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Lauren Herman is SVP of people and talent at career marketplace Jobcase. She transitioned to HR following a successful career in product development, taking the people reins in January 2020. Herman recently spoke to HR Brew about how her product skills have translated well to developing a people team.
How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in HR? My job is to ensure Jobcase has the right talent, in the right organizational structure, [and] working on the right problems. All of this, plus developing a culture that attracts top talent who are motivated to bring their best each day, all while rapidly growing the business.
What skills did you learn in product roadmapping that translate well to a career in HR? As a product leader, when you’re scaling the product organization, or as an engineering leader, when you’re scaling the engineering organization, a lot of it comes down to initiatives, talent, culture—all things that I get really excited about [and] that I get to do company-wide now. So, a specific example: When I was in product and engineering, I’d get very excited about the next hire that I brought on to lead [a] product initiative that I felt like was going to drive results for Jobcase. Another example is [when I put] in career pathing within our engineering department to make sure that engineers could see themselves here and grow and stay at Jobcase, because they felt like they had a clear ability to understand how they could grow their career.
What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked? It’s very hard to pick the best change because any change that has a meaningful impact matters. For example, if an employee is expecting to take secondary parental leave, the expansion of Jobcase’s leave policy becomes the best change we’ve put in place. Another example is if a woman is living in a state where she is worried about her abortion rights, our commitment to equal healthcare access, no matter where the employee lives, is the most impactful.
What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job? One of the biggest misconceptions about HR is that we only set policies. I don’t see my job as a policy setter, but rather as a culture-driver and a business partner who implements scalable practices company-wide, in an environment where culture is deemed the driver of organizational success. Practices that are right for one company may not be right for another, so my team and I customize our playbook to fit our culture and drive change management to engage our biggest asset: our people.
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What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job? I’m a metric-driven leader, so I get a lot of fulfillment from seeing charts that go up and to the right. Whether it’s employee engagement, diversity statistics, employee retention, revenue, or others, the impact of charting an effective people roadmap is reflected in the people data and the business data. Also, the human side of me loves reading the engagement survey comments, since qualitative data is extremely important as well.
What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why? My dad worked at Scott Paper Company for 30 years, but it’s clear that [staying at one company] is no longer the reality for most employees. Instead, we are in an era where everyone must drive their own career path, which is what Jobcase is dedicated to helping people do. Through a platform that provides members with tools, community, and access to information, workers are supported in achieving their long-term career aspirations. Similarly, we as HR leaders need to cultivate environments where employees are empowered to drive their career forward, even if it means outside of the organization.
What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why? I recently attended a conference where leaders talked about their remote and hybrid work policies. It was a small room and yet there were over 20-plus different policies represented. I’m least optimistic that anyone has truly figured out a successful remote or hybrid structure and how these structures can coexist in the same organization. There is a lot of hard work left to do to navigate this change and we must realize that we are only at the beginning of this journey.
Tell us one new or old HR tech product or platform that’s made your life easier, and why. I’ll give you one of each! We have been using Culture Amp since 2020, making it an old product for us, for employee engagement and performance. It gives us great visibility and data into progress and supports our employees career aspirations. It also has great benchmarking capabilities and people scientists behind its innovation.
Pave is a compensation platform that we recently began working with in 2022. It allows us to show employees or potential employees their total compensation potential at Jobcase—cash, equity, and all of the great benefits we offer. We believe it will help us attract, inspire, and retain top talent. Additionally, Pave’s ability to seamlessly connect with our HRIS, ATS, and equity management systems is a massive upgrade to our operations, from multiple systems and spreadsheets to one singular compensation tool.
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