HR Works: The Podcast for Human Resources

Company culture is the name of the game in HR, but experts wonder how best to create that culture. Is it enough to just announce your mission objectives and print them on the wall? The guests for episode 93 of HR Works would argue that that does not go nearly far enough. They instead suggest implementing a purpose driven culture. What exactly is that? I’ll let our guests explain. We are happy to have Keith Goudy, Managing Partner at Vantage join us today. For over 20 years Goudy has been a leader and a consultant. He has extensive skill in working with individuals and senior management teams to optimize their effectiveness and demonstrate strategic leadership. Dr. Goudy’s coaching specialties include accelerating the development of high potentials, helping company officers get to the next level in their careers, building and leading high performance teams, and minimizing unproductive behaviors and habits that can limit personal credibility and effectiveness. We are also pleased to be joined today by Duncan Ferguson, Director of Client Services at the same organization. He has held a variety of senior leadership roles with both BP-Amoco and GATX. Prior to joining Vantage, Duncan was Managing Director at BPI Group, a global HR consulting firm. His role at Vantage is diverse and includes executive coaching, leadership development consulting, marketing, social media, and relationship management. Duncan has been researching what it means to be a “Best Boss” and how this impacts organizational leadership, engagement, performance, and retention.

In this episode of HR Works, we discuss the very serious issue of mental health in the workplace. Mental health discussions have a tendency to focus on mental illness. While mental illness is certainly a critical concern of mental health, everyone is susceptible to poor mental wellness and HR managers need to address the concerns of every one of their employees. Our guest had a first-hand experience with the world of mental health that profoundly impacted him and set him on a path towards helping others. We are very lucky to have Eric Kussin, the founder of We Are All A Little Crazy: a 501c3 dedicated to making sure that everyone in the workplace is accepted, heard when they want to be, and safe. In this episode, Kussin tell us a little bit more about his path to where he is now. It’s one that is remarkable but will likely also be familiar to a lot of our listeners out there that personally live with, or have friends, family, and coworkers that live with mental wellness concerns. You can find the STARR practices that Kussin mentions here: https://weareallalittlecrazy.org/starr-background-info/

In Episode 91 of HR Works, we discuss the EEO-1 Component 2 Compensation Data reporting rule, which is due for submission on the 30th of September of this year. We have two attorneys joining us to discuss this: Partner Maggie Spell and Senior Partner Mark Adams of Jones Walker LLP. They both work in the great City of New Orleans in Louisiana in one of Jones Walker’s 15 locations. For more than 30 years, Mark has represented employers in disputes before federal and state courts and regulatory agencies. Drawing on the depth and breadth of his experience, he counsels employers on the development of effective human resources policies, procedures, and strategies for complying with federal and state labor and employment laws. He also works with businesses to limit exposure to employment claims, litigation, and government agency investigations. Maggie focuses her practice on cases brought under federal, state, and local employment laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. She regularly offers wage and hour compliance advice and has represented employers in numerous Fair Labor Standards Act collective actions and state-law wage and hour class actions. The official FAQ's can be found here: https://eeoccomp2.norc.org/Faq And the article that Mark mentioned can be found here: https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2019/07/12/no-henny-penny-the-sky-isnt-falling-eeo-1-pay-data-portal-goes-live-soon/ Finally, if you want to learn more, please consider joining our webinar on August 23rd at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time entitled, "EEO-1 Report Double Whammy: How to Meet the Sept. 30 Filing Deadline So You Don't Get Sued." Nita Beecher of Fortney & Scott, LLC will help you feel prepared to accurately file the necessary information for the annual EEO-1 survey. This webinar will feature live Q&A: https://store.blr.com/eeo-1-reporting-082319

Everyone knows how critical employee engagement is for the success of any organization. Despite awareness and vast amounts of money being spent on solving this problem, engagement rates are still low across the United States. Today's guest is a CEO that has won Glassdoor's Top CEO for multiple years, and the New York Times has profiled him in an article titled, "The Incalculable Value of a Good Boss." Aron Ain, CEO of Kronos, attributes truly believes in making work a better place, and that results in great employee engagement. Ain began at Kronos in 1979 and never left! In fact, he worked his way up to CEO and has been going strong ever since. He has been tackling employee engagement for years, and practices what he preaches.

Getting leadership to listen to HR is critical for the success of your HR department as well as for the success of your organization. But it can be very challenging to get them to really hear you. We discuss this, aligning goals across leadership, avoiding and correcting silos, and much more with our guest, Ed Muzio. Below is a partial transcript of this episode. For a complete transcript, go here: https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2019/08/07/getting-senior-leadership-to-truly-listen-to-hr/ Jim: Hello, everyone, and welcome to HR Works, the podcast for HR professionals. We really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to join us. I am the host of HR Works—Jim Davis—and the editor of the HR Daily Advisor. Today, we are joined by a strategic HR expert, Ed Muzio. Ed’s mantra is higher output, lower stress, sustainable growth. He is also the author of a number of books, including his most recent, Iterate: Run a Fast, Flexible, Focused Management Team, an Inc. Original publication, and that was published in 2018. Ed has also been featured in national and international media, including CBS News, Fox Business News, and the New York Post, and has contributed regularly to CBS, Monster.com, and the Huffington Post, among others. Jim: Ed, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. We are really excited to have you here. Muzio: Jim, thank you. It’s great to be here. Jim: Why do so many of us in HR have a hard time making ourselves understood to senior leadership? Muzio: You know, I think the answer has a lot to do with language and the language we use to talk about the work and the output it produces. Senior leadership, in my experience, and I do a lot of work with middle to senior leaders and executives; they’re focused on what they’re focused on, which is producing output for stakeholders, and a lot of times in HR, we have some language problems with that. For example, here’s one that I talk about in my book Iterate. I like to say we have a deficit of language around managing. We have what I call managing with a capital ING, and that is if you have direct reports, you are managing them, with a capital ING. You’re setting goals. You’re helping them develop. You’re modeling policy. You’re dealing with issues. I think HR is very good about talking about those kinds of things and has a lot of good tools for that. Often, you’re also doing what I would call change management, with a capital CHANGE, which is major shifts in structure or purpose for the whole organization, shepherding large groups of people through those shifts—again, an important thing to do, just like managing, and HR has some good tools and some good language. But there’s a third part of the equation, and it’s what I call management with a capital MENT, and that is that anyone who’s in management, particularly true in middle and senior leadership, is part of a system of people who are together working to allocate and reallocate the resources of the organization in pursuit of its output, to keep adjusting it back on track toward the output we need it to produce. We don’t have, a lot of times in HR, good language for that, and so we end up talking—whether it’s about tactical things like hiring and firing or whether it’s even about strategic things like talent strategy or succession planning—we end up using a lot of language that’s sort of internally focused, whereas what our clients care about and what they’re hearing about from the other people around their sort of metaphorical and physical leadership table is they’re hearing about their output. What am I doing? What are you doing to support their output? I think when HR has a hard time drawing that line, when we don’t do a good job of saying, “Look, I’m here in support of your output, and here’s what I’m doing in support of your output,” I think we have a hard time honestly getting taken seriously by the people we’re trying to serve.

In this episode of HR Works we discuss equal pay surrounding the Women’s U.S. soccer team—especially in the light of their recent World Cup victory with two experts Tom Cunningham and Charles Bendotti. Following is a partial transcript. For the full transcript of this episode, go here: https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2019/07/24/discussing-equal-pay-and-the-u-s-womens-soccer-team/ Jim: Hello, everyone, and welcome to HR Works, the podcast for HR professionals. We really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to join us. I am Jim Davis, the host of HR Works and the editor of the HR Daily Advisor. Today, we’re going to talk about gender pay equality, specifically with regard to the U.S. women’s soccer team’s situation. They just won their fourth World Cup victory just about a week ago, and there is a pay equality issue in the works and some lawsuits. It’s a little bit complicated, but here to discuss pay equality in general and the situation with the U.S. women’s soccer team are two guests. I am pleased to introduce Tom Cunningham, Vice President of People at Pariveda. Am I saying that correctly? Tom: You are. That’s close enough. Jim: Excellent. It’s an organization that prides itself on its transparency. He oversees internal learning activities, recruiting HR functions, and office operations, ensuring that the company’s people are supported in their continuous development throughout their journey. Before moving into this role in 2017, Tom served as the office-managing Vice President for the New York market. He was responsible for building, growing, and managing the local market consulting practice. Tom holds a BA from Yale and an advanced degree in music performance from Westminster Choir College. We’re also pleased to introduce our second guest, Charles Bendotti, Senior Vice President of People and Culture at Philip Morris International (PMI). He was the architect behind the global equal salary certification and has been with PMI since 1999, when he started as a business analyst. He was named Vice President of Human Resources Asia in 2012 and was elevated to his current role in 2016. Charles holds a master’s degree in international relations, economy, and law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, and an executive MBA from HEC Paris. Jim: Thank you both so much for joining us today. Tom: My pleasure. Charles: My pleasure, as well. Jim: So, just to introduce the situation, I’m sure most of our listeners are aware, but the U.S. women’s soccer team won its fourth World Cup victory just about 10 days ago. And leading up to that team, leading up to that victory, was a lot of discussion about pay equity. Indeed, when the team won, the whole stadium began chanting “Equal pay.” The pay situation is a bit complicated, and we don’t have to get down to the details, but the Guardian did a great job of running down what the men would have been paid if they had made it this far (which, by the way, they never have) and what the women will make. It’s a bit of an estimation, but it’s saying that each woman will have earned $260,000, and the men would have earned $1,114,000 if they had gotten as far. Clearly, those numbers are not the same. So, we’re just here to discuss what’s going on. What do you guys think about it? And what do you think about pay equity in general? So, I guess the first question is, does that sound like equal pay to you? Charles: So, Charles talking here. Let’s make a very clear statement: It’s not equal pay. I mean, if the U.S. women’s soccer team worked for PMI, they would be paid exactly the same as the men’s soccer team. So, I think there’s no question about it. There is no equality on this one. And I think we need to go straight to the point about it and be very clear about what we’re saying. If, as you say, the women’s soccer team generates more revenue than the men’s soccer team, by default, they have to be paid more.

Whether it's failing fast or being agile, leadership has already changed a lot from more traditional approaches. Our guest in this episode brings a lot of expertise surrounding what leadership and the workplace look like today, and what it will look like in 10 years. We are pleased to have Lisa Rueth, the Senior Partner and CEO of Cultivate Leadership, a consulting firm that is dedicated to leadership science, organizational design, and executive coaching. With over 20 years of experience, Lisa has dedicated her career to helping organizations with the mechanics of leadership, human performance, and systems of collaboration. Lisa studied Applied Leadership and Organizational Psychology at the Ken Blanchard School of Business and did graduate work in Authentic Leadership at Naropa University and has a Masters in Social Change, marrying her passion for empowering leaders doing world changing work. Below is a partial transcript of this episode. For the full transcript, click here: https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2019/07/09/hr-works-transcript-this-is-what-leadership-looks-like-in-10-years/ James: Hello, everyone, and welcome to HR Works, the podcast for HR professionals. HR has an important job: predicting the future. The urgency of that job grows with each passing year as various technologies rapidly advance. In a presentation that I recently attended, Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM, stated that skills learned today will be obsolete in 5 years. That stunning fact alone well couches the problem at hand. Technology is evolving far too quickly for employees to keep up, and HR is the exception. Today's guest specializes in what the workplace—and, in particular, leadership—will look like in 2025. I'm pleased to introduce Lisa Rueth, the senior partner and CEO of Cultivate Leadership, a consulting firm that is dedicated to leadership science, organizational design, and executive coaching. Lisa: Thank you for having me. What a pleasure and an honor. James: Absolutely. How about we jump right in? There are going to be a lot of changes to the workplace and to leadership over the next 10 years. For example, I see that there's going to be, by some estimates, as many as 800 million jobs lost globally by 2030. That's not that many jobs, right? Lisa: It's a lot. It's a lot. It's even more important to think through how automation will reshape entire industries. Right? It's not just the jobs that we're losing—it's entire industries and people who have particular skills. Like a large majority of some of those industries will be—think of trucking, right? Think of cars. They're autonomous. Think of trains, transportation, and airplanes. So, what we end up with are people. There's an entire category of people who are skilled for hands-on work that we have, over time—over the last 50 years, become more and more accustomed to outsourcing to other workers around a globalized marketplace. So, losing jobs is a problem within itself, but losing jobs for a particular category of people is also a problem that we have to grapple with.

With organizations losing unbelievable amounts of money to poor employee engagement, I always wonder what stops leaders from properly addressing this problem. In this episode of HR Works, we find a critical ingredient to successful leadership and employee engagement: vulnerability. Today's guest is Jason Treu, an executive coach who helps executives, managers, and employees to maximize their leadership and management abilities and perform at the highest levels. He provides coaching, workshops, keynote speaking, and other training services. Jason also has “in the trenches experience” helping build a billion-dollar company and working with many Fortune 100 companies. He spent 15+ years working in marketing leadership positions in Silicon Valley working with influential leaders such as Steve Jobs (Apple & Pixar), Reed Hastings (CEO at Netflix), Mark Cuban, Mark Hurd (CEO at HP), Paul Wahl (President of SAP), and many others.

If I’ve learned one thing since taking on this podcast, is that change in an organization literally cannot happen without leaders being on board. How can HR managers make that happen? It’s the 100 million dollar question, and we are thrilled to have two experts from Rose Group Int’l to help us answer it. The first of our two guests is Meg Manke, Senior Partner at Rose Group Int’l and culture and leadership expert. Meg has years of experience in leading through transition. From major changes in highly-regulated industries to managing through $100M acquisition, Meg has refined skills in understanding people through change. Her studies in organizational psychology and mastery in leadership concepts ensure that your people are taken care of. Period. Our other guest is Dr. Rachel MK Headley, also a Senior Partner at Rose Group Int’l and also a culture & leadership expert. Rachel brings a methodical and razor-sharp intellect to solve problems that suit her client organization, its ideal culture, and business goals. She has led and managed teams for over 20 years. Rachel enjoys a good challenge and manages big projects, unites diverse stakeholders, guides teams through change, and leads complex and ground-breaking achievements.

When it comes to workplace trends, it helps to get the research and opinions of the largest professional network: LinkedIn. To that end, our guest for this episode is LinkedIn's Vice President of Talent Solutions, Mark Lobosco. Mark is responsible for leading the global pre-sales, sales and customer success team for LinkedIn’s Talent Solution business, which helps employers find, attract and hire the best people. Mark also leads a number of company-wide Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (DIBs) initiatives. The report that we discuss can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/30AstkC