The HR Life Podcast

Tony Benjamin (00:09.916)
Welcome to the HR Life podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of the Grange Strategic HR Consulting, and Stephen Bigdeel Smith, who is so important that even his huge house cat is forced to acknowledge his vast authority on everything. Hey, Steve.

Steve-o (00:15.054)
I hope that's something that you can resource.

Steve-o (00:35.479)
Wow.

We do have a huge house cat. Have we talked about that on the podcast before? I don't know that we have. I guess we have, okay. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (00:40.838)
That's right. That's right.

Yes, yes, we've talked about the main coon on the podcast and we talked about how it turned on your sinks. And at the last update we had, we wanted to know what your water bill was. She's opening doors.

Steve-o (00:53.718)
She can open doors now. Yeah, she can open doors now. Yes. And you know how sometimes inside the house you have the little handle doorknobs, right? In fact, in my room here, we have a handle doorknob. And so I've had to replace some of the doorknobs with just normal turn doors because she can do the handles. But guess what? She's now learning that if she puts both her paws like this onto the doorknobs that are around, she can open those too.

Tony Benjamin (01:04.787)
yeah, the lever doors.

Tony Benjamin (01:21.156)
on either side? you're in trouble.

Steve-o (01:23.808)
And she's so big, she's strong enough, she can grapple it. It is ridiculous.

Tony Benjamin (01:27.3)
Yeah. So now have you got your water bills associated with her turning on the water and the bathrooms and playing with it?

Steve-o (01:35.094)
Yeah, you know the good news is Salem City has their water is all combined with some other stuff. I don't know. It's like all together. So it kind of breaks it out for me. Electricity is probably the most expensive thing out here. But we just all drink the Salem Pond water, so we're all good. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:41.426)
Tony Benjamin (01:49.915)
Right, right.

That's the one with the algae. Blue minute every August, right? okay.

Steve-o (01:58.027)
No, no, that's Utah Lake. Do you remember all those commercials during the summer from Studio C? This was hilarious. Studio C had a whole bunch of their little actors doing all these commercials online on like KSL and everything about how the water in Utah Lake is all fresh and good again. You should come and ski and all these things. And then literally within a month, guys, the algae boom is back. Everybody's getting sick. Go home. So they closed everything down just like that.

Tony Benjamin (02:05.208)
No, I didn't remember that.

Tony Benjamin (02:21.682)
Ha!

OK, OK, I got to tell you this is why this is why the algae bloom happens in Utah Lake more than any other time. So everybody knows I used to work for this company called OVIVO and they did water treatment plants, right? The engineered water treatment plants. So, yeah, so I asked them one day, we were out to lunch, me and some of the engineers, and I said, hey, why is it that the algae bloom now happens every single year in Utah Lake? Right? And it didn't used to.

Steve-o (02:40.0)
Yeah, that's right. So you know the real story here.

Steve-o (02:53.89)
Yeah, was just every once in a right?

Tony Benjamin (02:54.374)
they started laughing their heads off. There were three of them and they were laughing their heads off. And they're like, you know what the problem is? I go no, they got the waters too pure going back into the lake. So there's treatment plants that dump water treated water back into Utah Lake. Okay.

The problem is that the environmental regulations make the water so pure that it filters out all of the natural bacteria that's normally in the lake that eats the algae. And so the water is too fresh and that's why the algae gets the upper hand once a year now. Isn't that awesome?

Steve-o (03:27.918)
That's ridiculous.

Tony Benjamin (03:31.098)
All right, well now that we've got all the water.

Steve-o (03:31.98)
I mean the worst part is when I pull out a neon fish from the lake and then I'm like, okay, this can't be normal. I know, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (03:37.941)
It glows on its own. That's right. I got I got more stories about that, too. But before we go any farther, we want to welcome in Tracy Kalmar. Welcome, Tracy, into the podcast. Wait, wait, Oh, there we go. There's the studio audience right there. The live studio audience. They're. Oh, we're excited to have you. Hey, wait, wait.

Steve-o (03:48.396)
Yay, Tracy!

Tracie Kalmar (03:49.598)
Yay!

Steve-o (03:52.398)
Where's our studio audience? Man, wake those people up.

Tracie Kalmar (03:58.943)
That is a good welcome. I'm excited to be here.

Tony Benjamin (04:05.83)
They're crowding the stage, Steve. Put up your sign. Put up your sign.

Tracie Kalmar (04:07.529)
Wow.

Tony Benjamin (04:11.73)
There we go. There we go. He gave the stop signal and they stopped. That's I don't know what you're talking about. That's a live studio audience. They're only held back by a velvet rope.

Tracie Kalmar (04:12.939)
He did.

Steve-o (04:15.694)
Tony sometimes forgets where the button is. That's really what it is.

Tracie Kalmar (04:19.413)
I know.

Steve-o (04:24.846)
That's right, that's right.

Tracie Kalmar (04:25.109)
I can relate to changing my doorknobs in my house though, because I had a dog once that learned how to open the regular doorknobs, not the lever ones. And so we had to turn our deadbolt from our garage around so we could lock her in the house where she would open the door and get out. And so whenever she got out, I would think what wall did she chew through to get out of the house?

Tony Benjamin (04:34.142)
wow.

Steve-o (04:34.222)
Wow.

Tracie Kalmar (04:54.763)
And this was back before Marley and Me. I could have written that book and made a lot of money. My story didn't have as happy of an ending though. But when you have a smart animal, it's actually really, really hard. And I always said, I just want my next dog to just chase its own tail, because trying to contain a very smart dog is impossible. yeah.

Steve-o (04:59.406)
You

Tony Benjamin (05:06.159)
Steve-o (05:09.422)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (05:21.998)
so true. That's so true. We installed a fence in my backyard because my new property that I'm at, didn't have a fence and we put kind of a wood fence in there. And within 24 hours, my labradoodle figured out how to unlatch it and escape. And so then I would get an email or a text from my neighbor. My neighbor's like, your dog is on a walk with somebody else in the neighborhood. What's going on? Because she loves people. So she would just go and start walking with them.

Tony Benjamin (05:22.086)
Yep. Yep. That is that is very, true.

Tracie Kalmar (05:48.885)
Sounds like a labradoodle. Yep.

Steve-o (05:51.95)
And she would just stay right by their side and just follow them up the road. It's like, OK, bye, new family.

Tony Benjamin (05:51.994)
adulterous dog.

Tony Benjamin (05:56.701)
the that's right. It's the adulterous dog. That's the new name. Well, Tracy, we're so happy to have you here on the podcast with us today, because the truth is, is we you have been Steve's HR person at a company where he works. And we're thrilled and happy that you're going to be here and tell us all the dirt about him. And Steve has talked.

Tracie Kalmar (05:57.566)
Exactly, exactly.

Steve-o (05:59.791)
you

So crazy.

Steve-o (06:14.946)
And I've talked about you a lot, so.

Tracie Kalmar (06:17.599)
I know you've made me, I've been listening to your podcast before and like blushed because I come up and I'm like, my gosh, driving home from work, like, I mean, in all the, in all the good ways, I was very flattered and appreciative. thank you.

Steve-o (06:22.456)
Hahaha

Tony Benjamin (06:23.986)
You

Steve-o (06:25.134)
You

Nobody's looking.

Steve-o (06:32.888)
Well, that's good. Well, I remember the year that you won the Utah Achievement Award and I was really big on, you know, I had to get Heidi and everybody to fill out all the paperwork, but I was like, you guys have to submit her name. You have to do this. And so I was probably the reason why your name got submitted because I had to literally track them down to fill out everything. But once I got them to fill out everything, I was like, holy cow, they said some good stuff. I was like, this is great. I'm so excited to submit this, but it was well deserved.

Tony Benjamin (06:53.586)
look how happy she is with that.

Tracie Kalmar (07:01.259)
Still so appreciative. Yes, and I still appreciate that. It was a good experience. It was super fun.

Steve-o (07:03.074)
Yeah, it was well deserved. So it really was. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (07:07.504)
Yeah, I just say this on the podcast, there are three of us here and only one of us has not won that award. And that person is a pathetic moron. That's all I can say.

Steve-o (07:17.294)
Wow Tony remember we talked about compassion that that episodes coming out tomorrow, so you're gonna have to listen to that episode again

Tony Benjamin (07:21.254)
Yes, self-compassion, that's right. That's right. I'm just trying to set the stage for how big of a deal you both are and I'm not. Utah Business Magazine didn't like me. I am the one that nominated you, yes. I am, yes. And I probably said, yeah, yeah, well, that's what you won for, was all the fantastic things you've done for the HR profession over like a decade.

Tracie Kalmar (07:24.775)
you

Tracie Kalmar (07:33.333)
Yeah.

Steve-o (07:34.382)
Well, Tony, aren't you the one that nominated me? Yeah. Yeah. We did a lot of work with Shurm though. It was fun.

Steve-o (07:50.99)
Yeah, yeah, it's fun.

Tony Benjamin (07:51.665)
It was about time somebody recognized you. well, Tracy. Thank you. Thank you. I'm only 400 years old, so you know, it can happen at some point. That's right. Tracy, I am thrilled, though, that you're here. And we're going to lay some folk tales out there that Steve's been telling about you and everything.

Tracie Kalmar (07:55.079)
It's not too late. It's not too late.

Steve-o (07:56.858)
Yep, never too late. You still have time.

Tracie Kalmar (08:03.433)
Right. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (08:16.144)
Make sure that he's been telling all the things right. I mean, I'm sure all the good stuff is good, but who knows? And if you have any complaints that were filed against Steve that you can relate, feel free to mention those. That's right.

Steve-o (08:18.915)
Right, make sure I'm legit.

Tracie Kalmar (08:22.283)
That's right.

Steve-o (08:27.737)
can absolutely share them now. You're already past the two-year mark, right?

Tony Benjamin (08:34.726)
I don't know. Is that is that the statute of limitations for saying that stuff? I don't know. I'll tell you what. Somebody just told me the best, the best HR story that I've ever heard. And I can't tell it yet on the podcast because it will be resolved this this week that we're recording this the week of the 15th of December. It'll be it'll be this. Yeah. Well, it may be a year or two. Right. Whatever that time frame is before that HR person can tell.

Steve-o (08:37.721)
I have no idea. I don't even know.

Tracie Kalmar (08:39.093)
don't know. Yeah.

Steve-o (08:55.78)
so we'll have it on future episodes.

What?

Tony Benjamin (09:03.878)
But I don't know. It's my favorite story now of all time, which Steve says a lot for your for your pregnancy is a workers comp claim story that you have. That's right. Go go.

Steve-o (09:12.471)
Yeah, the accident. That was fun.

Tracie Kalmar (09:14.66)
I've got a good one. And on our agenda, we might talk about benefits for a minute. And if we get to, I will tell you a good benefit HR story.

Tony Benjamin (09:23.218)
Do you want to hang on to it or you just want to blurt it out right now? Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (09:25.199)
Do it now, do it now, I wanna hear it now, please.

Tracie Kalmar (09:26.453)
Want me to tell you, so my favorite HR story is that I got paperwork for a marriage, a divorce, and a new baby all on the same day. And it has become my guiding principle as a parent for the same employee. And I'm like, don't live your life in a way that you get married, divorced, and have a baby all on the same day. And it was, I had to like investigate it because

Tony Benjamin (09:38.96)
The same person?

Steve-o (09:45.239)
Wow.

Tracie Kalmar (09:54.773)
They filed divorce in one county, got married in a different county, and had a baby in a different county. And so I called all the counties and I was like, is this legit? Is this real? Come to find out they only filed for divorce, which if you've been in HR for two minutes, you know, it's not final yet. And so then I called the next county and said, hey, you issued a marriage license to this person and they're not technically forced yet.

Steve-o (10:00.855)
What?

Steve-o (10:12.697)
Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (10:23.879)
They're kind of like, oops. So I had to call the employee and say, you know, congratulations on the new baby. I'm happy to add them to your policy. However, new spouse, I cannot add because you're not legally married.

Tony Benjamin (10:26.491)
Oof.

Tracie Kalmar (10:44.381)
yet because you have to get divorced in the state of Utah still. So that's one of my favorite HR stories that I tell that's just kind of those wacky situations that you can't prepare yourself for. And then they happen and you go, what do I do? Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (10:45.092)
Wow, that's...

Steve-o (10:45.401)
So fun. Yeah, official. All divorces must be final.

Tony Benjamin (10:55.516)
Wow.

Tony Benjamin (11:00.186)
No, no. Who would tell you that that was on your bingo card? Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Steve-o (11:05.871)
What do you call that, like a divorcesary? Like an anniversary, but like a divorcesary? I don't know, like what do you name that?

Tracie Kalmar (11:12.907)
I name it, don't live your life in a way that that is what you do.

Tony Benjamin (11:12.946)
It is that that's great. It might be the title of the episode right there.

Steve-o (11:20.921)
Great advice. you get anything else from this episode, there it is right there, guys.

Tony Benjamin (11:26.47)
divorce, birth and marriage all in the same payroll period.

Tracie Kalmar (11:29.045)
That's a lot of stress all on the same day. I don't recommend.

Tony Benjamin (11:31.718)
Yeah.

Steve-o (11:34.319)
especially for HR, because you had to take all that time to investigate, right? Because, I mean, that must have used up quite a bit of time. So.

Tony Benjamin (11:34.598)
That's good. That's right.

Tracie Kalmar (11:36.285)
Right.

Tracie Kalmar (11:41.993)
I mean, it was just more like, I mean, it was, was pretty new in my career. I was pretty young and I was like, I don't even know what to do with this for a minute. So I just started making phone calls and, you know, process of elimination discovered that. And I was like, and then, and then having the conversation with the employee, I also was again, new in my career, young, felt inadequate to have that conversation. But I did it and that's how we grow.

We do the scary things.

Tony Benjamin (12:11.314)
And no one tried to murder you or take you out or anything. That's good.

Steve-o (12:11.395)
That's how we grow.

Tracie Kalmar (12:16.875)
And they were very like, okay. All right, that's fine. Cool. All right, good luck.

Tony Benjamin (12:21.68)
Wow, really? Wow. Okay, that's pretty good. So one of my favorite stories of all time is that right before I got to a company, there was a lady who had faked having cancer so she could get more time off and people would donate PTO to her. She went so far as to shave her head. She shaved her head.

And the only way it was found out is because someone actually called the medical provider who kept signing the notes and said, did you really write this note? Cause I have a question or two about it. And they were like, we have no idea what you're talking about. That's how, that's how it was found out. So, yep.

Tracie Kalmar (13:08.139)
They don't teach you that in an HR school.

Steve-o (13:08.271)
There you go. No, they do not.

Tony Benjamin (13:10.514)
No, they don't. They don't. Okay. You know what? That's a long introduction, but I think well worth the stories. Very good.

Tracie Kalmar (13:12.011)
they don't.

Steve-o (13:19.363)
Well, and and you know another thing I just want to say just because it's this time of year Tracy eight years ago gave me one of the best birthday cards I've ever received in my life and I know I've talked about this before and it was when I turned 40 and it said welcome to the protected class and what was so fun about that what was so fun about that is is we had several other of the salespeople and people in the room and I was the only one that got it. I thought this is so great because only another HR person would get it and I know you knew that.

Tracie Kalmar (13:29.813)
Really?

Tony Benjamin (13:44.306)
You

Tracie Kalmar (13:45.483)
You

Steve-o (13:49.175)
And so that was so good. I still have that card here too. So I saved it all these years because it's just, it's one of my favorites.

Tracie Kalmar (13:49.387)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (13:56.434)
It's fantastic.

Tracie Kalmar (13:56.713)
It's my response when people say like, how old are you? I'm like, well, I'm officially a protected class. So I mean, now you can't really ask me anymore.

Steve-o (14:06.809)
Hahaha

Tony Benjamin (14:09.422)
Stop asking. That's right. Okay, since we're since we're this far in I'm gonna I'm gonna read the the ad and then and then we'll kind of then we'll actually start the official podcast. That's right. Running a business is hard. HR shouldn't be Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR with expert support and everything from hiring to handbooks compliance to culture need payroll help or recruiting power. We do that too.

Tracie Kalmar (14:10.751)
Yeah.

Steve-o (14:12.175)
So fun. Oh Yeah, it was to our ad we got to say thank you to Becca, that's right

Tony Benjamin (14:36.474)
Fractionally and flexibly, no overhead, just results. Visit megastarhr.com and let's grow your business together.

Thanks, shout out to Becca.

Steve-o (14:47.503)
forever.

Tony Benjamin (14:51.77)
Sorry, Steve, I'm impressed that you did not say it along with me that time. Way to self-control. Self-control.

Steve-o (14:54.991)
I was tempted, I really was. I usually mouth it Tracy, usually, cause I have it memorized now when he says it, I usually mouth it, make fun of him, but it's alright. We love Becca, so.

Tony Benjamin (15:03.538)
That's right. So Tracy, tell us about you. Tell us about you a little bit and how you got into HR. And if you want to tell us why you didn't quit when Steve worked for you, like what it was that helped you through the massive burnout and all that that's associated with being HR over Steve.

Tracie Kalmar (15:08.255)
Okay.

Steve-o (15:09.601)
Yeah, how do you got an HR? Like, why HR?

Tracie Kalmar (15:11.707)
Yeah, it's actually,

Tracie Kalmar (15:17.835)
Steve was great.

Tracie Kalmar (15:22.313)
Yeah.

Steve-o (15:24.079)
Because I know I was her biggest headache. Every open enrollment.

Tracie Kalmar (15:27.935)
I wish that was true. It's not. So I often, it's kind of a funny story. I often say that the reason I got into HR was I was robbed at KnifePoint, which is true. I was working at a retail store and I got robbed at KnifePoint and I took the next day off because obviously, I mean, that's a little traumatic. And I took the next day off and I applied for one job as a HR assistant.

Steve-o (15:50.275)
just a tad.

Tracie Kalmar (15:56.433)
at a big healthcare company in Utah. And it was the only job I applied for. I didn't hear back for about a month, but then I got a call for an interview and I got the job. And that's really what got me into HR. And after six weeks as an HR assistant, I became a benefit specialist and stayed with them for a long time, working all kinds of benefits, retirement, leave of absence. I kind of went from

Tony Benjamin (16:08.274)
Wow.

Tracie Kalmar (16:25.771)
one little niche thing to the next, tuition reimbursement. I did all the little things, which gave me a ton of experience while then eventually I went back to school and decided to get my degree. So I got my degree. And once I had my degree, I was looking for growth and working at a huge big company. You're very siloed into different niches of HR. And I wanted like the general

like overall experience and I lucked into applicant pro. And again, I applied for one job and I got it. And I often say applicant pro changed my life for the better. Like just absolutely loved the people and the opportunities and the growth that I got there. So I was, you know, an HR party of one. I worked part time at first and just kind of grew with the company as it grew. And

Steve-o (17:21.348)
Hmm?

Tracie Kalmar (17:24.873)
I was there for about a minute, I think, and they were like, hi, we're implementing a new HRIS system and you get to go. And with that, we need to do an open enrollment. So I started, you know, baptism by fire within my first minute of being there, implementing a new HRIS system and holding an open enrollment and get all of that, all that that entails. and it just never stopped growing from there.

Tony Benjamin (17:41.852)
Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (17:54.153)
Really, I was so excited to just be able to learn all the aspects and take everything that I learned and everything that I didn't know and figure it out. And I was given the support and grace to figure it out along the way. And it was great. So I recently left Applicant Pro about a year, just over a year ago. Yeah, yes.

Tony Benjamin (18:17.938)
So now, can we interject here? How did you make it, like how did you emotionally deal with Steve as an employee? And how did you stay in the profession?

Steve-o (18:25.456)
Tony really wants to know this.

Tracie Kalmar (18:25.835)
as an employee, Steve, like, I just don't think I'm gonna give you the answer that you want. Steve was like a bestie, especially pre-COVID when we were in the office all the time. He was like the sunshine that like walked into the room. you know, it was always, was, yeah, it was, it was like this,

Tony Benjamin (18:31.96)
dang well.

Steve-o (18:38.489)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (18:44.956)
That's so sweet.

Steve-o (18:45.07)
Wow. That's because I said hi to everybody.

Tracie Kalmar (18:52.267)
Not tradition, but like this, wasn't a full day if Steve didn't come and say hi and talk to you for a few minutes. And I think, although I loved my time being remote, like those are the things we missed, that connection and that just like water cooler talk, you know, because in our break room, we did have snacks and my favorite were the peanut butter &Ms that Applicant Pro got me addicted to. So if we didn't meet in the...

Steve-o (19:15.031)
We did.

Steve-o (19:20.656)
I forgot about that.

Tony Benjamin (19:21.01)
I hope.

Tracie Kalmar (19:22.187)
Yeah, we didn't meet in the break room over the peanut butter M &Ms. just, it wasn't a full complete day. And so yeah, Steve was great. It was great having his HR support, his HR network, his involvement with the SHRM chapter here. All of that was super beneficial to me and appreciated by me. So I wish I had these like nightmare stories for you of like him being this trouble employee, but

Steve-o (19:49.083)
So tell people about the tours and my office. Because this always intrigued me because I did not hear about this until COVID hit and we were no longer doing tours in the office with new hires.

Tracie Kalmar (20:00.467)
Well, I mean, every time we hired someone new, we'd give them a tour of the office. The office was not, you know, fancy by any means. No. But Steve's office, I don't know if I don't know how everyone knows Steve's, but Steve's office was entertaining because first of all, it was full. Like most offices were an Ikea desk and a chair. you know, in fact, we moved desks so often that when I, when I

Steve-o (20:07.48)
It wasn't glamorous by any means, yeah, so true.

Steve-o (20:18.416)
You

Tracie Kalmar (20:29.589)
got when I was new, put up a picture on the wall and everyone was like, that's cute. You think you're gonna stay here for more than two minutes. And it was true. Like we moved spaces quite frequently. I did not stay there long. But Steve, Steve got his because no one wanted to move Steve. So maybe that was like his covert, his covert thing because.

Steve-o (20:35.632)
You

Tony Benjamin (20:50.354)
That's how we did it.

Steve-o (20:51.312)
That's exactly why I did it. Because I didn't want to move.

Tracie Kalmar (20:55.349)
He had so much stuff in his office and it was all Star Wars or superhero related, mostly Star Wars. And so it's how people remembered Steve though, really. I was like, and Steve sits in this desk and you'll just know Steve. You'll know Steve because he's usually in a Star Wars shirt and he will talk to you. Like when you meet Steve, you'll know. And then you can relate that that's where he sits because that's just Steve. So Steve was like,

Tony Benjamin (21:07.141)
Yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (21:12.53)
You

Tony Benjamin (21:22.418)
When Dorothy's house falls on you, you will know. And that's right.

Tracie Kalmar (21:24.743)
Yes, you'll just know. You'll just know. There was a few people there that I was like, if you know them, you know you know them because you will like you just remember. And Steve was one of those and his desk in his office was eclectic. It was full.

Steve-o (21:27.28)
the thing.

Tony Benjamin (21:32.231)
Right, right.

Steve-o (21:39.759)
Even the door, had all the Star Wars stickers on the door. But did you realize I got in trouble with that though? Something like that. I got in trouble when I first put those stickers up and this was before you got there Tracy because one of the stickers was Princess Leia in her little bikini thing with Jabba the Hutt. Totally got in trouble for that one. Which I totally get. I know, I know, but you know, I get it. I was like, you some people are offended by a woman in a bikini on the, you know.

Tracie Kalmar (21:42.579)
Yeah, I don't know. When we moved out, did it take you a month? No.

Tony Benjamin (21:58.757)
I wonder why you got in trouble for that.

Tracie Kalmar (21:59.071)
I wouldn't have gotten in trouble. Yeah, I wouldn't have cared.

Steve-o (22:08.88)
and was in chains, you know, because she was the job of the huts slave, you know? Wow, where did that one come from, Tony?

Tracie Kalmar (22:11.851)
I yeah.

Tony Benjamin (22:15.388)
You

Tracie Kalmar (22:17.724)
loving that. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (22:18.962)
It's, you know, a bikini clad woman on a sticker on a door. Surprise! I got you in trouble. That's shocking. Yeah.

Steve-o (22:24.558)
You

Tracie Kalmar (22:25.419)
The only thing more shocking or probably less shocking would be if it was on the HR professional store, right? Like we often joke that it's always the HR team that's got the inappropriateness going. So yeah, so yeah, so I'm a big believer in like, there's different, you need different things out of a career, different seasons of your life. And sometimes those seasons of your life, know.

Steve-o (22:27.61)
sucking.

Tony Benjamin (22:32.508)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (22:37.649)
That's right.

Steve-o (22:37.882)
right?

Tony Benjamin (22:41.116)
Yep.

Tracie Kalmar (22:52.277)
Like if you're about to have a baby or about to get married or something, you kind of know you're entering a new season of life. And then sometimes those seasons of life change and you don't anticipate them. You're suddenly a caregiver for an elderly parent or, or a spouse or something like that. And you need something from your job that, you know, for that season of life that maybe wasn't as, as important. And so, so, yeah, I just, my only child grew up and graduated and the things I needed and

The flexibility that I enjoyed no longer was my priority, but growth became I was like I'm still young enough to have a lot of career left is what I kept saying like I know that I'm a protected class, but I feel like I have a lot of career left and I want to do more. I want to know more and so that's I ultimately left and landed at nice as a senior HR business partner. So I'm working for a global tech company and. Getting all the experience in the difference that.

Tony Benjamin (23:32.587)
Hahaha

Steve-o (23:35.162)
Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (23:51.143)
that comes with a bigger company and immigration and all of that has been a big part of my daily life now, which has been super exciting to grow as much as I've grown the last year.

Tony Benjamin (24:01.5)
That's really cool. That's really cool. And you're at Nice now, right? That's the name of the company, Nice. Good for you. That's nice.

Steve-o (24:06.299)
Yeah, and I love her post too because she, you one of the things Tracy's always been good at is sharing her stories and the things that she learns and just being completely vulnerable about it. Like, here's what I learned today and here's what happened. And I love that part of it because the reality is is HR is like that, right? We're all at different stages and we're just gonna learn stuff as we go. And sharing it, I think is really important because you might have somebody who just happens to read it or look at it and say,

I'm going through the same thing right now. This is great. You see those stories from other people and you're just like, yeah, I can relate to that and it's a lot easier to deal with, guess, in that sense too.

Tony Benjamin (24:44.348)
Well, that's good. so OK, so I think I think that's good. And again, congratulations on making it through working with Steve and all that and still having your sanity. That's wonderful. Even though you won't share all your great stories, but that's OK. Stickers on the doors. Tracy, that's right. So here here's here's the. I bet she will. I bet she will.

Steve-o (24:52.836)
You

Tracie Kalmar (24:55.392)
Yes.

Steve-o (25:02.629)
with bikini clad women.

Steve-o (25:08.155)
My wife's gonna love listening to this later. She will, she will.

Tony Benjamin (25:12.998)
Merry Christmas, everybody. Anyway, Tracy, I want to ask you the same question we ask everybody that we bring on. Talk to us about the state of HR as it stands right now. What is the state of HR? Kind of big picture, good, bad, ugly, or really good? I suppose that's a possibility. But tell us what you think about what is this current state of HR?

Tracie Kalmar (25:30.912)
Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (25:35.831)
I mean, there's things that we read on, you know, LinkedIn and things that would make you, yeah. I gave some thought to it. I feel like the state of HR is changing in the fact that, well, and this is a positive, a positive change for HR has been that HRs for so long was just looked as like the data entry people, the people, the...

Tony Benjamin (25:41.786)
and business insider, right?

Steve-o (25:44.069)
Yeah, like Coldplay concerts.

Tony Benjamin (25:47.697)
Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (26:03.359)
the paper pushers or the police department that I was here to enforce the policies and make your life miserable. And, you know, I don't think that that's the state of HR today. And I don't believe that it's future. It's more strategic. I almost said strategic. I did, I said it. Drinking game.

Tony Benjamin (26:22.918)
There you go. You did it. Hey, that's okay. I'm thirsty. So that's a good time.

Steve-o (26:23.409)
Everybody take a drink. There we go.

Tracie Kalmar (26:29.027)
It's more about understanding the business, aligning with their goals and knowing the insides and outs, understanding financials of the business, which I'm actually super grateful that I got that experience at ApplicantPro under RCFO, Heather Walker. was so great at, I know she was so great. she, you know,

Steve-o (26:46.875)
She was so good, yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (26:53.417)
I got a seat at the table and I got to have, was listening to those conversations, which helped me prepare for my next role and understanding that now I'm at a publicly traded company. So understanding that is so huge. And, and then just aligning the business to the direction that it wants to go, but having that people focus in mind, because like sometimes Heather Walker and I are really great friends and she was our CFO.

and our brains are completely different. And so we often approached a problem together on purpose because I was going to approach it with a completely different mindset than she would. And so we would arrive hopefully into the best solution by aligning our goals. And I feel like that's the perfect situation of HR is you need to align and grow, but having that people focus. And then,

I hear all the time of people saying like I'm out right HR is not for me. I what what can I transition to? I'm seeing a lot of that. Yeah, so when they say what is the state of it, it's yeah, it's kind of the state of it is maybe and but then I say like maybe if you're not ready for the next phase of HR, then that probably is time for you to take an exit. I actually love.

Tony Benjamin (27:58.727)
Yes.

Steve-o (27:58.896)
It is happening a lot, you're right.

And that's

Tracie Kalmar (28:18.981)
I'm very happy in what I do and being a business partner and being on kind of that business side as a partner for the business leaders that I support and understanding their challenges and their goals and their focus areas and then working with them together as a true partner to come up with the best solutions to drive our people to make our deadlines and produce what we're supposed to produce. It's like,

I love it. So I'm really happy with the state of HR and we talked in the introduction before we started recording a little bit about the controversy surrounding HR and SHRM as a network. And we were like, we can't touch on it. I'll be honest. And this is how I feel. I'm holding space as they say. I'm watching because there has been some very controversial, I will say disappointing.

Tony Benjamin (29:02.714)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Steve-o (29:03.345)
Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (29:18.303)
things coming out about SHRM and the organization. And I'll be honest, I did get my SHRM certification and I paid for it myself and it was a lot of money. And so seeing that was kind of disheartening for me because I was like, I invest in the wrong organization? What do those letters after my name mean now?

Steve-o (29:18.597)
Very disappointing. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (29:42.226)
Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (29:46.101)
Like, do they mean anything or do they mean something negative even? And for me, I just feel like, yeah, what will they mean in the future? So for me, I'm just like, the jury's out. I'm not like quick to judge on anything. So I'm not like, but I'm like, disappointed. I'm disappointed. Yeah.

Steve-o (29:50.331)
Yeah. And what will they mean? Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (30:06.044)
Yeah, no, and that's, know, I and just the type was Steve and I are hoping we're going to do a an empty Red Sea podcast on this in the in future. So I'll keep some of my powder dry on this. But I've been trying to talk to different people who have worked for Sherm and some of them who don't anymore and trying to get a real feel for what working for Sherm was like, because.

Look, the thing about the about the lawsuit and know, sherm says, you know, they make a motion, they try to get the judge to throw out or not tell the jury that they're the experts in HR, right? Not to you. Okay, fine. Whatever. That's a tactic. Well, sure, but it's a tactic, right? It's like if you sue a news organization, the news organization always does this deal where they say, they use this tactic in court where they say, look, no one believes us anyway. So it doesn't matter what we say, right?

Steve-o (30:44.635)
Which is so ridiculous in my mind, but yeah.

Mm-hmm, it is.

Tony Benjamin (31:01.124)
It's one of those tactics you take in court. It's a legal tactic. Blah, blah. I don't really care about that. I care about it in the degree to which I hope the truth, whatever the truth is, comes out in the courtroom. But I don't really care about that stuff. What I do care about is the rumors about the management style that is at SHRM. And I have and when we talk about this again, we'll talk about this, but I have information that Johnny is the best of them.

but he's not perfect. that, and just hearing some of the stories that I've dug into, and maybe we'll dive into those another time, that sort of stuff, that's actually what worries me. That the number one organization that is supposed to be...

the best at this. might be one of the worst. Right. And part of that is just East Coast business mentality. By the way, if anyone wants to this in Houston, it's a lot the same way. They have the same attitudes there and stuff like that is very cutthroat and ruthless. So that that's what worries me most about it. I'm not worried about whether or not Sherm's get the initials after your name are going to be a black mark on you. mean, mine are from HRCI. And for a long time, everybody thought HRCI was going to go away. And I thought and I

I hate to say this, but all I kept thinking that's great. If HRCI goes away, that just means my PHR never expires and I'll just continue to leave it next to my name. yeah. So, but yeah, I don't need that. I don't need to be recertified for that anymore, right? They lost in court. So that's right. But anyways, yeah, Steve, anything you want to jump on that to? think Tracy bringing that up was awesome.

Steve-o (32:19.026)
There you go

Tracie Kalmar (32:21.013)
I'm adopting that, I don't know. Maybe.

Steve-o (32:30.534)
Yeah, you earned it. It's there for life.

Steve-o (32:39.762)
I I have a lot that I kind of said on that, because it was something that when it first came out, I just put a post online if you guys want to go look at it. I posted about a week ago, because, find me on LinkedIn. If you can find me, I don't have a paid account. Yeah, I don't have a paid account anymore, so you might have trouble finding me, you because their algorithm only allows people who are paid, but, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (32:50.278)
Find Steve on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, you should sponsor this podcast. And then we could have some influence over how you do it. That's right.

Tracie Kalmar (33:03.733)
You have to follow, sign up for notifications, and then make it a part of your daily processes to go check Steve's LinkedIn just so that the algorithm will start showing him in your feeds. Yeah.

Steve-o (33:11.026)
Yeah, I need help again, right?

Tony Benjamin (33:12.924)
That's right. That's right. And who wouldn't want to pick and check on Steve every day? Somebody's got to.

Steve-o (33:17.702)
Right. And you can go read my post on this, I my biggest thing is, yes, we should care about the accountability of SHRM. And yes, it's disappointing. Yes, I there's a part of me that's angry. There's a part of me that's frustrated by it. But I think what hurt me the most and what I didn't want to see and what I was frustrated about is how many people were burning down the community of people who serve under the SHRM name, all the volunteers that I've worked with.

Tony Benjamin (33:44.818)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (33:46.481)
You know, we have to resist this desire to want to tear people down because that right there is not what our profession is about. And as soon as you take this component, which is a pretty big headline, and you start tearing down the very people that serve under its current name and volunteer and do all the things that they do, that's where I think the failure is. And we have to be better than that in our own profession.

The professionals that I serve with here in Utah, I have a tremendous amount of respect for. And I love and value who they are as coaches and mentors and all the things that they've been to me. And I hated the fact that people were just simply tearing down SHRM and all the people associated with SHRM, which is what I felt was inappropriate. Yep, especially at the local level.

Tony Benjamin (34:35.25)
Especially at the local level. Yep. And I want to that's a great point, Steven. I want to augment or add on to what I said by saying I'm talking about Shurm National, not State Shurm, not your local chapter. That's all your friends. Those are all people that are here. That's a great point.

Steve-o (34:46.768)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Steve-o (34:52.274)
So anyway, I just I for me I chose not to judge my peers based on this big picture right of what Sherman's doing Because I still love and respect them and they're men and women of integrity that I've worked with over the years Tracy one of them, right? I mean that there are people that I've worked with over the years that I would I would go to bat for them in any situation and and that will never go away so So to me at the end of the day it really is about Yes, they need to be held accountable

And they're going to be fined. I'm sure they're going to fight it. But whatever if it turns out it's all true and the jury already decided it's true, then yes, they should be held accountable to that period. anyway, yeah, we'll have an episode where we talk about that more depth. But thank you, Tracy, for bringing that up, because it is a hot topic right now. And again, we just need to avoid the and I'm grateful for somebody like Tracy, who is the professional that I know that does sit back and just watches.

Tony Benjamin (35:31.196)
Yeah, that's good.

Tracie Kalmar (35:39.573)
Yeah.

Steve-o (35:49.383)
Because there's no reason to go on there and start ridiculing and making fun of people or putting people down. That's not what this profession is about. And Tracy is the epitome of that, of sitting back, watching it. Why? Because she's not gonna just simply throw people under the bus because of one big event. So that's another thing I appreciate about you Tracy. So there you go.

Tracie Kalmar (36:10.411)
all those years of practice. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (36:12.274)
And restraint in responding to Steve. That's right. That's right.

Steve-o (36:12.306)
Right. That's right. Yeah, when I was in the office, she had to restrain all the time.

Tracie Kalmar (36:14.825)
Yes.

all the time.

Tony Benjamin (36:19.322)
No. that's OK. Now clear back on episode number two of this podcast. And by the way, everybody, if you haven't listened to episode number two, you should listen episode number two. That's when we had Becca on and Becca and Steve were talking about cutesy ways of reinforcing company values. And so the discussion about the values and the water bottles. Can you tell me about this, Tracy? Can you put that out there and say what that program really was?

Steve-o (36:36.466)
Yep.

Steve-o (36:47.302)
I love those stickers.

Tony Benjamin (36:48.658)
Settle the argument all the way where like 25 episodes later.

Steve-o (36:52.348)
They don't believe me Tracy, they don't believe me.

Tracie Kalmar (36:56.075)
What controversy about the water bottles?

Steve-o (37:00.146)
Well, it's remember how we used to have stickers. Yeah, it was.

Tony Benjamin (37:00.294)
Well, was was an on the podcast that wasn't.

Tracie Kalmar (37:03.575)
the stickers, yeah. I mean, was it controversial?

Tony Benjamin (37:07.344)
No, it wasn't. It was controversial on the podcast because Steve Beck and I were having this discussion. Can you reinforce company values without being cute? And then Steve said what you did. And I thought that doesn't really count as cute, but sort of it's like borderline cute.

Steve-o (37:07.376)
No, it wasn't controversial, but...

Tracie Kalmar (37:10.344)
Okay.

Tracie Kalmar (37:15.785)
Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (37:22.143)
Well, I'll tell you too. I'll tell you what I did. Well, I'm going to tell you why I did it and then I'll tell you what we did. But, you know, I'm an eighties kid. And so, you know, when you would go to get, right, you'd go get a Happy Meal for McDonald's and you needed to get like all of the toys, all of them. And then Pokemon became big and you had to catch them all. Right. So I wanted to start being like, how can we

Tony Benjamin (37:26.62)
Go. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (37:31.494)
That's the best decade. Yeah.

Steve-o (37:40.144)
All the toys. All of them.

Tony Benjamin (37:40.816)
Right? Yeah, yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (37:51.753)
gamify, if you will, core values and want people to collect them all and earn them all. And so I thought, let's do stickers and whether we put them on water bottles or laptops or whatever, it started out being, wanted like, I was gonna 3D print little things for our desks. So when we walked by, you could see that Tracy had the humility or the smart token.

Steve-o (38:06.29)
Mm-hmm.

Tracie Kalmar (38:20.017)
and be like, wow, that's a cool one. That one's purple and I really want whatever. make it a game and then go earn that. But also that was hard because I think right around then too we went remote because of COVID. And so stickers became available because they're cheap to mail, they're cheap to make. So this is a very budget friendly idea for this bootstrapped companies that don't have an unlimited budget.

Steve-o (38:32.112)
Yeah, nobody was in office.

Tracie Kalmar (38:49.429)
So one of our marketing employees helped me create a logo for every value that we had. And we made them stickers and the stickers were shaped like honeycombs on purpose so that they could stack on your laptop really well and kind of integrate together. And the whole idea is that they would, they work better together. And then we started to everything we did,

Tony Benjamin (39:09.062)
cool.

Tracie Kalmar (39:17.503)
needed to tie to a core value, especially recognition. So if we were recognizing someone, we would say, hey, Steve did this thing. Thank you so much for being a confidence builder. And the reason that was important to me is I needed our new employees to be able to picture what that looked like, because we can talk about our values. And we did. New employee orientation, we said, here's our core values. This is what they are. This is their little logo. Isn't that cute?

But more than that, I wanted them to know what does that behavior look like? What habits do they have? How does that show up in sales or how does that show up in customer support or how does that show up in engineering? What does that look like? And so I needed them to be able to picture it. And so what we did is started recognizing it and then people go, I can do that. I can be more like that. And then they can visualize. I think most of us want to be high performers. We want to.

earn all the stickers or earn all the Happy Meal toys and we're all a little bit competitive, most of us. And so we wanted to just kind of really reinforce what does it look like? Because our core values, some of them were like, Heather's favorite one was confidence builders. But when I say that to you, like, how does that show up? What does that look like? But when you get a sticker and it's like, hey, thank you so much for Sarah who

Steve-o (40:19.037)
Mm-hmm.

Tracie Kalmar (40:41.767)
you know, on her own, welcome to this new employee and made sure, had scheduled a one-on-one with her every day to make sure she didn't have any questions and helped her get up to speed super fast. That's what a confidence builder looks like. And then other people can be like, I can be that, we have a new employee starting soon. I can do that too. And it just fostered that behaviors that we really wanted to see at ApplicantPro.

Steve-o (41:01.685)
Mm-hmm

Tracie Kalmar (41:10.057)
And so yeah, everything just started to revolve around the core values. First, we needed to make sure we had the right core values. I was not a part of that, but our amazing team created the core values. And in fact, right before COVID hit, we introduced empathy as one of our newest. And I remember thinking how relevant and perfect it was that that was introduced right before COVID, because then COVID hit and we needed a lot of empathy.

Steve-o (41:28.155)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (41:38.96)
Mm-hmm.

Tracie Kalmar (41:39.107)
And I referred to that core value a lot over that next year as we were traversing unknown things for the first time for all of us. All of us were doing things we had never done before and navigating homeschooling our kids and having a job and everything that year was. We all gained a lot of experience that year.

Steve-o (42:03.504)
Yeah, well and what I loved about empathy too was that it not only trickled in among us as employees, but it trickled down into our clients as well because we introduced this maintenance mode and we put people on pause. So for some of our clients who were in industries that got hit really hard, we were actually really flexible with them and we're you know, we showed empathy right? We said, well, we have this option because we don't want to lose you as a client, but we also recognize you're struggling right now.

And so from a sales perspective, we were able to introduce some things too that also, you know, exercise that core value with our clients. And I think that's, that's what was always fascinating to me about the core values, because when you have a group of employees who not only recognize the core values in each other, they start acting on those core values and it reflects in every conversation they have, which has an absolute impact on the people they work with and our clients. And I,

Tracie Kalmar (42:56.179)
Yeah.

Steve-o (42:59.889)
That's the beauty of it. When you're doing it right, it should impact everyone involved. So cutesy stickers or not. But man, I wanted all those stickers.

Tracie Kalmar (43:08.971)
QC stickers or not? I did too. I don't think I even earned them all. I mean, I might've stolen a whole set. It's fine.

Steve-o (43:14.771)
I didn't either. You stole a whole set? Wait, what?

Tony Benjamin (43:17.894)
Well if you're part of the team that designs them, you should be able to take them go home.

Tracie Kalmar (43:21.403)
I didn't really still help, but you know, like, mean, they were in my desk. I could have just put them all on my laptop if I wanted to, but it, you know, it just created a, and you know, especially if you're managing a remote workforce, there's something to be said about a card written by your manager that says, hey, thanks for this. This is what I saw. This is what I observed. This is the value. And then you get something. And even if.

Steve-o (43:25.213)
Yeah.

Steve-o (43:35.069)
Mm-hmm.

Tracie Kalmar (43:46.507)
it's a sticker you stick on your laptop or your water bottle or put in the garbage. Like it means something. And then the other thing we did is we talked about who earned the stickers every month at company meetings. So there would be a slide that says, here's our sticker, know, here's who earned it. So again, we were always driving the values that we wanted to drive. And it's something that I took with me even I tried.

At Nice, I will tell you, I did try to create stickers. I haven't yet. I'm not saying I won't ever, but I did try. But instead of that, right? I know. And, but when it's like every time I plan an event, it has to do with a core value of nice. So one of the first things I did was

Steve-o (44:20.659)
I'd say go with the 3D figures. I like that. I would have totally worked for those. So exciting.

Tracie Kalmar (44:39.179)
plan a win week because one of our core values was obsessed with winning and we did it during the BYU Utah rivalry week and it was all there was a message every day and then a big tailgating party and everyone wore their BYU or Utah gear and it was just about a core value and and being obsessed with winning and what does winning mean and what does it look like and how can we win at our jobs every day and I just really believe that the more we

can tie everything we do back to a core value, then it does, like Steve said, it becomes a part of the everyday conversation without even knowing it.

Steve-o (45:20.275)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (45:20.306)
No, that's fantastic. And that's where that conversation went in that episode, was exactly what you just said, is how do you pull it in there? And I love what you're talking about with recognition. Each time you recognize an employee, it should reinforce one of those values, right? And to your point, it's okay if you add or edit those over time as the company grows and is something different. You're a company and your five employees

your culture feels a certain way. When you're 150, it's very, very different. Right? And to reinforce

Steve-o (45:56.478)
Well, and the fact that Tony said it was fantastic is a really big deal, so.

Tony Benjamin (46:01.553)
Tracie Kalmar (46:02.197)
Well, and even if you're a small company with five employees, the thing is, is your values exist whether you've defined them or not. you know, making sure that you define them and that they really will lead you to where you want to go as a company is important. And instilling the right values will make sure you have the right people there as well, because that's the other thing that...

Tony Benjamin (46:08.538)
Yes, exactly.

Steve-o (46:09.107)
Amen.

Tracie Kalmar (46:30.813)
Another layer to the values is we screened for values in every job interview that we did because having a good culture fit was more important to applicant pro than having the experience, the perfect resume. So we actually valued you being a good culture fit more than we valued your perfect resume. So we screened for that. Yeah, we had.

Steve-o (46:55.731)
And you did that through some questioning, right? You did that through certain questions.

Tony Benjamin (46:55.834)
OK, that's a.

Tracie Kalmar (47:00.413)
We did. had, I often say I asked really hard questions, which I've kept. So if you interview with me ever in the future, I still ask them.

Steve-o (47:09.875)
Can you share some of those questions? Because one of the things I always loved about these questions, especially having been a recruiter in the past and watching Tracy evolve as an HR professional in the organization at the time and watching these questions come to life and how they really drew out the type of answers that you're looking for to find that culture. I was so fascinated by how you did this. I don't know if you can, if you know one offhand or if you wanna.

Tony Benjamin (47:10.578)
Good.

Tracie Kalmar (47:37.835)
Yeah, mean, yeah, honestly, a lot of them came from a book. So I can't even tell you the book. So I will try and find it. But a lot of them come from a book. But one of the ones I ask all the time is, tell me about someone that's better than you in an area that's really important to you. And what I'm looking for there is humility. What I'm looking for is you recognizing that someone is better than you. But then I'll always like,

Steve-o (47:38.885)
Share a few.

Steve-o (47:45.296)
wow.

Tracie Kalmar (48:07.689)
I mean, if they tell me something lame, like for myself, I'm not a runner. So if I went, well, Steve's a faster runner than me. Cool. Why is running important to you? Right? Like, because actually for me personally, running's not important to me. So I could care less if Steve's better than me, but he is better than me because almost everyone is, it's fine. But I wanted that story. I wanted that connection of like, you know, this...

Steve-o (48:23.09)
Yeah. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (48:25.394)
Right.

Tracie Kalmar (48:33.493)
playing the violin is really important to me because of X, Y, Z. And my sister was always better than me our whole lives. And I've always admired, like I'm just looking for that humility and that recognition that someone can be better than you, but in something that's really important. That confused people. mean, it's just such a hard, you can't prepare for that. Like chat GBT is not gonna ask, like tell you to be prepared to answer that question. The other one I looked for is like,

Steve-o (48:51.902)
I love that one. Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (49:02.631)
what three factors have led you to your success so far in your career. And for that, again, I was looking for humility. I was looking for the recognition that you didn't do it alone. And that's really hard because in a job interview, you're trying to put your best foot forward and you're trying to show how amazing you are. so bringing humility into a job interview is actually really difficult. So I usually had like a few humility questions.

Tony Benjamin (49:20.07)
Yes.

Tracie Kalmar (49:28.841)
or back up questions I could ask if I'm not getting it right away because of course they're gonna say, I'm highly organized, I'm very strategic, I just did it again, drink.

Steve-o (49:35.23)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (49:38.353)
Yes.

Steve-o (49:38.452)
Tantararan!

Tracie Kalmar (49:40.623)
or they're going to have these, these lists of things. I know. Good, good, good. so, they're, they're always trying to be amazing in the job interview. So I always had these backup questions and I used to Joe, I mean, I don't, I'm not saying this in a bad way, but I often made people cry. I almost started a tally of how many times people cried in a job interview. And it wasn't like, because I was making them, but like it got so real.

Tony Benjamin (49:42.286)
You never have to apologize for strategic just so you're safe.

Tracie Kalmar (50:09.515)
It's because I was authentic. I believed in being authentic. I believed in making real connections. And I think when you start asking questions like that, you create these real human connections. And then all of a sudden someone saying, I would say, what's the hardest thing you've ever had to do in your life? And people would burst into tears and tell me like a story that I was not prepared to hear. It's a lot of times, but it created this connection and this authenticity.

Tony Benjamin (50:34.93)
Right.

Tracie Kalmar (50:38.653)
I often say like in the age of AI, authenticity is going to be highly valuable. And so that's really what we looked for. looked.

Steve-o (50:46.248)
Well, being authentic was one of our core values. And so that was a big deal too, you know? Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (50:50.163)
Mm Yeah, was being authentically likable. and so we would screen for humble, hungry, smart. When am I dealt my deal? The reason I talk about humility all the time is it was my deal breaker. If if I couldn't get humility out of an employee, I would raise some red flags to the hiring manager to be like, hey, I never I never really told them you can't hire this person or you should. But I would say what's really hard for me or the thing I'm not getting is humility, which

could show up in a job like this. Not always, but in my experience, they're not, they're not as coachable and they're not as teachable. And when you do try to coach them, they get defensive and it, and, and it, creates some, some hard situations. And so, I always looked for that humility because it was such an important core value of ours. I also, I have an interview question that Denise actually gave me. so I'm going to give her the credit and

Steve-o (51:23.218)
Yep.

Steve-o (51:30.28)
Now they push back. Yeah.

Steve-o (51:47.048)
Casaniki? I love Denise Casaniki. I know, she's in Ohio.

Tracie Kalmar (51:48.465)
Yes, Denise Kazanicki. Me too. I miss her. You'll have to tell her hi for me. But hi, Denise. Please listen to this. But she gave me this interview question and I adopted it. And I've asked it more times than I can count. she said, we call it the penny question. And it was like, if I asked you to lay pennies from point A to point B, and I would always pick distances very far away from each other. And there was no rules other than the pennies had to touch from point A to point B on the ground.

Tony Benjamin (51:52.678)
Hi Denise, welcome to the Mentions on the POP.

Tracie Kalmar (52:18.601)
you know, whatever, other than that, there's no rules. Just walk me through what you would do to accomplish the task at hand. Now, why do I ask that question and what am I looking for? I'm looking for someone who can think of a big project that maybe they've never done before, they don't understand, they don't know the why behind it and break it down into a process. And I had some of the best answers. Someone invented a machine.

Well, I would invent a machine and I would put all the pennies in the machine and then I would just walk the route and it would lay the pennies on the ground for me, which I thought was genius, right? Because there and knowing who that is, also someone still applicant pro, they were a graphic designer. They were creative. So they were, you know, they thought outside of the box. Someone told me they were gonna rob a bank to get all the pennies. And that's when I started.

Tony Benjamin (52:55.378)
insightful yeah

Hahaha.

Steve-o (52:59.154)
Makes sense, yeah.

Steve-o (53:12.244)
That was smart.

Tracie Kalmar (53:14.143)
saying, let's assume that you have the budget to go procure the pennies. We don't need to rub the bank. But that's what I was looking for. every time, what I loved about that question is I rarely got the same answer twice. Like it's the same question delivered in almost the same way with different points of reference because everyone lives in different places. But I rarely got the same answer twice. And really it was just about,

Tony Benjamin (53:16.082)
You

Right,

Tracie Kalmar (53:44.107)
Can I give you a task with a little information that you have no idea how to do? And can you figure it out? Because when you're at like a growth company like ApplicantPro, figuring out something you have never done before is actually a really important skill. And we needed people who are not afraid to just figure it out. And one of the things I loved is when they'd say, well, I'm going to buy pizza for my friends and I'm going to ask them to help me.

Steve-o (53:57.493)
Mm-hmm.

So common, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (54:01.349)
Yeah.

Steve-o (54:05.908)
Mm-hmm.

Tracie Kalmar (54:13.887)
Because again, you're not in this alone. If you get a project that is huge and you've never done before, like you can ask for help. And I loved when even in a job interview, they would ask for help. So those are some of my fun interview questions that I would ask, but we would look for those values. So shout out to Denise.

Steve-o (54:35.526)
No, and I love this. This is what I loved about it, because like I said, I watched you grow and and I would hear about some of these questions with some of the new hires, because I would always ask them, right? Because I was always around the office asking people anyway. And I was just like I was just so intrigued because you were so good at basically pulling out the core values from people to really verify. Are you going to be a good fit here? Because the reality was, if you didn't have those core values, you didn't last long because you couldn't really

Tony Benjamin (54:35.975)
That.

Steve-o (55:05.64)
fit with people. You didn't mold very well with the team, if you will. And that's such a critical part. It is such a critical part. So, yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (55:11.947)
Yeah, we had good people.

Tony Benjamin (55:14.534)
I think. Well, and I think this this goes back to our conversation about Sherm a little bit. And that is.

Steve-o (55:16.211)
We did, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (55:25.244)
to think about how arrogant it is for a leader at a company to say, you have to think exactly like I do and act exactly like I do and anticipate what I would do to be successful here. And if you don't, you're just a piece of crap. And I remember at one place I worked, we let somebody go, or actually she left and the CEO of the company spent the next week just ripping on her about how terrible she was. Now look, there were some things that we found in her desk that she should.

Steve-o (55:36.179)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (55:53.543)
that she had like hidden work that she didn't want to do. Right. So there was some reasons to be critical. But the flip side of that is somebody another employee is we were talking about this and he said he said to me and it stuck with me ever since he said isn't it amazing that we all that we have so many pieces of crap that work here and we only discover it when they leave. And and I was like and that just really like it threw it right back at me about

about what happens. I don't know. You just don't appreciate people until you start to box them in and whatever. And it just gets more and more toxic. And what you guys are talking about is an authentic workforce where everybody is real and it's not a political jockeying game. know, in the legal stuff that I'm doing in that, more and more and more I hear about really big companies that just are slimy the way they treat employees. And then they wonder

why employees aren't forthright and open and honest with him and why employees play politics all the time and why the environment in their company is so harsh. Like there was one guy called me the other day and I'm listening to him for 15 minutes and I go and he goes, I don't know, Tony, I think maybe they're just gaslighting me or they're just mislead. They're just trying to get rid of me and they're going to do whatever they can to get rid of me. And they don't want to just say, get out of here. And I said, yeah, you're right. That's it. And I said, look,

I you and I might be able to make a discrimination case out of this if you do certain things and you push certain buttons and you try to whatever I said but look the real thing is just get out of there go away it's not worth my advice to you is is don't stay there like just don't just don't do it

Steve-o (57:35.069)
Yeah, I think we've talked about this on previous episodes. Sometimes HR and people in general, they're just scared to quit and they're scared to get out of that toxic environment. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (57:44.048)
Yes. Yes. People in general are scared to quit. Yes. It's and it's because of the uncertain future. Now, Tracy, I want to transition. You're talking about hiring people there. How do you then inculcate the company values once they start? Like they're a new hire. They come into the company. How do you get them into those values? Now, obviously you're looking for people that value those same things, but how do you get them into the company values and to

Tracie Kalmar (57:47.85)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (58:14.018)
and to eat the otter pops for lack of a better phrase, right? See, yeah.

Steve-o (58:16.661)
Like adopt them, right? Well adopt it, yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (58:18.335)
Yeah. Yeah. So number one, obviously, we need the leaders to demonstrate them, which we were so blessed with. So the buy-in from the top of the core values is imperative. Like, it can't just be some HR manager in a corner saying, here's our core values, but when they don't have buy-in from the leaders. So number one, you need the leaders to demonstrate them, which I think we

absolutely did have a great example of that. Like I said, we did it in onboarding, but I also was a big believer in getting them their first sticker in like their first 30 days. you know, 30 days into their new job, would, by this time I had a team. So luckily someone on my team did this. So I wasn't perfect at it, but we had a process and a reminder of like, hey, reach out.

Tony Benjamin (59:10.224)
You

Tracie Kalmar (59:15.071)
say, hey, this person's been here for 30 days, the manager should be able to identify a core value and give them their first one because it's really important to get that when they're new. No one wants to be new and lost and unsure. They want to know that they're doing a good job. And even if it's just a small thing because you are lost, I often said, it's going to take you three months to feel like you know what you're doing.

and that's normal. So if you feel lost for three months, it's okay, like ask a lot of questions. There's a lot to learn here. There's so much to learn. And so we need to give them that recognition. I mean, a lot of it comes down to recognition. We need to give them that little drop of recognition so that they know that even though they're new and they feel bad because they're not fully contributing to their team yet,

they are making a difference and we are seeing some good things from them because that will make them want to continue to do good things and see good things, you know, and contribute to the team, which is so important. And then again, just tie it into anything that you do, whether it's a company barbecue or, you know, if you're giving away raffle prizes, a lot of them you can tie into a core value.

If you're planning an event, let's say like we just did a women network event and we tied it into a core value even though it was a hike. So it's been a while because it was summertime still or fall. But we went for a hike and we can tie it into a core value in some tricky way because it's a good time also to just deliver a message. So, hey, with this activity, this is the core value and

Tony Benjamin (01:00:50.962)
It was warm.

Tracie Kalmar (01:01:05.439)
we're focusing on this with this in mind or because, you know, getting to a very, there's a lot of analogies you can do with hiking actually, a lot of business analogies. So you can tie it in, you can have this little message then drive it home and have an activity. And again, it's just reinforcing it every day and recognizing it even when you see it live. So that's another thing we would teach our managers is like, if you're seeing it live, acknowledging it instantly.

If you're overhearing a phone call from a customer support specialist with a client and you hear them doing something that's a core value right when they hang up, my gosh, I love how you handled that. You gave that HR professional who just called in the confidence to go be able to redo her job boards or to be successful in the role that she was playing.

Steve-o (01:01:57.654)
Be successful in.

Tracie Kalmar (01:02:02.591)
That's what's reinforcing it really. That's what's bringing it full circle is just that constant. then again, like then they don't have to question what it looks like anymore. They just know how it shows up in their day to day and they keep doing it. So.

Steve-o (01:02:08.349)
Again, like then they don't have to question what it looks like anymore. They just know how it shows up in their day. And they can do it.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:14.258)
Perfect. No, I think that's really important. And the piece of that too that goes along with that. And I think there are some people who are probably listening to this.

And they are saying to themselves, right? They're saying to themselves, so that sounds awfully warm and fuzzy. You're manufacturing something to make them feel good so that, you know, so they get the warm and fuzzies and they keep working for you. And that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about here is helping them to be successful and molding it into a business practice, not making something up.

not making something up just to make them feel good, but rather acknowledging the even the small steps they take towards growing into a really good employee. And then they will that reinforces the behavior that you want. And you as a business get more out of that. And I think that's that's awesome. That's really that's really good. Okay, go ahead, Steve.

Steve-o (01:03:08.661)
I'm curious too, Tracy, with, yeah, I'm curious too with, now that you're working for a much more global organization, and I imagine you probably deal with people in different countries, I mean, when you say global, I'm sure there's different cultures and things like that, do you find that to be a different kind of challenge, and how have you done a similar thing with this new culture and new?

new people altogether. I'm just curious how that has been reinforced where you're at currently. Like you talked about the company barbecue, which is awesome, which is in the hike and it's local. But what about some of those global employees? I'm just curious how you approach that.

Tracie Kalmar (01:03:44.351)
Yeah, it is different. And in fact, we just had the most amazing training of how to work with some of our global partner, employees or fellow coworkers across the globe. have a big office in Pune, India. We have, I forget how many countries we're in, but a lot, a lot. In my sphere, I work with people in India, Bolivia,

Steve-o (01:03:57.298)
Hmm?

Steve-o (01:04:06.528)
Mm-hmm.

Tracie Kalmar (01:04:13.661)
the US and Prague a lot. So we're quite diverse. And it's actually been one of my favorite parts of my new job is getting to know those employees and their cultures and their customs and their traditions. so one of the things we do is just incorporate what we can. And so we recently celebrated Diwali, even in our local Sandy office, while our team members in India were celebrating as well.

Tony Benjamin (01:04:17.148)
Wow.

Tracie Kalmar (01:04:43.223)
They got the day off, we didn't, but we had a party. And my employees from India, it is a celebration of light. And I don't want to misspeak because I just barely learned about it. But it's like they invite the goddess of, I want to say it's like blessings or it relates to, it's not money, but it's like blessings.

Steve-o (01:04:47.286)
So what is Diwali? Because I'm sure people are going to wonder, well, what is that?

Tracie Kalmar (01:05:10.667)
and they leave a candle out of their door and it invites the goddess of, don't want to misspeak, but go research it, go Google it. It's a really cool holiday, we had, but there's a, it's it's a really big holiday in India and it's super fun. There's tons of food and tradition and dancing and light. It's like a, there's tons of lights. So I think there they do fireworks and it has to do with lanterns. So we had this big party and everyone got a lantern and

Steve-o (01:05:20.426)
Yeah, yeah,

Tony Benjamin (01:05:20.466)
You

Tracie Kalmar (01:05:40.469)
We did henna tattoos and we did the sand drawings were, but what was so cool is that even our local employees who are from India, they talked about how much it meant to them that we celebrated with them and that they got to share their culture with their coworkers and talk about, like they love me asking like, why do you do this? And so that's why I'm like, I did ask and they did tell me, I don't feel like an expert that I can like tell you about it.

But he did ask, like, what does this mean? And what do you do? And what does the candle mean? And they love telling you, and they feel, seen, and heard, and understood when you learn about their culture. And that's across the board. And then how do you do that with their values? Is it is different? Like, even recognition, recognition in different parts of the world mean different things, and it's received differently. So it's something that I actually just talked about.

Steve-o (01:06:22.645)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:06:33.468)
Yep.

Tracie Kalmar (01:06:37.599)
the managers that I work for, we did a training and I talked to them about figure out how your employees across the go-lobe want to be recognized. Because in some cultures, they really want the public recognition. That means more to them. So in your standups, in your staff meetings, being able to say, so and so really, they worked with this client during a tumultuous time and they really solved this issue.

and went above and beyond to help this client. Thank you for helping like that public recognition, which again, I often say recognition rarely costs a lot of money. It really does because that public recognition means a lot. Some people just want a thank you, a private chat, a DM, a text message, a simple thank you. Hey, you got called to an outage at two in the morning.

I really, understand what sacrifice that was for you. Thank you for being there for us. That's enough for some people. Some people want a gift card. Some people want to monetary things. Some people want a card in the mail and some people like stickers. Me and Steve do.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:49.939)
Well, see, that's that's like we just we just talked to those two ladies from Dubai, right? And they were saying like your anniversary awards, right? Your anniversary awards mean nothing to people there. They want cash in their check. That's all that matters to them. You've been here five years. Here's five grand. Right.

Steve-o (01:07:56.811)
Yeah, such a great episode. Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (01:08:04.437)
Well, and swag. Some of our team members, in fact, we have a big office in Israel and one of our leaders was just here and she was like, when I hire someone new, I have to tell them that you guys like to wear nice branded clothes because they think we put you in uniform. Because swag and wearing like the free t-shirts in Israel is just not as appreciated. They're very independent. They wanna wear what they wanna wear and...

Tony Benjamin (01:08:24.122)
You

Tracie Kalmar (01:08:32.871)
we love the free t-shirts here. So they're like that doesn't even cross cultural lines in, no. So like when you're giving away recognition and you're like, here's your free t-shirt, some people are gonna be like, you want me to wear this? No, thank you. Like that's actually not something I'm going to do. I think it really is just understanding what people see as recognition because then once you can define it, then you can still, the methodology is still the same.

Tony Benjamin (01:08:35.099)
Right, right.

Steve-o (01:08:37.728)
That doesn't translate at all, yeah.

Steve-o (01:08:47.818)
Hahaha

Tony Benjamin (01:08:47.986)
Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (01:09:01.459)
recognized to the core value in the way that they like to be recognized, whether it's a free t-shirt or a card or public recognition, understanding their culture. And really, most people will tell you. So if you just say, hey, how do you like to? And it's, like I said, it can be by location or by culture. And then just making sure that

Steve-o (01:09:23.317)
Yeah.

Tracie Kalmar (01:09:27.381)
the leaders that are managing global teams understand that they can't send the same t-shirt to everyone because it's not going to land the same for everyone.

Steve-o (01:09:35.691)
Yeah, there's two things you bring up there that I really like and I apologize, Tony, I'm interrupting there. But two things that I noticed in what you were talking about, first of all, you know, recognizing the individual. And the thing is, is even though you have different countries that you're dealing with, some of us, our own company, we still have culturally diverse people in our business, in our industry, which means we can still find out about that particular culture and do it for that one person. And that was the second thing is it's individualized.

Tony Benjamin (01:09:36.284)
Now that's, go ahead Steve.

No, you're good. You're good.

Steve-o (01:10:06.066)
Every individual is a little bit different. And I love how when you when you had an example, your example was specific to something that person did specifically. And if anything, managers need to understand that if I'm going to recognize them. If I have truly listened to the phone call, I know what that phone call was about. I know what they actually did, and that's what I recognize. And it's a very individual thing. And so being very specific about what you're recognizing is key.

Tracie Kalmar (01:10:06.325)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:10:32.958)
So I love that. I love those two aspects there. At least what I got out of it, what you just said, which again, I'm always fascinated how awesome you are. So there we go.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:42.908)
Dun dun dun dun dun. I you know what Tracy we had talked when we met to prep for this for this we had talked about benefits and the open enrollment stuff you do and I wanted to spend a lot of time on that and we've gone we've touched on some cool stuff but we didn't get to that so I think maybe we need to have you back on sometime and let's talk about open enrollment you and I were really had a meeting of the minds on this stuff and how open enrollment.

works and how you teach benefits to people. And by the way, you have to teach benefits to people. There's that, know, you know, my it is, you know, my son just called me a few days ago and the New Year is coming up or whatever. And he's just barely passed his whatever waiting period. And now he's enrolling in benefits. And he wanted me to decipher his

Tracie Kalmar (01:11:17.323)
It's a foreign language. You have to teach them.

Steve-o (01:11:17.718)
Amen to that.

Steve-o (01:11:22.326)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:35.581)
book for him because no one at his company would sit down and decipher it for him, right? And help him through it. Anyways, we need to talk about that. And you had some brilliant things that I love that you said there. so I, right, right. I was just thinking we probably need to have Rebecca on for a whole podcast to talk about how to do open enrollment and that sort of stuff. Yeah, exactly. Before we tell you how cool you are for sure,

Steve-o (01:11:45.718)
She does. I didn't realize how much time we've already talked. That's crazy.

Steve-o (01:11:55.786)
Just benefits, yeah, open enrollment.

Tony Benjamin (01:12:02.706)
Is there anything that you want to promote or you want to tell us about or something that's coming up that you want everybody to know about?

Tracie Kalmar (01:12:10.475)
Not really. I'm excited for 2026. I definitely have my list of focus areas I'm going to work on in 2026. I think it's going to be another growth year for me and tackling new ideas. Things I'm passionate about are just women in tech. So I love getting involved and getting more and more involved in that space. And most I started kind of more locally and just our office and.

trying to drive that, but it stems from, you know, when I was on the recruiting side at ApplicantPro getting resumes from women entering the workforce after a break and their resumes were, family budget, stay at home mom. And I was like, no, no, no, no, that is not what you did. Like you have created employable skills. You just need to translate them to the language, again, speak the language.

translate them to a resume, you planned and organized huge events for PTA and that taught you, you know, project management and budgeting and all these other things that are very employable skills. Yes, yes.

Steve-o (01:13:20.361)
all the personalities of the moms. That's what always fascinates me about those things. Those moms, let me tell you, I worked with cheer moms and volleyball moms and let me tell you, all those moms have their own personalities and when you bring them all in one room together, that is a challenge in and of itself. Absolutely. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:13:23.954)
Yes.

Tracie Kalmar (01:13:35.957)
you're getting employable skills. so, yeah, that's kind of going to be a big focus again for 2026 for me is just diving in and creating a space, you know, where I'm at for more, you know, creating a space for women to be able to have a career and the other things that are important to them, whether that's a family, we have a lot of people that just like to volunteer at the homeless shelter or the animal shelter. just feel like women tend to be passionate about a lot of things and we can create a space that you can have both.

And be good at both. And so that's kind of my focus for the things I'm excited for for next year, so.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:15.494)
That's very cool. That's very cool. There's some really cool stuff in there. And that reminds me that we probably also when we talk about open enrollment and stuff with you, we probably need to talk about the house cleaning benefit that you guys had an applicant pro and stuff like that. Like I need to know some details on that. That's cool stuff. I've since since Steve and I talked about that on the pad podcast and that of course human.

Tracie Kalmar (01:14:29.983)
I missed that.

Steve-o (01:14:31.543)
I know, me too.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:37.222)
telling how cool you were in its implementation and all that sort of stuff. I've suggested it to like five different companies that that's stuff they need to do. So anyways, but that's right. Tracy, you're fantastic. Thank you very much for for being with us today. Awesome.

Steve-o (01:14:47.329)
You heard it here first.

Tracie Kalmar (01:14:49.611)
That's right.

Tracie Kalmar (01:15:00.619)
Such an honor, such an honor. You guys are, you guys are, it's just so fun to get together. I feel like we should do this more often.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:01.094)
That's right.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:08.364)
I kind of agree. kind of agree. I you know what? When when Steve said and you may be hurt, you may be heard this on the podcast when he said that he had talked to you and you had agreed that you'd come on and talk to us. He said she agreed to come on. He was so giddy happy.

Steve-o (01:15:23.691)
I was so excited.

Tracie Kalmar (01:15:25.707)
How could I not? It's the best part of my Monday for sure.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:31.596)
Awesome. There you go. Everybody. You heard it here first. It was again. Thanks Tracy. Before we get out of here, Steve and I would like to we're going to do a read for charity at the end today. And we want to thank Claire Lazier for for giving us this opportunity to do this. Yeah. Yeah. And we're in anyways, we want to thank her for giving us this opportunity. And who knows, maybe coming to NHL team near you. Pucks for autism.

Steve-o (01:15:47.543)
She's on the podcast a few weeks ago, so yeah.

Steve-o (01:15:59.362)
Yes.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:01.65)
Proves that when communities rally, families win. Their hockey tournaments raise local funds that support autism programming, inclusion, and connection for kids and adults everywhere. Join the team that plays with purpose. Visit pucksforautism.com. That's pucksforautism.com and get involved.

There you go, forever. That's right, fantastic.

Steve-o (01:16:25.431)
such a good cause, especially for those who have dealt with autism in the past. And I just I've seen that firsthand. And so I just I really appreciate that she does that. And she she actually had a conversation with the mammoths here locally, so they're probably going to do something here locally, I would imagine. Yeah, and when they do, we'll be talking about that, too, so.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:31.802)
Right, right.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:35.567)
Yeah, thanks to Claire for helping us out with that.

Tony Benjamin (01:16:43.345)
I hope so. hope so. That was that was good. And Steve is. Yep. Yep. That's that's right. And maybe maybe Claire will get to come out here. You know that Steve that tells me we need to have a party sometime for all the people who've been guests on our podcast and they all need to be on one location. And. That's right. And we'll we'll have Tracy make some stickers so they can all put it on their water bottles and stuff. And we that's got to earn them.

Steve-o (01:16:58.396)
That'd be cool. We call it the podcast party.

Steve-o (01:17:07.159)
They gotta earn them though, they gotta earn them

Tracie Kalmar (01:17:08.799)
Yep. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (01:17:13.135)
We can play Plinko and you can win them somehow. I like that. And Tracy can make sure they really earn them.

Steve-o (01:17:15.927)
That's right, there you go.

and we can throw darts at a balloon board, you'd be surprised how many people cannot throw darts. Like literally, when we set those up at the conference, we have to have this like five to 10 foot radius of space for the dart to hit. Yes, seriously, like there are some people out there, cannot throw darts. Anyway, sorry.

Tony Benjamin (01:17:24.934)
That's...

Tony Benjamin (01:17:31.889)
So no one gets hurt. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:17:41.051)
That's awesome. Well, Tracy, again, thank you very much. if it didn't go through enough, we'll just say it again. You're cool. Thank you very much for being here with us. And we can't wait to have you on again. We'll talk about open enrollment. Yeah, for sure. And and yeah, just cool stuff. Cool stuff. All right. Well, I guess we. OK, before we leave, before we leave, as we close out the day.

Steve-o (01:17:52.247)
Yeah, we'll have you on again. We'll talk about benefits for sure. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:18:02.187)
I was waiting for him to say fantastic again, but you know, it was fantastic.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:09.025)
I have been informed by very reliable people that I say the word fantastic too much, which I sort of already knew. I just didn't know everybody else had noticed it that well. So to the people named Rachel Child that will remain anonymous, who reminded me of this the other day, I have heard you. I'm trying to say fantastic less than I do strategic. Here you go. Anyways, well deserved.

Steve-o (01:18:12.587)
you

Steve-o (01:18:34.615)
There we go. There we go.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:38.097)
Okay, here we go. I guess we'll go out the same way that we came in. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review. That's a five star review on your favorite podcast app. Comments or questions for us? Email the podcast at the HR life podcast at gmail.com. And we'll talk again soon.