Episode 42

Communicate with Your Loved Ones to Ensure Your Wishes Are Honored then joined by Paula Zimmerman from ProSonder Solutions

Madison: Hello everyone, and welcome to Not Just Numbers, Honest Conversations with a Financial advisor and Lawyer. I am Madison Demora, and I’m here with Mike Garry. Mike is a financial advisor and a CFP practitioner and the founder and the CEO of Yardley Wealth Management. He is also an estate planning lawyer, and his law firm is Yardley Estate Planning. Hey, Mike.

Mike: Hey, Maddie. How are you today?

Madison: Good. How are you?

Mike: Good.

Madison: All right, so today we are going to discuss an article from the Wall Street Journal, and it is titled “When Making a Living Will, Talk to Your Loved Ones.” And this is by Ashlea Ebeling. Alrighty, So I will read a summary and ask Mike some questions. The article highlights the importance of living wills and advance directives in ensuring an end-of-life medical wishes are honored. It recounts Lynne Chesley’s case, where legal disputes kept her on a feeding tube for over three years despite her directive against life-sustaining treatments. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ultimately upheld her wishes, strengthening the enforceability of such documents. Living wills outline medical preferences and appoint healthcare proxy, but require clear communication and accessibility to be effective. Chesley’s case underscores the need for thorough planning and discussion with family and health care providers to avoid conflicts and ensure directives are followed. All right, Mike, what lessons could be drawn from Lynne Chesley’s case about the importance of clear and accessible advanced directives?

Mike: Yeah, this case was a tough one, right? Like she was on a feeding tube for three years, you know, she had some disease that gave her a shortened life expectancy. She went and drew up this advanced directive, named her sister as her surrogate and then her sister didn’t follow her wishes, according to her children. So yeah, that’s a big thing. We always talk about, when people come in, they have to choose a lot of fiduciaries. Who’s going to be the executive of your estate? Who’s going to be your financial power of attorney? Who’s going to be your health care power of attorney? If you have minor children, should they there be guardians? If they have trust, should there be trustees? And you know, we always ask, you know, make sure that people talk to their loved ones or the institution, for some trustee matters to make sure that they’ll do it. But I guess the other step is like, are you going to do it in a way that I want you to do it, right? And that can be tricky, you know, like for a guardian, you know, raising your children in a similar fashion as how you would raise them, no one’s ever going to be exactly the same, you know, it’s got to be good enough. But you know, for this, you know, the advanced directive where she clearly didn’t want to be, according to her document, didn’t want to be on life-sustaining methods indefinitely and her sister wasn’t really ready for that. That’s a big deal. So not only do you have to check with your loved ones to make sure that they are interested in carrying out, you know, your wishes, that they will actually follow your wishes, that they’re okay with that. And I wonder if the sisters had a conversation beforehand and if they did, you know, did the poor Lynne like have any sense that her sister wasn’t going to honor her wishes? You know, like it’s just mind boggling. It’s a sad case, you know, and you know I’m sure even the sister didn’t have, like, an evil intent. You know, it’s your sister, right? And you think you’re doing what you should be doing, but, yeah, it’s a hard case. Yeah, that’s a tough thing.

Madison: Yeah. So why is it essential to not only complete advance directive documents, but also discuss them with family and healthcare proxies?

Mike: Sure. So you need to make sure like first, like the document has to be accessible. Right. If nobody can find it, it’s as if it doesn’t exist. Right. So you need to communicate as best you can with your loved ones about what your wishes are. So, so that, so that they really are aware. Right. So like if Lynne had a conversation with her sister where she told her like, look, this is really what I want and made it clear to her, maybe this all could have been avoided, maybe not, but, but we don’t know. So you need to be able to make sure that you do the document, that you have the conversation with your loved ones. And like the clinicians, like the doctors and hospitals need to know what you want and they need to have the document or a copy of the document there so they can honor your surrogate or agent or proxy when he or she makes a decision to withhold life-sustaining treatment.

Madison: Should there be stricter standards or uniformity across states for advanced directive forms and their enforcement?

Mike: Well, that is an age-old question in the law. Right. So I listened to legal podcasts and it’s always interesting because they’ll say, oh well, this, this trust rule is effective in 11 states, hasn’t been come up in 10 other states and the other 29, it’s not effective. It would be nice in a lot of ways if there were specific rules that you could count on in all 50 states, but that’s not the case and it’s not ever going to be the case. Right. We have, people can be free to live in whatever state they want and be subject to whatever the rules are in place. So yes, from a practitioner’s standpoint and for the public standpoint, it would be great to know clearly what the rules are. But what I’d say and like when you, if you move somewhere, make sure your legal documents carry the same weight there and maybe you need to get a new set. In most cases you probably don’t. But you know, there could be a reason for it. I mean, yeah, it’s, that’s not going to happen. It would be nice in a lot of ways if you could count on some things, but there’s always states that are like cutting kind of the cutting edge on things and other states that just maybe follow behind slowly.

Madison: Okay. All right. What are some potential barriers preventing people from discussing their end-of-life preferences with loved ones or clinical team?

Mike: Sure. Like an emergency. Right. Like, if you’re unconscious when you come in, it’s really hard to tell the clinicians, like, what you’d want, you know, or if you have had a heart attack, like, you can’t sit down calmly and discuss, like, the pros and cons of different things. And, you know, like, sometimes families don’t talk. People don’t update their documents probably as frequently as they should. You know, you could have the person holding your power, you could be estranged from them. You could have forgotten that you’ve given them that power. And then the whole idea of, you know, we’re all busy, we have houses and people have safe deposit boxes. And so, like, knowing where things are and making sure that someone else, your loved one, would know things are. I thought about that today. Like, my sister has a lot of roles and duties and told her stuff is in the home office. And it is. And it’s not locked, so she should be able to find it. We had that conversation years ago. She might not remember that. Right. And so if she’s listening to this Jen, they’re in the same spot in the home office. But, yeah, it can be hard. And it’s not always top of mind. Right. It becomes top of mind when somebody dies or have a health issue. But if you’re just rolling along through life and you get hit by a car, it could pose a problem.

Madison: Yeah, absolutely. What lessons can be drawn from Chesley’s case about the importance of clear and specific language and advanced directives?

Mike: Yeah. So one of the things we talk about a lot in advanced directives in Pennsylvania, one of the last questions on the form a lot of us use is whether the agent has to follow your wishes or if they’re just guidance. And what is better really depends on the situation. You know, most of the time we have couples come in and they’re pretty clear on what they want, and each other knows what they want. But then maybe their kids aren’t as sure. And maybe their kids are younger. Right. So maybe their kids are 18, 20, and 22. And so maybe they should still have their siblings make those choices for them. At some point, people generally have one or more of their children make those decisions, but that’s hard. To answer your question a little bit better, I think that the language, like if you have any conflicting language in your documents, you should be clear about what that means to your loved ones. You need to make sure that they know. Now, we talk about that when people come in, and for the most part, people are pretty clear that they want things a certain way and there’s not really too much conflicting information in them. And so when people have to choose whether the agent must follow their advice there or their proxy or whether it’s just guidance, I say for the most part, it probably doesn’t matter for the spouses, but maybe it would be a good idea to make like your adult children follow your wishes because they be more inclined to not be sure. Right. If you’re in your 50s and you say, hey, I don’t want this, but your child is 23 and they have to make that choice and you’ve given them the choice to change it, that could present a problem, you know, and maybe you need different instructions for whether it’s your spouse for your children. But the main thing is you need to be clear about what you want in your documents and then talk to your loved ones about it so they understand. And then if you have any kind of planned procedure, make sure the clinicians have a copy of your document in case something really bad happens. They know and that they could take the immediate action and they’re not waiting for somebody to find something or not find something and then throw the whole thing into chaos. It’s a great question.

Madison: Absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree. And I could see it being an uncomfortable conversation to have with your family members. Do you maybe have any advice for people in this situation?

Mike: Right. The holidays are here. Talk to them, show them the document. Maybe the kids don’t know what the documents look like. Most 25 year olds haven’t seen 100 of them like you have. So. Yeah. So it would be good to have those conversations maybe at birthdays or family get togethers. Take the 10 minutes to talk about it. Right. And, and spend the time. And certainly the older you get, the more important it becomes. Right? Take the time. You’re doing your loved ones a giant favor by bringing up the topic so that when the time comes they can remember you saying it, they can remember seeing the document, practically have had a dress rehearsal, make the whole thing go much, much more smoothly.

Madison: Yep. Great advice, Mike. Thank you for that.

Mike: Thanks, Maddie, I appreciate that.

Madison: Today, we’re excited to welcome Paula Zimmerman, founder of Prosonder Solutions, an HR consulting firm dedicated to helping business leaders take HR off their plate by providing practical HR solutions tailored to meet the demands of their growing business. With over two decades of experience in HR leadership and a background as an employment attorney, Paula has worked across industries like technology, manufacturing, and nonprofits. She specializes in fractional HR leadership, operations, compliance, and employee relations. Paula believes that strong HR practices are competitive advantage and that creating better workplaces leads to a better world. Let’s dive into her journey and the impactful work she’s doing to help businesses thrive in today’s evolving workplace. Hi, Paula.

Mike: Hi, Paula.

Paula: Hi Madison. Hi, Mike. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to talk with you today.

Mike: Yeah. Thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate it. Really looking forward to it.

Paula: Thank you.

Madison: All right, Paula, so question number one. Can you share a little bit about your professional story and what inspired you to launch your business?

Paula: Sure. I’ll go back to the beginning because it’s relevant, but I’ll make it really quick. So I started my career as an employment lawyer, as you mentioned. And long story short, after eight and a half years I realized I loved my clients and the subject matter. And the lawyers in the law firm life, maybe not so much. A little happy to leave that behind. So I refer to myself as a recovering lawyer. And had the opportunity to move into HR, so specifically HR operations, total rewards, compliance and employee relations and really fell in love. I did that for about 10 years and then fell upon the life changing question from someone that I know. They said, hey, I have a problem and I think someone with your unique skill set is just the person I need, can you help me? So it gave me the opportunity to take on kind of a side gig. Fortunately, I was in a full time role where I was allowed to do that. I always caveat it with my employment lawyer background. Not everybody has that opportunity.

Mike: That’s right.

Paula: And to do it, make sure you’re allowed. I was able to. So I did what any good lawyer would do and went and started an LLC and got some liability insurance and took on the side gig and really loved it. Loved the opportunity to kind of, you know, kind of dig in and get to know a different industry than I was currently in. Kind of took me back to my law firm days when I had a portfolio of clients and then one side gig led to another side gig led to another side gig. And after about 12 months, you know, I started thinking of as a time to take the leap. And then I had one of those days at the office and was like, yes, yes, it is time to. So that was about 2018 and I’ve been out on my own. I’m doing this full time ever since.

Mike: Fantastic, fantastic. And so with the side gigs, like, you know, you must have done good work for people to notice that and then ask for you or people refer you. Right. Like, because nobody knows that you exist at first. Right. Like it’s hard to get the word out.

Paula: Exactly. It was definitely word of mouth. I mean, I think from day one. I mean I’m, I feel like throughout my 20 year career, like you’re only as good as your last, your last deliverable, whether you’re a lawyer, you know, the HR role that I had, I was servicing 48 different regional offices, all kind of very different so again, it was almost like a portfolio. So I’ve, I’ve always operated with that, you know, kind of you’re only as good as your last delivery. And yeah, when you’re doing, when you’re doing this kind of work, when you’re out on your own, you got to have a great deliverable. And then it’s really, you’re relying a lot on word of mouth, reputation, no matter how good your marketing is.

Mike: Right, right.

Madison: So how did you come up with the name ProSonder Solutions?

Paula: Yeah, so kind of back to my story. My quickly filed LLC, I was PJ Zimmerman Advisors, and it never really kind of sat well with me. It was just kind of raw and bland. But I used it for a year, year and a half, and then was thinking, okay, now I know I really want to do this. You know, I’m growing up. What do I want my name to be? So in 2018, I fell upon this word, sonder, which has interestingly been getting a little bit of a boost in the last couple of weeks with a post by Adam Grant that it’s his new favorite word or favorite word of the year or something. But it really resonated with me when I found it because what it means is it’s the realization that everyone around you, each random passerby, is living their own life. It’s vivid, it’s complex. They have all of their own kind of ambitions, friends, routines, craziness, you know, all of all of that. And it encapsulates kind of this idea of understanding and being open to other people’s experiences, even though they might seem like kind of background characters to you and people that maybe cut you off in traffic or is in front of you in line at the Starbucks. And when I found it, I was like, this really encapsulates kind of why I love employment law, why I love employment work, why I love HR. So reflecting on that, I was like, oh, maybe I can use this in my business name. So kind of played around with different iterations and versions, so kind of landed on ProSonder, because I support the idea and then solutions, because I’m, you know, doing HR consulting. I’m going to help you solve your problems. And here we are, a name change in 2018,2019, and it’s kind of stuck ever since.

Mike: I love that. That’s a great story. And Adam Grant is awesome. I’ve seen him speak a couple of times and read one or two books and follow on LinkedIn. Yeah, he’s really something.

Paula: Yeah, he’s got some great ideas and really a really approachable thinker in the space. Yeah.

Madison: That’s so sweet. I love that. All right, so you mentioned that getting your people practices right is a competitive advantage. Can share an example where fine tuning HR strategy significantly impacted a business’s success?

Paula: Yeah, I think, you know, there’s so many opportunities for HR to play a role in business. And I know we’ll talk about that in a little bit. But the one that really comes to mind is a recent project that I did with a business team to create a sales commission plan. HR plays such a significant role in compensation and total rewards. I mean, every company you’re, it’s your biggest line item, no matter what company you are, what you’re paying your people is huge, especially your sales folks if you’re in that kind of a business. And for this client, the comp structure that they had in place wasn’t aligned with their current business model they had. It was a legacy, it was kind of cobbled together, which often happens, you know, with my clients that are kind of growing quickly doing M and A deals, things like that. And essentially it was leading to disgruntled salespeople. It was incentivizing all the wrong behavior, both for their own compensation. Because you know, when you’re in sales, you get paid on how you execute. So they want to get the most they can. And for the business, you want to incentivize the right outcomes. And their comp plan was incentivizing all the wrong outcomes. So I sat down and worked with the business leaders to really understand kind of what they were trying to accomplish. Because in setting a sales comp plan and sales comp in particular, because it’s so tied to kind of goals and outcomes. But you know, so much of HR is really understanding kind of the directions you want to go. So the conversation that I had with this particular team was really understanding what did they want, what did they want to incentivize? Were they looking to incentivize driving sales? Sometimes, you know, you’re incentivizing cutting costs and those can be conflicting. Are you incentivizing having working capital? You know, what are your long term and short term goals? Sometimes they can work in conflict if you’re incentivizing certain short term behaviors with your comp plan, but it doesn’t really align with where you want to go long term. So in this particular situation, I worked with the business team to really dig in and dive deep to understand what they were doing, where they wanted to go, what their challenges were, and then put together a sales comp plan that really drove, drove their team towards those outcomes and incentivize their financial performance in those directions. And the result was you had happier sales commissions, happier sales folks, because they were making more money and it was clear to them. So they knew where they were going to have to work to make more money, where they might be wasting their time. The business was thriving because you had people moving in the right direction towards their business goals. And at the end of the day, it really helped the sales team and the business leaders, you know, be invested in the business and be invested in the outcomes. They felt like they were being valued, they were partners really in getting to the goals and outcomes rather than just kind of having this kind of archaic, hard to understand structure thrust upon them that, you know, kind of, they felt like they were spinning their wheels a little bit. So, you know, they had the objective targets they needed to judge their performance. That led them to their compensation, that led to increased sales goals and business outcomes, which made everybody happy. So I think that’s one of those places that HR can really play a valuable role. Bridging, you know, in bridging the people with the business, you know, in that way.

Mike: Yeah, that’s, that’s a great result. Thanks for sharing that. It’s, you know, in some ways it’s such a basic thing. Right. People respond to incentives, but then like how are they going to respond and what incentives and putting something in place that is good for the business and for the employees. Right. To make, make it thrive is a hard thing to do. You know, years ago, in between doing this and working as a lawyer, because I guess I’m partially recovering. Right. Because I still do estate planning. But it’s, you know, not a big part of my day. You know, I worked at Merrill and they changed the compensation plan all the time. I was only there three years and it was different all three years. And you know, in that situation, people responded immediately to whatever the changes were. And so the company really had to think out what they were doing and did some things that seem smart and some things that seemed pretty silly. But you know, people are, you know, in a hyper competitive area like that, people are going to respond. So the company has to be really sure. I think too often we see companies that’s like a bad Dilbert cartoon, you know, like some idiotic management thing that sounds good when a committee does it, but then it just does not work for the company or the employees and makes everybody less happy. So that’s great when you could get a big win like that, that everybody’s happy. Thanks for sharing. It’s awesome.

Madison: Wonderful. All right, so your services span from startups to global companies. How do you tailor your HR strategies to meet the unique needs of businesses at different life cycle stages?

Paula: Yeah, I think this picks up on a theme that we were just talking about because for me it’s most important to get to know the business, its goals, what the culture is and the people that are there. Because, I mean, businesses are made up of people and they’re just as unique as people. So I don’t believe that there’s any cookie cutter solutions. So it’s really easy for me to kind of take my skill set with that mindset and really kind of plug in to different industries and different places in the life cycle. I was joking with a client recently that I was inspired by the Anna Karenina opening line, All happy families are alike and each unhappy family is, is unhappy in its own way. I think, I don’t think I botched that sentence too bad. But I was saying, you know, the same is true for businesses. Like, there are great guiding principles and consistent themes of what you see in successful businesses like innovation, empowerment, you know, strong leadership, you know, all those kinds of things that, you know, you’ll see Adam Grant talk about and you hear like in the, you know, in the industry, in their journals. But you know, when a company’s not working and somehow I’ve built myself a bit of a specialty at kind of fixing the broken organizations. I think it comes from kind of my legal background and I don’t spook very easily and I’m really good with conflict and kind of difficulty. So I end up with businesses that, you know, they call me because they’re having a challenge, because it’s not working. So, you know, those are all the, you know, kind of unique set of problems and circumstances that contribute to that dysfunction, making each kind of unhappy business kind of unhappy in its own ways. So it’s really important to understand the goals, the goals and the culture and the personality. So, you know, an example that comes to mind is I did some recent kind of, I’ll call it culture reset work, but basically some companies were having some issues, kind of similar issues, but one was a nonprofit and one was a publicly traded international company. And they were kind of having the same issues and kind of the same themes across, like, lack of trust, leadership challenges, you know, really disincentivizing their employees. But as you can imagine, what it looked like in practice was really vastly different and the fixes were vastly different. Right. To get to the same outcomes of kind of building that trust, building the collaboration, you know, growing that strong leadership. So, you know, what works for kind of my tech and SaaS company clients, you know, doesn’t necessarily work with my, you know, manufacturing clients or nonprofit clients. So for me, this is the really exciting part of what I do, which is kind of getting to know new industries, people, places and kind of taking my kind of bag of skills and kind of ability and knowledge and again, comfort with kind of getting in and kind of bringing some order to the chaos across a wide portfolio of clients.

Mike: I was going to ask you if you had different kinds of specialties, but it sounds like you work with all kinds of different firms. And I do want to thank you for you being the first one to quote Tolstoy on our podcast. Like it had to happen at some point. Like, who knew that when that was going to be.

Madison: Leadership development is a big part of your work. What are some of the common traits or practices that distinguish high performing leaders?

Paula: Yeah, so I thought about this because, I think there’s, you know, there’s a lot of.. One of the things that I always get kind of annoyed about is people kind of the words that just become buzzwords in, you know, buzzwords in business. So I try to, I’m going to try to stay away from those or at least kind of describe them, you know, more tangibly. So the first thing I would say is self awareness. I think it’s really important for leaders to be aware of how others see them, how they impact others. So sometimes people talk about your wake as a leader, like really understanding how it is you show up. The next thing I would say is comfort with conflict. So going back to what I said earlier, that, you know, I kind of tend to find myself in organizations that kind of aren’t working or have a little bit of dysfunction. A lot of that dysfunction comes from kind of unaddressed conflict. So I could go on about this all day. But as a leader, you need to know when to make decisions. You need to understand sometimes you need to be the, “bad guy”. Doesn’t mean you need to be a jerk, but you need to be clear. You need to be decisive. And I think a lot of leaders aren’t comfortable doing that. And that’s where dysfunction creeps in. You know, authenticity is a big one that people talk about. And for me it’s really just kind of being, being honest, being open, being yourself. Like, I would much rather fail as my, you know, as who I really am, rather than try and succeed, you know, with the mask on or as someone else. And especially younger leaders that I work with, a lot of them are trying to, “be the leader” and kind of trying on different ways to do that. And that causes them some challenges. Curiosity, I think is really important. So for me, one of the biggest, you know, asking the right question is some of the biggest, you know, one of the most important things I can do, probably from the beginning of my career, starting out as a lawyer, but really, you know, knowing kind of, well, what do you want the outcome to be? Or tell me more about that, like keep people talking because usually the first thing you hear isn’t what you need to hear. And then I would say the last thing is especially in HR and leadership on a whole, but is knowing that you’re there to make money. I see a lot of folks like being afraid to, like kind of connect things to money or being like, we’re there to be profitable, like, you know, oh, well, it’s such a good idea. It’s the right thing to do. And, you know, we want to treat people well and that’s all right. But at the end of the day, you’re in a business. You’re there to make money, and if you don’t do that, you don’t have, you don’t have a business. This is true for my nonprofit clients, too. If you don’t have the revenue coming in and you’re not managing it well, you’re not going to be able to help people. So I think it’s really important to think about that, especially in the HR function, because I think a lot of HR folks kind of can miss that piece. And I think, especially as young leaders, really understanding how do you connect back to business goals being really important.

Mike: Yeah, I think that it’s sometimes from my own perspective, and I could be totally wrong about this. I feel like maybe it’s easy in the HR function to kind of get lost in the fact that you’re in there to make money because they’re not trying to bring in revenue. They’re not like closing deals. You know, they’re doing stuff like to make the corporation or a company, whatever, function better, but not necessarily focus on the bottom line like that. So it’s a good reminder that it is really important. And when you’re talking about the traits of leaders, conflict is the one I really have the hardest time with. I have to say, no problem being authentic. I’m decisive. But, you know, we grew up in a different. I’m 57. Grew up in a different time. Right. People are harsh all the time. Right. It’s just normal. And I’ve been trying purposefully to be nicer, and now it’s trying to balance, like, being nice with, like, being firm and making the right decision for the company. And, you know, it’s something I personally have to work at. I know it’s something that is important. And yeah, it’s who I am, I guess. And there’s not a whole lot of conflict because I’m the sole owner and I’m the boss. Like, you know, like, it’s not. It does make some of those things a lot easier. But, yeah, we want everybody to be reasonably happy in their jobs, have a good work life balance, do good things and be profitable for all of us. And it’s trying to figure out the balance of all that stuff. And it’s fun. It’s exciting. I like it.

Paula: Yeah.

Madison: All right, with workplaces evolving rapidly, what do you see as the biggest challenges HR professionals and businesses face today?

Paula: So I think the first one that comes to mind is one that folks have been talking about for a couple of years now, but is still really hot, is remote and flexible work. People at the end of the day, people want to be able to work remote, have a flexible and remote work schedule. I’m continuing to see clients with kind of a strict hardline in office or return to offices having a tough time recruiting. So that doesn’t mean you have to be remote first. What I tell clients is make your office time meaningful. So we’re really in a time where we’re redefining what it means to work in an office, understand the different impact across your various constituencies, across generations, across, you know, ability and disability, across where folks are in their life cycle, etc. And what I always say to clients that you know, are feeling the tension because many of my clients are feeling this tension. I have a few that are remote first clients, which is a whole different kind of tension. But most of my clients are like, we need people in the office. We want people in the office for some period of time. And you know, my, my best recommendation for them is to have clear guidelines and firm guidelines and flexible policies. So, you know, have your standards of maybe so many days a week or so many days a month in the office and have some flexible ways to kind of get there, make sure you’re bringing people back. Not just because you have a lease that you’re paying for and there’s nobody in the desk, but, you know, what does it mean to have people in the office and what do you want them to do there? So are you going to have, you know, kind of standard work in the office days so you’re not coming into the office and being the only one there. You’re coming in and being able to have some of those meetings, meaningful conversations. And then thinking about the compliance perspective. So I do have some work from anywhere or hire from anywhere clients, which sounds great in theory, but then they realize that they went from having 100 employees working in two states, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to have 100 employees working in 15 states with one or two digital nomads. And what does that mean? So you’ve just taken your HR administration and compliance from something that’s pretty easy to manage, 100 employees in two state to something that’s really, really complex. You know, when you have many, every state you add, adds complexity and God help you if you go to California and all of those kinds of things. So really thinking through those things. So that’s the first one. Secondly, I’ll say AI is on the top of everyone’s mind. So I would say I think that’s going to be a big conversation in 2025. There was, I’m going to do a LinkedIn post about this a couple of days, but there’s a recent study by Slack that shows CEOs and business leaders, you know, 97, 96, something like that, high 90s percent of them that were surveyed are investing in AI. They want to use AI to kind of automate and move their business forward. And about 50 to 60% of employees are afraid of using it because they think their boss is going to think they’re lazy or they’re stupid or they’re cheating or something like that. So it’s a big disconnect. So back to the idea of making, making sure you’re incentivizing the right outcomes. You know, I see a lot of companies that are afraid of AI on one level and putting in restrictive policies. If you can’t use AI, you have to get all of these, you know, going to go through these gates to use AI, which is important because you don’t want people uploading confidential information to Chatgpt and things like that. But the policy is focused on kind of the negative and the protection. Whereas on the other side, you’re kind of putting in a lot of investing money to use AI and you’re not really kind of telling the story and connecting the dots in the right way. So kind of focusing on what that means in 2025, particularly from an HR perspective, because you’re going to be the ones helping to bridge that gap between the business and the employees of how to get folks to really use the big investments that companies are making in this technology.

Mike: Right, right. Yeah. The remote flexible work thing is a, is a hard challenge. We, you know, our company is small enough that it’s not too bad. Right. And nobody’s in the office five days a week other than there’s a handful of clients that we meet on Fridays. Right. So we’ll ordinarily work from home on Fridays. But then beside that, it’s when clients are coming in or when we need to meet. And yeah, it’s hard because you want to be reasonable and fair. And then, you know, we also pay all this rent and like, we’re, we’re starting to get pretty full. But the thought of like paying to go somewhere bigger and all the improvements you would need to make, to make the space ours where we’re only full about six hours a week. That’s a hard one. You know, like any afternoon here, it’s not that crowded. And so, yeah, everybody’s doing good work, and we’re all located in Pennsylvania, so. So from an HR standpoint, it’s not so bad, but, yeah, it’s an interesting challenge. Maddie, do you know anybody whose boss encourages them to use AI in their job?

Madison: With podcasting, sometimes, yes.

Mike: Yeah. Maddie uses it sometimes to help get some ideas, review articles, right? Like a long article. I’m like, hey, can you look at this? And you know, sometimes I’ll give her like a two page article and it’s like, okay, maybe we could summarize this a little bit and then get some better ideas from it. It really helps with a lot of that flow.

Paula: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there’s a lot of benefit for it. I mean, even using the big publicly available like ChatGPT’s and things like that. I mean, if you’re not, if you’re not putting confidential information up there, I mean, it’s a great way to, you know, I mean, for me, it’s a great way to just start writing and not look at the blank page. Because you can go into ChatGPT and like, I want to talk about, you know, helping people get more comfortable with conflict. And it’ll give you. It’ll give you something to start with. And it’s like, you know, some people make the mistake of then just taking that and kind of using it. But, you know, a smart way to do it is then you kind of, as you said, you know, it gives you ideas, it gives you a place to help prompt your thinking. I mean, it can be a great kind of back and forth, back and forth way to use it. So I think there’s a lot of positive ways to use even the kind of broad, generally available AIs to kind of summarize articles, analyze data, things like that, without risking, you know, confidential information. And then I guess I think one more thing I want to flag about 2025 is there’s a lot of the articles and kind of writing and, you know, there’s a lot of conversation about just the uncertainty that’s coming potentially in 2025. So not to get super political, but, I mean, there is an expectation with the new administration that, you know, we’re likely going to see policy changes that impact the workplace. Already seeing some, not related to the administration change directly, but there was the anticipated change to the FLSA overtime rule that was going to raise the threshold. So at risk of requiring more people to get paid overtime, that was just put on pause. So their employers kind of dialing back changes they were going to make. And, you know, people who think and write about these things, a lot of them are, you know, predicting some of the changes that we could see coming to the workplace at the federal level. So there’s that. And then we also know that if the federal government makes changes, then states might react and kind of make their own changes, or localities. I mean, we see cities like Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco kind of have some of their own standards for people that are within their jurisdiction. Or industries, sometimes you just start to see companies, especially if they’re big companies like Google, Amazon, you know, start to make changes that others in the industry will then follow. So I would say for employers, it’s just really important to kind of stay in the know, understand what’s happening, and, you know, get some good advice for what it may mean for your workforce planning and potentially be ready to respond in real time. Because there could be some. Could be some changes coming in 2025. And even if they don’t really happen, there’s the anxiety that people have around the conversation that changes could happen in 2025 that really impact the workforce as well.

Mike: Right. One of the things we’ve been talking about for a lot of clients in the financial end is wait till something’s potentially going to be law. Like, a lot of stuff gets floated by the president elect. And so, like, don’t get hung up on what you think might happen, because it may or may not. And, like, you’re going to give yourself a lot of anxiety that maybe can be avoided. You know, wait till they’re voting on stuff and then, then, you know, plan accordingly and, you know, be aware of what’s going on. And I would encourage listeners, we’ll have links to your socials on this and follow Paula on LinkedIn. So keep abreast of what’s going on.

Paula: Yeah, and that’s great advice, Mike, to kind of wait for things to get really close, closer to implementation. I think a lot of times in HR when I talk to clients, they can get a little bit of whiplash because they’ll have, you know, their CEO or others on their executive team saying, hey, I heard about this. Is this going to happen? What do you know? Like, you know, we need a plan for this and really kind of understanding how to kind of calm that down a little bit to say, yep, we know, we see it. We’re going to plan for it. Here’s kind of our plan to plan. But as you said, Mike, you know, not putting too much, you know, not putting too much effort in, too much energy before you have to.

Mike: Sure. Like, so with the tax and estate planning, a lot of the financial rules change all the time. Right. Like, somebody asked if RMD rules ever change. I’m like, yeah, they’ve changed constantly for the last 25 years. They haven’t not changed. There’s a conversation we had this morning. So, yeah, you have to know what’s coming about and, like, plan to plan. Like, in some areas, there’s so much more stuff that is talked about than actually does change. And so it makes it hard, and I do think it makes people a little bit nervous or anxious, and, you know, there’s not a whole lot you can do about that.

Madison: What do you believe is the most misunderstood aspect of HR leadership, and how do you aim to reshape that perception?

Paula: Yeah, so I think we touched on it a little bit already, and, you know, I think I would kind of give it the headline of really refocusing HR as being business leaders. You know, I could stand on this soapbox all day, so I’ll try and keep this short and direct, but, you know, I think HR as a function can have a bit of an identity crisis at times and really need to kind of lean into their role as business leaders. You know, I’ll hear a lot of, you know, kind of people lamenting, especially on social media, that, oh, HR isn’t your friend. Or, you know, HR is kind of the unsung hero of the business world. And, you know, I think that, you know, HR isn’t supposed to be your friend. You know, HR is there to kind of manage, you know, how people are treated in a business, make sure that people are kind of being kind of treated fairly developed, etc. But at the end of the day, you know, as we said earlier, you’re there as a business leader. You’re there to make money. You’re there to move the business forward. So, you know, one of the ways I coach some HR leaders is, you know, we all know, you know, something like a wellness program is a nice idea and it’s the right thing to do, but, you know, nobody can afford everything they want just because it’s a nice idea, the right thing to do. Why is it this nice idea? Why is this the right thing to do that you’re going to invest your money in? So, sure, the idea of hosting a wellness event is nice, but when you take it to the CFO and she’s like, why? Like, I’m not, like, convince me. This isn’t really compelling. You know, you want to have data, you want to say, you know, this kind of program can, you know, I’m kind of making this up. But the data is out there, you know, can reduce the cost of our medical plan experience by 1% per year. You know, or at the end of the year, you say, hey, remember that wellness program we did? It saved about $350,000 in medical plan cost. It reduced our absenteeism rate by 4%. You know, things like that. So not being afraid to lean in and putting dollars and data behind the right thing to do, like dollars in data don’t kind of make it less of the right thing to do. And I think sometimes HR leaders kind of don’t want to talk about that. They want to kind of just move forward and kind of focus on, kind of, focus on kind of the, kind of the fairness, kind of the right thing to do. But you’re a business leader. You can care and you can be fair, which is a, which is what HR is there to do and treat people fairly. But, you know, you’re there as a business leader. You have to understand how the business works. You have to understand what your incentives are. And I guarantee you, if you are an HR leader that can talk about how you’re going to help make the company money and you’re going to talk about, you know, the metrics and the return on your investment, you’re going to have a seat at the table, you’re going to be in those conversations. People are going to want to hear about, you know, how what you’re proposing is going to reduce turnover, reduce, you know. all kinds of different costs. So I think that’s one of the most kind of misunderstood aspects of how HR leaders can plug in and be really effective as business leaders.

Mike: That’s great. Thank you. Really good.

Madison: All right. If you could give one piece of advice to business leaders looking to improve their HR practices, what would it be?

Paula: I think I would say get the foundations right. You know, I feel like sometimes HR is the last, you’re kind of the last piece to be addressed. And maybe it’s related to what we just talked about, is HR kind of, not necessarily kind of being seen as a business leader, kind of connecting their work to those metrics and their cost and ability to drive profitability, but kind of building strong strategy and operations are really important for any organization. Even smaller organizations. Sometimes I get the questions of, you know, I only have 75 employees, do I need to think about HR? Yes, you do. Yes. You might not need, you know, a full sophisticated CHRO on your team, but you need to be thinking about your people practices. So, you know, making sure that what you’re putting in place for your people supports your culture and goals. I think be guided by common sense. And we touched on this a little earlier, that, you know, sometimes you can have these really complex kind of policies and processes, especially if you’re taking cookie cutter things off the box that just really don’t work. When you kind of look at them and you’re like, a person didn’t build this, like one person, like, how is somebody going to kind of engage with this? So, you know, always ask yourself, does it work? Like, are people really going to be able to engage with this kind of keeping fairness and equity in mind, you know, creating those kind of strong practices that allow that flexibility. But people want to feel like they’re treated fairly even if they don’t get what they want. I’ve found a lot of times if people feel like they’re being treated fairly, they feel like they were heard, they might not be happy with the outcome, but they’re going to be a lot less angry and be able to swallow it easier. And then I would say lastly is as you’re building those foundations, really take the time to test your investment and practices. One thing I see with a lot of companies, especially those that are growing or going through a lot of M and A deals and things like that, is they can change really quickly and kind of chase the new, kind of the new bright shiny toy of, oh, we need a new, we need a new tech system, we need a new practice. We need to redo our comp philosophy. It’s important to monitor things and make tweaks if they’re not working for you. But sometimes you just kind of need to let things sit and breathe a bit. I have a client that put in a comp philosophy a couple of months ago and they’re already talking about, like, oh, well, I don’t know if it’s really going to work. We’re going to need to do this, that and the other thing. And it’s like, but you haven’t even been through a, you haven’t even been through a cycle yet. You know, like, what are the concerns? So back to my curiosity. Tell me more. Like, where is this coming from? What’s making you think that, you know, there’s something that might not be working? And let’s address that. But you know, sometimes it’s always not the bright, shiny new thing that you need. It’s really kind of testing and adapting what you already have.

Mike: Right, Very well said. Sometimes the bright shiny thing is great, and other times, like, you don’t really need it. What purpose does it serve? That’s good stuff. Made me think about something that a situation we had in here where I think somebody was a little unhappy about something. And then when I had a conversation with her and told her the metrics we used to come up with the compensation plan, I think that she realized that it wasn’t just, like, throwing stuff out. We use a Schwab survey for other advisors in our area, and we pay at the 80th percentile. And for firms in a, like, thing. And then when I think when she heard all that, she’s like, oh, okay. Like, that makes sense. And, you know, that’s good. But, yeah, I think that, you know, it’s hard to always know when someone feels that they’re not being heard or understood. Right. And I’m not, it may be surprising, but I’m not really an outgoing guy. Like, I would tend to gravitate towards the computer or a book or a phone. And so I don’t always know. Like, my wife saves me on social cues all the time. All the time. And so. Yeah. But it’s a, it’s a really good point. I love that, Paul, so much stuff that you’ve talked about, like, is very relatable to me. Even with a very small business and seven employees. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on. And, yeah, it’s good. The firms that you work with and you said they’ve been all kinds of different. Like how many employees do they typically have? I mean there’s probably like the global enterprises might be giant, but like what’s on the small side like for like any local, like Bucks County or Mercer County business?

Paula: Yeah, I mean it really depends on what the engagement, on what the engagement is. So I have kind of been like, kind of have like an on call advisory with, with firms that are as small as like 15, 20 people, you know, because as you well know, I mean if you have one employee, you have the risk that you need to have challenging performance conversations, you might need to have termination conversations, you know, all of those kinds of things. So you know, typically if I’m doing more of like the fractional CHRO engagement, I’m probably more like you know, 20 to you know, a few hundred because you know that’s more of the kind of, kind of, kind of go in and get your hands dirty, help build things. Kind of build, build performance review processes, build feedback processes, help them set up their kind of compensation plans, benefit plans, things like that. You know, for companies above, like kind of the bigger companies, like when I’m into the thousands, it’s often kind of filling in, you know, kind of interim roles. Like they’re between HROs, you know, maybe their VP of Employee Relations is out on, you know, parental leave and they need someone to kind of fill in. They have particular, kind of particular needs about building something or you know, kind of additional support. So it really runs the gamut. I think I would say my sweet spot is really kind of that 50 to thousand person company where they need that kind of the fractional support or the interim support to keep their day to day businesses running or to kind of kind of come in and give them like a, kind of give them a booster, a tune up or help them when things get, you know, when things get a little more challenging.

Mike: Okay, that sounds great. I’m glad you said that. The scope of the engagement could be really varied. There’s a lot of different parts of HR that maybe the firm can’t handle some aspect for some reason and needs ongoing fractional help or interim help if, you know, if somebody’s out for some reason or something. That’s great, great. Thanks for explaining that.

Paula: Yeah.

Madison: What is a recent success story or project that you are particularly proud of?

Paula: Yeah, so I think this actually might extend the conversation that we were just having a little bit. So the first thing that comes to mind is a client that I started working with a few, a while ago, I would say a few years ago, they were being purchased by a PE firm. So they were being spun off by their parent company. So the CEO brought me in because all of their HR folks were staying with the parent company and they didn’t have any HR person to help them through kind of the M and A deal and kind of manage the people they were bringing with them. So kind of went in to help the company move from, you know, move through that purchase being purchased by the PE company. They kept me on once the PE company bought it. Then while I was there, I navigated a CEO transition. The CEO that brought me in exited, new CEO came in. That CEO decided to keep me on and I worked with him and the leadership team to really build the team and reorganize the business. They had a couple of M and A deals then that they were already planning. So kind of worked through those additional M and A deals, moved to have a global footprint, built that global backbone out and then hired my replacement. So hired the CHRO that was going to come in behind me to replace me and then kind of build the team out from there. So why I love it is I still engage with them so they have like a fully staffed up HR team. They’re continuing to grow and I still kind of dip back in with them a couple of times a year for various projects. I mean, I know the company, interestingly I built many of the processes that they’ve now scaled with them that they’re still using. So I can ramp up really quickly and easily. I mean, I’m proud that I feel like I can ramp up pretty quickly with any new client. But this client isn’t really a ramp up and the people know me and the leadership team knows me. And for me, I love it that, you know, it feels great to see how they’ve grown. I mean, they’re kind of multiple sizes larger than when I was working with them, which is great. And for me this is really the essence of kind of what I do and kind of the fractional HR model. So you can dive in for a purpose. You can dive in and kind of stay with a company longer term. So with that first span, I was with them for a little over a year while I was kind of navigating the sale, the transition, all of that. Then I kind of got out and then kind of dove back in for particular projects. So either to just help them with capacity when they were, you know, understaffed or help them, you know, with a particular, you know, strategic needs. So I’m really proud of that. I love that relationship with them. And like I said, it’s really kind of the essence of when I think of people often say, well, what does a fractional CHRO do? It’s now one of those kind of trending things that people talk about that, as I said earlier, you know, I kind of hate the buzzwords, but for me, that’s what it really is. I mean, it kind of takes. For me, it differentiates an HR consultant, which I don’t know if it’s because I got to start as, you know, a lawyer. And lawyers always tend to be skeptical of consultants, I’ve found. But when I think of a consultant, I think of somebody that comes in and kind of tells you how to do it and say, oh, well, Mike, for your seven employees, you should have a compensation plan and you should use the Schwab and, you know, pay at the 80th percentile. Good luck with that. Like, you know, I mean, that’s a little short, but, like, that’s more of the consultative style. I mean, for me, when you say fractional CHRO, it’s, I’m going to come in and get my hands dirty with you. I’m going to get to know your company. I’m going to do it. You know, I’ve implemented HRIS systems. I’ve done compensation plans. Like, I will come in and function as a member of your leadership team. So for this client, I sat on the leadership team. I went to their kind of leadership retreats. For all intents and purposes, to them, I was their CHRO. So there’s that level and then there’s, as I mentioned earlier, kind of the more kind of outside counsel type, which is, you know, I’m on, you know, you have me on retainer for a couple hours a month. Just don’t worry, pick up the phone, give me a call, send me the email.

Mike: Yeah, okay, great.

Madison: If listeners can take away just one thing from this conversation, what would you want it to be?

Paula: I think is, you know, build strong foundations for your HR. Having custom built HR processes and foundations for your business is essential. You know, HR can be a really strong partner in building your business. Your people, your people are what make or break your business. I know it seems cliche and we hear it all the time, but it really is. You need to have the right talent at the right time in the right roles or, you know, your, your business is not going to thrive. So that is the most important thing for any business, no matter your size. And I think it’s never easier than now to kind of get that support regardless of the size of your business. You know, between you know, finding folks, you know, on LinkedIn and other services and again, being able to kind of buy, kind of buy what you need when you need it with, you know, a fractional model, a consulting model, you know, all of those kinds of things. It’s out there. There’s, you know, great software platforms, you know, PEO providers that can help you, you know, manage the entire employee life cycle from beginning to end. You know, figuring out what you need and getting that right is, is really important. And the clients that I see that have some of the biggest challenges are the ones that let their people practices lag and then they kind of see the symptoms of kind of, you know, exiting talent, not being able to get talent, you know, not being able to achieve their business outcomes.

Madison: All right, Paula, just one more quick question. Where can our listeners learn more about you?

Paula: They can follow me on LinkedIn at Paula Zimmerman or they can check out my website, www.prosonder.com.

Madison: Wonderful.

Mike: Excellent. Paula this was great. Thank you so much.

Paula: Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation. This was fantastic.

Madison: So for more information on Yardley Wealth Management or Yardley Estate Planning, you could visit our websites at yardleywealth.net and yardleyestate.net. You can also follow us on socials at Yardley Wealth Management. Don’t forget to smash the like button if you enjoyed this episode. This podcast has been Produced by Madison DeMora and Mike Garry, with technical and artistic help from Poe Productions.