Erin McCann

▶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 Erin to the Built by People podcast. Erin, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could tell us a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:55GuestYeah, very happy to be here. Thanks for the invitation. I'm excited to share a little bit about job architecture, performance management, happy to talk about my personal background, which is a little unique for HR professionals. I don't come from HR naturally. I actually started in the commercial sides of organizations and sales and marketing, customer operations, and maybe 12 years ago decided that rather than focusing on external customers, I really wanted to take that operations and institutional knowledge and bring it in-house and lead people teams. So I took a big step back in my career and joined a startup of about 13 people in New York. Um, the marketing SaaS company, and really learned on the ground through my network, did my own education, and really built a structure just by trial and error. And since then, since I started in that company called Castora, now this is my fourth startup. I'm working in a company called Genomonon.

▶1:53HostHow do you approach designing a job architecture that supports clear career pathways for employees and also align that to performance management goals?

▶2:05GuestYeah, so this is something I really had never seen done before in a clear way when I started back when I was at Castora, employee 13. Easy to do this kind of work when you have 13 people. Harder as you get to 2,000, 5,000-person organizations. And really, this just came from me writing things down. So, when I was first trying to build a performance management structure, when I was new into people operations, the thing I realized was that it was really hard to assess someone's performance if there wasn't clarity on what their roles or responsibilities were. So, I went to Google Sheets and just kind of wrote down the functions within the organization and started to put pen to paper. What the expectations were for every level. And since that initial framework, which was pretty basic, I really tailored it to every organization where I've started as their first people leader. So I mentioned this is my fourth time building a startup as a people team leader. This time around, I really have made the framework a lot more approachable, but also custom-built for the company where I work now. Starting with that framework, I Usually tailor this to the company and the goals and the core values. At my last company, we used a framework called TIME, which was teamwork, impact, mindset, execution. We essentially wrote what that meant for entry-level roles all the way up to the C-suite. At Genomenon, I took it a step further and consistently used the same, what we called competencies. So, things like accountability, results, the manager track, that would be like performance management and team structure. And then we built out core values. So think any company's core values could scale from entry level to C-suite by the impact you have. And then for each department, I wrote specific skills or what we called crafts at Genomnon. So for engineering, that would be development or code reviews. For the people team, that includes things like employee experience and recruiting. And again, just really took this framework of these 3 Cs Put it in Google Sheets. Again, pretty basic. You don't need something really fancy to start off with. The content is really the most important thing. I wrote out the same competencies and core values for every team, and then wrote specific skills that scaled from entry-level to C-suite based on the department. And I will say ChatGPT really helps. You get a lot of words on a piece of paper, they can really go through and summarize for you, and you can kind of check your own biases along the way, which is really helpful.

▶4:34HostWhat role does job architecture play in setting fair and achievable performance expectations for employees across different roles and levels?

▶4:42GuestYeah, so I think this goes to your latter question, which is how do we use this in performance management? And I mentioned those 3 C's. The crafts are individualized to every department. So think those engineering or people team skills, where the competencies and the core values we kept consistent across every team. So really this equalizes what we look for from a specialist level, entry level, to senior, to lead, to director. So every director is being evaluated against those same expectations from a core value and a competency perspective. Same with folks on the maker track, for example. So you are creating that equitability across the organization. After we had that job architecture built, the way that we use this in performance management is, again, we don't have access right now to fancy tools. And the content to me was most important. So I just created a Google Sheet template that, um, our managers used with a rating scale and evaluated folks on those competencies, core values, and crafts or skills that bubbled up to a summary. And again, that gives you really data-driven performance metrics that are based on the same criteria that everyone is being evaluated on across the organization. Really make sure that we're doing things equitably for every single person.

▶5:54HostAnd how do you ensure that performance management is closely tied to career progression and development within your organization's job architecture?

▶6:03GuestYeah, so we keep these transparent. So if I'm a marketing specialist and I'm really interested in becoming a senior marketing specialist, just making things up, I'm able to see my current level. I'm able to see the next several levels up, and the goal of my manager is to assess my current skillset. And then share where I have gaps in getting that next level up promotion. So using that tool, I can see if I'm a— we use a 4 rating instead of a 5 rating to really get these tight. If I'm doing okay, but not great in one of the competencies, let's use results as an example. Maybe I, maybe I linger too long and I can't push like an MVP out. I really need to get those details ticked and tied before I push something out and that's causing delays. So I would get a 2 in results maybe. And then my manager could really show me where, why that's happening and why this is a critical skill for that next level up and create a co-create with me a development plan to help me close that gap.

▶6:59HostCan you share an example of how structured job architecture has improved performance management outcomes?

▶7:06GuestIt's made it much more specific. And I think one of the things that managers are craving is alignment and guidance on what great looks like. So, as an individual, I might have one idea and my manager might have a totally different idea. This puts everybody on the same page and allows managers to, rather than focus on rewriting a job description every 6 months or every year, remembering all of the work that's happened over 12 months if you're doing an annual cycle, it really focuses on the right behaviors that we know will help achieve the outcomes that we need as an organization. So this should all be very closely tied to organizational and departmental goals. These are the behaviors that, you know, if successful, will help you achieve those goals in the long run.

▶7:52HostAny other best practices that you'd like to share related to job architecture or performance management?

▶8:00GuestI would say two things. One, we tie compensation to this as well. So I build salary bands against these levels, and related to that, As organizations get bigger, it's a lot harder to start, but it becomes even more critical. And part of this is titles and levels. And as a person who's grown up in startups for the last 15, 20 years, I know that there's this desire to reward folks with a big title. When it comes to the people team and trying to roll out something like this, it can be a real challenge. However, this does give a pathway to having a solid conversation about why someone might not be a C-suite employee, but they have a C-suite title, or VP, but they have a VP title and they're not doing the right activities to demonstrate that level. This creates an opportunity to have a really good informed conversation. So I would say tying this to compensation in some way, making sure that people understand that performance is how you get a promotion. And then making sure that it's clear that performance is not just output, it is also core value alignment. And baking all of that in together will really make sure you don't have those brilliant jerks running around or those underperforming superstars on the value front who don't have the right output. Because especially in small companies, it's really about having the right people in the right seats and spending your money effectively.

▶9:21HostErin, any other parting advice you'd like to share with our audience?

▶9:26GuestIn this sense, just get started. Start writing something down, Google Word doc and Google Sheets. It's really the content that's most important. Don't wait for a fancy tool to come around and fix this for you. You can get started really easily, pen to paper with ChatGPT.

▶9:42HostErin, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure having you on.

▶9:47GuestThank you so much.