Paycor – How HR Leaders Can Overcome Burnout and Rebuild Resilience With Nathan Peirson

Music:   This is RecruitingDaily recruiting live podcast, where we look at the strategies behind the world’s best talent acquisition teams. We talk recruiting, sourcing, and talent acquisition. Each week, we take one over complicated topic and break it down so that your three-year-old can understand it. Makes sense? Are you ready to take your game to the next level? You’re at the right spot. You’re now entering the mind of a hustler. Here’s your host, William Tincup.

William Tincup:   Ladies and gentlemen, this is William Tincup and you’re listening to RecruitingDaily Podcast. Today we have Nathan Peirson from Paycor. Our discussion topic today is How HR Leaders Can Overcome Burnout and Rebuild Resilience. So I’ve been looking forward to this podcast for a couple of days. And so I can’t wait to kind of jump into it with Nathan. Nathan, would you do us a favor and introduce both yourself, but also introduce Paycor?

Nathan:   Yeah. Happy to. So first off, thanks. I appreciate the opportunity to be on and with you today to talk through this. I think it’s a really important topic, always is, but this time of the year and in the midst area it’s gone on, I think it’s even more relevant and important this time of year. So my role at Paycor, I’m our interim chief human resource officer. I’ve been with the company a couple years. I came in really leading our business partners, rewards and operations groups so all the E-comm benefits, our policy process compliance, and then also the talent management space.

And over time that I’ve been here, we’ve had some changes in things to the team. A couple months ago, I stepped into the chief human resource role and really sitting across the entire function right now. So Paycor itself is an HCM company. We’re a leader in the space. We’re recently public a couple months ago. But yeah, we provide really end to end human capital management solutions to, yeah, a variety of clients. But really when we look at it we do a lot from the payroll standpoint, from the talent management suite of offerings and things like that. But it’s a great company, a great space in the HR technology space. And again, excited to be with you guys today.

William Tincup:   I can validate that from a couple different places, but a friend of mine, they sold their ATS to Paycor, Newton Software, 100 years ago and they loved partnering. So they partnered with Paycor early on and so they had a bunch of joint clients together and they just loved it. People were fantastic, very easy, down to earth, kind of Midwestern values and just a wonderful company.

Nathan:   Yeah, it’s a great company, great technology. And that was one of the things like when I had the opportunity to really kind of go out and look at the next move and the right place for me and where it was, of having been on the the receiving end and from the customer aspect of their HR services and technology and all that. And to be able to have an opportunity to come into a space that you know well, about what the company that really has an outstanding product and then things like that. And the workforce and the culture and the reputation Paycor has, it’s been great. Like I said, yeah, I guess it’ll be tomorrow. It’ll be a two-year anniversary.

William Tincup:   That’s cool.

Nathan:   Yeah.

William Tincup:   Congratulations to you. Okay. So burnout, how do we, let’s just kind of peel some of the onion here. How do we assess or how do we assess for burnout? Like how do we know if one of our team members, if they’re either on that edge or they’re just tracking in that direction?

Nathan:   Yeah. I think there’s a lot of different ways. I don’t know if there’s any like one right or wrong answer because I think there’s the team aspect. I think there’s a colleague aspect. There’s the organizational aspect. And you see it from a lot of different areas. So from a team aspect, depending on what role you’re sitting in, a lot of that comes down to as a leader, and as a manager and how you’re connecting, how you’re spending time with the team. And I really look at that and what we encourage when we think about leadership is you’re engaging with the team and you’re trying to understand, and really eliminate kind of obstacles to their obstacles to their success. So when you think about like, what are the things that are getting in the way of people being, yeah, successful?

So those are always the conversations that I have. You give an update, you talk about how things are going and all that. And I always end my conversations with like, what do you need from me? What can you do, or what can I do to help you? Those types of things. So I think is when you look at it from a team level, if you’re the manager, if you’re a peer and a colleague and those things, you have to be close enough. You have to have the relationships. You have to be engaging in those conversations and things to be able to really understand because you can tell.

William Tincup:   Yeah.

Nathan:   You can tell where people are at and whether it’s point in time and they’re having a bad day, or it’s three conversations in a row. But you have to be able to be close enough to really understand what’s going on, understand the work because I think when you’re too far removed from it, especially from a team aspect, those things can get away from you. But if you’re leaning in, if you’re engaged with the team, you’re talking to your team, you’ve got that trust build up in those things, you’re going to see it. You’re going to have those conversations. So I think from a team aspect, that’s what I encourage them and it’s all about those relationships and really leaning into it.

From a point of organizational standpoint, you’re going to pick up on it different ways, but sometimes you’re going to see it in just from kind of the noise in the organization. You’ll start to hear the rumblings. And I think every organization at one point or another, like you start to hear that in different pockets just the way that your feedback and things travels from that. You could see it from the turnover standpoint. So what you’re kind of reacting to in those cases, but whether it’s from the exit interviews, whether it’s from just seeing the turnover numbers start to tick up, or you’ve got resignations and you’re doing saves and things like that, you can start to see it that way.

But the spot where I like to really lean in, and I think it’s the most valuable way to get this is it’s feedback. It’s constant, regular ongoing feedback. So if you’ve got a pulse in your associates, if you’re talking to them, if you’re asking them these types of questions, you’re going to be able to start to draw stuff out of, hey, what are the friction points right now? How engaged are we? Where do we have challenges in those things? And then you just have to keep clicking into it until you can get down to the root cause of some of that, and figure out what you got to go do about it. But I think there’s a lot of different ways that it kind of starts to show up in organizations.

William Tincup:   I love everything you’ve said. And I think that you’re asking, listening, and then doing something with it. So then you’ve got to, once you asked and they’ve told you whatever it is, then you’ve got to figure out, okay, how do you triage that? How do we actually fix whatever Jimmy needs or Dorothy needs, et cetera? So I think then there’s a treatment of that feedback. But it all starts with what you said, you got to ask, you got to get feedback, you got to have a pulse, figure on the pulse of the organization, almost every team member on the organization. What are you seeing right now? What’s leading to burnout? What are some of the drivers of burnout that you’re starting to kind of see that’s kind of creeping into the organization?

Nathan:   I think it depends on, again, there’s so much and there’s so many factors when you think about stress, and you think about burnout and those things. So you could take it from an organizational point of view. And I think a lot of that factors into the last, I won’t even say 18 months now, I guess it’s been more than that, but almost two years. That’s been stressful from every aspect of COVID and ongoing to remote work, potentially to some organizations that shifted into that virtual setting. Some organizations that were still, yeah, coming into the office and having to work in production environments and those things, and you think about, do I have to be vaccinated? Do I have to have a negative COVID test? All those things. So regardless of anything else, you’ve got this stressful environment that’s around.

You think of all the other external pieces of just the news and what’s going on in the world and those things. It’s been a really stressful last couple of months. And then you couple that with the standpoint of look, there are always stressors from a work standpoint of organizations continue to strive to drive more efficiency and more productivity. And oftentimes, they’re asking people maybe to do more with less, or to think differently about the work and there’s this constant change. So you’ve got the work stressors and then you also have the personal stressors. And this time of year as well, you’re going into the holidays, people are juggling a lot. There’s your family situations and all that. So what do I think contributes to it? I think everything contributes to it.

And I think as an organization, as a leader, I think that’s why it’s so important that you really have to have a really good understanding about the role you play, how you can lean into it and how you can help people out. But yeah, there’s a lot that’s contributing to stress. And then if you look at it just from like, let’s say from like an HR practitioner or an HR professional standpoint, you’re in the midst of all these. So you’re very empathetic. You’re very compassionate. You’re in these conversations, you’re helping the organization, you’re helping people through. And there’s this onslaught of that where you’re coaching and counseling and those things. And that can also take a toll on yourself. Like I said, I think you could cut it in multiple different ways. But yeah, I think there’s a lot that people are asked to balance and then to deal with.

William Tincup:   So obviously, first of all, great answer. Proactive and reactive. So when we’re listening, when we’re doing what you suggest, we got the figure on the pulse. We’re listening to folks. And then there’s probably an element of being proactive in all of this, and kind of understanding burnout in one’s organization and maybe even one’s team, et cetera. And then there’s reactive. Somebody just comes in and it’s Tuesday. And then you can just tell, so there was no cue, there was no something that led into it. But you can tell that something’s wrong.

Programmatically, what have you seen? And what advice do you give to other HR leaders about, okay, some of this is going to be reactive to whatever is going on in their personal life, or what’s going on in their professional life? And some of it you can get in front of meaning, you can be proactive and here’s the things. So you’ve given us a lot of good advice on some of the proactive. What do you suggest when someone finds out, when an HR leader finds out that they’ve got to burn out problem? What do they do then?

Nathan:   Yeah, I think so there’s a couple things to it. If it’s an individual, yeah, it’s just kind of maybe this is kind of maybe a basic answer to it, but it’s an individual situation. So part of this you really have to understand those pressure points, those stress points and things like that. So I’m a big proponent again, of listening. Have you had the conversation? So as that individual comes in, I think it’s really important not to necessarily jump to assumptions and jump to solutions and stuff like that. I think there’s a part where as an HR professional, at times, you’re engaging in a conversation where you’re listening. You’re trying to coach, and you’re trying to understand what’s going on, because again, some of these are work related.

Some of these are personal related. So it’s really unique to each individual. And I think there’s different stuff that depending upon what’s going on, that you can kind of, you tap into and you can talk about. And I talk about this with my team and I talk with others and things about it. But to me, if it’s an individual situation, I’m always trying to help people think about being very purposeful and then very intentional about how they deal with it and how they approach it. Because I think there is such a blur today between work, life, work-life balance. And now it’s just this intersection of you potentially could be always on. So how do you start to set your boundaries? How do you think about being really intentional? Because if you’re not, the staff can get away from you.

So burnout can happen and you may have the best thought of, I’m going to turn off the email. I’m not going to check at this point in time, but if you don’t set those boundaries and sometimes you have to communicate those boundaries and those things like there are ways that people can take a step back. If those are causing the stressors, how do you figure out ways for people to be able to disconnect? Even if that is for small pockets of time. So I could say that there’s a lot to it, but I always to look at things like that of trying to help people understand where are they at? What can they do? I’m a big proponent of, especially when the weather was nicer and things like that of how do you try to get even if it’s like some physical activity and stuff into it?

And we had a lot of folks where maybe they would take a call and they would take it while they’re walking outside to get some fresh air and some sunlight and things like that at because we’ve moved, Paycor has too, a virtual first setting. So the flexibility and stuff is fantastic, but it also leads to the point where it’s really easy in the evening just to get back on and get right back at work. because you’re, you’re right there next to it. So I always think about it from that standpoint of an individual basis. It’s really trying to listen.

William Tincup:   Nathan, what if you see it as, as you said, defined more organizational, what if you see it with a swath of people? And they are all individuals obviously, but you start seeing it like you got a call center.

Nathan:   Yeah.

William Tincup:   And you just start seeing, okay, the attrition, the turnover rate is just spike there’s something wrong clearly. Then what’s the… How do you triage that?

Nathan:   Yeah. Typically, that’s where you’re going to lean into that really heavily to try to get down to the root cause of it. And it’s going to be a combination of discussions, of feedback, of potential focus groups and those things, because you’ve got to get, especially if it’s not clear. But you’ve got to get down to the heart of it. And depending upon what that is, but a lot of times you do see it where you’re seeing those things. It’s a time of year.

William Tincup:   Right.

Nathan:   You’ve got stuff that’s going on in the workload and it becomes really difficult. I think you have to lean into that. And then you have to be able to know, and to the point earlier of, look, you listen, you understand, you communicate back to folks, that you have listened, and that you have heard them and those things, and that you are taking action. Action’s different though, because in some cases you may not be able to quickly create the capacity and the relief. So sometimes you can. So it really varies within that. To me, the most important thing is you understand it.

And then you’re making a very thoughtful decision of look, we’re not in a position to invest in X, Y, and Z that gives immediate relief. What we’re going to do is we’re going to do this over time and you’re going to see the relief, but it’s going to come in, I don’t know, X weeks or things like that. So sometimes that’s a conversation and that gives people relief and they know, hey, point in time, everything can be challenging at one point or another. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it’s, hey, you know what? We got to pull out all the stops right now. Or there’s a process that we’re doing that we’re not able to fix. It’s inefficient and those things and it’s causing more work.

I always like to prioritize too. And it works in some areas. Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s what’s the stuff that has to get done? Because sometimes you run into it where people are adding stress because it’s self-imposed with the pressure of trying to do everything. Whereas a leader, you can calm them and say, that’s cool. We want to do that, but worry about that in 30 days. Don’t worry about it now. So sometimes depending on the situation you’ve got that power, and you’ve got that ability to go in there and help people prioritize and not try to do everything,

William Tincup:   Especially in this environment where the boundaries are so blurred. Giving them relief, giving folks relief, say, no, you don’t have to do all of this. I love that pulse, that could be done in 30 days. Let’s do that. Let’s move over to resilience for just a second. How do you like to think of resilience? How do you like to define it in your mind?

Nathan:   Yeah. I think resilience is… I don’t know about the definition piece, but I think resilience to me is, I don’t know any organizations really now or when I think about the HR teams and stuff like that, resilience it’s such a core capability and such a core expectations because everything is changing. There’s constant change all the time, new demands, you’re being stretched in different situations. You’re having to juggle things. And I think resiliency and change in those, those are core attributes. Those are things that you’ve got to look for. You’ve got to look for people that understand that. And I think back earlier in my career, change was something that you get talked about it, it happened, but it wasn’t as frequent and in your face the same way. Now it’s just an expectation.

It’s not something unique and different. You’re just expected and depending upon the industry and the type of organization, your function, it’s just something you’re expected to operate within. So I think resiliency it’s a critical aspect. It’s a capability within it that to me, it’s helping people really understand the the new normal, helping them understand look, the change isn’t going away. And some people deal really, they deal very well with that. And some people they don’t. And you have to think about like your environment and Paycor is a great. It’s really a great organization and a great example of. Been around years from a founder-led organization, which was very regionally in Cincinnati. Glad when you looked at it from the population, and the community impact and those things to look at the publicly traded organization now.

We still got a half of our associates in the greater Cincinnati area and those things. But part of your growth from a private founder-led organization to a public organization is starting to drive resiliency and ability to adapt to change and those things, because you scale and you grow different and stuff like that. So I just like, to me, resiliency you’re always thinking about in the stuff you do, of how do you get the team in a spot that things are going to change and the status quo. You always have to be challenging. You always have to be thinking about how to continue to really react to that. So I think to me, it’s like something that we just talked about as part of the DNA. It’s really what we’re trying to do with it.

William Tincup:   I think COVID sped some of that up for us because I think we were already resilient. Most HR and TA leaders prior to COVID already had a pretty high adaptability score. But COVID definitely sped some of those things up and made it more of an organizational core that everybody needs to be adaptable, like radically flexible, et cetera. So I used to kind of just like people, you can imagine 10 years ago, you’d have the discussion say the upside of resiliency. You don’t have to talk to people about that now. Everyone gets it. Now it’s a question of how do you build it? How do you hire for it? How do you rebuild it and make sure that people are comfortable with things the ground beneath their feet is always going to be moving? And that’s okay.

Nathan:   Yeah, and I think the other thing that’s really interesting about resiliency is, and I think you’re right. I think it did accelerate it. I think what it also did it highlighted, and I don’t know that this is good or bad, but where folks struggled with that. Where they struggled with change and they struggled with the resilient pieces. And some of that becomes the organizations, the cultures, like the DNAs and things that, hey, this is the organization where it’s at. And you do see, and you have seen it in pockets where people have opted out. Things have changed and they’ve changed careers. And they’ve done things like that because things are different now. And I think that’s the way it is. You have to be, in this environment and in a lot of these roles, you have to be really resilient and where maybe 10 years ago, like you said, you didn’t have to be to the same degree.

William Tincup:   Right.

Nathan:   You were in some cases, but maybe not all roles. And some people, I think it probably kind of reset their thinking and their expectation around, hey, is this still the right fit stuff? Because yeah, you were forced to be. But I think what you’re saying about how do you build it in those things? A big part to me is it starts with your leadership. It starts with leadership. If you’ve got a very resilient…

William Tincup:   You expect it.

Nathan:   Yeah. You expect it. And if you’ve got a team that leads from the front, because you can always slide back to, what do I say? Excuses,

William Tincup:   Yeah. Rationalizations.

Nathan:   This is really difficult, those types of things, or you could lead with, hey, this is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to do something unique and different. It’s a challenge. Resiliency really does come like, you can build that with how you lead and how you communicate and those things as well.

William Tincup:   So tips and tricks that you’ve seen and maybe heard, or even that you use on kind of helping folks with it? Because some of this is doing with ambiguity and getting people over to this flexibility, agility, adaptability, resilience, et cetera. You kind of moving them over to this place. What have you found? Because you’ve got folks, but you’ve also, you’ve got a whole peer group that deal with the same thing. How do you kind of help them? Folks that maybe aren’t agile or aren’t flexible, how do you get them over to a place where they’re comfortable with being uncomfortable?

Nathan:   Yeah. I think that’s a really good question. I think it’s a good question of how do you ever get them comfortable? I think you’re considerate around it. I think you really have to think about how do you bring everybody along??

William Tincup:   Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nathan:   And I think that goal was, look, you want people to get there. You want to make sure that they’re supportive. They’ve got a good framework. There’s clarity. They understand and those things. And I think you’re going to get the vast majority of people. And sometimes you’re going to get some folks that maybe aren’t, and that’s okay.

William Tincup:   Right.

Nathan:   That’s okay too. But for me, the biggest piece when I think about ambiguity, and change, and how you bring people along is I’m a huge proponent of clarity. I think that that takes so much out. It doesn’t mean that you have every answer. It doesn’t mean that there’s not ambiguity and you’re not dealing with change and those things. But clarity to me, especially like where I’ve been in organizations where you don’t have let’s say role clarity. So my role’s this, your role’s that, and there’s all this stuff in between that, hey, we’ve just kind of downside a desk before we’ve kind of adjustment made it work. And then as you grow, as you scale, as these other things come in, you start looking around of, who’s going to take point on that? Who’s not? And I’m busy with this other stuff and stuff starts to fall through, things are changing. To me, how do I create really good clarity? Clarity around what’s important to us as an organization.

What’s important to us as a team? What’s important to you and the role? And, hey, let’s identify. Where do we have areas of ambiguity? Where do you have areas that are causing some of this confusion and stuff like that? So as a leader, that’s something that I always look for, and I always strive to create clarity. Because I think if you can do that, if people at least have it in their jobs, they’re going to be able to deal with the change and the pieces that are coming from other areas. But I think if you’ve got it like in your own shop and your own role, where you’re not really clear about, hey, what’s my priority? What should I be working on? Where are my boundaries and who owns this? Or I’ve got this process that is kind of like vague out here that’s causing a lot of pain points, creating clarity and expectations and stuff. That’s something I think when you do that really well, you can fix a lot of the ambiguity and a lot of the noise that comes with that.

William Tincup:   Yeah. And you’re evolving that. So in the military, they call that clear intent. So there’s from the top, there’s a clear intent, whatever the clear intent is, and if it changes, then you communicate the new intent. And so everyone knows what the mission is and what you’re trying to achieve. And so I love that you started with communications and it’s like, listen, you might even have to over communicate.

Nathan:   Absolutely.

William Tincup:   And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with overcommunicating. Just getting people to a place where they really appreciate and understand kind of what the goal is. I love that. Last question.

Nathan:   If you think about how performance management has changed over time, annual goal setting, it doesn’t… I’ve been in hindsight like why did that…

William Tincup:   Like dinosaurs are walking around when we talk about it.

Nathan:   Yeah. It never made any sense. So as you think about now, between weekly, one-on-ones, you’ve got technology that enables different types of check-ins, you’re doing more like, maybe you’re doing more on a formal like quarterly basis where you’re doing a look back, you’re doing a look ahead, you’re resetting, but you’re much more agile. You’re building that into your practices and those things. It all goes hand in hand. You just have to do it well. And I think that’s the piece that I’ve always been a big proponent of those types of discussions and stuff. And you can get really complicated when it comes to performance management and those types of things. But at the end of the day, it’s clarity and it’s expectations. And that’s where I think like, yeah, it can just have such an impact. And like I said, I think it’s always interesting to look back at, man, why did we ever think candy?

William Tincup:   That seemed like such a great idea.

Nathan:   Yeah.

William Tincup:   And now, boy, that is a horrible idea.

Nathan:   Yeah.

William Tincup:   Last question is just in your mind, or as you’ve thought about it, the relationship between the two; burnout and resiliency, what have you… It’s just your observations of what you think the relationship is between the two?

Nathan:   I think there’s… I think everybody can have burnout. I think any situation, any point in time, but I think it’s training yourself, your mindset around resilience. And now I think about even conversations like with my own team, whether that’s in recent months, whether that’s in prior companies and those things, but the more of, again, I go back to how these pieces work together. But if you have resiliency and if you have a mindset of you’ve been through this stuff before, and you know like, look, there’s always going to be a wrench thrown into it. It doesn’t matter but best laid plans. Something’s going to come up.

William Tincup:   Right.

Nathan:   So if you’re prepared for that, and if you look at it from the opportunity standpoint of instead of, hey, I just lost a key team member. I just had this go on and threw a big wrench into my plans. Take that moment in and have your quick moment of loss and grief of like, I get that. Do it for a minute, take it in, catch your breath. And then it’s like, okay, here’s the opportunity. It’s not then in the world, this happens all the time. This is the stuff that we all have to deal with. So then how do I take this opportunity to improve? How do I take this opportunity to maybe think differently about it, and how can I go after it? So to me, it’s a mindset piece.

William Tincup:   Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nathan:   And I try to whether that’s a conversation, whether that’s with the organization, with others and stuff, is that’s really what I try to encourage. Because I think a lot of times when you’re maybe not as seasoned with that, or you haven’t had as much exposure to it, or it’s just maybe not your first predisposition, you may start in the negative spot. And like I said, I think that’s fine if it’s natural immediately, but how can you help people? How can you help? Because the people that are resilient, they see that and it’s just like, it’s a blip and then it’s back to, okay, cool. I’m ready for that because I’m resilient.

I know this stuff’s going to come, and people expect that. There’s always the stuff that comes up. So I think they’re hand in hand. But to me, the more we can continue to build resilience and help people lean towards the opportunity and the positive side of it, I just think it’s a much healthier, it’s a much better spot because there’s always going to be something that just, like I said, throws a wrench into things for you.

William Tincup:   Yeah. I think causation correlation smarter people will have to study this and figure it out for us and report back. But it seems that the more resilient one is, maybe the less that likely that they would have burnout, or that it would be that everyone’s going to go through it, like you said, but maybe they could consume it in a different way, the more resilient. But that just, I don’t have any empirical data on that. It just kind of seems that way.

Nathan:   But it seems intuitive.

William Tincup:   Yeah.

Nathan:   I think that’s the piece of it because everyone’s going to deal with the same stuff, like resiliency allows you to think about it.

William Tincup:   Yeah.

Nathan:   It’s a different mindset. It’s a different, and it’s a more positive mindset.

William Tincup:   You get to it differently. Nathan, this has been everything that I wanted. And so thank you. I can’t even imagine how busy you are. But thank you so much for coming on this, the RecruitingDaily podcast. I just absolutely appreciate you.

Nathan:   No, I appreciate the opportunity. And yeah, great conversation. And yeah, like I said, just appreciate it.

William Tincup:   Awesome. And thanks for everyone listening to the RecruitingDaily podcast. Until next time

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