314 - Building HR from Scratch: From Team of 3 to 40: Courtney Kolar (Chief People Officer, Neighborly)

Speaker A: And I get on the call with this coach, she made me retake it and we had the. It was the best conversation, but I walked out with some really great, okay, this is a way that I could ask a question differently and maybe influence the executive team or even in a board setting. What does that interaction need to look and feel like? I would say that's probably it. Just trying to learn from those that have been down the path before and then making sure that I'm staying sharp, for lack of a better term, of how to ask the right questions and how to engage in the right conversations. And the other area that I would, I guess, touch on is just competitive insight and knowledge. Just trying. I. I force myself to find and read at least one article a day. Doesn't sound like a lot, but over time it can add up. It's easy to let a couple weeks go by and be out of the market and what's going on. And, um, it's just so critical that you've got a pulse on what are the trends, what's happening, especially in the public market, what are some of the IPOs that have been successful or not. SpaceX was kind of a fun one to watch, so, I mean, it's just getting into the weeds on some of those pieces. So make sure that I've got a good understanding.

Speaker B: You're listening to the Modern People Leader podcast where we go behind the scenes with today's top HR leaders and work experts. We talk to them about how they've gotten to where they're at, what they do every day, and what they see coming next for the future of work. Hope you enjoy. Courtney, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Speaker A: Good. Uh, thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Speaker B: So Courtney is one of the. I feel like it doesn't happen as often as I would like, where the person that we're interviewing actually listens to the podcast. And I can't remember when we initially connected on LinkedIn, but I don't know if I reached out to you or you reached out to me, but it was a no brainer to have you on the podcast and we're so happy to have you.

Speaker A: Thank you. Likewise.

Speaker B: And so we start every episode the exact same way. And that's with something called Good News Stories, which, since you've listened to the pod, you're familiar with. And we like for our guests to go first. So if you have anything that you want to share, we'd like for you to go first.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think on the work side of things. We are wrapping our annual engagement survey. So, uh, we wrap officially tomorrow. You'll learn about this more here in a few minutes. But we've had a lot of change organizationally, so I always watch for different, just change trends. And we're A, participation is really great this year and B, the score is positive and ahead of where we were last year, which is always a good feeling. So both for engagement and employee net promoter score, things are trending in a good direction. So excited to unpack that and happy to see those early results.

Speaker B: Steven, you going to go next?

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm going to keep it personal. My 6 month old son, I almost said 5, but he just turned 6 months, has been at home for the last 3 days with a fever. And today he's at daycare. That's my goodness. Keep it real simple. You know, the hot potato is just like trying to get all the things done. Uh, it's, it's brutal. And then the fever, the lack of sleep, it's just like. And then you rinse and repeat that. So I'm feeling blessed to have somewhat of a clear mind today and no Joaquin in my arms as I'm recording this, because that was going to be what happened.

Speaker B: I'm also going to go personal. So last weekend was Father's Day and I waited a little bit too long to get my dad a Father's Day gift. And so my little brother Mateo had a great idea to sort of make up for things. And he was like, what if we take dad to go play a round of golf next weekend? We'll go to somewhat nicer golf club than we usually go to. We'll pay for his round and we'll have a good time. And so this Sunday we're gonna go play around of golf. Uh, the three of us. I think actually Tori's gonna come as well. And you know, this was like a big hobby of mine pre baby. I would play all the time. I've maybe played like four or five times over the last year and a half since like a little bit before the baby was born. And so I'm excited. I'm, um, excited to get out there and I know my dad's gonna enjoy it. So that's my good news.

Speaker A: So fun.

Speaker B: And so, Courtney, before we get into the main topic for the day, I want to start with your story. I feel like you have a very unique journey. If I remember correctly, it started at Kohl's on the retail side, like as a store manager. Hopefully I'm not making that up. And Here you are today, you know, chief people officer at neighborly of a, you know, international company. And so, yeah, tell us the story. How did you go from. From store manager at Kohl's to where you're at today? Let me ask you something. How often does coaching actually happen? At the moment it's needed not in a quarterly review, not after something goes sideways, but right before a tough one, on one or right after a meeting where something felt off. We had Diane Sadowski Joseph on the podcast and she said something that stuck with me. How do we actually change behavior and structure work to take advantage of AI while keeping humans at the center? That's the gap. Because. Because on paper, a lot of teams have invested in development, but in practice, managers are still guessing. Feedback comes late and most AI coaching tools still feel pretty generic. The real opportunity isn't more advice, it's better timed, more relevant coaching based on how people actually work together. That's where Cloverleaf comes in. Cloverleaf is an AI coaching platform built for how work really happens. It combines behavioral insights like DISC and cliftonstren strengths with real workplace context. So instead of another destination tool for development, it shows up in the flow of work. Using Cloverleaf, teams can get coaching before key moments like one on ones or feedback conversations. Understand team dynamics, not just individual performance. Turn behavioral data into practical day to day actions. Reinforce development without adding more HR overhead. In other words, it shifts coaching from reactive to built in. Bottom line, if AI coaching is becoming a priority, the question isn't if it's what kind. You can learn more about Cloverleaf @Cloverleaf Me M MPL. That's Cloverleaf Me M MPL.

Speaker A: Yeah, happy to share. So my I call it career journey started at Texas A and M at Career Fair. And I always start there because I had no idea what I wanted to do growing up. And so I was not a classic. I want to be hr. I want to be this or that. It was a bit of a gamble. Coming out of college and Career Fair, I was the most attracted to retailers because of the energy and just the team. And everybody I met at their booths just felt like somebody I wanted to be around culturally. So I interviewed with retailers, got the job with Kohl's, was an assistant store manager for the first year with them. So they put me through a manager and training career track, which in hindsight I will tell you is the best place to start because you really learn the business. You learn how to read a P and L, you learn, you know, all the things that can go right and all the things that can go wrong and every level of leadership you get to witness in retail store management. So did the MIT program. Store manager for. Or, uh, assistant store manager for about a year. Did not love retail. The hours were not for me. The, the work, quite frankly, did not. It wasn't for me. It wasn't energizing. The part I loved was the hard part, which was the people. I dealt with everything. In that first ASM job, I was in a tough store, very high turnover. I saw every associate relations problem you can probably think of. Um, substance abuse, terminations, performance attendance, threats, violence. I mean all the. And I total shock to my system coming out of college and trying to manage all of that. So I was on the phone a lot with our regional HR team. And that's really what got me hooked on hr, is just I got to know them, what they did. I loved solving the problems, the people problems that were in the building. I loved celebrating when we got. We overcame some of those problems. And that's really kind of what got me on the HR track. So after a year in that ASM or assistant store manager job, I transitioned to a regional recruiting assistant. So that was my first kind of real HR job. Stepped back, took a pay cut, went from a salary to hourly, but I didn't care. It was the right move to get myself into hr and the rest is kind of history. So the nine years at Kohl's, eight of them were in hr. I think I did six different positions, moved around the country, spent some time in Southern California, Northern California. Always said yes. It was a, uh, I had a role. I can always say no and I'll never get anywhere. But if I say yes, then I can always go back, you know, I can always do what I was doing before. If it doesn't work, you don't know if you don't try. So I was in recruiting positions, a, uh, regional talent manager position. I did a university relations position with them. Growing the west coast college relationships that is probably still to this day my favorite job. So much fun and working on campuses and coordinating leaders in front of students and just building the next generation was awesome. Was in California with Kohl's for about three years and they moved me back to Texas. I got married. The person, the, ah, my husband now I was, uh, starting to date. He's from the Texas, you know, he was not going to move to California. So Kohl's was amazing and said, hey, you're doing this job in the Bay Area. Would you like to do it from Home. And I said, sure. So my last two years with Kohl's, I was in a regional talent position doing recruitment internal succession. And then they promoted me into a director position overseeing all of field HR for the Southeast territory. It was a quick journey. Probably seven different roles in nine years, mostly on the HR side, and got to see what great looked like. To be honest, I think Kohl's was an awesome start just because it showed me the bar. Big, huge company, 200,000 people, you know, saw every single part of that business. Then the neighborly, you know, kind of chapter hit. And back then we weren't neighborly yet. We were the Dwyer Group and very small, I would say organization, comparatively to a Kohl's based in Waco, Texas, which was kind of the clincher. Waco is where I grew up, up until college. So my parents are here, my in laws are here, everybody that, you know, kind of our little network community. We had started to have a family. So we knew, you know, we wanted to raise our kids close to home if we could. So I started putting out feelers, got connected to Dwyer Group leadership team, and within a month had, uh, a job offer to come and help them build an HR department. And so I didn't know it at the time probably, but in hindsight, we're about to hit the gas on acquisitions. Neighborly's very acquisitive. They had a three person HR department, so they needed a leader to come in and really help to the foundation and grow the team and the resources and the tools and phase it in an order that made sense. So that was the opportunity. It was really a blank slate. Totally different from what I was doing at Kohl's, but leaned heavily into the Kohl's kind of best practice background to frame a lot of what we do here. And here I am 10 years later. It's amazing. It's been a very quick decade. The company has reinvented itself several times through M and A and leadership changes, and it's been really fun and rewarding to be part of that. So that's the quick version of Courtney's story.

Speaker C: So how many employees at the time? Dwyer Group? How many? How big were y'? All? Um, just out of curiosity.

Speaker A: Sure. So when I joined, we had roughly 600 global employees. I would say of those three, about 350 were considered corporate in the US and then the rest of them were either international or what? We have some corporately owned stores as well, and the Northeast. A big, uh, portion of our team was corporately owned stores. And so 600 folks, about nine franchise brands when I joined.

Speaker C: And now what is the company?

Speaker A: Yeah, so now we are. Right. We hover a little bit. We have a seasonal workforce that shifts, but I would say a good average is probably about 1600 employees. We have 28 franchise brands in the portfolio, plus some corporately owned stores that, that we consider ours as well.

Speaker C: What an amazing run. And there's one thing that you did leave out because we have a dossier that we use to get ourselves ready for these. And I thought you were going to come in hot and mention both. Daniel and I are University of Texas alumni. And if you are not familiar with Texas University Dynamics, our big rivals are the Aggies. Texas, uh, A and M. And you're a staunch Aggie fan, right? Is that true? Yeah.

Speaker A: Third generation. I think so.

Speaker C: Third generation. Amazing. Amazing. Your husband also.

Speaker A: He is not. He went to Texas State and so he.

Speaker C: Okay, okay. They're like a neutral. That's like neutral territory.

Speaker A: Grew up in Ag fan and then somehow landed at Texas State, so.

Speaker C: Oh brother. Well, going back to Neighborly, you know, for those that it's a lot of different brands under a single umbrella. You've grown super quickly. You know, I'm guessing it's not exactly a household name or maybe the some brands are to people that, that are using them. So give us a little bit of background on, you know, how you explain your business and what you do to. To a stranger who's just finding out out about you for the first time.

Speaker A: So Neighborly is a home services platform, to your point. We are the parent to a lot of child brands and they're all in home services. So they are a lot of household names individually, probably not to your point as Neighborly, but names like Mr. Electric, Molly Maid, the Ground Skies, Mr. Handyman, uh, Mr. Rooter for plumbing. So all of them in home services. Yep. So probably names, you know, I've literally

Speaker C: used like here I am thinking I had never heard of like how could I not know about Neighborly in Waco, Texas? Because that's not exactly, you know, you don't hear that a lot of like these growth companies, but I know I've used several of the brands. Trends.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Amazing. Amazing. And what has been kind of the most unexpected brand that you acquired over the that 10 year journey? This is uh. I already went off script.

Speaker A: That's a really great question. You know, I think probably Shelf Genie, if I had to guess, because it's not a business I even knew existed. Like it was very. It's A niche business has a very, you know, certain unique customer, but they build out all kinds of fun shelving solutions. Um, so if you ever have cabinets, you just can't reach the back of them or you need, you need organization in a space that's just completely full of clutter. They are a great brand. And so they just, they're a really great brand with really great owners. Their product is tremendous. We also have a manufacturing plant that supports them that is part of my associate population now they're in Tucson, Arizona. And so just a really unique concept, not a brand I'd heard of before.

Speaker B: And so just going back to the story. So you cold message the CEO on LinkedIn, which I think you might have left out of the story. Uh, you have lunch in Waco and two weeks later you have the job. You show up the first week and the entire HR function is three people, as you said. Take us back to that first week. Like what was going through your head and how did you start to work through what the next steps would be to build out the HR team?

Speaker A: Yeah, great question. So I would be lying if I said it was all confidence that, uh, first week, I think I knew it was a smaller company, smaller department, limited resources. I had all that in my head. I knew it wasn't going to be Kohl's, but I was not prepared for walking in. And it was payroll processing, uh, professional. We had a benefits administrator or HR coordinator. She kind of was a catch all role. And then there was a personnel director at the time. And that's it. And my first, I'll just give you an example. You know, the first, probably three days on the job, multiple times, three or four times, I would hear conversations in our HR office. We would have hiring managers come in and they would say, they would introduce a new hire to our team. They would say, hi, this is so and so. Can you get them onboarded? And instantly my mind is just going crazy. It's like so many questions, you know, who recruited this person? Did we run the right checks? Are we confident they're the right fit for the role? Where's the job description? Just all these questions in my head because of the HR environment that I was coming out of, which was very best practice, centralized, you know, all those things. And so it was, you know, that first week was an interesting one. It was a lot of learning. I think at the end of the day, as, uh, surprising as some of, you know, the processes I was witnessing might have been just less formal, less buttoned up than what I was Used to. I was so excited by the blank slate opportunity. For me, that was exactly what I came for. And I think the person that hired me in ultimately was our general counsel. He's still here today, although now I call him brother, not dad. Because we, you know, I grew up kind of working underneath him. And then when I promoted to chief people officer a few years ago now, we became peer. So that's been a fun, um, relationship, but a great mentor for me. And um, I remember running to his office several times week one going, oh my gosh. And he would just look at me and say, I know what you got today. And I'm like, okay, let's talk. So he's been a huge support and I knew I had the support of him, our cfo, our CEO, to make changes that were needed for the business to be able to grow. Nothing was wrong with the way that the team was functioning. It just wasn't going to be scalable into the future. So that was the first week reaction.

Speaker C: Woof. And so I believe now you, you're more than 40 or around 40 people on the, the HR organization. In the HR organization, is that right?

Speaker A: In the people organization, yes. And so we have, I would say, uh, of the 40, right around 25 is core HR. So they're handling all of the classic HR functions. The rest of the team is coming out of PR communications, which are really. Communications is about 90% of what the PR comms team does and that closely aligns with HR and just you know, naturally, uh, natural fit. And then corporate facilities also reports up through the people organization, which I consider environment, associate, experience. And so we have two headquarters for neighborly. Now we do maintain the Waco campus. We also opened up an Irving Las Colinas office about five years ago, really for talent, reach and depth and just getting the right, you know, folks in the door. And so we maintain both. And we have small facilities, teams at each campus that help with those operations as well as corporate events. So that's the full kind of 40, but HR is about 25.

Speaker C: Amazing. And in my experience, when you're building, expanding a people team, that usually isn't a linear process. It's like you take three steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, four steps back. You ebb and flow and as I believe you should with the business. And so when you look back at the journey, like what were some of the key inflection points either in terms of like the business driving changes or driving kind of expansion or more needs or just like the evolution of the team Itself, like, when you think about those key moments, can you share some of those with us?

Speaker A: Yeah, I. There's a couple different ways that I'd probably approach it. So we'll. I'll kind of talk. A lot of our inflection points came just through size acquisition. How many people were we trying to support and the types of people that we had to support. I think that, um, we acquired some businesses that required new policies and handbooks and practices totally different from our corporate environment at one point in time. So that required a new skill set and types of, you know, HR folks that maybe we didn't have on staff. So a lot of our inflection points came through just being very acquisitive. And the business, to your point, business shifts that required a different level or type of support. The rest of it, honestly, it was interesting the way that we approached the work, because there was a lot. There was a lot of opportunity for us to be able to centralize recruiting, which is ultimately where I started. And what I came in to do first was centralize the recruiting aspects of Neighborly. And then beyond that, just centralization was a big theme. And I think we, as we would finish one portion. Once we got centralized recruiting in place and in motion and really running well and layering in the technology to support it, we would move on to the next area. And so the next area was dependent upon what the business needed the most. So after we finished recruiting, we did some analysis, understood kind of goal setting was the next biggest priority. So we shifted gears into associate relations, and we started to build the team out there, supporting performance reviews and a consistent approach to how we manage talent. And what does that look like at Neighborly and how do we, you know, view strengths and developmental opportunities and all those things? So I think, just taking a pause, we have always maintained a roadmap. I'm very big on, you know, plan your work. Work your plan. Somebody gave me that advice years ago when I worked at Kohl's, and so easy and simple, and it doesn't sound very fancy, but if something goes wrong, it's because you missed one of those two. You either failed to plan it or you failed to work it. There's no other answer. So I've been very big, and my team hears that a lot. Plan your work. Work your plan. And that's exactly what we've done here. It's just, how do we plan for the next two, three years? And then if we need to tweak, we will but for. Attack it in an order for whatever the business is really needing is kind of how we approached it.

Speaker B: And so I remember you telling me that the big initiative was People Services 2020. Like this is what you had named it in 2016. You had this whole plan that was under this initiative. Take us through, like what all was in the plan? Like what were some of the key milestones that you wanted to hit by 2020 and maybe give us like a story or two on like what went a little bit, you know, off track or like didn't go according to plan. I feel like people always love to hear about that as well.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: In addition to the successes.

Speaker A: Yeah, that is probably one of my favorite stories. It's just a fun, fun journey to look back on. But. And it's people ask a lot. They're like, why people services 2020 were you on like a certain year time crunch? And to be honest, it just sounded right. 2020 just seemed like that's the right time. Four years is about right. Like three seemed too short, five was too long. Uh, so that's why there's no other reason. It was just, it's coming, we know it's here, let's set a date and let's really work toward it. And so what that really meant was just how do we take what we have today, which was really payroll benefits and I would say the termination side of employee relations. There really was not a strong culture of business partnership from the HR team. It was much more higher in term. Kind of very personnel driven. Record keeper, I guess would be the right reputation. So how do we transform that? And by 2020, in each functional area of the business for HR. So for recruiting, what does that look like? It looks like centralized processes and systems and hiring managers that are working with our team. Instead of the reverse, you know, bringing a candidate to us, we are pushing candidates to them. All the classic things you think of with a centralized recruiting team. And then we did that same analysis across each functional area and kind of painted the vision for what does great look like, you know, for talent management and thinking about how we want to assess our talent. We can build it, we can buy it. What is, what are the trade offs? What tools are we going to use? How are we going to, you know, get that information back to our hiring managers and people leaders so they can make good choices. So it really was mapping out, you know, what do we think is possible? What all do we need to do? A let's assess the landscape, figure out where we are and where the gaps are that we need to fill and then Put it in an order of how we're going to approach the work. And the work needed to be approached with people, uh, talent to support it had to be supported with resources and tools like systems. Everything was on paper when I started. We had filing cabinets down so many hallways that I can't even. It was crazy to me because I'm like, this is not 25 years ago, this is 10 years ago. So lots of paper. And that had to be. It was a foundational thing. And a lot of times people do not love working on foundational work because it's boring, but it's necessary. And so we started with like, what do we have to fix foundationally? Everything's got to go digital, got to be in the cloud, got to migrate, have to implement technology to support us. And then what behaviors do we need to change with our people leaders to make all this happen? So that's kind of the, I guess, nuts and bolts of how we were looking at it. Let's assess, let's figure out where the gaps are and then put them in an order. Centralized recruiting was first. And really we started with that too, for advocacy reasons from a change management perspective, because we knew that our business partners, once they saw the power of having a centralized recruiting team filling all of your conversations and scheduling candidates, they up set still, you know, retain the right to hire and they make the choice. We just do all the backend work. We knew if we could create quick advocates there, we would get less resistance on centralizing other parts of hr. And that's exactly what happened. So we created some very quick fans that had, you know, some louder voices. Once we centralized it, we made sure we filled roles for those folks first. They shared their experience with their peers. We had lots of manager training in those early days. I think we met with our people managers quarterly because we were changing things so rapidly. We needed to keep them up, uh, to speed on what was changing and why in the big picture. So that really served us well too. So I think speaking of training and stories. So foundational work has to be part of the roadmap. It's not the fun stuff, but it's the necessary stuff. And we simple things, like we had policies, but they weren't in order. They were just kind of all over the place. You know, open up the folder, there's 40 Word documents, some are updated, some aren't. Like just, you know, all the classes, we had them, they just weren't organized. So, um, we put in place a policy directory and very, very organized, you know, 10 sections here's all the sections, here's why we're doing this, so we can scale. And as we introduce new policies, they have an order and a fit. We introduced an intranet to house them on. Just all these basic tools that, you know, in some ways maybe we should have had and in other ways we just weren't big enough. We weren't ready yet. But I remember sitting in a, or uh, I had just finished a manager training and one of our brand, uh, presidents at the time who ultimately we grew a very good relationship. But she came up to me after and had never seen, you know, had never operated this way, liked kind of the more ad hoc approach. And her feedback to me was, you know, this was a better training for an admin versus me. Like why do I care what order policies are in or where they sit on an Internet or you know, how they affect my team? What does that matter to me as a leader? Like this is better for an admin. And I remember at the time thinking like, she doesn't get it. She doesn't see the big picture of why order matters. And foundational things make a difference and protect her and the organization. Right? You've got to care about what the company, how the company feels. And that was kind of her attitude, to be honest. Like the first four or five years as we were changing things and finally, you know, 6ish years had passed. She left the organization three or four years ago and I'll never forget she called and she was in tears and she's like, hey, you remember that training we had? You know, uh, when you first started and you were walking us through, like, look, we're going to have to re, rethink about how we do some things so that we can scale and we can grow. We can, you know, start to build on that foundation. And she's like, I still think about the feedback I gave you. And she's like, I just, I'm so sorry. She's like, I've never been able to say it now, but I'd like for you to know. Like, I see it, I understand why that was important. That feedback wasn't fair. Like it was a bizarre moment because in my head I'm thinking it was five years ago, who, it's no big deal. But what was powerful is like got connected for her. Five years later, she now understands why we had to have order. You know, take the chaos, wild west kind of environment and create order so we could build from it. We could introduce a workday two years later and know that we were ready for it. So it just. My journey's been filled with those moments of helping people connect dots and see the bigger picture and what's possible and why some of that foundational infrastructure is so critical to be able to go faster in the future.

Speaker C: One of the. I've worked. I've been exposed to a, uh, few businesses that their growth strategy was growth through M and A like that. Obviously, you know, you had. That's not the. That wasn't the only lever, but that was like the main lever for a few businesses that I've been. I've worked with. And one of the things that sticks out, jumps out at me from those experiences is it always felt like there was a need to, like, pattern recognition was really, really important. You know, what did we get right? What did we get wrong? How are we going to do things differently next time? Because there will be a next time like that. The only given is we're going to have to do this again, y'.

Speaker A: All.

Speaker C: And so being able to see the pattern and, and take the right. The right actions that. But still give space for each business. They're all a little different. Right? There's no silver bullet in how you do M and A. In our, Our prep call, you mentioned that, like, through all of these acquisitions, a playbook started to emerge. Can you tell us a little bit about that playbook and, uh, how it came? What are the kind of key parts of the playbook and how it came about?

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I think. And you're right, they're not all the same. There's always going to be differences. You know, I can look around today and see things in our business that are just products of acquisitions past that we haven't approached yet for whatever reason. Although that's less and less. You know, I think for us, it started with helping, you know, our acquired business. Every. The first acquisition we did at Neighborly, it was kind of a blank. It was a blank slate. That's kind of the theme, I think. And so we weren't really moving off of much because instantly the business wanted to jump straight to operations. Well, they're doing this for technology right now. What do we need to do over here? So really, the first piece of the playbook is just let's. Before we can decide, you know, what to do with technology or enter whatever function it is, we've got to understand what the people are doing now. We have to take an inventory of who's doing what. Why is it important? What is the impact that that's made on the Business to make sure we're not going to cause disruption by making decisions too quick. So doing an inventory of sorts was kind of step one and leaning into the people side to create that inventory. You know, step two is after we've got a basic understanding, it's digging deeper and getting to know the people and just connecting like this, you know, one on one. We did that a lot in person. That's always more, you know, effective. We feel like. Of course then 2020 hit and everything was virtual. So all of our M and A work was done via virtual for a while. But you know, getting, getting on site and going at uh, building the culture very early and upfront and so taking the group to dinner, making sure you break bread, have a meal, get to know them as people so that they don't see you as enemies that just bought the business and might want to change a lot of things. So inventory, you know, culture, build, break the bread, understand, you know, who are going to be your core advocates in this process and the ones that you can lean on in the new business and who might be your core resistors. That's really how you learn that. And if you don't have that level of understanding upfront, I think you're setting yourself up for maybe a slowdown in the future, you know. And from there I think it just. We do have a pretty. Or uh, we have not had an acquisition in a couple of years, but we do have a pretty regimented process checklist, if you will, just by functional area of the various things that need to happen and in what order that we've had to build. Kind of over time, of course it changes depending on the actual business and some of their unique needs. But people wise, it generally starts with understanding what are people doing today, how does that translate to the neighborly environment and then from there, you know, okay, titles and uh, pay rates and all those things, how do they tend to correlate and where do they fit? And so running that analysis typically like 60, 90 days in, and then helping the business, taking all that information and then working with our business leaders to actually make those changes, to have those conversations, to start integrating the people into the team versus just the work, I think a lot of people get tripped up on, okay, this is happening in that business, who's going to take it on our side? And it's like there's a person involved too. It's not just the work you're having to integrate, it's also the people. So that's really, I think, been the key learning and the thing that we try to keep front and center when we have acquisitions now.

Speaker B: And so, you know, 2016 to 2020, that was People Services 2020, which you just walked us through. And I know that. Well, I guess what came after 2020, like, catch us up on the last six years. I think you guys got acquired. Is that right? Or now you're PE owned. Fill in the blanks for us. And, you know, what did it look like going through that same sort of, like, you know, process of diagnosing and solving.

Speaker A: So which, you know, now we can kind of joke about it a little bit. 2020 brought all kinds of unique things to the business with the pandemic. And I mentioned, you know, we do keep our running roadmap, and it's something that I share with business leaders. Even today, when we hire someone new to the business, I will take the time to walk them through, sometimes personally, sometimes our leader on our HR team will do this, but help our brand Presidents, our corporate SVPs, our senior executive team, especially, to help them understand the historical context and why things maybe are the way they are. But what are the initiatives on that go forward? So that is a practice we still very much have. Even now, you could say things are pretty much built, but we still take the time to do that and help people see how we're constantly evolving. The last six years, you know, 2020, I would say, is the one year that the roadmap didn't get executed. Probably 80, 90%, because we were thrown so many just challenges, as we all were. And so no one guessed we might be taking temperatures that year or doing some things that aren't really in the HR wheelhouse or playbook. So we rolled with it. We did build out quite a few risk management materials that year. So if I had to say, well, what came out of that, like, we got some great procedures and playbooks for that built out of it. But it's really been about taking the foundation that we worked so hard to put in place for 2020 and now starting to fill in that foundation. I like to use the house analogy. You know, the first four years in People Services 2020 was literally building the house. It was first pouring the foundation, which was all the boring stuff that nobody wants to do. The policy reorganization, the filing cabinets, having to go digital, like, all those core things that would help us down the road. And then we put up all the walls. We put up a centralized recruiting system. We stood up a performance review process. We adopted technology. We did all the core basics to get the house built but 2020. There was no yard, there was no pool, there was no fence. There was no, you know, extra stuff, you know, to go along with that house. So I think the next six years have really been about all the fun stuff. It's been about the landscaping and the pool and, you know, all those extras that now you can have. So implementing talent management and really, you know, trying to work through with our people, leaders, what that looks like and making sure there's a common language around it so that we can have productive talent conversations. Yes, we introduced a tool, but we really hadn't seen the power of the tool yet until the last couple of years. We implemented workday. So we took kind of all these basics that we had that we had built foundationally and we had matured those processes enough to be able to work through a pretty, I would say, complicated workday integration over the course of six months. It was quick and fast and I had lots of great resources that were helping with that project to make it happen. But we wouldn't have been able to do that with the precision we did it on time, on budget, had we not had a strong foundation we were working off of. So we took some disparate systems globally our business, you know, a lot of things were handled in country before workday because we didn't have a system that could accommodate global, whereas Workday could. That was really the big shift. But we knew that was a necessity. And as we're growing as an organization and you mentioned private equity back if an IPO is in the future and we don't know at this point what the outcome is, but if it is, we need to be ready for that. So it's funny, I think getting ourselves ready, you know, to be competitive as a mid to large employer has really been the last six years. Yes, we had all the basics. Now we're filling it in with all the extras, talent development programs, you know, things that we really couldn't think about yet. Now we have the resources and the time to be able to put some really great tools in place.

Speaker C: And so as you look to the future and what I love the house analogy because we're, we're constantly, we're never done and there's always improvements that we can make. And you know, seeing as, but it seems like we're in a pretty good spot, like the foundation set, we've got the frame, we've got all the required pieces are there for like everyday life. But as you look to optimize life, make life even better, you know, what are Some of the things that you. That are under consideration, like, what could the next, you know, 10 years, the net, or if there was a, uh, people services, you know, 20, 30, you know, what would that look like?

Speaker A: I love the question. And I also kind of dislove the question because that's a hard one to answer. With the rapid pace of how AI and other things are transforming how all of us live. I'm not even going to say work. It's transforming how we live too.

Speaker C: And I promise that wasn't, uh, an AI question. Without saying AI, I truly just, like, curious.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's just part of every day. It's like, I just, I recently used it to redesign our entire master bedroom. Like in my personal life, I'm like, it's just, it's everywhere. So it's like it. We can't not have, you know, that in our thought process. Still a, uh, lot of questions, I think, with HR leaders and just peers. I talk to and I listen to your podcast a lot, and it seems like there's a theme, you know, it. Nobody really has this golden book of answers for how it will transform the way we work, but I think we have a strong belief here that our managers are really kind of the key. I mean, if our managers are not leading well, if they're not adopting AI into their everyday, if they're, you know, if they're not infusing an ownership culture with our associates every single day for just, just thinking outside the box, asking the curious questions, you know, implementing something that might make your day easier, and the, uh, the folks around you easier, they're not driving that. It's not going to get done. So I think our focus for the next, call it 10 years is really going deeper with precision on some of our leadership levels, our management levels, and making sure that we're equipping them with the right tools to lead well. And I, you know, one thing that's always on my mind, I'm like, I am of thankful that in HR there really isn't a bot that can replace this. There's no bot that can replace us talking and having EQ and being able to pick up on things. Yes, you could learn some tips and tricks from, you know, a chatgpt or whatever tool you're using for how to display, you know, eq, but it can't make you do it. It can't force that. And I just think what a unique position, but also a challenge to make sure that we are giving our managers the right tools to do it. So a Lot of manager development, a lot of manager engagement. You know, that's really been kind of the focus. I think we are also, uh, part of our maturing as an ah, HR function in an organization. We are currently in the middle of a job architecture project and we're kind of reimagining what does that look like across the organization? How do those levels correspond? How has it changed? What types of tracks do we actually even need within the technical track considering all these differences that are now in the workplace today that we haven't had before. So, so just reimagining, I think what that looks like has been a big part of our conversation here lately for the next ten.

Speaker C: Um, I was just going to say really quickly and honestly, thank God AI exists for job architectures because if you have not done that before, it is tedious. There are a lot of spreadsheets. It's just like mind numbing, uh, in my experience. So what a perfect thing to take a bunch of not fun, yucky work off of or just to get a superpower that can get you to a better answer quicker.

Speaker B: I was just going to ask if there were any interesting findings coming out of that work. Doing the job architecture.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, you know, I. Not necessarily. And neighborly has. That is actually the last part of our HR journey, or I guess roadmap, if you will, to centralize for neighborly. You know, we have always had informal job architecture and levels across brains and departments, but there's never been one consistent structure. And I think part of that is the M and A environment and having to live with several, you know, different versions of what that looks like. Whereas today we're morphing all that kind of into one. We've partnered with some really great resources to help us do that and think through some important things. And our ELT has been lots of meetings the last several months just making sure everything makes sense for the organization. But I would say, you know, one really great finding coming out of that work is that I think, and it goes back to the original setting, the foundation, because we put in place centralized recruiting because we've had, you know, regimented processes to be sure to ask the right questions and manage job descriptions and people that are coming into the org. We by default kind of built an informal architecture that is going to make it very easy to transition into this one. So that was the first learning is wow. Some of those behaviors and things that we implemented very early on have really kept us out of a lot of heartburn and trying to make the new one work. So that feels really good. That's a good insight. I think the technical track itself is the track that's getting the most attention. So every, every company has administrative tracks, they have executive tracks, manager tracks, tracks typically when you think about the workforce. But technical tracks, even if you're not a technology company, I think has been just the most fast evolving, you know, group of jobs to try and figure out where they slot, how they fit, you know, what, how do they translate to levels? Because they're the one group that highly technical roles just typically don't translate to your traditional level. So that's been a fun kind of just aha moment and project for the team to work through and give us a language to help our leadership understand the differences between them and that it's okay, you know, that maybe, maybe some things that they were seeing in the workforce are validated through the architecture. Like, oh, now I get it. Like there's this technical track, highly technical jobs that wasn't there 10 years ago, but it's there today. So interesting.

Speaker B: And so going back to something you said a little while ago, just the idea of becoming IPO ready, you know, regardless of whether or not you go public, how this is sort of how you're thinking about things going forward, what does that actually mean for the people team? Like, what changes when you're building with that level of rigor?

Speaker A: Yep. You know, it's funny because I, in my mind, and this is how I talk to our team as well, we have not called it IPO readiness, but that's exactly what we've been doing the last 10 years. And so putting in technology that's going to serve us well into the future, that gives us the ability to run more advanced analytics at the push of a button instead of, for example, pre work day, it might take me a week to get a global headcount report because we had the US systems kind of locked in, but they weren't talking to the global systems or the people in those countries. So lots of advancements in just speed to data. And what does that look like? That helps us be stronger partners and thought partners, but also just to report what's going on in the people function. That's a table stakes item from an IPO standpoint in a public company. And I feel like we can check the box on that and it's not, we didn't do it because we wanted to be IPO ready. We did it because we knew at our size it was good hygiene to be, you know, ready for that. So I think most of the work we've done and putting in the foundational blocking, tackling, you know, pieces and then now working on all those extras has really. You could call all of that IPO readiness in terms of what that looks like. I guess on a more formal note, doing a formal assessment for where is the gap still? And I think for us it's. There are some obvious things that we don't have being private equity backed up. We don't. Our equity program is something that we'd probably, we would need to look at and make a shift into a, uh, more public facing equity program. So that will be work that falls to the people team eventually. Similarly, short term, long term incentives and just being a bit more regimented and routine on how those things are planned and um, put into motion versus a bit more manager led or department led right now. And so there are some pockets, but I would say the majority of it lives there. The rest of it just good compliance, you know, making sure that we are following all the. We are in 43 states effectively, plus four countries. And so making sure we're compliant with all of the various legislation is just a table stakes item. And that's something we already do. So yeah, my view is I think you should always be IPO ready regardless of what's coming next and especially at our size. It's just good hygiene to do that and it should make for a much simpler process if that's the likely path.

Speaker C: Ah, you know, I'm curious. When does IPO ready include your own personal. Do you have your own personal goals? Like, is there anything that there's IPO readiness for the org and there's IPO readiness for Courtney and I know IPO for a long time for people leaders. IPO and sitting on a board, like a board board responsibilities are two like big check marks for a lot. Not everyone, but for a lot of people leaders out there. And so I'm curious, like, what, you know, when you look at yourself, are there any investments you're making, you know, just to prepare for the future, whatever it brings?

Speaker A: Good question. I think for me it's leaning in, to be honest. Like, I'm listening to a lot of podcasts or different things that I probably wouldn't have listened to before. But I want to know and be able to speak the right language. Even for finance leaders. I'm like, understanding. There's a couple great CFO podcasts that I've started to put into my playlist just because I want to hear what's going on with debt. Uh, restructures and all the things that a normal HR leader might not care about on a day to day, it feels like are things that we need, you know, long term investing in the time, I think to do a constant reflection. I'm a big fan of picking up the mirror. And so anytime there's an opportunity to do a coaching call, I recently had one which was just a kind of random opportunity from attending a conference, but with a Gallup coach to be able to really dig deeper into strengths and kind of apply that, which we've all done that it's a classic. Uh, most people, if I ask, have done strengths finder and they could tell you what their top, you know, strengths are. I probably hadn't done it in 15 years. And I get on the call with this coach, she made me retake it and we had the, it was the best conversation but I walked out with some really great okay, this is a way that I could ask a question differently and maybe influence the executive team or even in a board setting. What does that interaction need to look and feel like? So investing in my own kind of growth, to your point, I think is going to be helpful over the next couple of years and just taking the time to learn some new tricks and how to communicate effectively. I would say that's probably it. Just trying to learn from those that have been down the path before and then making sure that I'm staying sharp, for lack of a better term of how to ask the right questions and how to engage in the right conversations. And the other area that I would I guess touch on is just competitive insight and knowledge. Just trying I, I force myself to find and read at least one article a day. Doesn't sound like a lot, but over time it can add up. It's easy to let a couple weeks go by and be out of the market and what's going on. And um, it's just so critical that you've got a pulse on what are the trend trends, what's happening especially in the public market, you know, what are some of the IPOs that have been successful or not. SpaceX was kind of a fun one to watch. So I mean it's just getting into the weeds on some of those pieces to make sure that I've got a good understanding.

Speaker C: God, I had forgotten about strength finders and you know, just assessments in general. And I'm um, mentioning it because you've touched on two things that. But strength finders was also recently kind of resurfaced in, in our lives. One of our clients the company called Cloverleaf, they do AI coaching for managers. And I. It's just, you know, you talked about the importance of managers and giving them the tools they need to succeed in kind of an ever changing world, and that's what they do. But they leverage your whatever assessment data you have, that Strength Finders being one of them. And I just, like, I'm a disc person because I spent a lot of time on sales teams, but it's like that. You can never go wrong going back to that data and reassessing yourself and others, like in your immediate realm of influence. Uh, and so love that you did that.

Speaker B: And Courtney, on the Gallup Strength Finders, are you comfortable sharing what the data said? Like, what did you learn from that experience? That, that maybe you, uh, maybe it was like a blind spot beforehand.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. So it was kind of interesting. And I'm always. I love taking assessments years apart because inevitably something might change. And my question for the, you know, coach or whoever's doing the assessment is always, is that normal? Like, should I be changing? Like, should my DNA stay the same? And I think, no, probably not. Because you're shaped based on the experiences that you have. You know, I'll give you kind of a strength and maybe, uh, and also a blind spot that came out of that assessment. And I think from a strength perspective, I have a very strong activator in my kind of DNA. And so I like to. One is futuristic and two is activator for me. So seeing the future, which kind of makes sense when you think about all this roadmap work that we've done, but then also having the skills to get people excited and really activate the roadmap. Good with execution kind of plan your work, work your plan. So those things I was expecting to see. Um, but the blind spot there is making sure that we're pausing to ask the right questions. And, you know, I gave the coach the challenge. I said, I'm still a relatively new CPO. I've got two years in the saddle. I have 10 with Neighborly, but two here. And I've done a lot. We've had a lot of unique experiences thrown our way. And that would probably be a whole nother podcast. But there's been a lot that's happened, you know, in our future, including the transition of a CEO. You know, our current CEO is two years in, in July, but we've had kind of a change pattern, um, as you would expect, you know, with a new leader. And he and I work really well together, and that's Been great, but still new. And so I'm like, sitting in those ELT meetings. We've got a fairly new leadership team, you know, coming off of a new CEO, and I find that I tend to be a little bit, bit more reserved and commentary, and I'm not with my own team, but in that setting, I might be. And so she brought up, too, she's like, well, responsibility is also, you know, a theme for you. And she's like, it, uh, more than likely is coming out of, you know, you aren't wanting to speak for marketing or for technology or for whatever department it is because you feel an obligation to let them speak into their own business. And I'm like, yep, spot on. But she was like, your blind spot is like, you're there to help the team go faster. She's like, your activator helps you to move the conversation along. So she said, I get, you know, I don't want to seem like a know it all, and I'm not a know it all. Like, I don't know everything, right? But she said, if that's the watch, she said, you need to frame it as a question. Like, if you know where the team needs to go, frame it as a question. Hey, guys, have you thought about, you know, this, that, or the other? Where this, that or the other is probably the answer, but it helps the team to get there faster. And just that one little, like, tip was a very good. Aha, uh, moment for me. I'm like, this hour was worth, you know, every bit of my time because that was such a good. That's something I could put into practice right away. You know, if I've already. If I had the thought that this is the answer, frame it as a question to help the team get there faster. Because my job in the room is to activate it and make it happen. So that was kind of a. Both a strength and a blind spot, I guess, combined. The other one, you know, that I would share. I am not high on empathy, which for an HR leader, I feel like a lot. Most HR leaders may be high. Some probably aren't. And as I was talking her through that, I'm like, that one is always a personal. Like, like, oh, should I be higher here? And it's not that I care deeply, right. About the organization and people. And our. My CEO and I, we joke a lot because he always says, he's like, I'm the heart and you're the head, and we're supposed to be the opposite. And I'm like, but as in a joking way. And that is true. Like, he even on stage, like, he's kind of the jokester. And I'm very, you know, um, just follow the script, right? And so it's a good dynamic, but I'm like, should I be higher there? And it has moved up, by the way. It used to be really low. Now it's a bit, you know, mid level. And as I was explaining, she's like, you know, she said, I'm not sure that having a high empathy. She said, to be honest, I don't know that you can walk through the experiences you've walked through and it probably would have slowed you down because there would have been a lot of emotion. You know, we lost our CEO tragically in an accident. That's what sparked, you know, the search for the new one in a very tragic accident where he lost his life. And it's just helping an organization move through that. She's like, it's probably good that empathy was lower for you because you're able to separate those things. And she also mentioned, she's like, I bet you're the calm in the room. And I said, as a matter of fact, I am. Um, like, that's been feedback I get a lot from business partners, is that if I'm in the room, all of a sudden things calm down because I just don't like, it's. There's not going to be a ton of emotion around some of those things. So it's, it's kind of interesting. Something I thought was maybe not a strength. She was like, actually, I think it's a good thing. And here's why. And this is, you know, how it might look different if it were in your top. So interesting stuff. I would highly recommend if you haven't revisited like I had in, um, 10 or 15 years, it's worth the time.

Speaker C: Fascinating. Yeah, I'm a big believer in assessments and knowing. I have a curiosity that I just want to know why I'm wired the way I'm wired, why other people are wired the way they are, and like a pursuit of like, just being better, being better for myself and being better in my interactions with others. I am also not a high empathy person. Interestingly enough, AI is really good at that. Like, you know, I can give it kind of my thought and my intent and it can help me, uh, call out or like, you know, transform. Help me find words that are more empathetic in their, in nature. But when you put me in a crisis situation, I am very calm. I would be curious, you know, know that Would be good for Daniel. Like, I, you know, freaking world could be burning around me, and I'm like, all right, here's what we need to do. Like, we got this. You got this. I got this. Let's go. We're gonna get out of here now. But it's just so relatable. And, you know, similarly, just to share my assessment data, I haven't gone through a formal, like, revisit, but it's come back up because I am a high d. Uh, in the disc world that just driver, and I don't have a lot of patience sometimes for pioneering and pioneers. Sometimes pioneers just have to pioneer to pioneer. Like, that's just, like, who they are. And I have been in a lot of brainstorming or ideating and, you know, found myself, like, getting impatient or just feeling like. Like, honestly, what the are we doing here? Excuse my language, but the reality is, like, we need that, and that's what transforms our business. And Daniel's really, really good at that. And, you know, I'm grateful that he's really good at that, because I'm not super patient about it. And, you know, business takes time. Like, all of this takes time. It took 10 years, you know, to transform. You know, this journey that you've been on, and you've just shared, like, so much transformation is happening. And it's a good reminder for me, like, you know, it's good to pump the brakes sometimes. I don't know. Daniel, anything coming up for you? Because we're. Unfortunately, we're at that point where we're gonna have to turn it. Turn the corner here and bring it to a close.

Speaker B: I mean, I think you nailed it. Your reflection is pretty spot on about the two of us. And yes, we could be in the scariest, worst situation ever, and you'd be like, oh, we're good. We're okay. And there's something to be said for that. Like, sometimes, whenever, um, I'm going into, like, panic mode about something. I'm like, wait, why am I panic making? And I think about you. I'm like, Stephen or Despica. Uh, it is what it is. We'll deal with it.

Speaker C: We got it.

Speaker A: True.

Speaker C: Well, I think we are at that point. Courtney, this has been great. We have a couple. Before we end the pod, as you know, we have a couple more traditions. The next tradition, we call it rapid fire questions. The same ish, uh, set of questions that we ask every guest. You ready to do this?

Speaker A: Let's do it. It.

Speaker C: Awesome. First question. What's one piece of Advice you'd give to someone in HR who's just starting their career.

Speaker A: I love that question. It's hard to pick one, but since it's rapid fire, I would say display ownership in your work from day one and you'll get where you want to go. I think when I think back, I said yes to everything. Things on my job description, not on my job description. Things I didn't want to do. Everything from filling out the pesky spreadsheet that no one else wanted to touch to literally cleaning a dish in the sink. Like, you just display that sense of ownership in your work work, and it will tell people kind of who you are and what, what you're about. So I never view anything as extra work. I guess that's the advice. Like, don't view it as extra work. View it as a chance to show ownership and drive.

Speaker B: That's the first time we've gotten that response. And it's one of my favorite. Next question. If your team gave you a superpower nickname, what would it be?

Speaker A: Okay, so I asked them this question because I thought this might come. So I'm like, I don't, I don't. I have no idea. Uh, so give me a sense. And so the one that kept coming to the top was the company compass. They were like, we would probably name you a compass because you know where we're headed. You keep everybody aligned and you navigate whatever's in the way while staying like, calm and collected and just point in the right direction. So I liked that thought. That was nice.

Speaker C: When we get lost, you help us find our way. I love that. Next question. What's a strategy or practice from another company you'd love to steal?

Speaker A: I think if I had to point to one, one thing that I've heard a lot about and do think makes a difference. It's. I believe Google is the one that pioneered this, but it's then spread to other organizations. They have a requirement, and I don't know if it's every part of the business, but for certain parts of the business, probably the less, you know, not in customers, homes, et cetera. Giving 20%, a fifth of your time to working on things that are not in your job description, that are not technically, you know, their primary role. And they do that just because it gives people permission to innovate. And we talk a lot about big ideas. We do consider our employees as owners of the business here at Neighborly through a broad based ownership program. So we want them to, to actually have the time and the space to ideate and bring those ideas back, but you got to give them the time. So I'm impressed that Google does that and learning more about how they do that.

Speaker C: I'm thinking about Gmail, Google Maps, like, all things that probably could have come out of that.

Speaker B: I'm thinking about doing like a little LinkedIn series, like short little video clips on the responses that we've gotten to this question. This is such a good one. I hadn't heard that one in a while. I used to work for a company called Humu, which was founded by, I guess the first chief people officer of Google or one of the first. And this was something that he brought over to Humu. They would give us like 20% of our time back to work on something that wasn't in our job. And I think it was a little bit more broad. It could be something within the company, but it could also be like a side project. So I love that one. All right, last rapid fire question. Who should we have on next?

Speaker A: I think, uh, somebody that I just think is full of wisdom and has a ton of different experiences in her background. Also in our portfolio here with KKR is Martha May with Varsity Brands. If you haven't met Martha or you don't know her, she, she's always great to talk to and just get some wisdom bombs out of. So she'd be a good one.

Speaker C: Amazing. We would be honored. And we'll definitely see if she's interested. And that gets us to our final tradition. Courtney. We call it one word, close a word or a few. Just as we think of the last hour that flew by, again, how we want to wrap things up.

Speaker A: I'm going to go with plan your work and work your plan. I just think it's a classic example of today's conversation, but just a great one to live by.

Speaker B: I'm going to say know yourself and be ready.

Speaker C: I'm going to go with own your work. I love that, that piece of advice. Well, we did it, y'.

Speaker B: All.

Speaker C: Courtney, this has been an absolute blast. You know, we, we probably riffed a little more than what we alluded to as we were about to hit record, but I think it was awesome. And I just. We really appreciate you sharing your story and joining us on the pod. So thank you for, for being a guest.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me ready.

Speaker B: Bye, guys. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Modern People Leader. We really, really appreciate it. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating. It would mean the world to us and connect with us. On LinkedIn. We want to know what you think about the show and you can find links to both of our profiles in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and see you on the next episode.