People Heroes Rising: Getting Your Company out of Survival Mode with Amy Mosher Chief People Officer at isolved
Nov 20, 2023Season 2Episode 10
William Tincup
Scarcity is a dangerous feeling. It makes you rethink your risky decisions, but sometimes you can't grow a company without taking a chance. In today's episode of the People Heroes Rising podcast, William Tincup travels to the isolved Connect conference to uncover how an organization can thrive in scarcity. Here in Palm Springs, our special guest Amy Mosher, Chief People Officer at isolved, speaks on the mindset one must take when resources are few and far between.
So, how do you shift from survival to an optimization mindset? Among a million things, focusing on best practices, scaling to the next level, and maintain a strong company culture. Listen to your customers above all else, as without them this is all for nothing. And don't stop networking! Build a strong relationship with companies, competitors, and other successful people so a helping hand is just a call away.
Besides digging yourself out of a trench, Amy speaks of her role as the Head of People, and the company's commitment to its employees and the positive culture it fosters. Meeting customer needs has always been isolved's main goal, through feedback and expanding their product offerings.
Scarcity is a dangerous feeling. It makes you rethink your risky decisions, but sometimes you can't grow a company without taking a chance. In today's episode of the People Heroes Rising podcast, William Tincup travels to the isolved Connect conference to uncover how an organization can thrive in scarcity. Here in Palm Springs, our special guest Amy Mosher, Chief People Officer at isolved, speaks on the mindset one must take when resources are few and far between.
So, how do you shift from survival to an optimization mindset? Among a million things, focusing on best practices, scaling to the next level, and maintain a strong company culture. Listen to your customers above all else, as without them this is all for nothing. And don't stop networking! Build a strong relationship with companies, competitors, and other successful people so a helping hand is just a call away.
Besides digging yourself out of a trench, Amy speaks of her role as the Head of People, and the company's commitment to its employees and the positive culture it fosters. Meeting customer needs has always been isolved's main goal, through feedback and expanding their product offerings.
ladies and gentlemen, this is William Tincup, and you're listening to the Recruiting Daily podcast. Amy is with us today. We are broadcasting from the iSolve Connect user conference in Palm Springs. Uh, I didn't think y'all could top Nashville. This is, this is better than Nashville.
Amy Mosher:
I love Nashville. Palm Desert is pretty spectacular right now. Pretty spectacular.
William Tincup:
And evidently for the folks in California that I've talked to, this is the time to be out here.
Amy Mosher:
It is, however, we are in a heatwave, even for the desert right now.
William Tincup:
So let's, let's, what is a heatwave in the desert?
Amy Mosher:
105 in October is a heatwave.
William Tincup:
Is that a heatwave? Really? When someone says you're going to the desert, do you expect, is the expectation...
Amy Mosher:
Okay, is it 125? No. There you go. But I'm not sure there's too much difference between 105 and 125.
William Tincup:
At a certain point, it's just hot. My wife and I went to the University of Arizona for our graduate degrees, and I was telling Ron about this that... After about a year or so, your pores open up. Absolutely. Your pores get bigger, and you don't, you don't sweat. No. It just, your perspiration just evaporates. No, it's incredible. And you get used to it, like, it's a different type of beauty. Like, when you get off the airplane, first of all, it's a great airport, and uh, everything's kind of brown, and rocky, and stuff.
Amy Mosher:
It's very brown ish, pink ish.
William Tincup:
Right. Yeah. But it's a different type of beauty. Once you start digging into it, you start seeing the different types of plants and cactus and all that type of stuff. Absolutely. It's actually really pretty.
Amy Mosher:
It's amazing. I spent all of my summers as a child in Sedona, Arizona. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Spectacular. Painted desert. Absolutely. Yeah.
William Tincup:
I've got my son wanting to go there because every time he sees a great sunset, he's like, is that like Tucson? I'm like, no. No, son. You don't understand that. You don't understand the level of the game that's being played in Arizona. A Texas sunset. No, I don't care how good it is.
Amy Mosher:
It's the dry heat, too. It's so much easier to just live in. Yeah. Than, you know, the humidity of the South, for example.
William Tincup:
Oh, 100%. I mean, I got married in Birmingham. So, uh, I'm, I'm familiar with humidity. Humidity is like, that's what we do in the South.
Amy Mosher:
Absolutely. We do it well. You were baking in that suit. Yeah.
William Tincup:
Now 105 there. In 100 percent Humanity? Yeah.
Amy Mosher:
I've been in Memphis in August, I know what that feels like. Yeah, yeah.
William Tincup:
Tell us a little bit about this year's Connect. What's been exciting for you?
Amy Mosher:
First of all, the scale. Yeah. The scale. Just so many more customers, so many more network partners, so many more people to network with. It's been, honestly, an incredibly positive experience for me as the head of people at isolved. Yeah, these are your people. These are my people. It is incredible to see just the amount of interest, I think, not just in the technology, of course, but just in each other. Yep. And, um, in the discussions are really about best practice, a lot more about how do we scale our businesses? How do we get to the next level? We're out of that whole like pandemic, how do we survive kind of thing. Now we're in the optimized mode. Um, I think culturally, you know, from HR everywhere, right, is what I'm feeling right now. And it's a really positive vibe.
William Tincup:
Well, we got, we interviewed, Ryan and I interviewed a bunch of customers yesterday and a theme that kind of came across all of the. The customers was, they want, they want, they want to actually increase the product offering. So like, if they don't have performance, they want performance. If they don't have like, don't have time in attendance, they want time in attendance. So it's like, rarely do you go to a user conference where you're like, we want more. Like, we have this, but we want the other stuff too.
Amy Mosher:
Isn't that amazing? I think that's some of the beauty of iSolves though. You know, the modular technology that, that ease and implementation. Um, The offerings, even for small market, like you can't get this anywhere else. You just can't. It's not, it's not realistic. Uh, but it certainly is for isolved and um, and the customer service isn't weighing, like that's how people come back. I think it's gotten better. I agree. I agree.
William Tincup:
I don't know if that's a pandemic, pre pandemic, pandemic or post pandemic thing, but that was yet another theme yesterday is like, we like our people. Like, we like dealing with, like, if something, I can't find that log in, you know, whatever the bid is. I can't do this. I got a team. Yes. Like, they think of y'all as an extension of their team.
Amy Mosher:
I totally agree with that. And when do you work for an organization where your customers hug you? Yeah. When they see you. I know. Right. It's incredible. There's a lot of hugging. A lot of hugging, folks. A lot of love happening over here.
William Tincup:
People, there is a consent form, however, that everyone signs at the beginning of the conference. Are you a hugger? If you're not a hugger, then you wear a badge.
Amy Mosher:
You wear a badge. I don't know.
William Tincup:
You got a pin. No hugging. You know, don't want to get anybody in trouble.
Amy Mosher:
It's fine. It takes all kinds, right? I am amazed. Every year, um, at how much love we get from our customers and, and we love them too, right? But I feel like the service level to your point has even improved significantly. I think over the last couple of years, that has a lot to do with the people that we're hiring at isolved and the talent, um, is incredible. Um, interestingly, I'm a little, little something out of the back here. Um, we're getting a lot of incoming calls, right? We're getting a lot of incoming calls from our competitor companies, from employees there. That want, they've heard the isolved culture is incredible and they want the culture. They're like, it's not about the money anymore. It's not about anything else. It's really about something I believe in. Yes. I want to work somewhere where it's fun and exciting and people care about each other. Like that. There's only been
William Tincup:
a few, and we won't go into names, but there's only been a few in our industry, HR tech plays that were actually great at HR. That actually cared about HR, that went in and they won best places to work, great places to work, and they were actually great places to work. You could tell that they were people first, people centric types of businesses. Ever since I've been interacting with isolved, I just know, it's not a bit. Like it's, you know, sometimes it's a marketing bit. This is our marketing bit. I've dealt with enough of the executives and enough of the customers. It's
Amy Mosher:
sincere, yeah. This is actually the people. It really is. And, you know, when I came on board about four years ago, um, I was really excited about the people already. Um, and I had been a client before. Yep. And, uh, I, I knew a lot of the, the members of the team and I really felt like, wow, this is incredible. Um, we can just take this to the next level. The foundation was already there from a cultural perspective. Right. And, because I don't create the culture. Right. You know, the employees, they're just, I enable them, right? And they did this and they do this every day. And it's interesting to see now a lot, a big influx of new employees coming on board that are like, show me how you do this. Like, I want to be a part of this. Well,
William Tincup:
you've established the, you've established what's norm, norm and the social norms. This is what's expected. Yes. If you don't put customers first, you're not going to last. Yes. You know, if you don't, if you, if you don't care about the employees too, if you don't put employees, you know, uh, and, and care about employees,
Amy Mosher:
you're not gonna make it. Yes. And it's really interesting to see, you know, caring about people doesn't cost any money. No, no, no. It's not an investment at all from a monetary perspective. No, all you gotta do is care. It's certainly an investment in time and focus, but it's well worth it. The ROI on it is significant. Oh, 100%.
William Tincup:
So you won't remember this, however, I do. You were one of my first podcasts in the pandemic. So this is January, February. I remember this. Okay. So you remember the term that you coined? From then? From, from, from then that I've, I've since stolen used everywhere.
Amy Mosher:
I've slept since then, William. I have no... Radical flexibility. Radical
William Tincup:
flexibility. Because I asked you, I asked you, I said, how are you dealing with all this madness? She's like, you said... William, everything's up for sale. It's radical flexibility. Onboarding? Radical. What can we do differently? Compensation? What can we do differently? Like everything that we thought we were going to do a certain way, or we've done a certain way?
Amy Mosher:
All for grabs. You know, we continue to do that. And it's really working. After the pandemic, we decided from a cultural perspective internally that we were going to put as much effort into engagement and enablement remotely as we do in office. And so we just went like not 50 50, we went 100 100. Right? And it made a huge difference in the way that we could acquire talent and our ability to onboard. I'm going to tell you, we just set up a BPO, um, near shore, um, operation with an incredible company called Solvo in Medellin, Colombia, which is an amazing place. And I've been down there quite a lot here in the last nine months, but it, uh, Because we focused on that, our ability to onboard individuals in that particular instance has also been incredibly successful. And several of our network partners also have relationships with this particular company and they do a great job with HCM. So um, and they're culturally very aligned. So for our CEO, that was the first thing he's like, look, you got to go find another partner because they're going to be helping you acquire talent that understands why we acquire talent in this way.
William Tincup:
Well, Colombian people... Spent some time down there myself. Colombian people are warm, and friendly, and they care, like, it is...
Amy Mosher:
Hardworking, just enthusiasm, coming out of their port... Like, it's, it's refreshing, is what it is. Right,
William Tincup:
yeah, yeah. Well, cause then you could, you get jaded when you deal with, sometimes when you deal with American talent. Especially... In, in times when things are, you know, crazy, talent wise, and there's scarcity, the demand's like, oh yeah, I'll do the deal, I need a 100,
Amy Mosher:
000 like, what?
William Tincup:
And sometimes you have to pay for it, and sometimes you actually have to write a check and go, I
Amy Mosher:
need this
William Tincup:
developer, I need this whatever, I need this person. Hundred
Amy Mosher:
thousand dollars. I gotta pay it. We're in a very lucky situation right now where we've got people who wanna come and work for us, and they don't wanna do it for the money, they wanna do it for the experience of growing something cool. That's genius. And that's what we knew we had to come to the table with because, you know, we're a privately owned business, we're incredibly profitable. We have to stay that way. Right. I,
William Tincup:
I heard this, I heard a number yesterday, and if we keep increasing that number, I'm not gonna say it on the radio however. I want to be a stockholder. I'm ready. So, whenever there's an opening, I want to, I want to, I want to, buy in. You've got, you've
Amy Mosher:
got, you're drinking the Kool Aid now, and it's bright pink.
William Tincup:
I'm on brand. I got the, I got the socks on. You can't see me. I got the the pink shirt on. Yeah, yeah, I'm on brand. I gotta ask you, uh, about, uh, Connect. Your favorite part of Connect so far? So, just anything, like if you could pinpoint one thing, maybe it's a speaker or a session or just
Amy Mosher:
interaction. You know, my favorite part of Connect so far is just, I had a meeting earlier with our account management team. That's our inside sales team. Those are the people that are. selling into our customer base and, um, and they have a hard job, right? Um, and they're incredible people, but I had a meeting with them this morning and they're smiling, they're laughing, they're enjoying talking to their customers. They're enjoying spending time with each other.
William Tincup:
You don't get that if you don't shoot your customers. Well, honestly, you avoid the customers until the renewal
Amy Mosher:
day. I was. so happy for them, right? And they, it becomes easier. They've become so much easier and so much more joyful, right? Like it just was very near and dear to my heart to see those people that work so hard, that have so much pressure put on them. Um, you know, feel that way and genuinely, right? They're patting each other on the back. They're congratulating each other. They're talking to clients. Like it was, it was beautiful. You can't
William Tincup:
sell customers more stuff if you're not doing a great job with the stuff that they've already bought. So there's that, but also it makes it easier for them to then be able to go, hey, how you doing? What's going on? You know, you might not know that we do this thing over here, whatever the product is. You're not using it right now, but you know what? When you're ready, we can turn it
Amy Mosher:
on. And also, there's so much value add, right? And you can so sincerely say, hey, this is really helping other companies. Like you, you're spending a heck of a lot of time on this and you should automate it, right? Or get some help or build some best practice around this thing. Like it, it can help your business. And this is,
William Tincup:
this is the whole mid market. Y'all go up to what? 10, 000 ish? We'll go
Amy Mosher:
however high we need to go, William. I'm an enterprise client of the product. I utilize the entire product myself. Um, and we're about 2, 600 employees now. Okay. Okay,
William Tincup:
so you can go up, but you can also go down because we've sure all the way down to like 50 employees Yeah, that's
Amy Mosher:
that's the we can go down to five employees William. It's the beauty of the product is it is So, so, so flexible. Radical flexible. Radically flexible. Radical flexibility, William. I'm telling you.
William Tincup:
You nailed it. Listen, I know you got to get on to your next thing, but thank you so much for coming by and talking with us.
Amy Mosher:
Oh, it's my
William Tincup:
pleasure. All righty. And thanks for everyone listening. Until next time.