Episode 33 | Hot HR and Workforce Trends with Shari Simpson

Shari Simpson  00:00

One of my biggest ahas through through that experience, both internally and, you know, just talking to the larger HR community, is I need to talk less and listen more. And that, for me, was an aha moment, because I don’t know that I had in the past connected that to I’m going to have great, rich, robust conversations if I’m quiet more and listen more and show empathy more. And so over the years, I’ve really tried to make that transition

Karan Rhodes  00:03

Blended workforces are one of the hottest talent strategies today, where employers are using a mix of traditional employees with external resources like independent contractors, coaches, consultants, vendors and technology solutions, all in order to enhance competitiveness, ensure cost flexibility and expedite business goals, but how are the successful companies infusing blended workforces into their business strategy, and what are the critical success factors and pitfalls to avoid during implementation? And on the flip side, what does it really take for suppliers to improve their chances of finding and landing contract opportunities? The devil is in the details, my friends, I’m your host, Karan Farrell Rhodes, and it’s time to get smarter about blended workforces at work. Hello, my superstars. This is Karan, and welcome to another episode of the blended workforces at work podcast. We are super excited to have today on the show Miss Sherry Simpson, who’s the Senior Manager of thought leadership at Paylocity. And Paylocity, for those who you don’t know, is one of the most modern human capital management platforms around. And in my over 20 year career at HR, I’ve known about them for quite some time. So when I tell you they are Premier, they really are, and I wasn’t paid to endorse them or anything like that, I just appreciate all the great work they do in helping businesses, and they are a premier supplier and vendor of choice. But Sherry is also the host of the HR mixtape podcast, a sought after speaker, and she also shares my passion around shaping the future of HR. So we are so honored to have her today, and welcome to the show, Shari

Shari Simpson  01:48

Karan, thank you so much for having me on. I love being on this side of the mic.

Karan Rhodes  01:52

I bet you do. I bet you do. And listeners, you’re probably hearing the doggies. It seems like there’s a truck outside, so I apologize about that, but you all know they’re part of the show as well, so but thank you again. Chair for joining. Boy, we have a lot I’d love to talk to you about but before we get started, for just as much as you feel comfortable, we’d love to get a sneak peek into our guests lives outside of work. So would you mind sharing just a tad with us about what you enjoy doing?

Shari Simpson  02:24

Yeah. So I am an avid reader. Every chance I get I have a book or a Kindle with me to make sure that I’m not only enjoying some fiction, but also I try to make sure I have one of those really great business books in the lineup. I am also a mother of three military. One is actually a veteran, and two are active duty. One is currently deployed right now, I am a mom dog to two beautiful black big dogs that I absolutely love and spend time with, and I am working on my doctoral degree alongside my husband, who’s also doing it, because, you know, as empty nesters, that’s what you do, right? You go back to squirrel

Karan Rhodes  03:05

Well, you know, you actually do. I will about for that. I’m a recent empty nester myself too young to retire, way too young to retire, unfortunately. So I haven’t got for the PhD, but what I have, I was accepted to a major program trying to help get more women and people of color on corporate boards, and so that’s like a mini MBA all in itself. So a development route, a different route, but I want to give you high fives and congratulate with you and your husband for taking to get in your PhD. That’s awesome. If I don’t mind, can I ask? What are you looking to specialize in?

Shari Simpson  03:45

Yeah, so I’m going for a Doctorate of Education and Leadership and Innovation, which aligns very well, I think, to the conversation we’re going to have. And I’m excited to be able to give back as soon as I have that designation. I’m about a year out from from finishing, I start my dissertation paperwork here in about three weeks.

Karan Rhodes  04:04

Oh How exciting. Yeah, okay, we’re gonna have to have a virtual celebration when you finish, but I’m gonna send good wishes your way that you rounded out very soon, because I know it’s been a journey for you all thank you. All right, well, let’s go ahead and delve in Sheri. And I’d love for you to start with a little bit about your professional history, just a high level, up to date, and then if you can share with us what you actually do at Paylocity.

Shari Simpson  04:34

Yeah. So as most HR people, I did not start off in HR. I always love when I meet the unicorns, who did start out in HR, and that was their whole intent. I actually started out in mental health. I had my undergrad is in adolescent studies, and I was working for the best supervisor leader I have ever worked for in my 20 plus career, and he pulled me aside one day, and I’m making this story very short compared to the extent of it, but pulled me aside one day and said, hey, you know what? You’re in the wrong profession. And I was like, What? What do you mean? I’m in the wrong profession. And he’s like, he’s like, You should be in HR. And I’m like, the policy police. I was like,

Karan Rhodes  05:16

No way!

Shari Simpson  05:17

I don’t think I want to do that. That’s not my personality. And he he he was very insightful. He sat me down. He’s like, No, let’s talk about your skill set and what I’m observing from you why I think it aligns to that profession. And I never looked back from his advice. I moved forward. I switched careers. I went and got, you know, advanced education, and I have done all the things so talent acquisition, payroll benefits, employee relations, training and development. In fact, I started at pelasity as an HR business partner just about eight years ago. Actually, I just celebrated my eight year anniversary this week.

Karan Rhodes  05:52

Congratulations.

Shari Simpson  05:52

Thank you, thank you. Thank you. And I was supporting the product and technology arm of our company for a couple years. Absolutely loved it. The developers we have are some of the most passionate people I’ve ever worked with, and I had a really great opportunity to move into a more programmatic role, from the perspective of corporate HR initiatives, making sure that as we rolled programs out, that they were uniformed enough, but also had those custom levers for different parts of our business that could support our business partners and the initiatives that they had, and then there, it just kind of evolved into this role around thought leadership, where I have this really great opportunity to spend time creating public facing content. So that goes through the podcast. I do monthly webinars. I get to attend conferences and speak and hold conference sessions. But really, it’s about helping others reach that aha moment through all of those different venues, and seeing, you know, the work that I do in the research that I’m I’m interested in as a real source for people, so that they have another place to go to as a trusted source of information.

Karan Rhodes  06:59

Oh, I love that. You know, it sounds like your role is very similar to we had on the podcast Tony Buffum, who is the head of corporate relations for Upwork. And he does something very, very similar. He and listeners, you can search our site or your on your platform or choice to to check out Tony’s episode. But he does the same thing, trying to think, you know, he speaks a lot. He tries to help all types of stakeholders get that aha moment about what they can do to really help their companies, their initiatives, or even themselves. And it sounds like you do something very similar. And I think you have the coolest role, because I love to share what I call my superpower is strategic ideation, and so I’ll always love to talk strategy and ideate, and talk and converse with people to come up with super great ideas or pathways, and that whole collaboration thing is what I would do for free if I didn’t have to pay the light bil every now and again.

Shari Simpson  08:03

Right? Unfortunately.

Karan Rhodes  08:05

I’m really jealous of that role. So that of that role in your role, what has been maybe one of the your aha moments as you go around speaking and and talking to clients and even in your internal staff, could you share maybe one aha moment that for yourself that really resonate with

Shari Simpson  08:24

Yeah, so I am an extrovert to the most specific definition of it. And if you’ve taken cliftonstrengths finder, my top, my top two are Woo and relator. So I have a broad network. I like to get to know people and get real deep, real quick. And one of my biggest ahas through through that experience, both internally and, you know, just talking to the larger HR community, is I need to talk less and listen more. And that, for me, was an aha moment, because I don’t know that I had in the past connected that to I’m going to have great, rich, robust conversations if I’m quiet more and listen more and show empathy more. And so over the years, I’ve really tried to make that transition and become real vulnerable to listening, as far as things like getting feedback when you speak, you know, giving your audience the opportunity to give you feedback using a tool like talk about or something like that. Some of that feedback is pretty hard to hear, but it has made me just that much more connected to the people that I love and to my peers. So yeah, talk less, listen more.

Karan Rhodes  09:38

You know what? I’m gonna take that lesson as well, because I’m an over the chart extrovert like you are, I think that’s why we’re in the business we’re in and have podcasts and try to be out there with people, because we love it. Get our energy from people. But I do understand that sometimes I need to listen more. Pull back. I A lot of the clients that our firm has worked with are kind of in the technology or engineering spaces. And I realized it was so funny, I realized that I was scaring some of them, because, not to put anyone stereotypical, but usually they don’t like they’re more reserved. They just don’t like people, you know, all in their space all the time. And I was and so I just, I think that I want to take that lesson from you to apply to myself as well, talk less, listen more, and get more out of the conversation by learning more about others. So

Shari Simpson  10:29

Yeah.

Karan Rhodes  10:30

So I thank you for that gift.

Shari Simpson  10:32

You’re welcome.

Karan Rhodes  10:33

Yeah. So let’s talk about trends that you all are seeing, either at Paylocity or you in particular, in the general workforce. You know, a lot of things have evolved. Even you know, over the last few months, last few years, the way the world works has shifted quite a bit. Where do you think organizations are really struggling, and what opportunities do you happen to see in the horizon that lie ahead?

Shari Simpson  11:03

I think this is a really big question. Oh, because, because I see differences in different size populations, in our HR peers, I think those that are those HR departments of one which we know there’s a lot of them out there, or those smaller HR departments that are, you know, dispersed. You might have payroll and accounting, and, you know, your HR person might be somebody who is learning as they go, they’re cutting their teeth. They used to be in a different role. So I think for that population, AI is something that they’re struggling with, just trying to figure out how to get started with it. There’s so many. There’s so many amazing AI tools out there right now, beyond your basics of asking chat GPT questions, there’s, and I’m not going to go through a list, because I think that’d be unfair to any vendor, but there, there are great tools out there where you can go in and put in a brief outline and it creates an entire PowerPoint deck for you with beautiful pictures and, you know, so there’s all these tools out there at that level, and then you kind of blow that up, right? And you go enterprise level, your our enterprise friends are trying to figure out, how do we start to embed this so we can create better customer experience?

Karan Rhodes  12:15

Exactly.

Shari Simpson  12:15

How can we support our employees better? You know, one of the things that Pelosi has done with our software that’s getting released to general public in the next few weeks here, I think it is public, so I’m not kind of giving you a peek behind the curtain. Okay, good. One of the things that we’ve done is we’ve added the ability to use our embedded AI chat model, our AI assistant for employees, to ask questions against the employer’s handbook talk about something that sounds so simple having such a huge impact on the hrs person’s day to day. I mean, we all know that we’ve spent so many times answering questions that you’re like, if you just read the handbook, you would know,

Karan Rhodes  12:54

Yeah, right?!

Shari Simpson  12:56

So it is AI in all aspects, we’re trying, we’re trying to figure out. So that’s one of the biggest trends. I think the other trend is we’re other trend is we’re trying to figure out our own definitions of inclusion inside of our organizations. I think for everybody, that means something different, for different organizations and different populations. But Gen Z will continue to drive us to have that embedded in our organizations, whether it’s you’re focusing on equity, or you’re focusing on pay transparency, or you’re just trying to get the definitions of what your organization thinks inclusion is, those are something that I think is on the forefront of a lot of people right now, and we’re going to see more and more conversation about that. And then, you know, for our top three, I think the last one is this shift from traditional kind of job, or ladder progression, or even lattice progression in roles, to a more skills based focus of moving people around the organization and hiring differently, hiring for those skills, instead of going through this laundry List of your responsibilities. Because we we know that sometimes you have people who are very quick to learn a new skill. And so how do you start to leverage some of that stuff in your organization just differently than you have before.

Karan Rhodes  14:12

Absolutely, I actually spoke on that topic at Gallup’s headquarters on a future of people summit and and we talked about that in depth, and that is, you’re so right. That is a top trend, both now and in the future. Yeah, focus on skills. And the other thing I’ll mention is I have never in my career seen an overstaffed HR department, and if you all can find one, I would love to meet them and see what one looks like. But my point being is that the complexity of the talent agenda at organizations continues to be a point of focus for CEOs and board members and the entire organization. But so many times HR, like you said, they’re not. They didn’t go to school for it, per se, they’re learning on the spot. They may only be a department of one or two. They’re responsible for the operational basic to keep the organization going, and then the whole other, you know, strategy side and other duties as assigned is just heavy to bear. So I encourage all business leaders out there too, is to give a lot of more support to your HR teams, their advocate, obviously, and, you know, use services like pay loss. I love your AI assistant, because you’re so right. There are so many questions that come into HR that if they had just read the book, or, you know, it takes away from the time that or the productivity of our HR teams. And so using a fantastic platform and tool like that could make a real difference. So I know it’s going to be a winner. I definitely do, and I encourage anyone out there to, you know, definitely check it out, since they’re releasing it this year. Has it been released yet? Or is it going to be soon?

Shari Simpson  16:03

It’s phased. So something that’s really cool about us is we release everything to our employee population first. We actually call it D O O W, drinking our own wine. It comes out of the tech space, where they actually use the phrase eating your own dog food,

Karan Rhodes  16:21

Yeah. That’s what I remember.

Shari Simpson  16:25

So we D O O W everything in our org. So it has been, it has been available to us for a little bit, and it’s going out to some of our beta testers, and then it’ll be available for general application.

Karan Rhodes  16:36

Amazing, amazing. I’m curious what in your role as thought that in thought leadership, how do you determine what topics to talk about when you go out and speak, or where is your focus right now? What are you learning more about to share?

Shari Simpson  16:54

I love this question. So I do a lot of reading, a lot of listening to podcasts. I will say my my focus has actually transitioned a little bit from, you know, just reading HR information to really focusing more on business information. I find that when I can lean into, you know, articles that I’m reading out of the Wall Street Journal or Forbes or those kinds of things, those are all impacting HR professionals, because ultimately, right our business acumen gives us the ability to be the strategic leaders in our organizations, and that’s the place we should sit right at that strategy point where we can bring that to the table. So when I go and I speak publicly, I try to make sure that the content I’m providing taps into business acumen in some way, provides very needed tactical information. I think sometimes when you go to conferences, you you might get inspired by a session, and then you walk away and go, okay, yeah, but what can I do with that? Like that was

Karan Rhodes  17:55

Right!

Shari Simpson  17:57

We’re like, what can I do with it? So I actually took a different approach. This year, every year, I try to create a set of content or a set of decks that I’m going to present on. So this year, I decided to go a little kitschy, and so I have aligned my content to either movies or TV shows, and have pulled in some of the things that I think are kind of most important. So one of them has to do with the movie The Sandlot and building teams. One of them has to do with the Queen’s Gambit and being strategic in your workforce development. And so really, it’s about understanding what are the trends out there, what are HR professionals trying to accomplish from a business perspective, and then what tactically can we provide and make sure that you know, no matter where you sit in the HR realm, whether you’re a specialist or a generalist or you’re on that precipice of being a chro, can you come to this session and get something out of it?

Karan Rhodes  18:53

Well, Sherry, we are definitely sisters from other mothers, because I do the same thing. I’m a movie fanatic, and since I movie and sports fanatic. But I bring in samples of movies to talk about points, or help to illustrate points, or I talk about, you know, some kind of sports event or sports celebrity to make a point as well, and usually between the two of them that captures or make the audience in some kind of way and makes them smile. So boy, great minds think alike.

Shari Simpson  19:23

They sure do.

Karan Rhodes  19:26

So would love for you to also share a little bit about your HR mixtape podcast. Would I always love to promote fellow podcasters that are doing big things and getting messages out? So can you give our listeners just sneak peek into your podcast so in case they want to add it to their playlist.

Shari Simpson  19:44

Yeah. So really, the intent was I want to talk about things that HR professionals have on their mind, and not kind of box myself into any one particular category. Here why we picked the name mix tape to make sure that.

Karan Rhodes  19:59

I love it!

Shari Simpson  20:00

It. It was clear we were mixing it up. So I’ve had everybody on, from Johnny C Taylor, from Sherm, has been on. I’ve had the former president of the Miami Marlins baseball team on. I’ve had people on to talk about writing a book. Because I swear we are all writing a book in our heads. If you work in HR,

Karan Rhodes  20:17

Yep.

Shari Simpson  20:17

You have stories that you you think somebody needs to hear at some point. So you’re, you’re trying to figure out how to put those in a book and just very serious topics about, you know, how do you handle sexual assault in your organization to, you know, how do you think about things like ageism? So it’s all over the board. It’s concise. So twenty, twenty-five minute episodes, and we release every Tuesday morning.

Karan Rhodes  20:39

Nice. All right, well, listeners, there’s another one to add to your playlist, because if you’re listening to this podcast, these topics really will probably pique your interest, so definitely take it. Check out Sherry’s podcast as well. HR Mixtape, another question I’d love to ask you. I don’t want to get into, you know, deep into politics and all that kind of thing, but you know, the whole geopolitical climates around the world, you know, are really impacting business and business strategy, and it’s it trickles down to the HR and talent agendas as well. Are there any things that you’re seeing trend wise, or if you’ve gotten feedback from your audiences on how they’re thinking through how to take an account like what’s happening in Europe versus what’s happening in the US versus elsewhere.

Shari Simpson  21:28

This, this is a, this is,

Karan Rhodes  21:30

I know it’s a deep question.

Shari Simpson  21:32

it’s a heaven topic, and it’s one that is HR professionals, we’re struggling to navigate. We have to figure it out. I genuinely believe that. I think what I am saying is there’s definitely a shift in the types of conversations that we’re willing to have publicly that’s changing. I think that we’re at a point now where we need to have those tougher conversations with our leadership teams and ask them what, what? What? As a company, we’ve decided we’re going to sit whether you’re going to be pro something or anti something or neutral again, without getting into, you know, politics and details. A great example of this, and this really highlighted it for me, about how different organizations can take a different approach and still be supportive of their employees. Was when Roe v Wade was overturned, there was a whole conversation about kind of in this space, do we change our benefit programs? Do we not change our benefit programs? You know, how do we address this? Do we not address this? I feel bad. I don’t know the person who said this, so I can’t give them credit, so I’m kind of reissuing their story. But what they had shared was, take into account your employee population. And so what they were saying was, if you have an employee population where the majority of them is 40 years old and they’re male, maybe you don’t need to address this in your organization. Maybe you don’t need to put out a communication or highlight a benefit. But if your population is between the ages of 20 and 45 maybe you really need to put something out right, at least highlight what benefits are offered. So I think we’re in that point now where we’re having those same types of conversations about, what does our culture look like? What are we going to support? What are we not going to support, same like with return to work. You know, there’s all this static out there still about return to work mandates. And at the end of the day, the business has to decide what kind of business they want to be. And if that business says we’re a return to office, we’re a fully on site business, then that’s what the business is, right? And that culture that they are defining, whether I love that or not, is besides the point, right? And so, as an HR person. You either have to get on board and figure out how you can do that and keep your employees engaged and your talent retained, or you have to go to a different company that aligns with you know, your view of of the workforce.

Karan Rhodes  23:53

Absolutely and what I loved about what you were sharing is that we as HR leaders have to stand up and and be willing to have those hard conversations with our executive leaders, with the employee body, you know, with a lot of stakeholders. We can’t just sit back and hope it goes away. It’s not. The world of work is going to forever be complex in some way, shape or form, and if we really want to continue to have a seat at the table. Then sometimes you you know, we’re going to have to initiate some of these discussions and see where the company is going to be landing, and then do our best to think about how to best support it. Work with, you know, corporate comms for messaging, you know, get employee feedback and do your best to attract, retain and develop your employees based on the environment that the company has decided that they want to embrace.

Shari Simpson  24:49

I will add, though, that I do think it’s our responsibility to challenge our leadership behind closed doors when we have those opportunities to bring the data that we have from the talent and the people perspective, that maybe they haven’t considered. That being said, once the decision is made, you have to move forward with it.

Karan Rhodes  25:08

You have to be on board. Yeah, I love that add. You’re absolutely right, absolutely right. And and that leads us to our final question. I can’t believe our time is almost up, but it’ll lead nicely into it. Because I guess, as you all know, I guess listeners, as you all know, we always ask our guests about the seven tactics of high performing leaders. And Sheri was so kind to share that leading with courageous agility really resonated for her. No surprise, but for my new listeners out there, leading with courageous agility is all about having the courage and the fortitude to take calculated risk, to stand up for what you believe in and do the right thing. You know, even if the future is uncertain or aren’t and in or unclear. And so Sheri, curious minds would love to know in your words, why did courageous agility really pop for you.

Shari Simpson  26:02

You know, I think courageous agility for me, puts you in a place where you can remain curious and you can challenge from a way of wanting to bring innovation into an organization, wanting to demonstrate flexibility and trust and transparency, I have always found that that curiosity that I bring to the table and asking questions sometimes uncovers things that we didn’t know were there that we needed to talk about, and then gives us that ability to get courageous and say, Okay, now that we have this information, how are we going to handle it, and how are we going to lean into being a little bit less risk adverse, saying yes, a little bit more and showing that there’s room for there’s room for failure, because we know that that’s going to lead to growth. So I think the more that you can be courageous in that, and be agile in in moving through those different phases, I think is going to make you a great leader.

Karan Rhodes  27:02

I so agree that’s a drop the mic moment, if there is one in this episode, because, you know, and that’s why in the definition, we do say calculated risk. That means you just can’t go willy nilly. You need to take the information, the data, the insights that you have at hand, assimilate it, and then make the best decision possible with the information that you have, but still move forward, even if it’s in baby steps. Because, like you said, if you hit the wall, you can always pivot or, you know, or recalculate or do other things, but you got to take the baby steps forward to make progress. And I absolutely loved your insights on that. Well, Shari we are going to have all your information, your bio links and things in our show notes. But I always love to give our guests air time. So if they’re interested in finding you and or Paylocity, where should they look?

Shari Simpson  28:01

Yeah, so you can find Paylocity at Paylocity.com. So pretty easy. There me personally. You can find on LinkedIn, or you can find on socials. I am @HR swagger on socials or my own website, which is askhrswagger.com

Karan Rhodes  28:17

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Sherry for the gift of your time today, we really appreciated it. And gosh, I was taking notes while we were talking, and my notebook is full, so I think it was a fantastic episode.

Shari Simpson  28:31

Well, Karan, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Karan Rhodes  28:33

And thank you to listeners for the gift of your time as well. We know that there are literally millions of other podcasts out there, and we do not take your patronage lightly. All that we ask is you like and subscribe to our podcast, favorite podcast platform of choice, and to be sure, to just share our podcast with just one friend, because by doing so, that will help us all learn more about blended workforces at work. Well, that’s our show for today. Thank you again for listening to the Blended Workforces at Work podcast. You can check out the show notes, additional episodes, bonus resources, and also submit guest recommendations on our website at blendedworkforces@work.com. You can also follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube by searching for the name Karan Rhodes with Karan being spelled K a r a n. And if you like the show, the greatest gift you can give would be to subscribe and leave a rating on your favorite podcast platform of choice. This podcast has been a production of Shockingly Different Leadership, a global consultancy which helps organizations execute their people, talent development, and organizational effectiveness initiatives on an on-demand, contract, fractional, or project basis. Huge thanks to the SDL production and editing team for a job well done. Bye for now.