These last few years have been a doozy for HR pros. A parade of personnel crises caused by the pandemic, increased scrutiny of DE&I, the Great Resignation, and now, the Big Stay have made HR leaders key strategic business players as CEOs and boards pay more attention to workforce issues than ever before.
David Reed, global head of talent acquisition at claims administrator Sedgwick, told HR Brew that his background as a Certified Public Accountant and MBA in finance helped him navigate these significant changes.
“The vast majority of my career has been within HR. But anyone who’s ever worked with me or for me has always noticed that there’s an emphasis on the commercial side and the data and the profitability,” he said. “Because you can take the accountant out of accounting, but you can’t take the accountant out of me.”
Reed oversees a recruiting team that hires some 10,000 candidates around the world annually. He joined Sedgwick, which employs more than 33,000 workers globally, in June 2021, a few months after the firm appointed Michelle Hay as its new chief people officer. Reed was drawn to Sedgwick by Hay’s vision to elevate the HR function to one that tackles strategic people initiatives.
“We didn’t really have a strategy around our talent and what our value proposition was, what our employment brand was, what our internal mobility strategy was, all of those things,” he said. “So, that’s what we, across Michelle’s collective leadership team, have been focused on the last three years.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked?
The ability to deploy and redeploy resources to the highest priorities. Within Sedgwick, we have a number of unique business units that serve different clients, and they have different profiles that they need to recruit for. But my team, the talent acquisition team, is capable of recruiting anywhere. Let’s say your specialty is recruiting property adjusters, you can still go recruit for workers’ comp adjusters or even nurses, because we’ve trained our team members and we’ve built processes and systems that enable that fluidity. We build standard processes, we implement single systems, and then we train people across the business so that we can move them around.
What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job
That I hire all 10,000 people myself. A lot of my job is leading the team that does the hiring, ensuring that they have what they need, and working with business leaders to understand their needs. It sounds like what I do is recruit because what I oversee is the recruiting function, but actually I do much different things than recruiting.
Quick-to-read HR news & insights
From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.
What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why?
I’m optimistic about a couple of things. I would start with AI…It’s a little bit scary, but there’s huge potential here. We’re only starting to scratch the surface. We’re taking a measured approach, but trying to recognize the potential that it presents.
Here’s an example. Someone internal to Sedgwick sent me her résumé saying, “I’m interested in a next assignment, what do you think?” We have a proprietary instance of a generative AI engine that is only Sedgwick-based. I input her résumé, and I said, “Match this résumé against open positions here at Sedgwick.” And voila. I could have done a lot of research, and maybe even off the top of my head I would have some ideas, but I let the engine provide me with some options that I was able to get back to the individual [and] say, “Here’s some things for you to consider.”
I’m also optimistic about transparency...Whether it’s through social media or other cultural influences, we’re becoming more transparent, and no function has more opportunity to capitalize on that than the HR function. We can train our people leaders on how to be more honest with people in a caring, kind, helpful way. We can be more transparent about our pay. We can be more transparent about opportunities elsewhere in the organization.
What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why?
People’s ability and willingness to operate in the context of change. I think many people are programmed to resist change. I think this is an emerging area for HR in general to enable our leaders, their leaders, and our people to all be a lot more comfortable with change. Change is hard, but it’s good. Even if it means your job is changing or your job is going away, that presents opportunity. We’ve got a long, long, long, long ways to go on helping people adapt to change. But I think the most successful companies [and] the most successful leaders embrace change.