Future Leader: Nicole Mauri
Nicole Mauri
HR Shared Services Manager
Safelite Group
When she graduated high school eight years ago, Nicole Mauri's plan was to pursue an education degree at the Ohio State University and become a classroom teacher.
She first decided to take a break to earn some money and ended up working in the call center at Safelite Auto Glass. That "break" became a career.
Mauri is now the HR shared services manager at Safelite Group. Her skill in coordinating the help desk for Safelite's 10,000 employees--and the 54,000 calls and 10,000 emails it handles in a given year--has earned her a Future Leaders award.
"I have been in human resources more than 20 years, and few people have struck me as having as much inherent skill as Nicole," says Michelle Beiter, Safelite's assistant vice president of corporate human resources. "It comes natural for her to be a leader for her people. She knows what is important to associates and the best way to communicate with our associates."
Mauri may have started in the Safelite call center, but she was on the move a year later to serve as a job coach. She progressed further, putting her teaching skills to work as a sales trainer.
"I had the opportunity to revamp our training program…and since I knew the information so well, because I put it together, I was asked to facilitate the training," she says. "I fell in love with watching the lights go on for them-bringing concepts to life. Working with new hires and having the opportunity to have people grow their careers is really fulfilling to me."
By 2009, Mauri was the training and development assistant manager for both the Columbus and Chandler, Ariz., offices, and became manager in 2012. A year later, she was back in Columbus full-time to serve as the human resources shared services supervisor. She was promoted to her current position in 2012. Her role is to represent human resources for all Safelight employees.
"Nicole is relentless to ensure that processes are streamlined, and very clear and concise and easy for associates," Beiter says. "If there is ever a question that comes up that one of her team members has not handled in the past, she documents it and finds the right answer."
Beiter wrote in her nomination that Mauri's skill with employees is well represented in her phone interactions. She has decreased callers' wait times by nearly three minutes and abandon rates by 19 percent, despite a 5 percent call-volume increase in 2013.
She has also structured her team so that 85 percent of employees calling into Safelite's HR Helpline have inquiries handled in one touch, helped by an electronic knowledge database which she created to address common questions covering 19 topics and more than 160 documents.
"Human resources at Safelite is about people and developing leaders to inspire their teams," Mauri said. "It is all about handling things in a timely manner and making sure associates feel empowered for self-service. Our role is giving them the tools to be successful."
To inspire her coworkers, Mauri designed an MVP of the Month award. The award recognizes someone outside of the HR shared services team who consistently goes above and beyond when handling inquiries.
"I have had a lot of really good leaders who have cast really good shadows," says Mauri, who is now finishing her degree at Franklin University. "They have inspired me to do the same with my team. It's all about happy people mak(ing) happy customers. My team serves as point of contact for associates and managers in human resource inquiries. They have such an important role. We have to make employees feel valued and get them the information they need."
HR Excellence Awards 2014
Executive of the Year (Large Organization): A Christine Browning
Executive of the Year (Midsize Organization): Doreen DeLaney Crawley
Executive of the Year (Small Organization): Katie McGrath
Innovation (Organization): Battelle For Kids