The Business of Life with Dr King
Dr Ariel Rosita King brings on a variety of International guests from various countries, cultures, organisations, and businesses to talk about turning
problem into possibilities! Let's turn our challenges in opportunities together!
The Business of Life with Dr King
Dana Neiger: Transforming Human Resources with Empathy, Representation, and Empowerment in the Business World
Discover the transformative power of empathy and representation in the business world as we sit down with Dana Neiger, the inspiring co-founder of Hive Talent Acquisition Firm. Dana shares her unexpected journey into the realm of human resources, a field she stumbled upon thanks to a friend's invitation. Learn how this Black-owned, woman-owned firm in Atlanta is redefining HR for small to medium-sized businesses, focusing on creating inclusive, non-toxic workspaces.
Dana and her business partner, Veronica Jenkins, channel their experiences with toxic work environments into fostering company cultures that prioritize humanity and equality. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of the motivations behind Hive's creation and the unique story of its 'queen bee' inspired name.
Join us as we tackle the pressing issues of gender and racial pay gaps, delving into strategies that women and people of color can use to assert their worth in the workforce. We discuss the courage needed to reject unfair pay cuts and emphasize the importance of legal protections that support candidates in negotiations.
Through consulting, coaching, and interview prep, Hive aims to arm individuals with the tools to overcome systemic barriers. As we wrap up, the conversation highlights the power of mentorship, with personal stories underscoring the impact of role models in fostering success. This episode is a call to action, urging listeners to seize opportunities with determination and compassion, all while championing kindness and grace in the business landscape.
Music, lyrics, guitar and singing by Dr Ariel Rosita King
Teach me to live one day at a time
with courage love and a sense of pride.
Giving me the ability to love and accept myself
so I can go and give it to someone else.
Teach me to live one day at a time.....
The Business of Life
Dr Ariella (Ariel) Rosita King
Original Song, "Teach Me to Live one Day At A Time"
written, guitar and vocals by Dr. Ariel Rosita King
Dr King Solutions (USA Office)
1629 K St, NW #300,
Washington, DC 20006, USA,
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DrKingSolutions.com
Hi and welcome to the business of life. My name is Dr Ariel Rosita King and today we have a very, very special guest with us, Miss Dana Niger. Welcome.
Dana Neiger:Thank you for having me, Dr King. It's nice to be here.
Dr Ariel King:Wonderful. Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself and also the business that you have?
Dana Neiger:Absolutely so. I'm Dana Niger. I am 44 years old, going through perimenopause, and I'm also a small business owner. I am co-founder of Hive Talent Acquisition Firm out of Atlanta, Georgia firm out of Atlanta, Georgia. We are an HR consulting firm offering full human resources services everything from compliance all the way around through recruiting and talent acquisition, and we tend to work with small to medium-sized businesses that don't yet have internal HR or legal teams. We are Black-owned, woman-owned, minority-owned, a DBE and a government contractor, and we're very proud of those NAICS codes, and we tend to work with similarly sized and labeled companies and firms as well. We have a specialty in the transportation engineering industry, but we run the gamut and experience and exposure in many different industries and arenas. Thank you again for having me.
Dr Ariel King:Wow, that's amazing Woman-owned business. Bravo, bravo, merci, merci. Can you please tell us more about some of the highlights of the business that you do?
Dana Neiger:Absolutely so. Some of the services we offer on the business side of what we do, again, full service human resources. So everything from coming in and evaluating and developing strategy around hiring, onboarding and offboarding services and policies and procedures, all kinds of compliance related both state and federal compliance, employee handbooks, safety manuals, understanding your dynamic within your company as far as employee relations Relations, offering a wonderful one-on-one program that really gets in and shakes out all of the nonsense and provides the company culture that is non-toxic oriented, things like that.
Dr Ariel King:That's a lot. Yeah, and may I ask you human resources. How did you get into human resources and why did you choose that as your as a company, human Resources? Because I'm sure there's a lot you could have chosen.
Dana Neiger:That's really kind of you. The reality is I accidentally fell backwards into Human Resources as the start years came back in 2004 and a girlfriend of mine was recruiting with a staffing company and it was determined that I was going to just go ahead and join that team and see where that took me and ended up really falling in love with the relationship management associated with recruiting, and we were recruiting high-level intellectual property law attorneys. So that was the sort of soiree into the first nine and a half years of my career, and then I wanted to learn more than just recruiting. I wanted to learn human resources as the entire whole umbrella, because people don't understand recruiting, though an amazing facet of human resources, is just one factor of it. Right. The other things that I mentioned before employee relations, safety, understanding, compliance, right, those kinds of things are actually the main bread and butter of a daily human resources professional right, and then the talent acquisition side is just one part of it.
Dana Neiger:So the reason my business partner and I actually founded Hive was we met on the same team working for formerly known First Data in the merchant services industry, and they were actually at the time training us to ghost candidates. We were having a really hard time. They were pitting teams against each other. It was a toxic environment of dog eat dog. It was just a really, really awful place to be right and my business partner and I looked at each other we weren't business partners at the time, but we were really great friends on the same recruiting team and we said we could do this better and that we could bring the human back into human resources and Hive was formed.
Dr Ariel King:That's fantastic. How many years ago was Hive formed and where did you get the name from? Where does the name?
Dana Neiger:come from? Those are great questions we founded in 2017. So we are, I think, in our eighth year, if I'm not mistaken. Bad, bad math. I'm really bad at math. I think that's eight years close enough. Using my fingers and Hive actually came from. Funny enough, my business partner, veronica Jenkins, and I have both sort of been queen bees in our own lives, with our own families and friends, and she also is allergic to life. Just being honest, not putting her whole business out there, but that poor woman should live in a bubble, bless her heart. And so she uses a hypoallergenic body wash that is honey based and the smell of it. One day she was just like we are queen bees of our hive and this is what we want to do, and I was like I am in on that, that's a great idea and that's how I came to be.
Dr Ariel King:Love the name, love the name. Okay, so I'm going to ask you to just tell us more about some stories of what you do and how a hive has progressed, so we can learn more about some stories of what you do and how Hive has progressed. So we can learn more about what you do through common stories, absolutely, absolutely.
Dana Neiger:We love a good story and storytelling, don't we so, hive? And our purpose and our why was taking small to medium-sized businesses with ownership that looked like us woman-owned, black-owned, minority-owned businesses. Again, we do have a specialty in the transportation engineering arena, so the majority of our clients are in that space and they are small to medium-sized civil engineering firms, environmental firms, water firms, geospatial and tech firms, different kinds of land and site development firms, and we tend to work with them on the basis of as being woman owned and or minority owned or black owned. What matters to you and your people and the great fit that we have is we don't come in and do anything but consult. It is high level partnership. We get in with the ownership and the hiring managers and executive leadership and we make sure that we're all on the same page from day one, right? What is the point of us coming in and being there and doing great work and making change if you don't want this change, right? So, first and foremost, we partner up and we know we're collaborating and from there the strategy unfolds and we prioritize it. What are the three to five main pain points that you have? And we break that down from the perspective of, let's say it is hiring processes or attrition. From the perspective of, we can find great people but we can't keep them. What's going on right? So we have to make sure and evaluate those processes. What tools are they using or not using? How are you streamlined or not streamlined, for that matter? And so we have done everything from taking teams through new implementation of new software behind the scenes to get them streamlined on processes and things like understanding time clocks and keeping track of those things in certain places and hours-wise for hourly employees and other aspects of it.
Dana Neiger:It is a full-on recruiting strategy. Aspects of it. It is a full-on recruiting strategy understanding what part of this program is going to give them what needs as far as hiring and then determining what parts of the year that's in and setting them up for success that way. As an example and, of course, my personal favorite, career development, sitting down with us at Hive but acting as an HR director for a particular company and what they want to see happen as far as career development, truly is one of the most exciting things that we do here. Setting people up for success with our career pathing documents, ensuring they can see visually what skills they are either lacking or missing or just haven't had the experience and yet getting them to the point of understanding what that looks like. Each process Sorry, I didn't mean process each promotional like step in their career, and that part, like I said, is most exciting to me.
Dr Ariel King:I loved it. That's so interesting. I'm learning a lot about HR. Let's go back to being a woman-owned business and what that's like being an entrepreneur, because basically you're an entrepreneur. Can you tell us about some of the earliest challenges that you had as an entrepreneur you and your colleague or your partner starting a business and then how those challenges went through the eight years and where some of those challenges are now? Just so people can understand that it's not always easy in the beginning and how we progress.
Dana Neiger:Thank you, we are very transparent here, so we have no problem sharing all the ins and outs, and the reality of all of this is going to come down to how women are treating other women, right. So that is really the ultimate sort of ceiling that we have to break through as women in general. Don't step on other women to get there is my point right, and everything that I do and everything that Hive does, and everything that Veronica believes in and supports with this business as well, is all solely based on the fact that we, as females who are a minority, not just in our specialty arena here of transportation engineering, but in the C-suite in general right, globally, global statistics women only hold 29% of senior management roles. Okay, that is shockingly low, even though it is significantly higher than it's been in years past. But 29% are we kidding?
Dana Neiger:In the US, women make up 30% of the C-suite executives as of about 2023. These are 2023 statistics. So that's not bad, it's not great, but it's shockingly low in many aspects when you compare to what the workplace looks like these days. Women of color in the United States only 4% of C-suite positions pathetic, pathetic, and looking at you and your face right now. It is shocking still that we are in 2024. And these are statistics, right, I agree with you, I'm quite surprised.
Dana Neiger:Those numbers are shocking and I share them on purpose, to shock and to remind people who say things on a daily basis white men in particular, and no offense meant. But the reality is there is a pay gap and there are gaps in senior management and executive management and C-suite when it comes to women and women of color. So don't lie to yourself and think that that's not the case. It's 100% still the case.
Dr Ariel King:I think that's a very good point and I believe that, as you were saying, internationally it's the same, unfortunately, when it comes to not just C-suite but C-suite pay. So pay equity, and some countries are doing it better than others. Some countries are having more people within the political stream. You know they use parliaments um more than others, so you have more women. Of course, we have now countries that have women um that that are ahead of governments in Africa that started, and then then in um South America and so on and so forth.
Dr Ariel King:Yet I think it's a very good point, but it's, you know, what we're seeing is actually international. So, and also, unfortunately, what we're seeing is not just international, but when you have people that are homogeneous in their culture or their, their ethnic background, or whatever you want to call it, you'll have the same problem. Whatever you want to call it, you'll have the same problem. So it's amazing to me that it seems like perhaps it's a X chromosome and Y chromosome issue. Unfortunately, that's playing out all over the world. Let me ask you something as a person, you and your partner, who are both women that own this business. How have you been able to overcome some of the challenges being a woman-led business?
Dana Neiger:Sure. Well, first of all, you have to give yourself grace right In anything that you do. It doesn't matter if you're a woman or not, but, especially as a female, we are already behind the ball, if that's how you want to look at it from that perspective. So, jumping on board and deciding that you're going to own a business, let's go ahead and make sure that you're set up for success so that you don't become a statistic falling off. The other great thing about where we're located in greater Metro Atlanta, georgia in the United States, is this is a predominantly African-American city and, in that sense, predominantly Black. Woman-owned businesses rule this economy here. So we're proud to be part of this type of economy giving back to the community, and I think that's one of the things that woman owned businesses specifically have a higher statistic of doing than not. From a pay gap perspective, I do want to go ahead and bring up that an overall pay gap in the United States of women to men earning on the dollar is still 82 cents to the man's dollar right. White women earn about 79 cents for every dollar earned by white men, but black women earn about 64 cents on that dollar and Latino women even less, in 57 cents on that dollar. So I do want to go back to those statistics and still say again for people who don't think that pay gaps exist, especially racial pay gaps, right In this money equity environment, that we're talking about this in the safe space that you've provided, it is a hundred percent still a thing and it affects people every day, and so part of the change that Hive is trying to make is we have individual services, we do consulting with individual candidates as well and we offer coaching for people trying to identify jobs. We also offer resume rewrite, reformat and interview preparation. And in some of that interview preparation, dr King, one of the most important things that we bring to the table, I feel, is helping women, especially women of color, understand their worth. People of color really in general because I do work with men, of course, as well, since we're talking about women, I just kind of go there, but when we're working with candidates of color, I do make sure because the same types of comments come by all the time is I just need the job, I just have to get my foot in the door, then I can show them my work ethic. This is not the same type of mentality that white people have. When I speak with white people, even white women, they don't necessarily have those same thought processes, right? So automatically people of color are just willing to take pay cuts, to get themselves in the door and know that they'll work harder and eventually hopefully earn where they think they belong. And I'm telling people no, absolutely not so.
Dana Neiger:In the United States it has been federal law for over 10 years now that no one in an interview process Dr King is allowed to ask anyone about their current salary or their salary history anymore. As a matter of fact, every job that is posted here in the United States must have a number associated with it or a range associated with based on those skill sets. Right? So it's been made clear that now in interview processes those are illegal questions. So that tells people who are interviewing when they know that, do I really want to work for this company? They might have some cultural issues. Not knowing that they're recruiting in the hiring side of things is asking illegal questions.
Dana Neiger:Number one, right? The other way to look at that. Number two is to ask yourself if I'm interviewing and someone asks me what I'm looking for, I have the right to say back to them throw that right back and say well, what is it that you're offering based on these skill sets? What is the number or the range of salary that you're offering for this particular job description? Right, and these are really wonderful ways that our federal government here in the United States has actually given us the power back to be able to feel more comfortable in these interview processes that, let's be honest, for years have been systemically racist, racist and bigoted. Right, so we are trying hard here at Hive to break free of those types of terrible stereotypes, those types of I forgot, I don't know what word I was going to say there. That happens occasionally. I apologize, but you get what I'm saying.
Dr Ariel King:Yeah, no, I think this is a very good point and I'm listening to you because I'm learning a lot from you. I just had no idea that you're looking at these type of disparities and I would think that these types of disparities, unfortunately, are duplicated all over the world, because people are people all over the world, Work is work all over the world and success or not, lack of, or support and lack of, is all over the world. So, yeah, I think that I'm learning a lot. May I ask can you think of one or two situations or consulting that you did either with a company or a person, where and you don't have to, of course we're not looking at the person's name, but where the person started out not knowing what to do and how you were able to guide either the company or the person with the specialty? You know, the specialty work that you do at Hive.
Dana Neiger:Yes, absolutely so. We've, and I'll be very transparent without sharing any confidential information, right. So we have a client, had a client, I should say, in the Marcom industry marketing communications. I should say in the Marcom industry marketing communications black owned, woman owned firms super excited to work with them. Day one, everything was flowing, it was super exciting, we're collaborating, feeling good, we're communicating well.
Dana Neiger:By day seven, which ended up being a Sunday getting phone calls and text messages at nine o'clock at night on a Sunday, trying to prepare for a Monday at eight o'clock, meeting with them we realized something is off here. So we took notes, we documented and we waited another week just to see. And that's kind of what happens in human resources is everything is almost like a hypothesis or a science trial, right? Is you have to observe, take notes, document, come back and do some research and compare and contrast, right? So a few weeks in with this client, we realized we had to set boundaries right away. They had no boundaries, they were bursting through what we thought were very obvious kind of standard business boundaries of no working on the weekends, right, kind of thing. Or we don't work on the weekends, I should say. And so one of the important things that we learned very early on and this was a client from several years ago was boundaries are so important for developing that professional relationship. And the reality is, after a few months of working with this client, my business partner and I realized that our mental health and awareness in this situation was not worth losing or getting lost over one relationship, right. So we had a conversation about a transition and ended up firing that client from our docket because they were not a good fit culturally. They blew right past boundaries that we set of not working on weekends and not calling after certain periods of time, and please don't set eight o'clock Monday meetings. If you're not going to be prepared by, you know, friday because we're not working on Sunday, you can work on Sunday. Not judging you on that, right. So that's a sort of negative one. I'll share a positive story as well so that we don't end on a negative. We have some relationships now that are true partnerships. The owners of the company and my business partners and I all have each other's cell phones and information and we communicate daily I'm actually doing this podcast from a client's site right now, as a matter of fact, and when I come and act as their HR director and I really don't look like an HR director today because it's Halloween, so I have a Halloween costume on, but, as you can tell, they have a very fun culture here where all of us are dressed up in Halloween costumes for a big lunch together today, and that kind of culture is, in fact, what we create and bring and instill into our clients who want that Right.
Dana Neiger:This particular client was very thirsty for a non-toxic environment and they were on the precipice of getting it organically. It was just a few fine tweaks that needed to happen to make the differences of here's a gift card Thanks so much for all of your hard work to here's a party for everyone on your team. Tell us about this great project. How did it work? You all are awesome, right, there's a difference and, yes, people love the gift card and the privacy, but some people love accol card and the privacy of it, but some people love accolades in front of everybody, and you have to figure out that dynamic in order for that relationship to really become solid. And I've been with this client from the beginning, from our founding, since 2017. That's an amazing story.
Dr Ariel King:So eight years of working with a client that's an amazing story. So eight years of working with a client that's been able to put in place, um, this type of culture. May I ask, in your opinion, after eight years with this kind of culture, for many people in business they want to say well, what is the bottom line? How does that affect um? Either attrition, how does that affect um, for example, what money comes in or out? Or you know the the measures. So, in your opinion, what measures are affected by this and how are they affected?
Dana Neiger:So I think that measurements, metrics, kpis, whatever you want to call that these days, depending on what part of the world we're in right Measurements are important as far as attrition is concerned, and a really great HRIS or applicant tracking system behind the scenes can can help with that right from the perspective of tracking how many candidates you attract to a particular job posting, how many make it through the process of interview per, how many actually get let out of that interview process and how many make it through, and how many people stay and how long they stay with the company.
Dr Ariel King:I don't mean to interrupt. So how about for the eight years? How about? I mean? What, what, what positive? What positive KPIs can we see from, not them, not only working with you, but actually in, in, in empowering the people that work there for this positivity within the company?
Dana Neiger:Oh, okay, I misunderstood. Thank you so much for bringing us back on track so positive KPIs. From working with us, you will see positive less attrition, less turnover in your environments. If that is your goal, you will see positive experiences with onboarding and offboarding, which occasionally happens.
Dana Neiger:Nobody wants to lose people, but the reality is, statistically, if you're losing people because they're moving on for better opportunities, that's something you need to help change and figure out. If you're losing people because, for example, they are relocating and it's another spouse, that's not a statistic that you have to worry about. Right? That doesn't come back on your culture and you have to look back and say what did we do wrong here? Why did we lose this person right? So we can help with those. We can help with positivity around your general work dynamic, including leadership skills.
Dana Neiger:It is so great to hear hey, so-and-so is thinking about becoming a people leader one day, but has never taken a leadership training course. Can you guys help them with that? That's exciting Taking a brand new potential people leader, getting them to determine what their leadership style could be, how they want to manage people, what they like and don't like about being managed a certain way. Those are fun conversations and for it to watch people have that click moment, that light bulb moment go off. I'm a leader of people right Like yay, it's exciting, it's exciting.
Dr Ariel King:I love that. I love that. You know we've talked about so much today, so I would ask you, as a woman owned business, could you maybe give us and women that are thinking about opening up or starting their own business and whatever it is, can you give us some five tips of what you learned and what you think is important from you personally to start and start a business.
Dana Neiger:Thank you. Meditation and manifestation is number two. If you are not currently learning how, or trying to figure out how, to meditate and manifest success in your life, that is 100% something that small business owners, especially women in my group of women whom I know from the transportation engineering industry that we do this right. The other thing that I would love to say is, when it comes to mentorship, women, please go reach out, even if you don't necessarily want to be a leader of people. Sometimes the anecdotal stories from your years of experience you don't even realize how much they help less experienced women who look up to you, who look up to you, and that leads to the final one, looking at you and your beautiful face.
Dana Neiger:Dr King, right, I see that there are women in this world who will look up to you and have already looked up to you and said she looks like me. That means I can do that too, and I say that for Latinas, I say that for Asian women, I say that for Indian women of every kind, and I say that for all different kinds of women, backgrounds, et cetera. There are young ladies out there looking at you, going. She can do it. Maybe I can do it too. So make sure that that mentorship and that ability to network with these young ladies and to help them out solely is one of your biggest priorities.
Dr Ariel King:Thank you, I love your five and may I ask is there something you would like to leave our audience with today? That's extremely important, whether it's man, woman, whether it's an entrepreneur or somebody looking for a job. Are there any tidbits or something that you would like to leave with people just to think about and to have resonate for the week? Resonate for the week.
Dana Neiger:Find your kindness and your empathy Most important for me this week, especially so I'm sharing it with everybody else. Find your kindness, find your empathy give each other grace.
Dr Ariel King:Thank you for that, and I want to thank our audience for today for listening to us and remember if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, then when that's Halal. And I say I, if not now, then when that's a little, and I say, if not me, then who go out and make the business of life the best you can. Thank you, and thank you.
Dana Neiger:Thank you for having me.