Earlier this week we held the first annual Transformational HR Summit in Seattle, organized by Seattle HR Collective, a joint venture of Reverb and Recruiting Bandwidth. When we created the HR Collective nine months ago, our goal was to bring together experienced leaders across Seattle’s startup HR community, fostering knowledge sharing and learning. Today we have more than 700 members, and it’s been incredible to see the rich exchange of ideas each month as our members continue to elevate their roles as business partners and leaders within their organization.
Our HR Summit featured a phenomenal lineup of speakers with Dan Spaulding, Chief People Officer at Zillow Group giving the opening keynote, and panel sessions with other influential leaders including Mala Singh from Electronic Arts, Shannon Anderson from Madrona, Myra Gregorian from Seattle Children’s, Sean Kelley from Amazon, Leang Chung from Getty Images, Christy Johnson from Artemis Connection, Aiko Bethea from Fred Hutch, Ruchika Tulshyan from Candour, and Nicole Maddox from Growth Talent Advisors.
Collectively, this group of leaders and more than 150 attendees from local Seattle companies discussed the future of HR and Talent trends – from DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), how to be a talent advisor vs. a recruiter, and how to build a healthy culture from day one. Our speakers shared rich and engaging perspectives, with full participation by our audience throughout the day.
The Importance of Shared Values and Bridging the HR and Talent Trust Gap
Kicking off the summit, Dan Spaulding shared the candid, behind the scenes story of how Zillow built a culture of “disruptors”, moving from a startup to billion dollar business in its first decade in existence. Today Zillow Group has nearly 4,000 employees with a $10B market cap. As the company grew, one of the biggest keys to success has been establishing a common language and shared values that everyone in the organization can live by.
“The decisions and language you use as business leaders today will echo into the future of your company,” shared Spaulding. “If you want to be transformative, you need to have a mission that resonates, a common language around what you value, but you can’t ask your employees to value something and not live it in the way you treat your employees.”
In addition to providing an inside look at Zillow Group’s culture and company values, Dan also shared some great examples of the actions the company has taken to develop a supportive and employee centric culture, while creating a more open discussion around diversity and belonging. For instance, Zillow recently adopted Bravely, a unique platform that enables employees to talk confidentially with a certified leadership coach.
Spaulding discussed the “trust gap” that often plagues the HR profession, and the importance of bolstering transparency and establishing a space where employees feel safe to voice their concerns.
Turning the Corner on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Following Dan’s keynote, our Inclusive Culture panel shared advice and strategies organizations can take to improve DEI. No culture can be healthy if isn’t inclusive, and the perennial question of who owns culture kicked off our discussion.
Aiko Bethea, Esq., Head of Diversity and Inclusion, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center asserted that HR is the “caretaker of culture.” She explained that inclusivity has to be mindfully shaped from the start. Deciding not to do so is risky, because you have a culture whether you’re forming it intentionally or not.
“Culture is much easier to deal with it early on,” shared Christy Johnson, CEO with Artemis Connection. “We work with a lot of startups, CEOs say they don’t have time to deal with culture right now. And they’re missing the point because it’s being formed whether you focus on it or not.” Our panelists also emphasized that building an inclusive culture must be co-created at every level of the organization, and creating change starts with the CEO.
Myra Gregorian, SVP, Senior People Officer Seattle Children’s took the question of equity a step further asking: “How are you going to bring equity to life?” Gregorian explains: “Equity is a core value at Seattle Children’s.. We look at equity as how do we help each individual person associated with the organization reach their highest potential? It’s an outcome to some degree. How do we turn that into behaviors?”
The panel discussed real-world examples and actions companies can take to respond effectively in the wake of #MeToo, as companies across industries from CBS Corp., Google, Uber and Nike have seen their collective cultures fail to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination, and fail to act appropriately when concerns were raised.
Mala Sihgh, Chief People Officer at Electronic Arts shared a timely example here. EA recently released a new game (Battlefield V) prominently featuring women in combat as part of its World War II setting, which sparked anger from their core gaming group (including sexist comments saying women didn’t participate in WWII). EA was appalled by the negative reaction, and quickly responded online.
“Our CEO Andrew Wilson was bold and unequivitable in his response at our town hall,” shared Singh “He literally said ‘if this is happening to you at EA, please come forward. If you see this happening to someone else you are obligated to come forward’. After that conversation, we saw a 2-3x uptick in people coming forward and talking about things that were happening.”
As a part of its’ broader employee engagement efforts, EA created a neutral body whose sole job is to investigate people’s concerns and recommend remedial action. “We are restructuring our HR function to create two groups,” shared Singh. “One that is focused on driving the objectives of the business, and one whose focused on creating an incredible employee experience every single day and advocating for the needs of our front line managers and workers.”
**Stay tuned for a more in-depth posts on DEI. In line with diversity month in Oct, we’ll be blogging more on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as upcoming panels at Seattle Startup Week and our monthly Seattle HR Collective events.
The Value of Being a Talent Advisor vs. a Recruiter
We heard from some of Seattle’s top talent advisors including: Shannon Anderson, Director of Talent, (Madrona Ventures), recruiter for 30~ years; Sean Kelley (Amazon), leads recruiting for Worldwide Ops; Leang Chung, Senior Director, HR (Getty Images); Nicole Maddox, Founder, CEO, (Growth Talent Advisors) who shared invaluable insights from some Seattle’s best talent leaders on the distinctions between being a Talent Advisor vs. a Recruiter, and how to elevate recruiting efforts to become a more strategic function of your company.
In today’s market, hiring well is the #1 predictor of a company’s success. The stakes are high to find the right talent for the right role, and the wrong hires translate to massive costs and barriers to a company’s productivity and momentum. So why would you sideline a key function?
Recruiting well is not about filling orders. It’s coming to the table with a strategy that makes sense for the business. Shannon Anderson summed up the difference between a recruiter and a talent advisor.
“A recruiter thinks of a hiring manager as a customer, a talent adviser thinks of the company as their client.” She went on to further explain that talent advisors show up as business partners with a strategy and collaborate with hiring managers to do what is in the best interest of the company as a whole, rather than just pleasing a hiring manager. It’s imperative that your recruiting efforts are smart, strategic and set up your company for long-term success. Shannon states “I can’t think of any company that’s gone public that doesn’t have an amazing recruiting machine. Recruiting is one of your biggest levers. It’s not an afterthought.”
Sean Kelley, Talent Acquisition Director for Amazon Worldwide Operations added “Hiring machines are fueled by great sourcing and understanding of the audience.” Kelley went on to add that being a Talent Advisors requires one to stand their ground and ask for what they know they need in order to produce success for the company’s business goals. “Be convicted. You cannot let your team get crushed. Go in and ask for what you need.”
Prior to running Growth Talend Advisors, Nicole Maddox, headed up Talent and HR at Convoy. Having worked with many companies at different stages, she notes “most managers/companies won’t know something isn’t working with their recruiting process until it hurts and someone says “fix this!” Nicole emphasized the critical value of having and tracking your recruiting data. Good data will tell you where you’re falling down, and where you can make adjustments.
Leang Chung, Senior Director of Human Resources at Getty Images addressed the HR trust that can happen between HR and recruiting teams. Prior to working at Getty, Leang worked for a fast growing startup. When she noticed the company’s HR and talent teams were siloed, she found a physical solution by mixing up the seating. This resulted in deeper connection between the teams on a personal and professional level and an increased sense of accountability and responsibility to one another.
**Stay tuned for more in depth blogs about Talent and Recruiting: For those of you who weren’t able to attend the summit, in the coming days, Recruiting Bandwidth will be sharing an in depth post highlighting more insights from our panelists.
Is Anyone Listening? Grow Your Coaching Skills
We closed with an interactive workshop led by Susan Mann, on how to grow your coaching skills. Susan is the former Director of Learning and Development for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and serves as Chief Learning Officer for Brene Brown.
Mann reflected on some of the key takeaways from the summit, discussing why coaching is a linchpin skill for success, and how to engage in effective coaching conversations. She also discussed how to empower your team (without micromanaging), how to create an inclusive environment and build trust as a coach, while continuing to focus on productivity and achieving business goals.
Mann emphasized that while coaching is a key skill for managers, most aren’t versed. She was quick to point out, though, that coaching skills are easy to build. With a bit of support, managers can improve their coaching skills, and learn to hold effective 5-10 minute coaching sessions that benefit their teams.
** Again stay tuned, in the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing a more in depth blog post featuring additional insights on what goes into growing your coaching skills.
Key takeaways from this year’s summit
In summary, here are just some of the many takeaways from this year’s summit:
- Moving the needle on diversity and inclusion doesn’t happen based on awareness and education alone. As HR professionals, we need to redesign and be thoughtful of our tools and methods. They are a number of practical and effective steps companies can take to make progress on DEI, effectively measure it and evolve their culture. There’s no one right approach, but there are tons of best practice examples, including those shared at the Summit, we can all can draw from.
- HR doesn’t own culture; leadership owns culture, so change has to start at the top, and reverberate through every part of the organization – from recruiting to your HR processes to coaching and development.
- Talent Strategy and executing well on it is one of the number one predictors of a company’s success. Treat it as a strategic business function. For those of you who are recruiters, show up as Talent Advisors with a plan, ready to collaborate on what’s best for the business overall versus filling roles.
- Creating something transformative starts with having a common language and shared values that everyone in your organization can live by, learn from and coach others to pass on.
We couldn’t be more thrilled with how our first annual Transformational HR Summit went. A BIG THANK YOU to all of our incredible speakers, sponsors and attendees for making this such a dynamic event!! The goal of the Seattle HR Collective is to foster and build a vibrant community discussion around these critical topics and share key learnings as each of us act as leaders and ambassadors within our own organizations.
We looking forward to hearing updates and additional shared learnings from the group at our upcoming events, meetups and workshops. Until next time!! Cheers
by: Jennie Ellis and Mikaela Kiner
