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HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call.
Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time.
There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.
HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”
Rebecca Taylor (00:01)
Hello and welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host Rebecca Taylor and I'm here with Autumn Willingham, Chief People Officer at The Parking Spot. Welcome, Autumn.
Autumn Willingham (00:10)
Hi, thanks for having me.
Rebecca Taylor (00:12)
Thank you so much for being here. I know that it's like, you know, sometimes we were just kind of chatting a little bit before this and, you know, sometimes we have a few minutes to meet before these recordings and sometimes you meet right as the recording starts and then we get going. And this is kind of one of those scenarios where we just met, but I feel like we're already in a pretty good groove. I think this is going to be good.
Autumn Willingham (00:29)
Yeah, excited about our chat today.
Rebecca Taylor (00:32)
Yeah, me too. And for those who are new here, I just want to let you know a little bit more about HR Voices. So HR Voices is a podcast that explores real and fabricated anonymized employee relations scenarios through the lens of experienced HR and people leaders. Guests, like Autumn, are going to evaluate realistic workplace situations and demonstrate how they would assess risk, apply judgment, and design practical responses. So the goal is to reveal how strong HR leaders think when they're facing ambiguity.
not necessarily to find a single correct answer because as we know in HR, there so rarely is one correct answer. We're living in the gray pretty much the whole time.
Autumn Willingham (01:09)
Right,
my gosh, yes.
Rebecca Taylor (01:12)
So, Autumn, are you ready for your scenario?
Autumn Willingham (01:16)
Yeah, let's do it.
Rebecca Taylor (01:18)
Okay, so we're calling this one the candidate who lied about degrees. During a post-offer, yeah, I'm excited about this one. I know we just picked it, but I'm like, we could dig so much into this, so. During a post-offer background check, HR discovers that the company's top candidate for a senior finance role listed an MBA from a university he did not graduate from. He completed two years before dropping out. He has 15 years of strong experience, excellent references,
Autumn Willingham (01:22)
Mmm, good one.
Thank
Rebecca Taylor (01:44)
and the hiring manager considers him the only qualified candidate for a critical role. HR policy requires rescinding offers for material misrepresentations. The hiring manager argues the degree is irrelevant to actual performance and wants an exception. Legal is split. The candidate, when confronted, apologizes and claims it was a long ago error he forgot to correct. Okay, so before we get into the he said, she said, he said part of this whole thing,
Autumn Willingham (02:11)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (02:13)
What
stands out to you as the most risky or the most unclear in this scenario?
Autumn Willingham (02:19)
Yeah, I mean, what I hear in this is, are we getting what we want to pay for? Are we getting truthfulness? Are we getting someone that we can trust? And when we're hiring any candidate, but certainly one in the position or department of finance, this is, you know, they're going to have access to fiduciary ⁓ documents, financial records.
We need someone that we could trust. And if I were the HR advisor in this scenario, I would immediately start by reframing the issue that way because ⁓ this could introduce an untrustworthy risk to the business. We need someone we could rely on.
Rebecca Taylor (03:07)
Yeah. And do you think that the issue for you is more the lack of degree or the misrepresentation part?
Autumn Willingham (03:15)
Well, no, I think the core issue and how, cause in this scenario you mentioned like, well, the hiring manager wants to kind of see past this. This is, and I get it, I'm empathetic. Like otherwise we've got, you know, what could be a high potential high performing person. ⁓ I would start with, let's put the problem in front of us, not between us. And let's look at this factually. I think the core problem is we have someone who
is misrepresenting themselves in the hiring process. And we need to make sure that ⁓ this person has been candid and truthful and that we're not negligently hiring someone already knowing we have what I would call a red flag concern.
Rebecca Taylor (04:02)
Yeah, I think that's fair, especially when even if the scenario ends with the employee forgot to correct the mistake. It was like a long ago mistake that they had this on their resume and they haven't corrected it. Even that for someone in finance of a certain level, attention to detail is so important, right? So even if it's something like that, it's like, how did you not check that before you applied?
Autumn Willingham (04:25)
Yeah, mean, and that's well, first of all, you know, we're we're asking this person, a future member or partner in finance to provide accurate, detail oriented ⁓ analysis and to provide and always represent ⁓ certainly financial information in an accurate manner and to make sure that they really know their stuff. And so to miss an important detail.
⁓ And maybe this person is telling the truth that, this was so long ago. ⁓ From a performance angle, that's kind of concerning. That's a major detail that was missed. From a candidate ⁓ transparency, ⁓ that this is, again, a red flag. mean, how could you not fix the issue today if this was a problem long ago? So just a... ⁓
multiple things that I think stand out. would want to ⁓ consult our hiring manager that let's not look at the individual, let's not get fixed on this one person. There's other great candidates that we can go after that don't make ⁓ critical errors in their resumes and that represent themselves accurately.
Rebecca Taylor (05:45)
Yeah, yeah. And it's kind of funny because if not this specific type of situation, but something similar, we see a lot of this happening now in different ways, right? I mean, I know that a lot of my former friends and current friends, former fellow recruiters, they are experiencing misrepresentation in resumes at some points. There's a lot of...
There's a lot of noise in recruiting right now, and it's really hard to tell sometimes if someone actually does have the skills that they say that they do or the experience that they do. so I think that's why this scenario, even though it's so specific about a candidate misrepresenting a degree, there are, think, going to be a lot of things that we can sort of talk through and how you kind of dig into this that are probably going to be relevant for someone who's experiencing an adjacent type of situation at their own organization, right? ⁓
So there's the misrepresentation part, there's the attention to detail part, and then there's the question of, this person ultimately then not qualified for that role? That's another thing that could be out there that kind of needs to be evaluated depending on your hiring policies and the qualifications for that specific role. So who do you want to start talking to in this scenario and what do you want to understand from
Autumn Willingham (07:06)
I would definitely want to start, you know, to respond to the last point you made around, is this really a qualification that's necessary? And the way that I would navigate that with the hiring manager or the recruiter is, ⁓ well, let's balance what the MBA degree and how it's credentialed. How have we hired previous candidates ⁓ in prior roles?
or this, let's say this current job opening, did we already tell other candidates or decline them because they didn't have an MBA? So what precedent are we modifying or establishing by if we were to move forward with this candidate to say, yes, well, although we discovered, you didn't admit, the candidate didn't admit, we discovered that they misrepresented the degree.
I would go back to the hiring team and looking at what are the true qualifications for this position and say, why would we make the pivot? ⁓ And ⁓ if the education credentials that comes with an MBA based off certain role, ⁓ a certain role in the position, or if it's just been a historic practice, is this the moment to reevaluate that solely to make an adjustment to hire this candidate?
Or is this something that was necessary to reevaluate anyhow? And I think, you know, it will depend on your specific discussion, your specific ⁓ needs or how critical it is to fill this position. But I think ultimately the point will always remain and it will always linger, you know, can we trust this particular candidate? Even if we were to make that exception, does that
Does that change in any way that this is the best person for that role? And I would just have an icky feeling about that anyhow. ⁓ Our role is just to not make the decision for the hiring managers, but our job is to present here's a good option and here's the best one. And when I frame things that way, any manager would always want to go for the best option, which in this scenario is ⁓ likely.
no need to change the credentialing. We just had a candidate that misrepresented and we're gonna go find someone who's a better fit, more honest.
Rebecca Taylor (09:39)
Yeah, yeah. Especially when, you know, whenever you submit an application to an organization, you have to sign off that everything that you have and everything you say in there is true, which, you know, again, people will check that box or sign that depending on what type of application it is and, you know, probably not expect people to check. ⁓ But that is, you know, that is that that if we're not going to act on that, then what's the point of having it? You know?
Autumn Willingham (10:07)
Yeah, no, you're spot on because then you go back to, you circle back to values. And if your company values or leadership values are integrity, honesty, high quality performance, accuracy, I mean, does this, how does that particular candidate calibrate against those values? And I think it makes it even clearer what the best option is.
Rebecca Taylor (10:36)
Yeah. And I think in this scenario too, you're dealing with competing priorities, right? As you do whenever we do an HR, because we have, you know, the side that we have to sort of play, I guess you'll put it, where, you know, we're sort of really stress testing the manager's decision. We're sort of saying like, you you say that this person's the only qualified person, but we see that they've misrepresented themselves. So then we disagree with their qualification or there's something here that's missing and we need to kind of get
as close to the same page as possible, right? So how do you balance or how do you approach this conversation with that hiring manager? Because assume, figure a finance role, person with an MBA, they're the only qualified person, they've probably been recruiting for this role for a while, or they feel like they've found like, you know, the golden ticket, they're like, this is the perfect person. So how do you line up that conversation with the hiring manager who kind of has the most to win or lose other than the candidate?
Autumn Willingham (11:23)
from.
Yeah, I would start with empathy. My approach would probably be something like this. You know, hey, hiring manager, like, I know that we've been recruiting for this position for so long, and we were really excited about this candidate. ⁓ I just want to talk to you about how you're feeling about ⁓ how we discovered not having an MBA. How did that make you feel? ⁓ And kind of get some
rapport and responses based off of that. Then I would start leaning into what we want most out of this position. Do we want someone to fill this role in the now? Do you want this role or see this position growing with the business? as this whoever the candidate is evolves with the business, hopefully, you know, as part of succession planning, would you?
want this, what values would you want out of this person? And again, I would, I would start centering my, my approach around this good option to, you know, to hire, best option not to hire. And I would coach them into answering these questions and helping them arrive at the best answer by getting them to say out loud, I do want someone who has high integrity.
someone in finance who's accurate. I don't want to have a dark cloud from day one if I were to hire this person and have a big question mark. I want someone that ⁓ comes in motivated for the right reasons with integrity without question and accuracy as a high performer, which is what we want from day one to ensure that the quality of our candidates are never compromised.
We will never compromise those values over ⁓ policy.
Rebecca Taylor (13:36)
Yeah, yeah. I think it's smart to take it to the values too, because that's always the, when you really kind of need like a grounding perspective or a grounding framework to kind of guide those conversations, they're the best ones to sort of sit within. And probably also the competencies for the role, right? Assuming those are even partially scoped out. Having hired for finance many times in my, in my HR career, I know that, you know,
Trust and accuracy are two very important parts of that particular role. ⁓ You know, I guess you could say in any role at the company, but with finance especially, I feel like it's weighted differently because they have all of the keys to the kingdom in a lot of ways. ⁓ And I think that's the, you know, the tough part. Now, if they're, ⁓ I guess like if you're, so as you're talking to the hiring manager, what do you say to the candidate or what do you suggest they say to the candidate?
Autumn Willingham (14:16)
Yeah.
great, great question. Thanks for asking this. ⁓ I would not over elaborate with the candidate. ⁓ First of all, in most states, it's not even really required. We don't have to necessarily go into too many details about why someone is or isn't hired as long as it's not based off a discriminatory reason. And that's not the case here. What I would say to this candidate is ⁓ first, you know, thank them for applying.
I would let them know that they were seriously considered, that we had some dialogue internally, but ultimately the decision was made, noting that I'm not naming who made the decision, but I would say the decision has been made that we're not going to move forward at this time. And I would leave it there. I anticipate the candidate would ask a follow-up question, well, did this have anything to do with, ⁓ you know, the MBA error? And I...
I would say in most cases, as long as you can keep your response brief and limit it in scope, would say yes, this was part of our decision making process and we just don't feel comfortable ⁓ with how it was represented on your resume. And again, thank you for your time and end the conversation.
Rebecca Taylor (15:51)
Yeah, yeah. And it sounds like from this scenario, and this is a fabricated scenario too, right? So there's, have to take some of it what's in there with a grain of salt, but it sounds like in this scenario, there's a, there is an actual policy that requires rescinding offers for material misrepresentation. So it might not even have to be about, we're not comfortable with this. It might just have to be about it, you know, this is the policy, it is what it is. And that might have to be enough, cause then you're, you know, something you said earlier is,
Autumn Willingham (15:56)
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (16:20)
whatever decision you make here could set a precedent. Because maybe this is the first time that that policy is being enforced or that it even comes up, right? And how you handle it sort of sets the precedent for if you make an exception for this candidate or this potential new hire person you were sending the offer from, if you make an exception here, then you're going to have to make an exception everywhere to show that it was not a biased type of exception.
Autumn Willingham (16:46)
yeah, that's a perfect alternative way to share that with the candidate that we don't see this as an opportunity to break with our current policy.
Rebecca Taylor (16:55)
Yeah. And who ultimately owns the outcome in a scenario like this? So someone has to decide what to do with the candidate, is that, does HR decide and enforce that on the manager? Does HR present options like you mentioned and then leave it on the hiring manager? And then who ultimately owns that outcome and is accountable for whatever fallout happens after it? I know it's kind of two questions, but they're combined in my mind.
Autumn Willingham (17:19)
Yeah.
No, there are two perfect questions that run in parallel. I have worked in organizations where ⁓ perhaps the business leaders, operational leaders, they rely on HR to be the full 100 % guardrail of policy and make hiring firing decisions. And if your listeners work in an organization like that, then go ahead and stand in that authority.
However, I typically don't lead that way. My preference is human resources serve as consultant or advisory positions. my belief is our role as HR practitioners is to empower business leaders to make the best business decisions. So when it comes to hiring, firing, ⁓ I would always present.
that the managers own these decisions. And so that's why I position these type of scenarios in my past similarly. Like this is a good decision you can make, but this is the best one. And I have to tell you, not that I've encountered this fictitious scenario to the T, I have had similar ones and it has never failed me when I frame it that way because
Rebecca Taylor (18:40)
Yeah.
Autumn Willingham (18:45)
It is how you consult and coach and get them to say out loud, I want to make the best decision here and thank you for helping me see through this clearly and guiding me there. That way we're never telling them what to do. They appreciate that in most cases. Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (18:58)
Yeah, in most cases is the key term, but yeah, even if not at first, right?
think something that can really work in everyone's favor in a scenario like this is a little bit of time, not delaying the decision for too long, right? But maybe giving it a few days so that the manager can kind of, you know.
Autumn Willingham (19:17)
No.
Rebecca Taylor (19:24)
process a little bit and then have a little bit more time to make that call, to talk to you. Because at first, you can imagine they're going to be frustrated, right? They're already pushing. saying, this person is the only person who can do this job. They're pushing to just sort of say, just stay out of my way and let me do my thing. It's kind of how I read this fictitious scenario on behalf of the hiring manager. So I think giving a little bit of time to say, hey, let's give ourselves a few days to figure out what we want to do about this.
Autumn Willingham (19:50)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (19:53)
tell the manager, we'll tell the candidate, we'll tell everybody that we all need to take some time. ⁓ How much time is too much time to wait for something like this? To make a decision and inform everybody.
Autumn Willingham (20:04)
Yeah, I think.
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to put a point on it because I think ⁓ if you're hiring managers willing to say, well, let's let's keep this candidate warm, the the. Misrepresenting candidate, we can keep them warm and while we explore additional candidates now in this scenario, it already took a while to find that. So I mean, to directly answer your question, I wouldn't let more than a week go by.
Certainly knowing that the way that I recommend reframing it in terms of a values-based decision and a policy-based decision, it shouldn't take that long to make that decision. But I mean, my sweet spot, just a couple of days max, but definitely I think a week might be a little too long.
Rebecca Taylor (20:57)
I agree. I agree. Because I think because then it's like you're leaving the candidate hanging. They could have other roles that they're interviewing for. Right. Like it's not fair. It's not fair to them. They also kind of need to be able to know where they are instead of being stuck in limbo. ⁓ And to your point, if you take too long to make the decision, then the question becomes, well, if this was so straightforward, then how come it took you so long to make the call? And that can just raise questions that you don't want raised. Right.
Autumn Willingham (21:01)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Rebecca Taylor (21:26)
that don't need to be raised.
Autumn Willingham (21:26)
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely. mean, you want to be decisive when it comes to values, which is why, you know, take the night to think it over is probably what I would say at a max, ⁓ but no more than two. This is a, you know, we want to guide them with straightforward values-based decisions that should not really be compromised. That doesn't break.
Rebecca Taylor (21:39)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah. It's almost like kind of they have to get on board with what the decision has to be in something like this.
Autumn Willingham (21:55)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, give
them time. Like that's where the empathy comes in. Give them time to get on board with what they have to do. It's not what they want to do, but what they have to do.
Rebecca Taylor (22:00)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, and give them space to be frustrated probably too. just because it is frustrating, it's like, look, I get it. I want this role filled too. But here we are. Yeah. So do you see any patterns repeating across situations like this? when I say patterns in situations like this, mean hiring managers looking to make exceptions because a candidate is perfect despite things like this. Like despite.
Autumn Willingham (22:08)
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Rebecca Taylor (22:32)
either not having the experience that they said or despite giving a bad reference, for example, like what patterns do you see repeating in these kinds of things?
Autumn Willingham (22:37)
Yes.
Yeah, I mean, great question. We've all been there. I have this fun term, like a candidate crush. It's like, my gosh, they're, you know, they were perfect. I could never dream of another candidate, better candidate for this role. And it's hard to break up with your candidate crush. But if there is a pattern, ⁓ which I would say, you know, at least we're all entitled to this one, you know, back and forth.
Rebecca Taylor (22:47)
Yes.
Yeah.
Autumn Willingham (23:07)
Maybe two, but it's definitely a pattern if there's a willingness to break from qualifications. ⁓ I would say, well, we need to probably revisit with this hiring manager about what we decided or agreed upon in the candidate intake call. Hopefully, you know, your listeners are doing that. But we center ourselves back to the beginning. This is what we said we wanted and needed in this role.
Rebecca Taylor (23:28)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Willingham (23:36)
⁓ And what would be a good enough position or reason, I should say, to tie break from policy, from what we agreed upon, ⁓ from historic practices. And just as a note ⁓ for compliance purposes, you know, if any of your listeners are, you know, part of, you know, they're required under affirmative action plans or compliance purposes.
If we start making changes, modifications, exceptions in the middle of a hiring process, that can get us into some really hot water as we're changing qualifications for ⁓ current candidates or interested candidates. So we want to make sure that your hiring process is consistent. As long as your analysis
Rebecca Taylor (24:15)
Mm-hmm.
Autumn Willingham (24:31)
is consistent, it could yield different outcomes, but you don't want to start changing your analysis in the middle of the hiring process. That could really lead to some compliance issues, so good watch out.
Rebecca Taylor (24:43)
Yeah,
I'm so glad you brought that up because these types of scenarios I've found always come up when there's a bias for that candidate. Whatever that bias might be, we went to the same school. We really enjoyed our conversation. There's something in this hiring manager's mind that's like, this is the only person who's qualified. And it has to be a bias because they're looking past the qualifications and the misrepresentation to justify this. And we are all human.
Autumn Willingham (25:04)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (25:12)
all do this. Like any candidate crush that I've had that I'm sure anyone has, it's like because there's something about them that's like, they're like me or whatever. That's completely normal. The thing to do with that is like basically what you do with that. You don't use that to make hiring decisions, right? You kind of have to hold that up to the consistent criteria that you're holding every candidate to, like you mentioned. So you're not changing the criteria just because of this one candidate who got involved.
Autumn Willingham (25:13)
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right. And I mean, you know, there's it's not exactly like dating, but hiring someone, it has a lot of similarities. And so HR has to be that that friend to say, wait a minute, like this is a pattern friend. Like you, you know, remember you had that one girlfriend or boyfriend that kept doing that to you. Like don't change what your what your what your values are, what your morals are. This you want. You're going to find that right person for you. And that's our we just have to be that mirror.
Rebecca Taylor (25:46)
Yeah.
Yeah,
it's like we've seen this movie before. Don't do this again. I love that. And you know, is there anything that HR leaders can do? And maybe we've kind of touched on this, but just to ask it sort of explicitly, you know, is there anything that HR leaders can do to prepare managers for this kind of moment? Because I feel like every manager has this moment that's like, I know they're not perfect, but so like, what can HR do to prepare them?
Autumn Willingham (26:10)
Yeah, exactly.
Rebecca Taylor (26:34)
Is it just making them aware that it might happen? Is it training? Is it a combination of things?
Autumn Willingham (26:40)
Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking that question. To prepare for this particular moment, ⁓ first of all, we hope that it doesn't ever really happen. But I think this is why annual training or refresher training on ⁓ biases, and when we hear that word, sometimes in today's climate, we jump to identity biases. But that's not necessarily what we're talking about here. We're talking about those affinity biases or
Rebecca Taylor (27:06)
Yeah.
Autumn Willingham (27:10)
a halo horn effect where this person made one error or said one thing you didn't like and now they do nothing well in the interview or the halo, which is, my God, you like watching that favorite TV show, so do I. And now there's this halo filter on. Yeah, exactly. So it is important to do ⁓ anti-bias training when it comes to recruiting.
Rebecca Taylor (27:28)
work here, here's an offer, yeah.
Autumn Willingham (27:39)
⁓ Even for our most seasoned hiring managers and our most seasoned HR professionals, we are not immune to these type of pitfalls. So that's probably the most, you know, tangible way to get ahead of it. But we should always as HR leaders, we should stay sharp and keep our eyes and ears open when we see these biases start to creep in. And let's not let it fester. Like let's
Let's find ways where we can be open and transparent. And I won't even call it like calling it out, but just making them aware and just being that mirror and saying, you know, friendly, coachable phrases like, hey, I just, I just want to look out for you here. ⁓ Let's make sure that we're not, I'm taking another look at your, the candidate intake form. And we agreed that you really want this. We don't want this to happen again.
It's so important that you have someone who can present accurately in front of the board. I don't want someone that you can't rely on or makes these type of errors. Does that sound like someone I should be looking out for and recruiting for? And then you just want those closed ended, yeah, you're right. Yeah, thanks for reminding me of that. And that's what we're looking for. And we know that we're being that best business partner to our team.
Rebecca Taylor (29:03)
Yeah,
yeah. I think that's so, it's such a good call, just sort of reminding them, reinforcing, because most things are just, you know, awareness and reinforcement, right? Like just make them aware that biases exist whenever you're kicking off a role. You can even have notifications coming out of your, out of your ATS for interviewers that can say, remember, these are things to not judge people for or to not, you know, base your decision on. It should be based on this, here are the questions. ⁓ And then it's just the reinforcement. And I think
Autumn Willingham (29:26)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (29:32)
the consistency in calling it out in scenarios like this and sort of, you know, then holding them accountable to follow through with what the policy is or what the law is in some cases, right? ⁓ So I think that's a really good call. Just like a reminder of like, hey, we're all on the same team here. You know, we don't want to open ourselves up to risk because, you know, if HR is on the record for saying that this is a policy that this person would be violating, this is not how this should move forward.
Autumn Willingham (29:44)
Yeah.
Rebecca Taylor (30:02)
and the hiring manager overrules that, the hiring manager's on the hook for that, at the end of the day, right? So it's like, I don't want that for you if that turns out badly.
Autumn Willingham (30:05)
Yeah. Right.
Yeah. And we are the, you know, we are the gatekeepers of that. And so our, you know, executive leaders count on human resources to be, you know, that weighted balance to make sure that, you know, folks aren't running away with ⁓ changing standards and ⁓ expectations about what a hiring process should look like.
Rebecca Taylor (30:33)
Yeah, yeah. And ⁓ one final question, because if you can believe it, we're actually at time. So one final question. This is sort of shifting gears, but it's sort of an important, I think, thematic sort of part in scenarios like this. What's one assumption about HR that you think needs to be challenged?
Autumn Willingham (30:52)
⁓ related or unrelated to this.
Rebecca Taylor (30:53)
Just one.
It could be
related or unrelated, whatever comes to mind.
Autumn Willingham (31:01)
Yeah, that I think the one challenge.
that we need to overcome is that we don't contribute to the bottom line when we do. And here's how. ⁓ Human Resources is responsible for supercharging your people analytics. We should know and understand how the business makes money, how your people
Rebecca Taylor (31:19)
Yes.
Autumn Willingham (31:38)
contribute and drive to these revenue driving decisions. And we need to understand how to attract new talent that will continue to drive profitability or operational efficiency or the best legal consulting, the best financial ⁓ analysis or going after to grab new capital, whatever it is. Our job is to attract the best talent. And we have to hold
ourselves accountable, but over communicate to our business partners what we're doing and how we're doing it. We're doing this efficiently. Some, you know, in today's world use leveraging AI and automation. So we're trying to be as efficient as possible. We hold ourselves to speed of talent delivery and we hold ourselves to efficient metrics. And then opposite of that, when people leave,
we have to supercharge our analytics about turnover. And the greatest hidden costs to most organizations bottom line are the hidden cost of turnover. And this is where HR needs to step in and step it up with how we over communicate, how we're gonna help solve turnover problems. Because if we have the strategic insight into why do people leave,
⁓ What makes them stay? What do they value most and that way we can have that insight to ⁓ and that that insight to Stand in the boardroom to say well We should invest here this much and invest in this initiative because it's going to solve this problem Which will reduce turnover by this amount you've got their attention immediately and that's how you start showing up as a
true value add to the business. There are still unfortunately a lot of folks that think all we do is just hire, fire, write policy and plan parties. That's not what strategic HR should do. So let's all work together to bust those myths.
Rebecca Taylor (33:48)
Yes, yes, yes, I cannot say that. Yes, enough.
Autumn Willingham (33:50)
Okay.
Rebecca Taylor (33:54)
Yes,
and it's so true turnover is so expensive. Everything about it is so expensive. And if you can even see indications of turnover before it happens, that shows up in your people analytics too. And when we bring things up like, hey, these are prior exit interviews. Hey, this is feedback from, these are questions people are having about their managers or about their jobs. That's all data that you can map in that sort of shows you where you might need to be paying attention and where you could be losing people. Because you lose people mentally before you
them physically, right? So find those indications so you can address them before they get, before they really fester, right? Yeah. Well, Autumn, thank you so much. Thank you for being here, for sharing your wisdom, and for chatting with me today. This was really fun.
Autumn Willingham (34:24)
Yes.
Exactly. Yes.
the pleasure was all mine. Thanks so much for having me.
Rebecca Taylor (34:43)
Yeah, and thank you everybody for listening and I hope everybody has a great day. Bye.