How to make your business explode (2024) | HR HEROE'S S1 E4

[0:00]  I think that employers are going to see a lot more turnover than expected right now turnover is at an all-time high just get your work done you're just another number you're lucky to be here what's your two cents on kind of that dichotomy I think it's really important that employers take that empathetic and compassionate approach they're going to see such a difference in how their employees act the morale the culture their performance statistically is only 5% of employees actually access an EAP program so we've got a lot of businesses out here that talk about supporting large organizations with eaps but people still don't access those resources employees are always unless they're truly happy in their workplace they're always going to chase the next best thing more money whatever it may

[0:58]  be all right everybody welcome back to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast especially for a brand new episode in our HR Heroes series you know on this podcast we talk about the hearts and the hustle that are necessary for success in business and in life and I'm incredibly excited to bring my guest on today Jamie Palace she's the founder and CEO of j palace LLC and a principal and vice president of Human Resources recruiting at rkp advisory as well Jamie thank you so much for being with me today I really appreciate it thank you for having me so Jamie you know there is amazing science that's out there about the practice of gratitude and the impacts on

[1:47]  our own personal life to Express gratitude to somebody else and have them say something that they are grateful for not only impacts the people who are sharing but everybody else around them and I just want to start off the episode by saying how grateful I really am for having you you here today and if you want to take a couple seconds what are you grateful in your world today I'm grateful for being here as well um thank you for finding me on LinkedIn and asking me to join your podcast um I'm super excited about it it's going to be awesome well you know I want to give a couple seconds to introduce you to the audience you know like you said you and I connected on LinkedIn and I've been on a mission to share the insights the tactics and the approach to HR because in our world of business today and in life in general it seems like we're losing so much of the human element and

[2:36]  when you and I spoke first we talked about one of your human experiences in college and you made the incredibly scary jump from being and studying for a Nursing degree and then realizing that it just wasn't the right fit for you but you still wanted to help people in some other capacity and something that you said was you were taking a course on Industrial and organizational psychology and you had a professor say hey Jamie I think you might want to pursue HR so why don't you tell us a little bit about that early nursing experience for yourself and then let's dive a little bit deeper into your background as well yeah so I originally um applied for nursing school got in completed about three and a half years and just before my last semester I was like this isn't for me but I love the aspect of helping people didn't

[3:24]  really know what I was going to do um or where I wanted to take my career from there sat down with my parents I sat down with counselors at school trying to figure it out switched my major to um psychology and biology and I was you know obviously just going through the motions at that point figuring out what to do next took an IO psychology class and was suggested that this may be a good route for me from there I started doing some research on human resources and how you know there are similarities with iOS psychology and HR and what my

[4:12]  next steps could be I then got a internship in HR at a construction management firm in New York City and fell in love with it and then worked my way up the ladder from there I mean that what I wanted to really talk about today was that scary experience right and I feel like so many people today in especially in the younger demographic right we're both in our 30s we go through school and we're told that like this is the path that you're going to go down so make a choice stick with it and then so many people get into their field or start experiencing the nuances of even their Nursing degree right and they're like this just isn't for me so that com type of conversation you were having with your parents about like I just don't think this is for me let's walk through that a little bit and

[4:59]  how scary that was and some of the steps that you took to kind of refortify your mindset to be able to say I'm going to choose a different path what was that like oh I was terrified especially so young like there's so much pressure on everyone to figure out what you want to do at 17 years old when you're applying for colleges like you're so young do you really know what you want to do at that point um so obviously like three four years later as you're going through the motions of taking the courses and seeing if this is really for you I was like it there's that feeling of like I'm just not happy so obviously my parents were very supportive and they wanted to see me happy and you know we're going to support any decision that I made and what I wanted

[5:46]  to do with my future and I'm very appreciative and grateful for that um speaking with the school a little different you know they're always pushing you to finish your track are you sure you want to change it's going to add an extra semester whatever it may be to graduate but in the end it was the best decision they made so that even with that fear put it aside yeah I know that like that fortifying our mindset right is just like such a process that we have to be happy I think emphasis on that is just so important I've seen so many people in the older Generations pick a path of life and then they look back 25 30 years later and they're like oh my gosh I never was truly in alignment with who I wanted to be in this world and like that

[6:33]  is a sense of regret that I would never want to have and so I'm just so proud of you for making that scary change but I know there's so many other people out there who want to make that change too but they just don't know where to get started you know what I mean it's so crazy because I mean we're young we're in our 30s but even at the time when I was changing Majors no one really did that you kind of just stuck your course but ever since I made that change I guess over the past like couple of years I've realized that so many people now are okay with making that change and honestly that makes me very happy um and I know I told you last time hopefully at some point I could take my business at j palace LC and expand it to working with college students or even high school

[7:23]  students and helping them figure out like what what is your path what do you want to do or how are you going to prepare for your future um if you're not happy okay then let's figure out your next steps or how could we prepare you for that interview that you have coming up or whatever it may be um I want to be a resource for people of all ages and all steps of their career and I'm so glad that you brought that up because Human Resources right I think like we talked about when we first connected that so many businesses have lost the human element El of business yes but also the human element of life and especially when we think about our professional careers like everybody says you have to pick something you have to stick with it don't give up on it and that entire experience is so stressful

[8:11]  especially for younger people and so I was hoping that you were going to bring that up because I was going to be my next point about you know supporting the generation of coming up behind us because those are truly the people who really need the support to make those scary types of decisions yeah so let's talk a little bit about um j palace LLC and the other work that you're doing as well give us an overview of your company and what your mission is from an HR perspective to help organizations make these changes toward the future of leadership yep so j palace LLC is a full service HR Consulting and recruiting company um and my goal is to help Empower organizations to kind of uplift their employees because in the end employees and people are your biggest asset without them you don't

[9:00]  really have your company um so my goal is to work with work with organizations and change their mindset to take an employee approach first um a people approach first I should say um it's so important that organizations put more of a focus on their employees even if it's just a a weekly check-in or whatever it may be because in the end we're still human so yes it's good to have that day-to-day Hustle but we get so lost in it and we're still human humans still need validation they still need recognition they still

[9:48]  need whatever it may be so I want to help organizations you know pull that out and and and help them you know re recognize and and give their employees the engagement that they need so what are some of the biggest challenges that you see from your position in HR right now when you go into your Consulting gigs and you engage with different like leadership groups what are some of the biggest challenges that these organizations face and not having that people first mentality what are some of the things that you see I would say leadership by in so let's say um leaders don't necessarily prioritize not that they're not

[10:34]  prioritizing putting people first it's just that they're getting so caught up that they may forget to you know so I want to help Implement different ways so it's just streamlined you don't you don't have to think about it it just happens naturally you know so what are some of the I would say best practices because you and I both come from I would say a technologically native world right we were born in the 1990s we grew up with te a little bit before technology right but now we've seen it explode in our lifetime so what are some best practices and Innovative approaches that you've seen and or you've implemented with different organizations when it comes to I would say overcoming some of those human first

[11:21]  challenges like what are some of the suggestions and Innovative approaches that you use so my biggest suggestion to employers or leaders managers how however you want to phrase it is don't wait until the annual review that onetime review have weekly check-ins do quarterly reviews whatever it may be but speak with your employees give them current feedback give them positive feedback what constructive feedback whatever it is but it has to be current if you wait until the end of the year and and it's December January you're rolling out your performance reviews The connection's Lost where is that connection again going back we're

[12:08]  still human we still need that connection we still need validation whether it's good or bad so do it more often to even if it's a f minute weekly check-in that's all you need let your employees feel valued and I've seen um organizations Implement that and they'll come back and be like wow I've seen such a huge difference in our workplace culture and from there when you see a difference in your workplace culture performance is automatically going to improve so that that's my that's where I typically start and I've seen I've seen it do wonders um if you're looking at more of like a well-being kind of side of it I like to implement um Wellness programs

[12:55]  so let's let's Implement awareness and educational seminars or um let's send out did you know emails about certain mental health topics whatever it may be how can the organization support that employee or their families how whatever it may be whatever struggles they're going through um and I and I've again seen it do wonders this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart right the work that we do here at Francis really is about spreading positivity and encouragement in life but also in the world place and when it comes to Wellness I think so many organizations think about Wellness being like a policy and a procedure right we're going to bring in a fractional therapist or we're going to give you guys access to an app or something like that but those things

[13:41]  unfortunately don't get utilized right they're very much like this is a resource that's available to you guys but that stuff never really does the job yeah and so we always think about how do we spread opportunities of Wellness within an organization and being able to just read a simple text message from our perspective is a conversation starter that gets people on that road right because it like you said a little earlier Wellness is something that we shouldn't have to always think about and I like the way that you phrased that it should happen in the background and so that's why I'm so you know encouraged to work with different types of teams when it comes to this kind of stuff as well and here's an interesting statistic um the national Safety Council came out with a study in 2022 that said organizations today pay $155,000 per employee that has poor mental health in absenteeism loss

[14:31]  productivity and turnover and so if you're thinking about how do you support your organization from a business first perspective it means supporting the people inside the organization so they can show up as their best self every single day which is really interesting to me so when it comes to I would say like the wellness and well-being perspective from your HR landscape what are some of the things that you think about mental Wellness in the workplace especially in this negative and more stress stressful World more than ever are those things important to you or what is what's your perspective on that on mental health and mental well-being in the workplace oh absolutely we should always put that first um I mean again going back to like resources that we were talking about before employeers be like oh well we have an EAP program which is an employee

[15:18]  assistance program they could use that they'll get some free sessions and then they can use you know free therapy sessions and then they could use it through their insurance okay that that's a great resource and glad you have that but let's Implement some other stuff even if it's just a educational piece or um a weekly team meeting on Fridays where you all have lunch together and just separate yourselves from work for a bit but it is so important to put mental health and well-being first in the workplace because again it's it's going to improve your performance so I think it's really important that employers take that empathetic and compassionate approach and they're they're going to see such a difference in how their

[16:05]  employees act the morale the culture their performance and I I don't think that they would have any regrets doing that yeah I mean one of the things that I know statistically is only 5% of employees actually access an EAP program so we've got a lot of businesses out here that talk about supporting large organizations eaps but people still don't access those resources and so you have to find those Gap fillers right that nurture the relationship with the culture that you're trying to establish in your organization that stuff is just so incredibly important and I want to get your two cents on this as well so when we think about the younger generation right like us but more importantly the mid young 20s who are coming into this spith they want to be seen and validated so what do you think

[16:54]  is going to happen in the future if they these new style employees if you will come across old school leadership of just get your work done you're just another number you're lucky to be here what's your two cents on kind of that dichotomy and that friction that's going to be caused I think that employers are going to see a lot more turnover than expected right now turnover is at an all-time high um employees are always unless they're truly happy and their workplace they're always going to chase the next best thing more money whatever it may be and that's because they're not truly happy in their workplace if they're valued and they're recognized then they won't necessarily need to chase the dollar um but I do think that

[17:41]  if if the culture doesn't change in a workplace then retention rates are are going to plummet turnover is going to be through the roof and employ and organizations and employers are going to suffer and there's nothing scarier from a leadership perspective of thinking you're going to hire a team right and then they just turn over because they're not happy in their place and I think that's a different I would say version of the modern work experience is people just aren't going to stick around for an organization who doesn't prioritize them especially from the people and the human element and I know that the younger generation for sure is gonna be like dude I can go on Tik Tok I can hop on Instagram and YouTube I don't need to be here if I'm not happy and like you said it's not about always chasing the dollar

[18:28]  but it's about that fulfillment right we want to live life and be happy as possible yeah yeah it's so one of the questions I have for you oh sorry go ahead no it's okay you can go I was gonna say so my next question for you is what are your personal experiences when it comes to mental Wellness have you ever gone through your own struggles in the environment of work and life and what has kind of the prioritization of your own Wellness kind of represented to you I absolutely have struggled with mental wellness and mental health issues in the workplace and it's intimidating I have to say from personal experience it's very intimidating going into work every day

[19:16]  and truly struggling but if you have the leadership that's going to support you it makes a world of a difference at the time I had my supervisor she she was great she supported me and provided resources and just even just listened not necessarily that we were talking about my mental health issues but when it came to work and what I needed out of work she listened helped me got me to the next step and I couldn't be more grateful for that because so many of the times again going back to what I said earlier everyone gets so stuck in that Hustle

[20:03]  the day-to-day hustle and they have blinders on they're not necessarily paying attention to their co-workers or their employees whoever it may be and it can be very isolating but to have someone that's going to support you listen to you and help you get to that next step it's it's the best feeling ever so I I encourage all supervisor ERS management teams HR whoever it may be to support and listen to your employees because it can make the world of a difference it's fundamental for business success you know one of the things that we talked about and I'm gonna yank out my book really quick which I shared with you previously is the book 12 and a half right by Gary ve who talks about leveraging the necessary or emotional

[20:51]  ingredients for uh for business success and I was like you know what I love his approach to this because when we talk about about things like a positive work environment when we talk about a culture of encouragement and support that's one thing for the team to do it but the leaders of the organization really set the tempo and everything waterfalls down from there and so I love the fact that you're talking about managers and leaders and the SE suite and HR all being those leaders who can waterfall and trickle down positivity because it's very difficult to be a negative person when you're surrounded by leaders who care invest and really think about your wellbeing as a priority and I love the fact that you kind of took it there but you know Gary vaynerchuk so anybody who's watching or listening today go check out this book 12 and a half leveraging the emotional ingredients

[21:38]  necessary for business success it's a great one because it talks about all of the 12 and a half different ingredients so I'm gonna take a little bit of a sidebar here because the 12 and a half ingredients in here Jamie are some really interesting ones but there's a lot in here that a lot of people don't think about so I have a question for you when it comes to empathy why do you think empathy is something that's important for leaders to demonstrate when it comes to supporting their teams they have to be able to not necessarily put themselves in their shoes but they need to be able to see different perspectives so that they could better help and guide that their employees and I think it's very important to be empathetic and compassionate in the

[22:26]  workplace I mean there's like empathy in itself like you said with an honest and open heart and being able to engage in thoughtful conversations and putting ourselves in the shoes to ask how can I support you and understand the human element of like you know a lot of employees show up to work and they carry all of the personal life experiences with them maybe they've had a bad day maybe they were bad news on that day and sometimes we don't show up as our best self so being empathetic from my perspective is a gigantic I would say superpower of the best lead leaders to be able to put themselves in their employee shoes um my next topic of conversation here is I took some polls and asked some questions of my audience and said what type of things do you see in HR what topics what problems what

[23:14]  challenges do we face and the top one that came in was HR is too policy driven and one thing I know about HR in general is we create all these policies and procedures right and there the code that the organization is supposed to live by and a perfect one is the employee handbook and I recently saw you post on LinkedIn about how an employee handbook needs to be reviewed on an annual basis and I love this because organizations are changing so quickly in today's world of business but let's talk about from your perspective why the I would say review of an employee handbook is so important especially on an annual basis so are okay so this isn't is openend

[24:03]  questions there's so much to go in here so yeah yes companies are becoming very policy driven and it could be both beneficial and negative in the workplace um I think to employees it's it's viewed as very negative um but there are aspects that of course are going to be used to protect the company but also protect the employees um I don't think many people actually read the employee handbook and see how beneficial and protective it could be for an employee um so I do encourage that you actually read your employee handbook at some point but policies laws regulations they're always

[24:52]  changing and it doesn't necessarily have to be based off of oh the EOC made to change to this law and we have to update our handbook but it could be as simple as we're changing our Performance Management process from annual reviews to quarterly reviews and bi-weekly check-ins and this is the process and this is how it should be and you're updating your handbook things are always changing and your handbook is essentially a resource for the employer and employee to go and view how things should be done in that organization essentially like a contract if you want to say but um yes I understand

[25:38]  why employees think of policy driven workplaces as a negative thing but in the end it it it it's beneficial to them as well um so yeah I think that honestly should probably be updated more more than once a year but a lot of employers forget the employee handbooks even there so a minimum once a year but maybe even more in my opinion yeah I was thinking about how quickly technology in itself is moving right and it affects everything that we do like the pandemic was a great example right people went into these remote workforces they started working hybrid they doing all these different types of things but I

[26:25]  doubt many organizations actually thought about the process of updating their employee handbook to reflect the new landscape of work no because I think uh if I was in your two cents or in your shoes going into an organization do you ever see organizations that have an employee handbook that was written when the company was founded but it's never been updated oh yeah I was uh working with an organization a few months back and they're like I was doing an HR Gap analysis for them and they were like oh um yeah we have an employee handbook I was like oh okay great when was it written um it was updated last maybe seven years ago I was like okay well a lot has changed since so that that's probably step number one but let's see what else uh where there where there are gaps so yeah no it's employee employers always forget about

[27:14]  the employee handbook yeah I mean I know that we published one back in and this is pointing like fingers directly at me but we published our employee handbook most recently in the mid 2021 and so as I'm listening to you talk about the importance of review I'm like wow me and the team need to go back and look at the employee handbook to be able to make sure we're in alignment with where the world is at today especially um so much has changed since 2021 I know so much seriously even the way that engages with um like AI right I mean Ai and Technology are being emphasized more so than ever they create so many efficiencies and I think being tactical about an expectation about how my team should also utilize technology would be very beneficial um in the

[28:02]  employee handbook and establishing those expectations as well yeah exactly because I think today in the world we're always looking to be more proficient work today takes less time than ever and being able to be as proficient as possible and efficient as possible is uh something that's super important that more people need to pay attention to is your team mostly REM today yeah we're 100% remote so everybody is working from their own devices their own station and I think you know more and more businesses especially today are in a remote setting right and thinking about how we enable our team with the appropriate tools is something we can talk about but if that's in a policy and procedure right in the employee handbook and the expectation is set that's a more effective way of going about that kind of stuff exactly so this this has been very beneficial for me so I appreciate

[28:51]  your consult serves um so a couple things that we talked about today Jamie yeah as we kind of enter our last leg here was we talked about you know the big changes that people make early in their career the importance of happiness and aligning truly with that the fact that organizations are changing quicker than ever but more importantly from your perspective the human element of business and why it needs to be retained and refortified so my question for you is if you had a piece of advice to other HR leaders who are in a situation where their organization just isn't where they know it should be what pieces of advice would you give to them to approach leadership and talk about the changes that are necessary for them to kind of tackle 2024 with a full head of steam from a culture

[29:40]  perspective from a culture perspective specifically I would say from when I say culture I mean from like a human Centric perspective okay um so I would always suggest hearing from your employees first let's imp Implement some Employee Engagement surveys where do the employees think changes need to be made what what do they like about the company what do they not like about the company where do they see the culture um you could learn a lot from your from your employees and a lot of the times leaders don't necessarily like to take I don't want to call it advice but they don't like to hear what employees have to say

[30:30]  but if you take the time to listen and see where their where the employees struggles are what they love about the company you you could really you could go far with that because they're going to be brutally honest so that they could be happy and they could feel valued and they could be recognized in the workplace um so I I I always say start there see what see what the employees say and you could learn a lot I mean even in business right we think about how we can deliver the best service possible and the best form of feedback is your customer and if you think about the role of a leader and a CEO leaders in HR your internal customer is your team and so emphasizing feedback

[31:18]  from them and being able to create a feedback flywheel so we can improve quickly um I think is something that is incredibly ad advantageous and I really suggest that everybody does those things because it's often the people who are right in front of you who have the best sense of what's going on and how we can improve as well but that shouldn't be an intimidating process for leaders today is getting feedback from their team and I think we're seeing a big change in that especially with leaders like you yeah I think a great thing to implement as well um it's a heavy lift but I think a great thing of 360 reviews let's hear from everyone it doesn't have to just be what your supervisor thinks of how you're doing let's let's hear from your colleagues let's hear from your supervisors let's hear from customers or clients that you're working with it's it should be a well-rounded review not just

[32:06]  a a oneperson um approach so 360 reviews are great as well yeah I mean the more feedback we get the better we can be right as simple as that yeah and that's all employees exactly is that feedback right that feedback that validation process well Jamie this has been an absolutely amazing time you giving insights and you know your approach to HR I think you've given some amazing inst examples of what the future is going to look like for you as you start impacting the younger generation to get over some of those scary experiences as well yes I want you to take a couple last seconds here um to share a little bit more about where people can find you and more information about your business so if they find themselves in a place where HR just

[32:54]  isn't having the impact that they're looking for how can they reach out to you and find more about your services yeah absolutely um you can go to my website at jpalace jpalace llc.com so j p a l a llc.com or you can find me in LinkedIn at Jamie j Mii Palace um and I'm I'm open yours so please reach out at any time and i' I'd love to help well guys there you go you heard where you can find Jamie and her approach to supporting the people of your organization thank you so much Jamie for being willing to make scary changes in your life because I know you're going to have a huge impact on the future generations of workers and I know how much you've overcome to get to where you are today in an

[33:42]  entrepreneurial journey and a life Journey perspective and once again I just want to share a little bit of gratitude with you because I know that some of the challenges you face from a mental health perspective have been challenging at times as we all have but one thing I love to emphasize to the audience is is we are all stronger together right you've got friends around you you got people who are W willing to listen and if you're going to lean on others they're gonna lean on you as well so Jamie thank you so much for being a part of this episode I really appreciate you thank you I'm so appreciative thank you for having me all right guys that's been another episode of the heart and hustle podcast a brand new episode specifically of our HR Heroes series So Jamie Round of Applause for you for being an HR hero I appreciate you that you're doing for the Next Generation everybody have an

[34:29]  amazing day thank you so much we'll catch you in the next one