People Heroes Rising: Customer Experience and People Heroes with Geoff Webb VP of Solution Strategy at isolved

Do you know any People Heroes? We do! In this episode of People Heroes Rising, host William Tincup travels to the isolved Connect User Conference in Palm Springs to hunt for some worthy minds.  He gets a chance to interview Geoff Webb, VP of Solution Strategy at isolved, about what it means to be a people hero. Heroic principles aside, they both discuss the increasingly strategic role of HR in businesses and the influence of technology on HR operations. 

But that's not all, Geoff touches upon the unique challenges he has faced over the past few years, the role of DE&I, and what they envision for the future of the employee experience.  Don't you think that HR should remain at the center of business planning? We do too, and that can be done through the positive impact of automation, using data you have to develop actionable insights, and more.

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Transcript

William Tincup: 0:06

Ladies and gentlemen, it's William Tincup and you are listening to the Recruiting Daily Podcast. We're broadcasting from the isolved Connect User Conference in Palm Desert Palm Springs at the JW Marriott. And, uh, I have to tell you, I thought Nashville was fantastic. Mm-Hmm. However, I believe you've upped your game. I think we have. I believe that the pressure becomes next week. How you're gonna up your game for next year. It's gonna start immediately. It does. It does. Already planning. Already. Already people are like, hey, what are you doing next year, where are you going to be in Vancouver. What? Um, so you just got off the stage. I did. So, uh, you had to get a little throat lozenge, a little water, do a little bio break.

Geoff Webb: 0:50

Done. Done. Ready. What did you speak about? So the, the panel we did, it was great. By the way, I loved it. Doing panels at these kind of events because you can have an actual conversation. It's just like, let's present a bunch of facts to you. Um, and it was, uh, we had customers up on the stage from a whole bunch of different backgrounds. So we had somebody that runs HR for a whole set of different family owned companies, everything from gas stations to convenience stores to a hotel. Uh, we had somebody running, uh, from a non profit that provides technology integration and data to law enforcement. Oh, wow. And then somebody else from another one of our customers from a non profit that provides healthcare services to underserved communities. So, wildly different sets of environments, different sets of challenges. And the conversations were really, you know, around what have you seen over the past few years? What was really tough in the past few years? What have you seen getting better? And things like the role of technology, the role of DEI and B. We talked about a lot of different topics. Some of it was fairly much, you know, operational stuff. Some of it was much more around, uh, the, you know, what do you really think the future is going to be and how optimistic are you about the future for the employee experience, for example. So it's always good. Love, love, love talking to our customers anyway. And then when you get a chance to have a conversation where you can share it with everybody else and you get a whole bunch of diverse, different opinions. It's, uh, it was fascinating. I loved it. I mean, hopefully the audience enjoyed it, too.

William Tincup: 2:14

I really, really enjoyed it. Did you, uh, did anything, I say shock, or did anything kind of come out of left field for you? Or did anything stick, like, you know what, that's gonna be a theme of 24, I can see that being a bid, etc.?

Geoff Webb: 2:25

Yeah, I think, so we talked about, you know, one of, it's one of my themes, generally, I like to talk about is, you know, the how strategic is HR? Within the organization is it and I you know, and I think it's more than that I mean, it's not that the HR isn't is nervous strategic HR is always strategic But is it understood to be strategic? Do people get it? Right, and I think I was pleasantly surprised by the experiences of the folks out there that they're actually being no They are really being brought into those conversations. And I think what's what's driving it is It's tough. It's tough to find good people. It's tough to hang on to good people, and it's tough to develop them. So, um, so that was actually a good thing. That was like, that was like, oh, that's actually... Well,

William Tincup: 3:07

some of the reasons they can be strategic is some of those things that they used to do have been automated. Mm hmm. You know, if they, if they, if they're using the product... In the way that we want them to, things that they used to have to slog through for hours and hours and hours, or maybe even like on the analytics side, you know, and I have to spend a day digging into the data, it's like, I hit a button, and it tells me what that bit is, and it's like, okay, now I can actually take that data and then... Talk to the rest of the C suite and go, okay, here's what's going on.

Geoff Webb: 3:37

Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we, uh, one of the examples that was given was, uh, by Jaylene, actually, who, uh, works for, uh, Haynes Corporation. She said, you know, when she first started, she literally had to type each check by hand for the whole company. Oh, yeah. It would take days and days and days. Oh, yeah. She goes, she said, you know what, I actually did it, I was in a meeting earlier on today, or rather yesterday, I hit the buttons and it ran payroll and I was done. Right? Which means that now HR professionals, because of the unfettering effect of technology, have time to go do stuff that's more important. And what they're doing is really starting to have a strategic impact on the business. Now I'm able to develop the workforce of the future. Now I'm able to build a resilient workforce. It doesn't matter what direction you're taking this organization in. We'll be ready and I've got the time to do it. And I think, you know, one of the things we're going to be talking about a lot as we go into next year is the role of technology in surfacing the return on investment of what HR does in ways that are, you know, graspable. by their, their peers. This is money I'm saving. Here's, here's the positive impact.

William Tincup: 4:41

Cost savings or experience. So you can point to retention related things and saying, here's what's going on with retention. Here's what's going on with recruiting. Yeah. You know, here's actually what the pipeline looks like, etc. And here's how that, you know, the time to fill, if we, if we use that kind of a metric, it's like, listen, once your hiring managers know, okay, it takes 18, 18 days, for instance. Well, that's fine. So 18 days out, they know, okay, I can expect somebody to be able to replace that person.

Geoff Webb: 5:10

Okay. Yep. Yeah. And I think based on data and based on data is gonna, you know, it's funny that HR has always had so much data and it's always been so difficult to use it in ways that, that actually deliver the story. And I think that the twin roles that we, you know, an organization like us have the two things that we need to do. One of those is to deliver the technology that's going to enable them to do that, to deliver the return on investment metrics, to show, you know, to enable them to show this is how much money I just saved you, I literally saved you this much money this month by doing these things, here's how much I could save you, you know, next year if I did those things. That's the one end of this. The second end of this is to... To work with HR professionals to help them tell the story, so not just to give them the data, but to also then enable and train and support in, here's how you talk to your IT organization, here's how you talk to your CFO, here's how you talk to the, you know, the CEO about business strategy. If we can do those things, then... The, the sort of gradual shift that we're seeing towards being seen as more strategic, that will accelerate like crazy and that's going to be huge

William Tincup: 6:14

for everybody. Well, I think it's also the consumption of the, all the features and functionality. Y'all have such a wonderful kind of suite of products that goes across. Right. And again, it solves, you got an ecosystem as well. So it solves a lot of problems for them. And whether or not you built it or it's truly deeply integrated into, into what you've built. It's getting them to use it, so I know you'll put, place a premium on customer experience and kind of user adoption and getting people to use the technology, because it's one thing to get them to buy it, great, but if they don't use it, then we don't fulfill on that promise of making, getting them their

Geoff Webb: 6:50

time back. Yeah, and there's been some studies that show that actually our customers tend to use our product more than almost everybody, any other products that are out there. So in other words, when they buy, they actually then do stuff with it, which is huge. And the other thing is, you know, the, the sort of the design philosophy of what we've built is always to have that single integrated view of the employee. Right. One, you know, that I tend to think is a sort of golden thread that runs through the whole platform of the employee experience. If you have it all in one place, you're then in a position to say, by the way, these are the things that are driving these behaviors. These are the things that really matter. Here's how we can, we can save money. Here's how we're going to develop those employees. Here's who we should be developing. You have, you aggregate the information and ultimately it bubbles up to being wisdom that I can then go deliver. Right. I

William Tincup: 7:35

love it. I love it. I love it so much. So, I'm going to ask you, what's your favorite part of this, uh, Connect? Uh huh. Um... So far, we're day two, so we're... Day two, yep. Outside of your sessions, of course. Your sessions have been amazing. Oh, I'm sure it has. Yeah, yeah.

Geoff Webb: 7:50

Um, no, I, you know, it's, I just got to sit down at breakfast this morning. It's always the same thing. You know, you know, I do a lot of traveling. I do a lot of traveling. I travel every week to go meet customers literally every week of the year. Um, this morning I sat down and had breakfast with a bunch of people and they were both customers and partners of ours. And we just, we talked about two things. We talked about stuff we can do better, which by the way is gold and it's. It always shocks me how unwilling organizations, especially technology companies, are to really listen to people when they tell you what you can do better. It's like, no, they're giving you... They don't want to put their customers together. Right. And it stuns me. It's like, no, no, you want to know what the path to success is. These people are drawing it for you. They're literally telling you. Yeah. Please listen to them, especially the ones that tell you you can do something better. So we had a good conversation about stuff that they're asking for. And actually, I was in a great position because I could say, oh, that's good. Because it's on the roadmap. We're delivering that in a few months. That was nice. It's nice to be able to do that. But even if you can't, please listen to them and do that. And then the second thing, I think, was we got into a conversation about... Actually, interestingly enough, about that ROI idea. But it was about embedding... How do we embed HR in more than just the sort of the processes of managing people? It was how do we embed them in the shaping the landscape of the technology tools that people use? Because it seems like what we're seeing is things like what tools I have, what environment I'm working in, how does it, you know, who am I going to be working with? All those things have a huge impact on my employee experience, which means they're going to have an impact on whether I want to join your organization. And there's certainly having an impact on whether I want to stay. If we can take HR and move it from a peripheral operational function to being central, central to everything else, having, you know, engaging with delivering insight to every other part of the organization, that means that, you know, you've got HR at the center of the business plan. And that means that you've got people at the center of the business plan, and I just, I know, it should not be shocking to anyone to think that's going to mean that your business is going to be able to operate more effectively, more efficiently, and be more successful. Well, the

William Tincup: 9:53

thing is, is getting them to understand, because we've said for years, people are our most important assets. Yeah. And it's like, okay. But, but if, if we, if true, then why, why aren't they at the center of every decision we make?

Geoff Webb: 10:06

Right, yeah. It reminds me of that, that old joke about the, you know, when we were talking about football in England, soccer, I would say, you know, and it's... No, no, no, say football. Yeah, football, football. You know, it's, it's... Football important. And it's like, it's not important. It's the only thing, right? The most important thing. No, it's the only thing. It's like, and it's, it's the same thing. People aren't the most important thing. They're the only thing. They're the only thing. If you don't have that, you don't have anything else. You have a large agree, you have an office space or a, you know, a factory or you know, a healthcare, some widgets. You got stuff lying around, but it ain't gonna do the job by itself. It's always the people always. So how do we help hr? Shape

William Tincup: 10:39

that and that's where we're at. Enable the those people to thrive. I think it's something I've gotten from a lot of your customers. Ryan and I did a bunch of, uh, customer interviews yesterday, a slew of them and things that we, we learned from the customers are just, they want, they want to use more products. So they're, they're, they're using, you know, payroll, time and attendance. They want to use performance, right? So there's that. And, uh, Another thing that developed was they, they view the ISOLVED team as an extension of their team. Mm hmm. Because I, one guy, I asked him this, I asked him, it's kind of the same question I ask a lot of customers. Like, okay, what do you love about them? And what would you change? Magic wand. You could change about them. They all struggled with what they could change, but one of them said, you know, because I kind of pushed him on like, well, what happens when things, you know, you can't log in or this and the other, like, what happens when things go badly, you know, this and the other? They're like, I just, you know, I just ring up my team. You ring up your team team? No, my isop team. Right? Like they think of your, the isop team. I hope so. Yeah. As an extension of their HR team. Right. Which I don't know that many HR vendors that have actually transcended into that space where they, the customer, again, there's so many people that think of, uh, vendors. Mm-Hmm. as a vendor. And it's not a partner. They're a vendor. It's something they can buy from. It's an expense. Whereas that wasn't the conversations we were having yesterday with customers. Right.

Geoff Webb: 12:02

That wasn't about expense. No. And that's the thing. We, we, we always want to be, you know, we're not always going to agree on stuff, right? Sometimes. And there's gonna be times when the customer says, well, why did you, would you build that when I really want you to do this? Or why do that? But the point is, it's the conversation we have with them. We're having the conversation again. You're not avoiding it. No, we talk to them. We, we welcome it. We, you know, we run all of these events and we run the road shows that we go out on the road and we meet customers where they are, which by the way, A lot of the feedback we get is that's, they love the fact we actually come out

William Tincup: 12:33

to them. Oh, a hundred percent. And I, well, first of all, I think it's genius. I think it's genius in a way of you go out.'cause some, some folks can't travel. Right. You know, they can't travel to connect, they can't tra travel to HR Tech or something like that. But if in your, if you go to Topeka Mm-Hmm. they could go to that for half a day. They do. Right. And what I've been to, uh, Ryan and I were lucky enough to come to the Dallas one. and man, they ask questions, but they do Like, this isn't a if you, for the audience's sake, for if you're thinking about this, when I say it, you're thinking like, this is a one way conversation, a pretty PowerPoint, this, that, and the other. Uh, no, no, no. These people have their laptops. Oh, they do open and they're like, Hey, on onboarding, I'm having a problem onboarding this person. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever the bid is. And the people that are up in front are, are, okay, let's take that, all right, okay, let's go through that screen, let's do this, okay, click that, do this, do that, do that, and everyone in the audience is like, oh, cool, I didn't know that, or, you know, I do it this way.

Geoff Webb: 13:30

Yes, we, and we do, we, you know, we make a point of saying, you know, we want to invite everybody, and that means if you have a customer that's just ticked off with you. Yeah. Bring'em in. Bring'em in, bring'em.'cause get'em close. Because I tell you, and actually I remember the, the, the, the Dallas event, there was, you know, one or two customers had a long list of things they wanted to talk about. Yeah. Wanna talk about this and this and this, this, and yeah. Those customers went away. And you know what they did? The next week they signed multi-year contracts. So, oh my goodness. That's fantastic. Right? Because they had, they, they, it goes right back to your original point. What they see, what they feel, what they're experiencing is we're right there with them. Like, you know, we're in this with you. We're not going to go, we're not going to hide away. If you've got a problem, we'll fix it, or we'll tell you why we can't fix it, and we'll figure out some way to help you out. But, no, we're fully in it. And that's always been the story, is we, look, we, we don't want to just throw technology at stuff. We don't want to sell stuff. We do want to, we want to have you as a customer, but our job is to be with you hand in hand on that journey. The day to day journey of you making things better for you, the people you need to

William Tincup: 14:28

look at. For five employees to, you know, 10, 000 employees, you can scale with people. And again, not everybody needs the same stack, not everybody needs the same setup, et cetera, but everybody's treated the same way because we had, we had, again, the array of people that are larger customers and people that were, you know, a hundred person firms. And it's like both of them had a wonderful customer success stories to tell us.

Geoff Webb: 14:52

Yeah. And, you know, it comes back to, you know, you look around this event, right? We see a lot of the. Signage and the imagery. We've got people dressed up as superheroes and things, and we've had this sort of concept of the people heroes for, you know, quite a while now. And it's been very central to the story we tell. And the reason is, I mean, it's, it's kind of cute, you know, and they look, they look, they're kind of goofy looking, but the point is the people, the real people heroes, uh, our, our customers, our HR customers, because what's the def, what's the hero, right? It's always the same. They don't have enough time. They don't have enough resources. They're in the fight and they're doing it for somebody else. Yeah, they're firefighters. They're fighting for someone else's success. That's a hero. And so that's why we think of our customers as people heroes. And if you start from that perspective, everything you do after that is headed in the right direction.

William Tincup: 15:40

What's, what's, what's beautiful is you're enabling people heroes, which enables their... Their customers which are the employees and it enables them to be heroes as well. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely a natural extension I could talk to you forever, but you know, you've got like some work to do

Geoff Webb: 15:56

Allegedly

William Tincup: 15:59

Thank you so much for coming on

Geoff Webb: 16:02

Appreciate you love it always good to talk to you my friend

William Tincup: 16:04

All righty, and thanks for everyone for listening to the Recruiting Daily podcast until next time