HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat Podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics covered include HR Tech, HR, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham, Bob Goodwin, Pauline James, and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week.
The show is approaching 1000 episodes and past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, Gartner, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, McLean & Company, UPS, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, McKinsey and Co, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
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Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
HRchat Podcast
Build vs. Maintain: Transforming HR Strategy for Uncertain Times with Mary Faulkner
What does it take to transform HR while navigating uncertainty? Mary Faulkner, Principal at IA, returns to the HR Chat Show to share powerful insights on sustainable transformation, strategic HR, and creating adaptable organizations.
Mary's journey from aspiring stunt car driver to HR transformation expert began with a passion for statistics and continuous improvement. Her unique "build vs. maintain" philosophy emphasizes the importance of questioning the status quo without changing for change's sake. "You need to create an environment which that is OK," Mary explains, highlighting how leadership must establish "permission to question, permission to think differently." This balance between innovation and thoughtful implementation becomes especially crucial during turbulent times.
Drawing from her extensive experience solving "big messy problems," Mary shares fascinating examples of global HR implementations where standardization meets localization. Her work with multinational organizations reveals the complexity of balancing global consistency with local requirements—especially in regulatory environments like the United States. "We very much believe that you should be as standard as possible and as different as required," she notes, capturing the nuanced approach needed for sustainable transformation.
Perhaps most valuable is Mary's insight into HR's role as an organizational bridge-builder. She emphasizes that effective HR leaders must be "bilingual"—fluent in business operations while advocating for workforce needs. Understanding how a company makes, saves, and spends money allows HR to translate strategic objectives to the individual level, ensuring organizational success and employee wellbeing align rather than conflict.
As organizations face continued economic uncertainty, Mary offers practical wisdom for the path forward: focus on process optimization, creative workforce management, and building resilience. Connect with her on LinkedIn or at iatransforms.com to continue the conversation about transforming HR for tomorrow's challenges.
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Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom and visit hrgazettecom.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, bill Banham, and back on the show after far too long is the awesome, amazing, fantastic Mary Faulkner, principal at IA. Mary, welcome back to the show. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:Hi Bill, I'm great. Thanks so much for having me back on. Always good to chat with you.
Speaker 2:It's been a while, mary, so why don't we start there? What's been going on with you in the last little while, the last couple of years?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean we're, as you can imagine, like a lot of other people. We are very busy. We're trying to help organizations figure out how to be successful in the current environment, get ready for a future that is a little uncertain right now, but so far it's been. I mean, it's always good work. We always work with great people. It's just it's been a lot.
Speaker 2:Let's just be honest yeah, we are just context here for you listeners. We are recording this interview at the beginning of April. It is how do I put this mildly uncertain times we are living in. Indeed, mary, you've worn a lot of hats over the years, from operations to L&D to senior HR leadership. What originally drew you into the world of HR and what's kept you engaged over the last couple of decades?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, like a lot of people who end up in HR, it was never like a goal. I mean there are a lot of people who are very great who go through school fully intending to be in HR. I did not. I told the story quite a bit of my intention was to be a stunt car driver when I was younger. That did not play out, but ultimately I was in the middle of an MBA program and just hated it, absolutely hated it.
Speaker 3:But there were a couple of classes that I liked. I liked business law and I really liked statistics, and statistics kind of got me going down the path of continuous improvement, organizational development, learning and design and that sort of thing. So I ended up getting into HR through kind of the learning and OD side of it and then from there continue to grow my career. And part of the reason why I always have liked HR is it's always different, I mean, depending on where you like to focus, but HR is one of the few departments that touches every aspect of the business. You know HR has a chance to be that connector throughout the entire organization, to be able to say hey, operations, you're doing this and finance has this thing going on. We should probably talk about it and figure out how that's going to impact the business. So that's what I've always liked about HR and that's why I keep coming back to it, because there's just so much opportunity there to really impact more than just a small team.
Speaker 2:Wonderful. Now you're known for your build versus maintain philosophy, mary, when it comes to HR strategy. Can you tell us now what that means in practice and why it's such an important distinction for organizations navigating what we're living through right now transformation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, transformation. Yeah, I think there's two sides to it. For me personally, build and not maintain is. I like to fix things, set things up, get things in motion, then move on. That can be challenging for an organization, though.
Speaker 3:If you have a bunch of people who think like I do and want to move on. You do need people to stay behind and actually maintain and grow whatever it is that you've built, but you can still take that mentality, that continuous improvement mentality, and apply it to an in-house role to continue to grow your transformation. So, if you always think about build, not maintain, it's about how do we keep thinking about what might need to change? How do we avoid just getting into the stagnation of, well, we've already, we've always done it this way. No, just think continuously about building upon what you created, having a way to think through and saying do we need to tweak this? Do we need to reprioritize this? So keeping that mentality for a sustainable transformation is incredibly important. Just, you need to keep it going. I mean, change for change sake is not exactly the healthiest thing to do either, but having a mindset of can we do this better? Do we need to change something, can be very, very impactful for an organization.
Speaker 2:And whose responsibility is that to maintain that mentality? Is that the HR department? Is that the senior leadership? Is it a silly question because it depends on the size of the organization, or is it actually everyone, because everyone should be contributing to the company culture?
Speaker 3:I would say, yes, it is all of that, it's an element of each person should bring that attitude to work. You know of saying what can I do? How could this be better? But it's up to leadership, I think, and it could be in HR, it could be in operations, it could be your chief legal counsel, whoever it might be. You need to be able to create an environment in which that is OK. The way of setting up the permission to question, the permission to think differently and to try new things. You need to have that.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you only have control over a little tiny bit and if you live in an organization that rules by fear or rules by too much compliance or whatever it might be that can lead to, we're not going to change anything. I don't want to rock the boat, and that, to me, when organizations embrace a don't want to rock the boat mentality, that leads to decline. Now, on the flip side of that, there is a benefit to moving slow. Sometimes, depending on your industry, depending on your organization, what you deal with, taking that moment to stop, think about it is really, really important. You really don't want to move too fast when you're dealing with people's lives sometimes.
Speaker 3:You need to move fast sometimes, but sometimes it's better. If you're thinking about I'm going to make this change and it's going to disrupt, you know, hundreds of thousands of people or it could put people's lives at risk, you want somebody to be thoughtful about that process. So it's a mix of of moving fast to move slow or moving slow to move fast. I meant you don't want to move fast to move slow, that'd be stupid. But moving slow to move fast, but still embracing that ability to change and not hide behind rules.
Speaker 4:Hi everybody. This is Bob Goodwin, president at Career Club. Imagine with me for a minute a workplace where leaders and employees are energized, engaged and operating at their very best. At Career Club, we work with both individuals and organizations to help combat stress and burnout that lead to attrition, disengagement and higher health care costs. To attrition, disengagement and higher health care costs. We can help your organization and your workforce thrive, boosting both productivity and morale across the board. To learn more about how we might help you and your company, visit us at careerclub okay, thank you, mary.
Speaker 2:So I a thrives on big messy problems. That's a direct quote from you guys, which sounds both exhilarating but also daunting. What's one particularly complex challenge that you've helped a client tackle, and how did you approach it?
Speaker 3:yeah, that's hard to say. One because they're all pretty, they're all complex and messy in their own rights. So one that kind of comes to mind is when you deal with a global client that is headquartered outside of the United States. That can be challenging because for those of you who work in the United States and deal with HR in the United States, you understand that there are just a lot of complexities. Our benefits programs alone is something to try to figure out. You know time off requirements, fmla, and the fact that we have national, state, city level laws and requirements is very complex.
Speaker 3:So we've helped organizations roll out an HCM from a global perspective and we were working with one client that has 300,000 plus employees worldwide but they're headquartered in Europe. They left the US for last, rolling out like an HCM and figured, oh, we just have this, we're going to all be on the same core approach, we're all going to use the same processes and US. You just tell us the couple of things we need to tweak. Well, when they got to the US, leaving it to last and realizing the complexity, that was really hard to kind of talk through. All right, how are we going to help the global headquarters? Think about where they are absolutely going to have to change. But how, then, do we also help the US-based part of the organization compensate? Where are we going to help them fill the gaps? How do we make sure that they're not trying to kind of kludge together all these different systems to still get to where they went? So that was really difficult. I don't know that we got there 100%. I think there are still some elements that they felt like they kind of take a step back from functionality. But at least I feel like we bridged the gap between of the understanding of the global headquarters, finally understanding. Oh, this is why the US business does tend to struggle when we try to push out these kind of bland standard processes. And listen, we love a standard process. We very much believe that you should be as standard as possible and as different as required. Much believe that you should be as standard as possible and as different as required. You need standardization to maintain, to be able to not invest too much. Too much customization is impossible to sustain, but you still need to be aware of what's happening out there.
Speaker 3:Another one that I was thinking about is we and this was a very small, very, very small organization kind of public sector, but not really more like on a nonprofit side of things, and they were just trying to rethink their onboarding process. But their onboarding process was all paper-based. They were still getting wet signatures for everything. If you needed to make a change to an employee, you would physically carry a form from one desk to another desk, get it signed. So that was a huge change for them, even though it seems so simple of like, let's use your technology to do these things as it's designed. That was a big, big change.
Speaker 3:And the thing that we're most proud about with that group was, while we're working on it, the HR team. We saw their offices and they had tarps over their desks to catch the rain and divert it, because all of the money in this group would go towards the people, the people in the organization. It wasn't about the HR. So we were able to highlight some of the challenges that the HR team themselves and some of the sacrifices that they were making and help get them some better facilities. So those are a couple of things that we get to. We impact the large global and we impact the small local and we just love being able to do that industry-focused workforce accelerator that offers learning programs to prepare individuals for successful careers.
Speaker 5:Our approach is centered around cognitive neuroscience research, combining the latest research and modern learning methods to create informative and psychologically safe learning experiences. Our programs enable individuals to achieve career readiness and immediate impact in their chosen field. Moreover, we help businesses create positive learning experiences, increase productivity, enhance team performance and build upskilling resources to meet the needs of today's modern workplace. Learn more at nebulaacademycom. Thanks, and now back to the HR Chat Show.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you very much. Just a bit of a follow-up to some of the things you mentioned in your previous answer, but I'm going to challenge you. Okay, thank you very much. Just a bit of a follow-up to some of the things you mentioned in your previous answer, but I'm going to challenge you to answer in 60 seconds or less. In 60 seconds or less, mary. In your opinion, what's the role of HR in bridging that gap which is what you mentioned a moment ago between strategy and culture? Summarize that for us in 60 seconds or less. Oh my gosh. Well, hr cannot work in a vacuum, and neither should the rest of the what you mentioned a moment ago between strategy and culture. Summarize that for us in 60 seconds or less, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:Well, hr cannot work in a vacuum, and neither should the rest of the business. So when you think about, hr needs to be able to translate what the business is trying to do to the person level. So the role of HR is really to understand what the business is trying to achieve. Understand how a company makes, saves and spends money and then being able to say this is great, I know you want to do this. Here's the people aspect of it. Here's how we need to staff up for this. This is how workforce management needs to be thought about. Here's how the laws of the land need to be applied to make that happen.
Speaker 3:So HR needs to be able to live in both worlds. Whereas finance and operations and everybody might fail sometimes to really think about the people side of things HR needs to understand how the people is impacted. They're talking to people, they're dealing with their lives, as well as understanding what the business cares about and bridging that gap. So in some ways, hr needs to be bilingual. You need to be very well versed in how the business talks, but you also need to be very well versed in being able to represent the needs of the people and how that's going to help the business execute on that strategy that they're trying to do.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thought you were going to run out of time. I think you just nailed it, Mary, because you're an awesome pro. I can't believe I doubted you. I can't believe I doubted you. Ok, so, as many folks will already know, because everybody knows you in the space you've contributed to HR Examiner, EREnet, SHRM and a whole bunch more over the years. What are some of the hot button issues that you've been writing about lately? Why are they top of mind for you? And I'll just throw it out there what's changed in the last couple of weeks that might be getting your attention on the go forward?
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness. So it's funny. We've been writing about this for a while, even since from my COVID on, about the ability to adapt without losing sight of your goals. So it's it's. You know, even the last two or three that we've done and I've written on too is really about okay, you have this long-term transformation.
Speaker 3:A lot of transformations are multi-year, but the changes that are happening are. You got to pivot today. You got to figure out okay, how did this change? Okay, that's going to we have to reorg, or we have to think about how we're going to do a riff, but we're going to do it really intelligently and with good empathy. What is that going to do?
Speaker 3:So all of these things have really been coming through of saying how do you stay the course, think about it. But how do you set yourselves up to be flexible? Stay the course, think about it. But how do you set yourselves up to be flexible? How do you create a governance process that allows you to take in the changes, apply them, you know, apply some sort of prioritization and figure out all right, how do we make this change without sacrificing our long-term goals? So that's been a lot of it.
Speaker 3:It's it's that difference between intentionality and panic. And how do you make sure that you're not always panicking, but acknowledging the panic we know, we're not trying to go out there saying like, oh, everything's gonna be fine, don't worry, we've been through this before. No, we just how do you rely on the foundation that you have built and try to absorb some of this, but also acknowledging that, yeah, we understand your job is terrible right now. And how do we help you not make that job so frustrating? I mean, the level of burnout is insane right now. We don't want to keep writing about burnout because everybody's just feeling it, so we're just trying to give some tools to be able to navigate it.
Speaker 2:I mean, given everything that is happening right now, where do you think the conversations will be going in the next few months? Will we be talking about mass layoffs? Will we be talking about the rebirth of car manufacturing industries across the US, for example, and all the new opportunities for leaders there? Get your crystal ball out. Help our listeners out. What do you think some of those conversations will become?
Speaker 3:I mean, just to be brutally honest, I don't think we're going to have enough stability in the next six to 12 months to even be able to set anything up. Right now, businesses are very much in a reactive mode and trying to figure out okay, so now what? What's the next thing? And trying to figure out okay, so now what, what's the next thing. I think we're going to continue to see a dry like. There will be the what did he do today thing approach of like how is this going to impact me? But it's also going to be back to thinking about. We know we still need to get here.
Speaker 3:So process optimization budgets are going to be cut just to be able to protect some of that operating capital being able to sustain the business and to absorb some of the changes that are coming. And yes, some of these changes are forcing hand towards. We need to be smarter about how we're operating. All right, let's look at process optimization. We're not going to have a lot of money to go out and buy a lot of technology. How do we optimize our technology?
Speaker 3:So I think it's an opportunity in some ways for businesses to really rethink the way they're operating. I do think HR is going to be challenged to figure out how to continue to do more with less and help the business figure out what that looks like from a workforce management perspective and a capacity perspective. So from an HR point of view, it's really about understanding. All right, what are people doing? How do we set our business up for success long-term? How do we get creative about the way that we are organized as an organization? So I don't know that it's going to slow down anytime soon. It is going to require a lot of resiliency, just to be blunt, sorry.
Speaker 2:Maybe things will be better than we're expecting.
Speaker 3:Maybe you know I will be the first one to be happy if that's the way it turns out.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, so we're recording this specifically for on april 7th 2025. Right now, where where things are are at is all these clever people have revised their forecast and they're saying there's a 45 chance, or 40 to 50 chance, of a us recession. Uh, within within this year, um, so I mean that means that you know we're at least 50 looking good, maybe. Well, who knows, who knows? Anyway, let's, let's change that completely. Um, you may or may not know this about me, but over the last few years, I've got heavily involved with a bunch of the disrupt hr events um, over here in the uk, and I'm also involved with um one in upstate new york, and we do other stuff in toronto. I noticed on on your LinkedIn profile that you were an organizer of Denver for for a while. Just, let's, just do a little bit of a shout out to the Disrupt community. Why did you get involved with that? What do you like about it? What's what's unique? And, as part of your answer, what are some of the events that you're hoping to attend this year?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I was the first chapter outside of the original Disrupt HR. So Jennifer McClure, steve Brown they're very good friends of mine I went to the first one that was in Ohio and I was like we need this in Denver, I want to do this, I want to be part of it. So I started the Disrupt HR chapter in Denver. We were kind of the first branch to see if it would work out and then from there it kind of went out. So I loved it because it was a chance to a few reasons. One, hr needs some disruption and let's stop thinking about it from a policy and compliance piece and let's get out there. But I also took it from a standpoint of there are not enough practitioners who are willing to stand up and speak. They don't get the chance to, they're terrified of getting up on a stage. So I looked at it as like it is five minutes of your life For those of you who want to give it a shot. You are doing this on a daily basis. We need more of your voices on the stage. Get up there, do it. So that was a big piece of it for me and I love seeing that it's continuing to go. No-transcript From a, from an event perspective, I don't get to go as to many as I would like to, just because of schedules.
Speaker 3:We we as an organization, as a, as a firm we represented a few like we were at trans um. Mark Stelzner was at transform, he's our, he's our um, one of our managing principals. We will be at um HR tech this year with panel and just hanging out and that sort of thing. Um, we were trying to get to other ones and we just ran out of time. We did unleash last year. We did, you know, I did EREnet last year. It's just we are so busy right now now, but we want to do more. You know we're doing things like these podcasts. Um, we are more than happy to do webinars, that sort of thing, just to get out there.
Speaker 2:Um, but, like a lot of people, it's just a challenge right now okay, well, it sounds like I might be able to buy you a drink at hr tech in vegas. Yeah, I went last year for the first time, uh, okay, so the hr chat pod, they tell us, is number two or number three in the world for downloads and whatnot in the category of hr tech. Um, so I should have gone to this a number of years ago. But, frankly, between you and I and all the people listening to the show, uh, I wasn't the biggest fan of las vegas, let's put it like that. Um, but I was wrong. It's an amazing conference. I called it. Uh, it's a great place to do business, to reinforce relationships. I am looking forward to going back and, um, I would love to see you there fantastic yes, I would love to see you too very good before we wrap things up today.
Speaker 2:How can our listeners connect with you? How can they learn more about all the cool things you're doing over at IA?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I would say. The best, most consistent place these days is LinkedIn, so find me on LinkedIn. Mary Faulkner I think it's Mary Faulkner one is my actual link, because there's a lot of Mary Faulkners in the world. You can also look at the IA web page in the world. You can also look at the IA webpage. We just are recently rebranding to IA Transforms because, while HR is our core, we're also working with a number of areas of the business. So IA Transforms, but IAHR-HRcom will still get you there. You can also get to us by IHateConsultingcom, because we do so. That will also get you there. But we would love to connect with anyone who wants to reach out to us, and my email address is mfaulkner at iatransformscom, so please find me there if you want to connect.
Speaker 2:I love that redirect. I'm going to check it out as soon as I hang up for you. We need it, mary. That just leaves me to say for today it's been too long. Let's not leave it this long in the future. Thank you very much for coming back on and being my guest today.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Bill. It was great to talk to you.
Speaker 1:And listeners as always. Until next time, happy working. Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette? Subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work. Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.
