Keith Rummer, SVP, chief people, diversity & inclusion officer at Phillips Edison & Company, Inc. (Nasdaq: PECO), participated in a video interview in conjunction with Nareit’s REITworks: 2022 Conference held on Sept. 12-13 in La Quinta, California.
Rummer commented on ways in which human resources executives can keep senior management engaged and on-board. “You’ve got to come from a position of really being informed; you have to have your finger on the pulse of the organization,” he said.
While a proponent of the use of data, Rummer said it needs to be used strategically. He noted that presenting real-life stories can often work to convey an issue to management in a way that data doesn’t.
Turning to ways to measure and manage expectations for long-term initiatives, Rummer stressed the importance of incremental steps. “If you can set things that you want to accomplish along the way towards a greater goal, you can start to gain comfort.”
Rummer added that “if you can start putting lines in the sand and looking for improvement it makes that dialog around the ultimate goal a lot less scary for people.”
Meanwhile, Rummer discussed the broader impact of the pandemic on HR, noting that many executives left the field because it was so stressful.