Katy Conway
Former Chief People Officer
RGP
Episode 204
What Marketers Know: Treating Employees Like Customers in Business-First HR
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleMay 5, 2025 · 11:07
Thesis
“Katy Conway believes that effective HR leadership stems from a 'business-first' mindset, treating employee experience like a marketer treats customer experience, and using comprehensive data to uncover true drivers of engagement and retention, rather than relying on common assumptions.”
Show notes
Transforming HR and Organizational Culture: Lessons from Katy Conway's Career Journey
In this episode of the Built by People Podcast, host Dave welcomes Katy, who shares her 30-year career journey in HR, including her 'accidental' entry into the field and her extensive experience in talent management and acquisition.
Katy discusses a significant cultural transformation she led at RGP, focusing on employee experience, and the power of clear and transparent communication during challenging times like Covid.
She highlights the crucial role of analytics in shaping HR strategies and shares the importance of balancing business objectives with HR priorities.
Katy concludes with advice for HR professionals to always align their efforts with the core mission and values of their organization.
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:51 Katy's Career Journey
02:09 Transforming Organizational Culture
04:14 Balancing Business Objectives with HR Priorities
07:02 Leveraging Analytics in HR Strategy09:48 Parting Advice and Conclusion
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What you'll take away
- 1Approach HR with a business-first mindset, focusing on how people strategies directly drive overall business value and outcomes.
- 2Transform organizational culture by adopting a 'marketer's' perspective, deeply understanding the desired employee experience through listening, external data, and journey mapping.
- 3Leverage both quantitative and qualitative people analytics to uncover the true reasons for employee retention and attrition, challenging common assumptions like compensation being the primary factor.
- 4During challenging business periods, foster trust and unity through clear, transparent, and consistent internal communication about changing priorities and why decisions are being made.
- 5Prioritize HR initiatives by continuously assessing how each contributes to creating an 'experience' that effectively attracts and retains top talent.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Katy Conway challenges the common assumption that compensation is a top-three reason for employee attrition, stating that external benchmarking data rarely supports this.
In Katy's words
“I call myself a bit of an accidental HR person... I really maintained first and foremost a strong interest in business, whatever the focus of that business was, growing it, helping to cultivate it. I happen to be doing that through a people lens, but I think that's been an approach that's really served me in my experience.”
This quote highlights her foundational business-first approach to HR, which is a core theme of her leadership philosophy.
“the thing that helped me most was approaching it or thinking about it a little bit more like a marketer. Than a typical HR person. So starting with what is the employee experience that we're trying to create”
This is a direct and actionable insight into her unique strategy for culture transformation and enhancing employee engagement.
“much like in our own households, you can handle bad news when you have a little bit of sense of how you're going to tackle it. But getting that context and knowing where things are and what markers you need to see to add things back in and for them to start to improve really gives you a sense of your bearings again and helps people.”
She emphasizes the psychological benefit of transparent communication, demonstrating its role in maintaining trust and clarity during organizational challenges.
“I learned about myself that data became my best friend. It's so very helpful, and I'm a big believer in leveraging and always looking at both quantitative and qualitative data. I think one without the other can be misleading.”
This highlights her commitment to data-driven HR, emphasizing the necessity of combining different data types for accurate insights.
“in external benchmarking, there are a lot of longstanding data inputs that are really reliable that show rarely is compensation— I dare to say ever has compensation been in the top 3 reasons for people leaving an organization.”
This is a key contrarian take that challenges conventional wisdom regarding the primary drivers of employee attrition.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Organizations struggling to transition from traditional, transactional HR models to more experience-focused people strategies.
- •HR leaders relying on assumptions (e.g., compensation as primary attrition driver) instead of comprehensive data to address employee engagement and retention issues.
- •Companies facing significant business downturns and needing to navigate difficult decisions while maintaining employee trust and morale.
- •Lack of transparent and consistent communication during periods of organizational change, leading to employee anxiety and uncertainty.
- •Difficulty for HR functions to clearly align their initiatives with broader business objectives and demonstrate tangible value.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Your career has spanned about 30 years, predominantly in HR
WSJD Live: My Career Journey
You successfully transformed an organization's culture to enhance employee engagement and retention
How to Transform an Organization's Culture
Katie, you had to balance business objectives with HR priorities during downturn
When Do You Balance Business Objective with HR Priorities?
How did you leverage data to drive meaningful change within the organization
In the Elevator: Data and Analytics in HR Strategy
Dave: Katie, what parting advice would you share with our audience
Katie On HR: Built by People
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
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