HR Leaders

In this episode of our On The Road series, we sit down with KeyAnna Schmiedl, Chief Human Experience Officer at Workhuman, to explore how organizations can identify future leaders before they are already in the obvious succession pipeline.
KeyAnna shares how Workhuman’s Future Leaders technology is helping companies spot the people giving off strong leadership signals across the business, including those who may not be visible through traditional talent reviews, manager nominations, or proximity to senior leaders.
Her message is clear: the best future leaders are not always the most obvious names in the room. If HR can use better signals to see talent earlier, organizations can retain, develop, and invest in people before they walk out the door.

🎓 In this episode, we get into:
Why the most visible people are not always the best future leaders
Why managers need to become talent exporters, not talent hoarders
How proximity bias shapes who gets noticed, sponsored, and promoted
How AI can help HR spot future leaders earlier without replacing human judgment
How better talent signals can help companies retain future leaders before they leave

🙏‍ Thank you to our series partner - Workhuman
Discover how Future Leaders helps HR teams identify rising VP+ talent earlier, build stronger succession pipelines, and develop the leaders your people already follow.
✅ Learn how to spot Future Leaders with Workhuman → https://www.workhuman.com/future-leaders/?utm_source=hr-leaders&utm_medium=partner_share&utm_campaign=1213801944017821&utm_content=null&utm_term=na_events_whl-orlando_prospecting~null_hr-leaders-podcast-recordings_1x1_5.20.2026
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of our On The Road series, we sit down with Jennifer Reimert, SVP, Consulting Practice at Workhuman, to explore how organizations can make recognition reach the people who are often hardest to reach: frontline and deskless workers.
Jennifer spent 20 years as an HR practitioner and total rewards leader before joining Workhuman. She was also a Workhuman customer back when the company was Globoforce, using recognition to help bring two merged companies together when culture, identity, and belonging were under real pressure.
Her message is clear: recognition cannot only work for people at a desk. If most of the work that defines your culture happens on the floor, in the field, in hospitals, in plants, in stores, or across customer sites, then recognition has to meet people where they actually work.

🎓 In this episode, we get into:
Why 4–6 recognition moments in a year can help reduce turnover by half
How to build a recognition business case that speaks the language of the CFO
How to make recognition work for frontline workers who are not sitting at a desk
How recognition data can reveal skills, networks, high performers, and hidden talent
Why recognition needs to reach people through kiosks, text, physical cards, and manager-led moments

🙏 Thank you to our partner, Workhuman
Discover how Workhuman helps organizations turn recognition into real business impact, building stronger cultures, more connected teams, and better visibility into the people driving performance.
✅ Learn more about Workhuman → https://www.workhuman.com/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of our On The Road series, we sit down with Ken Wechsler, VP, Total Rewards at Akamai Technologies, to explore how AI is changing the conversation around rewards, recognition, performance, and the future of work.
As a total rewards leader, Ken is now facing questions that would have seemed unlikely just a few years ago: What is our AI strategy? What outcomes are we trying to drive? How will AI change productivity, performance, and how people are rewarded?
His message is clear: AI skills alone should not automatically mean higher pay. The real question is whether AI helps people deliver better outcomes, raise performance, create more value, and help the business move forward.

🎓 In this episode, we get into:
Why the real question is not AI usage, but whether AI improves outcomes
Why AI is forcing rewards leaders to rethink how performance is measured
Why being proficient in Gemini or Copilot should not automatically mean higher pay
How Akamai is connecting recognition, trust, and performance in a remote-first company
How rewards teams can use AI to move from manual analysis to strategic business partnering

🙏 Thank you to our partner, Workhuman
Discover how Workhuman helps organizations turn recognition into real business impact, building stronger cultures, more connected teams, and better visibility into the people driving performance.
✅ Learn more about Workhuman → https://www.workhuman.com/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast On The Road, we sit down with Eric Mosley, Founder and CEO at Workhuman to explore how recognition data, AI, and human insight are changing the way organizations identify their future leaders.
Eric shares how Workhuman’s new Future Leaders capability uses recognition data, performance data, and AI to identify the people most likely to rise into senior leadership roles years before they are officially promoted.
And this is where it gets really interesting.
Eric says the strongest signals are not coming from a traditional succession planning form. They are coming from the language people use about each other, the recognition moments that describe how work actually gets done, and the patterns that emerge across billions of human interactions.
🎓 We get into:
Why succession planning often feels too slow and bureaucratic
How recognition data can reveal hidden leadership potential
Why deep, specific recognition creates better signals than surface-level praise
How AI can identify future leaders two, three, or even five years early
Why companies need to retain and develop these people before competitors do
Why making work human still sits at the center of the entire strategy

🙏 Thank you to our partner, Workhuman
Discover how Workhuman helps organizations turn recognition into real business impact, building stronger cultures, more connected teams, and better visibility into the people driving performance.
✅ Learn more about Workhuman → https://www.workhuman.com/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast On The Road, we sit down with Jorge Quezada, MBA (He.Him.His), Vice President, Culture & Performance at Granite Construction, to unpack what happens when culture stops being treated as a soft initiative and starts being run as a business driver.
Jorge explains why culture is the operating system of an organization, shaping how people think, act, interact, and bring the company’s mission, vision, and values to life every day.
He shares how Granite is updating its culture for the next 100 years by preserving what makes the company strong, diagnosing what needs to change, and creating the conditions for people to grow, adapt, and perform.
Most importantly, Jorge reveals why the future of culture belongs to leaders who stop copying best practices from other companies and start understanding what their own people, business, and operating system actually need.
🎓 In this episode, Jorge discusses:
How organizations can learn, unlearn, and relearn to stay relevant
How AI still depends on human adoption, better questions, and human thinking
Why culture should be treated as the operating system that drives performance
Why leaders need to diagnose their own culture before copying external best practices
Why unleashing human agency starts with challenging limiting beliefs and building confidence through action

🙏 Thank you to our partner, Workhuman
Discover how Workhuman helps organizations turn recognition into real business impact, building stronger cultures, more connected teams, and better visibility into the people driving performance.
✅ Learn more about Workhuman → https://www.workhuman.com/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.