Running HR Like a Business: Galderma's Outcome-Focused HR Model
In this episode, I'm joined by Allison Pinkham, Chief Human Resources Officer at Galderma to discuss how she led a transformation of HR into an outcome-focused function aligned to business goals.
After analysing metrics revealed high recruiting agency spend, Allison spearheaded development of a new talent acquisition model. Her team implemented quantifiable hiring targets and candidate experience surveys to track impact. Within one year, they decreased agency spend from 60% to 3% of roles while maintaining speed and quality of hire.
This exemplifies Galderma’s shift to an outcome-focused HR model. Allison instituted objectives based on business results, not HR activities completed. Outcomes tie to individual, regional and global performance. Rewards directly connect to results achieved.
Allison emphasizes HR must hold itself to the same standards as other functions - using data, showing ROI, focusing on outcomes and strategic priorities. She is excited to see the full impact as HR's transformation progresses. Her advice to other HR leaders is to stay laser focused on the value drivers that matter most to running HR like a business.
Episode Highlights
How they overhauled recruiting with quantifiable hiring targets, decreasing agency spend from 60% to 3% in one year
How they Instituted objectives tied to business results rather than HR activities
How they transformed succession planning to identify top 5 capabilities for roles
Five tips to increase Workplace Productivity
Accelerate your business growth with workforce upskilling. Implement IDC's top five strategies to build an agile, future-ready team. Invest in your employees' skills today, align their growth with your business objectives, and witness unparalleled success.
🎙️ Automatically generated Podcast Transcript
Allison 0:00
So the first thing we did was put in place, outcome based objectives versus activity. And what that really looks like and upskilling people on an outcome versus an activity and really upskilling managers to assess outcomes versus activities. And then the other thing was really put in place was ensuring within those outcomes that they're tied to local results, regional results and global results. So that way employees feel they have a line of sight to what they're looking to achieve. But it's also tied to the bigger picture. So it's tied to their individual performance, but it's tied to the broader picture.
Chris Rainey 0:38
So welcome to the show. How are you?
Allison 0:40
I'm great. How are you?
Chris Rainey 0:41
I'm good. Looking very colourful. today. Yes, thank
Allison 0:44
you. I have to bring the spirit of summer to the to the podcast and really excited to have the warm weather here. So
Chris Rainey 0:50
amazing. When you when you say when you say here, you probably your accent may mislead people when you say, so where's here, where's here?
Allison 1:00
Here is Switzerland, Switzerland, right outside Zurich, but I am American. But we're enjoying the summer here in Switzerland, which is fantastic in the Alps, lakes, swims and everything outdoors. Before we
Chris Rainey 1:12
jump in, tell everyone a little bit more about your journey to where we are today. Yeah, absolutely.
Allison 1:16
So I never intended to be an HR, I actually wanted to be a sports anchor. That was my original dream. And I went to I went to college doing broadcast journalism, played every sport, no demand, I think I played 12 Different got 12 different letters in high school and every single sport you can imagine. So I was very passionate about that. And but after doing some informational interviews, the industry just didn't line up with my ethics and values and where I wanted to be as a professional. So I gave up the pipe dream and went to the next best thing, which was consulting. But I went into consulting at Anderson Consulting, strong learning agility, three in the mix, gold driven, passionate around the succeeding and so I started out there. My backup plan, my minor was in marketing. So I DID IT systems consulting for a while, but kept gravitating towards marketing, business development. So I realised, well, let me give that a shot. And it was actually at that next job when I was doing marketing and business development that I moved into HR. What was happening was, I was an account manager. And it was one of those situations where managers were or people were being promoted in the manager levels. And unfortunately, they weren't given a lot of skills and capabilities, how to manage. So I saw directly from a business perspective, the impact that poor management can have on employee turnover and losing accounts affecting the bottom line. And I'm somebody, I can't just step back and not do anything. So I put together a business case for the CEO. And I put together all the analytics talking about how we need to put a management development programme in place and how it would pay off within six months. He loved it. And he said, You know what, I want you to lead it. So that was my parlay into HR. And I never looked back. And and that's really what I love is the intersection of business, and HR.
Chris Rainey 3:06
Well, why do I started unpacking that you mentioned that sort of learning agility you're looking for. A lot of that can be seen in sports, right? You have to be adaptable, constantly learning new things, you willing to fail forward, you lose games, you win games, right? You have to be a good be coachable in order to be a good athlete, as well, right. And then you link that with the marketing background that you have, and sales and business development, you've got a very good combination now of what it means to be an HR leader, the intersection between marketing, and HR has never been more more compelling. You definitely need to be able to sell if you're an HR leader, so you definitely need a bit of business development. And then nw 100% need to go for growth mindset to be to be there. So you also come for it for many lenses. But also that commercial lens that you just mentioned, you mentioned is essential for HR to run like a business when we last spoke. And you just mentioned it briefly there again, break that down. What does that mean? What do you mean by that?
Allison 4:08
So I think it's really important that HR holds ourselves to the same standard that any other function would be. So take marketing, for example, they have a lot of spend under the belt. So they really have to justify all of their spend and really look at the ROI is when they develop a marketing programme they do co creation and their design. They do end user testing. They're more agile in their cycles to learn from essentially what's working, what's not working, adjust as needed. And I really believe strongly that HR should also hold ourselves to the same standards in terms of using data analytics to drive decision making, making sure we're measuring outcomes and not activities, making sure that we're agile and can keep pace that we're scalable, that we're able to use ROI to determine where to make a change or when it's needed and also to measure the impact we're having on the business. So there's a number of things that we that are basically the vision of that but then a number of things we do in HR to back that up with the initial place.
Chris Rainey 5:04
Where do we even start on that? You mentioned, rewarding impact versus activity. Could you give an example.
Allison 5:11
So I think, unfortunately, too often that people get rewarded, whether it's through bonuses or promotions based on activities they've done without really being able to show how that activity drove the business outcome. So one example was I worked for a company previously where people were getting paid out their short term incentive targets, but the business wasn't achieving its goals. And it continued to happen over and over again. So not only was the company losing money, but clearly they weren't rewarding the right outcomes that they needed to achieve. So the first thing we did was put in place, outcome based objectives versus activity, and then what that really looks like and upskilling people on an outcome versus an activity and really upskilling managers to assess outcomes versus activities. And then the other thing was really put in place was ensuring within those outcomes that they're tied to local results, regional results and global results. So that way employees feel they have a line of sight to what they're looking to achieve. But it's also tied to the bigger picture. So it's tied to their individual performance, but it's tied to the broader picture. So 100% of what they achieve is based on how the company does, that's the denominator, but then you have a multiplier based on how you did based on those outcome based objectives for your individual function or regional function. And then that way, there's a connection between the global results, regional results, local results, but also as an individual and as a team. So it's a nice connection in terms of ensuring that outcomes are rewarded versus activities. And the other thing we've done is everyone knows the distribution curve, you know, so we don't force a distribution curve. But we do say if a function has out achieved, theoretically, it should be skewed more to the right more toward a high performance curve. If a function has not achieved, theoretically, the rating should ski more to the left. Again, not with reinforcing but saying it's an outcome based and it should it should be reflective of the rewards people get the ratings people get, as well as as opportunities from that.
Chris Rainey 7:01
How does this shift the type of what do you in the team? You know, what you're talking about running HR, like a business and being your as a function being focused on impact rather than rather than activity yourselves? as well? How does that change the type of work and how you structure your team? And your strategy? Absolutely. So
Allison 7:18
I'll give a good example where we used concrete data analytics to determine even the model we put in place and HR. So for example, yeah, we were a hyper growth company. So we're growing leaps and bounds. And when I joined, we were about 4900 employees. And we had 131 FTE in HR. But because we're looking to grow to about 6300 employees, which we are now first of all, we looked at their average requisition load per recruiter and wasn't even wasn't even doable, it would have made like 120 reps per recruiter, we looked at how much we were spending on agency spend, which was a whopping $11 million per year, because we can't see we're not externally and 60% of those, we have those open wrecks, we went to agency, we didn't have a strong brand in the market, because you can imagine we had agencies all over the place with different approaches. We didn't have any pipeline of talent, because you had a different agency for every every requisition. And we also essentially, were spending a more higher rate cost per hire than you normally would if you had a mixture of an in house or outside outsource model. So based on that, we put a new requisition model in place, which was essentially different regional talent acquisition recruiters that are in house and executive recruiter in house. But then we went with an outhouse RPO, which is through one of the vendors we work with. And we were able to scale in our hyper growth to ensure that the wreck load was manageable, and they could and we actually achieved 51% additional resources on top to be able to keep pace with the wreck load. But you can say so what, how'd you do on recruiting and that's where the outcomes come in. So essentially, we put into in place the targets in terms of quality of hire metrics, and baseline targets that we outperformed year one, we put in place hiring manager, quantitative metrics to ensure that we were pace with how the candidate how the hiring managers thought about our process candidates surveys as well, to ensure we outpace that time to fill we want to make sure we're at least on par with the agencies and time to fill and also that new hires we we bring on stay and continue to grow with the company within the year two years. And so we got to pay off and now that rather than spending $11 million per year, we keep the agency spend at 3%, which used to be 60%
Chris Rainey 9:30
of Frantisek firms 60 To free 3%
Allison 9:33
Yeah, wow. And we went from 60% to 3%. And we said we do allow some agency spend, obviously with some of these critical roles that are more senior, but we're very selective and where that where that is. And we also measure for example, there were some where the RPO actually was doing the search, I handed it over to a search firm and they ended up having the exact same time to fill. So there was no better off through the search from those particular agencies. So we track that to see essentially make sure that we're not impeding the business, we're still delivering quality work, while at the same time saving the company money, and at the same time getting the time to Phil's that we're looking for throughout the business. But if we didn't have those metrics, and we're measuring outcomes, then it would be difficult, I think, for the business to change from wanting to go from their search for whatever they had a search to accepting the new model, if we didn't have the metrics to really show that was actually exactly same quality, if not better, in many cases,
Chris Rainey 10:29
amazing. Getting the metric is one part and the software, the other part is actually going through the change and transformation. What were some of the biggest challenges that you had to face in?
Allison 10:39
Yeah, so the biggest one is, in this particular example, the change management could you could imagine, if you're a hiring manager, well, you just want to go to a search firm, pick whoever you want, you want to get going. So one of the big changes was having a consistent approach to using this outsourced model. And getting people used to an outsourced model, it was also getting people used to using our new global workday system, because we had to track wrecks, whereas before, they would just go off and running. Without doing that. It was getting people used to that there were certain protocols they had to follow as hiring managers. So we had a consistent brand consistent messaging when we're out in the marketplace. So it was things like that. But then once they saw, like I said, the metrics or the quality of the candidates, then it started to change, you know, turn the tide and also be able to see the types of candidates we're getting. So essentially, I think it's really using the metrics to to combat any potential emotional connection people have with wanting just go with their search firm, and also showing that the candidates they were getting were were continued to be top notch. And the candidate survey results as well. So I think it was a combination of all those as well. But that was just one piece of our transformation. We've been transforming HR to run like a business across many different areas. But that was just one example.
Chris Rainey 11:46
What are some of the practical things you did in terms of how you position your brand, like you mentioned before you had 60%? Across multiple companies, where they're all probably selling a different narrative of what it means of what it means to work at GM at the organisation? How did you approach that.
Allison 12:02
So we designed our own employee value proposition for two purposes, one to then transform into our employer brand, but also to to also to be honest, to solidify our culture at Galderma. Because we are spin off from Nestle, so a broader company, and we were pureplay dermatology company. So we really wanted to define our culture. So we started with interviews, focus groups, all levels, and really said, what what keeps you at Galderma? What excites you about Galderma. And then we built that into our, their top five things. And we built that into our employee value proposition that then gets translated our employer brand. And now we are literally launching it as we speak externally, which is called Faces of Galderma. So we use our own employees with their own quotes, that is tied to why they joined Galderma. And then this is embedded in the hiring manager guide. In solidifying the top five reasons. Everybody always asked me, What's the culture like at Galderma? And I always answered the same way that people answer that you could ask at any focus group, but this way, now at least, it's consistent, and our brand is consistent out there. So the brand has the same brand material, it has the same purpose, which is advancing dermatology for every skin story. But the tagline, if you will, is things that are different, that are tied to our brand. And example is make your mark, because something specific about Galderma as being able to make an impact because of our size. The other one is diversify your career grow with us, because a big thing for us is being able to work across three business lines. So it's things like that. And that's defined in the taglines and the interviews we have in our brand. But that's how we built it in the hiring manager. Essentially, their talking points, but also on our careers website to make sure that people really understand consistently the brand of Galderma. And it ties to our corporate brand, too, which is advancing dermatology for every skin.
Chris Rainey 13:47
Amazing. So you kind of create that common language for those leaders, but also giving them just as you said, those guides to like hear two points. So they can use them practically during conversations during interviews. How do you you mentioned those stories in quotes? Do you share them externally?
Allison 14:04
Exactly. So we share them internally and externally, like, so when you go on to our career website, it'll have a quote from a real employee, but that quote is tied to one of these five pillars that we got from the employer value proposition. So it really speaks to the true reason that people join the company. Because if you're, if what you're promoting is different than what you feel internally, then anybody you hire will believe very well, Matt, I hear
Chris Rainey 14:30
that all the time. I speak to so many people like that that are, they'll see things that their company posts on social media or you know, LinkedIn, and they're like, That's not who we are. Or that's not the experience that I'm getting. And you're right. You might you may attract people, but they will leave just as quick as well. So, is that what you meant? Because we spoke before and you said, Stay laser focused and ruthlessly prioritise the most critical value drivers. Is that Well, yeah.
Allison 14:56
Yeah, so that's another aspect because we got to boil down so that we we've boiled down our priorities across three areas, which is areas to grow the business, grow our people and grow the HR function. And when I say grow, I mean develop and continue to upskill. And out of those three areas, we have no more than three to four priorities for each of those for the whole entire HR function. And so I'll give you an example. One of the priorities this year was to develop a general manager leadership development programme, which is a nine month programme mixture of on the job learning, formal learning, peer to peer coaching, and so forth. But of course, one of the questions we get this is fantastic. When are you going, you know, we want all people managers, we want this, we want this, of course, because you can do a million things. But the point is, you need to focus on those miss most critical value drivers, and then build on that at the rate that you can support real impact. So if we just rolled out everything at once, we wouldn't have the resources to manage it, we wouldn't have the resources to measure impact, and then it would become a flavour of the month because you wouldn't be able to I call it the product app optimization phase, ensuring that you're getting the biggest bang for your buck, I think. And then within this ruthlessly priorities, we always make sure take, for example, the short term incentive pay for performance I just mentioned, we put that back in our purchase this year, even though we launched it last year, because we need to fully embed it. And it'll probably be in our priorities, and other takes time, because you need to account for that. Otherwise, you just continue to ask people to do new things, new things. And then if you do that, first of all, people get burnout. Second of all, then it ends up becoming flavours of the month and you never truly have full impact. So we always build for new product launches, again, thinking of marketing terms, new product launches, but also product maintenance optimization of those products we've launched to ensure that you're truly embedding one last example the outcome based objective, I actually just got the results back first year, we rolled it out, about 60% of people had outcome based objectives. We just did another assessment. Now it's 90%. So it was from last year to this year. But if we just said outcome based objectives, and then moved on to our next topic, and didn't embed it and fully optimise it, it would have become a flavour of the month. And that's what that's what we make sure we ruthlessly prioritise on
Chris Rainey 17:03
duty managers and individual points have like a dashboard, they can see of what those objectives are. So it's kind of their transparency.
Allison 17:12
Oh, yes, they have their objectives in their workday system. And also, we talked about the tracking of how they're doing based on that. Some are very specific to the brand, like market share, and they have tracking on that. But then, for example, they have business results, they're accountable for that, or specific objectives, and then people results. So that's the other
Chris Rainey 17:30
thing that's really important point. Yeah.
Allison 17:33
So so we actually, for the first time, put in place leadership accountability as last year with very clear KPIs around three primary areas, which is engaging and retaining your teams, developing development and succession planning and building an ethical culture. And these are included in their objectives along with their business objectives. And so now we're coming up on mid years, and we talked about out of those outcome based objectives which have KPIs associated with them, how are you tracking against this? And that becomes part of their performance review. Because what we say to them is, you're not a product leader, you're not a project leader, you're a people leader. So that entails business results, plus people results and holistically, that's what they're held accountable for.
Chris Rainey 18:15
So that's also linked back to their compensation.
Allison 18:18
Correct. And the ratings. Yeah, and how they're evaluated.
Chris Rainey 18:23
What was the reception?
Allison 18:27
I think it was to me, if I can be very honest with you, I think they thought it was gonna be a flavour of the month, I think they were waiting
Chris Rainey 18:32
or you forget about it. It's just a note of a thing. But to your point, it
Allison 18:35
comes HR. Yeah. I don't do flavours of the month. And I don't do check the box activities are pretty relentless. When it comes to it. I can tell I really get it. And so I'll give you an example. We just did a leadership development programme. And I said, think about this. Think back to a previous manager you had like about the best manager you had. And think about what they did. Did they focus on your career? Did they care about you as an individual? Did they help you to grow and develop? Did they mentor you? And how much more likely were you to stay with them to continue to grow with them versus a manager who just delegated didn't give you any guidance didn't pay attention to you? And how likely were you to stay with that company offered discretionary effort I said HR is here to to provide the approach and the tools and so forth. But people stay for their managers or leave because of the direct managers. That's really what the biggest impact and that's where a lot of aha started going off and why they realised leadership accountabilities is so important on PeopleSoft.
Chris Rainey 19:31
I love it. I love it. One of the things that I know that is something that we're just really, really passionate about is really building and designing the business and your function to be able to adapt to market conditions. Could you share more on how you doing that?
Allison 19:44
Yeah, so Galderma is high pace organisation fastest pace company I've worked at and I absolutely love it. So I think either you love it or you hate it, but I love it. So what it means is you need to be agile and adapt very quickly. Just a couple of examples. So one exam bool was one of the products I had mentioned, we wanted to we realise that our sales team was not necessarily selling a particular product that was our most profitable product product. So it was really working very closely with commercial excellence on the sales incentive plans and really looking at how can we double down incentivizing more on particular products and doing that real time not waiting until, you know, end of year because by then, you know, essentially the year is over from a revenue perspective. The other thing is we developed a global capability Centre in Barcelona that was not planned for but when we realised our infrastructure cost in Switzerland, was higher outpacing where we needed to be from a revenue perspective, we built a global capability centre, I would say, in record time, recruited a number of roles over there versus in Switzerland. And we were able to transfer a number of skill sets over to this new capability centre, that we had to build up a new legal entity, the tax structure, I mean, everything that came with it in record time. So and that was not something planned not to say, but it was basically one of these when you take a step back, and you realise, based on market conditions, we need to make an adjustment here on our infrastructure costs, based on market conditions, we need to make an adjustment based on which products we're selling. So it's really and all of this is in tandem with the business is obviously not HR doing this solely, but that's where the great partnership comes when HR runs like a business is being able to that one.
Chris Rainey 21:17
Yeah, no, I love that. Yeah, it's so important, because it's always funny. Whenever I do, like, do our events that you know, we do our face to face events, and we see a presentation or someone sharing their four year of shattered four year plan. And I'm like, that's not gonna look the same. We're not four years from where we are now, you have to have the the ability to pivot and be agile, otherwise, that's just not gonna work. Anyone thinking they're gonna have a five year, me and Shane had a great business plan when we started this company, it looks nothing like what our business plan is at the time. So you need to be able to have adapt, I have that flexibility to win.
Allison 21:53
There's a saying in the military, I think no plan has ever survived a battlefield, where you go in with a plan, but you have to adjust pretty quickly when you see the market conditions.
Chris Rainey 22:04
Yeah, you've mentioned a lot around data and analytics, I using the specific tools, or is this all within workday? Like, where are you? Where are you drawing all analytics? For? Yeah, what does it look like? Yeah,
Allison 22:14
so we're using workday. But to be honest, we'd like to take it to another level, I'm, uh, I'm very passionate about data analytics and insights. And I think it comes from my previous consulting, it is still manual, I would say. So take, for example, the outcome based objective that I just noted, we have to do a lot of that is manual, where you go, and you come up with a five point scale, what creates a, you know, outcome based objective, and it's very manual to assess that from a qualitative perspective. Whereas other things like the are very quantifiable, such as the RPO model. And so we rely a lot, that's something actually get from both workday and our systems, because everything is through workday, and in partnership with our RPO. But that's very tangible, quantifiable, you know, rates, but it's also some qualitative, what we'd like to get to is things obviously, where you can push a button and be able to get these analytics, but it's just not something we have, we always joke we say at our company, you have to be quite gritty, you have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and be able to understand you know, the analytics you need, and then find a way to get it in a way that is sustainable and scalable over time. Even leveraging the technology, what we have done for the HR function, because of Workday, and through case management and workday, we've been able to scale the HR function with that growth I mentioned from 4800 to 6300 employees, we started with 130 ft and HR, we even were able to reduce to 110, even though our employee base had grown, because we're leveraging workday and technology and case management to be able to answer the standard questions, you know, where's my payroll? Where are the benefits, and then you'd be our business partners to focus on strategic value driving work, which is leadership development, organisation design, reading of people's strategy, succession planning, and really being smart with the resources we have. And I think that's why running HR like a business, I've always had that, that mantra, but it's even more important in a private equity owned environment where every single resource counts. And that's where I think you really have to be concrete where you're using your resources when you
Chris Rainey 24:12
spun off the business was was, was the technology you use now already in place? Or did you start from scratch? Is it like a server from scratch?
Allison 24:20
Yeah, so we would the spin off actually, that's been part of the other transformation. And everyone's going through this and and transformation, which is, we relied a lot on Nestle. But then when we spun off from Nestle, that's who we spun off from, we had to create our own end to end global system. So workday was our first global HR nn system. And we implemented I could tell you coming from IT systems integration, in record time, I think it was implemented in in nine months for a global system. Now of course, you need to continue on to the creation and so forth, but, but it was record time and that's just the pace we're at, but there are other things that we put in place that are global systems order to order to cash and a number of other things. things from a financial system perspective securement perspective. So and that's what people are doing on top of their day job. So we're we're transforming the business to be as efficient as possible and effective as possible while continuing in our hyper growth environment across three business lines, so it's it's an exciting time
Chris Rainey 25:18
to start across the team and I am making a piece at the moment on sort of the whole technology landscape because it's, it's a minefield for HR leaders, right every day, that's a new solution to r&g popping up. Why workday? There's so many platforms out there now. And I'm always interested to hear people's insights and perspectives.
Allison 25:36
Yeah, so to be honest, workday was selected. That was like a before I joined, but I will tell you what I used to work at on with SAP SuccessFactors. I actually did pull this name from the past PeopleSoft in the day, which nobody even knows about. But I will say that workday has actually been extremely user friendly. And the benefit of workdays you can plug a lot of interfaces on it. So for example, the compensation module may not be the best and workday, even though they have a number of great modules. But you can there are compensation modules, if you want advanced comp to plug in quite nicely with it. So I like it as a foundational element. That again, you can either continue to add modules through it, or you can look at additional modules. But the nice thing is that integration because again, I can tell you from IT system experience, it's so important that you have modules that can easily be integrated in so I think that works quite well.
Chris Rainey 26:31
Amazing. You mentioned before succession planning. So I want to jump on to that steering, succession planning and talent development. You mentioned that, based on clear and concrete pathways, what do you what do you mean by that?
Allison 26:42
Yeah. So again, because I'm not in check the box person. And I like to do things with impact. This is actually a succession planning approach that I put in place years ago. And again, measuring impact, we realised this actually had significant impact, which is it sounds simple. But a lot of times the most simplistic ways of approaching it actually have the biggest impact. So with succession planning, we really boil it down, we start at the upper levels, and then go down from there. But we've we prioritise the top five skills and capabilities required to be successful in that role. And we are maniacal about this. I mean, you really pressure test these to say, or at least the five and they can't be wishy washy about what goes on, how do you come up with Oh, for example, if I'm doing it for the finance, yeah, we'd sit down with the CFO and start with his role, and really be crystal clear on those five skills and capabilities. One example I always use when I was, was when I was with Heineken, but we sat down with the chief marketing officer to do this. And because he had such a large budget, he said, now normally wouldn't put p&l in there. But because the chief marketing officer has the largest budget of the company, many times, you need somebody with a certain significance of budget management as one of the five. And again, so the idea is that you don't just put in visionary leadership, because that can be very flirty, concrete. Yes, very concrete, then you do that you assess where the incumbent is against it. And that becomes their development plan where they need to go each successors validated, validated against the five can they achieve this or these things are developable. And then based on that, whatever the five, or the gaps, say, got one or two, that becomes their concrete gap to close with the concrete targeted development actions to get them there. And then you measure it on a quarterly basis. So as an example of somebody needs an experience, that they can't get within their own function, then they get onto a cross functional or business case challenge or something that's getting that to them. And then you're tracking their progress on that on a quarterly basis from another one's networking with not networking, networking, but being able to understand how global works versus regional, local, then they're on a project related to that, but it's very concrete, and then you're measuring over time and assessing have they progressed in their succession, advancement and succession adherence overall. So how are you doing from a succession adherence and these metrics help make sure that it's not a check the box activity?
Chris Rainey 28:54
I think we're seeing a reoccurring theme here. I mentioned. I mentioned impact activity. I love it. It's so interesting, cuz I've always thought that they would have to meet those five criterias. So it's not you're not being unrealistic to say we're only going to hire someone that meets all of these things, you understand there are going to be gaps. And that's going to be a conversation you'll have with that candidate from day one.
Allison 29:23
Well, especially for the internal, I should say, for the internal for sure, those five skills and capabilities they do get into if you're looking externally into the external. So that becomes the ideal candidate profile. But especially internally, we want to develop our people, they're not going to always have it. And so it's really about placing your bets on again, some people with strong learning agility, go getters, people have the potential to advance and then we know they'll be able to close the gaps based on that versus waiting for everyone to have this
Chris Rainey 29:50
experience. But those more senior roles are going to scrutinise that way. A lot more.
Allison 29:55
Yeah, like exactly, the C suite and so forth. But yeah,
Chris Rainey 29:58
and then what Where does the role of the manager and the leader when how do they come into the equation?
Allison 30:04
Exactly. So this is part of their leadership accountability. So they are evaluated based on the succession pipeline that they've developed as a leader. So it mid year review time urine review time, they are evaluated on how they're doing and advancing those successors within their teams. So it's not it's not just an HR accountability, it's really a people management leader accountability
Chris Rainey 30:26
that you typically get. Is it things I don't have time to do this whilst trying to do it? Yeah.
Allison 30:32
Yeah, so we get the Yeah, exactly. I don't have time, that's hrs job. But that's where we go back to, again, just bringing down anecdotal examples. So when you think about change management, if you get people to remember who helped them with their career, and why that was so important, and also to think end to end, it's not just about what's in it for them. It's also what's best for the company. And if you're at certain levels, you are you are a leader for the company, not a leader for your specific role. So it's also helping them to recognise they have a role to play on this, again, as a people leader, because they're not a project leader.
Chris Rainey 31:03
You got, you're already doing a million things already. But what are you most excited about moving forward?
Allison 31:08
Yeah. So I would say what I'm most excited about is this evolution we've had as an HR function. So when I joined two years ago, I was actually just doing a town hall and I took a step back. And I'm really proud of our HR team, I really am proud of our HR function, because we've been able to, like I said, transform, implement this global workday system, be able to focus on outcomes, not activities, continue to focus on his value creation drivers as an HR function and find ways through our people solutions that are and workday to match still manage and execute flawlessly on the on the fundamentals, but really focus on those differentiators. So what I'm most looking forward to is, as with anything, transformation takes time. And we're not fully through the journey yet. So I'm excited at the end of the journey to see where it will finally come to full fruition because we're seeing using data analytics, the progress we've made and the impact we've made. But I'm really excited to finish this journey with the team because I think it's going to be hugely impactful and be able to be scalable, with the organisation going forward.
Chris Rainey 32:08
And I think one of the things that you've said, Well, maybe even people picking up a lot, a lot of things you're talking about is business. They are not HR data. You're talking about HR and the business and in business and HR, right. And you have to go beyond HR data, right? You're talking a lot of the decisions that you have been describing and mentioning, is working directly hand in hand with the business. Absolutely. And that's
Allison 32:31
where I think that it goes back to our credibility is a function rests on us having strong business acumen being courageous challengers being coaches, and really being in the room as people I always I love this anecdote where someone said I would love to walk in a room, listen to an executive discussion and have no idea who the HR person is. Because everybody's contributing equally to the business topics. So that's actually what the way I envision HR playing a role.
Chris Rainey 32:59
What advice would you get to lead so perhaps aren't in the position that you're in right now on how to really move to really HR being a big part of the business?
Allison 33:12
Yeah, so I would say I don't know if anyone's familiar with David Letterman, who watches this show. But he used to have the top 10 Things list. And that's where I go back to the top 10 related to running a Trello like a business. So I would focus on the 10 items that at least I envision, HR could focus on to run HR like a business, which is we talked about some of them, but really using data analytics and insights to drive decision making, defining the outcome based objectives and rewarding that versus activity, being agile and operating at pace, being able to adjust quickly to those market conditions and be agile, be scalable, and redeploying resources at scale and at pace, staying laser focused and highly ruthlessly prioritising the things that really matter, steering succession planning and talent development in a very concrete and clear pathway, providing upskill upscaling through targets such assignments and just the time training and being clear around the leadership accountabilities in this journey. And then finally, launching HR products like a business which includes product optimization to truly make an impact versus check the box. So just this is really where I would advise people to say, we are part of the business just like everybody else. And we have a different function just like everybody else. But we all are contributing equally to these areas of business. So let's think like business leaders in this house.
Chris Rainey 34:35
I think you're gonna get a lot of our leaders reaching out to you on LinkedIn now. A lot of questions. I appreciate you, Carmen. I love what you're doing. And you can hear the energy and passion for what you do, as well. And, you know, even though you didn't plan on being in HR, I felt like it chose you in a way as to why you're smiling today, which is good. I love it. I love it. I have to say, apart from that, keep up the amazing work and I look forward to doing it again soon.
Allison 35:06
Thank you. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you for having me. Absolutely loved it. Thank you
HR Leaders Newsletter
Sign up below and well send our weekly newsletter packed with actionable insights, podcasts, clips and compelling content directly to your inbox.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Tony Buffum, VP of HR Client Strategy at Upwork.