🤝 HR at Full Speed: What NASCAR’s HR Manager Shared About Engagement

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🤖 OPM’s New Leader Targets Efficiency Across Federal HR

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is under new leadership, with Director Rob Shriver aiming to overhaul the agency’s efficiency and technology adoption. With responsibility for managing HR operations for more than two million federal employees, OPM is focusing on digitizing hiring processes, streamlining benefits administration, and improving service delivery for federal workers.

Shriver has emphasized accountability and performance tracking, stating that OPM must act as both a strategic advisor and service provider. His vision includes centralizing human capital data and aligning agency HR teams with government-wide goals for talent development, succession planning, and diversity hiring. Read more.

🎧 HR Insights

In this conversation, Kylie Saunders, CEO of WorkTrybe, and Matt Owens, Director at Annexa, emphasize that a strong employee experience begins well before a new hire’s first day. When internal advancement isn’t immediately available, companies must still create reasons for people to stay. In today’s hiring climate, where talent is hard to find and harder to keep, employee experience becomes the foundation for retention. Saunders and Owens suggest focusing on the early stages of the employee lifecycle—onboarding, role clarity, and early recognition—as the point where engagement is built. Employees want to feel that their skills matter and that their time leads somewhere.

💡 HR Tips & Tricks

Tip of the Day: Introduce quarterly “role refresh” sessions where employees can suggest small modifications to their roles based on skills they've gained or tasks they want to explore. This approach gives HR real-time insight into evolving strengths and keeps job satisfaction high without needing major org chart changes.

Trick of the Day: Use anonymized sentiment analysis from internal email and chat platforms to track team morale patterns. While respecting privacy boundaries, this tool helps HR understand tone and energy shifts across departments, allowing early intervention before engagement drops.

🧾 HR Case Files - HR at Full Speed: What NASCAR’s HR Manager Shared About Engagement

In an interview on the HR Works podcast, NASCAR’s Senior Manager of HR shared key engagement strategies that keep their unique workforce aligned and energized. From onboarding pit crews to supporting administrative roles, NASCAR emphasizes purpose-driven messaging, flexibility, and internal storytelling.

Key Takeaways

• Engagement increases when employees understand how their roles impact the organization’s core mission.

• Internal storytelling can be as powerful as external branding for retention.

• Cross-training promotes versatility and helps fill sudden staffing gaps without delay.

🧰 HR Toolbox

Stay equipped with the latest HR events and resources.

Resource of the Day

New research in Harvard Business Review suggests that giving HR the final say on who gets invited to interviews leads to better hiring outcomes. The study found that HR teams tend to make more consistent and bias-aware decisions, especially in large organizations. When hiring managers handle the entire screening process alone, unstructured judgment often leads to inefficiencies and missed talent. Centralizing shortlisting within HR allows for standardized criteria and broader access to underrepresented candidates. The research supports this model as a way to increase both diversity and hiring speed

Event of the Day

The HR Weekend Conference, set to take place from Oct 31-Nov 2 2025 in Seattle, will focus on some of the biggest challenges HR teams face today: retention, resilience, and culture building. Eminent speakers will lead sessions on data-driven recruitment, building internal mobility pipelines, and using people analytics to measure team engagement.

For event details and registration, visit the website. 

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