John Marshall (00:32)
Welcome back to the Present Professional. Today I’m joined by Jessica Miller Merrel founder of Workology, a workplace resource for HR, recruiting professionals, and business leaders. Workology has been recognized by Forbes as a top career resource, and Jessica’s insights have been featured in outlets including The Economist, Forbes, CIO magazine, CBS, Entrepreneur, Sherm’s HR magazine, and more.

She’s also the president and CEO of Exceptional HR, a human capital strategy and consulting agency, and the author of Digitizing Talent: Creative Strategies for the Digital Recruiting Age, published by Sherm. In our prep conversation, we touched on some really rich threads around HR burnout, the invisible workload of HR.

How HR can better communicate its strategic value and the deeper cultural dynamics that shape whether people share knowledge, withhold it, or follow certain leaders from one organization to the next? Jessica, welcome to the present professional. I would love to start with your journey. So what led you into HR recruiting and workplace strategy and

How has your perspective evolved on the profession throughout your work?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (01:50)
Well, thanks for having me. And my friends call me Jess, so I like to be called Jess. I I think like a lot of HR people sort of accidentally ended up in the HR profession. I had graduated from college and went to work

For Target in their manager training program. And then eight weeks in, I went to go job shadow someone, and her name was Vicky. And it turns out that she was the store HR manager. So I actually was supposed to be like a floor manager in charge of soft lines, hard lines, and they decided to move me to human resources. And I found out when I went to my job shadow training. So it was Monday, so it was payroll processing day, and she’d also lined up.

Some interviews for me. And at first I was not very happy. I’m 22. It you know, it seems like a huge blow. I didn’t know anything about HR. And I went through my training with Vicky, went to my store location, and quickly realized during my first holiday hiring season how important things like staffing were, training, and scheduling.

to the success of the business and I kind of fell in love with the HR area because I felt like it was really underappreciated and kind of seen saw us as like the secret superheroes of the business that people don’t didn’t really understand. At least my peers ⁓ the other managers in the store, they had no really clue or understanding exactly what I was doing and why and how it was happening. So once I went through my first holiday season, I was like, this is great.

I need to learn as much about HR as I possibly can and kind of dove in head first. So that’s how I ended up in this space. And retail, HR, any frontline hiring is really

Interesting, you learn and grow up really fast just because you handle a lot of situations really quickly. And I would say probably my first three years in retail HR, i I finally kind of understood that when I was ⁓ talking with some other HR peers that I had connected with and

was seemed to be a lot more familiar and had dealt with situations that were probably something that someone with fifteen years of HR experience necessarily hadn’t like navigated. So I just kind of fell in love. It’s it’s different in every industry and decided that this was my place and space to to kind of put my stake in the ground for my career.

John Marshall (04:16)
Wow. What a what a journey. It sounds like you were really thrown into the fire to when it comes to the specific area, right? In retail HR. Hm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (04:25)
And and

I will say that most retail people will probably be shaking their heads or hospitality and be like, That’s exactly every day. You just didn’t know. And there would be times where the one of my most interesting experiences, I was on vacation.

John Marshall (04:32)
Yeah.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (04:39)
And I came back from vacation and they had decided to transfer me to a different retail store. So somebody called me and let me know that they had boxed up my stuff at the store in my office and wanted to know when I wanted to come and pick it up. And that’s how I found out I was being transferred to the store that had the multi-class action lawsuit stemming from twenty EEO charges. It was a nightmare. And

Those are the kind of experiences that you don’t normally get when you’re like five years into HR. But if you’re willing to ask questions and

understand the business. I I learned how to read a P&L and could talk the language of ⁓ the retail managers and and my district manager. And so I just kept getting more opportunities and kept growing. And unfortunately that opportunity it was not the one I wanted at all. ⁓ it didn’t come with the pay raise either, but it came with a lot of experiences that most people don’t have in their entire HR career.

John Marshall (05:26)
Mm.

Well, considering that while we have a lot of HR professionals that that tune in here, as well as just people leaders in general, I’m curious what you think people outside of HR most misunderstand about the profession.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (05:46)
I what’s interesting is I don’t really think that that’s changed since I entered in the workforce as an HR professional. I I think there’s a lot of misinformation, miscommunication about what we actually do and then how we actually do it. And a lot of it is our fault is HR leaders because we don’t speak the same language of business and we don’t often take the time to kind of hold the leadership’s hand to articulate exactly what we do. And and that is because

‘Cause it it understanding how to like

For like ⁓ calculate turnover, for example. It’s a number. It says, you know, we’ve had a lot of people exiting the workforce. Here’s the number of people that we fired versus who’ve left voluntarily. But connecting the dots to say this is how much revenue is lost because of these really great people that we’ve lost, and this is how it’s impacting us on a daily basis, maybe over 45 ⁓ days or 60 days or 90 days, that’s when I think leaders start to understand. I think that because

there’s so much of what we do that’s behind the scenes. ⁓ the real key is to just keep selling and communicating like the value and and explaining. There’s a lot of training and things that need to happen. And I think right now it’s just more public. Like I I saw the Webflow CEO just randomly decided to shut off a bunch of people’s access to their computers this last week and that’s how they found out they were being let go.

John Marshall (07:15)
Mm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (07:15)
And

I don’t blame human resources necessarily. I think that we as HR people ⁓ kind of are operating with one hand tied behind our back. You know, the at the end of the day our boss is the CEO and they can make the final decision. And if they don’t value or respect us and understand ⁓ the impact of of their actions, decisions, and how they impact the revenue side, but also the people side of the business, they’re gonna continue to misbehave.

John Marshall (07:44)
Hmm. And then you’re there to clean up the mess.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (07:47)
yeah. I mean I I’ve d

I’ve decided that how I’m going to voice my opinion because I’ve been doing like speaking publicly about like bad behaviors and horrible bosses for a while, but these behaviors are not stopping. In fact I feel like they’re becoming more public because employees are waking up and and saying like I can’t believe that everybody just, you know, laid off a thousand people at this company.

And as HR, like I didn’t make the decision. I advised or could or suggested on maybe what steps could be made ⁓ and try to explain. But at the end of the day, I am I’m just the person who unfortunately, you know, checks the box for termination or presses the button or delivers the message. So for me as an individual that’s not working at an organization, I’m just going to start supporting businesses that I feel like have good people practice.

So as a consumer, I won’t be shopping at businesses that I know and I see publicly that are doing these crappy things. and I would encourage managers, leaders, HR people who are passionate about this to maybe do the same thing. We could kind of change the business, kind of like what happened to Target, right, the last two years.

⁓ people said we’ve had enough. DEI practices are really important, and your decision position on this isn’t in alignment with us. And so people exercise their right as a consumer. So I’m gonna start doing that more frequently. Will it be somewhat painful? Yes, it will probably much harder for me to get the things that I need to get, but I’m I I have to do something as an individual out there. So these kind of things are becoming more common.

And I also feel like I’m glad that it’s coming more to the surface, like people are talking about them. and if we see bad things happening, we need to stand up and talk about w why they’re wrong and how they’re wrong and then the consequences ⁓ of those actions for those businesses. Because I don’t think their behaviors are going to change unless we do that.

John Marshall (09:46)
Yeah. When the market responds in that way, the business has to make different decisions. So as the market, if we behave d we behave differently, businesses will behave differently. I see where you’re going and but there’s a couple of things that you said about the behind the curtain, like this this invisible workload that

HR has and I see this in a lot of our key contacts and a lot of our clients at at Humessence where they have an HR director, an HR VP in these businesses of you know fifty, two hundred, three hundred people that maybe have one person as a support.

So they’re doing all of these different functions that I that I think most people don’t even know exists. Like so I think that there’s something that you brought up about like the amount of task switching that that person needs to do and how that leads to to burnout. But I’m I’m curious,

What you would like to clue the listeners into of what is this invisible workload or behind the curtain? So what are HR professionals like being asked to carry today that might not show up on their job description? That might just get added one more thing to the workload, one more thing, before we absolutely have to get you that other headcount. What are some of these things behind the curtain that people don’t see?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (11:07)
I’ll I’ll give you an example of of one that I’ve heard recently, which, you know, again, like I’ve lived it, but when you hear it from someone, it’s like, holy cow. So ⁓ the leadership team was requiring that an HR generalist manually publish their job listings, right? Hitting the button, copy paste whatever on Indeed and and other job bar platforms. So they’re doing that and in theory them the leadership is saying, Okay, from four thirty to five before you wrap up your day.

you know three times a week are gonna do you’re gonna post these postings but then they also asked for

PowerPoint presentations that talk about each of the roles, right? And the nuances and maybe some sample people that might be the right fit. Now, this is an HR generalist, not a sourcer recruiter. So this is someone who is doing HR human resources work and also doing recruiting, which is more common than we know. So these PowerPoint presentations for this individual, for one, was taking about one hour to one and a half hours, and they might have four to six jobs that they’re publishing. Okay.

And they were at the end of their rope. So that is for one day, right? You’re looking at at least five to eight hours of additional work that this person was was not talking about. They weren’t explaining, they weren’t sharing. my suggestion was: hey, we can schedule these postings, number one. And then two, why doesn’t AI make these PowerPoint presentations for us? Number one. but

This is an example of something that is kind of the invisible workforce. Another one is one of my really good friends out of Oklahoma City. She scheduled the date of her wedding to happen after payroll closed, okay? On a Monday.

And when I have brought this up, this happens more often than not. So instead of cross-training or leadership saying, hey, we should have a second person be able to do payroll so you can enjoy your honeymoon and your wedding, this it was easier for this person, and I get it, to just change their wedding date to a Monday and then go on vacation while in the middle of the pay period.

Right. And then they come back immediately from vacation and do this work. This would not be acceptable for any other role in the organization. I don’t see IT saying, hey, I can’t ⁓ help these support tickets and I can only do it like I can only like get married on this day or start my vacation for for that reason. Whether it’s HR or maybe a location manager that is doing these kind of tasks, there are a lot of these manual activities and visible things that we are

Responsible for that we don’t communicate. And if we do communicate, then we get labeled as difficult, as too much, or a problem. And unfortunately, because HR is also women predominantly, ⁓ 85% of the workforce, it just kind of adds to that whole stereotype that we’re just being a bother and creating a problem. But when my male colleague says, No, I’m not going to get married on Monday, we’re just gonna train someone and then makes the business case for.

It I see more often than not that this is accepted. so there’s a lot of invisible stuff, and a lot of it is ⁓ our own fault because we are not taking the time to measure and communicate. In IT we have tickets, you have a support ticket. When somebody has a question about an EAP that’s gonna take an hour for you or a benefits question to be able to dive in.

IT will log that ticket and provide insights into how long that took. I have never done that in all my years of human resources as a generalist, that when somebody comes into my office to ask me where the expense report is and then ask me seven other questions related to something, I don’t log that information anywhere to demonstrate the value that I bring, the time that it takes, and the support that I provide, and then tie a monetary dollar to that inform to that piece of of my job.

John Marshall (15:00)
Hmm, the business case.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (15:03)
Yeah. And it’s it’s hard because though doing those things takes time, right? Time we don’t have. It takes brain power. It takes conversations. It takes effort to be able to do. And for a lot of us, we’re I think it’s seventy five, eighty percent of us that are already burnt out. we don’t have any space to be able to argue or make the case.

John Marshall (15:07)
Yep.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (15:23)
to to set up the systems to do the things because those are gonna take the rest of our time ⁓ or more so and we’ve already hit our limit.

John Marshall (15:32)
So how do how do they exit this downward spiral, right?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (15:37)
they

just leave the organization. I so y what you see is a lot of really great HR people who take on these roles, a lot of them that are growing tech startups, which I think are fascinating and and interesting, those that are scaling quickly, they go in and then they they put it all in for maybe eighteen months, twelve months or whatever until they can’t

John Marshall (15:41)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (15:57)
give anymore and then they exit. So you’ll see a lot of HR people who have reached that point. Like I have a friend right now who is at that space. She worked for a very well known company. If I mentioned it, you would know. I’m I’m not gonna mention, but she is taking a 90 day sabbatical, which I think is healthy to to recognize that you’re burnt out and that you need to leave and it wasn’t a fit with the organization. But why do we even have to do that? We should

have an organization that supports our mental health and well being and

allows us to have boundaries and helps set us up for success so that we don’t have to leave an organization after 12 or 18 months. So I know when it when you see consecutive heads of HR leave an organization under 18 months, to me that is a signal that the leadership is not supportive of HR and doesn’t respect. And we were seeing that right now we saw the Bolt CEO just say like he just fired his HR team and all his problems went away.

His HR problems, his SEC problems are still happening. But that’s a s that’s somebody who doesn’t value HR. And I would never encourage any HR person, no matter the amount of money that they’re throwing at you, to subject yourself to that kind of abuse, really. That’s what it is.

John Marshall (16:56)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It seems like I mean, even again, like I said, my context, there’s also a training and development side of it. Like they’re responsible for that as well. They’re responsible for culture, responsible for you know event planning. I mean, there’s

so many different things like when it comes to anything that’s outside of outside of product development, legal accounting, or like something directly involved with the customer falls into that HR bucket. W that I’ve seen in my clients. Yep.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (17:43)
I’ve seen I’ve seen HR responsible for real estate. I’ve seen HR

responsible for marketing. That I ⁓ I interviewed somebody on my podcast that was this ⁓ CHRO for a bank that was also responsible for marketing. It’s s it’s fascinating to me the different things that

Are moved into HR. Now, I mean, I would love to be in responsible for marketing in HR. That would be great because a lot of what we do in HR is in fact marketing. But I think I am definitely not the normal HR person. I have a lot of marketing experience. Well, when you run a blog that reaches a million people every month, you do have a lot of marketing experience. I’m not that typical HR leader for that kind of thing. But ⁓ yeah, it’s just sort of a catch-all. And I think it’s because it’s that.

John Marshall (18:26)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (18:33)
That cost center kind of mentality, not revenue center mentality that people kind of say, yeah, HR can handle it. And we want to continue to create value, right? We want to try to be respected by our peers and ⁓ get that seat at the table. And so a lot of times the idea is that the answer should be yes to those questions because they’re inviting me in. They want me to be in charge of real estate. ⁓ wow, that really means they value my time. really, it it’s the actual

John Marshall (18:36)
Mm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (19:01)
opposite. And so I guess I would encourage HR leaders to say no more, but justify the no, right? And to create those boundaries. It doesn’t have to be big. It could just be, hey, I’m no longer answering emails after 7 p.m. and putting your phone on permanent do not disturb until you wake up the next morning and you start your day at nine. There’s no HR emergency, most of them. It’s very small, 99.9%.

Of conversations that come out after hours are not like they don’t need to happen. those small boundaries are going to give you some space as the practitioner to be able to breathe and relax and reset so that when you hit the ground running the next day or after a long weekend, you are able to rest and recover and just.

not think about work. It’s not it’s not a healthy thing.

John Marshall (19:52)
Agreed. Agreed.

Before we get into building the business case, I think this is a key thread, right, that’s going to, you know, really empower more HR leaders to do to do more in building their business case. But before we get there, I want to ask if there’s what companies are doing this right today? Like what are companies doing that are setting their HR teams up for success to deliver a lot of value? what are they doing differently?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (20:22)
⁓ I think they’re focused on people leadership versus human resources. I and I and I don’t know the name change seems small, but I I think it is meaningful, right? They value their people. And I don’t mean like chief culture officer. There’s nothing wrong with that title, but I feel like when we call it human resources or human capital, it feels very income statement-y, right? And in a world where things are becoming more

John Marshall (20:26)
Mm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (20:50)
technology focused, more AI agentic decisions, where people will be overseeing

AI and automations more than things, it makes the human element, the people side of what we do, I think even more important. Meaning that if I’m a call center rep and it’s an AI-generated call center rep, right, when that call comes through to me, the person, and that person has been on the phone with the AI rep for 45 minutes trying to get an answer, like the interactions of the human conversation really matter. And so then for HR,

we need to pro we need to provide support to the humans that are in the roles doing the things. but more importantly we need to take care of ourselves so that we can support the people in our organizations doing the things because things are moving much more quickly. So it’s the human thing. So I really feel like people are

organizations like a people department, the nuance of it is is really important. And then having a clear division of responsibilities of what people are doing. I there’s nothing against generalists. I have been a generalist for much of my HR career and I enjoyed it. Like I like to be able to move from thing to thing. But the older I get and the more the I’m seeing things like I think there’s more value in ⁓ niche or like specialized areas.

So if I would go back into HR, I would probably go into compensation or it would go into benefits. And that is where I would stay and kind of hang my hat. When we try to be a catch-all for all the things, automatically we’re set up for failure because everybody just says, they can take more. Here’s more for you. Here is another, you know, report that you can generate or a meeting that you can sit in. And

And I think that that’s ⁓ where we’re we’re really setting ourselves up to fail as an HR department.

John Marshall (22:46)
Hm. So I’m I’m hearing that the companies that are doing it right are leveraging AI and some of these tools and technology to take some of these invisible workload things away from HR so that the people leaders can focus on empowering the people behind the business operations.

Right. As opposed to generating this presentation, this report, this all of the little time sucks here. So it’s almost like utilizing the technology to elevate the strategic nature of people operations and at the same time

having specialists, like allowing folks to focus on specific high value things where having the human perspective is going to make a bigger difference. Am I am I getting that right?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (23:35)
yeah, and you’re saying it so much more eloquently than I am. So thank you for the paraphrase.

John Marshall (23:39)
⁓

Okay. Well so I think we’ve I think we’ve clarified what companies are doing right. Now on building the business case, so helping the HR leader, the HR generalist that’s listening right now say, I’m doing all of these things, right?

I would love to build a business case for getting another team member, getting another headcount, for specializing, but I have all of these things that are coming at me. So like where do I find the time to build the business case? Like what do you have to say to that person?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (24:20)
I think you’re gonna have to prioritize things. We all have a lot of things

Going on, right? And we have an a finite amount of time that that fits into the day. So perhaps it is setting some things aside that really aren’t that important, right? Or delegating resources or tools or something somewhere else. I really think that understanding business acumen is one of the most important things for HR people to understand. I want you to be able to understand.

The business, articulate the business, and then help others understand and learn the business.

Right. Because a lot of times they just haven’t worked with an HR person who can read a PL and can explain the value of a program. So we should be doing a lot of forecasting for different scenarios and talking about those kind of things. And what’s great is there’s so many great tools out there right now and AI that we can use them to do a lot of really cool forecasting for different situations. And then we can communicate with leadership. And it doesn’t mean we’re in every conversation.

conversation because frankly we’re not going to be in a lot of them to start. But if somebody’s like, we need to implement this new HRIS system, how much is it going to cost and what’s the value that it can bring, right? Then that’s when you start to kind of go into your you’re going to have to use statistics and your analytical mind. And if you don’t

familiar with those things. Like there’s people, there’s tools. We have the internet. Like we have access to a lot of things to help prep prepare you for things. And what’s great is even if you don’t have data sets available and you just want to model stuff, one of my favorite places to even get like clean data that’s anonymized is a tool called Kaggle, K A G G L E. It’s free. You can get data sets. So you can just theorize like here’s what happens if we build this, if we launch this HRIS system and we grow to

This amount, right? You can put put this data in and kind of like say, will this be able to support what we’re trying to do? And then that way you’re able to explain to leadership if we are going to grow by the headcount that you’re expecting in the next next 18 months, we will need to be upgrading our HRS system or performance management system or training tools or whatever. And it’s going to cost this much more investment, right? We have to be thinking this way. The other thing beyond business acumen,

And you’re gonna have to prioritize and make time for this. And this is the second most important part of business acumen is influencing. I do not think we understand this enough. And as women, majority, I don’t think it’s a skill that all all of us have.

⁓ I think men in general, like this is something that they learn. Like, I’m I’m I’m probably gonna get flamboyed for like all of this female men talk, but I feel like when I am talking with a CEO and they and and I am in influencing mode and I’m using my tools, ⁓ and I have a plan and a strategy to be able to do that, I’m much more successful when I have a plan put together. In my earlier years of human resources, I didn’t have a plan. I just kind of came in. I’m like, he values HR.

It’s you know, I understand how to read a P&L that should be enough. No, we need to have a strategy in place. some of the most important things that I did was I took a class on influencing and I went through a program. I’m a definitely a fan of something called NLP NLP and it’s called neurolinguistic programming. I went through over 500 hours of training in this area, and so body language, conversations, connecting with people, ⁓ all these things.

your mind being right are really important part of influencing. And then that strategy piece. So if we can marry the acumen business case to the influencing, we need to let people come to the conclusion that we already know.

Right? I do this with my teenager all the time. I’m doing it right now. Like sh the school she wants to go through for college. I have I can’t tell her. If I say to her, you absolutely not can cannot go to this college, I’m not gonna pay for it, what is she gonna do? She’s gonna go to that college. CEOs are the same way. Really. so

We have to plant seeds of influence in different places and play the long game, right? I’ll let you know in a year how this all plays out for me, with my kiddo. But it’s the same thing. We have to let them get to the conclusion that you already know in your heart of hearts needs to happen. And sometimes, even when you lead them that direction, they’re gonna make the mistake. But we have planned, we have strategized, we have played the long game. You can’t do that when you’re only in an organization for 18 months.

Right. And I think that’s the other thing that’s happening a lot right now is people are jumping ship. And Brightly said if your mental health is impacted, you should not be in an organization that doesn’t value you. But it’s really hard to make meaningful change when you’re only in an organization for 18 months and you aren’t using these other tools or resources.

John Marshall (28:55)
Mm-hmm.

powerful strategy, influence, and gathering the data. Now, when it comes to gathering the data, what should HR leaders start tracking if they want to make a stronger case for support?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (30:13)
I if if I was an HR person in an office right now, I would be going the IT ticket model, right? Logging everything that I’m doing because they don’t get it. and I think we innately know this, right? Because we have been involved in layoffs before where we get we lay off and we have to deliver the message to a group of people that were maybe just support people. But we nobody did the thorough and get investigation to analyze exactly what those people do. And maybe they submit part of a critical

report that is key to the success of the business and suddenly now revenue is tanked because this one thing isn’t happening. So we need to explain through time, question, resources, value what we bring. So I think every HR team needs to go or people team needs to go to a ticketing system where we’re logging it, right? I it’s not because I want to take our job and I want to reduce our headcount. What I want to do is help from as a leader understand where we’re spending our time.

Are there different resources or information that I can help automate add or just reiterate?

If there are ⁓ if we are spending, let’s say seven hours a week on benefits training to people who questions to people who’ve already gone through orientation, that is a signal to me that says, wow, we need to do something different with benefits training and orientation, right? Maybe we only do a a brief overview, but then we send them an on-demand link two weeks in after they’ve gotten settled so they can sit down with their partner and understand benefits, right? And then you have to test. So you have to

give you you do this training, it’s on demand, we make them the changes. Wow, over this course of 60 days, we have a 50% reduction in the amount of time that we spend.

⁓ what can I do with that extra ⁓ you know, three and a half hours a week that I now have free? And maybe that’s for three people. So suddenly it’s almost a full like 12 hours of of headcount that I have. And so then we can reallocate that time to other projects, other things, more strategic activities versus benefits conversations that they can listen to a podcast, watch a video about. Maybe I can go actually talk to people.

and and build a rapport with them instead of being heads down in you know, a conference call. these are all I think really important things that HR people need to to really consider. But I would start first with

reporting and understanding how we’re doing it, when we’re doing it, and then how can I use automation tools technology or retraining to help free up some space? Because ⁓ we’re not gonna get probably more headcount. So we’re gonna have to make more headcount or more time through processes and systems improvement. That’s the reality.

John Marshall (32:59)
Well said. And why do you think that this kind of business translation is not discussed more openly in HR spaces?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (33:11)
because it doesn’t suit the professional association’s larger goals, right? Like like if we if we think about there are leaders, there are small pockets of people right now that are having these conversations, right? I also do think there’s a lot of gatekeeping. So once you get a certain level in your career, ⁓ these are secret sauce.

techniques, right? Or it’s a small group of people. And it’s not really our job necessarily as the VP of HR to tell everybody what we know because it is, in a sense, for a lot of people, competitive advantage.

Right. ⁓ and so now they know something that you don’t know. I say this a lot about meditation, ⁓ because I’m a daily meditator. You and I talked about this in the prep call. And what I found is that the more I know that like it works for me, I see that it’s working for other people, but people aren’t talking about it. So just because it’s not out in the public every day, so being a strategic HR leader, meditation, whatever, it doesn’t mean that it’s not effective. I think that a lot of people,

John Marshall (33:45)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (34:14)
see it as a competitive advantage. So they keep it close to to themselves, right? they because the fear is is that if everybody knows that business acumen should be a focus or like streamlining operations should be a focus, then it it isn’t special anymore, right? That skill that you have. Same with like ⁓ having a regulated nervous system. Like

I feel great. I can make better decisions. I make space for different things in my life, but I also am more aware of the people that don’t.

And people that who are regulated and see it as a competitive advantage ⁓ to like use and manipulate will do that to get more out of people, right? To to have that lady, that HR person building those PowerPoint presentations and be willing to click those indeed posts. That’s better for the leaders if that person is doing the extra work and and not complaining, right? It becomes wow, you’re so productive with your team. Well, you’re just better at manipulation.

By understanding, like this person’s in a more constant state of stress, and therefore you can get more productivity out of them.

John Marshall (35:21)
this concept of knowledge, knowledge is power, like keeping your keeping your secret sauce or your strategy. I feel like this is just one of those realities of the human condition. Right. We get a competitive edge, we keep it to ourselves because right, we’re innately competitive creatures. Right. But

When something like that scales to the organization level, like w what are we leaving on the table by withholding all of this information? Not even just within an HR strategist, but the ops leader, the the COO, the CTO. You know, w when we’re withholding all of these strategies, I mean, yeah, what

It seems like there’s a there would be a there’s a lot of opportunity that’s not making its way to the table here.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (36:07)
I I agree with you. ⁓ those people that aren’t sharing, they’re protecting themselves. And and, you know, I guess they have every right to to do that, right? To to make that ⁓ that that decision. I operate from a space where I feel like everybody should have the choice to be able to to make the decision of of how they wanna be. So if I can share a best practice or a resource or something that’s working for me, I think I should

be willing to do that. ⁓ I will say that a lot of people don’t share these kind of like not only just for competitive advantage, but because when you do say something openly like, hey, I meditate daily and it’s changed my life and this is why, sometimes people might think of you in a different context or wow, are you a Buddhist or something? you know, that goes against my beliefs. and for me,

I care less the older I get about what other people think, but I am willing to share because I’m not so much worried about like reactions, judgment, things that people think about me. Those are their thoughts, not like mine, and and their their right to have them. But I wanna give people the option of choice to be curious, to learn more, ⁓ to to try to think differently because

conversations about business cases, ⁓ you know, leadership strategies.

⁓ things that are are working for certain leaders are being shared in certain circles. You’re just not probably a part of those circles. And so that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people will say like surround yourself with people who are more successful than you, right? So that you can become aware of maybe ideas, thought patterns, frameworks, just like changes in lifestyle or leadership that you might have not been exposed to. Especially

Especially if maybe you know I my dad and my family blew collar, we grew up in a rural area, like I was always of the mind like more hours means more success or more output. And ⁓ I also had the belief that like people were out to get you. Like, so protect yourself, and you can only take care of yourself. So those are things that ⁓ don’t necessarily align

with me anymore and through r new relationships, experiences, people in my life,

work experiences business, I have made kind of new agreements and beliefs that are are really important to me. And one of those is the ability to share best practices, resources, and what’s working for me. Anybody can call me on the phone. It’s like that’s my real number on my website. Most people don’t, but I will make time for you. What I have found is that most people d just opt themselves out of making time for bigger conversations for other people out of

fear or a belief that, you know, you’re not worthy or good enough to be able to be in that room. And I felt that way, like in rooms with people who were like super successful. It’s like, what the heck am I doing here? but the only way to grow is to to be uncomfortable. And that’s for HR. We’re gonna have to get uncomfortable.

We are gonna have to get really uncomfortable in order to get that seat at the table and really showcase our value and protect ourselves from burnout and all these other things that are happening because that’s just the reality when change happens. Like it’s not an easy one.

John Marshall (39:31)
Yeah. Yeah. Comfort comfort in the uncomfortable. Right? Any any real change, I guess you could say. are you familiar with spiral dynamics that work? It’s it’s it’s an it really interesting body of work about kind of the way that the way that humans and systems

Jessica Miller-Merrell (39:40)
I’m not. I’m not. Tell me about that.

John Marshall (39:50)
kind of evolve in levels of consciousness. And it goes on it it’s called spiral because it goes on each level, it goes between I’m make and for those of you just listening, I’m making a motion in a spiral from left to right.

There’s the individualistic and collectivist side. Individualistic, collectivist. And it’s the the way that levels of consciousness evolve until you’re at this level of the Buddha, if you will. All right. And the the the concept of just the reason this came up for me is around knowledge sharing. And it’s it’s like because you can’t go from a level five to a level two.

to convince someone that they need to be at a five, to introduce them to a concept that is a level five concept. Right? You need to get to a three.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (40:32)
Yeah.

John Marshall (40:37)
and introduce them that same concept at the level of a three, and then maybe they’ll think about trying that on. So it almost ties influence and knowledge sharing together in a specific body of work. I think I think you might be interested in in this. So I’ll I’ll leave I’ll leave that one with you for a little bit more ⁓ reflection.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (40:52)
Yeah, I I I Google it

I googled I googled

it as you’re as you’re talking. I mean I I definitely think it’s kind of like if you’re a a swimmer, which my kiddo’s a swimmer, right? Like she’s not going to be competing at the Olympics after she’s been swimming for two years, right? Like that takes time, per per like practice, mental mindset, like all these things before suddenly, and she is not going to be an Olympic swimmer, nor do I need her to be an Olympic swimmer, but where she’s at.

That is is is just fine, but you can’t just jump to suddenly being respected by your leadership team or and I think a lot of people want that, just in life, like with things. Like we all want to have it be shredded in thirty days, okay? And let me like myself included, but it it it’s a lie.

John Marshall (41:37)
Yep.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (41:42)
Right. It takes time, years, ⁓ a lot of tweaks and changes and modifications and evolution ⁓ that are unique to you in your own circumstance and life choices and your body and environment to be able to get. And maybe you won’t ever get shredded in three thousand days. I don’t know. But it’s the growth that happens like along that.

that path. ⁓ I have lost almost a hundred pounds over the last like three and a half years. Yeah. And or yeah, thank you. And

John Marshall (42:08)
Woo. All right. Congrats. That’s awesome.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (42:13)
I it’s what’s interesting is like when I first started, I was like, I had a size that I needed to be, and that was gonna solve all my problems, right? And then once I hit that size, the reality was wow, like I got a long way to go, number one, which was interesting. But then, like remembering and congratulating myself to be like, hey, that person from three years ago or four years ago or whatever that thought like this was it, you have achieved.

the goal that that past you set out for yourself, like let’s celebrate that. ⁓ and but what then I realized is like there’s a lot more than just the size, right? There’s there’s different nuances and and and pieces to like my personal health journey that I didn’t know. But like you’re saying, I wasn’t ready for. And if I would have had all that information and be and said,

John Marshall (42:43)
Mm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (42:59)
you’re gonna have to work out this much and make all these changes and do all these doctor’s office visits and have all this acupuncture and meditate and do all this stuff to meet that goal. And I knew that four years ago or whatever, I probably wouldn’t have even done it. I definitely wouldn’t have done it. ⁓ but I can’t imagine not doing it now that I’m like here and past that. I wasn’t ready for it for all that.

John Marshall (43:13)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

Yeah, like you the the most right, the most profound empathy is meeting people where they are. Meeting ourselves where we are. Right? Yep.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (43:30)
Ya starting with yourself, right?

That I think that and that’s the one thing that I think a lot of people miss. And and I I see I’m on the internet, like that’s my life. That’s my business is on the internet. Comparison culture is is here, but I have to remember that that’s the best version of themselves that they’re putting out there on the internet. and I’ve seen a lot of like Pinterest perfect

offices, right? Where the office like this looks pretty cool back here, but you don’t see the pile of shit over here in the corner, right? That I moved before. And but that’s a lot that’s how life is, right? Like you are connecting with somebody in that moment and you’re like, wow, they’re so successful. They do all these things. And you’re just seeing a version of them in that moment, but you don’t know all the other things that are either under the surface or that they have hidden in the corner.

John Marshall (44:00)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (44:20)
As CEOs and leaders

especially. Like I and I feel like when HR people know because we see those things more often than others, because we’re always in it and and we’re the confidant and we know where the skeletons are.

John Marshall (44:34)
Yep. You know, and just this this concept of meeting people where they are, this so as you get more familiar with the spiral dynamics work, it it also refers to the collective, right? So y you could have a level three, more like hedonistic competitive culture

But if you introduce a level five concept to a level three culture, they’re all going to turn and look at you like, What? Yeah, like that’s that’s not the way we do business here. Human centered, we’re we’re focused on the product. Right.

And and that’s okay. You that could be a signal that it’s time for you to exit that culture and go with something that’s a little bit more aligned with you. But then like there but then there are leaders that support people and culture like moving up that spiral with them, right? Moving like meeting people where they are to like

Jessica Miller-Merrell (45:25)
I love that.

John Marshall (45:30)
allow them to develop. Like it’s the diff I I see it as the difference between right managers and leaders, right? Managers are managing energy and tasks and like shifting things around. But leaders are supporting the development so that each of those individuals will become more empowered to take on more tasks and manage their own things. Right? Their own business. Now

In your perspective, like what are some of these qualities of leaders that people follow?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (46:02)
I like leaders that share their like their good and their bad. one of my favorite business coaches, like she’s just real, right? And and I’ve worked with her a number of years. And w one of the reasons when I started working with her I just said like if you tell me how you do all the things, like that’s all I want. I’ll I’ll pay the money, right? Show me how I’m ready. but I I like

I love that she talks about the losses, right? Because the losses are opportunities to learn. And ⁓ in NLP we do this anchoring technique where anytime like you had like you made a mistake, you would pinch yourself. Okay. And and then you would say to yourself, great learning.

Alright, so you’re you’re anchoring a moment that typically was like, ⁓ crap, I screwed up with like a body like

experience and then with a set of keywords that are gonna elicit a different response, which is that. And even still, I went through NLP during COVID. I will still say to myself, and sometimes I will feel myself pinch myself, and I will say great learning when I screw up. So it’s like a celebration of those things. So those are the kind of leaders that I want to follow, the ones that are willing to share their mess a little bit, but also what they’ve learned from it. Because I don’t want to hear somebody who’s just gonna dump all the junk, you know. I want

Somebody be like, I screwed up, but this is what I did to change that, and here’s what happened. it gives people permission, I think, to be curious and to be more vulnerable for themselves. especially when you talk about like work-life balance in the office, right? Like, if you’re struggling with that, you don’t have to share all of it, but you could be like, Man, I really had a hard time shutting off my email last ⁓ weekend. here’s what I did to help combat that. Like, that helps.

you seem more human and then gives people permission to just be curious and and like relate to you in a different way. I do see a lot of organism like a lot of leaders bringing teams with them, which I think is great. And honestly it’s such a good strategy because you already know what you’re getting.

it’s not a wild card when you’re you’re bringing somebody into the office. And and if I was in the job search right now, I would be trying to find ways to I mean, obviously I want to work with people I know, like and trust, but if you don’t have that ability, like I would be starting a podcast, I’d be getting on video, I’d be doing things for people to be able to get to know me as the human, to be like, hey, I like her. And I think I would like her on my team.

Right. and y that’s a little bit ⁓ tough because you have to put yourself out there and people make judgments and decisions, but I would rather them know like wow, she feels like the right fit for me so that when I go and show up at the office, it’s not a complete one eighty with the manager.

John Marshall (48:43)
Hm. Okay. So a couple conversation tracks here. The on one hand, I’m hearing that this leader you want to follow prioritizes creating psychological safety and just being authentic. Real. Yeah.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (48:56)
That’s important. I think authenticity and trust is like

the most important like part. I mean, if we’re thinking about like Maslow, right? The the hierarchy of needs, like that most important part is for us. That’s safety.

John Marshall (49:03)
I agree. Mm-hmm.

I agree.

I agree. And then and then the the the other the other conversation piece is is, you know, what you’re saying to the person that’s becoming discoverable.

that becoming discoverable is part of the now today’s hiring journey, right? Letting people experience you to know that you’re a fit before you’re even in that interview conversation.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (49:33)
Because I want people to opt out of me before I get into it.

Right. Before I invest like five hours of my time or six months of my time. We’re doing this with my kiddo for college admissions. All right. Cause she has some big goals. so she’s a writer, and so we need to showcase her work and her expertise. So a great school is gonna say, like, yeah, I want this, I need this person at my school. So she’s launching a podcast and she has a portfolio website that she’s building, and she’s a writer, she’s a fiction writer, creative writing, that’s her goal.

But I am we’ve been thinking about like the schools that she wants to apply to, like how does she stand out in the sea of sameness? And I think that’s the same way for job seekers right now because there’s thousands of applications. And so if you really want to find a great leader to connect to and somebody who know who really cares about you, you need to send out like signals or flares, right? That say this is the kind of person that I am. so that maybe the one that is like not

for you says, ⁓ no, I listened to five minutes of that video and I know that they’re not for me. That’s not a failure. That’s a good thing, right? You dodged yourself a bullet. So I do I do want more HR people to be talking about their stories and who they are. And I really want them to not do it just when they’re looking for a job. Because th I normally get pitched probably about six times a week.

For some to be on my podcast, I they’re out of work and I wanna help them, for sure. But I have a limited like space and time. So don’t wait until you got your notice to suddenly be in the market. Start building those relationships now because you know, I’m in I think I have a couple spots open for podcasts for through the end of the year. Like I would definitely have a practitioner on

that was in between if if they were interested and wanted to share, but they need to start building those relationships now. Not last week when they got laid off.

John Marshall (51:22)
Yep. Standing out in the sea of sameness. ⁓ I love it.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (51:25)
And with AI, it is more common than ever. I mean, if

you look at LinkedIn right now, it’s just all AI slop, right? So how do you stand out in the sea of sameness as a practitioner, but also like in your organization?

John Marshall (51:33)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (51:40)
It’s it’s a it’s s such a conundrum,

John Marshall (51:43)
Now we could do a whole episode on this. So so we we gotta bookmark this one. You’re gonna come back and we’re gonna talk about the sea of sameness and differentiating yourself because that’s its whole that’s its whole own thing. But for but for the listeners here right now, so for the HR professionals listening, for the executives listening, you know, I wanna make this practical, right? So you know

Jessica Miller-Merrell (51:47)
Mm.

Okay.

John Marshall (52:11)
What do you think there what is one thing that the HR leader, the HR professional listening right now can do this week to make their work become more visible?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (52:21)
I think if it was me, the first thing I would do is I would log and track everything I’m doing and my team is doing in 30 minute increments. Okay. and ask yourself, is this something I have to do? Is this something that I can delegate or is this something that I can set aside? Right? So what I want to do first is create space for you and also a story.

To be able to tell your leadership team, right? So you do this activity for two or three days, maybe longer. I I mean at least three. And you should be able to find at least five hours in your week just for you that you could probably delegate or set aside, like realistically, right? So what are you gonna stop doing? What are you gonna start doing? What are you gonna delegate? And then I want you to tell that story to your leadership team, and then I want you to have them do the exact same thing.

John Marshall (53:05)
Mm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (53:06)
Okay.

So you aren’t even we aren’t looking at financials here. We’re just saying, like, hey, we’re gonna prioritize our tasks, managers, leadership, team. And then now you’re the hero because you’ve just given back every manager on your team, every manager five hours.

with something super small. It does not have to be big to be meaningful. I just did this with a group of HR executives and they were blown away. All we did was we ran through a simple framework and and and about productivity. So once you have that five hours, then you can decide how to fill it with high priority strategic tasks that are going to give you the most value, but I want you to write those down first and then say pick one.

Don’t pick five. Just pick out of your top five, pick one and do that one. Whatever’s easiest that gets you the most accolades, like congratulations, whatever can build you the best, like relationship, like quickly, right? The most good. And that’s what you need to do this week. That’s it.

John Marshall (54:03)
Mm.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Now to the executive listening, to the the leader in whatever department listening, that

could do a better job of understanding and supporting HR and you know helping their people leadership become more strategic. Right? What’s one thing that executive can do to better understand, support, and increase the strategic nature of their people operations?

Jessica Miller-Merrell (54:35)
I’d just like you to book a 20-minute meeting with HR and just say, How can I help you be more successful? And that’s it. Like, don’t try to mix your agenda or like do any of the things. Just say, what do you need right now and how can I help you? And and honestly, the fact that you asked the question might be enough for them in that moment. Like if my CEO came to me and just said, Hey, let’s go grab a cup of coffee, what can I do to help you this week?

John Marshall (54:54)
Mm.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (55:01)
I would be on the floor like and like a weight would be lifted, like temporarily. So that would be what I’d say. Just make just just pick one person on the team, 15, 20 minutes, just meet with them and say, hey. But then here’s the other part. Please do something from like take action on one thing. It doesn’t have to be all the things. Just one thing. And like really do it. Don’t just like send it over to somebody else and like never check on it again. Just just one thing.

And and and hold yourself accountable to that one thing. because that’s how you build trust with your people, especially people who have been overlooked and maybe underutilized and misunderstood. Like you just have to follow through on one thing to start that relationship.

John Marshall (55:42)
Wonderful. Jess, thank you so much for your passion. I s just I feel what you’re feeling and your enthusiasm for this topic and right I mean just for supporting people one, delivering more value, but also just living a better life. Right? Having space.

Jessica Miller-Merrell (56:01)
Well you make it you

it easy, John. I mean, honestly, this was a great conversation. ⁓ I and I ⁓ I can’t wait to connect with with anybody who wants to have like my door’s open. text me, call me, email me, send me a contact us form, like a DM. I’d love to chat more.

John Marshall (56:19)
Wonderful. Well, listeners, we will have all of that information for you to be able to connect with Jess through her website, her organizations, her work, and her LinkedIn. So that’ll all be in the show notes. So be sure to go there and reach out. Have the conversation. If this is sparking something within within you, she’s just a phone call away, right? Number on the website.

Again, Jess thank you so much. And listeners, I appreciate your support and tuning in to the Present Professional podcast. We will see you next time.