Summary:

Brian Arrington, CHRO at Oak Ridge National Labs, joins Dr. Jim to discuss the evolving role of HR from administrative to strategic. They explore the significance of understanding business needs, asking probing questions, and internal talent development to drive efficiency and alignment. Brian shares his five-step framework for sustainable HR success: strategy, self-reflection, synchronization, success, and sustained success. Tune in for insights on building high-performing teams and making a lasting impact within your organization.

Key Takeaways:

• Strategic Alignment: HR leaders must align their strategies with the broader business goals to ensure their function drives organizational success.
• Self-Reflection: Regularly evaluate HR processes to identify and address inefficiencies, ensuring a streamlined approach to recruitment and talent management.
• Synchronization: Achieve synchronization between HR and the business by understanding the overarching mission and maintaining flexibility within strategic plans.
• Effective Questioning: Asking the right questions is crucial for HR professionals to understand business needs and to foster better collaboration.
• Sustained Success: Implementing the "five S's" framework—Strategy, Self-Reflection, Synchronization, Success, and Sustained Success—can lead to a world-class HR organization.

Chapters:

00:00

The Evolving Role of HR in Strategic Decision Making

06:27

Transforming HR: From Transactional to Strategic Workforce Planning

09:54

Navigating Leadership Transitions and Organizational Change

13:19

Effective Talent Management Through Strategic Questioning and Partnership

14:38

Balancing Internal Promotion and External Hiring for Organizational Growth

16:48

Focusing on Skills Over Headcount for Future Growth

18:04

The Importance of Asking Questions for New HR Leaders

20:54

Shifting HR from Administrative to Impact Oriented

23:33

Improving Recruitment Efficiency Through Intentional HR Practices

27:08

Five S's Framework for Impact-Oriented HR

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Brian Arrington: linkedin.com/in/brian-arrington-shrm-scp-b5b0342

Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda



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Engaging Leadership Outro

Engaging Leadership Intro

How can we fix that? And what should HR leaders be emphasizing in their conversations with folks? Functional leaders and executives. Those are just some of the questions that we're going to tackle today. With our featured guest, Brian Arrington, CHRO of Oak Ridge, national labs. Let me tell you a little bit about Brian's story.

He's described as a passionate. And energizing leader, Brian's dedicated to the development of top talent and has implemented career development and transition plans, created training and apprenticeship programs and catalyzed succession planning initiatives. He's known for his ability to translate strategy into action and creating a rewarding and collaborative work environment.

Brian. Welcome to the show.

[00:01:47] Dr. Jim: I'm pretty pumped to have you on the show. I'm looking forward to the perspective that you bring, which has.

[00:02:12] Brian Arrington: Well, thank you all for having me, first of all. Started my career in the retail industry. Spent about 15 years in the retail industry, and my company was bought out and purchased. And so I explored other opportunities within the hr arena. Was fortunate enough to land a position with with a contractor I got involved in introducing to this government contracting space.

In that realm, I was able to move. Across the country, in fact, across the world and into different positions. One row I went to Colorado. I was in a chemical depot spend time on oil, gas and chemical. construction and engineering projects. Prior to coming to Tennessee, I lived overseas on a military installation in the middle of the Pacific.

And that's actually what helped me grow my career from an HR standpoint .

That's pretty interesting. But I think one of the things that I'm most interested in about is how your talent strategy philosophy has shifted or changed from the time that you were in retail, where. You spent a ton of time in there to your current role within the federal space.

And so from a staffing and hiring perspective, you've got to make sure that you're, you have all your positions filled. I remember working at a store and The two significant areas were ladies shoes and cosmetics. And so if at any point in time you had ladies shoes and cosmetics positions open, they had to be filled, especially in that last quarter, because that's what all the revenue was being driven.

And so when you think about that mindset and understanding how the business is set up and structured and how the funding profiles come together, it's different when you go into the DOE is funding comes in. Sometimes it may come in piecemeal. And so you have to understand that. The business all up.

So the mindset of understanding that business is the same, but the execution in terms of the strategy and how you lay things out may vary because you have to be well versed in the different components that you support from a business perspective, whether it's engineering, procurement, or products related to project management or construction.

They may change scope or perspectives, but they won't change their overall skillset and capabilities.

[00:05:41] Brian Arrington: Right? So simply understanding the business and the funding models and how they come through is important simply because. As an HR professional, we're all, we talk about being transactional and transformational, and it's easy to say we want to be transformational, but in reality, and we think about recruiting space, we are triggered by [00:06:00] the requisition.

The requisition drives everything that we do. And so if you have a lot of requisitions coming your way, you're just going to go respond and react to them. So my challenge to HR professionals is to think outside of the people strategy. And be connected to the broader business and understand the overarching strategy and what's happening.

And so the funding profiles may come and you may see a mechanism that says, Hey, there's 50 requisitions that come through in a short period of time. And so instead of going to go fill those requisitions, I think we need to start asking the question, why we have to understand what is happening.

And we also have to hold ourselves and the leadership accountable to say. Recruiting is not the only way we can go fill positions. We can address some of the demands. That we have from a mission standpoint, we've got to look at abroad and we've got to understand what's happening internal to the organization.

I can't get this done because HR can't find me the people. I think that's a misconception. I think we can find the people if we give given enough time to do but we also have to go back to the business and say, okay let's talk about the internal mechanisms that exist. What career planning positions are opportunities are exist.

What about succession planning? What about upskilling and reskilling and how are we aligning that to the product business so that we look at it from a standpoint of, is this growth or is this actually backfill we're trying to address?

That's going to have a certain level of impact in terms of the types of [00:08:00] conversations that HR leaders and HR professionals need to be having with the business. What I'd like you to do is tie that together with what you realized was one of the biggest factors that helped you build high performing teams as an HR leader.

So the main piece behind that is the change element. It changed from an organizational standpoint. So when I introduced this idea of workforce planning and restructuring and understanding that it's not just the recruiting component we have to address, that challenges the organization.

We're holding the mirror up to ourselves and holding ourselves accountable. So we don't just fall into this transactional type of approach where a requisition comes and we just respond to it. And so it's this holistic approach to bringing everybody together. And ultimately at the end of the day, you're trying to drive this notion of synchronization.

So the organization is trying to drive and meet mission deliverables. You'll have the business different directors or business units within the organization meeting some of their deliverables. And so HR and the organization has to be aligned. And the way to get that alignment is to understand upfront what the expectations are, what the actual mission drivers are, what the funding profiles are, as I mentioned previously.

So there has to be a level of patience to HR leaders have those leaders who are in their roles for quite some time. They may have that culture down pat. They may have some alignment, but. When they introduce new approaches and new strategies, they must realize that the changes never but it does take time.

[00:10:37] Brian Arrington: If you're trying to make an impact right away and you're trying to make a name for yourself, you may do things that kind of don't align to the cultures. Remember, you're coming to a culture that already exists and people and. Entities are already shaped. They're already doing what they want to do.

One of the first things that I did coming into this position is I met with each of the, my colleagues leaders one on one for about an hour just to understand their business. And also to get a true assessment of what they felt about the human resources entity, the group, how we were functioning, where some of the pitfalls were then I met with everyone on my HR organization, one on one as well for about 30 minutes, just to understand, Hey, Why are you here?

How long have you been here? What do you like about the role you're in? What are your aspirations? There's also this mindset within the culture that says the employee had to be in a role for five or 10 years before they can go to the next opportunity. And I dispel that notion and say, Hey, look, we're looking for, leaders who are interested in dynamic in their approach and they're wanting to think outside the box and be creative and more importantly collaborate.

[00:12:01] Dr. Jim: There's another element of what you said that I think we should expand on, and that was your phrase that change is inevitable, but change takes time. And I think everybody gets that in some instances, or in a lot of instances, it can seem like the business side of most organizations don't have the time or the patience for that change to really take hold.

They want results, probably on unrealistic timelines. So if you're in that sort of environment where the business is pushing back and setting unrealistic expectations, what can HR leaders and HR practitioners do to push back against that narrative and be much more centered in a realistic timeline?

And so they just go do. So what I do actually is I ask questions. So similar to the recruiting example, let's say some organization submits 50 requisitions to in a short period of time, and you look at the business, you can look at some of the data from HR standpoint and see that things don't make sense.

And when they don't make sense, you have to ask questions. And it's not being confrontational and adversarial in any way, shape or form. It's basically helping to understand the business. So if you do what I said and you go meet with the organizational leaders one on one, understand what's driving their business, understand what the key motivators and indicators are, understand what's happening with their organization.

Hey. Who are your top leaders? Who's excelling? Succession planning. Do you have in place? What types of development do you have in place internally? How do you onboard your employees? What type of mentoring relationships are set up or structured in your organization? When you think about what's coming on what these requisitions you have in place, you'll see a pattern with some of the requisitions.

So if it's something where we need to look at backfilling, perhaps we're not back from the role that actually open. Perhaps if you have the succession and career planning in place, you may challenge them and say, Hey instead of us backfilling the senior more seasoned type of role, which is going to take us six to nine months to feel what if we have opportunities to grow and develop people in the role itself.

So we're actually backfilling a lower level role. It may take me easier. It may take a easier for me to fill that position. And in short order, I go get a, I may be able to get a college hire says As opposed to getting a more seasoned senior executive, which takes more time to fill.

How does that set up your team and the organization? To potentially fail or burn up more resources than necessary?

And so when they bring somebody in from the outside, it disenfranchising them and they may feel negative towards the person who comes in. And that, in that individual may have been none of the wiser. And so that's happened to me. Many times throughout my career. And the objective is when I come in as new leaders to bring people together, understand some of the challenges and issues that exist, but to bring people together.

By bringing people from the outside, you bring people who are challenging, who may address different nuances or raise different areas that you may not have recognized. So there has to be this healthy balance. So there's not a one size fits all approach. I think inherently, we, even when you bring somebody in and you hire somebody, they become part of the organization, right?

And so there's gotta be this inherent mechanism that says we need to drive this talent. We need to grow our talent because retention becomes the broader issue. So if the question I would ask everybody is if there was no turnover, how many people would you hire this year? So it becomes a growth conversation.

And I can forecast that and project that over the next several years, but it's the growth that we need to get in touch with. And so from a overarching HR perspective, it's not about the head count. It's about the skillset. So we understand the growth, you can understand the growth is tied to a particular scope or business or skill set, and that's what you're driving to.

So we need to get our leaders to think, stop thinking about. The numbers behind what they're doing, but the skill set behind what they're trying to address.

So you can get a clearer understanding. Now, you as a senior and an executive that's second half. So I want you to speak to those. New leaders and new HR [00:18:00] practitioners that are, new in their role or only have a couple of years of experience. What are the things that they should be doing?

To create the conditions necessary for them to be able to ask those questions and influence in the way that you've been that we've been talking about throughout this conversation.

The one I'm really want to know. It's probably the fourth question, but the way I'm setting it up or structuring it is framing in such a way that I draw comfort and ease from you and you're being honest. And we have this receptivity, this alignment, and then it gets to where I really want to go. So for new leaders, I think it's being comfortable in your space.

And so a lot of leaders will walk into it and be challenged or threatened by somebody who has more experience in a certain aspect of the HR arena. But just to throw it out the window, you have to look at it from a broader perspective and you have to look at the business as a whole. And new HR professionals, whether they're HR business partners or new individuals.

in their, within their swim lane. I would say just be inquisitive seek to learn be open and transparent in your perspective and your approach and build trust. It's about relationships. I think the more you ask questions, the more you engage the more we set the people will be. And so as you're asking these questions, people want to talk about what they do, especially on the D on DOD space.

I think it goes a long way. And whether you're a new leader or. or more experienced or season leader, it comes down to being genuine in your perspective in your approach and then asking those questions. So you can ultimately have influence impact over the organization.

So what are the things that leaders and HRBPs should be thinking about to take that macro view and not fall into the overly siloed view of what needs to be done?

And then you go to the, to get to the ask the questions to get more specific understanding as as it pertains to that particular function or director in terms of what they're doing and how they want to execute. And the broader understanding of where you're trying to go from a strategy standpoint has to be in place, but you have to be flexible.

You have to be willing to be able to tweak that or massage that as you as need be based on the nuances that you find from the responses to the questions that you ask. And so you may have this overarching strategy that says, Hey, we're going to hire X amount of people this year. And you, your perspective may be that a certain director or business unit may be only 5 to 10 percent of what that may be.

And you may look at it and say, wow, I didn't have that on my radar screen because I wasn't aligned to that aspect of the business and the growth that was coming. And having an overarching understanding of where you think the skill set may be or what the drivers may be, and that's going to be predicated on what you did the year before.

So you're carrying the same alignment going forward. And so when you go out year after year, asking and engaging the leadership, it'll become inherent. That's where the changes is inevitable. It takes time. It stood up. And so when you get those specific responses, you gotta be willing to be flexible.

You can't be so stringent that It paralyzes us in the space and time that we're in.

[00:22:51] Brian Arrington: So what I do is actually, I talked about, going to the externally, actually go to the leaders and ask them questions. I think the biggest thing, which [00:23:00] we tend not to do is we need to do some self reflection. And so I call it holding a mirror up to ourselves. And organizationally, what are we doing operationally from HR standpoint?

How do we execute? We have our job descriptions in place. How we look at, the recruiting process in the timeline of how long it takes to how long it takes to recruit where the pitfalls within that process and what is HR doing to be able to address some of those pitfalls? And how do we increase it?

The throughput that we have a pipeline in place. When we go recruiting at colleges and universities, why are we going? Are we going because we've gone there for the last five or 10 years? What's the return on investment we go to these institutions. And so it's being very intentional about what we do and how we do it.

And so you can only don't do that by once going back once again, going back to the business, having those conversations. The other aspect of it is from an HR standpoint, and I was a recruiter years ago think monster. com had just come out. So years ago, you would get a. Resume faxed over to you.

HR professionals who have become complacent in this recruiting space. And using the technology, although it's important. And I think it can take us a long way. We can't be complacent. We still have to have that human aspect of human resources to make sure we're engaging our employees.

And so when we hire somebody, them getting an email and saying, Hey, congratulations is great. But that personal touch from the hiring managers also can go a long way. And so thinking about what we do in HR space is inherent to our success. Thinking about at the very beginning of the job description, do we need to post this job description?

significantly more. You may have a throughput issue. You may have a processing issue. There may be a situation where we're actually not recruiting. I've been in many companies where professionals were to come in at the plot 13 to 15 time before they actually get a role on the job. And so when they apply for something, they may be qualified for it.

But instead of using those individuals that go back to them when you have a similar job posted, we make them start back over in the process and apply all over again for a different role as opposed to being intentional and recruiting them with the information we have off of them. And so I think it's important to understand your entire process from beginning and from a hiring perspective and doing that self reflection to see where the issues, where the pitfalls within the HR spectrum, so we can drive change there first and then be More efficient in our process to be able to support the broader organization.

Can we Target them to come back and bring them into the funnel because you're if you consistently build a process in doing that, what you're doing is you're reducing the amount of time that it takes to go ahead and fill a role. And you're probably also reducing the volume of roles that are open.

Brian. Great conversation. I'd like you to think back to the entire discussion that we've had when you think about everything that we've talked about today, and we've been specifically focused on how H.

[00:27:08] Brian Arrington: Yeah, I'll try to simplify it and say, I'll call it the five S's. The first is strategy. We talked about the strategy aspect of it. And HR professionals are focused on the people strategy. They need to focus on the broader strategy from a business standpoint. And are they aligned to that?

If it's a new leader coming in, is a strategy already developed? Think about how you're being how CEOs and COOs are interacting with you. Are they engaging you? If not, then it is focused on the people strategy. What they want to be part of is that broader strategy. And they need to have that seat in the room.

And as HR professionals talked about having a seat at the table for the longest time. And so I think now we're in a place where we have that seat at the table. But the question, because what are we doing with it? So we have to have be aligned with the broader strategy. The next piece is the S is self reflection.

And now you have this synchronization. You have this rhythm that exists where HR is running lockstep with the organization. And then when you have that, you have the fourth S, which is success. You'll start seeing momentum. You'll start seeing this Positive change. That's that change is inevitable, but it takes time when you get to that fourth s, but there's one more s and you're not done at the fourth s.

The fifth s is sustained success. That's when you're at the space where you have, predictive analytics, when you're losing data to be able to align some of the things that are happening, you're being predictive about what you're doing in that space. So when you combine all of those things. You have this utopia if you were of a world class HR organization, which I think we're all striving to get to be,

[00:28:56] Brian Arrington: uh, happy to engage. I can be reached through LinkedIn.

I think one of the first things that you mentioned that is really important is HR needs to be deeply tied into understanding the business that they're operating in. So whether you're in the retail sector, the energy sector, or anywhere in between, you first need to get in tune with how does the business.

That you can easily fall into is becoming one of an order taker where the business is driving what HR as a function does. So that's important for HR practitioners and leaders to build the discipline to slow down and ask questions. So you're creating the space to influence and shift the direction and perspectives of what that business leader might be asking.

And then the last thing, and this is true of any leader. Thank you. And any professional is, don't be afraid to say that you don't know. I think it's an easy trap to fall into, especially if you're an early stage leader to think that by giving an answer without enough context is going to positively impact your credibility and actually your ability to say you don't know and ask the necessary questions is probably going to be more useful in terms of your ability to influence within the organization.

You can find that at www engage rocket. co slash HR impact. And then tune in next time, where we will have another great leader joining us and sharing with us the game changing insights that helped them build a high performing team.