Thomas Lokar
Chief Human Resources Officer
National Car Wash Solutions
Episode 152
Transforming HR: From Transactional to Strategic Value Creator
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleJune 11, 2025 · 15:46
Thesis
“HR must proactively transform into a strategic value creator, leveraging technology and data to move beyond transactional tasks and drive tangible business outcomes.”
Show notes
Journey and Impact of an HR Leader: Insights from Thomas LokarIn this episode of the Built by People Podcast, join host Dave as he welcomes Thomas, an accomplished HR leader, who shares his diverse career journey. From obtaining a PhD in organizational behavior to leading significant HR transformations across various organizations, Thomas offers valuable insights into leadership development, technology integration, and strategic HR initiatives.
He discusses his experiences at companies like Mitel and National Car Wash Solutions, emphasizing workforce planning, leveraging AI in HR, and implementing efficient staffing and retention strategies.
Thomas also sheds light on the evolution of the HR business partner role and provides practical advice for HR leaders on driving value creation and embracing technological advancements in their organizations.
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:42 Thomas's Career Journey
03:59 Leadership and HR Strategies at Mitel
06:48 Rebuilding HR Functions at National Car Wash Solutions
09:45 Leveraging AI in HR
12:05 Defining the HR Business Partner Role
14:17 Parting Advice for HR Professionals
15:40 Conclusion and Farewell
Previ is a private pricing network that is free for companies to launch and maintain. It saves employees $2,200/year on essential services like their cell phone and auto insurance bill. Visit here to learn more.
What you'll take away
- 1CHROs must be anticipatory, "look around the corners" to prepare HR models for impending organizational changes (e.g., private to public transitions, acquisitions).
- 2Prioritize HR operational excellence (staffing, retention, consistent processes) as a foundation before tackling higher-order strategic initiatives to establish HR as a value center.
- 3Leverage technology strategically, including HRIS like Workday for integrations, engagement platforms like 15-5 for feedback, and AI for enhanced recruiting and people analytics.
- 4Consider diversifying HR Business Partner talent by hiring from consulting, marketing, finance, or legal backgrounds to prevent a regression to transactional roles and foster strategic advisory.
- 5Adopt a "value creator" mindset in HR, consistently using data, dashboards, and analytics to demonstrate tangible business impact (revenue, cost savings, growth).
What most organizations get wrong
- •Thomas Lokar suggests hiring HR Business Partners from non-HR functions like consulting, marketing, finance, or legal to instill different perspectives and prevent them from being "easily drawn into, this is how HR always operates" and becoming transactional generalists.
In Thomas's words
“I then went on to the Hay Group and had a really great experience and career there. Made my way to senior consultant. And then as my wife and I were having children, we have 5 children in total. The first 2 started at to challenge my travel schedule as a consultant. So I moved on to internal in a director of leadership development role with Bristol-Myers”
Highlights a personal career pivot driven by work-life balance considerations, a common challenge for many professionals.
“you have to be able to look around the corners as a CHRO. And see what is coming, and then go back into your HR model and say, what are we prepared to take on and what aren't we prepared to take on?”
Emphasizes the proactive, anticipatory role of a CHRO in strategic planning and organizational readiness.
“if we didn't get that shored up, we were never going to be able to meet the retail demand. And then the second part of that is once you're able to staff, how do you retain? You can't live with 30 to 40% turnover year over year in your plants or in your field service”
Illustrates the critical link between operational HR fundamentals (staffing, retention) and overall business performance and customer satisfaction.
“using AI in our recruiting function to build better job descriptions...Having AI find those people, bring them, aggregate their resumes into the recruiting process, put those in front of managers, ended up being super helpful.”
Provides a concrete example of how AI can improve the efficiency and reach of talent acquisition, especially for hard-to-fill roles.
“I would have hired probably all of our HR business partners in the 2000s, and I look to do this now from different functions. Either from consulting like McKinsey or Bain or PwC or Deloitte, or from the marketing or finance function or legal function. People with different perspectives who wouldn't be easily drawn into, this is how HR always operates.”
Offers a bold, contrarian approach to staffing HRBP roles to foster a more strategic, less transactional mindset.
“This is no longer a function where you can talk theory. You have to bring dashboards and analysis, and AI is gonna help this greatly. So you can say, hey, we did these 6 things, got these 10 outcomes, and without these 6 things, we would now not be able to do this in revenue, in cost savings, in growth outside of our core products as a company.”
Underscores the modern imperative for HR to quantify its impact and demonstrate business value with data, moving beyond theoretical arguments.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Inability to meet customer demand for equipment or chemicals due to insufficient hiring in plants, service, and installation functions.
- •Lack of a dedicated staffing function, leading to reliance on expensive contingent search and inefficient recruiting processes.
- •Slow, manual, and inconsistent onboarding, background checks, and I-9 verification procedures.
- •High employee turnover (30-40% annually) in critical frontline roles like plant workers and field service, hindering consistent business operations and customer experience.
- •HR perceived as overly transactional, "chasing down every ground ball" rather than providing strategic value to the C-suite.
- •Outdated organizational structures (e.g., "fat diamond" hierarchy) that impede talent mobility and strategic shifts (e.g., cloud adoption).
- •Inconsistent HR processes, payroll, and ERP systems across acquired companies, making integration and synergy capture challenging.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Dave Gentry shares a little bit about his career and consulting journey
Exploring the Career Journey
Tom, what was your experience like transforming Mitel from private to public
Tom Flannery on Transforming Mitel From Private to Public
Sam, when was a specific time when you had to rebuild an HR function's operational excellence
WSJD Live: Rebuilding HR Function's Operational Excellence
Tom NCS leveraged AI in HR to improve efficiency and consistency
Tom Flannery on AI in HR
Tom: What lessons can today's HR leaders learn from the mid-2000s
WSJD Live: The HR Business Partner
Tom, what parting advice would you like to share with our community about HR
Tom Knows How to Build a Value-Center HR
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
Expand transcript (0 words)
Transcript is not available yet.