Cory Rose
SVP of People
TAG (The Aspen Group)
Episode 399
Generic HR advice is failing. Master your unique business context to win.
Current chapter: Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built By PeopleOctober 23, 2024 · 18:25
Thesis
“Effective HR leadership demands a deep understanding of unique business contexts and diverse employee personas, advocating for adaptable, data-driven strategies over fads or 'one-size-fits-all' approaches.”
Show notes
This year, Cory Rose paused performance reviews entirely at TAG (The Aspen Group). She also cut engagement surveys from quarterly to annual. Both moves were intentional and controversial—and she's not apologetic about either. The HR community's reflexive reaction to those decisions tells you something about the field's relationship with process: we protect the ritual long after it stops serving the purpose.
Rose's career is a study in breadth: interdisciplinary studies with a cross-cultural humanities minor, agency recruiting, NIH, Deloitte, Berlin, Udemy, Chime, and now TAG—a multi-brand dental, veterinary, and aesthetics platform where "employee personas" include dentists, nurse estheticians, vets, and corporate professionals who might as well be working for entirely different companies. The practical implication she's drawn from navigating all of it: don't chase fads. Don't copy what Google or Netflix does. Understand your actual people—their motivations, constraints, and communication norms—and build from there. A framework that works for a 10,000-person tech company will actively harm a 2,000-person healthcare services organization if you apply it wholesale.
Her most pointed advice is about Total Rewards: it's the most under-resourced function in HR relative to its actual organizational impact. Getting compensation and benefits wrong touches every employee, every day. The HR leaders who die on that hill—who invest in genuine TR expertise and resist the temptation to underfund it—are the ones whose organizations can actually attract and retain in a competitive market. Her parting counsel is both simple and hard: understand your business first. Everything else follows from that.
- The case for pausing performance reviews: why intentional disruption of ritual can produce better outcomes than refining the ritual
- Reducing survey cadence as a strategic choice: how less frequent but more actionable surveys produce better follow-through
- Don't chase fads: why copying enterprise best practices in the wrong context causes organizational harm
- Understanding employee personas across diverse workforce types: tailoring engagement for dentists, vets, corporate staff, and frontline workers within one organization
- Total Rewards as the most under-resourced function in HR—and why you should never cut there first
- The "sponge" approach to new organizations: listening and synthesizing before implementing—and why it's the fastest path to trust and relevance
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What you'll take away
- 1Prioritize understanding the unique business context and diverse employee personas to design effective HR programs, rather than applying generic best practices.
- 2Approach HR trends like AI pragmatically, focusing on how they can genuinely augment administrative tasks and drive value, rather than blindly chasing every 'shiny new thing'.
- 3Re-evaluate the cadence of traditional HR processes like performance management and engagement surveys, opting for less frequent but more actionable and impactful interactions.
- 4Invest adequately in Total Rewards professionals, as their expertise is critical for navigating complex compensation, benefits, and generational needs in a constantly evolving market.
- 5Cultivate a 'sponge' mentality when entering new organizations, actively listening and synthesizing information before implementing changes, to gain trust and ensure relevance.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Reducing the frequency of formalized employee engagement surveys (from quarterly to annually) to ensure more thoughtful action planning and minimize business disruption, while maintaining a commitment to employee feedback.
- •Pausing traditional twice-yearly performance reviews to fundamentally rethink the process, shifting focus to continuous expectation setting and real-time feedback for better talent management.
- •Advising HR leaders not to chase every fad or adopt practices just because large, well-known companies do, instead emphasizing the importance of tailoring strategies to one's unique people and business needs.
In Cory's words
“I was an interdisciplinary studies major with a minor in cross-cultural humanities and Africana studies. And so I've always been fascinated by different cultures and different points of view in the world, like how do people think, how do how do different cultures react to different situations...”
Highlights the guest's foundational interest in diverse perspectives, which later informed her international HR career.
“It's one thing to be a US-based person saying I support an international team, but until you like live and work every day in that environment and really understand that, like, the big world picture view outside of America, like, you don't really understand like what HR looks and feels like if you're not sitting in that culture day to day.”
Emphasizes the critical importance of immersion for true cross-cultural HR understanding and effective global people strategies.
“I think the first thing as myself, as an HR practitioner, I always do when thinking about the trends is like, what's a trend and what's actually going to stick around? Because I think it's very easy to get distracted by brand new shiny thing.”
Reveals a pragmatic, skeptical approach to adopting new HR technologies and trends, prioritizing long-term impact over novelty.
“I'm not afraid to say the hard thing in a meeting, and sometimes that's gotten me in trouble. I had a first job where I would just be like, just tell them to do that. And I got called abrasive, but I was just being very matter of fact, right?”
Illustrates a direct communication style that, while sometimes challenging, is rooted in efficiency and candor, essential for executive leadership.
“I would say maybe something controversial is we've taken a big pause this year on both performance and engagement.”
Directly addresses a controversial decision to rethink traditional HR processes for better strategic alignment and actionable feedback.
“I would actually say total rewards professionals, because I think a lot of times TR is an under-resourced team... You need somebody that understands the how and the why of how you pay people and how you reward people.”
Highlights the critical and often undervalued role of total rewards in organizational success and employee financial well-being.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Employees' number one concern in 2024 is covering monthly expenses, indicating a widespread financial well-being challenge (Previ sponsor message 0:30).
- •Businesses risk disruption and ineffective action planning when employee engagement surveys are conducted too frequently (e.g., quarterly) (12:50).
- •Traditional, infrequent performance management processes (e.g., twice yearly) fail to provide timely feedback, leading to employees being unaware of their performance standing until it's too late (14:00).
- •Under-resourced Total Rewards teams struggle to navigate complex and changing market dynamics, benefits costs, and diverse generational needs in compensation (15:50).
- •HR leaders face challenges in scaling programs and processes across highly diverse employee personas (e.g., dentists, vets, nurse estheticians) within multi-brand organizations (4:50).
- •The difficulty in discerning between fleeting HR trends ('brand new shiny thing') and genuinely impactful solutions can lead to distraction and wasted resources (7:14).
In this episode
Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built by People
Tell me a little bit about your career journey and what led you to HR
How to Get Out of Your Career Trap
I'd love to ask a question around some of the most significant trends shaping HR today
The Future of HR Tech
One trend that's swinging back is this idea of retention
Reasons for Retention in a Budget- constrained Environment
What are some of the challenges that you've faced in your HR career
WSJDLive: The Challenges of HR
We've taken a big pause this year on both performance and engagement
What's Controversial About Your HR Practices?
What question would you have me ask the next person I interview in this series
What is one area that you should never under-resource?
Corey Miller: Don't chase every fad, don't ignore trends
HR Live: Don't Chase Every Fad
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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