Influential Woman · Mechanical Services

HELEN JONES

Human Resources Generalist, Rieck Services

Dayton, OH

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Cert SHRM Certified Member SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management)

Her Story

About HELEN

I'm the HR Generalist here at a mechanical services company, where I handle all HR and payroll for this location and our Cincinnati location. My only typical day really is Monday, which is payroll day when I get payroll processed, but other than that, it varies. I could be writing policy, or I could have an employee issue that I need to deal with. I could have an employee come into my office with a problem that I need to discuss with them. Sometimes they just need a shoulder to cry on. It just varies from day to day, depends on if it's a full moon or not, maybe. My main area of expertise is probably federal and local compliance. I have to keep up with all the time on compliance at every level because the rules and the laws and the proposals are changing all the time. I spend a lot of time just reading and researching to make sure that we as a company are compliant with all of those updates and that we're supporting our employees the way that we need to, and that our company is always doing not just the bare minimum that's required by law, but going above and beyond.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with HELEN

01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

I just think that the challenges for women are not what they were 30 years ago. Women have come a long way and have a lot more opportunity. Young women are more college graduates than there are men, so I think that what I would love for some of these younger women to realize is that there are so many battles that they don't have to fight now, that there are so many things that they don't have to hide under the rug. The world is really open for them, and I just hope that they take advantage of that, and not look at the... of course, there's always going to be opportunities to improve everywhere, in every sector, but to celebrate the opportunities that they do have, and the people who came before them and fought those battles. They've got a lot more opportunity than I did coming out of college.

02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

I would say probably the biggest challenge, and the biggest challenge that I've experienced over the last 4 years, is recruiting and staffing. It changed some from the period of COVID and post-COVID, when everyone was just changing jobs, and it was so difficult to fill roles because people could pretty much write their own ticket. It was a challenge then to find and retain talent because of that. Now, it's a challenge to find and retain talent because there just aren't as many people looking for jobs like there were then. Now we have a pool, it's just harder to find people now. It's a smaller pool of qualified applicants. So it's just a challenge to find people, to staff positions, and then once you get those, find that talent that you're really looking for, to keep them here. As a company, you really have to think outside the box and make sure that I'm constantly reporting to leadership and selling ideas to leadership on what we can do as a company to recruit and retain that talent.

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