Matt Vance: Today, we’ll be talking about breaking traditions. We’re not here to take away from your favorite holiday festivities or treat Joining us is Brady Haider a widely recognized R leader and innovator to right? Yes, yeah. I wonder…

Brady Haider: Yeah, you’re good. I know, I wish.

Matt Vance: if,

Brady Haider: Yeah, it’s hard. Trust me. I would say the same but we’ll have to start again. Yeah.

Matt Vance: Or am I the slow or just you just start right here and read that. Okay, I’ll switch. And I’ll do this part. All right. I’ve never had A rough start. That’s why it’s recording, okay?

Brady Haider: All right.

Matt Vance: Today, we’ll be talking about breaking traditions. No, we’re not here to take away. Your favorite holiday festivities or treat Joining us is Brady Haider. A widely recognized R leader and innovator to discuss, traditional HR and a new way of use viewing this business function. So, thanks for joining Brady

Brady Haider: Yeah, happy to be here today. Thanks for having me.

Matt Vance: We’re excited for today’s conversation before we jump in. Here’s a little bit about Brady Haider is the vice president of Global People Operations at Expert Logic, a global leader in cpq configure price, quote, headquartered in South, Jordan Utah. Their suite of business applications make it easier for your clients to buy from you. Now surpassing 10 years at expert logic, Brady has created, a people first culture with an emphasis on vi rewarding careers and growth opportunities. In one year. Brady led expert logics, explosive growth with a 70% headcount increase. Now spanning 26 US states and 13 countries. His leadership directly helped Logic become named one of Utah’s fastest growing companies by Utah business and make the Inc, 5000 list back to back years as one of America’s fastest growing companies

Matt Vance: So Brady before we get into the questions, all about company culture and about how we can make traditional better. We heard a rumor that Kobe Bryant knew you by name. So, we’ve got to hear the story. Tell us about this.

Brady Haider: My goodness. that’s crazy. That going down memory lane to tell the story. believe it or not that that is it that rumor is true. So I worked for the Utah. Jazz basketball team? Back in the year, 2000 the 2003. So This would have been around the 2001 season. now I was a ball boy, so all that stuff you see on camera where they’re getting the towels for the players, the powerade, The water mopping up the floor. That was my job.

Matt Vance: Nice awesome.

Brady Haider: so yeah, that season we had different assignments, each game and so sometimes you would work one of the teams You may work the jazz, their Vance, if you’re working their bench, you’re in charge of their warm-ups and towels, you may work behind the bench to get them there. Gatorade our water things like that. So this game I was assigned the Lakers bench and this was the year they had Shaquille O’Neal Kobe Bryant. They were the championship team from the past so really great team. so,

Matt Vance: That.

Brady Haider: on our shirts, we had our name, Just like a store, worker, they have their names, but what happened is, a lot of times there’s just just in the Hey, I need that and we would help them. So I didn’t hear my name a whole lot, so I was working the Lakers bench about midway through the third quarter. They called the 22nd Timeout. And those timeouts, they’re on the floor so they’re not on the bench and they’re all huddled around. But from within the huddle, I heard, Hey Brady, can you get me a powerade, This took me by surprise because I’m telling you for two years. every time it was Hey I need this or Hey, you or go get this. Right, that’s just what it was.

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Brady Haider: But I was so taken back that I was called by name and I looked and that was Kobe.

Matt Vance: That is so cool.

Brady Haider: So of course ran to get him the powerade and that made such a big impression on. And that has transpired, that that has been something that has taught me a valuable lesson about putting people first. Just that gesture, he had a lot more to worry about in that moment. I’m sure. But just that quick gesture to call me by name, made a world of difference. So I’ve made a point since that day, To always go out of my way to call people by their name. So if I’m in the restaurant or Home Depot, it doesn’t matter. I’ll call them by name and you would be amazed at the different status. It’s like, Hey, Gary, can you help me find this all sudden Gary’s my buddy now, right? And just having that connection I was putting people first is,…

Matt Vance: Yeah.

Brady Haider: is just a valuable lesson, I think.

Matt Vance: And that really is such a cool story and very inspirational. And, I read a book called Work inspired by the CEO Of Kronos Aaron Ian and he talks about a similar principle of how leaders have this superpower. Where, even little interactions can make such a lifetime memory for someone else that you really need to be aware as a leader, and as someone that can have influence on other people. So that’s really cool that Kobe did that, and that it made such a huge impact on you. So cool. Thanks for sharing that story Brady.

Brady Haider: That’s fun to talk it. go back down History. Lane that was fun.

Matt Vance: I like it. So prior to our interview today, you had shared your opinion of quotes. Traditional HR in contrast to how the HR function can operate differently to achieve significant growth, both financially and non-financially for companies. So, our big question for you today, Brady is what’s the difference between quotes? Traditional HR and what you refer to as people operations.

Brady Haider: Yeah, thank you for that question. This is really interesting because earlier in my career I didn’t necessarily think I would be in an related role. prior to that the general experience was associated with something negative Hey, if I have an issue with my paycheck, If there’s a problem with Someone broke a company policy or a rule, it’s associated with a negative response. Go talk to and that’s how I think some people perceive it. even though when I tell them this is the industry or the role that I’m in, it can sometimes be associated with that. what I found when I was taking the certification through Sherm

Brady Haider: Which I highly recommend. By the way, anyone out there, it’s a very intense course, but very applicable hands-on learning. But what was interesting with that course, was the main takeaway that I took is that great people leaders Find a way. To create policies that improve the overall people experience at your company. So, there is that legal and compliance aspect, that’s very important, but I think it’s the approach that you take to say, let’s still be legal and compliant. But first put our people and build the processes around a great people experience and culture and then the rest falls into place.

Brady Haider: I think with traditional the tendency can be somewhat the opposite that we start out with the legal and compliance side first. So we approach it as we have to enforce this policy Or it’s associated with more of a negative response. With people erations. the essence of people operations is creating a great people culture. that’s the taking a step back looking at policies. Why do we have these policies? And how do we incorporate those into what are people want? Most so, if we were new to an organization stepping in, let’s take a look at what Is most important to our people’s happiness at work. And now if we can create policies around that,

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Brady Haider: that’s how people up operations, can be different. It’s just that flip from. how do I approach it with the people first in mind, or With the compliance side of it people ops is more proactive, traditional HR can be more reactive once a situation happens. here’s the policy. Let’s enforce that policy where proactively we’re saying, Hey, let’s partner with the leadership team. And let’s find out what kind of culture that we want and now let’s build Our policies around that.

Matt Vance: So how would you recommend to an organization that maybe they have? The more traditional HR and maybe even have some negative perceptions? How would you recommend to them that they make the transition over to people operations?

Brady Haider: I think definitely, it’s a team effort, even the best people leaders out there. You can’t do it alone. I was impressed as I was reading the first part of your book Matt on the review cycle. That you have two or three pages just of acknowledgments, Of all the people that influence this and helped you get to that journey. And that’s where it starts. It has to be a team at team effort. So it’s getting that buy-in from the leadership team, helping them understand the value of putting people first what that can do to your employer brand?

Brady Haider: What that can do to your employee experience once they’re at the company, recruiting becomes, much easier. Retention is better. All of those have a great impact. So, buy-in from the leadership team and making it a team effort is by far. The top two steps I would say.

Matt Vance: I totally agree in that team effort approach that, we can go further together. There’s a saying that if you want to go fast, go alone if you want to go go together. I totally agree with that mentality and you observed it in the acknowledgment section of my book. I wanted to point out. One thing that you had said earlier about supporting people first from a policy standpoint at even a legal level within the company with Handbook and other operational things. So, when I was working with one company, they had a policy around attendance Around the holiday season for customer support. It’s a super busy time of year for this organization and so they created a policy that was business first and said,

Brady Haider: Right.

Matt Vance: Everyone that there are no days off for between this date and this date around the holidays because it’s go time, we need every person hands-on. And I heard that there were a couple employees that had received I guess essentially attendance points for not being able to be there. For whatever reason through this time, that’s not a people first policy, that’s a business first policy or they think it’s a business first policy, but what it actually created was a turnover issue where people once that time of year started coming, we could see that there were more people exiting the organization because they didn’t want to have to go through that time frame.

Brady Haider: Right.

Matt Vance: Without being able to take time off. And so I think understanding that behavior and then creating policies that help support the people, maybe it was, having a third party customer service organization that was there for a flex for You…

Brady Haider: Right.

Matt Vance: added capacity over Few weeks or whatever, that would support the individuals. So there wouldn’t need to be that compromised on personal needs encroaching on the business needs but I don’t know if you have other thoughts or stories or examples of how from a policy level. The leaders can support people first in practice.

Brady Haider: I think Great story by the And that’s a great example because that what you described happens almost anywhere really I think how I would approach this. It’s all how you position it to your people. If it’s positioned as look, you can’t do something right. And that’s another reason why people may associate A negative response with is that we’re being told. No, you can’t do something. So if we can help them understand the reasons why we’re doing it and offer an alternative solution that may be received a lot better. So for example, you may just hear my company won’t let me take time off in the holidays. That’s horrible. You tell all of a sudden, you want to go look for another job?

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Brady Haider: But let’s position it this way. Let’s say that, that is the strategy of the business and needs to happen. Okay, let’s be proactive about this communication and say, Hey, we encourage life balance throughout the year. Let’s really push and encourage those vacations to be used earlier. Maybe give a stipend or some type of incentive for a summer vacation. It’s like, and then help them understand. look, we’re still able to give raises and bonuses. This is important for the business if we can make those profits during this time, we’re going to have a company take your spouse on a nice vacation and will reimburse you up to a certain amount of money. In February. So now the message to your spouse is, Hey, this is important to the business. So this is required. But guess what? We’re taking the family on this trip in March and the company is going to help us with that.

Matt Vance: Love that’s definitely acknowledging a legitimate business need while also being conscious of the people needs and finding ways to achieve both as much as possible. And I think when there are things that need to be done, that are business, critical managing expectations in the way that we communicate. Those things makes a world of a difference. I think that’s a great words of wisdom right there. From Brady, I love it.

Brady Haider: Yeah, absolutely. It’s if you can tie back in anything that you’re doing, should be tied back to your people and putting them first. So help them, understand anything that you’re rolling out, how that applies to the feedback that they’ve given or why it’s important from a people perspective. So some may not like going through a mid-year end of year review because of how they may been administered. But if a people ops are approach when you’re putting the people first you’re helping them. See that hey you’ve mentioned being valued is as a really big important factor for Having autonomy to do your work and the tools that you need. So having those reviews gives you that chance for your manager to recognize you

Brady Haider: And also, when you’re on the same page with what your goals are, then there doesn’t need to be micromanagement. So now we’re doing this for autonomy. We’re also going to talk in those meetings about career growth and your personal development. So I’m not approaching that performance review to say, Hey, Matt here’s a checklist of all the things that you failed on. I’m approaching it like servant leadership. Hey Matt, I am here to help you succeed. Let’s talk about your career plants. Let me tell you how great a job you did on that quarterly report earlier this year. So now all of a sudden a review which were dreading traditionally, I’ve got to do this end of year review with my manager. Am I going to be demoted. Now I’m looking forward to this because this is helping me.

Brady Haider: and I have an opportunity to talk about the rewarding work, I did and the challenging work ahead, all those things that are important to you

Matt Vance: So you’ve mentioned acknowledgment multiple times, it seems like that’s a huge approach for people ops. And then just now, you also mentioned communicating in a certain way, a strategic communication, which may seem like you’re faking or something, but it’s really showing care to the individual and how they receive this message does matter.

Brady Haider: Yeah, it absolutely does because the way that we teach servant leadership is that if Matt is struggling. For example, I take some of the responsibility as the manager, I have to take more responsibility to say. It’s just like the player coach, we talked about basketball at the beginning, but if a player is not succeeding, the coach needs to look at that rather than the player needs to do better. The coach needs to put them in a position to succeed. You will see a player move from a team to another team. Now all the sudden, they’re assist ratio is twice they’ve had in their career. Are they that much better of a passer now or did the coach put them in a position to utilize their strengths?

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Brady Haider: So, that’s the approach that you take, the people do the best that they can, but the manager needs to do the best they can to help their people succeed and rather than Hey they’ they’re not performing. So How can I put them in a better position to utilize their strengths?

Matt Vance: Yeah, I can see how this people first approach would be great for a good company culture. And that brings us to our next question, how does company culture impact profits?

Brady Haider: Yeah, I love that one. We say here that the culture each strategy for breakfast.

Matt Vance: Love that.

Brady Haider: Think about this, you could have the best strategy. But if you don’t have the culture around it, and when I say culture, people that buy in that are enthusiastically, working to support each other, a team effort. If you don’t have the right mindset and mentality to buy in the strategy, doesn’t matter at that point. so if you have a team think about the power of a team working together,

Brady Haider: and now, you think about The investment that you make in your people. So if you look at a financial statement, what’s one of the largest investments

Matt Vance: The people for sure.

Brady Haider: it’s definitely the people. And so, there’s two ways to look at, if you put your people first, which is one of your biggest investments. Now, we’re saying how do we get the best return on that investment? So if I can create a culture of great teamwork, That they’re about their input is heard that their contributions are heard, that their impact is there, that they feel like they have a voice. what you’ve done is created an environment that taps into their creativity and their innovation So we’re not just doing a task. We are now committed to the company in the overall vision. That is how you get the best return on your investment. Which is really exciting because think about this, too. When someone is engaged at their job, highly committed to the company. Highly engaged. Now.

Brady Haider: You’re getting more out of them. But that doesn’t mean that they’re working longer hours necessarily. In fact we want the life balance. But what that means is I get the very best out of their creativity. I get the innovative ideas that they have, and that is how you bring profits. Is by getting that return and getting the very best of them because when they’re engaged at their job and they’re committed to the company. You get their very best. and they will put in more because they want to not, because their manager said to work harder, bill intrinsically, want to I think that that is the key that we should be striving for

Matt Vance: I 100% agree that individuals are willing to give that extra discretionary effort. When they feel cared for, they feel supported and they feel like the company both thought at a personal level from their manager and a policy level from the organization at the top. When they feel supported and I think you’ve hit on some really good points that feedback is important that we need to communicate efficiently and we need to acknowledge the individual goals and career aspirations of our team members. I think all of these pieces fit together to have a culture that is successful and I love the way you said it culture, eats strategy for breakfast. You can have a winning culture but if your team isn’t bought into that approach, then you may as well throw it out the window. So I’m a hundred percent aligned with that. So we’ve got a lot of listeners out there Brady that our HR leaders, some of them maybe are like solo.

Matt Vance: Practitioner at a smaller organization summer members of larger teams. Do you have any tips for leaders to embrace new ways of doing things? And especially embracing this mindset of people operations over traditional HR.

Brady Haider: I would say the number one. Piece of advice would be to always be continued, continuously learning and improving. so, the way that you do things today, Probably won’t work next year. Because how fast our environments moving and the pace of companies and the pace of products and innovation. So you have to be willing to change and adapt. how do you decide on that? It’s very important that your you have multiple touch points with your people. You want to know what the collective feedback of your people are. When I say collective, Some person may have a very strong opinion but let’s say that

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Brady Haider: a vast majority of people share that same opinion, that’s the collective voice of your people. So you want to dial into that and know what that is, and then drive change around that. And if you can do that, that is going to lead to first environment that people are happy and thrive and do their best in. So just, when I look at this, there’s some people that have this idea that hey I’ve done this for 30 years so I know what I’m doing. I went to the dentist actually the other day and they said don’t Dr. Johnson’s in Orlando. Is on vacation? No, he’s at a conference for training. And I’m thinking, What is a dentist? I mean, don’t you just clean teeth and, isn’t it the same? And when he got back, I talked to him about that and he says, Yeah, we found a new innovative way to clean your teeth that takes less toll on your teeth. It’s more efficient.

Brady Haider: contrast the dentist that I had, growing up was more of the, Hey, I’ve done this for 30 years and it never changes. So you have to ask yourself, who would you rather be associated with? It could be the same in any other industry, mortgage lending or whatnot. If someone has done something for 30 years, Or someone’s done something for two or three years. But they learn the latest and greatest products and different advantages programs that you can take advantage of. That’s what you want. So, the best would be experience with innovation. But you have to be willing to continually change the way that you do things. There’s times that things are continued to be done and that’s because it is the very best proven way to do it. But I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of times things are done, just based on tradition, or this idea that I’ve

Brady Haider: I’ve got this experience, so I know and we’re not going to change.

Matt Vance: I read a great book called The Happiness Advantage, and it talks about those terms as growth mindset and fixed mindset, One is ready to Always trying to find a better way of doing things, learn, and grow. And This is how things are and it doesn’t change. And I think that growth mindset is huge for leaders for any professionals out there to ask yourself. Do I have any things that I have a fixed mindset about? Are there certain things that I think can’t be adapted or changed and deciding if those things are worth changing and worth growing, right?

Brady Haider: Yeah, absolutely. I would say another tip is for leaders, take a step back. See where you’re focusing your efforts and your time. And then ask yourself is that leading directly to a people first environment. What does that mean? We kept saying that people first find out what the collective what is contributes most to their success and happiness. you can ask them. That’s how we came up with our people. First top five, the things that I mentioned on here having rewarding work camaraderie, with the team career growth autonomy, being valued, those are our top five, understand what those are in your company. and then focus your efforts towards Those top five and then help the people. And the managers see, Hey, This is why we’re rolling out this program because you’ve talked about how important it is to be recognized from your colleagues. So we are rolling out this program to help support that.

Brady Haider: Or we’ve talked about being globally. Aligned, we have our people in 13 countries and half of the United States So that is one of the big pieces of feedback we’ve received is How do I feel more connected with my colleagues. And so we’ve rolled out a program recently that allows global alignment with our goals and our okrs. but rather than, Hey, here’s this new software, we’re pushing on you help them understand based on your feedback. This is what we’re doing to help you and that’s why we’re rolling this out.

Matt Vance: Yeah. Communication is huge. You need that buy-in. You need the survey from your employees to know what they really want and customize it to their needs and wants. Thank you so much for your time today. Brady’s LinkedIn profile from this episode’s high. Article and we will also put a resource for the Sherm training that Brady mentioned in here and thanks everyone for listening and thanks Brady. We’ll see.

00:30:00

Brady Haider: Yeah, thanks for have a good one.