My guests on this episode of Punk Rock HR are Betterworks CEO Doug Dennerline and Vice President of HR Transformation Jamie Aitken. Betterworks is an organization that’s near and dear to my heart and is focused on rethinking performance management.  In this conversation, we talk about the future of HR and work, why annual reviews don’t work and how to think about holistic performance management.

Doug has a long history in software, including being president of SuccessFactors (now SAP SuccessFactors) and an executive at Cisco. He’s seen the inner workings of what HR technology looks like. “My goal in life is to really reimagine performance management in a way that actually is a benefit to an organization versus what people do with it today,” Doug shares.

Jamie has been in HR for 25 years and has always “been drawn to puzzles to solve.” Betterworks is leading the transformation movement in an era where HR leaders get to be a part of the change. “We have a perfect storm as HR leaders to really innovate and have a significant impact on business outcomes, more so than I’ve seen in the 25 years I’ve been doing this,” Jamie says.

Doug and Jamie aren’t just co-workers; they’re also co-authors on an upcoming book that combines their perspectives of HR leader and CEO. This book is called “Make Work Better” and is scheduled for release in May 2023.

“The goal here is we take you through a journey and basically say, ‘Here’s when this process was invented, here, why it was invented, here’s why it doesn’t work, and here’s the research that says it doesn’t work,’” Doug says. “‘Here’s what the ideal process we think should look like, and here’s how we can help you get there.’”

Punk Rock HR is proudly underwritten by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is a B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head over to thestarrconspiracy.com.

The Future of HR

HR is significantly different than it was just a few years ago. The HR industry needs people who want to innovate, who want to lead and work at the intersection of purpose and meaning.

These HR leaders need to be actual leaders in the company, and the head of HR should report to the CEO. “If I’m being told that I am somewhere down reporting into a different function, then that tells a story for me, and it will inform whether I decide to go there or not,” Jamie says.

The HR function has a lot of responsibilities, including hiring and compliance, but the modern HR leader is deeply involved in the overall business.

“My favorite HR people are men and women who are strong enough and are mobilizers, and they’re curious about the business,” Doug says. “It’s not just HR stuff; it’s ‘What is the business we’re in?’ ‘What do we need to do to succeed?’ ‘What are the skills of the people we need to have?’ And then they hold that mirror up to the CEO and say, ‘You know what? These two people on your team aren’t going to get you there, and you need to do something about it.’”

Performance Management That’s Holistic

Performance management has evolved beyond a grading system where you tell people what they do wrong or right. Instead, performance management is about providing guidance, recognition and a meaningful career map that connects employees’ work to the company’s growth.

This modern approach to performance management requires frequent conversations; the annual or semiannual review won’t cut it.

“When you’re able to connect the points between recognition, feedback, conversations and goals, all of those things together form a body of work,” Jamie says. “If I’m an individual and I’m in a traditional performance management conversation once or twice a year … my boss is going to be looking at maybe three months if they can remember, five months if they’ve taken notes all the time. There’s a huge recency issue there.”

Recognition is an essential part of the employee experience. Betterworks’ mission is about making performance management more human, where the manager’s mindset is, “I’m your champion in this company and I’m going to make you successful,” Doug says.

Empathy For the End User

Department of Labor data reveals that productivity has declined in 2022 by the largest amount since the government began tracking it in 1948. I think that a big component of this drop is burnout. I believe that empathy can be the antidote to burnout, and so does Betterworks.

“I don’t believe in work-life balance. I call it work-life integration,” says Doug. “And candidly, you’re integrating work into your life, especially today. It’s about accomplishment to me. If you’re doing your job, I don’t care when you do your job, I don’t care how you do your job, as long as you’re being respectful and all those things, then that’s the kind of people I want in my company.”

Doug recommends giving people time and room to recharge. This can look like spacing out meetings or offering a wellness day, as Betterworks does on the second Friday of every month.

Empathy can help leaders understand the employee experience and even design for it.  “A lot of customers I’m working with now are saying, ‘Let’s look at what that employee experience feels like now. Let’s identify the pain points. Let’s see where we can make those moments that matter,’” Jamie says.

[bctt tweet=”‘We have a perfect storm as HR leaders to really innovate and have a significant impact on business outcomes, more so than I’ve seen in the 25 years I’ve been doing this.’ ~ @JamieAitkenHR, @Betterworks. Tune into #PunkRockHR!” via=”no”]

People in This Episode

Doug Dennerline: LinkedIn, Twitter

Jamie Aitken: LinkedIn, Twitter

Full Transcript

Laurie Ruettimann:

This episode of Punk Rock HR is sponsored by the Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is the B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head on over to thestarrconspiracy.com.

Hey everybody, I’m Laurie Ruettimann. Welcome back to Punk Rock HR. My guests today are Doug Dennerline and Jamie Aitken from Betterworks. Betterworks is an organization that’s near and dear to my heart, that is focused on really rethinking performance management. And in today’s conversation we talk about the future of human resources, the future of work and, really, how to rethink performance management in a more holistic way.

So if you’re like me and you used to get an annual review or do an annual review once or twice a year, well, those days are ⁠— or at least should be ⁠— over. And Jamie and Doug are here today to talk about what the future is like, how it could be more inclusive, more encouraging and really help us think about careers as more than just a moment in time. So if you’re ready to talk about performance management and get super-nerdy about the world of work, well, sit back and enjoy Doug Dennerline and Jamie Aitken on this week’s Punk Rock HR.

Hey, Betterworks team, welcome to the podcast.

Jamie Aitken:

Thank you.

Doug Dennerline:

Thank you.

Jamie Aitken:

Nice to be here.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Yeah, it’s great to have you. We’ll get started by having you identify who you are so that my wonderful community can understand whose voice belongs to who. So, Jamie, why don’t you get started? Who are you and what are you all about?

Jamie Aitken:

Hi, Laurie. Jamie Aitken. I’m the VP of HR transformation at Betterworks. I have been in the HR space for 25 years. I’m a sucker for transformation. So throughout my entire career, I’ve been drawn to puzzles to solve. And so why I’m so excited about the work that we’re doing here at Betterworks is because we’re constantly talking about transformation. And if you think about what’s happening in the world today, not only in terms of the world of work, but just in general, we have a perfect storm as HR leaders to really innovate and have significant impact on business outcomes, more so than I’ve seen in the 25 years I’ve been doing this. So, happy to be here and excited to talk about this.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I’m so pleased to have you, and I want “sucker for innovation” on your LinkedIn profile if it’s not up there already. Well, Doug, it’s so nice to have you on the podcast. Why don’t you tell everybody who you are and what you’re all about?

Doug Dennerline:

I will do that. My name’s Doug Dennerline. I’m the CEO here at Betterworks. I’m actually the ex-president of SuccessFactors, so I have been around the HR software industry for quite a while. I also am an ex-executive at Cisco Systems, where I had 6,000 employees. So I was on the other side of all those processes we lived in inside of HR with a big team. And so, my goal in life is to really reimagine performance management in a way that actually is a benefit to an organization, versus what people do with it today.

Laurie Ruettimann:

We’re at a really strange inflection point in the economy right now, and I wonder if I can get both of your takes ⁠— starting with you, Jamie ⁠— on where things stand for the modern HR department. Where are they today, kind of post-COVID and maybe pre-recession?

Jamie Aitken:

Well, yeah, I talk to HR people every single day. That’s probably the best part of my job. And frankly, I think everybody’s a little bit burnt out. There’s been a lot going on, and certainly COVID brought a lot of that also to the shore. But even before, we were dealing with demand for higher engagement with our employees, and what does that look like as it relates to performance? This is a process that people have been complaining about.

HR’s been hearing complaints for a long time, but even secretly amongst ourselves, we’ve been moaning every time we had to push this process out to an organization that was frankly telling us all the time that it was not really providing the value. So we were sort of unwelcome. It was not one of the more pleasurable parts. But also, if you think about how “quiet quitting” is emerging now as something that people are talking about, this is really a unique time for us to address a lot of things that haven’t perhaps been going well previous to COVID, but that COVID really brought it to a head. Which is why, as I said, this is a puzzle that HR people can really be part of solving.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I love that answer. And, Doug, I’d like to just go a little bit further with that because we’ve gone through this period of time of rapid change and an opportunity for rapid innovation. And so many HR professionals are really there. They’re at the executive level having those conversations, and yet so many processes haven’t kept up. And one of them is the annual performance review. That still happens, and maybe a company’s innovated and done it twice a year. But why, Doug, are we still doing that annual performance review when all the research says that is not the way to do it? What are your thoughts on that?

Doug Dennerline:

I think we have all been living in this incredible environment from a productivity perspective for the last 15, 16, 17 years. We have not seen a recession or even a downturn in the economy. Things are growing, the company’s growing, we’re doing well. Why change? 75% of companies still do an annual review. I’ve not been an HR person that says, “Oh, the performance review process is awesome in my company.” Everybody knows that it’s bad. To me, with coming out of COVID, and the difficulty HR people have had in the last couple of years, are starting to realize, with this work-from-home environment, that process isn’t going to hold up in this environment.

And Jamie and I are in the middle of writing a book about it, actually. It’s this notion of we really need to change the process. If you want to find good people and retain good people, being talked to once or twice a year about how you’re performing in the rearview mirror isn’t going to cut it. And so I’m a fan of Geoffrey Moore as a researcher and a consultant, and he talks about “crossing the chasm.” We see great companies that are using Betterworks today that are the early adopters. They realize that they need to change these processes. And we’ve seen the effects of that in these great companies, but it hasn’t reached Main Street yet.

And I think somehow, because the world of work has changed, and we’re going to be managing people like this forever, I think, at least in a hybrid environment, that it’s time to change.

Jamie Aitken:

I think HR has got puzzles to solve, but we also have to be courageous and jump in, right? Because change is difficult. And if there’s an entrenched process of, “well, this is the way we’ve always done it,” the curious and the innovative HR people are the ones that are going to say, “OK, let’s do this.” This is the time. We’re not going to wait.” This is the time for us to actually answer the call, which is to fix what’s wrong, but also to make sure that people are ⁠— there’s a longing for people to feel connected to the goals of an organization and to see how they contribute to what the organization is trying to achieve.

And so, you can’t do that if you’re talking once or twice a year about what you’re working on and how it makes a difference. You also can’t feel like you have a way to help form and shape your career if you’re not having more than one or two conversations a year about what your aspirations are, for example.

Doug Dennerline:

There’s another side to it, to me, Laurie, though. It’s not all about HR people. If I were an HR leader today, you have to find a leader in the organization that realizes that the most important asset they have is people. And I think it’s finding an informed CEO who knows how powerful a good HR partner can be to them and then empowering them to come in and change the processes. And be supportive of that, and be a champion for them to make it through this change process. And it takes time. I will tell you, our best customers, when they go from annual or biannual to quarterly and check-ins in the mid-quarter, it takes a year before people realize the cadence and the benefit of the cadence. But it’s really great once they make it through that process.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I love some of the words that you’re using to describe a future state, not only of human resources, but of the world of work. But I’m real curious about the future of HR because some of the words you’ve used to describe a future state, you need people who are champions, who are allies, who are partners, who are collaborators and courageous and curious and innovative.

I wonder if I’m missing anything, Jamie. What is that future HR leader like, the one who’s going to bring us to the promised land of helping people work at that intersection of purpose and meaning?

Jamie Aitken:

Well, I think all of those things ⁠— and Doug and I were talking about this a little while ago. One of the questions that HR people should be asking when they’re in an interview process is, “Where am I going to report into?” Because I think, linking to what Doug was saying, it’s really important that there’s a recognition within the company, and particularly with the CEO, that HR is a significant contributor to the progress of an organization. If I’m being told that I am somewhere down reporting into a different function, then that tells a story for me, and it will inform whether I decide to go there or not.

Doug Dennerline:

I tell my sales team, if the head of HR reports to the CFO, don’t bother calling on the company. Because to me, that’s a message where the CEO says, “Oh no, that HR stuff, I don’t want to have to deal with that. So I’m going to drop that in under my CFO and let them deal with all that stuff.” That’s just not the way to go.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I think that’s right. My very first human resources job, I was an intern in 1995, so I just reported to the HR manager. But HR reported to a site leader who reported to someone who reported to a VP of facilities who reported into the finance group. It was absolutely insane. And I think you’re right. There’s something about where the rubber meets the road. You really need human resources to be in that leadership role. Are you seeing that as a trend?

Doug Dennerline:

My favorite HR people are men and women who are strong enough, and are mobilizers, and they’re curious about the business. It’s not just HR stuff. It’s what is the business we’re in? What do we need to do to succeed? What are the skills of the people we need to have? And then they hold that mirror up to the CEO and say, “You know what? These two people on your team aren’t going to get you there, and you need to do something about it.”

I know HR people talk about getting a seat at the table. That’s how you get a seat at the table. You have an opinion, be involved and help drive the organization to where it needs to go. You have people in the organization that can deal with compliance issues and lawsuits, but at the leadership of HR, they need to be business people.

Jamie Aitken:

And challengers, so that they are curious, but they’re also confident enough that they can have the conversation challenging status quo. So the scope changes completely. If you go back to this idea that if you’re reporting into somebody other than the CEO, you can already predetermine what your scope is going to be. And it’s very much going to be focused more on the backend processes and systems of compliance and administration, as opposed to a scope that allows you the kind of innovation that we’re talking about.

Laurie Ruettimann:

As you were talking about this future state of the world of work and of human resources, I was thinking about how, for years, we were focused on performance management best practices, and we were focused on what modules, and what are the things we should talk about. And I just wonder, what is the future of performance management? Because sometimes best practices are just the worst crowdsourced practices. But I don’t know. You’re both experts. You tell me. Jamie, why don’t you get started? What is that future state?

Jamie Aitken:

Well, actually, I’m going to pull back a little bit first because I think what HR people, ripping off what Doug just was talking about in terms of business acumen ⁠— and I’ll tell a little story. I was head of global talent management for a large organization, and in the first 30 days that I took the role, I went around and talked to a bunch of the business leaders. And I was saying, “OK, tell me what’s broke in HR. Tell me what’s broken and what we need to fix.”

Laurie Ruettimann:

Did you hear an earful?

Jamie Aitken:

I certainly did, and as many people I asked, I got as many different opinions, but they were all very focused on what HR problems there were. “Oh, fix the talent acquisition,” whatever the case. Pick an HR process, I was getting feedback on it. And somebody changed it. I had the “aha moment” and said, “Wait a minute, I’m asking the wrong question.” So I went back to all of them and said, “What is the business problem that you’re having that I can help you solve?” And I think by framing it that way, we get a completely different view and perspective on what we should be doing in HR. And it also allows us to articulate why what we do in HR is going to move the needle for the business.

HR people can get very excited about best practices in a process. And yes, that’s true. I think it depends on the culture. I think it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish from a business perspective. So chasing after best practice isn’t necessarily going to get you the business results that you need. You can get wrapped up into that whole game and spend all of your time reading HR articles about what to do next. But I say my challenge would be step back first, and tell me what the problems that you’re trying to solve for the business are, and then we’ll design the process that needs ⁠— I’m Canadian. I say “process” sometimes.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Yeah, I love it. Doug, I was just thinking that so often when an HR professional really believes in the future of work and they go out to the marketplace and they want to buy a new performance management software, they’re locked, though, into buying a software based on, quote unquote, best practices. That platform isn’t agile enough to actually understand what business problems are and to help the workforce translate what they’re doing into solving those problems. I don’t know. You’ve seen it all. You’re ex-SuccessFactors, ex-Cisco, you must resonate with that. And I just wonder how Betterworks sees this differently.

Doug Dennerline:

My goal really is to move process away from HR, who now pushes it on the organization ⁠— and they’re the police around it, and please get it done ⁠— and move it to where it actually is seen as a value to the individual. It can’t just be a tax, it’s got to be a value. And the value is we’re now going to create conversations between manager and individual contributor on an ongoing basis throughout the year. What are my goals this quarter? What are my goals for the company so I feel connected to the organization? What are my personal aspirations that I want to grow inside the organization? And how is my manager going to help me get there?

And create a conversation that probably isn’t happening on a regular basis. So now the employee’s going, “Hey, this is great. I’m actually sitting down in a tool. We both answer some questions about how things went this quarter, and then we get together, have a conversation about “What are my goals next quarter?” So you see the performance of that person on an ongoing basis, not, “Hey, let me think back. What’d they do last year for me?” And so now it’s seen as a value by the employee, so they actually want to participate in it. And that’s the change that you have to get through.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Yeah, I like that. One of the trends, and there are the trends in human resources, but one of the ones I find most valuable is this renewed focus on recognition. And so when you combine the concept of recognition with performance management, what you actually get is more informed career mapping, career mobility. But I think this component of recognition is so important, and I’m just surprised that it took businesses so long to understand that it’s not just about telling people what they’ve done wrong, but saying “thank you,” and letting them know how they’ve contributed to the growth of the organization.

Jamie, you must see this trend that we’ve been going through over the past couple of years and welcome it with all of your years in HR.

Jamie Aitken:

Absolutely. And what I love about it as well is when you’re able to connect the points between recognition, feedback, conversations, goals ⁠— all of those things together form a body of work. If I’m an individual, and I’m in a traditional performance management conversation once or twice a year, I’m going to be limited very much, and my boss is going to be looking at maybe three months if they can remember, five months if they’ve taken notes all the time. There’s a huge recency issue there.

Whereas, if I as the manager, before I go into a conversation with my direct report, can see all the feedback they’ve gotten, the recognition from peers, from people that they’ve worked on, on other projects, and I can also draw from the conversations that I’ve been having on a continuous basis? Suddenly that becomes a lot richer and robust in terms of me being able to have that conversation with the employee at the end of the year. It’s much richer and much broader.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I love that. What you’re talking about is a more holistic take of the employee experience. And, Doug, one of the things I was thinking about as Jamie was talking is really about how it’s much more than just recognition that’s a trend. It is employee experience. This is something that we’re talking about, and I don’t see it coming to an end. Do you, anytime soon?

Doug Dennerline:

No. I think it’s an important topic that we’re talking about. And again, we try to innovate, as well. How many applications are you in every day now? It can be overwhelming to an individual. And so, we spend a lot of time trying to integrate to the applications you live in at work, whether it’s Salesforce as a salesperson, or Jira as an engineer or email if you are a white-collar worker in some industry.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Yeah, if you’re human.

Doug Dennerline:

Exactly. So you can interact with our software from within those places that you live all day long anyways. And so I think that also makes it easier. And I think as a manager these days, the command to control of the past is not going to work in today’s environment and with today’s workforce. It’s very much an empathetic leader. Their whole goal is to help you be successful, not to review your performance. It’s like, “I’m your champion in this company, and I’m going to make you successful.”

Laurie Ruettimann:

One of the things I was thinking about is how empathy can be the antidote to burnout, something that came up early in our conversation. And I just wonder when you’re out there talking to your customers, Jamie, Doug ⁠— either one of you, both of you can talk about this ⁠— how often burnout is still coming up. Recently we’ve had a report about the first major drop-off in productivity in U.S. history. And so I think about why are people less productive these days? The big component for me, the big red flag is burnout. I don’t know. What are your thoughts on this?

Doug Dennerline:

I think it’s an important thing to be thinking about. We certainly have thought about it at our company. We put things in play, like we now take the second Friday of every month off, and so people can catch up with life and do things that they need to do with family. We recommend to people, only do 30-minute Zoom meetings, only do two Zoom meetings back to back, and then leave 30 minutes without doing a Zoom meeting. So don’t Zoom all day long.

I have an attitude, and I’ve had it my whole life, where I don’t believe in work-life balance, and I call it work-life integration. And candidly, you’re integrating work into your life, especially today. It’s about accomplishment to me. If you’re doing your job, I don’t care when you do your job, I don’t care how you do your job, and long as you’re being respectful and all those things, then that’s the kind of people I want in my company.

These companies now that are taking your picture throughout the day with software or looking at your keystrokes, who would want to work for such a company? Such a lack of trust.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Right, absolutely. Well, Jamie, what are your thoughts on this, on burnout and really what’s happening in our organizations today?

Jamie Aitken:

Well, I was actually going to take it a slightly different way, which I think it would be a good challenge also, to HR people, as they’re designing around and for that employee experience. So a different bend on empathy, which is, a lot of customers that I’m talking to as they’re looking to design what that future state is going to be ⁠— so back to your best practices. I like to use design thinking, which at its heart is about empathy for the end user. So a lot of customers I’m working with now are saying, “Let’s look at what that employee experience feels like now. Let’s identify the pain points. Let’s see where we can make those moments that matter.” And some of those moments that matter, by the way, are being able to acknowledge gracefully and respectfully when an employee or anybody in the organization is feeling that kind of burnout.

But the idea for HR people, and certainly I was guilty of this early in my career, a bunch of HR people would get into a room, we’d close the door, we’d design the beautiful process that we would create, and then we’d foist it out with crossed fingers, hoping everybody would wildly adopt it. So this empathy also comes into play when you’re designing what that future state is going to be like and what that experience is going to be like. So the conversations I’m having with HR people now are how can we actually introduce empathy into the actual design, what programs we pull together for our employees?

Doug Dennerline:

Laurie, I would add one thing. It’s really interesting to me to be in the business of building software for HR people because a lot of times, they basically want to build their process and application now, but nobody ever thinks about simplicity. Our whole role when we talk to people is, let’s redefine your process and make it as simple as possible, so it gets such better adoption, where people go, “Well, that’s not how we do it here.” They get wedded to their process, and they think their process is great, and the only person that thinks it’s great may be them. The rest of the organization hates it.

And so I really urge people ⁠— and I have a great example of this at SuccessFactors .but we spent six months building their old process into our application, and then they came to the United ⁠— It was a French company ⁠— they came to the U.S., they visited Walmart, who we had just sold our product to, and they had a two-page process for performance management. And the other one was 22 pages, believe it or not, French company. And they go, “Why did you let us build this incredibly bad process when we could have done that?” And I’m like, “We tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

Laurie Ruettimann:

Unbelievable, and I’m not surprised to hear that. And also, we can just laugh about complicated French processes as HR people all day long. Well, as an author, I’m always excited to meet and talk to fellow authors myself, and you two are both working on a book. So, Jamie, tell us a little bit about the book that you’re working on.

Jamie Aitken:

It’s a book that we decided to write. Doug and I have known each other for a very long time, and one of the questions that we asked was, “Why isn’t there an HR person and a CEO co-authoring a book?” Both of those perspectives we feel very strongly should be amplified together when it works well. So we decided, we looked around, there wasn’t one out there. We thought, “You know what? Let’s do it, then. Let’s write the book that we believe in.”

And, Doug, I’m sure you want to pitch in here. We talk in stereo sometimes, Doug and I. But really, it’s about this notion of reimagining how we can make this better and how we can make work better.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Doug, why don’t you remind us all of the title and tell us what you really want people to walk away with when they read the book?

Doug Dennerline:

It’s called “Make Work Better.” The goal here is we take you through a journey and basically say, “Here’s when this process was invented, here, why it was invented, here’s why it doesn’t work, and here’s the research that says it doesn’t work. Here’s what the ideal process we think should look like, and here’s how we can help you get there.”

One of the big stumbling blocks for HR people is all the downstream things that happen when you have an annual review and a rating and a ranking, and it’s the mental break of breaking those processes apart. I always laugh, Laurie. In the old world, we did performance management and comp, annual comp, in the same cycle in January. And then everybody said, “Oh, that’s just too much work, and we’re kicking off the new year.” And so, oh, brilliant, I know. Let’s move the compensation conversation out six months, and now we’re using six-month-old data to make compensation decisions.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Right.

Doug Dennerline:

And so, the book-

Laurie Ruettimann:

I laugh, and yet I cry, because I’ve lived it.

Doug Dennerline:

So the book is really aimed at saying when you have, hey, Mr. CEO, or Mrs. CEO, wake up and realize this is how you should operate as a CEO in today’s environment. And head of HR, it’s not just about being tactical and being compliant. It’s around being a change agent for the business itself. And so, it’s just a journey of where you are from today, and how if you just follow this road map, if you will, you can get there. And it doesn’t mean you have to buy Betterworks to do that. It’s just a mental change and mental attitude about how you think about your processes inside of HR.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, it was amazing to talk to you today about the future of work, the future of human resources, and your future book. Jamie, do you have a publication date for it?

Jamie Aitken:

We’re finishing the writing by December, and the book will be available for purchase in May.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, I’m so excited. We’ll have to have you back in May to talk about the book and the impact it’s making. And, Doug, why don’t you close us out by telling everybody if they want to learn more about performance management or Betterworks, where they can go, where can they find your company?

Doug Dennerline:

Betterworks.com, or you can write me at doug@betterworks.com, email me. I’m happy to talk to you. We’d love to talk to people that really want to rethink how they’re doing these processes and move to something that all your millennials and your X and your Y’s will appreciate.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, as an Xer, I’m going to say everybody should email Doug because I favor email, and I’m in there all day long. Jamie and Doug, it was really a pleasure to have you today on the podcast. Thanks again for being guests.

Doug Dennerline:

Thank you, Laurie.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Hey, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Punk Rock HR. We are proudly underwritten by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is the B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head on over to thestarrconspiracy.com. Punk Rock HR is produced and edited by Rep Cap with special help from Michael Thibodeaux and Devon McGrath. For more information, show notes, links and resources, head on over to punkrockhr.com.

Now, that’s all for today, and I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll see you next time on Punk Rock HR.