In this episode of Redefining HR, I am thrilled to be sitting down with Beth Steinberg, senior vice president of people and talent at Chime. Beth is sharing her deep wisdom on all things leadership and people, what drew her to the field of HR, advice for chief HR officers and chief people officers in new roles who are building relationships with their CEOs, and what she is building at Chime.

Chime is a financial services company aimed at making banking better for everyone through various products and services. Beth has been with Chime for about two and a half years, but before that, she was part of several different Fortune 500 companies and emerging companies, such as Facebook (in the early days), Sunrun, Nordstrom and Nike. 

Beth’s experiences at these companies taught her many things and showed her that it doesn’t need to be entirely by the book. “I would say, I’m a builder of things. I like to solve hard problems. I don’t like to have a playbook. I like to try to do things in a different way that’s going to make an impact,” she says.

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The Importance of Business Case for Program Investments

It’s essential to justify each dollar within your business because very few CEOs say they don’t care about leadership development or recruiting. That said, while leaders understand the importance of this conceptually, writing those checks is another story.

Conceptualizing investment programs for your business is an excellent first step because they are essential to your company’s growth. However, having the support of your CEO and leadership teams is also necessary because this is not something that HR professionals are taught within their curriculum. Usually, HR professionals are learning how to craft a business case on the job, so creating a space to learn and implement will help account for every dollar.

Data That Support Your Business Case

At Chime, the people team was clear on what the company expected and considered those responsibilities when making their business case. A great way to support your business case is to take a page from Beth’s team and use data to measure the effectiveness of the programs you are investing in. 

Beth shared that she and her team were able to demonstrate program benefits through data derived from engagement surveys. “For example, I can prove out through our engagement survey that leaders who participated in one of our learning and development programs or coaching programs had an average of seven points higher than leaders who did not,” she says.

Your data will serve as the backbone of your business case, so use it to show how programs continue to improve your team. “What we’re doing is working, and we just need to stay the course,” Beth says.

Feedback for Improvement

Another way to enact successful programs is to approach leaders and get their opinions, before and after implementation, which can supplement the data you have obtained. 

By getting people’s opinions, you make them part of the crucial foundation of your business case, which helps to gain support. “It can give you insight that perhaps you didn’t have before,” Beth says. “And I think it provides some champions for us throughout your organization.”. 

Understand what your role is and how it is pushing the overall success of the business. You need to be able to prove through the data that “what you’re doing is actually accomplishing that,” Beth says.

People in This Episode

• Beth Steinberg: LinkedIn, Twitter, Mensch website, Chime website

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