HR Happy Hour Network

HR Happy Hour 309 - The Importance of the Manager - Employee Relationship Host: Steve Boese Guest: Adam Rogers, CTO, Ultimate Software This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Adam Rogers, CTO of HR Technology solution provider Ultimate Software to talk about some recent research Ultimate published on the manager - employee relationship, why it matters, and how managers can make this relationship better. In late 2017, Ultimate partnered with the Center for Generational Kinetics to publish new research on the manager - employee relationship, to better understand how managers and employees perceive things differently at work, and then to help create solutions, both managerial and technical, than can improve and strengthen this critical relationship. It has been said often that 'people don't leave companies, they leave managers', and on the show Adam shared both what the research found about this idea with respect to how employee retention and engagement is shaped by these relationships, as well as his personal observations as a manager and leader of an organization. Additionally, we talked about the importance of openness, transparency, and trust, the need to provide training and resources to managers - especially new managers, and the need to focus on how the manager - employee relationship drives employee satisfaction and engagement. And we also managed to fit in some winter weather updates, college football, and NBA talk as well!  This was a fun show, many thanks to Adam to joining us. Thanks to show sponsor Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com. Subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show wherever you get your podcasts.

HR Happy Hour 308 - How Virtual Reality Will Change Workplace Training in 2018 Host: Steve Boese Guest: Derek Belch, CEO & Founder, STRIVR This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Derek Belch, Founder and CEO of STRIVR, a Palo Alto firm that uses innovative Virtual Reality technology for workplace training and improved performance. On the show Derek explained the key concepts of Virtual Reality, how it differs from Augmented Reality, and provided a framework for HR and workplace leaders to understand VR, and how it can be deployed in workplace and workforce training and learning contexts.  He also shared the story of his company STRIVR, from their beginnings working with collegiate football programs as well as other professional teams, to some of their current work on the corporate training and development space, including their massive partnership with Walmart, Derek did a great job of explaining VR, how the technology works, how it applies to training, the particular training scenarios where VR makes a great fit, and how HR and training organizations can get started with incorporating VR technologies into their training and development portfolios. This was a really interesting and enlightening conversation - thanks to Derek for joining us. Learn more about STRIVR at www.strivr.com. Subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts - just search for 'HR Happy Hour'.

HR Happy Hour 307 - The Benefits of Hiring Disabled Candidates Host: Steve Boese Guest : Dan Peltz This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Dan Peltz, Founder and Director of Shift NJ - an organization that helps candidates of all ability levels to connect with employers and find meaningful work.  Shift New Jersey was created to empower individuals. Dan and the team individuals of all ability levels maximize their potential through employment, skills training, counseling, and case management. They assist adults in preparing for college, employment, and independent living by helping them develop the vision, mindset, action steps, skills, and experience necessary to become successful. On the show, Dan described how Shift NJ works with candidates and employers to find employment opportunities, help build skills and capabilities of candidates that may have some challenges in finding positions, and how they support both the individuals and the organizations to make these programs and placements work for everyone. Additionally, Dan shared examples of how large employers like Amazon are working with agencies like Shift NJ to place more candidates into open roles, and how they are proactively seeking to expand their candidate pools. Finally, Dan shared how HR leaders in any location can get started with these programs and how they benefit the organization and community overall. This was an interesting and important show - thanks to Dan for joining us. Learn more at Shift NJ. Thanks to show sponsor Virgin Pulse - learn more at www.virginpulse.com. Subscribe to the HR Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

HR Happy Hour 306 - New HR Tech: Connecting Employees with Trusted HR Pros Host: Steve Boese Guests: Toby Hervey, Sarah Sheehan - Founders of Bravely This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Toby Hervey and Sarah Sheehan, Founders of Bravely, a new HR tech startup that connects employees with trusted HR pros to help them resolve workplace issues.  On the show, Toby and Sarah shared the reasons behind their decision to launch Bravely -  workplace environments that are more stressed and with more conflict, with many employees feeling reluctant or afraid to bring their concerns to their boss, colleagues, or internal HR resources, and an ever changing and stressful set of conditions in many workplaces. Based on their work experiences, Toby and Sarah decided to launch Bravely - a tech-powered platform that allows a company's employees to have confidential conversations and receive advice and input from experienced and neutral HR professionals in order to help employees work towards a solution to their workplace issues. As we all know, these often difficult conversations are hard for many employees to raise, and can be ones where they feel scared to even start. Working with Bravely's vetted and experienced pros and advisors, employees usually find a way to make progress, to get past the fear of having hard conversations, and resulting in a better outcome for both the employee and the company. This is a really new, interesting, and important new tech, and I hope you find it as interesting as I did. Learn more about Bravely at www.workbravely.com. Thanks to show sponsor Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com

HR Happy Hour 305 - Workplace Movie Hall of Fame - 'Big' Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, it is the return of the popular 'Workplace Movie Hall of Fame' series with a look at 1988's massive hit 'Big' starring Tom Hanks, America's 2nd most popular and acclaimed actor.  On the show, Steve and Trish break down the workplace themes and issues that 'Big' explored - ideas of how young people think about work and careers, how incorporating new ideas and creative thinking from diverse sources almost always benefit workplaces, and how office politics and stodgy cultures can often get in the way of progress and innovation. 'Big' is mostly about the tension and conflict that arises from growing up and a huge part of growing up is finding your career calling and navigating the world of work. 'Big' offers the opportunity to think about modern work and workplaces and to think about what we all expected from work and careers when we were younger. Additionally, Steve continued to pitch Tom Cruise as America's greatest actor, we discussed how willingness to adopt new technology has always been a great way to advance your career, and whether or not you need to say 'Spoiler Alert' when discussing plot points of a 30 year-old movie. This was a fun show and we hope you think so too. Thanks to HR Happy Hour Show sponsor Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com. Subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

HR Happy Hour 304 - LinkedIn, Talent Insights, and Data Science in HR Host: Steve Boese Guest: Dan Shapero, Vice President of Talent Solutions, LinkedIn This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, we welcome Dan Shapero, Vice President of Talent Solutions at LinkedIn for a discussion about data science, machine learning, and how new tools and technologies are providing information, insights, and value to HR and talent management and acquisition leaders to help them make better talent decisions. Data is increasingly being leveraged to help employers decide whom to interview and potentially hire for open roles, to have better understanding to answer questions like 'Where should we locate the new offices?', and how to best reward, develop, and manage talent in the organization.  Enterprise systems are changing - in the past they only stored information. Today modern tools and technologies help organizations better understand that data, glean insights from that data, and make informed decisions as the systems learn more about the data and about the business. Dan shared ideas on how HR and talent leaders can begin to adopt these new approaches and technologies in their organizations, how to start the process or journey to becoming a 'data-driven' HR function, as well as some of the new technologies and capabilities that LinkedIn has been developing in these areas. Additionally, we learned that Dan knows recent HR Happy Hour guests Dan Heath and Sjoerd Gehring and that Steve still has not launched his all NBA show Bounding and Astounding. Thanks to Dan for sharing his insights. Thanks to HR Happy Hour Show sponsor Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com.

HR Happy Hour 303 - Jeff Carr and the 'New' Zenefits Host: Steve Boese Guest: Jeff Carr, COO, Zenefits This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Jeff Carr, COO of HR Tech provider Zenefits. Zenefits has had a pretty wild ride in only about four years, and today is at a much different place than just a year or two ago. Jeff was really open and honest discussing Zenefits efforts to correct mistakes made in the past, (and in fairness, under a totally different leadership team), to rebrand and re-cast the company products and strategies, and what might be in the future for one of HR Tech's most interesting companies. While I bet just about every HR, Payroll, and HR Tech professional that will hear this show has certainly heard the name 'Zenefits', you may not be as aware at how in the last 12 - 18 months the company has looked to, for lack of a better word, emerge from its own past. This was a really interesting connversation with one of HR Tech's most experienced leaders talking about what I think is an incredibly fascinating story. We also talked a bit about minor league baseball, Thanksgiving, and Steve once again teased his upcoming All-NBA podcast, 'Bounding and Astounding'. Thanks for Jeff for coming on the HR Happy Hour. Thanks to HR Happy Hour sponsor Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com. HR Happy Hour listener survey here Subscribe to the HR Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

HR Happy Hour 302 - Tim Sackett and Talent Acquisition Technnology Host: Steve Boese Guest: Tim Sackett This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Tim Sackett, President of HRU Technical Resources, popular writer and speaker on all things Talent Acquisition and keynote speaker at the upcoming Recruiting Trends and Talent Tech Conference. On this show, Tim shared his perspectives on how technology continues to change the Talent Acquisition function, how roles for sourcers and recruiters are impacted, and some of the keys for corporate talent acquisition leaders to make the most of their technology investments. Additionally, Tim talked previewed his upcoming keynote at the Recruiting Trends and Talent Tech Conference, (November 28 - 30, 2017 in Palm Beach, Florida), how to balance the 'people' side of recruiting with the technology, as well as the one single area of Talent Acquistion Technology that Tim thinks more corporate leaders should be investing in today. Finally, we talked about innovation across the board in HR and Talent Tech, the role of technology in candidate experience, and Steve teased his NBA podcast, tentatively titled 'Bounding and Astounding'. Thanks Tim for taking the time and we hope to see lots of HR Happy Hour listeners at the Recruiting Trends and Talent Tech Conference later this month. Reminder: HR Happy Hour listener survey here.  Thanks to show sponsor Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com.

HR Happy Hour 301 - Re-inventing the Candidate Experience Host: Steve Boese Guest: Sjoerd Gehring, Global Vice President, Talent Acquisition, Johnson & Johnson This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Sjoerd Gehring, Global Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Johnson & Johnson, to talk about how J&J has re-invented the candidate experience with a blend of enhanced processes combined with new technology resulting in a modern, consumer-like, responsive, and effective new set of tools and processes that combine to create a new standard in large company candidate experience. Sjoerd shared some of the challenges that J&J was facing in talent acquisition, the need to become more responsive to candidates, the need to leverage new and better tools and technologies that meet candidate expectations that rival their consumer and personal technology experiences, that shaped their journey to create and launch J&J's new platform and experience named 'Shine'. Shine puts the candidate at the center of the experience - providing increased information, transparency, usability to candidates, as well as driving increased satisfaction from both candidates as well as internal stakeholders. Sjoerd also shared some of the thinking that went behind developing the Shine platform, how and where to prioritize effort and focus, and what some of the early outcomes that have been seen since the new platform was launched. Thanks Sjoerd for sharing information about the J&J journey, and the lessons learned that any company can take direction and inspiration from as they move to modernize and improve their recruiting processes. Thanks as always to show sponsor Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com. Subscribe to the HR Happy Hour wherver you get your podcasts.

HR Happy Hour  300 - Taking Care of Employee Caregivers Host : Steve Boese Guest: Adam Goldberg, CEO and Founder, Torchlight This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve is joined by Adam Goldberg, CEO and Founder of Torchlight, an outcomes focused, employee caregiver platform that reduces the costs and complexities of modern caregiving for families and employers in the U.S.  On the show, Adam talked about the growing challenge of caregiving in the US, the situation where employees have significant responsibilties outside of work with childcare, elder care, and other caregiving situations that require, time, attention, resources, and are a major source of life and work stress for employees. About 1 in 6 employees in the US, (that is over 20 million employees), are facing these challenges, and the changing demographics of the US and the workforce only suggest these challenges are only going to increase, making the employer response to their workforce's needs and concerns in this area more important. It is a billion dollar challenge and problem for US employers. Adam shared why this issue matters to him, and to workplaces, how employers have typically responded, (or not responded) in the past, and how modern, technology supported approaches, like the one developed by Torchlight can help employers and employees.  This is a significant and growing problem in the workplace and for employees, and it was great to finally discuss this on the HR Happy Hour. Learn more about these issues and about Torchlight at www.torchlight.care. Thanks to show sponsor Virgin Pulse - www.virginpulse.com. Subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show wherever you get your podcasts