Must Listen to HR Podcasts: Good Morning HR with Mike Coffey - Discussing AI

Prepare yourself for a candid and lively chat with Mike Coffey, host of Good Morning HR, as we kick off our "Must Listen To Podcasts" series. Imagine having the chance to audit your company's hiring process after an FBI-level heist—Mike has been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale. From aerospace to healthcare, his impressive journey in HR sheds light on the expertise and insights needed to navigate this complex field. Together with Warren and Mike from Jaded HR, they explore what makes a podcast authentically represent HR and avoid falling into corporate jargon traps. If you've ever pondered the power of a well-curated podcast list, you're in for a treat.

Join us as we reveal the secrets behind crafting a meaningful podcast experience, one that resonates with HR professionals and the curious alike. Our hosts, Warren and Cece, share their meticulous selection criteria for podcasts that deliver real, engaging content, and Mike Coffey fits this mold perfectly. Listen in for a mix of humor and insightful industry tales, as Warren recounts the quirks of past podcast lists and the joys of creating one that truly matters. Whether you’re an HR veteran or a newcomer eager to learn, this episode promises rich stories, laughter, and a genuine appreciation for the art of podcasting.

Listen to Good Morning HR: https://goodmorninghr.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Had you actually read the email, you would know that the podcast you are about to listen to could contain explicit language and offensive content. These HR experts' views are not representative of their past, present or future employers. If you have ever heard my manager is unfair to me. I need you to reset my HR portal password, or Can I write up my employee for crying too much? Welcome to our little safe zone. Welcome to Jaded HR.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Welcome to Jaded HR, the podcast by two HR professionals who want to help you get through to workday by saying everything you're thinking, but say it out loud. I'm Warren and I'm Mike, not CC, exactly. We've kicked the kids out of the room. All my co-hosts have always been younger than me, and so now we've got some Gen Xers here that are going to take over the whole podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:10

So all you whippersnappers and Zoomers out there. You're going to have to put up with us for a little bit of time. But, as you hear, we have Mike Coffey on with us today. He is the host of Good Morning HR and this is actually the first episode of our Must listen to podcast series we're going to do, and so for the next few weeks we're going to be bringing on guests who host other podcasts to have them tell about their podcast. But I want to give you some background on how we got here.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Cece and I were talking and there's all sorts of best podcast lists out there and Jaded HR has made a few of them. But there was one that someone tagged me on once and I looked at it and it was by another podcaster and it was an order list. This list is not ordered. The order is by who can come and be online with us at what time and work into our schedule. But these are just must-listen-to podcasts. But this one list we put into Jaded HR was listed on and be online with us at what time and work into our schedule. But these are just must listen to podcasts. But this one list we put into we Jaded HR was listed on.

Speaker 2: 2:12

I think we're like seven or eight or whatever. It doesn't matter. But the host of the list creator was host of podcast number two and I just got a laugh out of it and that podcast isn't around anymore. And the other podcast lists that you see out there are done like clickbaity. Some I haven't posted episodes for a long time or others are just not good episodes. So I wanted to have something. I came up with Criteria had to be actively recording and have an episode in the last three months was one of them. It cannot be a corporate shill sales job on that. Like there's some HRIS systems that have a podcast where they're you know they're talking HR, but it's it's talking their HRIS.

Speaker 3: 2:54

When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and that's kind of what they exactly.

Speaker 2: 3:00

I didn't want those and I wanted to be real list of podcasts. The CC and I discussed these podcasts that we're inviting on and we said, yep, we'll have this one, and we had some discussion Should we include this, should we not include this? And we haven't made our list. But we have to listen to them and I think they're quality enough to rank as our list. Who knows? We've got a number of other hosts coming on already scheduled and we're trying to arrange a few more. Hopefully, get this Must Listen To podcast to carry through the rest of the year. But before I go too much further, I want to thank our Patreon supporters. We have Hallie, the original Jaded HR rock star, and then we have Bill and Michael as well. So thank you for your continued support. But let's get things started. So, mike, you are beyond the host of Good Morning HR. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 3: 3:49

Well, I'm a career HR guy who was in aerospace and then healthcare and then left healthcare and started consulting. And then one of my early consulting clients was a nationwide financial services company. They'd had a big internal theft and they brought me in to come in. I mean, like the FBI is involved, is that kind of company? And they brought me in to do an audit of their employee selection process because the FBI was like holding this person's rap sheet and said why did you hire her? And and they clearly, among other things, needed better background checks. And I had run that for the healthcare system that I'd worked for and and you know that was pre internet that's how old I am and so I had to become an expert, you know, from the employer side of the desk on that stuff for that. And so one thing led to another, and actually I was they, they, they suggested their VP of HR was an attorney, had a and just I've always I was always kind of the HR compliance wonk and he said, well, why don't you just do this for us? Cause you understand all this background check stuff, you know, cause we'd put out RFPs and didn't like the results that came back and he and I said I'd have to go get a PI license. You know, I mean, here in Texas you have a private investigator's license to do that. I have to go do that and I had to. I mean, it's hiring people. I'm not sure this. You know, this is what I'm going to do a long-term. And I came like, oh well, there we go. And so here we are, 25 years later he's an engineer and I've got three amazing boys and I've paid for colleges with this and got an amazing team that does all the hard work and lets me do the fun stuff.

Speaker 3: 5:41

I still work with clients to solve people issues. I've I will never write another employee handbook or anything like that, but I still do a lot around employee relations, employee selection stuff. But you know, my bread and butter is really, you know it's imperative. We do, you know, just like I always say you know, bulletproof background checks, for with fast and friendly service we just we cater to really risk averse clients and it's not just employment background checks.

Speaker 3: 6:07

We do due diligence for private equity firms, family offices, vendor selection. We have a really large CPA firm that before they take on an audit client, they have us do due diligence on the principles of the company so they know who they're getting in bed with. So basically it's people related stuff. So that's where, that's what you know, that's what I pay for all my kids' college and probation fees with. Is that kind of? Is that part of it? But I get to spend most of my time doing fun stuff, speaking at conferences. I'm really involved in Texas SHRM and support chapters across the state. We've got 32 chapters here in Texas and so I do a lot with those folks, and so I just kind of live the dream.

Speaker 2: 6:56

Hey, it sounds great. So what made you decide to create the podcast? Good Morning HR. How did you get to that point?

Speaker 3: 7:04

create the podcast. Good Morning HR. How did you get to that point? Well, the thing called COVID happened and where I was traveling, speaking at conferences and SHRM chapters and knitting clubs anybody who had listened to me I mean Rotary, I didn't care, I wanted audiences and that all stopped and so I was kind of climbing the walls and then we, you know, we had sent all our employees home. They were all working remote and I just needed I needed to meet some people. And you know we're in Texas, so you know everything shut down in March and by June we were French kissing strangers on the street. You know we didn't stay really locked down that long, but a lot of the big meetings weren't happening and so I had had the.

Speaker 3: 7:47

Actually I did a podcast for Austin HR about 10 or 12 years ago, for about a year, and I really enjoyed it. But just because you know, with SHRM chapters, people, you know, officers change and people are different, people are in charge of different things, and suddenly that just wasn't a priority. So it's kind of withered up and died, but I really had enjoyed it. So I said, well, let's, you know, let's kick that back up and that'll get me, you know, meeting new people, interesting people, and my one superpower is asking, you know, dumb questions of smart people. So I get to play to my talents and so I started doing that and I've got a great team. My marketing coordinator, marianne Hernandez, is awesome. I've got an amazing producer, rob Upchurch, who does all the hard work. So all I have to do is ask dumb questions to smart people, and so it makes it pretty easy.

Speaker 3: 8:39

But the funny thing about the name Good Morning HR we went through everything we could think to, because the old podcast back when we were doing with Austin HR was called the Imperative Podcast and I didn't want that and we kept you know, and everybody was pushing me hey, it's a podcast. You should say you know, it's your morning coffee C-O-F-F-E-Y, because that's my last name and my initials are M-R. Michael Ray Coffee, m-r. So when, and I, my initials are mr michael ray coffee, mr. So when I was in aerospace, my badge says mr coffee. Yeah, thanks a lot, mom. I appreciate that. And so I wasn't. And so coffee jokes I mean, I'm 55, I've listened to them for 55 years, so I'm gonna do that.

Speaker 3: 9:18

And then I started thinking well, I own probably 40 or 50 domain names, because every time I get an idea for something, I registered the domain name. Then I just keep renewing it. I mean, dotster makes so much money off of me and so I started going through those, and there's one that I had registered in 2012 called Good Morning HR, and I remember the conference I was sitting in. There was somebody talking about Web 2.0 at this conference and talking about how you really needed to have, and I registered from my phone my early iPhone that domain name right there, and I'm not, and I've paid for it for all these years and never used it. And I said, hey, how about good morning HR? And everybody said, oh, that's, that's better than the mic show, so let's go with that. And so that's that's where we're at.

Speaker 2: 10:01

That's funny. 12 is and I don't have the.

Speaker 2: 10:06

I'll have to look up the date, probably when I first registered jaded hrs I it started as a blog and I was like so many blogs out there start out gangbusters, and then, you know, a year or two in I'm like one post a month. I would go from like every other day to one post a month and I didn't have a lot of. I had a few hundred, uh, uh, you know, visits a month to my page and it was just like. So I ended up I kept the domain, I just took the blog down. But yeah, that's that's how this started, in that we actually I actually got the idea to bring back the Jaded HR in form of a podcast.

Speaker 2: 10:42

Patrick and I, we used to work together. Hr in the form of a podcast. Patrick and I, we used to work together. He was our first co-host and then I left the company and he's actually still there and the Thanksgiving before COVID, I just bounced the idea off of him. I said or maybe a little bit even earlier than that, I said, hey, I have this idea, I want to bring back Jaded HR and bring it as a podcast. And he was on board and it was so funny. We got together the team, the company that both Patrick and I used to work for. Everybody else other than Patrick left At some point we had a lunch over Thanksgiving that year, right before COVID, and so Patrick and I have an announcement to make and everybody went all crazy and now it's nothing crazy, we're just making a podcast and things like that. But yeah, that in podcasting is so much easier than blogging and it's so much more fun too.

Speaker 2: 11:31

It really is, and I really appreciate it, and it seems like it's an easier way to get your word out there than than blogging. And you know, the JDA HR does have a webpage and a blog, which is completely unattended. But yeah, I need to spend some time on that, so, anyhow. Now, one thing I really like about Good Morning HR is you give the HRCI credits. I was telling you all fair.

Speaker 2: 11:57

I'm just barely over a year in my certification cycle and I've already got of the 60, I've probably got 50 research credits and most you know I go to conferences and things like that, but overall, most of them are from Good Morning HR at half an hour, 75.75 or full hour, and I've done some of your webinars as well. So if you are a certified professional, this is probably the best way to get your certification credits. It's great because I'm listening to podcasts anyway and, like I said, yours is high quality, good guests. I love your guests and we're talking off air about you getting your guests, but it seems like most of them seem to be drawn from your SHRM networking, you seem to have a.

Speaker 2: 12:43

You know you've known this person 20 years and you've known this person 15 years and things like that. So you have good guests who speak well on their topics and I really appreciate it. And another thing you're not trying to sell anything you do like what a 30 second?

Speaker 3: 12:58

Yeah, there's a, there's. We've got a two minute cap on me talking about imperative in the center, and that's just so that I can justify to my accountants that this is a marketing expense, because really it's a passion thing for me, it's something.

Speaker 1: 13:11

I just enjoy doing.

Speaker 3: 13:12

But the HRCI and SHRM research credits have certainly gotten a lot of attention and made it popular, because there's not many podcasts out there that go through the effort to really get those things pre-approved and registered.

Speaker 3: 13:26

But we did that all along. We've been doing webinars for years and at any given time I've got between 15 and 20 hours of webinars on the website that people can just go watch for free and get credit. And most of them have nothing to do, and I think my webinars are kind of like the podcast. They almost have nothing to do with what I actually sell, where I make my revenue on the background check. Most of them are around other issues like AI, which has become a big topic for us, and just things I'm interested in. It gives me a way to have an excuse to go explore something and create a webinar on it. But they're all HRCI and SHRM credit. In fact, Mary Ann, our marketing coordinator, told me last week and I think she said it was 70,000. We've given away 70,000 HRCI and SHRM research credits just from Good Morning HR in 170 episodes.

Speaker 3: 14:13

So that's got to put us on a list someplace, I think. But it's certainly it's free, and I'm a big supporter of SHRM chapters and I think everybody should be part of their, their local HR community, whether it's a SHRM group or something else, and, you know, participate in Disrupt HR or whatever comes along. But, and certainly HR Southwest is, you know, our home, our state conference here in Texas and I've spoken at it every year for ever and wouldn't miss it for the world. But you know a lot of folks, especially in a state like Texas where you've got so many rural areas that don't have, you know, maybe they've got a local SHRM chapter or maybe the nearest one's 45 minutes or two hours away, and so them having a way to get research credit and still learn something and stay up on current things, I think is just really important. So it's, you know, it's kind of a privilege in a lot of ways that people you know that they listen to me and that I'm able to help them.

Speaker 3: 15:13

I was at a conference and we're sitting around at a dinner, at a table having lunch, and I was talking to the person next to me and the person on my. You know, I was talking to the person on my right and the person on my left tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, are you that podcast guy? And and he just heard my voice and and and I said, yeah, yeah, hi, it's good to meet you. And he said, you know, you sound like Kermit the frog. I'm like, okay, well, that's great, well, thank you, but I listened to your podcast.

Speaker 2: 15:41

Oh, okay, yeah, Kermit the frog, I haven't been identified yet, but I don't do a lot of. I'm not out in the public as as much as you are, but I, I love it. I you know. I consider you my friday morning of commuting partners. I have an hour and a half commute now. I do listen to all my podcasts. The minimum I listen to is at 1.5x, depending on the podcast and the topic. I'll go as high as two things, but and I can't listen at one X anymore I am completely. I get frustrated like hurry up and speak.

Speaker 2: 16:14

Do you listen. Yeah, I do the same Everything's usually at 1.25.

Speaker 3: 16:22

And I listened to. I listened to a lot of of podcasts too, and there's a handful of them that you know I have to hear every week. They're just part of my routine. But I also listen to a lot of audible audiobooks. I've been yes, I've been doing audible since like 99. I've got, you know, thousands of titles in my library now and, uh, I listen to most of those at like one and a half times, unless it's a, you know, especially like right now I'm reading a book called Breath and it's about healthy breathing and it's all this stuff and it's interesting. But I can listen to it pretty fast. But if it's a good narrative novel, like fiction, I'll listen to it at a normal pace because those voice actors are so good on those things, and so I'll listen to it that way, at normal speed.

Speaker 2: 17:03

Actors are so good on those things, and so I'll listen to it that way at normal speed. Well, speaking of breath, I think that probably ties in your other. Your other hobby is a yoga instructor. Yeah. You speak about on your thing. So that must be perfect for HR folks because, lord knows, we, we, I had a day to day, stressful days and and things like that, so that you could sell your yoga instructing to, to HR professionals and have a great market right there. Just a HR only yoga studio.

Speaker 3: 17:33

And yeah, I've been practicing 15 years and I started cause I tore up my knee. You remember the P90X, you remember that you get to see the DVDs and do that. I tore my meniscus doing jumping jacks and P90X on Berber carpet in our living room and I had the surgery and it still felt crunchy. And a friend of mine who plays soccer, who's my age, and he at the time was in his 40s and played soccer at a pretty competitive level for his age, and he said, hey, you should try this hot yoga. It's going to really make a difference in your knee. And I'm like I'm not doing yoga and but it just never. My knee never felt quite right and so I finally went into yoga. I went to a Bikram studio and did that really hot yoga, 105 degrees, about 60% humidity in the room for 90 minutes and I did it for every day for a week and I kept coming back and within a month all that crunchiness, after they had repaired it, had gone away in my knee. And so I was. I was hooked, and so it's been 15 years. So breathing is is big for me, but also just just, it's a great low impact. You know I'm 55 and you know it sometimes hurts to get out of the chair and you know I hurt me, you know I hurt myself just doing stupid stuff.

Speaker 3: 18:46

And so I found that when I'm really, you know I practice or teach just about every day.

Speaker 3: 18:54

You know I still do some weights and some high intensity interval training stuff, but I wanted to teach.

Speaker 3: 19:00

I wanted to teach for years. But making the time planning ahead so that I had time to do 200 hours of teacher training was challenging and I finally decided I wanted to do it last year after 15 years of practicing, and it was a matter of saying okay, I'm going to say no to this conference, I'm going to say no to this conference. I'm not going to do this travel for the fall so that I can get all 200 hours of training in. And now I teach four times a week at the Core Power Yoga here in Fort Worth Shout out to Core Power. And I practice on top of that. Those four classes I teach and usually four or five, really five or six sometimes I'll still practice at least five times a week, and so it's and I can tell my sanity at the end of the day is so much better if I was in the yoga studio at 6 am than, if I'm not, I'm kind of unbearable about three or four in the afternoon.

Speaker 2: 19:58

Yeah, I don't do yoga or anything. My wife and I. Since we moved to where we are now, we're in a very scenic area and we do a walk and the walking you know our standard route is three miles and I can tell the difference of just the stress and relaxation and we just chit-chat and talk and have our dog with us and it's great. You need to get out. You expend some energy somewhere.

Speaker 3: 20:23

Well, and you know, you get to a certain age where you start reading about longevity with health. And I have a 95-year-old grandmother who's a widow, who lives by herself and is as tough as nails. I mean you can't keep those Depression-era girls down, but she's got her wits about her, she's strong and she just maintained a different lifestyle than most Americans do today. She's always active and even now, at 95, I'm pretty convinced every inch of her flooring is vacuumed or mopped every single day.

Speaker 3: 21:00

And so she stays active and all that and so, and when you start reading about it, it's, you know, balance, you know core strength and mental cognition are the three things that you've got to preserve in order to live a long, healthy life. And so I'm getting, you know, I'm really getting at least two of those, you know, by staying active in yoga. You know, my wife was a runner and her knees kind of given up, so she's practicing yoga, but we do. We walk a lot too, and that's a great way just to clear your head.

Speaker 3: 21:29

I just, you know, being active is is really important, and I'm certainly not a jock, I'm not coordinated. I mean, you know, I always say I'm blind in my right eye and I'm deaf in my left. I can't do, you know, and no hand-eye coordination or anything like that. So yoga is perfect because you get to move at your own pace, move with your own breath, and I can walk too. So that's, you know, that doesn't take a lot. So, yeah, but I think it's, you know, for me, it's made me bearable to all the people in my life, so it helps, oh yeah, I just, you know I I've tried to.

Speaker 2: 22:01

You know I used my moving as a trigger point for I've got a new house I've gotten. I used my moving as a trigger point for I've got a new house, I'm in a new place. I would change all these habits and overall it's worked pretty well. I still don't I'm not perfect, but I've lost a lot of weight since March when we moved and overall I'm feeling better and I'm more energized. I'm just happier overall and, yeah, I think just getting a little exercise works. But let's see here, what do you? You bring on any number of guests. And one thing I was saying earlier I like about your guests they come from your network but they also they're not out there. Like a lot of the interview style podcasts. They're not out there selling their latest book or a seminar. And if you've listened to any episodes of JJ Archer, you know HR. You know that I am very anti. I know you're a speaker, but the keynote speakers who try your best, do your hardest and things like that have no substance behind anything.

Speaker 2: 23:03

That's one of the things that just kills me when you go to a seminar and somebody's got this. That's one of the things that just kills me when you go to a seminar and somebody has got this. You know, rainbows and butterflies, presentation that has zero substance. And then I it blows my mind walking out and I'm just like, I'm like what the fuck did I just listen to for an hour and then so many people love that so many people love that stuff and I'll go to the conference and a lot of conferences I'll I'll go to the conference and a lot of conferences I'll.

Speaker 3: 23:34

I'll skip the keynote unless it's somebody, because you know, but even celebrities, I don't care what they think, and it's just not you know, and so but, like, hr, southwest is having Sam Rad, who's a futurist. She calls herself a futurist anthropologist and she, her writing is really interesting and she actually spoke to the leadership of the Texas State SHRM Council Texas State Council for SHRM last year I think and it was just really really interesting. So I'm looking forward to her keynote and in fact we're doing two live episodes on the floor at HR Southwest this year.

Speaker 1: 24:03

We've never, done that before.

Speaker 3: 24:04

Yeah, it's walking without a tight rope and we'll see it may be a total disaster, but, but she but I'm interviewing her after her keynote in front of a live audience, so we'll see how that plays out. I like those, but I'm always looking for something practical to take away. And that's the other thing about giving HRCI and SHRM research credit thing, about having giving hrci and sherm research credit you've got to have at least three key learning points in order to you know to really justify it getting credit and so. But you know you get pitched, I get pitched everybody I know with a podcast as soon as you've got past nine episodes, which puts you in about the top 10 of podcast ever don't tell me.

Speaker 2: 24:45

I always say I'm in the top five percent of podcasts don't tell them the secret, and so you know.

Speaker 3: 24:52

But you know all the pr firms. You know every company is out there paying pr firms to get their executives or their their leaders out on podcasts, but you know to sell their company one way or the other and we just really really avoid that. I book very few guests that are coming from that environment. Now if they've published a book, I'll have them send me a pre-release copy of the book and I like them to send it to me in PDF because I can drop it in ChatGPT and say give me the highlights and in ChatGPT you'll just read the PDF and give me a really good synopsis and so I don't have to actually sit down and read it for three hours or four hours. And so I'll do authors sometimes, but most of it I ignore the PR.

Speaker 3: 25:36

But I've got my network, got a big LinkedIn network, but also I'm subscribed to way too many local SHRM chapters, monthly newsletters or weekly newsletters, emails or whatever they do, and so I see who their speakers are and what they're speaking about.

Speaker 3: 25:53

So I'll just cold reach out. So I've had employment law attorneys and HR consultants from all over the country on the podcast just because I saw that they were speaking in this chapter. I thought, oh, that's an interesting topic, or I'd like their perspective. And I spend too much time on LinkedIn seeing what people are saying about, you know, people, issues and leadership issues and I'm saying, oh, I'd like to get this person on, or I think this person's full of shit. I want let's let me get them on and and, and, you know, let's engage and talk about it. And we've had a few that have where we've butted heads, but usually I, you know, my job is I see it as not to be is to facilitate the conversation, not to, not to debate somebody on this. But I have thought about starting a second podcast, just where I, you know, I, you know, be brave and call bullshit that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 26:37

And so I'd subscribe to that one too. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, I, I love it. But you sort of walked right into the topic we wanted to cover today Talk about putting the books into ChatGPT. But you seem to be very passionate about artificial intelligence. Beyond talking about it on your show, you've done several webinars on it. I love the one with the deep fake my coffee. That was really cool. I actually pulled that up and showed it to my assistant. This is really cool the way you did that, and you did another one not too long ago on AI as well, so it's a topic that you seem to be pretty interested in. So I think there's only AI is very dividing, like everything else in the country right now, but the people who love it and are really all in and the people are scared to death of it, and I'm in the sort of all in, I want to learn about it, I want to use it. I think it'll be such a great tool for HR professionals to use.

Speaker 2: 27:39

We were talking a little bit offline. If you can put your handbook, say, in a large language model and the employee can go in and just type up a question oh, what is the bereavement policy? Bam, they get an answer in two seconds and they don't need to call HR and things like that and it'll be very self-service. And benefits you have benefit questions? Hey, upload your benefits documentation. You can ask hey, how does this work, what's my co-pay, what's my deduct? How does this work, what's my co-pay, what's my deductible on this plan? And I just see it as being such a time saver and honestly, nobody in HR likes answering those questions. You can be the most Well, and your employees don't like calling you to ask them either.

Speaker 2: 28:23

No, they don't.

Speaker 3: 28:24

They would rather be able to get the answer easily, and so if you've got a well-designed, well-informed chat bot of some sort that gives them the answer accurately, quickly, that's what they end up and maybe they can do it, you know, after hours. I mean, maybe their kid breaks their leg at a soccer game on a Saturday afternoon and they need to figure out. How do I figure out? Which ER do I take them to to make sure it's covered on my plan? Hr is not in. They, you know, and certainly their broker's not going to answer the phone. If they could get online and see that stuff and you know and have, you know, secure access to it, know exactly what their plan is, that's like a no brainer to me and talk about employee engagement right there.

Speaker 3: 29:08

okay, you know, their problem was solved right away and somebody in HR didn't have to stop what they were doing and take that time and then have that interruption and then try to re-engage in whatever they're working on. Then here comes the phone again.

Speaker 2: 29:23

So yeah, that's probably the number one skill set needed in HR is being able to get interrupted and hop back on, and because the busier you are, the more interruptions you're going to get. Oh sure, I had a quick question about this. You have a day when it's a slow day. It's a completely slow day because nobody's interrupting. You're saying, oh, let's see what's going on. Manage by walking around.

Speaker 3: 29:53

Go around and talk to people on those slow days and things like that, and that's hard to do. But that's one of the things that when I was in frontline HR and even now that I run my company I've got an amazing team but I have time that's blocked off on my calendar, that phone calls don't come in, emails don't get looked at and unless somebody's bleeding to death I don't let them interrupt me because I need that deep work, that focus, and I just say this is the time I'm doing that. And then I have days where I set aside nothing. But you know you can schedule all the meetings on these days and so you know I give you know we use schedule once. You know some people use calendarly to let people set appointments and I've just got certain days of the week that are, you know, at least two days a week where people can schedule a meeting. You know on my calendar and if they've got the link there, you know they can schedule a meeting and it's somebody I probably want to talk to. But then I protect Tuesdays and Thursdays from those kinds of things and you know if my team needs me they can get me.

Speaker 3: 30:51

But they know, leave Mike alone when my cat and they honestly my calendar and they see things are blocked off, they know why and that makes a giant difference. But because that interruption cost there's so much, there've been, there's so much. You know scientific research. Now that you research, now that you're in that deep work, you get interrupted and then it's 10 or 15 minutes before you can really get back into flow and so you waste so much time and so much mental cognition is just wasted trying to get back into it. So I think that's one of the things I tell young emerging professionals is find the time to do that deep work that you're not interrupted, where you can really bring your best attention to your work. I think too many professionals are slaves to the technology now and the interruptions and the dinging and the binging and the buzzing I think it keeps us from delivering our very best.

Speaker 2: 31:51

Well, on the flip side of people like you and I, who are interested and I want to see where AI takes HR, but you have the opposite people, the people that, oh, this is going to cost me my job and this isn't going to. You know, is it going to cost you your job? Probably not. I heard this saying any number of times and I've always attributed it to Tim Sackett.

Speaker 3: 32:17

I heard him say I know what you're going to say because I heard him at the Grand Cayman HR Association in. May of 2023 speak. That was a junket. I didn't need to go to that HR conference, but it was good to go to Graham Kamen, but I heard him speak and I know what you're going to say.

Speaker 2: 32:33

You're not going to lose your job to AI. You're going to lose your job to someone who knows AI.

Speaker 3: 32:37

Who's using AI? Yeah, ai, yeah, that's the first time I heard that Good. I've always credited to him when I repeat it, and I repeat it, and I've had Tim on the show too.

Speaker 2: 32:47

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 32:47

And he's a super sharp guy and he's always been one of the most creative HR thinkers out there as far as cutting edge stuff.

Speaker 2: 32:58

Yeah, you know I miss HR famous podcasts, you know, because I would have definitely invited them but they didn't meet the criteria. They haven't published episodes in quite a while. But you know, one thing I do is all these podcasts that go stop publishing. I still keep them in my subscription list and then every once in a while, like a hostile work environment it went away for a long time.

Speaker 2: 33:21

It came back and it's gone away again and other ones. I just maybe they'll come back. Surfing Corporate came back recently, so if you keep it in your feed, maybe it'll come back, so and you'll get to enjoy it again. But yeah, I used to really enjoy HR Famous.

Speaker 2: 33:35

And when you said that, that is the best AI line I think I've ever heard, because you can either embrace it and is it going to cost your job? Probably not. But what's going to make is the HR department. You were talking about this before we started recording. You're going to need fewer people, but that doesn't mean a job elimination Just as we grow. Hey, I'm not going to add you up. You've got that talent.

Speaker 3: 33:56

Now that you can develop and bring more value to the organization. Let those people grow professionally. You're not going to be trapped into saying, okay, I've already trained this person to do this job and I really you know, we've all you know if we've managed very long, we've had that really key player in that one role and we're just like, oh, it really hurts to think about training somebody else to do this job, even though it's the best thing for this employee and for the company over time. But we will free people up to do more creative work, to do stuff that brings more joy to them than just putting tab A and slot A all day, which is really what AI is best for right now.

Speaker 2: 34:48

Exactly. I want to see where it takes us. I think there's so many great opportunities. Actually, here's a situation Aporia, I'm in grad school now and I'm not going to name the classes, some classes. I got a syllabus recently and the syllabus talks about the honor code and all this. And it goes. This instructor, their syllabus has a paragraph AI is against the honor code. It's the only one I've seen that has it. And you know, use will be subject to disciplinary action. Yada, yada, yada. And I'm like okay For the writing I have to do for my classes. I write it 100% myself, but I do load it up into ChatGBT and I say please make suggestions for clarity, grammar structure, things like that.

Speaker 2: 35:42

And it's amazing that it knows what I mean when I say grammar, structure, clarity, and you could do this or, you know, say this or reorder it this way, and it's great. And I'm not using it to write my papers, as that's all my original content, but it didn't make it so it's legible to or readable to, the instructor. Oh yeah, I would do that all day and I'm going to still continue, even though it's forbidden. Uh, I'm still gonna continue to do that because it's I'm not generating material out of it, but I've watched a youtube, a person writing it and and I think you even did you asked one of your webinars to chat gbt to cite their sources right, and the citations are there. So I mean, wow, but I don't use it that way. I still that's the older guy in me that I'm going to do it myself, but I'll let the system correct me and make suggestions and fix my mistakes.

Speaker 3: 36:41

Well, and you're you know you and I are of the same generation. When Google came out, I mean I remember there were. You know we were hearing stories about. You know college professors and high school teachers saying, no, you can't use the Internet to do your research, everything has to be in a book and you can only go to the library. And you know that seems so antiquated now. And I think that's the same thing with AI.

Speaker 3: 37:09

Michael Sherrod from Texas Christian University is a pioneer in the digital world in general. He worked for the local newspaper here in Fort Worth, the Star-Telegram, in the 80s. So when I'm in high school he was working for the Star-Telegram and they were the first newspaper to go digital in the country. They were the first one to have an online and it was a dial-up. You know 1440 modem, that whole thing. And I remember because I subscribed to it when I was in high school. It was called Star Text and so he left there and he had a lot of tech startups and he's an entrepreneur in residence or something over there at TCU now and teaches over there and he's been on the podcast and talking about AI and he tells his students that basically, yeah, you can use AI, but be ready to fully defend whatever you turn in. And it kind of goes back to the law school kind of approach where, okay, let me take your paper Now, let's defend it. And one of my best friends is Jim Zeta, who's a career plaintiff's attorney, who's pretty retired now. He teaches at Texas A&M Law he and at TCU in business, in the business school, and he tells his students the same thing yeah, use it.

Speaker 3: 38:30

You need to know how to use this, but you also have to watch out for the inaccuracies, the hallucinations, and be willing to you know, to defend what you publish. And I think that's going to be the route we all have to go. It's you know. I see these on the HR boards. I see people complaining about well, their cover letters on their resumes are clearly written by ChatGPT. And I'm like well, first of all, why are you requiring cover letters anymore? I mean, really, are you reading cover letters and evaluating candidates based on the content of the cover letter? And, second of all, yeah, that's who you want. You want somebody who is going to be efficient and not spend four hours writing a memo that nobody's going to read.

Speaker 2: 39:13

Like our podcast starts off with. Had you actually read the email, or a little disclaimer at the beginning? Yeah, both my children. In North Carolina we have these things called early colleges, so basically the kids will finish ninth through 12th grade in two years, and so it's really compressed, it's not easy work. And then the second two years of high school they're getting their associate's degree. That's great and it is. It saves me so far. It saved me four years of college tuition. But the principal at the school, he's given his spiel to the parents as you have to apply and be accepted to the program. But the principal is sitting there, you know, saying that he encourages the students to use their cell phones, use their technology available to them in class, because the important thing is not being able to get getting the answer from a book, it's being able to come up with an answer. You don't need rote memory anymore to know. You know the Gettysburg Address, you know the preamble to the Constitution, you know we learned it through Schoolhouse Rock.

Speaker 3: 40:14

But they don't have that anymore. Conjunction junction yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:16

Conjunction, yeah, but he said kids don't rely on and they need to develop the critical thinking skills to research appropriately. You know, this site is a legitimate site and worth getting or worth citing, and this is this one's clickbait junk or whatever you want to call it. That's not going to give you anything and I really appreciated that and I think it's. It's helped both my, my children and their, their careers, their educational careers, so Well and the, the.

Speaker 3: 40:47

The skill we need to be teaching people is how to synthesize what they've learned or what the information they have at their hand and implement it. How do I synthesize this and solve a problem with it? That's the thing that AI is not going to do. It's not going to solve problems creatively, especially where you need it In the HR world. We need empathy creatively, especially where you need it In the HR world. We need empathy, and people are never going to be happy with a robot letting them go or a robot doing the interview and making the employment selection. That's not the experience that people want to.

Speaker 3: 41:22

A good friend of mine, beth Stanley, has spent a career in sales. She's a sales trainer and she wrote a book. People Buy from People and I think that's true in so many ways. I mean, we're all selling something and people want to deal with people, and until until we really get to that level of full you know, skynet, uh robot that is is indistinguishable people are going to want to know that there's a person on the other end of this transaction and in this communication. So I'm less worried about it. I'm like you. I'm very bullish on AI.

Speaker 3: 41:57

I think there's a need for guardrails, because I've talked to plenty of HR people in the last couple of years who have reached out and said, hey, you know a lot about this. My CEO says we have to start using AI, and that's just it. Just use AI for the sake of using AI. And where do I start? And I'm like, well, that's the wrong question. The question is what problems do you need to solve in your organization and what's the right tool to solve it? Just because you have a hammer doesn't mean everything's a nail, so your most important problems may not be AI problems. So let's solve your most important problems and then maybe you'll eventually get to a problem where AI is helpful, and I think that idea we have to use it just because it's the hot thing. Well, you remember what is it? Five years, six years ago, everybody was talking about how blockchain was going to revolutionize HR, and when was the last time you heard that?

Speaker 2: 42:53

So, yeah, you know and I was a little bit drinking the Kool-Aid on the blockchain because I would love to have a defined. You know, this was their true employment history. That almost I mean it's a little big brother honestly and that's not me, but true employment history that almost I mean it's a little big brother honestly and that's not me, but your employment history. It's right there and it's uneditable, or you know, and and things like that. So I just I thought that that was going to be cool. I think it's probably still got some it's. It's not going to be everything everybody was saying four or five years ago about blockchain, but it I think. I think we'll see some of that still.

Speaker 3: 43:28

Oh, I think it's going to be, but it's not going to. It's not doing what they thought it was going to do. It's not being adopted at the rate it is. It's going to be part of the technology. It's in part of whatever solutions we have. In and of itself, it's not the solution. And I can tell you, I spend way too much time in Coinbase looking at my current Bitcoin values, because they skyrocket and they drop back down and I think I should have sold, and then I start going back up and I think I'm not going to sell. So my blockchain experience has been mostly Bitcoin and it's just another reason I have to take yoga classes every day.

Speaker 2: 44:08

Raise that blood pressure. Well, I don't want to take yoga classes every day, so raise that blood pressure. Well, I don't want to take too much of our time we're coming on in. So Good Morning HR. They drop episodes every Thursday. Like I said, I listen to it on Fridays because I work from home on Thursdays and so you're, like I said, my Friday morning commuting partner. But be sure to check it out. You can download it on all your favorite podcast players and check it out and you know, even if you don't need the research credits, it's going to be well worth your time. Top quality guests, I think I mentioned to you in one of the earlier emails I had to you.

Speaker 2: 44:41

I really one of my hot button topics is neurodiversity, and you've had really great guests because neurodiversity is onediversity and you've had really great guests because neurodiversity is one of those topics where there's a lot of people selling a lot of BS out there and you know Pine Sky. When you have people who really understand neurodiversity, it makes because I go in when I hear somebody's a neurodiversity expert will be speaking on it for HR related, I go in with the most cynical. I'm ready to pounce on them and tear them apart and, like I said, the guests you've had that you brought on talking about it have been really good and thoughtful and really know what they're speaking about. But every time I hear that topic and related to HR, I'm to, I'm, I'm like I'm chomping at that, I'm going to, I'm going to troll them, I'm going to slam them.

Speaker 1: 45:35

I'm not going to let them.

Speaker 2: 45:36

I'm going to have my flame floor ready, the first mistake they make, and there's too many out there to give me that opportunity. But I've got actually the okay, you're full of crap, and I just mark his plate and move to the next step.

Speaker 3: 45:49

Well, and that's kind of you know, HR and just business podcast in general, there'll be something that's a hot topic for a while and everybody jumps in feet first and everybody's an expert in this or that, and and then you find out most of them don't know what they're really talking about. And, like with AI, I admit, you know, I'm learning this is what I've done so far, you know but I'm not coding stuff in Python, building a lot of APIs my team does, but I, you know, I'm not doing a lot of that. I'm mostly using large language models and understanding how our enterprise systems work and are being implemented, but I'm not a coder. But we saw it with the EI and unfortunately for the good things that need to happen in that space, a lot of charlatans jumped into that space in 2020. And we've had conversations on the podcast where I bumped head with not charlatans but people who see differently on some of those issues as far as how to accomplish what we want to accomplish in that space.

Speaker 3: 46:54

And I think neurodiversity has become a topic that's approaching that kind of level where a lot of you know, a lot of people agree and want to, you know, want to open up their workplaces to folks who, just you know, see the world different and interact differently. But there are a lot of people who are just hey, this is a way to make a quick buck or to add something to my resume, and I think that's a shame Because those speakers, a lot of them that are right now talking about, say, neurodiversity.

Speaker 2: 47:27

You know, two years ago they were the DEI experts and before that they were whatever expert it is. So that's my jaded, cynical outlook. So, anyways, please listen to Good Morning HR, a great podcast to be listed on our Must Listen To podcast. So, Mike, thank you very much for joining us. I really, really appreciate it. As we, as we exit, I want to thank our voice artist, Andrew Culpa, who does the introduction and the intro and outro. Music is the underscore orchestra devil, the devil. So I'm Warren, I'm Mike, and we're here helping you survive HR one. What the fuck moment at a time. Be well. And we're here helping you survive hr one. What the fuck moment at a time. Be well.