Randi Seran

▶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 Randy to the Built by People podcast. Randy, 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.

▶0:49GuestSure. I feel very fortunate that I've always known that HR is my jam. I've been in it since high school. I help global emerging tech companies scale by finding the right leaders so they can put in the right processes and systems so that I can come in and create that inspiring culture of belongingness. And I've been very fortunate to be able to lead people teams from startups to midsize to public companies.

▶1:21HostRandy, can you walk us through how you transformed low employee engagement at ChannelAdvisor into winning a best place to work award and what specific corporate actions made the biggest impact?

▶1:32GuestAbsolutely. Certainly something I'm quite proud of. When I was asked to lead the people team as the VP of HR, one of the first tasks I had to do was a global reduction in force of about 20% of our staff. Employee morale was understandably quite low, and trust in leadership was really shaken. So, turning that around wasn't just tactical fixes, right? It was deep, intentional culture work grounded not just in transparency, but accountability. And we really focused on 3 critical areas. One is reinventing that performance and reward. So, we overhauled our bonus program to create that true pay-for-performance culture, right? If the business won, we wanted the employees to win. So, we tied the rewards directly to the company results. And employees can monitor this on a weekly basis. We shared ownership and really aligned everyone's actions across the business. One metric that I always call was the Ghost of Christmas Future, right? If that metric went up and to the right, then all of our numbers went up and to the right. And rather than pausing engagement survey, being fearful of what people might actually say to us, we actually doubled down and we continued to survey our employees. And then we took actions. We launched quarterly all-hands versus just doing it— doing it quarterly. We started doing it monthly. We wanted to give employees more information, not just about the product innovation, but also our strategy and where the business is headed. We also built a leadership academy to support our people leaders. At that particular company, 72% of my leaders were promoted from within. So equipping them with the right tools to lead effectively really had an impact on the employee experience. And we also introduced clear career growth by ensuring that company-wide there was career progression frameworks put in place so they could see how they could grow with us. And this really gave our employees a sense of purpose, direction, and showed that we're taking an investment in them.. And so, really think there's— there needs to be the alignment with the performance, with growth, and as well as transparency to delivering what we actually heard to rebuild on that trust. It was a quite intentional effort to earn back that employee engagement. And then, as you mentioned, ultimately winning that Best Place to Work Award.

▶4:21HostRandy, how did you develop your leadership academy programs, and what key elements do you include to strengthen the critical relationship between managers and their direct reports?

▶4:34GuestSo, I think it's so important to enable your leaders to have the right story to tell to their employees. And so, I built multi-session Leadership Academy, really designed to share with our frontline leaders what we as a business what do you expect from them to lead at that particular company? Now, I think everybody has a playbook, but one thing I want to caution everyone is you can't use the same playbook. You always have to look at each company that you're serving and recognize how you need to tweak it to make the most impact. Our engagement data consistently reinforce that employee-manager relationship is just one of the most critical and strongest drivers, actually, of retention, performance, and culture. And so, every company's gonna have their own norms and dynamics, but I think equipping the people leaders with core capabilities and leadership skills is really important. We had 4 main pillars, and I think when a company has good values, it's really important to teach the leaders how those employees can demonstrate those values on a daily basis. I think it's also very important to be very transparent with what is the goal of the business and how do you translate that goal down to that individual employee. And so it's not natural for some people. It's a natural gift, right, to be a coach. And other people, it takes a little bit of effort. So, of course, in these leadership Sessions, we teach people how do you coach not just for performance, but also career growth, which is a little bit different. And then as all of this was focused on retention, we always want to look at how are you going to attract that top talent. And so there's always going to be a session on how do you identify talent through the behavioral-based interviewing. I'm a firm believer 80% of employees that are hired based on behavioral-based questions are more successful. So, by tailoring and investing in specific company-focused leadership development, measurable impact and engagement scores tied to manager effectiveness consistently exceeded benchmarks on both of my organizations where I implemented this. And I think it really just gives leaders the tools and the confidence to be able to have a more connected and engaged workforce. I don't think that strong leadership is accidental. I think it's developed with intention.

▶7:31HostRandy, when faced with downsizing at ChannelAdvisor, how did you and your executive team redesign the bonus program around net revenue retention? And what results did this strategic shift produce?

▶7:44GuestAs you mentioned, we did that reduction and morale was quite low, right? It was really essential to reestablish what's the focus, what's the alignment, how do we get motivation all in the organization. Our goal in this was also to rebuild confidence and ensure the employee felt connected to the business future success. So we anchored our metric around one specific metric, net revenue retention, because we were an e-commerce software as a service organization. If net revenue retention was high, our revenue went up and to the right. I partnered very closely with my CFO, my COO, And we redesigned the program to align, and we made 3 key changes. One was clarity. We clearly articulated how that net revenue retention would be measured and what success looked like. We created line of sight, helping employees understand how their individual contribution impacted this metric. We had a very strong communication plan. Around transparency, and we also did more recognition. That communication plan specifically had how each department, how their efforts could contribute to this metric. We did FAQs, we did a rollout of an all-hands, we used many different communication vehicles, which I think was really important and created a communication rhythm and maintain that rhythm. We kept our word on that, and we tracked progress week over week, reinforcing the momentum, celebrating the wins, and we also built in upside. So, when the company exceeded goals, employees shared in that success. Payouts actually reached more than 100% multiple quarters, and the results, they were meaningful. And so, we saw that when employees won and they saw that in their pocketbook, engagement scores also improved, performance rallied, There was one quarter where we were so close to getting— I think it was 120% or close to that. You could feel the momentum in the company. We want to hit this goal. And so we were rooting for the sales team. We were rooting for our customer success teams. I really think it was— we really did reestablish that culture where every team member understood how they could contribute to that growth.

▶10:25HostHow do you balance the people side of HR with the business impact side, particularly when helping emerging tech companies scale?

▶10:34GuestSo, I think balancing the people side of HR with the business impact isn't an either/or. So, done well, I think they're deeply connected. In my experience, it's so critical to integrate that people strategy with the business strategy from the start. As people, they take up at least 70 to 80% of the budget. So the cost is there. And when you're scaling, it's so easy to prioritize speed over structure. But I think sustainable growth really requires thoughtful investment in people, in particular leadership, because I truly believe it's the leadership that enables the culture to thrive, and that enables the company to scale, adapt, and deliver over time. Good leadership also creates good resilience, and as when companies need to pivot, how quickly they can pivot, how fast they can act can be a differentiator. And I always start by understanding the business model. What are the revenue drivers, the growth objectives, and then really build that people strategy around that trajectory. That might mean designing a comp structure that drives that paper performance, building in leadership capabilities to support rapid scaling, or just making sure you have the right systems in place that support global teams without adding friction. And at the same time, I'm always thinking about that employee experience, like how do we retain the people that we've worked so hard to hire? How do we create clarity in moments of change? How do we How do we make sure that we are communicating in a consistent, fair way across all geos? And how do we make the values come to life, right? So if we have those corporate values, how are we demonstrating those values? I think truly when you align those people initiatives to those business outcomes and keep humanity at the center, you really create that culture that can scale. Without breaking.

▶12:43HostRandy, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶12:46GuestSo as an executive HR leader, I think one of the most important responsibilities besides understanding the business, because that needs to be a given for us to have a seat at the table, is really have a deep understanding of who are we serving. It's knowing demographics, lived experiences, evolving needs of your workforce. And when you build the people strategies, they need to be inclusive, they need to be relevant, and they need to be truly impactful. Organizations like people, they mature over time, and what engages and motivates early career professionals are going to be very different than what resonates with more experienced leaders. Priorities shift, expectations evolve, and I think most effective people strategies are those that reflect this complexity. And that's why intentionality is so critical. You can't build that high-performing values-driven culture by default. It does require thoughtful design, tailored programming, a relentless focus on that employee experience across every stage of that journey. Meaningful impact doesn't happen by chance. It's a result of listening with empathy, learning with humanity, and of course, leading with purpose.

▶13:59HostRandi, thank you so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast.

▶14:02GuestThank you so much for having me.