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Taylor Lahrman is the HR lead at healthcare technology company Olio. After graduating with a marketing degree in 2020, when job opportunities were scarce due to the pandemic, Lahrman decided to go back to school to do a master’s in HR. She landed at Olio in July 2021, and recently told HR Brew about what she has learnt in the first phase of her career.
How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in HR? We’re a small company, less than 25 employees currently. So, you name it: payroll, benefits administration, employee engagement, talent acquisition, compliance, office management…I wear many hats! While this may seem overwhelming, it brings me the utmost joy each day to know I’m impacting our employees in a multitude of ways, whether it’s answering a simple question about reimbursements or designing a new process to make their lives easier. I ensure everyone has what they need to be comfortable, productive, and successful.
What have you learned in this first year of your career? To not be afraid to speak up. There have definitely been a couple times where I haven’t been comfortable with a certain decision or I haven’t felt like it was the right course of action…the worst thing that someone can tell you is “no.”
What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked? The consolidation and organization of different shared drives, spreadsheets, office supplies, and processes, which originally required our employees to search and scour for what they needed. Since I began a little over a year ago, I’ve been able to create better problem-solving avenues to one-stop shops with all the necessary information someone could desire.
What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job? Since we’re such a small company, I hear, “Man, it must be tough to be the person people always need answers from”...in reality, it’s not so much “tough” as it is fast-paced. Some days, people only have a couple requests, and others I’m putting out fires left and right.
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What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job? You know the feeling when you solve someone’s problem that’s been causing them pain for who knows how long? That is the most fulfilling part of my daily work. Nothing brings me more happiness than giving others the tools they need to be the best they can be!
What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why? The transition from compensation and benefits being the only two components to the compensation package…toward a holistic, total rewards approach. This excites me because employees have been and always will be humans first, and it’s our job as employers to view them as such, so creating packages that allow an employee to still be an individual outside of [the] office will be crucial for satisfaction.
Tell us one new or old HR tech product or platform that’s made your life easier, and why. Rippling! It’s been a lifesaver when it comes to employee data, because everything is stored in one place. We do all of our payroll [and] our benefits through there. We do different talent acquisition things [like] hire and onboard in less than a minute. It just automates so many different processes that we were doing manually before and now kind of does it all for us. If I can’t find something in our records, I know Rippling will have it somewhere waiting for me. Their support team has also come in clutch when I’ve needed to solve problems quickly and don’t have the right tools.
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