Nathan Peirson

▶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 Nathan to the Built By People Podcast. Nathan, 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.

▶0:54GuestYeah, appreciate it, Dave. Appreciate the opportunity to be on this today, get the chance to speak a little bit. Career journey, I didn't have a background where I thought I was going to get into HR. I graduated undergrad in finance. I did some lending. I did financial services. I sold life insurance. I did different pieces. I really thought I was going to go down that track. I had applied to grad school for my JD, law school and things from that standpoint. And I had a friend that was in a master's program at the University of Cincinnati in HR. And I thought, hey, it was a good program. I was interested in the people aspects of business, but really for more of a short-term kind of stop, because look, everything runs, all businesses run through people. You're as good as the people that are working with you, working for you. Early in my career, in my early 20s, I thought, hey, this is the opportunity to get a little bit more knowledge. Let's deviate from the law school path, do this, step into it. And I really fell in love with the space, stepped in and looked at really how you can really start to drive a business, think differently, influence from how you develop, attract, retain folks. So I got into an internship early on as part of my grad school. And every time that I really went back to my plan of, okay, I'm going to go back and get an MBA, get the JD, kind of look at those pieces. There was a new opportunity. I did a lot of M&A early on, a lot of travel from an international standpoint. I got really big chunky projects in those things. And this was in the early 2000s. So when we were at that early offshore, like arbitrage, when you looked at contact centers and call centers. I worked for a big one in Cincinnati where we started with about 40,000 people, primarily like North America. We grew our India and our Philippines operations and those things. I got to do M&A in different parts of the world. Every time when I thought about stepping back and like said, get back to that plant, there was something new in the HR space. And it really just built from that. Got to parlay that into different opportunities at a clinical research company from a global standpoint. In my late 20s, I was running a global HR function with 120 people around the world, publicly traded organization. So really good opportunities there. And then I had an opportunity to step into the front end of an IPO with a fintech payments company. We acquired more than doubled in size a couple years into that company called Worldpay that was based out of London. And we merged with them, put the headquarters in Cincinnati, spent some time there. Then I got to go to a company called Paycor on the front end of an IPO there as well. So I've had some really great opportunities and now I'm at company called Onnit. It's in the legal tech space, PE-backed, and it's been awesome. It's been a year of, of really building and getting the company on a really good, fast growth trajectory. Yeah, I've been pretty fortunate and had some pretty great opportunities.

▶3:35HostNathan, at Onnit, you mentioned focusing on foundational fix before growth. Can you walk us through your approach to assessing and prioritizing what truly needed fixing versus what could be eliminated?

▶3:47GuestYeah, I think when you step into a situation, all organizations are going to be a little bit different. So having a close relationship with the executive team, having a good view on the business and what the objectives are for the next 6, 12, 18 months and those things, when you've had enough experiences, I think you can step back and you can evaluate where the HR function's at today, how it's supporting the business, or where were there opportunities to support it differently. I've talked to lots of different folks about this. I've just thought over the years and just when I think about my career journey and how it's evolved is early on in HR, you get geeked out about HR itself in the practice of it. And I remember rolling out a lot of different things in HR where it's programs, it's projects, and it's what's new and interesting in the HR space. And a lot of times it may not always have the immediate hook or it may not be simple and easy for the business to consume. Probably over the last 7 to 8 years, something finally clicked as you start to grow and expand in these more complex organizations where At the end of the day, it's not about just doing HR stuff for HR stuff's sake. It's about what are the things that are going to drive the business. So the lens that I took when I came in is let's assess where we're at. Let's assess the stuff that's adding value. And if it doesn't add value, let's kill it. We, in a lot of cases, probably over-engineered. We had policy for policy's sake. We had processes that when you looked at what we were doing, we were probably checking the box more than we were actually focused on an outcome that drove business impact. So that was the first piece is assessing what the work we're doing today. And then you're looking at the business to say, okay, what are we trying to do? We were trying to build a foundation for scale. That was the most important thing for us is we had brought in new leaders, a new leadership team. We had gone through a transformation to really take an organization that had been siloed from a geographic standpoint, from an acquisition standpoint, that had different business units internally, the part where working together, we were pulling this together and really building the foundation for scale. So the piece for me is I had to build a people practice that had a foundation that was really good at the basics. And then once you got that, you could say, okay, how do I start to overlay talent programs and talent initiatives that could start to elevate the function? And you're doing all this because you're piggybacked also with a readiness standpoint of how do I get us ready for transaction or sale or whatever, not knowing if that's in 6 months or if that's in 6 years. But knowing at some point, as you're in a space like this, you've really got to make sure that your shop is, it's tight. It's got all the things you need to from a compliance standpoint, from an operational standpoint. So that was really the approach and the view that I took. And it sounds like a lot and it was, but I always try to simplify it to say, look, there's all these things out here. How do I cut it down to what is the most important? How can I communicate that to my team? How could I communicate that to the business? So there are misaligned objectives around the things that people may think you're doing or HR should do. These are the things that are most important to us right now. Everything else is backburnered until we're able to build a foundation and add talent in different areas and those things.

▶7:00HostNathan, you spoke about eliminating administrative processes that weren't adding value, including performance ratings. What was your thought process behind these changes and what impact have you seen?

▶7:11GuestI've heard, I mean, over the years, it's performance ratings are like, it's, I think like the adage is like, they're universally like adopted. So everyone does performance. Everyone always did performance ratings. And it was also universally hated. Like people do not like, and they did not like the performance process, especially before it was an annual process. Sometimes you'd have a semi-annual. People are writing, I don't know, a thesis more or less on defending the work that they've done. And then the manager in some cases is rating, not reading a self-assessment. Applying their own, it's a look back. You typically aren't driving a lot of engagement out of those people are waiting for a compensation decision. And that's really ultimately what it's driving. So my experience when it comes to performance management is it's very much a check the box. It's very much a reactive kind of look back at the last 6 months, 12 months, whatever that period of time is. And then performance ratings as well. Unless you're spending a lot of time, and I don't think it adds a ton of value going through the calibration, forced rankings, the developer— I've done all that stuff in my career. I don't think it ultimately is buying you anything different because you still have bias. You still have subjectivity from a manager or leader point of view. If I go ask any group and any leader, like, who are their top performers, they can tell me without having to write and spend hours doing a performance review and assessment. So our approach to is we weren't doing it well. It wasn't productive. It wasn't making an impact and it was wasting a lot of time and a lot of energy. We were right in the midst of it when I joined and I had a couple folks on my team and they wrote probably 3 or 4 page like essays around the work that they'd done. And it wasn't aligned with anything beyond trying to justify the role or an increase in those things. And that, and there's nothing wrong with people because that's what they've been taught with it. But what we shifted to is to say, hey, take the rating out of it. We're going to have quarterly performance connects. So it's what we call them. We did the same thing at Paycor when I was there, but these are quick conversations. Hey, what are the things most important to me? What are the 3 priorities this quarter? What were the biggest accomplishments last quarter? 2 to 3 bullets. That's all it is. Hey, where do you need help? Where's the stuff that you could focus in on? So it's a quick conversation. And for me, it takes maybe 10 minutes of prep time, 15 minutes, because we're having weekly one-on-ones with folks. You're having regular discussion. So when you come into this, it's not looking back over the course of a year and having to justify it. It's a conversation that is focused on, hey, let's make sure we're aligned for this upcoming quarter. If something's going off the rails, let's have that conversation. And what we do is we say, hey, you're on track or you're off track. And that's the conversation is off track. You know what? These things went a little bit sideways last quarter. How do we get these back on track? What support do you need from me? Let's make sure that these are your top 3 priorities. Performance management, I've always thought, it's basic. Like, it's not rocket science. I think we can overcomplicate it way too much. And I don't think ratings are inherently like a bad thing. I just think some organizations that they make sense, some organizations can handle them better, and some organizations are small, they're nimble, that they know who the performers are. We were just at a point where it wasn't adding value to us. So I would say we are two cycles in. I think we are starting to adopt the practice, I would say, now we're not like advanced from that standpoint where I'm saying, hey, all of a sudden our performance discussions are great, but what we're focused in on is education. And we're really trying to change the narrative of, look, I don't need you to go and do all the stuff in the system just to check the box. So we have a completion percentage. I care about the conversation. So I had somebody recently that was on leave and like the deadline around the quarterly connects what was coming up. And they had just got back. They said, I don't know if I'm going to have time to do it. The deadline's in 3 days. And my response is, I don't like, I don't care. You don't have to do it for me. You don't have to do it for yourself to have something in the system. Now you should have a conversation with your leader because you're back from leave. Hey, what are the 3 most important things for you this upcoming quarter? That's your conversation. You're connecting in. What's the focus? What are those things that are important to you? So that was a big piece for me is we eliminated a ton of noise and a ton of just administration. But yeah, we're, we're early. This is a behavior change. It's a different approach and it's now about quality conversations. We've got work to do, but that's where you expect when you're making a change and you're building on the fly as we're also pivoting this organization to hypergrowth mode.

▶11:44HostNathan, in your experience speaking at the PE Summit, you discussed org design from an HR standpoint. What are the key principles you follow when designing an HR organization that truly drives business impact?

▶11:58GuestYeah, I think from an HR standpoint, I kind of always think about it this way. You can give me a big budget and I can create an organization that, like, it's got all the bells and whistles. It's got singular focus. It's got, you know, business partners and experience and it's deep in T. Like, you can figure out whatever you need to depending upon budget to scope and what the business wants. Some organizations though, you say, hey, if our focus is foundation and our focus is really making an investment now to drive profitability and create a foundation for growth, you're probably not going to be able to invest in every area that you would if you're, I don't know, further along on the maturity scale and you've got bigger operations and things like that. So to me, an important piece is really understanding what's your deliverable and setting that expectation with your leadership team. Because if I've got a team of 3 people, that's cool. That's fine. I know what I can get done with 3 people. If I've got a team of 10 people, I know what I could get done. So to me, it's part of understanding the resources, understanding what the business needs, and then being able to be really thoughtful about what are the most important things for the business right now. And then how do you design an org that's going to be, that's going to support those. So right now, when I think about my function, we've brought in some really good talent. We've shifted some roles around, but we created clarity in the jobs. We created clarity on expectations and then our structure as well. But we've got people wearing multiple hats. Do I think that's the long-term best case scenario when you think about organizational design and those things? I don't. I mean, you probably don't want your business partner also wearing a TA hat, also wearing a comp hat. But when you're starting to push 600 people, you're global and you're shifting from a foundation to, again, a hypergrowth mode, you're going to wear different hats and you're going to say, hey, it's okay for me in compensation right now to be a B minus. So B minus looks like this in this world. So you just have to be really prescriptive and really thoughtful about what's most important to us right now. And as you evolve, you're going to start to index into different areas because complexity, business demands, and things like that. So that's the way I think about it is it doesn't matter what you're going into. The organization is, look, if I've got constraints around budget or headcount, that's fine. I can decide what I can do with that. And it could be operations. It could be very focused on, look, we've got to have strong rigor around compliance and being able to run payroll and do the basics of HR. You can look at growth and say, look, there's a lot of important stuff. TA is going to be where I'm going to invest because we've got to build a growth engine. So to me, it comes down to, it starts with the business. You have to have some basic like concepts and understanding of HR and design and those things. But I think from an experience standpoint of seeing it done different ways, different size organizations, global, domestic, and those things. This gives you an opportunity, like coming in was to say, what makes sense for us now? But I'll tell you, like, as we shifted to growth mode, you go back and you start to reassess. So that's the step now is reassess and say, to enable growth, these are the different layers and levers we need to pull. Like, I may be an A in this lever that I know, hey, I can go do these things so we can deliver this. If we're going to have to drive development in a different way, or we're going to have to do reskilling and these things, okay, we're probably going to have to make further investment into our L&D or organization. So it's being thoughtful about that and the business, or we can always say no. And that's fine because then you say, okay, this is my capacity. This is what this looks like. And you get alignment with the business of you can't expect different and aspirational and really best in class for everything. You have to make trade-offs in those things. So I'm a big fan of expectations, clarity with it, and working closely with your business. Like I'm not in the business of HR for HR's sake, like we're trying to drive business. And I think the PE space works really well for somebody that thinks that way because you get to solve problems, you get to be creative and you get to move in these different environments where it's, you know, it could be foundation setting, it could be cost control shifting to hypergrowth, but it's fun. It's a space and like going from that foundation setting to hypergrowth mode, the business being really successful. Like I said, it's been a year and it's been heads down, but it's been a blast.

▶16:29HostNathan, when building and developing HR teams, how do you help the team stay focused on impact rather than getting caught up in traditional HR administrative processes?

▶16:39GuestYeah, I think that's, to me, like, you just have to be able to walk the talk with it. So to me, it's, we have regular touch bases, like, with the leadership team, one-on-ones, and then also from an organizational standpoint with the broader HR team. And it's being really clear and deliberate on what's most important to you right now. Because sometimes stuff does come up. And we'll go down a rabbit hole and I'll be the first to say like, timeout, like, I don't care. Why are we spending time going down this? And it's a lot of times the stuff that folks have done before, that's where they've operated. So you just have to be close enough to be able to walk people back out of it. And I'll say it's a change. And I always tell people, look, we're going through this kind of culture shift. So don't expect it to all be right the first time. Don't expect everything to be smooth and easy. There's got to be stuff that we're going to have to sort out, but it's just looking for those examples and continuously helping the team understand, look, you only have so much time. You only have one resource. What's that resource spending time on that's not helping you pull out of this stuff too? So it's like a coach. That's a lot of the role with it. I had a leader years ago that had a whiteboard in their office and they didn't focus a lot on strategy. They focused on activities. And this is like some of the aha moments you have in your career is 30 different actions, projects and stuff on the whiteboard that was important to that individual of, hey, I want to get all this stuff checked off this year. Did it have an alignment back to a strategy? Did it have an alignment back to an impact on the business? Not necessarily. So those are when you start to realize when you're having to go execute some of those is like, look, I could put all my effort into these 3 things and make a huge impact, or I could spend time doing 30 things and have this little tiny impact across stuff. That's the way you just, you have to be consistent with it because if you say Hey, don't focus on the low impact. And then you're asking people to go do that stuff. It doesn't work, but I think consistency is a big part of that.

▶18:35HostNathan, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶18:39GuestYeah, what I always tell people is I think curiosity, like to stay curious. That was probably like the one thing I took away early in my career. There was a lot of stuff that I won't say I was necessarily interested in and like excited about it in different parts, but I never turned stuff down. I was always open to explore, to take on different projects. And even today, if it's a different part of the business, I've picked up different roles in different parts of the business over the last year. And that's something that it doesn't fit into the HR hat and those things, but being curious and staying open because you can learn so much from taking on your stretch assignments, different roles, stuff that you like, whether or not you may not be excited about it, may stretch you a little bit outside your comfort zone, but do it. It's like, stay curious, get uncomfortable if you want to grow. And if you don't, that's great. Like you have to decide that for yourself, but if you want to grow, you want to develop, stay curious to take on more, just be a sponge, try to take on what you can get outside your comfort zone. Don't worry about, there are going to be times where you're overwhelmed, but take a step back. What's the stuff that adds impact? So I apply that to my day-to-day and my list of stuff too. That's how I prioritize. There's a lot of noise that can really take over your day. Like just don't let it, you have to be really consistent there.

▶19:53HostNathan, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶19:57GuestYeah, it was great. I appreciate it. Uh, thanks a lot, Dave.