Workplace MVP LIVE from SHRM 2022: Jess Miller-Merrell, Workology
Jess Miller-Merrell, Founder of Workology, joined host Jamie Gassmann in the R3 Continuum booth at SHRM 2022, offering findings from her latest research. Jess discussed how she’s looking at data around HR titles, the eleven different priorities HR leaders are focused on, the challenge of managing the top priorities, how Workology serves these professionals with training and development, and much more. Workology continues to collect data on HR trends from leaders. Jess encouraged anyone interested to take the survey which is available here.
Workplace MVP is underwritten and presented by R3 Continuum and produced by the Minneapolis-St.Paul Studio of Business RadioX®.
This show was originally broadcast live from the 2022 SHRM Annual Conference held at the New Orleans Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Jess Miller-Merrell, SHRM-SCP, SPHR, Founder, Workology
Jessica is a former executive HR leader turned thought leader and entrepreneur focused on sharing resources and stories to help elevate the workplace, employees, and business leaders. Jessica has spoken at global events including SHRM’s Annual Conference, SXSW, Working Mother Magazine’s Conference, and HR Tech Fest. She’s recognized by Forbes Magazine as a top 50 social media influencer and featured by The Economist in their C-Suite series for HR. Jessica’s newest book available in Fall 2022 is Digitizing Talent: Creative Strategies for the Digital Recruiting Age published by SHRM.
Jessica is also a Master certified trainer in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a psychological approach that involves analyzing strategies used by successful individuals and applying them to reach a personal goal.
Jessica Miller-Merrell is the founder of Workology, a digital resource that reaches more than a half million HR and workplace leaders each month. Jessica lives in Austin, TX, with her husband, daughter, and an assortment of furry family members. She is the co-owner of Duo Works, an Austin-based co-working and shared office space
Workology
The team at Workology have made it their mission to elevate HR and workplace leaders everywhere with more training, support, and resources to help them do their jobs better. They reach nearly 1 MILLION leaders monthly. The team of wordsmiths, course creators, HR experts, and marketers offer training and learning to the HR community AND we help their HR tech and service provider clients with content creation, demand generation, market insights, and support.
Company website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter| YouTube
About Workplace MVP
Every day, around the world, organizations of all sizes face disruptive events and situations. Within those workplaces are everyday heroes in human resources, risk management, security, business continuity, and the C-suite. They don’t call themselves heroes though. On the contrary, they simply show up every day, laboring for the well-being of employees in their care, readying the workplace for and planning responses to disruption. This show, Workplace MVP, confers on these heroes the designation they deserve, Workplace MVP (Most Valuable Professionals), and gives them the forum to tell their story. As you hear their experiences, you will learn first-hand, real-life approaches to readying the workplace, responses to crisis situations, and overcoming challenges of disruption. Visit our show archive here.
Workplace MVP Host Jamie Gassmann
In addition to serving as the host to the Workplace MVP podcast, Jamie Gassmann is the Director of Marketing at R3 Continuum (R3c). Collectively, she has more than fourteen years of marketing experience. Across her tenure, she has experience working in and with various industries including banking, real estate, retail, crisis management, insurance, business continuity, and more. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mass Communications with special interest in Advertising and Public Relations and a Master of Business Administration from Paseka School of Business, Minnesota State University.
R3 Continuum
R3 Continuum is a global leader in workplace behavioral health and security solutions. R3c helps ensure the psychological and physical safety of organizations and their people in today’s ever-changing and often unpredictable world. Through their continuum of tailored solutions, including evaluations, crisis response, executive optimization, protective services, and more, they help organizations maintain and cultivate a workplace of wellbeing so that their people can thrive. Learn more about R3c at www.r3c.com.
Company website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from SHRM 2022 at the New Orleans Convention Center, it’s time for Workplace MVP. Brought to you by R3 Continuum, a global leader in helping workplaces thrive during disruptive times. Now, here’s your host.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:19] Hi, everyone. Your host, Jamie Gassmann here with – goodness sakes. It’s been a long day already – at SHRM 2022’s Expo Hall. And I am here at our sponsor, R3 Continuum’s booth. And with me is Jess Miller-Merrell. Welcome to the show.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:00:36] I’m so excited to be back. We’re like conference besties now.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:39] Yes, we are. And LinkedIn besties. We’ve known each other for a while socially on social media.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:00:44] Agreed. Agreed.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:00:46] So, just remind us a little bit of your background just for any listeners that might be listening to this first hand, because I know you run Workology, so share what that is and kind of talk to us a little bit.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:00:55] So, Workology is a training and learning destination for, really, the entire human resources industry. We help HR professionals be their best selves with a lot of digital resources and training. And we also help HR technology companies and vendors, people who are in the industry that aren’t necessarily practitioners, learn and understand about the HR space. Because – shocking news – it’s incredibly complex what we do and it only has gotten more complex in, you know, this thing called the COVID.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:01:30] Yes. And I know what we want to talk about today that I think is really exciting because any time you’ve got research and data that can help business leaders, especially an HR leader, to make some decisions or kind of know what might be coming is always exciting and really useful. So, you’ve done some research. Tell us a little bit about that.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:01:49] I have. So, I’m such a nerd about just our industry. I absolutely love this space. I’ve had a podcast for now eight years, but in 2020, when we were all buckled down in our homes, I started interviewing heads of HR on the podcast for a series called the CHRO Podcast Series over with Workology. And so, what I decided was, like, I needed more information than just anecdotal interviews with CHROs, which we have now 50 of these interviews.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:02:23] So, I launched a survey, and so it’s called HR Benchmark Survey. And if you’re like, “Wow. This is cool. What the heck is this?” hrbenchmarksurvey.com is where to go. And there are 30 questions. It is geared towards heads of HR and senior HR leaders for them to let the community know about what is happening in their world as an HR leader. I think we see each other at events, but I want to know, not one on one, but with many different responses, as many as possible, what are the trends? What are we seeing in HR? And how is our job, our responsibilities transforming? Because it really, really is.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:03:03] We’re leading executive meetings because of COVID and all the changes that have happened. And I want to make sure that we keep being a part of these conversations. Because you and I know working in the HR space, it’s incredibly important what we do. It’s not always understood fully the impact we have. So, that’s what the survey and the research I’ve done is all about.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:03:25] Yeah, I love that. I always kind of say you’re kind of secretly the heroes in the workplace that nobody knew was the hero. You’re helping with so many different things. I know I consider my HR team definitely my heroes because they help me do a better job as a leader.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:03:40] So, in looking at COVID, I think would you agree, and maybe your research has told you this, that more organizations due to the ways they had to shift and pivot with the changes with COVID, in response to it but then also now kind of coming into this endemic they’re talking about, the changes to the work environment, do you think that HR is being seen in a different light in terms of value than ever before?
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:04:07] Anecdotally, yes. We are, like I said, leading conversations. And I do think all the economic changes and the shifts, and then the Omicron coming in have really made us have to be incredibly nimble and flexible. And businesses with teams of people and leaders aren’t always those things. But, now in this current environment, for whatever is coming next, we have to continue that. And my hope is that we learn from the mistakes, the failures. Those are all moments of opportunity for us to grow.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:04:43] And as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, I think about that for myself. Like, when something doesn’t go right, it’s an opportunity to learn for next time, for the next time we launch a new product or a new conversation that I have, like in a podcast interview. Like, I wasn’t always great at podcast interviews. My first one over eight years ago on my podcast, the Workology podcast, not great. So, it takes time and you have to learn from each lesson, there’s a lesson there. And I think that’s what we have learned from this is we have to be prepared for the unexpected.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:05:16] Yeah. Like the silver lining in it. So, let’s dive into the research a little bit. So, I know you’ve got some results, you know, what were some of the findings you gathered from that research?
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:05:26] So, for the nerdy HR geek in me, I really just wanted to know what is important to HR leaders. And so, we asked a lot of different questions. I had 30 different questions on there. But I asked about their teams, their organizations, how big they were, what their job title was. Which, for me, I really wanted to understand why are there two different job titles. For a senior HR person, there’s typically a chief people officer or a VP of HR – well, there’s a third – or the chief HR officer. What does that mean exactly? And is this a new position? Is this a new title? What’s changing?
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:06:04] So, the majority of our respondents, which we had 457, identified as a VP of human resources, primarily. We had a number of chief people, officers. Of course, we had some chief HR officers. But those are really the majority of the titles. There was also like a VP of talent and management, which I thought was kind of interesting from the survey results. But I think that’s what makes it challenging for selling in our industry, number one, because everybody has a different job title. And then, connecting with the right person who is actually the head of human resources.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:06:42] I was also really interested in the HR to employee ratio. I’m still working on that data because I want to be able to see, are there differences in verticals or segments or company sizes. So, the nerd in me is like, “Yes. The more responses I get, the better.”
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:06:59] One of the really interesting parts of the research was initiatives, and I’m interested in seeing how this changes over time. But we found, the HR responses in the survey said that they have 11 different initiatives or priorities for HR. And if I think about my day and what I try to do as an HR leader, 11 sounds like a lot. How do you manage all those things? So, when I am communicating this information to the CEO and I’m interested to see how this evolves over time, but there are 11 priorities that the average HR leader is focused on.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:07:36] So, if you’re focusing on 25, compared to this information that we have here, you have a lot more three times, almost, the priorities, but they’re very vast. We have talent. We have recruiting. We have retention. We have upskilling. We have payroll processing. All these different things, and that’s really one of the biggest challenges of the HR role is it is so diverse, you have to be an expert in so many different areas. In fact, 11.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:08:04] Yeah. That’s crazy. And not to mention like the day job, right? Eleven sounds like it’s just the projects that they’re working through, goodness sakes.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:08:12] Yeah. Because then you have the individualized thing. So, maybe one of your top priorities is retention, but within retention you might have three or four different projects that you’re focused on. Maybe you’re launching some pulse surveys, maybe you’re doing some skip level interviews, or some different programs. How do we manage and balance all those things?
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:08:31] I really think that HR leaders are really super secret project managers because you really have to be able to organize yourself, your team, and then all the other members who are involved in the organization who are part of these programs. Because it’s not just HR who’s doing the things, it is the frontline managers who are really executing the plans and the programs that we are putting together.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:08:55] Yeah. That’s amazing. So, now, this is the first time you’ve done the research, are you looking to do this kind of on an annual basis so that people can see trending reports?
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:09:04] So, I want to do quarterly. Because I feel like if COVID has taught me anything, it’s that we have to be flexible. So, this is done quarterly. My goal is for us to have as many responses that we can receive, which is one of the reasons why I was excited to be on the podcast, because I need your help. I need everybody’s help to help contribute, because the more people we have to complete the survey, the more information I have to share, and the better our data and results will be. So, we’ll be doing it quarterly.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:09:35] I want to just go back for just a second. I talked about the 11 initiative, so there’s four primary, this is right now. I’m so excited to see how this changes next quarter for us. The number one initiative is onboarding, which is not surprising because we’re hiring all these people. We’ve had a lot of turnover, the Great Resignation. The next one is culture and employee engagement. Also, not surprising. But then, number three is recruiting. And then, our fourth one is employee experience.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:10:09] So, I feel like HR really has, in the top four anyway, there’s a foot in a different area. Like, we’re on the culture retention side, but then, “Oh. We have to hire all these people.” So, how do we do all these things? And then, upskilling is also very high on the list, too. So, it’s very retention and recruiting focused for us right now.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:10:30] And it’s so interesting and I love hearing the whole employee experience, because I’ve heard a lot about that lately. You know, just creating those work environments that makes it hard for an employee to leave. And so, your data seems reflecting very similar to that kind of thinking of I need to recruit these people, but I also need to make sure I create a great experience where I can retain them at the same time.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:10:56] I call it The Leaky Bucket Syndrome, really, because we are filling up a bucket with water and there is always a hole, and that’s the turnover that we’re having in our organization. So, with the Great Resignation, our hole was very, very big, and it still might be. I think a lot of people are going to jobs, and then six months in saying, “Oh. This wasn’t the right place for me.”
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:11:20] And I have a number of friends who are returning back to their original organization, so they are boomerang employees. Or they have made some choices and they’ve said, “Okay. My priorities have shifted even more. These are the kind of things I do want in an employer. I’m going to go over here to this other place now.”
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:11:38] And HR people are switching jobs too. A number of our survey respondents, a very high number, are less than a year in the role. And, frankly, based on my LinkedIn right now, I think that so many people have changed jobs and they are less than six months in. I don’t even know the number of congratulations I send out every day for new people in the space who are in these chief HR officer roles is so many.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:12:08] And I feel like if you’re having turnover in that head of HR role, there is really something serious with your organization that you need to take some reflection. Because if you can’t retain the person who’s supposed to be in charge of onboarding, retention, employee experience, et cetera, et cetera, how are you going to be able to retain any of your workforce?
Jamie Gassmann: [00:12:28] Yeah. You can’t. I mean, your HR leader kind of helps to set the tone of that culture in a way. I mean, it starts at the top. I mean, it’s all executive leadership. But your HR people drive a lot of that.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:12:39] And we’re the ones who are having those conversations with the executive team and reminding them about these things. Yes, I think every leader should be responsible for turnover and culture. But we are the keepers of those metrics and information in those programs, really.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:12:56] So, in looking at your research, if somebody wanted to get access to the research or to get access to Workology, how do they do that?
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:13:06] Well, just Workology in general is really easy, it’s workology.com. And I have over 8,000 published resources there on the website. I’ve been doing this a little while. We really shine for online training in the area of HR certification and HR personal development. So, you can go to workology.com for that information. If you’re like, “Wow. This is great. I want to know more information about the survey,” the best place to go is hrbenchmarksurvey.com.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:13:39] One of the interesting things that I’m seeing HR leaders who take the surveys – you have to complete the survey and then we’re sending you a copy of the results. So, complete that and then we’ll get you the information – a lot of our HR pros who have access to report and the preliminary data have been using this to have conversations with their executive team about, “Here’s how my HR department needs to be set up or here’s what my peers are doing on their HR teams.”
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:14:05] It’s really important for me to make sure that we are still leading these conversations long after COVID is in the rearview mirror. So, this data is designed for us to help make that happen, because I don’t want to hear more about HR trying to get a seat at the table. We are at the table and I want us to be able to stay there.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:14:23] At the table and now have the data to help backup what you’ve been saying and doing.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:14:27] Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:14:29] Fantastic. Amazing. Well, you heard it here, check out workology.com and definitely get that HR Benchmark Survey. Thank you so much for stopping by, Jess. It’s always a pleasure to see you.
Jess Miller-Merrell: [00:14:41] It is. I love this conference. I love that you all do the podcast here at the conference. I think it’s fantastic and it’s such a great way to get to know you and the Continuum team better.
Jamie Gassmann: [00:14:51] Yeah. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Outro: [00:14:56] Thank you for joining us on Workplace MVP. R3 Continuum is a proud sponsor of this show, and is delighted to celebrate most valuable professionals who work diligently to secure safe workplaces where employees can thrive.
