Reducing Employee Conflict Through Data And Insights

(0:54) Okay, are we streaming? I think we’re on. We’re live. We are live.

Thank you, thank you. (1:01) To have two awesome people to help tackle this, I think, difficult subject because employee relations (1:10) can be draining for sure. So totally excited to have Kim Rowe and Deb Muller with us today.

(1:18) Do you both want to give yourselves a little bit, introduce yourselves and give us a little (1:22) information about what you folks do. So Kim, we’ll start with you. Sure, yeah.

So hi everyone, (1:28) I’m Kim Roa. I lead our people consulting, employee relations and compliance teams at Workday. (1:33) I’ve been here for about 11 years in various capacities and we’ve been a long time (1:39) Emtrain customers.

So really excited to be here. Thank you, Kim. And Deb.

Hi, I’m Deb Muller. I’m (1:47) the CEO and founder of HR Acuity. We’re covering HR and employee relations professionals, (1:52) turning into technology to try to solve some problems.

But we do everything employee relations (2:00) related. We have HR Acuity as an employee relations and investigations case management platform. (2:06) Workday is one of our clients.

We love working with them and we love working with Janine and (2:09) her team as well because I think we’re trying to really solve the same issue. How do we create (2:14) better workplaces for our employees? Exactly. So we do, obviously we work with Kim a lot at (2:22) Workday.

We also work with Deb and her team a lot because we have a lot of shared clients (2:27) with HR Acuity. And similar to Deb, I’m also a recovering employee relations investigator, (2:33) litigator and decided to get on the proactive teaching side of things. So I think we’ve got (2:39) some interesting ideas for everyone to think about to how we can get ahead of these issues (2:45) and be proactive and start to reduce at a minimum some of our workload.

I’d love to see in the chat (2:53) people letting us know if employee relations is part of their scope. That’d be great. Just give (3:00) us a thumbs up because that would be kind of fun to hear.

But just to get us started, (3:07) you know, I think, you know, as the theme of our conference suggests, you know, these are polarizing (3:13) times. You know, even before we think about the geopolitical events and the politics, (3:20) the political rhetoric right now, you know, having five generations in the workforce was coming from (3:28) such different life experiences and such different backgrounds, communication styles, expectations (3:35) of what they should, you know, what’s reasonable to expect from their coworkers and things. You (3:42) know, differences, if we’re not intentional and conscious, become kind of friction on the fly (3:50) wheel, as I like to say, right? So, you know, it becomes more, you know, more contentious, if you (3:59) will.

And I’d like to hear, I have my idea, but I’d like to hear from both of you folks, you know, (4:07) how you think about an employee relations calculation, if you will, or if you haven’t (4:13) thought about that in terms of, you know, talking to the finance team of what people can expect (4:18) every year. So, I guess, Kim, I’m thinking about you. Is that? Yeah, I mean, I think this is the, (4:24) this is something that I think a lot of employee relations teams are always grappling with, (4:29) and it’s both tied to, you know, thinking about how we can model out our capacity, you know, (4:36) and kind of planning and headcount and resourcing, but also showing our value as a function and (4:41) how do we think about the value, the risk mitigation, the cost deflection, right, that the (4:47) function brings.

We don’t have a great calculation that I can share, you know, but one thing I (4:56) for sure, based on all the things that you, you know, kind of highlighted, like companies are (5:01) dealing with shifting business needs, increased focus on performance, economic uncertainty, (5:07) divisive political matters, entering the workforce, you know, it’s a really exciting (5:12) time to be in employee relations, that’s for sure. I do think that current, with the current trends, (5:19) one thing that companies can plan for, for sure, is that we’re going to see higher rates (5:24) of employee relations claims, and I think the percentages will be even higher for what I kind (5:31) of call lower tier ER issues or things that don’t rise to the level of a formal investigation, (5:37) and I’ve talked to a lot of peers, I was just actually with Deb and a bunch of HRQD’s (5:44) fabulous customers a couple weeks ago talking to other ER leaders about these trends and what (5:49) we’re seeing, and you know, we do know that even if investigation cases are remaining (5:54) relatively steady, companies are seeing significant increases in general ER concerns, (5:59) and it’s really fueled by workplace conflict, performance management, escalations and disputes, (6:06) and more general concerns being reported because of politics and societal issues (6:12) entering the workplace more than ever before, and I think this is like especially prevalent (6:18) with technologies like Slack and other social collaboration tools, so it’s like a perfect storm (6:23) of all of these things happening, and these cases are also costly to manage, right? It’s not just (6:30) investigation cases, it takes a lot of time if there’s higher volumes, a lot of times they’re (6:36) complex conflict mediation cases, they require mediation, so you know, it’s a costly endeavor (6:42) for sure, long-winded answer. No, that’s all good.

Deb, I’m sure you’ve got some thoughts (6:49) we’re going through that, Kim, like where to start. I mean, I think that’s the question, (6:52) where do you start, right? If you’re just talking about the claims, I always say to people by the (6:57) time you have an investigation, someone makes an allegation, there’s been a lot of shit, (7:01) excuse my language, can I say that? That’s happened in the organization already that an (7:06) organization either couldn’t see coming or they chose to ignore, and hopefully it’s the former, (7:10) not the latter, and so when we think about sort of how many claims, like what are you trying to count, (7:16) what are you trying to look at, how are you comparing it, like what does good look like, (7:20) can you see what I would call the predictive indicators that maybe something’s amiss in the (7:25) culture or something’s going on with policy or maybe there’s a lack of data, that people (7:30) aren’t reporting things because maybe they don’t think that they can in the organization, so I (7:35) think that’s something that is an organization now, we are seeing organizations really taking (7:41) seriously, thinking about this data, so as Kim was referencing when we were all together, (7:45) I started talking about developing a P&L like a balance sheet, finance has that, how do we sort (7:53) of formalize that in human resources so that we’re all looking at the same thing, it’ll be a (7:59) little different, just like our P&Ls are all different depending upon the kind of company (8:03) or the kind of customers we have, but how do we know what good looks like, how do we know when (8:09) something spikes that we need to go and ask some questions and to dig deeper, we are seeing issues (8:15) rise, I know that you have linked as one of the resources here our benchmark study that we do (8:21) every year, we also just did a study which you can get on our website on critical moments and 41% (8:28) of employees reported having experienced or witnessed inappropriate, unethical or illegal (8:33) behaviors in 2023, that’s a lot, 40% of your workplace, so we know that’s happening generationally, (8:44) Jeanine, you mentioned that at the beginning, if I think about the differences when I started (8:49) working in HR, the way we dealt with this was we just didn’t talk about race, we didn’t talk (8:54) about politics, we just sort of like that was how we did it, doesn’t work anymore, but I also (9:02) think about the generations that are now part of the workplace and these are the then children who (9:08) in school were taught about bullying, were taught about being an ally, were taught about (9:16) speaking up, so we should see those increases rise, we should see people sort of questioning (9:22) behaviors in the workplace that I don’t know, I want to say my generation, we just sort of (9:26) was like oh, I guess that’s the way it is, I will deal with it, you know, and I’ll work around it, (9:30) so a lot of, it’s a really, it’s a wonderful time to be in employee relations, it is really elevated, (9:37) we’ve seen this over the past, I would say two decades, like totally transform and continue to (9:41) transform and so much that we can do to really get proactive to make a difference in organizations. (9:47) Yeah, I love that, and James, if you would, we’ve got a couple slides I think might be (9:50) helpful for our conversation and I’d like to start with one right now, and if you could let me, (9:59) give me controls, James, so I could advance them.

As you’re advancing that, I said Helena, (10:06) says a note in here that I love, my experience reflects that trust is a root factor, oh my gosh, (10:12) yeah, around the trust wagon, it’s all about trust. Well, and actually, so James, if you (10:17) wouldn’t mind just advancing, because I don’t seem to have the controls, oh there you go, okay, (10:23) thank you, thank you, okay, so Deb, this was inspired by HR Acuity’s annual report, and so, (10:31) you know, I think that one big step forward for all leaders of employee relations teams (10:40) could be coordinating with their finance teams and just putting this as a line item, (10:47) a more visible cost to the organization, because Deb, you know, and I looked at last year’s report, (10:53) not this year’s report, but this is a very, very simple equation, okay, so a quarter of a percent (11:00) of your workforce is going to make some kind of a claim every year, right, so just, you know, (11:06) how many employees do you have times it by 0.025, and that’s the number of claims you can expect (11:13) to experience every single year, and then I did an informal poll of about, it was about 100 (11:22) investigators, so we all know that an outside investigator, that’s a lot of money, you know, (11:28) those investigations could be six figures easily, the smaller ones are, you know, maybe 15, 20k, (11:35) but even when it’s internal, so Kim, even people on your team, they’ve got an hourly rate, (11:41) they’re spending a number of hours in an intake and having conversations, even if they don’t have (11:45) to do a full investigation, so looking at that spectrum, you know, I think $25,000 per, as an (11:54) averaged cost, across the big spectrum, per employer relations claim is a reasonable amount (12:03) of money. Yeah, well, also, yeah, Ginny, I just say the indirect cost of that, right, think about all (12:10) of the employees that are involved, that are not thinking about getting their job done and sort of (12:15) working on their performance metrics, but are now, you know, whether they’re a witness or they’re (12:20) accused or they’re just part of it and sort of the resources, it’s tremendous, you know, it can (12:27) really distract.

So we all know that, everyone listening on this call knows it, the reason why (12:35) I wanted to come up with something that I agree is, frankly, a subset of the real cost, is for the (12:41) benefit of the finance team, who, you know, they don’t want to hear stories, they just want to see (12:46) numbers, it’s like, okay, CFO, put this number in your P&L, because this is the number that any (12:55) workforce experiences in employee friction, that has a cost attached to it, and so why it’s so (13:03) important, I think, for leaders of employee relations teams, it becomes your benchmark, can you beat that, (13:09) you know, can you show cost savings to your organization, you know, and Deb, to your point, (13:15) just the direct cost, obviously, there’s a whole bunch of indirect cost savings that flow when you (13:20) reduce conflict, and I just, it always, you know, part of the reason why I stopped practicing law (13:29) and started a business is, it always was baffling to me how legal departments never tracked anything, (13:38) they never tracked costs, they never, I mean, and it was like, wow, it’s like they’re in an ivory (13:46) tower, just doing their work, and they’re not seeing how it connects to the rest of the organization, (13:51) and that was just, you know, kind of frustrating to me, and, you know, so I think that, you know, (13:57) every organization needs to be tracking their remit to the business, you know, yes, they did (14:05) track the severance payments and the litigation sums of money that they spent to law firms, (14:10) but not necessarily the, you know, kind of early indicators. I’ll also add kind of separate, (14:17) but related to this topic, you know, I think one of the things that we’ve been looking at, (14:22) and I would encourage other people to think about is, you know, some employment legal teams and (14:27) house teams, they do have some metrics that they’re reporting out on, you know, and it’s (14:32) really helpful for ER functions to go and connect with those teams to figure out, like, what’s being (14:39) reported out on, how do we think about how our team might deflect some of those things that, (14:45) you know, that end up kind of going to, that could go to legal, you know, if we didn’t do our job (14:50) effectively, right, so those are some of the conversations that we have, and I think (14:55) it’s an ongoing dialogue, but I do think that’s a helpful way to engage and think about that (15:02) interconnection as well. The other metrics that I think you can pull in, because the hard part is, (15:07) it is cost avoidance, right, so it’s very hard to really say, did we really impact it, or did we (15:13) just, you know, how do you know if you’ve actually avoided a cost, so there are other metrics that I (15:17) think that resonate and people listen to, so we asked in our study this year and last year, (15:25) this is our critical moment study, which you can get, and this is my favorite metric, and I feel (15:30) like I share it almost every day, but we asked people like their, how their net promoter score, (15:36) right, how likely are they to recommend their organization as a place to work, and so you (15:40) do that with your customers, we do it to sort of look at the employee experience and the culture, (15:45) and across the board in our surveys, it was, this year was 31 percent in general recommended their (15:50) organization as a place to work, which is actually pretty much in keeping with sort of the Gallup (15:54) polls and other things that happen, but then we sliced and diced it a little bit, and if someone (15:58) said they had not experienced, so we said 40, how many, 41 percent had experienced something, if they (16:04) said they didn’t experience, we looked at, well, how likely were they to promote their employer, (16:09) and that was up to, actually I have it here, so I don’t want to get it messed up, that went up to (16:15) 41 percent of people said they would promote their organization as a place to work, (16:20) and then we asked, we did a little bit more, and we said, okay, well, if you have (16:27) had an issue, right, it was investigated, you reported it, right, that’s one thing, it was (16:33) investigated, it was resolved, that loyalty number went up to 56 percent, which when you first hear, (16:40) it sounds like, wait a second, something bad happened to them, how can they be more loyal to the company, (16:45) but going back to Helene’s comment in the chat about trust, right, when everything’s going well, (16:51) you’re sort of just assuming everything’s going to go well, it’s when something goes bad, (16:55) and how your employer or anybody reacts that builds loyalty, and so my analogy that I share, (17:01) and maybe this will resonate, I don’t know, I call Nordstrom analogy, I am a big, very brand loyal, (17:08) very loyal Nordstrom customer, even though I can get the exact same clothes at probably three other (17:14) stores, and that’s because when something goes wrong, if something fails, or the product falls (17:20) apart, or believe it or not, if like I lose or gain weight, they will take it back, no questions (17:25) asked at any moment in time when something happens, and so for me, I know that when things don’t go (17:33) right, they have my back, so I don’t have to worry about it, I’m like, I can make decisions, I can (17:36) move along with my day, and if we think about our work environment, it’s the same thing, we don’t (17:40) expect perfection, we don’t expect everything to go right at work, but when an organization takes (17:45) care of you, and I know that they’re going to help me out, and they’re going to move to resolve (17:49) something for me, I’m much more loyal to them, and when we think about retention, and how important (17:54) that is, particularly in this, we continue to have this war for talent, that’s real dollars right there.

(18:00) Yeah, no, thanks Deb, I think that’s a great point, and in every problem situation, (18:05) there’s a silver lining, or an opportunity to build trust, to do right by that person, and (18:11) build trust. I just want to call out Denise’s comment in the chat, because it’s totally (18:15) relevant to this, make sure that your remedial measures are consistent, you know, systemic (18:23) throughout the organization, and it doesn’t seem piecemeal. Well, I would actually take that a bit (18:28) further Denise, because I absolutely agree, but think about all those things that happen, so as (18:33) Kim was talking about, you know, the employee relations issues that never rise, right, so (18:37) someone’s on a written warning, or maybe they violate a policy, you know, there might (18:42) have been an investigation, you just have to deal with it, that’s probably 80% of what you’re doing, (18:46) how are we tracking those things at the HR level, at the managerial level, right, to make sure we are (18:52) treating women of color the same way, when it comes to these policy violations as everybody (18:57) else.

If we’re not looking at that, we can actually have a real disparate impact on the organization, (19:02) not, we don’t, we don’t mean to, but we don’t have the data to look at it, to see who we’re (19:07) impacting, or the types of workers, or where we might have other issues that could lead to (19:12) other turnover, or things that we, maybe our policies are impacting a certain generation (19:17) differently than the rest of the generation, we need to tweak that, because times have changed, so (19:23) my thing is, getting it before the investigations will happen, we need to handle them, we need to (19:27) do all the right things, but all of that data, and the power of what’s going on, the behavioral data, (19:32) you know, how people are acting, or misacting, misacting, unacting, I don’t know, whatever, (19:40) that’s not, that’s where we need to catch them first, those are the predictive indicators that (19:44) we really need to be on top of. Excellent, thanks Deb. Okay, so I want to, well actually, before I (19:49) do this, I can’t help it, because it’s in the news, yesterday and today, I asked this in my last (19:54) session, so there’s GrubGate going on, and the EY scandal going on, so these are kind of, these (20:02) are employee relations issues, so for those of you who haven’t read up on it, so GrubGate, (20:09) 25 folks at Meta took their meal vouchers, and they didn’t buy meals with them, they bought, (20:16) you know, laundry detergent, shaving cream, what have you, some personal items, and so (20:21) there’s some controversy now about, you know, whether that was the right decision, because Meta (20:27) decided, okay, it’s time to terminate these folks, so Denise, this kind of loops back to (20:32) your comment of like, okay, is this equal, is this consistent with how you’re treating (20:36) other infractions, and then at EY, and this just was, I think, reported today, (20:45) they had a handful of folks, an issue near and dear to my heart, so they were gaming their (20:51) compliance training, and when that was found out, EY took action, and so people are, there’s (20:58) controversy going on as to the, whether those decisions were consistently made, and if they (21:03) were appropriate, so please give us your comments in the chat, be interested to hear.

(21:09) I mean, these are really interesting topics, Janine, because this is why the data is so (21:15) important, right, and we’re fortunate to be HRQD customers, and, you know, you need to be (21:23) able to do the analysis on the data, you can’t rely on people, you know, their memory of, you know, (21:29) how did we handle a situation that was similar, right, you have to be able to do that analysis, (21:35) and even something, Deb, you touched on, right, just making sure that, you know, with your talent (21:40) practices and performance management being one, that you’re being consistent, you know, (21:46) you’re treating people fairly, you’re looking at your equity in those talent practices, (21:50) you’re doing analysis to see if, you know, a complainant is having a, you know, a different (21:58) calibration impact after raising a complaint, you know, is there any potential retaliation (22:03) happening, like all of those things are really important, and I think a really great evolution (22:09) of the ER function to be looking out for those trends and hotspots, and you have to have, (22:16) you know, that kind of strong data set in order to do that. For sure. Yeah, spot on, and I think, (22:21) look, I wasn’t there doing this investigation, but I, from what I read, some people didn’t get (22:26) fired, right, there was different levels of it.

I really hope, one of the things I would say, (22:31) where were the managers, like, and are they holding them accountable, like it just, like, (22:35) because someone, you know, little things happen, right, you get away with something, (22:41) and it’s just something about investigations I’ve done in my past, and sort of someone does (22:45) something, and like, no one says anything, so I go, I guess that’s okay, or they see somebody (22:48) else doing it, and that’s a cultural thing, and so yes, the employee has to be held accountable, (22:54) but what about the managers, were they turning a blind eye, were they doing it themselves, (22:59) were they sort of, you know, so are they looking at that to understand, you know, (23:05) where did we allow that to happen, that people in the organization, particularly so many, (23:09) felt that this was okay, and so, and we, yes, we need to hold the employees or individual (23:14) contributors accountable, but I’m hoping that it’s, that they’re looking further up to really (23:20) say, look, this isn’t, you know, this isn’t okay, it’s, look, it’s stealing from the company. (23:24) Right, exactly, that’s a perfect segue, so I want to ask both of you folks, (23:29) when you’ve had claims, are there ever times where you’re like, oh yeah, I called that, (23:36) like, yeah, I’m not, not surprised, got that issue coming from that team, coming from that manager? (23:44) I have a really good one, every, every ERA professional can relate to that, you know, (23:48) you get, you get a new complaint coming in from your favorite function, right, and you, (23:52) and you just kind of go, okay, you know, here we go again, right, I think we can all (23:56) relate to that, you know, in terms of like specific, you know, calling out specific styles (24:03) or behaviors or issues that may be contributing to an increase of concerns coming from a specific (24:10) team or manager, sometimes it can be really hard to identify, you know, what, what, what it is, (24:15) what’s happening, right, I mean, one of the things I definitely have seen, one trend in a post (24:21) pandemic world with companies having an increased focus on performance can lead to an increase in (24:27) ERA concerns, so people leaders need to be really thoughtful on the ways that they’re coaching (24:33) and managing performance, you know, there’s increased scrutiny from employees on behaviors, (24:38) tone, you know, could the coaching that they’re receiving be perceived as bullying, (24:43) do they feel they’re being treated fairly and with respect, right, and so there’s, (24:48) there’s a lot of nuance to it, and I, you know, I think the challenge is always getting in front of the (24:53) potential issues before they happen and identifying early indicators, and I do, I’m really excited, (24:59) Janine, to dig into the Emtrain analytics tool, and especially as we kind of shift to a more annual (25:06) training cadence to kind of see if, if that can help us identify some of those behaviors (25:11) and cross-referencing where we see issues popping up in the organization to drive more proactive (25:18) training and interventions, right, where we see things popping up, so. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, (25:25) ditto to all that, and I think the other thing is, you know, in HR, ER, like, you know, you’re not, (25:31) I mean, hopefully you’re walking the floors and getting your people, but we have to really (25:36) empower our managers to know what to do and to be willing to sort of call these things out when (25:41) they see them, I mean, when you said that about, did something surprise you, years ago when I was (25:46) in-house, when I was working in HR, there was an allegation of, from a vendor, actually, who was (25:52) saying they couldn’t work with the company anymore because one of our employees, they felt, was (25:56) antisemitic, so I was doing the investigation, and I can take you through all the investigation, a lot (26:00) of interesting things on that, learnings on that as well, but when I went to the manager to talk (26:06) to them about this allegation that was being made, her first response is, oh, actually, I’m not (26:12) surprised.

What? What? You’re not surprised? And she went on to tell me about some sort of (26:17) off-handed antisemitic jokes or remarks that this person had made in the past, and I’m like, hello, (26:24) hello, like, where were you? Right, where were you? And so the manager has to know, first of all, (26:30) they have to be responsible when things like that, and be held accountable for doing something, (26:35) and then they have to understand what to do with it, what can they say, who do they go to for support, (26:39) what is the right thing to do, and I think that’s where we really can impact the organization so (26:43) much, because they really are the front line to our employees. They’re also, for most employees, (26:49) who they see when they think about the company, so making sure they’re equipped is so important. (26:56) Right, so I’m showing EMTRAIN’s culture skills framework, because after doing, you know, years (27:03) and years of litigation, which is, you know, the people involved in litigation, either the person (27:09) making a complaint or the person defending themselves from a complaint, it’s so emotional, (27:15) it’s really emotional, and so being kind of a practical person and always thinking through (27:22) how everything connects together, I just naturally came up with, you know, like, there was a (27:28) time when I was in San Francisco Superior Court, and the law in motion judge, I was representing a big (27:34) employer, and the law in motion judge was like, I can’t handle any more of these harassment (27:39) discrimination cases.

I mean, it was just hundreds. It was during a particular, you know, downturn where (27:45) there was just hundreds and hundreds of files of cases, and so through all that experience, you know, (27:50) I learned all your harassment, all your discrimination cases, it is stemming from mitigating bias, our (27:57) ability to mitigate our own biases, so Deb, your comment about the off-handed anti-Semitic jokes (28:02) to that one person. Connecting in-group, out-groups.

My last investigation where I finally said I can’t (28:10) be a practitioner anymore was somebody who was being ostracized from a group, but the nuts and (28:17) bolts of this person’s complaint was that the other co-workers ate his Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. (28:23) Did you not? Big litigation matter, like six figures because of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. (28:30) So in-group, out-groups will always cause claims.

Most of the harassment cases, not all of them, but (28:37) most of them are managers who don’t understand how to manage their power. They don’t understand that (28:42) when they’re saying something to a direct report, that person is perceiving, and I think, Kim, you (28:49) had some comment when you’re doing coaching and performance management, you just need to think (28:54) through, how is this person receiving my comments? And that’s a skill. And then, you know, ensuring (29:01) equity so that all of our decisions, you know, are consistent and seem, you know, even-handed.

So (29:07) I think that they’re skills, and when we say, yeah, not surprised that this issue, this claim was coming (29:13) from that team or that manager, I think if we unpack it, what we’re really saying is there’s (29:18) a behavior or a weak skill that we’re seeing that needs to be strengthened. (29:25) Well, and that’s what I love about Emtrain. Like, your training, I think, is different (29:29) because you ask those sort of, you just kind of throw in those questions about the person’s (29:34) experience.

They’re not knowing, but it’s giving Kim’s team and other ER teams these breadcrumbs to (29:40) say, huh, let me just go explore. There may be nothing there. Like, we’re not going to have 100% (29:46) happy, you know, wonderful, you know, employees that, you know, but when you start hearing it (29:51) over, maybe there’s something, and let’s get in there early, and let’s mitigate that or figure (29:56) out what’s going on.

We have another member of our roundtable group who, you know, when they (30:02) specifically, it’s retail stores, when they specifically don’t get complaints in a specific (30:07) store or region, they go and sit there and start asking questions. Yeah, what’s going on? It’s (30:12) the lack of issues, which sometimes is more telling. So, what are we doing with this data? (30:17) But you can’t do anything with it if you’re not collecting it.

Right, exactly. Just quickly want (30:24) to show folks, this is going to be out in Q1 of next year. So, this is after a year of collecting (30:30) feedback from all of our stakeholders, and they said, listen, because we’re all wearing five hats, (30:37) doing many, many jobs, can you just make it easy for us and let us know (30:41) where we should be spending our time? And so, all this then kind of tees up.

Don’t have to worry (30:47) about these issues. These issues, you’re on the fence. Okay, these issues need a little bit more (30:51) investigation, and then you can kind of go and drill down, and on the ones that need more (30:58) investigation, it’s hard to see.

But it’s showing you, Deb, to your point, those kind of innocuous questions (31:03) might be fine, but it might also, you could just deploy another little micro lesson and pulse (31:09) again to see, all right, did I hear what I thought I was hearing? And if yes, then maybe you just do (31:15) a little lunch and learn. And so, you get to that manager who thinks it’s funny to do the little (31:20) kind of off-color jokes here and there that are offending those around them type of thing. (31:27) I think, what else? Lastly, and I want to kind of give folks time to think through how to (31:40) maybe also be proactive and kind of tee up and summarize the value of their work for their (31:47) managers and for their organizations.

But lastly, you know, with all of those questions and all the (31:52) responses going into a heat map, so again, you see, like, which organizations, which teams, which (32:00) managers, you know, seem to be having the weakest skills, the weakest behaviors that require the ER (32:07) team’s time and attention and focus. And so, with that, and then, James, you could stop sharing. (32:16) Thank you so much.

Wanted to hear, you know, some ideas from either Deb or Kim in your roundtables (32:23) that you folks are engaged in. You know, what are some ideas on how best to, you know, kind of (32:32) summarize the work that the employee relations team is doing so that everyone else understands, (32:39) you know, in the organization, finance for sure, but even some of the operational leaders (32:43) so that people are connected. Deb, do you want me to go? And then, I’m sure you have a ton of (32:49) great examples from customers.

Yeah. So, I mean, we, you know, I mentioned that we use HR Acuity for our (32:56) ER performance investigation case management, and we partnered with our people analytics team. (33:04) This is kind of an evolving body of work, but we partnered with them to bring a lot of the (33:09) data insights into Workday, into a dashboard, through Prism integration to really identify (33:17) key trends and hotspots, right, based on our ER data.

So, it’s really been helpful. Like, (33:25) there’s some recent use cases where we were able to identify some regional hotspots (33:30) by case type that allowed us to kind of have the right level of discussion with regional leadership (33:36) and identify some interventions, right, before things got worse there. (33:42) At a point, yeah.

(33:43) So, you know, and I think it’s just about having the right kind of format of your data and insights (33:50) because it’s also, it’s very difficult to have people, you know, constantly analyzing the data (33:57) and the reports, right? So, it’s really helpful to put it into like a, to put it into a dashboard (34:03) format. But that’s one recent example. And then we’ve also been able to identify specific case (34:08) type trends following our performance review cycles.

And so, this is the body of work that’s (34:13) happening right now where we’re working on some people leader training to help in proactively (34:18) addressing the areas that are coming up after the performance review cycles so we can, you know, (34:27) focus more on like some of those behaviors and the things that we think will help mitigate. (34:33) And Kim, are those issues that are being reported in the HR ACUITY system, (34:37) so that’s flagging, the system’s flagging it for you folks to say, okay, (34:41) you’re getting a body of people registering their concerns? (34:46) They’re cases that are coming into our team and then we’re, you know, we’re putting the (34:50) case details into HR ACUITY and then getting those insights through our dashboard. (34:55) I see.

(34:59) You know, there’s so many, I mean, the power of sort of is in the data and there’s so many ways (35:07) that you can use that data like the way Kim and her team is doing it. And either on the aggregate (35:12) level, or of course on the individual level, because there’s turnover and attrition in (35:16) organizations. So, I mean, I remember, you know, being in an organization, people like, oh, did (35:20) anybody, you know, we got this legal letter about Ed Smith, anybody ever heard of him? Like, you know, (35:24) people are kind of going back to their mental archives or the paper files when somebody left.

(35:29) So, there’s a lot of risk there to dealing with something. And Kim, you mentioned like (35:33) performance issues, like how many times, you know, someone makes a claim and you’re like, (35:37) oh yeah, well, I had this conversation already with them. Well, is it written down anywhere? (35:42) Like, it’s too late now.

Like, it’s too late. You haven’t done it. Somebody mentioned something (35:46) about having a company size of 58.

I mean, you know, at HR ACUITY, we have about 150 employees. (35:51) We use all of our tools, you know, because even our managers, like new managers coming in can sort (35:57) of see what’s happening. You’re not sort of starting from scratch what’s going on.

But sort (36:02) of another benefit, and it goes back to, I can’t remember who threw out the trust thing there, (36:08) is using that with your organization. And this is a little bit controversial. We have people in (36:14) our community that like love this and people like, we could never do this.

But I’m a big (36:18) proponent of transparency. Transparency breeds trust. And so there’s ways you can do that.

So (36:24) last year at our roundtable, some from Best Buy shared how they’re extremely transparent about the (36:30) number of people that report to their hotline. They normalize it, right? We want people to come (36:38) forward. So they’re like, one in every X number of associates has come forward.

And if you looked (36:43) at the number, you’re like, that seems like a lot. It’s actually a really great place to work, (36:46) but people feel comfortable coming forward, both anonymized and not anonymized, (36:50) to bring things forward. And that’s what we’re trying to do with some of our tools.

So (36:54) you shouldn’t just come forward to the hotline when your boss has asked you to sleep with them. (36:59) You should come forward when someone makes that antisemitic joke or uses an inappropriate term, (37:07) and you just don’t know what to do, and it made you or a colleague feel uncomfortable, (37:12) and you just need help. That’s when you should be coming forward, (37:15) because that’s not necessarily against the law.

It’s just really bad behavior that we need to (37:19) actually go and make sure that person understands it’s not keeping with our culture. So doing that, (37:28) really taking that and normalizing it, making people feel that it’s okay to come forward. (37:33) Some companies go as far, and I love this, as saying, we had this many issues this year.

(37:38) This many were found to have merit. This many weren’t. These are the types of things we did, (37:45) so that when you have an issue, you can say, oh, my gosh, HR.

They actually might be able to help (37:51) me. Sharing stories, that’s the type of thing this data can really do to build that trust in (37:57) organizations to have people come forward. Yeah, I love all that.

Thank you, Deb. And (38:01) just to double tap on one thing that Kim was talking about, and we’ll kind of round out our (38:07) conversation with this, having the data and insights to bring to your managers, Kim, (38:12) to help them build more productive teams. I mean, friction slows down productivity.

It causes (38:18) turnover, as Deb said. So I have to believe you’re setting yourself up with your whole team (38:24) as being trusted advisors to those managers and leaders, which is where we all want to be. (38:31) Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I feel very strongly that employee relations is a strategic space, (38:37) right? And I believe that to my core. I think that a lot of the work that our people consultants and (38:44) our ER partners do is very strategic, right? And the data helps kind of tell that story (38:50) and bring that value-added coaching and perspective and narrative to help the (38:59) business. I mean, that’s why we’re here, right? To help the business and to help employees that (39:03) are going through things that they shouldn’t be going through, but also to help the business, (39:08) right? Exactly right.

Well, we’re at time here. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kim.

Thank you, (39:14) Deb. Great conversation. And thank you, everyone, for chiming in the chat.

(39:20) Thanks for having us, Janine. Great conference. Yeah.

Thank you. See you next week. Bye.