Supporting Working Parents and Building Connections with LiveIntent’s Abby Hamilton

Better People Podcast

In this episode, LiveIntent’s Chief People Officer Abby Hamilton talks about the challenges working parents face, the unique initiatives she’s taken to look after working parents, and how HR leaders can build connections with their employees.

Abby Hamilton has worked in HR for over a decade and is now the Chief People Officer at LiveIntent. Over the course of her experience in recruiting and HR, Abby has worked with talented leaders in adtech / martech and pharmaceuticals / medical devices.

Abby’s key areas of specialty include hiring, employee engagement, DEI, mental health in the workplace, cultural transformation, performance management, leadership alignment, learning and development, HRIS, succession planning, and data-driven decision-making. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Better People Podcast:

• How Abby built her negotiation skills.
• The primary responsibilities of a Chief People Officer.
• How to build a connection with your employees.
• What employee resource groups are useful for.
• Different types of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).
• The challenges working parents face.
• How HR can take care of working parents
• How to build a brand’s story.
• Ways to improve staff retention.

Resources:

• LiveIntent
• MidAtlantic Employers’ Association (MEA)

Connecting with Abby Hamilton:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with Margaret Uhrich:

• LinkedIn

Quotables:

• 9:10 - “Going into the pandemic I realized how much I was hiding of myself and how much I was creating shame about being a working mom that I was hiding some of that part of myself because I didn’t want people to judge me, I didn't want people to put that stereotype of well she’s not going to work hard or she’s not going to be as dedicated or she has to leave because she has to go take care of her kids. It’s true I am going to put my family first however that doesn’t make me less than, I’m still great at what I do, and I can still be dedicated, if anything else I have to be even more dedicated in the hours because I job before work and I have a job after work and that is my family and that is my children and my young children and with the onset of the pandemic I couldn’t hide that anymore.”
• 10:24 - “I was speaking in front of the entire company and my son was four at the time, my older son and he didn’t care that I was talking about something, he needed something from me in that exact moment and all that matters was I need your attention. He interrupted in the middle of it and everybody saw, the entire company saw and I was mortified absolutely mortified this was a part I felt I needed to hide I didn’t want to talk about openly and I was afraid people really judged that moment and then I got such an outpouring of love and support of how cute that was and how great it was, it was the best part of the meeting and it was funny and it was just a pivotal moment for me.”
• 15:22 - “Looking at compensation and making talking about money less taboo, you need to be able to talk about what you get paid and how you get paid more in the future, how do you get to that next level, what does career progression look like.”