HR Pulse - Winter 2008 - (Page 15)

[HR LEADER] Karmen Reid K armen Reid is ending her term as ASHHRA Region 6 Consultant and joining the board as the Regional Director. If you attended this year’s annual conference in Austin, you may have seen her accept the 2008 Paul Guy Mentorship Award, which was established in memory of a past ASHHRA president. The award pays tribute to a member who demonstrates the attributes of role model, teacher, resource, supporter, and companion. Reid is all of those things and more. Her entrée into the HR ﬁeld came as a recruiter when she was hired after graduation by her alma mater, Central College in Pella, Iowa, to recruit students from across the country to attend the school’s study abroad programs. Reid herself was a Spanish major who spent more than half her time as an undergraduate in those programs. She then worked as an English teacher in Japan before relocating to Florida and accepting a job as nurse recruiter. Reid held several positions—including stafﬁng manager and compensation manager—at two different hospitals before deciding to seek a job at Mayo Clinic, which she considers to be “the best health care provider in the world.” Caring for the Care Providers As the section head of salary administration at the Mayo Clinic, Reid oversees compensation for 25,000 employees, representing about 3,000 unique job titles. She views her role as caretaker to the caretakers. “In HR, we’re here to care for the patient care providers,” says Reid. “I feel that it’s my job to make sure that they are well provided for, compensation-wise, so that they can give their best to the patients.” One of her overarching goals is to make sure employees focus on total compensation rather than simply on their paychecks. “I believe that pay and beneﬁts should be extremely fair and generous so that employees don’t think too much about them—so that they’re more motivated by other factors such as the work itself, recognition, responsibility, interactions with supervisors, an ability to make a difference, teamwork, the opportunity for promotion and career growth,” she says. Reid sites keeping up with the large number of job titles as one of the biggest challenges of her job, as well as one of the most fascinating parts of her work. “When I ﬁrst started at Mayo, I read through job titles and job descriptions and came across a very interesting one—mouse colony supervisor. When I went home and told my kids, they were quite excited and thought I worked at Disneyland! This is a real job, but not one that you would ﬁnd in every health care organization. Since we do a lot of research on mice, we have an animal science type of job that supervises the care for their colonies,” she explains. “This is just an example of some of the unique jobs I get to work with every day.” Reid believes that competitive compensation is one of the keys to addressing the ongoing shortage of health care workers. Through her 27-year career, she says she has seen pay levels in the ﬁeld increase signiﬁcantly, and she believes young people now see health care as a good profession to enter. But she emphasizes the need to ensure salaries remain competitive with other industries so that health care HR professionals have the tools they need to recruit the best possible candidates. 15 HR Pulse Winter 2008 “I believe that pay and benefits should be extremely fair and generous so that employees don’t think too much about them.” Emphasis on Communication When asked what she is most proud of accomplishing so far at Mayo, the ﬁrst success she mentions is the work she and her staff have done to improve compensation communication for employees. She believes the more employees understand how their pay is determined, the more satisﬁed they become. “Our current program was created in 2000. Previously, the pay program was complex, hidden, unpredictable, and hard to understand,” says Reid. “Employee satisfaction scores were dismal. Since that time, we have worked very hard to change practices and attitudes, using the principle

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of HR Pulse - Winter 2008

HR Pulse - Winter 2008 Contents Pulse Points Executive Director’s Letter President’s Message HR Leader Profile: Karmen Reid Advocacy is for Everyone A Case Study in Raising Voices Diversity Management Measuring What Matters Bullying as Gender Harassment Combat Workforce Changes Hardwiring Accountability Immigration Frustration HR and Education Making Exit Interviews Count Management Styles that Enhance Intrinsic Motivation Backup Care Fact or Fiction 10 Ways to Lose Your Best People Advertisers’ Index

HR Pulse - Winter 2008

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