Beyond EX Surveys: Building a Strategic HR Vision – Mary Poppen

[00:00:00] Nena Dimovska: Welcome to People Pulse. Today we are thrilled to have Mary Poppen join us. Mary is a dynamic leader with a wealth of experience as a Chief Customer Officer, author, speaker, and advisor. She’s an expert in customer and employee experience, and one of the best individuals to speak on the critical connection between the two.

[00:00:22] Nena Dimovska: Mary’s thought leadership extends to her role as a faculty member, as at the Michigan State University, where she teaches in the master’s program for Customer Experience Management. As the author of “Goodbye, Churn. Hello, Growth!”, she offers invaluable insights into driving business growth through enhanced experiences. Beyond her professional accomplishments, Mary enjoys traveling, exercising, and wine tasting with friends. In today’s conversation, we’ll explore how to prioritize actions in employee experience programs, overcome key challenges, and discuss the emerging HR roles we expect to see by 2030. I hope you’ll enjoy this insightful discussion with Mary Poppen.

[00:01:02] Nena Dimovska: Welcome.

[00:01:02] Nena Dimovska: Now, In, in talent management, HR often focuses on identifying specific roles to address, let’s say, immediate business challenges, you know. Making it a highly situational process.

[00:01:16] Nena Dimovska: However, balancing this with a long term strategy is, I would say, much more essential. How would you advise, how would you approach resolving this paradox?

[00:01:27] Mary Poppen: I think and I get excited about this too. You’re asking me all these questions. If the world looks like this the ideal solution in my mind would be you have a strategic workforce plan, right? Where HR is in the boardroom discussing, how the people strategy aligns to the business strategy.

[00:01:46] Mary Poppen: So in this scenario, HR is in the room to share how the company can achieve the desired business strategy through people. Because the HR team has the best knowledge of where employees are with their skill sets. You know, what kind of capabilities? Who are we hiring? Where are we hiring from? If you want to grow in, you know, from North America into Europe. What is that going to take from an employee, you know, skill set, pipeline, all of those things.

[00:02:16] Mary Poppen: And when HR too often, right, HR is just told, here’s our business strategy. So like, go figure out how we can accomplish it. Instead of HR bringing those insights of what we already have in the company and where the gaps are against that business strategy. So to me, like creating a strategic view of the workforce, would highlight the current gaps against the business strategy, and it would allow the company to align priorities and move faster toward their strategy, right, toward their desired business outcomes.

[00:02:49] Mary Poppen: So balancing the immediate needs with long term talent strategies really requires aligning the short term role requirements to long term development paths. And that’s where HR as a strategic arm of the company can be so critical, right? And so impactful. But it involves fostering a culture of internal mobility, of investing in skills training, which is becoming more and more important and more desired by employees in a succession plan, right? To meet evolving business demands. So it really needs to be looked at as a strategic plan, strategic opportunity. By the way, one of the things I recently read was the great resignation 3.0 is going to be because employees aren’t getting skills development and the career paths aren’t clear and skill development isn’t a priority for the company.

[00:03:46] Mary Poppen: So employees are going to be leaving for companies that, you know, reward them, recognize them, but give them significant skill development opportunities.

[00:03:57] Nena Dimovska: Yeah, of course. I mean, I could totally understand as a, millennial now being in the workforce. I see it across my peers too, that people are now, and I think this is not just generational thing, but, you know, people are just hungry for knowledge and for improving their skills. I think that we’re, you know, adjusted to changes more. And these changes come with new skills development needs. And if you don’t get that in the workplace, then I can understand how it can bring disengagement or dissatisfaction. I really appreciate your emphasis here on, you know, just appreciating people and giving them opportunities in the workplace. Now, I was impressed by your insights during a recent webinar on employee experience best practices. Could you perhaps just summarize some of the key strategies that HRs use to leverage data driven insights and improve engagement?

[00:05:02] Mary Poppen: Absolutely. And by the way, thanks for attending the webinar.

[00:05:06] Mary Poppen: It was a pleasure. I enjoyed it.

[00:05:08] Mary Poppen: I love this topic. So employee engagement is definitely a journey, not a destination to use an old phrase that I think is still really applicable. But doing an engagement survey once a year just to see scores change, isn’t enough.

[00:05:24] Mary Poppen: Companies have to invest in a continuous feedback and action cycle. So surveys are one piece of the puzzle, but focus groups, exit interviews, manager one on ones, right? These are also really key in creating a holistic view of the employee, you know, engagement and experience. Also having multiple channels for feedback and insight, is going to drive more informed actions that are going to have a greater impact ultimately on not only improving, but sustaining employee engagement. And that’s a key piece I want to double click on too, is like an engagement program that makes improvements in employee engagement, you know, yay, but companies can’t pat themselves on the back and stop.

[00:06:08] Mary Poppen: They have to keep going and focus on ways to sustain it. So I also want to double click on, it’s not just HR’s responsibility. Again, I’ll take the opportunity to say, this is what leaders, managers and employees, you know, should be getting involved in and helping to take action. And actions that go across business silos and cross functional, you know, priorities and execution.

[00:06:33] Mary Poppen: So I’ve said this already a couple of times probably during this podcast, but those things are so important to really making organizational change,

[00:06:42] Nena Dimovska: Yeah, true. I guess this shared accountability is one of the foundations in order to come to this cultural transformation. And it completely makes sense. Yeah. Because without it you know, the responsibility and the success of these programs goes beyond HR. It’s with leaders at every level and with every employee and it’s just gets much bigger importance across the organization.

[00:07:14] Mary Poppen: And it takes time.

[00:07:15] Nena Dimovska: Yeah.

[00:07:16] Mary Poppen: You’re not going to get results overnight. Some, right? Some actions are quick, but some are long term, so it’s also building that sort of patience and long term focus, right? On actions and measurement.

[00:07:28] Nena Dimovska: Yeah. I mean, such a large culture shift, usually doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time. Of course. Thank you. Thank you for putting that out. Now, from your experience, how would you say that employee experience technology justifies its value. So how would you advise organizations to strike the right balance, to maximize value and minimize this resistance that we discussed about due to the change management complexities?

[00:07:59] Mary Poppen: So there are so many solutions. I think we could just agree, add value, like Semos Cloud, right? There’s so much reward and recognition and focusing on communications and the whole employee experience is so critical. But if you go to the CFO with you know, anecdotal stories: this is going to help our people be happy and the fluffy metrics, you know, they’re going to be like: No, I’m not going to give you know, thousands of dollars to spend on just happiness. Which of course is a miss because yeah, if you want to focus on happiness. But you have to align it to the business impact to really get investment.

[00:08:40] Mary Poppen: And so, you know, when you think about focusing on value, there really should be an HR tech strategy that outlines what are the key measures of success that are aligned to the business outcome. For each solution that you’re proposing to roll out, right? And if this plan is in place before a solution has rolled out, so much easier to show where progress is being made and where the gaps are and where you can show progress, you’re going to continue to get investment.

[00:09:09] Mary Poppen: So that part is really important. And the challenge many times for companies that I work with, part of the challenge is defining what are the metrics that make sense, to show value, right? And just show improvement to get the investment. Once you define that, then you can track and analyze those metrics right from the very beginning.

[00:09:31] Mary Poppen: So hopefully, you know, your HR tech provider comes with shared value metrics already. So they can help you make that business case and help you define what to measure. But justifying the value of each employee experience tech really involves demonstrating the impact on productivity gains, improved employee satisfaction, reduced turnover rates, you know enhanced customer satisfaction and experiences.

[00:09:59] Mary Poppen: So if you can link it to those things. You’re going to have a lot more buy in across the organization. But regarding your change management question, I think organizations what I’ve seen addressed really well is it’s companies that involve stakeholders early and they get that buy in, they build cross functional champions.

[00:10:21] Mary Poppen: So those employees in the company that are out there saying, you know, you should adopt this to their colleagues, right? That really helps. And then providing training and showcasing the tangible benefits that like with them, what’s in it for me and being able to communicate that. So for change management, and of course, thinking about the timing of the rollout is important too.

[00:10:44] Nena Dimovska: Thank you for that. And you mentioned that the value of HR tech has to be linked to broader business goals. So how it helps businesses achieve their strategy. Can you perhaps share either a story or an example of some metrics that have been useful? To evaluate this return on investment from various HR tech tools.

[00:11:13] Mary Poppen: Let me share a story about employee engagement solution and the impact on the business. So there’s 2 different ones that are really impactful, but I’ll pick the large airline who shall remain nameless, had adopted an employee listening and engagement strategy, where we were then able to take that data and link it to on time performance impacts and safety, which is arguably way more important.

[00:11:43] Mary Poppen: Although it depends on the people you ask who are in flight that want to land on time, right? But we were able to find insights in the employee feedback that directly tied to whether the hub we were measuring, you know, whether on time performance was improving or not and the safety employee safety incidents.

[00:12:05] Mary Poppen: So we were able to help the organization focus on actions that would help in those 2 areas. And over a 6 month period, there were significant improvements involved. That is the kind of measurement and application to action and investment that shows, you know, we’re doing the right things to make improvements in the most important things to our company.

[00:12:27] Mary Poppen: Thank you. Thank you for that. Now leaders today like you briefly mentioned, must influence a range of hot button issues from, like we mentioned, return to work policies, change management initiatives… And you know, doing just a lot more with less. Storytelling here is a powerful tool, for clarifying the reasons behind this initiatives and not just helping to get everybody on board. Is there anything that from your perspective you would like to emphasize? Now, where should they be careful? So, great question. . I know some great storytellers. I am not a great storyteller but I’ve had to learn based on my audience, whether it’s the board or it’s a customer executive team. Or it’s my team, right? What are the right messages that I need to put together to get buy in and help sort of rally people around what the value I’m trying to provide or the impact I’m trying to share, influence people. Ultimately great storytellers with an ask at the end or are able to get. You know, more buy in and influence people, you better. But part of being a good storyteller is linking what’s important to your audience to write the story.

[00:13:54] Mary Poppen: And so starting with, if it’s an executive team starting with the headline, right? Sort of like, what is that big wow impact that you’re going to be talking about? Because otherwise, if you start with too much detail and you start right telling just like, yeah… including too much detail without what the outcome is going to be, you sort of lose, lose the audience.

[00:14:16] Mary Poppen: And so it’s getting that attention grabber at the beginning for why should I listen to you? And then being able to share what you’ve learned and wrap kind of the details around. The organizational outcome or what’s important to the audience. And then, of course, being concise and articulate and using data, using facts and tapping if you can tapping into the emotion so winning kind of the hearts and minds of the audience through your storytelling is the most impactful, impact that I’ve seen. And so I think companies should offer their, especially their leadership opportunities for storytelling, learning, or skill development.

[00:15:01] Nena Dimovska: Skill development, again.

[00:15:02] Mary Poppen: Yeah. I think it is… it’s a skill and some people have it naturally and some people really struggle.

[00:15:09] Mary Poppen: So if you can have a framework to sort of build around that’s going to help you. But I do think if you’re in the boardroom, it’s about highlighting the impact right away and then sharing that detail and the facts underneath.

[00:15:23] Nena Dimovska: Thank you. That was amazing answer, you know, so just to summarize it, you know, align the messaging with the goals, tailor it to the audience, tap into the emotions, as you say, using data selectively, you know, being also, culturally sensitive, authentic and practice, practice, practice, practice. Thank you.

[00:15:45] Nena Dimovska: That was very, very useful.

[00:15:46] Nena Dimovska: And the last question for today throughout your career, you’ve undoubtedly faced crossroads where some tough decisions had to be made. Can you share with the audience? What are your guiding principles when you have to make a pivotal career decision? And what are some of the lessons learned, you know, sharing your secret sauce for navigating such critical moments?

[00:16:13] Mary Poppen: So I’ve definitely had some crossroads between different roles to pursue and also different companies. For me, it really comes down to what is the impact that I can have in this role or in this company, who are the people that I’m going to be working with? Super important to me and the culture of the company.

[00:16:39] Mary Poppen: So I need to be where I see that the mission of the company is making an impact for people. That the people I’d be working with are, you know, just good human beings who want to do make an impact, do good things, work together, collaborate. And then, I mean, there’s other things to focus on variables too, with, you know, the table stakes of your, you know, compensation and pay, et cetera.

[00:17:06] Mary Poppen: But, that the initial decision making really comes to: does it align with my core values and where I want to be in the future. So when I’m making these decisions, I generally, I go old school and write down kind of the pros and cons. But I have a personal board of directors. These are friends, family, colleagues, mentors especially my husband, my biggest champion who I talk through all this stuff with.

[00:17:38] Mary Poppen: So if you don’t have a personal board of advisors, I highly recommend that to anybody listening because these are the people that know you well, and they can listen to, you know, your excitement level for the new opportunity. Where you think you could have an impact also point out some blind spots, maybe that you’re not considering.

[00:17:58] Mary Poppen: Right? And so that’s been really impactful for me. I think the lessons learned over the years are the importance of not letting the imposter syndrome hold, you know, hold you back. And looking at the long term aspect of the decision. Is what I do now going to allow me to be where I want to be three years or more from now?

[00:18:20] Mary Poppen: So sometimes it’s hard to know, but those are the things that have gone into my decision making.

[00:18:27] Nena Dimovska: Thank you, Mary, for sharing your insights on influent customer experience, AI, and the evolving HR landscape. I hope you found Mary’s advice on using data to drive lasting change as valuable as I did. For more, check out her book, “Goodbye, Churn. Hello, Growth!”. Thank you for tuning in. Subscribe for more industry insights, and together we’ve just unlocked another heartbeat of the workplace.

[00:18:53] Nena Dimovska: Until next time, keep investing in your people and driving change.