People Heroes Rising: HR Leaders are Both Born and Made with Jaylene Owen of The Hames Corporation

Some people just have the 'it' factor.  In today's special episode of People Heroes Rising, we learn what it means to be an HR leader. William Tincup sits down with Jaylene Owen, Director of HR and Payroll at The Hames Corporation, at the isolved Connect user conference in Palm Springs to discuss this very topic.

Jaylene shares her pilgrimage from California to Alaska, following a life crisis involving a cancer diagnosis and marital betrayal. Overcoming struggles can be a daunting task, but with the right mindset anything can be a growth opportunity. Besides personal turmoil, she also support the casino she used to work for through a major money loss incident.

Life events aside, Jaylene answers the important question of...why isolved? This is her HR tool of choice due a number of factors, including its customizability and efficiency.  The discussion delves into the dedication of isolved's customer care and constant improvement, popular features among customers, and their commitment to incorporating customer feedback.

If you're struggling to grow through challenges, or at the very least are curious about isolved's platform this is an episode you won't want to skip out on.

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Transcript

William Tincup: 0:06

Ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to the Recruiting Daily podcast. We are broadcasting from isolved connect in Palm Springs, Palm Desert, you call it whatever you want, JW Marriott. This is their user conference and it is fantastic. We're gonna be talking to Jaylene. Is that, did I pronounce that correctly? Yes, Jaylene. Okay, good. I was gonna say Jolene, but that, you've probably heard that before.

Jaylene Owen: 0:29

Yes, if it sounds like my name, I'll answer to it, but yes, it's a J.

William Tincup: 0:35

Too funny. Now, uh, where are you from?

Jaylene Owen: 0:38

Originally, I'm actually from California. Um, but, over the course of my lifetime, I've moved from Tennessee and then eventually found myself in Alaska. Now, how

William Tincup: 0:47

do you find yourself in Alaska? Boy, that's a story here.

Jaylene Owen: 0:50

That is a story. And actually, I could probably write an entire book on it. But the short story is that I went through a life crisis. I ended up in my 30s with a diagnosis of cancer. Oh my gosh. Um, it was very revolutionizing to my marriage. It actually... Caused my husband, at the time, to cheat on me, and so I decided... Your cancer? Yes. Great it is. Unfortunately, yes. Wow. And he got a girl pregnant, and so I was like, I deserve more, and basically wanted to get to a place where I knew I would have the opportunity to disconnect and heal. And so, Alaska, an island, Sitka, was the perfect place. That

William Tincup: 1:30

is a perfect place. Again, men will create excuses for anything, but that is probably the craziest excuse I've ever heard.

Jaylene Owen: 1:37

Well, I have to tell you the story about the robbery that occurred. I used to work for Seboba Casino that's right across this, uh, mountain. Yeah. And on, uh, August 2nd, 2007, 1. 6 million dollars walked out my front door. Okay. Which is why I'm actually in HR. Crazy. Oh

William Tincup: 1:55

my gosh. Yes. This is such a great story. So, uh, you're a customer of iSolved. Yes. Now, how'd that come to be?

Jaylene Owen: 2:02

Uh, so I have a lot of experience in the HR field. So once that, uh, occurred with the robbery, I went back to school and ended up, uh, changing and going into HR. Right. And so I worked with a workday, I worked with a lot of HCMs, and then when I went to Alaska, it kind of went backwards. And so they had nothing. There's not as much up there. No. And so I really was struggling, but I needed to be able to find a product that was going to be the price right. And something that I knew would work in the customization that I was used to with the bigger companies.

William Tincup: 2:34

That's right. Yes. That's right. So, you made the decision, you probably did demos and lists and looked at different things and got into pricing and stuff like that, so you made the decision with iSolved. How long into the relationship did you say, yeah, I made the right decision

Jaylene Owen: 2:50

here? Oh, I knew I made the right decision immediately. Um, there was no other product out there and I did a lot of research. One of our issues was that we are an aggregated larger employer. I work for a family owned and operated business. And so they have multitudes of diverse business structures and legal companies. So, I, we were actually a, uh, customer of ADP for about 20 years. Yeah, sure. And, in 2015, prior to me getting to the company, they had made a, uh, forced migration into their cloud system. Right. But it could not, the platform could not operate with multitudes of legal companies. Right. And so, in the middle of it, they had to pull out... That's a one to

William Tincup: 3:28

many model. Yes. It's hard to, it's hard to get the, some software the way it's structured. Uh, the foundation of the software, it's hard to get it to do one to many. Correct. So, I could see that. I mean, I'm sure ADP has figured that out and all that other stuff, but that's not really the point. The point is, is, this, the, the solution with iSolved, you could do that. Yes. You could do it in one instance and then be able to manage all the different things that are happening at whatever, however many different companies. Yes,

Jaylene Owen: 3:55

yes. Oh, that's cool. So, when I signed up for them, I just, I was like, give me the bells and whistles. Give me everything and never turn back.

William Tincup: 4:02

Wow, so what to, again, you have different employees in different companies, so you got all kinds of different stuff. What's the product that you That's being used the most, that people like the most.

Jaylene Owen: 4:16

So prior to, um, isolved, and especially because we pulled out of ADP, there was a course of time where literally employees could not access any information, um, if they needed a copy of their paycheck stub. I had to actually take the paycheck stubs and... And scan them. And then if they came to me, I'd have to go to and find my PDFs for that particular folder file and say, here's your copy. Um, it was so archaic. And, um, unfortunately, because of the fact that that occurred, iSolved was the thing that opened up that door. And I did have to train a lot of the employees. Uh, many individuals at the time were like, there's no way you're going to get people to use their phone or this technology. But it wasn't hard as, as many people thought. No, not

William Tincup: 4:56

at all. Once you put something superior in front of somebody, and you say, this will actually change your life. Yes. This will make your life better. Once they do it, the first time they do it, they're like, yeah, I'm never going back to the other way. Yeah. We're, we're good here. So, what do you like about Connect? Now, you've been, you've been to Miami and Nashville and this one? No, actually,

Jaylene Owen: 5:15

this is my first Connect. Yeah, I, so living on an island, um, getting off of the island can be very difficult. Travel is not always simple. Uh, actually, it took me 14 hours of flying to get here. And that was because of the fact that we had bad weather on one of the islands I had to transfer to. Right. I got shot up north to Anchorage, which is... Uh, I mean, just that and coming back down adds an extra five hours. Oh my goodness. Uh, oh yes. And so it can be very difficult to get off the island. I usually try to pick, um, for my continuing education, a event that I know I'm going to get a lot out of. Right. And so I cycle it. But last year I went to HR Tech. Yep. And this year I picked iSolveConnect. Yeah,

William Tincup: 5:53

yeah, yeah. Well, and what's interesting is there's a SHRM, uh, Alaska. They have a show. I think they have a show.

Jaylene Owen: 6:00

They do. I actually used to be the president of the SHRM chapter and sat on the board. Did you know that? Every 18 months they do like a local version up there, but um, I've kind of stepped back from that just because it's been very difficult with the, it's almost a bubble. You've got to kind of get out to get fresh. Same

William Tincup: 6:17

thing. I've spoken at a lot of the, like, HR Florida, HR Southwest, Indiana, a lot of the state SHRM conferences. And a lot of the people, the practitioners that are involved say the same thing. They get into it, they're deep into it, you know, they start on a committee, do a bit, and then all of a sudden they find themselves on the board doing other stuff. And it's like, at one point, it's not burnout, it's at one point, they're like... The new ideas need to

Jaylene Owen: 6:44

come in here. Correct. And I think that's where like diversity and inclusion kind of come in. 100%. Um, but yeah, the, the state board, like there's only so many practitioners or so many professionals that really get involved. Right. And usually, um, because of the lack of, uh, involvement, they'll transfer people from position to position to position. So you'll work with someone that's held every position on the SHRM board. Oh yeah. Um, yet you don't, you get that group think.

William Tincup: 7:07

That's right. That's right. It's like, hey, let's do something, let's do something new and innovative. Hmm, or we could do what we did last year. So if you could, okay, so we've asked this question of customers yesterday, magic wand time, so if you could change anything about iSoft. What would you change? Magic wand. Uh,

Jaylene Owen: 7:28

I just actually told this to, um, the analyst, uh, I think his name is Mike. He, in my opinion, so one of the problems that I've had with I solved is that I'm an HR team of one. Yep. And unfortunately there's a lot of distractions that come my way and when. Uh, being that I'm remote, um, a lot of people are depending upon me to provide them with the information. Right. And I struggled with that. So, when it comes to implementation of something, I might get it launched, but I don't get everything perfected. And of course, the idea is that you can perfect it as you go. Right. Um, but. Even my time is still more precious. So having the ability to possibly do a sandbox or like a training environment where I would have the opportunity to maybe play with it on my own time, uh, that would be actually very

William Tincup: 8:15

valuable. It's probably already being built while we're talking. They take, they take advice. It's crazy. They take advice from their customers to heart. Yes. Like I've seen it at the roadshows. I've seen it at Connect. I've just seen that they, they've put the customers at the center of the business. And it's like, we're gonna make sure that we do the stuff for them. And so when, you know, most vendors when they say, oh yeah, it's on the roadmap, I typically don't believe them. You know, because everything's on, the kitchen sink's on the roadmap. So I typically don't believe them, but when iSolve says, yeah, no, that's coming out in the next release, I actually believe that it's coming out in the next release.

Jaylene Owen: 8:51

Yes. The, the product advancement has been rapid, and that's something that I absolutely love about isolved. It's, it's not stagnant, um, the ideas come out and the products are,

9:04

they

William Tincup: 9:04

work. They don't sleep. They don't, they don't, I mean, rest on their laurels, I guess is the old phrase, they don't, they don't do that. Like, they're constantly, we've had podcasts the executives, they're constantly trying to think of, what do we, what can we do, what can we do, what can we do, what can we do. Um. Well, you'll find this interesting. So I've asked every executive the same question, you know, what do you like about Connect? And to a T, every isolved executive has said, I just like the customers, being able to see them, being able to talk to them, being, seeing them talk to each other, like getting them together. And again, there's so many vendors in our space that run from their customers. They'll sell something and then they're gone. Hard to get, hard to get them on the phone.

Jaylene Owen: 9:45

Well, the one thing about iSolve that I love is, you know, with any implementation, if anyone has implemented some sort of software, they know it doesn't always go as it's planned. You get those hiccups along the way. 100%. If you don't, you didn't do an implementation. Exactly. And so like, to your point where they're out of there, especially like with ADP, when they had to pull out, iSolve though, no matter what, they have over the course, when I've had struggles and I have had struggles, I'm gonna be honest with that. They make it right. Yeah. And they always

William Tincup: 10:15

fix it. I've seen this with my own eyes at a road show. Ron and I were at a road show in Dallas and a team came in and they had a list. And I'm in a list of things and they're like, okay, with onboarding, I got a question about this and this doesn't work. And Jeff was up at the, up at, uh, at the front and he's just like, let's go through them one by one. Let's go. Bring your list. Wow. And, and rapid fire. And what was great is all of them had their laptops out. So they all had product cracked, cracked open. And what I loved about it is customers started answering other customers questions. Like I was just a fly on the wall, just kind of checking, checking everything out. And it's like, somebody would ask a question, it's like, oh, no, no, no, I'll show you what we did. We hacked that, we did it this way, we do it this way. It's like, oh, that's cool. People are writing notes. People are writing their stuff down, I'm like, yeah, this is different. This is different. This is different than other players. Yeah. They care. They... You know, it's funny because as a recovery marketer, a lot of vendors will say they care. They don't care. You're just, you're, if you're a number, that's a compliment. You know, you're less than a number. It's your, your MRR, ARR to them. They're going to come and see you about three months before their renewal date and that's about it. Yeah. If you call them, they don't really want to handle your call, because something's broken and they don't know how to fix it, and they oversold the product, and you know, this, that, and the other. But I wanted to ask you, did you speak, uh, did you speak at any

Jaylene Owen: 11:42

of the sessions? I have actually, here right after this, I'm actually going to be going to a session, but I did a live customer panel around 9 o'clock this morning. Okay, what did you talk about? All the pain points and progress of what I've been through over the last few years.

William Tincup: 11:56

Oh, that's cool. So you just went, you just went transparent with them and said, okay, here's the deal. Yeah. Want to know me? Yeah.

Jaylene Owen: 12:02

Boom. Well, and being from Alaska, to be able to represent Alaska is, to me, it's a prideful thing that I wear as a badge of honor. 100%. Um, and yesterday you probably saw me walking around in my dress. I did. I did see you. So yesterday was actually the official Alaska Day holiday. I heard this. I heard this. Someone referenced that during the podcast. Yes, and so we dress up. There's a lot of, uh, So, in Sitka, Russia was the capital for America and they sold us the land and we did the transfer there. So, my town actually reenacts everything every year. Oh, how cool is

William Tincup: 12:40

that? Oh, Russia hates me. You know they'd love to have that back. You know they'd love to have that back if for no other reason than to be closer to the U. S. You know they'd love to have it. It's like the Louisiana Purchase or Spain and Mexico, etc. I'm a Texan. So I understand the kind of... Whenever you go somewhere, you kind of represent the brand, you represent the place, so I love

Jaylene Owen: 13:03

that. And we have a very big populace of indigenous people here. Oh yeah. And so just the, that culture and that heritage is so rich.

William Tincup: 13:11

I, uh, it's, it's, uh, my master's thesis was, uh, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. It's called NAGPRA. It's a law that was enacted in 1990. And it basically gave rights to, uh, Native people. To go to museums and get their, their stuff back. Wow, I did not realize that. George Bush signed it into law, didn't, had no idea what he was signing, and essentially, it gave the power to the tribe to get remains, human remains, cult items of cultural patrimony, religious sacred objects, etc. And so they can knock on any museum in the country. And say, hey, uh, need that back. Wow. And the, it was theirs. They, they get it back. Now some, I dealt with a lot of the Romaine stuff when I was at the Smithsonian. So I had actually, um, I had a tribe, an indigenous tribe from Alaska that, it was in the 1940s that they did, uh, excavations. The archaeologists, you know, did a bunch of stuff. And so these were people that... Like, these are, this is, it's one thing to kind of think of, like people that were 200 years ago, 300 years ago. I had a guy that came in and he's part of this tribe and he could look at a box and tell whose parents that was. Wow. Like, it was real. Like, it got real fast. Like, again, when you're dealing with stuff that's cultural, especially indigenous culture, you know, things that are two, three, four hundred years, you know, you can be a bit disconnected. The tribe isn't, but one can be disconnected. When something's in the 1940s, you're not disconnected from that. Those are people that you actually knew or knew of. And so, it's got, not just the rich culture, it's the really interesting people. Yes. Really compelling people. It is. And compelling stories,

Jaylene Owen: 15:02

too. It's amazing. I, um, I love the ability to hire people with that culture. Um, it's a struggle because there's still a, the stigmata and the stereotypes there. But for the most part, our company really values the, uh, the sacredness of the people there. Oh, that's cool. And, um, so we, it, it's... It's a guarantee that we work with them and that, um, it's about the community.

William Tincup: 15:27

That's genius. That's genius on so many levels, because again, you're not seen as an occupier, you're seen as a liberator. Yes. Like, you're working with a community, like, you're not trying to change them. Like, listen, we don't want to change you, just, you know, we want to actually help you. And I think that again, when you make that investment, and it is an investment, when you make that investment in people. It pays off.

Jaylene Owen: 15:48

I would 100 percent

William Tincup: 15:49

agree. I could sit here and talk to you for like two hours. Unfortunately, you've got like things that you have to do and good places you have to be. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Jaylene Owen: 16:00

Yes, definitely. Thank you for

William Tincup: 16:01

inviting me. 100%. And thanks for everyone listening. Until next time.