Episode 76:

Welcome to The Upstream Leader podcast. Today’s conversation should be a fun one. Our focus today is really on how to take operational roles and help them really guide the future of your firm and using those positions in a strategic way, to really follow that vision for your firm. And I’m excited about our guest today. I have Erin Raukar from Cummings Keegan. Erin, it is so good to see you again.

Yes, good to see you too. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely, Erin. I appreciate you taking the time to be on. So Erin, right out of the gates, the one question we ask every one of our guests, what really molded you into the leader that you are today?

Well, I appreciate the opportunity to self-reflect a little bit on my journey. And really, when I think about who I am as a leader now, in addition to who I am as an HR professional, I feel like it’s intimately connected with the people that have been a part of my journey, both personally and professionally. I have had so many thoughtful, caring, and sometimes bold and brave people that have shared some critical development feedback with me. And they’ve been at the points in the career where I really needed to hear what they had to share.

So I’m not going to be generic. I’m going to give you a couple of nuggets here so you can learn a little bit about me and really how you can see how feedback in my life and my journey has truly been a gift. I know that sounds cliché, but it has absolutely been a gift and molded me into who I am. So one that comes to mind is actually from the beginning of my career. I had joined Target headquarters based in Minnesota, and I was in a leadership development program. So right away, I have this built-in group of leaders that want to give me feedback and they want to help me with my communication skills and they want to teach me how to project lead and how to supervise. But it was actually one of the leaders coming out of my program that had been supervising me for the course of 12 months, and I was really working towards a promotion into my first supervisory position, and I got it. I earned it, I worked my butt off like this was going to be amazing. She was sharing that exciting message with me. And she also shared, “Erin, you’re going to move into this role. You’re supervising a diverse team, different communication styles. They have 20 plus years of experience on you and you’re going to come supervise them. You have to figure out the professional maturity thing.”

I remember feeling like that was a little bit of a punch to my ego. And I thought, “Ah, what do you mean? I’m mature. You just promoted me. I’m going to be amazing.” And that was it. That was my first kind of song and dance internally with what does professional maturity mean? And I think, in the moment, I thought, why is she telling me this now? She’s giving me this exciting message. I’m getting promoted. That’s exactly why she had to share that feedback with me in that moment—I was going to walk into leading this team and I did have to figure out how to navigate challenging communication styles, how to supervise, how to lead in a way that empowers your team members. And I have carried that with me through my entire career and had so many opportunities now leading teams where I’ve been able to pinpoint, “Oh, this is something where they’re developing professional maturity” or “this is something that I can lean into with that employee to help them grow.”

So Erin, with the open and honest feedback, I know that’s something at Upstream we talk a lot about. And I truly believe—you referenced it as a gift—and I think it is almost impossible for anyone to get better without that kind of feedback. So before we jump into our topic, I’d love to get your thoughts on what did you feel at that exact moment? And then how did you work through that and actually see that as a positive? Because I think so many young professionals, actually not just young professionals, so many professionals really struggle with that idea of someone giving us open and honest feedback.

Yeah. So in the moment, I remember feeling a little taken aback and thinking, “Oh, this doesn’t quite match our conversation.” But after I had reflected on it a little bit, when I even just look at that base definition of what professional maturity is, it was so true: I was a 22-year-old about to lead my first team, and there are so many different facets of professional maturity that leak into an entire career, right? I might be 15 years in human resources now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have conversations with team members, with leaders, with colleagues from afar, where in my head, I’m not thinking, “Wait, what? What was just happening or what was said?” And then it’s that gut check again of like, “Well, Erin, how do you really move forward? How do you counsel this person to better handle that situation?? So it has served me throughout my career. And that was just, you know, one example of feedback for a leader at a critical moment with their team member.

I have absolutely, on my journey, received feedback from my team members, upward feedback that takes that extra level of tact in how you give that to a leader where they’re going to receive it too. But critical points where they’ve shared feedback with me, colleagues that I have diverse thoughts or approaches to different things that have shared feedback along my journey. And I can’t think of a single time, truly, when I’ve received feedback that I haven’t at least been able to take something from it, right? You can disagree with parts of it, but there is some truth to what someone is sharing with you, and I have walked away such a better person and I try to share that forward, giving feedback with my team, with colleagues when I’m an HR sounding board, or really just leaders when they need a gut check. I’m here to be that gut check for them.

Well, I love that, Erin, because it’s something that, you know, I think as a profession we continue, I think a lot of times it’s the “too nice” kind of approach of we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, but in all honesty, if you’re not doing that, you’re not helping anyone because it’s not going to get better. So I love hearing about that journey, Erin. And so, Erin, you gave us a little bit of insight into your past and how you said you were at Target beforehand. What was it that really brought you to the public accounting profession?

Yeah, it was definitely a journey. So when I had started at Target headquarters, I had studied human resources. But I found this leadership development program and that’s where I wanted to head. I wanted to lead teams. Pretty early on, I had a passion for team or group leadership. And so my eight years at Target Headquarters was a variety of leadership roles and then into human resources operations. And I had thought, you know, here I am leading these HR teams of subject matter experts, but I’m not an expert. I’ve never been an HR generalist. I’ve never been that sounding board. I’ve always been a leader of the teams delivering that service. So I had transitioned into education, and I was with a college for a couple of years and that was my first HR generalist role. And I actually had kind of this perception in my mind that HR to some extent was a kind of the behind the scenes function of an organization. Like it had to be there to function. And then I went into my first HR generalist role, and I don’t know if you’re going to find a bigger advocate for the impact of human resources, and really someone that’s more passionate about the role. I saw all of these HR functions of excellence, right? Whether it was recruiting, employee relations, generalists, where I knew a little bit about everything, or at least how to connect employees to the resources that they need. And HR was just completely intertwined in every facet of the organization with the college I was working through. And in that space, I also found a lot of passion in education. And so I spent some time with this college and then I transitioned into public education really to explore what it meant to be human resources in a union environment. Which is unique. It is a whole different life experience. I was using a completely different tool belt in that space. And really what I found is that I wanted to continue to have the opportunity to make an impact in the way I did previously when I was in a more traditional business setting or organizational setting.

And Cummings Keegan had posted this position, and I will tell anyone this—I read the job description and I ran downstairs and told my husband, this was written for me. Like, you think I’m kidding? It was posted on LinkedIn. It basically should have said, Erin Raukar, we’re waiting for you to apply for this role. And Cummings Keegan gave us this, you know, this opportunity to be the first human resources role in the firm. So they just made this investment in the position two years ago to really create and evolve what the role looked like, to identify where parts of HR were maybe sitting in a different position, but what benefit it could be to have it streamlined into one position or at least one position guiding what HR looked like, that’s what drew me in. It was this position description that I felt like represented everything I was looking for, in that next level of fulfillment to really own what the role could be in an organization.

So Erin, did you just show up and not even apply and say, “I’m here to start?”

No, it’s actually really funny. So I did, I truly ran downstairs and said to my husband, “This role was written for me. There’s no way they don’t call me.” And then I had the opportunity on LinkedIn where I can tell if people look at my background. And so a couple of weeks later, I saw that one of the leaders had looked at my LinkedIn, and I was just waiting for that call. And I remember even going into the interview, they had an external recruiter looking for this position, someone that had a lot of HR experience, and I remember as we talked through the position, it was really hard for me not to say to her, “I was, this role is for me, let’s do this!” But what I ended with, I remember her asking me, “Well, Erin, do you want to talk a little bit more about next steps?” And I remember feeling so excited that I had said, “Well, really all I want to talk about is next steps. Being me meeting with the leading partner and interviewing for this role. I just, I think it’s a perfect fit,” and remember her laughing a little bit and saying, “Well, we’re on the same page then, let’s get that scheduled.”

It’s awesome, Erin. I love hearing that story. So there’s a couple of things I’m going to go back to that you said. You said one in, you know, in your firm, this was the first HR position, and then you go even further back. You were talking about HR generalists and thinking that sometimes behind the scenes, you look at the profession historically, and I don’t know if this is the exact right term to say, but in a lot of ways, it was almost like HR started to grow in the profession as more of a check-the-box. Strategy, you know, when firm issues arise or whatever that may be. With the role that you’re playing, you know, coming in new to the firm, how did you really turn that into a strategic part of where the firm is going? How did you get that seat at the leadership table to really drive and play a big role in the vision of the firm?

Yeah, I think there’s a few different components I would touch on. So really, Cummings Keegan, they knew what the potential for HR could be. But it was an exciting opportunity and also just a little bit of pressure to say, “Well, yes, this is at a base level, what HR could be, but here’s the impact it can make on recruiting, onboarding, culture, employee relations, retention.” And so when I think about first joining the firm, I remember sitting down with our leading partner—I think he was pretty excited about the role too, but I had so much energy and passion for what HR could be, that he and I really worked together on what are the first six to twelve months of priorities? Where does the firm already have a base with culture, with performance management software, with development programs? And all of the foundation was there and some things I came in and I thought, “Wow, Cummings Keegan, like you are doing it right. This is beautiful. This is a run state. We’ll just, we’ll make some enhancements, but this is absolutely already in a good place in so many ways,” most of it being tied to the culture, like second to none at Cummings Keegan.

But I remember sitting down with the leader and saying, you know, “Here are some things that you know. You want as the leading partner, the full partner group has collectively said, we need to make progress in this area. Or, you know, we don’t have formal exit interviews. We don’t have concrete onboarding plans. So we get these great people in and then maybe kind of fumble those first few weeks or couple months.” Like, there’s absolutely areas we can improve. So he and I collaborated to develop what’s the 30, 60, 90, and then six and 12 month mark priorities. So I knew what I was working towards in those first 12 months. And that doesn’t mean that there weren’t consistent things that took my attention along the way, right? I still was the day-to-day human resources leader. I still did have employee relations. People came and went. There were recruiting efforts, which that was all the daytime stuff, right? And then you continue to make progress in some of those larger initiatives.

But it was pretty clear to me that the leading partner and all of the partners had some priorities they wanted to make sure they were part of the first year. So that really guided where my effort went, some of the incremental progress that we made, and then some of the things that were just kind of sweeping changes for the firm.

A couple questions there. Well, just to give the group, our listeners, a little more background, give us a little bit of insight on, because you mentioned the partner group, firm leadership, how many partners are within your firm?

Yeah, so we have six partners in the firm, and then when you just think about the overall size of our organization, we hover between 35 to 40, balloon just a little bit with interns and some of our wonderful seasonal staff that come back during tax season, but, you know, we’re still kind of a smaller organization, which I like to say that’s the sweet spot, right? I’m an HR leader that gets to truly know every one of the individual employees that we’re supporting, but we still have a variety of large initiatives, and we still have all of the same needs and functions of a mid or large organization as well.

Erin, you mentioned when you started and kind of the vision that was laid out, here are the things we know we want to work on. Tell us a little bit more, and then I’ll have a follow-up question to this, but tell us a little bit more in the, you know, little over two plus years that you’ve been there, how has your role continued to evolve?

Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ve seen it evolve even just in the last six to nine months pretty significantly. So, I think about the first three months, a lot of it was getting the lay of the land. We have a wonderful director of growth and marketing who had some of those HR-related functions in addition to an office manager, in addition to a finance and compensation manager. So we had a variety of roles that were with the organization to set me up for success. That afforded me the time to really transition knowledge. I had resources in the firm where I could say, “Hey, that system’s not working or what’s the historical context on how we got to the place we are?” So a lot of it was just getting the lay of the land in my first, you know, three to six months, starting to make some progress on the larger initiatives. But at its core, it was truly a human resources generalist type of role, touching a little bit of everything, maybe a little bit heavier on the recruiting than I had anticipated, but in a wonderful way. Then I got to know the culture that much more so I could be an advocate for it when I was recruiting.

Now in the last year where I’ve seen the role evolve, there are larger change initiatives that the leading partner and the partners have worked through, where I feel like I have truly had a seat at the table and been looked to with consultation, sometimes wearing the hat of HR, sometimes wearing the hat of leading a team, but always having a seat at the table to contribute what the partners are looking for from me in that situation. And now it’s grown just a little bit more in the last nine months, from human resources also to have an administration group with me. So I have worked really closely with our office manager, and then I guide our client experience team, which is that internal administrative support group.

So Erin, here’s the follow-up question to that. So let’s say we have a firm leadership group that’s thinking about going this direction or taking, you know, an HR or an operational role in a much more strategic direction, maybe they have a little bit of hesitation. Any words of advice for firm leaders that are thinking about how can we utilize our, you know, operational team, whether that’s HR, whatever it may be, to really drive our firm vision forward? Any advice or any thoughts you would have for them?

Yeah, and I think I’ve found quite an amazing example in Cummings Keegan. Like they just embraced this role from day one, which makes it that much more fulfilling and exciting for me, right? The road is endless. There are so many opportunities to make an impact here. One thing I would say, speaking from experience here, actually in a prior role that I had in a school district that was experiencing their first human resources role—I think when leaders are looking at, you know, should or should we not potentially invest in this type of position, or hey, we have this position, but we don’t fully understand the scope or skill set that might be represented in this space, it’s about utilizing that role, that operational professional, that human resources leader, as a sounding board, especially in human resources—really for anything that might be slightly impacted by one nugget that they might share with you. Because a lot of times these types of roles are really with subject matter experts. So for HR, if it’s all things employee-related, well, everything we do at the firm is employee-related. So that’s a whole lot of opportunities to engage me in the conversation, maybe even just as a sounding board.

So really for those leaders, if you’re going to make that investment, make sure those people are taken on as key stakeholders—those roles are key stakeholders—when you’re trying to make some sound decisions in the firm. Another thing that I think about is making sure that role has the right responsibilities connected to it and that you don’t have responsibilities displaced in other places because it’s convenient or because that employee in the firm always did that. That might be the case early on when you invest in this type of position, but the closer you can get to human resources, really owning human resources, or growth in marketing, really owning that space of the firm or finance, etc., really having the right responsibilities sit with the right roles… It can be confusing, a little bit frustrating, and it just can cause some interesting dynamics if you don’t get to that place where there’s clarity of who owns what in those operational-type positions.

In a way, allow you to be an advisor, a strategic advisor in your area of expertise, if I’m hearing that correctly.

Yeah, it’s like allowing and actively soliciting that, wanting that for your operational employees.

Yeah, I love that mindset, Erin. And so one thing that, you know, this is probably, it can probably go across multiple aspects or areas of a firm. But, you know, one of the things that we hear a lot is, gosh, you know, we have so much to keep up with, or I’m getting pulled in multiple directions. So Erin, you’ve talked about generalist roles starting out, you’re moving in a strategic direction. How have you personally been able to make sure that you have the time to work on the bigger projects that can really move the needle? Because I know the days can go by, the weeks can go by pretty quickly, and you look back and it’s like, dang, I haven’t even touched that yet because I’m too busy putting out the fires. So any successes or guidance that you have for our listeners?

Yeah, I would say that’s something that has been quite a journey for me, and I would be dishonest if I told you I fully figured it out. I think what I would say in past experiences is, well, I put out all the fires or I do the day-to-day HR stuff during the day, and then at night on weekends, I work on those strategic initiatives. That’s not advice to anyone. I encourage you to not do that. But what I would say is there have been some, what might seem like small changes that I’ve made, but they’ve had a pretty huge impact on my work-life balance and how I’ve been able to continue to work through larger initiatives, especially when there’s clarity and there’s a timeline and what we’re working towards.

So, just a couple of tidbits or things that have worked well for me: One is setting priorities with my leading partner. So, I’m not just working on passion projects or things where I’m like, “this could make a difference in the firm.” Obviously, I advocate for those types of projects or those being priorities, but I make sure that me and the leading partner are pretty in sync with what is or isn’t a priority for the next three months, six months, and then what’s on the horizon past that.

So, he and I work really closely together. And then another thing is just being really open and communicative about deadlines. So, if I’m asked to do something and it’s, hey, we need to get this done, Erin. You’re the role of the subject matter expert in this space. I will say that’s, you know, absolutely, I can take that on. Is that something that you’re comfortable with me having done by the end of the month? Or in the next two weeks? Is that an appropriate timeline? Because I also am working through these initiatives. So, it’s just kind of being an advocate for your own time management. Communicating what you can get done and when.

Erin, when you say that, of being an advocate for your own time management, one of the things, you know, going back to your opening comment about getting more comfortable with open and honest dialogue. How, in a professional way, say you get requests from other partners within the firm, how do you effectively say no, if you don’t feel like it falls in line with that strategic vision? I know I’m kind of putting you on the spot here with that question, but I think it’s something that maybe we all struggle with, advocating for our own time and focus. So how do you effectively say no when it just doesn’t make sense for where the firm’s going?

Yeah, I’m thinking of when the partners listen to this conversation and then they go, “Oh, I don’t know if I’ve heard Erin say no too often.” And I truly don’t know that there have been too many times I’ve said no. I think one thing I do is ask a lot of probing questions when something comes my way—I ask about what role the partner or leader might be looking for me to play in the situation, what level of contribution, what some of the ripple effect or takeaways might be after, right? It’s not like it’s a one-and-done meeting, here’s the next six months of things that come away from that conversation. So a lot of it’s just level setting about what my role is or isn’t.

And then it’s about communicating deadlines. Especially with the leading partner, you know, if he says, hey, we’re going to this or I need this done by Tuesday. I’d say into our conversation we have a weekly touch base, I’ll say directly to him, I want you to know that I’m not going to work on this for a couple of weeks. So, I’ll still get this to you, but just know I’m going to shift priorities a little bit.

One thing I would chime in on that as well is that in the touch bases I have with my leader, we actually have at the bottom of our weekly one-on-one touch base document that we share, it’s what’s the next two weeks’ focus, or what does the month of April look like? What are those priorities? So that keeps him and I both grounded and understanding what’s coming up and what’s going to take my time.

Yeah. And Erin, so in a lot of ways, not saying no, but just effective communication and setting expectations. And Erin, my guess is over the two-year time frame, just hearing you talk about it, there’s been a level of trust built, so when you do have that trust, you can have that open and honest dialogue. So I love hearing that.

So Erin, we’re going to shift gears a little bit here. So, gosh, Erin, time flies. I know it’s been a few weeks ago. But you and I, we had the opportunity to speak, and you know, a couple, I think it was like three hours for one day and then three hours the second day with several HR and learning and development professionals. And when you think about taking this role in a strategic direction and bringing that power of people together and sharing their ideas and sharing their experiences, for those that were not able to be there—whether that’s other HR leaders, firm leaders—were there any takeaways that just stuck out to you that you think, gosh, other people in the profession need to hear about this?

Yeah, I feel like it was two days of takeaways for me. I think a lot of the topics we had, I thought, well, great, I’ll just take that entire presentation then and mold it back to what I want to bring to the partners. Just so many initiatives that we had and we’re working on that other firms are working on too, or that have already made a lot of progress. And so it was just truly an outstanding experience. There are two things that really rose to the top for me. One is more in an HR space, and then one is from a leadership mindset.

With human resources, one of our presenters had shared, you need to invest in a relationship up front before you get to a place in that relationship where you have to have tough conversations, before you have to deliver feedback, before you have to try to move the needle in a significant project where there are some challenges, obstacles, or maybe, some kind of barriers you need to overcome with that individual. And that spoke to me, and really, I can think of examples in every single role where there were obstacles we were working through, conversations that had to be had, and I would ask leaders directly, say it was performance management related. I would ask leaders directly, you know, are you going to deliver this feedback to the employee? Let’s prep for what that conversation looks like. Or you’re going to meet with this colleague and share something with them on how you want to move forward. And I think 80 percent, absolute just a guess on that part, but 80 percent of the hesitation was because there wasn’t time invested at the start of that relationship, or ongoing, where there was the rapport or the level of trust to be able to have that authentic conversation so both individuals could move forward. So, from an HR perspective, just that I don’t think it could have been better said, invest in the relationship early on so you can get through those conversations later on.

Well, Erin, I hate to say it this way, but you look at our world that we live in, and too often we say like the status of busy, or like the busier you are, the higher your status goes. There’s this mindset, the more meetings, the more things I have going on, all of a sudden you’re consumed with that. And it’s interesting, you can, there’s different studies out there that whenever we start feeling stressed, we actually will isolate and focus on getting through the day instead of taking the time to build those connections. So, I guess, you know, coming out of that, do you have any examples or advice, if someone is maybe feeling that way? Like, gosh, Erin, I just don’t have the time—how do you make the time to do that? Because the people are outside of, you know, culture, people are the most important part of a firm’s success. So how do we make the time to do that? Any ideas on what they can do to actually make those connections so they have the trust and then they can have the conversations when needed?

Yeah, I think, really an example that comes to mind is something I was living and breathing over the last three months. So I had mentioned, I transitioned from human resources to human resources and administration, which meant for me this tax season wasn’t working through all the HR administrative projects, it was really being there with the client experience group and experiencing what their day-to-day looks like as volume fluctuated, ebbed and flowed, they were working some weekends to support workload, and our clients and our internal team. There were absolutely times where I could see it with my team that workload was mounting and I absolutely checked in with them multiple times throughout the day, and that meant everyone was briefly interrupted, but hopefully to the benefit of us staying connected, keeping the positive team dynamics going, making sure we all took a breath when the team might have just spent the last three hours staring at PDFs or assembling paper documents.

And so to anyone that might think isolation, head down, focus—if there aren’t those incremental breaks, that human connectivity, especially in a team dynamic, there’s going to be a miss. Everyone’s going to be isolated, it’s going to impact the team. You might get through everything, but you’re not going to get through everything with some level of well-being intact. And so I just, I felt like I lived and breathed that the last few months. One of the biggest investments, whether it’s in human resources or in a leadership role, one of the biggest investments I can make any day and every day is spending a few minutes or longer with everyone on my team or with any leader or staff who needs me. That comes to the forefront of what the priority is for me on any given day.

And Erin, hearing you say that, you just have to wonder, you know, if you’re not doing that, at what cost? You know, if you’re not making those connections, what is the back-end cost of that? And I think there are too many of these situations where I don’t know if we ever fully understand, but I know it’s not great if we’re not building that human connection with each other and that culture within an organization, or even just within a team. So Erin, I love hearing you talk about that. So Erin, any other takeaways from our group meeting, things that you just think that would be very valuable for our listeners?

Yeah, so one of them was actually more geared towards leadership and people leadership. It’s been a couple of years since I had a larger team, like I have at Cummings Keegan right now. When this presenter had shared this, I thought, oh my gosh, “Erin, like, Erin, hello, wake up! Why does someone need to say this out loud to you for you to remember how important this is?” It brought me back years ago to my first experience at Target. But what was shared is that as the leader, you can’t invest more or care more about the outcomes, the performance, of your team members than what they’re trying to work through. Hopefully that phrase resonates with you. I think it was said a little bit differently, but it’s a great reminder to me about, you know, of course I care about the outcomes, of course I care about the success of my team, but if I care more than that individual or that team member, it’s just, it’s kind of a fruitless effort. It doesn’t mean I’m going to care less, but it means that I have to continue to operate and function as a leader, guide the entire team, and that employee probably has some stuff to figure out on the effort or the performance that they’re bringing to the table.

Yeah, Erin, it gets into the self-accountability side of, you know, if you want to get somewhere, you’re going to have to do it yourself because no one’s going to do it for you. But then, you know, Erin, the side, if you are a caring coach and you do show it, I think people see that. And Erin, I’ll just share one thought on that too, going back to your very beginning, your opening statements about what really molded you as a leader. You know, I think that’s our job as leaders or as coaches to help educate our team, that here’s our roles and responsibilities in this relationship, and I should never, ever have to care more than what you do.

And I think, I guess as I say that, I wish I would have understood that much better. Before I started in the profession, I had a brief stint outside of the profession and I look back and it’s almost embarrassing, I felt like it was their job to create my path for me, and I was disgruntled, and it wasn’t the case. I had a big eye-opener whenever I joined a firm. But I guess that’s all part of growing in the learning experience. So, well, Erin, I appreciate the insights there.

Erin, one of the topics you covered during that session was around onboarding. And when we talk about the people side of things, it’s just, you hear it across the profession about retention, recruiting, needing more people, and what does that look like? And you hit a really important topic about what is that new hire experience, and what does that onboarding experience look like. And many times I think we think about the client side maybe, but not as much about our people. So, any insight on what you’ve learned over the past couple of years on how to truly make that a memorable type experience for new hires as they join the firm?

Yeah, that topic really, on onboarding specifically, was something I was excited to talk about because that was one of those larger, long-term strategic initiatives that I had worked on or that we had pinpointed as a firm early on in my time with Cummings Keegan. So with our onboarding, it went to a place of, okay, we’ve got the employee and you know, that first week we’re going to have some connection with them, we’re going to jump kind of right into the training. And then there wasn’t, you know, a more formal 30-day check, 60-day check. How’s it progressing? What are you learning? Do you have what you need?

So we’ve had a pretty significant evolution. And there’s a few things in particular that I think differentiate the onboarding experience at our firm. And I’m not just saying, you know, from my perspective, this is really great. We’ve had check-ins now, formal check-ins at 30 and 60 days with new employees, where they say, this is the best onboarding experience I’ve had. Or, my last experience was, you know, day two, I was starting to get projects, but I didn’t even have access to software. So we truly know we’ve made a difference in the lives of our new hires.

So with our formal onboarding process, the first thing that I would say that was a pretty big shift is that we have very formal documented onboarding plans that carry a new employee through their first three to four weeks. So this includes, you know, the basics of like a welcome page, here’s your phone number, here’s your onboarding peer or colleague, and then your supervisor. So just the basics. And then each day, it’s not just laid out on a document that we say, hey, here’s your onboarding plan, but it’s 100 percent scheduled for them outside of some things where they’re going to have to figure out what time in their calendar works best. So, we give them very detailed onboarding plans, and what we’ve learned is that takes some of the nerves away of, what am I supposed to own or do in my first few weeks? And what’s the timeline for my progress that the firm is saying is desirable over that first month?

With those onboarding plans, they are very much culture-driven as far as how many one-on-ones our new employees have with their leader. Consistent one-on-ones with their onboarding peer or onboarding colleague, and then I don’t want to say it’s all about food, but a whole lot of virtual lunches, in-person lunches, and just one-on-ones with their colleagues to just get to know them. So it might not be a specific training topic. It might be Erin and Heath spending time talking about outside of work, inside of work, what their career journey was, and how their first year at Cummings Keegan has gone. So it’s really personal connection first, starting to build that trust and rapport before they dig into system software shadowing and training.

We really work to have a pretty thoughtful 30-day check-in. And I know the onboarding process continues on, right? You might say 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 6 months, a whole lot of timelines you can find out there. But at the 30-day check, what we found is that is kind of a pivotal moment to course correct as a firm if we need to course correct. As a supervisor, we actually have the supervisor say, what feedback do you have for me? Or what do you need for additional training from the firm at this point? And then also for the employee, when I think about transparent communication and Setting expectations and setting them up for success. At that 30 day mark, we have a really thoughtful 30 day check in with employees to make sure that we’re checking the boxes for them and that this is the right fit and that they’re making the progress that they need to.

Yeah, that’s awesome, Erin. And then, Erin, this may, this could be different for different size firms. So I’ll still ask the question and know how they apply it internally. It could be different. It could be a leader of an office. It could be a leader of a service line, it could be, you know, a leader of a department, but I don’t have the schedule pulled up, but I remember you walking through kind of a mock schedule of what that looks like and sharing that with the group. And one thing that stuck out to me was just that, and correct me if I’m wrong on this, but every new hire gets an opportunity to interact with firm leadership. Is that accurate?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So, there’s a variety of ways that we accomplish this. You know, there’s roles that report into the tax department head, which is one of the partners in the firm or a tax manager, audit manager, etc.  but outside of maybe a couple of weeks during tax season where things are really tightened up, then again, we just would shift this out a couple of weeks, but, there are on site lunches, there are virtual lunches, there are just basic connections where we say, Hey, this 30 minutes is with our tax partner group and all they’re going to do is share who they are and what their journey’s been. And they’re looking for you to share the same, a little bit about your background. So the first time you get an email from this person, you know their face, you know their name, and you know, a couple of tidbits about them, where it’s a person emailing you, that’s it, it’s not a scary email where you’re going, Oh, what is this? Look at that title! It’s just that much better received. So we do have that. It’s pretty much all of the partners and managers have exposure to all of our new hires in some capacity in the first few weeks.

Awesome. I love that, Erin. Do you have any, maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but just thinking about that, what that process looks like.  I think it was at one of our ELA conferences, someone shared that your role is always to replace yourself. So like any new hires that they would have, since they were fresh, in many cases from college and off campuses of going back and recruiting, their replacement was like interns. So they even got them involved in that process. Have you had any scenarios where maybe a new hire in the first six to twelve months, ends up, maybe in a way recruiting someone that they know to bring into the firm?

So, I wouldn’t say in my first couple of years, we’ve seen a lot of that with the intern or first year referrals. What I’ve seen is that when I’ve gone to recruiting events, whether it’s campus events or other opportunities where potential candidates truly want to figure out if we are the fit for them before they would accept an offer or have a little bit more realistic of a job preview—what I’ve found is that when I have staff, whether they’ve been with me for one year, you know, three years prior to me being here, is that when they go to these recruiting events or they engage with potential candidates, the excitement when people talk about our firm, that have been at our firm, is contagious.

I’m thinking about one in the fall and now we’ve had a new tax member join our firm from this, but we went to a recruiting fair in the fall, and I had one of our staff accountants in tax go with me. And I walked away from that thinking, I don’t even need to be here. Look at this guy. He’s the best advertising I could—he should do the recruiting for me. And so it, it really is, our culture is, I mentioned, you know, second to none, but it really speaks for itself and you see that, you see our employees living and breathing how positive the culture is.

Obviously there’s realistic things about what we’re doing now, what we could do differently and do better, but the firm is very open to that, and so I think the biggest gift I’ve seen is not necessarily referral, referral, referral, but that when our staff do engage with potential  candidates, candidates walk away going, well, that place is doing something right. Like, I should pursue that. I should move to the cities and go join Cummings Keegan.

Yeah, I love that, Erin, because I, you know, one of the things I continue to  preach on is we need to tell a different story to, you know, about the profession and to people considering to come into the profession. So I love hearing that they’re excited about it and they’re telling their own personal stories and not throwing out stats or whatever it may be. So that’s a great example, I think a very useful example. So, I appreciate that, Erin.

Erin, as we wrap up here, one thing we like to do is leave all of our listeners with a resource, something that has made a major impact on you throughout your career—that could be, again, that could be books, podcasts, whatever it may be. So, Erin, do you have any thoughts on a resource that’s been very impactful for you? 

Yeah, I think, so I have two things that I would share. One, though, really rises to the top for me, and it has been throughout my entire career, if as individuals, leaders, human resources professionals, if you can find a strong peer network to connect with, that will serve you in so many different capacities. You have this built in confidential group, that have similar experiences, but maybe have different opinions, advice, guidance they might share. I even have in my life a group of four HRs that I worked with in that college setting that I mentioned earlier, we are all bringing very different things to the table—different strengths, different opportunities. We always joke that we’d be the best consulting group out there because we touch everything you need in an HR capacity. But that group is the group that I can bounce any situation off and know that I will get sound and well rounded feedback from them on how I can proceed. So peer network groups, HR, Upstream, peer network groups, any opportunity that you have to connect with colleagues going through similar situations is truly invaluable.

And I do have one book too, that I would reference, and it was, it feels like it was from a past life, and it was written by Kim Cameron, who has written a variety of books over the years. He had written a book called Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance. And the reason I reference this book is because it really spoke to me. It was actually a part of a culture shift that we were working towards at the college that I was working at. But it talks about a variety of tenets of positive communication, positive culture, positive meaning or purpose for employees. And I think back to that book, there is not one thing that I read in that book where I thought, oh, that’s fluff or okay, that’s idealistic. No, it wasn’t at all. It was the truth. You will see an impact of positive feedback and coaching versus, you know, criticism or other styles of leadership that you might have experienced in your past. And so if I could, I throw that out there again, it was in a past life, so I don’t remember everything about the book, but it was something that impacted and truly resonated with me both in an HR capacity and as a leader.

Erin, that positive mindset, it just, it goes so far. And Erin, I knew we connected somewhere on that because I’m big on Jon Gordon’s, you know, Power of Positive Teams, Power of Positive Leadership, and talks about we’re not positive because life is easy, it’s because it can be hard. And I truly believe it can be contagious. And even hearing you talk, Erin, it’s contagious. And one thing that I’ll just share too, that Erin mentioned the peer networks, the Upstream Peer Networks, you’d probably never hear Erin say this, but she played a big role in that group and really brought a lot to contribute to that group.

So Erin, we’ve been grateful for your interactions there as well. So much, much appreciated Erin.

Thank you.

Alright. Well, Erin, it is time to wrap up. I appreciate your time. And as always, I look forward to the next conversation. And thank you to our listeners for making time to invest in the podcast as well. So thank you.

Thank you, Heath.