Maryellyn Haffner has been a human resources expert for over 30 years, with more than 20 of those years spent working internationally—across borders and cross-culturally. Prior to establishing Verve Advisors LLC, Maryellyn was vice president of human resources at Axcess Financial Services for nearly ten years. There she developed and executed strategic HR plans for a private $800 million company that employed five thousand associates globally.
While working at Axcess, Maryellyn reduced annual recruiting spend by over 40 percent by establishing and reporting key business unit HR metrics; utilizing workforce planning and succession planning techniques; leveraging social media; forming strategic alliances with recruiting partners; building robust onboarding programs; and creating formal development and mentoring programs. She outsourced most of the non–value add HR administrative functions and built a robust in-house HR consulting group of highly valued and respected HR business partners aligned with the company’s various business units. She launched the company’s first eLearning program in 2007, expanding the catalog to more than three hundred learning and compliance modules for US, Peru, and UK employees. The company’s first global timekeeping, payroll processing, and time reporting system was also implemented under her watch, saving over $200,000 year-over-year while satisfying global compliance and reporting requirements. Employee job satisfaction, motivation, and engagement attributes all advanced during her tenure as head of HR, as evidenced by the annual Employee Engagement Survey, which she championed annually since implementing it in 2007.
Prior to Axcess Financial, Maryellyn spent twelve years as the corporate director of talent management and employee relations at Chiquita Brands International. There she provided expert guidance on effective talent management practices to corporate and global business unit leaders of this $3 billion global, branded produce and packaged foods company. She spearheaded a needs analysis of over 1,500 people leaders in twenty countries that led to closing competency gaps of managers through a twelve-month People Leader Certification Program that Maryellyn’s learning and development team designed, developed, and delivered. She also introduced a unique global program—Respect In The Workplace—the tenets of which combined Code of Conduct compliance requirements with desired cultural behaviors and expectations. Maryellyn achieved a 20 percent year-over-year savings by improving employee relations practices and standardizing the delivery of services. She also authored and implemented the Employee Assessment Matrix, a management-decisioning tool used to help make separation decisions of over five hundred employees without a single incident during downsizing initiatives and reduction-in-force events.
Earlier in her career, Maryellyn was the human resources manager for the Walden Book Company responsible for talent recruitment, placement, and testing for the expanding New Store Division. Prior to this she was an executive recruiter in New York City for Bloomingdale’s Executive Placement. She started her career as first a training manager and then as a personnel director for Read’s Department Store at their flagship location in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Maryellyn received her BS in pre-med/biology from Fairfield University in Connecticut and attended the Lubin Graduate School of Business at Pace University in White Plains, New York. Maryellyn received her certification as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) in 1995 from the HR Institute. She achieved her Senior Certified Professional (SHRM – SCP) from the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) in 2016. She is a member of the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), and Greater Cincinnati Human Resources Association (GCHRA).