The cavnessHR Podcast

a talk with Ben Eubanks

CavnessHR

The cavnessHR podcast – A talk with Ben Eubanks
Ben Eubanks is the Principal Analyst at Lighthouse Research & Advisory.
He has authored dozens of reports, eBooks, and more than one thousand articles, maintains upstartHR, a blog that has touched the lives of more than 900,000 business leaders since its inception, and hosts “We’re Only Human,” a podcast that examines the intersection of people and technology in the workplace.

The PDF to the shownotes with the links to the YouTube video is at the link below.

Attachment

The cavnessHR Podcast can be found at the following places or you can just type in cavnessHR on the respective app.

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cavnesshr-podcast/id1289104534
Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/cavnesshr/the-cavnesshr-podcast?refid=stpr
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-119338849/the-cavnesshr-podcast-23
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xfElzTE5Xo&t=1s
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/s/19556cc
Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Db7znz3jn3yphk3v2cjz3ugi4d4?t=The_cavnessHR_Podcast-The_cavnessHR_podcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Jzmh93OoMN1kZsUGwBGb5
Pocket Casts: http://pca.st/1N3g

Social Media links for Ben below!!

http://lhra.io
http://LinkedIn.com/in/beneubanks
http://twitter.com/beneubanks

Below are Ben’s book recommendations:

“The Front-Line Leader” by Chris Van Gorder.

The link to purchase the book is below.

http://amzn.to/2DCwRTS

Free Resources:

upstarthr.com/freebies

Jason: 0:01 Hello, and welcome to the cavnessHR Podcast. I’m your host, Jason Cavness. Our guest today is Ben Eubanks. Ben, are you ready to be great today?

Ben: 0:10 Absolutely.

Jason: 0:12 Ben Eubanks is a Principal Analyst at Lighthouse Research and Advisory. Ben has authored dozens of reports, eBooks and more than 1,000 articles. He maintains UpstartHR – a blog that has touched the lives of more than 900,000 business leaders since its inception and hosts We're Only Human – a podcast that exams the intersection of people and technology in the workplace. He has appeared on numerous influential lists throughout the HR and recruiting space and is a sought-after speaker and thought leader. Previously the HR Director for an Inc. 500-ranked global technology startup. He currently operates Lighthouse Research & Advisory, a human capital research and advisory services firm. He works with HR, talent, and learning leaders across the globe to solve their most pressing business challenges with a research-based perspective tempered by practical, hands-on experience. But more importantly, he has four children, a wonderful wife of 10 years, and a preference for running outlandish races for fun. Ben, you are definitely one busy person. What are you working on right now, what's keeping you busy right now?

Ben: 1:23 So, I'll take that very last piece, on the running thing (because it'd always makes me laugh when I hear it said out loud), and then I'll jump into work stuff. So, the first one, I recently put a stake in the ground and said, “I'm going to do this.” So, I planned this race in March; last year I was actually traveling, so I missed out on that, and had to do a couple back-up races, I'm looking forward to it. It's a 12-hour event and I'm hoping to crack 50 miles. So, it's going to be a lot of fun, a lot of work, and so I've got a long road of training ahead of me for that one, which I'm excited about.

Jason: 1:56 How long have you been running?

Ben: 2:00 You know, people ask me that occasionally and I never have a good-pat answer. It's been a long time. I've been married for ten years and that was the first year I ever ran an ultra-race. So, I ran a 50k (which is 31 miles) in 2007, and I've run for years before that. So, I don't know. It's been probably 15 plus years I've been running on and off and through kids and everything else that's one of those things that's kind of always stuck with me – one of the only things that I've had in my life longer than HR, I guess is the running piece. So, on the work side, I've been doing fun research lately. You mentioned in the bio [that] I do a ton of research. Prior to being a researcher I was a practitioner; [I] spent my time in the trenches. So, the thing that I try to do with the research is not just look at things that are fun or interesting or entertaining, but things that someone can take a concrete take-away. So, for example, today, I actually just published some new findings from research.

Ben: Think about all those corporate, branding videos you see and all the money spent on those where it’s like, “hey, come work at Google, come work at Amazon, or Walmart, or one of those big companies.” They spend all this money on this video that's like an overview of what their company is and does, and they're trying to use those to capture the attention of candidates. We actually surveyed candidates to ask them what they care about, they said, “we don't really care, doesn't really matter to us,” it's ranked way down there. The only thing ranked lower, unfortunately, I guess, is the HR or recruiter message, something from us, as the recruiting audience, it’s the only thing they care about less than a corporate video.

Ben: The thing they care most about is hearing from a hiring manager, “hey what's the job like, what's important to you, what's it like on this team, what's the culture like,” or even a job preview: “hey, I want to see what the job itself is like, what kind of duties and things.” So, again, one of those pieces of research that, hopefully, give someone some ideas around, “hey, next time you're going to spend some money on something, trying to capture something, to get out there and get these to candidates,” don't do that that corp-branding video, or don't prioritize that. Look for ways to get your actual employees in front of the candidates because that's what they really want to see.

Jason: 4:15 Ben, on the job site, it seems like there's a disconnect right now. Job candidates still say they can't find a job. Then companies are saying there's no talent out there. So, there's a disconnect. How do we fix that? But, first, do you think there's a disconnect out there, and, if so, how do we fix it?

Ben: 4:32 That's one of the topics, whenever I see something on this skills-gap thing, I always read it. I actually have a tab open right now in my Chrome that I'm going to read through today – it's a new report from this year that spoke on that; (it's kind of from a CEO perspective) what does this look like in terms of the skills-gap. I would agree with you, there's a lot of challenge on the candidate side. I just heard, this weekend, that even more people have actually dropped out of the workforce in terms of looking for jobs. They just said, “hey, we're not going to find something that fits our skills, we're just dropping out completely.”

Ben: So, our unemployment rate is continuing to look better and better, but that's due, in part, to these people are just completely giving up on ever finding a job that fits their skills, which is a little bit concerning. So, there's a lot of companies, larger firms, that are saying, “hey, we're going to try to reskill, retrain, prepare, people for this next generation.” So, I think I was reading about AT&T recently, they actually launched this initiative and said, “we're going to train 100,000 people on how to get from these old systems to the digital age, basically – instead of having this analog phone system they've been managing, that might have been your job for the last 20 years, suddenly it changes to digital and you are completely unskilled, unrepaired, unable, to handle that.

Ben: So, they're working to train their own employees on that stuff and I think that's where a lot of the transition towards this new sort of economy, the new types of skills and things are going to come from – the bigger companies saying, “hey, we're going to train our people, and if they leave and go somewhere else, that's fine. But at least we'll have this group of people that can handle this.” Because there's definitely a mismatch in terms of the skills that companies are looking for. Every single study I've done and even, anecdotally, when I'm helping people hire, they're saying, “hey, we can't find these people, especially technical talent; we can't find the ones we need.” But, at the same time, we have people out there saying, “hey, I can't find a job; I'm still looking, I've worked for so long that I'm not going to look anymore.” So, there's definitely a mismatch.

Jason: 6:36 I think another challenge is it seems like, at least from my point-of-view, that a lot of hiring managers, they're trying to hold up for the 100% perfect fit and I think they’d maybe do a better job to hire the person with an 80%, 90%, fit and train up to get 100%. I think that’s another challenge, too.

Ben: 6:52 What is your take on this? Because I have my opinion. But what's your take on hiring for fit and then training for skills?

Jason: 7:02 I'm for that. But the idea is, a lot of times I think when people say, “we're going to hire for fit, that's really key code for, “keep certain people out,” if that makes any sense.

Ben: 7:14 Yeah, absolutely. That's why I asked it that way, because that's one of the challenges. Everybody's had that hire manager that says, “well, they're not really a fit, oh it's because she's a woman, it's because they're a person of color, it's because whatever – something that makes them different.” The thing I was pushed back on is, we should look at fit not in terms of a general, vague thing. That was always my standard; managers can never come back to me and say they're not a fit without giving me a specific reason and definition for what that meant. I can't say, “oh, I just feel it.” No, that's not going to work because when that lawyer says, “yeah, they didn't hire because she's a woman,” I can't say, “well my manager didn't feel right about it.”

Ben: I can't back you up, I can't support you. So, give me some concrete reason. I always came back with here are our core values, if you say they don't fit, you're going to tell me which one of those they don't fit. Are they not honest, are they not transparent, did they not have this work ethic? What is it that they're failing to meet, because that's something you’ve got to come back to. I guess if we're going to give a takeaway today, that's one of those things that you can take right back with you when your manager says, “hey, they don't fit,” – “sorry, I don't accept that, that's not an acceptable answer. They're going to have to give something more substantial than that. Because in the event this comes back, and something bad happens (which it doesn't often), but for those times it does, we're going to have to back this up and that's not an acceptable answer.

Jason: 8:36 Yes, I totally agree with you on that. Ben, you've had a lot of experience in HR in various, different HR roles. So far, what has been your favorite HR role that you have had?

Ben: 8:46 I worked my last role in HR as a practitioner. I was the director of HR for this 500 startup company. We did a lot of really cool work and that was part of the reason that I loved it – we did software development, so technology. But at the same time we had a services side where I had to go out and recruit helicopter pilots to go and train in the military and all kinds of neat stuff. It was really easy to be excited about what we were doing. There's something for everybody, but personally I couldn’t be excited about working for a company that makes cosmetics, or whatever. Everybody's got their thing. But that kind of stuff just was really exciting for me as a recruiter to go and find those people. Then as an HR manager to work with and enable those people to do great work. Because I could see the impact, how we're protecting people, we're helping them to be safer, where we're trying to do these really cutting-edge things. So, that was probably the coolest one.

Ben: Most of the response there had nothing to do with HR, it had to do with the kind of work and the kind of company. Ultimately, I think you have to adapt your HR practice to those kinds of things. You can't just have this default template of HR and try to apply it to everyone, every culture, because that's not going to work out. I think the culture of the company is one that fit well with me, personally, because I am – despite being an HR person, and despite having all the compliance rules and all the other good stuff there, I am very much a low-rules person. I'm focused much more on what's great because experience is positive. We'll try to maintain this minimal standard and make sure we're safe on the legal side but, in general, I always focused on what can we aspire to what could make us great, what can we do that's going to set us apart from the competition. So that was the kind of things that really drove my decisions on a daily basis.

Jason: 10:41 Ben, so you have a statement on your LinkedIn profile I totally agree with that says, “that HR needs to take a page from marketing and sales in its approach to influence the organization and focus on hard, measurable results.” Why do you think HR hasn't gotten to this point yet?

Ben: 11:02 That's a good question. I'll say this, I do know that there are plenty of HR leaders that do have that down, they've got that squared away, and they are rocking and doing amazing things. So, I know that that is true because I've met and talked to plenty of them. At the same time, there's a lot of people and (you know this well) they get in the profession because, (a) they fell into it, (b) “I was an admin and someone asked me to take up the HR stuff and that's how I became an HR person,” or (c) “I'm a people-person, I like people, I don't like numbers,” and that's why they get into HR. None of those are bad things necessarily, because everybody's got to get in somehow. But once you're in, you need to latch on to this idea that “I need to be able to prove what I'm doing, prove the value of what I'm doing, really connect the outcomes of my practice back to the business to the best of my ability.” We can't always connect everything we're doing. It's easier for sales, for sure, it's easier for marketing and some respects, for sure, to connect their stuff back to actual business outcomes. But we need to always be searching for those kind of things as HR leaders because that's how you build credibility, that's how you get attention from the leadership. That’s how you get investment and resources and really make an impact on the organization is when you can have those conversations.

Ben: A couple years ago I wrote a piece that said, “stop saying I'll get back to you with that.” So, back when I got started in HR, someone gave me advice like, “hey if you don't know the answer to something, just say hey I'll get back to you on that,” and eventually that becomes almost a crutch and you miss that opportunity to have an impact right there. Because you're not prepared, you're not ready, you don't have the data. So, my push, then, was hey, let's stop relying on that, let's say hey, you know what, I'm about 80% sure that this is the reality. You throw something out there I can always check back with you if there's something different. But try to be right there with some numbers to have some probability, some certainty behind what you're saying instead of it just being this fluffy stuff that we can't put any measurements to. Because that just perpetuates the stereotype that HR is bad with numbers, bad with measurement, and it's just a fluffy kind of practice instead of this hardcore business operation that’s driving value for the business.

Jason: 13:23 Ben, that’s great advice. I know most people don't realize how HR is actually more of a numbers-based resource if you get down to it, at least in my point-of-view.

Ben: 13:35 Absolutely. When I speak about strategic HR it's funny, I carry this practice like business problem like sales, or customer satisfaction, or safety. On the other side, I have HR practices like recognition and training and recruiting. So the thing that I do with the audience is we’ll roll the dice and I'll say, “okay, you've got five seconds, tell me how you're going to connect this thing to that thing.” Let's say it comes up with customer satisfaction and training. Customer satisfaction is the problem, apply training in some way to fix that. Or maybe hiring comes up and it's customer satisfaction. How can we change our hiring practices towards hiring more people that are more interested in serving customers than just collecting a paycheck. So it gets them to quickly start thinking about those things in a moment's notice, thinking about how to connect those things together. The more you practice that skill, build that muscle, the better you'll be at having those conversations in daily work when you're talking to someone. They're saying, “hey, we got a problem with this,” and immediately your mind goes to, “okay, these are the two or three levers in HR that I can pull to affect that thing, let's figure out if there's a way to get some investment make that happen.

Jason: 15:03 Ben, right now, from my point-of-view, there’s two HRs – there's a HR of old and HR of new. The old was like, the answer’s always no, they’re administrative, old-school, so to speak. The HR of yes, the new one, always tries to say yes and find a way to make a solution. How do we get more people from the old way of HR to new way of HR? How do we make that happen?

Ben: 15:25 I'm going to be very bleak and sad-sounding, I'm going to say let's wait for them all to die off or retire and move out of HR, and hope that this new generation changes that. If I'm going to be more proactive and happy in my response, and positive, I want to say that they just need to hear more conversations like this. They need to be aware that it's not okay to just show up, take notes and be the glorified admin, basically. They need to look for ways to have an impact, to improve the business. There are some times where someone works for a smaller company where they might report to the CEO who has places zero value on HR other than, “help us not to get sued.” That's a super common kind of thing and people always kind of face that and that will always be a cap on how great your company can be.

Ben: Because you're never going to be better than whatever they see HR as this basic sort of role. So, when you find one of those leaders that really believes that HR has value, that really believes that the people are the truest, most valuable asset of the business. those are the kind of people you need to look for, work for, and just latch on to because of those sorts of opportunities. For example, going back the two different roles that I've had in HR – one of them. I worked for a company that said, “hey, HR’s here to hire people, to terminate people, and that was pretty much it. In my first HR role, I spent all day, every day, doing nothing but processing termination and new-hire paperwork, and it's all I did. And after about six months I said, “Goodness, this is killing me, I've got to do something else, surely we can figure this out.” So, I went through and did an analysis of all of our turnover data. Nobody asked me to do this, no training or anything else; we're going to figure out what these trends are.

Ben: So, I looked at the data and found we have X percent turnover and about half of that is in the first 90 days – a ton of the turnover. so let's figure out what's happening those first 90 days; is it a recruiting problem, are they selling them something different than the job actually entails? Let's look at our managers; manager A has 10% turnover in their team, manager B has 50% turnover in their team, what are they doing differently? Let's try to either coach or move out manager B or give manager A some way to reward them, let's encourage them, because others will take a page from their book. So that's just an example of latching on to the data that's already there, it's already sitting there, it's waiting for you. The problem was I was working for one of those companies that didn't see the value in HR; even our own VP didn't see the value in that – she shelled the research.

Ben: Then the company actually shut down a few months later because they were just following a part of the scene. So that's always my cautionary tale of you've got to be aware of the stuff. But, at the same time, if you don't have someone you're working for that sees a value and encourages that sort of stuff, then it's never going to lead to something positive. You're always going to be hitting that ceiling, you’re always going to be struggling with that. So, if you were listening to this, and you do work with someone that sees the value in HR, and you do work with someone that embraces the idea that people are best the resource and we need to find ways to help them be even better, then, again, don't take that for granted. That's something very special and something that most people would kill for.

Jason: 18:58 Ben, I really like how you utilize social media. Can you talk about how you’re utilizing social media right now and what you’re doing?

Ben: 19:08 So, it's funny, back when I got started, I was one of the first HR people using Twitter regularly, which is funny to think about it, it’s back in 2009, and at the time, it was kind of a ghost town. There was not a lot of us around. So those of us that were there built these really strong relationships and, even today. I'm good friends, can pick up the phone and call any of them, and it's amazing. I tell people that's one of the values of social media is to be able to connect with someone. Think about this, if you wanted to get the insight from a CHRO, and you are not at that level, and you wanted to know what they were thinking, go out there and find someone on LinkedIn, someone on Twitter, and you can see the kind of things they're sharing, see the kind of thoughts that they're having. You instantly get some insight into what that person’s thinking and that's the kind of insight you wouldn't have gotten 10 years ago – that's pretty powerful. So, that's really powerful for the networking effect.

Ben: The other side, I have friends that use things like Twitter and others like, “hey, I'm not really a poster, I just want to kind of see what's going on.” So they use it to kind of curate a newsfeed – that's kind of a cool idea. I definitely do the connection thing, I definitely do the sharing thing. One of the areas of this year actually I’ve really seen a lot of value from, personally, some of it’s getting answers and some of it is helping and giving back, is in terms of Facebook groups. I don't know if you're a member of any that are out there, but like HR Open Source – it's a place where they're trying to make a lot of the best practices, tools, templates, case studies, resources for HR leaders, completely free and available. They get nothing, you pay nothing; it's just a way to add value to the community. Again, there's networking going on, obviously; I love jumping in there and answering questions on things I'm looking for. And so I use it in a wide variety of ways – it's hard to be really short, concise, on that. But if I had to pinpoint one of the things I've seen a lot of value and, recently, both giving and receiving, is definitely in the Facebook group.

Jason: 21:23 Ben, next, talk about a time you were successful in the past, what you learned from this success, and what our listeners are going to learn from the success you had in the past.

Ben: 21:31 Sure. So, I want to talk about one that ties in the conversation earlier and also was super, duper recent. So, last week, I was presenting at an event out in Arizona and I was running a workshop for HR leaders, and the session was on hacking HR – let's try to hack this thing we do and break it apart – and I can talk about the format (if you're curious). But, basically they had to pick a component of HR, like training, like leadership development, or onboarding, and break it apart and try to tweak something that would improve the outcomes. Because, if we're serious and honest with ourselves, most of our practices could use a little bit of tweaking, could use a little bit of fixing.

Ben: The thing that made it successful for me, in my estimation. Was that these HR leaders walked out of this thing knowing that they had the capacity, the capability, to make some meaningful changes in their approaches and their practices they're using. But the thing that ties back to the previous conversation. Is one of the things they had to do in the process is after they identify the area they're going to focus on, like onboarding, they had to then aspire to something, they had to decide “what does my perfect state look like.” Yes, onboarding was working, [but] how would I know? So they had to think about the positive outcome, they also had to the think about how they're going to measure that. Because one of the things I did at the very end when they had a pitch back their idea is I asked them, point blank, “how are you going to measure this?” Because if it's not measurable, we shouldn't be doing it; if it's not going to be something that we can tie back some value to or prove that it's adding something, then we should not be doing it as HR leaders.

Ben: So much of what we do on a daily basis is completely immeasurable or completely outside that loop. So I challenged all of them to be thinking about how are you going to measure this, how are you going to prove it, what sort of data are you going to collect, what's the evidence. [I] pounded that into their brains over and over again because I wanted them to be thinking about. When they design a new program or they decide to roll out a new practice or they're going to compile it and test out this new benefit, how are you going to know, before you even start, that it's successful or not. Because if you wait until the end, and you try to decide then, “did that work?” Well, it's too late to gather some data, it's too late to understand how to go about it at the very beginning. It's too late if you wait till the end or wait till you're already started. Start before you even begin this program; think about how we're going to measure the success. That's one of the big takeaways that I have never ever forgotten from some of the things that I've done in HR, and one of those that I always reiterate when I'm talking to people, trying to give them a good takeaway is to think about. When you're designing your new approach, think about how you're going to measure it before you take that first step.

Jason: 24:23 Ben, next, talk about a time you failed, what you learned from this failure, and what our listeners can learn from this time you failed in the past.

Ben: 24:32 This one still hurts my heart to think about it. So, I had a manager – not my own manager, a manager that I was the HR at 4 years ago – and we had acquired, basically, 40 employees from another employer. So none of those employees went through our typical hiring screening process and they all just came on overnight, basically. So what ultimately happened is some of those people that came across would have never been hired if I put them through our standard practice because they were not a fit for our company. They didn't believe the same things we believed. So, there was a manager over that entire group of employees that employees complained about. I heard it from all kinds of people, and I was still pretty early in my HR career and this was really a new kind of experience for me is acquiring these people. So, I didn't put as much stock into their comments, their issues, their requests for help, as I should have. I would kind of coach the manager, or I would try to support in some way, or I would be the ear for the employees that they wanted to complain. Ultimately, that was just a crutch.

Ben: No matter how many conversations I listened to, no matter how many of those employees I would kind of pat on the back and say, “hey, it'll be okay.” It didn't get better and it just got worse, it just kept on going and going and going. So, the lesson there is to really take those things seriously. We lost some good people that left because the issue never resolved itself. The research tells us that managers have this just really large impact on the satisfaction of their people – something like 60 or 70 percent of an individual’s satisfaction depends purely on their manager directly above them. So if I could give you just one piece of advice it would be to really focus on that relationship.

Ben: Make sure it's as great as it can be, because if we let even one poor manager that’s managing five or ten people, if we let them linger in the organization, that has this huge impact and you potentially lose some really good people. I don't know why it is. What's your thought on that? Managers seem to get this pass where they can be terrible and organizations aren't as quick to take a step to fix that as they would be for an individual contributor. I don't know if it's because they think they're higher up the food chain, they're paid more, they're a more significant resource, what it is. But it's something that that I've struggled with, seeing [that] I know other people do as well.

Jason: 27:10 I think it's more, “okay, this man has been with us for five, ten, years, we know him, he's produced for us; and this new employee’s been here maybe a month or two months.” So, the company's perspective, I think that they're probably going to go with a manager just because they know them. But I think they need to be more open-minded, especially if you have multiple complaints against that manager.

Ben: 27:32 Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Jason: 27:35 Ben, next, talk about someone who has helped you in the past and how they helped you.

Ben: 27:43 I think the person who's made one of the most profound impacts on me was one of my first managers. Not necessarily the first one, not the very first one. She was not so awesome when I got into HR; she's the VP I mentioned a minute ago. The person that had this amazing impact on me is she took a chance on me, hired me into an HR role that I felt like I was completely unprepared for. When I started there, the thing that really blew me away [was] she said, “here's what you're going to be doing,” and a week later, [she] said, “what do you like, what do you not like?” The things that I liked, she gave me a little more of, and the things I didn't like, she tried to find some way to shift that off to the extent she could. Over time, I was basically building this job of things that I completely loved and I could not wait to go to work every day. I would wake up in the morning eager to get started on the day and it was just an amazing experience. The thing that I got, I just loved it, because – I didn't know it at the time – but she was secretly grooming me to take over her role eventually.

Ben: But she was giving me exposure to these areas of HR that I wouldn't have had exposure to at a bigger company and was really just helping me to, in some ways, challenging me to think about my career in ways that I hadn't in the past. When I started there, I was like, “hey, anything is great,” and, over time, I start realizing, “oh, I don't like this thing as much but I really love that thing.” So as I start honing that, I had to start making some tough choices because she's like, “hey, if you want to do more of X, you have to do less of something else.” It challenged me to think really critically about which of these is adding the most value to the business, which of these, in five years, would I still want to be doing at this level. So it was just one of those managers that you never, ever forget. Jason, I want to throw it back at you. Do you have a manager like that? That you remember from your past that was just one of those that you wish you could have just kept with you pretty much forever?

Jason: 29:42 Yes, I was an officer in the army and had a boss, but at the time I was Captain Jason Cavness, he was Major David Wood. He was a perfect boss. He had high standards, but if you couldn't meet them, he would help you meet them. He would train you up, always calm, always back you up. If you didn't know something, he wouldn't belittle you for it, he would be like, “okay, let me train you up.” So, to me, in my mind, that’s my perfect boss – now, Colonel David Wood.

Ben: 30:07 Very cool.

Jason: 30:10 Ben, do you have any book or books to recommend to our listeners?

Ben: 30:15 So, I was telling you a little bit ago, I have so many books – I've always been a big reader and I love them, they’re such a valuable resource. So one of them would be the first book I just throw out there in terms of a recommendation, it's a book called The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder. It tells a little bit of the back story of the CEO of Scripps Health Network – one of the biggest healthcare organizations based in the US. It tells the story of how he became the CEO. But then it tells some really neat things about how he actually runs his day-to-day operation as a CEO and the lessons for an HR leader are really impressive in there because he talks about the incredible value of communication.

Ben: It talks about some of the ways that he interacts with employees and tries to find ways to create a more positive employee experience for them. It's one of those books that I’ve read two or three times, always recommended to people, whether you're in health care or not, because there are some amazing life lessons we learn from it. If all of that has no interest to you and you're just curious to hear the story. He started out as a police officer and someone ran into the back of patrol car and broke his back. So he was medically discharged from the police force and had to find something to do. And, again, years later, he's now the CEO of this worldwide health network and so it's a really cool story as well. If you like nothing else but the story aspect, it's worth it.

Jason: 31:46 Ben, I understand you have something for our listeners, today.
Free Resources Below!!!!!

Ben: 31:50 Absolutely. So, one of the things that I've done over the last eight years that I've been writing over at upstartHR.com. Is pulling together these different resources and things – eBooks and special guides and other tools and things to help people with a variety of stuff. If it's, “hey, I need some help with employer attention. Or I'm trying to get onboarding up to snuff and what can I do there to fix it, or even hey, I've been put in charge of this new HR department and I have no clue what to do, how do I build it from the ground up.” So, I put together a ton of resources and it's over at upstarthr.com/freebies. Or if you just go to upstartHR.com and check out in the top section. There's a link directly to the freebies page and you can find all kinds of good stuff there, regardless of your type of company, regardless of where you are. That'll kind of help you and guide you through some of the decisions you have to make in the coming months.

Jason: 32:43 For our listeners, we will have the links to all this material in our show notes. Ben, we’ve come to the end of our talk. Can you provide any last-minute words of advice or wisdom for our listeners?

Ben: 32:54 Yeah, I'll add this. So, HR, at its core, is about serving the business through the people. It's not about serving the people so much, but it's serving the business through the people. It's by creating better people, processes and practices. But we've got to think about it from the business angle with this perspective because if they're not finding value in these things, then it's going to be a real challenge to sell it. So, if you remember when you run into those business problems that you have all these different levers to pull. I gave you the example the dice a minute ago – but think about that. When you run into a business problem, when you hear someone in your organization talking about a challenge that they're having, think about those different ways that you can make modifications to the workplace, the work environment, the things that are going on and doing. Those things can make you a great HR leader if you just look for those opportunities to dive in and support the business.

Jason: 33:42 Ben, thank you very much. You provided some very valuable advice today and lot of value. Thank you very much for being on our podcast today. I know you're a busy person so I really appreciate it. To our listeners, thank you for listening as well. And remember to be great every day. Thank you.

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