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HR Wine Bar is a candid and practical podcast for HR professionals who want real conversation, real community, and real insight. Hosts Amy Luckenbill and Jamie Mohrman share honest stories from their careers, explore the challenges and opportunities facing HR today, and offer clear and relatable guidance on everything from compliance to culture. Created in partnership with HRAM and connected to the larger SHRM network, the show helps listeners stay informed, supported, and connected. Each episode blends meaningful HR content with a lighthearted style that feels like talking with trusted peers. Tune in, learn, and find your HR community with HR Wine Bar.
To the quiet warriors of the workplace
Speaker 2:The champions of compliance
Speaker 1:The confidants of crisis.
Speaker 2:And the keepers of the keys to culture. Cheers. Welcome friends to HR Wine Bar. This is our first, very first episode. And today's agenda is an opportunity for us to tell you about us, Jamie and Amy, share a little bit of our professional backstories, talk about our volunteerism, those types of things.
Speaker 2:Our goal is to bring a little bit of humor to the HR persona. Persona. We're not licensed bartenders, but we sure do not know how to pour a mean HR story. You know, that's what we're doing today. So, Jamie, why don't you start?
Speaker 2:Let's talk a little bit about about who we are. I'll let you go first.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, if you would have asked me probably, I don't know, twelve plus years ago when I first started volunteering or attending HR events through the local chapters. If I would be doing a podcast, I never would have believed you. So cheerleading, doing something new, stepping out of our box, and I feel like we are so lucky to have found each other in this journey and just be able to, you know, meet as co chairs on the government affairs committee for the Human Resource Association of the Midlands or HARAM, and the rest was kind of history for us.
Speaker 2:That is our origin story of how Jamie and Amy came together. What about you you individually? What's your story?
Speaker 1:Well, I got my start in HR kind of nontraditionally. I thought I was going to be a wedding planner, and then I formed my own wedding and decided that that probably Wait.
Speaker 2:Wait. How did I not know this?
Speaker 1:Well, it's, you know, not something that I bring up to Girl, that's our next very good at it.
Speaker 2:That's our next partnership. I'm telling you.
Speaker 1:Wedding planning or some sort of planning. But long story short, I decided that I needed to figure something out. My husband was in flight school at the time, and I started job coaching. And from there, I started realizing I loved helping people find their passion and place to work. So I moved into staffing and recruiting, and then I said, well, I wanna get my SHRM CP and my PHR, and I wanna do this thing for real and actually become a certified HR professional.
Speaker 1:So from there, the rest has kind of been a multitude of everything from director to VP roles.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Excellent. Well, I also was a non am a nontraditional HR person. My background, education, and past life are all in music, music education, music performance, a long stint as a church musician, theater, and design, and those types of things. And I fell into HR when my husband and I, first got together in 20000, so twenty five years ago.
Speaker 2:And I moved to be with him, and a recruiter just kind of recognized something in me when I went for a customer service job of some kind. And she said, I'm not sure that's right for you, and HR was it. So I continued in HR from my entry level $9 an hour job through the ranks.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We thought that was a lot of a lot of funds. And so just working through career wise to director level as well. So we are both nontraditional HR people. I I had thought you were were HR all the way through college and all of those things too.
Speaker 1:Think I that's one of the most interesting parts, Amy, is that each of us have this, you know, random journey that gets us to this place where we can have a shared experience even though we didn't naturally Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I don't I don't know that anybody plans to go into HR. Right? I had a few
Speaker 1:friends that I was like, oh, do you know what you're getting into?
Speaker 2:Right. Right. Every time you have someone come to you and say, hey. I'd like to get into HR. You're like, but no.
Speaker 2:What part? It's a great field. It's a great field. But, yes, I definitely go and ask some questions And make sure that you have great colleagues to bounce things off of like we do. So hopefully, what we can offer folks in this podcast is is a wide field of content from those newbies who are looking to break in to our, you know, CHROs who are looking for the newest idea and a community and a place to draw their team from.
Speaker 2:But we're addressing everything from compliance to how HR carries themselves in the workplace, the language that we use, the ways we advise and support leadership, the way we strategize, all those types of things. So it really is a place to just remind HR folks that you're not alone. Right? And that is kind of where Jamie, you and I have have latched on to each other through our volunteer work and reach out to each other for a lot of different things for my favorite my favorite term for a sniff test on things that we're dealing with. So Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Mhmm. So we hope to for our audience, we hope to bring serious content with a lighthearted delivery as you may have noticed about our title HR wine bar. We both enjoy our wines and spirits. And so we have met over that as well.
Speaker 1:So We should tell them what our favorite one is. Maybe like our we should like cheer them
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Choice even though we don't have one in front of us right now.
Speaker 2:Right. Because we're in the office. So what is your favorite wine of choice, my dear?
Speaker 1:Really? I just as a great HR professional, I do not discriminate equal opportunity wine drinker. But I would say if I had to choose, probably a Savvy Bee or a some sort of rose bubbles.
Speaker 2:Got it. I am on the rose bubble train pretty much anything with bubbles. I love a good Prosecco. I'm a dry Prosecco girl, not a sweet Prosecco And my favorite grape is German grape called Grunewetleine from the Vachau Valley in Germany where I have I have sailed the river through the Bachau Valley and seen the terraced grapevine beautiful beautiful harvest going on. And so I have latched on to that wine, and I'm very lucky that that I can get it at a really nice wine store here in Omaha.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's my
Speaker 1:obviously a much more sophisticated wine drinker than me.
Speaker 2:No. I think it's just one of those. I know what I like, and I just keep going back for it because it doesn't matter what brand it is. I just keep when I when I could drink red wine, I was a Malbec girl, but Red and I don't agree very well anymore. So that's just elder.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. They're something that comes with maturity that the reds just don't sit quite the same way. No. No.
Speaker 2:So we will start with our toast. We'll take a deep dive into a topic. We may or may not have guests our first, six episodes that we bring you, for our initial drop. We do not have any guests, but we will be bringing those in as topics develop. And then some final thoughts and a final toast at the end, and that's kind of the structure of our podcast right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, obviously, with our wine talk, we've already stocked the bar for ourselves, but our plan for the remainder of our sessions is really to stock the bar with six top shelf episodes for you to binge right away because we want you to be able to do this while you're out on your walk, in your car, palatable sessions that you can listen to and hopefully get some great insights maybe before you start your day or while you're on your afternoon walk. A couple of things that we want to draw attention to is really a little bit of where Haram fits into the larger picture of the SHRM world. Many of you are probably SHRM members. Hopefully, you're members of your local chapter and SHRM, but we get a lot of questions about that.
Speaker 1:And I currently serve as the director elect for HR Nebraska, and so we felt it was a good opportunity to kind of shed a little bit of light on where those two intersect and how they kind of support one another at all levels. So, obviously, this podcast is being powered by HARAM or the HR Association of the Midlands here in Nebraska, but we're really hoping that the reach is is greater than that. And as HR professionals, we know that what we do is similar across the board. We're dealing with people, and we're dealing with compliance, and we're dealing with things that no matter your industry, no matter, you know, what your organization is, HR is HR in many, many ways. So these resources at the national level, obviously, SHRM being that organization that can give you tons of great resources, templates, tools, webinars.
Speaker 1:I know Amy and I attended several of those throughout the executive orders that were coming out originally right after the election, and there was lots of moving pieces and parts. And SHRM was kind of deep diving into those to help HR professionals know what was happening at the federal level nationally. So opportunities to dive into that. And then as you kind of get into your local chapters or your state level, which is kind of that middle liaison, At the state level, we have a whole council who gets together, bimonthly. We talk about, things that are impacting our chapters across the state.
Speaker 1:There's funding mechanisms that happen across the state, and often we probably think of the HR Nebraska conference that hopefully many of you were able to attend, this year. And, that's something that our our council also, hosts and works with our event planners on every year. But we are really there to support our local chapters, ensure that they have resources they need, and then relay information back to SHRM. We have a regional partner that we work with at SHRM National who helps elevate things that we're seeing in our local chapters. If we need assistance with something or we need more resources, maybe we're trying to get more kids from the colleges around our area involved, and we need additional resources to to best do that, and the Sherm brand can help us do that.
Speaker 1:We're reaching out and providing insights back that they can take to Sherm National and assist our local chapters with in in a variety of ways. So wanted to kind of shed a little bit of light on that. Amy and I, obviously, part of one of the committees on the HARAM board and chapter of the government affairs committee. So, Amy, I'll let you talk a little bit about HARAM and the local chapter.
Speaker 2:Right. HARAM Human Resource Association of the Midlands is the Omaha Metro. So this would be Omaha, Fremont, surrounding rural areas, as well as across the river. We kind of capture some of the Council Bluffs, Iowa side because it's much easier for those folks to come over to Omaha than it is to get to Des Moines. So we're we're across the Missouri River handling the Omaha Metro.
Speaker 2:And then I'll throw it back to you, Jamie, to talk a little bit about the other five chapters that are across rural Nebraska.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So our reach is far, and we've got some really engaged chapters doing some really cool things. I encourage you to go out to the HR Nebraska website. You can see all of our local Nebraska chapters. We have the Norfolk Area Human Resource Management Association that kinda takes care of that Northeast part of the state.
Speaker 1:We've got our Columbus Area Human Resource Management Association, so the Columbus area. And Columbus and Norfolk partner together on an upcoming they've actually got a a nice little cohesive conference that they do together and some cohesive events to kind of bring people from in between those communities together. So lots of great opportunities in ways they're collaborating throughout the year. We've got our Lincoln HR. We've got Haram, obviously, that we've been talking about.
Speaker 1:We've got Western Nebraska HR Management Association, so taking care of our HR practitioners out in the Western part of the state, and then we have our Central Nebraska HR management association. So Grand Island area, Hastings, taking care of that Central Nebraska. So really no matter where you are, there's a way to get involved, whether that's virtually, whether that's attending a local meeting, whether that's just getting connected with a person who can, you know, understand what you're dealing with in your day to day HR scenarios, I guess.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. We should also mention that HR Winebar will be parallel to Haram's program offering starting in 2026. So our plan is to drop two episodes roughly per month. And anytime there is an in person program with Haram, we will have a follow-up to that, which we kind of call the after hours party, to go further into the topic.
Speaker 2:Or maybe there's a couple of them that I'm like, I think I might have a different opinion than what will be presented at that program. And so maybe we'll we'll play some devil's advocate in some of those as well. But know that some of the our episodes will be in line with the haram programming in 2026. And then the opposite drop for the month will be a topic of of our choosing, whatever's whatever that top of mind or top of the pile on the desk, I guess, is the way. True.
Speaker 2:Understood. I would say that. Yeah. Right? Evolving.
Speaker 2:So all of that being said, we have some of our programming already set out for the 2026. Jamie, what's your what are you what are you most excited to hit?
Speaker 1:You know, I'm looking forward to many, of course, but I'm looking forward to everboarding with Amber Watts. It seems like a very interesting continuation of, you know, what she's been sharing with our chapter in the past as well as just this continual, need for how do we keep our people engaged? How are we retaining our talent? We know that it's tough to go out and find people to come in. And but if we can retain the people that we have, we can grow them in the right way and keep them on board with us.
Speaker 1:That's best case scenario. So hoping to hear some great insights from Amber. How about you, Amy?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And she had a she had a new book coming out next year. Right?
Speaker 1:Yes. So we hopefully get a chance to Wonder if there's hear that.
Speaker 2:Maybe maybe we have a giveaway in our future. If we can work that out, that would be ending. Mhmm. Terrific. I think I am most excited about, day in the District 2.
Speaker 2:This year, 2025, we took a number of HR professionals, about 50 of us, to the capital to meet with legislators and talk about the bills that were on deck for the extended session. And we did that in April this year for 2026. We're going in January, and our plan is to do a a live from day in the district. And I'm really excited for that because we'll have an audience with us and hopefully a guest if we can if we can get our our top choice to come join us. So I'm excited for that.
Speaker 2:That'll that'll add some new energy to to the conversation. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that was another opportunity. This is kind of, again, our state chapters being involved. We had last Right. When we did it May, I think it was May.
Speaker 1:Had everybody together from across the state. I guess it's March my months are somewhere in there. I'm it was somewhere in between March and May.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was tax day. It was tax day with all it was April 15 because we were afraid we'd forget the date actually. Well, you know, you bookended it. It was somewhere in there. You know, that's the life of HR.
Speaker 2:The the calendar just keeps going, keeps going. Yep.
Speaker 1:But we encourage you to be on the lookout because it is a great opportunity to really engage with your fellow HR professionals from across the state and truly understand how, you know, they're being impacted in in various ways across their organizations too. So
Speaker 2:Yep. You know, one of the things I found I found most interesting, yes, the legislative piece is important. Tracking the bills, building connections and relationships with our representatives, super important. But as I looked around the room at all the people coming from across the state, I was kind of struck by the variety and the different types of people that were in the room, different perspectives, and yet there was kind of an underlying, I don't know, current of of excitement about being with other HR people Mhmm. Who felt that it was important for us to be there because HR can be super lonely sometimes.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's just kind of the nature of the job. We talk a lot about department of one, those organizations that are small and have one HR person, kind of going it alone and trying to advise and trying to guide and and keep guardrails on the business and keep everything tracking in the right direction. And then when you come up against obstacles or need that sniff test that we mentioned a moment ago, it can be a really lonely place if if you don't have a good community to lean on. So HR needs an advocate. They can't always be on their own.
Speaker 2:And so I was really struck by that camaraderie that naturally happened when we all kind of came together. So that was a that was a big win for me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. No. It was a it was a really great experience and moving to to get to be a part of that and and know how our fellow HR friends also are having to go you know, their leaders are looking to them. They're asking those questions with the any bills that are passed or legislation that comes out. Oftentimes, we are the ones that the leaders are looking to saying, what do we do with this?
Speaker 1:And sometimes you just have that expectation that you feel like you have to know, and it's comforting to be in a room with people who are also sometimes figuring it out as we go because not everything is super clear right out of the gate. We've maybe learned that with our Nebraska paid sick leave this year. And once you think you've got it figured out, you come up with some other nuance that you recognize we need to consider and how you're gonna implement.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. I I think I attended four different legal sessions. So that's in addition to reading the bill for GAC, for government affair, and for day in the district, and all of that, and reading the final bill, and then attending four different legal updates specifically to, the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, which I affectionately call HIFUA. That's not an official term, but that's what I call it, HIFUA.
Speaker 2:And so every time I was in a session, I was like, oh, oh, I haven't thought about that. And every because it's untested, unprecedented, not applied yet, brand new legislation for us at the state level, there is there are so many moving pieces and interconnected things in that that you definitely need a community to help wrestle through those topics.
Speaker 1:100%. I attended probably all the same as you and then
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm sure we did. Recognizing,
Speaker 1:like, none of them actually covered how the HRIS system or the payroll system is going to work when we start to have to input that. So that's been, like, the scramble of at the end. Now we have to actually make this
Speaker 2:Implement. Yeah. Logistically. We have to make the technology support the thing that we want to do. And every time you put a technology piece in the mix, it just gets harder.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think we we were talking the other day that HR maintains stability where there's ambiguity chaos and leadership doesn't always want others to to maybe know what that looks like or maybe doesn't want others to do that. But we see it behind the scenes, and we're navigating it and oftentimes right in the trenches as we're trying to figure it out.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. You are absolutely right, though. When things when things do become unknown and unprecedented, I'm thinking back to the COVID times when, you know, the the assistance packages were out and we were handling through the nine forty one tax documents, paid sick leave, and reimbursements, and those types of things, that got super hairy and was very, very stressful. And I will admit that because we weren't meeting together in person, I really missed the community aspect of wrestling the change and the unknown.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I just Mhmm. Yeah. That's a revelation to me right now. I hadn't even considered that, that it would have gone so much smoother had we been able to come together.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well,
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Speaker 1:Either way, Haram did a great job of making sure that we have lots of resources. I think that is another big benefit is just always kind of seeking ahead, like, what's coming even with HIFUA. As you said, you know, there's always that looking ahead to what are our HR teams or HR departments of one needing as a resource and what can they take back and share. And I think we're doing a great job of always kind of staying ahead of that and anticipating what
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:We're gonna need.
Speaker 2:What's next? And that is part of what HR wine bar is all about. Right? So it's the compliance piece, but with some humor that, hey. When we when we start talking about HR topics, we are HR folk, and and we're gonna cut through some of the stuff that that other people in our business spheres might need to wrestle with.
Speaker 2:We we can set those things aside and get right to the heart of the HR piece because we're sitting on two barstools right next to next to each other with our wine just, you know, getting out of that loneliness piece.
Speaker 3:So
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I feel much less alone.
Speaker 1:Yeah. 100%. Your relationships change too as you move into various levels of HR roles. You don't get to maybe have the same level of peer relationships that you had at one time, or your peers change in those relationships, and there may be some relatability differences. And, you know, sometimes we may not always agree with decisions that are made, but we have to help ensure that that gets put out there.
Speaker 1:And so those relationships may look different as people are venting to us about how they might feel about a decision that was made. You know, we're we're having to maintain, again, that stability in whatever the policy decision practice that's been decided and Yeah. Kinda go with it. Mhmm. Well, let's talk about a little bit of relatability.
Speaker 1:We talked a little bit about this, you know, maintaining stability, having to navigate weird situations, relationships changing. And then I feel like there's always the one thing that, you know, HR is really one of the only departments people, whoever, that deal with this. Amy, tell us about your maybe first termination and how you handled that grace or grit.
Speaker 2:Grace or grit? Mhmm. Whoo. First termination. You know, I don't I don't remember a name or a situation or anything specific.
Speaker 2:I was working in manufacturing at the time that I can say. And I remember being young. I was I was probably 30, which I now think is young. That was twenty years ago. Young in my career, but but definitely in a management role by that time.
Speaker 2:And I remember being in a room with this gentleman who, of course, you always expect determination to to have a negative response. Mhmm. Right? And I I feel like it was my first. And I remember someone telling me more words don't help.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? Getting into the meat of why doesn't help. Nine times out of 10, the employee knows
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:What the reasoning and the justification behind the termination is. But what I hadn't anticipated was how much empathy and how how much feeling I would have for that person regardless of whatever situation was. It was basically just not getting the job done. Right? Couldn't find him when he needed to find him that type of stuff.
Speaker 2:Right? And and I remember just, okay, words aren't gonna help. Words aren't gonna help. And I just sat and let him Mhmm. Talk.
Speaker 2:And that that needs to run its course. Mhmm. And I didn't have any words of wisdom. I wish now looking back that I had had a little bit more grit in the empathy space, right, to say, I understand that this is hard. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I don't I don't know that I said a whole lot. Oh, you've put me on the spot. And so Mhmm. He was he was gracious. He knew that he was in the wrong in the situation, but he had to run through his words Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And his emotions before he was in a position to to leave. And he he left well. But I I do remember thinking I could have done that better. Mhmm. I didn't need to get into the meat of it, but I could have been I could have had more words around the empathy piece.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So
Speaker 1:And it's a hard balance. I mean, it's it's no matter what the situation, it's two humans going into this conversation that's not easy on either end. It's hard to deliver that news even if there's a very clear path that got to that conversation. It's you're trying to meet somebody where they're at, and you can't a 100% be there in that moment either and experience exactly what they're feeling. So that silence is powerful, that time to process.
Speaker 1:And like you said, you you start to maybe learn new ways to engage in that conversation from a place of empathy as you unfortunately have those conversations and get a little bit, you know, maybe more understanding of how that person might be processing. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Well and again, I was young, so I'm gonna give myself grace there. Also, at that time in my career, our society was different. Right? We didn't have open conversations about mental health even twenty years ago. We had an EAP that nobody used, employee assistance program for our young professionals who maybe don't know that acronym.
Speaker 2:And the EAP was not something that most employees used out of fear that it would get back to leadership or HR or something else. And so there wasn't an open conversation about mental health or struggles or those types of things.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? There also wasn't TikTok. And there are those those social media pieces where people had access to support if they couldn't afford to go and pay for their own mental health care. And so it was just a very different society that we lived in twenty years ago. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And in that respect, good on us that it's a little bit different. But I don't know that even a seasoned HR person would spend a lot of time thinking about how an employee was processing. Right? I think in general HR at that time, at least my experience from the advice and training I was getting at the time was just much more stern. And that's probably where the more words don't help came from.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. The the next natural step step of that I wish I had gotten was you can still empathize. I think I was just wary of of putting the company in any kind of liability, you know, first time. The other thing being, I should never have been the one terminating that employee. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? That should have come from a manager with me in the room with them, helping them through that process. I never should have been looking back on it now as a seasoned female HR practitioner. I should never have been alone in the room with a man who had the potential to become volatile.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Right? That's a whole other conversation. And one we might need to get into it in one of our episode. But but the just the very nature of how do you set up your office to make sure that you can get out if someone becomes volatile at that point. I I knew enough of that to be in a conference room with multiple doors, but, you know, that could have gone either way.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So, you know, first it's interesting. You ask about the first one because I'm I'm so different when I do that now. Mhmm. So
Speaker 1:To your point, the the what we what we know now versus maybe what we did then and how we approach situations and HR's maybe the perception of HR then versus now. Right? Like, of old versus HR of today and that huge Absolutely. Maybe is more there than just that transactional traditional piece that existed then and the resources that we might provide somebody as we offboard them and ensure they've maybe got some outplacement resources or to your point, the EAP, different things that we might provide now that looked a lot different.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Maybe then.
Speaker 2:Sure. Yeah. Well, let me let me flip the script on you because I don't wanna talk about terminations anymore.
Speaker 1:I'm like
Speaker 2:Mhmm. News to me. If we do talk about terminations, I'm gonna have to have a real glass of wine to do that. Let's talk about Yeah. Some And this is why HR need the barstool.
Speaker 2:So so talk to me about, like, an HR win. Let's let's flip the script. Let's talk about a win that you that you have had maybe that you wanna celebrate, that you think fondly about. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, and I'll say this one was earlier on in my career, but it's still one that stands out. I think maybe for some of our newer HR professionals kind of when you think about your seat at the table. And at that time, I was newer to HR as you remember. Was gonna be a wedding planner.
Speaker 1:That fell apart. Very different feeling. So I was working for an organization, and we were kind of in this, like, hyped up recruiting time. We needed to hire a lot of people quickly. We had big projects that were coming up on a construction type of site, and so we needed to figure out some ways to build pipeline.
Speaker 1:And I got tasked with that at that time and really had no, you know, true experience in building out specific recruiting programs. It's kind of my first go. So I owned my seat essentially and said, I'm gonna just try these things, and we're gonna build some really good relationships, And we're going to hopefully become, you know, the number one place that these candidates are gonna be thinking about when they're deciding where they're gonna work. And so we spent a lot of time working with local schools, the colleges, building out internship programs, getting creative with ways to engage with students, kind of like we were talking in Amy's situation differently, but still meeting them where they were at. Like, where are students?
Speaker 1:Where are we going to find them? How are we going to engage with them? Which now I think about it, and it would be completely different in how we were going to engage.
Speaker 2:Right. I was like, this is still very topical.
Speaker 1:Right. Like, side of the times totally changes. But Right. At that time, Snapchat was actually new, and we did a campaign around, like, students who were maybe working on projects that pertain to our field. They could submit an entry of, like, showing something that they were doing in their field.
Speaker 1:We had a, like, a snap code or something that they used. We hosted events at a movie theater. We, you know, got engaged in different ways they could have mentorships. Maybe they weren't able to fully do an internship because their schedule didn't allow, but they wanted that opportunity to meet somebody and get connected within the organization. So we had an opportunity for them to, you know, get connected with a mentor, and then there were other activities that allowed them to get swag and stuff that students like.
Speaker 1:Right? We love swag. Right? Things like that, but it was a way to really engage and start creating that name recognition of who we were, what we were going to offer, and get them immersed in our culture at the time. But for me, it's one that stands out because we ended up going on to win employer of the year for our internship program one of the years, and, you know, there are contributions of many that went into that.
Speaker 1:And we couldn't have done it without the people all across the organization, but it was a time where felt like, you know, as an HR professional, and maybe some of you are out there thinking, like, I've been tasked with this thing I've never done before. You never know where it can lead and owning that seat, maybe creating the table. Maybe you have to build the table to put the legs on. I don't know. But you really you have, you know, maybe more influence than you think, and getting creative and out of the box sometimes can be just the thing to help set you on the right course.
Speaker 2:I don't think that's a maybe. I think that's a for sure. Right. Especially now, sign of the times. There is you know, when I think about, again, my first foray into HR, if applicants were circling ads in a newspaper.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure that's how I got my first h right. Exactly. Newspaper, you know, I checked my email on occasion. I met my husband online, but it was not because I was online all the time. Right?
Speaker 2:And I didn't even have a computer at the time. It was just a fluke. And so I was circling an ad in the newspaper and got called to come in and meet the recruiter. So pipeline is very different today than it was when I started. And so being creative and thinking outside of the box is key right now because of our change curve.
Speaker 2:Our society changes, which we've already talked about some of those, but the ways that we communicate, how we spend our time outside of work, you know, out in nature versus social media, and the variety of social media that there is to to engage with. Right? My one email address has now become about 10. You know? And so I think for our for our new to HR folks just coming in, to your point, you were new in the field.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what we need is the folks who have a different way of thinking about technology and AI and connection. How do we connect with each other? How do we learn? Today's learners are very different than you know, I've had this conversation as a guest on a podcast before. I sat in a row.
Speaker 2:I filled out a worksheet. I handed it to the person behind me so that they can grade it with their red pencil, which was required on the school supply list that they have a red pencil to grade papers. And they knew my grade, they handed it back up to me. That is not what education looks like today. So we need the fresh out of the box thinking both for for difficulties like terminations and for those those wins.
Speaker 2:That's that's exactly how all of that gets better Mhmm. All the way around HR. Mhmm. So? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, we have we have hit on a number of of different areas, and I hope that that you know? I I feel like people have seen a little bit of me talking about terminations and maybe not the red wine, the white wine, those types of things. And we've definitely seen a piece of Jamie killing it in her early career when she didn't think she knew what was going on. Right? You know?
Speaker 2:But can. We do what we can, and that's what we continue to do. Hopefully, we have shown you a little bit about about us. We hope to be trusted advisers for you the way I look at Jamie as a trusted adviser for me, and hopefully, does the same.
Speaker 1:Likewise, Jamie. Of course.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Please subscribe, share, send us your stories, your wins, your fails, and your, you won't believe this tales is what we're looking for. And we'd like to take another minute to thank our sponsors. Our inaugural sponsors are making HR Wine Bar
Speaker 3:possible. Connects the right people and the right companies, fast, friendly, and focused on results. From temporary staffing to executive recruitment, the MyStaff team knows Nebraska business and delivers a job done right. Looking for your next HR role in Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado, or South Dakota? Everyone knows Kim Lynch at MyStaff because she connects great people with great careers.
Speaker 3:Let Kim help you land your next HR dream job. Email kim@mystaff.com. Whatever your hiring need or career move, MyStaff is your employment partner for a job done right. Visit mystaff.com or call (402) 614-1441. Because at MyStaff, we're not just recruiters, we're partners in your success story.