ļ»æHi, everyone. Kumar Dattatreyan here with Agile Meridian and the Meridian Point. Welcome to another episode of the Meridian Point. I don't know what episode number we're up to right now. It's well over 100. I know that much. Today, I'm so pleased to introduce you to Amy Uehling. She is the founder and CEO of Optimized HR Solutions, a company dedicated to creating people-first HR strategies for startups and small businesses. With over 15 years of experience in both government and the private sector. Oh, sorry, I've lost my place here. With over 15 years of experience in both government and private sector HR, Amy is a self-described HR disruptor on a mission to put the human back in human resources. I love that. You know what? It's one of my pet peeves. Actually, I'll save that for later. I want to continue with the introduction here.
She specializes in leadership development and creating positive employee experiences, helping organizations build strong cultures that drive growth and engagement. Amy's unique approach combines compliance expertise with a passion for fostering innovative and productive workplaces, particularly through developing first-time supervisors into effective leaders. That sounds amazing. So help me welcome Amy. Amy, I hope I did you justice in all the wonderful things that you do.
You absolutely did. And you nailed my last name, which does not always happen. Well done.
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Of course. Yeah, I'm glad. I'm excited that you are here. There are so many things that I want to ask you. This show is all about disruption and innovation, and we like to highlight stories of disruption and innovation throughout industry, right? Different industries. In my line of work, we work quite closely with HR and large firms, as they go through transformation. And one of the things this is a pet peeve of mine is when humans are referred to as resources, right? And that's where what I said about you, that you focus on the human in human resources. I think that's so true. To me, resources are the desk or the computer or a keyboard or a phone system that you get your employees, the people that do the work, so that they can be more productive. They're not the resources themselves. They are people, right? People. So I love that you focus on that. And so kudos to you on that.
So, tell me about this disruptor moniker that you've given yourself. What does that mean to you, and how are you trying to change traditional HR practices?
Well, as you just so eloquently put it, it is about the humans. While it's tempting to put humans into the same category as resources because they are assets in a way, and sometimes, in order to get the point across to decision-makers, giving them that term helps to connect the dots as far as the, you know, the black and white lines on a balance sheet or a P&L. But we have to recognize that those humans come in various shapes and sizes, and by that I mean every personality trait, every quirk, the strengths that they bring to the work, the innovation, the opportunity to make the processes better. Everything that goes into making the day-to-day work happen comes out of the genius of human intelligence. We utilize the tools and the resources that were provided as part of our jobs, but we are inherently human and we offer so much more than just work. You know, the skill set that shows up on our resume.
So I've been very passionate about this idea my entire career, having had the opportunity to go to school at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, where there is a Gallup Center for Leadership embedded in the business college. I took a lot of courses that really circled around the modern leadership idea and what that means, how to apply it, and why it's good for businesses. In the last decade, we've seen an increase in the research findings showing that companies with strong cultures with positive cultures, outperform their market competitors. These are the types of companies that end up on the Fortune annual 100 Best Companies to work for list. But they do that for a good reason. It's not because of ping-pong tables or pizza parties or because you have to bring your dog to work day. It's about how the employee identifies their value within the company. That's what it really comes down to. A lot of times, we refer to this as employee experience.
So there's a strategic element there to our people in our organizations. And we need modern engagement strategies because in 2024, it is a lot different than the world of work in 1994. So yeah, so my goal is toā€” Let me back up. I think that there are pockets of large organizations that have begun to make these positive changes. We're seeing some of those cultural elements out there in publicly traded companies and maybe medium- to large-size companies. However, this is significant, like employee engagement, and the employee experience, in my view, is a significant strategic opportunity for small businesses. Because a lot of employees are really sick of the corporate everything. The benefits are nice. They like the idea of higher pay, but we're starting to see the emphasis on their work life and what the experience is like. Do they enjoy doing the work? And they're valuing that in a different way.
So for me, the disruptor piece comes back to being part of the small business movement and helping to aid in that work where they can compete with larger businesses using innovative and creative HR strategies.
I love that. So I want to, before I get into the disruptor piece and certainly on the employee experience piece of things, which I think is something that you're keying on here as a competitive advantage for companies. I would imagine there would be a competitive advantage for companies, large or small, right?
Yeah, completely agree. And I think we just tend to see it more often in stories about larger companies, A, because those companies make the headlines more often, but also B, larger companies, larger budgets, larger administrative overhead opportunities, and strategic human resources is often considered a nice to have versus a need to have. But the need in my mind exists for a small business, if just the same, if not more than a large organization, because those small businesses need to be strategic and tactical. And they need to have their tactical human resource piece that's happening in-house, processing employee documents, their onboarding, their payroll, et cetera. But you do not need a full-time strategic HR presence. That's where the fractional, the rise in fractional HR has really started to blossom in strategic HR in general. So I think that from my perspective, it probably does exist in small business, but it's a lot more prevalent in the large businesses with the bigger administrative budgets.
Yeah, I agree with you there, you know, having experience in both small, medium and huge businesses. My experience runs the gamut, if you will. I agree that small companies could definitely benefit from a strategic approach to developing their humans. You know, the people that help them run their company and provide the services and the value to their customers. And the large companies, of course, they have them. But they're treated more as a sort of a cost center, you know, HR departments, right? As a cost center, as something that's a necessity that you have to have it for compliance or whatever. And HR in many organizations, and some they're very much embedded throughout the company and they provide the kinds of services that you would expect to improve the employee experience as it were. However, in lots of companies, it's a very siloed thing. And they're sort of at the beginning of when employees start and they're there at the end when they're let go or they leave. Right. And they don't have that much involvement in the middle.
I'm going to get to a question here. And the question is, you mentioned culture and modern cultures. Can you distinguish or can you just give us some more what you mean by modern cultures or modern leadership styles and how it differs from more traditional styles of leadership?
Oh, I lost your sound.
So modern styles of leadership. Right. So I think that modern leadership in a word, collaborative. All throughout most of history, you have the authoritarian top-down management. Do what I say, do it the way I say it. Do not complain. Do not make changes. Do not deviate from the plan. And we're seeing now that we have built this entire workforce full of intelligence workers who don't just want to make their widget and go home. Many of the employees are really looking for a sense of purpose in their work. They value the value set that they bring to the table. They value being able to grow, being able to do a job today a little bit differently than they did yesterday. Having the autonomy to make small decisions, large decisions, depending on the appropriateness of the position, these are all things that employees are really looking for. They're not satisfied with showing up, sitting at their desk, rubber stamping documents as they come along due to this specific process, and then going home at the end of the day.
And really, that's not the way of the world of work anymore, right? We're 24-7. We're worldwide. We're complicated, we're complex, we're trying to compete. Everything's changing all of the time. But yet we still have a legion of leadership that says, everything runs through me. I make all the decisions. Do not ever go outside of our procedure or SOP. Say what I tell you to say. Do what I tell you to do. And that's a very frustrating rock and a hard place to be for the employee who recognizes how processes could be improved. More revenue could be generated. Clients could be served better and they're not being heard. They don't have a voice. So I think that we really need to shift our mindset from command and control to collaboration.
I love that. That's a really nice way that you put it. I did a show a couple of weeks ago on servant leadership. I'm sure you've heard of the term.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, and it was quite a long time ago. Was it Richard Greenleaf, I believe, that wrote a book about it? And it's been used by various authors on, you know, experts, if you will, on leadership. What is your opinion of that style of leadership? And does it apply in this modern world? Distributed decision-making, autonomous team environment that we are striving towards?
Absolutely. Servant leadership is most definitely a style that I ascribe to, I appreciate, I prefer, I guess, because I do believe that as leaders, regardless of what other tactical responsibilities you may have as a leader, your first job as a leader is to develop and shape the people you're in charge of. And what better way to do that than to serve them with every action you take, identifying their skill gaps and recommending training saying their name in a room when there's an opportunity for them to grow and develop, taking on stretching activities. These are all things that are so valued by the modern workforce. And it's often very hard, though, I will admit, because there's always a risk. Is there a risk that that person is going to stab you in the back? Is there a risk that they're going to fail and you're going to feel like you are made to look bad? Yeah. But ultimately, in my mind, if you got into leadership for the reason that you want to help the organization, you want to grow and develop as a person, you want to keep moving higher within an organization or perhaps higher within your career field, you fail. You have to care about the wins of the people that you serve. And I should say the people that you lead, because to me, those two things are ubiquitous, but how better to do that than by serving them, by supporting them, by, you know, giving them opportunities to take risks and then being there and helping them pick up the pieces if something goes wrong.
Yeah. We can't predict. None of us can predict the future. And, you know, if it all works out, you end up looking amazing, but you won't even care because the feeling that you get when you develop someone and you watch them become better than they were before, to me, that's like the best part of leadership. Um, selfishly, I guess, but it, it's a win-win you're serving the other person. And by doing so you're growing and making yourself better. And I think we could use a lot more of that.
We could. To me, it seems to be, and again, this is something we discussed a couple of weeks ago. I encourage you to watch that video because we talk both about servant leadership and what I consider an on-ramp to servant leadership, and that's leadership as a service. And that technique is a set of patterns that leaders can use to, because it's hard, you know, it's like, it's like mom and apple pie. Of course you want to be compassionate. Of course you want to serve your team. Of course you want to do these things. But it's not always that easy in an organization that rewards you on results. And so even for employees, employees that come in and they're like, what, you want me to make a decision? Really? I don't know if I'm qualified to make a decision. Just tell me what to do. And so it's hard for people even that want to be that servant leader, especially that's someone that's new to it, not that mature as a leader, to understand that there are different leadership styles they can use, that for the newer employee, you can take a more of a coaching, mentoring style of leadership that provides them that security that they need until they get more proficient at their work so that they can start to make decisions on their own.
So anyway, where I was going with this is, you know, a lot of times the culture doesn't support servant leadership. An organization may pay lip service to it, even though the rewards that are instituted by HR and whoever doesn't really support this notion of people that are close to the work making decisions about the work. Because ultimately, if they make the wrong decision, then it's the boss's neck that's on the line, right? Not that employee's. So, and this brings me kind of to the question, how is someone, in your experience, how has someone evolved to that state of leadership? I'll just leave it at that, open, as open as I can make it.
Well, it's a very, very good question because you hit the nail on the head. It's really easy for me to talk about these things and for the two of us to riff on it and talk about how wonderful it would be and all of the benefits that the organization and the employee and the leader would see. But it really is hard to practice, especially in the early stages where there's not a confidence level also associated with it. And I think that's where mentorship comes in in a big, big way. We have a serious problem in that we often identify the best widget maker for a promotion, put them in the position, expect them to be able to turn the rest of the widget makers into an equally high functioning widget maker that got them the promotion. And then we say, good luck and walk away. And perhaps HR, you know, depending on the organization, sometimes HR, the people operations team, employee relations, and HRBP, there's like thousands of terms, but they may have a really great HR partner who has a strong leadership background and can help them learn the coaching styles that are effective or the different, you know, mentorship ways that reverse mentoring pieces that by teaching. Mm-hmm. they can learn, but often that's not the case. It's not prevalent out there amongst the HR community. Very often theā€” And I say this with all the love in my heart, but there are very often people that end up in human resources started out in another administrative position and they got voluntold into HR related work. And then it just developed from there. And they didn't ever really have an opportunity to do the study or to get really deep into an understanding of what it takes to navigate this very complicated thing that is effective leadership.
So I think that you really have to take it case by case. And the best thing you could possibly do if you don't know where to start is to reach out to a strategic partner or a coach. There are so many opportunities to partner with a fractional or or a small agency, or even start with your internal HR and see what they have to offer. And then go from there and develop it strategically with that person, work on it over time, but stay consistent with trying to implement that plan and process based on what you believe and have assessed to be the most effective way to implement and you're right the organization there needs to be some support from the top down in order to be truly effective and cut all the way across the organization that's not always the case but I do believe that you can be a leader without having a title you can be a good leader and a good role model without having the organization's backing, you do the best you can with the information and resources that you have available. And you hope that, you know, that hashtag be the change will eventually catch on around the organization because the benefits do start to show. The turnover rates go down. Your retention goes up. Your productivity goes up. You start to see some metrics that you can associate with this strategy. And then you might be able to get more backing from outside of your little pocket of the organization or big pocket of the organization, depending.
I totally, totally agree with that. It does take a commitment from senior leadership and it, and I almost see HR as, um, maybe even the internal coaches within an organization that they need to have that skill. So to your point earlier about some admin from a different department being voluntold into working in HR, you know, they don't have necessarily the skills or the background to do that job effectively. Of course, they could be given that background. They could be provided the training. And of course, you know, provided they have the inclination for that kind of work, you know, to be in that type of a coaching or mentoring role, a training role, whatever it might be that HR is doing. But provided all those things are there, then there's no reason why HR shouldn't be more involved in helping leaders lead from the back, if you will, and helping people without titles lead their work as best as they can and be more engaged and things like that.
Which brings me to my next question. So you talked a lot about, or you have talked, we have talked in our prior conversations about the employee experience. How would you say that the employee experience has changed post COVID?
Well, first, let me... kind of clarify and give context to what I mean by the employee experience because you know as is so many other things in our very connected and information available world right now it has taken on different meanings to different people. So the way I use it is based on, you know, reading and some research but it's probably not identical to the way that an academic might use it per se. So just caveat I think that's what I'm trying to foot stomp here. But when I talk about employee experience, I'm talking about looking at the way that your workers experience their work in a holistic way that allows you to quantify their engagement, how they feel about their jobs in more or using more factors than just their productivity. It would also include surveys regarding their confidence and leadership and how they feel about working with the team that they currently have, the culture of the organization, the work environment. Do they have the tools, the right tools to do the job that they're being asked to do? Do they feel psychologically safe? Do they have some autonomy in their work? Those are typically the characteristics that are being included in my mind when I'm talking about employee experience.
So I think that during COVIDā€”
So before you go to COVID I want to pull on that thread a little bit. You know, I'll be frank I've never heard the term employee experience used before, and it really resonated with me. You know, I mean most of in my work and I'm working with companies, transformation work a lot ofā€” There's lots of talk about, we've got to improve the customer experience, you know, and what is the customer experience like, you know, from the inception of the acquisition process and how we acquire customers to their eyeballs, to look at our site or our product or whatever it is right up until they make a decision to buy and, and what's the post-purchase experience like, and all this has lots of research. Lots of people are focused on that.
Yes.
I have never heard this term in an employee experience. And I think that is so important and so tied to providing a better customer experience. So can you maybe go a little deeper? At what point does it start in your experience? How do you help your clients define the employee experience? Are there ways to measure it beyond surveys? Because surveys can become tiresome and tedious having to fill out questionnaires all the time, right?
Completely agree. What is your experience there?
Sure. So to back up and kind of the way I approach this with my clients, are you familiar with Maslow's Pyramid, a hierarchy of needs?
Absolutely. Yeah.
Okay. So I... several years back in a moment of frustration when I was trying to create a visual for what I was trying to explain, I did some Googling and of course I found some good stuff, but the business application of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And I can't even tell you who to attribute this to. So for whomever out there built this, thank you very much. I think there's different versions out there now, but I digress. Anyway, so when I look at and think about the employee experience, just like in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, as far as the human experience, the bottom of the tier is, are you safe? Do you have shelter? Do you have food? Do you have water? Those like bottom level have to have these things before we can move on to other things. These are the needs. So for the employee, that's do you have the tools to do the job that you're being asked to do? If I'm asked to hammer in nails as part of building a home all day long, but my hammer only works 12% of the time because it's broken at the stem. I don't have the tool that I need to do the job and no amount of culture, no amount of sense of belonging, no amount of anything else that's in that hierarchy is going to probably make me happy or change that frustration level.
So those are the first pieces to solve. Do we have the right tools? Do we have the right information? And do I have any other resources that I need in order to be able to effectively do the job that you've asked me to do? And then it goes up from there. Things like being treated with respect, being supported, having an opportunity to grow and develop, having a voice in society in the context of your work group or your team? Do the others care about your opinion, your experience? Those sorts of things. Then it goes up, there's more altruistic, do you feel a sense of belonging? Do you enjoy the people that you're around? Is this a community where you feel like you can be yourself, bring your whole self, experience the fullness of the things that you bring to the table as far as being an employee? Are all of those or any of those, are you starting to get some of that? Then you've reached like the third tier and you're doing pretty darn well. And then as it goes up again, it becomes a little bit more tortuous closer to that self-actualization piece where the human experience and the employee experience kind of merge a little bit because you can't necessarily rise to the top of that pyramid if you haven't at least come to a certain point in your rise from self-actualization from the bottom to the top.
So I really think that we often get so hung up in the weeds of the details of what's happening in our day-to-day, and we don't recognize that some of the frustrations that employees are experiencing could easily be remedied, right? That bottom level of the pyramid. Do they have the tools they need? If this person is responsible for processing credit card payments, does our credit card vendor reliably and consistently do the job or do they have to fight with that machine every single day? Those are the type of things that sometimes we don't really think about, but they very much affect how the person feels about going into their job every day. And there's countless other examples. Did that fully answer your question?
Yes, I think so. I think maybe the one thing that we can explore, I want to get to some of these other questions here before we run out of time, is beyond the surveys, are there ways to measure the employee experience? And so maybe as I ask these questions, you can think about that. Because I think a lot of companies are so focused on surveys that, and so it tends to lose meaning, especially when you take a survey and the employees fill them out and nothing changes, right? And so then every year or every six months you got the survey and it's like, why am I filling this out? Does anyone actually look at it? Because nothing's really changed around here. And so I'm just curious because we have all experienced the power of social media. It has shaped behavior over the last 20 years. And I'm not saying that companies should do this necessarily, but there's things that we can learn from social media, how social media gets us and understands us and provides us with an experience that we love. We're addicted to. We can't put our phones down because we want to see whatever we want to see on there. And so I'm just wondering if you've heard of any companies out there that, not the nefarious part of what social media has done to our society, but some of the good things, right? So to collect feedback in a way that is not specifically a survey, it's other ways to get feedback and to provide an engaging message employee experience? Maybe that's the question.
Yeah, no. And I mean, what an amazing concept idea I think you're starting to move towards is how can we harness the power of social media and use that to our advantage within our workplaces in order to collect some data on what our employees feel and think about working for this organization. I'm certain that there are some solutions out there and I am probably going to be Googling a number of different things tonight to see if I can come up with some modern strategies for that. Because you're right, companies do tend to rely very much on surveys. And I think that's the majority of the reason is because they are very cost efficient. You can set up a survey monkey or use your CRM to create a survey that imports the data right into your database without any need for someone to hand jam and tally the data, the numbers. Um, so I do think that surveys are probably always going to retain some place, but I think the more important question is what's happening after those surveys occur.
Right. Right. Because if it's dead space afterwards, right. Okay, fine. I did my survey and then you never hear, like there was some results here, some actions that the company has decided, you know, we're going to trial out to see how they work. And if we can make it work for the business and the employee is great. If it fails on one side or the other, then we have to pivot and try something else. That's where the surveys really fail. And that apathy towards the survey comes 100% from lack of action or lack of change recognized. Because no one's going to continue to use their time, right? In that way, if they don't feel like tangible results.
Yes, absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, that's maybe something that we can do another one of these on when you've had a chance to kind of research if there's any.
I love it. Challenge accepted.
Anything out there that looks into. And if not, maybe we just stumbled on a new business.
It could be. It could very well be. I think it's an area rife for innovation only because there's so much data out there. We're all and I want to get to the COVID question and and maybe one more before we end this broadcast, but there's so much data out there, especially in this post-COVID era, when everyone's remote, everyone's online, they're all doing something online with tools that are supplied by their company, right? So again, I'm thinking big companies, but small companies too, right? Smaller companies, smaller firms, if they're not brick and mortar, people are typically working from their homes or something. I don't know if that's your experience, but maybe you can correct me.
I think that's in line with my experience. They're online, they're doing things with the tools that they're using to communicate with their peers and their bosses, and of course, the customers in some way, shape, or form. Are there things we can do? Again, it has to be something that's consensual that the employee actually consents to the data collection, right, that we can start to analyze their mood from the messages they sent to their coworkers or something like that to say, oh, people are unhappy.
Yeah, there has to be some AI automation, right, that would allow it to be maybe anonymous, but also it analyzes the information that they're putting out there and providing data on the mood and emotion and yeah um feeling towards towards their work yeah if it's not already it really should I'm guessing we're gonna hear about it someday because you're you're absolutely right I think we are all to a point with surveys where yeah I mean it gets I mean and also to your point you know if people don't do anything about about it then it gets to be It gets to be a wasted exercise, right? Of people's time. And these surveys are expensive. You think about it, you've got to say you have a thousand employees and they participate in a 30 minute survey. That's 500 hours that have gone into filling out that survey. Right. And I, if the average salary, if an employee is a hundred bucks an hour, you do the math. That's an investment. That's a significant investment. And then, of course, the analysis that goes after the fact and analyzing the responses and coming up with actions on things to do, which don't always get done.
So I think we've probably beaten this horse pretty dead at this point. I want to, we're getting to the 38th or so minute here. So I want to give you a chance to say anything that I have not asked you because I sort of went down a few rabbit holes.
Well, so did I. You're in good company. Things that you are passionate about that I didn't ask you about yet that you'd like to share.
Well, I mean, we talked about leadership and that tends to be my primary passion. As you know, and as we've talked about, but of course not in the context of this conversation, so I will repeat it. I spent 15 years in-house and I came to a decision point and when I left the most recent position, I decided that I had a lot of opportunity to use the passion that I have for the exact problem that was discussed earlier about promoting widget makers without giving them the tools and the resources they need to be good leaders. So that's why I decided to launch this company. I want to be that strategic partner, the trusted advisor who can help navigate those complicated situations and bring value to the organization through the very valuable assets that you would look at on your balance sheet or your profit and loss statement that represents your humans.
We tend to see a lot of turnover right now. There's something to the effect of 50 something percent the last research study that I read that is attributed to poor leadership. That's a huge cost to the organization so it seems like cash going out without an immediate or without a guarantee for a change to that number. But even if you can move the dial back by 5% and you only have 46% or 40%, your return on investment for the time spent training your leaders, mentoring your leaders and giving them the resource that they need in order to be more effective and get the best out of their people I mean, to me, it's a no brainer, but it's not a, it's not something common out there that, you know, you don't go buy it on the shelf. You find it in the tiny little, um, very specific supermarket, you know, in the bottom aisle as an option. Um, so it, We need to bring that out more. And leadership coaches, I think, are already working on this. But we have a generation coming into the workforce in the near future following Gen Z. Gen Alpha will be following Gen Z. And the millennial generation was semi like this. And even some, you know, late Gen Xers such as myself could kind of fall into this camp where we really are looking for that different employee experience. We want to have value in our jobs. We don't want to have the Sunday scaries. We want to see that the skills and the strengths that we have, that we get to utilize those in our work. And as often as possible. And we can create that and better the company and the employee at the same time. It just takes working with the right partner, finding the niche for your leadership style that matches your culture and your operational strategy.
So to me, it's about first identifying that there's that problem. And then second, working with one of the many very talented HR consultants or leadership coaches out there who can help you to go to that next level and that's small businesses in large alike so of course I'm a little biased and I tend to think that I can do a really good job for you but you have to find the one that really works for your organization.
Sure. Yeah. There's always the way that you should be. Yeah. You should be, you should be hiring the people that, um, that have the characteristics that you're looking for to be part of your, your established culture. And that should also be your subcontractors and in the, consultants that you choose to work with you have to have that level of trust that they want your best interest and they understand what your needs are and you know they want to work within that so um whether it's myself or you or any of the other coaches or HR consultants out there. I get all spun up on this because I am passionate about the idea that we can change the world of work with small little measures. It does not take an overhaul to your entire organization or a massive disruption to your operations. Small measurable changes consistently applied over time. That's all it takes.
I love that. I think I think you're right. It's, you know, it's we call that and in my world, we call that continuous improvement, or as the the Japanese would say Kaizen, you know, small improvements over time that build up to significant change.
You are focused on small businesses, right? And these concepts, of course, apply to businesses of any size, leadership, the employee experience, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, absolutely.
How do you help small businesses that have really limited resources? It might just be the owner and a few employees. Maybe there's a manager or two, I don't know. Prioritize leadership development and the employee experience how do you how do you convince them that it's worth spending this money time on to to to invest in in these types of goodness we know it's good right
Absolutely and it you know number one first recognizing that whether you have a problem now, you may have a problem in the future. Um, so I, I often go in looking for feedback from, from the organization about what their pain points are at that point, and then being able to try to tie those to the case studies, um, or the available information or my other, you know, local clients, if that's, you know, the name recognition helps or, or what have you. Um, To help them see that, yes, it is an investment, but it can be an investment based on all of your needs, not just your people needs, because obviously your budget has needs and your time resources have needs. So if there's a commitment to make this change, that can be done in increments that work for the organization. Not every consultant is going to work like that, but some of us do. In my case, my minimum amount of investment per month is a five hours. And only three of that would need to be organization hours. The remaining two would be hours that I would work independently based off of the goals of the organization so I think it's just about finding the right partner because there are so many different partners out there with different price and time models but if if there's a commitment if there's a recognition that this is important we need to focus on saving money through employee engagement and retention strategies um it will only take a few months for that return on investment to present itself. If you save one employee from walking out the door, even if it's an hourly employee at $15 an hour, you know, on average, the most recent data I've seen is $4,500 roughly is the cost to replace. And that doesn't include onboarding or benefits or, you know, the promotion that may be needed to occur in order to facilitate the option. Anyway, there's... there's a lot of expense involved in losing employees today.
Yeah. So investing and keeping them can be a quick ROI. If you know how to look for it and you find the right partner.
I suppose to your point, it's, it's really talking, getting to know what their pain points are and and, and then keying the, the, the solution, if you will, on what they say, right? If they say, you know, my business is growing so fast, I can't find people and they, I can't, I can't seem to replace them fast enough. People are just leaving. They're not staying with me. I don't, I don't understand what's going on. You know, I've had to hire new managers. I've had to hire new employees, whatever. I think those are probably signals, right? That there's something wrong with if you will, those are big red flags that you might say, you might, you might say, well, you know, that's all great. It's wonderful that you're doing great with the business. There's demand for the services you provide. However, you're impeded. Your biggest, biggest impedance right now is finding the people to provide that service and that value to your customers. So, um, And then having the conversations to help them realize the benefits of using a leadership coach. What do you call yourself, Amy? Do you call yourself a leadership coach?
No. You know, I have not gone through the process of taking an official coach certification. So I don't feel comfortable using the term coach, executive coach per se, but I am a strategic HR partner or a strategic HR consultant. And coaching is one of the styles that's utilized in that. So, um, so I guess really consultant strategic partner, it comes in a lot of forms because sometimes depending on the client, what they want to hear is fractional chief human resources officer.
Right.
Um, But in general, that's what I consider myself is a strategic HR consultant.
Got it. Got it. Well, for whatever it's worth, I think the work that you're doing is very much aligned with coaching because you're really helping these people understand, you know, helping them reflect on what they lack and what they need. And you're providing them with the tools and the resources and the human resources, but the skill resources, the talent resources, they need to be more effective.
And I love partnering with different business coaches in this work because there are limits to my expertise and my experience. I really bring the technical HR side and the strategic HR side, but there are other elements at play here that don't always happen, can't always be fulfilled by my services and expertise. So it's great to have, um, you know, good coaches available that can also come in and, and, you know, especially in that are specializing in something specific, whether it's leadership or, um, you know, finding hidden profits or whatever it is, there's so much value, I think, to having good partners around you that, um, like you said, when you listen to what that organization, um, describes as their pain points, you might find multiple different avenues where they can improve and they just, you know, they need to get the right people in there. And sometimes once they found one right person, the next steps or the next phases of making that continuous improvement, you know, present itself with the right people that they know in their network who are aligned to their, their vision and values. So, um, it it's, there's, there's a lot of, um, oh my gosh, what's the old synergy, that buzzword synergy. There's a lot of synergy in between coaches and HR consultants, I think just in general.
I believe that as well. Well, um, I, Could probably talk to you for another hour. However, I don't think we'll have to do this again.
Yeah, I don't think our listeners would stick around for another hour. So we're going to...
Totally fair.
Yeah, we're going to end our session with this thought. And that is, my thought is that this has been a fabulous hour spent, at least from my perspective. I hope everyone that's watching...
It will feel the same way. I feel that, you know, I learned a lot about some of the things that you're doing. And I love this whole idea of the employee experience. And next time you're on, maybe we can talk about if we've done the research, you've done the research, talk about companies that are sort of plumbing the data that shows how employees feel. You know, what is their sentiment? What is the employee sentiment? And what do they do about it to help improve that in some way shape or form.
Yeah absolutely it would be fascinating um fascinating learning rabbit hole for me and I love to learn so challenge accepted let's do it.
Awesome. All right well thanks for joining and for all of you watching thanks for watching hope you got out of this I'll be including Amy's information below in the show notes. So please, if you need an experienced HR strategist, consultant, coach to help you in your transformation, don't hesitate to reach out to her. And who knows, maybe we'll partner on something in the future. We'll see.
Hey, I love that idea. And thank you so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure. And I agree, we could probably riff on this for a couple more hours, but we would definitely lose people. So good call.
All right. Well, thanks again. See you next time. Take care.
Thanks so much. Bye.
