Empower Your Workforce: The People-Centric HR Strategy for Organizational Success.

Welcome 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 Scott Lucher to the Built By People Podcast. Scott, thank you so much for joining us. As a starting question, I always love us to have you tell us a little bit more about your career journey.

Yeah, well, Dave, thanks for having me. Appreciate the time. Looking forward to our conversation. Career journey. I would say it's definitely been a journey. And if I think about my career, it's really kind of compartmentalized in sort of chunks, if you will. First part of my, or my first career, if you will, was in the military. Spent 10 years in the military coming out of undergraduate and had a chance to do lots of great things. Active duty, reserves, National Guard, couple deployments to Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and Bosnia, and airborne and all kinds of stuff. And really, Had a great career, spent 10 years in the military, and then late '90s decided, you know, wow, there's a lot going on in the market. Maybe I should get out and test my waters in the business world, if you will. So I went to a recruiting firm, you know, for assistance in finding a job and went on all sorts of interviews, all different places, and nothing really, really stuck. And I think helping military members transition to civilian, I think, is a unique challenge even still to this day., but I was, spent so much time in the recruiting firm and I thought, well, gosh, what do you guys do around here? And they were on the phone and ringing bells and talking to people. And a week later I became a recruiter and that started the second sort of career journey in sort of broad HR. I spent many years in an executive search firm and then transitioned to internal recruitment and spent, you know, a good chunk of years in there. And then they eventually moved into HR as an HR business partner and a business unit leader for HR. And at that point, I decided to get a lot more deeper into the science of HR, decided to pursue graduate education in IO psychology, and then inevitably a doctorate in business psychology, and took that information and that experience, then decided to go into consulting. And so career 3 has been in management consulting, and I spent, you know, probably the majority of my last 10 years or so in management consulting, working for a lot of firms, small firms, large firms, doing HR transformation, HR and talent consultation. And along the way in that, in that part of that journey, I was also an adjunct professor at Cornell and for my grad school. I went to graduate school at Chicago School. So I was doing that whole teaching, speaking, consulting thing. And then came upon the opportunity at Empower, which was really presented as more of an initial consulting type of engagement. Come in, see how we're doing., you know, sort of current state, future state, what's the plan, and kind of work towards that. And quickly became an interim role, and then last December became the full-time chief people officer for Empower. So kind of came back to internal HR just through a roundabout way, and we've done some amazing things so far. It's been a great, great journey. So my journey's not been linear at all. It's been, you know, where doors open, and I just take the opportunity to kind of walk through those.

Scott, any specific lessons you've learned along the way that you'd like to share with our audience?

Yeah, I think the concept of a career is probably very different than what, you know, how we're accustomed to maybe programmed to think about it going into school. You know, certainly not linear, circular if anything. Lots of things sort of coming around. But I think the through line to that is to have an idea or, and I was recently reading about this, have a sort of a 5-year perspective on what you may want to do. You may not have it clearly articulated, but have some sort of markers out there. So when I went to, decided to go to grad school, I engaged a career coach, went through about a year process. And so that opened up sort of my eyes around, let's not be so declarative on what the career exactly is, but what are some of the things you may want to do? Teaching, speaking, writing, consulting, and the like. And so there were steps I took in that, in that way. And so I think from a career perspective, be open to the doors and windows that are presented to you and be willing to take those because they really create lots of new career opportunities for sure.

So you started your career in the military, you then went into recruiting, and then you went into consulting, ultimately ending up in internal HR. Tell us how those experiences prepared you

for what you do today. Yeah, I think the through line for all of that is the dependency on people and that people are, as I say around here, are the business, right? And so whether it was the military, whether it was, you know, recruitment, internal HR, consulting, you know, the core of it comes down to people. You have the right people doing the right work, doing the right things in the right way. And that's really what's framed my point of view around being an HR leader is, you know, there are lots of different types of HR leaders for different, you know, experiences. And the thing that I really try to drive with our team here is that everything we do should be about optimizing our people and their experience. And if we are serving them, then they will serve the business because they are the business. And therefore we will have, you know, the, the success that we're looking for. So it's very much a people-centricity, both in terms of our structure, our strategy, our operating model, the policies. Everything we do is designed to really optimize that so people can come in every day, be their best, do their best, and contribute in the most meaningful way. And that's really sort of the through line through all of those is the dependency on people doing what they have to do for a broader purpose.

On the topic of optimizing your people, what are, what are the key factors that contribute to a positive employee experience in your perspective?

Yeah, you know, in my prior consulting work, and even as a, as a researcher and practitioner, I spent a lot of time, probably about almost 10 years researching engagement, commitment, experience, all the things, you know, that sort of broader realm there. And in the last couple of years specifically, especially before joining Empower, I had my own consulting firm and it was very much focused on HR transformation type consulting and employee experience. And so I spent a long time really trying to understand, well, what is employee experience? What are the aspects of employee experience that we all, quote unquote, experience to try to get an understanding of how we might be able to look at that and measure it, etc. So when I, when I sort of went through this process, it was very simple in terms of just talking to people like you and I, and I would say, you know, tell me about your experience working at said company. And inevitably you'd hear all these different sorts of experiences or microexperiences or interactions, if you might. What started to emerge was a pattern. And, you know, whether I was talking to an entry-level person, a senior-level person, of these types of experiences. And so it's things like, the business unit I worked for, the benefits I received, the feedback that I received, how I do my work, the impact of my work, the opportunities I have, pace of work, policies, recognition. There's a— I've identified about 18 different types of experiences that impact our broader experience and was able to actually here within Power recently, we measured our overall employee experience. We measured each of those 18 factors to see how they are contributing to the overall. And more importantly, we measured the impact of those factors on 4 key business outcomes, which was performance, productivity, people's intent to stay, and their intent to recommend people to come work here. So we have really clear line of sight as to where people are, what's impacting that, and more importantly, what we can do about it to, to improve that.

Scott, how can HR leaders foster a culture of continuous learning and development within their organizations?

Yeah, I think this is paramount. You know, as we think about— if you're answering the question of what do our people need to have their best experience, they need continual development. That could be technical skills, it could be quote unquote soft skills as it's referred to. And so one of the things that we did here at Empower is we spent a lot of time identifying what are the core competencies or behaviors that we want our people to exhibit to demonstrate and to hold others accountable to. And so once we had that behavioral framework, we structured an enterprise-level development program where everyone in the organization went through development this year. And it was really based on those behaviors and how those behaviors flow through depending on your level of contribution to the organization. And that's really setting the foundation, as we refer to as Empower You, to kind of a play on words of empowering you, the person, and empowering you. And then think of it almost like a university, if you will. But it, you know, by doing that, we're setting the stage for now that we've got these behaviors, now we add on more of the technical components of a given role and continually looking at how do we reinforce that? Because for our business, which is very technical, it's federally regulated, we are manufacturing as well as compounding pharmacy, it requires strict adherence to policies, process, procedures, which have to be continually trained, if you will, and continually reinforced because, you know, not to be hyperbolic, but if someone doesn't follow a policy or a process, it could result in a really significant issue, i.e., bad medicine, someone could be hurt, etc. So, you know, this idea of sort of continuous learning is just paramount to giving our people the experience they need to be successful.

Scott, how can HR leaders leverage data and analytics to make informed decisions about their workforce?

Well, certainly gut feel is one thing, but having good data is another. We are certainly on a journey to do so. I think we, you know, we have recognized the value of data. We try to make evidence-based, pragmatic, practical decisions that are anchored in some definable data. We certainly have a ways to go, but we're getting much better at doing so. And I think it just becomes more of an operating paradigm or a behavioral paradigm at a leadership level, which is to say, you know, are we going to make decisions and are we going to make those decisions based on data and data that we feel strong that is accurate, reliable, etc. And just being and bringing that as part of the the business ethos or cadence, if you will, of how we operate. We are definitely on that journey. As a matter of fact, I'm in the Wharton CHRO program right now, and that's the class I'm currently in, which is using data and analytics to, you know, inform strategy, et cetera. So it's certainly top of mind, and I think every HR leader is thinking about how they could leverage data more effectively to make better decisions and impact their people.

Scott, what qualities make an effective HR leader in today's complex

business environment? I laugh because I feel like that list is really long, but if I try to sort of synthesize it, at least from my experience, certainly you have to be flexible.

I don't want to use the term

agility because it's sort of, you know, connotes a certain sort of thing, but having flexibility, or as I like to think about, freedom in a framework. I think as an HR leader, you have to have a framework for how you do what you do, when you do it, et cetera, but you also have to allow for freedom within that framework. Because, you know, the only people who are really thinking about HR, if you will, are the HR people. Everyone else is just thinking about, hey, I come to work every day. And so how do we as an HR function enable, equip, empower them to do what they have to do? It requires some flexibility, but it also requires a framework for which to operate. And so I think that's a critical quality. I think the other quality is to be a continual professional learner. You know, I am constantly learning something every day here in my role at Empower, whether it's about the business, whether it's about our people, whether it's about what's going on externally and how to bring that in, and how to work within and navigate our leadership teams, etc. So it's constantly learning. And I think if you're open to that, then it creates a lot of value and opportunities. I think there's openness for learning or continual learning. And then I think, you know, last and certainly not least is, again, a focus on people. I'm a proponent of and adopt a servant leadership approach, which is really about others, empowering, enabling, engaging them, and trusting them to do their work and, you know, enabling them to do so. I think there's always a certain element of trusting and verifying to make sure that those things are happening. So I think it's really around being flexible in the framework, continual learner and, you know, putting others first from a leadership perspective to get the most out of them. There's probably a lot of other qualities and competencies, but certainly those are the ones that are resonating with me today.

Scott, the war on talent continues. There's a subset of our workforce that might be defined as 10xers, people that significantly outperform kind of the standard performance benchmarks. Curious to get your perspective on some of the more effective measures an organization

could take to keep that best talent. Yeah, I think as simple as it might sound, one thing is to ask your people where they're at, what they're doing, how they're feeling. This is the sort of the genesis behind the employee experience, the impact assessment that we did is you really wanted to know, look, where are you? How are you feeling about what you do, where you do it, who you do it with, et cetera? And then more importantly, respond and provide some, some actions around that. We are, you know, as it relates to our, you know, we're getting ready to kind of share more corporately sort of the feedback from that, from that exercise. But I certainly think that, you know, at its core, whether you're a supervisor or manager up, is spend time with your people every month, ask where they're at, how are they doing and what they need to be successful. And serve that and provide that for them. I think that is— that's how people want to connect and want to stay. Obviously, there's, you know, broader purpose and mission alignment and all the things that you would want to see in an organization, which sure, it empowers, is critical. You know, we, we provide access to quality medicine so millions of people can have healthier and happier lives. That's something that all of our people rally around, and that is the core purpose. And so we hook into that, but then it's okay, what do I need to be able to do that really well? I think it just comes down to leaders or people leaders spending time with their people, knowing them and being active with them.

Scott, any parting advice you'd like to share with

our audience? Well, I think about sort of parting advice. It would be, you know, keep, keep, keep going, right? There's a lot of things that we can do as an HR function. We have a great ability to impact people's lives, you know, every day. You know, people spend most of their time at work or a lot of their time at work. And so how can you focus on making it the best possible experience for, for people? And sometimes that's challenging, sometimes that's difficult. You know, there's all sorts of things we can do in HR, but I think if you focus on driving the best experience for people, everything will follow suit.

Scott, thanks so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure having you on.

Thank you, Dave. Pleasure.