Clark Jessop
SVP, HR Business Partner
U.S. Bank
Episode 123
Forget the fluff: True employee engagement requires foundational HR.
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleJuly 1, 2025 · 13:16
Thesis
“Genuine employee engagement and organizational success depend on addressing foundational HR elements like meaningful work, clear goals, and skill development, rather than superficial interventions. He also asserts that work-life balance is primarily a personal decision, achievable through deliberate boundary setting.”
Show notes
Exploring HR Strategies and Innovations with ClarkIn this episode of the Built by People Podcast, the host interviews Clark, a seasoned HR professional. Clark shares his untraditional career path in HR, starting from journalism and transitioning through financial services to his current role at US Bank. He discusses his experience in various companies like HP and Cognizant, emphasizing how different organizations shaped his HR approach. Clark delves into employee engagement, specifically the Deloitte model, and highlights the importance of meaningful work, supportive management, and growth opportunities over superficial engagement activities. He also explains his data-driven approach to workforce analytics and compensation strategies. Clark discusses the development of a skill-based role architecture at US Bank, aimed at providing clear growth paths for employees. He concludes with advice on achieving work-life balance, stressing the importance of setting personal boundaries. The episode is presented by Previ, which offers significant savings on essentials for employees.00:00 Introduction to the Built by People Podcast00:37 Meet Clark: From Broadcast Journalism to HR Leadership01:55 Clark's Career Journey: From HP to US Bank03:10 Employee Engagement: Beyond Happy Hours06:37 Transforming Data into Actionable Insights08:58 Developing a Skill-Based Role Architecture11:44 Parting Advice: Work-Life Balance13:10 Conclusion and Farewell
What you'll take away
- 1True employee engagement stems from foundational elements (meaningful work, positive environment, supportive management, growth, trust) rather than just social events.
- 2Transform workforce analytics from mere data reporting into actionable insights by contextualizing trends, comparing benchmarks, and driving leadership discussions for concrete actions.
- 3Implement skill-based role architecture to define competencies, clarify career paths, inform hiring/development, and identify organizational skill gaps.
- 4Recognize compensation as 'engagement hygiene' – essential for fairness but insufficient on its own to truly drive employee engagement.
- 5View work-life balance primarily as a personal decision; be deliberate with your time and set boundaries to achieve it, as these are often respected.
What most organizations get wrong
- •He views the concept of 'work-life integration' as 'nonsense,' advocating instead for deliberate work-life balance through boundary setting.
- •Compensation, while important, is presented as 'engagement hygiene' rather than a core driver of employee engagement within the Deloitte Irresistible Organization Model.
In Clark's words
“Happy hours and potlucks, they have their place, but it can backfire if you just do those things, but don't get to the more foundational elements of engagement because those things in isolation can feel to employees like you're almost like you're spraying Febreze into a dirty room without actually cleaning the room itself.”
This quote powerfully illustrates why superficial social events fail to address deeper employee engagement issues.
“One interesting part of this model is that compensation is not one of those 5 components, but it's presented more as engagement hygiene, meaning that fair competitive pay, of course it's important, but you're not going to win on that alone.”
This reframes compensation as a baseline requirement rather than a primary driver of sustained engagement.
“I think of this process like a bridge, and the first section of that bridge is the data. But I think the trap we often fall into is to stop there. And I've seen a lot of examples where there's lots of data being produced. It takes a lot of time to pull together, and the intended audience just isn't paying attention to it.”
He highlights the common failure in analytics: gathering data without translating it into meaningful, actionable insights.
“What good looks like for an early career compensation specialist versus an executive talent consultant role, which is what we call the HR business role at US Bank, that will look very different.”
This emphasizes the nuance in defining skill competency levels across different roles and organizational tiers.
“There's this concept that's buzzy right now about work-life balance being more work-life integration. And personally, I think that's really a bunch of nonsense.”
This is a direct and strong rejection of a popular notion, advocating for clear boundaries instead of blending work and personal life.
The problems this episode addresses
- •HR leaders and managers often misdiagnose employee engagement issues, implementing superficial solutions like social events that fail to address foundational problems.
- •Organizations can fall into reactive compensation practices where budget is allocated based on vocal complaints, potentially overlooking deserving high-performing employees.
- •Employees frequently lack clear visibility into the specific skills required for their current roles or for advancement, hindering personal and career development.
- •Managers in large corporations may feel disempowered, believing they have limited control over the factors that genuinely impact employee engagement.
- •Companies invest heavily in collecting HR data but struggle to convert this data into actionable insights that directly support business objectives and strategic decision-making.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Clark did not start out in HR. I was a broadcast journalism major
Starting Out in HR
In our past conversation, you talked about employee engagement being more than just happy hours
Employee Engagement: The Deloitte Model
Your workforce analytics approach transforms data into actionable insights that make a difference
How Workforce Analytics Transformed Data into Action
US Bank developed a skill-based role architecture to help employees identify growth path
US Bank's Skill-based Role Architecture
Clark: Work-life balance is mostly personal decision
Clark on Work-Life Balance
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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