In the 45th episode of the Human Resources for Small Business podcast, Brandon Laws interviews Jenny Scull and Annie Oxenfeld of Xenium HR about their past experience as in-house HR professionals and how different their current roles are as HR consultants.
Annie and Jenny share their experiences in each type of role by sharing what a typical day is like, the pros and cons to each type of role, what professional development is like, how they manage their work load, their teams and who they work with regularly, and much more.
Brandon: Welcome to the HR for Small Business podcast, this is Brandon Laws. I have two guests with me today, Jenny Scull and Annie Oxenfeld. Both of them are HR Business Partners at Xenium and we are going to talk about their past as in-house HR managers. Now, with Xenium, they are HR consultants, so we want to give some perspective on what that transition has been like and what it’s been like in the past versus now and what that means as far as client facing or just for a business what it really means.
Annie, let’s start with you. Define what you did in your last role, just from the perspective of being in-house.
Annie: Sure. So, I was the HR manager for a nonprofit in Portland of about 150 employees and there were 3 different locations in the Portland area. So I really managed the entire function of HR for that company. I was part of the executive team as well to kind of lend an HR perspective to what was happening with the business and then supervised one employee in the HR department, so we were a team of two. We really were a comprehensive department: we were heavy on the recruiting side, a lot of employee relations, a few investigations here and there, benefits administration, open enrollment, all that stuff, so anything that was HR fell under me.
Brandon: You said 150 employees in the company, two HR internal. What was the other person’s level compared to yours?
Annie: They were at a coordinator level, so that person focused heavily on the recruiting side and then onboarding, benefit administration, all that good stuff. So there was a lot of turnover as is kind of common in nonprofit industries. There was a constant influx of resumes and screening and all that stuff. That person really championed that—interviewing, phone screens, all that good stuff.
Brandon: Excellent. We’ll dive in deeper as to what you did, but I want to hear from Jenny about what you did before coming to Xenium.
Jenny: Yeah, so I was an HR manager for a health clinic in the Portland area. We had about 600 employees. I managed a team of four, so I worked pretty closely with the management team on performance management, employee relations, assisting with the recruiting, benefit administration—kind of leading that process, really doing the whole training and compliance policies, working with administrative staff on getting the HR function in place for the clinic, that’s pretty much what I did there.
Brandon: The four people who reported to you, what were their specific roles?
Jenny: We had an HR assistant who did the filing, the phones, really kind of that day-to-day stuff. And then we had two other HR rep levels, so they were administering the family medical leave, assisting with recruiting—we, too, had quite a bit of turnover; it’s pretty common in the industry I was in, so we had the recruiting split up and the different HR reps would handle different specialties—and then really the day-to-day portion of the benefits.
Brandon: Quite a full book, that’s for sure. Did you feel that, with everybody’s role and then your role too, that you maybe had a lack of resources at times and you were spread so thin, or did you have access to other resources from an HR perspective?
Jenny: I think it really ebbed and flowed. At different times in the year we’d have open enrollment, for example. We had a wellness committee as well, so we managed all of that. During those periods of time we felt a little short staffed, and being that our clinic grew, we doubled in size throughout the time I was there. In 6 years we doubled in size, so our roles were changing.
Brandon: Annie, back to you. What about your role back at the other company, what did you do specifically?
Annie: There was a compliance side to it, so a lot of proactive research to make sure we were in compliance. There was a lot of employee relations and coaching managers. Managers are pretty green, which, again, I think is common where people do really well in the role that they start in and then get promoted up to a management role and maybe
don’t have some of the background and skillset that’s needed for a management role. So we did a lot of coaching and supporting managers and just really a lot of communication with employees, corrective action, those coaching conversations that can be difficult if you’re a new manager. To really understand how to do that well is a learning curve. So supporting managers on that, leading the open enrollments for that, and a lot of supporting any kind of questions that came in, heavy interaction with managers and employees.Brandon: So did you feel like a lot of what you did was reactive, the day-to-day employee relations and answering questions?
Annie: Yeah, after a couple years of that it got the point where, with the rest of the executive team we were able to say that we wanted to get beyond this and start doing some culture work. I led some focus groups with another colleague to kind of get a sense from people of what they were feeling, working there, and we tried to translate that into what could we do differently, how could we improve. We did an annual satisfaction survey with the employees, too, out of our department and analyzed that and all the metrics that go with that, like turnover, and so it started to get a little more strategic because it was that kind of reactive mode of how can we train managers, what tools do they need, where can we go to get beyond some of this.
Brandon: Did you feel like with the day-to-day reactive type of stuff that you did, it sounds like you spent a lot of time on the strategic side the surveys and other high-level stuff. Did you ever feel like the balance got out of whack at times?
Annie: In terms of?
Brandon: In terms of the day-to-day stuff was so overwhelming that you just didn’t have time to focus on a lot of the stuff that you wanted to?
Annie: Yeah, definitely. There are so many details that go into it and you have to be thinking about everything, so there are definitely times, especially when it got really busy, around open enrollment or other times of the year, just the survey itself was a huge undertaking. Certain times of the year were definitely a lot busier especially if there were multiple employee relations things going on. I did a lot of reading through documentation that the managers were doing, so I would put my eyes on pretty much everything that was going to be presented to an employee. So that takes a lot of time, and yeah, there were times when that balance was off kilter.
Brandon: Let’s kind of switch gears a bit. You both have similar roles at Xenium. Jenny, I want to hear from your first, could you define what you do on a regular basis? Because I do want to tie it back to how different it is, so we’ll start with you on this one.
Jenny: Yeah, so now it’s quite a bit different because we manage a book of business; you’re working with a variety of different clients. With each small business, their needs really vary. Each client could require you or request that you do certain things that other clients don’t even need or maybe care about. We could be doing anything from investigations for a client to coaching managers on the best ways to talk with their staff, assisting with how to do proper documentation, sometimes clients want orientation done for them, so you’re really doing a variety of different tasks for each client.
Brandon: Annie, what would you add to that?
Annie: Same kind of thing, there’s a big variety whereas when you’re internal, you get to know that company really well pretty quickly whereas when you’re in a consulting role like this it’s much more of a give and take. You’re kind of learning each client as you go, so when you start in this role it’s a huge learning curve to know what makes each client tick, where they really see value. So something that you might see in an internal environment, for instance, where you have more control over like, this is what we’re doing or this is the initiative I’m going to push forward, in a consulting role you’re just recommending that and they can take it or leave it.
Brandon: Because they still make the decisions at the end of the day.
Annie: Exactly, because they are the decision makers and we are here to advise on best practice, so there’s an element of kind of letting go a little bit in this role, whereas when you’re internal you kind of own a bit more I think, because you have more decision making power. But yeah, it’s responding to the needs of the variety of clients that you have—that’s the job.
Brandon: You mention the fact that, at least, this is what I gleaned from what you just said, ramping up with and being a consultant with all of your clients is probably difficult in the beginning, because you’ve got to get to know them and you’ve got to know a lot of them, because there’s probably, what, 20-30 clients that you have?
Annie: Right, yeah.
Brandon: So when you have time to really integrate yourself in the business on the in-house side versus the consultant side, what kind of tricks have you learned or maybe even in your onboarding process at Xenium, how did you integrate with those clients and try to learn as much as you possibly could to make them feel like you’re part of the leadership team or part of the employee group when you’re really an outside consultant?
Jenny: I’ve really felt that doing interviews with the managers and really just getting to know them as a person and how they operate, what they prefer, their personalities, has
really helped. With some of the larger clients, really having the opportunity to meet the staff, too, because I feel like that’s really important to know the employees and the managers of the business. And then you also need to know how the business operates and the roles that each of these people holds. So I’ve felt that that’s really been big for me, especially being newer. I came into this world and didn’t really know what this job is, so that really helped me understand what I’m getting into. When I first started I would go onto their websites and read about the business, about their mission, see who the key players are, and then really try to schedule that face time with the clients to get to know them on a personal level so you can learn how you want to work with them and how they’re going to best receive information that you want to share with them.Annie: I’d say for some of my bigger clients I’ll go on a regular basis to their manager meetings or their all staff meetings just to have that face time. I also found that it does take time and sometimes it takes a crisis, so if you’re there when they need you to be there, then that kind of builds that trust. So if they have a big investigation or something and you’re right there and you’re able to provide them with really good quality service, then that kind of encourages them to come to you more often and you start building it that way. So sometimes they don’t really know what they need you for until they need you, and then that’s when you’re really doing the real relationship building because you’re working through something together. I’ve found for those newer relationships, responding quickly to stuff that’s important really makes a difference in building that relationship.
Brandon: Let’s talk about resources. I imagine the resources that you have access to would be quite a bit different, though it depends on where you’re coming from. For in-house, if you have a lot of budgetary resources, you probably have access to what you need to do the job right. But on the consultancy side you have people as your resources. So talk about the differences between the people side of resources and also the monetary side or even tools. Just talk about that, what the differences are.
Annie: I’d say, for me at least, it was a huge difference, because where I was before, I reported to the COO who didn’t have a background in HR. So if I didn’t know what to do or if I didn’t have an answer to something, I had to go external. Sometimes that would be an attorney or BOLI or a lot of research online, which is time consuming. And you still have to do that, sometimes as a consultant we call legal and do our research, but when you’re on a team of HR professionals like this type of a role, you just have so many people, you’ve got a depth of experience that you couldn’t even ever have in an HR internal department, so it’s literally just walking around and asking people, Have you ever had this come up before? And they’ll say, Oh! I think this person had something come up like that last month. And I like that better than talking to someone you don’t really know, because a lot of the time HR is kind of a gray area so you want to get advice from someone you know and trust instead of having to ask a stranger. That’s my take on it.
Jenny: I definitely agree, I had the same sort of thing. My direct manager had an HR background so luckily I had that as a resource, but oftentimes, as our roles grew, her role transitioned as well. So you’re kind of the final decision maker on certain things. I like to bounce ideas off people so I was really utilizing my staff quite a bit but ultimately I was the manager, so any decision that I made was the decision that I made. And we often would call legal if we needed, but coming here it was just great. I’ve already learned a ton from having all the resources available here and everybody’s different levels of experience and stories that they’ve shared. So if we have an issue that has come up before, we’ll send an email to the whole team saying, Hey, my client’s looking for this information, or What have you done in this situation? Everybody’s so willing to help and say, This is how I dealt with it, do you want to meet, do you want to talk about it? Or dropping policies by my desk saying, This is from a client that I’ve used in the past. It’s been great to have that different level of resources here.
Brandon: Both of you come from pretty similar experiences where you were leading a team. Jenny, you were leading four people, Annie, you were leading another person. You
were the top-notch HR person in-house. But when you come to a consultancy, you’re no longer number one, you’re in a sea of HR people who are very good at what they do. What is that like? I almost relate it to sports back in the day, you’re so good maybe on your little high school team but then you go to college and all of a sudden everybody’s that much better. What is that transition like?Jenny: I personally like it.
Brandon: It’s humbling, right?
Jenny: I really like it because I’ve seriously learned a ton since I joined Xenium. The depth of knowledge, like Annie said, is just crazy. So for me, I’m learning all over again and there’s so many things that, when you’re in one industry there are certain things that you maybe will tune out because it doesn’t really apply to you. And so there’s a lot of missed opportunities I had working for one company because I didn’t really need to know, and of course everyone wants to know as much as they can, but in reality you don’t have time to learn everything. But in this role, you really need to know almost everything because you have so many different clients with different backgrounds that it may come up one day. So I feel like everything I hear I’m just a sponge. I’m gathering all this information and saving it.
Brandon: How do you process all that, though? Is there a way you save it?
Jenny: I try to review most of it, I keep folders on my email called “Resources” and if I ever need it one day, it’s there. At least the knowledge of knowing it, and then maybe you’d have to do further research, obviously, if the situation came up. But I just feel like I’m listening to everything and saving all my emails.
Annie: I completely agree. I love it. It’s like boot camp, you’re exposed to so many more situations more quickly.
Brandon: It happens fast.
Annie: It happens fast! One client I’m thinking of in particular probably in a month had more investigations than I did in a year working somewhere else. Not that you want to have a bunch, but it gives you that exposure and that experience and you’re just in it, in the thick of it, all the time, so you’re constantly developing and learning.
And I’m laughing because I do the same thing, I have a “Resources” folder in my email. It’s hard to keep up with everything sometimes, but just the breadth of experience you’re getting from all these different types of clients, you do have to know so much more. Every time you have to kind of think, Ok, how many employees does this client have? Do these laws apply to this client? So you’re constantly on your toes, which I like, because I like that continuous feeling of learning and I love that there’s people here who I can run situations by or say, Hey, I’m thinking about this approach, what do you think? And I really appreciate that because they’re big decisions and it helps to feel like you’ve got support around you saying, Oh maybe try it this way. To feel like you have support in making those recommendations for things that get a little bit sticky, it just helps you be more confident.
Brandon: There’s always a downside to wherever you’re at. Annie, we’ll start with you, tell me about something that drove you completely crazy about being in-house, and then I want you to do the same for consulting.
Annie: I think it was really hard being in-house, because it was hard to shake that negative perception of HR.
Brandon: Like the finger-wagging department of “No”?
Annie: Yeah. I think I mentioned that the company I worked for had three separate locations, so I was housed primarily at one, and although I would have office hours at another one, they weren’t as frequent. So people at that second location would often say to me, just freely, Oh, I saw you coming and I thought oh, better go get my box. It was just that constant feeling that people don’t like you, they don’t want to be around you, they think that you’re only there for bad reasons. So it was kind of a perception that no matter how many good things you tried to do, you couldn’t really shake it.
Brandon: Jenny, what about you being in house, what drove you nuts?
Jenny: I think the biggest thing for me is when you’re really working with a manager on a coaching issue or performance issue and you’re repeatedly giving them advice and giving them all the tools that they need to be able to have this difficult conversation, and let’s face it, no one likes to have a difficult conversation with an employee, but it doesn’t happen. It’s procrastination, or someone’s out, or whatever happens, and then the manager comes back and they’re fed up and they want this employee gone, they want them terminated. And when you walk through the steps and ask, Okay, how did that last conversation go? I remember working with you about a month ago. And it’s, Oh, I never had that. And then they’re to the point where they’re so frustrated they want this person gone, and your role is to manage risk and protect the company and also you have a sense to protect the employee too. If the employee doesn’t know that their job’s on the line it’s unfair, and most companies don’t want to have that perception that they just fire people. I think that was really hard, because you work so much with them to get them all the tools and you help them do the write-up,
you do everything besides having the conversation with the employee. I think to me that was probably the most frustrating piece.Brandon: And then what does it look like as a consultant?
Jenny: When I first started, it was, why do I do certain things for one client and then I don’t do these same things for another client? It’s really getting out of that mindset of, you’re HR, you do the whole gamut of HR, you do everything with every client. You have to remove yourself from that in-house role and remind yourself that you’re a consultant and not every client values HR or needs HR or sometimes maybe they want to handle things their own way. I think that part is a learning curve to get to know your clients and how they all tick and what they all need you for. That piece for me was and still is a challenge. Like, wondering why do they call me sometimes when they need coaching advice and then you see a termination come through on a different issue that you didn’t help on.
Brandon: I think every business, to your point, values HR differently. And whether you’re in-house or a consultant, I think the type of HR that’s needed is probably pretty customized by client or by business.
Annie: I think for me it’s along the same lines of just not being immersed in the culture. A lot of times you get thrown a scenario that you have no context for. You don’t know the employee they’re talking about, you don’t know the history, and so you of course try to get as much information as you can. But it can feel just a little bit uneasy because you’re not there, you’re not in the physical environment so you don’t have all the context that you would in an internal environment. When you’re internal HR, you’re really in the fabric of the politics in the office, you can’t get out of it, which is one thing I like about the consultant role, but along with that you get the nuance of the day-to-day workings of everything. So it takes a bit of an adjustment to step out of that and be completely a third party and advising on situations that you’re not getting a complete picture of.
Brandon: Annie, you alluded to this earlier, but working with people, that’s got to be pretty different in both types of roles. You said that in the in-house role, they see you walking down the hallway and think, Alright, I’m packing my box. What is your relationship with the people in that organization being in-house versus as a consultant? And you’re probably dealing with different people, too.
Annie: Yeah, so I’d say that the managers, they’d be walking to get coffee and see me and say, Oh hey, by the way, and it turns into a half hour conversation. So you get that face time, that onsite presence that really helps you maintain those relationships with managers because everyone’s busy and when you’re there and you’re available, it encourages people to come talk to you more. But at the same time, there is that perception of HR that happens more internally that’s maybe got a negative stigma to it. So maybe people are going to be challenging me a bit more or not wanting to take your advice or are more resistant. So coaching a manager on something basic like how to talk to your employee or addressing a performance issue because maybe they don’t feel comfortable with it and they’re going to push back. In the consultant role, people tend to view you as being more knowledgeable or respecting your opinion more because you’re outside. Even if they decide not to go with your route, I still feel like my recommendations are always respected, so that can be a difference.
Brandon: Jenny, I want to ask you something a little separately, and it probably is true for both of you, schedule wise what does your day look like as an in-house person and then what does it look like as a consultant? I imagine they’re very different.
Jenny: I think as in-house of course things come up, employee issues come up, managers call, your phone rings, but you have more of a sense of, if you’re managing benefits I have my invoices that are due, I’ve got a couple jobs I need to recruit for, you kind of have more of a, I wouldn’t say set schedule because I don’t think anything in HR is ever set, but in this role, in a consultant role, you have to be ready. Your phone could be ringing, you could get 10 client phone calls in a day. You may think you have your day planned out, but you have so many different clients, all unrelated, calling about different things, emails coming in from 30+ clients and then sometimes employees on top of that, so you just really have to move fast-paced and be on your toes. In the consultant role you’re traveling a lot so you’re not in an office environment from 8-5, you could really be with three different clients in the same day, you’re in your car a lot, you’re traveling around. Of course you try to get back into the office as much as you can to be able to get the resources that we all have here, but sometimes there’s times that we don’t come to the office for two days, three days straight. So it’s quite a bit different.
Brandon: And I can speak to the fact that you guys are always out, because I’m an office dweller myself. I get out occasionally but I’m usually here and it’s a ghost town most of the time!
Let me ask you this, in terms of your schedule, because it definitely sounds like being a consultant versus in-house, your schedule’s more demanding because you don’t know what’s going to hit at any given moment and you’ve got to visit a lot of your clients to see them face-to-face. Have you learned any tricks over the last months or however long you’ve been here about being efficient in your role, from a consultant perspective?
Jenny: I think for me especially since I’m pretty new, I’m learning from some of the people who’ve been here longer. But using some tricks on your Outlook calendar, scheduling your drive time out, not scheduling back to back meetings, that really gives you the opportunity to get out of the meeting, regroup, check your email, make those
phone calls for emergency situations that have happened, before jumping back into another meeting. So really being kind of strategic, I guess, and planning your day. If urgent things come up, obviously you might need to move some things around, but if you have meetings that clients want, maybe if your day’s already looking a little scheduled or full and you’re not needing it to happen that day you can do it the next day. Really, Outlook is our best friend, it’s on our cellphones, it’s on the computer, we do color-coding for different appointments that we have, so I think for me that’s really helped and I obviously used my calendar, but it definitely didn’t fill up like it does now, so it’s definitely different!Brandon: Based on what Jenny just said, I’m sure a lot of that overlaps with you, Annie. Is there anything you’ve done that’s really streamlined your day-to-day?
Annie: Yeah, so one thing I did was I turned off my notification for emails as they come in because I was getting really distracted by that. If you’re trying to work on a project and you’re seeing all the volume that’s coming in, it’s hard not to click on that. Another thing I like to do is to schedule my projects on my calendar. So if I know, for instance, a handbook’s coming back, I’ll schedule time to review that so I’m not booking out and pushing projects out like that.
And just remembering that I don’t have to constantly check emails. I try to be strategic about when I do that, although it’s difficult. Sometimes you get out of a meeting and you’ve got 30 or 40 emails.
Brandon: That’s the most frustrating thing. Do you ever come back and have like 50 emails? How does that even happen? And of course it’s when you’re in a meeting, too.
Jenny: I haven’t learned that yet, and I need to, I can’t get off of the reminders.
Brandon: You have to, it’s such a distraction.
Jenny: I know, that’s what I hear!
Annie: It makes such a difference.
Brandon: And the ding if you have the sound on, and the pop-up window. It’s just insane, you can’t use that.
Annie: And what I’ve found, too, is when you wait longer, sometimes the issue gets resolved. You’ll see ten emails on the same chain, and by the time you get to it, you really have little to do instead of jumping in there with everyone else.
Brandon: Last question for you guys, and it’s kind of a biggie too. As business needs change, HR just keeps changing, right? I think it’s not seen as the department of “no” anymore, it’s more seen as having a seat at the leadership team at the executive level, it’s more strategic. What do you think, long term or short term, is HR going to be more in-house? Is it going to be more consultants? Is it going to be a combination of both? Where’s it all going?
Jenny: You know, that’s a good question. I think in my opinion, for larger organizations I feel that an HR department is probably necessary for 500+ employees. I think that they have a team of at least maybe 5-10 for larger organizations. But I think that the small companies, especially the companies that we represent, I think they value our model. They get a whole variety from VP of HR down to HR assistants to be able to support them. Small business maybe don’t have the resources to have in-house HR and they like the fact that we are a third party. That’s some of the feedback I’ve gotten, they really value that we’re a neutral third party and that everybody feels comfortable coming to talk to us. I see our model being very popular for smaller businesses will continue.
Annie: Yeah, I think we’re seeing that more and more that this model really works because the companies are able to get what they need and not have to have a full time person there or the stuff that they don’t necessarily value or prioritize. And they’re also getting, like Jenny said, that depth of resources. They have pretty much an entire HR department behind them when they need it, and when they don’t that’s fine too. So I think it really is becoming more and more of a popular model that companies are responding to.
Brandon: You guys are awesome. I honestly feel like we could have talked for an hour on this! We’re over where we usually go, but I want to ask you one last thing as more of a close for the people listening.
If people are making the decision, maybe they’re on the consultancy side and they’re curious about what it’s like to be in-house or vice versa, what kind of advice would you give somebody about where to look for information about making that decision? Because that’s a big difference, it’s a huge difference.
Annie: It’s a huge difference. I think I would just recommend thinking about what’s important for their career, for their day-to-day life. If they’re somebody who doesn’t like a ton of variety if
you’re very routine, if you like to go to an office every day, then the internal is definitely the way to go. But if you’re really curious and like to always be learning and growing, don’t mind traveling around and having to work in different environments with all types of different people, then this is definitely a great model for that. So I think it just depends on what you’re looking for priority-wise.Jenny: I think another cool thing is that when you come to a model like ours and you have a book of 20 or 30 clients, you’re really working with 20 or 30 different companies, so if you really like business and learning about businesses and all the different missions and cultures that there are out there, I think that’s something I really like about this role that I’m in.
Annie: Yeah, I agree with that. It’s really fun to get to see how different places operate and how they structure their culture and their core values and their benefits, it’s just really interesting. You get to see all different kinds of models.
Jenny: And just all the businesses, too, and how they operate. And typically they’re smaller, so you may be working with the operations side and the marketing side and a business owner, so you’re really getting to see all sides of some businesses, so it’s really cool.
Brandon: Annie, Jenny, thank you for joining the podcast, I appreciate it!
Jenny: Thanks for having us!