Cheryl Naumann, Chief Human Resources Officer at University of Phoenix

Show Notes

How do you scale people strategy for a fully remote workforce, while future-proofing with AI?

In this episode, host Emily Fenech sits down with Cheryl Naumann, Chief Human Resources Officer at the University of Phoenix, to unpack how her team supports 3,000+ employees and faculty who serve working adult learners nationwide.

Cheryl shares how UOPX keeps engagement far above benchmarks in a digital-first culture, why “brave, honest, focused” values power connection, and how the university is rolling out an enterprise-wide AI upskilling initiative from learning paths and enterprise tools to grassroots “power users” who accelerate adoption. She closes with practical advice on building an enterprise mindset so HR can drive business outcomes, not just people processes.

Key Timestamps

• [00:35] – Introduction: Cheryl’s remit and the mission of serving working adult learners

• [01:00] – Inside the CHRO scope: TA, total rewards, HRBPs, comms, and aligning people strategy to university goals

• [05:11] – Biggest challenge: sustaining connection and wellness in a fully remote culture

• [08:06] – Culture in action: “Be brave” and the virtual coffee outreach playbook

• [11:49] – AI upskilling at UOPX: leaders first, benchmarking usage, and safe enterprise tools

• [14:33] – Power users as change catalysts: grassroots adoption beats policy alone

• [17:13] – Real HR use cases: comms headlines, L&D visualizations, Glassdoor replies, compliance workflows, legal summaries

• [20:41] – Final advice: lead with an enterprise mindset and listen for people-powered solutions

Takeaways

• Design for digital connection: Encourage intentional outreach (e.g., “virtual coffees”) to build friendships and cross-functional visibility.
• Measure and mind engagement: Pulse twice a year; celebrate high scores but don’t relax—remote wellness requires ongoing attention.
• Upskill leaders first on AI: Build confidence with curated learning paths and sanctioned tools to model safe, effective use.
• Leverage power users: Turn early adopters into guides who share use cases and shrink the intimidation curve.
• Start small, compound wins: Automate summaries, visualizations, workflows, and comms to reclaim time for higher-value work.
• Adopt an enterprise mindset: Know the business levers, listen widely, and align people solutions to strategic outcomes.

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Emily Fenech (00:00.68)
Welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Emily Fenick, and today we are joined by Cheryl Nauman, Chief Human Resources Officer at the University of Phoenix. Welcome, Cheryl.

Cheryl Naumann (00:10.412)
Hey, it's good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Emily Fenech (00:12.988)
Yeah, of course. So Cheryl, you are setting the people strategy for more than 3000 employees, 3000 faculty who are then shaping the future careers of thousands of students across the country. Can you tell us more about your role, your team and what your day to day looks like at that scale?

Cheryl Naumann (00:31.534)
Yeah, sure, happy to. Our university is really special. Our students are predominantly working adults. Unlike just right out of high school, that's not our typical student. They're typically working, and many of them have kids, and they're very busy, and they're trying to complete their degrees. So we're very mission-focused in that sense. And my team has the pleasure of supporting our internal team members, our employees, our faculty. And so.

You know, on an average day as a chief HR officer, I mean, I'm basically responsible for the entire people function. So talent acquisition, internal communications, total rewards, HR business partners, employee services, employee processes, policies, procedures, engagement, talent development, all of those kinds of things. Very rewarding. have an amazing team. I'm really, really lucky. And so, you know, on

On a typical day, there is no such thing, right? I think as a CHRO, you kind of go with the flow and every day it's something that's a little bit different, but I have a group of amazing specialists in their fields that I work with closely on my particular team. So obviously I spent a lot of time engaging with my key leaders on the HR team, whether it's my head of talent development or my head of HR business partners or...

compensation and benefits. And in that space, we're really looking at what are we doing to make sure that our people processes are aligning with the strategic vision for the university. And what does that mean? I mean, it translates into projects as they come up, key initiatives that are employee facing. We're doing things like making sure that our compensation programs are fully aligned to capture the very best.

talent that we have and that we need for the future, which is, as you know, very evolving right now. Things are changing and modifying so much. And so we have to make sure that we're always on the cutting edge of recruiting the very best talent. We're also looking at engagement and how are our team members engaged. Our workforce is fully remote. All our employees are fully remote. So we do still have offices in Phoenix, Arizona.

Cheryl Naumann (02:50.261)
We use them occasionally, but for the most part, people are working from their homes. So that's a key element, I think, that makes our workforce unique. In addition to my own team, I'm also working with key stakeholders in the business, whether it's the president of the university or my other fellow executives who head up marketing and IT and the academic team's operations, trying to learn what the needs are in their particular area, identifying people opportunities.

whether they're challenges or ways that we can prepare for the future. So very, very diverse.

Emily Fenech (03:26.726)
Yeah. I think you nailed it when you said there's no such thing as a typical day. HR, every time I do one of these interviews, I'm humbled and reminded just how many hats our HR partners are wearing on any given day. you know, as of recording this podcast tomorrow is HR appreciation day. And so, yeah, make sure you go, yeah. And if you're hearing this after the fact, you know, yeah.

Cheryl Naumann (03:47.457)
I need to send an email out to a bunch of people at work. Hey, appreciate us.

Yeah. That's great.

Emily Fenech (03:55.134)
It's September 26th, so it's always good to say thank you for all of the things that HR is taking care of, most of which, you know, most employees kind of don't really know about. A lot of it is behind the scenes working on their behalf, but much of it is not as visible because it can't be.

Cheryl Naumann (03:58.201)
Good to know.

Cheryl Naumann (04:08.269)
Right.

Cheryl Naumann (04:16.29)
That's exactly right. But it is, there's so much that goes into the proactive pieces. think, know, decades ago, HR was focused more on the reactive part of the responsibilities that were not even necessarily really appreciated and actually in some cases even feared. That's so different today. That is really not what HR professionals focus on. That is such a tiny part of, quite frankly, what we focus on is that reactive

problem situation. Yeah, it comes up, it comes up for all of us. But it is more about thinking ahead, thinking about how do we develop our team to be, to really be able to achieve their own career goals and be the very best they can be and maximize their own earning potential and how do we help people to grow and how do we help our businesses to grow. So that's really what our focus is these days.

Emily Fenech (05:06.396)
Yes. Great. Well, what is the biggest challenge that you and your people are facing?

Cheryl Naumann (05:12.622)
you know, we, I think as a fully remote workforce, there are lot of positives to that. And I'd say there are far more positives than negatives. And we pretty much can recruit talent very easily because a lot of companies are bringing people back into the office. We found that we have no desire to do that. We've been fully remote since 2020. So a lot of positives, but with remote work.

We still, as we hire new people, some have never worked in a remote setting before. And for some, they thrive in that environment. And for some, they really miss that kind of, you know, walk down the hallway human connection. And it's about learning the new normal of what does that look like in a digital world? How are we doing that? How are we facilitating and encouraging that? So I think that's a thing that we are always hyper-focused on.

We are fortunate that overall our engagement survey results, and we keep our finger on the pulse of our team members twice a year, our engagement survey numbers are so far beyond national benchmarks, which is great. However, we don't let our guard down. So we want to make sure that we are finding ways for people to fit in a digital culture and.

form relationships, which is also harder when you only meet people from the neck up, right? So when we sometimes come together for events, it's nice to see, you're that person I've only seen in a square, you know? So again, focusing on the engagement factor and the overall wellness factor. And, you know, it can go both ways when you're a remote worker. You can have enhanced wellness because you now can use your commute time for

Emily Fenech (06:34.397)
Yes.

Cheryl Naumann (06:58.584)
physical fitness and you know, can take a stroll around the block maybe and take a conference call while you're walking around and those kinds of things. But there's also the risk that you sit far more than normal and you're sedentary and you're not moving as much as you might have if you were having to walk to another building on a campus like a building, you know, a corporate campus. So these are all the kinds of things we are also focused on. Plus, you know, we love our families. Yes, we do.

but sometimes spending a lot of time with our families, you know, you're in close quarters, right? So we try to find those outlets through virtual wellness hubs, through programs, peer-to-peer coaching, ways that they can engage outside of just this little piece that is now their world.

Emily Fenech (07:33.768)
Yeah.

Emily Fenech (07:47.793)
Yeah, I saw a conversation just yesterday about sort of the disappearance of third spaces in people's lives. And someone chimed in like, what do you like, forget third spaces. A lot of people don't even have second spaces anymore. Right. And I think I'm one of those people I work remotely and I, I love all the positives that you've already covered, but you know, I take advantage of the physical health benefits of more time to work out and to go for walks. Like you mentioned, but

There's also the mental health components of not seeing another person except for on a screen. You know, for extroverts like me, that can be a little bit tough. I guess my next question is for the people on your team, how are you navigating that? Are there any specific programs that have been successful or a way to sort of identify needs, identify risk? How are you addressing that?

Cheryl Naumann (08:24.834)
Yeah.

Cheryl Naumann (08:36.462)
Well, I would say it starts with the culture and the tone that we set overall. So for example, our core values are brave, honest, and focused. And the brave one is one that we really embrace, that people are most excited about. And we've had these core values for several years now. But being brave, oftentimes I'll go and I'll speak to employee groups. And yes, they're virtual. They typically appear at virtual town halls. I'll talk a little bit about this. And one of the things that I encourage, and I'll use this as an example, because

You said you're an extrovert, I'm an extrovert, so we might be easier to connect and quicker to connect than people who are introverts. And so again, in this world, what I will say to them is, if your colleagues are all in this virtual environment and you really feel like you just haven't established friendships, like we used to, a lot of your friendships and even quite frankly, romantic relationships used to come out of the workplace and you can't see anybody now, so it's a little crazy.

But what I tell them is to be brave. what I use as an example, and I say this to the introverts too, is if we're on a town hall and there 250 people and somebody afterwards messaged you on Slack or Teams and said, hey, I heard what you said during the town hall. was really interesting. Would love to just virtually connect for a cup of coffee sometime. I'd love to hear more about your background. How would you personally feel if somebody did that?

know, provided they weren't creepy about it. And most people say, I would be really flattered. You know, if somebody reached out or maybe it's a 10 person meeting or 20 person meeting, somebody said, hey, I'd to connect afterwards. We don't really know each other. Or I'd love to maybe work in your department someday. I'd love to talk to you. Can I reach out for 10 minutes? Almost everybody says I would be so flattered if somebody did that. So I said, you do that to somebody else. Like do that to somebody else.

Reach out, find some connection. Maybe they didn't say a word, but you can say, saw you, you mentioned you're from this department. I'm working on this cross-functional initiative. I'd love to learn more about what your particular area does. Can I connect with you for five or 10 minutes? We can have a virtual coffee. And I have heard from many people that have actually said, I would never have done this. I would never have done this, but you said our core values brave.

Cheryl Naumann (10:53.078)
and it gave me a way to connect. And now this person and I, touch base every few weeks and I've made a friend through this. And so it's just really cool when people realize how would it feel and you'd feel good, then do that for somebody else. And it works, it works.

Emily Fenech (11:08.158)
That's such a terrific example. I love that. also for I also, you know, it's kind of like shoot your shot. Like there's a lot of people that if I admire what they're saying, even on LinkedIn, you know, like just reach out. I really like what you're saying. The worst they can do is ignore you. Most people, they don't and it, leads to great conversations, great connections. Yeah, that's wonderful.

Cheryl Naumann (11:23.66)
Yeah, exactly. And most people won't because they'll be like, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And also through the learning paths that we offer, you know, we we offer customized learning paths that our team members can pursue within our LMS that also help them to learn about new things, you know, just outside of their normal job scope where they they can either come together in small communities or just expand their knowledge so that they're building their confidence, their skill set all the time. All of these things are

really important because you're basically, each of us has to own our own development. Yeah, our employer has to support it, sure, but we really do need to own our own development. What is your personal goal for the year? Whether you're an HR professional that's listening to this or you're a team member, what are you going to do to say, are my goals, this is what I want to do in my career? How am going to get there? What steps am I going to take this year to get there?

Emily Fenech (12:22.462)
Yeah, those are great ideas. Cheryl, I saw an article that you wrote in HR.com, I think last week, and it was about generative AI and why people, not policies, drive successful AI adoption. So this is where I typically ask, you know, what trend is having the biggest impact on your people right now? But I'd love to ask you specifically about that article because this seems to be top of mind for you right now. So how is, yeah.

Cheryl Naumann (12:28.366)
No?

Cheryl Naumann (12:33.89)
Yes.

Cheryl Naumann (12:49.454)
It's very top of mind. And I'm really excited to be leading the internal enterprise-wide initiative around AI upskilling for our company. And the way we look at this is, you know, this is something that we all need to get excited about so that we can deliver the very best work on behalf of, in our case, because we're so mission focused, on behalf of the students we serve, our alumni,

all of our stakeholders, the more we can leverage technology as it emerges and make it part of our life, the better we will be. And so, you know, in human resources, one of the things that, you know, we're asked a lot is, you feel like this is going to threaten people's jobs? And, you know, the adage that everybody talks about right now is AI won't threaten your jobs. just basically, if you can't leverage it to make yourself better, then that's a threat.

for sure. So it's going to be as common as using a calculator or a microwave or anything else in the future. So what does that mean exactly? So what we did here at University of Phoenix, as we have an internal initiative that is focused on people leaders to start, because we actually did a benchmarking survey to learn more about AI usage just amongst our people leaders. And no shock, it's not 100 % that our power users at this point.

You know, we have a lot of power users and then we have some that are in their infancy or have never, ever utilized any form of AI. And so if we can build the confidence and the skillset amongst our people leaders, then they're going to get excited. And so one of the things we did through this internal initiative is we rolled out an internal SharePoint site that has a lot of different learning paths for different proficiency levels.

We are focused in this infancy right now on the enterprise tools that we have authorized because obviously we have confidential corporate information, et cetera. We don't want to train an external model, et cetera. So we're using Copilot and chat GPT 5.0 internally.

Emily Fenech (15:00.656)
One second, Cheryl. I'm sorry, we can edit this out in post, but my husband's AirPods have connected to the program. Can you give me one moment? I apologize.

Cheryl Naumann (15:12.014)
Oh, okay, no worries. Of course, no worries. Those things happen. I totally get it. Take your time. You're good. Okay. Or like somebody starts up your...

Emily Fenech (15:17.52)
Okay, I think we've resolved it.

We'll edit that. He's, he's, he walked in the house and the AirPods connected and then he walked. Yeah. Talk about the pains of.

Cheryl Naumann (15:28.588)
Yeah, or somebody starts their car up and.

Emily Fenech (15:33.435)
Exactly.

Cheryl Naumann (15:33.778)
you're cutting out. Is it still you're cutting out quite a bit. Can you hear me? Yeah, you were just you were in and out there for a second.

Emily Fenech (15:38.29)
Yes, can you hear me?

Emily Fenech (15:43.09)
Yeah, I think we had a lag. Yeah, talk about the pains of your family at home and remote work. That's a perfect example.

Cheryl Naumann (15:48.207)
That would have been good to leave on air. It's actually a good example. I don't know what he was saying. I couldn't hear that part. I can start where I can.

Emily Fenech (15:52.382)
Yeah, maybe we just believe it is.

Well, we'll just pick it up with a new question. You know, we were talking about the trend of, one thing I really liked in your article was this idea of sort of internal captains, if you will, of taking the most fluent people, the ones who are power users, I believe you called them, and really sort of putting the challenge to them to bring their peers along. And so I kind of wanted to ask you how you arrived at that solution.

for driving fluency at University of Phoenix.

Cheryl Naumann (16:32.034)
I think when you're thinking about any kind of new technology adoption, it's fine to have the corporation sponsor and provide tools and resources. But what we know about change management in general is that change management and adoption really is most effective if you can harness the power of grassroots efforts. And in our case, we can

put up all of the learning paths that we have and make them available in terms of whether it's prompt engineering or what the different models are used for, et cetera. until they see other people doing it, it's kind of, again, maybe a little FOMO. Maybe those kinds of things are kicking in, but let's see who else is using this. And then sometimes it's a little more threatening to raise your hand and say, I'm going to take chat GPT for beginners. That's a little more intimidating. But if you can get somebody that's

in their business unit that's a user that can help to shepherd them along is great. We still provide the learning paths. We still provide them for all levels. We're actually encouraging, openly encouraging people to use our enterprise tools for personal use because what we know is for new users, the first time they make a recipe or the first time they get travel planning or that an AI can create an email for them, that's the infancy piece where they get really excited and then they think, what about?

What if I do this? Could I do data visualization? Could I consolidate reports? Then they start the experimentation piece. So these power users play a critical role in sharing their use cases with other members of their team members, as well as broadly. And then we supplement with additional training at different proficiency levels. So there's a place for everyone. Once we get the people leaders fully embracing AI on a regular basis and seeing what it can do for their teams,

We're a month or so away from rolling this out more broadly. We just want to make sure that if they had questions, their people leaders are equipped to be able to answer those as well.

Emily Fenech (18:40.134)
Yes. And I really like the analogy you use too of it being kind of like a tour guide in a new city where you really only need it day one. Just to get your bearings. Here's the tool we use. Here's a couple of use cases just to sort of get a lay of the land. And then by day two or three, you have the confidence to go explore that town by yourself. I really love that analogy because I think that's what AI captains or whatever you want to call them, like what they can foster.

Cheryl Naumann (19:06.464)
Absolutely they can, yes. And that is about just building on everyone's innate curiosity and letting it just shine. Yeah.

Emily Fenech (19:15.4)
wonderful. Have there been any specific experiments, any tools that you've tried, any frameworks that have got you really excited lately that you would want to share?

Cheryl Naumann (19:25.858)
You know, within my own team, one of the things that I did to really foster and encourage my own team's enthusiastic use of AI is I asked them to send me directly as a CHRO their specific use cases of what they're doing. And I said, you don't have, doesn't have to be fancy if you're a new user. You can send me a personal example. You can send me a business example. I actually stole this idea from one of my other fellow executive colleagues who did this in his team. thought that's genius.

So I'm getting all these great replies and I'm seeing that we're doing things that I had no idea we were doing. That they're just immediately just making it part of the work, which is great. I mean, we're using it for everything from generating compelling headlines for HR communications that will increase our click through rates on specific HR comms to...

creating insights and data visualizations for L &D, well, like training sessions. What is the feedback that we're getting and visualizing that and helping us to craft kind of new paths that are more effective. We have one of my team members said that she created a custom GPT for responding to Glassdoor reviews, which is interesting.

You know, kind of getting that down. It's not full agent status, but it's close where everyone's customized to the content and making it real time. So it's just, it's exciting to see these different types of things. There are workflows when team members relocate to certain states that have different regulatory requirements around FLSA status, et cetera. And one of our team members is using AI to automate some of those workflows.

and push out communications to the employee going to move to that state. The manager of that employee, like now what do you need to do to track time in this state that you didn't have to do before? We're using it, I mean, I've used it just recently just to take legal documents that I was reviewing that had massive red lines and saying create for me an easy summary of the before and after of this.

Cheryl Naumann (21:32.387)
particular legal document that was very extensive, heavily redlined. What was the before, what's the after? Assume all red lines to be adopted and show it to me. It did get one thing wrong. You obviously have to vet some of the content, but the time saving is huge. And just seeing all of these little ways that we're deploying AI to make our HR processes more streamlined, more quick so that we can go on to higher value work, quite frankly. That's what it's about, right?

work is going to just be done by a robot. we can do the higher value things and the time set goes away, which is the key.

Emily Fenech (22:10.014)
Yes, you guys should write a playbook. That's so many great examples. That's incredible. What's the opposite of death by a thousand cuts? You know, that's what I'm trying to think. Cause it feels like you've got wins, like lots of small wins that when you compound them are likely saving you a ton of time. So.

Cheryl Naumann (22:27.554)
Yeah, yeah. And, and, but we're just in the infancy too. I mean, that's all of us are right. We, we have only seen this far in and it is, it is exciting to see, I think what the landscape of the workforce will look like in the future and seeing, I really can't see any of our team members where AI can't materially help them propel their careers.

make them more effective, help them to streamline and simplify and do higher value things that will produce business results down the road, right? I think all of those things are there. There's just not an area it's not gonna touch.

Emily Fenech (23:12.19)
Well, I've really enjoyed our conversation today. Cheryl, do you have any last words of advice for people who might be listening?

Cheryl Naumann (23:19.918)
I would just say that one of the things I always talk about in HR is that to be effective in our profession, you have to have an enterprise mindset. You can't just look at HR in your people systems. You have to truly know what the strategy is of your business. You have to know what levers need to be pulled to achieve those corporate objectives and to listen as much as you talk. Like listen and become a sponge, take in information.

so that you have a million little things filed away because there is probably a people solution to every single one of those and ways that we can add tremendous value. And we're really fortunate to be in this profession that we can go and work in pretty much any industry and deploy these skills, but to do so in a way that will truly not only change our companies, but change the lives of all of the talented people that rely on us to give them a good experience.

Emily Fenech (24:15.836)
Yeah. Well, I wish you a happy HR appreciation day one day early, Cheryl. Thank you for being here.

Cheryl Naumann (24:21.56)
Thank you, was a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Take care, bye.