Jessica Miller-Merrell – SHRM 2022 Series: What CHROs Are Dealing With Today

Connect with Jessica:

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Connect with Dwight:

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• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

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• david.turetsky@salary.com

 

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Workology Podcast
• Compensation Consulting Services
• The Plunkett Pay Equity Framework
• HR Data Labs Season 4 Episode 14
• HR Data Labs Season 4 Episode 12

• “I started doing the interviews and to date we've had over 50 interviews with heads of HR, but I was finding that it was just anecdotal [conversations]. . . . So we launched what we called the HR Benchmark Survey.”
• “Innovation is everything. The more diversity we have in terms of people we bring into the profession of human resources, I think the better it is for everyone because we're dreaming up new things.”

Announcer: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record for their discussions into a beaker. Mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. Like always, we try and find you fascinating people inside and outside the world of HR. Today, we're still at the SHRM 22 conference here in beautiful New Orleans, Louisiana. Today, we have a pleasure to talk to Jessica Miller-Merrell, who's the CEO and founder of Workology. Hey, Jessica, how are you?

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 1:10

Hey, I'm doing great.

 

David Turetsky: 1:12

So Jessica, one of the things we typically do is we'll ask people to give us a little bit of background about themselves. First, describe who Jessica is.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 1:22

Oh, only my therapist knows, right?

 

David Turetsky: 1:26

That's okay, we don't have to go deep!

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 1:29

So I'm an HR practitioner turned entrepreneur. And we really are focused on providing resources, information, training and support for the HR community. Workology is a destination that reaches 800,000 HR practitioners every single month, and I'm focused on helping them elevate their business. I'm a former practitioner, turned entrepreneur. And I love doing this work because I'm helping serve the person that I used to be in those organizations.

 

David Turetsky: 2:00

That's awesome. It's a great goal. And I'm glad you're doing it. Thank you. So one other thing that we do is one fun thing that no one knows about you.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 2:09

One fun thing that no one knows about me. I really love stand up paddleboarding. I moved to Austin about six years ago, and I go every chance that I can.

 

David Turetsky: 2:18

That's awesome. I'm so uncoordinated that I would probably fall every single time trying to get on board. But I applaud you for trying.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 2:26

It's good for core work. And it's it's a lot of it's a lot of fun. Austin is a great place for that. And it gets me out of the office and or my home office or work office, whatever and out into beautiful just views.

 

David Turetsky: 2:40

And I'm sure with the temperatures being what they are recently, it's better than being just normally outside because you can actually get in the water anytime you get too hot.

 

Unknown: 2:48

The temperature? Yes, it's not unlike Louisiana, New Orleans is right now. We just don't necessarily always have as much of the humidity. So it's six or three digits for sure. For the next couple of months, yes.

 

David Turetsky: 3:00

Yeah, that's one thing I don't miss being in Massachusetts is three digits.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 3:03

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 3:04

So one of the things we wanted to talk about today, and our topic for today is understanding what senior HR and CHROs are dealing with today. And Workology is working on a CHRO survey, which is fascinating. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about your CHRO survey. So the first question is, why build a CHRO survey? What kind of spurred you to do it?

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 3:38

So at the beginning of 2020, when the pandemic happened, I have a podcast also too called The Workology Podcast. And with everyone being at home and unable to see each other, I decided to do a series of interviews where I talked to CHROs. So it's the CHRO series on The Workology Podcast. And I really just wanted to understand and share with others who might not be able to go anywhere, what what is happening right now, what are priorities and initiatives and changes that are occurring as a result of what we were all going through together, but separately, so.

 

David Turetsky: 4:12

And by the way, there was nothing happening in 2020. Nothing, a pandemic? Guys that's easy. CHROs had that. Oh my gosh, every CHRO that's listening to this right now is like yeah, that's why burnout is at 92% for heads of HR. So we're all working a lot trying to navigate this, this crazy space. And so I started doing the interviews and today we've had over 50 interviews with heads of HR. And I liked the anecdotal conversations. The one on one, I think it's fantastic. But I was finding that it was just anecdotal. It was me saying, Oh, I talked to this person. So we needed more data, more information. So we launched what we called the HR benchmark survey, and we've surveyed 457 heads of HR, asked them about what's important to them, who they report to, what's their budget, how their business works, what are priorities for them as heads of HR? And then also what are priorities for the business? So a whole host of questions about 30. But the real reason that we wanted to put this together is because I wanted to be able to share, because I feel like it's a pivotal moment really in human resources right now. So how do we keep that momentum going? Post COVID and beyond for us? I think one of the funny things is, when you asked a CHRO, what they were doing, they were wearing so many hats, especially during the pandemic, so many hats of making sure that we understood who's working at home, who's not, who can work at home. What were the changes happening in legislation, because things were changing so rapidly, and there was just so much going on that their heads were literally spinning. So what you're trying to do now is you're trying to put context for what they're doing, and how they're dealing with things.

 

Unknown: 5:49

Absolutely. And being able to explain to others. Because also, I'm finding that during the pandemic CHROs were leading executive conversations, because we needed to know exactly about what you were describing legislation changes, safety regulations, all these different things, we had to be starting the executive meeting conversations. I don't want us to not be a part of those conversations. So it's really important for us to have this data to be able to communicate to each other, support ourselves as individuals in HR and our teams, but also talk to our CEO and executive team about here's what my peers are doing. And this is what's a priority for us in aggregate.

 

David Turetsky: 6:26

Right. So let me ask you another question, which is, where did you use to get this data before? Where did anybody go to try and get data about all the things that CHROs were doing?

 

Unknown: 6:37

I mean, there's a number of outlets that are out there. I think the Conference Board is a really good place for a lot of information. I just felt like small to medium sized businesses, we don't, we don't normally don't have access to that information. Or most organizations like the Conference Board will focus on collecting data for really large enterprise companies. And so the SMB market often gets left, they get forgotten. So I want to make sure that we focus on the SMB market.

 

David Turetsky: 7:08

I think one of the things that we've specifically talked about in the past on the HR Data Labs is, there's a very different world that SMB deals with not just from regulation, some regulations are shared, but from regulation, but also from who they're competing against, and the local markets that they have to deal with, and all the other things that that sometimes big organizations do, but a lot of times they don't, because they have the resources to be able to deal with those bigger issues.

 

Unknown: 7:32

Their teams are different, who they report to is different, the priorities are different, how they report, in terms of business success is different. When you're publicly traded, there are a lot of different regulations and requirements for for sharing of information. And you don't have those same things necessarily in SMB markets.

 

David Turetsky: 7:50

The job of a CHRO is almost fundamentally different. Because it's not exactly the same, because you have so many people as a larger company, CHROs, you have so many people who can take on those other hats. And the CHRO typically has such a litany of things that they're responsible for, because they just can't afford, right, other people.

 

Unknown: 8:13

And we've seen that in our CHRO series on the podcast, too. I've talked to chiefs of staff with 25 employees all the way up to HR organizations that were supporting fortune 100 companies. So you know, if when you have a team of employees that are 300,000 Plus strong as a CHRO, it is very different! What your schedule looks like, how you filter and organize information, versus a 25 person or a 250 person or 2500 person organization.

 

Announcer: 8:45

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David Turetsky: 8:57

So let me ask this other question, Jess, where could this survey go? What are you hoping that the future is? Where do you want CHRO, the CHRO data and the CHRO survey to go? What what what would be your dream?

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 9:12

So my vision is quarterly information. So I really want to have like a body of work and research because that's really my background is is in research. I have a degree in anthropology. So I feel like HR, HR, the HR profession is sort of my culture that I'm setting as an anthropologist, so I want to be able to have this body of work, quarterly trends uncovered and information. So when we look back in two years, five years, 10 years, at the end of my time in human resources, I have really built something that really showcases how dynamic and interesting and just fascinating really, the role of the human resources professional is.

 

David Turetsky: 9:53

I love that and to me as a statistician, I love to longitudinally look at things and say why is something so different, what's the things that make it different? Whether it's industry, whether it's time, whether it's geography, whether it's just purely the size, because obviously, as we talked about size could be very a big, big differentiator, even in the small and midsize markets. So are you planning on doing things like actually having researchers who are pouring through the data and doing research papers on it? Kind of like what, you know, the Gartners and other Deloittes have done in the past?

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 10:29

We'll see what happens. I mean, we've just launched the first quarterly results of the survey.

 

David Turetsky: 10:34

I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 10:35

Yeah, you are, but I love how you're thinking! Because yes, I would love a team of data analysts and data scientists to dive in this information, take a look at it, and like pull out real gems, because the more information we get from the survey, the more people who are inputting their information into it, the more granular I can get, the more vertical the just like you were saying, location, geography, all the things. That's what gets me excited, like, can I find a trend or uncover something in one of those areas that we might have missed, because we haven't really evaluated or researched humans, the HR professional in this way before. So I, I'm excited to see the possibilities.

 

David Turetsky: 11:19

There's no better person, I think that could steward this than an anthropologist because your background is in studying humans, the human condition, right?

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 11:28

It's so crazy that this is where I ended up because really, I went to school, and then I just kind of fell into human resources. So now kind of circling back, it's like, oh, like, this is what I was training for. So I'm really excited to see how the data in our research is received. And then like, you were dreaming up all the things for me, what the future is gonna look like.

 

David Turetsky: 11:52

Just call me, we'll talk.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 11:54

Absolutely!

 

David Turetsky: 11:55

So one of the fun things, and I and I think everybody who heard what you just said, kind of agrees, a lot of us fall into HR. We had different backgrounds, whether it was, you know, having a liberal arts background, or having an art history background, or I have a statistical econometrics background. And I didn't fall into it, I actually purposely did it. Because when I graduated from college, I got my first job was with Towers Parrin. And I was developing statistical analyses based on people's jobs. And it was it was crazy. But I love how people do fall into it with different backgrounds, because it gives us so much of a fertile ground for understanding what we do differently. And those differences make us a better group for it. So I'm glad you're here.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 12:42

I love it. I innovation is everything. So the more diversity we have, in terms of people we bring into the profession of human resources, I think the better it is for everyone, because we're dreaming up new things. I mean, think about the number of HR technology companies that have come into this space, from when I first started until now, like the sky's the limit. I love seeing the evolution. And I think that as individual practitioners, we should expect the same things. We are changing Human Resources forever.

 

David Turetsky: 13:11

Absolutely, totally, wholeheartedly agree. Especially in the world that people analytics where, you know, marketing, finance, production, logistics, they've been doing statistics and analytics forever. We've just started, it's so new for us. And yes, you can listen to people like Al Adamson and Richard Rosenow and David Green and or me and talk about, you know, what's happening in that world. But because we now have people who are have those backgrounds in the world of HR, they're pushing us to go differently. So I'm glad you're here.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 13:44

Thank you, I, I'm excited to see what's in store. And I love that research and data has finally arrived. It totally makes sense why it's here. When I think about all the information and data that I'm inputting, and then all the technologies that I'm using, like it's a lot of information, putting it all together trying to make sense to help forecast or artificial intelligence. There, the possibilities are really endless for us.

 

David Turetsky: 14:06

And we hope that the HR world becomes more friendly to analytics, because let's be honest, not all of us have math degrees. And a lot of us hated our statistical classes, but but hopefully we're gonna get there. And hopefully your research shows that!

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 14:24

Yeah, I felt like HR professionals are open and we just have to keep talking about the value that data brings, the different ways that can be used. I feel like all this statistical data has been can be so incredibly helpful right now as we're still going through the great resignation. Imagine a world where you could anticipate turnover and plan for it from a workforce planning standpoint. Every HR leader, I think they should be super excited about that possibility because it will definitely change our job and our role in the organization forever.

 

David Turetsky: 14:57

And let's pray that happens.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 14:59

It's on its way, I know it is coming.

 

David Turetsky: 15:01

It is, it is. Jess thank you so much. It was wonderful having you. And hopefully we can have you back for a different topic.

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: 15:15

I would love to! Thank you so much.

 

David Turetsky: 15:16

Take care and thank you.

 

Announcer: 15:19

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