Melissa DiMuro
Chief People Culture & Marketing Officer
Limbach
Episode 160
Beyond HR: How Culture Becomes Your Core Business Strategy.
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleJune 5, 2025 · 11:24
Thesis
“HR transformation, culture, and brand initiatives must be deeply rooted in the overall business strategy to effectively drive key organizational outcomes and ensure leadership alignment.”
Show notes
Four years after Melissa DiMuro joined Limbach, the company's salary attrition had dropped 41%. That number doesn't happen by accident, and it doesn't happen with a single initiative. It's the result of a disciplined sequence: deep data analysis, defined "moments that matter" in the employee journey, a compelling employee value proposition, integrated leadership development, and a career pathing structure that gave people reasons to stay before they started looking to leave.
Melissa arrived at Limbach — a publicly traded building solutions company — at the start of COVID, which meant her first 90 days were a listening exercise conducted during a crisis. Rather than accepting the constraint, she treated it as an advantage: when people are anxious and uncertain, they tell you the truth. Her standard onboarding practice — a rigorous listening tour followed by a full SWOT assessment — produced the kind of diagnostic clarity that normal onboarding rarely does.
Her work on brand-culture alignment is the other thread that runs through everything she's built at Limbach. She holds a conviction that most organizations quietly avoid: internal messaging, external brand, and shareholder communication have to tell the same story. When they don't, the discrepancy is visible — to employees, to candidates, to customers. Melissa's operating philosophy is that culture and brand aren't HR and marketing's separate problems. They're the same problem, requiring the same integrated solution.
- The 41% salary attrition reduction — the full sequence of interventions that produced a number most organizations can't achieve
- The 90-day listening tour as a diagnostic tool — why starting with questions produces better answers than starting with solutions
- Building an EVP that drives retention — data, employee voice, and "moments that matter" as the foundation
- Aligning brand, culture, and shareholder messaging — why consistency across all three is a strategic requirement
- "Business people with a foundation in talent" — the operating identity that keeps HR solutions tethered to business outcomes
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What you'll take away
- 1Implement a rigorous 90-day onboarding plan focused on listening to employees and stakeholders to conduct a comprehensive SWOT assessment for new roles.
- 2Prioritize HR initiatives by triangulating employee feedback with core business needs, framing HR leaders as 'business people with a foundation in talent, organization, and culture.'
- 3Reduce attrition through a comprehensive approach: deep quantitative/qualitative data analysis, defining employee experience 'moments that matter', building a compelling EVP, and integrating leadership development and career pathing.
- 4Address inconsistency in internal, external, and shareholder messaging by developing a cohesive brand story with commonality and consistency across all stakeholder communications.
- 5Ensure all HR and brand initiatives are directly tied to the business strategy, making them business imperatives rather than isolated functional efforts.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Successfully integrating People & Culture with Brand & Marketing functions under one leader, which is an uncommon but highly effective organizational structure for unified messaging.
In Melissa's words
“During my time there, I really became known for growing and scaling organizations across a number of different spaces and across the globe.”
This highlights the guest's foundational expertise in expanding and developing organizational structures.
“There could be a lot of feedback about things people would like to see, but at the end of the day, we have to be business people with a foundation in talent, organization, and culture.”
This quote emphasizes the crucial need for HR leaders to adopt a business-first mindset.
“I'm pleased to say 4 years later, that we reduced our salary attrition by 41%.”
This provides a clear, quantifiable result demonstrating the success of her implemented strategies.
“I think the company has to be very intentional about what's the cohesive brand story, how does it connect across different stakeholders.”
This emphasizes the critical need for a unified brand message across all audiences, regardless of organizational structure.
“But the magic happens when you can pair what specific strategy is going to get the business the key outcomes they're looking for.”
This powerfully articulates the core thesis: linking HR and brand initiatives directly to business strategy for impactful results.
The problems this episode addresses
- •High attrition rates, particularly in industries like construction, leading to significant costs and operational challenges.
- •Lack of comprehensive qualitative data (e.g., reasons for leaving, employee experience insights) to complement quantitative turnover metrics.
- •Absence of a clearly defined and compelling Employee Value Proposition (EVP) to attract and retain top talent.
- •Inconsistent internal and external messaging across employees, customers, and shareholders, diluting brand and culture perception.
- •Siloed perception of HR, culture, and brand initiatives, failing to integrate them as critical business imperatives for leadership alignment.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
I started in printing, made my way through aviation, and now I'm in building
Top Executives: Career Journey
Limbach developed its employee value proposition from the ground up
Employee Value Proposition Assessment
Limbach reduced salary attrition by 41% over four years, Melissa says
Transforming the Construction Industry's Culture
Melissa discusses aligning the company's brand with its culture
The Challenge of Aligning the Company's Brand and Culture
When thinking about HR transformation, culture, brand, my recommendation is to always
Culture and Brand: The Business Imperative
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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