David R. Pearson

▶0:01HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome David Pearson to the Built by People podcast. David, thank you so much for joining. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:54GuestSure, absolutely. Well, first and foremost, thank you for having me. Uh, it is definitely a delight to open up this dialogue. A little bit about me. I have a very non-traditional course, as most folks in HR do. My initial journey from work was right after high school. I was supposed to go into the military. I'd made the determination not to, and I worked for a small retailer. That retailer had asked me to come on as a business partner shortly after that. And I did so. This was great. This is awesome. I'm in school. I'm in college. I'm also running a business at the ripe old age of 18 years old. Talk about experience. I'm getting to know every little piece of business, customer service, all the way down to employee relations. And as I'm going through my course studies, employee relations was an area that I said, hey, sure, let me focus a little bit deeper on this. At the age of I don't know, 25. I looked around, wanted to expand the business. My business partner did not. And I said, okay, time for me to cash out and move on. And I did. Talk about being very concerned because at that time I had a mortgage and I did not have a job. Upon my graduation, I ended up working for a very large retailer in the HR sector. And it was a financial step back, but just like a slingshot, it was a step back to catapult me forward. And after that, I ended up working for a very large PEO. And in that role, I had a lot of experience in terms of working with marketing companies, landscaping companies, professional service companies. You want to talk about the whole gamut, probably for every year in the PEO industry, you're going to get about 20 years of experience because it really would take that long to bounce from industry to industry to industry. So that was fantastic. And then, you know, I found myself at Extensis, and I've been with them for 10 and a half years now, which is ironic because most jobs last anywhere from 24 to 36 months. And I've had the opportunity to really partner with the organization, see the growth, but touch on every facet of HR. And every facet of the business as well.

▶3:09HostDavid, before this call started, we talked about your recent trip to Colombia, and that brings me to the next topic of our conversation. As organizations scale and expand globally, what are some of the key cultural challenges HR must address, and how do you approach building a cohesive culture across regions?

▶3:30GuestYeah, so I think that's a great question. We've all seen it. We've all experienced it. We might have a friend or two that might go to a foreign land and say, hey, this is not the way that New York is. This is not the way that New Jersey is. And you chuckle to yourself and say, well, that's because we're not in New York or not in New Jersey. So I think that's the first step is turning around and saying, meeting anybody in a global atmosphere where they are. And in part, that is identifying their culture. Identifying their laws, their labor laws are not necessarily going to be the same as we have on the stateside perspective. When you really start to focus on moving the boundaries of your business, what are you looking to achieve? Is it because you are struggling to find talent on a stateside basis? You know, an example I'll give is the accounting industry. For years, becoming an accountant was the way that a lot of folks went. And then all of a sudden nobody was going to school for accounting. But that role and that function is a dire necessity to every business. So you're starting to see more and more businesses kind of gravitate out towards specialty types of roles because they can't necessarily find that level of expertise here on the stateside component. But I think even grander than that, when we look at businesses in general, most businesses are operating in a very global facet. So you have to embrace adopting employees and folks in those regions.

▶5:03HostDavid, how does HR support business growth and transformation, especially when integrating both nearshore and offshore teams?

▶5:11GuestYeah, again, another great question. So I think one of the challenges that HR has in general is we don't look at ourselves as business professionals. We look at ourselves as HR. And then what happens is, as you're working with your senior leadership team, they might turn and say, oh, well, they're the no police, or they're processing payroll, or they're just doing this, they're just doing that. It's important for all HR professionals to really look at themselves as business professionals that specialize in human resources. Right there, you start to change your, your optics of whatever the situation is. You start to look at how can we solve the business problem while peppering in all the HR components that are there. Now, when you're looking for overall growth and transformation, a lot of that ties to culture. So, and the growth is usually, hey, I need my sales team to push in this arena. I need my operations team to really flex out. But when you're looking at the transformation component, That's all organizational development. So understanding change management, understanding the effect that it's going to have on individuals. And depending on the sophistication of your business, you might already have 5,000 employees. So most of them might have experienced this before, or you might have 100 employees who have never experienced this before. So it really comes down to what your messaging is in terms of moving, again, going back to the borders and boundaries. Moving those borders and boundaries further out and embracing a different way to conduct business, all while going towards that vision and goal that you do have for the business itself.

▶6:56HostDavid, what strategies are you using to foster strong communication and cultural sensitivity for leaders managing remote and intercultural teams?

▶7:06GuestAnother great question. So managing in general is always hard. And if we take a step back 5 years ago, when COVID was forcing every business to operate in a remote capacity, managers were strained. Some folks did not have that skillset to manage a remote environment. And they said, uh-oh, what am I going to do? We have video conferencing, but not a lot of companies were using it to the degree that we all use it today. It's really second nature if you think about it, us talking face-to-face, you click the button, people are now invited into your homes and they're now, you're now invited into theirs just to conduct business. But when we talk about leaders managing these environments, it's very important for first and foremost, a leader to understand the folks they're working with. It's also important for them to understand the communication channels. What is the preferred communication channel? Sometimes English might be the second language. So managers really should meet that staff at the midpoint. Take it and take a couple of language courses, learn a couple of keywords. Again, going out to Colombia where the joke amongst the staff was that I know 25 words in Spanish and by the end of my trip, I'm going to know 35 words. And I did, and I achieved it, which was great. But at the, at the end of the day, that is because it is my obligation to communicate with them and their obligation to communicate with myself as well. Then you can always follow up with email communication. This way it gets the point across. There's always those translation services that will allow you to actually see in real time what that looks like. But lastly, these folks are part of your organization, so make them feel as though they are sitting in the cubicle right next to you. Make them feel as though they're invited to your town halls, they're invited to all of the programs that you would ordinarily host. Stateside on an international basis.

▶9:05HostDavid, how do you ensure alignment between business goals and employee experience, especially in a global environment?

▶9:14GuestSo interestingly enough, we have systems in place that really cascade out what our— we use objectives and key results. So overall, what our objectives are for the particular year at a grand scale, and then how we pepper that into each particular department and what their impact is going to The big piece with that that we found important is that is our staff holding senior leadership accountable, holding senior leadership accountable to execute against all of these goals and objectives that are out there. And if we're not, what are we doing to get there? What are we doing to get it right? So adopting that same philosophy for folks on an international scale, equally important, but with understanding the communication nuances, understanding all the differences between the regions that you're working in, because our social norms are not necessarily going to be their social norms. So there has to be massive sensitivity when you do start crossing over international lines.

▶10:17HostDavid, curious to get your perspective on the role HR plays in helping leaders navigate intercultural communication challenges.

▶10:26GuestYou are the key to the lock. So at the end of the day, the biggest piece is making sure that as the HR leader, you ordinarily support the culture just in general. You're not going to create the culture. You're not going to say, hey, this is the environment we want to be. That's your staff. You're hiring the people in. You know, the way I always look at it is that senior leadership's obligation all the way down to entry-level associates and somewhere in the middle it crushes together. And then that's where your culture comes out. And it's HR's responsibility You think of an Oreo cookie, that it doesn't spill over too much and you can kind of contain it all into one spot. That's the same thing for international activity. It's HR's obligation to understand all the nuances with relation to culture, with relation to labor law, with relation to all those fundamental aspects. But it's also HR's responsibility to give tips, tools, tricks, and training as to how to interact. What that means, and then what your intentions are for managers so they have clear guidelines as to what they need to achieve. So if you're saying, hey, listen, take some courses within this particular language, what is your follow-up? Because sometimes what we do from an HR standpoint is we have these grandiose ideas, and when it comes down to execution, we push it, but then that follow-up, we get distracted because there's a million other initiatives that we're working on. So it's very important to really map that out so you can be certain that— and it's the same on a stateside perspective— that you can make certain that your employees are supported by their managers, but your managers are also supported by human resource or senior leadership to give them those tools and trainings they need to be successful.

▶12:14HostDavid, any parting advice you'd like to share with our audience?

▶12:18GuestSo the biggest thing is Be eager to learn, be inquisitive, ask those questions, because at the end of the day, there's so much you're going to learn by just the day-in-and-day-out interaction. Continue to shape your business in relation to what your overall vision, mission, and goals are, but also how these other employees give you the ability to support what that messaging is. But I think from an HR standpoint, it's always being inquisitive, always being curious. That curiosity is really going to catapult that business. And there's a couple of things I always talk to HR colleagues about is the stamina and resiliency. It takes a lot to be in HR. It takes a lot to show up with a smile every single day. And part of that is because you can't let the weight of the day before carry into the following day. A lot of people are looking to you for guidance and looking to you for support. So you need to make sure that you do that. And then lastly, what I'll say is in order to do that, you yourself need to have that outlet on the outside of work. So make sure that you're focused in on that, whatever that means. It can be playing pickleball, it can be going to the gym or reading at night, anything to that degree. So it's important to take care of yourself so you can take care of the organization.

▶13:38HostDavid, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was great having you involved.

▶13:43GuestThank you very much for having me, and I look forward to more conversations.