The TroopHR Podcast

Ep 2. 2024 Priorities - Beyond Business Insights with Jill Katz, Founder & Chief People Officer Assemble HR Consulting

• Tracy Avin • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Jill Katz, the Founder and Chief People Officer at Assemble HR Consulting, sits at a unique intersection, working with clients in various industries and stages of growth. From this vantage point, Jill offers insights on the top-of-mind issues for her clients in 2024. Ranging from the office versus remote work debate to acknowledging the impact of world events has on teams, she provides actionable advice for turning volatility into an opportunity to lead with candor,  courage and care.

Mentioned in the Episode:
Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths To Transform Your Workplace by Mita Mallick

If you would like to learn more about joining our community please visit troophr.com and you may learn more about our upcoming retreat here > 2024 TroopHR Retreat April 28th - May 1st 

Credits
TroopHR Founder: Tracy Avin
 Show Producer: Nicole Fealey
Show Host: Taylor Bradley
Note: Transcripts generated by AI.

Thanks for joining us. This is your host, Taylor Bradley, and you're listening to the TROOP HR Podcast. Welcome to the podcast. My name is Taylor Bradley, your host, and I'm joined today with Jill Katz. Jill is a founder and chief candor, courage and care officer at Assemble. She is a master facilitator, strategy coach, speaker, advisor, all while being proudly a mom and wife who puts family first every single day. What I love about Assemble, it is a one-stop shop of experts that have real HR experience. who build trust and quickly create seismic sustainable growth with candor, courage, and care. Jill, welcome to the podcast. Taylor, I am so excited to be here, especially after we figured out all of our special technical glitches. You and I are now technology specialists. Yes, yes. My engineering team will be very proud of me of navigating classic first time jitters with technology on the podcast. We have a lot to be proud of before we even get started. Well, speaking of problem solving, I want to talk about a big topic, 2024. What I think a lot of our listeners are most eager to learn from you is from your unique vantage point of all the different clients that you're working with. What stands out as two to three key topics that are at the forefront of your clients minds when they're entering into 2024? Wow, Taylor, it's, there's, there's so many things when I think about 2024 and I look up on that board, like a beautiful mind, and I pretended I'm Russell Crowe. I think of so many different things. I think of the still hybrid in office, working, working remotely topic. The topic is really heating up. That's a big one. When I think about the topic of inclusivity, particularly now while. We're literally in the middle of a war and how important it is for DEIB to be at the forefront of everybody's agenda. I think about this recession, not recession, recession, not recession, and how clients internally and externally are in a really chaotic and confusing moment. And I think about the importance of relationships and feed. So those are the first things that that just jump out at me viscerally. In each one of those topics, probably we could spend a whole hour on, let's start with the first that you mentioned, the hybrid in -office remote debate. How are you leading your clients through what is best for them and what are some practical steps to get them to that point? You know, we've really seen the pendulum swing, Taylor, obviously. What is now almost three years ago, which is really mind blowing if you think about it, but when you think about when we were in the heart of the pandemic, we saw organizations all find their way to be remote. And what people learned at the time was that almost every job could be done remotely, almost every job. And so for those roles where people learned they could do their jobs remotely, you got this mixing of people's lives. And at that point, I started to sort of speak out that there is no such thing as work -life balance. There is just life. There's just this thing called life, and there's a big pie. And in that pie, you've got family and you've got community and you've got religion for some people and you've got hobbies. and you've got household responsibilities and you've got basketball games and walking the dog and also your job. And hopefully your job is a piece of that pie, but not 50%. It shouldn't be work and life. Work should be a portion. And so people started to realize, I don't really need to be in the office to get this job done. I've just spent six, 12, 18 months proving it. And if you sort of fast forward a year ago, people started to go back in what we called hybrid and organizations were saying, let's come back one day a week that turned into two days a week. Many organizations made it three days a week. I now have some clients that have three days in two days out. I've got one client. I think it's kind of interesting has, has five days in the office and the next week is five days remotely. The next week is five days in the office. So. You see all kinds of things. My opinion, Taylor, which may not be the most popular opinion is that what really makes the most difference in an organization is empowering employees and putting the power into the hands of your people. We've now learned that we can do it. And so by going backward and mandating something, by telling people actually you have to be here, you could... run the risk of demoralizing people and telling people something they don't want to hear when they've already proven otherwise. And so I believe putting the choice into the hands of employees is the best thing to do. So I always vote for letting employees know that you're going to have the office open if you believe in having in -person office, Ness. And saying, we're going to be open five days a week. We would love to have people here two, three days a week, but... The choice really is yours as long as you can get the job done. And that's a really important part. I like the idea of focusing on outcomes versus where someone physically sits. And one thing that I've noticed after speaking to many colleagues that have mandated going back into the office is that those decisions were often made by a homogenous group of individuals. So. How would you advocate that when we're making these life -impacting decisions for our workforce, that we make sure that there's diversity of thought in that process? Well, I think you said it perfectly when you are explaining who's making these decisions. You've got this small group of people at times making the decision, but have you ensured that you've got diversity of thought in that group? Have you looked carefully? at your employee makeup. Have you really, now we're talking about inclusion, which is great. We're starting to bring in some of the other topics. Have you considered people that have caregiving needs at home? Have you considered parents with children? Have you considered people that have special needs situations at home? Have you considered people that have really long commute? There are a lot of people that moved far away from the office during COVID. And I've actually heard, there's really kind of an interesting debate for me where you've got some people that moved far away. And so those people in organizations are now allowed to work remotely, but the people who didn't move are expected to come into the office. Well, that causes some conflict also. So you really need to consider the makeup of your organization before you go ahead and make those decisions. And the CEO is not always the best person to be making the call. Yes. I knew of an individual where the CEO was making that call from their vacation home in Florida, which I found just truly ironic. Now, one of the topics I listened to one of your troop HR meetings from May of 2022. And this was a empowering moms episode. And I thought you gave some great insights into some of the silver linings that came from the remote environment, where it started to make it a more inclusive environment for individuals. What are some of the key things that you think have really changed for the positive over the past couple of years? Well, I can tell you, Taylor, that for me personally, working remotely has changed my life. And so I describe myself always when people ask me to introduce myself, the first thing that comes out of my mouth is I'm a mom. It is what matters the most to me and always has since I became a mom 17 and a half years ago, which I can't believe I've been a mom for 17 and a half years. And it does go as fast as everybody says that it goes. I was lucky enough to start a remote work life before the pandemic, which was pretty racy at the time. And I worked from home one day a week, starting from the time that my children were very, very small. And I can tell you that connection for me, I took my children to breakfast every Friday morning and had the opportunity to drive them to school. And as a person who was taking the train to work every other day at 7 .29 in the morning and getting home at 7 .40 at night, That one day, that opportunity to be with them. And then when I started Assemble six years ago, the opportunity to be working from a remote office in my house every day changed my life. Removing two hours of commuting from my day, being able to be in the house when, for me, it was my children, when my children came home from school. They came into my office, they sat down, we got to see each other's face eye to eye. I got to say, how is your day? And even those five minutes, Taylor, just hearing how the test went or that they got to play football during recess or what's happening with their friends or what's happening at rehearsal, that connection moment in the middle of the day, it meant everything. And being home for dinner more nights during the week than I had been. That meant everything. Not missing a basketball game. That meant everything. And so for me, it gave me more confidence as a parent that I knew more of what was going on. And I think that made me love my job more, love my life more, and overall be a happier and more fulfilled person. And from that, I think what a great call out here. is for your clients or for any of our listeners that are experiencing recruitment or retention issues. This is a competitive edge. This is how you get an inclusive diverse workforce is by offering flexible work arrangements. And to pivot now into another topic that you've mentioned in 2024 is there is a lot of turmoil, political issues in the world. We're entering an election year in the United States. What would be your recommendation for leadership teams deciding how involved or not involved to get into these topics of their employees? I think that we cannot live under a rock. And my opinion has always been to not let big, sad elephants sit in rooms. It's uncomfortable for people. No matter what's happening, whether it was during the COVID pandemic, or whether it was during the George Floyd terrible, terrible tragedy. We've gone through so many different things over the past four to five years, and I could name countless, countless experiences that we've been through as a world, and they all live inside of us. When we say these words, these experiences, they are triggering. To not talk about them, to not acknowledge them, is... just tone deaf. It's completely tone deaf. So for leaders to show up in a work environment, whether that includes Zoom or Teams or Slack or in -person or a dinner or a lunch, it doesn't matter where it is. And to not acknowledge something is happening that is way bigger, way more emotionally taxing, way more important in a lot of ways. then what might be happening at that particular meeting I think is perhaps insensitive to some people and tone deaf and may be really missing the point. That leader may be missing what's happening for someone personally. That leader may be missing the opportunity to connect in an authentic way with people on their team. That leader may have a lot to learn from other people on their team. And so I think that education for leaders is the most critical thing, especially now to learn how to engage, how to have the hard conversations, what true empathy is really about. And it's not about agreeing. That doesn't mean that every leader needs to feel the way that people on their teams feel, but leaders need to be able to show care, support, and create a safe space for people. Because everyone is carrying around something. And do you feel a beneficial approach would be for leaders to have that woven in in early AMAs at the beginning of the year of there will likely be these types of events that occur? We want to make sure that we have a safe space for dialogue. How should they set the tone to start out for the rest of the year? There's so many different ways to do it, Taylor. Some leaders like to do AMAs. Some leaders like to just create open conversations, like setting up a lunch once a month that's just an open lunch where they have conversation about what's happening. Some leaders make an investment and bring in experts, DEIB experts, to come create sessions or host open forum. Some leaders invest in actual learning, like unconscious bias or ally shift. And there's many topics to learn from some leaders, encourage their team members to become parts of groups or participate in external events. There are many ways. So what I actually recommend is for leaders to sort of canvas their teams and say, this is important to me, important to you, I assume. And what kinds of things would be helpful to you and what would you be interested in? Yeah, I love that. In many of these discussions, I do feel come back to you need to lead with data, especially when it comes to encouraging diversity in your organization. And people operations is such a critical function in collecting a lot of meaningful data, providing that analysis. What are some data points that you feel if teams aren't tracking already that they should when it comes to flexibility, diversity, and some of the topics that we've mentioned? Other I mean, my goodness, we could also have a podcast on data. And we should I hope that you are interviewing someone in true bond data. I mean, we should be tracking who is on the team, we should be tracking turnover, we should be tracking loyalty, we should be tracking day, who's staying and why they're staying, we should I mean, my goodness, there isn't anything that we shouldn't be tracking right now. Part of you just mentioned, which I found. more people talking about are stay interviews. Have you seen those utilized? Are they successful? I have not actually implemented them yet, but I would love to learn more on the topic. They are not used as much as they should be used. So I do believe in them strongly, Taylor. Stay interviews help us to figure out what's working and what needs work, as I like to say, before someone decides to exit stage left. And we learn more from stay interviews, perhaps than we learn from exit interviews, because by the time someone leaves, what we're hearing from them is probably colored and biased. We do talk about them a lot. You read a lot about them. You see lots of people talking about them, particularly in the people operations and HR strategy space. But I don't see them used as much in my client base as I would like them to be used. We do sometimes get data when we're doing touch bases from leaders. When we're checking in with people, sometimes they're called check -ins. But if we were to start to change language and actually start to use language like, this is a stay conversation. This is a conversation about retention. We want to understand Taylor, why are you here? And what is it that keeps you here in this organization? That's framing of a conversation. really might help us to collect, I think, more meaningful data. And it's great qualitative data to get, and you can certainly aggregate trends over time. So why did you come to the organization? What's keeping you here? What are two or three other questions that you think would be pertinent to that? I like to ask everybody what's pushing you forward? What is holding you back? Those are my two favorite questions. Actually, I would leave it at that because when you ask someone what's pushing you forward, you start to hear all the things that are working, but working forward. So you might hear about leadership, you might hear about processes and structure. You might hear about peer groups, you might hear about team members, you might hear about things happening in the business with the clients, with the product. And what's holding you back? You will hear hopefully about all of the same topics, but the things that are hurdles or speed bumps or getting in the way. Love those questions. And I'm taking notes on what to implement for myself. So this is great. Now, Jill, one of the things that stood out to me about your background is you seem to have an extensive background in executive or HR leadership in a retail setting. Now, one of my first jobs, when I was in high school, was working in a clothing store. And I can promise that it's much different than working in a tech company. What do you think is an interesting theme that you've learned from all of your experience in retail that would apply for HR leaders to know or to leverage? I did spend a long time in retail, about 16 years. The interesting thing, Taylor, is that my retail experience was all at a corporate level. And so I only worked for a very short time as an HR leader supporting the actual retail stores. And so most of my experience was working with people that were in merchandising, design, marketing, technology, leadership. And so one of the biggest lessons I learned, two lessons, one of the biggest lessons I learned was that people are people are people. And having spent a good amount of time in my life working in media and entertainment, And also working in retail is that in the retail space, like most spaces, it is sort of a feeling that what's happening there is really, really specific and proprietary to retail. And what's happening in retail is really specific to retail. But one of my biggest secrets is that people are people are people. And especially now after working at Assemble for six years where we work with media and digital publishing and retail and pharmaceutical and aviation and all kinds of businesses, what we've learned is that leaders struggle with the same issues across the board. The one thing about retail that I think is pretty specific is the piece. The pace of retail is boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and things change on a dime. So that is one thing that is kind of special about retail. The other trend in retail that I do think is pervasive, pervasive across all leadership and something that we get to work on and we are passionate about at Assemble is the topic of feedback. And we believe in feedback with candor, courage, and care. We've learned over time that people fold back on feedback at work. We live in a culture where people want feedback, love feedback. We go to social media for feedback. We like, we like, we comment. We're so interested in getting feedback, giving feedback. But when we get into work, Taylor, we fold back. We don't say it. We don't want to hurt someone's feelings or get in trouble. We're worried about the ramifications. And so, Learning to share feedback with candor, courage, and care is one of the biggest and most important opportunities in retail and all industry. That is a great note to end on. And I'll transition to our most important segment here is the lightning round. So are you ready to get some great answers to the lightning round? I guess we'll find out. Let's say I'm unprepared, but Alright, well there's no grades, there's no wrong answers, but my first question is the best career advice you've ever been given in one sit. Sometimes the things we fear are actually our deepest desires. Love that. That's deep. That's going to resonate with a lot of folks, I think. And the next up is favorite HR tool or book right now. Oh, my new my newest favorite book was written by my dear, dear friend, Meeda Mallick. It is called Reimagine Inclusion. And if I. were to get up, you'd find that it's right on my desk right now. Everyone needs to go check that out right now. And next up, one hot take HR opinion. I think most people would say that the most important part of being an amazing HR person is knowing the business. I think it's important to know the business, but I think there is nothing, nothing more important. than building relationships. And I think that actually trumps knowing the business. If you can build strong, authentic relationships, then you can use that as your currency to get anything done in a business and to help people be the best leaders that a business needs and also to learn about the business. Absolutely love that. And the last question I think should be the easiest. If you can give us a quick blurb on Assemble and how can our listeners connect with you? Assemble is a one stop shop of real HR experts. Everyone who works in our organization has experience doing HR. We're all real practitioners that did. That's right. We all did the job and that's what I think makes us a little bit different. And we create. Seismic change with sustainable growth. We do it all under our trademarked leadership model of candor, courage, and care. We deliver breakthrough off -sites, learning programs, fractional HR, and coaching. And you can find me on LinkedIn under Jill Capp. You can find me on Instagram under HRAssemble. And we are also on Facebook. So. We are so happy to talk with anybody and learn about what everybody else is doing out there. We love to build relationships. That sounds great, Jill. Thank you for being on the podcast today. It's been wonderful having you on and working through the technical issues at the beginning, but it's been a true honor. And everyone go look up Assemble, go connect with Jill. Great content that's out there and great opportunities to work with them in the future. Taylor, thanks. This was so much fun. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Troop HR Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, we encourage you to subscribe and leave a five -star rating. If you would like to learn more about our community, please visit troophr .com. In the meantime, keep living the dream.