Transforming Workforce Dynamics: Empowering Employment Engagement, Retention and Skills Based Hiring

Episode 6 Transcript 

Chris: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to this episode of the HerSuccess podcast. We are the podcast that interviews highly successful and influential females with the hope of inspiring the next generation of leaders within the engineering and tech world. This podcast is brought to you by Engtal. Engtal is a leading technology and engineering recruitment firm, that really cares about diversity, equity and inclusion.

So much so that we donate a thousand dollars of every diverse placement we make to our very own non profit that works to balance the scales of diversity in these industries. If you are an engineer looking for your next role or you're a company looking to partner with a recruitment firm that really cares about diversity, equity and inclusion, please get in contact.

Today's episode we talk to Michelle Lee. Michelle is the vice president of HR at one of the largest engineering firms in the world. We cannot disclose which company she works for due to their company policy. However, they're a [00:01:00] global powerhouse with over 200, 000 employees across the world. We touch on a number of exciting topics, including how to increase employee engagement and productivity while decreasing churn.

We also explore how to protect your company culture during times of change, such as extensive growth or during a merger or an acquisition. It's a great episode with someone that has a superb background in all the topics we're going to talk about, and I hope you guys enjoy.

Hello everyone and welcome to this edition of the Her Success Podcast. Today I'm joined by Michelle Lee. I'm incredibly excited to chat to Michelle. She has a super impressive background. She started her career 20 years ago as an HR generalist, and today, is a vice president and divisional HR head at one of the largest companies in the world.

 She has a particular passion for employee engagement, employee retention, and generally creating outstanding [00:02:00] cultures. For anyone that knows me, you'll know that I'm incredibly passionate about all of the above. So really excited to, dig into this, with Michelle. So Michelle, thank you so much and, and welcome to the show.

Michelle: Oh, thank you so much, Chris. I'm so excited to be here.

Chris: Excellent. First things first, I'd love to just get an overview, of your background. So, yeah, would you mind telling us, where you came from and, what your careers looked like?

Michelle: Yeah. So when I graduated college, the economy wasn't looking so good.

Probably similar to how it is right now. And, I basically, had a general liberal arts degree when I graduated, wasn't sure what I wanted to do and I started my career in social services. And, really loved the mission and the vision of the company I worked at. I grew into some management positions but felt that there was a lot more that I could do and contribute, on the business side.

So I started to take some HR classes and while I was working in my social services job, I was, networking [00:03:00] with the CEO of one of the, companies, that we partnered with. He asked if I knew of anybody who was interested in an HR role.

Mm-hmm.

I told him I'm interested, but I need training 'cause I don't have any experience. And

mm-hmm.

He, he went ahead gave me all the training I needed and, and took a chance. And it's been, 20 years. I started out in, generalist roles and progressed into management roles. I worked at, small to, mid-size companies primarily. And, now I'm at a big company, so I have experience, both with public, PE and family-owned businesses.

And I like, each of them 'cause they all have, you know, unique perspectives and you learn a lot, from the company cultures.

Chris: Excellent. No, I love that. And yeah, congrats on, you know, obviously a highly successful career.

One of the things that's prevalent, I think in your background, is that kind of increasing employee engagement piece. When I was reading through your, your kind of bio everywhere you've been, it looks like certainly on the face of it, [00:04:00] that that's been a bit of a mission of yours to come in and improve employee engagement and improve, retention. When you do that, when you come into an organization, where do you even start with that?

Like how do you understand the lay of the land and, put things in motion that are gonna kind of improve employee engagement?

Michelle: Yeah, I do that in a couple of different ways. One informal way that I do is I really get connected with the leaders and the employees. Just by walking around and having conversations and finding out about the pulse of the organization, you learn quite a bit.

But then you also want to have data to back that up. So I find that having an engagement survey, really works. And the great thing about it is once you get the data back, you can find out by individual departments what's working and what isn't. So what I've typically done was after the survey results come in, I engage, with the leaders on the leadership team and we talk about their specific areas [00:05:00] and then, we brainstorm some action items, that they can, be empowered to meet with their teams on.

And then they meet with their teams so that way they know that not only are we having the data, but we're also following up. Then there's constant communication. You know, having monthly town hall meetings talking about the survey results, what are we working on so that you keep things in motion because at big companies, for example, processes seems to be a big concern.

So you're not gonna see that being fixed in six months. So you need to constantly, communicate what you're doing and how you're making improvements. And then you see the engagement scores, trend up because you're addressing, the issues.

Chris: Nice. No, that's, that was gonna be one of my, my questions is, you know, I'm, a big, I'm very passionate about employee retention and engagement and, for me, I, I obviously run my own business, but we're a 55, 60 person company and, I, I know everyone personally at the organization.

I can see most of them, from my office. But for an [00:06:00] organization like yours, that I imagine has, you know, people all over the world with a bunch of different cultures. I imagine the things that you are putting in place are probably impacting people that, you know, you, you've maybe never even met before, or you know, that you've certainly not had a, any of personal relationship with.

So it sounds like, one of the crucial things, as simple as it sounds, is really listening, gaining the feedback. Putting in place an action plan, but crucially following up on that regularly and making sure that, it's not something that you address for a couple of months and then forget about, it's something that you regularly, follow up on.

Michelle: Yeah. You have to really make that part of the culture, and show that you, you're really committed to improving engagement. You're not just having them complete a survey and putting it on the shelf for a year. 'Cause then employees will not respond. And engagement, will actually go down if you don't respond to the survey.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, I exactly seen that in, you know, a previous company that I used to work for. It actually had the opposite effect that you hoped it would have. Like, it actually made the [00:07:00] engagement worse because, you know, people were asked for their input and then the input was ignored. So that can have, yeah, like you said, the complete opposites.

 You, you've also been involved in some company acquisitions. I was always, Interested by that. From a culture perspective, obviously that can be a time of a lot of turmoil, a lot of, uncertainty when one company buys another or two companies merge, particularly if you have cultures that are maybe a little different, kind of mashing them together must be a little bit of a challenge.

What kind of things did you do to try and blend those cultures and keep engagement and retention high when the companies were going through some of that, that change?

Michelle: Yeah, so there's a lot of sensitivity involved, with these types of integrations. So what I find is that by figuring out what each of the companies value and trying to find synergies and, and trying to partner up people from the different companies, and learn more about what they, what they wanna do in the future, and [00:08:00] there's a lot of change involved and you know, it's important to communicate. So regular, communication, same thing with engagement surveys that you're letting people know about, the changes that are happening, how it's going to impact them, you, and, and keep things positive and, and do what you can to keep them engaged and use their knowledge.

'Cause a lot of times what I find out from companies you acquire, there's so much trivial knowledge that, you wanna be able to, get in your organization and, and be able to, you know, hold that and make it a competitive advantage. So really leveraging the employees and the talents, from the companies that you're integrating is really key and seeing how they could fit in.

And maybe you can change your organizational structure based on, the talents, that come into the company.

Chris: Yeah. How do you create that culture of communication? Because it sounds like communication is really crucial to everything that you do. You know, that kind of almost over communication, explaining why we're doing things, you know, the business reasons behind there.

But I [00:09:00] imagine that is, it's important to really root that in, in the culture. And if you have a culture where people over communicate and they talk kind of regularly, , a lot of the employee engagement is, is just naturally go going to improve, but how have you been able to create a culture that does naturally kind of communicate?

Michelle: Yeah, I worked with leadership teams and really encouraged them to have town hall meetings on a monthly basis. Now, that might sound like a lot, to some people, but actually people appreciate the frequent updates. And then at the town hall meetings, you would get an update from the CEO. The CFO would talk about the financials.

Then each of the division heads would give a quick update on how things are trending in their business, and then also checking in with the employees and finding out from them what questions they have. And we actually do that in a confidential manner where people can submit, questions because maybe they wanna ask these questions, but they may be too embarrassed to ask in front of a large group.

So sometimes submitting those questions confidentially,[00:10:00] and sometimes, you know, getting those conversations started. Help with communication and transparency and that's how you really started. And then you empower the leaders to have regular updates with their teams, recognize their teams at the department level.

So you do it at the high level, but then each individual managers accountable for the communication as well.

Chris: Excellent. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Submitting, confidential questions, for the town hall, I think it's a very good point 'cause obviously you get. A handful of people that are very bold and are quite willing to put their hand up and say, you know, what is this?

But then there's a large portion of people that are not like that. You know, I'd certainly think in my early career I probably wouldn't have been the kind of person that would've put their hand up and asked a question even if I'd had something that I really wanted to, to know. So I think that's a it's a great idea. And I think what you, you talked about, you know, kind of asking the employees. Well one of the things that we did at a previous, company I worked for was, was reverse mentoring. We got some people that were two or three years into the job to be a [00:11:00] mentor to a C-level exec or a senior vice president and things like that.

And I remember at the time the feedback was incredibly positive because, they really learned so much about the business by speaking to people that were kind of on, on the floor and engaging with the customers and, all of that stuff that, they would never have even known had that reverse mentoring, not happened.

Looking, at your, background and looking at a lot of the, the content, , that you, that you post a lot of it's around self-development. Again, also something, you know, I'm, I'm very passionate about, but to tell me something that you do or something that you've done in the past, there's help with your own personal kind of self-development.

Michelle: Yeah, I'm a very goal-driven person, so I find that I always need to, to work on something. I have a growth mindset. It started back when I got my MBA, I thought it was important for me to round my HR skills and business skills. So I started there and then I kept, taking HR training courses.

But most recently I [00:12:00] enrolled in an executive coaching program and that's been fantastic. , There's 92 modules, there's a hundred hours of coaching. It's very intensive and it's really helped me improve my coaching and consultation skills.

We interrupt this podcast for a quick 30 second introduction to Engtal the host of her success Engtal is a US-based staffing agency specializing in engineering and technology. We have an insatiable passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and part of our mission is to balance the diversity scales in our industry.

We are so tied to this mission that we donate a thousand dollars from every diverse placement made to our very own nonprofit Diversify the Future. We then use that money to fund scholarships for underrepresented groups of people to help them obtain a STEM degree. If you're an engineer or a tech professional looking for a new position, or maybe you're hiring for talent in this space and want a recruitment partner, please get in touch.

Chris: What would [00:13:00] you say is something that you've learned during that course that you've been able to kind of put into practice?

Michelle: Because a lot of times I get into consulting mode, so this forced me to take a step back.

And ask more, questions and have the leaders come up with the insights.

Mm-hmm.

Chris: So when you think back to, you know, through your career, what would you say is one of the biggest challenges, that you've, faced in your career?

Michelle: Yeah, so I would say, change management.

 There was one company that I worked at that merged with a very large company and we were implementing a compensation system. And the most difficult thing was getting leaders on the same page with how we were gonna pay people. There were folks that worked at very large companies and they wanted to pay above market.

And then we had some other, folks on the team that were a little more conservative, so we wanted to be able to retain and have a really high caliber workforce. We had to come [00:14:00] to agreement and alignment on how we were gonna pay people, and it just took us a long time to, get to that decision point.

 It took many conversations. There was a lot of market data involved you know, there was a financial investment that we had to make. So it took just, a long time before, we came to an agreement that we all felt good about. But I'm actually glad that we did that because then we felt that the structure was solid.

Mm-hmm.

And it was something that we can maintain, with the company.

Chris: Yeah, I can see that. I think some of the decisions that we've made as a business that have been maybe the hardest decisions that we've really had to hash out, and we've gone through multiple meetings to agree sometimes they're the ones that really stick and have the bigger impact in, in the business.

 So yeah, I could definitely, definitely see that. Well, one thing you, you posted about on LinkedIn, I think it was, was relatively recently, was skills based hiring. And I was interested looking at that, you know, the idea of hiring based on people's skills rather than, [00:15:00] experience.

Could, could you give us a bit of an overview of firstly, what that is like, you know, kind of expand on, on the concept and, and why you think it's, a good idea?

Michelle: Yeah, so skills based hiring, it's a new trend, that's coming up and a lot of work places are using it. It's really good for technical folks especially.

Engineers because you're looking for specific skills and if you're only looking at the candidate's past experience, but you're not looking at the skills that they acquired, they may not transfer so well into your organization. So it's understanding about what skills do they have as an engineer, how does that align with your organization and, you know, what are some of the higher skills and demand?

What are ones you can train on? So it's really about. Figuring out what skills are right for your workforce, and then you can incentivize people for getting more skills, more education. It, it's very motivating to employees. It's just a different way of thinking. Now it doesn't [00:16:00] work for all positions.

 mm-hmm.

Especially executive positions. You're gonna wanna use more behavioral based interviewing, but for technical positions, I see that skill-based hiring is going to make sure that you have people with the right skill sets in place and help them continue, growing their skills.

Chris: Okay. Awesome. Yeah, that makes, makes a lot of sense.

 We have a lot of people graduating th this time of year. If you were to give advice to someone, let's say there's someone graduating that wants to pursue a similar career to yourself, so they're just starting their, career in, in HR and they're looking to, follow a similar career path.

What advice would you give that individual. I would, ,

Michelle: give them advice on having a lot of informational interviews. Talk to people in the positions that you wanna have in the future and find out more about, their journeys and what they've learned. Because sometimes you could gain some, valuable insights.

Learn more about the profession, see if it's something you really wanna go into. So talking to [00:17:00] people, with a similar interest, that's what I, I advise one of my mentees to do. And he found it extremely helpful 'cause it gave him some direction, on what he wanted to do next. And just by exploring, what are you good at?

You know, if you're in HR, are you good at the analytical side with the data and the compensation and the benefits? Or do you like, more of the employee engagement, talent management? So figure out what you're good at and see how that lines up. 'Cause there's so many different career paths you could take.

So it's important that you're making sure that you're using things that you really enjoy, 'cause you wanna have a long career and you wanna enjoy your career. So make sure that you're having fun while you're doing it.

Chris: Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's great. Great advice. And you know, I, I remember when I graduated it was the same, it was, right in the middle of the, 2008, 2009 recession.

And, I just jumped at the first job, that I was able to get. And, and luckily I, I did very much enjoy it. But, thinking back now that it's probably some advice that I may have given myself as to, you know, look at a [00:18:00] few different paths, really kind of analyze. You know, where, where you think you are strong or what you think you are gonna enjoy and then, you know, kind of go, go down that road.

The thinking kind of, on the mentorship side, you mentioned that you have a, a mentee there. Who would you say was your biggest, kind of mentoring in your career and, and what did they teach you?

Michelle: Yeah, I was fortunate at one company I worked at, I had a fantastic boss and he exposed me to the business.

He was an engineer and he helped me really, understand the technical side. Got me involved, with the senior leadership team early on and just gave me those opportunities. So having a boss that is open that believes in you, gives you opportunities. There's, there's a lot of great people to work with, but make sure that you find a boss that really gives you the ti, you know, the time to develop that values your contributions.

I mean, that's really important.

Chris: Yeah, no, love it. Could, couldn't agree more. And tell me something that, you are excited about [00:19:00] for the future. Like, what are you working on at the moment? And you, you, you obviously have a very growth oriented mindset, like what's the next, you know, kind of, steps and stuff for, for you,

Michelle: yeah, so really with the, the AI and seeing where that's, gonna take things to the future. I know some people have mixed, feelings about that, but I'm excited because I feel that's going to help, you know, offload some of the administrative tasks and, and help you focus more on strategy and being able to be more efficient with what you do and how you spend your time.

So I think, with finding talent, there's some great ways to utilize AI, , starting to do that, you know, and, and looking at your processes. And I think the main thing is looking at the employee experience. How can you use AI to make a great employee experience? So I think we have a lot of opportunities.

There's a lot of mixed, reviews about the employee experience. . I think we should leverage things in a positive way to help employees feel good about the companies they interview with and the people they meet with. [00:20:00] So I'm, I'm excited about that.

Chris: Yeah. No, me, me too. I mean, I think AI and ML and, you know, it's, it's an inevitability of, of the future and I think, you know, the people that harness it and learn from it and, and corral it and use it for, good things like that will, will do, do very well.

 Well, one of the other things that I noticed in your background was that certainly on your LinkedIn, you very much tie employee engagement and retention to, to the overall success of the business. And, you know, it's very clear that, you know, it's not just about. Keeping people happy and retaining them, there is a financial benefit to doing that, and that does translate in, into the bottom line.

In your experience, has that always been the case? Have you always seen when companies have high engagement and they have high levels of retention, that has always translated to a good financial performance? And if so, what? Why do you think that is?

Michelle: Yeah, I definitely have seen the connection to that, , because when, you know, I've worked with companies that, were having, trouble financially, [00:21:00] I found that employees were really struggling. It was hard, to keep them motivated, to retain them because they were concerned about the financials. So knowing that your companies doing well, you're part of the mission, it helps really, motivate people to perform.

And when companies struggle and they, they don't have good leadership in place, , people tend to leave. So, And explore other opportunities. So leadership is key, to success.

Chris: You mentioned that you've, trained leadership and, and one of the things that you do is obviously encourage this, this open communication.

Are there any other areas that you train leadership in relating to employee engagement? Like let's say you have a group of, a division that the engagement's low and the retention is, is quite high. Then you have five managers that are scratching their head saying, you know, well, why do people keep, keep leaving?

What training, you know, what would you recommend for, someone like that?

Michelle: Yeah, so, so what I do is I work with those leaders, spend a lot of time coaching them, and we look at some data. We look at, exit [00:22:00] interviews. Are there trends here? Are people leaving for a similar reason? Is it the compensation?

Is the expectations too high? What, what is the issue? So figure out. What the issue is, what the trends are, and then be able to address that. Because if you don't address it, it's going to keep happening again and again. So getting to the root cause of the problem and taking some action steps really makes a big difference.

Chris: Yeah, no, I, I bet. I think that's, everything I had and, and you know, all we, have time for today, but Michelle, thank you. You know, I thought this was really, really insightful. We've had a handful of guests on, on this show and I think they always bring a slightly different perspective.

And I think your insight into company, employee engagement, retention, particularly when people are going through times of change and how companies can keep retention and, and engagement high during those times has been been really, really useful. So, if anyone wants to reach out to, to Michelle, when this podcast goes live, email and contact details will be there feel free to[00:23:00] and Michelle, thank you so much. You know, I've really, really enjoyed interviewing you and, and having you on the show.

Michelle: Thank you so much. I enjoyed it as well. I appreciate it. Awesome.

Thank you so much for listening to today's HerSuccess podcast, brought to you by Engtal we hope you found this episode, instructive, educational and inspiring. Don't forget to tune in next week.