They’re charged with caring for North Shore Bank’s most valuable asset: you! This week, VP Molly Schissler takes us behind the scenes in the HR department — and has some exciting news about annual performance reviews. Our featured department last time was Commercial Loan Servicing.
The Human Resources team: Molly Schissler, Milene Below, Pauline Paulson, Cindy Lohrey, Cheryl Fregoso, Jaime Sagler, Nikki Shelton-Moss, and Jennifer Laning.
Personnel
Molly Schissler, Vice President, Human Resources
Milene Below, AVP, Training and Development Manager
Cheryl Fregoso, Human Resources Representative
Jennifer Laning, AVP, Talent Acquisition Manager
Cindy Lohrey, Payroll Manager
Pauline Paulson, AVP, HRIS & Benefits Administrator
Jaime Sagler, Training Specialist
Nikki Shelton-Moss, Training Specialist
What is your department’s main purpose, and what are the services it provides?
The HR department provides services that cover the full spectrum of the employment life of North Shore Bank employees — from recruiting, onboarding, benefits, payroll, and employee development … all the way to retirement.
What tasks are performed by the various job titles in your department?
While the HR department is made up of a number of “individual contributors” — in that one does payroll, one does benefits, etc. — we all work very closely together to coordinate the activities that make up the employee experience.
Payroll is so much more than just making sure we each get a paycheck on payday (although that is the priority!). Cindy manages tax filings, PTO administration, unemployment claims processing, wage survey administration, and more.
Pauline administers all of our benefits, which involves plenty of details and deadlines. Another large part of her role involves system administration: All of the HR data not only flows through UltiPro, but is also coordinated with other systems, as well as outside benefits vendors such as Empower Retirement, Anthem, and Delta.
You’re probably all familiar with Cheryl. She assists with every new employee and just about everyone who ever has a question about something HR-related. She is our go-to person and keeps the rest of the department running smoothly. She also recently stepped back into training, assisting with teller training while we are in the process of bringing Jaime on board.
Jenn is a one-person powerhouse for recruiting and hiring. She stays incredibly organized while staffing all of our branches and departments, and managing thousands of applications and hundreds of interviews each year.
Milene, Nikki, and Jaime round out our HR team and are our training heroes. From an employee’s very first days and weeks, throughout the rest of their career with us, these three touch just about every training and development program need.
What are some things you’d like other departments or branches to know about what your department does?
There are so many behind-the-scenes activities that happen on a daily basis to make sure that employees have what they need to do their own jobs. Whether you have a question about a performance issue or have a complicated benefits situation, some member of our team is there to assist. You also may not know that Molly oversees our Facilities & Services area, in addition to HR and training.
What events or projects or times of the year keep your department especially busy?
Calendar year-end is especially busy for Cindy and Pauline. Between finalizing all year-end payroll and taxes and finalizing all of the benefits enrollments, these two are kept quite busy. Late summer and early fall are typically the busiest hiring months, but that can fluctuate at any time. This year and next, training is especially busy, between our new “SOAR Conversations” training programs and working on a number of improvements to existing training programs; we will also be rolling out a new learning management system called GreenLight around April.
Any personal celebrations or milestones among the people at your department recently?
Pauline celebrated 20 years in June. Cheryl will celebrate 20 years in 2016. Molly celebrated five years in May. And Cindy has five years this month!
Is there some music — or a TV show or movie or book or anything — that’s notably popular among the people in your department?
The Voice is a popular show and discussion topic. At the time of writing this summary, Part 1 of the finals for Season 9 will be airing tonight. Will it be Jordan Smith? (It was!) Of course, the Packers are also a hot topic. Currently 9-4 for the season and topping the NFC North, will they have what it takes to go all the way for Super Bowl 50? (Hmmmmm …)
What’s a great work story from your department?
When we learned that HR would be one of the first departments to use Jabber, we were pretty excited about it. At some point during the process, one of the team mistook the name “Jabber” as “JibJab.” We all had a really good laugh about this, and so last Christmas the team decided to make its own JibJab video with each of us as elves. It was hilarious and so much fun to do! We often try to inject some fun into our days, because otherwise it can be pretty intense work that we’re doing.
Any exciting or noteworthy developments on the horizon for your department?
We rolled out a new way of managing performance with the retail area in 2015 (and eliminated annual performance appraisals for them). In 2016, the rest of the bank will be following suit. (You read that correctly: Your last annual performance review was just completed in 2015.) We’re also very much looking forward to implementing GreenLight in the spring.