they're] gonna be successful and st...

I'm really excited we are a fully remote organization. It's why I get to do the work I do from Hawaii. It does mean I have really early mornings, so be aware of what you're signing up for, but I get to work fully remote. In supporting fully remote organizations, we have to be incredibly intentional about the culture and the way we work. Diana Brown, Head of People, Eco We're Only Human -- Episode 163 Working remote. It's a polarizing topic overall, but perhaps even more so when it comes to HR...

"One of the things that a lot of our industry struggled with was trying to regulate employees and not let them have their phone in their hand, but we actually encourage it. We ask them to help us do TikToks. Everybody gets involved. It really brings in a sense of camaraderie. We're not constantly saying, 'Get off your phone. Get off your phone. Get off your phone.' We're encouraging them: get on your phone, take the pictures, take the videos, promote the brand." Michele Corkins, Senior Manage...

"We have 1700 people at our company. That's 1700 different opinions, needs, journeys. So at Getty Images we create and we measure and we monitor engagement opportunities to strengthen a work culture where people belong and they can do their best work." Marie Potter, Senior Director, Culture & Development, Getty Images We're Only Human -- Episode 161 Defining the problem is a big step towards finding a solution. But what do you do when the problem or challenge is so broad and v...

"I was deleting 24 Google Calendar placeholders one day and manually copy/pasting new hire email addresses into the 17 ones we were going to keep. It was at least 30 minutes of hundreds of just mindless clicks. And I said, wait a minute. I'm gonna figure out how to do this [better]. So I looked at our Google Calendar integration, saw that I could both delete calendar events and add participants to calendar events. It worked so well. I took hundreds of clicks down to two clicks to complete tho...

"If I had to put a bet on the future, where we're headed is about understanding potential future performance and what drives and drains people. I think that's really where I see TA going longer term. We've seen success around using some of that psychometric data to really upskill folks into engineers that wouldn't not necessarily have been on technical paths. So business analysts, old school project managers, and those technical analyst folks... Finding the ones that are really well suited to...

"And speaking of changing expectations and what's socially acceptable, this challenge of ghosting is going through the roof, and I've got bad news for you. It's gonna get worse. When we look at the data on ghosting, we see that it's actually age correlated. So someone who is 25 is more likely than someone who's 35, who's more likely someone who's 45, and so on. So the people who are 55 years old and older in the workplace are the least likely to ghost an employer. And guess what? They...

"It's a big differentiator. And I think the organizations that figure it out--the organizations that get it right--are the ones that are gonna be able to attract people. And I think organizations that don't are gonna have more of a struggle because that becomes more important as we think about just making conscious choices: how do we wanna spend our days? How do we wanna spend our working lives and what do we want to accomplish? Mike Trusty, VP of Talent and Learning, Fannie Mae We're Only Hu...

There's certainly the opportunity cost that comes with assigning someone from your learning team or frankly finding anybody to work on this if it's not gonna fix the problem. There's also the frustration that comes with that. I've experienced that personally and as a leader of learning professionals. It is really frustrating to spend your time and effort doing something that you think is not gonna work. Ben Sieke, Director of Talent Development and Learning, Delta Dental We're Only Human -- E...

 "So there's a massive amount of insights coming from this. We measure things like net promoter score -- we have an average NPS of around 73, which as we all know is pretty great. And a big one for me is that 41% of people we actually go on to hire actually have used the platform once or more than once. That's a really big figure to show this is actually supporting employees to apply with us and attracting them to us and being successful in getting a role with us." Lisa Brignall, Head of...

 "The joke is pilots get in the plane, they read their checklist, and they take off. They push the [autopilot] button and sit back and wait for the plane to land itself. But when something goes wrong, suddenly the pilot's got to take control. And then everybody's life's in that pilot's hands. I think autopilot turned off for compensation people 18 months ago." Bryan Briscoe, VP Global Compensation at Marriott International We're Only Human -- Episode 154 There's not a company in...

We can talk about DEI and belonging in that space. We can talk about culture, but really those powerful impacts that can happen internally and externally are really dictated on the leadership. When I think of leadership, I believe leadership is an example of love, trust, and grace. George Rogers, Chief Culture Officer, Lighthouse Research & Advisory We're Only Human -- Episode 153 There's no shortage of conversations today about DEI and the newest addition to that set of pers...

"Our main priorities right now are not unlike all people leaders. We're focused on hiring and we're focused on retention. On the hiring front, it's less about volume hiring. I think that everyone's slowing down just a little bit. With this economy we're focused on smart hiring and making sure that we're bringing in the right people for the right roles. Making sure not just to check a box or to make sure we're getting people in, but we want them to be happy in that role." Allison Lee, Chief Pe...

"One of our ramp agents interacted with our CEO during one of his station visits and mentioned that he had taught himself how to code and that he was interested in technology. Our CEO was able to come back and connect him with recruiters and with our career mobility center [to] learn about a new program that we were just standing up. That employee actually moved from a ramp agent into this program, and our CEO was the one to call and make him an offer." Kelby Tansey, Manager of Recruitm...