We're Only Human

"The job of a talent acquisition leader is actually like five or six functions put together. You're a marketing leader doing outbound and branding. You're a sales leader, leading a team of individuals having conversations, converting candidates, or an operations leader by coordinating and scheduling and setting up interviews through the funnel. You're an analytics leader, trying to build dashboard...

Thousands of people have been our dataset this year that we've been talking to and analyzing and understanding what's happening. There's so much research and evidence here to help you. Transparently, I've never seen a market like we're in today. I hope this gives you some good insights and good ideas to solve for the current challenges and an extremely difficult hiring market. Ben EubanksChief Res...

"I think openness to failure is as important as openness to success, because if you're not open to failure, you're not open to trying new things. Full stop. You're going to keep rolling out the same trite things that maybe aren't the best things. So it's really as important to try new things, and where you give yourself the credibility is the fact that you are measuring and you are looking at whet...

"An HR manager can do whatever they need to do.  We do have a vision, and the vision is that all administrative tasks should be done in less than 15 seconds." Leila Laidani, Aconso   We're Only Human -- Episode 122   In the last year, companies have shifted much of their work processes to a digital format. However, legacy files and workflows don't always transition so easily.  In this episode, Ben...

"You need to have a competitive pay and benefits offering. When you go to do that, the employer ends up paying for a lot of things that go unused just because there's too much to communicate. What's just amazing about the time and space we're in now is you can really use personalization to surface opportunities from among and within those programs and benefits at the right time, in a way where it'...

"I had a client that in February of last year had 72 employees, all in Boulder, Colorado. By September of last year, they eliminated their office and went remote. They went from having all their employees in one state to having those same 74 employees, but across 14 different states." Jordan Conley, President, Obsidian HR   We're Only Human -- Episode 120   In the United States, approximately 98%...

"Companies can now optimize things like rewards and training and development. HR and the way companies communicate with employees is going to be based on personalization."  Juan Betancourt, CEO, Humantelligence   We're Only Human -- Episode 119   The "one size fits all" approach is being replaced with the "one size fits one" approach at some of the most forward-thinking companies.  In your persona...

"It all has to link back to practical insights and practical takeaways about how best we can come through the current crisis together." Bill Banham, Editor, HR Gazette   We're Only Human -- Episode 118   One of the fun parts of the last year has been connecting with new people, finding new resources, and building new communities. Someone at the heart of that is Bill Banham, editor and publisher at...

"Listening without solving... Is really important, because the tendency for a lot of people is when somebody comes to you with an issue, the immediate response is to try and find a solution to the problem when in fact that may not be what you need."  Gordon Simpson, SVP Human Resources, DHL Global Forwarding   We're Only Human -- Episode 117   Work is changing. We all know it. We've seen it. Hirin...

"There's a lot of blame going around. Rumors, gossip, people are on their guard.  So this kind of hidden anger and passive aggressiveness that I have seen, [what's] always an eye-opener with clients is how many people need to be CC'd on any given email. So the more people that are CC'd in anything gives you an indication: there's a bit of fear, and so that shows that there's generally low trust." ...

"So the nerdy neuroscience about the brain is that your brain can't distinguish between a real-time event or if you visualized it.  But when you when you walk yourself mentally, emotionally, visually through those things, and you just see yourself doing them and being successful, that's the really key piece." Roger Kitchen, Mental Skills Coach   We're Only Human -- Episode 115   High-performing in...

"What I see is that we're no longer working from home. We're living at work. And so how do we help employees work differently?" Maribeth Bearfield, Chief Human Resources Officer, Bright Horizons   We're Only Human -- Episode 114   In the last year, employers have struggled with how to support workers in a rapidly changing environment. Even today as some things change, others stay the same. During...

"If this week a leader acknowledges [employee feedback], next week, the person is eight times more likely to participate again than if the leader said nothing the week before."  Ruby Kolesky, Co-CEO and Head of Product, Joyous We're Only Human -- Episode 113   What's your stance on employee feedback and anonymity? In today's conversation with Mike and Ruby from Joyous, they share a bold proposal:...

My preference in work was not towards optimizing machinery, but helping optimize work processes for people. Tim Gardner, Former Organizational Development Consultant at Kimberly-Clark (retired)   We're Only Human -- Episode 112   If you're an introvert in HR, you're not alone. Recently I shared a piece on LinkedIn about introverts in HR and the value of introversion, and the piece received thousan...

"The platform was up and running literally weeks after the pandemic hit. And through this platform they saved 2,000 jobs, so it's also about saving jobs by redeploying people effectively when the times are needed." Jerome Ternynck, Founder and CEO, SmartRecruiters   We're Only Human -- Episode 111   In some brand new research, we found that internal hiring and talent mobility is a key priority for...

"I think as HR leaders, one of the biggest things that we have to do is never lose sight of the people." Erika Lance, SVP of People Operations at KnowBe4   We're Only Human -- Episode 110   According to research, organizations face an average cost of over $3 million for a cybersecurity breach.  Do we have your attention? In today's episode, Ben talks with Erika Lance of KnowBe4 about the importanc...

"It's about understanding that workforce isn't a recruiting job. It isn't a leadership job. It's everybody's job. If you have needs in the workforce, you must communicate them. And the vehicle to do that is our recruiting team." Betty Jo Rocchio, Chief Nursing Officer, Mercy   We're Only Human -- Episode 109   One of the consistent priorities in our research over the last few years for recruiters...

"We are what we call a conversational AI platform, the main product being our AI assistant, which was built with a really simple kind of mission to create magical experiences for candidates."  Josh Zywein, Paradox.ai   We're Only Human -- Episode 108   Chatbots aren't new. Most of us have used them as consumers to get support when we visit a website for a cable or mobile phone provider. Plus, in o...

"What different actions can we take going forward? So whether it was an implementation to our benefits plan or whether it was rolling out a new piece to our onboarding process, let's do an analysis at the end... Is there anything that could've made this better? Just one little thing that we could tweak so that we can learn from this." Angie Redmon, striveHR   We're Only Human -- Episode 107   Toda...

"The way work is getting done is increasingly flexible and it gives the worker the power of choice. That choice serves both the worker and the end enterprise."  Dan Beck, COO of Utmost   We're Only Human -- Episode 106   Quick, your business needs to fill a talent gap you have, but you don't want to hire a new staff member. What do you do? Hire a consultant? Pick up a freelancer? Snag an independe...

"Be gentle with yourself. I think we can all afford a little compassion and we're often able to give that to others easier than we're able to give it to ourselves. Give yourself time for introspection to understand what truly motivates you and let that be your first step." Kristin Richter, Engagedly   We're Only Human -- Episode 105   This is a special edition of We're Only Human! Last fall Ben co...

"You can reconcile accounting, but you can't always reconcile people." Jeremy Stickling, Chief Administrative Officer at Nussbaum Transportation   We're Only Human -- Episode 104   Turnover in some trucking and transportation companies runs nearly 100% a year, meaning they turn over virtually every employee over a 12 month period. But at Nussbaum, the turnover runs under 30% a year. What's the sec...

I really do believe this is a moment for learning and training that could see a transformation that benefits learners.  Simon Greany, Elucidat   We're Only Human -- Episode 103   How many times have we in HR and learning been forced to create content in subjects we knew little to nothing about? In today's episode, Ben talks with Simon Greany from Elucidat about how the company supports employers t...

"We can't forget about being human." Tom Moran, Chief Strategy Officer, Prodoscore   We're Only Human -- Episode 102   When workers gathered to work on assembly lines, productivity was easy: you counted the widgets produced per hour. In the modern workplace, it's a much harder proposition. How do you know when knowledge workers are really accomplishing what they need to be?  In today's discussion,...

"We allow business leaders to dictate things based on who they like, who they golfed with the last weekend, and things like that when it should be: 'Who is doing the work and who is a benefit to our work environment and our culture?'" Carla Patton, HR Executive   We're Only Human -- Episode 101   One of the challenges in the last year is that the pandemic showed the cracks in the relationships cre...