Why one HR pro turned to talent development to address her company’s shortage of telecoms professionals

We know we’re preaching to the choir when we say that the job of an HR professional hasn’t gotten any easier.

Skills shortages, low employee engagement, and a deficit of workers have created headaches for most HR professionals in recent years—and they’ve had to get creative to address these challenges.

That rings particularly true for Kat Gerig, vice president of human resources at Indiana-based telecommunications company Telamon. She leads an HR team of eight, serving hundreds of employees in the US, India, and Europe.

Currently, Gerig said her biggest challenge is managing all of the demands of the HR function, like keeping employees engaged, minimizing turnover, and staying on top of workforce development planning. She has launched several initiatives to tackle that, including an apprenticeship training program for high-turnover roles and employee career development benefits.

“What I try to do is make sure that we’re moving things forward, and that we are not just supporting the business,” she told HR Brew. “I don’t want to just be a support, I want to enable our business to grow, and to hit its goals. That’s really what I charge our HR team to do.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked?

We created an Installer Academy training program where we grow and develop inexperienced telecommunications installers. We had a business problem—[we] couldn’t find the talent we needed in the market—so we got creative.

We then spent quite a bit of time—many, many months—just trying to build out a program where we can bring in inexperienced talent. So, we looked more for competencies than we did experience. We were looking for people who [were] obviously hardworking, high learning agility, very detail-oriented, don’t mind working with [their] hands.

If they had a desire to be in the telecommunications business, we would take them, hire them, train them. And then along the way, they could move from an apprentice to a [senior role] over a three-year period, if they had the right learning agility. Not everybody was going to get there on that pace. But if you have the right learning agility, and you’re a hard worker, we can make that happen. And of course, with that comes pay increases along the way.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job

That HR is generally “negative.” That’s not the case.

When [people] see me coming their way, I don’t want them to panic, right? I want them to think, “Oh, Kat’s coming over to be a partner,” which is really what we want to be. I think it’s about trust. Building trust and building relationships. If I can build trusting, strong relationships with people, it shouldn’t be that we’re a feared entity.

Unfortunately, we have to do some hard things. And that is just the reality of our job. But if we’re doing our jobs well, in a lot of ways we can prevent a lot of those things. If we’re hiring well, if we’re engaging our workforce, if we’re building those trusting relationships, if we’re coaching and guiding our managers through challenging employee situations, if we’re doing all those things well, I feel like we can get through that reputation that sometimes is there for HR departments.

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

For me, it is “cultivating growth,” which is one pillar of our employee value proposition, throughout the company. How can we continue to grow and develop our employees so they are ready for the next opportunity and they want to stay with Telamon?

We do a variety of different things [to support that]. We have your standard tuition reimbursement where we will pay for people to go back to school. We also—I really love this program—we allow people to apply for dollars. We have a certain number of dollars each year or people can apply for up to $2,000 each in our fiscal year. It can be [for] a certification, continuing education of some sort. Whatever will benefit them personally and for their job, we want to support that.

The other thing is…if somebody has an interest in something we will get them on a project. A lot of times, on-the-job training is really the best way to learn. We will help people get those opportunities, even if it’s like, “Hey, you still have to do your job, but we’re going to let you get involved in this project over here.” A lot of people thrive on that kind of growth and development.