Building a Core HR Strategy

Mark has 20 plus years working as an HR executive, midsized to Fortune 500 companies with strengths and talent management, leadership development, coaching, performance management, proving company culture, all things HR and leadership during his career market successfully worked in companies such as PepsiCo, Ericsson, Nortel, Texas Instruments and Safeco. As of 2013 , mark transitioned from a corporate HR career, started his own HR strategic consulting company, HR Catalyst Consulting.

Mark , we are so excited to have you. Welcome to all about hr.

So that's , uh, that's probably , uh, kind of where I'd sit for now.

They were all separate departments. So I would say the nice thing there is that if you, you could become very grounded, become very expert in something, and just go very narrow and deep and what the major difference there. When I went in the middle market, which is about the last eight years of my corporate career, moved into the middle market world, anywhere from about companies between 50 million , uh, to about two or 300 million in revenue.

The biggest thing is then you have to really become much more of a truer generalist, and you have to know a little bit about everything. And that really opened my eyes to the world of compensation, the world of benefits and things that were a little more , uh, really going a little bit more broader and not as deep in some of those functions.

So I really enjoyed that experience and ironically, that worked out very well chronologically because the last eight years of my career was spent in that middle market world. So I started in the much larger companies, and then I dropped down in size. That kind of eye got , it was an eye-opening experience for me, and that was a little bit of that light bulb moment around possibly going into my own, starting my own , um, consulting practice with HR Catalyst in 2013.

So, you know, in essence the, the biggest difference , um, is really about you. You become very specialized in very niche in the, the, the larger company world.

And then you have to be a much broader focused and much more of a generalist within the smaller to middle market size companies, where that's kind of the sweet spot of what we do today, is really focusing on those classical lower middle market size companies and bringing HR strategic expertise than a lot of different buckets or disciplines within the HR function.

So it sounds like as you kind of scale down that it sounds like that crosses over all kinds of different parts of the business unit. Which brings me to, I think the next question, which is, so when you go to that spot, or if you're coming from the other spot of , we're just starting and I have all these things we need to get done or learn or get established, and how do growing organizations build an HR strategy? Where do you start?

And so much of the work that we do at HR Catalyst is around focusing around building strateg building programs and strategies that are based off of really the, the foundation of why the company exists and also around its core values. And so a lot of what we try to do within organizations is we love to start strategically , uh, a new client we're gonna start working with in the next few weeks.

We're gonna start, they do not have a compelling mission or purpose, and they don't have a set of core values that they've got embedded in their organization. So we're gonna start there, and then we're gonna build a lot of the core HR programs around, around hiring, around succession planning, leadership. We're gonna build it around their core values.

And so in essence, we're gonna start culture being bespoke, and then we're gonna build all the different, we're gonna build all the different, or the , the hubs, excuse me. And we're gonna build all the different spokes around their culture, their core values, and really what becomes, what should become a much stronger kind of identity.

And that's gonna help them in recruiting strategy will help them ideally differentiate themselves in the marketplace to become a competitive choice and a brand of choice to actually work for and also work with from a marketing perspective,

I just feel like, you know, if if you're running a successful business and didn't stop and go, let's have all this early on and you're now coming back to it, like, what's that dynamic like? I feel like that's gotta be pretty hard for you and your team coming in sometimes.

But nowadays, I think there are so many, especially in the market we live in today around the great resignation, the struggle for talent. I think that organizations fully understand that you have to do something . You have to have a very, a very unique value proposition around who we are, how we differentiate ourselves from working for another company just like us down the street.

And so you either get, you either get CEOs who are like, they're intuitively they know it, but until they talk to somebody like somebody that I work with that works on our team, then there that could be that light bulb moment to where they're like, you know what, that's exactly what we've been missing. And that's a part we're missing.

And so, and, and then if they really feel that way and they don't, they don't really see our, our value proposition around, we truly don't know what we don't know about pe the side of the business, then it could be much better that we don't actually have them as a client. Because if we're always gonna be rolling a boulder uphill, it's just not gonna work for us. And it's usually the ones who, who get, they just don't, they don't have the, the , uh, people strategy.

They don't have somebody to lead a people strategy within their business already. And that's a little bit of that missing.

It's , it's the missing cog in the machine that those are the companies that, that when they hear what we do and they understand the way we think through the human capital side of the conversation, that's where I think most of them, if they really do understand there's a lot of challenges there and they don't understand it , they will, it'll be a much happier relationship and then we can really add value to their organization.

And if it's an employee led culture, it's, you never know what you're gonna get because of course there are gonna be very high performing passionate employees who get the value proposition, but you also have, are gonna have a number of rogue employees who are very disengaged.

And so you really are gonna get this, it's almost like if you try to paint a picture, if you try to, if you take all the colors within the color palette and you mix them all together, you're gonna get this murky, ugly looking , murky brownie mustardy looking goop. Yep .

And so that's where I think that companies that struggle and I think with the amount of leadership, the , the amount of things that are coming out now that have been coming out of the last five or 10 years that are very popular around, you know, having a , a strong culture.

And also the way we talk about it too is if you have a strong culture core set of core values mission, there's lots of case studies we can cite, which will say this will directly correlate to better performance, both top line revenue and profitability.

So it's a very easy, cuz if they say, well this is just soft and fluffy and that this has nothing to do with our business, nothing to do with profitability, I can go in there and quickly cite time and time again, organizations that have a strong culture and oh by the way, they're also the market leader in their industry, our market segment.

So I think I can help them understand that they're really financially driven and they have a C F O who's the ceo , E o , there's a really easy way to still sell that. That this will give you much, there'll be a much higher chance that you'll be able to not only attract and retain the best people, but this will also drive , um, drive top line revenue and bottom line profitability.

Like what are some of the next steps as you're building a HR strategy for

We love to start though around, we would go back into recruiting talent management strategies, understanding that they have that, that's, that's gonna be consistent around recruitment talent management around performance evaluation processes. How often are you doing reviews? Are you doing touch base meetings that are quicker and more informal on a regular basis? Ideally we love to see clients do that at least monthly or quarterly. Do you have a compensation strategy or philosophy?

And usually a lot of companies we deal with, it's almost like they , they look at us like we have three heads when we talk compensation strategy or philosophy cuz they don't know what we're talking about. So we help to educate them. The other big thing we'll talk about there too, I would say would be around, we, we do some core things around leadership development and leadership coaching.

Because we know that at the end of the day, if you don't have strong leaders, especially in that first level leadership positions, and a lot of our clients typically have never done the leadership training. If you don't have really good leaders who are the, you know, the sergeants and the left tenants who are really driving the workforce and the key contact with the workforce, then everything's gonna stop.

Doesn't matter how good the executive leadership team has everything sorted out, if you don't have strong leadership at the first or second level, everything you've, you work on is gonna be falling on deaf hairs. So we, so those are a couple of things we would like to focus on initially. The beauty of what we do too, it's all based on pain points within the organization. So we don't have a step cookie cutter 10 step process to work with a client engagement.

They're all gonna be somewhat different and they're all gonna be fully customized to what the organization's major pain points are and where we think we can add the most, do the most value added work and make sure we have a consolidated strategy going into an engagement that we're all a , we're in agreement and we wanna make sure, of course the leadership team is in great move with what we're gonna do with them direction.

Like how do you, and it can be a different obviously, but how do you position HR with some of the executive leadership as you're building out these teams

Case in point with myself, I went back and got an MBA fairly early in my career, so probably three years in, nobody told me to go get an mba . My manager didn't instruct me to.

And just because I think HR people, my biggest, sometimes I rub HR people the wrong way because I say HR people need to not only know, not only be very proficient at HR speak , they need to be first and foremost, especially as you move up the HR world and the HR ladder, you need to be very proficient in , in business speak because the only way you're gonna gain credibility with the leadership team is if you speak their language and you're not turning everything into people jargon.

And not only, and also not just focusing on, on compliance. So I would say that's the first comment there.

The, the other thing I would say there is that you need to fully, I I always, I told people when I was corporate and I had a team of HR people working for me, if you need to miss my meeting to go to a business meeting, you know, ditch my meeting, go to the business meeting because you're gonna learn a lot more and you're also gonna gain credibility with your business leaders you support because, and that's just gonna get you more , um, it , it's gonna be able to learn their verbiage and their

vernacular and their pain points. And then the HR piece is gonna be secondary. So , um, I do want competent HR people, but I do tell people first and foremost, if you're gonna get an advanced degree and you're in hr, go get an mba . It's gonna be much, makes you much more credible. And then the other thing too is go to the business meetings first. Hang out with the business people.

Don't pe don't hang out with the HR people cuz you're gonna learn a lot more from the business people and you're gonna gain credibility from them a lot quicker if you do that. So if you focus on that strategy. So that's my, my thoughts , uh, on that , uh, on that question,

I know a lot of the folks that listen to this, I know a lot of people out in the workplace right now are really at an infection point, you know, with, with work. So can you, can we pivot slightly, but talk more specifically some best practices regarding change management mm-hmm. , uh, for these organizations you're working with and in general.

Because if you don't have a burning reason to change mm-hmm , then why change? If you're changing for change's sake, then that's , uh, you know, it , it's naive or stupid, whichever you wanna say . So, so I'd say one of the key things is what is your burning platform to change? And I think of , you know, coming out of now, you know , March, 2022, we're, you know, hopefully, knock on wood, coming outta covid. So I think one of the, one of the things is fundamentally is your business.

Is there a burning platform to say if your business doesn't change, you're gonna go outta business in the next few years? A and I would say the other big thing I would recommend is you need to have, you need to spend a lot of time understanding what the end goal is, what is the vision? And you have to clearly articulate some, some groups I've worked with, I actually, which is sometimes really amusing.

I would take an ama um, an executive team and actually instead of them, an extend of them using something they're very comfortable with, by having a narrative, by having their vision in words, I actually give them crayons, glitter, dust, glue. And I actually have them draw the vision. And it really gets, and most executives, when I came out of the high tech industry for years, and when you give an engineer sparkle dust and feathers and glue, it's amazing.

Some of them go, first of all, they think this is the dumbest idea, but once they get into it, it's amazing some of the things you get out of that. And, and then I would have them articulate it , of course, then I would switch it over to words. So when they were done playing like they were in kindergarten, I actually have them then describe verbally. And that helps to really , it's almost like, you know, they're really thinking left brain , right brain, yeah . They're really moving over.

Most of them are, are much more left-brained individuals and it really gets 'em to think much more outta the right brain side and highly creative. So that's one of the other things I think about there. So, and the other big part besides understanding what the burning platform is to move and change, you have to build that competitive, you have to build that very compelling vision as to why you have to change.

And then you have to, you have to do several things along the way because at the end of the day, I use , um, there's se there's, you know, a hundred change management models, but I just love the, you know, I love going into the, you know, the , uh, the denial resistance, explan exploration commitment model. I think it was started by William Bridges. There's a lot of other biz , there's a lot of others. Coter has a great model out there.

John Coter , who's a , you know, world renowned management guy. But the key thing is you've gotta have steps that you methodically work through. And the other big thing is you need to understand as you're going through a major change that things are gonna get worse before they get better. And a lot of company, a lot of changes fail simply, you know, 70 to 80% of change management processes fail because when things start getting worse, the, the leadership team is not fully committed to it.

So they actually decide to ditch the change process and they're like, you know, let's go back to my security blanket and go back to the way it was. And so I, I make sure that whenever I'm working with a company, I always tell 'em guys, before, guys , gals, it's gonna get worse before it gets better. But you have to understand, I'm gonna say, trust me , things will get better. But you have to go through that valley of despair.

And if you're not ready to go through that valley of despair for depending on the complexity of the change, you , you may be there for a while . You have to buckle up your seatbelts, put on your big girl big boy pants and buckle up. Because if you're not ready to do that, then don't change. Because that's one of the biggest reasons companies think they need a change. They knee jerk into the change.

They're not ready to go through the unproductivity, the , the, the ging of teeth that's gonna happen. And then they come out of the , and they're not willing to take those, those , those hard steps. And they actually end up ditching the change three, six months in. And maybe they've also spent a hundred thousand, $200,000 along the way and they actually revert to where they were before. And that's the worst thing you can do whenever you have something that's gonna really save the business.

But I used to go all over Europe and several other continents with Erickson, so that was probably a highlight.

That didn't come out of that dip in the economy somehow. But I, I found out that like, essentially that was like GEs model and it just broadly talked and everybody, whether you're GE sized or not went yeah, that. And then no one touched it. And then now I feel like everybody's touching it. There's a million opinions of performance management out there. Some are saying get rid of it all together. Some are saying, no, no, you should still do it once a year.

Some are saying, oh, you should do it a lot, lot tighter. So let's get your opinion. I I really liked your insights. How do you build out performance management for these organizations that don't have it? And what do you think are the most important cornerstones for any organization in the topic of performance management?

So I'd say that's one of the first things that I want to dispel is a performance management. Performance management process is holistic. It happens throughout the year. Uh, performance management is everything from , uh, giving timely feedback to employees on a regular basis. It's really critical to , um, we help a lot of companies build , um, uh, an onboarding process.

And one of the key things is new employees need a lot of feedback, especially, you know, I don't , I don't wanna bash millennials or Gen Zs, but millennials and Gen Zs live in a, they live in a world where they want, they want a lot of feedback. I

How did your week go? How, how was everything? What was frustrating? How can I help you? I would, so I would say very upfront , making sure you build a feedback, a constant feedback loop into the performance management process. Making sure also if things are not going well, you have a, a very , uh, consistent and cons and , and very constructive process around disciplinary action.

Because so many companies that I work, again, we specialize with companies, let's say 50 employees to about 250, 300. A lot of them terminate employees without a lick of documentation. And so there's nothing that says you ever did a poor job. And of course the, the icing on the cake is you never tell an employee in writing that an outcome of this process could be termination.

And that is a huge landmine from a liability that's, you're pretty much handing it to an attorney who represents the employee that write a check for me because you wrongfully terminated this , this person. So making sure you have a good onboarding process, part of performance management, making sure you have a compelling disciplinary process and a process around discipline or corrective action.

Also making sure around your actual evaluation process, you actually drive that to focus on not only just doing some sort of a review, but you also, you also build in there a facet around career development. What do you wanna be when you grow up? Yeah, love that. Yeah, because if you don't know, and you know, I I , I guess I won't share my ear my age here. Well, I'll share my age, whatever , it's 59 , it's 59 .

So , um, so I have been around the block in HR a few years, but I still 'em trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. So it's amazing too because there's a lot of people who are, whether it doesn't matter if they're in their fifties or they're in their twenties, if you ask that question, it's amazing some of those responses you'll get from them. And the beauty is you need, you need people within the performance world.

You need your steady eddies who are gonna do a good job and they don't wanna move up. They want to stay in that same job for the rest of their life. And that's great, but you're also gonna have those people who are 25 years old who want be the ceo E o . And so you need to have a kind of a mix of both because we all know that not everybody can be the c e o of the company. You only have one of those and you all , you only have one c o o .

But some folks are who are in HR want to go operations, some folks in operations want to go into marketing. So the nice thing is, especially if the organization has 500,000 employees, you can start moving around. You can start moving people around strategically. And so I would say performance management goes into career development. Mm-hmm . goes into onboarding processes, goes into continuous feedback and documentation goes into things around disciplinary action.

And if you will, if you just visualize, I know this is an audio, but if you visualize a circle that performance management never , it doesn't really have a start in an endpoint . It's cyclical and depending people will join the organization, people will leave the organization continuously. But making sure, the biggest thing is making sure that managers and leaders clearly understand this is a holistic process.

And good performance management throughout the year will, will help to not only keep the employees engaged, but they'll also make sure that it's very intentional about the communication touchpoints that the leadership have with their employee on a very regular basis.

My wife was just, I don't think her bosses, and so this , my wife was just doing performance reviews for her team. They had, she's been there three months, they had her doing everyone's performance reviews on her team by herself and they had her do a full performance review to go and file for the person she hired a month ago. And the person she hired two months ago that haven't sold anything or done anything other than just onboard , I was like, wow, talk about , uh, check the box performance ,

I know it really resonated with me and I , uh, I just wanna make sure this gets shared out to all of our listeners too. I thought it was great.

So that's really, if you link back to that or pick up that book or do an audio book , it's, it is got some really good things in there. But, so the Seven Cs, ironically, the, the , the thing that I love first, of course the , the , the first C is culture and you know, it , it's, it's a , um, so when you think about culture, and a lot of times people or automatically think about, or , you know, they think about cultures are correlated to businesses.

And, and every organization, every real organization has a culture. I went to, you know, like it or not, I went to Baylor University down in Waco, the hop spot of Waco national basketball chant last year just starting on mass . March Madness. Now had a great win. This today.

Again, a lot of coaches, doesn't matter what sport, what level they talk about the culture they're building , building within their teams. Yep . So I'd say first of all, you know, first seven C is culture. I know we gotta, we gotta move on here. But , uh, the next one is contagious. So having somewhat of a contagious attitude and really goes back into , um, leading with a , per leading with a passion and purpose.

You know, some of the best leaders, they don't have to have all, they check the boxes, but they're really, they need to be passionate about what they do and excited about what they do every day . So I'd say the next C up , um, second C is contagious.

The next C , which I love too, it's a little more, I don't know, you could say ho hum , but it's actually around being consistent and consistency, especially with newer managers, newer leaders I work with, I tell them, you know, you have to do, if you're gonna do one thing, you've gotta do it time and time again. And you can't be playing favorites. You've gotta be very consistent in how you lead, how you discipline, how you look at promotions, how you look at reviews.

You need to have a very similar lens. So consistency is huge because if you're not consistent, you're gonna lose trust within your employees and you're also gonna , you're gonna lose trust, respecting, and , uh, and you're also gonna lose a lot of, of things that are just core and innate within being a good leader. So consistent. Next one up, communication.

Especially if your business is going through, if they're going through high growth or unfortunately maybe high restructuring and high contraction. Now, you know, communication's gotta happen. It's easy to communicate when things are going great. Um, it's really hard. I was with a couple of companies in corporate that went bankrupt. And the big thing, like it or not, I really pushed on the leaders was, you gotta communicate, you gotta be very open, you've gotta be honest and transparent.

Now , one of the , a couple of the organizations, we literally had to take it apart and dress it up for, for consistency. But I was able to work with the, the c e o GM of that business, and he went from being so staged and so unnatural and so rigid to when we finished going through that process, I loved, I I gave him three bullets to talk about weekly.

And it just turned out to be awesome because he was very personable and this was a very high level engineer who felt , felt very uncomfortable about communicating. And he became very passionate, very empathetic as we were going through this restructuring. So communication's the next one out of the seven Cs , you know, the , the next one up is connection. You've gotta be able to connect with your team, especially I would say with the changes are going on within the workforce now.

A lot of people are , um, more and more people are working remotely and a lot of people are hired remotely too, which is a real challenge because some of the people, they never see their boss and they were hired into a remote environment. So making sure you connect with people often and making sure you're doing that on a regular basis. And sometimes it's just, it could be just a random, you know, it's kind of one of those random things. Uh, you know, just checking in with them .

If you have technology and Im, or whatever message system, you know, how's it going today? How's your day going? And maybe just checking in with them. Maybe they've been working on a big project and working long hours. How's your day going? Or, you know, send 'em a Starbucks card, send 'em a if, you know, send them a , a little gift at their home and, you know, thanks so much for working so hard on this project. Really appreciate it.

And that's gonna keep that engagement level up for that employee. The last two of the seven Cs . Next one is commitment. So making sure you've got committed people on your team. If they're, if you're finding they are starting to become a little bit disengaged and distracted, you know, reel them back in, find out what's going on in their life. You know, they may have a lot of things that are going on within the life that you don't really, you don't wanna get into too much of the personal side.

But you also , um, you know, Kim Scott, she has a great book, radical Radical Candor. Um, and one of the key things in there is really, and she's , uh, you know, she's high tech . She's been in Silicon Valley for years. Uh, but she, one of the key things within that book is really about caring for the people on your team personally. And so committing to really get to know your people, know yourself first, and getting to know your people is huge.

Because, you know, somebody may have a , uh, you know, may have a teenager who tried to commit suicide, may have a teenager who's got problems with drug addiction or alcoholism may be taken care of. Aging parents, you know, they may have a lot of stresses.

As I mentioned, maybe I referenced it earlier, but the last one is kind of, you know, is caring for your employees. You know, when they're sad , you know, making sure, Hey, do you need to take a day off? Do you need a , a time out here? And just say, Hey, I'm gonna give you a day off. Don't take it as PTO time. Just go take care of yourself.

If they've been working on this huge spa , uh, project, you know, send 'em a gift certificate to go have a spa day or get a massage or something like that, because I'll guarantee you that a hundred bucks or whatever you spend, send somebody, you know, the universal Amazon gift card or Starbucks gift card. You know, thanks so much from working on this. Hey, just thinking about you. Let me know if you need anything.

If they're going through a really tough time, it's amazing how that will keep that level of engagement up and keep that and just show that you care about your, your employees. Because every employee, and again, so many people now are being, are working remotely or they're working in very different ways that a lot of companies now are loose in the connection.

And that connectedness, that act of caring, being able to understand, even though I just see you like, you know, I see you on a screen, I see you on teams and Zoom all the time, just sometimes doing a random check-in with them just to show you care and especially if they're going through something, trying within their life is will , will be huge. And so those, those are in the nutshell are kind of the seven Cs .

But , uh, great , uh, a lot of really thought provoking things from somebody who is really outside of the corporate environment, but did a really nice job as the coach. Uh , former coach of the eighth Atlanta Falcons.

If you had to give one final piece of advice to the workforce, you get to talk to every person that goes to work. They're all listening. Yeah . The world's biggest audience. What do you tell people about going to work every day right now where

Do what you can to be one of those engaged workers. And that even if you're, you know, even if you're very new with the company or you've been with the company for years, being one of those engaged employees who's excited to be there and be kind of that rally and cry for other employees and also just be able to, you know, that that helps to leaders to be really happy. Love it . And leaders are, are loved to have engaged employees. And just remember the leader, your boss is a person too.

So ask them how they're doing, get in a conversation, get to know your boss. And , um, you know, I think that'll go a long way for you, just not only professionally, but also personally if you go, you know, just, just like one of those , uh, one of those adages, you know, life's life's 80% or 90% of attitude. And so go to work with a positive attitude and I think that'll help your stress level a lot and probably help you do , uh, really well in your , uh, your career , uh, journey.