HR Tech Preview – Supporting the HR Function with Technology featuring Paychex

543 – HR Tech Preview – Supporting the HR Function with Technology featuring Paychex

Host: Steve Boese

Guest: Alison Stevens, Director of Field HR Services, Paychex

This episode of the HR Happy Hour is sponsored by Paychex, one of the leading providers of HR, payroll, retirement, and insurance solutions for businesses of all sizes. The current business and hiring environment has redefined what it takes to succeed as an HR professional, requiring HR leaders to adapt and innovate at lightning speed to help their organizations remain competitive. Download the 2022 Paychex Pulse of HR report to discover the tools and tactics your peers are using to deliver on both HR and business objectives – faster and at scale – while still meeting the evolving needs of their employees. Visit payx.me/PHR2022 to download your copy, today.

This week, we met with Alison Stevens from Paychex for an HR Technology Conference preview.

– Latest data from the Paychex Pulse of HR Report

– Tackling stress and burnout within your organization

– Flexibility of remote and hybrid work options

– How to stay on top of compliance as it evolves

Thank you for joining the show today!  Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we look forward to you joining us at the HR Technology Conference in September! Check out the 2022 agenda online, then register with code SB22F to save $300 on your pass here.

Transcript follows:

Steve 0:26
Hi, this is Steve Boese and welcome to a special series on the HR Happy Hour Podcast Network, where we will talk with three leading HR technology providers about all things HR Tech and the upcoming HR Technology Conference set for September 13 through 16th, 2022 in Las Vegas. First I’d like to thank our show sponsor Paychex. This episode is sponsored by Paychex, one of the leading providers of HR, payroll, retirement and insurance solutions for businesses of all sizes. The current business and hiring environment has redefined what it takes to succeed as an HR professional, requiring HR leaders to adapt and innovate at lightning speed to help their organizations remain competitive. Download the 2022 Paychex Pulse of HR Report to discover the tools and tactics your peers are using to deliver on both HR and business objectives faster and at scale, while still meeting the evolving needs of their employees. Visit payx.me/phr2022 yo download your copy today. And thanks for listening to the HR Happy Hour Podcast Network. And let’s start the show.

Steve 1:33
Welcome to the HR Happy Hour Network. My name is Steve Boese. We have a great show today, we are going to be talking with friend of the show and I’d say at this point, regular guest of the show Alison Stevens from Paychex, we’re gonna be talking about some of the top challenges and and importantly solutions for HR leaders. And you know today in late 2022 as we record this, it’s been a really tough couple of years for everyone, including HR pros, and we’re gonna dive into some of that. Let me formally welcome Alison to the show. Alison is the Director of Field HR services at Paychex, where she is responsible for leading 500 HR professionals who provide HR outsourcing services, including professional employer, organization, and administrative service organization to customers. And they’re 1.5 million worksite employees, she has over 25 years of HR experience in professional services and HCM industries. Alison, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Alison Stevens 2:34
I’m well Steve, thank you so much. Great to see you.

Steve 2:37
Great to see you as well, Alison, I’m going to ask for a formal count after the show runs. Because when you once you hit and longtime listeners of the show will know this, once you hit five appearances on the HR Happy Hour, you are eligible for a very special gift, which we actually will send you so I don’t want to give away what it is. But very, very special. So yeah, you were on about three months ago with our friend Jeanne Meister, we talked about scheduling, and the impact of regular scheduling and how the importance of scheduling to employees kind of work life balance and their stress and their burnout. And that was a great topic. And it’s great to cover some of the things we’re gonna talk about today. Largely, kind of the impetus for this was the new pulse of HR 2022 report that Paychex released recently, I can’t remember exactly when it came out. But it is full of great data and insights. So first off, before we dive into that, let me just ask you, how are you doing? Now we’re saying so over the last few months since we talked,

Alison Stevens 3:45
Things are great. I don’t know about you, but I feel like summer has flown by. Was able to take a few days off was on vacation last week. So that was awesome kind of rest, recharge, get the batteries reset as we head into kind of like August-September timeframe. So yeah, things have been really, really busy can’t complain?

Steve 4:08
Well, that’s good and make sense that for an organization like Paychex, right, who’s servicing literally hundreds of 1000s of customers around the country. And we know right I’m in labor market geek we read I read the monthly reports like everybody else does unemployment, extremely low back to its pre pandemic low. More people working in America, I think than at any other time. I think all the employment quote unquote, at least at the macro level has recovered from the beginning of the pandemic. So that means busy times for an organization like Paychex, who’s servicing actually millions of people right through their customers.

Alison Stevens 4:52
We are extremely busy. I’ve been talking to a lot of clients over the past couple of weeks. And you know, it’s just been fascinating to talk to them about You know how busy they are? Right? With, you know, if it’s a business that it’s summer season, you know, retail restaurant busy for the summer, but also just making sure that they’re onboarding their employees well taking care of their employees engaging with their employees. So it’s, it’s, yeah, there’s a lot happening and a lot happening with American small businesses right now for sure.

Steve 5:20
And one of the things one of the highlight, I had like three pages of notes that were provided to me, thankfully, by our producer before the show, Karen, awesome, but I took my highlighter out and just wanted to highlight a few key points that I wanted to make sure we talked about today, one of the phrases or the statements that comes from the pulse of HR report that I highlighted, I want to start our conversation really with is it says, quote, HR leaders have not rested since 2020. And I think that’s a great way to start the conversation, Alison, because we’ve talked about burnout, we’ve talked about stress, certainly COVID, obviously, all the medical situations, and safety and health and just what everyone’s gone through over the last couple of years. But it’s also important for HR leaders themselves, right, who largely are concerned with looking after the entire employee population, to think about kind of their own health and welfare and their own stress levels, I’d love for you to maybe talk a little bit about that. And maybe some of the things you hear from your clients, you know, your team of 500 plus HR people, helping your clients with their own kind of stress and burnout.

Alison Stevens 6:26
Sure, and, you know, it is very true, right? HR, leaders, HR professionals, anyone that’s performing in any kind of HR function, as has had very little to no rest over the past several years. If you go back to the beginning of the pandemic, right, it was all about just monitoring the leaderboard of various regulations that were changing both state, federal and otherwise, every single every single day, it seemed like it was changing, right. And then kind of as we moved out of sort of the core changes that resulted from the pandemic from a compliance standpoint, then you’re sort of that net, then everyone is realizing, okay, here we are in a reshaped workplace, a dramatic shift has occurred in the employee employer power dynamic. And, you know, now here you have HR professionals having to navigate, how do you continue to support engage, retain, retain, attract your employees, but also keep your function advancing and moving forward? One of the things, too, that I’ve noticed in talking with clients is, you know, particularly for clients, for small businesses, right, you’ve got that individual who is not just an HR leader, but they also might be handling other functions, right, whether it be an operations leader, you know, providing administrative support to a company, they’re serving as the office manager, right, that comes with myriad responsibilities. So I think more than ever, HR professionals need to feel supported and need to feel like we have their back whether it’s Paychex, whether it’s you know, a community that they belong to, whether it’s their friends and family, their co workers, their peers. I feel like everyone I talked to it’s like thematic ly just very busy, lots to do lots to focus on. And how intently focused every HR professional I speak to is focused on the employee experience and making sure their employees are well taken care of.

Steve 8:27
Yeah, I agree with you. That’s all I hear about you. And that’s every conversation we have is about how do we how do we make things quote unquote, better for employees, better benefits, better working conditions, remote work, which I want to circle back to, because we see in the pulse of HR report, the importance of flexibility in scheduling and remote workout, we see it come up time to time, a couple of times in the report from HR leaders reporting back how they’re using, either by choice or by necessity, having to use flexibility and remote options to kind of try to meet some of the challenges that they’re facing. One of the things you know, you know, you and the team that paychecks provide a great support system, and maybe even a backstop, if you will write to your clients who to help them navigate through a lot of these challenges. We, you know, I remember early in the pandemic, we talked to Tom Hammond quite extensively. And I know we did a show about it just on PPA, right? How organizations, you know, we’re going to try to qualify for those funds, right to keep their businesses going to keep paying people and then recover those funds as well. That was, that was such a huge, huge thing right back in, I guess mid 2020 to late 2020 Probably was half right, maybe that like, oh, we’ll just forget about it. Right? It feels like it was 100 years ago.

Alison Stevens 9:48
It was only like two years ago, but it feels like 22 years ago.

Steve 9:51
Like, I don’t want to get too far. I don’t want to get too far off the track. But, you know, I was just talking to someone just a friend the other day and I said to my son, you know, I was looking at the calendar It was like August 15, or something. And there was some COVID thing in the news, right or something, something had closed, or there was some some bit of news. And I said, How is this? How is it still happening? Right? When did COVID Start? Right? I felt like it was 80 years ago. And I feel especially bad for younger employees. And maybe this is slightly slightly askew from what we wanted to talk about. But I do feel a little bit for younger employees, who may be, we’re starting their career right around the same time, the impacts of COVID were hitting organizations and hitting workplaces, and really, really disrupting things. And so if you were a young person, maybe starting your career in the spring ish, or the summer of 2020. How is that impacted you a couple years later? I don’t know if you have any experience with that either on your team mouse, and you, I’m sure you’ve hired people in the last couple of years. But like, that must be really, really different.

Alison Stevens 10:50
Yeah, and here’s what’s fascinating. Oh, my gosh, I have like, a lot of thoughts about what you just said. One is this past summer, within my organization, in my division, we hired actually our first class of interns. So we hired college students from around the country group of, of 10 students. And we actually have their commencement ceremony tomorrow, and they’re gonna be talking us through their capstone projects. Yeah, we’re really excited, they’re such a great group, we’ve been talking to them along the way. But, you know, traditionally, and I think I speak for Paychex, but I speak for many companies, right? Internship Program, you’d be welcoming your interns into your office, right? You’d be exposing them to different leaders and executives and giving them different experiences in the office. And everything we’ve done. Across the summer has been virtual. You know, we’ve we’ve had several cohort meetings with them, giving them the chance to ask questions. And their questions have been fascinating, fascinating, right, really dialing into like our leadership styles, you know, talking to some of our executives, and asking them about how they’ve had to pivot their leadership styles either, you know, pre pandemic post pandemic, what it means that they’ve worked globally, like it’s just been, it’s been such a great experience. And just interesting to form relationships and having to form them virtually, and making the connections we need to have, you know, this already, I haven’t asked nationally distributed workforce.

Alison Stevens 12:25
And we really, you know, made sure to spend time to make that experience meaningful. And then I sort of juxtapose that to with some conversations I said, I’ve been having with clients, and I was talking to a client a few days ago, and she was talking to me about, you know, she’s like, I need to sit down and spend time with my new employees, who are an entry level positions and talk to them and explain benefit, right? Because like, I really need to, like, make sure I’m leaning in and spending more time with them. Right? Particularly if they’re working remotely, right, there’s sort of there is a piece that gets lost, right? Where they can’t just like knock on the door, come into someone’s office and say, Hey, can you like, sit down and explain this to me? Um, I feel like, right, there’s that human connection of feeling comfortable having that question. So now they have, she’s like, Yeah, they have to kind of seek me out and make sure so I’m, she’s like, I’m really trying to be proactive. I’m following up with every single employee, new employee to say, hey, you know, what questions can I answer for you with respect to the selections you’re making, making sure you understand our full benefits program, and she was talking to me about, you know, that’s taking a lot of her time, you know, as we go back to the pulse of HR, and in our findings around, you know, the shift in where, where HR professionals and leaders are spending their time.

Steve 13:41
Yeah, great. I know, it’s gonna be certainly like HBs business school studies are going to be done on this for forever. It does. It made me think of something, though else. And I’m a huge proponent of flexibility, remote work, if it’s available, every employee is different. Their circumstances are different. There is I mean, we go on and on, right, there’s a child care crisis in the United States right now. Right. And that impacts working parents dramatically. Right. And we could talk about that forever. But the one thing that made me think of when you’re telling telling that story about benefits is, in this age of remote or distributed or hybrid work we’re going to have, we’re just going to have less casual conversations with our co workers, right? That’s just the nature of remote work, right? Almost all the conversations we’re having in a remote environment are scheduled, their meetings are on the calendar, etc, etc. We’re going to have less casual conversations. And even those casual conversations, right in a workplace that have nothing to do with work, or at least they begin with nothing to do about work. And they might begin with Hey, would you do this weekend? Oh, you know, I went to the ballgame, or I went fishing or whatever. But then, oh, by the way, did you see this new benefit thing that the benefits team sent out? What do you think about that like that? Sometimes those conversations spill into that say that benefits discussion that you were describing? Right? And so then an employee, maybe a newer employee picks up some interesting bit of info Question or some insight that they might need about something in the workplace. But it all started innocently with, you know, you know, how was your weekend? Right?

Alison Stevens 15:07
Exactly, exactly right. And how do you then create those scenarios or create a sense of openness and dialogue that then invites those questions or comments, you know, having to be intentional, but also, I think also having to be creative, right? Companies really have to, I think, put more thoughtfulness into their communication strategy. Right. So it’s not just the HR department, but it’s also right leaders, managers, supervisors to think about, okay, how do I make sure that I’m picking up perhaps on subtle cues, inviting questions, I find myself recently just saying, like, ask me anything, right? Just ask me anything, because you’re right. Like, we don’t have those moments of informal, you know, what we used to call water cooler moments? This has been on my mind.

Steve 15:59
Yeah. And I’ve always been, I’ve always been skeptical of the folks who’ve come out really hard against hybrid work or remote work, who kind of lean on those kind of water cooler, if you will, discussions in terms of they they somehow generate all these great ideas, and all this innovation and all this new, new new development and efficiency. I’m skeptical on that, because there’s really no data that proves that. But I’m, I’m not skeptical that these kinds of communications and that inform of that culturalization, if you will, are understanding the vibes and the flows and kind of picking up things subtly. And in informal competition, I do think there’s value in that for sure. Very, also difficult to measure. But yeah, I think that’s really, really true. And here’s the thing, too, right. And let’s pivot a little bit back to the pulse of HR report. It’s that just these things that we’re talking about managing hybrid, trying to understand how communication needs to change being more intentional about communication from an HR perspective, those things are just been thrown on top of all the other things, right that HR always has to do. And in the in this study, we see that tracking down hours, right, and chasing down hunches and things like that, and making sure hours and therefore payroll, right is correct is still a huge time suck for HR followed by just trying to stay on top of compliance. Allison, you’re working with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small businesses 1000s. Literally, I’d love for you to comment a little bit about the what the data says. And then also what, you know, your interactions with clients suggest about, hey, just the nuts and bolts of HR still being certainly a challenge.

Alison Stevens 17:35
Yeah, you know, we were surprised that the tracking of of hours, right jumped to the list. But then when you start looking at some of the posts of HR data, right around the spike in percentage of hybrid workers, you know, you can start to make those connections. And they, yeah, it really made sense. And if you know, an HR function is still sort of managing things by spreadsheet, or, you know, in the past, perhaps relied on the person coming into their office to say, okay, you know, I worked from X to Y, whatever that might be right? Then you start to enter in this notion of technology, and how, you know, companies really need to lean on technology in order to perhaps accelerate and advance some of those efficiencies that will help them enable them to then make improvements, you know, speed to value as it relates to making sure your payroll is running efficiently and correctly, making sure you do have a method in which your employees can track and report their hours. You know, certainly and we’ve, you know, again, in talking with our clients, we’ve been, we’ve been watching them, you know, most like make some of that, again, small businesses, it’s, you know, one person with six job descriptions, right, who is just their default setting is perhaps paper, perhaps it’s a spreadsheet, whatever it might be, right, and then, you know, watching them go through that transformation of WoW, leveraging a time and attendance tool, leveraging, you know, particularly if my business is now offering flexible work, how that can really be transformative with respect to saving time, and then of course, compliance. Right, me staying on top of compliance is, is still a really big factor. You know, we talked to clients just about a week ago, and we asked them to tell us, you know, kind of, in discussing the pulse of HR, like, what’s top of mind for you, where are you spending the most time, you know, and we saw tracking hours we but we also saw a lot of hey, like regulation and compliance is just still a really big thing, right? even think about like sick pay, right? Like knowing, you know, sick pay rolls in every single state, as if you make the decision to offer remote work, making the decision to expand where your employees might be working from, and then having to make sure you have that awareness and knowledge. Right. You know, that’s what our HR professionals are here to do to help support our clients and making sure they’re, they’re keeping up with that knowledge. But, you know, it’s a lot to know.

Steve 19:57
Yeah, and I’ve been in the HR tech space forever, obviously Paychex is a great partner to us in the HR technologist. But here’s where you must lean on technology, there’s really no other way you can manage this as a small to medium sized business, certainly large businesses, I think they all get this. But as the business grows, gets more complex, as you said, Alison as circumstances change, where you might be doing hybrid work or remote work, I mean, many businesses at the beginning of the pandemic, went to a fully remote model and said, yeah, just go live wherever you want, we don’t care anymore, we’re gonna close our office event, right? It’s probably just closed, right? If they were able to right facilities, I’d love for you to share a little bit about what HR pros again, through the pulse of HR survey, as well as the ones you’re you talk to you on a regular basis, through your client work, are telling you about how technology is kind of helping them least least support them in in trying to get ahead of I can’t find the hours and I can’t figure out all these these crazy regulations.

Alison Stevens 21:00
Yeah, the study revealed, I think it was close to 40% of the leaders that responded to the survey, you know, said, Hey, yes, HR technology is helping us reach our goals reach our objectives, right, same percentage saying like, it’s improving our ability to manage processes, right. Like, we talked about payroll benefits, you know, other processes important to sort of keeping the HR engine running forward. And then, you know, we also saw similar results in the areas of how they were using technology to drive engagement, skill development, attracting candidates, right, so they can improve retention, things like, you know, running an engagement survey, if you suddenly go from closing your offices and your employees are distributed, and you don’t have the ability to talk to them every day, right? How do you kind of lean in and get get information and sentiments from how they’re feeling and using that feedback, to make good decisions, whether it be about your policies, or your just your operating plan, overall? Training, right, lots of conversation around skill development, and how important that is, to being sure you’re providing the necessary skill development to keep your employees growing, engaging advancing in their careers. And that’s very important when you make that connection towards retention of your employees, right, keeping them engaged in the work that’s happening within your business. And of course, technology now plays a big role in that skill development, offering online courses offering the ability to tap in and get your skill development. You know, I talked about this example and other conversations, but it has stuck with me, you know, talking to a client, and she was telling me how, you know, she went from all of her employees in one place to her employees in multiple states. And she said, I talked to them and said, hey, you know, I want to be sure you guys strengthen your communication skills, I want to be sure all of you are working together as a team. So she collaborated with them, they developed all of the topic. And then, you know, leveraging a learning Essentials program through Paychex, she was able to develop a curriculum, and she like they loved it, you know, then she like that it would hear from them every month, and they would start just giving me recommendations of the topics they wanted to learn more about. So then it also, you know, became this really collaborative experience, not just for the leader, the HR leader, but also for her employees, because she really felt good that she was making an impact on the things she heard from them that they need it.

Steve 23:29
Yeah, that is a super example. Because again, that’s another nuance or consideration of going to a hybrid model or a fully remote model, right learning and development, commitment to skill development, what new skills may need to be emphasized, we see that some of the report as well, right, some of the HR leaders responding that, hey, there’s some different skills here that we need to make sure we’re developing in our teams if we’re going to work in this way, right. You mentioned collaboration, communication, working, working effectively, we’re talking on zoom right now. And it’s a great conversation, we can see each other etc. It’s not still not exactly the same, right? If it were to be we were in a meeting room, right, somewhere together. So there are some acknowledging that there are some differences and how to address them is it’s a great point. Awesome.

Alison Stevens 24:14
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it’s nuanced, right? Sometimes it’s needs to be customized or, you know, adapted, aligned with the culture of your organization. And, you know, just going back to creating those open lines of communication, I think, to me, like that’s really kind of the foundation of as we think about the future as we think about you know, how do we how do we create more runway not just for HR professionals, but for organizations as a whole. I think it’s just continuing to stay open to the needs of the needs and the the suggestions and questions that your employees might happen. How do you continually find ways creatively, innovatively to engage them and be sure you understand what they need? Whether it’s their first job, or you know, or they’re getting ready to retire.

Steve 25:04
Yeah, things could change. We don’t know, right? No one predicted pandemic, right, a couple of years back. That’s why I’ve never really liked those like prediction posts, no matter if it was technology predictions or workplace predictions. Weren’t pretty, I don’t, I don’t really like them. And then when the pandemic came, right, and became now a thing in our lives now for two and a half years, and who knows, maybe forever. That’s when I said to myself, Okay, I was right. Like, we should never read anybody’s prediction post, because actually, this many people zero predicted that right? The most impactful thing that’s happened to really any of us probably in the last I don’t know, probably since 9/11, I suppose. Right?

Alison Stevens 25:43
And nobody saw it coming.

Steve 25:47
I do think like we were talking before the show, and we specifically we’ve talked about hybrid and remote a little bit. And I felt I mentioned to you before the show, like I feel like that’s two thirds of every conversation I have, or the media that we’re doing here on the podcast network are some of the other things we do or have something to do with it. I was watching CNBC news this morning, where the CEO of one of the biggest tech companies in America are really in the world was talking about it at length. And there’s a data point I want to read out from from the from the pulse of HR surveillance, and we can maybe just talk about it for a second. And it’s this one, the number of companies often remote or hybrid work increased by 124%. And I believe that’s year over a year, that’s not 124% Since the beginning of the pandemic, that’s year over year, right. So that is bad. And the number of employers offering flexible schedule is really, really important. And maybe an underrated kind of sub topic here was up by 50%, year over year. That’s a very big number, too. So Allison, from what you’re hearing from your clients, and your thoughts, as an HR pro been doing this a long time? Is that do we need to stop debating whether or not we shouldn’t be doing this? And just accept? This is how it is? And let’s figure out how to make it work for as best we can for everyone.

Alison Stevens 27:04
Unequivocally, yes, I absolutely believe that I think it’s high, whether it’s remote, flexible work schedules. As humans, we need to adapt to where we are right now. Right in the world. And it’s really important that once we accept it, then also making sure, like, our mindsets are also advancing and adapting to this new reality. So you know, things like from an HR perspective, making sure and again, we’re doing it all the time, we’re supporting our clients and making good decisions about about hybrid or remote work. For example, I think we talked we helped a client, not too, not too long ago, where we help them kind of engage our employees ask questions, figure out what was going to work best to make sure their safety was top of mind. And and we helped them develop a split schedule, right. So that some employees were going to work like Monday, Wednesday, scheduled some Tuesday, Thursday. And then, you know, if, if you had more work to do that required you to come in the office, you could kind of apply elect to come in on Fridays, right? And this is like, seemingly like, wow, that’s a pretty basic, foundational decision to make. And it’s been working for the for the company, which is fantastic. But at the same time, it’s also okay, also keeping in mind things like your performance management practices, right now they need to be, you know, agnostic to, to where or how you’re performing your work.

Steve 28:33
Right, and make sure you’re not being biased by that presenteeism bias, right, or that recency bias of the manager saw you more than they physically saw the other person, right?

Alison Stevens 28:43
That’s right, or they think, like so avoiding, you know, right, of absolutely avoiding, you know, demonstrating any preferential treatment or actions towards the employees who are visible in the office versus not. So, you know, making sure you’re consistently delivering one on ones not just to the employees who happen to be a close proximity if you’re a leader who’s working in the office, if you’ve made that decision to do so. So then you start to really see how, again, if we go back to like, since 2028, our function is not rested, how there’s still so much, so many layers of consideration that still need to be made from an HR department, from that person who has HR is their responsibility to be sure that if you’re making that decision around hybrid, hybrid, flexible, remote work, you also have to be sure that you’re also progressing and advancing your policies, your procedures as it relates to HR to be aligned with that, that new reality.

Steve 29:45
And theirs. Thank you, Alison. And there’s some great ideas and insights in the HR report some of the things you can do, as an organization as an HR team, to try to meet employees where they’re at to try to support them to try to improve things like improve your onboarding processes, improve your retention specifically, we’ve talked a ton about remote, maybe innovative my file because I feel like that’s on my mind like 24/7. You mentioned we sort of started at the top of the conversation with HR has not rested since 2020. So I’d like to then circle back to that, and then tie in Alison, what you’ll be doing, what you’ll be speaking about at the HR tech conference, which, as we speak, is about a month away as this as you’re listening to this is maybe a week or two away, for folks who might be attending, I’d love for you to share a little bit about what you’d be because you’d be talking about HR people, you know, in a technology to sound but also about HR itself. And I think that’s important, because we just said at the top, HR doesn’t always look after their own well being and their own career development and their own their own sales, I’d love for you to maybe spend a couple minutes talking about what you’ll be sharing with HR tech.

Alison Stevens 30:53
So very excited. And this is going to be my first HR Tech experience. So I’m looking forward to being there live very excited. So Nathan Shapiro, and I, he and I are going to be talking about how HR technology can help avoid a great HR resignation, we started to see some data I’m sure you’ve seen, you know, just through social media through things like LinkedIn, right, we see a lot of HR professionals are switching jobs, changing jobs, leaving HR to be consultants, right, or whatever that whatever the various trends kind of all rolling up to, you know, HR professionals having now an increasingly high turnover rate. And so Nathan and I are going to talk a bit about the evolution of the HR professional, the evolution of the HR function. And, you know, we know that so many HR professionals and leaders, right are working tirelessly to, you know, be innovative, be creative, creating new processes, making great strategic decisions, to help advance their company so that they can impact the employee experience, which we’ve talked about is so important right now. So we’re going to kind of dive into that and talk about how technology really can be the answer to help bring companies into the future and continue to have them be successful, and how you know, HR professionals themselves, whether they’re leaders or just working inside the HR function, how leveraging technology can really help them be more innovative, more creative. I mean, really help them save time, so that they can spend time more focused on the strategic elements of their work, dive into the needs of their employees and help their organizations thrive.

Steve 32:53
Yeah. And that’s such an important topic, Alison, thank you for sharing some of the details of that. I do encourage folks who are going to be out of HR tech to come see Alison and Nathan, as well, they’re going to be great. And but yeah, that’s been kind of the promise of HR technology. As long as I’ve been involved in the space, right, it’s going to help us help all of us elevate what we’re doing as HR professionals, why we got into HR in the first place, nobody gets into HR, right, like we talked a minute ago about nobody gets an HR for tracking down employee hours, right? Right. We’re not here for the spreadsheet, 75 payroll adjustments on Friday, which sucks so but paychecks has some great tools to help you with that, too. That’s another thing. And I will shout out one more thing, I can’t give it away. But if you are at an HR Tech, I do encourage you to come see Alison and Nathan, but also go by the Paychex booth. I know they’re going to be demonstrating a new tech innovation, which I have seen I got a sneak preview of this, I saw a demo of this. Nathan might have even given the demo for us for what I remember. Not sure, but it’s really really cool. And I believe you’ll be able to just say without giving it away actively participate yourself in the technology demonstration that we haven’t either, but I’m gonna go do it myself and probably hopefully, like record it and film it and we’ll put it out on video or something. But it’s really, really cool. So shout out to them. They they’re doing some really great things. So okay, I think Alison, I’m gonna let you go because you’ve got literally hundreds of clients and millions of employees to support besides talking to me, but I do appreciate you taking some time to come back to the to the HR happy hour. It’s great to see you again.

Alison Stevens 34:28
Great to see you and I look forward to seeing you in person in a few weeks.

Steve 34:32
We will see you at HR Tech, we’ll hang out maybe we’ll like do something we’ll do some video or something. That’d be great. So here’s what I’d like you to do, of course, Paychex.com. I will put another link to the Pulse of HR report in the show notes as well that we’ve been talking about, for most of the show. Absolutely worth the read. It’s a free download free resource. It’s 30 pages long and it’s full of great information. I highly encourage you to check fit out and of course, HR tech conference as well. If you hadn’t made your plans to attend, you can go to HRtechnologyconference.com as well get get involved. Come see Alison and Nathan and the team at Paychex there. So Alison, great to see you again. Look forward to seeing you soon.

Alison Stevens 35:14
Thank you so much, Steve. Great to see you. I appreciate you.

Steve 35:17
Thank you and thanks for listening everyone. That’s it for today’s HR Happy Hour Show. Remember to check out all the links I put in the show notes and we will see you next time and bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai