Logan Sutherland
VP, People and Culture
Stampin' Up!
Episode 234
HR's true influence: Shaping lives, building managers, changing the world.
Current chapter: Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built By PeopleApril 14, 2025 · 17:35
Thesis
“HR professionals wield significant influence, not just within organizations but globally, by enriching employees' work lives, aligning them with their potential, and thus positively impacting their overall well-being and communities.”
Show notes
The work part of our lives — given how much of it there is — matters enormously. Logan Sutherland has built his career around that conviction. From his father's floral shop to Microsoft, Bluehost, and now Stampin' Up!, every chapter of his journey has been shaped by the belief that HR professionals have a unique opportunity to improve people's lives, not just their employment experience.
Logan's defining thesis is that managers are the single greatest lever in any people strategy. They are the fulcrum point — what happens between an employee and their manager predicts almost everything else: engagement, performance, retention, development. At Microsoft, he built the capability frameworks. At Stampin' Up!, he's applied them with a different constraint: how do you build management capability in an organization without Microsoft's resources? His answer centers on two practices. First, the one-on-one conversation as "the basic unit of leadership" — not a status update, but a genuine human connection that surfaces issues before they become crises. Second, a tiered listening strategy: annual surveys for breadth, monthly pulse surveys for trend data, and "Lunch and Listen" sessions — a random sampling of five or six employees, over a meal — for the qualitative depth that no survey captures.
He's also developed a methodology for transforming HR team members from transactional processors into strategic partners — not through classroom training, but through deliberate on-the-job exposure to non-traditional HR work. Business context, he's found, is the most powerful HR development tool available.
- Why managers are the highest-leverage investment in any people strategy — and how to build their capability systematically
- The "basic unit of leadership" — how Logan treats the one-on-one conversation as the foundation of organizational health
- Tiered listening for genuine employee insight — combining annual surveys, pulse data, and Lunch & Listen sessions
- Building HR business acumen through non-traditional assignments — how exposure transforms transactional practitioners into strategic partners
- The long-term impact of HR work — why improving the work experience of individuals ripples outward into communities
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What you'll take away
- 1Prioritize building management capability, as managers are a primary predictor of employee success and happiness, multiplying positive effects throughout the company.
- 2Institute regular and healthy one-on-one conversations as the 'basic unit of leadership' to diagnose and prevent issues between employees and managers.
- 3Utilize a mix of broad-scale (annual/monthly surveys) and high-fidelity qualitative (Lunch and Listen sessions) listening techniques to genuinely understand employee sentiment.
- 4Foster business acumen in HR teams by integrating them into weekly business updates, staff meetings, and cross-functional discussions to provide context and strategic insight.
- 5Provide non-traditional, challenging on-the-job experiences for HR team members to expand their view of the business and transform them into strategic partners.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Choosing to leave the medical devices field at the beginning of a global pandemic for a paper crafting company proved to be a great decision, contrary to conventional career wisdom.
- •Advocating for an HR person to serve as an acquisition integration manager, a non-traditional business role, met with skepticism but successfully expanded the individual's and the team's strategic impact.
In Logan's words
“I think I see managers as one of the key fulcrum points for anything we want to do with our employees as a company. They are a strong predictor of success and potentially happiness for employees.”
This quote emphasizes the foundational importance of managers in influencing employee outcomes.
“I feel like that's the basic unit of leadership is good, healthy conversations with employees.”
This distills effective leadership into a fundamental, actionable practice: consistent communication.
“I just pick, have a random sampling of employees, 5 or 6 employees. We provide a lunch and just ask them what's going well, what we can do better, and what ideas they have.”
This describes a practical, high-fidelity qualitative listening technique to gather genuine employee feedback.
“Giving that on-the-job experience where you're doing something that may not be a traditional HR role is a huge way... to totally expanded their view of what HR could do and what our business was.”
This highlights the power of experiential learning in transforming HR professionals into strategic business partners.
“The work part of our lives, given the amount of time we all spend at work, is really significant. And anything we can do to improve that work portion of life improves the person and helps their life better as they go home and are with their loved ones or community or family.”
This powerfully articulates the ripple-effect impact of HR work, extending beyond the workplace to personal well-being.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Managers often fail to recognize their role as leaders and continue to operate as individual contributors or 'best technicians'.
- •Many organizations lack a consistent practice of regular, healthy one-on-one meetings between employees and managers, leading to communication breakdowns.
- •HR teams with transactional backgrounds frequently struggle to develop business acumen and participate strategically in broader company operations.
- •Leaders in fast-paced business environments find it challenging to effectively listen and connect with employee sentiment at both individual and broad scales.
- •There is often internal skepticism from business leaders about HR professionals taking on non-traditional, strategic roles outside of typical HR functions.
In this episode
Covering monthly expenses is the number one concern for employees in 2024
Built by People
Dave Nelson has wanted to be a business person since he was 7
Tim Ferriss on His Career Journey
Building management capability is a passion of yours as an HR leader
Developing Managers: The Key
How do you establish effective listening techniques to stay connected with employee sentiment
How to Listen to Employee Sentiment
When building business acumen in HR teams, what strategies have you found most effective
Developing Business acumen in HR Teams
Logan has helped transform an HR team member from transactional mindset to strategic partnership
Have You Changed the HR Team's Mind?
Logan, what parting advice would you like to share with our community
A HR Professional's Last Words
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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