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Crafting Your Career: Finding Purpose and Growth in Your Current Role
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Can you find greater purpose and satisfaction in your current job without needing to change roles? Discover the transformative power of job crafting with insights from our expert guest from Evolve Me. This episode promises you new ways to reflect on what might be missing in your job and identify opportunities for skill expansion and personal development, ultimately enhancing both your career satisfaction and retention. Learn how workshops and lateral moves can support your growth and experimentation within your existing role.
We take a detailed look into the importance of career visioning and job crafting for long-term personal and professional growth. Understand how regular career conversations with your manager can align your aspirations with organizational goals, and why organizational buy-in is crucial to make job crafting effective and fair. From self-initiated research to networking, get equipped with valuable tools to explore other roles and opportunities within your company, and to navigate potential challenges like favoritism and political dynamics.
Navigating the logistics of job crafting within a team is not without its challenges. We discuss how managers can ensure equity and fairness while supporting individual growth. Hear inspiring success stories, such as a CEO who recommitted to her role through self-discovery and leading new initiatives. Additionally, we touch on the benefits of HR membership and volunteering, highlighting the dynamic offerings of the New York Retail Alliance and how they can propel your career forward. To wrap it all up, enjoy personal anecdotes and favorite moments that will leave you inspired and ready to take action on your own career journey.
Mago and Braebender is an independent, visionary benefits broker dedicated to reimagining employee benefits. With a rich history of over 50 years, mb continues to deliver personalized healthcare solutions to complex benefits challenges. Our approach, combining customized plan designs with strategic innovative thinking and one-on-one support, ensures comprehensive management of our clients' workforce and their benefits. Driven by our commitment to innovation and affordability, mv offers key service areas that empower our clients to navigate their benefits plan confidently. Our services include data analytics and reporting, compliance support, population health management, communication, engagement and advocacy. Through these services, we not only address current challenges, but also anticipate upcoming trends reimagining the future of employee benefits. For more information, contact Matt Heine, executive Vice President of Indiana.
Speaker 3Welcome to MICE the podcast where we empower HR excellence. One conversation at a time.
Speaker 4I know that at Evolve Me you focus on not just women returning to the workplace but also job crafting. So can you explain what job crafting is?
Speaker 5Yes, so because, after doing nine cohorts of the Reinvention Collective and working with so many women that are looking for next chapter, and from our own personal experience, it's given us a real understanding of what women are really looking for in the workforce. And sometimes you might love, hopefully love the company you're at, love the women that you're, the people that you're working with, but you're looking for something more out of your role. Either you're looking to learn new skills, looking to try new things, maybe just looking to grow as a person by. Maybe you're a lot of times. For instance, maybe you're in sales and you'd like to branch out into marketing, right? So the idea is that you don't. In order to do these things, you don't necessarily have to leave the role you're in, but maybe you can get some of this from the company that you're at now.
Speaker 5So whether it's learning new skills or even finding more purpose or meaning in your role or becoming more deeply connected to how the work that you're doing impacts the overall organization. So job crafting really starts the same way that reinventing your career. If you're looking to change careers or return to the workforce, job crafting starts a very similar way. It means that you have to take a moment and think about what it is that you feel like. Maybe you're missing in your role, what you want more of, and maybe what skills that, even though you're good at them, you'd like to be spending less time on them Anyway. So job crafting starts.
Speaker 5The basis of job crafting starts much the same as someone who's looking to change roles or return to the workforce. It all starts with that deep inside work. So you need to take a step back and think. If you're feeling like vaguely dissatisfied with the work you're doing now, is it because you're missing something? Is it because you'd really like to be doing something else? Is it because you would like to be finding more purpose or more meaning in the work you're doing? You don't really understand how the work you're doing connects with a greater organization. So what's missing for you?
Speaker 4And maybe not feeling that you're tied to the organization, your role.
Speaker 5So sometimes the women that we work with are thinking of changing jobs because they want to do something new. But changing roles can be really disruptive and not everybody has the ability to just leave their role, take a leap and go do something else. Or there might be a lot of reasons why you want to stay at the company you're at. Maybe you love the values of the company you're with, you love the people you're working with, but what you're missing is wanting to learn or grow or try new things. It's not necessary all the time to that.
Speaker 5Evolve Me does, and that's starting from the inside and really thinking about what it is that you want out of your work, out of your career now, and where you're looking to go. And maybe you use. Maybe there's three key skills that you use every day and you really only have two of them. Maybe there's part of your role that you really wish you could offload to somebody else because you'd like to take on one new responsibility. So these are some of the kind of things you have to get clear on first before you start having that conversation with your manager or with other people at work.
Speaker 5But think about how you're looking to grow and where you're looking to for your career to take you. So that's in skills expansion. Sometimes another way that people want to job craft their career is they like the work they're doing but they're not feeling purposeful enough or they're not finding that meaning in their work, and sometimes that is just because they can't quite see how the work they're doing contributes to the overall organization's goals. So that's another kind of job crafting is doing some work to dig in there and figure out what get more purpose out of your work by finding it, figuring out how your work is connected to the organization's goals.
Speaker 4How do you believe that job crafting can benefit both the employee but also the organization?
Speaker 5Not everybody has the ability to jump off and start a new leave, a role, or they may not want to because they might love the company they're at right now, but they're just looking for more, either more learning opportunities to grow, to expand their career vision, or they might be looking to find ways they might be looking for meaning, more meaning and purpose in their role, and so that's another way you can job craft, to dig in and try to get that connection.
Speaker 3Yeah, job crafting is really a win both for the employer and the employees. It's a great retention strategy for employers because, rather than have an employee quit or be considering other opportunities, this is a way, as Linda was saying, for them to dig in and to really love the relationships that people have within the company and their tasks or their responsibilities, if they really get to understand, like, how their staff wants to grow in their companies. I think it's a huge opportunity for employers to have like workshops for their employees to skill up or to make to try out lateral moves and experiment in other departments, because that's another way to grow. Our careers are often too siloed, so we're just growing up in a ladder in one area. But I think with job crafting there's an opening for employers to really understand how their employees want to develop and grow, because maybe somebody in marketing wants to go more to the business side of things and so there's an opportunity to take on a project in another area of the company, things like that. And then, of course, for the employee it's easier, obviously, to stay in the job that you have rather than look for a new job, but you are not going to feel compelled to stay if you're not learning and growing and developing. We know that's one of the number one things that employees want from their companies and their organizations.
Speaker 3If there are opportunities to grow and expand within the role that you have, why not stay? I think that more and more people I know this was true for me when I was in an executive role. If I was, along the way, given more opportunities to grow and expand, I might have even stayed longer. So I think it's really it's a great retention strategy. It's a great way to offer continuous learning and also, in encouraging this, you're creating a very agile, adaptable workforce that can pick up different skill sets along the way, and their role is not so static too. You're handed over a job description. Maybe you're in that role for several years. It shouldn't be that job descriptions are so static that they can't evolve and grow with how you do too. So we really encourage employers to take that growth mindset into their work when they think about how employees can develop.
Speaker 4It sounds really similar to job sharing. What's the difference, or are they basically the same thing?
Speaker 3No, I think job sharing is typically when two people share the same role. So they split a role so that it's two people will have a full-time role and you might split it in two parts. Let's say you want more flexibility so you can have a full-time role that's satisfied with two part-time people Often. Also, like you can job share when two people have different kind of skill sets and strengths that they bring and together they make a full role. So maybe one person is great with the quantitative side of the role and the other person is great with the relationship side of the role. But it's an executive role and you need both sides and so they might want to share that position. If that's something that the companies offer and divvy up the roles With job crafting you're not really sharing the roles with other people.
Speaker 3You're taking on like new responsibilities and really or new relationships and you're really tapping into your own passions.
Speaker 3So let's say you're in a, you're a fundraiser, let's say for an organization, and you really you really care about kind of women's growth and development, right, but you're a fundraiser, that's what you do day in and day out.
Speaker 3So you might want to the way that we've seen some women job craft is to take on additional responsibilities outside of their roles.
Speaker 3They join the women's employee resource group.
Speaker 3Maybe you're like a leader, so you want to, you know, step in and co-chair the group If there's like a void of leadership there, that will make you enjoy the job that you have more because you're deploying your technical skills in the fundraising role but you're also deploying your passion of advancing women and community building and leadership in this other role. Of course, that sometimes makes for a lot of work, but if you're passionate about it, it might not feel as feel like work because you're so like in the flow and it's something that you really care about. So I think, at the end of the day, job crafting is really, I think, like looking at your role really closely and seeing like what your values are now, what you're excited about, what you're passionate about, and seeing how, with some tweaks, you can adjust the role that you have so that it aligns with who you are as a person, because we all grow and change when we take on roles and yeah, and to see where those opportunities are and also to be like to talk about it.
Speaker 3Nobody's going to know, like, what you're interested in, too, unless you feel equipped to really to talk about it. And that's actually something that we do in our work in Evolve Me and our reinvention collectives too is, and with the work we do as companies, is help women be equipped to talk compellingly about not just the role that they have in front of them, but their interests and their passions and that what they aspire to.
Speaker 5I also think that with job crafting too, aside from just your interest in passions, like it also gets into taking a moment now that you've been in a role for a few years and really thinking about where your true strengths lie.
Speaker 5Because the way?
Speaker 5Because with job crafting if you want to do a little more of something rather than just piling more work on, you might have to do a little less of something else.
Speaker 5But if you've got a couple people, that where I think maybe this would go into a little, where you were thinking of job sharing, although that's a kind of a different thing because that's more time like who's doing what. But let's say you had two women on the same team or two people on the same team and they were doing similar roles, but one wanted to do more of one part of their role and less of one other thing, because that more aligned with their strengths. If everybody was very aware of their strengths and could focus on their strengths, there could be some trading of responsibilities within a team so that everybody was focused on the things that they were really good at. People tend to like doing the things that they're really good at. That align with their strengths, and that way you have so much more productivity and set job satisfaction because you are focusing on what you're innately good at.
Speaker 4So say I want to go down the path of job crafting, what strategies would you give me to start that process? In my current role.
Speaker 3I think that what Linda was saying is you could start by doing a strengths assessment there's lots of different assessments that are available online that are free and to really to drill down on what are the strengths that I have now, and not just the technical strengths, but what are the some. What they're often referred to as soft skills, but we see them as leadership skills. What are the skills that you've gained in your role that you can use in other ways? So I think that if you're that's the first place is to start with your strengths. Another thing that you can do that's really effective is to think about what you do on a day-to-day basis and like where you're really feeling energized and that you feel like you're in the flow, and what are some of the activities that you're like what I really don't need to do this report anymore. That can be delegated to somebody. Who can I delegate that to? And so that's a way. Once you get things off your plate, go down and look at all your responsibilities. What lights me up still, what am I energized around and what's like I've been there, done that. I don't want to do that anymore. Then you can get like a fuller picture of like where you can really leverage and build out some of what, like your motive.
Speaker 3So many people at work are not motivated right now, and so I think that taking stock of okay, these are what, these are my responsibilities, where do I really want to put my energy and then having that conversation with your manager and saying this is what I'm really excited about right now, this is what I really want to bring forward, this is what energizes me and our team, like, how can we talk about offloading some of these other things? Right, so I can leverage and do more of what I really love, because that's what motivates people. And, of course, there's things that in your job, not everybody's going to love every part of their role, but if you really like assess, like, what you're doing, what you're spending the most time on, are those the things that are making you feel satisfied and fulfilled? And if they're not, it's time to take a hard look on. Okay, how can I get more of what I really want to do into my role? To have those hard conversations Sorry with your manager.
Developing Career Paths Through Job Crafting
Speaker 5Sorry, let me just close the door here, ok the other thing, too, is to take some time, and you might do this with a coach or with your manager, or just do some time thinking about it yourself, but trying to think about where you'd like your career to go, like where would you like to see yourself next year, where would you like to see yourself three years from now, five years from now? And are there to get you from now to there? Are there some additional skills or things you'd have to learn to get there, or skills to develop, because that might be a way that you might want to craft a role, to give yourself some opportunities, to have some experiences in those areas, so that you have a path to move forward. So it's doing a little bit of work on career visioning and having a path rather than just coming to work every day, doing the thing and going home. But that also can give you a sense of purpose too, if you have an image of where you're going with this, instead of just clocking in and clocking out, but that you have some goals for yourself, and then that also can lead to a nice conversation with your team or manager in terms of this is where I'd like to go. I think I need to be exposed to some of these things, learn some of these skills to get there. How can we work this into my day-to-day work?
Speaker 5The other thing, what Judy was saying when you're thinking about what gives you flow and what doesn't like, the things you get you excited when you know you're going to do X, y, z at work that day and you're excited to get out of bed and get to work. And then there's the other things. You're like oh, I don't want to work on this report or I don't want to do this anymore. The things that you don't want to do. You probably have a call. There's some things nobody likes to do, right, but you probably have a colleague. There are some things. Everybody has different skills and different things that give them that flow state. So you might probably have a colleague that is more jazzed about doing that type of work. So it's also working as a team and that's where good managers come in, where they can see that. But if they don't know what you're enjoying doing and want more of, they can't help you.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think I can't emphasize that enough that point of career conversations with your manager are really important, especially when you think about job crafting and it doesn't happen enough Usually conversations with your manager if you're, maybe you have quarterly meetings and maybe you just have the meetings for your performance review having regular scheduled career conversations where you can make your aspirations known, both in your role and maybe going beyond the role eventually if you've had a long career there.
Speaker 3Especially so I think that sometimes employees are afraid to be transparent with their aspirations because they might feel like, oh, this person has one foot out the door. So that's why I think having the conversations and really having your manager understand how you want to grow in this role, but maybe even beyond, and how can this role set you up Because nobody stays at a job forever, right? Imagine how, when you do ultimately leave, you'll feel like not indebted to the company that's not the right word but you'll feel like that they gave you this gift right of really developing this other side of yourself, to have a next chapter eventually. So I think there's a lot of benefit that can happen from regular career conversations where you are pretty transparent about how you want to develop. That's not just one-sided, not just the manager coming to you to assess your performance.
Speaker 4So say, you have an employee come to you as a manager and they're presenting yes, I want to job craft, these are my goals.
Speaker 3No-transcript yeah, you can go, but you've been manager more than me more recently I would say, first I would see, like how they want to, what are the areas that they want to grow in, what kinds of new responsibilities they want to take on. And then I would say I would understand where they want, what they want to take on, what's interesting to them or exciting to them, and then I would think about what projects or initiatives because I'm the manager, so I can hold more of the whole right of the department or know the organization or company's priorities I can say, oh, I know in this department this initiative is happening and you could really add your expertise or give this a try out. So then as a manager or supervisor, you can contact the person who's leading the initiative and say, okay, I want to. This person wants to grow in this way. What can they help out? Can they sit in on meetings? Can they help shape, like the, you know, the early stages? Can they be involved in some way?
Speaker 3So I think that one thing that's key, though I think, in the job crafting is that, in order for it to work, I think the whole company or organization, or at least the HR department, needs to like, buy in that this is a strategy right, because you can't have ad hoc managers saying Paula wants to do this, like somebody, take Paula and John wants to do that. Anybody need John. So I think that it could become very. It needs to be systematized in some way, at least at the level of the company or organization deciding that this is a strategy for retention that we want to try out as a pilot event. I think that if it's not intentional, in that way it could become very much. It could be a favorites thing. You have a relationship with this other manager and you say, oh, this person really wants to try this out, and then I think politically it could become very difficult if it isn't taken on as an organizational goal.
Speaker 5You might not even know what is out there. You might have an inkling that you're interested in sliding from marketing and including a little more strategy in what you're doing, but you don't really know what strategy does. So some of you can take upon yourself by having casual coffee with one of your colleagues that's in another department and just learn a little more what they do before you stick your foot out to know what it is that you're talking about, so that you have a good understanding, because sometimes the grass always just looks greener. So go see what their yard is like and see what kind of skills are necessary there and what types of personalities work in that area, and try to do a little research that way, even if you have colleagues at other companies that are in different departments, to just understand what if you're looking to possibly eventually job craft into a new part of the company or no type of role.
Speaker 4What challenges have you seen so far with implementing job crafting incentives within an organization? And then how have you or do you suggest they're addressed?
Navigating Job Crafting Challenges and Success
Speaker 3I think that this is a newer strategy. I don't think that we haven't. There's a lot. There's some research on it for sure, but we have. We've been leading some workshops around introducing the idea to HR leaders as a retention strategy. I think some of the challenges I spoke about before is that it really needs to come. It needs to be a directive from the senior leadership and the C-suite that this is a strategy that's going to help with retention and attracting talent as well. So I think that has to be something that is baked into the organization's goals. I think that another challenge, that something that is baked into the organization's goals.
Speaker 3I think that another challenge that I could see happening from it is, as a manager too, how do you decide what if everybody wants to job craft at the same time? You can't. You need, obviously people need to fulfill their major responsibilities of their role. So if everybody at the same time wants to tweak their role, I think the carving out what is the sequencing do you have? I think do you have to be in a role for a certain number of years to be able to job craft? Like, how many people on a team can job craft at once? I think some working out some of the logistics so that it's there's equity among the the team and also there's some level of fairness and that, like, the manager has enough people doing the core responsibilities as opposed to people going off on their side projects or things that they're interested in. I think figuring out the logistics of how it happens also has to have a lot of coordination around it.
Speaker 5I do think, though, that there are things that you can do for your organization as a whole, and I think this comes into play a lot with a lot of the corporate workshops that we offer.
Speaker 5Judy right, so that if you take the time to survey your organization whether you're doing it through your company's ERGs or more broadly, to see what it is that people would like more of broadly, to see what it is that people would like more of, you can do some broader job crafting without it having to be on a person-by-person basis, for example, if you find that broadly, even if it's in one department that people are really interested in learning more about I don't know a new software that's on the market that only a couple of people are using, so that could be a broader job crafting to provide a training for a large group of people or allow people ways to upskill.
Speaker 5Or we've even done workshops where people have been able to take time on their own to get in touch with what's really exciting to them at work and do some way and do some thinking about how that does connect with the work they're currently doing at their organization and how they are using their strengths and how they are making a difference. I do think there are some broader contextual ways that you can do that and satisfy it without having to go in and do the job crafting on an individual basis, and get some of that same uptick in employee satisfaction when you're known as a company that is really invested in growing your employees, in helping them to upskill, in helping them to understand why their contributions matter. It's great for attracting people and it's great for retaining them as well.
Speaker 3Yeah, I would say that, like all of our workshops fall under job crafting, because the companies are all about retaining top talent and attracting and building top talent. Yeah, we have our own job crafting curriculum.
Speaker 4Would you say that job crafting more so falls on the employee responsibility? Employer responsibility, or do you think it's a shared, equal responsibility?
Speaker 5I think that the employer that is really concerned about employee retention and about employees feeling engaged and happy and excited to come, they all agree to support and they'll take a day every quarter to do something good so that people feel very purposeful at work, so that they're all participating in something, but thinking about really asking your employees what they're looking for more of and thinking about ways to deliver that. On the other hand, it behooves the employee to not assume that everybody's a mind reader and try to have those continual career conversations such Judy's talking about.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's the first thing that came to my mind when you asked that question is yeah, you have to have these continual career conversations and that has to, I think, be built into the HR process and maybe, even more largely, the performance management system. How are you defining success for employees? Is it just ticking off that they've met the requirements of the job, or are they growing and developing too? Is that part of measuring success? So I think it's a larger conversation, but 100% like what Linda said too to employees now own their own professional development.
Speaker 3Like everybody, you can't great. If your employer does provide workshops, like we partner with companies to do, that's amazing. But everybody's, like also responsible for themselves, for like how they want to grow in their career beyond the title or the role that they have now. And we've seen that more and more as the marketplace shifts and people are changing jobs every two years and there's a different kind of loyalty to, as in just in general, and people want to continue to grow. And yeah, I think all those dynamics, those larger dynamics, are also at play.
Speaker 5Yeah, like if you're looking to make a move within your company or take on more responsibility, it really it's your responsibility to find out what steps you need to get there and if there's some upskilling that you need to do and it's not offered by your company, there's so many free resources out there to go out and seek that out and get it. And I have those conversations with other people. Everybody really is the CEO of themselves, and you, yeah. So it's really up to you to decide what it is, figure out what it is that you need to make your next move and then and then be take the steps to get there, be scrappy.
Speaker 4So can you both share a success story where you had a very successful job crafting situation?
Speaker 5I have to think for one moment.
Speaker 3I mean one person that comes to mind is is the yeah, we have a client that had a great one, yeah.
Speaker 3You can speak about that if you. I was going to say the woman who went through our program and decided to recommit to her role as the CEO of a nonprofit and leverage her strengths. She came into the Reinvention Collective as a CEO of a nonprofit and she really thought she was. She had led the organization for many years, seen it through many you know different iterations and she was. She wanted to throw in the towel and just try something else and then going through the process of self-discovery, as Linda was talking about before, and really analyzing, assessing her own strengths, what she loved to do about her job, what she wasn't that excited about, and she went through this self-discovery process and she came out on the other side, actually not leaving and not quitting as the CEO or executive director of the organization, but recommitting to being the executive director in a new way, I think with this new kind of idea of what she was going to add value around and how she was going to contribute in a different way.
Speaker 3I think with this new kind of idea of what she was going to add value around and how she was going to contribute in a different way, having gone through this assessment process and she was excited about going back and she had all these ideas. I think that's, I think, a prime example of retention. She retained herself right, but it was a great story because she came in thinking she wanted this radical change and then, through doing some of this assessment work, she came out on the other side feeling even more energized about the role that she had and showing up to it in a different way couple of times with attorneys that we've worked with individually that they felt like they needed more purpose and I could go either way with these stories, because they both found it.
Speaker 5This one woman in particular.
Speaker 5She loved where she worked, she loved the people she was working with, but she just she was wanting something.
Speaker 5She wanted her work to feel more purpose-driven than what she was feeling, and so she went through our individual, our group coaching program, the Reinvention Collective, to really dive deep down and try to figure out what it was that she was looking for and where her skills and strengths lie and her values. And she started thinking that maybe she thought she might have to just jump ship and go work for a nonprofit, but in the end she explored some of those work Like I said, the grass is always greener explored some of those opportunities and then, through that process and through really drilling down, came to think of a way that she could recoup some of that purpose and bring it back into the role that she had at her law firm and then had a conversation with her the person that she directly reported to, and they helped her carve out a new niche role for her to take so that she didn't have to leave her role. She could keep all the things that she liked, but that she could bring that additional purpose into her work.
Speaker 4Do. Most of the women that you work with end up staying in the same role.
Speaker 5I would say some don't and some to us. Some of us come. Many of them come to us after they've already taken the leave and left, okay, so we can't help them fix that. Some of them sometimes they've left a culture that was just really toxic. Some of them sometimes they've left a culture that was just really toxic and there was just there wasn't going to be something to do to fix it. But oftentimes we've even helped, like people, job craft, maybe within their industry, even if they didn't leave, even if they left their role. They might've thought they were going to have to go to a completely different sector industry and they found a way to stay within that industry or stay within. I had one woman that moved from government into private but doing the same type of work, but she just found a different sector that worked better for her. But yeah, a lot of women they've already jumped ship by the time they come to us. And they've already jumped ship by the time they come to us.
Speaker 5If you go to our website, evolvemework, we have our group coaching programs listed there. We do lots. We've been doing a lot of corporate workshops lately and, as Judy said, they all focus on job crafting in one way or another, because they're all designed to help people feel more connected with their work and help women advance in their roles. The Reinvention Collective we're launching our 10th cohort. We're really excited about that and that's for women that are looking to return to the workforce level up in their roles. Not everybody leaves that comes in the reinvention collective, as we were saying, we can help people figure out how to love their roles even more, but that's targeted to women in midlife that are thinking about what career visioning and thinking what their next chapter looks like.
Speaker 4Thank you so much to both of you for doing this. Thank you so much.
Speaker 5Coming up next a member spotlight interview.
Speaker 2Hi everyone. Today featuring our member spotlight with Naira, I have Lisa Mungovan, who's the owner of Mungovan HR Consulting LLC. Lisa, welcome and tell us what Naira means to you.
Speaker 6Thank you for hosting me, naira. I have been a member for a long time. I was a member before it was Naira, it was Paira, and I've always relied on it number one to educate me on topics. I think that's the biggest one, but the networking is important too. I've met so many people through NIRA and have been on committees. I enjoy the annual meeting that is held in May, again learning a lot of things, but also just meeting a lot of different people, and they work for all different industries, so learning about the industries as well.
Speaker 2Awesome, as far as I know, and you brought up Pyra and I had recently actually learned of that and I was like, oh, wow, that's an interesting fact about how it's evolved in that. Lisa, are you a SHRM member? Yes, I am. And how? Approximately how long have you been a SHRM member? Since 2006. Been a SHRM member Since 2006. Okay, okay, how do you feel like there's been a lot of evolution or evolution, I should say, of SHRM.
Speaker 6In those years, absolutely Early on, when NIRA was first, we actually had resource. We attempted, the board attempted to have resource pages so that they our members could get information and more of us became Naira members and SHRM members at the same time so we could get the information from them. But, yeah, the white papers, the resources, the templates that SHRM has, I get the magazine and I read that and I share it with colleagues as well. So a lot of those things. I have never been to a national conference, I as I understand it. They're very large and they have a lot of really good speakers to those as well. So I know way back when it was not the case.
Speaker 2Wow, yeah, I that's on my list. I have not, either, been to a national and I definitely would like to have that experience. This will be a good year. It's in.
Speaker 6Chicago, so it's not too far.
Speaker 2I know Very close. So, lisa, tell us why you chose human resources.
Speaker 6Well, back when I had graduated from high school, I sat out a year, I had everything ready to go to college and I just decided I just didn't want anything to do with it. So I worked two jobs and the manager of the grocery store that I worked for suggested I take just one class. And so I started in operations management at IU and knew that I liked the way things needed to be managed. And but then when I took my first HR related class and I had students in there that were most of them were working adults. They talked about all the different things that they got to do in HR, and some of them focused on specializing and other ones focused on more of the generalist role. It sounded it was a good fit for me.
Benefits of HR Membership and Volunteering
Speaker 2I can't agree more with that. I think I had a similar kind of experience with just learning about how much what could be involved in HR and all the opportunities. So, lisa, what would you say? What would be a part of HR, of that, your experience, that you enjoy the most?
Speaker 6The variety, I think, is you never. Most days you want to try to plan, but things change and can change in a minute and in 2020,. We experienced so much where everybody said you have to pivot, and I'm thinking but HR people pivot all the time. One of my primary reasons is just watching people succeed that don't always think that they can, and, with given the right amount of coaching and training, seeing them just the light shine behind with them, that it's like gosh. I did this and I didn't think I could, but I really appreciate you being there for me. I think those are the bigger ones.
Speaker 2Yeah, and that means so much. That means so much for that person that might not see that and, yeah, I love that you shared that. I thought that was really great. Lisa, what would you say are your top three things that you consider to be beneficial about being a NYRA member and I know you highlighted them at the welcoming of the beginning of our podcast, but what are some other? Maybe you have some additional things, but what are those things you consider?
Speaker 6The networking is important because we can rely on each other.
Speaker 6If I need someone that is working in recruiting and I've got a client that needs that and I know that I'm not the best capable person I do warm introductions to my clients, to them so that they can find the most qualified candidates quickly.
Speaker 6The education, I think is just it's ongoing and I've not met an HR person that isn't a lifelong learner. We're always eager to learn things and more efficient ways of doing things, because things that have has evolved a lot whether it be the automated systems and the AI and all of those things that are coming our way but learning how we can then help our employees. In my case, clients know how they can be more accepting of it and not be afraid of it. But this is how things may evolve and, as we know more, I'm not one to put out speculation from attorneys on some of the laws that may be changing until we know for sure and I've gotten feedback from them that they really appreciate that they don't need a lot of emails that this may happen, like with the new FLSA rules. But it's good to know that and I'm able to get that not only from Naira, but I attend law webinars and those types of things to keep up to date on things too. Yeah.
Speaker 2Valuable information from all those aspects for sure, and with NYRA.
Speaker 6I think NYRA has done a great job of expanding, educating us. Not only is it the weekly or monthly meetings, but the HR Power Talk, the Legal Ease, the Membership Breakfast those are all things that were not happening previously. I was on the board through 19. And we had the monthly meetings and they were good. But I think now the expansion of a lot of other things are keeping people in our industry up to date on things.
Favorite Speakers, Apps, and Quotes
Speaker 2Yeah, and Lisa, I also wanted to add, for everyone listening to that yeah, you served as a board member on Naira and you said that. You just said that was back in 2019 timeframe. So you have still had that insight and I know me I'm a new board member that has so enlightened me on so many things personally, professionally, all aspects but we're thank you for your volunteerism too, for serving on Naira and your time, and wanted to add that in too so for your experiences that you've had with the monthly luncheons. Do you have a favorite speaker that stands out or something you'd like to share, who that is and why you thought they stood out?
Speaker 6as your favorite Sure. Of the most recent ones, dr Martise Hammons, I think, was the one that I enjoyed the most. It was very animated, but the message that he was able to convey about biases and helping all of us understand our own biases, whether they be implicit or otherwise the graphs that he showed and the diagrams that he showed were I'm a very visual learner and so it just really helped me understand that more. And as I watched and I watch people so watching at the meetings and I was watching individuals and there were just a lot of aha moments that I saw going on. So he's the most recent one.
Speaker 6Back in 2008, my job had been eliminated from the company that I had worked for and I was just floundering. I wanted a company that had the same culture we had built in that particular company. But Steve Gilliland was the one that was a keynote speaker back then and he was hilarious, but he just gave us some fundamental things that really aligned with how I, my values, are. But then he came back in 2015 and part of his sentence or statement or putting sentence was can you believe it's been seven years and it just hit me as, oh my gosh, I plan to be at this respective employer for two years and then move on into something else. Now I held three jobs at that particular company, but it was just like my strategy was two years and seven. He had said seven years and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I just it, it didn't even occur to me, Wow, and he said some of the same things that he said back in 2008 and I didn't care, but it just.
Speaker 2That was just very eyeopening for me back in 2008, and I didn't care, but it just that was just very eye-opening for me. Okay, I, I, yeah, that intrigued me. That was before I became a member, so I I couldn't recall that one with Steve, but I, I feel like the same. I think it's true what you said. The observations made by Dr Martiz were I noticed that too in the room, so I'm glad you shared. That was one of your memorable speakers for Naira. So I have some, of course, I like to add in some fun questions so we can learn a little different side of our members. But, lisa, if you could choose one song that you played every time you walked into a room, what song would that be and why?
Speaker 6I really like Coldplay. I got to see them for the first time in 2017 at Soldier Field in Chicago, and the song that I really liked just because of the music and the beat and it's upbeat is called the Adventure of Lifetime. The lyrics have nothing to do with human resources nothing at all but I would play it every day. It was just very upbeat. When I was taking my grandson to kindergarten and at different ages, I would play it every day and we would just bounce around and not sing along. It was just the song. And when they played it in 2017, chicago had the worst storms come through that day and we were going in an Uber in the storm. They had already canceled five of the opening acts and weren't sure if they were going to play. Get there and the seats are wet. We've got plastic the plastic things over us just in case and it stopped.
Speaker 6All the rain stopped and the sky is cleared, and so they were able to come out and play and they were able to get all the three of their sets done. And then it started raining and I'm very safety focused so I'm thinking, oh my gosh, they're on the stage with all that equipment and they want to keep playing. And it's like I mean, when they played that song, the crowd just roared. And they did. They had cannons that were blowing confetti, colored confetti all over the place and all the lights it was. It's a really cool song.
Speaker 2Sounds fun. Yeah, it sounds like fun, and I know their tunes are definitely upbeat and so you'll have to check that one out. Yeah for sure. Yeah, those, I know some of them, so they are some good tunes. They are some good tunes. I like this question and it's always intriguing to me what others would consider to be their top three apps. If you could have just three, which ones would those be?
Speaker 6My three are primarily for survival for me, so Maps is definitely one, google if I need to find something. But LinkedIn has been a great app for me, not only for myself to connect with people that I've never met before, but also to share and comment and to grow my business During 2020,. I'm a real people person I think most HR people are and it really bugged me that I couldn't go out and meet with people and so I just decided I'm just going to link with people that I've never met, but I thought they had a really cool job, and so that's what I did. I linked in with some executive directors of some nonprofits in the area that I'd never met, but I heard really good things about them and they were willing to talk. So we did virtual meetings and then after 2020 and we could get together. We still get together, so I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it is a for a moment. I think not that I want to say my age or how old I feel, but I'm like what before apps? It's amazing that we have these at our fingertips, especially on these apps now. So I'm just thinking, yeah, it's just fun stuff. So, lisa, do you, or would you, or do you have a favorite quote? Not necessarily quote, you could be a saying or motto that you stand by or that you'd like to share with everybody.
Speaker 6When I started my business, I was never one that wanted to open start my own business, but I found my why, and that was we have so many small businesses in Northeast Indiana that don't or can't afford to have a full HR person. They have their administrative person that processes payroll, et cetera. But, as I learned with many people starting businesses, there's this imposter syndrome that lurks in our brain to let us know that we're not necessarily qualified to do this, and so one of the presentations that I had gone to she had presented that imposter syndrome is not a clue that you're unqualified. It's a sign of hidden potential. When you think others are overestimating you, it's more likely that you're underestimating yourself.
Speaker 2Yeah, that is I had, that's just. Yeah, it's a. I like that. I like that you shared that. It puts a different perspective right.
Speaker 6It does yeah for sure, and I find that with newer HR people, I've just finished a project where I've been developing a newer HR person and she had, I think, about seven months in retail, 11 months in payroll, but she's bilingual and very talented young lady. But it was just getting her what she needed, that foundation, so that she could make the decisions and feel confident about it. And I've done that. A lot in my role is helping those administrators that either hate HR because they don't know it well enough, but once they get to know it, then it's okay. I can do this, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2And thank you for, I think, whoever connects with you or has your guidance, your clients and everything I can, even just in the time we've talked, your passion for that and, like you said, wanting to see that through, to develop someone and see that I can see that passion and that's awesome, because I think that's when that's genuine and authentic from an HR person. I think that it can just unfold so many things. So thank you. It's just great, lisa, that it can just unfold so many things. So thank you, it's just great, lisa. Thank you for what you do. Yes.
Speaker 6And I had the benefit of having good mentors as I was going through my career, and I had some bad bosses too, but I learned from them that I would never treat people that way, and so I try to teach that as well.
Speaker 2Paying- it forward. Right, carrying it forward, absolutely yes. So, lisa, do you have any encouraging words for someone who's listening that's considering to join Naira? I?
Speaker 6talk about Naira all the time when I meet with my clients. I encourage them to consider it. I suggest that they come as a guest. I have them go to nairaorg and look at the different speakers that are going to be presenting. I just finished working with a nonprofit and the executive assistant is going to be doing HR, and so I started explaining to her different resources that are available. Naira, of course, was one of them, and so she's so excited. She looked at nairaorg, looked at what the things are. She's signed up for the annual meeting already and the one thing is encouraging them if they don the speaker. I have some colleagues that think that they know a lot and we all do, especially if we've worked in HR for quite some time but there hasn't been one speaker that I've heard that there wasn't at least one thing I could take away.
Speaker 2Excellent and we the efforts are there. We're trying to our board trying to work at adding that value for those lunch, monthly luncheons and speakers. And, Lisa, we appreciate you as a member and in what you've just said and shared about assisting with those new members and making people feel welcome and making people feel that opening that up and helping them interact and talk to people, Because while most of us are people, there are some introverts in the room and so that helps. So thank you for doing that and what you do to help promote NYRA as well. So that wraps up our interview for the Member Spotlight. Lisa, Thank you so much for your time on this. I've enjoyed talking with you.
Speaker 3Thank you for listening. Stay tuned for our next episode.