HRx Radio – Executive Conversations: On Friday mornings, John Sumser interviews key executives from around the industry. The conversation covers what makes the executive tick and what makes their company great.

HRx Radio – Executive Conversations

Guest: Cecile Alper-Leroux, VP of HCM Innovation, Ultimate Software

Episode: 332

Air Date: July 19, 2019

Transcript

Important: Our transcripts at HRExaminer are AI-powered (and fairly accurate most of the time) but there are still many instances where the robots get confused (or very confued) and makes errors. Please expect some inaccuracies as you read through the text of this conversation. Thank you for your understanding.

Full Transcript with timecode

00:00:13 :23 – 00:00:36 :14

Good morning and welcome to HRExaminer Executive Conversations. I’m your host John Sumser and today we’re going to be talking with one of my favorite people Cecile Alper-Leroux, she’s the vice president of HCM Innovation at Ultimate Software and one of the actual senior level working anthropologists in the HR Tech industry. It’s an astonishing thing.

00:00:36 :15 – 00:00:37 :21

So how are you Cecile?

00:00:38 :19 – 00:00:42 :13

I’m doing very well John. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

00:00:42 :13 – 00:00:56 :08

Yes. Would you tell people just a little, you’ve had such an amazing life, give people some titbits that sort of explain how an anthropologist ends up driving strategy at a human capital software company.

00:00:57 :23 – 00:02:18 :04

It’s an interesting question and hopefully the story will be somewhat interesting. As a child I was one of these people who pored over Life magazine I was actually born in into a bi cultural family and because I was born in France and moved to the United States when I was very very little. And as a result of that I’ve always been interested in people cultures all things related to differences between people and what makes us similar. So I studied antropology in college and got a couple of master’s degrees and I then realized that it was going to be very difficult to get a job as an anthropology professor because I didn’t really feel like writing my thesis and they’re not a lot of jobs available for anthropologists in the scholarly realm or in the academic realm. So. I talked to a friend of mine who was head of H.R. for a small company in Minnesota. That’s where I was at the time. And I talked her into giving me the opportunity to help with some of the global. work and expansion that they were doing and got started in the realm of HR convinced her I look at as an anthropologist I interview people and I love people so I’m sure that I could be useful somewhere if you give me a chance. It was literally one of those put me in coach I promise I won’t disappoint you.

00:02:18 :05 – 00:02:20 :13

And so I ended up in the world of H.R.

00:02:20 :23 – 00:02:23 :19

That’s wild. But this is not just, I just ended up in the world of HR

00:02:26 :00 – 00:02:40 :06

Let me make the context clear for people who do understand it. Ultimate Software was a payroll company yes, and Ultimate Software has gone from being a payroll company

00:02:40 :21 – 00:03:04 :19

To being in a horse race that looks like they just might catch workday three or four years from now. And that transformation from payroll operation to full spectrum human capital software provider happened partly during the time while you were there so you had your hand in this amazing business transformation.

00:03:05 :06 – 00:03:09 :28

As an anthropologist that fluked into HR. Now that’s awesome.

00:03:10 :00 – 00:03:25 :01

It is really it is really remarkable. And I think that’s what has for sure takes a significant team and an openness and I know that one of the first things that I recognized when I first joined Ultimate Software about nine years ago

00:03:25 :13 – 00:04:10 :13

Was that it was the first place that I had worked in which the creative latitude was truly granted to people who worked and could provide a good reason for that to the openness and the ability to bring ideas regardless of where you fell in the organization is something that I think has propelled ultimately to its new position and I think you know where you say that for sure it’s a horse ra