Welcome to another insightful episode of the AdvantageClub.ai podcast, dedicated to exploring the journeys of inspiring leaders and the complexities of leadership. We are thrilled to host Dana McCormick, Former Chief Human Resources Officer at Simeo, who joined us all the way from the U.S. Let’s take a look at Dana’s story and her valuable insights into HR practices and leadership.
A Chat with Dana
Smiti:
Hi everyone, and welcome to yet another episode of Inspiring Leaders and Leadership, a podcast by AdvantageClub.ai. My name is Smiti, and I’m the founder of AdvantageClub.ai, which is a rewards, recognition, well-being, employee engagement, and end-to-end experience platform. We have an amazing person joining us all the way from the US. We have Dana McCormick, Chief Human Resources Officer at Simeio. Hi, Dana, how are you?
Dana:
Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be here.
Smiti:
We’re super excited to have you here as well. We know a lot about you, Dana, so we’d also love to have our viewers learn a little bit more about you.
So why don’t we start with a little bit about your journey, how you actually got into HR, how you’ve moved to become a Chief Human Resources Officer, and what your roles and responsibilities are today at Simeio.
Dana:
Sure. I would love to share that information. It’s been an amazing journey for me. I got into HR many years ago while I was working part-time, raising a family, and going to school at night, working on my college degree. And I had just gone into HR, not expectedly, and started doing a little bit of HR work. So somebody needed some HR work done. And I just started, slowly getting into it. And the more that I got involved, the more I started enjoying it.
And then I started learning about how it contributes to a business, how it focuses on the employees, and how, being in HR, you can make an impact on someone’s career journey, their development, their livelihood, and how you can make work a job for an employee fun, meaningful, and maybe even give them a reason. Why is it that they do what they do and have a purpose? So I eventually went into HR full-time. I’ve enjoyed correct progressive career growth throughout my career. I’ve been very fortunate to be offered some amazing opportunities within HR. It has not been without a lot of hard work and sacrifice.
Someone once told me that anything worth having doesn’t come easy, and that has certainly been my experience. So after enjoying progressive growth at prior organizations, I landed here at Simeio in January of 2022 and have been here ever since. It’s an amazing company with a lot of amazing people. And as you mentioned earlier, I serve as the CHRO for Simeio based here. Our corporate office is based here in Alpharetta. And pretty much everything that falls under HR is within my span of control.
Smiti:
That’s amazing. And what I really liked was the fact that you said that anything worth having doesn’t come easy. So I’m going to take off from there. Of course, nothing big that you do in life is easy.
So how do you navigate challenges when the going gets tough for you? Can you give me any examples of failures you’ve experienced, you’ve overcome, and what your experiences were from them?
Dana:
So, when I have challenging opportunities that present themselves, I take a step back and figure out, OK, what is the challenge? What is the desired outcome? So I sort of begin with the end in mind: what do I want this to look like? What is expected of me and the outcome. So another question that I’d like to ask myself is what can I learn from this so that when I do, when I am faced with something challenging, what am I supposed to be learning and what is being taught here?
I would say one of the biggest challenges, especially from a career perspective, is when I built the very first time an HR department from scratch. So being able to take what I had learned at a very large organization, and I had been a generalist, that’s pretty much my background. So I was able to take that knowledge and build an HR department from the ground up. Was it easy? No. I had to figure out exactly what the priorities were, what the most pressing issues were to begin with, and prioritize the priorities and build upon that. What would be most critical to the business, and what’s more important to the employees? And then just move forward from there. So it was a very rewarding experience.
Smiti:
Now that’s amazing. And I think there’s also another point which I’d like to highlight here is that you have in the past managed HR in larger organizations.
And when you move to a smaller one, you have to build everything from scratch. It’s incredibly hard, so kudos to you for that. And I’d also love to understand whether you felt there were any cultural challenges between how it happens in a larger organization, where you have everything sorted out, and then you’re building everything from scratch. You’re starting off things; you’re creating structures. Did you face challenges there?
Dana:
Absolutely, especially cultural challenges. I do have a background in teaching DEI, so that came in handy. But working with a global organization, which is the one where I had to build an HR department from the ground up, you run into cultural challenges, time zones, which is a big hurdle. So what you can accomplish, when, and who is available. Overcoming those is understanding what those cultural differences are and working with them, not against them. And being approachable, being available, you gain the trust, you explain the desired expectations, and that certainly helps with open lines of communication and getting things done.
Smiti:
Now, it’s great. And I think what you mentioned around being available and being approachable and being actually there physically to solve people’s problems, that’s usually the mark of a great leader. And we always say that leaders are there for people who need them, and that people are there for leaders when they need other people.
I want to understand who has been your mentor or your biggest supporter who has helped you over the course of your career, personally and professionally. Who is the person you approach when you need to have any sort of advice?
Dana:
Well, my family’s always been there. They will always be there. So sometimes I’ll bounce ideas off my family or any type of issue that’s going on. Not all the time, because I don’t want to talk about work all the time at home. Some years back, I had a mentor. She is a former CHRO for a very large quick-serve restaurant based here in Atlanta, and she did not know me. I did not know her. So I approached her with the idea of being my mentor.
I had seen her progressive growth, where she was, what she was doing, the good things that she was doing, and she welcomed me in. She said, I would love to do it. How can I help you? And so we spent time once a week on various topics within HR, especially if I was facing some sort of particular issue. And she would coach me on the best way to handle that, whether it was a quarterly meeting or rolling out a new program. She was just so well-versed in everything. And I trusted her so much. And I was so appreciative and thankful for the time that she gave back to me. And then what I did was I paid that forward. So, as you move up, you pull somebody else up behind you.
Smiti:
That’s absolutely true. And I think that’s also kind of a cycle of life.
So people help you and then you help people and kind of all the mentors who have helped shape your career or your life really gives you a lot of insight into doing good for others in the future as well.
Dana:
That’s true. We were thinking along the same lines. So as leaders, one of our roles is to serve, to be that servant leader. So she was serving in that capacity to mentor me. And I see myself too as a servant leader.
Smiti:
That’s extremely humble and really rare for leaders to say and really understand that their job is to serve people and not the other way around. So that’s amazing.
Dana:
That’s my thought process.
Smiti:
So if we talk about HR in general, we know that the entire landscape in the world has changed today. We’ve moved from the Great Resignation to the massive firing, and everything’s really unstable in terms of employee requirements, in terms of organizations supporting them, and all of that. Since employee needs are constantly changing, what, according to you, are the steps that HR leaders can take to address these constant changes?
Dana:
Yes, And let’s not forget about the Great Stay.
Smiti:
Yes.
Dana:
That’s the newest lingo, ‘the great stay’. So everything is cyclical. There were times when companies could not hire fast enough, and they beefed up their talent acquisition team. Companies were getting very creative with what they were going to do, number one, to attract talent, and secondly, to retain talent.
For me, it would be important to determine what those needs are and what employees are looking for. And you can easily find that out. So if you’re a virtual company, whether you’re hybrid or whether you have employees on-site, talk to your employees, be visible to the employees, show them that you’re interested and that you care what is important to them.
If you have employees who are leaving, you can look at your trends. And one of the trends is that my commute is too far. Well, in this day and age, that just shouldn’t be happening, especially if anything, Covid’s taught us we can do our jobs pretty much from anywhere. So trust your employees, but figure out what’s important to your employees. If you’re not talking to your employees that much, do a quick survey. What’s important for them. Is it work-life balance? Is it flexibility? Is it working remotely? Is it the hybrid model? Is it the benefits? What is it that is important to them?
Employees now look to see if a company’s values align with their values. What’s on your web page? Do you know what your company values? Are you giving back to the community? Are you giving back in any type of way? Do you have volunteer days? Take a look at your benefit offerings. Do your benefit offerings meet today’s changing needs? And that could be too generational. I mean, if you think about the workforce demographics, they’re multiple, and they’re changing. So, how do you cater to all? And it’s listening to your employees.
Smiti:
Absolutely, I agree.
And I’d like to also talk a little bit about and expand a little bit on the great stay. And typically, when you’re looking at an era like the great stay, it has both challenges and it has opportunities. The benefit of the great stay, I think it’s music to every HR professional’s ears now that people want to stay in their schools. They want stability, like what was like a really hard challenge earlier, and retaining all your experienced people, all your skilled people. It’s like a major asset for any organization. However, with the great stay, I think the challenge that comes in is that if people are staying back, it’s important to also keep them motivated. It’s important to keep them engaged, and things keep moving. I mean, the great stay is not here to stay forever.
It’s going to move eventually. So, I think it’s also important to keep innovating engagement programs and figuring out new ways to drive a better employee experience. So, according to you, what steps have you taken, or how have you or your organization, or anywhere in the past, how have you innovated employee engagement or recognition programs to drive a better experience?
Dana:
So involve your employees, and ask them how they want to be recognized. Some employees don’t want public recognition, and some employees want money. Some employees want to be recognized in front of all their peers. So what can run the gamut on what that looks like? But I’m a huge proponent of involving employees before we roll out any types of programs because you get their buy-in, and then it helps them to kind of take ownership of the program.
So, from a motivation standpoint, I would ask, what does that look like? At one company, one of our values was innovation, and so we rolled out an innovative program that asked for not the old school employee suggestion program, but we asked them for innovative ideas. And these innovative ideas could be something that is for the company, it could be for employees, it could be anything pertaining to servicing our clients better. There was nothing off the table. So involve those employees who are actually doing the job. They’re going to know better how to explain it than anybody else. So seek their involvement.
And we rolled out an innovative idea suggestion program, and employees would come forward with their ideas. And it was actually documented. So it became visible, and it was assigned an owner. And the owner had to be a manager in the company. They took ownership of that so that it wasn’t just something that was the flavor of the day. And then once a week, they had to give an update on the progress. Can it be implemented? Can it not? And what is this desired outcome? So if you want to, for example, one of the innovative ideas is to cut down on the number of days that it takes to fulfill a client’s request, whatever it may be, what’s the outcome? You want to cut it down from seven days to five days, two days, whatever that looks like. So then you had a well-formulated approach as to how you were going to roll this out and then what the outcome was.
So we always welcome the ideas of the employees. And that’s just one. And there are certainly several other types of recognition programs here at Simeio. We have an HRIS that acts as a social media type of platform, and employees give kudos to others, their peers, and other employees all the time. So we see it, and it’s a common occurrence here at the company. People regularly get kudos.
Smiti:
That’s amazing. And to summarize, I think the three major pointers which I feel generally apply to every company are: one, you ask employees what they want. So you take feedback, and you take that feedback seriously. Second, you mentioned that what works for one person might not work for another. So hyper personalization, I think, is key to giving a good experience. And third was primarily around innovation.
Just because it has worked once does not mean it’ll work again. So keep constantly evolving and innovating ideas, innovating methodologies to engage employees further.
Dana:
Exactly right.
Smiti:
Amazing. And with that, we’re also at the end of the podcast. Just as a closing note, I would love to hear your thoughts on what advice you would give to the HR leaders of tomorrow.
Dana:
Learn, learn, and learn. Observe. You have two ears and one mouth. What was important for me was that I found people at different stages of my career who were doing what I aspired to do, and I would observe, I would try to partner with them as much as I could so that I could learn and understand the whys. And then after spending time with them, I would understand whether or not that was a nature or discipline that I want to go into or not. But just learn what you can, read a lot, and get involved in HR networking communities. It has always served me well to network with other individuals because I love bouncing ideas off of other people. And it’s also good just to have that network. As an HR leader in a company, we’re limited as to who we can go to. So it’s always good to have that outside neutral party if you ever need to bounce anything off.
Smiti:
That’s awesome. And I think we could not have had a much more perfect ending statement than that.
So thank you so much for your time today, Dana. And this was insightful, and I’m sure our viewers will love listening to you and learning from you.
Dana:
Well, thank you. This has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Concluding Thoughts
Our conversation with Dana has been truly enlightening, offering invaluable lessons for current and aspiring HR leaders and professionals. Dana’s experiences underscore the importance of continuous learning, the power of perseverance in the face of challenges, and the critical need to listen to and involve employees in shaping a positive work experience. Her emphasis on adaptability, particularly in the ever-evolving landscape of employee needs, provides a clear roadmap for fostering engagement and driving innovation in any organization.
**This podcast was recorded during Dana McCormick’s tenure at Simeio and published on YouTube on Aug 19, 2023.
