IAMPHENOM VX: Nigel Miller Speaks Onboarding & Elephants
Nigel has spent the last five years of his career at Edelman, one of the world’s largest and leading PR and marketing agencies, working with teams and clients across the firm to optimize the employee experience. As such, Nigel will speak at IAMPHENOM VX on Wednesday, September 26th on the CHRO panel to discuss how leading companies are engaging their staff. While there are now myriad technological options designed to help, Nigel believes that a great employee experience starts with the basics. Do employees understand the company mission? Could they easily express the company's purpose in a short elevator ride? Do they understand how they can personally contribute, and does their line manager take the time to help answer these questions? Nigel refers a lot to helping employees get off on the right foot from day one. "Onboarding is often times an underrated but critically important engagement driver." -Nigel Miller And to be truly prioritized and successful, onboarding must be a shared responsibility versus merely the work of HR. In fact, in Nigel's view, the accountability must always sit with the hiring manager, with HR having the responsibility to enable the process, provide the framework and tools. Nigel suggests that KPIs should be assigned to HR but also to leaders for the onboarding of new employees, helping to ensure the appropriate time and energy are given, the performance is optimized, and unwanted turnover in the first year is minimized. Outside of dedicating his energy to Edelman (until recently as CHRO and now as Senior Advisor, Employee Experience), Nigel is just another #NotNormal Canadian, living in Europe for the last 15 years. He is a volunteer trustee on several charity boards, including the Canada UK Foundation and The Elephant Family. The latter is unique in working with human communities throughout Asia to prevent conflict with rare and endangered species like their beloved Elephants, and to create sustainable habitats for both people and wildlife. In addition to helping protect wildlife, Nigel enjoys exploring the outdoors with family, friends, and his dog, a Border Terrier who is small but has a big dog mentality and heart. He has traveled to roughly 80 countries across all continents. When asked about a truth he has gained from his life experiences so far, he said, “I love contributing to an environment in which people can be their true selves. Take the explosion in diversity initiatives across industries in recent years. Unfortunately, many of those initiatives fail to meet their ambition when there isn't enough focus on inclusion. It's one thing to attract and recruit diverse profiles - be it gender, race, sexual orientation or even socio-economic background. But I'm pleased to see there's a growing recognition that recruitment is only a start. By focusing on inclusion, we make every effort to create an environment within which every individual can express who they are, feel that their strengths are recognized and deeply valued, and can look around and see and hear people like themselves. This is easy to say, but not so easy to do."
Who is Nigel?
If you’re hungry for more of these gems, don’t wait and reserve your seat today for IAMPHENOM VX for FREE on Wednesday, September 26th!
Derek leads the Marketing Communications initiatives at Phenom People. He engages with Phenom customers to spotlight their stories in the media.
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