How to Earn Employee Trust in 2025
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we speak with Jeanette Winters, Chief Human Resource Officer at 8x8, about building resilient HR strategies that balance agility, transparency, and authenticity.
Jeanette shares her unique insights on leadership consistency, the critical role of lifelong learning, and why transparency, especially in times of uncertainty, is essential for trust and engagement.
🎓 In this episode, Jeanette discusses:
Why consistency in leadership matters
Integrating HR strategies directly into business objectives
Maintaining transparency and authenticity in uncertain times
The power of lifelong learning in driving competitive advantage
Creating meaningful connections to enhance employee engagement
Deel is the all-in-one payroll and HR platform for global teams.
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Jeanette Winters 0:00
Based on what is known today. One of my favorite phrases, I use it six times every day. Well, what does that mean? If you think about where we were in February of 2020, none of us knew that, literally, a month later, that the world would be shut down with the pandemic. There's going to be things that you know, slide in from the side or over the top of the mountain, and we've got to be ready for that so I can be authentic and transparent and answer a question like that, but know that the answer may have to change tomorrow based on externalities over which we have absolutely no control.
Chris Rainey 1:00
Jeanette, welcome to the show. How are you?
Jeanette Winters 1:02
I'm lovely. It's this bright, sunny day here. I'm looking forward to it. Oh, most looking forward to our conversation. Yeah, don't
Chris Rainey 1:09
show off, because it's a miserable day, as always in the UK. So
Jeanette Winters 1:14
it's the UK weather. It's
Chris Rainey 1:16
true. Yeah, it'd be more shocking if it was warm. We'll be like, what's going on as well. But anyway, how you been? How are things?
Jeanette Winters 1:23
You know, it's a busy time of the year, and we're getting, we are getting ready for the end of our fiscal year. So, you know, the activity really boils to a great temperature, and we're off and running. So lots happening, but not only within our company, but within the HR community too. With the change in administration here in the United States, we've seen lots of new executive orders and legislation, legislative directives that are that we will need to sit back and take a look at. So it's a really intense time for those of us in the HR field. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 2:04
and it's like, it's not slowing down either, is it? No, it's not.
Jeanette Winters 2:08
It's not. So we just need to get ready for that pace and hope that all of us have been practicing to run a marathon
Chris Rainey 2:18
before we get there. Is Take it. Take a step back a second, tell everyone a little bit more about yourself personally and your journey to where we are now, and a little bit about the organization, if people aren't aware of it. So
Jeanette Winters 2:29
my journey is really a three legged stool from when I was a college work study student, I looked at technology and how it could automate processes that would enhance student service in the area of student financial aid, and it went from there. And so technology, productivity and then change, because all three go together. And so it was that three legged stool that's been the, really, the pillar of my career. And I have an amazing education that I was gifted by the American University in Washington, DC, and degree in psychology and sociology, another Master's degree in student development and counseling, and then my doctorate is in Public Policy from the University of Southern California, and that has really helped me dig in to the workplace issues that we tackle every day. I spent about 10 years of my life saying I never wanted to be in HR, just to be in shadow HR serving the business. And my tenure, nearly 10 years at Intel, five and a half at American Express, was in shadow HR organizations because the business needed something that the Standard HR wasn't set up to accomplish and so we did that is not ideal, though. The ideally HR should, in fact, be meeting the business functions needs. And so that's what I spent the last 10 years doing.
Chris Rainey 4:16
What do you mean by shadow HR?
Jeanette Winters 4:18
So we set up recruiting. We set up everything, including performance metrics, training, high potential programs, everything except the basic HRIS I see and compensation and benefits, meaning they were administered centrally, but everything else was done in the business, and that really is considered shadow HR, because HR central would have recruiting and learning and developmental it wasn't directed at what the business needed, and that's why they brought me in. I. Yeah. And literally, my career, if you were to say in one statement, has been to align corporate goals with the human capital, to ensure fulfillment on both ends.
Chris Rainey 5:10
Yeah, was the goal of that shadow HR, to give you more freedom within the framework a bit will be a bit more disrupted, disruptive,
Jeanette Winters 5:19
more freedom be more disruptive and more directed specifically to what we needed now and then. So, you know, it is. And the thing of it is that we talk a lot about agile and we talk a lot about meeting the needs. HR is a two sided coin. You know, you have the one side where you take care of people, you recruit them, you train them, you develop them, and throughout their career, and then the other side of the coin is taking care of the business. But if the two strategies are not aligned, you're not going to have the opportunity to really maximize either. And that's really what has been the hallmark of my career the last 20 years. Love
Chris Rainey 6:05
that telephone about the current you're currently you see at tarot, new new role. Turn on a bit about the organization who perhaps not aware of it.
Jeanette Winters 6:14
Yes. So I'm the Chief Human Resource Officer at eight by eight, and we are an integrated telecommunications company, voice, video, chat, and all the above that is aided and embedded by integrated artificial intelligence. And I emphasize the integration because it's not sitting out on the side, it's embedded into the flow of the work, making everyone much more productive and making the technology a whole heck of a lot easier to utilize. So we are a 35 year old company that has changed hats a number of time, and we are just in the the throes of completing a three year strategic journey where we've been in this business with the integrated telecommunication and we're really very excited about it, because we're really enabling our customers To better serve and to connect with their customers.
Chris Rainey 7:22
Wow, that's incredible. Because obviously the technology you're discussing now, what you just mentioned, the business does, didn't even exist, so you must have constantly been disrupting yourself. What was the initial product of the business?
Jeanette Winters 7:34
Initially they, in the first iteration, we sold a lot of telephone sets.
Chris Rainey 7:40
Wow. You've really gone through the whole I love hearing stories like this. So, you know, plugging into the wall, Sue, teleconferencing and AI, wow. I just love hearing those stories. Oh, it's,
Jeanette Winters 7:54
it's wonderful to see the evolution of a platform that's specifically designed to help problems that we all have, and whether it's multinational, meaning multilingual, communication, whether it is, you know, it's wherever people are, and enabling people to work wherever they are, and that's really the you know, over the last five years, that shift has really taken hold, notwithstanding that many companies have gone back to on campus, work in office, but there's still a lot of us, as you can see from my office, that work remotely, and as I do, and it's it's a it's a reality, because What it does is it allows us to have access to talent we might not have otherwise. Yeah, so I can hire somebody. We have about 500 people in, pls, Romania. It's a great technology hub there and but there are types of technology where we go to Bulgaria or Bucharest or, you know, and it's a bit far flung, no matter they have the same interface as our folks that are in office in the Cluj building. So
Chris Rainey 9:10
our engineering team for our AIS in Nigeria, which people will be people always surprised by
Jeanette Winters 9:18
as well, you know, we need to get over that surprise, because technology is enabling the growth and development of workforces literally everywhere around the world. It's so it's so exciting.
Chris Rainey 9:32
Yeah, I can't move on without mentioning your background. Clearly, there's a passion there for if anyone that's listening, many horses. Oh, tell us the story. I noticed the story there. Oh,
Jeanette Winters 9:43
so I was from the time I started walking. I loved watching my mother and grandmother ride. And we had, they had a dairy farm, and they had farm horses, and I was told I could not get on these draft horses. Unless somebody was out there.
Chris Rainey 10:01
So draft horses for everyone listening like, are like the work or the huge work horses, right? Giants, well,
Jeanette Winters 10:09
and think of the Budweiser Clydesdales, the two boys over my left shoulder. Yeah, and, and so as a toddler, my mother and grandmother saw me trotting down the driveway on one of the old draft horses, no saddle, no bridle. And my, you know, they came running out and both very accomplished equestrians themselves, you know, on work horses. And they said, we told you. I said, Oh no, Tatas over there. I you know, there's somebody out here, but my passion for for horses really stemmed from the two of them, as did, does my love of dogs and the care that they they so richly deserve. But the the paintings that you see in my office are of the boys that have taken me around the world, to learn, to compete and to spend time with four legged creatures that are just amazing. Yeah, and so I ride a sport called dressage, not widely known in the United States. It's big
Chris Rainey 11:14
in the UK, absolutely, you have one
Jeanette Winters 11:17
of the world's best riders.
Chris Rainey 11:19
I think we won the Olympics, right? Yes,
Jeanette Winters 11:21
absolutely, absolutely, yeah. So it's um, but it's a The reason it appeals to me is that it is a cerebral sport. If you don't connect with the sentient being that you're sitting on all 1700 pounds, there's no connection there. And you get no performance with a connection and understanding what they need and what you want, which really isn't that the way we train people, whether it's a kindergarten student or a college student, it's that connection, and that's one of the reasons why I love the sport so much. You know, people will say, Oh, you just sit in that saddle, yeah, if I sat in that saddle with these critters, I'd be in the sand or in the next county if I wasn't paying attention. What
Chris Rainey 12:08
have you learned from everything from you mentioned, like rescuing dogs to STEM programs, which I know that you're very passionate about, to horses. What are some of the things that you've taken away from those passions that have impacted your career as a chro,
Jeanette Winters 12:21
you know, one of the first things that I learned and in working with, and I'm terrible at reprimanding any of my, you know, my pets, whether they're four legged and weigh 1700 pounds or, you know, the basset hounds that ran around My house for many years. But there's one, a behavioralist once told me, there's 100 to one ratio every time you let somebody get away with something, you know, misstep under saddle or misbehaving in the house. For a dog, it takes you 100 times to correct that behavior because they say, Oh, I can get away with this, and so it becomes learned for them, and unlearning takes a ratio of 100 to one. And one of the things that that has impacted me as a leader, never mind as a leader of people functions, is that consistency is absolutely imperative. Why do I say that? Because if you're here one day and you know around the corner the next, people don't know what to expect, and our brains are wired for consistency and what is known, and so in the face of the unknown, it has to fill in the blanks with what it does know, and so we never get the optimal level of connection, whether it's an animal or a human. Some people don't like the reference aligning humans with pets, but it really that that rhythm does work if consistency is absolutely key to what you need to do when you're training an animal or whether you're training an individual.
Chris Rainey 14:06
Yeah, and you're not comparing. You're just talking about the principles. It's just the principles are lined across consistency. And if anyone could deny that part, how do you maintain that when you you want to drive consistency? But how do you do that when there's so much ambiguity, right? Because it kind of suck a paradox, you know?
Jeanette Winters 14:26
And one of the things is that people are asking for more transparency and more authenticity. We just did in all hands last week. And someone said, will there be layoffs? And so one of my favorite phrases, and I emphasize it today because it I use it six times every day. I start the answer to that question with based on what is known today. This is my answer. And they say, well. What does that mean? And it's, you know, if you think about where we were in February of 2020, none of us knew that, literally, a month later, that the world would be shut down, and so with the pandemic. And so there's going to be things that, you know, slide in from the side or over the top of the mountain, and we've got to be ready for that so I can be authentic and transparent, but also know and answer a question like that, but know that it may have that the answer may have to change tomorrow based on, you know, externalities over which we have absolutely no control.
Chris Rainey 15:43
Yeah, what's the what's the typical reaction that you get?
Jeanette Winters 15:47
Well, I have explained why I use that phrase so so that people understand. I'm telling you what I know now, but don't expect that it will hold tomorrow, a week from now. You know, if you think about some of the more poignant moments in our history, think about 911 and how the, you know, air travel in the United States literally came to a halt. We didn't know that morning, that we that what was going to happen, or the reaction. And so I remind people that there's nothing that we could have done at Intel, for example, which is where I was working at that time, to really alter that. And yet distribution stopped because we used airplanes to ship chips around the world. We had people that were stranded in many, many locations, and we needed to get them home, but I didn't know that the day before. And so I want people to understand we have to. We can tell you what we know today, and then we'll tell you when we know something different tomorrow. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 16:59
I think people appreciate that transparency, and no one has a crystal ball to give you, to give you the answers. So whilst it's not, maybe not the answer that they want to hear is still is the truth? Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, I love that, and and that, and that goes to building trust, right? Because if you're only just giving people the answers, people the answers that they want to hear, then they may be happy at the time, but then all of a sudden, they're surprised when there's a layoff. Well, well, yeah, you'd rather be transparent up front. You
Jeanette Winters 17:33
know, I'll share an experience that I had with my CEO at igloo. And this is a man. He's still a very, very dear friend. And there had been a series of ownership changes over the course of about 10 years. And the the private equity group that we worked were the fourth in 10 years. So it's buff shine cell. Buff shine cell. And so the last private equity owner had said, we want to invest for the long term, and so we want to get out of this cycle, higher layoff, higher layoff, whatever. And so someone asked the CEO about that, and he said, We will not have layoffs that worked until about two weeks later, Hurricane Harding hit and literally flooded about two and a half million square feet of manufacturing and distribution. And you know, so you can imagine what our quarter revenue
Chris Rainey 18:35
looked like a food company, right? Just for everyone
Jeanette Winters 18:38
listening, igloo is the cooler company. Oh, fat company.
Chris Rainey 18:41
There's another igloo in Europe. There's like a food manufacturing igloo company.
Jeanette Winters 18:46
We keep their food, we kept their food cold.
Chris Rainey 18:48
Okay,
Jeanette Winters 18:50
great, yeah, okay, so, you know, but literally, we were underwater for two weeks. And so the quarter, you know, was really hit hard. And you know, when you don't, when you don't have a place for people to work there, you know, there's no work. So we were able to keep people on, uh, during the majority of that, but there were layoffs. So then people came back to the CEO, you know, several months later and said, you said there would be no lay. I won't forget yeah and you know. And he said, Yes, you know. And that's where the phrase based on what I knew then came from. I'm
Chris Rainey 19:29
gonna start using that in all facets. I'm gonna say it to my wife next time she asked me a question based on what I know now, it
Jeanette Winters 19:38
actually is reassuring to children, because then they know you intend, if possible, to make something happen. But that's true. You know, you know you have hurricanes, you have tornadoes, you have earthquakes, forest fires, whatever you know, Mother Nature might hand us one of your economic forces. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 20:00
one living too much just to get your thoughts on, is like that. There's been quite a few surveys and research that show very strongly that employees look towards their organizations for guidance more than their own government, right? They look towards their and we saw this in COVID, right? You know, people were like to their businesses. What do we do, as opposed to more so our even our own governments, which kind of seems is really interesting when you think about it, should companies see themselves as change makers, beyond just employers? Is there a responsibility there? If so, why
Jeanette Winters 20:36
so? The thing of it is the way we are as humans, we are part of a herd. And so, you know, you go home to your wife. I don't know if you have children or if you have pets, but you go to a unit where you live, where you hang your hat. And so you think kindly and more highly of your home environment than you do. It is. We make connections with our managers, with our teams, and they become just as much as part of our neural, biologically wired need to be seen and heard. They know us. They care for us, and we expect that. And so that's why communities and companies have been have done such amazingly good work in so many places around the world, because employees connect with managers, remember, and we've known this, and the research has been replicated, you know, time and time again over the last 30 years, people don't leave companies. They leave managers. And so there is that herd that people become a part of. We call it a team or a department or a unit. And so it is that that people wire into, and then, if they can bring that along with them into the community. You know, there is an annual breast cancer awareness and research 5k walk that we do here in Katy, Texas every year. And and the companies sponsor their employees to walk the the 5k and they the they represent their own interests at the same time they represent the company. And so it does become almost that individual, indivisible line between the community, the company and the employee. And I think we need to remember that it's absolutely powerful. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 22:40
would you say that the same thing goes for well being and mental health?
Jeanette Winters 22:45
Oh, absolutely. It's interesting. We just did our employee survey, and we had highs and lows. Like every company, you know, we have a very high response rate. We traditionally have, we have had a very high engagement score. We have traditionally and but there were some pockets, if you look at the heat map results, there were some pockets of sensitivity, and we dove into that and dug into it, and people said they wanted more time with their managers, and so we scheduled one on ones. And, you know, oh, just all sorts of things. Well, one of my managers called me and said, I just want you to know that two of my five people were not getting the help they needed out of the EAP and, you know? And I said, why not? And here they were they they had needs, whether it's counseling or just somebody to listen to them, and so we were able to rectify that, but they didn't even know until we had the discussion. They tried the EAP. It didn't, it didn't pan out. We have since fixed that, but you know you're going to when you see somebody eight to 12 hours a day, you're going to see more of their mental health than perhaps they will be at home. We all wear masks and armor, as Brene Brown like to describe it, and when you find what the real issue is it's much easier to to provide the help that somebody needs. You know, we talk about burnout and how burnout is so prevalent that's not a it becomes a mental health issue, but it really is a corporate overload and overwhelm issue, and so corporations have to take responsibility for that.
Chris Rainey 24:38
Yeah, and then most companies don't give the managers and leaders that support and training they need to even have these conversations.
Jeanette Winters 24:48
And the thing of it is the mindset that we've been shaking, and we really work hard at it, is to make sure that people understand as managers, their. Job is to be those one stop shop for whatever the employees need and and then they have HR VPS. They have, you know, employee relations specialists that they can turn to to get the help. But their employee comes to them, we expect them to seek the the assistance that the employee might need, whatever it might be, yeah,
Chris Rainey 25:25
yeah. But in all of them to do that, they need the right training, right? Because, like when I became, when I became a leader or a man a manager, we wasn't talking about well being or leading with empathy, right? Or any of these topics that are really probably for priority right now for many people as well. And I think sometimes managers think it's their responsibility to have to have an answer, instead of actually just being there and listening and then sign posting as well. So I think there's a lot of work we still need to do in that in that space to help it
Jeanette Winters 26:00
gets back to the idea of lifelong learning that, you know, i i There's a mastermind group of HR professionals that I've been a part of for the last five years, and we try to meet every Thursday, and initially we did, because None of us knew really how to handle the pandemic. And you know, what do we do? And we had to learn about flexibility and working from home and engaging people remotely and things. And you know, Chris, that is such a different set of skills than the ones that we were probably grilled and drilled on in, you know, in universities or even in the course of the day. We've got to be lifelong learners. The world is changing around us every moment, and it's up to us to keep current with it. You know, I tell people every, you know, every time that I get together with them. I end by saying, learn something new every day. And they say, and somebody challenged me a couple months ago and said, why? And I said, because the people that are learning something new every day are more competitive than those that sit it out. And they were like, oh, okay, now we get it. Now we get it. I
Chris Rainey 27:21
think a powerful thing, I've been focused like that I've been doing pretty much my whole life, even from the sports days, is rather than, like, learning everything you do every day. Yes, is important, but like, even more important, I think, is actually doing, acting on it every day. So one of the things I tried to do is, is actually I've reduced the amount of material I consume for learning, and actually, instead focus more on learning something, executing on it. So more like execute every day. Oh, because a lot of people, they know a silly example, they know how to lose weight, they know how to eat healthy, they know how to but how many people didn't actually wake up and say, Actually, today I'm going to focus on executing on those learnings. And if you see hyper, any of the high performers or incredible leaders I've had on this show, they're really good. Yes, they're, you know, growth mindset learners, but they're even better executers.
Jeanette Winters 28:13
Well, they they take the learning to experience, which is execution, right? And there where our household is a group of basketball fanatics, and they're very happy right now March Madness, and we're getting near the end of the NBA season and and the finals will be coming up. And Stephon curry, who, for anybody who knows anything about basketball, has really changed the game. Yeah, and he there is. I dove into his autobiography about executing. And he's the first one in the gym in the morning. He's the last one to leave at night. Here he is. He has broken virtually every record in, you know, in shooting and three point shots, and you know, from the free throw line all of these things, he still does it. He's in better shape every time he comes to camp than he was the year before. He knows age takes out a little bit, but he executes. And he says, You can't learn and be better by what I do, by reading a book or even watching films. He said, that's helpful. But where the it's the execution on the on the floor that really enables excellence,
Chris Rainey 29:31
it goes for anything in life, right? Like I always say to my friends, like it's all our reps. You know, if you listen to episode one of this podcast, it sounds terrible compared to Episode 1000 but like, how many people are going to put in 1000 reps right to do that? And it's the same with I grew up playing ice hockey and basketball, by the way, as well. So like, it's all around reps. Like I miss 1000s of shots right to learn how to hit a shot from the free. Phone line. So,
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