NOW of Work Mercer

JESS VON BANK, and Jason Averbook are joined by special guests: Sarah Mink, Principal Consultant & Advisor, Mercer; Traci Tenkely, IT Project Manager at City of Chandler, Arizona; Kristen Poe, IT Project Manager at City of Chandler, Arizona.

On this episode of the Digital Meetup, we discussed how the City of Chandler has successfully built and maintained a strong organizational culture, as well as exploring the potential benefits of a new ERP system in enhancing employee engagement and connectivity.

About the City of Chandler:
Chandler, Arizona has built a reputation as a Community of Innovation. Life in Chandler goes beyond a thriving and dynamic business community with progressive entrepreneurship. Known for its rich diversity, the city offers an outstanding quality of life for all generations with great schools and recreational opportunities. Chandler has grown to become the state's fourth largest city with a population of more than 285,000. Chandler has been named one of the nation's Best Places to Find a Job and Best Cities for Women in Tech. The city also is one of the safest communities in the nation and boasts AAA bond ratings from all three national rating agencies, one of only 40 communities to achieve this distinction. For more information, visit the city website, or connect with Chandler on social media.

Please join us in welcoming Andrew Hartman, Founder Time Boss!

Burnout, stress, and anxiety are omnipresent in the modern workplace. But it doesn't have to be this way for business leaders looking to make an impact while balancing their professional and personal lives.

Andrew Hartman is the Founder of Time Boss, an organization that helps leaders and their teams reinvent their relationships with time to get more done with less stress and anxiety. For the last 2 decades, Andrew has been a high-level professional managing his own schedule while working in marketing tech firms and software startups. About 5 years into his career, he began to burn out when he found there was more to do than there was time in the day. At 27, as the stress and anxiety built up, Andrew lost his sense of smell for six months.

“I decided to learn everything I could about making massive progress on my strategic priorities while maintaining my mental health so my family and well-being wouldn't be left in shambles.”

So, Andrew started implementing new habits to manage his time, allowing him to close the computer at the end of the day without stress. And it worked.

He has taken all he has learned over the years to build a simple system that helps business leaders avoid the same mistakes and chaos. The Time Boss Model is a distilled version of 15 years of learning. Andrew has run the experiments, made the mistakes, learned what works and what doesn't.

TUNE IN as we explore the common issues faced in time management among professionals, the addiction to the stress cycle, and practical tips for effective time management and setting healthy work boundaries.

After a decade as the Founder/CEO of Jibe and then serving as an executive at iCIMS, Joe Essenfeld is embarking on a new entrepreneurial adventure as Founder & CEO of Fora, an innovative executive relationship management (ERM) platform poised to transform C-suite decision-making through cutting-edge AI technology.

In today’s corporate environment, there’s a relentless influx of data which places a high demand on executive bandwidth. Fora addresses this challenge directly by sourcing essential insights from the overwhelming buildup of information generated by organizations, allowing leaders to concentrate on strategic decision making and relationship building. Fora is committed to enhancing the strategic capabilities of executive leaders across medium to large enterprises. Emphasizing the platform's unique position, Essenfeld notes, "In a landscape dominated by AI solutions designed for widespread use among knowledge and task workers, Fora stands apart by specifically serving the C-suite. Going beyond enhancing decision-making capabilities, Fora ensures the highest levels of safety and security. Our platform acts as a safeguard for executive leaders, integrating AI to support strategic decisions while conscientiously minimizing organizational liability related to the retention of meeting recordings and transcripts. This careful approach advances leadership effectiveness and protects sensitive information, establishing Fora as a vital ally for the C-suite in navigating AI adoption with confidence and reduced risk."

Prior to Jibe and iCIMS, Essenfeld worked as the chief operating officer at Insomnia Cookies, a private equity backed cookie delivery company. He led operations, achieved triple-digit revenue growth, quadrupled the number of locations, and grew the employee base to more than 150 full-time staffers. Essenfeld launched his career at Dartcor Food Services, a corporate dining services company in the tri-state area, serving as a vice president after graduating Cornell University. While still a student at Cornell, he joined the executive team of Nightfunk, a venture capital-backed national network of online entertainment guides for college students. He helped to expand it to more than 120 campuses throughout North America.

Please join us in welcoming Skai Dalziel and Joe Facciolo, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of Guusto! Today's discussion will delve into Guusto's history of building a culture of recognition from the head office to the frontlines.

Old pals, Skai Dalziel and Joe Facciolo, go all the way back to 1988 when they grew up together in a small town just north of Toronto. They both attended the University of Western Ontario, where Joe studied Psychology and Sociology, while Skai studied Engineering and Business. After graduating, they both traveled the world for a few years before returning home in the midst of the global financial crisis.

In 2008, they kickstarted their first business venture, Dining Tours (think high-end food and wine crawls). Despite local success, they were unable to expand without strong relationships with restaurants in other cities. Around 2012, Skai and Joe noticed that restaurants would often receive calls from people requesting to send a drink to a friend for a celebration or to show appreciation to a client. However, the staff would often refuse to take credit cards over the phone. Aha! There should be an app for this!

From 2012 to 2017, the pal duo built Guusto from the ground up. They partnered with a clean drinking water foundation that fueled their motivation. They pitched the product of Guusto to the Dragon's Den but walked away without a deal. They were also the first to raise equity crowdfunding in Canada. Around that time, they started working with HR leaders to build more robust employee recognition tools. They focused all their energy on customers and solving their problems.

After receiving a 1-star review on Glassdoor in 2019, Guusto recognized the irony of selling employee recognition tools but not using them internally. After this epiphany, Guusto completely transformed their business. The secret ingredient? CULTURE! Culture is the ultimate advantage.

"Everything I do, I believe in challenging the status quo... I believe in thinking differently." Chris Long is an experienced and forward-thinking leader in human resources and people strategy, with over 20 years of expertise. Recognized for his innovative strategies in improving company performance, Chris provides specialized consulting, advisory, content, and research services through Elev8’s unique offerings like Acceler8, Calibr8, and Articul8. These modern solutions offer businesses a different approach to achieving success in an ever-changing competitive environment. As a highly sought-after speaker, Chris has made it his mission to help organizations journey into the future of work. Elev8 is not a conventional advisory company. It is a collaborative exchange of ideas, knowledge, experimentation, and support for: growth, scale and change. They bridge the gap between buyers and vendors bringing together forward-thinking insights to help optimize HR tech investments, Strategies & Processes, and People Operations for maximum effectiveness in today's environment. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from Chris Long! Let's challenge the status quo and think differently together!

The Founder & CEO of Raven Intelligence, Bonnie Tinder, along with Mercer Senior Principal, Jim Holincheck, join Jess Von Bank and Jason Averbook for this special epeisode of the Now of Work Digital Meetup! They talk about all things Enterprise Software Implementation, Projects & more!

Raven Intelligence is a free online community that helps customers select the best consulting partner for their HR software project and ensure success. It was created to help customers make an informed decision about their Enterprise Software Implementation partner. As someone who has been in the HR Technology space for 25+ years, Bonnie saw a need to help raise awareness and transparency into project work. While analysis on cloud software features and functions is voluminous, the analysis of the actual project work to get those systems implemented was non-existent…until now. Raven Intelligence is fulfilling that need, while making the selection process easy & more fun. Choose your partner confidently knowing all of your options.

Jim Holincheck has more than 30 years of experience in the HCM technology industry. He has spent his entire career working with customers to strategize, select, implement, support, and optimize their usage of enterprise applications. He leads our Workforce and HR Technology practice. As a seasoned industry veteran, Jim brings a wealth of practical insight to the role.Before joining Mercer, Jim joined Workday in 2012 and led Services Strategy and Marketing before moving into the product management organization to launch the Customer Deployment (Adoption) Applications team. Tune in!