Joy Todd

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

▶0:55GuestYeah, absolutely. Thanks, David. Thanks for having me. My career journey's been pretty diverse. After college, I started out in marketing. I was a pharmacy technician throughout college and beyond just to pay for my tuition. And over time, I just transitioned to different roles working for a pharmacy benefit management company, and I was trying really hard to find a career I was passionate about. Eventually, I went back to school for my MBA. I was working in a data analytics role. And I took the HR class that was in the core business selections, and I fell in love. And I pivoted immediately to HR. That was my true passion. And then from there, I took on different roles. I worked in state government, in manufacturing. Recently, about 18 months ago, I joined AVI Systems. We're a global corporate audiovisual integrator. We specialize in creating cutting-edge technology for providing the coolest workplaces around. So we're cool tech, we're fun tech. Our goal is to make work environments fun, productive, and worthwhile. And on top of it, we're an employee-owned company that's growing rapidly. So I'm, I'm really excited about my career journey and, and where it's taken me.

▶2:05HostAwesome, Joy. And I know you, you've stepped in, uh, you know, following, uh, someone who had been there for 15 years. Curious how you approached that transition while simultaneously preparing the HR function for that rapid growth that you've experienced?

▶2:23GuestYeah, good question. You know, when I stepped into the role, my focus was really just to listen, observe, and just learn the organization, learn where we were at. And at the same time, I had a detailed list I was keeping of kind of the areas and projects that I thought needed attention. I was asked to really elevate the HR function at AVI and prepare us for our bullish future. And at the time they told me that, but I hadn't even seen it happen. And right now, obviously in 18 months, I've seen a lot of growth. A big first step for me was aligning with our leadership team because I really needed to understand the goals, the vision, and the priorities for HR at AVI, which was formed in part by a lot of extensive discussions to grasp their different perspectives on what they see as the most critical HR issues, as well as the broader organizational issues. So this essentially was an audit of what we were doing in HR, our processes, our practices, and even the technology to kind of figure out our current state and then identify what we needed to work on next. When I started, our team was quite lean. We had a team of 4, including me. And so one of the biggest challenges for me was retaining the existing team who had all that knowledge and the experience, and I needed to lean on that, but also simultaneously build a larger one, which also included installing and reinstating a learning and development function that had been eliminated prior in the COVID years. So that was a really big part of our growth. But what, what's been really fun, David, is I was given the opportunity to reimagine what HR could be at AVI. And over the past 18 months, we've made a ton of progress, but I would say there's still a lot to do as we continue to prepare for the next level of growth.

▶4:12HostJoy, you've gone through a lot of growth. I think you've hired around 370 people in the past year alone. Can you share your strategy for scaling an HR organization to support that kind of growth?

▶4:27GuestSure. Yeah. I guess I'd say scaling an HR organization to support our explosive growth involves some key steps. First, we really needed to build a strong foundation. By strategically investing in growing our team and then connecting to the organization's goals and vision. These are really essential building blocks that we needed to create scalable HR function. And then for us, a big part was addressing some outdated HR policies and practices. And these are— were really crucial just to ensure that we're operating efficiently and effectively. So refining our talent acquisition, we have an incredible team of 3 recruiters that sit in the Dallas area. And we have a really robust recruiting strategy, so we need to make sure that we're strong in that area. Number 2, we put a lot of work on our onboarding, so streamlining our onboarding, creating a comprehensive onboarding process so we can quickly integrate all these people into the organization to have fast and productive impact. So that's been a big focus of ours in an area that I would say we'd been weak in. Also investing in our leadership, that's where the rubber really meets the road, you know, to allow the organization to be successful and make sure that we're retaining the right people. Employee engagement is a really important aspect, fostering a really positive work culture. People come to AVI because we're known for our culture, we're known for our growth, we're known for all the great things that we're doing. We are growing gangbusters, but again, the culture's what's bringing that in. So we have to be intentional in order to continue to cultivate that. And then one big thing that we've been focusing on are what are those things in our team that we can outsource so that we can focus on really the things that only we can do? So just an example, we outsourced all of our leave management. We have a lot of leave management across all of our branches. So that's something that we've done. And then always just regularly, annually looking at what, what are our goals, what is the organization needing? And so we can pivot and what is our goal for the next 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, et cetera. And then I would say for me in this spot, and maybe others wouldn't have a situation, we had to overhaul some pretty outdated policies. We had to create a compensation system that we didn't have. We modernized and revamped our employee benefits to be more competitive. We had to shore up even some policies like harassment training to mitigate risk. And there were just some smarter practices that we needed to do to better support the business rather than maybe some of the outdated or arbitrary rules. So that was a pretty big lift for us on the team in addition, you know, from the auditing and then what do we need to kind of get where we need to be? So I hope that, that answered the question, David.

▶7:19HostThat was great. And Joy, you mentioned kind of moving from a traditional passive HR function to a more proactive, collaborative HR business partner model. What have been some of the key elements in making that transformation successful?

▶7:36GuestYeah, great. Some of this would be, as we're moving from a traditional passive HR model to the HR business partner model, is kind of training the organization about the change so that they can anticipate our involvement and and understand the value that we can deliver to them. So it's not only leveling up our team, but kind of demonstrating that to the organization. And the ways I would say that we've done that the best would be aligning with the business goals and making sure that we understand the strategy, the challenges, what's happening with the business, even in the specific branches or departments, understanding the business and even the financials, the market dynamics, what's happening in the industry, et cetera. Collaborating well with them and communicating so we can start to demonstrate again, the knowledge that we've gained from digging into the business and showing kind of how we can help with that. Engaging employees is obviously a really big part of it. We've started an annual engagement survey, which delivered some really concrete feedback that we kind of sensed and we were gathering just over time, but we really have something now in writing. We're delivering that back to the employees and sharing what things we're going to do to fix or improve the culture and work environment. And then I'd say just learning all the time. I mean, having a learning mindset and not just a fixed mindset. There's always something that we need to be curious about and learning about the organization and learning about the people and everything that's going on because we got to stay relevant and we can't just sit kind of where we're at.

▶9:16HostYou know, you've got a lot of locations across the United States. Sounds like 40 office locations, maybe more. How do you maintain a consistent company culture across all those locations while also ensuring that each location maintains its own unique identity?

▶9:35GuestYeah, that's a really good question. And, and again, something really important to us. I would say maintaining a consistent company culture across 40+ locations, they're always growing as we're doing quite a bit of acquisition activity while allowing each to have its own unique identity does require a multifaceted approach. One thing is we're really lucky to have strong communication from our CEO and President, Jeff Stavener. The leadership team has a really strong servant leadership style. Those things play a crucial role. For example, our CEO has a weekly video update that he sends to all employees. Which really fosters a sense of unity, transparency, very approachable. Employees feel that they know him. So this, all of it combined with a team, does help everyone feel connected from the top. Also, I would say, despite being spread across different offices and even more home offices, because we have a lot of employees that work remotely from home across the country, we prioritize finding ways to connect both in person and virtually. So we're intentionally focused on our culture. And so I would say the culture here is stronger than some organizations that are even entirely in person. And I can say that to my own experience. We also have leaders at each location that are responsible for maintaining and promoting and cultivating their culture organization-wide and at their own locations. We have a lot of employees in AV that come from the live events industry. And they have all these great stories of bands they toured with. Some of them are fantastic musicians themselves. So just as a nod to this, we name our conference and customer experience rooms after local musical acts, kind of adding a fun, unique touch. In San Francisco, we have the Grateful Dead conference room. Chicago, we have Styx. Minneapolis, here we have Bob Dylan. So it's just kind of a fun piece. But, you know, like I said, because we've experienced significant acquisition activity, it's even more important to maintain what works for that acquired company, but also integrate them in our process. I would say that our ESOP program is huge. It fosters a really tight-knit community. It promotes transparency because we provide all of our company financial and goal— financials and goals to everybody, which builds a culture like I've never seen because we're all in this together. We're all rooting for the company, we all have money in the ESOP. So, and lastly, I would say that we have a lot of opportunities that we come together in person, like AVI, customer events, training academies. We have office grand openings and innovation workshops for different roles, et cetera. So, all of these things help reinforce our shared values, and then we're building strong relationships continually.

▶12:26HostJoy, what parting advice would you like to share with our audience?

▶12:30GuestI would say in HR, perhaps more than in other careers, it's essential that you really have a great fit with your organization's values and practices because as HR professionals, we're leading the charge in carrying out employee actions, communications, and decisions. So we really need to embody and promote the organization's core values consistently. When there's strong alignment between your personal values and those of the organization, it really enhances your ability to be an effective advocate and leader. So I would suggest don't settle for anything less than a strong culture fit, even if it takes you years to find it. And I would say for me, that would be the case, but being really in sync with your organization's values not only makes your job more fulfilling, but it just makes sure that you are able to genuinely support and drive the company's mission and culture. That's my best advice.

▶13:27HostThank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶13:32GuestThanks, David. Happy to be a part of it.