HR Happy Hour Network

AI for Frontline Workers: Creating a Better Employee Experience
Hosts: Steve Boese
Guest: Gretchen Alarcon, GVP/GM of HCM and Payroll at UKG

Summary
On this episode of the HR Happy Hour, Steve Boese is joined by Gretchen Alarcon to explore how AI can help organizations create a better experience for frontline workers while also helping managers make smarter workforce decisions.
Gretchen shares how UKG is approaching AI from both sides of the employee experience. For workers, that can mean making everyday tasks—like requesting time off, understanding a paycheck, accessing support, or navigating a leave of absence—faster and easier. For managers, AI can bring together information about skills, availability, overtime, scheduling, and workforce needs to help them make more informed decisions.
The conversation also looks at the connection between schedule stability, skills, pay, and retention. For frontline employees, knowing when they will work and what they will earn matters. AI can help organizations create schedules that meet operational needs while considering the people behind those schedules. It can also connect employees with training and certifications that may lead to additional hours, greater earning potential, and new opportunities.
Steve and Gretchen also discuss the role employers can play in supporting financial wellness, including greater pay transparency, earned wage access, and helping employees better understand the resources available to them.
As organizations prepare for 2027, Gretchen offers a simple framework for thinking about the frontline workforce: find them, enable them, and keep them. That means finding people with the right skills, continuously developing the workforce with accessible learning, and creating an experience that gives employees the clarity and support they need to stay.

Topics include:
How AI can simplify everyday HR interactions for frontline employees
Why schedule stability can have a direct impact on employee retention
Connecting skills and certifications to hours, pay, and career opportunities
Financial wellness and support for employees living paycheck to paycheck
Preparing frontline employees for an AI-enabled workplace
How leaders should think about finding, enabling, and retaining frontline talent in 2027


Thank you for joining the show today! Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

Workhuman is a proud supporter of the HR Happy Hour Network.
Here’s a wild stat: 6 in 10 employees have never been meaningfully recognized for a work anniversary. Think about that. Five, 10, 20 years of someone’s life — and too often, the moment falls flat. Workhuman’s Service Milestones® makes recognition more personal, memorable, and impactful. Milestone tracking happens automatically through your HRIS, the right colleagues are inspired to share stories and congratulations, and employees get access to rewards they actually want.
Ready to make your milestones meet the moment with Workhuman? Click the banner on this episode’s page or follow the link in the show notes to learn more.

Making Change Stick: How HR Leaders Build Trust, Alignment, and Adoption
Hosts: Mervyn Dinnen
Guest: Amanda Arrowsmith, Executive Director of People and Culture at the Royal British Legion

Summary
In this episode of HR Means Business, Mervyn is joined by Amanda Arrowsmith to explore what it takes to lead meaningful organizational change.
Amanda shares why successful transformation starts by connecting every initiative back to organizational purpose and strategy. She also explains why organizations sometimes need to do less, slow down, and create stronger foundations before moving forward. Rather than measuring success simply by whether a project launches on schedule, leaders need to consider whether people can actually adopt the change and whether it improves how work gets done. A major part of that process is the role of managers. Amanda describes managers as the “secret sauce” of successful change because they are the people translating organizational decisions into everyday conversations with employees. Giving managers early information, practical tools, space to ask difficult questions, and a clear understanding of the “why” helps them communicate change in ways that make sense for their individual teams.
The conversation also explores employee voice, change fatigue, resistance, and the importance of allowing employees to make sense of change for themselves rather than telling them how they should feel about it. Amanda explains that leaders need to recognize the potential loss of agency and identity that can accompany even positive changes and create space for people to work through those reactions.

Key Takeaways
Turning long-term organizational strategy into manageable stages of change
Why successful transformation requires prioritization and organizational capacity
Building alignment between strategy, leaders, teams, and everyday work
Creating meaningful employee voice without requiring consensus on every decision
Recognizing and responding to change fatigue and resistance
Measuring change through both business outcomes and employee behavior

Thank you for your continued support of the show and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

Workhuman is a proud supporter of the HR Happy Hour Network.

Here’s a wild stat: 6 in 10 employees have never been meaningfully recognized for a work anniversary. Think about that. Five, 10, 20 years of someone’s life — and too often, the moment falls flat. Workhuman’s Service Milestones® makes recognition more personal, memorable, and impactful. Milestone tracking happens automatically through your HRIS, the right colleagues are inspired to share stories and congratulations, and employees get access to rewards they actually want.

Ready to make your milestones meet the moment with Workhuman? Click the banner on this episode’s page or follow the link in the show notes to learn more.

Take a Different Seat: What Are We Really Looking for at HR Tech Events?
Host: Chris Havrilla, Podcast Host & Founder of AI Alchemists™
Guests: Joanna Clark and Matthew Brown

Summary
What are you looking for when you walk into an HR technology conference? A new solution? The latest AI announcement? A vendor shortlist? A glimpse at where the market is headed?
In the debut episode of Take a Different Seat, host Chris Havrilla starts with that seemingly simple question and invites two experienced HR technology leaders to examine it from very different seats.
From the buyer perspective to the vendor and customer experience side, the conversation explores what really happens when organizations, technology providers, and practitioners come together at industry events. The answer turns out to have far less to do with collecting product information and much more to do with understanding the problems organizations are actually trying to solve.
The discussion digs into the growing disconnect between buyers and sellers, the pressure to adopt AI, and the danger of applying new technology to processes built for yesterday’s work. Instead of starting with a product or feature list, the group makes the case for starting with the business problem, asking better questions, and staying curious long enough to understand what a solution will actually mean inside a specific organization. As the conversation progresses, another important gap emerges: the difference between what technology looks like in a demo and what it takes to make that technology successful on day one. Buyers may not always know what questions to ask, while providers can easily allow their own talking points to drive the conversation. The challenge for both sides is to move beyond the pitch and get closer to the realities of the work, the organization, and the people who will ultimately use the technology.
And by the end of the episode, the original question has changed. Instead of asking people at the next industry event, “What are you here to see?”, perhaps the better question is: “What do you need to learn more about?”

Topics Include
Why the same HR technology event looks very different depending on the seat you're sitting in
How buyers can move from shopping for solutions to understanding the business problem
Why AI is exposing old processes rather than automatically fixing them
The disconnect between technology demos and the reality of implementation
Why learning, curiosity, and better questions matter more as technology changes faster


Thank you for joining the show today! Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

Workhuman is a proud supporter of the HR Happy Hour Network.
Here’s a wild stat: 6 in 10 employees have never been meaningfully recognized for a work anniversary. Think about that. Five, 10, 20 years of someone’s life — and too often, the moment falls flat. Workhuman’s Service Milestones® makes recognition more personal, memorable, and impactful. Milestone tracking happens automatically through your HRIS, the right colleagues are inspired to share stories and congratulations, and employees get access to rewards they actually want.
Ready to make your milestones meet the moment with Workhuman? Click the banner on this episode’s page or follow the link in the show notes to learn more.

The HR Happy Hour Network Welcomes "Take a Different Seat"
Hosts: Steve Boese & Trish Steed
Guest: Chris Havrilla, Podcast Host & Founder of AI Alchemists™

Summary
The HR Happy Hour Media Network is welcoming a new show to the network: Take a Different Seat, hosted by longtime technology strategist, analyst, advisor, and product leader Chris Havrilla.
In this introductory conversation, Steve and Trish sit down with Chris to talk about the idea behind the new series, the experiences she brings to it, and why perspective matters more than ever as organizations navigate AI, technology, work, and increasingly consequential decisions. The premise behind Take a Different Seat is simple: better decisions begin with better questions, and better questions emerge when we are willing to see a problem from perspectives beyond our own. Rather than beginning each episode with a predetermined answer, Chris will start with a consequential question, bring together different perspectives, challenge assumptions, and see whether the conversation leads to an even better question.
Chris also shares how her career across research, advisory, product strategy, and technology has shaped the new show. Her experience spans organizations including Deloitte and Oracle, where she worked through the rapid evolution of generative and agentic AI and saw firsthand how technological change creates new legal, ethical, operational, financial, and human questions for organizations. Together, they explore why context matters when making technology and workforce decisions, why organizations cannot simply hand responsibility for consequential decisions over to AI, and why leaders need to become more comfortable examining issues from more than one seat.
As Chris puts it, sometimes the most valuable outcome isn't finding the answer. It's discovering the question you should have been asking in the first place.

Topics include:
The idea behind Take a Different Seat and what listeners can expect
Why perspective and intellectual humility are becoming essential leadership skills
How better questions can lead to better organizational decisions
Chris's experience across AI, product strategy, research, and advisory work
Why AI is creating new questions around accountability, transparency, and decision-making


Thank you for joining the show today! Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

Workhuman is a proud supporter of the HR Happy Hour Network.
Here’s a wild stat: 6 in 10 employees have never been meaningfully recognized for a work anniversary. Think about that. Five, 10, 20 years of someone’s life — and too often, the moment falls flat. Workhuman’s Service Milestones® makes recognition more personal, memorable, and impactful. Milestone tracking happens automatically through your HRIS, the right colleagues are inspired to share stories and congratulations, and employees get access to rewards they actually want.
Ready to make your milestones meet the moment with Workhuman? Click the banner on this episode’s page or follow the link in the show notes to learn more.

From Low-Wage Work to Career Opportunity: Building Better Talent Pathways
Host: Steve Boese
Guest: Connor Diamond-Yauman, Co-CEO of Merit America

Summary
In this episode of At Work in America, Steve is joined by Connor Diemand-Yauman, for a conversation about economic mobility, workforce development, and creating stronger pathways from low-wage work into sustainable careers.
Connor shares the story behind Merit America and the realization that helped inspire its work: access to education alone does not necessarily create opportunity. The conversation explores their work with adults in low-wage jobs and why human coaching has become such an important part of its model. While learners may initially come for credentials in areas such as IT support, project management, cybersecurity, or semiconductor technology, Connor explains that many ultimately identify coaching as one of the most transformational parts of their experience.
Steve and Connor also discuss the rapidly changing labor market and the challenge of preparing people for jobs and skills that continue to evolve. Rather than trying to perfectly predict the future of work, Connor argues that agility is becoming one of the most important capabilities for workforce development organizations, employers, and workers alike.
For HR and business leaders, the message is clear: expanding economic opportunity requires opening the aperture on how we define qualified talent, taking thoughtful risks on people who may not fit traditional hiring profiles, and creating real pathways for people to turn their skills and potential into meaningful careers.

Topics include:
Why access to education does not automatically translate into career opportunity
How workforce programs can keep pace with a rapidly changing labor market
Why some perceived talent shortages may actually be workplace or business model problems
The disconnect between removing degree requirements and actually changing hiring practices
How employers can broaden their definition of qualified talent


Thank you for joining the show today! Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

Workhuman is a proud supporter of the HR Happy Hour Network.
Here’s a wild stat: 6 in 10 employees have never been meaningfully recognized for a work anniversary. Think about that. Five, 10, 20 years of someone’s life — and too often, the moment falls flat. Workhuman’s Service Milestones® makes recognition more personal, memorable, and impactful. Milestone tracking happens automatically through your HRIS, the right colleagues are inspired to share stories and congratulations, and employees get access to rewards they actually want.
Ready to make your milestones meet the moment with Workhuman? Click the banner on this episode’s page or follow the link in the show notes to learn more.