Making a Better Experience for Those Ahead of Us
Episode Notes
Kristin Thielking, joins Paul on this week’s episode of 52 Humans. She shares her perspective on why she believes making a better experience for those ahead of us is important.
About the Guest:
Kristin Thielking
Chief People Officer
Vendavo
As a key advisor to the CEO and member of the executive team for global Human Resources, Kristin has the vision for developing, driving and leading strategic human capital initiatives and organizational development in high-growth, fast-paced organizations. She is known for her innate ability to not only drive the strategy, but to align the cultural purpose to the overall human capital initiatives, as well.
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Paul Wolfe
Hi everyone, and welcome to another weekly episode of 52. Humans, the vlog casts on stories of human first leadership. I'm your host, Paul wolf and a human first leadership advocate. And I hope this show can be a source of inspiration to us all to transform our workplaces by returning to the humanity that binds us. Does that today's episode is going to be amazing. I am looking so forward to chatting with Kristin fielding about human first and empathetic leader, leadership. Kristin is the Chief People Officer at fin Davao. She is a great friend of mine and a wonderful, amazing human being. I've got lots of other adjectives and things I can throw out there about Kristen. I've known her for a long time, probably longer than I'd like to admit these days. But it's been a wonderful friendship. Kristen, thank you for being on the show. And welcome to 52 humans.
Kristin Thielking
Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me. And yeah, I try not to count the number of years that we've been friends.
Paul Wolfe
It's just, you know, the birthdays in the years they get exactly. So you know, how are things going into Davao? Tell us a little bit tell the audience a little bit about kind of what a Chief People Officer at the novel does every single day?
Kristin Thielking
Yeah, absolutely. Things are going really well. So the organization has grown, we've gone through a couple of acquisitions of late. We're in eight countries, 40 4050, people weren't good to people, which is awesome. So we're still a pretty small company, but in the pricing software industry. So the organization has has really done great things, we've seen a lot of transformation. In the time that I've been there, I was really brought in as an opportunity to help evolve our culture, as our business was transforming from an on prem solution to a SaaS solution. So to was our culture evolving. And so it's been a great opportunity to partner with the leaders of the organization and help bring our culture forward and bring into kind of our day to day this opportunity to focus on the people in our organization and make leadership decisions. Starting first with our people.
Paul Wolfe
That's amazing. Like, you know, Chief people, officers have such interesting and challenging and bizarre we were talking earlier, bizarre job sometimes. But leadership and culture are words that we hear a lot today. And I think, you know, sometimes they're understood clearly. And sometimes they're misunderstood, clearly, can you talk to us a bit and talk to the audience a bit about the viewers about, like, your example of human first leadership, something you've experienced, or something that you've exhibited? And tell us your story?
Kristin Thielking
Yeah, I'd be happy to. So you know, I thought about this. And it's really something that I experienced and was really foundational, in helping to shape my decision to go into human resources as my career. So my very first job out of college, I was working in a PR role in a direct mail marketing organization. And I was young, I was ambitious, I was super excited, it's going to take the world by storm. And six months into my position, my position was eliminated. And I was I was pretty emotionally wrecked. And the process by which the position was eliminated, and the decision was made and the communication, just the whole process around it was really not human centered. And I committed to myself then that if I ever had the opportunity to have influence into how these things were handled, that I would do it differently. And, lo and behold, through the years, I have had too many occasions where you know, you have you separate employment with an individual for a variety of reasons, whether it be you know, performance related decision or an organizational downsizing, the outcome is the same that the individual separates from their role. And I always want to ensure that as we approach these conversations and the process around an individual separating that we always think about it and the two key words I always use are dignity and respect. The individual should always leave the organization feeling a sense of dignity and respect. And sometimes that gets lost in the process. And organizations can kind of lose sight of that and the individual leaves the company feeling very differently than maybe how they felt when they were an employee.
Paul Wolfe
Yeah, I love sadly as I say, I love that example. But as as a former chief HR officer as well, like that's the crappy part of the job. And I love you know, the the dignity part of it because I also find that and I think it's just an inherent in the way, HR folks are trained or taught or see other people doing it. You know, it's I, and I've been a part of this sometimes too, and I've evolved over time similar to you is, you know, okay, we're going to talk to this person at noon today. So their system access has to be turned off at 1201. And I would always be like, Why are they a criminal? You know, they haven't done anything like if it's if it's a mutual separation, or its performance, or whatever the kid job elimination, in your case, this is a human being sitting across the table. And we were talking earlier, too. This is a business decision that has nothing to do with a human. So I love how your experience what you experience, on the contrary of what my book is about, and what we're what we're here talking about, changed? How you approach it. How? How has it? Do you think it's changed? Other things, other processes that you've developed in HR? And can you give us a little, a little taste of that as well?
Kristin Thielking
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I always try to think about any process, any program that we put together, what is the desired end result? And what's that desired, end state, and then back our way into it. So kind of use some design thinking. But if the program or the process is designed to enhance the lives of our employees, or to make things easier for our employees, it's the right program. If it's processed for process sake, or for compliance sake, or things of that nature, how do we ease the burden or the responsibility so that it's easier for our employees to move through? So I think you always just have to keep that. Keep in the front of your mind, not in the back your mind, but the front of your mind that these programs that you're putting in place are to make things better for our employees, not to make things harder or more cumbersome?
Paul Wolfe
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's, that's human first leadership, it's like, to your point, it's that human is always in the front of the mind, it's top of mind or their top of mind, not something you think of down the road, I similarly, I've seen so many, I've seen so many processes and programs put in place, just because somebody wanted one. And it like doesn't really enhance the employee experience or their life at the company or their work at the company. And that's tough.
Kristin Thielking
It is, you know, a specific example that I can tell you about. So basic and so simple. It was during COVID, we as an organization, you know, every every organization was going through its own struggles in working remotely. It were very geographically distributed in 450 countries. And what we recognized in when you're in, that are 450 employees in eight countries, when you're in that many countries, there are very few common days off. And the number of common holidays globally are very, very slim. So we implemented something so basic for global recharge days, one per quarter, and the whole company stops. And on that day, it always coincides with a three day weekend or a four day weekend otherwise, so it gives more of a break. But the whole company is quiet. And I've heard more positive feedback from our employees about how impactful that is in their lives, just to give a little bit of extra breathing room. And it's something that's just become iconic in our company. And I hope that it's something that will always be there. And you know, if I'm ever had another organization someday that I can take into another organization, if it doesn't already exist. It's just such a nice breath of fresh, fresh air for everybody in every country.
Paul Wolfe
It is we did. So we were in a q&a When I was at Indeed, beginning of pandemic and somebody asked about giving people birthdays off below and CO CEO and I after the q&a talked about it. And I said that I said it's just like a PTO day and we had unlimited PTO open PTO. And like what if we just closed for a day very like the same, the same thing, because there's no email traffic I have to worry about even when I take time off PTO, or personal day or a mental health day, whatever you want to call it. There's still stuff flying around, the other people are still working. And so we call we ended up calling them I think our internal comms VP ended up paying them you days, it was about our employees. And it's when we, you know, similarly, we looked at calendar holiday calendars, which, you know, make my eyes glaze over, because there were so many of them and like, they overlap and like do we actually have the same time off? Sometimes it was Christmas, sometimes it wasn't depending on the country. And it was a day that we didn't the day, a month, a day a month where everything was just quiet. And people like you know, talk about it. They're trying to get their company I've had other company like HR folks reach out to me like how did you do this? Why? And I'm like, it was an employee question that just turned into like, hey, let's and it was like let's do this now. I'm sure what the mandava two there were some things that have to happen on that day. So some people may have to keep an eye on things and they get another day off and so but they're trying to rotate that but it is It's little things like that, that really look we're in business is to make money and it's a business and we all get that. But the business is run by human beings and what better to think of and something that's going to help them just take a break. It's such a such a great example. I thank you for your time. Thank you for your story. I appreciate you sharing in this specific examples.