A study found that 46% of learning and development professionals say upskilling and reskilling are top focus areas. Scroll to learn these new norms.

1. Can you tell us more about yourself and your career before Phenom?
My expertise is in organizational psychology, so I work with executives on how to lead their workforces to peak efficiency. After sitting down with HR leaders to better understand how staffing can support bottom-line growth, I devise human capital strategies centered on attracting top talent, increasing employee engagement, and improving retention. I also have a background in leading both public and private companies in fast-growth and multi-unit operations, allowing me to advise both global conglomerates as well as non-profits. CHROs aren’t born with a crystal ball, so I help them anticipate and prepare for HR problems before they become business problems. In fact, I recently shared some of the emerging trends in 2023 that HR leaders ought to prepare for.

They include:
AI is everywhere. Talent experience platforms must have AI tools to responsibly automate and
personalize the experiences for not only candidates and employees, but recruiters, managers, HR, and HRIS teams as well. AI doesn’t make the decisions, yet is crucial in creating efficiency, and speed, and supporting leaders to compete and win in the talent marketplace.
Lifestyle is the new work style. See your employees as whole, unique individuals with lives outside of work. Define a new lifestyle contract to create work environments that allow people to perform at their best, but also give them the freedom to be themselves. This means that we blend a productive and measured professional work contribution with the flexibility to acknowledge what many found during our forced time at home over the pandemic. That I can be productive and in some cases more productive at home. This realization has changed the talent market in the past and was drawn to engagement programs enticing people to stay at work with ping pong and happy hour drinks carts, and recognition. Now, talented professionals who don’t work in people-facing roles have reoriented their view to a work style that is oriented around their lives.

2. Could you brief us about Phenom and your role there as CHRO & Chief Evangelist?
We’re a global HR tech company based in the Greater Philadelphia area. Our purpose is to help a billion people find the right job. It’s not a slogan, but our North Star. My role is about helping senior HR executives around the world solve their most pressing talent problems, be it hiring, retention, or culture and engagement. As a current CHRO and past CHRO at LifeTime, I know the challenges and have found solutions around them. So I can relate to what they’re dealing with, and I’m in a position to share new thinking, fresh ideas, and best practices to make their jobs easier.

3. What’s your favorite part about working in this industry?
It ties right back to my earlier comments about devising talent strategies to help organizations thrive. I’m stoked at the challenge because every day brings a new opportunity to deliver impact. I recently supported an HR executive to better explain the strategic need for an HR tech upgrade, and she came back several weeks later excited about the success of her discussion with the company’s COO.

At this moment in fact I’m attending a strategic planning meeting with a fantastic client in Toronto, recognizing all that is going so well and making plans to improve in areas uncovered during the course of our time together. Amazing outcomes, working with great leaders, helping one billion people get the right job. That’s awesome.

And, really, it’s situations like these that made me get into this line of work in the first place: to get executives to think about peak performance and efficiency through a different lens.

4. Can you shed some light on the solutions that Phenom offers?
More than 500 global brands rely on Phenom to find, grow and retain talent.
Specifically, Phenom’s intelligent talent experience platform helps candidates find and choose the right job faster, employees develop their skills and evolve, recruiters become more productive, managers build stronger-performing teams, HR aligns employee development with company goals, and HRIS easily integrates existing HR tech to create a holistic infrastructure.

5. Can you highlight some recent upskilling and reskilling initiatives taken in your company?
The story here is what we are doing for our customers and the professional development of their
people. It starts with digitizing and aggregating skills data. You can’t improve what you can’t see or measure, right? This data usually never lives in just one place. So managers can then visualize skills gaps for individuals and departments.

Powered by this intelligence, employees get a very personalized experience that illuminates
opportunities to get the skills they need to move forward in their unique journey. They’ll get
personalized learning and development recommendations, as well as opportunities to connect with short-term projects, mentors, and resource groups. All of these facets of the experience contribute to the discovery and acquisition of new and valuable skills that have been identified and prioritized.

Within Phenom, we’re creating learning champions – high-potential/high-performing employees who are being trained and certified to lead upskilling/reskilling/onboarding efforts within their respective teams. The “train the trainer model” creates skilled facilitators who can create content and learning plans quicker and with greater subject matter expertise.

It’s a career path/stretch assignment opportunity for our high-potential talent, and it helps engage more learners and create more learning opportunities in the flow of work across the business globally without needing a massive HR L&D budget.

6. In your opinion, what are the most exciting topics in HRTech right now? How do you keep up with the constantly changing landscape?
Without hesitation, the most exciting topics would have to be skills and intelligence. They are the keys to attracting talent and keeping them in the organization. We have not yet begun to tap their full potential, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Upskilling and internal mobility are huge right now. A LinkedIn study found that 46% of learning and development professionals say that upskilling and reskilling is a top focus areas in 2022, and I believe that will carry over into next year. In anticipation of this new focus, Phenom expanded its platform to include personalized solutions for HR leaders and HRIS teams. We’re giving them exactly what they need to align the growth of their people with the growth of their business.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had recently with a CHRO about the changing landscape question. I hear firsthand from talent executives how staffing shortages, depleted talent pipelines, and under-skilled employees are impacting the bottom line in ways that they hadn’t before. Solving these issues ties back to skills and intelligence. Keeping in touch with thought leaders in the business, researching, and reading what CEOs read to support my efforts to stay relevant. I’m certainly humbled by the opportunity to support committed leaders in their work. That drives me to stay informed and accurate in what I’m doing with companies.

7. Phenom was recently recognized in Fosway’s 2022 9-Grid™ for Talent & People Success. Could you share some insights into this achievement?
We’re honored by the recognition because it means we’re having an impact on the talent market. We’re delivering on our promise to help organizations reskill, upskill and develop their great talent through an AI-powered platform. The U.S. labor shortage doesn’t appear to be waning anytime soon, so keeping your people is a priority No. 1 for any company. Phenom is empowering enterprises to do just that.

8. Could you tell us more about your work culture, and what makes Phenom’s culture unique?
Our #notnormal culture helps us stand out from other companies. Being different is welcomed here. We embrace people, personalities, and points of view. In fact when we onboard talent we ask them to name what makes them #notnormal. The employees love it and it has become a cornerstone of our orientation process, so people feel the culture when they join the company.
I can recall one person who said his #notnormal was he drove everywhere because he was afraid of flying. My #notnormal is I am licensed to officiate weddings! Companies have to know who they are and what they stand for, and then create a culture that embodies those things.

9. Could you give us a sneak peek into the next growth phase of Phenom?
Let’s be honest here. HR, in general, is perceived as, well, boring.

What we aim to do at Phenom is turn that stereotype on its head and invigorate the ho-hum into the “wow.”

And we plan to do that by delivering intelligent talent experiences to everyone involved in the talent process: candidates, employees, and so on. The way winning companies approach talent has fundamentally changed.

Everyone is competing for talent everywhere. Hybrid work environments have changed the rules around hiring and retention. Even forklift operators can work from home now. And so every company is on a journey of talent transformation.

The “old” way of doing HR was labor-intensive and soul-crushing. It was a one-size-fits-all approach. The “new” way of doing HR is all about an intelligent talent experience that centers around personalization and automation.It all ties nicely with our mission of helping a billion people find the right job.

10. Which inspires you to achieve more at work?
My best days are when I’m bringing solutions to CEOs and CHROs that help their workforces run at peak performance. And I do it from the perspective of a people and workplace culture executive who believes in the power of human capital to help organizations thrive. I take an organizational psychology approach to establish strategies centered on attracting top talent, increasing employee engagement, and improving retention.

11. Where do your passions lie? What do you think defines you as a person?
One of my favorite quotes is “the market for something to believe in is infinite.” I’m an optimist by nature, and I believe that we are put here to find meaning in our lives and to help others do the same. My dad was a high school principal. I saw him help others tap deep into their well of human potential — potential that they didn’t even know they had. I guess that’s where I developed a people-first mindset for the first time.

My best days are when I’m bringing solutions to help leaders run their businesses at peak performance. And I do it from the perspective of a culture expert who believes in the power of human capital to help organizations thrive.

12. What is the most significant piece of advice you would want to give to company leaders?
The new talent economy is real, and you have to prepare for it. Many companies aren’t ready to handle this monumental shift in the talent market because they’re wedded to the old way of hiring and retention. They still don’t get it. They don’t realize that expectations have changed. By 2025, 25% of the workforce will be Gen Z so if companies are still posting 1,000 jobs on a career site instead of sending personalized job recommendations based on skills and experience the current job seeker is moving on quickly. They are demanding something different, more personalized, and more consumer friendly. Eliminate manual tasks when automation can seamlessly handle them. Allow recruiters to do the relationship work they love to convince the best candidates to join the team. I continue to encourage organizations to invest time and talent in the things that matter most. They will reap the ROI that comes from an AI-powered, data-driven talent strategy.

Discover the full potential of your Hrtech strategy with our comprehensive Hrtech News and Hrtech Interviews.