Cortney Worle
Chief People Officer
Cafe Rio Mexican Grill
Episode 182
From Overhead to Strategic Partner: How HR Leaders Drive Business Success
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleMay 20, 2025 · 11:57
Thesis
“HR leaders must embrace continuous evolution, proactively engage across business functions, and be willing to tackle diverse projects to transition from an 'overhead' perception to a strategic business partner driving organizational success.”
Show notes
Cortney Worle built her HR career on a single principle: never say no to a project. Not a popular job description item, but it's the reason she progressed faster than almost anyone around her — and it's the first thing she tells every HR professional who asks how to get to CPO.
Now Chief People Officer at Cafe Rio Mexican Grill, Cortney has one of the harder HR mandates in the industry: managing a dispersed frontline workforce where email doesn't reach everyone, phone numbers change constantly, and employee turnover within the first 90 days is a persistent, expensive problem. Her answer to the communication gap was elegant and practical — she tied pop-up messages to the one action every employee performs every single day: clocking in and out. Her "Nailing the 90" program attacked the retention problem head-on with a combination of compelling compensation design and structured 30/60/90-day touchpoints, driving a 25% improvement in new hire retention. Her insight on compensation is worth unpacking: you don't need to pay the most money. You need programs that are compelling, understood, and hit employees at the right moment.
The conversation also covers succession planning — an area where Cortney challenges the standard one-for-one backfill assumption. When a long-tenured employee holds a complex, multifaceted role, she argues, finding one person to replace them is often both impossible and unnecessary. Splitting responsibilities across multiple roles is smarter, more resilient, and often reveals capabilities in the existing team that were previously invisible.
- The "never say no" career strategy — how saying yes to projects outside HR built the cross-functional knowledge base that gets CHROs their seat
- "Nailing the 90" retention program — combining compensation design and structured touchpoints to reduce new hire turnover by 25%
- Clock-in/out as a communication channel — reaching a frontline workforce without email or stable phone numbers through the one touchpoint they use every day
- Compensation that doesn't require being the highest payer — designing programs that are compelling, transparent, and delivered at moments that drive behavior
- Rethinking the one-for-one succession plan — why splitting complex roles across multiple people is often the more resilient and revealing choice
- HR's cross-functional credibility — Cortney's advice on building relationships outside your HR line and sharing ideas that aren't strictly HR-adjacent
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What you'll take away
- 1Always say 'yes' to projects outside your comfort zone or job description to gain diverse knowledge and accelerate career growth in HR.
- 2Design compensation programs to be compelling, clearly understood, and timely for employees to maximize their impact on retention and drive desired behaviors, especially in high-turnover roles.
- 3Leverage technology to create reliable one-to-one communication channels for dispersed frontline workforces, such as pop-up messages upon clock-in/out.
- 4Approach succession planning with flexibility, considering that complex roles held by long-tenured employees might require splitting responsibilities among multiple individuals rather than a single backfill.
- 5Build cross-functional relationships and confidently share your ideas, even on non-HR topics, to ensure HR is viewed as a strategic partner in all business conversations.
What most organizations get wrong
- •You don't have to pay the most money to retain employees; instead, focus on making compensation programs compelling, understood, and delivered at the right times to drive engagement and retention.
- •Traditional succession planning that assumes a one-to-one backfill for every role is often insufficient for evolving organizations; consider splitting responsibilities for complex, multi-faceted roles.
In Cortney's words
“I will say what I always share with people is the reason my career grew at the trajectory it did in HR is because I never said no to anything.”
This highlights the guest's philosophy of embracing all opportunities for learning and growth, even outside a defined role.
“you don't have to pay the most money, and you're always going to have competition for that. But your compensation programs have to be compelling enough that people understand them and it's hitting them at the right times.”
This quote challenges the assumption that top pay is the only retention driver, emphasizing strategic design and timing of compensation.
“But the one thing an employee does every single day for us is clock in and out. So if we have that ability to say something to them as they're clocking in and out, we're going to be able to disperse communication a lot more effectively.”
This showcases an innovative and highly practical approach to reaching a dispersed frontline workforce with critical information.
“don't assume that there's just one person for every— to backfill every role. Not only is that not safe, because what if that one person leaves, but sometimes you have to look at the roles differently and go, hey, what if we had to split this up, spread the responsibilities among several people?”
This provides a non-traditional, flexible perspective on succession planning for complex roles in evolving organizations.
“making sure that you're part of the conversation, building relationships with leaders outside of your HR line, and also making sure that you're not afraid to put yourself out there. If you have a thought, you have an idea that's not necessarily so HR-related, because I've been in that position before where I've been timid.”
This offers direct advice for HR professionals to transcend traditional boundaries and establish themselves as strategic business partners.
The problems this episode addresses
- •High employee turnover in the restaurant industry, particularly for new hires within the first 90 days, leading to increased retraining costs and compromised customer experience.
- •Ineffective compensation programs that fail to align employee behavior with business results or are not understood by the workforce.
- •Challenges in reliably communicating with a dispersed frontline workforce lacking consistent access to email or stable phone numbers.
- •Succession planning difficulties for long-tenured employees who hold multi-faceted roles, making direct one-to-one backfilling impractical or risky.
- •HR being perceived as merely an 'overhead' function rather than a strategic contributor to business performance.
- •Developing leadership skills in technically proficient team members who are hesitant about supervisory roles.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
I actually started my career in retail management and didn't dislike it
Cafe Rio VP of HR's Career Journey
Cafe Rio transformed HR from being overhead to becoming a strategic business partner
Cafe Rio: The Strategic Business Partner
The biggest thing on technology is being able to communicate with our team
How Technology Affects Business Performance
Courtney, tell us about an experience where you developed leadership skills in a team member
Developing Leadership Skills in a Direct Report
Cafe Rio is starting a more formal succession planning process
Cafe Rio's Succession Plan
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
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