Welcome to this episode of Redefining HR with Kerry Chandler, chief people officer at Bombas. We discuss her career path, what led her to Bombas and the secrets to building people teams. Kerry also shares how early career heads of people can align people strategy with the organization and build strong relationships with the board of directors.

Kerry got into HR while pursuing a master’s degree in public administration from American University in Washington, D.C. Instead, she joined McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing) in an entry-level HR role. 

“I just remember being sort of amazed that, wow, you can actually come to work every day and really help people make their lives at work a little bit better,” she says.

Since then, Kerry has gone on to HR leadership roles with global organizations, including Disney, the National Basketball Association and Under Armour.

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Connecting Success to the Employee Experience

With each HR role, Kerry sees how technology has evolved and how companies increasingly value HR and the employee experience.

“I started to see this fundamental shift where leaders — business leaders, actually — were starting to make the very important connection between business success and the employee experience,” she says. “I think that happened as a result of, slowly but surely, different generations of employees becoming more vocal in terms of what they needed from their workplace. And when you think about why that happened, I think one of the biggest shifts was the digital nature of everything that happened.”

More companies have recognized that employees are their companies’ most significant asset, including Bombas, where the purpose-driven mission was also attractive.

“Companies that get that, they see human resources now as a really strategic differentiator in terms of how they show up, how they integrate people practices into their strategies and business plans,” Kerry explains.

Listening at the Employee and Executive Levels

First-time heads of people, especially when entering a company, face the challenge of trying to learn everything about the organization, its culture and its people.

Kerry has gone through this process a few times in her career. She focuses on two areas: listening at the executive and employee levels.

“Any company I come into, there’s so much to learn about the business and how it runs. There’s all these new acronyms; there’s all this new, everything,” she says. “‘What are the business triggers?’ ‘How do you know when you’re being successful?’ ‘What are the signs where you need to pivot or do different things? So there’s the listening and learning in that room. But I’ve also made sure that I’ve tried to find a way to supplement that with listening at the employee level.”

At Under Armour, Kerry held listening sessions with employees from different functions and job levels to learn more about the employee experience.

“You don’t need to ask a lot of questions. What I like to do is say, ’What do you love about working here? And what would make you love it even more?’ And if you ask those two questions, the things you start to learn are amazing,” she shares.

Building Better Relationships With the Board

HR leaders must communicate effectively with other executives, but they shouldn’t forget about the board of directors. Building those relationships can be intimidating, especially for new heads of people. Kerry benefits from also being a board member at real estate company Redfin and mental health provider Lyra Health.

With this experience, she realized that HR leaders must know each board member’s background and listen intently to build better relationships.

“Oftentimes it’s about trying to figure out who on that board has the same passion and belief in terms of this link between employee experience and business success,” Kerry says, “and then, how you can leverage them and they can leverage you in terms of moving the needle on these issues?”

This process takes time, both to build relationships and figure out how you can best contribute.

“You can find yourself lacking that voice about that linkage to the employee experience,” Kerry shares. “So making sure that you understand your board well enough to be able to insert those comments and those thoughts when and as necessary. Leveraging other board members to help you do so, I think that’s really important.”

People in This Episode

• Kerry Chandler: LinkedIn