In the inaugural episode of my Off the Clock podcast, three amazing players across the vast HR ecosystem weighed in on a range of related hot topics — from the impact of paid time off on productivity to the pandemic’s enormous impact on the way we work.
They included Andrea Bunch, a leader in HR for more than a decade who is VP of HR at CapRelo, the nation’s largest privately owned moving and logistics company, Ulises Orozco, a serial entrepreneur whose PTO Genius reimagines what employees can do with paid time off, and Cameron Sadler, who went from scrubbing toilets and teaching engineering to becoming Founder and CEO of NewCraft, which uses patented technology that connects developers to employee platforms with a single API.
As many as 55% of working Americans don’t use all their PTO, says Uli, who over time realized that companies sincerely want employees to recharge their batteries and feel great, as well as be seen as great places to work. It was refreshing to hear after being in the software space where Uli encountered his share of toxic masculinity.
In many cases, HR is a cost center. but his mission was to turn it into a revenue center — building key performance indicators into his company’s technology and arming clients with critical statistics. This would help HR execs create a compelling business case that transcends a soft-benefits recharge and better work-life balance by measuring PTO’s direct effect on absenteeism and medical loss ratios. It’s playing well in the C-Suite where he has noticed more CFOs are showing that they care about their workforces.
But it’s also important that HR embrace a more holistic or strategic view of how their people engage with the organization, its culture and purpose, according to Andrea. Some employers may be confronted with seasonality aspects of product manufacturing, she explains, while others need to leverage partnerships with contractors to help build business.
When Cam launched his amazing HR tech startup, the goal was to make employment magical. He was drawn to this space thinking primarily about his former students and that finding the right job in the right environment either made or broke their lives. It was heartening for him to see innovators rushing to build new services for dramatically different workplaces, onsite COVID-19 testing for employees, Zoom call backgrounds or novel ways to communicate with teams over audio. “That remote work Gold Rush was really eye opening,” he remarks.
Productivity software enabled Andrea to easily see how employees in a boots-on-the-ground culture were spending their time during the pandemic. What her firm realized was that people tend to be more productive when they’re working from home than in an office setting where there are countless distractions. Like so many other organizations, her workforce toiled away remotely not only from a safety perspective, but also to keep the business afloat, soulful, mindful and healthy during a challenging time.
Every HR decision must take into consideration that employees are key stakeholders who share in the profits, which Andrea says will bode well for career development, as well as helping build a business.
Click on the following link to watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIGBq-ucJdI&t=1s
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