Virtual Roundtable - HR Perspective

1. 3:45 Question about employees hearing from their leaders instead of HR directors / dealing with employee engagement.
   1. 4:14 Nick answers: Being on the recruiting side of HR, the most difficult times for him were having to reject people at the end of their candidacy for positions because of downturn. 
   2. 5:19 Wesley answers: “If engagement is an HR issue, you’ve lost the battle before you’ve started”. There are a lot of tools HR can provide to leaders, such as exit interview questions and engagement teams, so that they have beneficial interactions with employees. 
   3. 7:08 Jeffrey answers: His company finally gained traction with a diversity and inclusion when they realised: “This is not an HR initiative, it is a business imperative. Once our people feel included, then we will be a force to reckon with and it will be very hard to compete against us''. “HR plays a role as a coach and an advisor behind the curtain”.    
   4. 8:48 Fred answers: “Rather than focus on the employee engagement itself, I would say focus on the things on either side of the workplace environment and experience employees are provided and the results of their labor.”

1. 10:15 How do we enrich the experience for employees, and how do you find the talent to do this?
   1. 10:53 Wesley answers: “To start out, as a business you’ve got to have a clear sense of what the employee value proposition is...why are we here as a business and why would you ever want to join us?” Furthermore, “Staying ahead on sourcing and talent pooling [is] one of the challenges in oil and gas,” but it is very important for attracting the employees you need. He also notes you must stay “relevant to what appeals to the different generations or types of employees that you’re trying to bring in”, referencing the use of social media, a multigenerational workforce, and more. 
   2. 15:40 Jeffrey answers: His company’s use of a program that seeks out talented high schoolers and pays for their college tuition for them to work their after graduation has been a huge success in gaining consistent new talent for the company. 
   3. 16:45 Fred answers: “If your message is offbase from what the experience is, if there is a gap between the aspirational and functional culture that employees experience, then your message is going to differ from the message from internal employees through social media, and that’s going to create challenges for you”. 
   4. 17:40 Nick answers: Through an apprenticeship program that gives on-the-job training to veterans in the company, these veterans can “make up money as they’re building up their career, but it’s also a huge retention bonus for us...and it’s a competitive advantage”

1. 19:30 How important corporate culture is in keeping people at their workplace. 
   1. 19:57 Jeffrey answers: The culture nowadays is “if you haven’t convinced me or impressed me by lunchtime on the first day, I’m probably not going to stick around,” and people say “they are here because they want meaningful experiences...they want to contribute”. Companies must respond to this to keep employees. There are three components that lead to whether or not people will be attracted to your company and how long they will stay: “emotional connection people have with their organization, the local culture, and how inclusive you make insiders and outsiders feel.”
   2. 28:39 Fred answers: It’s about “the emotional connection employees have with supervisors and also about the emotional connection the employee has with coworkers.” 
   3. 30:51 Nick answers: Many programs that focus on the employee experience at his company teach employees “how to interact better with each other. There’s constant de