Stephanie Manzelli
Chief People Officer
Employ
Episode 74
HR's Strategic Pivot: Speak the Language of Business, Decentralize Impact
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleAugust 20, 2025 · 9:21
Thesis
“HR leaders must proactively speak the language of business (finance, ops, growth) and decentralize ownership of culture and engagement to become strategic partners who drive organizational outcomes, rather than just administrators. Influence comes from courageously addressing hard truths with data and empathy, not just polish.”
Show notes
Stephanie Manzelli's most pointed line in this conversation is about seats at tables: "We were not asking for a seat at the table any longer. We were handing out roadmaps." That shift — from HR as petitioner to HR as navigator — is the through-line of everything she's built at Employ, where she came up through finance before moving into people leadership and has never stopped speaking the language of the business she serves.
Her most concrete contribution to that shift was a structural one: decentralizing the action planning for engagement surveys. Instead of HR owning the outcomes and building top-down initiatives, Steph pushed ownership to local leaders — gave them templates, coaching, and accountability — and watched engagement climb by up to 50% in some teams. The insight behind it is deceptively simple: the people closest to the problem are usually closest to the solution, and top-down culture programs tend to solve the problem HR observes rather than the one employees actually experience.
She also speaks with unusual directness about courage — the kind required to name what's not working in a room where that's not comfortable, to reframe attrition as customer churn when talking to a CFO, and to offer data-driven, empathetic insight on politically complex problems that most HR leaders would sidestep. For people functions trying to move from administrative to strategic, her approach is both a philosophy and a playbook.
- Decentralizing engagement action planning — why giving local leaders ownership drove up to 50% engagement improvements and what that required from HR
- HR's language problem — translating people metrics into business terms (attrition as churn, leadership gaps as decision latency) that executives act on
- "We were handing out roadmaps" — the positioning shift that changed how HR was perceived at the executive level
- Courage as a strategic HR skill — naming ambiguous or politically sensitive problems with data and empathy, even when it feels like overstepping
- Culture ownership is everyone's job — why HR leading culture is a category error, and what the right model looks like
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What you'll take away
- 1Decentralize engagement action planning by empowering local leaders with templates, coaching, and accountability, moving beyond top-down narratives to solve micro-level issues effectively.
- 2Frame HR initiatives in the native language of business (e.g., attrition as customer churn, leadership development as reducing decision latency) to integrate HR as a core part of the business plot.
- 3Cultivate courage to address ambiguous or politically complex business challenges, offering data-driven, empathetic insights even when it feels like 'overstepping,' to open space for strategic conversations.
- 4Shift HR's role from a 'mirror' reflecting culture to a 'compass' actively steering both culture and business direction, becoming a co-architect of growth and efficiency.
What most organizations get wrong
- •I don't think HR owns culture. I think everybody does.
- •Influence isn't about polish, it's about saying the hard things sometimes when others won't in a kind way, in a way that they can understand.
- •Instead of constantly translating HR into big business language... I learned to speak in the language of finance and ops and growth from the start. And I think that's what everybody who wants a career in HR should do.
In Stephanie's words
“I don't think HR owns culture. I think everybody does.”
This quote challenges the traditional view of HR's sole responsibility for culture, emphasizing shared ownership across the organization.
“We were not asking for a seat at the table any longer. We were handing out roadmaps.”
This highlights the transformation of HR from seeking inclusion to proactively leading strategic initiatives and dictating direction.
“Influence isn't about polish, it's about saying the hard things sometimes when others won't in a kind way, in a way that they can understand.”
This offers a contrarian view on how true influence is achieved, prioritizing courage and directness over mere presentation.
“When HR leads with subtitles, we risk seen as an outsider, but when we speak in the native language of the business, we're not just in the room, we're, we're part of the plot.”
This emphasizes the critical importance of business acumen for HR leaders to be truly integrated and impactful within an organization.
“HR isn't a mirror, we are a compass.”
This concise metaphor defines HR's role as a proactive guide for culture and business direction, rather than just a reflection of the current state.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Engagement surveys often function as a 'check-the-box' exercise, generating vague company-wide themes without driving local-level change due to centralized accountability.
- •HR departments are frequently perceived as administrative (benefits, rules, happy hours) and struggle to secure a strategic 'seat at the table' in critical business conversations.
- •Organizations formed from mergers and acquisitions face challenges integrating diverse 'microcultures,' leading to varied team problems that macro-level solutions fail to address effectively.
- •Business units can fail silently due to a reluctance within leadership to acknowledge poor performance or engage in difficult, honest conversations about structural problems.
- •HR leaders often struggle to translate their work into compelling business terms, leading to a perception of being 'one step removed' from core business drivers and limiting their strategic influence.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Steph is the head of HR at Employ, helping talent teams hire great people
Steph Greene's Career-Defining Moment
Steph says targeted action planning improved engagement across the organization
Steph on The Company's Career-Defining Moment
Steph has faced challenges in her career and how she overcame them
Challenges in the Workplace
Steph, what's a legacy you hope to leave as an HR leader
What's Your Legacy as an HR Leader?
Steph shares her advice on leadership on Built by People podcast
Steph Jenkins on Leading With Your Company
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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