Meredith Gatzke

▶0:00IntroWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce.

▶0:39HostI'm excited to welcome Meredith to the Built by People podcast. Meredith, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:48GuestThanks, Dave. And of course, I will absolutely share some of my journey. I went to college thinking I was going to be a high school history teacher. I'm not a high school history teacher. I graduated, I taught for a year, decided that I wanted to do something different, and worked my way into recruiting. And from there, I moved into the private sector, became really a generalist, and was doing a lot of traveling in the Northeast for a corporation I worked for. Then when it— I got married, had my first child, and I found myself in public education in New Jersey. I started working as a secretary in a school district, and I have worked my way up. I spent about 13 years in K-12 in New Jersey, and then I moved into a vice president role in community college, and now I am the vice president and chief human resources officer for Montclair State University. So I feel like I've gone through another whole iteration of K-12 in my almost 17 years in the public sector and 20 years in HR.

▶1:57HostMeredith, how has working in a heavily unionized environment shaped your approach to employee relations and organizational change?

▶2:05GuestSo this is something that I actually talk about a lot because in New Jersey it is, and the public sector that I work in, it is a heavily unionized environment. And those partnerships are critical to everyone's success. Not just the HR office, but the administration and the employees who are working within those collective bargaining agreements and units. So, you remembering that you need to collaborate and not create conflict. It is a long-term relationship. It's never only when you're sitting across from the table and negotiating a contract. It's those formal phone calls, like, how do we avoid this? Like, how can we work through this? Can this just be an MOA? Can it be a one-off personal agreement? So building that trust and being transparent and really working through the problems from both sides of the table is critical. And making sure when you are implementing change and you are driving change, that it's structured and you understand or ask people how it's going to impact those who are working in those agreements. How is this going to impact an agreement? How is this going to impact? You're trying to predict the future almost anytime you're implementing change. But we really, when we're working in a unionized environment, it is so much more structured that sometimes it just takes longer, which is difficult, but it's worth it in the end. You would rather do it right than do it incorrectly and have grievances, and it just doesn't make everybody feel good. So, You're building long-term relationships because today's decisions are going to impact future full-on negotiations, future change management initiatives, future budgeting processes, things like that all come back into play.

▶4:00HostMeredith, what strategies have you found most effective in building strong relationships with unions to successfully implement change?

▶4:09GuestSo it really comes down to communication, which is something that HR offices are always being asked to do more of and do better. And early and frequent engagement, calling and giving a heads up that something is going to come down the pike, they're going to get phone calls from members, this is why we did what we did, involving the unions when we can in discussions before decisions are made. So when we're doing policy changes or implementing a new policy, we like to get their input. It's not decision-making input, but it's input, and it's been socialized. That socialization aspect of change and initiatives are critical. I also try and have them participate in problem solving with me, not, you know, me trying to fix everything, asking for help. If they're a partner, they really will try and figure out because they know their culture, they know their members, they know what's coming to them that's not making its way to my office, so they often are partners in problem solving and having a respect for the processes and agreements that we have in place, not yesing everyone, signing everything, and then never utilizing it, never implementing it, never bringing up that fund for developing a certain staff member group, or not following through on a program that was going to be initiated to drive some sort of engagement that people are looking for. You have to follow through on what you are agreeing to. And sometimes you can get so caught up in the day-to-day, you have to communicate, oh, we have to circle back and do that. And then leveraging data and impact analysis. Sometimes we work on feelings and sometimes we work on facts. So anytime I can bring data to the table and say, look, this is why we are looking to make this change, they— it's not just arbitrary. It's not— it's something we can look at historically and try and project what we're looking to do. There's a goal in mind. So that has been helpful. And again, it all goes back to communication. All of that circles back through communication.

▶6:22HostMeredith, can you share a challenging experience where you had to navigate complex labor dynamics and how you managed it?

▶6:29GuestSo I've had an interesting— something as simple as approve versus acknowledge in a collective bargaining agreement can make a big difference. So when you have leaders that are not necessarily in HR, but they want to go do this thing and are going to change something that they think is just super arbitrary because they want to have information, they want to have knowledge of whatever is going on, so they say, look, now this needs to be approved. The unions, I've worked with quite a few in New Jersey, but I've had them come to me and be like, A, what is going on? And B, what is this approval? We don't need approval. It says in our contract that we only have to acknowledge. So what we've ended up doing is HR, because we live in these contracts all day, every day, and I have leaders outside of HR who are not necessarily living in my world every day, this may be the first time they're working in a unionized environment. Maybe they came from a state that doesn't have this sort of system set up. I walk back and I really do a lot of training. We recently developed a program like managing in a unionized environment. And those little nuances of words and understanding that and realizing I should probably pick up the phone and call someone before making that change. Makes a big difference. And then, so the situation that I had with the acknowledge versus approve, I said to the union leadership, I said, you know what? You're right. We messed up. I'll go back, I'll talk to them, we'll fix it. And we did. We followed through. And I think they were a little surprised at how easy it was for us to just— you have to be humble, right, in HR? Like, you have to admit when things are not done the right way, and we fix it, and we move on. Everything is figureoutable. So I think taking that approach And really educating the leaders that I work with in the spaces that I have worked in on those little nuance words, that has been key to not having this happen over and over again.

▶8:33HostMeredith, in your experience, what role does HR play in balancing the needs of employees, leadership, and unions, especially during times of transformation?

▶8:44GuestSo this is something else I speak to a lot. I was recently on a panel with a representative from a union and a representative from a faculty with the Senate group and myself as HR. And what the group that we were on a panel for wanted to know and understand was, what are the differences between all of you? Like, you're all here to help us, but how? My view and my leadership, HR is really the bridge between business goals and employee protections, right? So we all work for the same organization. We have organizational goals. How do we get there navigating the needs of the employees, the needs of the institution, the labor contracts, the individual agreements, the state compliance, federal compliance? So it's really being that bridge and being a resource. I mean, I know it's kind of cheesy, but human resources, we are a resource for employees and the organization. When the organization comes to us and says, hey, we want to make this change, how do we do it? And it's never just HR. It could be HR and IT, or HR and finance and budget. We work together to get that done. Balancing the needs of the employees versus compliance, we need to make sure changes align with all of these factors. We can't just go in blindly. There's a lot of planning that goes into change and change driving institutional effectiveness. Those are words in higher education that we, we think of thoughtfully and we want to be impactful and meaningful. But it's hard when you're balancing employees, internal departments, external departments, organizational as a whole. We have a whole student population that we are supporting, that we are doing the best— what we feel is the best for them. Championing culture and engagement. We want to understand the culture of where we work and we want to make sure that people feel like they're being heard. It might not always be that their feedback is what we go with, but it's important to keep engaging with individuals and groups. So while we're doing all of this transformation, we're collecting feedback. We're not making the same mistake twice. We want to keep moving forward and drive the organization towards the future.

▶11:02HostMeredith, how do you see the future of labor relations evolving, and what should HR leaders be doing now to prepare for it?

▶11:10GuestSo, I think what's coming is with all of this engagement and culture that we now understand better, employees have more spaces to speak, right? So, they want to be heard, but then they want to see the impact of all this data that we're collecting. They want to understand how that is coming out. So, I think, especially in the labor sector, We definitely want to make sure that the employees are heard and their larger group is heard, right? Like, we negotiate with a small group of people from the labor unions, but they're representing thousands of people. So that's something we have to keep in the back of our mind. And I also think technology's role is just going to continue to transform human resources and even labor relations with hybrid work, remote work, AI. Digital tools, what can we use? I would say work smarter, not harder. So we're trying to figure out how can we identify trends, how can we use this technology that we have now to make it more streamlined, not easier. It doesn't get easier, it's just different. So I think embracing that together and again, understanding how each group is using it will be key. For sure moving forward. And then mental health, flexibility, skills development, succession planning, those are all still things that we are working through. I mean, in human resources and with all of our partners in our other divisions, that's what we hear a lot about. We want to support and understanding how we can support and what the limitations are on an HR office versus having a division that needs that support partner with an external partner. Or use resources that maybe the labor unions do have through their membership benefits. So that's always something to keep in mind. And being proactive, be adaptive, be able to adapt to your surroundings, being nimble, being a good communicator, recognizing that you can always be better and do better next time.

▶13:21HostMeredith, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶13:25GuestI think adaptability is going to be maybe I don't want to say replace change management, but I think adaptability and being able to move forward and evolve, not only as an individual, but as a team, as a division, as an organization, it's impacting talent acquisition, it's impacting retention. If people see the writing on the wall somewhere and they don't see leadership making changes and making all of these pivots, we've heard of horrible things happening, people leaving, and having to replace that talent is just— it's so— it's difficult. So I think really being able to have a pulse and an understanding of what's important to your employees and how you can best support them professionally, and being able to pivot in this ever-changing world, you can't expect to have the same job for your entire career. Your job evolves, the needs of the people around you evolve. You have to evolve with it. And as a leader, your team needs to see you being able to evolve because the expectation is that they're changing and they're moving the organization forward. So I really think that is key. It can't just be about compliance. It can't just be about strategic HR. It has to be in your everyday practice, being able to pivot, to figure things out, to come up with solutions, to listen to other people's solutions. Being open and being humble, I think, is really where we're going.

▶15:03HostMeredith, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶15:08GuestYes, thank you so much for inviting me, Dave. I appreciate it.