Melody Sundwall

▶0:00HostWelcome 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 Melody to the Built by People podcast. Melody, thank you so much for joining us today. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:49GuestYeah, happy to be here and share a little bit. I'm one of the people that got into HR not on purpose. It was not the path. I was in project management and not doing anything at all related to this industry in any capacity. And really had a boss come and say, I think we need to switch and I really want you on the HR team. And I said, no, you've got the wrong human. That is not for me. But what we, after we talked all through it, what we figured out is, you know, the reason that I guess I was doing well with project management was recognizing that you don't always have the right people with the right talents doing the right pieces of the puzzle. And you can get a project across the finish line sometimes just by moving players around and doing some different things. And so that was actually my entry into it. And since then I've just been having fun. I've worked in a couple of different industries and had an opportunity to work with everything from big business to small business, private owners, organizations with union and all types of different walks of life. And so it's been great.

▶2:01HostElodie, can you tell us about a time when your ability to meet employees where they are helped navigate a challenging situation? What was your approach there and what were some of the results?

▶2:13GuestYeah, I think my kind of heart posture for taking care of our teams is always, I can set the bar wherever I'm going to set the bar, but Not everybody starts there, right? And so I really believe that you have to meet them where they are. And so whether that's messaging, right? If you have policy changes, if you have important company announcements, you have to be able to get it to somebody in the field. You have to be able to get it to highly educated, highly compensated in the office. Like you just have to be able to do that and you have to be able to meet employees where they are. We've had, we had an employee recently that really just was not showing up in the same way that we were used to seeing them show up every day, just not with that same energy, not with the same amount of questions or excitement for anything. And it was, okay, what is going on? What are we doing? What needs to happen here? And really, at the end of the day, what we got to is that there was a whole lot of things happening for them outside of work that was impacting the day-to-day. And we were able to really just go, okay, then let's give you some time and space to work on those things. And by really just diving in to meet them where they were and not just, hey, there's a performance issue here, we're going to only deal with the performance piece of it. We were able to make some things happen and move some things around and let her take care of some things outside of work. And 6 months later, everything's back on track and everybody's doing what they need to be doing and life is good. But If we had not taken the time to figure out where she was and what was at the heart of what was going on, I don't know that we would've had the same result.

▶3:54HostMelody, how does your baseball team analogy play out in real-world scenarios? And can you share a specific example of repositioning team members that led to better organizational success?

▶4:05GuestYeah, I think if you think about your team like a baseball team, right? Not everybody's a starting pitcher. I don't care what they think. They're not all starting pitchers. Not everybody can be a utility player, right? You have some people that they're good at what they do and they're good at that one thing, but for the love of God, don't move them anywhere else. They're not going to succeed well, right? You have some people that are AAA players and on a major league team, like it just doesn't work. And I think you have to be able to come in and look and go, okay, something's not right over here, or even just listen. Hey, they've got an interest in something else, right? We had, we had someone at one point that was on a contracts team. They spent a lot of time just going through contracts, tracking down signatures and dates and deadlines and all those kind of things. But what they really wanted was a sales opportunity. And it was, it was the pent-up energy for wanting that next challenge and wanting that next thing was not being fulfilled. Great at what they did on the contract side. Great at the attention to detail and all those kind of things, but there was an interest in something else and we moved them over and gave them a bite at that apple and put them in that new position on the team, whatever you want to call it. And it didn't work. Actually, it was not a solid position for them whatsoever. But what we figured out was really what she wanted was not just working on the contracts, but not as aggressive on the sales side. What she really wanted was customer service and that business development relationship piece of the puzzle, right? And so by giving them a shot to play a different position and do something different, we found out, okay, we still haven't found the sweet spot, right? But we know what's not working and we know what doesn't come to fruition.

▶5:53HostMelody, when was a time you had to help leadership manage a significant strategic shift? How did you approach the people side of that change?

▶6:03GuestYeah, there's two different really specific examples that I can think of for that, right? One is we had— anytime you have massive layoffs, right? So whether you go back to the 2000s and you have the telecom boom and bust, right? And you have to really work with everybody on that change management and understanding and what are we really doing here? The thing that you have to go into when you talk with leadership on that is no matter what change you have, it's like throwing that pebble into the lake, right? And it's going to be a ripple. I don't care. It may be a small ripple, but there's going to be a ripple effect. And so I think the important thing is that a lot of times leaders are focused on the financial side of things, and it needs to be our job to say, okay, but remember that ripple is going to hit everybody emotionally as well. Right. And it's going to hit how they show up every day. It's going to hit how they trust coming into work, if they trust the message that you're giving them, those kind of things. And I think it's my job to go in and be that voice to say, okay, this is how the message needs to be worded. And it should not come from you because they don't hear from you often enough to trust you. It should come from this person, or it should come in this— no, it should not just be a random email that they get in the middle of the day. Like, it needs to be this kind of messaging or that kind of messaging. And so Really, it can be, again, whether it's a layoff, whether it's changing an organization internally, whatever those things may be, I see it as my voice to work with the leadership to say, these are your blind spots. And if you don't do this, the ripple becomes so much bigger than it has to be.

▶7:39HostElodie, how do you balance the messiness of human dynamics with the structured needs of business objectives? Can you share a specific example?

▶7:48GuestYeah, I think that the example I would give for that, there's so many because we're all just messy humans at the end of the day, and we show up in different ways. We have someone who is really good at what they do, and we grandfathered that person in on this new policy or this new style of doing something because they're really good at what they do. And the problem with that is that it creates other mess. We know this person's been doing it a long time. We know they're good at what they do. We know they deliver on what they do. It's fine. We can figure it out. We can make the allowances, but then there you have to balance that then of, okay, but what message are you telling the rest of the team that this person gets to be grandfathered out of doing these new process or procedures or trying it the new way or those kind of things. And that's, it's actually still an ongoing conversation that we have every time we do something new operationally, we specifically talk about this one person and go, okay, how far are we going to push this versus how far are we going to let this go? The delivery that we get out of them is worth a whole lot more than fighting to say, no, you have to do it this new way when the recipe that they've got is working. And, but then there's other sides that we have to go and we have to go listen. We put this one piece of the puzzle, this is what the rest of the organization is reporting on. So I need you to find a way to meet me over here. And I think it, it's, you just balance what does that look like and juggle that, right? Some things you can tolerate. And some things you can't, and you play that role. But that's that messiness of making sure the company gets what they need and can keep good people on.

▶9:28HostMelody, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶9:33GuestMy favorite phrase about HR is that we are here to be a resource for humans, right? I think it's really interesting when I see blogs or I see posts or I see whatever, people that are unhappy in their role and they just feel the drudgery of being in HR kind of thing. If you think of it as we are here to be a resource for humans, then we as a resource get depleted as well, right? There are places where we thrive as a resource. There's places where we do not thrive as a resource. And I think it's really important to recognize how we are showing up every day. And so figure out if you're still going to be a resource for humans, are you in the place you can continue to deliver and be that resource. And if not, let's go find something else to do. I think it's really important for how we show up.

▶10:25HostMelody, thank you so much for joining us today on the Built By People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶10:31GuestThank you. I appreciate being here.