HR, We Have a Problem - How fundamental HR practices can “right the ship” for organizations; Nice-Pak’s grassroots approach to post-pandemic challenges.

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: When you walk into an organization and the state of it isn't ideal, it's easy to sit there and have those moments really like, oh boy, breathing heavy here.

[00:00:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Not everything is going to get accomplished overnight.

[00:00:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you want to work fast, you want to work aggressively, but you also want to work within the realm of what's possible at a given point in time.

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And so, don't lose hope, don't get discouraged if you're having conversations where you're trying to influence or steer somebody in a direction.

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_00]: It takes you 10 conversations to get that done versus maybe 2 or 3. Those things are going to happen.

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, even in well-oiled machines, organizations that are just coming along, those things still happen.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_00]: But it seems to get almost, you know, the spot like it's showing a little bit brighter when you're in a state of turnaround.

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Like we were just stay the course, trust your instincts and make sure that you're locked up with your business leaders.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the HR Huddle Podcast, presented by Sapient Insights Group.

[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_01]: The ultimate resource for all things HR.

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It's time to get in the Huddle.

[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Hello everyone, welcome back to the HR Huddle.

[00:01:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Terry Zipper, CEO and managing partner at Sapient Insights Group.

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm back for another exciting episode of HR We Have a Problem.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_02]: This is the show where we break down the big and most relevant HR issues of the day.

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_02]: We help you make sense of what they mean for you.

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And we talk about what you might do about them.

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Joining me today is Mike Pool, Mike is the CHRO at Nice Pack.

[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome Mike, great to have you today.

[00:01:55] [SPEAKER_00]: My Terry, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_02]: I was hoping we could talk about some of your big priorities and some of the initiatives you've been focused on from a people and leadership perspective.

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_02]: To help what is I think a fast growing family owned company kind of grow up.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Does that sound like a good plan to you?

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Sounds great.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Then let's get into the Huddle.

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_02]: So I really want people to hear a little bit about Nice Pack and kind of what drew you to this role.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's one of those organizations people don't know that name very well because of the way you guys approach business.

[00:02:31] [SPEAKER_02]: So tell us a little bit about that and kind of what drew you to the role at Nice Pack.

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, yeah. It's a company with a pretty significant presence but to your point a lot of people have never heard of us before because that's because we're largely a private label manufacturer.

[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And our bread and butter if you will are pre-moistened wipes.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_00]: So think like baby wipes, facial wipes, disinfectant wipes, etc, etc.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_00]: We work with many retailers largely here in the United States as well as over in Western Europe to supply them and their private label businesses with our products.

[00:03:07] [SPEAKER_02]: So so we use a lot.

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_00]: The couple use a lot, yeah.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_00]: If somebody has a baby that they're caring for and cleaning them up there's a good chance that it's with one of our products.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_00]: They just don't necessarily recognize that and we're proud of what we do and we're proud of the lives that we get to touch every day.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. So the companies have been around for the better part of six decades, long time and we've more or less kind of defined the market if you will in the pre-moistened private label wipes face.

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_00]: To your point earlier we are a family owned.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_00]: We were fully family owned up until a couple years ago and then they make up of the ownership structure change a little bit.

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_00]: We actually do have an investor, a minority investor in the organization as well.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Which led to self-dismurages in terms of some of the leadership at the top of the house, namely our CEO, some changes there.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_00]: But you know the company we're a dominant player in our space, you know, we feel great about the space that we play in today.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: But we're also thinking about potentially what are some other avenues that we could be looking at down the line.

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So now that we're kind of set up in a good spot from an overall performance perspective, we're in a much better position to be able to drive those sort of decisions which is really exciting and a very exciting time to get part of nice back.

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_02]: So you came into this sort of mid-sized family owned business that was still kind of operating as a family owned business for all the decisions kind of rolling up to the top.

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_02]: What was the, do you know what the trigger was that where they finally said hey we need to make some pretty big changes and so we really need somebody to, you know, lead our HR function lead the people in this organization to the next level.

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so you know, nice back has been on a pretty steady growth trajectory over the course of really the last 10 or 15 years and we saw a huge boom during the pandemic which is right before I joined the organization.

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And like a lot of organizations who saw this big uptick during the pandemic, it was immediately followed with some pretty significant headwinds from a macro economic perspective.

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And as a consequence of that there was just a lot of, you know, a lot in the way of changes in terms of senior leadership, lack of cohesion across, you know, across the different functions and just kind of a lack of, you know, general sense of direction is to where we were going these headwinds hit us pretty hard.

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Plus we were operating under a cost model that at the time just wasn't sustainable.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_00]: So I was brought in along with at the time some other senior leaders to help begin to write the ship if you will and, you know, our focus on the, on the HR front on the people front is to make sure that, you know, we're getting the best people and roles focusing on the right priorities and really leverage the scale of our, of our entire employee base to really drive the business and the organization moving forward.

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, was there and any kind of HR strategy in place or was that something you had to build out and then how did you kind of align that with the nice fact business strategy.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, great, great question. So the short answer is there wasn't really a cohesive strategy in place.

[00:06:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I inherited an HR team who to their credit was doing a lot of great work and working really hard, but I think, you know, if you asked them they would probably say that they felt like they were spinning their wheels.

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_00]: All the things that they were doing were the right things, but it just didn't really seem like it was kind of a mounting to, you know, to anything that was really, you know, truly gaining traction, whether it was performance management, whether it was talent development, succession and so on and so forth.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, we had a lot in the way of employee turnover. As I mentioned, you know, there are changes in senior leadership.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_00]: So that was one of the, you know, kind of first things that we looked at and said, okay, we got to kind of stop that and focus on that.

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, before long as I sat down with not just my team but certainly the business leaders, we looked at, okay, what do we need to do right now to kind of stabilize and, you know, quote unquote, write the ship so to speak.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And fundamentally, there were things that we needed to do around performance and just, you know, creating this better, you know, what I'll call orientation around performance at large, you know, meaning are we clear in terms of defining the broader business priorities.

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And if we think we're clear, how clear do we think the folks throughout the rest of the organization feel that is. And so we, we pressure tested that and what we found was not everybody was forget aligned with priorities.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Some of them weren't even aware of what the priorities were. So at a very kind of basic fundamental level, we said, okay, we've got to we've got to be very clear about what it is that we need to do as a company if we're going to kind of see our way through these headwinds.

[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_00]: First thing was, let's figure out a way to reduce cost. The other thing is let's figure out a way to grow our profitability. So those were two key areas that we just kept beating the drum on pretty loud as we got into, you know, the talent of 2021 into the beginning of 2022.

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_00]: By the way, I joined in September of 2021. So I'm coming up on three years myself at the organization. So 2022 was was a bit of a transformational year and it was really about kind of laying down, you know, the foundation of what it is that we need to go achieve as a company.

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_00]: On the HR front, some of the things that we focused on were, you know, reimagining our performance management approach.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I came in at the tail end of our fiscal year. So I walked in right at a time when we were doing year end performance and prezo processes and things like that.

[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_02]: I thought about this. It's all that good stuff.

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so I thought, okay, well, this is a good timing. I, you know, it gives me an idea to how this is all kind of playing on. And what I found was for those who, you know,

[00:09:09] [SPEAKER_00]: 15 bullet points of, you know, this is what I do for a living. And if they achieve those objectives, it amounted to really not much more than just kind of basic table stakes.

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_00]: So there was really no mechanism in place to kind of push ourselves or push, you know, either as individuals or as a function or as an organization to say,

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_00]: We've got to, we've got to reach new heights. So one of the biggest big focus areas that we did not long after I arrived is we reimagined our approach to performance management.

[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And it sounds very basic and very fundamental in a way. It is, but it's also very powerful in that we said, okay, fewer, more impactful objectives.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, we've got to make sure that every last person's every last objective is tied to the broader business priorities.

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So the other big thing that we did, as we went on a, you know, a bit of a road show the first part of 2022 is we're setting up our priorities for the year.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And we made it abundantly clear about the things that we were trying to achieve or needed to achieve as an organization.

[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And we made sure that, you know, from the top of the house all the way down through, you know, the front line, every person's priorities were ticked and tied to what the broader organizational objectives were.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_00]: So that was, you know, again, a pretty basic thing but a pretty powerful thing. And as we got to the end of 2022, we found that there were, first of all, more meaningful discussions around performance.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_00]: The things that were achieved by our employee base actually did move the needle on certain things.

[00:10:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And that set us up well as we went from 2022 and whether that's to our, and got into 2023 because we ended up having a really pretty solid year in, in 2023 as we got through, you know, the headwinds that we did.

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, one of the other things that we did was I noticed that we just didn't have a great way of differentiating our top performers from our, we called solid performers versus the folks who maybe are performing as well.

[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_00]: So we actually changed our performance rating scale, which is not necessarily something as I sit here and think, you know, that's not like what I'm going to hang my HR career hat on.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_00]: But we needed to put up mechanism in place to allow our leaders to just think differently about what their approach to performance was going to be and really put the responsibility on them as leaders, to make sure that they're more dialed into the things that their employees need to get done and they're, and they're driving that accountability.

[00:11:29] [SPEAKER_00]: So again, some pretty basic blocking and tackling to start.

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_00]: But as we sit here today, we now have established a more kind of robust HR agenda that's going to take us over the course of the next three to five years.

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And those three key areas are steeped in, you know, establishing a purpose and values for the company values meaning, you know, the way we operate, the way we work with, you know, one another.

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_00]: It's one thing to achieve results.

[00:11:55] [SPEAKER_00]: It's another thing to make sure you're doing it the right way and that we're all kind of marching along on the same, on the same page.

[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, kind of purpose and values, the other big strategic area for us is engagement.

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And but for us, what engagement means is how do you leverage engagement as a specific tool for driving performance?

[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_00]: So not just simply employee satisfaction or employee happiness, but you know, if you have an engaged workforce, they're going to work harder for you.

[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_00]: They're going to be, they're going to work smarter for you.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to get more out of them.

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_00]: So how do we leverage engagement as a specific tool to actually go and achieve those things?

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And then the third kind of big pillar that we're focused on is really around how we kind of leverage the talent that exists, you know, within the organization today.

[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And that starts with inventorying what we have, right? So who are our key players? Who are our position players?

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the folks with deep subject matter expertise. Do we really understand the landscape of what we have?

[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And then from there, we're beginning to layer on, you know, again pretty pretty basic, pretty fundamental, but like plans for development for each of these folks.

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_00]: So that we've got a specific plan for how we're going to grow them as individuals, which ultimately grows teams, which ultimately grows the organization.

[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's a lot of what I'll call kind of fundamental HR work, but it's important stuff that I think based on where we are in our timeline, other things that we need to, that we need to focus on at this point.

[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, it's moving past the, okay, we've got the compliance stuff down. Now, how do we develop the people? How do we help them become, part of the organization?

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_02]: How do we share the same values to get the work done, right?

[00:13:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah. We actually just rolled out these values just last week to our senior leaders, so we kind of revealed to them for the first time.

[00:13:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And actually if I could just take a quick moment to talk about that, we started the work on our values several months ago.

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And we first established that we needed to create a set of core values for the organization that would serve as, you know, more or less the fabric in which we operate.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And we could have just as easily as some senior leaders said, okay, well, this is what we think they are and let's go and socialize them with the rest of the organization and see what they think about it.

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you stop ourselves and we said, you know, it's better if this is home grown.

[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's exactly what we did. We went out and we did some surveys and even more important than that, we did some focus groups across every one of our locations around the globe.

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_00]: We spoke, you know, eyeballed eyeball with probably over a hundred employees and did these focus groups to really understand from them.

[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_00]: What are the values that are most important? And the feedback we got was just absolutely tremendous.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_00]: So from there as you can imagine we had a lot of data points and a lot of words that were being used.

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Some words were very different from one another, but they were all kind of describing some of the same key themes around teamwork and excellence and integrity and so on.

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And from all of that, what we did was establish some statements, so not just words, but actual statements that we're going to live into as a company.

[00:15:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And when we went back to those folks who we did the focus groups with and we said, hey, here's the fruits of your labor. If you will hear some of the things that we heard you say and now we're going to play back to you in the form of these values.

[00:15:24] [SPEAKER_00]: It was met with two thumbs up. So we're feeling pretty good so far about what that process is.

[00:15:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And as we go to roll this out more broadly in August, we're pretty confident that it'll, you know, it'll resonate well with the rest of the organization.

[00:15:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Because it came from the voices of the employees, not just guys like me, but folks on the front line, folks in supply chain, folks in marketing, etc.

[00:15:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that's a great point and it sounds like that's one of the ways you help keep people engaged throughout this process.

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Because this is not a short, you know, hey, we're done in six months. This is a multi year initiative and plan, right?

[00:16:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's hard to keep people engaged and it sounds to me like, you know, building it from the ground up instead of pushing it down is a much better way to get engagement and to make sure that people are actually engaged with those values.

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_02]: They're not just values that we're saying, hey, you need to hold these values.

[00:16:25] [SPEAKER_02]: They're values that people actually have and haven't dored in the organization.

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And really, that's been one of the big kind of themes of my time here at Nice Pack is this has been a first class lesson in meeting the organization where it's at.

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. I've been pretty fortunate to work for, you know, some other organizations in the past, which had really set me up to be in a position like I'm in now.

[00:16:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, for lack of better terms, I've seen some great, you know, world class best, you know, best in class practices. I've got a tool kit of HR best practices that I've accumulated over the over the years.

[00:17:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And I could have just as easily come in and said, okay, well, this is what we did at my prior company. So why don't we do it here?

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_00]: But in speaking with the leaders and, you know, folks on my team, it was pretty clear that, you know, we've got to get our footing first.

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And before we go and try to just implement something because it worked somewhere else, we've got to understand what the landscape is here.

[00:17:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Case in point when I arrived at the end of 2021 naturally one of the first questions I asked was, do we have engagement results? Do we do a survey?

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And the short answer is yes, we do. But the last time they had done it, or a nice packet then it was like two years prior.

[00:17:38] [SPEAKER_00]: So there was a gap in time, you know, around engagement. And at that point I had to kind of hold myself back a little bit because, you know, so desperately wanted to go and just roll out another survey just to get a pulse.

[00:17:49] [SPEAKER_00]: But as I sat there and thought about it and considered, I said, listen, I without even doing a survey, I think I understand what the pulse of the organization is right now.

[00:17:56] [SPEAKER_00]: We've got folks who are disengaged and disenfranchised and feeling quite frankly a little frazzled. I don't know if I need a survey necessarily to tell me that.

[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_00]: But more important, I could go do a survey, we could go do a survey and then we get the results. But are the leaders equipped to actually go and do something with those results?

[00:18:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And that was the big question that we were asking ourselves as a senior leadership team and as an HR team and the short answer was not yet.

[00:18:21] [SPEAKER_00]: So it actually wasn't until September of last year. So it was coming up on just about two years of my time here that we said, okay, we're ready to actually go launch an engagement survey.

[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so glad we decided to wait and not just kind of try to get it out there right out of the gates as soon as I arrive.

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_00]: But instead, what the new leadership team kind of settled in, you know, at this point are mid-level managers and a frontline managers have been on, you know, this performance journey long enough to know that, you know,

[00:18:50] [SPEAKER_00]: engagement is something that's important to us and therefore should be important to them. So that, you know, as we as we launched it, everybody kind of knew there, they're marching orders if you will in terms of what their responsibility is.

[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not just top-down driven from senior leaders, but it's got to be universally owned.

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_02]: One of the things we talked about when we spoke originally was the need to build the leadership capabilities.

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, building those leaders within the organization that could help you get to that point, right?

[00:19:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Sounds like that was a big factor in even just rolling out the engagement survey.

[00:19:25] [SPEAKER_02]: What was the scale of that? And sort of how did that leadership development fit in the larger set of your priorities?

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we're still on that journey, but we've made, I think, some pretty good progress, certainly in the last, you know, few years.

[00:19:39] [SPEAKER_00]: So, from a leadership perspective, I mean, just to give you a sense, our organization because we're, you know, we're a private label manufacturer 85% of our organization is frontline hourly employees situated in one of a few different production plants.

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Two here in the United States and then we have a few others over in Europe.

[00:19:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And so the majority of our leaders are, you know, plant-based leaders who are, you know, working in manufacturing.

[00:20:04] [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of those folks, you know, more or less kind of grown up in manufacturing or, you know, kind of grown up at nice pack.

[00:20:10] [SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of them have developed very strong technical expertise, or deep institutional knowledge about the organization.

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Even people that we've hired in from the outside, you know, they, they were looked at and said, okay, well this person's got, you know, a lot of, you know, deep manufacturing experience.

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to bring them in.

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_00]: We, you know, I always use this analogy not all great sales people make necessarily great sales leaders.

[00:20:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And the same can be said for, you know, pick your function.

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And so one of the things that we, we started to do and this was actually fairly early on was try to refine the lens through which the organization actually looks at an assessors talent from a leadership perspective.

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's not to say that we dismissed any sort of technical expertise that somebody might need for a particular role.

[00:20:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Listen, if you need mechanical engineer, hire a mechanical engineer, you're not going to hire somebody who doesn't have that skill.

[00:21:02] [SPEAKER_00]: But layered on top of that, you really got to look at what's this person bringing to the mix in terms of their, their kind of leadership style.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_00]: And even if they're not leading people, you really got to look, you got to look at the role that they're in and you get to ask yourself, well, apart from whatever technical expertise they're bringing.

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Who are they having to work with regularly? What kind of level of influence do we think that they're going to need, you know, for a role like this.

[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_00]: They're partnering with a lot of different cross functional partners, you know, how, how do we need them to be thinking about, you know, kind of strategy if that's something that's important.

[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_00]: So fundamentally I think the way that we've approached the, you know, how we're kind of moving along the leadership journey is it starts with having a keen understanding of what is it that we need.

[00:21:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And being really clear about that.

[00:21:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And then also being honest with ourselves about the idea that not everybody who is put on this planet to be a leader and that there are some people who are great position players, and we've got to get comfortable with that idea.

[00:22:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully they can get comfortable with that idea.

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_00]: But that, you know, that gives us license then to be much, much more thoughtful about how we're going to mobilize talent in and through the organization.

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_00]: We've actually implemented some selection assessments that are specifically looking at leadership talents and abilities to really help us understand that.

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And in addition to helping us from a selection standpoint, they also actually begin to serve as a roadmap for how we're going to develop people, you know, certain ways based on what their talents are and what their abilities are.

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's really, you know, fundamentally it comes down to, you know, creating plans for development and creating a leadership development roadmap that steeped in what makes this person tick.

[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what are they really good at? Let's leverage that to the best of our ability and let's make sure that we're developing that so that we get the very best out of them and they feel like they're getting the best out of themselves.

[00:22:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, sometimes it's the helping people understand the importance of the role, whether you're in a leadership role or not, right?

[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And you can drive more value in a non leadership role potentially than you can in a leadership role if that's not your core strength.

[00:23:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think sometimes we just downplay the significance of that and as individuals, we sort of equate, you know, leadership to dollars, right?

[00:23:29] [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, got to be in this leadership role, I got to be an management role to get paid more.

[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_00]: That's right. That's right.

[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's probably one of the big challenges.

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_00]: It is. It's, you know, I've talked a little bit about some of the process changes and some of the things that we've done but the biggest shift.

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_00]: I think in any organization, you can implement a new process, a new procedure, a new system.

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_00]: But that aside, it's the attitude and the shift that requires probably the heaviest lift of all.

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_00]: It's getting people who, you know, for maybe a long, long time have been thinking a certain way. You know, I can, you know, I can build this person up. They can be a better leader. We can get them there.

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you believe that, you know, some people were put on this planet, you know, with the innate ability to hit a golf ball 350 yards with a nice fade, then you've got to believe that some people were put here to lead.

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And, and frankly, you know, fundamentally some people are better at it than others. And that's okay because we all have talents.

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a matter of recognizing what those talents are.

[00:24:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, getting the very best out of it.

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And when you begin to have those open honest conversations with employees and managers, it really kind of opens up their world.

[00:24:39] [SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like, okay, you know what I actually can be? Who I want to be?

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And then, and then we can hopefully create the right roadmap for them to get the very best out of that career here.

[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah. I think that's the importance of the development plans as well.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_02]: It's really helped people to see where they can add the most value and help them grow in areas where, you know, they really can add that value.

[00:25:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.

[00:25:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Did you find yourself having to overcome was there a lot of infighting or sort of, you know, inefficiencies and some things like that that you found you had to deal with?

[00:25:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, very early on because we were, we were, you know, going through a pretty tumultuous time, you know, coming out of the pandemic and with the macro economic headwinds that were playing on and shipping rates and raw materials costs and all that.

[00:25:32] [SPEAKER_00]: There was a lot of finger pointing and, you know, you name it and I think a lot of, you know, I don't think that's unique to nice back.

[00:25:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of organizations were, you know, kind of dealing dealing with.

[00:25:40] [SPEAKER_02]: It was a crazy time.

[00:25:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And it was unprecedented. We no one really understood or knew what exactly what, you know, what was going to happen.

[00:25:49] [SPEAKER_00]: So yes, I mean, in short, you know, that happened with the change in our ownership structure, our former CEO retired is remained on as a director on our board of directors.

[00:26:00] [SPEAKER_00]: We brought in a new CEO, gentlemen who started actually almost a year ago coming up here in August to be here a year.

[00:26:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's where we've really begun to kind of coalesce this new leadership team.

[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_00]: So there's myself, we recently brought on a new CFO and some other key executives throughout the organization.

[00:26:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And what we've said is as an executive leadership team is an executive committee, we have to be lockstap with one another.

[00:26:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Right, we've got to be, if you will, show a force to the rest of the organization in terms of our, you know, how we're partnering with and working with one another.

[00:26:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Behind those doors, we can disagree all we want. And that's okay. And teams should do that.

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_00]: But when we walk out of the room, we've got to say, okay, this is the, this is the path that we're going on.

[00:26:43] [SPEAKER_00]: So we've got to kind of live into that idea.

[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And frankly, in doing that, we expect that to be the case throughout the rest of the organization.

[00:26:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, what helps drive that further is making sure that from a prioritization standpoint.

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_00]: The alignment that happens at the top around our key priorities gets cascaded down all the way through the rest of the organization.

[00:27:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And we're doing I think a much better job at that.

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll give you a kind of an anecdotal example. So turn over was was a pretty major issue for us back in, you know,

[00:27:38] [SPEAKER_00]: part of what was driving that was one we weren't hiring the right people.

[00:27:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And two, if we did hire somebody the way to kind of bring them on board it was clunky.

[00:27:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So we'd have people start and you know, inside 30, 60, 90 days.

[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_00]: They're like, this place is not for me. I'm out of here.

[00:27:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, a lot of it was viewed as an HR issue.

[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_00]: So what we did is a function say, hey, well, let's, let's dial a little bit further into that.

[00:28:04] [SPEAKER_00]: So from a selection standpoint, yeah, there's things that we should be kind of looking at and doing differently in terms of how we're sourcing candidates and how we're getting them and so forth.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_00]: But we need that ownership to extend well beyond us as the talent acquisition team, you know, for example.

[00:28:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we've got to get our leaders more in tune, you know, with the folks that they're hiring.

[00:28:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And so we created this partnership and I think we've gotten pretty good at, you know, how we, how we kind of manage the hiring process now where there's

[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_00]: just loads more ownership across the board than there ever has been in terms of selecting talent for people to come in.

[00:28:42] [SPEAKER_00]: On the onboarding front, it was actually, it was a group of production leaders that came to us as the HR team.

[00:28:49] [SPEAKER_00]: So HR would kind of run, you know, the onboarding and the orientation and all that but there was, there's some leaders actually in our Moore'sville and the endow location that came to us and said, hey, we have some thoughts.

[00:29:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And we said, let's have it. What have you got?

[00:29:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And between their team and folks on our team, they came together and they completely reimagined the onboarding in the orientation.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, orientation and onboarding need to cover the fundamental things that basically benefits and, you know, here's the, the org structure and by the way, they're the rest rooms and the break room and all that stuff.

[00:29:23] [SPEAKER_00]: But it's so much more important than that. It, it's an opportunity for an organization to really indoctrinate people from the get go and get them bought into what this company is all about.

[00:29:35] [SPEAKER_00]: We've got a long rich heritage and it's like we want to celebrate that and I want somebody from the moment they walk in the door to start celebrating that with us.

[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what this team focused on. So now, you know, when somebody comes in, they're part of nice packed day one, they understand what their role is,

[00:29:52] [SPEAKER_00]: they understand how their role ladders up to the bigger picture and the importance that it plays.

[00:29:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And as a result of those two things, we've seen a dramatic reduction in our turnover. We've seen more, you know, more longevity in our front line, which is, which is fantastic.

[00:30:06] [SPEAKER_00]: We've actually also seen the composition of our turnover change pretty fundamentally whereas before it was majority voluntarily. People leaving voluntarily.

[00:30:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Now that's that's flipped, right? And we're a little bit more in control and a little bit more in the driver seat in terms of managing performance and whatnot.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, as we're having this conversation, it's reminding me just how important every aspect of the employee journey is, you know, you think, oh, well, sure up our performance and that'll fix everything.

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Nope, got to shore up onboarding. We're going to shore up our onboarding now we've got to shore up our development.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's all sort of inner, so interconnected, right? And what makes the organization tick. So HR has a lot of priorities.

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_00]: There are, it spans, you know, it spans a lot of different layers and but you know, I agree with the Terry, I think it's you have to shore those things up. I call those kind of the HR fundamentals.

[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. And you can't go do big ambitious things if you don't have the fundamentals unlock.

[00:31:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And fortunately, I think we're in a place now where we're getting there and that's given us license to start thinking about some of those big, you know,

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_00]: two or three years ago, if you asked me if we'd be talking about some of the things that we're talking about.

[00:31:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a glass half full kind of guy but even I would have probably said no way.

[00:31:42] [SPEAKER_00]: But you know, here we are, right? We're talking about some pretty ambitious things that we think we've earned the right to be able to go look at and kick the tires on and see if we can't play in adjacent spaces, which is really, really exciting.

[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the sort of level of HR that I love to play in, but it does start with the fundamentals.

[00:31:58] [SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome.

[00:32:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:32:00] [SPEAKER_02]: What role if any did HR technology play? Like did you guys have a good core HR system or, you know, were you looking at technologies and trying to bring in some technologies to support enabling some of the things you were building?

[00:32:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. So fundamentally the HR system that we use today, I assume I can say it's a it's all T pro we used all T pro I don't know if I'm giving a.

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to see it.

[00:32:26] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a trade sticker.

[00:32:27] [SPEAKER_00]: No, I think that's my lot of people use all T pro so I think they think that's fine.

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, actually I'm a first time user of all T pro.

[00:32:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I've I hadn't used it that you know believe it or not my 20 something you know your career hadn't used it before as far as the system itself goes.

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I think, you know, at a basic level it's working for us.

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I but I believe we're not getting the most out of it that we should be.

[00:32:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's actually something that I've challenged our team to think about is how do we leverage the system in a way that's going to be more beneficial to us?

[00:32:56] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, it's got a lot of bells and whistles and things like that.

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Like a lot of systems do that were just not fully tapping into it.

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_00]: So if I go and buy new cars now even the base models have all these different things on it.

[00:33:08] [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't leverage half of it, right? Because I don't know that it's there and I you know, I don't know how to use it.

[00:33:14] [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of the same thing with our HR system. So we're we're challenging ourselves to really focus on that and get better use out of it.

[00:33:21] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, whether it's for performance management, succession planning, talent, you know, development and so on and so forth.

[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of one, you know, key area.

[00:33:29] [SPEAKER_00]: The other thing that I would say is because such a large portion of our employee base is frontline hourly they don't have regular access to things like email.

[00:33:38] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we've got communication boards and things like that video screens throughout our locations.

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_00]: But you know, that doesn't always reach every person.

[00:33:46] [SPEAKER_00]: So one of the things that we're looking at and we're exploring are, you know, apps that you know, you can put on every employees phone that can serve as a way to communicate.

[00:33:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Gary Giles, who's our chief executive is all about wanting to be able to go factory direct to every last person in the organization.

[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_00]: So while it may not be feasible to have said everybody up with an email address, we are looking at some different platforms and apps that will allow us to go factory direct to folks all throughout the organization even down to our frontline level.

[00:34:18] [SPEAKER_00]: So that just messages but we can send them videos they could they could be used it to do things like open enrollment instead of having to, you know,

[00:34:35] [SPEAKER_00]: connected to the information that we're so desperately trying to cascade through throughout the company.

[00:34:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean people do everything on their phone now, so it's not a leap, right?

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_02]: That's right.

[00:34:47] [SPEAKER_02]: For a long time frontline workers have not had direct access to computers or they had to go to a specific place to use it, right?

[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't always convenient.

[00:34:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And now they've got this this thing in their pocket that says big is the, you know, some of the original computers that they were using in the government right to run massive amounts of things.

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty awesome.

[00:35:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if you were going back a couple of years and sort of starting over, is there anything you would do differently?

[00:35:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, probably a hundred things.

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, I think, you know, there were certain things that, as I mentioned earlier, so now I'm maybe going to talk about both sides of my mouth a little bit.

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, meeting the organization where they're at right, I developed this what I think is a pretty good toolbox or toolkit over the years.

[00:35:41] [SPEAKER_00]: There are certain things that in hindsight it actually goes both ways.

[00:35:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I wish there were certain things that I applied more pressure on sooner and certain things that I would have kind of dialed back on a little bit just to get the organization a little bit more comfortable.

[00:35:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't look back with any major regret because as we sit here today, I think we've set ourselves up fairly well.

[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, there are some things that I would probably adjust in just in terms of you know getting, you know, getting the company to kind of shift their mindset a little bit a little bit sooner on certain uncertain things, you know, versus later.

[00:36:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Those things, for example, being like we're on the succession planning and talent development journey now.

[00:36:18] [SPEAKER_00]: You know what?

[00:36:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, I wish we would have started maybe several months a little bit sooner on something like that so that we're just a little bit further along now.

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't think that's, I don't think we're any worse for the where on that as we sit here today.

[00:36:31] [SPEAKER_00]: But you know, it just means that there's an opportunity for us to really catalyze that and accelerate that moving forward.

[00:36:37] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah.

[00:36:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Is there any advice you would give somebody who's kind of embarking on a similar transformation journey?

[00:36:48] [SPEAKER_00]: What's your number one?

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_02]: What's your number one?

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_02]: What's your number one?

[00:36:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:36:51] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you're, when you walk into an organization and the state of it isn't, you know, isn't ideal.

[00:36:58] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's easy to sit there and have those moments really go away.

[00:37:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Breathe in heavy here.

[00:37:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Not everything is going to get accomplished overnight.

[00:37:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, you want to work fast.

[00:37:10] [SPEAKER_00]: You want to work aggressively.

[00:37:11] [SPEAKER_00]: But you also want to work within the realm of like what's possible at a given point in time.

[00:37:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And so don't, don't lose hope.

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't don't get discouraged if, you know, you're having conversations where you're trying to kind of influence or steer somebody in a direction.

[00:37:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And it takes you 10 conversations to get that done versus maybe two or three.

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Those things are going to happen. And by the way, even in well-oiled machines, you know, organizations that are just having a long, those things still happened.

[00:37:40] [SPEAKER_00]: But it seems to get almost, you know, the spotlight gets shown a little bit brighter when you're in a, when you're in a state of turnaround like we were.

[00:37:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Just stay the course, trust your, trust your instincts and make sure that you're locked up with your business leaders.

[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I think, you know, one of the, you know, very kind of fundamental things that I learned early on in my, in my HR career.

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, and again, I've been, I've had the good fortune of working for some from great organizations that have really kind of defined what HR is today is that it starts with what's the business priority that we're trying to solve for it.

[00:38:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Like don't ever lose sight of that.

[00:38:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And then from there, build everything that you're going to do from an HR perspective around that.

[00:38:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And then eventually that priority becomes more realistic and then eventually gets achieved.

[00:38:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And then you can re-establish what your people priorities should be.

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, it was coming in and it was, it was tackling some of the fundamentals to start.

[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_00]: That's not why I necessarily became a head of HR, but I just knew at that point like this is where we're at and this is what we need to do.

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you can get comfortable with something like that early, I think that will serve you well.

[00:38:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And then you'll build your way to a place where you're, you know, then you're focusing on kind of the big strategic priorities and really shaping, you know, what the future of the organization can be.

[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, be patient, be focused.

[00:39:06] [SPEAKER_00]: That's right. That's right.

[00:39:08] [SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome.

[00:39:09] [SPEAKER_02]: I know there's a lot of people going through this today, you know, there's just a lot of organizations that kind of hit that point in their life cycle where they need to grow to the next level.

[00:39:21] [SPEAKER_02]: And they're making some of these same decisions.

[00:39:24] [SPEAKER_02]: So I think this will be a big, big help to them.

[00:39:27] [SPEAKER_02]: So thanks for joining me today, Mike. This has been a great conversation.

[00:39:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Where do people can people find you online on LinkedIn and other socials to learn about what you guys are doing?

[00:39:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. I'm fairly active on LinkedIn. So folks can connect with me there.

[00:39:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, nice pack. We have our own LinkedIn page as well. And as of late, we're, you know, because of the great things we're doing.

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_00]: We're pretty proud about the things that we've got going on internally.

[00:39:53] [SPEAKER_00]: So we're kind of shouting it from the rooftops if you will, on LinkedIn.

[00:39:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Just to draw more attention to ourselves, we want people to know we're a great place to work.

[00:40:01] [SPEAKER_00]: We're, you know, we are becoming what I would like to call a destination organization for a great manufacturing and leadership talent.

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_00]: So check us out on LinkedIn. We're there. All right. Get a marketing plug in there.

[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_02]: So I want to also thank brand method media group who will produce the podcast and will make Mike and I look great and this comes out.

[00:40:23] [SPEAKER_02]: I want to thank our marketing team and I want to thank you for tuning in.

[00:40:27] [SPEAKER_02]: That is it for this episode of HR. We have a problem.

[00:40:30] [SPEAKER_02]: If you enjoyed this episode, you could subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app.

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_02]: We was the review. If you have a minute, send us an email. I'd love to hear any topics that you're interested in hearing about.

[00:40:42] [SPEAKER_02]: You can also drop us a line or schedule a chat on the website.

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_02]: We will be back into weeks with another episode of HR. We have a problem. Thanks everybody.