EP 35 Rat Birds, PEO's, and Your Business Knowledge With Stacee Pedersen

In this episode the guys talk to Stacee Pedersen about everything from PEO's to groundhog day.  They talk about why PEO's don't work for many companies, why its harder sometimes for consultants to affect the daily operation of a company, and of course, Stacee's entrepreneurial rise to power.  The guys introduce a new segment called HR In Life.  What happens when your star performer runs off every supervisor she has? Why are the Baltimore Rat Birds... errrrr... Baltimore Ravens, headed to their doom?  Listen to the episode and find out. 

Learn more about Stacee Pedersen at: https://www.momentumemployergroup.com/
Find her Podcast at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/waking-the-why/id1832387848 on Apple Podcasts.  You can also find it on Youtube, Spotify and other platforms. 
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steve "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about our Sponsor, MegaStarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn about books referenced on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast

Stacee Pedersen was not hurt in the recording of this episode. 

Stacee Pedersen is currently the Founder and President of Momentum Employer Group and COO of Winward Electric. Stacee has 25 years of experience in managing all aspects of Human Resources. Stacee was the VP of Human Resources for Zions Bancorporation and Director of Talent Management for PCC Structurals.

Stacee earned her MBA from the University of Utah, completed her undergraduate degree in HR at Weber State University, and holds both a SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP) as well as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) certification. Stacee is a certified coach, trainer, and speaker through the John Maxwell Team and is also certified in Lean Construction. Stacee loves competitive sports and finds joy with family at ball games. She enjoys playing piano, reading books on leadership and living a life filled with purpose.

Creators and Guests

Host

Fantastic Tony Benjamin

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

Host

Steven "Big Deal" Smith

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

What is The HR Life Podcast?

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

Tony Benjamin (00:15.422)
Welcome to the HR life podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are the fantastic Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of the Grange strategic HR consulting, and Stephen Bigdeel Smith, who is so famous for recruiting that people call him and ask if he will recruit them just so they can be associated with his name.

Steve-o (00:43.691)
Wow. I'm just glad you said fantastic.

Tony Benjamin (00:47.992)
Well, Rachel Child has told me that that's my new nickname is the Fantastic Tony Benjamin. And so I had to go with it this time. And it was it's obviously very funny and very, very inspiring. So there you go.

Steve-o (00:53.965)
That's right.

Steve-o (00:57.666)
You had to.

Stacee Pedersen (01:03.115)
Hahaha

Steve-o (01:06.391)
I just have this image of you as like the thing with your rock face and stuff and I'm gonna smash it, you know, like.

Tony Benjamin (01:14.029)
No.

Exactly. Okay. Well, there you go, Steve. That's how famous you are. So how you doing?

Stacee Pedersen (01:21.741)
it.

Steve-o (01:22.507)
good I'm good I'm you know excited because it's my favorite holiday and I know it's not a holiday for a lot of people but that's okay it's it's important to me yeah it's Groundhog Day really I'm so disappointed right now I don't even I can't even talk right now

Tony Benjamin (01:32.152)
Your favorite holiday?

Tony Benjamin (01:40.92)
Ha

Tony Benjamin (01:45.026)
that

Stacee Pedersen (01:45.197)
I was really racking my brain trying to figure out what holiday is today? What am I missing? my heck.

Tony Benjamin (01:51.032)
That's right. That's right. Everybody there joining us at Stacey Peterson. She's in the house.

Steve-o (01:55.117)
Stay see.

Stacee Pedersen (01:56.833)
Woohoo!

Tony Benjamin (01:59.434)
Hey. All right. All right. Well, we didn't even have to give them Adderall today. They're on a roll. I don't know if that velvet. don't know if that velvet rope is going to hold them back, Steve. You might have to get the body bouncers in here to. I know, I know it's it's yeah.

Steve-o (02:06.925)
Mm-hmm.

Stacee Pedersen (02:07.256)
Love it!

Steve-o (02:11.523)
They've been waiting for Stacy for a while.

Stacee Pedersen (02:14.781)
Wow, this is amazing. I'm feeling pretty good.

Steve-o (02:19.939)
That's how we get y'all riled up, you know.

Tony Benjamin (02:23.99)
Yeah. Well, Stacy, welcome to the podcast.

Stacee Pedersen (02:27.031)
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here with you two. It's gonna be fun.

Tony Benjamin (02:31.305)
Yeah, well, we're happy to have you here. You're kind of a you know, you're up there and Steve's level of big deal ism. And just, you know, you know,

Steve-o (02:38.211)
could say she's a little bit higher than me, but yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (02:41.133)
It's so funny. Well, Tony, your definition of Big Dill is kind of funny, kind of interesting, because you told me this the other day and I'm like, wait, why am I Big Dill? And you know, you had said it's because I hired an executive assistant. And I'm like, wow, if that's the only bar, this is great. It's good.

Tony Benjamin (02:54.264)
Well, that's that's one of the reasons.

Steve-o (02:54.595)
That's all it takes.

Tony Benjamin (03:00.888)
I just want to say it's it's evidence of your big deal in this. That's the when you need an executive assistant, that's when you know you're there. You know, we could also or.

Steve-o (03:01.664)
Hahaha!

Steve-o (03:08.323)
the big deal on this.

Stacee Pedersen (03:12.173)
or the fact that I might struggle to keep everything, you know, all together. I don't know. I don't know.

Tony Benjamin (03:18.712)
Now, if that were the case.

Steve-o (03:20.855)
I've had a few assistants in my day and they're there. It's helpful. It really is. It makes such a difference. Yay Sam.

Stacee Pedersen (03:23.781)
they're the best. Yeah. Shout out to Sam. Love you, Sam.

Tony Benjamin (03:29.43)
Wow, Sam, there you go. No, I was going to say if all it was is that you were disorganized and that's what got you an executive assistant, I would have had one about 30 years ago.

Stacee Pedersen (03:39.053)
Ha

Steve-o (03:39.683)
I've had four Tony believe it or not. I have so Priscilla Stephanie Bridget and Cam Cassie. Yeah, I've had four so far in my lifetime. No, I think if we were to talk to any one of them they would probably say good things and I doubt they listen to this podcast but but they all four of them were unique in their own right and let me tell you all four of them.

Stacee Pedersen (03:43.565)
Steve.

Tony Benjamin (03:44.742)
Steve, that does not surprise me at all.

Stacee Pedersen (03:51.531)
Are you scaring them away, Steve? Like, why for?

Tony Benjamin (03:55.672)
Yeah, there's a question.

Stacee Pedersen (04:01.995)
Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah.

Steve-o (04:07.819)
were phenomenal in their own ways because luckily they realized that I was not perfect and boy I struggled in a lot of areas and they picked up the slack really well. So yeah, I think that's the beauty of it. Like you know you have a good executive assistant when they notice the slack and they don't give you flack for it. They just say, let me take care of that for you. So that's right. That's right.

Stacee Pedersen (04:17.101)
So good, so good. It is.

Stacee Pedersen (04:30.421)
Right? That's what team's all about. Gotta love it. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (04:34.68)
There you go. Okay. Well, as the only person here who's never had an executive assistant, I'm to crawl off and go hide. That's just, wow. There you go. So that's right. Well, you know, we could also say that Stacey's a Utah business magnate and one the most powerful women in Utah, highly influential everywhere she goes. People seek her advice.

Stacee Pedersen (04:38.453)
You

Steve-o (04:39.117)
Hahaha

Steve-o (04:43.334)
Poor Tony.

Stacee Pedersen (04:43.543)
Huh.

Steve-o (04:52.835)
This is very true.

Stacee Pedersen (04:54.791)
you guys.

Steve-o (04:57.667)
She is one of the core, yeah, she was one of the core reasons why we had the bill that recently passed. talked with Mark Tolman. Stacey was heavily involved in that at the state level. yeah.

Tony Benjamin (05:08.386)
she was.

Stacee Pedersen (05:10.069)
You know, I think it's, I do think it's super important that as HR professionals, we are present and we show up and we use our influence where we can. And so it's a big deal. Yay. Yeah.

Steve-o (05:21.367)
And you did it, which is exactly why I think it's so cool. Yeah. And if you haven't listened to Mark Tolman's episode, go back and listen to it. You'll kind of understand the story because we did, we brought up that story on that episode. So it's kind of cool. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (05:23.222)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (05:32.568)
Yep, Yeah, I know. And Stacey was one of the people up there speaking and pushing and influencing. So we like that.

Steve-o (05:40.157)
And she was so instrumental at the State Council. I was obviously the state director at the time. And she was so instrumental in making sure that all of us were aware and inviting us to come to those sessions where we needed the professionals to actually share their stories. Because the reality is you don't get a bill passed like that if you don't really have the stories that are behind the scenes and actually proving why we need this bill passed.

I just thought that was phenomenal. It was one of those things that I just totally respected what you were doing, Stacey. So I just really appreciated it.

Stacee Pedersen (06:09.687)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (06:13.101)
Well, you know, we have a great HR community. We really do here in our state. And so it doesn't take much. You send out the ask and people show up. They do. So that's great.

Steve-o (06:17.431)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (06:24.631)
Yep. Yeah. It's so true. So true.

Tony Benjamin (06:28.248)
No, that's exactly it. And here's to many more returns of that sort of thing. that's really, really important. Well, Stacey, now that we've talked about how cool you are and everything, and your coolness has nothing to do with you knowing Steve. Matter of I think that just adds to Steve's coolness. But since we've got that, why don't you tell us a little bit about you? Like, tell us something.

Steve-o (06:33.281)
Yeah, yeah, hopefully we'll see a lot more.

Stacee Pedersen (06:33.494)
Right.

Steve-o (06:40.055)
Ha ha.

Steve-o (06:48.355)
It does.

Stacee Pedersen (06:56.437)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (06:57.928)
did you get into HR? us your background a little bit about you. Because you own your own company. So let's talk a little bit about that and how you got there.

Stacee Pedersen (07:04.257)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, again, thanks for having me here today. And I love HR, but I didn't know anything about it. I was up at Weber State for my undergrad taking a career development course and

Steve-o (07:04.397)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (07:18.661)
one of the requirements was to do a research paper on the career that you thought you wanted. And I was really digging into public relations. I thought that would be kind of fun and I love dealing with people and issues and those kinds of things. And as I started looking into it further, I realized that the demand for public relations on an individual's time, maybe not

may not be as conducive to someone who would want a family. And so I had to really pause for a minute and ask myself what I was doing. And I was engaging with my professor about it. And she said, you know what? Have you ever heard of human resources? It's kind of like PR, but it's within a company. And so I was like, well, no, right?

Steve-o (07:43.863)
Mmm.

Steve-o (07:59.235)
That's a good description. Yeah, yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (08:01.965)
And so I pivoted with my research and started really digging into what HR is all about. And then throughout my undergrad, I took, I had three different internships because I really wanted to understand it. And I will say, depending on the role that I've had throughout my career, I questioned whether public relations would have demanded as much time as I've spent in some of my roles. But I am happy to say that I am a mom. have, you

Tony Benjamin (08:27.992)
That's right.

Stacee Pedersen (08:32.099)
three wonderful children. I have a bonus daughter. My son got married a few years ago and we are empty nesting now and I will tell you I love this stage of life. The seasons are real but it really is a joy. So I did go and get an MBA from the University of Utah which really taught me a lot about

Tony Benjamin (08:42.946)
Yeah, me too.

Steve-o (08:44.917)
Amen.

Stacee Pedersen (08:53.261)
thinking about business in a different way. I've always loved HR and I actually was going to get a master's in HR from Utah State, but then they canceled the program which led me to the U for an MBA. I'm super grateful that that happened during that timeframe because it really sparked something within me of what I really actually love to do. I had an opportunity, worked in manufacturing for over 15 years, different organizations.

I worked for a large Fortune 500 company here in Utah, and I found myself among some of the best of the best HR professionals, enjoying what I was doing at the same time, not feeling fulfilled, which is kind of a weird feeling, you know, where you're doing your best to give back and help the company progress and meet its objectives, but yet inside, you just knew that you weren't growing in the way that you need to.

I am a person driven by purpose and so I kept having this nudge that I needed to start my own company, but I never set out to do it. It wasn't something that I had in my trajectory or in my plan. But I kept having that feeling that, you know, small to medium sized companies, they really needed HR and they needed it. They needed strategy in a way that they've never experienced and they needed to be able to plan their human capital just like they do their financial capital.

but they don't know where to get it, they don't know what it looks like, and they can't afford it. So, you know, if there's a problem, go solve it. So 10 years ago, January 6th this year, I started Momentum Employer Group. So it's been a journey, I will tell you that. A good one, but it's been a journey.

Tony Benjamin (10:23.64)
All right. Yeah.

Steve-o (10:24.578)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (10:29.111)
Wow.

Tony Benjamin (10:35.222)
Wow. Congrats. 10 years. Congratulations. That's really, really cool. That's really, really cool. So you were starting about the same time I first founded the Grange and then I worked for somebody a large chunk of that time in the middle. But but you've you've been doing it ever since. And that's really cool. That's really, really cool. You know, we were talking about this with Becca, too, when she was on on the podcast and we were talking about this idea that, you know, right now

Steve-o (10:37.12)
Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome.

Stacee Pedersen (10:38.933)
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks.

Stacee Pedersen (10:54.881)
Yeah, yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (11:00.333)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (11:05.336)
being an outside consultant is still the leading edge of what's coming. I really believe that market is still growing and there's lots of opportunity there and it's just starting to catch the wave. But back in probably what 2016 when you started, that's when I was starting, that was the bleeding edge then. Like no one was talking about it back then. It was first in, right? was a different environment back then.

Stacee Pedersen (11:30.891)
Yeah, well even I mean when I first started I didn't even know what it looked like I hadn't ever heard of a PEO or an ASL right at this point I'd been internal HR for organizations and so I didn't even know that it existed and to be honest when I started the company I started with both two legal entities an ASL and a PEO and for those of you that may not know a PEO stands for professional employer organization and there's what's called a co-employment relationship which means

basically under federal and state law, employees of our clients were actually our employees. And then under an ASO arrangement, you can do the same operational services for the client, but those employees aren't yours under federal state law, they're the clients. And so starting as a PEO, one, I didn't know what it was, but what I found myself quickly doing is taxes. I spent most of my time doing tax.

Quarterly 9.41s and I remember sitting there thinking.

Steve-o (12:29.485)
can't believe you said that with such a smile on your face. That was amazing.

Tony Benjamin (12:29.92)
yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (12:33.069)
Well, it's cause it's cause it's comical. Like I am an HR professional through and through and never in a million years what I have thought that I would be sitting there processing quarterly taxes. And I'm grateful for that experience and what it taught me. But I learned very, very quickly that this was not where I was going to make my difference. And that I needed to make a shift in my company and we chose not to do business as a PEO so that we could focus on what we do best, which is HR.

Tony Benjamin (12:35.32)
All

Stacee Pedersen (13:02.381)
But at the time when I first started the company, I didn't even know what those acronyms meant. I think that HR outsourcing world is an important one. I think there's a huge service that can be had, especially here in Utah when there is a lot of smaller companies, startups, that they don't start out with a full internal HR team. We get these owners, no, they can't afford it.

Steve-o (13:20.195)
and startups, yeah.

Steve-o (13:25.791)
Mm-hmm, and they can't yeah Mm-hmm

Stacee Pedersen (13:29.869)
And we get these owners that have passion about their service or their product, but they have no idea what HR would look like. And it's the last thing they want to have to deal with, right? And so I think that there is space for everything, for every type of HR service. There's space for an internal HR team, there's space for HR outsourcing and all the different forms. And so I really believe in abundance. And so I think there's enough for everyone.

Tony Benjamin (13:39.167)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (13:54.572)
Yeah, yeah, no, me too, me too. And I think this is a growing market. Okay, this probably leads into our next question, but my thought process in this, right, is that a lot of small business owners, they go into it and they think, I can't afford HR and it's not something that I need, that I am forced to have yet. And they wait until they're forced to do it. And some of them,

they feel forced to do it at 50 employees and some of them 30 and some of them not till 200. Right, right, right. So, right, right. But that's kind of their view of it, right? And so then all of sudden they're like, oh, credit. And then every once in while they come to this conclusion like, not only do I need it for compliance and employee complaints, but I want to do it right. And suddenly it clicks with them. And to your point, yes.

Stacee Pedersen (14:26.953)
It's so true.

Steve-o (14:27.789)
Which is so crazy. Why would you wait that long?

Tony Benjamin (14:50.198)
That's the piece of the market where I jump in, Because I'm past the point where I'm arguing over with small employers why they need HR. I'm way past that. you're right. They have no... But I'm finding more and more of them are hitting that point. And ironically enough, I think the reason that more and more of them are deciding that is because large companies talk about HR and how important their people are, right?

Stacee Pedersen (14:53.047)
Yeah.

Steve-o (14:58.423)
Yeah, they gotta know. Yeah.

Steve-o (15:15.309)
Yep.

Tony Benjamin (15:16.768)
Ironically, I'm not sure that they always mean it. But they say it a lot. And therefore, these companies really growing, they're like, I need that.

Stacee Pedersen (15:19.41)
Hahaha!

Steve-o (15:19.736)
Yeah.

They do, yeah.

Well, and Tony, you bring up a good point. I was talking to a restaurant a couple of months ago that was that does a lot of their type. It's a restaurant, but they do mostly the food truck type stuff and all of their employees. He's like he he called me up. He's like, Steve, I don't even know if these employees are legal, especially because the ice thing and all this stuff is happening in the market right now. That's his biggest concern. So the first thing he tells me on the phone is I know you're in a char and I just need you to know that.

Tony Benjamin (15:37.996)
Okay, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (15:50.488)
You're right, right.

Steve-o (15:54.455)
I don't know if all my employees are legal. And so I need to know if I'm doing this right. And it's funny to me that an employer like this who's doing so well financially and has some incredible employees and they wait until they have an issue. Because what happened was is he had an issue with one of the internal employees. They started writing each other out, calling immigration and all that stuff. And now he's like, what in the world do I do? And they wait until there's like this

Stacee Pedersen (16:20.961)
Yeah.

Steve-o (16:24.493)
fire brewing and they don't even wait till like it's just the fire in on the corner of the field. They wait till the whole field is on fire and then they frantically panic like I need to talk to somebody. Yeah. Sad.

Stacee Pedersen (16:34.077)
It's true. I think that happens because I think too many business owners equate HR to compliance. And they don't see, they don't quite realize yet that human capital is just as important as financial capital. And that the way in which you meet your goals and objectives are people. Unless you're running a one-man show, guess what?

Tony Benjamin (16:34.284)
Yep. Yeah.

Steve-o (16:44.567)
Yep, they do.

Tony Benjamin (16:44.982)
Yes.

Steve-o (16:48.365)
Mm-hmm.

Stacee Pedersen (17:02.891)
You've got to deal with human capital issues and all of your, and when I say issues, I'm not talking about employee problems. It's just all of the things of how do you motivate? How do you, how do you review? Like everything, yes. And so I, I wish that they could, that small employers, even large employers could see and understand the impact to their organization if they were to focus on human capital in the same or similar way as financial capital.

Steve-o (17:12.547)
It's just the stuff that comes up, the day to day. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (17:32.472)
Right. If you're, if you're the boss and you're sitting around thinking about how stupid all your employees are, that's probably a good sign that you don't understand it and you need to do something. So, all right. I'm going to do a, we'll, we'll jump in here with the ad read now. Running a business is hard. HR shouldn't be. Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR with expert support and everything from hiring to handbooks, compliance to culture.

Steve-o (17:32.503)
No, so true. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (18:01.024)
need payroll help or recruiting power, we do that to fractionally and flexibly no overhead just results. Visit megastarhr.com and let's grow your business together.

Very well. Yay. Thank you. Thank you, Becca. She does. We're very appreciative of we're very, very appreciative. That's that's right. That's right. Okay, now, I've got the big question, the overarching question that I want to ask you here in just a second. But before we do that, it is time for a little breaking news.

Steve-o (18:16.981)
Yay, Rebecca.

Stacee Pedersen (18:17.579)
Yay! Becca does great work. She does great work. Yeah. Yep. 100%.

Steve-o (18:22.669)
She does, yeah, she does. And fits right within this realm, you know, so.

Steve-o (18:36.503)
Before we do it.

Tony Benjamin (18:49.717)
breaking news.

Steve-o (18:51.009)
Okay, so I have a client outside of Pittsburgh that...

Tony Benjamin (18:54.825)
State by the way, Stacey's losing it. Steve was dancing as the music played and Stacey was losing it. He was so funny. It's like watching Kermit the Frog dance. OK. I have no idea what's coming next. OK, go Steve.

Steve-o (18:57.738)
You

Steve-o (19:02.103)
because I've been so excited to make this announcement because I have a client outside of Pittsburgh because Tony has no idea what I'm about to say, which is so fun. But this announcement is important. It's a, it's a, it's a very brief poem. It's a poetic announcement from a good friend of mine that I met several years ago in 2018 when I went out to outside of Pittsburgh and I'll explain that in just a second, but it's, it's an extremely important announcement. And so here was his,

Stacee Pedersen (19:02.317)
you

You're excited, but Tony's nervous.

It's great. It's great.

Tony Benjamin (19:27.383)
to a great city.

Steve-o (19:32.087)
a comment to us for today. We look to the future and not just the past. So I suppose this party could use a forecast. It is my job this February to to look to the skies and report back to you that there is a shadow here on my ground six more weeks of winter.

Punxsutawney Phil, who I got to meet when I went out to Punxsutawney because it was one of my dream come true way back in day, one of my favorite days ever. The prognosticator of prognosticators has wished us an extra illustrious six weeks of winter, which if you're in Utah right now, you know we need it.

Stacee Pedersen (20:09.869)
We need it so bad

Tony Benjamin (20:13.535)
Yay, the Punxsutawney fell.

Steve-o (20:14.462)
There you go.

Stacee Pedersen (20:15.446)
Ahem.

Steve-o (20:18.465)
I had to announce it, but that was his poem for today. Every year I watch it and that was his comments for today. And so, Punxsutawney Phil, hats off. He was totally thought I was gonna say something off.

Stacee Pedersen (20:19.037)
That's funny.

Tony Benjamin (20:28.823)
There you go. That was, I am, I am who knew what was coming. And then he said the word Pittsburgh and then I was like, Oh no, what about what's going, what's coming next? That's right.

Stacee Pedersen (20:30.029)
Tony is breathing a deep sigh of relief.

Steve-o (20:39.363)
Because he loves the Steelers. That's why because you know, it's outside of Pittsburgh. You have to drive about two hours to get up there. yeah, it was one of my favorite trips ever though meeting a groundhog. I can't tell you how important that was to me.

Tony Benjamin (20:47.679)
Yeah, yeah. No, that's

So I.

Tony Benjamin (20:55.255)
I woke up this morning. I woke up this morning and on Facebook, the first thing that popped up was a Jeep ad. And I was like, okay. And guess who was on it? Bill Murray. he was on it and he wakes up to the music of the same thing over and over again. And he's like, oh, I'm back. And he walks out and the guy who walks up to him says, Phil, Phil, is that you? Right? The insurance guy. And he runs off and he sees a Jeep.

Steve-o (21:07.297)
Doe Murray, yay!

Stacee Pedersen (21:08.191)
Steve-o (21:20.726)
Ned?

Tony Benjamin (21:24.309)
He's like, no. So he gets in the Jeep, a new Jeep Gladiator truck and drives off and then he finds Punxsutawney Phil steals him and spends the entire day with Punxsutawney Phil. It's awesome. What a great commercial.

Steve-o (21:34.668)
Of course.

I watched that movie yesterday like I always do when Groundhog Day comes out and and it is scary how much of that movie I have memorized

Tony Benjamin (21:43.159)
You

Tony Benjamin (21:47.46)
That's great.

Steve-o (21:47.927)
And when he punches Ned Ryerson in the face, just, you know, there's just so many things I love about that movie. I love it way too much. But anyway, there's my announcement. I wanted everybody to hear it here first. I know you're gonna be listening to this in the future, but just look back on it and you'll know we have six weeks of winter.

Tony Benjamin (21:54.271)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (21:54.399)
my

That's the best.

Stacee Pedersen (22:06.957)
you

Tony Benjamin (22:07.319)
That's awesome. Thank you, Steve. That was that was wonderful. That was that was really good. I am a little relieved, Stacey. Yeah. I don't know that. That's almost as good, Steve, as your story about dressing up as Santa Claus on Halloween and how many kids you made cry. That's.

Steve-o (22:10.349)
You're welcome. I couldn't help it. It's my favorite holiday of all days, and it's not even a holiday, I guess.

Steve-o (22:26.425)
man, let me tell you. that was, it was Stacy. It was so bad. There were so many kids that cried. I promised I vowed would never wear Santa again.

Stacee Pedersen (22:28.797)
Steve!

Steve-o (22:40.811)
I had way too many parents turning their heads and like shaking their heads at me and I'm like, man, what was I thinking?

Tony Benjamin (22:49.251)
Anyways, okay. We are, we are co- Everybody welcome to the HR life. right. Um, Stacey, we want to talk to you about the big question that we ask everybody here. What is the state of HR state and role of HR in a modern American company? Let's talk about where we're at right now.

Steve-o (22:49.443)
All right, sorry, we're detracting from what we're really here for, We're back. We're back.

Stacee Pedersen (22:52.299)
This is great.

Stacee Pedersen (23:06.806)
Thank

Stacee Pedersen (23:12.631)
Yeah, you know, it's a really interesting question because as I consider what we're experiencing, I rewind to the beginning of my career and the call for HR to have a seat at the table, right? And I pause for a minute and I'm like, huh, do we have that seat? Right, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (23:25.462)
Yeah.

Steve-o (23:26.787)
When we want to be strategic, right?

Tony Benjamin (23:30.516)
thank you. I was getting thirsty.

Steve-o (23:33.049)
I know I was after sharing my Punxsowny Phil story.

Stacee Pedersen (23:36.205)
So I think that the need for HR to be at the table is more critical today than it ever has. And I think that the state of HR, given our...

Tony Benjamin (23:36.257)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (23:50.413)
environment, whether that's cultural environments, or political environment, there are so it feels like every day is so hard. People like our people are divided. And I think HR finds themselves in situations that they don't want to be in.

They don't feel like they should have to be in that position. And I think there's too many HR people stepping aside. They're like, you know what, this isn't what I want. And to me, that's a problem, right? So I think I see that happening. At the same time, I do see a segment of HR just wanting to hold on to the way things have always been. So bad. And the reality is, is we have to let go. We do.

Steve-o (24:12.899)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (24:13.301)
Yeah.

Steve-o (24:33.845)
Ain't that the truth?

Steve-o (24:38.307)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (24:38.923)
We have to let go. I loved when I went to national sherm conference this last summer and one of the speakers had talked about AI and you know, it's the big topic that's happening right now. But he said something to the effect that has really hit home with me is that we've got to be looking at what we can automate. We've got to be using AI to help us augment the work that we do. But most importantly,

We have to keep human things human. And my belief is that as HR, it's time for us to take a stand on and take our rightful place when it comes to our organizations. feel like HR is at that intersection of performance and culture and people. And we are in such a pivotal position to make a difference for our organizations, but it's gonna require us to understand the impact.

Steve-o (25:11.011)
Hmm.

Stacee Pedersen (25:36.353)
that we can have. And we get caught up in administration a lot. We get caught up. And I think we've got to be proactive in how we can automate those kinds of things. And then we've got to start educating our business leaders on what human capital is all about and how people within our companies make a difference in how they can contribute. And this just goes beyond, let's create a standard performance review process, right?

Tony Benjamin (25:43.521)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (26:05.033)
It's just, clearly identifying how our people make a difference. And it's also helping our leaders let go themselves, right? Because our businesses won't be able to grow if our people within the business don't grow. And I think HR is in that critical seat to create that growth movement.

Tony Benjamin (26:13.867)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (26:27.467)
No, that's fantastic. There you go. It's a great...

Steve-o (26:33.985)
I mean mic drop.

Stacee Pedersen (26:35.935)
I know, Tony fantastic.

Steve-o (26:38.435)
If you can get the word fantastic out of Tony, you did a good job.

Stacee Pedersen (26:41.837)
I know, right?

Tony Benjamin (26:42.839)
That's right. No, I think that's very wise. I've had the philosophy, I don't know, a good eight or nine years, maybe 10 years. If I do something twice, it should be automated. I never want to do any sort of task more than once. The whole idea of if you go through this lengthy process and you manually do something over and over and over again seems silly to me.

I've always been surprised at the pushback on that. And not just from NHR, accounting does this all the time, you know, because we shove information back and forth across the border between HR and accounting in a company all the time. And I was always shocked at how little everybody wanted to automate that. To your point, that is changing now. People really do want to automate those things and they want to get past that.

Stacee Pedersen (27:33.303)
It is.

Tony Benjamin (27:41.28)
And I agree with you and all that. think, and now what the key to HR is becoming, and I think this is what you're getting at, Stacey, right? Is that we are the experts on what it takes to get employees to really produce for you. We're those experts. Now we're not the ones managing them on a daily basis. We're not the managers, but we are the people teaching those managers how to do it and designing it company-wide so it works across.

Stacee Pedersen (27:55.981)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (28:10.697)
And do it effectively.

Tony Benjamin (28:11.02)
departments. Right.

Stacee Pedersen (28:12.809)
Exactly. we literally, I look at it and say, HR, your job is to help your business grow. Like that is your job and you do it through human capital. And so as HR, if you don't know what makes your company tick, you've got a problem.

Tony Benjamin (28:21.642)
Yes.

Steve-o (28:32.706)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (28:32.717)
Like we have to know the language of business. I know we've been talking for this for like 25 years, but literally if we're going to help our businesses grow, we've got to know what those key measures are. And we've got to understand how to connect the people to those outcomes, right? And then build those robust processes that can help a company scale. I think it's an exciting time in doing that. But I do see a lot of resistance.

Steve-o (28:44.227)
Mm-hmm.

Stacee Pedersen (29:02.681)
have a lot of conversations with HR colleagues and I love them to death. I still get a lot of answers of I'm in HR because I love people. I do too. That's great. Right. I'm in HR because I get to make lots of friends. Okay, that's great. I'm telling you the future of HR, the statement needs to change to I'm in HR because I know how to help a business grow with its people.

Steve-o (29:30.211)
And and where this Yeah, and where this stems from is we just had our annual VLBS No, I love this because this is so VLBS stands for volunteer leadership business summit And I just like it because I'm the one that coined the phrase Because I hated what we called it before it was like why do we call it that? So anyway, so so every year our sherm leaders get together from across the state and so there's like yeah There's like 80 to 100 of us there because we're all

Stacee Pedersen (29:30.817)
Like, there's this business connection.

Tony Benjamin (29:54.687)
in the state of Utah.

Steve-o (29:59.149)
part of the, you all five chapters in the state council and we come together and that question was posed to the group. And, and I, and I love Johnny Scott. Johnny Katiannis is now the new state director. I was glad he made some of the comments that he did, but you're right, Stacey, the people that responded, it was all about the, you know, I don't know, the warm fuzzies, if you will, like we get to know each other and we get, know, but, but you're absolutely right. It is.

Stacee Pedersen (30:24.417)
reality is, I mean, that's a part of it, right? There is connection. And as HR leaders, if we're going to help human capital, we have to be able to connect with people. But I don't see in the future that that's going to be able to be the why as to why HR is there in a company. Yeah.

Steve-o (30:34.261)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (30:39.971)
And that's my point, and you bring up such a solid point that if that's the only reason, we're not quite seeing the big picture here. We're just not. So.

Tony Benjamin (30:40.117)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (30:50.326)
Well, that's I've told this story on the podcast, but it's been a long time. you know, I was a couple of years ago, I was at Disrupt HR Salt Lake and somebody said, hey, I want to introduce you to this young lady. She just graduated from school. She's thinking about going into HR. And why don't you talk to her about the profession? And I OK, what's your major? She said she was a communications major. And I said, OK, why do you want to get into human resources?

And she says, because I like people. And I literally said, sweetheart, you won't like them very long. That's yeah. Yeah. It just, you won't like, right. Right. So, it's, and, I, I look back on that now and I feel maybe I hope I didn't burst her bubble too badly, but, but it was, but my point was right is you get, you get to see the, the seedy side of all of it all the way around.

Steve-o (31:24.867)
It's coming.

Stacee Pedersen (31:28.621)
It's so true.

Stacee Pedersen (31:36.333)
Hahaha

Stacee Pedersen (31:44.959)
It's true.

Tony Benjamin (31:45.353)
And if that's, if you like people and you like interacting with them and then you have someone come to you and for three months straight, all they want to do is take advantage of you to try and manipulate a system. It burns you really quick. Like it, it really burns you. And, to, know, that is the opposite of what Sunny Giles talks about. And her thing is, is that as a leader, you don't have the time to solve all the company's problems anymore.

Stacee Pedersen (31:58.121)
It does for sure.

Tony Benjamin (32:14.422)
You know, 30, 40 years ago, a leader could solve his team's problems, he or her. They could solve the team's problems. But now there are too many problems. There's too many issues. There's too many facets of every business. So what that means is that the frontline employee has to be the person solving the problems for the business. They have to do it. They do it independently. They're proactive in doing it. They feel empowered to do it. They have authority and knowledge and all that to do it. And I really believe that's what we're after.

that, and you're right, it's an exciting time to be in HR. Let me ask you this, cause you, talked about how one of your professors came up to you and said, have you thought about HR? And I think, right, right. And I think you're like the third guest we've had on that somebody has mentioned this to them, a professor in school and that sort of stuff. And, and here's, here's what I, so I went and I talked at a, a high school here, I dunno, month and a half ago, two months ago, something like that.

Stacee Pedersen (32:44.653)
for sure.

Steve-o (32:55.447)
Yeah, and kind of channeled you that way. That's kind of cool. Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (32:56.299)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (33:13.396)
They had career day, which I thought was really cool. Actually it was junior high. It was junior high is when it was. And I went and I spoke to them there and I did a 20 minute presentation three times in a row on HR. And so I talked about a little bit about HR, but one of the, before one of the groups came in, one of them asked the teacher whose room I was in presenting, know, you know, what, what, what is, what is HR?

And she generally said that, well, this is kind of the admin sort of side of stuff that you work for employees. and, and yeah, and it was, it was everything from, you know, like you were saying, 20, 25 years ago, when I started in HR, that's really how it was seen. And, um, and I did everything I could to dispel that. But the point is, I think lots of people have that view. And Stacy, my question for you is, did you ever feel like.

Steve-o (33:45.283)
Ugh, he's cringe.

Tony Benjamin (34:07.626)
people say that to somebody, should get into HR because it's just admin or it's just paperwork. And I'm not saying they meant this when they talked to you, but do you ever feel like, do you ever get that impression? Like some people say you should go into HR because it's this little admin thing you can hide in because you're not good at anything.

Steve-o (34:27.379)
I know that's like.

Stacee Pedersen (34:28.415)
I know, wow, wow, Tony. No, what I hear more is that you like people, you like to talk, so HR would be good. And I look at that, I'm like, whoa, that's not the good career choice there, right? My professor, she actually did a lot of, she asked me lots of questions and...

Tony Benjamin (34:32.22)
Hahaha

Steve-o (34:46.796)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (34:47.146)
Right, right.

Stacee Pedersen (34:55.117)
she actually didn't ever even mention anything administrative. We talked about problems and issues and being willing to on the spot handle scenarios. you know, looking at, I was looking at public relations and kind of the energy and things that come from that. So she kind of guided me that way, but you know, it was interesting if I can tell a story real quick. I, that's why I'm here, right? So I, my first job out of my undergrad was at a manufacturing company and

Tony Benjamin (35:00.992)
Okay.

Tony Benjamin (35:08.683)
bright.

Steve-o (35:14.051)
Please.

Tony Benjamin (35:14.154)
Yes.

Steve-o (35:17.347)
the

Stacee Pedersen (35:24.749)
I had been there maybe six months when they walked my boss out the door. And I remember sitting there in my seat and watching him walk by and I'm what in the world is going on? And he was escorted out. And it was just him and I in HR. the owner, along with an outsourced HR consultant, pulled me into the owner's office.

Steve-o (35:36.471)
He was escorted?

Stacee Pedersen (35:52.917)
And they said, hey, we've just let your boss go. We had some concerns with the direction that the company was going and we would like to train you to be the HR manager. And I'm sitting in there like, okay. Like, what do you say? I don't leave it out of school six months. I'm like, anyway, but right. I know. But the, the consultant, his name was D Jensen and I worked with him for about a year and I'll never forget in one conversation he asked me, he said, Stacey is

Steve-o (36:09.923)
Thank you.

Tony Benjamin (36:11.254)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (36:23.039)
What's the role of HR? And I started, you know, giving him my spiel. And he said, Stacey, is HR an advocate for the employee or the employer? And I immediately thought, I know this answer, and I'm going to get this right because they beat this in my head at a Weber State. And I'm like, the employee, obviously. And he was like, wrong. And like, man.

Tony Benjamin (36:39.638)
You

Steve-o (36:50.487)
Hahaha!

Stacee Pedersen (36:52.625)
I was taught just went down the toilet right there. And I know right. But it was it was really good for me to have that pivotal moment in mindset shift. And then I was so lucky to have one of our general managers take me under his wing. And he challenged me in almost every operational way. He did not care that I was HR. He brought me to the table, tables that I'm like, I don't even know why. What am I doing? I don't I don't know.

Steve-o (36:55.425)
Typical school.

Tony Benjamin (36:57.127)
Hahaha

Steve-o (37:18.851)
Why I'm here.

Stacee Pedersen (37:20.461)
But I also have a very curious personality, right? So like if they say something, I'm like, I don't know what that means. I became best friends with a controller. I'd always go into Glenn's office and say, Glenn, what in the world were they talking about in that meeting? Because I really wanted to know the business. Well, at that manufacturing company, we were acquired by a large national or global organization. And that global organization wanted to do a complete overhaul of their HR team. And so they put...

the VP of Operations for one of our largest divisions over HR. And, you guys, was, this was awesome. So they flew all of us into Oregon, and we're sitting around a table and he hands us a test. He hands out a quiz. And it was only like 10 questions. And it was things like, what's the revenue of your manufacturing facility? What's your profitability?

What is your E-mod? Like ask us all of these KPIs because in this particular company, they had 26 metrics across the entire global organization. And so I'm like answering them, right? Cause I'm in those conversations. I know what they are. I got all of them, but one right. And the next, so the next person only got two right. And it's funny, one of the most senior HR people, she was so mad. She stood up and walked out.

Tony Benjamin (38:34.528)
Right.

Stacee Pedersen (38:47.157)
And I can understand the frustration, like, right? She thought that he throwing us all under the bus and such. But I looked at that as such a critical moment. And he, this is a quote from him. He said, human resources are to deliver the talent necessary to hit business objectives. How can you do that if you don't know what your business objectives are?

Steve-o (38:53.121)
Yeah.

Steve-o (39:12.107)
Amen. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (39:13.181)
I loved it. I loved it. And so I'm so grateful for like early in my career, I had these operational individuals that kind of challenged me there. But when I think about how we elevate our businesses and connect the dots with our human capital, it does start with understanding the companies that we work for, right? One of my business's core values is called love first. And you'll laugh.

Tony Benjamin (39:15.529)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (39:33.411)
Mm-hmm.

Stacee Pedersen (39:39.937)
Like for probably four or five years, I really struggled with what to call this value because afraid isn't the right word, but it just felt too touchy-filly to have it be called love first, right? And I remember on one of our quarterly offsite meetings, myself and my HR director were talking about it and she finally just said, Stacey, why don't you just call it love first? That's what you always talk about. But let me tell you what love first is defined as.

Tony Benjamin (39:52.02)
Yeah,

Stacee Pedersen (40:08.681)
It means we care enough to deal with the hard stuff. If there's something that needs to be said, we're gonna say it. We see the intent of individuals actions, but we will be addressing those actions because we truly do care about them. And that's how I feel like from an HR perspective, if someone tells you, hey, you should go into HR because you love people and you love to communicate, well, guess what? How do you handle conflict? And can you directly...

work in that environment and help people navigate through that because it's not comfortable and and how can you handle other people knowing other people's problems i'm not saying you take it on but you hear some serious sad hard stories i'll never forget jared sitting outside of my office addicted to meth out cold out cold

Tony Benjamin (40:53.834)
Mm-hmm.

Stacee Pedersen (41:00.897)
I brought him into my office, we were chit chatting, he couldn't stay awake, out cold. I just turned off the light, left him in my office and went outside, or outside the office and just kept working. And I care enough about Jared to hold him accountable the way in which he shows up to work at the same time to help him get the help that he needs. But as HR, I can't take it on me, right? And it's hard, it's hard not to do that.

Steve-o (41:24.29)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (41:28.045)
But when we talk about helping our companies meet the business objectives, that's what the future of HR is all about. I mean, that's what it's about now, but more so that's what the focus is going to be. And if we cannot connect those dots, we won't be in the profession. That's what I believe.

Tony Benjamin (41:48.222)
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. How can you meet your business objectives if you don't know what they are? yeah, yeah, no, I agree. Go ahead, Steve.

Steve-o (41:56.589)
I love that. That's such a good story. I just remember when I started my recruiting career, because I had a background in finance, I had studied finance, I understood that part of the business. I understood the numbers and so they could communicate that with me and I would actually get what they were talking about. And when we started Applegant Pro and I started talking to CFOs and CEOs and HR directors and...

we're talking about applicant tracking, you all the things that I talk about from a software perspective and trying to make their business better. It was just, was, it was so natural to me because I understood how it applied to the business. And when you can speak to that effectively, it becomes really easy for them to trust you. And, and, and that's so important. You have to have that trust of people in the HR realm, especially your, your C-suite, because if they can't trust you with the numbers,

but also trust you to keep certain things private and not just, you know, promote them out there or throw them in chat GBT and expect it all to be safe and sound. That's where this, yeah, these conversations become so critical. There's so much that I've heard in my time in HR. mean, people say you could write a book, right? mean, any, all of us in HR could probably write a book about the experiences we've had, but in a way we never will because we recognize how important it is to keep those things private.

Stacee Pedersen (43:22.69)
you

Steve-o (43:22.709)
Knowing that that one moment, like your friend that, or your coworker that had the meth issue, that moment should not define the rest of their life, if possible, right? You hope that they make the change, right? But it is still on them too to make the change.

Stacee Pedersen (43:34.327)
Well, that's

Well, and that's another key, I think, role or characteristic that someone in HR needs is the ability to be objective and just being willing to give second chances. And I would say smartly, right? But one particular situation doesn't that doesn't create someone's identity. But yet too often we hold on to that. Right. And I think with our role with our companies is to really understand what is our culture. Do we have a culture of

Steve-o (44:00.269)
Mm-hmm.

Stacee Pedersen (44:09.687)
second chances or are we like nope?

Zero tolerance, that's it, you're done. And there's a place for all of it, I would say. And I think from an HR perspective, it's so critical that we're aligned to the company culture. And this is one thing I'll say about culture. If you're not intentional about building it, you're going to get something that you didn't want. Because culture will happen regardless. so I think it's just these are the roles and the areas where HR really needs to get involved.

Steve-o (44:13.187)
That's it. Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (44:42.767)
We, right now at least, I think we're still too heavy on the compliance and the administrative end.

Tony Benjamin (44:50.09)
No, and that's, and I've said this 100 times, but if you have compliance issues, those are culture problems. They're, they are not first and foremost, they are culture problems. So I can come in and I can tell your manager to stop slapping his secretary on the rear end as she walks by. But that isn't the real problem. The real problem is you have a culture in which that happens. And that's it.

Stacee Pedersen (45:12.949)
I'd love that you bring this up, Tony. I've had people ask me, Stacey, how many times have you had to go to court? How many times have you had to be in mediation? And you wanna know how many times? One time. And you wanna know why? Because I don't put up with the behavior.

I just don't, I don't. that doesn't mean that we don't make mistakes or the behavior doesn't exist. 100 % it does, right? But we correct it and we do our best and we're transparent and we're open and we communicate with all parties. And I agree with you, Tony, those are culture problems. Those are things that we're allowing to have happen. So.

Tony Benjamin (45:27.776)
Yep. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (45:36.918)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (45:49.879)
Now that's that that's that is exactly right. That's good. You say that, Stacey. I have never knock on wood here. I if anybody can hear that, but knock on wood. I've never had an EEOC complaint, an EEOC complaint or a lawsuit on something that I have done. Now I've had I've had one when a VP did exactly what I told him not to do. He went behind my back and did exactly what I told him not to do. And I've been at

Steve-o (46:13.973)
That was fun.

Tony Benjamin (46:17.578)
And I've been at companies where stuff has happened before I got there. And we had to clean that stuff up. But I've never had it happen. And it's just what you said. We don't tolerate that stuff. We just don't. And if you're watching for it, you know what's going to cause it ahead of time. It's not like it's a big surprise or anything. Go ahead. You were going to say something else. Go ahead.

Stacee Pedersen (46:21.45)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Steve-o (46:22.691)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (46:30.379)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (46:36.972)
for sure.

I was just gonna say I do find it to be more difficult in the outsourcing world than when I was internal HR. And that's because I'm not there, I'm not full time at their place of employment. so, I mean, I spend a lot of time with the business leaders, both frontline and every level in coaching, but I do find it to be more difficult there, which is just frustrating for me.

Tony Benjamin (46:48.432)
Amen. Yes.

Steve-o (46:51.167)
Every day, yeah.

Steve-o (47:08.739)
Yeah, you're so right. I once consulted a volleyball organization with a pretty powerful player here that owns a lot of companies here in Utah. And when the issue presented itself, the first issue was, well, there's these complaints that some of the girls are making, there's complaints from some of the coworkers. And then as we dug deeper and as the kind of two years went by with this,

Stacee Pedersen (47:09.513)
It's just reality.

Tony Benjamin (47:10.037)
Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (47:35.547)
And you she's crying in the office. There's all these tears because she's like, I don't treat people that way. Whatever. Well, it turns out there was it actually the core was there were some embezzlement issues going on and there were people using some of the finances to purchase items that were not actually being purchased. And it was just being pocketed. So so you have these people who are doing the wrong things and they're being reported. And so we're trying to take care of it. But then it turns out it was way deeper than what you thought it was.

I mean, embezzlement's a big deal and that company, because of that embezzlement issue, shut down. Not because all the money was gone, it shut down because the leader, who I have a tremendous amount of respect for, decided, and I assume he was disappointed in these people that he had entrusted in those roles, that he just decided, okay, this business is not for me, we're out, and just shut it down altogether.

It was just it was sad because it was such a cool business idea and I thought man, this is so great, but you can't tolerate the employees are doing the bad things because can you imagine if if that had been uncovered like that and then we're just like, well, let's do a little slap on the wrist and just let him keep going. There's just some things you can't tolerate.

Stacee Pedersen (48:44.961)
Right, well, and we have to put our own.

Well, and we have to keep digging until we get to the root cause right sometimes. It's just like oh, well here's the issue I'm done and move on and it's like no like seriously sit sit and listen and Because and this is how you know if you didn't get the root cause it keeps popping up, right? So if it keeps popping up you're not done and we also have to put our biases aside our own personal opinions on certain circumstances And we have to be objective and so those are some tough skills

Steve-o (48:51.981)
Correct. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (48:52.682)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (48:57.237)
always something deeper. Yep.

Steve-o (49:06.669)
Yep. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (49:07.627)
Yep.

Stacee Pedersen (49:18.735)
that HR practitioners need to have. Yes.

Steve-o (49:20.365)
Well, and we have to be unbiased about people too. It was a complete shock in this situation that the people that were embezzling were doing what they were doing because of the amount of trust that the leader had put in them. And man, when it gets discovered, it's like, really? Like, whoa.

Stacee Pedersen (49:34.103)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (49:39.573)
Somewhere along the line, someone had a view that the company helped out somebody or it was a perk that you could do certain things with company money. And then it starts picking up steam. It picks up steam from that. And that's very much case. I've been at a company where that was the case too. Somebody was probably doing that sort of thing to avoid taxes.

Steve-o (49:51.009)
Yeah, and you just it blows up.

Tony Benjamin (50:08.84)
using company money to pay for certain things instead of getting paid. anyways, it's just, to your point though, that's a cultural thing.

Stacee Pedersen (50:19.455)
It is, think those are what those are things we have to we have to watch for our really good people make stupid decisions all the time. Right. And so we have to look at it and say, what processes do we put in place? What checks? What audits? What can we do to help our people stay honest? Right. And so that's just part of part of what we need to do.

Steve-o (50:19.595)
It is. Yeah, it's all culture.

Tony Benjamin (50:43.134)
No, and what you said about caring enough about people to tell them the truth, right? Look, you're messing up here and I need to tell you. One of the first things I do for all my clients is when I take over onboarding or whatever like that for them and I get to, you know, the employee discipline portion of the employee handbook. And I the thing I tell them is that this company, we don't punish people. We don't punish people. We do sometimes, however, document our conversations so you know what's important. So we don't forget.

Stacee Pedersen (50:46.583)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (51:12.842)
but we do not punish people. If you make a mistake, I'm not here to punish you. I'm here to help you see it correctly and get that back in with what the company needs. Stacey, want to hit you up because you talked about being a PEO first and that sort of stuff. I kind of want to touch on this subject a little bit. I've had clients that have looked at utilizing a PEO. And the first thing that happens after I get done gritting my teeth and

Stacee Pedersen (51:15.085)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (51:42.327)
Hahaha

Tony Benjamin (51:42.43)
I'm trying not to say what I really think is, I don't think the PEO model works for most companies. It does for some. There is some stuff out there. I want to kind get your take on that. maybe you can say, maybe it's just business reasons, but maybe you can say why you switch from a PEO model.

Stacee Pedersen (51:42.974)
you

Steve-o (52:01.731)
Yeah, because that is intriguing. Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (52:02.147)
yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So I do believe there's space for a PEO, but when a potential client that I'm talking to is looking at all different options, I always just ask, what's your goal? What's your objective? What's your outcome? What are you trying to achieve? And I think, when I went to my very, very first PEO conference,

and I was meeting all of these different individuals. It was so eye opening. They do. Yeah, Napio, the National Association of PEOs. Anyway, as I was meeting so many wonderful people.

Tony Benjamin (52:29.654)
You

Steve-o (52:31.981)
They have conferences for those things? I know, I'm just being ignorant.

Tony Benjamin (52:35.082)
We have a conference for everything.

Stacee Pedersen (52:43.391)
I came to realize and find out that most PEOs, fact, I didn't find one, started out as an HR company. They were a payroll company that wanted to expand vertically. They were a benefit broker that wanted more option. And I can totally see why, because it's only about tasks. There's a lot of cash, but it's only about tasks. And the really, really large PEOs,

Steve-o (53:03.501)
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of.

Tony Benjamin (53:03.84)
There's a lot of cash in it.

Steve-o (53:11.137)
that's a good point. Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (53:13.295)
The really large PEOs, they dictate. They don't care about you as a client and your culture.

Right? They dictate the process, the forms. It's very much their culture. We're talking really large PEOs. Other smaller PEOs, they do a little bit better job to try to embed themselves a little bit in your culture, but really, they're just taking off tasks. It's very rare. I actually work with PEOs today. When I transitioned my clients, when I decided not to be a PEO anymore, a few of them chose to stay in the PEO arrangement.

Steve-o (53:35.661)
but keep your core.

Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (53:48.831)
But they wanted me to still be HR. They chose to stay as PEO because they could get Synergy with workers compensation or certain benefits or whatever right and so I found PEOs to pick them up and Honestly the structure They don't have the HR strategy human capital management. They're doing the best they can with the

Tony Benjamin (54:00.15)
Yeah, right.

Stacee Pedersen (54:18.381)
Hundreds of clients each one of them has to represent to just get the issues solved but there's no Strategy involved and so some of these smaller clients that I've worked with No strategic. I should have said the word But they just so if there's a company that I just want to offload these tasks and I don't want I don't want and I don't welcome any HR engagement go with the PEO Okay

Tony Benjamin (54:30.282)
No strategic vision.

Stacee Pedersen (54:48.429)
And I found out very quickly that where I could make a difference as an organization wasn't valued in the PEO realm. And to stay in the PEO realm, because you, as a company, you have the payroll platform, there's heavy costs to all of that. I just looked at it and said, one, we don't get to do what we do best every day. I'm doing 941s every single quarter.

in this process and I It's expensive. It's not really this is not what I need to be doing. And so for that reason I adjusted but I'll tell you That was a really really difficult time in my life both personally and professionally, you know, I worked for an aerospace manufacturing company after September 11th and during that time and You know Boeing stopped ordering planes and then we had a backlog of work

Tony Benjamin (55:18.912)
Right.

Stacee Pedersen (55:46.837)
a couple years of backlog, but for probably two and a half to three years, it literally was layoff after layoff after layoff. And I hate that. by the way, my boss that got locked out, he told me, don't worry, Stacey, you'll get used to it. And so I vowed to myself, if I ever get used to impacting someone's life, regardless of the reason, I need to find a new career. So I refused to become hardened.

Steve-o (55:54.659)
Hmm.

Tony Benjamin (56:03.447)
Yuck.

Tony Benjamin (56:13.013)
Right.

Steve-o (56:14.731)
Wow. Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (56:16.471)
to that layoff process. But I am telling you, there is nothing like when I had to let some of my momentum employees go. Like I have never felt, I can't even put words to it you guys about how horrible that felt for me. But I also knew if I didn't make the decision, we weren't gonna be in business, right? And so, so I had to pivot.

Steve-o (56:38.115)
Yeah, and then you have to let everybody go, which nobody wants to be there. Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (56:42.123)
Yeah, I had to pivot. had to really think about what's our approach going to be going forward. you know, six and a half, seven years later, we're still here, which is great. But I do think there's a place for a PEO. But it tends to be those that don't yet see the vision and know what people can actually do, human, how human capital can actually help them achieve their objectives. And so if they're not ready yet, then go to a PEO.

Steve-o (56:46.957)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (57:10.388)
Yeah, no, I understand that that makes a lot of sense. Just give away the tasks that are associated with it. You get a little discount maybe on benefits and stuff and hopefully, hopefully that saves you money that you're paying the PEO. I've

Steve-o (57:13.067)
It does, it makes a huge lot of sense, yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (57:19.595)
Yeah.

Steve-o (57:22.531)
But with that being said, those PEOs, I mean, very administrative, do you think a lot of that eventually will be replaced with AI and will PEOs have as much credibility there in the field? I'm just asking it rhetorically. I don't expect an answer, but I look at how AI is expanding the administrative task piece of it and trying to simplify. I'm just curious about that.

Stacee Pedersen (57:39.5)
No, I think it-

Stacee Pedersen (57:45.005)
Right. I think the thing about with AI, even when it's taking up, it will take our administrative tasks, there still has to be someone that understands what's being done. And so the small business owner doesn't want to, they don't want to have to worry about it. They don't want to have to like ensure, cause even when, I mean, you can go and get a handbook anywhere.

Steve-o (57:53.751)
Yep, there we go. You're absolutely right.

Stacee Pedersen (58:06.069)
Right, you can get a download a free template anywhere, but you still have to read it. Most don't. They download it, slap their logo on it and think they're okay. And that is so scary. But they do it all the time.

Steve-o (58:16.653)
But they do it all the time. So I see it all the time. And when I see the Lorem ipsum at beginning and some of the paragraphs in there, I think to myself, wow.

Stacee Pedersen (58:26.293)
Yeah, no one's read this, right? And so I think that there will still be a place. I think it's just going to look a little bit different. Yeah.

Steve-o (58:34.177)
Yeah, that makes sense. That's that and that's my thoughts exactly right so.

Tony Benjamin (58:40.904)
You know, back in 2016, when I started the Grange, there was a lot of people who had, you know, they had paychecks or something like that. And paychecks would say, for $250, we'll send you HR manuals. And they would get like these three or four giant, you two inch ring binders. And there's probably four or five of them in the set. And it gave you everything you needed to run HR. No one helped you.

Stacee Pedersen (58:55.661)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (59:07.286)
No one told you what to do. had a template in there for your employee handbook. And that was it. That was it. And to your point, I used to bump into so many companies that had that stuff. they, know, a little 30 employee company who does landscaping, for example, and they, oh, but it didn't tell me what to do about this or that. was scary. Right.

Steve-o (59:30.925)
Well, that was a good salesman. Felling nice to Eskimos.

Stacee Pedersen (59:31.053)
It still happens today because...

No, it's true. mean, benefit brokers will say we have HR, but what they've done is they partnered with an HR platform. And so someone at the client site still has to do the work or understand it. And so, I mean, I think the industry will, it's going to shake up a little bit, but you still have to have that knowledge there. And that's where I'm fan of AI. I think it is so powerful and we can get to where we want to go quicker if we're utilizing the tool to help us get there, but we still have to intelligently use it.

Tony Benjamin (59:36.618)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (59:43.072)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:00:06.595)
Well, in my presentations, I made up an acronym called IDEA. And you have to identify the problem, describe it and break it into smaller pieces. And you have examples and things like that. But the reality is if I can't identify the problem and truly define it, which means I have to have an element of understanding, then you're never going to use AI effectively or the way it was intended to be used.

Stacee Pedersen (01:00:26.581)
Right. Yeah. I mean, AI is always going to give you an answer, but if you don't understand what the answer is saying, yeah.

Steve-o (01:00:33.763)
Correct.

And if you don't feed it properly, that's the other thing. A lot of people think that they treat it like Google right now. I'm just going to throw in a question and get my answer out and I'm good to go. But the reality is, is what you feed AI will have a huge impact on what it gives you back. And if you're not feeding it properly, and in fact, I'm, I'm, I'm helping my, my, my daughter and stuff with, with something right now. And, and, and I was trying to help her understand this, that if, you don't have the knowledge to begin with.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:45.942)
Mm-hmm.

Stacee Pedersen (01:00:50.581)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:01:05.835)
so that you can feed AI effectively, which is prompt engineering, those prompts, if they're not effectively, if you're not getting the information you want out of it, you're not prompting it correctly. And that's why that prompt engineering is so important, but it requires the human intelligence factor. Absolutely.

Stacee Pedersen (01:01:17.677)
Mm-hmm.

Stacee Pedersen (01:01:22.761)
It really doesn't. And you'll hear, well, just ask AI what you should be asking it. And it's true. I've done that, right? But it's, it is still limiting. And so I think it's there. So if I go back to like, let's automate what we can automate to Tony's point, man, if you're doing the same thing multiple times, like pause and say, how do I automate this? Right. But then this, this augmentation portion is so

Steve-o (01:01:29.815)
Which is helpful, but it's still limiting. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:34.442)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:01:45.399)
Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Stacee Pedersen (01:01:51.861)
It's amazing that the time it takes me to create a presentation now, it's crazy. But I'm still looking at it and saying, that's not how I would say that. And you were wrong. You know what mean? it's like I'm battling with AI back and forth on it. Right.

Steve-o (01:02:03.927)
Yeah, yeah, Or I would never use that image or no, that's not quite how I would say it or wait a minute, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:03.989)
Yeah, yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (01:02:10.731)
because I still want it to be authentically me, but I can use this tool. mean, prior to AI, I used Google that same way. If I'm creating a presentation and I wanted some information, I was searching on, so I just look at it, I'm just going through one channel to get multiple sources now, right? But when it comes to the human connection and elevation and growth of business and people, man, it takes that relationship.

Steve-o (01:02:13.347)
Correct. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:14.293)
All right.

Steve-o (01:02:20.951)
Yeah, you go and find stuff. So true.

Stacee Pedersen (01:02:38.164)
that human relationship. I think, I think one of the things we're battling in HR is that people don't know how to communicate anymore. They don't even know how to have a conversation. Small talk is really awkward.

Steve-o (01:02:48.259)
Especially younger folks. Did you know that there's a study that came out about that, that younger people are struggling having face-to-face conversations with people because they're so used to the texting and just getting the quick answers that it's almost, it actually, I forgot what it was. It was a brain study and it actually throws like flight and fright responses in their brain when they actually have to talk with somebody face-to-face.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:51.327)
No, no, and that's.

Stacee Pedersen (01:03:16.249)
Mmm. It's crazy, right? Wow.

Steve-o (01:03:17.763)
It's amazing to me. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:20.758)
I've got a fun story about that. son, obviously before he was married, he was a teenager and he had won this contest to go back into a national speech contest in Indianapolis for the American Legion. And he met a girl and she was a senior. She was a year older than him, but she was about to go off to school and stuff. And he kind of liked her and got chatting with her. And the thing was over and she became a finalist. Matter of fact, she won.

the whole contest. son did. She won the whole contest. And I said to him, says, go get her phone number, dude. And he was like, no, no, says, go, go. Yeah, this is your chance. Just go get her. Tell her you want to stay in touch. Go get her phone number. And he was like, Dad, that's creepy. And he was just like, you don't just you don't do that today, Dad. Maybe you do that in your time when you had another way of communicating. And I was just like. But the point was, is that he was and some of that just happens. You're young and you're a boy. But

Steve-o (01:03:54.371)
This is your chance. Life's a dance.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:16.343)
The point was is that he didn't have the art of human interaction down well enough to feel confident that he could say something, right? With, yeah.

Steve-o (01:04:27.981)
Well, and think about what he said in his comment. You can't do that. Like in your mind, you've already created this idea that, well, I would think this if somebody said that to me, but and it is a culture thing, right? It's like this culture of texting and all that.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:32.733)
That's creepy.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:39.817)
Right. Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (01:04:43.092)
It is.

Well, and it's one thing that we in HR may feel like we don't have to teach and train on in our workplaces, but if we want to have strong communication, we need to lead out. Let's not assume that everyone should know how to communicate. Cannot do it.

Steve-o (01:04:52.228)
but it has to be taught. It's so.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:57.066)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:05:00.653)
Bing. Yeah, Bing.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:03.924)
Yeah, it's it's it's a

Steve-o (01:05:04.557)
And I'm sorry, I just used a comment from Ned Ryerson, but bing.

Stacee Pedersen (01:05:07.501)
Right.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:11.19)
It's a no, but it's it's like a manager. The idea when somebody calls in late or calls in says they're going to be late, that you just let it go. No, no, you go up to the person after they get there and they've been there for bit and you say, hey, is everything OK? Are you OK? That isn't jumping into their personal business. That's not that's not that's not breaching a barrier. No, it's showing human right. You show that you.

Stacee Pedersen (01:05:29.449)
Not at all, right?

Steve-o (01:05:31.457)
No, and it's not confrontational either. It doesn't feel confrontational. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:36.222)
care, but lots and lots of managers won't do that. They're scared to death of doing that. I want to

Stacee Pedersen (01:05:40.545)
Right. Well, we have to educate on attendance too, because our kids can miss however many days and they just have to pay some money to get the attendance credit put back on. It's crazy. I know. It's crazy. in the workplace, these fundamental communication, work ethic skills, we need to teach. We need to set the expectation.

Tony Benjamin (01:05:50.834)
Yeah. Right, right.

Steve-o (01:05:52.247)
Wow.

Steve-o (01:06:05.635)
And I got to put it. Yeah, I got to throw a shout out here for APA in Draper and in just APA schools in general, American prep prep. So my daughter, Katie, her junior year, went to American prep instead of normal high school. And for two years and she struggled, she wasn't allowed to her phone. They had already had a mandate there. You can't have your phones out or anything like that. Now that she's in college, she recognizes and realize that, wow.

Tony Benjamin (01:06:07.925)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:06:31.881)
not having the technology in the way I'm learning more and I'm understanding it better. And she looks at some of her colleagues who are older than her in college and she's like, they have no clue how to study effectively. They have no clue how to do anything. And she's like, I'm like, she just recognizes what she learned from APA about proper leadership, proper study habits, proper focus on what actually matters when you're educating yourself. And so kudos to APA and

everything that they taught my daughter. Like I said, free shout out.

Stacee Pedersen (01:07:02.189)
Hey, if you see a resume, if you get a resume with someone who went to an APA school, you know they were taught. No, no.

Steve-o (01:07:10.058)
Now you know, I'm telling you, and I'm not trying to be biased there because I will tell you they are taught that so that when you sit down and talk with that particular student, you already know that they have some of those soft skills that unfortunately they are not getting in your traditional schools today, period. They're just not. So.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:11.924)
Yeah, yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (01:07:20.375)
Yeah.

Stacee Pedersen (01:07:27.725)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:28.328)
that's exactly that is it. Both my kids went to APA for different lengths of period and yeah, lengths of time. But yeah, that's they do it. They do a fantastic job. It's also really cool that both my kids. hmm. Yep, yep.

Steve-o (01:07:38.923)
And Challenger School is another one in this area that I've heard very similar things. Like I said, there is something to those schools who are focusing on the actual education, but specifically the soft skills that the students are learning at that level that is now taking them into college in a powerful way. Because my daughter is loving college. She almost feels it's a little bit easy. Whereas my other daughters who've gone through that, it was not as simple for them because that transition.

it was a little bit longer for them to learn those skills. yeah, but it applies into work, right? This is a work thing. Like you can translate things into work like that at all times. So, which gives us a transition.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:13.972)
All that translates. Yeah, it does. It translates. Yep.

Stacee Pedersen (01:08:16.006)
It does 100%.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:21.31)
I agree. OK, so Stacey. Yes, Stacey, want to I want to come back. We're going to now we're going to do something that we've never done before on the podcast. So we're going to have a special little segment and it's called HR in life. It's it's it's called HR in life. And and this is where we find something in life and we discuss it from an HR perspective.

Stacee Pedersen (01:08:21.42)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:08:33.548)
I can't wait.

It's not about Phil.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:50.007)
And because we're cool, it has its own intro music.

Steve-o (01:08:53.827)
Dun dun dun.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:10.582)
That's right. Here we go. HR in life. I did. It was impressive. Me too. Me too. anyways, so today I wanted to talk about something. And both of you jump in on this. So we want to take something that we see in just general life. And we want to apply that back to HR and organizations.

Steve-o (01:09:12.483)
Did you see my air guitar, Tony?

Stacee Pedersen (01:09:15.819)
the air guitar.

Steve-o (01:09:17.155)
I'm so good at that.

Stacee Pedersen (01:09:22.135)
I'm not.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:37.951)
and specifically today, I wanted to talk about this. Everybody knows I'm a Steelers fan. And of course I hate the Baltimore rap birds, or Ravens as their fans call them. And, not at all. anyways, but, so anyone who knows, obviously the Steelers got a new coach this year and that's all taking place, but the Baltimore Ravens did too. And I want to talk about this story a little bit. So, Jim Harbaugh.

Steve-o (01:09:46.529)
Wow, that wasn't cold and heartless at all.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:06.902)
was the coach of the Baltimore Ravens and he's been there 18 years. And one of the great things I think about coaching and the really, really good teams is they don't trade coaches all that often. They keep coaches for a while. And Lamar Jackson, it came out that after they fired Harbaugh, who was one field goal away and last second for making the playoffs this year. anyways.

It came out that Lamar Jackson, the quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens, didn't like Harbaugh because he didn't feel like he was utilizing him well. And he really, really wanted to win a Super Bowl. And he felt like his opportunity was passing him because of the coach. And lots of analysts will tell you that the real problem behind there, although Lamar is this dynamic great player, is Lamar. Lamar has a problem.

and he seems to fold up in certain situations. As a matter of fact, the Steelers, when they play them, the whole point is they hit Lamar really early in the game and make him a little nervous. And from that point on, he won't do the things that he normally does. So anyways, they fired this and it all came out that it was because Lamar was complaining. And it got me thinking about this idea of how many times we work with businesses or we've been in a business.

where one star employee comes up to management and says, I hate my boss. He or she's an idiot. They don't utilize me well. What a jerk. Whatever the accusation is going to be. They're incompetent because they don't do things the way I think they ought to do them, blah, blah, and all that. And the manager is the one who gets let go. And I just got to, as I watch this situation, I want the two of you to comment on this. It strikes me as idiotic.

to, for lack of a better phrase, to let the inmates run the asylum. that probably has more to do with what I think of the Baltimore Ravens. But run it all. But it's yeah, it's a bad precedent to set when you let your employees run off your management. So go ahead, guys. Give me your thoughts on that.

Steve-o (01:12:03.139)
My wife is watching this show right now where they just did, they started doing that. They let the inmates run everything. Insane is a good description of it.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:24.99)
And of course, we're all depending upon the reporting that's coming out, right? So we'll give that caveat, but go ahead.

Stacee Pedersen (01:12:32.119)
So as I said, mean, immediately I think about employee named Lisa. And she's, yeah, I won't say her last name. She's phenomenal, highest performing employee in the facility, like absolutely amazing. And I can't tell you how many managers we went through in her tenure there.

Steve-o (01:12:40.835)
Google Go Nameless.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:42.646)
Be right back.

Stacee Pedersen (01:13:02.027)
At the same time, these managers that were turning over, they wouldn't handle her either. So she always complained about them. They were the ones that ended up getting the boot. But at the same time, none of them took the step that was needed to address the issue until Dennis showed up.

Steve-o (01:13:10.219)
Mmm.

Steve-o (01:13:26.425)
we love Dennis.

Stacee Pedersen (01:13:28.097)
And he came to my office, he says, I cannot believe I'm being sent over to this particular department. And I was like, look.

you have an option, right? But no one ever wanted to address her because she was the best employee as far as producing and she had her group of people. You could imagine the turnover around her because no one could do what she did as well as she could and so people didn't stay very long. But when you bring up that story, Tony, I can't help but think, hmm.

you know, how many of the rest of the teams actually rallying around Lamar and how many are like staying silent and not really bringing up like the real issues that are happening. But in the end, I've seen it far too often where if the employees won't follow the leader, the leader gets let go, right?

Tony Benjamin (01:14:24.98)
Right, No, that's a good point.

Steve-o (01:14:26.935)
Which is so unfortunate. Okay, so I have this really funny, I don't know if it's an analogy. You know the movie that just came out, the survival thriller called Send Help with Rachel McAdams. It was pretty good. There's some things I felt like, go ahead, go ahead.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:36.534)
Dude, I totally want to see this. want to see this. My favorite line from the my favorite line from the trailer is when she says we're not in the office anymore, Bob or whatever his name is.

Steve-o (01:14:49.955)
Well, and I think what I learned watching this movie, because I was really thinking about how this applies to real life, is let's just face it, there are some employees that are literally insane, which is totally what happens in this movie, which is so weird. But you're right. Sometimes when you have these star players, in fact, I remember a certain company I was working for, the CEO was so fascinated with the star player.

Stacee Pedersen (01:15:05.823)
It's true, it's true.

Steve-o (01:15:18.573)
that if he did complain about people, those people would eventually get let go. And it wasn't just manager, it was other coworkers. And then he decided, well, I'm gonna use an assessment. We're gonna model this and we're gonna hire people that are just like him and have all the same exact background and all this stuff. And when they started bringing in people that were just like him and that were also suddenly producing, it became Lord of the Flies. It was so crazy how it was just...

Stacee Pedersen (01:15:23.159)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:46.134)
Right.

Steve-o (01:15:47.023)
I don't know how else to describe it, but yeah, it just became this send help moment with these two crazy people on the island trying to kill each other the whole time. So it just, I don't know. I don't understand. mean, there's obviously no room for complaints like that. Or if you're going to get complaints, you need to look at every, in HR, we should look at every side of the story and not just listen to the one, especially the star performer. Because sometimes the star performer,

is there because they're probably, they might be doing some things that are not so good. Our star performer in this example, it turned out was doing some illegal stuff and putting in extra things in some of the loan documentation for his clients. And it would, it would make his numbers greater. He would, he would charge more than what he should have charged, which is a huge no-no in that industry. And, you know, this was right before 2007, 2008, when the whole industry tanked.

in the real estate market. so sometimes we unfortunately overlook the issues because of the performance. And we allow that to cloud our or even bias our own thinking about it, which, you know, kudos to Dennis for coming in and seeing the situation right. And actually addressing it for the first time with the other managers couldn't because this is the star performer. I don't want to shake things up.

Stacee Pedersen (01:17:08.621)
Right.

Steve-o (01:17:15.785)
And, and yeah, we, I don't know, we can't do that.

Stacee Pedersen (01:17:19.297)
You guys, will never forget, so Dennis literally brought her in my office. He wrote up a performance improvement plan. He was very specific. We literally, we referenced standards of conduct in the handbook, because she's very intelligent. We knew she was so mad. You can imagine. She was so mad. She's never been treated like this before. But to her credit, to her credit, she went home that night.

Steve-o (01:17:29.824)
Wow.

Steve-o (01:17:33.421)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:17:39.299)
Of course.

Stacee Pedersen (01:17:47.109)
And when she came back the next morning, this is what she said. She said, I spent all night in the dictionary looking up these words as you're describing who I am and how I come across. And she says, I can see it. I can see it.

Tony Benjamin (01:17:55.808)
You

Steve-o (01:18:02.274)
Wow!

Tony Benjamin (01:18:02.531)
wow.

Stacee Pedersen (01:18:02.761)
And kudos to her for to take the feedback. mean, initially, she was not so happy, right? But she came back and she says, I want to improve. her performance didn't fault her or whatever. And it wasn't all roses after that either, right? But I'll tell you today, she's a leader. She's a supervisor. She's progressed up. And that never would have happened had she not had Dennis not done the hard thing, right? With her.

Steve-o (01:18:32.323)
So this was not Dennis the Menace. It's great. Yeah, that's great. Wow. Wow. There we go.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:32.534)
That's really cool.

Stacee Pedersen (01:18:34.441)
No, this was a good Dennis. Yeah. Right. Right.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:35.382)
Or Dennis the dentist. was, yeah, neither one. Anyways, it struck, this story struck me of, you know, don't let your employees run management. If they really could run management, they would be the management, not the employee. And it's a bad precedent to set to let your employee run off management.

Steve-o (01:18:56.291)
Correct.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:04.148)
I'm a firm believer of you always give management the benefit of the doubt the first couple of times you hear a complaint. You always give them the benefit of the doubt. Now that doesn't mean you excuse bad behavior. That's not what I'm getting at. The sherm examples, an example of that, right? But the point is is that you give them the benefit of the doubt and help them correct it until if you get that same complaint over and over and over and over extended period of time, then you know there's something there. But okay, Stacey, you've been awesome to have.

on the podcast. And we're so grateful for having you here. There was still more things that we wanted to talk about. We didn't even get to them. You've been you've been great. I want to know, is there anything that you want to tell us about or promote or maybe something we haven't touched on that you really wanted to touch on?

Stacee Pedersen (01:19:38.445)
Ha ha ha.

Stacee Pedersen (01:19:49.137)
You know, I'll just say one last thing, kind of a call, call to my HR teammates here.

And I know I referenced it earlier, but as I think about the role of HR and our opportunity, it's time to elevate. It's time to elevate where we stand so we can elevate our companies. And here in the state of Utah, we can elevate our state and wherever else you're at across the nation. I truly believe you have the power to have that much influence. And it's time. It's time.

Tony Benjamin (01:20:25.874)
Awesome. No, that's that's very good. I agree. I think that if it's if HR is done correctly, could revolutionize American business top to bottom. Really of that belief. OK, so now I will promote something, though. You want to tell us about your podcast really quick? Yeah.

Steve-o (01:20:35.619)
Absolutely. Yep.

Stacee Pedersen (01:20:43.453)
sure.

Steve-o (01:20:43.533)
Yeah, tell us about your cloud podcast. Yeah, please.

Stacee Pedersen (01:20:45.717)
Yeah, you guys fun. So I have a podcast called waking the why it's all about discovering the purpose behind life's crucible moments as I call it right. My very first company that I worked at was a foundry and they poured molten metal in a crucible and so I've always kind of fell in love with that analogy. And life's hard, right? We all are given hard, but we can take that hard and learn something from it it can propel us to do good. And so that's what the podcast

is about. I believe we all have a purpose and it's not just one thing. There could be many things there and you you guys, you guys are living part of a purpose I would say and really helping educate through your podcast here in our HR community. And for me, I'm really passionate about growth. You've heard it today. I'm passionate about helping businesses and people grow. And I think part of that is taking time to pause and really acknowledge what life has taught us and the connect

the dots of how we can use those teachings to help other people. So it's called waking the why. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:21:50.337)
And some of the stories are pretty amazing. mean, not only can, you know, sometimes the stories resonate because you might see yourself in a similar situation or having gone through your own crucible, but man, some of the stories, you're just impressed by how they reacted. And it just makes me want to react the same way, right? Like my next crucible, because I've had several crucibles in my life. There is no question.

Tony Benjamin (01:22:08.15)
If.

Stacee Pedersen (01:22:09.749)
Right?

Stacee Pedersen (01:22:14.807)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:22:14.829)
But it doesn't mean I'm not gonna have more. And I just, I don't know, you look at some of these stories and it's fun to kind of see how they responded. And you hope that when the next crucible comes, you can respond the same way, so.

Stacee Pedersen (01:22:30.163)
It's so true. There's a quote that I love. says, life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. And I think that, you know, most all of my guests have understanding and now they're choosing to live in a different way because of what they experienced. And so it's a powerful.

Steve-o (01:22:54.275)
That's cool. Did you know that in Hebrew, in the Hebrew way of living, people walk through life backwards? Like when you look at the big picture, they walk backwards. And the reason for that is because I cannot see the future that is behind me, but I can always look back on my past. And that's just a Hebrew way of thinking. Like that's how you walk through life. I mean, this reflects in scripture and things like that. Like when you look at the way they say some of these things, but that's how Hebrews

Live their life you walk backwards in life where you can't see the future But you can always look back on the past and and yeah, I mean that's exactly what that's about And so it it's kind of Yeah, that's

Stacee Pedersen (01:23:24.693)
Yeah, I love that.

Stacee Pedersen (01:23:33.366)
Yeah.

One of my favorite, I love Victor Frankl and he said in his book that between stimulus and response, we have the power to choose. And I think we all have a middle of our heart. We all experience the middle and sometimes our middles are really, really long and we don't understand, but we keep kind trudging through it, right? But even in the middle, we have that power to choose of how we're going to respond to it. And so I think waking the why,

why I'm doing it is just to give hope to people that are in the middle of something hard that you know we all experience it and we can learn from others experiences to help us get through what we're going through so

Steve-o (01:24:16.451)
Yeah, I know that's so great. It's so great.

Tony Benjamin (01:24:18.282)
That's awesome. So Stacy, where can they find the podcast?

Stacee Pedersen (01:24:21.217)
Yeah, you can find it on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple as well, Apple podcasts. No.

Steve-o (01:24:25.763)
And it's not just audio, I've watched, at least the episodes I've watched, it's like physical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's cool. That's cool. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:24:30.262)
You

Stacee Pedersen (01:24:30.647)
Their video too. Yes. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:24:34.55)
Yeah, there you go. See, we don't we don't. They don't want to see not me. They don't want to see me.

Steve-o (01:24:36.727)
Sometimes I wonder if people want to see us on video, but then I think, nah, they don't want to see us. Maybe Stacey, they want to see Stacey, but not us.

Stacee Pedersen (01:24:44.714)
They want to see you guys dancing. I'm telling you everybody. It's it's fun. It's fun when they're dancing

Tony Benjamin (01:24:51.03)
Yes, Steve, sure. Certainly help with that. All right. Well, anyways, want to make sure that we thank Stacey for being on the show. Awesome. She's been great. The crowd is going wild. They're pressing. Well, look, there's a couple of people running up to the stage with their autograph books. They want her to sign stuff. Whoa. Watch out for that one guy. He wants you to sign something I don't want to talk about on the air. Well, there you go. That's wow.

Steve-o (01:24:52.739)
Nice, nice.

Stacee Pedersen (01:24:55.476)
Hmm.

Steve-o (01:24:56.011)
My air guitar is what they want.

Yay.

Stacee Pedersen (01:25:00.205)
Thank you. Thank you.

Stacee Pedersen (01:25:20.051)
HR violation.

Tony Benjamin (01:25:21.14)
That's right. That's right.

Steve-o (01:25:22.819)
Just don't kiss him on the cheek, okay, Stacey? We'll be all right.

Tony Benjamin (01:25:24.66)
That's right. All right. Well, when a child faces a serious illness, the entire family feels the impact. Thrive Life Project steps in to lighten the load, delivering nutritious meals and engaging STEM kits directly to families homes completely free of charge. It's more than support. It's a community of care. Learn more at thrive life project dot org. That's thrive life project.

And thanks to Brock and all the great work he's doing with the Thrive Life project and all that. Stacey, you're fantastic. Thank you again for being with us. We had such a great time chatting with you. I enjoyed that a lot. Thank you very much.

Steve-o (01:26:09.921)
Yeah, it a lot of fun. Some fun stories. I'm so excited.

Stacee Pedersen (01:26:10.561)
Thank you. Thank you so much. love that. Yeah. So good. Thanks.

Tony Benjamin (01:26:14.708)
Yeah, we had a great time with that. We learned a lot tonight. All right. We'll head out the same way that we came in. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review on your favorite podcast app. Comments or questions for us? Email the podcast at the HR Life podcast at Gmail dot com. And we'll talk again soon.