Small Talk Window

The bulk of the HCM technology conference season for 2024 has come to a close, and the holiday season is nearly upon us. But let's turn the clock back about one month's worth. This is the second in a two-part series of "Small Talk Window" podcasts recorded with isolved from the floor of the HR Technology Conference & Expo -- the last week of September, millennia ago in HCM technology time....

Host Brent Skinner spoke with Jaylene Owen, PHR, MAIOP, director of HR and payroll at Sitka, Alaska-based Hames Corporation, where the HR technology installed is -- you guessed it -- isolved.

Fittingly, it was HR Professional Appreciation Day. Joining Jaylene were isolved Vice President of Corporate Marketing Amberly Dressler (a content pro) and Amberly's former colleague there, Geoff Webb, an author, speaker and, yes, master storyteller.

The topic was the book that Amberly and Geoff wrote together, "Center the Pendulum: HR Tales of Transformation for Better Business Outcomes." Their book highlights the challenges that People Heroes, as isolved calls them, face in simultaneously operationalizing HR and improving the employee experience.

When it comes to improving the employee experience, you don't have to boil the ocean -- you just have to take your next best step. It was an intriguing conversation against the backdrop of a teeming expo floor, with Jaylene providing valuable context from an HR leader's perspective.

By the way, isolved Connect 2024 is a virtual event taking place today and tomorrow (Oct. 29-30). If you're there, expect to hear plenty about the book's theme.

The HCM technology conference season for 2024 is coming to a close. Think of this episode of "Small Talk Window" as a redux. From isolved's snazzy, very pink exhibitor booth last month, at HR Technology Conference & Expo, host Brent Skinner spoke with Yutaka Takagi, their principal product evangelist -- amidst a bustling expo floor on HR Professional Appreciation Day, to boot.

Every organization has an employer culture. Many work hard to define it. Many work hard, too, to embody it as leaders. But how many organizations give thought to whether an employee knows it's OK, on a whim, to mosey on down to the breakroom for a midafternoon coffee?

"You can take a lot for granted," Yutaka says, and HR has an opportunity to lead in communicating the granular details of the employer culture. Who knows? You might even ward off quiet vacationing and other things your employees could otherwise be tempted to do behind the organization's back.

Listen in to hear Yutaka's thoughts around this. The timing couldn't be better. At isolved Connect 2024, a virtual event taking place later this month, Oct. 29-30, the nit-and-gritty of employer culture will be among the central themes.

Sean Behr, CEO of Fountain and the guest for this episode of “Small Talk Window,” had a laugh with Brent Skinner, the host, over the headline here. You probably won’t reach anybody anymore on Hotmail, of course. But you probably won’t reach any of your frontline workers through email, period. Did you know? The vast majority of them, 84 percent, lack a computer, according to a 2023 survey by MarketSplash. And, according to SHRM, 60 percent of them will abandon an online job application process if it’s too lengthy or complicated. You’re losing frontline workers before you even get them. Making a frontline workforce’s experience as frictionless as possible is not easy, and yet it’s critical.

Today is a special day. It’s "Small Talk Window" host Brent Skinner's birthday, for one. Far more important, however, today is the day of the Women in HR Technology Summit, which again, this year, kicks off the in-real-life much-awaited annual HR Technology Conference & Expo in Las Vegas. So it’s only fitting that Brent's guest for this episode is Natalie Stones, co-founder of Talent Collective, whose tagline is, "paving the way for women in TA." Talent Collective focuses on women recruiters helping women recruiters. In this job market, Talent Collective's mission is critical to DE&I and all sorts of other things.

We’re hearing a lot about people analytics these days. Aren’t we? One big reason is the technology that powers people analytics has advanced light years in recent years. Alas, a few misconceptions have slipped past unchallenged amid this breakneck pace of innovation, and John Federman, CEO of HireRoad, joined host Brent Skinner to bust a few of these myths on this episode of the podcast. In the process, they also just might have moved the ball up the field when it comes to helping democratize people analytics. You don’t have to be HCM-mature or enterprise-mature to deploy them anymore. You can be a medium-size company and, in fact, mature faster in your HCM (and as an organization, period) by deploying state of the art people analytics right now, today.

Mike Erlin, founder and CEO of AbilityMap (and a repeat guest on the "Small Talk Window" podcast), had his team run Catwoman through their highly robust psychometrics instrument to unearth Catwoman's human skills and how she might best utilize these on the job. Let's just say there's a very clear reason she's the superhero who gives Batman the assist he often needs to catch the bad guys. And there's a bigger picture here about cats—something we've heard a lot about lately. Mike and host Brent Skinner dive deeply into why, when it comes to the world of work, it's never a good thing to discount anyone. You might rob yourself of highly talented people who bring unique skills to the table. And besides, embracing diversity is a core tenet of human capital management, after all.

There was an article published recently in The Wall Street Journal. The content, especially the headline, "The White-Collar Hiring Rut Is Here. That’s Bad News for Young College Grads," suggests there's a massive decrease in the number of candidates being hired by Fortune 500 employers into roles that require a bachelor's degree. Steven Rothberg, guest for this episode of "Small Talk Window," sees something larger and perhaps closer to the truth at play. Founder and chief visionary officer of College Recruiter, Steven believes employers are finally eliminating degree requirements for roles that never really needed them in the first place. Think scope creep. Who really needs a college degree to go into automobile sales, for example? Host Brent Skinner happens to agree and shares a few thoughts of his own, too, for this spirited conversation.

Much of the chatter out there says AI is going to take over our work and leave us with nothing to do. That’s certainly a possibility, especially if we do nothing about it. But consider what Kieran Flanagan, chief marketing officer of Hubspot (and venture capitalist), has to say. He proposes an elegant relationship between AI and humans, wherein the former is a tool to enhance the latter. It'll probably take couples counseling to get there, however. To explore how all that might work out, Mark Chaffey, founder and CEO of hackajob, joins host Brent Skinner for this episode of "Small Talk Window." 

Joining as the guest for this episode of "Small Talk Window" is Lauren Miller. Lauren is an isolved People Hero. That means she uses isolved in her capacity as owner of an Arkansas-based location of Right at Home, provider of in-home care services to seniors and others facing physical and other challenges. It wasn’t too long before Lauren realized she was serving employees, too, not just her customers.

For this episode of “Small Talk Window,” Jocelyn King, CEO of VirgilHR, joins host Brent Skinner to discuss a Texas-based court’s eleventh-hour effect on the Federal Trade Commission’s brewing, hotly debated ban on non-competes. HR departments were going to have to comply with a key component of the (putting it charitably) now-in-flux regulation by Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024—tomorrow, if you’re listening to this episode the day it went live. The back-and-forth that has swirled around the FTC’s moves related to non-competes provides a caricature of the chaos and inefficiency that HR departments face day in and day out when it comes to compliance. Add in uncertainty, when stakeholders wait till the last minute to comply with this or that proposed new regulation because they bank on it not happening after all, and HR’s job becomes all the more difficult. Jocelyn should know and walks Brent and those tuning in through this television court drama–caliber story that unfolded in recent weeks.