Eric Hunn
Chief People Officer
Premier Protein
Episode 261
Regenerative Culture: The New Playbook for Employee Engagement, Not Old HR
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleMarch 25, 2025 · 19:31
Thesis
“Eric Hunn argues that fostering a "regenerative culture" built on purpose, connection, and growth, while challenging conventional HR practices and prioritizing compelling experiences over mandated controls, is key to sustained organizational success and employee fulfillment.”
Show notes
Premier Protein is a $10 billion public company that still doesn't have a performance review system, an employee handbook, or a mandatory return-to-office policy. That's not an oversight. It's a deliberate architecture for organizational health.
As Chief People Officer, Eric Hunn has built a framework he calls a "regenerative culture" — borrowed from agricultural science, where the goal isn't just to avoid depleting the soil, but to actively enrich it. The parallel to organizational culture is precise: the best cultures don't just maintain engagement, they compound it, adding purpose, connection, and growth in ways that make the organization better over time. For Eric, that means resisting the control impulse that typically follows scale. The more you mandate and regulate as organizations grow, the more you activate psychological reactance — employees push back against rules, not because they're bad people, but because that's how humans respond to lost autonomy. His alternative: make the office compelling enough that people want to be there, not because they have to be.
His case against performance reviews is equally grounded: ratings systems are far more reflective of the rater's biases than the ratee's performance. His case against employee handbooks is similar — they tend to reduce accountability by replacing judgment with rules. His parting reframe on work-life balance is worth staying with: the "balance" metaphor implies an unstable equilibrium you're constantly fighting to maintain. His model is regenerative integration — let work make you better at life, and let life make you better at work.
What you'll learn:
- How Premier Protein preserves startup culture and organizational freedom at $10B scale
- The "compelling, not mandatory" hybrid model — and the specific tactics that made it work
- Why performance reviews are biased toward the rater — and what Eric does instead
- The case against employee handbooks: how rigid rules reduce accountability rather than increase it
- What a "regenerative culture" means practically — and how to build one
- Why "work-life balance" is an unhelpful metaphor, and what to replace it with
This episode is in partnership with Transform. Check out their community here.
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What you'll take away
- 1Instead of mandating return-to-office, create a compelling office experience through leadership role-modeling, anchored meetings, and shared amenities that make employees *want* to be there.
- 2Critically evaluate traditional HR practices like performance reviews, ratings, and extensive employee handbooks, as they can inadvertently stifle innovation, growth mindsets, and employee agency.
- 3Cultivate a 'regenerative culture' that focuses on purpose, connection/belonging, and continuous growth, leading to higher engagement, better retention rates, and stronger market performance.
- 4As organizations grow, resist the inclination to exert excessive control through new rules and bureaucracy; instead, be choiceful to preserve a startup-like sense of ownership and accountability.
- 5Approach significant changes (e.g., return-to-office) with transparency about criteria and reasoning, building trust and avoiding the 'loss aversion' employees feel when mandates constantly shift.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Eliminating traditional performance reviews and ratings, arguing they are biased towards the rater and hinder a growth mindset.
- •Advocating for making hybrid work 'compelling' rather than mandatory, contrasting with many companies that struggled with return-to-office mandates.
- •Discarding extensive employee handbooks in favor of fostering an accountable mindset and trusting employee agency.
- •Suggesting that the common 'work-life balance' metaphor is unhelpful, proposing a 'regenerative' model where work and life mutually enrich each other.
In Eric's words
“I was actually more interested in how did I make a work environment that was really fulfilling and stimulating, in particular that just had a lot of freedom to it.”
Reveals his core motivation for moving into HR and a foundational belief for his leadership style.
“And paradoxically, the more control you try to exert, the more folks who don't have that power are going to exert back, which is often termed reactance in psychology.”
Explains the counterproductive nature of excessive control in large organizations and provides a psychological basis.
“We didn't make it mandatory. We made it compelling and interesting.”
Summarizes their highly successful and unconventional approach to hybrid work.
“We talk about an idea of a regenerative culture. And so this is an idea borrowed from agriculture where folks are trying to have an environment where you're not depleting the soil, but you're actually putting things like mulch and cover crops there so that you're getting more diversity and making the soil better than when you started.”
Introduces a powerful and novel metaphor for building a sustainable and enriching company culture.
“Performance reviews, I would say that overall they look like they are much more biased toward the rater than the people being rated.”
Directly challenges the efficacy and fairness of a widely adopted HR practice.
“Work-life balance is an unhelpful metaphor for most of us because it implies that I am essentially on some sort of tightrope and that if I can just get this equilibrium of making my family happy and my work demands that I can rest there and be comfortable.”
Offers a fresh perspective on a common personal and professional challenge, advocating for integration over balance.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Bureaucracy and excessive rules in large organizations leading to reduced flexibility and freedom.
- •Lack of connection and constructive challenges in fully remote work environments, leading to multitasking struggles.
- •Employee disengagement and lack of belonging, making work feel like 'going through the motions'.
- •Traditional performance reviews being biased, cumbersome, and stifling a growth mindset and innovation.
- •Overly detailed employee handbooks that paradoxically reduce clarity and employee accountability.
- •The unhelpful 'work-life balance' metaphor, leading to constant struggle and dissatisfaction rather than peace.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
I always love to ask about your career journey on the podcast
Your Career Paths
Your company has achieved remarkable success while maintaining a startup culture
Eric Schmidt on Restoring a Startup Culture
Eric, you've implemented strategies to make the office a place where people want
The Office Reboot: Making the Office More Compelling
Your company waited until 2020 to return to office after treating Ebola
Employee Return to the Office
Many companies have talked about the promise of hybrid work as best of both worlds
How We Made Hybrid Work Fun for Our Employees
Eric has eliminated traditional HR practices like performance reviews and employee handbooks
In the Elevator: Eliminating HR Practices
Eric Miller shares his thoughts on work-life balance on Built by People podcast
Eric Wolff on Work-Life Balance
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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