How 3 HR leaders launched their innovative ideas in uncertain times
Post-pandemic, people leaders are being tested on whether they can continue to deliver value and solve pressing business challenges.
Editor-in-Chief
Often, the most pressing business issues facing a company are—at their root—human issues. Which makes them HR issues.
That was the case for Charter Communications, a broadband connectivity company and cable operator serving more than 32 million customers.
“Our big challenge is turnover. Among our frontline workers, we have the highest turnover within the first year of employment,” Beth Biggs, Charter’s Group Vice President, Benefits & ESC, told an audience at Guild’s Opportunity Summit in late 2023.
The inability to hold on to workers meant that Charter might fall short of having enough skilled workers to install the cables they needed to meet their ambitious goal of bringing broadband millions of new customers.
“We always say if we can get workers to the three-year mark, they’re here to stay,” Biggs explained. But to reach a geographically dispersed population with engaging programs that inspired them to make a longer-term commitment to the company, the People Team had to think differently.
“Employees are absolutely expecting something different from us today than they were even a few years ago.”
Beth Biggs, Group VP, Benefits & ESC and Charter Communications
“They’re not just looking for competitive pay or great benefits; they’re looking for career opportunities," Biggs said. "They don’t just want a job, they want to know how you will help them grow.”
The answer at Charter was a bold new way of packaging their industry-leading investments in pay and benefits. But, like so many complex and new people investments, getting it approved and launched took thought, creativity, and perseverance.
Back to basics: what is the business need?
Since Covid, the influence of HR has grown dramatically. The tight budgets of 2023 and 2024 have become the first true test of whether CHROs can maintain their newly found favor and if HR teams can deliver the value their business counterparts need in a time of uncertainty.
The three HR leaders on stage at Opportunity Summit’s Making the Case For People Investments session came from different industries, but they cited a similar approach to launching visionary HR programs: start by developing a deep understanding of both the macro business environment and your employees’ evolving expectations. These are the ideas that will win.
At Darden, a multi-brand restaurant company that operates 1900+ locations including Olive Garden and Outback Steakhouse, the roller coaster of consumer behavior gave the People team cues on where to focus. At insurance and financial services brand USAA, supply chain issues, interest rates, and climate change have had a huge impact on their business. And a multi-generational customer base poses new challenges.
“Our service is our secret sauce,” Tamla Oates-Forney, former CHRO at USAA, explained. But younger generations are more cost-sensitive and less likely to show brand affinity, so USAA must increasingly compete on both customer service and price. This requires different skills from customer service reps than in the past.
Sarah King, Chief People and Diversity Officer at Darden, said that at Darden the expectations of hourly workers changed significantly post-pandemic. While these employees can’t work from home the way that desk-based employees can, they still want options in terms of schedules and PTO.
“The number one change we’ve seen is a demand for flexibility, and we’ve really had to shift our paradigm about what it means to manage an hourly workforce,” King explains.
“Flexibility is the new engagement currency, particularly in a frontline environment.”
Sarah King, Chief People and Diversity Officer at Darden
For maximum impact, think long-term
While it’s true that external market forces and internal needs are always evolving, an impactful HR strategy can’t merely be reactive. Maintaining relevance to the hot topics for the Board this quarter and aligning to multi-year strategic needs is critical.
Oates-Forney explained that USAA switched from a just-in-time hiring and development model to a more long-term approach of strategic workforce planning or SWP.
Companies have long had SWP functions, but these functions have evolved from working at the job level to taking advantage of skills data to work at a more granular level. They are focusing on understanding where the business is going, the skills required, when they need those skills, and how many they need.
“With SWP, we can make sure our investments in learning and development are meeting the company at its point of need. That way, when you need that talent, it’s already skilled and ready.”
Tamla Oates-Forney, former CHRO at USAA
She also talked about partnering with her CFO on unit cost analysis, to get more granularity on how much HR’s products and services are costing USAA. The first question to ask is: do you need this service? Then, is there a more efficient way to get this service? What does that involve? And finally: what does that mean to the organization?
Never stop marketing
One risk of over-indexing on long-term strategy is that your internal audience loses track of how this abstract planning translates into tangible solutions to their current burning problems. Who cares about anticipating future skills needs when you have a critical skills gap right this very moment?
It’s crucial to keep marketing your vision and the results you’re already seeing from smaller initiatives, as you build toward your ultimate outcome. HR teams can only do this if they've mastered delivering on two things at the same time: gathering robust data, and forming that data into stories like a master marketer.
Biggs explained: “You keep the long-term in focus, and then over time you make incremental improvements that serve short-term needs.” In other words, stay true to your vision and keep educating people on what you want to build for them, where you want to take them in the long term.
And don’t forget about the power of branding. Biggs explained that Charter had been investing in innovative programs for years. But when they put all of their proposed people offerings under a catchy name, “Investing in You,” suddenly internal stakeholders took note—and got on board.
“It’s funny that when you brand something and start talking about it under one umbrella, it really resonates,” she said.
Lead with the math
Painting the vision is one part of the equation, but what about the real-word impact to the bottom line?
When Oates-Forney approached her CFO with a proposal for an education benefit that wouldn’t just cover employee tuition, but also tuition for workers’ dependents, she used numbers to connect the dots and show how it would help lower the “unprecedented double-digit turnover” they had been seeing since the pandemic, which put their reputation for incredible customer service at risk.
She explained that not only would the program increase prospective employees’ interest in working at USAA, but it meant they’d be able to retain them longer. “I did the math. If every employee has 2.3 kids, and those kids are in school at different times, they’re going to stay until that last kid is out of school,” she said.
Biggs noted that data isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s an imperative.
“When you talk to your finance people and they’re asking about ROI, always go back to the data. If you don’t have data, they’re going to look at you and tell you you’re just talking about fluff.”
Beth Biggs, Charter Communications
Charter’s results could hardly be labeled as “fluffy.” Since “Investing in You” launched in Fall 2022, Charter has seen a 20 basis point reduction in voluntary turnover.
King emphasized that the key to working effectively with a CFO is like working with any other stakeholder: empathy. Take the time to understand what they care about and how they like to communicate. Build the relationship, tailor your message, and be cognizant of what they are held accountable for.
Balancing the future with tomorrow
In essence, HR is always about balancing the long-term and the short-term.
“Attracting talent is a short-term goal. Getting them to stay is our longer-term initiative,” Biggs explained. “The best case scenario is when you have an initiative that serves both needs.”
And those are the initiatives that will deliver the best returns.
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