A New Employee-Employer Contract with Keri Higgins-Bigelow of LivingHR

[00:00:02] People First Organizations will win in the future of where...

[00:00:05] Only real asset is your people.

[00:00:07] We know what our customers can work.

[00:00:09] HR lead organization is...

[00:00:11] I'm sorry, but leaders don't need to tap in the shop for...

[00:00:16] Welcome to the People Strategy Leaders Show.

[00:00:20] I'm your host, Srikalappa Fowder and President of Engageedly,

[00:00:23] and a serial entrepreneur in technology, films, and music.

[00:00:27] This is where we talk to people leaders, business strategists, and organizations and subanets.

[00:00:32] But about leading in the time of change.

[00:00:34] What is working, what is not working, and more importantly,

[00:00:38] what we should be thinking about.

[00:00:40] Stick around to the end of the show.

[00:00:42] We will reveal how you can be our next guest.

[00:00:44] And now, let's engage.

[00:00:51] Hello and welcome to People Strategy Leaders Podcast.

[00:00:53] I'm Srikalappa, your host.

[00:00:56] Today I'm joined with Keri, Keri Higgins-Bigelow, founder and CEO of LivingHR since 2009.

[00:01:03] She's a human who cares a lot about humans and the purpose of work serves in a life and society.

[00:01:10] Keri and livingHR specialize in reimagining work to build inclusive culture,

[00:01:15] talent, optimized, and capable of delivering on the business strategy.

[00:01:19] And humanized experiences for everyone at work.

[00:01:22] In 2018, Keri Higgins-Bigelow founded Faleigh, a woman's leadership group to advance women corporate and firm roles.

[00:01:30] She hosts a virtual monthly series work now plus in the future,

[00:01:35] as well as runs disrupt HR at talk past event for the world of work.

[00:01:40] She's a member of the Forbes Human Resources Council and a frequent speaker at National and Regional Events at Business Journal,

[00:01:48] ACG, IT Nation, ATD, Dissert Fajar, and PowerDow.

[00:01:53] Keri has been a featured leading voice for workplace culture and Forbes business journal, Food and Wine and Fast Company,

[00:02:01] and has been recognized as Inks Best places to work.

[00:02:05] 13 female leaders, Southeast HR person of the year, business journal, business woman of the year, business journal,

[00:02:12] best places to work and Florida trends, 2019 best companies to work for in Florida.

[00:02:17] Welcome to Keri, that's quite an accomplishment.

[00:02:20] Thank you for being on the show.

[00:02:21] Thanks, Ray. It's great to see you.

[00:02:24] So obviously you've been in this HR world and the whole circles of human workplace that we all have been having massive changes,

[00:02:36] the way employer and employer relationships have been changing over the years,

[00:02:40] especially since COVID.

[00:02:42] And one of the topics that we were talking before this podcast was there's a need for a new contract between employees and employers.

[00:02:51] What do you mean by that? That doesn't need for a new contract. Why do we need a new contract?

[00:02:58] Yeah, I think because the contract has been breached essentially by both sides in some different ways,

[00:03:05] but if you think about it, it's really a broken relationship and it's one of the reasons why I started living HR back in 2009 was,

[00:03:14] I kept seeing that there was this really strong intent for executives to make workplaces and with their cultures,

[00:03:25] you know good.

[00:03:25] And I think there's an executive out there that doesn't want their workplace to be a good workplace.

[00:03:31] But then you talk to employees and they would all go home and they'd sit at the dinner table and they'd all talk about how much they hate their jobs.

[00:03:37] And so there was this dynamic even back then in 2009 and then fast forward, you know,

[00:03:44] there's this since the pandemic we've got the challenge where work has really fundamentally changed in some ways.

[00:03:52] And the purpose that works serves in our lives has also seemingly changed.

[00:03:57] And so what employees want is really, it sounds so simple in some ways because what they want is autonomy and flexibility.

[00:04:09] And they want to be able to make a good living to care for their families and be able to put families, you know, ahead of their work day.

[00:04:17] But the reality is that they're tethered somehow to work in both either a technical way or a physical way.

[00:04:25] And the system of work is just not set up for what they want.

[00:04:30] And so the traditional work day, even things just like, you know, 95, 85, whatever it is, it doesn't align with, you know, the responsibilities that people have in their lives.

[00:04:40] And so there's this kind of massive systemic problem really that workplaces need employees to perform and employees don't have the right tools and capacity to be able to do it in the way that employers need.

[00:04:55] And then we don't have the systems that up in terms of time to give people the time that they need.

[00:05:03] It's like, oh, there's these two major lovers of time and money and neither of them are working for employees.

[00:05:10] Yeah, I think the bigger issue is that we are in a society where everything needs to be done now.

[00:05:17] Yeah, and I think there's a whole expectation that the customer wants support now they and then you need that to be done now for them.

[00:05:27] And that requires one of your employees to be available at that point.

[00:05:31] And sometimes it's the same person who's serving that customer throughout their life cycle.

[00:05:35] So you can go to someone else and you get a disrupt their life to do that.

[00:05:39] The whole, you know, need or I should say our system set up there.

[00:05:45] You want support now and having to disrupt people's vacations or their child care responsibilities can be very problematic.

[00:05:55] So is that a part of a societal problem in your view then, or is there something a company can actually fix regardless of what the clients and the ecosystem is demanding or.

[00:06:08] I think it is a societal problem.

[00:06:10] I think, but there's a role that companies can play in meeting what society needs right and I think what I mean by that is.

[00:06:20] I think we'll shift more to outcomes based work versus time based work and I think we'll start to see more in terms of talent market places where you know all the capability of the talent that you have at your disposal and you'll be able to.

[00:06:35] And then we'll pull them in on specific projects and it be based on what we're delivering and not just hours and time and right now things just even at living HR.

[00:06:46] You know everything is about how many hours are we booking for this particular project if you're in the legal industry, it's billable hours if everything is so centered around.

[00:06:58] You know the hours that we put in versus the outputs that we get and because of that with AI in particular and so many other different advances that we've made.

[00:07:09] We're going to have to become very outcomes focus versus time focused.

[00:07:13] Well, I'm going to tell you a little secret. I wasn't consulting services for 18 years and that primarily one of the reasons I left.

[00:07:21] Yeah, because there's whole time based system really distance and devising.

[00:07:28] Innovation to some extent, descent is incentivizes being efficient for your clients.

[00:07:35] Yeah, and that causes lots of problems because I had this theory and I don't know if it's actually written somewhere or not but I realized that just observing consulting companies and I ran once so you know it's shame on me to some extent I guess in that context.

[00:07:55] Is that if you're really bad your customer will fire you right if you're really good then you're underbilling them because the person's going to get the work done in two hours instead of eight hours that you estimate.

[00:08:07] So you really need like average people in your consulting team just right in the middle if you have really good people or if you have really bad people it's not good for your consulting team and that's true for any billable based hours, you know if you can get things done in two hours why why get it done in two hours get a media for person to do it in eight.

[00:08:24] And that's that definitely is an issue.

[00:08:30] But that being said, you know I do think the concept of involving technology and all the innovation where now those eight ten fifteen hours are working actually we don't quite rapidly.

[00:08:45] And we don't account for that because if you say oh that's actually going to be six hundred dollars an hour.

[00:08:51] The customer is going to throw a huge fit right.

[00:08:55] But it is going to be that because you create you created systems and processes and tools and innovations that can actually deliver that faster and ultimately that's for really should matter is your outcome like you said.

[00:09:08] That's right. Yeah and unfortunately even the technology isn't really based to like if I look at professional services firms and we're looking at utilization and capacity and we're looking at the systems that are set up to be able to ensure that we don't burn out our people.

[00:09:24] Most of them don't create that opportunity to focus on the deliverable in the outcome versus the time you know it's it's queues the data and it becomes very hard to manage from a workplace perspective.

[00:09:37] Which is why you know this is a big big big shift that we all have to make.

[00:09:43] Yeah, yeah we all have target and I remember having targets of 80% utilization.

[00:09:47] In consulting it then we have the same target for our team members for the most part and then we eventually started moving to more project based work.

[00:09:55] But it's hard to project based work because you can predict the customers environment you know they delay in decision making or they can't.

[00:10:01] They add work complexity in the middle of a project.

[00:10:05] So that can become a little bit of problem analytics so it does need to be.

[00:10:10] So I think relationship between customers and employee and employers or organizations also need to probably pivot when there's a little bit more trust in the relationship.

[00:10:19] So it doesn't move to this our based change management or change order type of business where.

[00:10:26] And you can do your change order and then you spend two hours handling about it and for the foreign work that's maybe we're only going to take another couple of hours anyway.

[00:10:34] Right, yeah that's it too I mean and I think you know consulting is you know just one example but if you think about all the different industries that operate based on an hourly workforce right that you know are really.

[00:10:47] Pain people by the hour their hours are based on a 40 hour work week they're get overtime based on time and a half over 40 you know all those things everything in work is sort of.

[00:10:57] Essentially rooted in time.

[00:11:00] Yeah, we that's to me a huge fundamental shift that it's not a thing that we can all just split a switch and you know magically fix and just want it to be this other way.

[00:11:11] It's you know we have to be able to set up processes and systems and change people's behaviors in order to be able to do it.

[00:11:18] Yeah, I mean that's very a very fundamental point that you mentioned except I will.

[00:11:25] I guess ask you how does that.

[00:11:28] Then impact companies that time aspect is a component of the word for example retail clerk at target for example.

[00:11:37] I'm not picking on target but as an example.

[00:11:39] So some of the weekend and I notice.

[00:11:43] That's a job that requires you to be there at a certain time and you get paid for our space on that how would how would a contract with an employee and employer.

[00:11:50] Change for in for an organization like that.

[00:11:54] Yeah, it's funny. I think the only thing that I did not example that I've been able to I thought about this a lot because my background originally was in retail.

[00:12:00] And I think you have to start thinking about scheduling flexibility in terms of people being able to select ships it's almost like that.

[00:12:13] I'm going to take I'm going to work from this time this time but I'm selecting it right itself scheduling it's like saying I'm going to take this block of time whether it's four hours six hours eight hours.

[00:12:23] Where the company is not mandating that but the person is you know able to sign up for what it is that they want and we've started to see those platforms certainly come out but again, it's not really adopted because it's harder to manage and figure out with a giant workforce.

[00:12:41] How are you going to actually implement that sort of change yeah I mean that's a good great point another you got my real starting you could have an organization with big pricing right essentially you work at six a m to 10 a m maybe that's a different pricing versus.

[00:13:02] Pena to 4 p.m. because that's a more convenient ship for a lot of people 6 a.m. is not a very convenient a lot of people and I would actually pick that because I'm early morning guy.

[00:13:13] But I do think there's some advantage to that because you know we knew take I think early money flights or late night flights and I always wonder who's this guy driving at 430 in the morning picking me out.

[00:13:28] There's a reason that person is doing that and they should get competent adequately for that so is that something what are you talking about.

[00:13:36] Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about and you know they do get surge pricing in the over world of that right like they get the better.

[00:13:44] They get the better rates and they do the same drive but they're making more money because it's less desirable.

[00:13:50] Yeah, so if you work on a black Friday you're being with that and only crowd you get.

[00:13:55] Oh gosh, Black Friday you're bringing me back to some some fun days in my past.

[00:14:02] Yeah, yeah it's interesting I mean I think that's why this is so it's so hard right and there's two sides of it and I know we talked a little bit about the employer.

[00:14:13] But I think what employers are also struggling with is figuring out how do we make sure that we get the same level of connection you know you keep hearing people also coming back into the office because they feel like their culture has to be created in a building and.

[00:14:34] The converse of what I'm saying is that we also want in the talent also wants workplace to be a place of community and it is primarily serving as this place of community.

[00:14:47] Yes, but if you have everybody working in the way that they want and different shifts and remotely and all that then that community becomes very hard to.

[00:14:56] Ron and manage and connect and so you know I think that's also another interesting component of it is that you know to get it both ways is really the challenge.

[00:15:06] Yeah, I agree and I was I've been thinking about this a lot myself because we have a very remote workforce and in technology specifically.

[00:15:16] The remote workforce is not that uncommon at all right large companies have gone to or at least in the US they have.

[00:15:24] And yes, it gives employees flexibility to work in the pajamas and obviously take care of their kids and pets and all of that stuff that goes with it.

[00:15:36] But at the same time there is the lack of community that forms and unwittingly and I said as only from research I've been reading it's causing some what a people are turning as a loneliness epidemic.

[00:15:52] Which I'm which is now apparently on the radar of national instead of health and all the other leading health organizations who are looking into it, which I think we're creating a society of people who are inherently.

[00:16:07] Maybe not as social as they were especially the gen Zs and maybe one of the next gen is have to see I actually.

[00:16:14] I don't know what is it what's in name for the next gen up to see is there one.

[00:16:18] Yeah, there is but I don't remember.

[00:16:21] We have a little bit soon talking about it in a couple of.

[00:16:25] But that is that is definitely an issue as well because you're overall connection to the workplace and that is not just about making money obviously it's.

[00:16:38] It's important one but it's also about having the fulfilling life because you spending so many hours of your day you're waking hours working, you know you want to feel like you're working towards a purpose, your sense of community.

[00:16:53] Because that's how the tribes were built back in the day right even just going back even 15 to 20 years you know people wanted to be in spend time socializing.

[00:17:05] Sometimes socializing too much and not working and working late and stuff like that so that definitely is there's a challenge I don't know how we will overcome that to be honest it seems like the tide has.

[00:17:16] moved in one direction although there's a lot of organizational leaders now especially the big banks who are asking and asking people to come back to work.

[00:17:25] There's recent interview with Eric Schmidt at Google was talking about in a Google suffering against the start us because people are getting too much flexibility in their work.

[00:17:37] So where do you think this is an online or do you have a crystal ball that tells you something here.

[00:17:42] I think it is going to be very employer specific and I think people will choose their career is based on what they're looking for in terms of flexibility.

[00:17:54] I think there are going to be choices that people really have to make in terms of do I want the flexibility and am I willing to develop myself in a career that gives me that flexibility or do I want to you know have this more traditional job.

[00:18:13] I don't there's certain things that I just don't think can be done remotely right you know that there's just no way to make them remote and so you know those to me are you know I keep hearing where people are like well it's not fair to have our corporate office be remote when we run a bunch of restaurants and they all have to go in.

[00:18:37] Well that's choosing what type of job you want and I do I disagree you know I mean I think if the job can be done.

[00:18:45] In a virtual environment and we're just going to be sitting on a zoom and you're not going to be socializing or interacting or serving the customer directly.

[00:18:52] I don't understand why you would force it what I do think that means though is that employers have to be very intentional about creating opportunities for connection and community.

[00:19:04] I think that you know fall outside of the traditional office space where you know you're bringing people together now more for.

[00:19:12] Events or you're bringing people together for off sites or but there has to be purpose right and there has to be a reason and then.

[00:19:20] Conversely you also need to make sure that you're building connection and community in the virtual environments that you're in like at living HR we have a chat that's called keep it light and people just put things that are light and fun and you know.

[00:19:33] I think that's a very important thing.

[00:19:34] But it starts a lot of really great conversation they have a foodie channel in our zoom chat that is all about just different recipes like they get to know each other and have other ways of creating community and virtual settings that are just as important now.

[00:19:50] And I think unfortunately most employers haven't designed their workplace or their employee experience to be both.

[00:19:55] Yeah right well suited for either.

[00:19:58] Yeah yeah that is definitely the case now there's one thing that you also we were briefly talking about this is you know even blaming the employers quite a bit at this point but what do you think employees employees are not getting right.

[00:20:10] In the so you know that's interesting to I've seen a lot of challenge lately with and I think a lot of it has to do with the burnout that everybody talks about their the workforce is just burnt out.

[00:20:23] And to your point earlier they are somewhat lonely and I think some of that is they're missing the social benefits that feed us you know and make us feel better because we've been with other people.

[00:20:34] But I also think there's this interesting kind of sentiment that I think employees are expecting employers to grow their careers and I will contend that growing your career is not the responsibility of the employer you're not owed anything.

[00:20:55] In that sense it's something that if you want it you got to go get it and nobody's going to hand that to you employers yes should they.

[00:21:18] You want it takes to advance their careers invest in their own learning get yourself a mentor do those types of things because other people will and when you don't you can't be upset that somebody else is advancing or they're moving up.

[00:21:32] It's not necessarily like a hustle culture thing it's just somebody is really invested in their career it's important to them and so I think we've got a shift that mindset and then I also think.

[00:21:45] The flexibility isn't something that is just granted like it's an exchange for performance performance to me grants flexibility you work trusting you.

[00:21:55] To as an employee deliver to the organization and to take advantage of that flexibility and use it in ways that is not for the benefit of the employer or the customer whoever that may be in that scenario you know that's what gets people into trouble.

[00:22:12] I think taking advantage of the employers that are offering the right things you know is is just as it's just another and it's you know I mean I think that's what creates this continuous broken trust dynamic is.

[00:22:31] Yeah those that take advantage I think that's the key I think the employees have to.

[00:22:37] Take ownership of the career and ask for opportunities but then once the opportunities are driven I feel like.

[00:22:46] They should then show that they've taken advantage of opportunities and not let it lose because we I've seen this in the past where.

[00:22:53] The employees like I need I'm not learning and growing I need this and I'm like absolutely let's do it we give them membership to different associations outside training groups internal training programs.

[00:23:12] And then you see the state that data it's like 20% even log in into.

[00:23:19] So like okay well you're given the opportunities so we didn't take advantage of it and be an up spending money on things that could have been spent somewhere else more fruitfully.

[00:23:29] So those are some of the things where I'm not blaming everyone obviously I'm saying there's cohorts to do that and they're cohorts to do to do take advantage of that and that and those are the ones who will succeed and grow and other people.

[00:23:42] Eventually our love left behind they don't get the same career growth opportunities or that and that and the compensation changes that come with it.

[00:23:50] Right in which case they end up going somewhere else and repeating the same cycle somewhere else for a little bit more so I think that's a big one that I do agree with.

[00:24:00] I agree and you know I think you're right is that those that do care and that do want to grow their career and do contribute the side part to me is that it's very hard for an employer to have visibility into which ones are which right and so you end up in that's part of why like some of these technology tools are so important is when you look at things like utilization and you see who's really.

[00:24:23] engaged in their career and is trying to grow a career that you have proof of concept whereas I think a lot of times things become very subjective because it's.

[00:24:35] I think it's not only just the manager that is highlighting somebody is doing a great job right this person and it's not based on the data that we can see if you're not using a system to actually measure it.

[00:24:47] Yeah yeah great so I think just to close our discussion.

[00:24:53] In an ideal scenario what is if you were to summarize a new contract with employees in the employer look like.

[00:25:00] Yeah I think it is there's a.

[00:25:22] Like we're going to give you this flexibility we're going to give you.

[00:25:27] This amount and learning dollars you can use it how you want to we're going to give you all the right benefits we're going to give you places of connection and then when we're clear that we gave them that true value proposition for why this is a great place to work.

[00:25:44] Then we need to make sure that they're holding themselves accountable to contributing based on outcomes and performance and so to me performance is the big driver of all of this right is that if we can really focus on.

[00:26:00] And then we're changing in that way in the future it's going to be a lot healthier and I think people are going to feel a lot better.

[00:26:10] It's otherwise it just feels hard right it feels like I'm doing all this work but I'm not getting all this credit and I'm just sort of spinning my wheels and so a lot of it has to do with expectations setting around.

[00:26:23] Here's what we're really expecting out of you here's what we are going to give you and exchange for that and a lot of it has to do with performance and outcomes.

[00:26:34] Yeah I completely agree.

[00:26:36] I think that's a big one getting to the right outcomes for any given role is a hard one for not our organizations to get their hands around that.

[00:26:47] That's where things like okay are helps but they need to be really good at doing okay are still doesn't solve it because we use.

[00:26:56] Okay are internally but you also have lots of clients using okay ares and it just turns into a task list instead of an actual okay are.

[00:27:07] So there's a lot to unpack there and hopefully the organizations you know get a better handle on that but I'm seeing more and more organizations moving towards outcome based.

[00:27:19] To some extent, but I think it's it's still a long way to go.

[00:27:23] I mean we're trying and it's slow. It's very hard to do. It's something that I believe in and I've seen it and I have built a company to try to get at the problem and it's still hard.

[00:27:36] So this isn't something that's a flip the switch kind of thing. I also think that.

[00:27:41] You know, just being really clear about the expectation setting around what employees say they want what employers believe.

[00:27:47] I think that's another big opportunity where we have to be clear that employers are kind of missing sometimes the empathy of the reality of the employees lives and so giving employers better pictures of what employees are actually going through.

[00:28:02] I think the ability to design workplaces that are more meant for those employees. So things like, you know, over 50% of the people that access food are employed, you know, those are employees and so we have to be really cognizant when things happen in the economy and things that change.

[00:28:23] Care giver benefits or things that impact people's just basic human needs. Like as employers we have to be very, very aware of what we're asking people to do given their circumstances.

[00:28:38] Yeah, yeah, completely agree. Well, thank you, Kerry. It's been a pleasure chatting with you and talking about this new contract. How can people learn more about you and the organization?

[00:28:48] Yeah, we're all over LinkedIn. But we're also at livinghard.com. Our LinkedIn page is very, very active. We also hold a cheap people officer collective group quarterly if you're a cheap people officer.

[00:29:03] We'd invite you to join that as well. And thank you so much for having me straight. This was a lot of fun. It's a great conversation. We should keep having yes. Thank you.

[00:29:14] Thank you.