QA: Human resources roundtable.

• Position: Industry Outlook - Discussion

People are a company's greatest asset--and that makes the human resources function among the most important in an organization. From guiding culture to coping with new laws and regulations, HR leaders are on the forefront of growth and change for their companies.

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Jacki Arevalo

Sweet Candy Co.

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Allison Barlow

Ken Garff Automotive

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Bryan Benard

Holland & Hart, LLP

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Catherine Burns

Gastronomy, Inc.

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Cammie Cable

Clearlink

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Aaron Call

G&A Partners

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Ben Graham

Major Drilling

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Jackie Lohdefinck

ARUP Laboratories

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Sharron Nqatikaura

ESG

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Jeanine Wilson

Sutter Physician Services

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Dan Walker

Clyde Companies

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Jeff Herring

University of Utah

Not pictured:

Alison Sevy

Questar

Rich Slater

Fresenius Medical Care

Justin Nelson

Kilgore Companies

Is developing the next generation of leaders within your organization one of your strategic business priorities? How can HR help in this endeavor?

AREVALO: We absolutely are developing our internal resources with regard to leadership. Were challenged in that we make candy. It's a plant floor. We have a multicultural environment. We have many different languages. So finding appropriate training for different language native speakers has been a challenge. But because we have such low turnover, we're really focused on developing internally the next level of management and leadership. It's been an ongoing focus.

BURNS: We've had a big change happen with our owner dying suddenly and not really having anything in place. And we have a whole lot of people who are over 55 who are in the top positions. So we have been strategically identifying people in our organization who have the potential to move into management and leadership positions. And then grooming them, passing on some of our responsibilities and turning these things over for them to take charge. The importance of that has really hit home right now. We're bringing them along so they're not just the managers working the floor, but they're learning the skills, being mentored by the people that have been there longer.

BARLOW: There's a real systematic approach to developing leadership. And when there's clarity, people will buy into it. It really works with your performance reviews or your performance management by helping to be really clear what is expected of the leadership. And then provide them with those strong experiences that are necessary so they're doing actual business work as they're learning and developing. It's a huge, huge opportunity for HR to improve the work within your organizations.

HERRING: Being in education, talent really is our business. Knowledge is really the key to our industry. But most of the talent we're bringing in, our professors and our researchers, they're experts in those fields, not necessarily in managing people. It's really a combination of us bringing in that talent, but also training and developing that talent, that leadership pipeline, to give them the tools and the skills, and get the barriers out of the way for them to be able to effectively manage people.

That has really provided us an opportunity to bring a leadership development program in for that segment of individuals to try and grow that talent from within as well.

GRAHAM: We work in a very blue collar industry. We fall into the process of promoting our best technical people, but they're often not skilled in management. But that's where HR has to own that process. Because that's what we do. The transactions we process for health insurance and for all these other things don't really add value to the business. They have to be done. We have to maintain those. But it's really in developing our people where we can prove any kind of strategic value to the company--not just be a cost center, but really be a development point.

Our company fluctuates from 5,400 employees down to 1,700. So one of our challenges is maintaining a constant level of leadership when the company fluctuates that much. It's extremely difficult.

BARLOW: The key, though, is providing real-life experiences to help prepare them. Because what you're saying is they're used to being a certain kind of employee. You've got to involve them to be leaders. By providing them with opportunities and experiences, you get to see how they respond and you can mentor them without giving them the actual position. They can learn from their mistakes.

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BURNS: When we have challenging situations that happen in our restaurants with customers or employees, we revisit those things again. Here's what happened. Here's what we did. But what could...