Policies, Practices & Procedures 101 w/ Debbie Lawrence | Ep. 81

In this episode, David and Gary interview the Founder and CEO of Talent Forward HR, Debbie Lawrence. They dish up the deets on hiring, firing and moving forward in the new age of tech and time management.

Links:

Debbie Lawrence LinkedIn

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/14/opinion/middle-age-millennials.html

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

David: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter and I am joined with retired professional wrestler Gary Voight. How's it going, man? What was your name again? When you were on the big in the squared circle? Do you remember?

Gary: 0:22

Yeah, the ninja who shall not be named?

David: 0:25

Oh, nice. A little Voldemort action. Nice. Nice.

Gary: 0:27

See, Ricky, the dragon. Steamboat was my hero. So I went, Oh, do the top row and the small guy. But yeah,

David: 0:34

you know, Ray Mysterio. Do you? Where did you where you're looted to wear a mask?

Gary: 0:38

I don't know who that is. I stopped watching wrestling in the 80s.

David: 0:42

And Ray Mysterio, Jr. Now. Alright, fine, fine. But more importantly, we are joined by Debbie Lawrence, who is the founder of talent forward. And we are excited to talk about that and learn how she got there. But first, I want to dive into a topic we've been talking a little bit about is leadership in general, it sounds pretty generic, but I want to make it more personal. And so when I say leadership, Debbie, what? First off I guess I should say welcome. Hi, how you doing?

Debbie: 1:15

Hi. I'm great. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Sure. Sure.

David: 1:19

So okay. Let me ask that again, because I flubbed it the first time my bad. When I say leadership, what does come what comes to mind? What does that mean to you personally, when you're in your role in your company?

Debbie: 1:34

For me, personally, when I hear that word, I think collaboration. So I can give you my own personal experiences with being a leader. And you have several different organizations and how I coach leaders now. Personally, I find that when you bring your team along with you, and there's some shared responsibility, obviously, with some direction at the top, and but giving autonomy and you know, a way for your team to collaborate and learn from each other, has exponential results. So using an example from my last corporate stint, I was a chief people officer with a technology company out of a base out of Maine. And I had team members from all over the country that I garnered through acquisition. And they came on board, mostly through acquisition, obviously, I had some organic hires. But they all came on board during the pandemic. So this team grew during a very interesting time, especially for HR. And, you know, I was appreciative of the fact that they all had prominent roles in their company, maybe not leadership roles, but prominent roles as HR professionals. And I immediately made sure everybody had a space that they were in charge of. So you know, whether that be, you know, somebody who's an HR business partner for our unit, somebody who's really focused on benefits and compliance, everybody had their ownership. And we collaborated as a group several times a week. So we, we spent a lot of time on Zoom, had probably had some zoom fatigue. And as soon as we could we got into a room with each other. And we would brainstorm. Everybody had a chance to speak, everybody had a chance to get feedback and give feedback. And it was probably the most dynamic time I've ever had as a leader. And, you know, now I bring that experience to the organizations that I've worked with as as consultants.

David: 4:04

Okay. So how, what is something? This is always a tricky one. What is something that has surprised you about leadership in it, something that was harder than you expected?

Debbie: 4:20

I think there are actually two different things. So as you're right, every generation is going to smell a little the one before or maybe the one coming after, right. But I think it's work styles that are just so different. And so it's not necessarily attitude. It's how they work. So you think about the boomer generation, they actually probably had some great work life balance, but they were put your head down, go do your nine to five, go home. Right. Also, between Boomers and Gen X, the workday started to limp in Jennex did that to themselves a little? Sure, you know, their, their, their attitude is come in for work, work, you know, work as many hours as you can to get seen, climb the corporate ladder, get more things, and which is a little you know, the get more things is a dramatic shift from from there the generation before them, right. So a little bit more of a throwaway generation Gen X are a lot of the current leaders in the in the workforce right now. Then you have mental millennials who came in and started putting up some very positive boundaries for themselves, technology has increased so much that, you know, now we're able to work anywhere, and they have they've adapted that like lifestyle, little. But now you've got Gen Z entering the workforce. And not only do they want work life balance, they want, you know, that remote lifestyle, which Genex is fighting against. And then you've got an added portion of the fact that they want to have a connection to their employers. So like I like the human or a cultural values connection that's so important to Gen Z. So there's which maybe not so much Gen X, a little bit of millennials, but this this, this Gen Z totally want to therefore go. Maybe compensation and benefits if they feel like they're doing meaningful work and for an organization that they can connect to. So it's really just styles of what they want is

David: 6:54

Gary relates really heavily to that Boomer conversation. He's, he's a boomer, you didn't look it, but he's making soul and

Gary: 7:01

not a boomer. And if I hear anybody say, OK, Boomer to me. Yeah.

David: 7:08

Got my new ammo. All right. On the podcast, okay. I want to learn more about you and how you got to where you are, let's just rip, Greg, this course. Tell me about you. And tell me about your company now and your history how you got here.

Debbie: 7:24

So my history is very interesting. When I went to school, I thought I was going to be a journalist. And I started my career in radio, back in Connecticut, at after a couple years that that career tanked on me. So I didn't really know what I was going to do. And someone said, you should try HR, you connect with people so well. And you know, because usually you go from HR to, from radio, to HR to natural progression. So I said, Sure, why not. And I really fell in love with it, you know, for many aspects, but mostly that people connection that that person had seen in me. So I, I started from scratch and worked my way up little by little, so HR coordinator, HR administrator, got my certifications. And I moved to North Carolina 2006 and started an HR generalist role with a very small company, it's no longer in existence. And it was only there for a short time when the company folded. And I few weeks later, I landed a job with a startup, a technology startup in Charlotte, it actually ended up being one of the most successful technology startups in, in the area. And I, you know, didn't know what I was joining at the time. But, you know, I came in at about 75 employees, I was there for 11 years and, you know, left after a very large acquisition. But, you know, in between the dashes from, you know, that 2008 timeframe to that but most to 2009 teen timeframe. I, I did I drew I grew the HR department from from nothing so, you know, little by little each year would add to that toolbox. You know, we had we were a private equity based firm, you know, after one sale, we read through the, the, the HR team a little bit more brought on an HR VP which was exponential to my career. She was she was in hazing, I learned so much from her. And, you know, when I left, I left as a director of HR, I had all aspects of had run all aspects of the, of the department at one point, but I knew who I was. And I knew I was not a larger company. And it was starting to go into that, that arena, down the road where they'd go public. That wasn't me, I fell in love with the startup world. So I took some time off, couple couple months, not a vast amount of time, refocused myself had some family things going on. And at that point, I started talent for HR two and a half years with, you know, during a pandemic, so I look back, I'm not sure how I got it from nothing to a team of, you know, 12, and all aspects of the function hadn't built out. But I knew at that point, I really wanted to try again, and get and get back into doing my own thing. And really focus on small businesses and startups, that's where my heart is, I think that's an arena that doesn't get a lot of love out there. They don't have the resources to to get the talent that they need to accelerate.

David: 11:23

So I'm gonna ask a really dumb question. What is HR? I mean, I know what it is human resources, I know. But practically speaking, what does that mean?

Debbie: 11:34

Well, I think two things. One, it is the foundations of the employee experience for an organization. And that's just not the experience for themselves with the experience for their families. So you're making sure you've got sound compliance, sound policies and procedures that support the employee, their family and their career growth. So that's, that's kind of the basic function. The second aspect of it, and I'm actually hate the term HR. I know everybody has coined a bunch of different terms for the for, for the, for the field, I like people in culture, I don't think culture is the sole responsibility of the team. But I think they, they influence it, and they nurture it. But it's really just connecting with individuals, you know, equipping leaders to connect with their teams. So everybody has a holistic experience when they're in the workplace. And by holistic, it's not just I come in, I do my job, I leave. I've got connections here. I'm growing, growing with this organization.

David: 13:06

What so practically speaking, if I'm hearing what you're saying your job is everything from the hiring of the people to the managing the boring stuff around that salaries. I mean, obviously, you're not doing accounting and paying them, but you're making sure they have the benefit packages, and you're doing their health insurance. And suddenly, that's the boring part of HR. Right, that has to be done. Yeah. But then you're talking about culture and stuff. So you're probably correct me if I'm wrong, the ones who are planning any outings, you're the ones planning any parties that are happening in the office, you're the ones who are making sure that there's social events going on and charitable events going on, and all of that, under the guise of whatever your values and alignments are for the company? Am I way off? Or is that? Um,

Debbie: 13:55

yes, and no, I, I will say this, there's a macro, there's a macro to that. Obviously, you know, culture and some of those fun events are great, and they do nurture the culture. But the things that are more important are equipping, equipping leaders to communicate with their team members, communicate with their teams as a whole, communicate inter departmental early.

David: 14:25

So how does that work, though? Are you just training on a leader that he needs to communicate or she needs to have a meeting? Or are you facilitating an outing that puts that leader amongst the people so they get to know each other? Like, what does that mean practically speaking,

Debbie: 14:39

all of it so you might have some foundational training, there's modeling of it. There's the practical approach. And I always took a coaching relationship with with leaders across my organization, and so, as well as my team members, so they would always have leaders that they worked with one on one. And they met with them bi weekly, to talk about their team's what's going on with their teams, you know, any changes that they've seen how to approach those changes, and really get them away from the hammer down mentality, that, you know, you often think of leaders. So that's one aspect of it. It's developing programs that offer growth opportunities for the for the team, for the company, I should say. So starting with onboarding, so really sound onboarding all the way through their their career. So being able to nurture those conversations, those performance, check ins, career development plans and keeping, keeping employees engaged. So I'm me and my team there, we're not doing it. But we're equipping the managers or coaching the leaders across the organization to do that, well. So yeah, so there's there's the macro part. And then there's the micro piece, which is the leaders themselves. So when

David: 16:27

you're dealing with startups, and that's who you you're focusing on, right? You like to smaller companies, they don't have budgets to go on nutso, and dive into training and events and all the goodies that you're talking about. So what does that mean, on their level? What are you doing? How do you support these startups?

Debbie: 16:48

Yeah, I don't necessarily think you need a ton of budget to do any of those things well, okay. So you know, going back to having those relationships with the leaders. So when I work with my startups, first of all, I need to make sure that I'm aligned with them. From a value standpoint, if I have, if I'm speaking with a startup who, hey, this is my baby, and let's acknowledge it is their baby. But they need hands and feet to get their baby off the ground. And they are not going to take feedback, they're not going to give autonomy to some of their their team members. It's not going to be a fit. So that's where I start, I have to start to make sure that I align with, with their philosophy, their mentality. I think the best way to approach this is to give you an example of one that I'm working with right now. It is a startup that started in 2017 by two college students. So they're about five, five years out of school. And they're doing more right than I have seen individuals with years of experience. And am I frozen, because I thought you guys were closing for a second. And what they do, right is the communication piece. So it is, and I have had to actually give them too much guidance for adjustments. Every week, there's a there's an all hands, it's a townhall. Everybody gets to present on what they're working with, what work they've done throughout the week, what challenges they have they've had, what their needs are, what successes they've had. And then Hey, open, open feedback. They also have an opportunity if they have an idea. It's great, you have an idea, come with an idea with a plan of how you're going to carry out carry this out with results. And, and I have seen such amazing innovation come out of this team just because they had someone say I trust you put the plan together doesn't have to be me.

Gary: 19:26

You mentioned earlier too, that you were in HR and smaller companies and larger companies and then extremely large companies and then you wanted to get back to the smaller startup thing. Now just because of the amount of tech layoffs and huge companies that are getting rid of people lately, and you know, you'll see memes and stuff like that, but HR often can be perceived as like, you know, HR is not working for you. They're working for the company. So maybe that's not your best route or don't don't know if it's not, don't trust them, or they're not really helping you as much as they say, I'm wondering if that level of, I guess acceptance or trust from the employee is very different between a large corporation and in a small corporation or a startup. And I'm just assuming, based on the size alone, that there are far more barriers between the employee and the actual connection to people in HR. So that kind of makes that, I guess, feel like HR and a large corporation is working more for the large corporation and doesn't care about the employee. Is that like a hurdle you've had to, like, deal with in the past? And is that one of the reasons why you like working with smaller companies now?

Debbie: 20:45

Yes, absolutely. In a large organization, you're often pigeonholed into specializing in one area of HR, and then you employees get tossed around. So okay, Debbie might be my favorite,

Gary: 21:02

and you just become the person that handles their health insurance. Or then there's a different person to ask about for this. And, you know, who knows how many vacation days I have left, and it's it's not actual, okay?

Debbie: 21:13

The partnership is just not there, the human connection is just not there. And that's just not something that I thought that's not an environment I thrive in. And some people do, and they do well. And I'm not saying that every large organization is like that, a lot of them do as well. So I don't want to knock them. It's just not the environment that

Gary: 21:34

I were just painting broad strokes of, you know, typical stuff that we're seeing, yeah.

David: 21:39

I'm just trying to think as a startup guy, myself, I have never thought of HR as something. I mean, it I need practical parts. But like, I know, when I need sales, right, I gotta go hire a sales guy. I know, when I need a lawyer, I know when I need an accountant. When do I need an HR person?

Debbie: 22:02

Pretty early. But it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody who is full time, it could be a business partner like myself. I'll tell you, the reason why you need to do that early. Yes, for some of the practical things, a lot of let's just get that out of the way. A lot of startups or small businesses don't know what they don't know. And they, they're not compliant. And in several ways,

David: 22:27

Oh, yeah. We found that out the hard way,

Gary: 22:29

a danger to the tester.

Debbie: 22:32

So my approach always is, hey, we're gonna we're going to have a partnership. However, let me do an overall deep dive into your policies, procedures, practices, etc. Let's get your compliance first. Because we can knock that stuff out really, really fast, then let's start hitting, you know, what's going well, what's not going well. And, and it matters a lot of time with employees. Especially talking to employees, as much as you can face to face. I mean, you probably hear a lot of companies do surveys, surveys are great. And they're actually sometimes like the starting point to conversations, but they shouldn't replace them.

Gary: 23:20

Nobody ever believes that they're actually anonymous.

Debbie: 23:23

Right? Right. And I tell you that I always say the best way to make sure that they're they're trusted is to do it when I say afterwards and follow up frequently. Because if you roll out results and say, Hey, we're gonna do these things, and you don't talk about it regularly, the the progress I guess, that you're making, no one will take them again. So I'll tell you whenever I've done that's, that's an area that whenever I've done surveys, I've always had very high participation and even higher position patiently later, just because of that approach. But yeah, it doesn't doesn't replace the one on one. So in some small businesses, too, they, they're often very familiar and, and not just relationship wise, they just start to get the that kind of, that's their culture, we'll hear a little one big family. But what happens is families families get dysfunctional and they don't always talk to each other. However, me coming in and being somewhat of a neutral party that they can talk to, that they get results out of. That's, that's important to them. So that's always my approach. Let's get the compliance stuff done. And then let's start on the interpersonal stuff with your with your team members. So yeah, it's it's it's not been a function. I think that a lot of startups have Thought of early. But if you are thinking, especially if you're thinking about growing, you know, whether organically or through acquisition, you want to do that early? Because it's really hard to.

Gary: 25:16

Are you also involved in hiring for the smaller companies that you're working for? Or is that something where typically they're not hiring too often? And if they go on a hiring, like, if they're growing, and they need to add five or six new people, are you involved in that?

Debbie: 25:32

I am. It typically they don't do, like you said, crazy, crazy runs of hiring, because they don't have tons of turnover and their their growth is a little bit slower. However, I will help them on the front end.

Gary: 25:53

Getting preparing them and stuff like that, pairing

Debbie: 25:56

them, yeah, I might even, you know, screen their candidates for them and send them over just to preserve their time. You get over to them some of the top candidates so they don't have to go through all these resumes or applications and talk to these individuals. I've talked to 10 people and I've handed them over free.

David: 26:19

When do you know, I mean, because I'm just thinking I'm making my first hires. I mean, in my case, right when when we're starting a not a software as a service company, we're starting some sort of services business. Where I guess I don't understand is I know Okay, I'm getting busy. I need to hire another Dev. Okay, I'm getting busy. I need to hire a PM. Okay, I need to make pretty things and, and squares and circles like hired Gary. Right? I need those. There was a little dig there. He enjoys, couldn't tell at all. I just want to make sure it's clear. I know when I need those people. And I'm still struggling with the thought of, unless I've got major culture issues, which as a leader that's supposed to be top of mind. Anyways, maybe I'm a bad leader. Fine. Right. But um, but culture is like, that's my bailiwick. That's what I my heartbeat is to take care of my people. So it's a very, so I'm not understanding either, I'm bad at that. And I need you. I get that that's fair. Some people aren't good at that. Or I'm not compliant that I need. You totally get that because we were not compliant till just recently. Don't listen to us lawyers. But I'm Where do how do I know I need you, right? I don't get that's not pinging me. i When does a company like mine? I get when you're large. And you need to manage this at night, I'll get I'm thinking purely practical stuff. But it's almost like you're mixing your business. And maybe there's what's unique about you, with almost like a business consulting kind of thing, right? It's not just here's the practical stuff that hrs got to do. But here's also the dude, you stink at culture, here's how I can fix that. I mean, does that makes sense? So

Debbie: 28:02

yeah, so I, you, we haven't really dove into my business model. I come in, sorry, I come in as a as a people and culture your people and culture hire so. But I'm functioning mostly in a very part time basis, because you don't need the function full time. Sure. But you need the help. And I get your, your practices in line. I guide you in terms of your culture, and helping you nurture your culture. I'm the person that your employees come to. However, after a certain amount of time, if my engagement starts to increase a ton, then I'm going to say it's time to hire somebody, then I then I go out and I find your full time hire and I train them and I move on. So that's that's my I do some other stuff. But that's my main business model.

Gary: 29:08

I'm sure there's other small businesses out there that need you but don't know they need you yet. So I think right now the question David has, like so how do you? How do you make these companies aware of not just what you do, but when they might need you? And I guess, kind of sell yourself as to this is when you need to hire me even if it's just on a small little compliance thing, just so from going here to you know, growing or going forward, everything's in line, like what phase of that company's lifecycle

Debbie: 29:40

what are the goals of the organization and I will say this, I have been very fortunate that I have not had to do a ton of business development because my work and the arena that I my work ethic, my work output, the area that I work in is very tight knit The word of mouth has has a referral. So now that referrals are there, um, but in terms of really selling myself, the first that conversation we had is, how much time are you putting into it you basically your, your basic HR functions each week? And what are your overall goals of the organization? How much is that taking time away from your day to day functions to achieve the goals of your organization. So, we start with that conversation and really go from there. And sometimes it's the fit, and sometimes it's not a fit, like sometimes they're not spending a time their cultures functioning really well. And I might say, you might not need me yet. But you know, 20, more headcount, you might let you know, like, let's, let's come back and talk. So it really comes down to the time that they want to spend you doing some of these things, as opposed to the overall goals of the organization. It also comes down to the risk level that they want to take on, as far as compliance is concerned. And, you know, what are their longer term goals? What do they have coming up in the next year that's going to possibly they'll possibly need more headcount? You, are they having any retention issues, so we explore a ton of things, you know, taking compliance off the table, we explore, you know, the retention, we explore the skill sets they need, and how hard it is to find those skill sets and the time it takes to find those skill sets. You know, in terms of your career, career growth, you want your your people to stay with you, you're a small company, you don't always next, have the next rung on the ladder, what does that look like? How can we put together a plan? So we really just talked about the different ways that I can enhance their, you know, their value prop to their employees, rather than, you know, I don't come in and be like, well, you're, you need this, you need that? You know, how can I how can I enhance the experience that your employees are having? And that you need to, you know, achieve the overall goals of yours?

Gary: 32:30

This kind of leads perfectly into our last question. And since you have experience with smaller companies, and you've gotten to see quite a few of them, and you even were in one that went from startup to sale. From everything you've seen, can you give us three pieces of advice for any entrepreneur who entrepreneur new business, or someone starting a small business, that might set them up on a path for either just sustainability or success in the future? Just three pieces of advice?

Debbie: 33:03

Yeah, absolutely. My first piece of advice is to not work where you're aligned, when you're starting your business, probably know this, the first inclination is to take the work that comes to you. But that's not always the right thing to do, because then you get kind of stuck on a hamster wheel of, you know, not working in your zone, not doing good work, or just a complete misalignment with with your client, and it turns into a poor experience. So I do not, you know, I get a lot of requests to do some work that I might not be a fit for. And I won't, I won't take those and I'm very honest, and I have a lot of people in my back pocket who you know, who might be great for those functions, and I hand them over there, I'm not a great fit, but I've got some other consultants who work better. The second thing is pay for what will drain you physically, mentally, or timewise. There are things that I am just not an expert in. I do not do them, because it's going to drain my time. And I'm going to get frustrated. And I'm in the end my clients will suffer because I'll be putting so much time to you know, to those functions. Business develops one of them so I have people in my back pocket that you know, I work with that do the business development mainly for me, and I reward them and then finally maintain a schedule which I fell into this trap when I started that, you know I had several clients, but their needs waxed and waned. And there'd be weeks that I didn't have a ton of activity. And then there'd be weeks that I couldn't keep up. So what suffered is my sleep, or my physical health or my spiritual health, and it would throw me off terribly. So I had to become disciplined and really get myself into a schedule that I, there are certain things that I do every day that they're just non negotiables. And I have to work them in and their calendar.

David: 35:40

So if someone wanted to learn more about your company, you all that good stuff, how would they get in touch with you?

Debbie: 35:47

They actually can find me right on LinkedIn. I'm overhauling my website right now. So I will not send them to my website. But it's Deborah Lawrence, talent for an HR, they can do a search of either of those things. And I'm on there, you can even send me an email at Debbie at talent, Florida hr.com, or give me a call. My information was right on LinkedIn.

Gary: 36:13

And we'll include those links in the show notes to this episode as well.

David: 36:16

So if Gary, they wanted to get in touch with us, how would people do that?

Gary: 36:20

They can email us as well, they could just send an email to Hello at the big pixel dotnet. Or they could leave comments or questions below this video on YouTube. Or they can reach out to any one of our social media channels. And if you want to see David do silly little dances, go on tic tac that he doesn't know exists.

David: 36:37

Don't do it. There's nothing out there. It's a lie to total and complete lie. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Debbie. We really appreciate it. This This was this is very informative, and I learned a lot. And I wish I would have learned some of that sooner to be honest, but there's no better time than ever. Thank you so much. And yeah.

Debbie: 36:59

All right, gentlemen, have a wonderful day. Thank you.

Gary: 37:02

It was great spending time with you. We appreciate it. And we'll see everybody next week. See ya.