Samantha Howland
Chief People Officer
Gannett
Episode 201
Stop Hiring, Start Engineering: How CPOs Build Unstoppable Organizations
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleMay 7, 2025 · 10:31
Thesis
“The HR function is an organizational engineering discipline, core to business success by strategically aligning cultural and functional people aspirations with evolving business goals, leveraging both data insights and strong relationships.”
Show notes
Strategic HR Leadership and Growth with Samantha Howland
In this episode of the Built by People Podcast, the host welcomes Samantha who shares her unorthodox career journey in HR and technology-based businesses.
Samantha discusses her experience in aligning HR culture with company goals, scaling HR operations, and strategic HR management. She highlights examples from her career, such as implementing learning and development programs for distributed teams and developing a competitive employee value proposition.
Samantha emphasizes the importance of understanding business strategy and having a data-driven focus combined with strong relationships.
She concludes with advice for HR professionals on leveraging technology and fostering relationships for organizational success.
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:49 Samantha's Career Journey
01:46 Aligning HR Culture with Strategic Goals
04:14 Scaling HR Operations
06:18 Key Success Factors in HR09:06 Parting Advice and Conclusion
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What you'll take away
- 1The CPO role is a strategic function demanding a deep understanding of business goals to align cultural and functional people initiatives (hiring, development, rewards) with future aspirations, not a one-size-fits-all playbook.
- 2Successfully scaling HR operations, especially in competitive environments, requires a clearly defined and authentically lived employee value proposition, robust onboarding, and continuous leadership development to foster connection and 'stickiness'.
- 3Effective HR strategy prioritizes ruthlessly: understanding business strategy, considering the entire employee lifecycle, and focusing on no more than four major annual goals that align with company direction, emphasizing strategic trade-offs.
- 4Future HR success relies on a balanced approach: combining a 'huge data focus' with technology expertise to understand workforce needs and optimize resource allocation, alongside cultivating strong personal relationships to grasp individual nuances and needs.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Samantha notes her HR team 'punches way above its weight,' delivering significant value with fewer people than expected ratio-wise by scaling services and empowering self-service, challenging the notion that large HR teams are always necessary for extensive impact.
In Samantha's words
“My career journey has been, as I describe it, a bit unorthodox. I spent a good part of my early career, a few different rounds working for founders, helping them scale how to scale a concept, a product, an idea, a service into a growing organization.”
This highlights her foundational experience in scaling businesses from the ground up, shaping her strategic approach to HR.
“I think the role of chief HR officer, chief people officer is all about that. There's not one playbook. Obviously, there's functional areas of expertise, but I think the role is truly about understanding where your business is going for the future and making sure that you can deliver on the cultural aspirations and the functional aspirations of how people are hired and operate and rewarded.”
This quote defines her strategic, forward-looking view of the CPO role, emphasizing deep business alignment over a rigid functional playbook.
“My HR team is punching way above its weight. We deliver value with fewer people than you might expect ratio-wise to our workforce, but really scaling our services and our experiences for people.”
This demonstrates her lean yet impactful HR delivery model, focusing on scalable solutions and empowering employees.
“First and foremost, it's understanding where the business is and where it's going. It's being part of the business strategy dialogue, being connected to commercial leaders and all the aspects of the operation so you can truly understand not only where the business stands today, but the aspirations, the path to get there, the goals. First and foremost, it's a strategy job.”
This emphasizes the strategic imperative of HR, placing deep business understanding as the primary success factor for any people leader.
“Strategy's about trade-offs. It's about the things you choose to do and the things you choose not to do. So every year, my leadership team and then our department, we have no more than 4 major goals, focus areas.”
This reveals her disciplined approach to HR planning, focusing on strategic clarity and rigorous prioritization.
“I continue to believe that people, the HR function, is core to an organization's success. In many ways, we're the engineers of an organizational system. That can thrive and grow and change as companies change, which we all know is a constant.”
This quote encapsulates her fundamental belief in HR's foundational and dynamic role in building resilient organizations.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Scaling HR operations effectively while managing a lean HR team and a largely distributed workforce (75% of managers managing distributed teams at Gannett).
- •Ensuring continuous learning and connection for employees across a distributed ecosystem, especially in a rapidly changing industry.
- •Attracting and retaining top talent when competing as an 'underdog' against larger, more recognized brands with potentially higher compensation.
- •Translating business strategy into actionable HR goals and priorities, making strategic trade-offs, and aligning all departmental efforts to these themes.
- •Leveraging data and technology to identify workforce and business needs accurately, and then strategically deploying HR resources and expertise.
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Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
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