EP 41 Definning Strategic, The Four Myths of HR, and He-Man in the The Empty Red Seat

In this episode Steve and Tony discuss Steve’s Four Myths of HR and define the difference between administrative and strategic HR.  For HR professionals looking to contribute in a strategic manner at an executive level, this discussion forms a guide to what that entails.  Of course, the guys talk about Project Hail Mary and the upcoming He-Man Movie as well. 

The four myths:
HR is administrative
HR isn't data driven
HR is a cost center
HR is reactive, not proactive
 

Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven “Big Deal” Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn more about our sponsor MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/

 

Quote of the Episode: “I’ve always thought that Strategic HR is the fundamental rethinking of how organizations treat people.” – Steven Smith

Creators and Guests

Host

Fantastic Tony Benjamin

I am a unique HR leader with more than 20 years’ experience working for some of Utah’s oldest, fastest growing, and most well-known companies. My experience includes Superior Drilling Products, Air Medical Resource Group, Control4, Ovivo USA and Deseret Book. I am a regionally recognized authority on building successful cultures and am an alumni speaker at DisruptHR SLC and DisruptHR St. George. I have earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix, a Bachelor’s degree from Utah State University, and am a certified Professional of Human Resources (PHR). I'm married to a woman out of my league, have three brilliant kids I doesn’t deserve and, although I travel a lot, live in Vernal, Utah.

Host

Steven "Big Deal" Smith

Steve will be the first to tell you that recruiting is marketing. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Finance at Brigham Young University and started his career in recruiting in Feb 2005. In 2008, he took a risk during a recession to help start a new company with Ryan Kohler, called ApplicantPro, a full suite HR platform for small to mid-sized businesses. In March 2025, ApplicantPro became iSolved Talent Acquisition, now serving 177,000 clients and close to 9800 employees. Before the merger, ApplicantPro made the Inc 5000 list 12 years in a row, Top Places to work in Utah 3 years in a row, and Steve was named the Small Business Utah HR Achievement Award winner in May 2024. iSolved was also named an Indeed Platinum Partner in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and is one of only ten ATS platforms in the country to obtain that designation. SHRM-CP & PHR certified, Steve currently volunteers on the Utah SHRM State Council as the immediate past State Executive Director. His book, The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction, was released in early 2023, and has helped thousands of organizations across the country rethink their approach to hiring. If you need help understanding the principles and role of SEO, marketing, and AI when it comes to attracting job seekers, Steve provides a solid framework for hiring effectively.

What is The HR Life Podcast?

The HR Life Podcast is a show about the work-life experience of those of us in Human Resources and business leadership. This long-form podcast is a conversation, casual, and not always the corporate line. Hosts and guests touch on everything from serious or even controversial topics to the absurdity of modern American business practices. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of The Grange Strategic HR Consulting, and Steven J. Smith, Author of The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction and all-around important guy. Guests include the best minds in the HR world. Join the show weekly.

Tony Benjamin (00:11.885)
Welcome to the HR life podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are fantastic. Tony Benjamin owner and founder of the Grange strategic HR consulting and Stephen big deals Smith, who is so important that at the national shroom conference, he is virtually required to stop in to at least five different state social events.

during the evenings. Hey, Steve.

Steve-o (00:42.158)
Ha

Wow. I seriously I don't know how you come up with all of these every single time. I have I have stopped at several state events. You know, one of my favorite though, and you could you could get four states all at once. About four years ago, maybe three years ago now when I was the state director, we started holding the Four Corners event. And if you don't know what the Four Corners is, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (00:46.832)
You

Tony Benjamin (01:12.203)
that was, That's the one I went to. was,

Steve-o (01:13.976)
The Four Corners event was awesome. Yeah. And it's just so fun. They have now done it every year since and they have all four of us states come together to a social networking event. And so you can literally hit four in one night right there.

Tony Benjamin (01:30.673)
That's see there you go. Now I am told, I am told by many people who've seen you at many of these that as you go around your entourage at the conference gets bigger and bigger as the as the days go along. So you start out with a few hangers on like me. And then as time goes, your entourage gets bigger and bigger. And yeah.

Steve-o (01:44.898)
Wow.

Steve-o (01:49.378)
builds. We know what you call that, right? It's called the conga line. I mean, surely you know.

Tony Benjamin (01:59.237)
I had not heard that's what you were calling it, but that does not surprise me. That's, that's, that's really good. That's really good. Yes. Well, welcome everybody. Yeah. Now, you know, welcome everybody to the podcast and we want to thank you for, for joining us and listening in today is an empty red seat edition of the HR life podcast. And, Steve and I wanted to talk specifically today.

Steve-o (02:07.822)
So now you know.

Tony Benjamin (02:27.639)
about the difference between or what defines strategic HR. So, and to provide at least how I think about this, maybe Steve thinks a little bit different about it, but it's people tend to define strategic and everybody get your cup because this is going to be a lot of strategic.

Steve-o (02:45.959)
Yeah, we're going to be drinking a lot today. We were just preparing for this call and we said strategic enough, I drank a whole glass and had to go get another glass full.

Tony Benjamin (02:54.481)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. So anyways, but the the idea here is that lots of people say that things are strategic, right? And what they're thinking is big picture. And what we want to talk about today is that's not really strategic, per se. I think that that has some elements of strategic in it, but it's not really the the definition of what we're talking about. So as I define this kind of what I'm talking about is the difference

between say an HR director, a low level director and a vice president, right? The scope of what you're doing and hopefully it provides a way for everybody to look ahead and to say, hey, if I want to be strategic or I want to have a seat at the table or I want to be a VP, what are the skills in that that I need to go over there? Because I think a lot of us think about this.

but we can't actually define it to ourselves. that's strategic or that's strategic or whatever. No, no, we want to talk specifically about what you do as a strategic partner. So am I getting that right, Steve, that I kind of laid that out right?

Steve-o (04:01.558)
Yeah, that's that. Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, I'm sure there'll be some differences or nuances that we have. But yeah, for the most part, you know, I deal with a lot of small businesses and with small businesses, oftentimes they're bringing on HR for the first time and they see HR a little bit differently. They don't they don't see it in a strategic way. And because of that, it it's I don't want to say it's a setup for failure, but it is a setup.

that if they don't change their mindset as the business grows, it will come back to them and it will not be pretty. so defining this, think is gonna be really critical, especially for you out there that might be part of a smaller business. And when I say small business, I'm talking maybe 150 to 200 employees because it's usually around that mark where you start really bringing in.

you maybe a second person in HR instead of just the office manager that you kind of put in charge of everything. Cause that's unfortunately what happens a lot. We call it accidental HR. but yeah, at that point, once you start hiring that second and third person, you really have to start thinking about how HR should impact your organization. Not will it, but when it does. And so, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (04:59.421)
Right.

Tony Benjamin (05:15.799)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I personally think that you need to, by the time you get around 50, you need an HR professional. I really think you need it. And I think you can lay the groundwork much earlier. And I help lots of smaller companies do that. Right. Right. But by the time you get to 50 is when you probably need a pro and not just someone who's entry level, but you need a pro.

Steve-o (05:31.367)
You can. Yeah, you absolutely can.

Tony Benjamin (05:42.749)
And then to your point, when you get around 150 or 200, somewhere in there, you got to have a second person. And you can either do that, grow up in expertise or put people under and take pressure off your high level expertise. So either way.

Steve-o (05:57.006)
You know, it's interesting. I was looking at a SHRM statistic the other day and they actually recommend 1.7 HR professionals per 100 employees.

Tony Benjamin (06:06.589)
1.7?

Steve-o (06:08.044)
Yeah, I don't know how you split somebody up, but yeah, that's how you do it. So maybe they just take the arms and the legs or something. I don't know.

Tony Benjamin (06:14.18)
Oh, I'm glad you went there because I was totally going to it. I couldn't think of a way not to be offensive. I was going to say maybe it's the Black Knight at the bridge. That's the that show you shall not pass.

Steve-o (06:21.678)
No, problem is, is the problem is, my mom or my wife, she reads way too much news. Did you hear about the paraplegic who shot somebody and was arrested for murder? No arms, no legs, nothing. But they shot somebody and she's she's like, I don't understand. And so she was so captivated by, know, how these new salacious news stories are. They literally throw it on there because they just want to get you to go and go read it.

Tony Benjamin (06:46.397)
Yeah.

Right.

Steve-o (06:50.99)
Yeah, so anyway, so she she's she's delving into it. She's going to fill me in later because I was I was too tired. I was like, I'm going to bed. Thanks. So.

Tony Benjamin (06:59.613)
Your wife is awesome. I love her taste in things. She's totally she totally grabbed some stuff out of the blue and then I just go wait Yeah

Steve-o (07:03.168)
She

It just confused her, right? She reads the headlines. She's like, what is this? What? How is that even possible? Like she just logically thinks about it. Yeah. So.

Tony Benjamin (07:15.237)
Hey, so here's here's thing to everybody now. We Steve and I have both done this. So we I think I didn't warn Steve I was going to do this, but I think I think this is safer as both to say, I think we're both in agreement. Go see Project Hail Mary. Great show. Yeah, great show.

Steve-o (07:33.218)
Yes, I am absolutely in agreement. And it's clean. There's no cursing. There's no nudity. like, and maybe my wife was disappointed that Ryan Gosling's butt didn't show or something like that. I don't know. Maybe she's disappointed, but there it is. It is so clean. And I thought the storyline was very well written. And and my wife liked it much better than the book because she said the book got very scientific on her and it just confused her.

Tony Benjamin (07:46.779)
Right.

Steve-o (08:02.743)
And so.

Tony Benjamin (08:03.089)
Yeah, and see, for me, that's part of the reason why I love the book was because it's hard science and science fiction. I love it.

Steve-o (08:08.718)
Yeah, which I which I feel like I would have enjoyed it too. I haven't read the book, but I loved Michael Crichton books back in the day and Michael Crichton was very much that way. You know, when he started talking about the dinosaurs, some of the scientific stuff he throw in there was it just made it so credible. Right. So so I totally get it.

Tony Benjamin (08:16.602)
yeah.

Tony Benjamin (08:22.849)
Yeah, Now, I love Michael Crichton books, except he didn't know how to write an ending to save his life. We've we've just escaped all the dinosaurs, made it inside the fence and we're all OK. Now we're waiting to be rescued. Everyone is safe and good and we're all going to go home. Hey, why don't you go walking outside that fence for a stroll and just look around? Just make sure you so you can die right for the end of the book. Yeah, anyways, I had Michael Crichton. Yeah, but.

Steve-o (08:27.606)
He didn't, but you know, it's all right.

Steve-o (08:42.626)
Just make sure. Make sure we're okay.

.

Tony Benjamin (08:51.899)
No, anyways, project home, very wonderful, fantastic thing. I would highly recommend the audio book too, if you're going to do the book or whatever. And the way they did the audio on audible was incredible. That was amazing. Great book.

Steve-o (09:02.094)
And if you really want to understand how critical, like if we want to apply it to HR, just think an HR department of one. That's a good way to think about it.

Tony Benjamin (09:11.837)
Okay, now I'm going to say this, there is a scene at the end of it, and I think I know you know what I'm talking about, where a manager person in charge has to have a very hard conversation with somebody. I thought that was done really well. As an HR person who does this, I thought it was done really well. But I don't want to spoil it. That's right. Here in a few weeks after you've all had a chance, we'll have that conversation. That will be part of our HR and life segment. We'll talk about that.

Steve-o (09:28.59)
Crucial conversations.

Steve-o (09:38.36)
Yeah, so spoiler alert now, we're gonna come back to that. I know exactly what you're talking about.

Tony Benjamin (09:41.873)
Yeah, yeah, fantastic, fantastic scene. Loved it. If you have seen the movie, send an email to the HR life podcast at gmail.com and tell us what you thought of the movie. I thought it was great. So there you go. That's my recommendation. And anyways, there you go. So now with that break set, I'm to go ahead and I'll do a read now and then it will be everything you've all been waiting for. Running a business is hard.

Steve-o (09:45.421)
Ahem.

Steve-o (09:53.614)
Yep. Me too.

Tony Benjamin (10:07.637)
HR shouldn't be Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR with expert support and everything from hiring to handbooks compliance to culture need payroll help or recruiting power. We do that to fractionally and flexibly no overhead just results. Visit megastarhr.com and let's grow your business together. So thank you, Becca. We appreciate it. Yeah.

Steve-o (10:31.726)
Huge shout out.

Tony Benjamin (10:34.589)
And as this is episode 41, of the hat and thank you to Becca, who is so generous and kind to start sponsoring us from the early days of the podcast. We're very happy about that. We're starting to have people contact us about maybe being additional sponsors and that sort of stuff. But we want to thank Becca. I mean, it reminds me of the deal with with GBS and helping us out of the conference. We needed a friend and there she was. So grateful for that.

Steve-o (10:45.528)
Yes, absolutely.

Steve-o (11:01.964)
Yep. GBS was awesome. And they're sponsoring again this year. It's a lower level, but still, they always go big. So I love it when GBS is at the conference.

Tony Benjamin (11:05.244)
videos.

Tony Benjamin (11:11.163)
Yeah. Yep, yep. OK, so Steve, let's talk about this. I think that you have a format that we're going to use to go through this. So let's do this. Steve, why don't you just introduce it? I'll let you introduce it, and then we'll talk.

Steve-o (11:27.074)
Yeah, so at one point I was thinking of writing a blog article about this because I wanted to kind of demystify the four myths that exist in the world of HR when it comes to being strategic. The sad part is not only are they myths, but there's some truth to them too. And so I was trying to kind of toy with that idea on how to address this and, you know, why not a podcast episode? And we can always pull a blog article or something out later on. So

So there are four basic myths that I was able to narrow it down. So we're just going to go through each one by one. So I'll just introduce the first one and then we'll, we'll, we'll talk about it then we'll come back to the second one. But the first one is that HR is just there for administration and compliance. And what does that mean? Well, it basically means that all we are there for is to help with processing and

And maybe automating some things, which is why some people are scared of AI and how that's kind of introducing itself. And basically, it's almost like calling a CFO the bookkeeper. It's probably the easiest way I can describe it.

Tony Benjamin (12:38.407)
Well, yeah, that's the analogy that I always give, right? So, accounting as we know it today is a byproduct of the industrial revolution and double entry accounting is this newer method that they came up with at the time to make sure that they could reconcile all the accounts and then it all made sense. right, right, right, right.

Steve-o (13:00.654)
Yeah, it was very transactional, which is how HR is often seen as just kind of the transaction department.

Tony Benjamin (13:08.701)
But now if you have an accountant and all they're doing is providing you reconciliation of your accounts, you've got the wrong accountant. Like if you're if you're going to get a company in your 20 or bigger, you start to get up, you know, to, you know, $100,000 or $200,000 in revenue, something like that. You're looking at that and you're going I need something better, not just reconcile my accounts. So that's very much so you know, Steve is recently I've been I've been for a client writing a job description.

Steve-o (13:16.408)
Yeah. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (13:38.717)
you know, for a for a direct, a senior director or a VP of HR, and trying to write with that strategic position looks like, right. So to your point, the thought is that lots of companies view that that way. And, and they do that right by, you know, they they pick a software, or they respond to employee emails that come in, they administer benefits.

Steve-o (13:42.402)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (14:00.43)
you

Tony Benjamin (14:05.629)
It's that one week a year, every year. That's And, anytime something exactly, and anytime there's, there's a, you know, something that happens is that against the policy. And, um, sometimes we ought to talk about the face, the Facebook group of men and get specific on that. But, you know, I, there was, there's some examples in there today where somebody was asking question, what about this? And everyone there answered, what does your policy say? What does your policy say? Is it specific enough?

Steve-o (14:07.342)
They administer policies. They train the policies. They make you sign stuff.

Steve-o (14:34.178)
That's the first question. It's the first comment always, well, let's go to your policy first, which I get. There's a reason why that policy was written. We're not saying that that's a bad thing, but it goes so much further than that.

Tony Benjamin (14:35.325)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right,

Tony Benjamin (14:48.559)
Yeah, right, right. And the person who's looking just at the policy and saying, how do I enforce the policy? That is that is the transactional thing that you're talking about. And lots of companies view it that way. So in that in that in that, in that group today on Facebook was a post in there, my company doesn't enforce any of the the HR policies, what do I do? It's like,

Steve-o (15:16.138)
Nice.

Tony Benjamin (15:17.199)
Okay, and it's a little tiny company, right? And they don't enforce any of their policies. They let people do whatever they want. They're willy nilly. And everyone came back and said, you need to tell the boss is what happens when you know, you don't follow your own policy and blah, blah, blah. They're like, you know, and by the way, these are all good things. I don't want to give me get you wrong. You know, tell them how much this claim would be in quarter how much you could lose or what the fines would be if you did this.

Steve-o (15:38.104)
This is where you educate and advise the executive team and suddenly you have switched from just a policy pusher to an advisor to the team, which is critical, right?

Tony Benjamin (15:46.427)
Bye bye.

But it depends. So right, right. So an HR administrative person will say, unless you classify people correctly under FLSA, you could get a fine from the state and it could be up to this amount, right? So that's what an administrative person says to the boss and then tries to show those amounts across all the employees and total, tell them what your total exposure is. That's administrative work. Okay. The more advanced strategic end of that, however,

is to say, we classify people correctly for several different reasons. One of those reasons, of course, is compliance. But in a bigger, more important way, what you're looking at is who am I empowering within the company and why? And who do I want to give freedom to? Because really, a salary provides both the employee and the employer freedom.

And if you're an employee and you think I'm going to be salaried and work less than 40 hours a week, you're sadly mistaken. But you're going to go to the leadership and you're going to advise them. And you're going to say, hey, look, you've got all these people here. They're borderline. They could be salaried. Let's take these three people right here and let's move them to salary and leave the rest hourly. And here's why. And then let's enhance their position a little bit more. So they're making more decisions. And what we're doing is we're

Steve-o (16:49.646)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (17:11.773)
pushing lower and lower the decision making ability of our employees. I, anyways, that's the difference, right? And a lot of those companies.

Steve-o (17:21.422)
I don't know if I would describe it as pushing lower but but rather giving some of the lower rolls more power so that you Empower than that. I get where you were going with that. I just wanted to throw that out there and we're not trying to literally push them

Tony Benjamin (17:29.661)
Yes. Thank you. Yes, that's that's what I'm. And we don't mean we don't mean lower is in the class of human being or peasants or anything like that. That's not it. But so now medieval times, you can sponsor this podcast. But no, that the anyways, that that's it. That's a different standard. Right. But that person who's asking that question and they're saying, why don't they ever enforce the policies?

Steve-o (17:39.47)
Exactly.

Tony Benjamin (17:59.055)
It is because what you just said, the company thinks that HR is only administrative and they brought you in to keep them out of court. They will do whatever they want, but they're still hoping you keep them out of court.

Steve-o (18:09.016)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (18:12.494)
Which is why I call it the first myth. Because while there is some truth to it, overall it is a myth. HR is not just simply there to deal with the administrative stuff and compliance. That's a piece of it. And that's definitely a component, especially when you start bringing up issues where we have to say, there's the compliance factor, but let's also look at all these other bigger pictures. So yeah.

Tony Benjamin (18:15.196)
Right. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (18:27.452)
Right.

Tony Benjamin (18:36.347)
Right, onboarding processes, papers that they need to sign, designing process and procedure, what do they need to be trained on? I'm trying to think about how do they sign up for benefits? When do they sign up for benefits? And what system do they use to sign up for benefits? All those sorts of things, right? Those are all what people think of that way. The strategic position.

Steve-o (18:46.67)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (19:03.395)
is that those are components of what I do, but they're not what I

Steve-o (19:07.426)
Well, you okay, so what you just described is my second myth. So do you want to hear my second one? So my second one is that HR is soft and they're not data driven enough. Now here's, here's why this is important. And the fact that you bring up software, especially because I have now been in the software world for, you know, 18 years, HR can't just simply say, yep, we're just going to bring in this HR system or payroll or time management or whatever, and then just simply implement it.

Tony Benjamin (19:12.359)
Shoot, go. Yeah, yep, yep, go.

Steve-o (19:38.008)
They literally have to sit down and do some modeling and productivity analytics, in essence, have an ROI, know what the return on investment is going to be by implementing these systems. And they have to be able to present that in a way that shows this is why this is the system we've chosen. But too often, what I've seen in my career is HR will go on the internet and they'll find an RFP or an RFI.

and they will just simply download it because ChatGPT gave them something pretty cool. Now before that they would just Google it, but still they would use somebody else's RFP and RFI to gather that information. And as a vendor, I would fill out some of those RFPs and submit them. And then it would be crickets for a while because suddenly HR starts getting the RFPs back and like, wait, we don't even need that feature. we don't need that one either. Why did they even bring that up? wait, it's actually in our RFP.

Tony Benjamin (20:37.053)
Right, right.

Steve-o (20:37.612)
See, that type of person has not, they are not at a director or a strategic level. They should have already vetted that process, talked with everybody in the organization and every department to determine what are the actual overall needs and analysis so that when I create my RFP, it is specific to our organization. And if your ATS, onboarding, payroll, whatever, does not at least meet these minimum criteria, then we're gonna have to look at the next one, period.

because this is the business need, this is where it lies. And again, if you're not data driven enough to do that research and actually verify all of that before you bring on a product, you are soft. So even though it's a myth, there is an element there that it shouldn't be a myth. People analytics is important.

Tony Benjamin (21:06.909)
That's right.

Tony Benjamin (21:27.037)
Well, it goes back to what you were saying earlier about accidental HR, right? People get into HR accidentally and whatever like that. those are the people who, they're trying their best and I don't want to knock that, but they're not pros per se. And so you get into that.

Steve-o (21:44.93)
Yeah, which is why they join SHRM and other groups, Facebook as an example, so that they can feel safe enough to ask those questions.

Tony Benjamin (21:48.903)
so they can be pros.

Tony Benjamin (21:54.353)
That's right. and you know, okay, so let's let's talk about some of the some of the analytics that people in advanced or strategic partners should be looking at. And we can start with this. I to me, this is the most basic and the most straightforward. And there's people like Jared Olson out there who are talking about more advanced, you know, statistics and that sort of stuff. And I think he's still playing along with some of those. Maybe if you want to comment, tell us what he thinks. He's got some. But but anyways,

Steve-o (22:21.678)
That'd be awesome. He'd be a good guest, right?

Tony Benjamin (22:24.325)
The point, he would be a good guest. But anyways, the most basic and straightforward one to me is what is your revenue per employee? Just straight out, what is your revenue per employee? Right, right. And what you do is you just take the amount of revenue you got within the period, your average number of people that are employed, or if you calculate it on a single day or whatever, you can do it on one day.

Steve-o (22:38.924)
which is one of my favorite stats. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (22:51.677)
you're going to take the number of employees or you're to take the revenue divided by the number of employees, and that's the number you get. Now what it is showing you is, is your top line, how efficient your employees are, how much revenue are they all generating together? And you know, you can break this out by departments and different stuff like that, and all you want to do that way. But in general, you're looking across the company, how much does each person earn for us on average, and you're have some departments that are more and all that.

Steve-o (23:04.365)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (23:20.817)
Then I would take the second piece of that. So the first is just what are we generating in revenue? The second is EBITDA, right? And that's earning before income tax and amortization debt and something like that. EBITDA. I can't remember all those things. Thank you. But it's.

Steve-o (23:37.294)
That was very well explained. Thank you

Tony Benjamin (23:43.783)
But the idea is this is your bottom line. EBITDA is your bottom line. So what you want to do then is take your EBITDA number and you want to divide that by the number of employees you get. And what we're finding, so the first one is top line revenues. How much revenue did we generate per person? That is how much money are we bringing in from them? And then the second is how much are we keeping? And that's really your efficiency number. That's the number that should tell you how efficient your people are being because

Steve-o (23:46.147)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (24:13.233)
That includes all your, what's the word I'm looking for? That's your total cost per employee embedded in there. And it's everything else. It includes amortization and all those other sorts of things. But the point...

Steve-o (24:26.414)
Can I tell everybody what it really includes?

Tony Benjamin (24:30.245)
Yes, go ahead. Sorry. My apologies to all the accounting professionals listening.

Steve-o (24:32.397)
Ahem.

No, it's it's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization. And it's basically a measure of the company's profitability, like you said, right? One of the things I love about this number and and the person who taught me the most about this number is Heather Walker, who was our CFO at Applicant Pro for years and years and years. In fact, I think she started working with us in 2012, thereabouts, just as kind of an assistant.

just to help in the interim and eventually became a full on, you know, just the full on CFO. And what I loved about her is that every single company meeting, she would talk about our EBITDA and how it impacts us and how important it is. And she would educate all of us as employees on how important it was. And she would remind us that what we do impacts this number. And I love that about her because she was always willing to

to bring it down to a level that it was understandable and help everybody in the organization understand it and why a 30 % margin was good and things, just stuff like that. That's why I just love and appreciate Heather Walker for so many things and that is absolutely one of them.

Tony Benjamin (25:51.197)
Thank you. That's that's wonderful. I and it's something you just said there, right is something else that everyone needs to understand. Can you read a basic PNL? And do you know the danger signs in things that are on a PNL that should raise red flags for you? If you don't understand that, go go find out from your CFO. And by the way, every business is a little different. That's right. But every

Steve-o (26:00.782)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (26:11.554)
Yeah, take them to lunch. You know how excited they might be to actually talk about it?

Tony Benjamin (26:18.599)
Yes. And you're CFO. They're very well aware of the value of lunch. I promise. but, anyways, the point just being is, is that your myth that people aren't data driven with that sort of stuff. If, if you want to be strategic, if you want to be that higher level person and provide and serve at that level, then you're going to have to know what those things are. And by the way, a lot of those things are different for every individual business. What is the number one thing? Yes.

Steve-o (26:23.0)
Yes.

Steve-o (26:44.654)
Correct. And industry.

Tony Benjamin (26:47.249)
What is the one thing that drives revenue and your bottom line more than anything else? And you need to be aware of it and where it's at. So for example, if you produce widgets in your company, the people who actually produce the widgets are your most important to be the most efficient because they're doing that. The I worked for before, Superior Drilling Products, our number one bottleneck in the production process were our brazers.

Steve-o (26:55.438)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (27:14.415)
And anything we could do to make our braziers more efficient meant the rest of the company earned more money. So we would pour lots of time and attention into those guys. How do I make them more efficient? How do I, how do I increase their ability to focus and do well and be excited about their job? Like those are all the things, right? So anyways, understand those things. And that that's part of being that data driven, you were going to say something else. Go ahead.

Steve-o (27:40.494)
Well, I was going to say that that kind of leads into that third myth, which the third myth, it kind of bleeds into what you talked about. And that is that HR has no impact on the bottom line. And what you just described is a very good reason that, yes, it does, because when HR can consistently look at their succession planning, the engagement, the types of talent they have in those different departments and organization and how critical they impact the bottom line.

HR is now no longer just simply a cost center, which is what the myth is that, yeah, HR is just a cost center. You don't have to be the cost center. Doing what you just described is exactly how HR becomes more of that strategic partner and can understand how each one of those departments are impacted and affected by what's going on. A layoff, turnover, again, succession planning, somebody who can take over because you need to move somebody internally into management or something to that effect.

This is where HR can have the greatest impact and like you said, it's different for every single business. So understanding your business specifically is huge.

Tony Benjamin (28:48.093)
No, that's very good. this idea that owners, business owners and CEOs and C-suite that they think that HR is just a cost center, it goes back to your first myth that we're just administrative. Keep me out of court. All I want you to do is keep me out of court. I'm going to pay you as little as possible because you don't generate anything for me. And I want you to keep me out of court. therefore, if you start thinking about all the things that you see in your Facebook group,

Steve-o (29:01.614)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (29:17.533)
80 % of those frustrations are the result of the company not understanding that, right? They think it's a cost center and that's why they're minimizing the impact of what it does around. And I hear again, the transactional or the administrative sort of view, for lack of a better phrase, of HR and what you're doing is,

Steve-o (29:25.784)
Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (29:46.713)
I need to do exit interviews. I need to track my turnover rate. I need to know how long it takes us to replace somebody. Those kinds of things, right? How much does it actually cost to hire someone in? Those are all administrative type things. Now that's gathering a lot of information, but a strategic view then is the compilation of all those. And it's not just, hey, know, five.

Five out of the 10 people or eight out of the 10 people who quit last month mentioned pay. So therefore we got to pay more people. No, that's not a strategic view of that. The strategic view of that is, hey, I'm getting this comment about pay. What's the real underlying factor here? Is it really just the dollar amount or is it something else that's going on? Because if you have a crap boss and the boss makes your life a living nightmare, of course I'm going to say pay.

because you don't pay me enough to put up with that guy. But I mean, you got to know that and you only know that because somebody does good exit interviews and you're getting details and that sort of stuff. But a strategic level advisor is telling the boss, hey, look, I know that this data says this, let me tell you what it actually results from. And as I've looked into it, Frank over there who's running this department,

Steve-o (30:44.814)
Ain't that the truth?

Steve-o (30:55.118)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (31:10.823)
He's not that great at engaging people. And as a result, he gets people who are unengaged, who aren't excited to be there, and therefore they want more money to do the same work. And that's a band-aid.

Steve-o (31:21.006)
Okay, so if you were at the student case competition this past weekend, because I was at the student case competition, we had a case study where we talked about stuff like this, and one of the groups that presented to us, their answer was to fire everybody.

Tony Benjamin (31:26.332)
yeah? Yeah.

cool.

Tony Benjamin (31:34.393)
Really, I love it.

Steve-o (31:35.854)
And they obviously had other options, like not just to fire, but it was so funny because the way they presented it, it sounded as if the real thing we should just do here is we should just terminate. And then they kind of backtracked a little bit, said, no, we have to go through the normal, you know, repercussions and write them up, et cetera. And then eventually it could lead to termination. at first, it just sounded like it was just terminate everybody, which is kind of funny.

Tony Benjamin (31:40.967)
Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (32:02.279)
Well, you know, one of the coolest things ever been said to me as a leader was I got promoted. It was a long, long time ago when I worked in a bookstore and I was promoted to what they call the day lead. And that meant that I was the store manager in essence, when the manager wasn't there. I guess it was nightly, just what it was. But anyways, the idea he was there during the day and I was there at night and I was wasn't paid nearly as much as he was and all that sort of stuff. But I was in charge of it every

I would say two thirds of the people that worked there had worked there longer than me. And so we get into it a couple of months. I'm like, dude, I'm having a hard time with this. Everybody just ignores what I say and what I do. And he literally looked me in the face and said, do you want me to fire him? Oh, like he gave me the opportunity to fire everybody and build a new team. He really did. And, and look.

Steve-o (32:49.944)
Wow. And what was Tony's response? I'm curious.

Tony Benjamin (32:55.291)
And Tony's response is, no, I like them. And they're all good people. in part of that, I don't think he expected me to take him up on it. But what he was doing is saying, do you want to rebuild that team? Do you want to build it from the bottom up? Sometimes firing. Look, if you have a crappy, toxic, horrible culture, you have to root it out.

Steve-o (32:57.58)
Hahaha

Steve-o (33:16.108)
Yeah, sometimes that's how it in my book is the gopher, right? It's the gopher that's gnawing at the the root of the tree, and when it gnaws enough, eventually that root is gone and the tree topples over and you don't even realize it's it's been gnawed, right? So sometimes you do just have to extricate the gopher.

Tony Benjamin (33:20.509)
Right, right. Yes, it's the gopher.

Tony Benjamin (33:32.837)
Right. And the only way

Right, right, right. Sometimes you got to do it. The analogy I always give is it's like cheese. I was telling this to a client the other day, it's like moldy cheese. You keep cutting off the mold until you get to the base of the mold and it's all gone, right? Sometimes you just got to cut it off. You can't cure it or wash it off.

Steve-o (33:50.222)
Yeah, and again, my point here is not that the answer is just fire everybody because what you bring up in this example with this particular manager is once you've identified it, you know, now strategically we can identify are there some training issues here? Are there some crucial conversation type issues like what can we do to now give our workforce the proper tools necessary to address what we're now seeing?

Tony Benjamin (33:56.731)
No, no, I get

Steve-o (34:20.402)
and implementing accordingly, right? And measuring, right? Measuring that, seeing the effectiveness of it, and then going from there.

Tony Benjamin (34:20.925)
Exactly. Yep. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (34:29.319)
But there's there's that idea again of a strategic person looking at that overall across the whole thing and saying, what are the root reasons for this? And it's not always matter of fact, it's rarely the very first thing that everyone's telling you. We don't get enough time. We don't. Yeah, yeah. Don't don't assume. Why do you feel that you don't earn enough money? And they're like, well, the works the work is really hard. Why is the work really hard? What makes it really hard?

Steve-o (34:35.928)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (34:43.499)
Yep. Yeah, don't make the assumptions.

Tony Benjamin (34:57.061)
And eventually you're going to get to that point where you're talking about the manager and that the manager is a jerk, right? And that's that extra level, that's the higher level of all of it that you just have to...

It's it's that's the level to which you just have to you have to be too. If you're going to be a strategic.

Steve-o (35:18.808)
Well, it's like when I used to interview people, I always tell people go three levels deep. So once they give you an answer, go deeper, next level. They give you an answer, next level, deeper, go three levels deep. Because usually once you get to that third level, that's where you get to the real core of the issue. So or the core of what's going on or just information, you know, whatever it might be. But I always tell people go three levels deep.

Tony Benjamin (35:36.633)
Exactly. Yes.

Steve-o (35:45.336)
See how deep you can go. Don't just take the answer at the surface and assume that, okay, that must be what's going on.

Tony Benjamin (35:51.837)
So this is okay. No, that's, that's great. And then what do you do about that? Right. So ask yourself this, if you're listening to the podcast, why do you have company activities? Why do you have company activities? And if you're like, well, cause that's what people do and it makes them happy, then that's the wrong answer. You probably should not. Right. Right. You should not be having company activities. Right. If you, if that's the reason you're doing, don't do it. Now you can say camaraderie.

Steve-o (35:56.398)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (36:10.126)
That's not strategic.

Correct.

Tony Benjamin (36:19.533)
Okay, I kind of understand that. And by the way, I hate that word camaraderie. just sounds French almost. just don't like it. Right, right, right. So, but anyways, the idea that, you know, just to say camaraderie, and everybody gets along. Okay, that's great. But why? Why does that matter? Like, what is their strategic reason? So maybe you want to say, look,

Steve-o (36:27.374)
That's just the Italian in you.

Tony Benjamin (36:45.297)
we're very siloed in what we do and everybody only hangs out with everybody, right? They're the only hangout, I'm sorry, they only hang out with their department. So when we have an activity, when we have an activity and all the people from the accounting department always sit together. Look, I worked at a company where the accounting department never came to activities. And it's because the controller couldn't be bothered. She was too busy. I'm too busy to do this. I don't want to be there at that thing.

Steve-o (36:53.646)
I was like, that made no sense at all.

Tony Benjamin (37:14.971)
And I went to her and I said, I can go talk to the CEO now, but I'm telling you, you have to be there. And she said, I don't have to be anywhere. And I says, okay, the CEO and the CFO will call you. And they did. No, you're isolating yourself from everybody else and no one's starting to trust you. So when you give them data that they can evaluate their business or their department on, they're not sure they trust you because they don't know you. And therefore they can't do it. And then I said, and by the way,

the next person who's going to talk about one of the company values in front of the whole group is you. And gave them a company value to talk about. So everybody can get to know them.

Steve-o (37:52.174)
You know, this goes back to our conversation with Tracy Calmer. You remember how she talked about in the interview process as well as all the company activities that she had. She would always find what company value can we highlight and make known or, you know, just spotlight it, if you will, to say that this is why we're having this get together, because we want to spotlight and highlight this particular culture thing, this particular core value, whatever it might be.

to truly show how important these core values are to us. That is providing value to a company activity. But just to have a company activity, just to have it, you're not doing it correctly. And so if you're listening to this and you've had company barbecues recently or what have you, and there hasn't really been a purpose behind it, again, you're doing it wrong, or at least incorrectly enough, or let me back up, you're not doing it wrong.

Tony Benjamin (38:30.045)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (38:35.367)
Right.

Steve-o (38:51.042)
But what you're doing is you are missing an incredible opportunity to not only be strategic in your thinking, but to really enhance your core values and culture and build it more than what it already is. So there you go.

Tony Benjamin (39:05.316)
Yes, that's exactly right. And that's what a strategic partner does. And by the way, that's the difference between a director and a VP, because the VP is the VP is looking how much money do I want to invest in this activity to get the result I need to get from it? And what is that result? And we're going to focus on that and make that happen. Right? Yes, yes. That's right.

Steve-o (39:09.358)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (39:22.126)
And let's measure it. Let's see if it made a difference. Too often I don't see the measurement piece of it, right? We call them smart goals for a reason, but measure is the second thing. If you're not measuring something, there's no point, period. So.

Tony Benjamin (39:40.443)
Right, right. And this goes back to the idea that a strategic person also has an annual goal for the HR department. What is it? So like one year, one of my goals was accountability. And we ended up keeping this for two years. The goal of accountability. We wanted to raise the accountability level and how we were going to measure that is the percentage of time that people completed projects on time. Because that was our problem.

And then what would happen, they wouldn't complete the projects on time. And then they would blame 30 other things or say, well, this happened, that happened. And the company was kind enough not to just say, well, you're fired. Right. The company really enjoyed it. It really appreciated the efforts of its people and they were good people. They just didn't have lots of experience of closing out projects. They get them 90 % done and then they'd fizzle. so what we accountability. So we set up measures of this and Kate, the measure is going to be this.

How do we work on accountability to raise that throughout the year? And everything we did, all the activities, matter of fact, I think that was the year we started doing the first responders and veterans annual event. We had a live band come and play. We invited police officers and firefighters and first responders, all that sort of stuff, including trauma nurses and all that, and veterans. And we did it every year around September 11th. Had a live band and

we had a budget of somewhere around 5,500 bucks or whatever, and we cooked hamburgers for anybody in those areas or professions that would come, we would give them free food. And they could bring their families, right? And the cool thing about it was, is it got to be a bigger deal in the community. The radio station started to promote it for us and all that. And what we would do is the idea is we would tell our employees, go ask one of those officers or go ask somebody who got what it.

what it meant to do what they do and the impact. What impact did they think they had or have? And they would learn about it and we would say that's accountability. What you're talking about there is their opportunity to serve and the only way you know if you really serve it is if you're accountable. Because these are, you're a trauma nurse and you decide to puncture someone's lung to let out the air or whatever that's backed up in there and all that sort of stuff, right? You're gonna inflate, it's collapsed. You're gonna reinflate it, all that sort of stuff. The only way,

Tony Benjamin (42:00.529)
that person's accountable because if they mess up the person dies, right? How do you live with that kind of accountability? How do you do it? Right, And you would know.

Steve-o (42:04.065)
Yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah, my wife and I watched the TV show The Pit and it is so realistic. It's unbelievable. But yeah, there's a high level of accountability there in that field. Yeah. So so we have a yeah, we have a question from the audience. So one of the audience members is asking what happens when you introduce the these accountability measures and people push

Tony Benjamin (42:17.002)
Right, No, but that's why we did that activity. So go ahead.

Steve-o (42:32.738)
back because they feel like you are trying to kind of meddle in the business and force them and yeah, and go out and get them instead of holding them to the true accountability. So that's a good question. Thank you, audience members. So we'll have Tony respond to that one.

Tony Benjamin (42:38.267)
or go out and get them.

Tony Benjamin (42:51.232)
Okay, so this is this is why I believe you teach big picture to small picture. Okay. And this is also the strategic idea of it. I learned this oddly enough from a podcast. And it was astronomy 101. it was astronomy 101, which fits right into project Hail Mary, but it was astronomy 101. And the the professor in that, and it's been 1012 years since he released it, but it was a really good series.

Steve-o (43:05.198)
That's not odd at all.

Tony Benjamin (43:19.677)
But it's the course they taught to non-science majors. Anyway, so he does astronomy 101. And how he taught it was he taught you the history of astronomy. So he started back in ancient Greek times and then looking at the constellations and noticing how certain stars moved in circles instead of saying stationary. And they called those planets, which is Greek for wanderer. But what I learned from him was you teach big concepts.

that are basic first, and then you add on to those. Which in a business setting is I teach you about the big concepts of the company, and then I pull it down to your position, right? And the purpose of that is to show how your position contributes to that overall thing. Now, what you want to do, and you get this pushback from frontline managers mostly. So what you want to say to them, here's our goal, here's what we want to do, this is how you are contributing to it.

Steve-o (43:58.498)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (44:17.153)
X percent of our margin is from you, right? And when your team doesn't do well, then that margin decreases by that percentage. Like we can track it two to three percent or whatever it is of our total margin. So you got, you know, a 30 percent margin and two percent of it comes from your department. So as we're as we're kind of watching that, then you say, I can tell when your people are being more efficient or less efficient. And I'm kind of grabbing generalities, not very good example, but

The idea is that you show them how what they do builds into it. And then you say, and you have the opportunity to, to report on this once a month or whatever that timeframe is. And then that's when you get the pushback, you get, what do mean? got a report on a way. You don't just trust me. No, no, no. But the only way we know for making progress is if we measure it and then, and then you report on it to say why we did better or not.

And by the way, I worked at a company where we didn't get financial statements for the end of the quarter for like three months afterwards. Well, then it was pretty stupid to ask that manager to come in and talk about why they got it or not, because by the time they gave that analysis, we were in two quarters later. Right. So you want to report on it when it's relevant and you want to say why we got the results we did. It isn't just accountability. People really have misused that word and they think it means

Steve-o (45:44.024)
you

Tony Benjamin (45:45.039)
I'm holding you to account for your shortcomings. That's not what accountability means. Accountability means we take account for what happened. We take account of what happened. So just like before, you have a bookkeeper, where did the money go? We spent money here, here and here. And what were our results that we got out of it here, here and here? Was it worth it? Yes or no. And that's all we're doing. Now, if you feel insecure that you are never going to get a yes in that, then of course you're going to be insecure about this, right?

Steve-o (45:49.454)
Correct.

Tony Benjamin (46:14.887)
But then it's your manager's job or whoever's above you to help you figure out how to do that. Okay. And you should go to them and look for leadership. But, then eventually if you're just not hitting it, you're not hitting it. But the idea, and by the way, companies need to get this out of their head. Then when you have people report, if they tell you that it's not going well, you're going to just get rid of them or fire them, or you're looking for around the last six months, they've been late on stuff three times. Okay. That's stupid. All you're to do is make people scared. So stop doing that.

Steve-o (46:19.682)
Yeah, how do we get there?

Steve-o (46:43.01)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (46:43.995)
What you're looking for, you're accounting where it is. And accountability means I hold you accountable for where it is. And then together, you advise me on the way to improve. In good quarters or whatever your reporting period is, when you do really well, I'm going to say that was really good. How could we have done better? And in areas where you did really bad and you say, boy, we sucked when, how could we have done better? And over time, it's going to build this idea of pulling you along.

Now, when you explain all that to somebody and you talk to them, and then this is the raw side of me, right? Because then I return to that big picture and I say, you know what we're trying to do here? Like if you worked for me and you were pushing back on something in my company, I'd say we're trying to rev this is your vision statement. We're trying to revolutionize the HR function in American business like that. Do you know how hard of an uphill fight that is?

we're going to do it. And when we do it, we're all going to be known as the people who did it. And that's inspiring. Like, wow, you go, but you got to report so we know where to improve. And anyway, you're following me there, right? You get this pushback, Tony, you're just HR, you don't know what you're talking about. You're right. I don't know what you do. But I know this. I know when I know the benefit your employees get when they're excited about working for you and when they're not. And I know

Steve-o (47:44.088)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (48:06.533)
You could increase your productivity by 10 to 12 percent just if they're excited to be there that day. Right. OK.

Steve-o (48:12.194)
Yep. Let me ask our studio audience. Yes, they like that answer.

Tony Benjamin (48:17.787)
That they see that. Wow. I don't know. You hear it here first people's.

Steve-o (48:21.326)
So So we have a fourth myth we have a fourth myth the last one that we need to address and that is the HR is only reactive and is not proactive now in essence what this means is that traditional Yeah, all the times because you know traditional HR

Tony Benjamin (48:28.157)
Okay, go, yep.

Tony Benjamin (48:39.227)
I'm sure that must bug you as a recruiter as a recruiter that must totally bug you.

Steve-o (48:46.082)
waits for the problem. And I'll tell you, there are some managers that just simply wait for the problem, right? A resignation comes, a lawsuit happens, a culture crisis, and then they just simply respond. But see, strategic HR anticipates. They anticipate because they're looking at the business picture, they're involved with all of the teams, they see the numbers, they understand the EBITDA in the bottom line, they're data-driven.

Tony Benjamin (48:51.387)
Yes.

Steve-o (49:15.106)
They see it before it even happens so that they can prepare these scenario plans, if you will, for talent shortages, building bench strength before leadership gaps possibly open up. They can read the signals when engagement is low, because usually when engagement is low, then that leads to turnover. And so then you've got spikes there. so shifting from this reactive approach to a more proactive approach, to me, arguably, is probably one of the biggest defining leaps.

into a strategic HR mindset. And it's so critical because too often, think about this, it is too easy to slip back into a reactive approach. It's too easy. And because it's easy to do that in HR, unfortunately, we see it a lot in our field. And because we see that a lot and we're constantly having this bad, you know,

Tony Benjamin (49:58.993)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (50:07.965)
you

Steve-o (50:13.076)
This is where burnout happens too, is there's so much reactive things to take care of that it's like, well, I don't even have time to be proactive. Well, that's where we probably need to sit down. Like you said, the accountability factor, anticipating things that are coming. But if we don't truly understand the business or its people, we can't anticipate those things at all. Period. It's just like a layoff. You announce a layoff. You're going to have people internally that are going to struggle with that as the survivors. You know, Andrea talked about that.

on our last episode, this survivor syndrome, where they remain and they're heartbroken or they go through this thing, right? Well, if you already know that's going to happen, what are you doing to anticipate those things that are coming up and how are you communicating that with your employees? And are you effectively working with them one-on-one? Not just general, because too often we do the strategic.

Tony Benjamin (50:42.117)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Steve-o (51:09.248)
Yes, is general in some ways, but the true strategy is the one on ones and actually working with the individuals when that happens. So just yeah, that's that's the last little myth, if you will. And like I said, all of these myths that I've brought up are actual realities in some companies today, and they should be a myth. We should not allow those things to creep into our organization in that sense.

So let's, yeah, this is how we be strategic. And we can go back to your, what do you call it? The job description that you had pulled up on that. But yeah, predicting the impacts. I know in your job description, the line that stood out to me as thinking about the subject is the ability to predict the impact of business decisions on human capital. That to me is probably one of the most strategic sentences in this entire list because

when you anticipate and predict the impact of what's going to happen, you are now better equipped to take care of it and nip it in the bud before it even becomes a

Tony Benjamin (52:16.081)
No, that's exactly right. Implement it before it happens. So.

Do you have a headcount plan for the year? If you feel that in your industry, a year is too far to look out, do you have a headcount plan for the next six months? And when that headcount is violated, either by cutting or by adding people, and usually it's people wanna add, but if they're going against that plan, your job is to make sure that there's a justification for it.

Steve-o (52:52.835)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (52:52.889)
And this is when you turn to your supposed ally in the room. Sorry, I'm being sordonic here again, but your ally, the CFO, and you say, tell me about the cost structure and how that will hurt or what effect that will have on the cost structure. maybe, maybe the CFO. Right, right. And maybe, maybe the, maybe the CFO says, you know what? We're so efficient right now that we can afford this. That's perfect. But exactly.

Steve-o (53:07.01)
Yeah, what effect will have on ebida? You know, all those things. Yeah.

Steve-o (53:18.712)
And that's what we want to know, right?

Tony Benjamin (53:22.247)
But you have a headcount plan and you stick to it and you tell your people between now and the end of the year, you get to hire three people, assuming you're in a growing company, you get to hire three people between now and the end of the year. You are scheduled to add them in Q2, three and four, right? One each of those quarters. And we would like you to build a plan for when they're gonna be implemented and how. And by the way, we want to begin the recruiting process.

Steve-o (53:39.298)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (53:50.567)
three to four weeks before you want to start the person. So, and by doing that, right, it's just a big strategic overview and you're looking ahead. Now, what that means is to go to what you're talking about specifically, Steve, we're looking ahead and another way you can do this, right, is you're going to say, anticipate in this department we'll have three people who will quit this year.

So in order, if I'm going to grow your department by three, I need to be ready to hire six. And that's where you're going turn the recording to. But the point is, is that you're anticipating those, you're looking at them, you're looking ahead. How do I know how many people are going to quit in that department? Because I look over the last five years, I look at the department who quit and what department, and I kind of give an average number and I start guessing, right? It's a wag at that point. But the point is, you're looking forward with those things. You're not just reacting to them. You're pushing forward.

Steve-o (54:23.352)
Six people, yep.

Tony Benjamin (54:47.707)
Now maybe you say, okay, this year, the first half of the year, we're gonna focus on this value of the company, we're really gonna push that hard. But if we push that hard, the natural consequence of saying more efficient, more efficient, more efficient, work harder, harder, harder, is that you're gonna have a bit of burnout. So the second half of the year, we're going to focus on how we're here for everybody, right? Right, right. But that's the point.

Steve-o (55:08.334)
Passion. So many good things Andrea has shared, right?

Tony Benjamin (55:14.809)
Right, right. But those are the things. you know, in that job description, some of this stuff I wrote, right, act as an advisor to all leaders within the company, giving them insights into all employees, predict the impact of business decisions. That's what you were talking about, right? And then create. Right, right. Create human capital headcount plans and monitor current status of that so that you know when someone's added in a department or whatever you're doing it.

Steve-o (55:28.994)
Yeah, absolutely. That's a big one to me. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (55:40.349)
You're developing a compensation strategy and routinely evaluate it against the public market Against what's originally out there and that probably means you have to have some sort of subscription to some sort of database or something like that

Steve-o (55:54.38)
And you have to have access and actually pull the data and know how to apply it and tell the story. That's exactly correct. You know, you know, what's interesting is, is, know, you how you get a lot of people in the industry when they're buying software, HR software, they they complain because they say it feels duct tape together because, know, these companies buy other companies to just kind of piecemeal them all together. Well, HR is very similar. HR should be embedded.

Tony Benjamin (55:57.436)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (56:01.987)
Exactly,

Tony Benjamin (56:16.038)
Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (56:21.895)
Thank you, yes.

Steve-o (56:22.72)
in the entire strategy of the organization, not just bolted on. Does that make sense? It is the same exact concept, the same reason why you buy a software that is all in one to try to have it all in one piece. HR should be embedded in the entire organization just like that. It shouldn't feel duct taped in different departments, depending on what's going on at the time. And I have always thought about that in that way, that our software should be just like our HR team, completely and fully embedded.

Tony Benjamin (56:25.531)
Yes. Yes.

Steve-o (56:52.992)
into and integrated into the entire company.

Tony Benjamin (56:56.219)
And that goes back to our audience question, right? Like you're just interfering in my job. How do you do that? And the answer is, is that you develop relationship with all the managers. And what I like to do when I started a company is I go in and I say, what are you after? Like, what are your goals? What are you pushing for? What are you, what are you really, what is your next step to being better in your department? And then they tell you and you go, okay, I can help with that. You're like, Tony, how can you help me?

Steve-o (56:59.352)
Yeah. How do you do it?

Tony Benjamin (57:26.319)
at how fast my guys program these machines to do X. And I say, well, I can make sure they're happier. They're here on time. I can make sure that you have, and of course you're going to customize this to whatever they're talking about, but I'm going to make sure they're more engaged. What if your guys were so happy about what they were doing and excited about what you're doing that they went out on their own and got their own classes and how to do it better?

And they brought that back and they taught you and everybody else what they learned in the class. And maybe you already know it, but their coworker doesn't like, right, right. Imagine they would be so excited about what you're doing that they would do that. Right. Like

Steve-o (57:55.252)
Mads not.

Steve-o (58:02.018)
How many, yeah, how many of your employees and even you as an HR professional is learning elements of AI and you're keeping it to yourself? I just want to throw that out there for just a second. How many of you are learning how to use AI? really excited, you're embedding, you're, you know, you're just, you're, doing everything correctly. You're seeing how AI is actually helping you, but you're not sharing what you're doing with anybody else.

Tony Benjamin (58:16.167)
Ding.

Steve-o (58:32.558)
That's a red flag to me. Like I've always felt like education should be free in that sense. Like we should be able to share what's working. And that's the type of culture that creates success. You don't want these siloed individuals that have learned how to do things and then they just keep it. You know, when I wrote my book, a lot of people are like, well, Steve, can't write the book because if you write the book, everybody else will know. And I was like, well, that's my point. I want everybody to know.

Tony Benjamin (58:56.635)
you

Steve-o (58:59.502)
There's a reason why the goal is to elevate our profession in general and elevate the way we're strategically trying to go out there and recruit people for our organization. That's why I called it the laws of applicant attraction. Laws are different than just simply principles, right? And that's why I chose that word, because when you follow the actual law, it's just like a nature law, right? Gravity. Gravity always pull you back down, right? You're not going to float away.

Tony Benjamin (59:16.657)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (59:24.317)
Thanks.

Right.

Steve-o (59:28.108)
That's because that law is unchanging. And that's why I chose that word when I developed that. And I think those are things that we should always educate everybody on. So it's a big deal.

Tony Benjamin (59:38.629)
No, and that is a good measure. No, it is. It is. And that's a measuring stick of, of your culture. So your culture should be one in that your employees are excited to share. So here's, here's a suggestion for all of you. Find some, if you hear of somebody around that has gone and taken some sort of class and any class that is, that is even tangentially related to anything you do.

Steve-o (59:47.0)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:08.807)
Have them teach a lunch and learn or a short class about what they learned and summarize it. And do it for their fellow employees. Make it required. And you know what you're going to do? That person will feel important, recognized, and excited. And then they're going to go around and share that with their friends. Yes.

Steve-o (01:00:26.008)
and you'll elevate the entire company. Just like the, you know, the water slowly rises. We don't see it rise, but it rises, right? When the ocean and things like that. Well, yeah, when there's a drought.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:35.973)
Or in the case of Lake Powell, slowly decreases, right? But anyways, yeah. But yeah, this is exactly.

Steve-o (01:00:42.274)
Dang, Tony, I was trying to make it all positive. Like I said, we're not trying to discover the dead bodies in Lake Mead, geez.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:48.765)
I keep thinking about that water line 80 feet above the ground. Anyways, the point I'm the yes, then this is this is how you get people to do that. I've said this a million times. I really believe it. You know, you're strategic when your executive meetings follow this format. You talk about people anytime you're talking about some sort of change or something you're going to do. Number one, you talk about people within the company, what's available to you, what's there, what the resources are in terms of talents, motivations, all that sort of stuff.

Steve-o (01:00:52.408)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:19.023)
And then you talk about the business change, right? You're to talk about it and the business of it and all that sort of stuff. And what can you do and can't you do? And then in the end, you swing back around to people and you're going to say, if we do that, how will it be received? What impact will I have on everybody? Your best employees, what are they going to think about it? All those things. And if you don't know that you need to. And I get it in a company with twenty five thousand people in it. That's great.

Steve-o (01:01:43.704)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:48.509)
You better have, if you as an HR person don't know those people or bring, if you're a, if you're a CHRL crow, if you're a crow and you're in a 25,000 employee thing, you should call up your HR BP over that thing and ask them, tell me about the guys, what are their pain points? What are they looking at? And then you can say that in that meeting or better yet have the HR BP and the manager over that team come and talk to them and say, Hey, we're thinking about doing X, Y, and Z.

What do you think? And get their impact. Now you're saying, but then everybody would find out and it leak out. Okay, I sort of get that. I sort of get it. But you still have to know how your people are going to react. That is what strategic HR looks like. You talk about resources, people as resources, the business decisions, and then the impact upon your most valuable resource, your people. And that's where you give your good advice. And that's where you earn your money.

Steve-o (01:02:46.638)
Yeah, yeah, I've always thought that strategic HR is the fundamental rethinking of how organizations treat people because your people are the primary driver of your competitive advantage, period. Your competitive advantage, like what you're good at, when you sit down and you look at this, do the SWOT analysis and you look at all the strengths and things like that, inevitably it will always go back to your people. And if it's not going back to your people, then what are you doing to drive that? Because that is a competitive advantage I think a lot of companies forget.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:59.687)
Yes.

Steve-o (01:03:16.184)
get to look at. They're so focused on the product, the widget, the service that they offer, whatever, and they forget that it's their people that actually drives those things. And that's where your competitive advantage really lies.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:18.01)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:31.237)
And this is what goes back to that myth you said about HR is just a cost center. And my answer to that now, anytime I hear it from anybody, I say, well, I think you've got that wrong. We're your only revenue driving center. Your human capital is the only thing that generates revenue for you. Don't believe me? Take all the people away, see how much revenue you generate. Your people are the only place of it. And by the way, that's HR.

Steve-o (01:03:36.173)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:03:55.214)
There you go. There you go.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:00.633)
My job is across the board, across all boards, everywhere in the company to utilize human capital better. That's my job. Now, I don't manage it directly. I'm not in charge of it. Each individual, whatever. But I'm the person who helps everybody else do it the right way. We're your only source of revenue.

Steve-o (01:04:20.398)
It's like my favorite t-shirt at ApplicantPro. Keep calm and resource humans.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:25.073)
that Steve, every time you say that, I keep thinking that my favorite T shirt from applicant pro was definition of human resources was I'm trying to remember it all. got it in my bedroom, but it's like the unofficial official lawyer, party planner, therapist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of the things. All right, right. So every time you say that, I know you like your shirt, but I like the other one. You guys did better. So

Steve-o (01:04:44.75)
psychologist, all the things. That's a good one too.

Steve-o (01:04:54.22)
My daughter Ruby would tell you her favorite was qualified and it was a picture of a quala bear and it was spelled out that way like qualified applicants. Like do you have qualified applicants? That was her favorite, but yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:54.47)
Anyways.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:04.733)
That's pretty good. Once again, I think the best t-shirt is the one that I helped design for the conference back in 22. And that is I started this job because I liked people. So anyways, there you go. That's my favorite. OK, well, Steve, I think we did a pretty good job there. And I hope this helps define for people when we're talking about strategic and we're talking about what it means from, again,

Steve-o (01:05:14.434)
Ha

Steve-o (01:05:19.406)
you

Tony Benjamin (01:05:34.461)
And maybe as we go out, this might be a good thing to say, right? So a generalist or an associate is someone who's pretty new. They handle a whole lot of different things in HR. A manager is someone who's experienced those generalities across the farm and they generally know what they're doing and they have a very transactional view. They make sure that all the transactional stuff happens and they gather all the information for a much larger purpose. Okay.

A director, their job is to direct all that and begin to lay the foundation or advice and depending upon your company size and all that, they lay the foundation for the culture and everything that's above it. But the difference between an eight or the real difference in experience between a director and an HR manager is that a director has been there, seen it all done that and has a t-shirt for any type of story you lay out for them. Right. They're never shocked.

no matter what happens. I was doing some interviews a while ago for a client and it was all politics all the time. was crazy. It was just crazy. And I get done with the whole day and I'm pretty tired after eight hours of politics and he said this, she said that, blah, blah, blah. And I get done with it and I say, and someone asked me, this must be so bad. It's terrible. I'm sorry. And I'm like, well, I've seen worse. I've seen worse. Right.

Steve-o (01:06:56.616)
Right. That's when you know you have the right person.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:00.711)
But the difference between a really good director than in a VP or a true strategic partner is that partner does those things that we've been talking about. Big picture, anticipating, not just call center, but finding ways to generate revenue based upon the efficiency. You're able to do it with hard numbers and in being able to show that and demonstrate it to others. That's what a strategic mind does. And that's what you want out of that.

If you're aspiring to that, that's the level that you need to get to. anyways, there you go. Yeah. So there you go. I do have a very, very short HR in life for us. You're ready, Steve. There we go.

Steve-o (01:07:36.29)
Mic drop.

Steve-o (01:07:48.77)
Here go. Here we go.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:07.505)
All right, all right, I like that. That gets me every time.

Steve-o (01:08:09.186)
I feel like it kind of starts out like a rock and then it ends up a little bit country. Like a rock country. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:16.251)
Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Now I'm going to think about that every time. I like that hard hitting right. Right. Yeah. No. OK. So while I was watching Project Hell Mary, one of the previews that comes on is for He-Man. And I have to say, I have to say that I was about four years too old for He-Man. So I was were you a He-Man guy, Steve?

Steve-o (01:08:22.85)
Not a bad thing, I just realized that.

Steve-o (01:08:36.822)
Yes.

Steve-o (01:08:43.15)
I was huge. He meant I had my dad bought me a lot of the little characters I had. Yeah, I had I had the characters like I just in my backyard, you know, I grew up in Las Vegas and our backyard was absolutely dirt. It's just all it was just straight up dirt. And and yeah. And the Red Ants were fantastic because you could. Yeah, but.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:01.565)
Right. Right. And endangered species and other things growing on back then. Yeah. Right. Right.

Steve-o (01:09:10.114)
But you know, I had like man at arms and he man and Skeletor and beast man and Stratus and Tila and all the things like I, yeah, I had them all even Shira at one point. I wasn't a huge fan of Shira, but I did like Shira in the sense that they had that little character. I forgot his name. The little character would always hide in the episode. And back then, if you found him, if you saw him, you had to dial a phone number. And if you were like one of the first callers,

you'd win some type of prize. I don't even remember what the prize was, but yeah, at least in my area. And as soon as that character appeared, the only reason I watched She-Ra is because as soon as that little character appeared and you spotted him, you would dial this number so you could tell them where you saw the character. If you got it right, you won a prize. I never won. And so I have no clue what, if that was even worth my effort, but there you go.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:41.978)
Really?

wow.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:04.295)
There you go. And Steve didn't do freaking with the cap. Did you ever do that? Did you ever do freaking with the Captain Crunch whistle?

Steve-o (01:10:11.35)
I did not, what is that?

Tony Benjamin (01:10:13.181)
so the Captain Crunch whistle that came the little whistle that came in Captain Crunch, it was the exact perfect tone. If you blew it into a phone that would open the connection for long distance calling without being charged. And so you should look this up, people. called freaking phone freaking. Yeah, yeah, phone freaking. You should look it up. You should look up. It's a real deal. And if you have one of those, it's worth one of those whistles because there weren't a lot of them made.

Steve-o (01:10:18.829)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:10:31.438)
How many of our listeners have no clue what that even means?

Steve-o (01:10:38.862)
That is hilarious.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:43.405)
you can, they're, pretty valuable now for the certain type of geek, but anyways, there you go. There's the first public example of hacking anyways. So the heat. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyways, the, preview for, he, man, he's the main character apparently, and I don't know what the plots can be. And I'm not getting, I don't

Steve-o (01:10:49.358)
areas.

All right. Well, tell us about your HR life. We digress.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:09.277)
Probably one of will have to write in and tell me about the movie because I'm unlikely to see it. You can talk about it. So at one point in the preview, they say to him, you really you seem to that you might have an app or what did they they said? you want to go into human resources? I'm not sure you really are that kind of a person or have the aptitude for that. And he looks all disappointed.

Steve-o (01:11:13.336)
I'm gonna go watch it so I'll talk about it later. So eventually I'll get to see it.

Steve-o (01:11:38.114)
No, no, no, no, no. It's because they caught him looking for swords in his Google searches at work. That's what it was.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:38.264)
And then...

Tony Benjamin (01:11:44.761)
is that is that I thought it was he was trying to say he wasn't made out for he for human resources.

Steve-o (01:11:49.25)
No, no, no, they were just saying that so so yeah, hold on. I gotta help you here, Tony. This is gonna drive me bonkers. He was doing searches for swords because he was trying to find out where his sword is so that he can start his battle. I assume I don't know what's going. I haven't seen the movie, so I have no clue, right? But but but he keeps looking for swords and so HR is is having to pull it in to say, I'm not sure we can have those kind of people here where your appetite is for that kind of weaponry or whatever.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:53.703)
Please help me out.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:15.325)
That's cool. Okay. There you go. There you go. Human resources makes an appearance in He-Man. So just putting it out there. There you go.

Steve-o (01:12:20.363)
Anyway.

Steve-o (01:12:25.218)
Yeah, it does. So there you go. Which is kind of exciting, but you know, if your employees are looking for swords, I mean, it's not always a bad thing.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:33.745)
You

yeah. Well, there you go. And all my clients, I advise. Yeah. Yeah. And that would be less of a deal than the sword. Right.

Steve-o (01:12:39.798)
I mean, I could have a pet tiger named Cringer. mean...

Steve-o (01:12:46.806)
Yeah, and he turns into a battle cat when I hold my sword up. I mean, yeah, it could get really weird. Who knows?

Tony Benjamin (01:12:51.837)
Ha

That's cool. That's really cool. Well, Steve, this has been a good I think this has been a really good conversation. Is there anything that we missed on this?

Steve-o (01:13:05.718)
No, I think we're solid. I think this is a good start. I'm sure though, again, listeners, if you can think of anything we didn't talk about or discuss, you're like, hey, I want to hear more about this. Let us know. If you know any good people we should be having in the red seat, let us know. Yeah. All the things. And, you know, at the end of the day, if you're a business owner, you're thinking about these things in your own organization, give us, you know, call us, right? There are ways that we can help in those areas. It's kind of a selfish plug there, but...

But yeah, let's talk. Let's talk. Let's personalize this for you.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:36.519)
Yeah, Yep, for sure. Yep, exactly. All right. Pucks for autism proves that when communities rally families win their hockey tournaments raise local funds that support autism programming, inclusion and connection for kids and adults everywhere. Join the team that plays with purpose. Visit pucks for autism.com. That's pucks for autism.com and get involved today.

Right. Shout out to Claire. Right. Well, Steve, this has been this has been really good. And I think it's been great. We'll give ourselves a little clap there. Yay. It's not quite the enthusiasm as a guest, but, know, some at least.

Steve-o (01:14:08.364)
Yes.

Steve-o (01:14:15.277)
Ha

Steve-o (01:14:22.638)
That's all right.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:26.237)
That's okay. Hopefully it was helpful everybody. We'll see you again next week. I think we're gonna go out the same way that we came in

Steve-o (01:14:33.912)
I think so.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:35.657)
Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review on your favorite podcast app. Comments or questions for us. Email the podcast at the HR life podcast at gmail.com and we'll talk again soon.