This week we continue our new series, A Day in the Life. In this series of three blog posts, we will profile a different employee and highlight their typical day. This week, meet CEO Joe…How does he make it look so easy?
A Day in the Life: CEO Joe
CEO Joe is in charge of a small, privately held software company in the Northeast. He is responsible for the strategic vision for the company, reports to the board of directors, and manages an executive staff of six. Joe’s management team includes vice presidents of HR, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Customer Support and Engineering. His focus is on leading his executive staff to achieve the company’s strategic goals, while also growing revenue and expanding globally. Joe believes that the hallmarks of a successful business are empowering his employees and building a positive culture.
Joe wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to go for a run, clear his head and plan his day. After he’s back home, he spends the first part of his quiet early morning hours working on a high priority special project. Today he is reviewing the details of a potential acquisition his company is considering. Then, he scans his email for urgent issues, reads the headlines, chats with the kids before school, and heads out for a breakfast meeting.
Once at the office, Joe dives into a meeting with his HR leader about the acquisition. Part of the due diligence they need to do for the acquisition is to compile and analyze data about his company’s large customer support department. He needs to know every detail about their hours, productivity, demographics, compensation, onboarding process, performance management, succession planning and more. The company he is considering acquiring also has a customer support department and Joe needs to identify and overlap any redundancies and decide how to merge the two departments into one with the least amount of disruption to his employees and customers. The success of the acquisition is largely dependent on this data.
At first, Joe is concerned. He predicts that getting this much information compiled and analyzed will take several people a few weeks or more, and that it will be a painful process for all involved. He’s been through these kinds of things before and they can be expensive, laborious and contentious. The inability to get accurate data can often sabotage the entire acquisition! However, Joe’s concerns are put to rest when he meets with Beth, his head of HR. She has all of the data he requested ready to go in a simple, easy to read format!
Joe cannot believe it and asks Beth how she could have possibly pulled this all together so quickly. She reminds him that last year they invested in an HR and Payroll software system that provided 13 specific modules and customized workflows so that they collect and use data related to planning and decision making for payroll, budgeting, talent management, performance evaluation and more. Pulling reports and analyzing data to help make the best decisions is one of the very best benefits of the system.
Armed with this data, Joe was able to make a quick decision about the acquisition. Having this knowledge readily available was a powerful differentiator for his company – they were able to move forward and complete the merger at just the right time, which propelled them to #1 in their market.
Way to go, Joe!
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We hope you enjoyed meeting Joe in the second installment of our series, A Day in the Life. Next week meet – Morale Booster Betty!