This people leader heads HR at the company that conducts dozens of ‘best places to work’ rankings

You may not know a lot about Quantum Workplace, but you’ve certainly seen their surveys.

The Omaha-based employee engagement software company is behind many annual “best workplaces” lists, including those published by regional business journals and Inc.’s “Best Workplaces” ranking. The company also offers an employee engagement platform that organizations can use internally, which is how Cyndi Wenninghoff, director of employee success, was introduced to the organization.

Wenninghoff, who leads Quantum Workplace’s HR team of three, had previously worked at employers that either participated in the “Best Places to Work in Omaha” ranking or used the software provider’s employee engagement surveys. The company’s focus on improving workplace culture made her want to work there.

“I always have given advice that you should always have your three or five companies you always want to work at if anything ever popped up. And Quantum Workplace was that for me, because the mission was always to build great cultures and build a best place to work,” she told HR Brew.

Now, Wenninghoff has a unique advantage, as she’s able to use the company’s software to find pain points in its culture, and to get intel on the broader talent market for its customers. Currently, she said she’s observing client and colleague concerns about retaining top talent. In light of that, she’s leaning on manager training and leveraging her company’s software to conduct quarterly performance reviews and regularly analyze them with Quantum Workplace’s leadership team.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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

We’ve increased manager effectiveness, which is a huge lever in retention…We have a monthly people leader meetup, where every manager that has a direct report, we meet for an hour, and it’s usually training related and they get to go to breakout rooms and talk to each other. And then we just try to do a lot of development for all of our employees, but also our managers.

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

That I am reactionary versus strategic.

I think it has a lot to do with whoever the HR leader is and how they partner with their fellow leadership team, asking tough questions and understanding the business as a whole. I think that’s where a lot of people could get hung up in HR, focusing so much on policy and getting so focused on catching people doing the wrong thing, creating rules, or updating their handbook. You have to have all of that, but you also need to be a partner to the business, and once you know the goals of the business, then develop programs and projects and strategies around that.

What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why?

I think AI and ChatGPT have the capability to make us smarter and allow us more time to really work with our business partners.

I started using [AI tools] in March of last year. Then we paid for external training to our leadership team. We’ve done a ton of internal trainings for employees. I just try to lead by example.

But the proudest item that we did on our team is using Microsoft Copilot to create a chatbot for employees, so our employees can ask this chatbot that lives on our SharePoint page the types of questions that HR gets all the time. What holidays are we closed? Who’s my health insurance with? How do I get a new ID card? All of those are in the Copilot, and it spits out an answer to the employee, which saves me and my team so much time. It allows us to work on more strategic work and not get hung up on those details.

What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why?

DE&I—[the] headlines right now are not looking great!

SHRM made an announcement in June, and [received] a ton of backlash from that…And now a ton of organizations have laid off parts of their DE&I organizations. It makes me wonder if we, as practitioners of DE&I, haven’t shown the true ROI of it. What else could be done to show that impact? I’m having that conversation as someone that leads our diversity council. We’re having that conversation of: What are we proud of? What do we want to do going forward? All of that.