???How leaders and PX teams can create a people-first culture | Marnie Robbins, VibeHRC

Part of our weekly People Hero Interview Series. We chat with some of the top voices in People Ops and talent development to understand what learning looks like today.

Meet Marnie Robbins, founder of VibeHRC and a seasoned HR consultant dedicated to empowering growing companies to cultivate vibrant and purpose-driven organizational cultures. With a passion for aligning people strategies with brand values and character, Marnie specializes in architecting sustainable People functions that resonate with employees' needs. Having spearheaded People organizations at start-ups for the last decade, Marnie helps organizations apply a "people-first" mindset that goes beyond administrative tasks, and focuses on nurturing a culture of creativity, inclusivity, and employee well-being.

Marnie has led the People function at Resolve, Podsights, Buxton, App Academy, Koddi, Cartegraph, and more. She deeply understands what it takes for HR to be a strategic partner to the Senior Leadership team and how to navigate start-up scrappiness and periods of intense growth. We’re so thankful to get Marnie’s insights today!

In our conversation, we talked about the impact of recent macroeconomic conditions on People Ops teams, how to create a two-pronged approach to leadership development, the importance of becoming an HR strategic partner, and more. Read on to learn about:

• Marnie's 10+ year career supporting and growing small business and startups, and why she was initially reluctant to remain in HR?
• How layoffs and downsizing can impact People Ops teams and how to support them?
• Why HR communities and a coaching approach to leadership is more important than ever?
• How a two prong approach towards leadership development is the best approach?
• How People Ops can feel like an internal CX if things are going smoothly?
• Why it’s extremely important to develop personalized career development plans for both past and future employees?

Hi Marnie! Thanks so much for joining us. Tell us a little bit more about your current role and your experience in People Ops.?

Hi! My name is Marnie Robbins. I am the founder of my own consultancy firm called VibeHRC. I started that back in June of this year where I work with small businesses and startups in growth mode to help them with anything people experience and culture.?

I started in traditional HR and sort of just stumbled into it out of college as my first job. At first, I looked to get out of it because it was just not my thing, but instead I found a job with a technology company. That was the first time that I really discovered that HR could be more than just an admin position. At the technology company, I was allowed to have creativity and to be people first and human focused.

And so for the past 10 years, I've stayed in the startup and tech space and have been able to take on the role of that person-first mindset in People Ops, standing up the function, setting the culture, setting the vibe, and setting up the employee experience and getting it set up for scale.

I'd love to get your thoughts on the tougher macroeconomic conditions we're facing. How has this added pressure, especially to People Ops teams?

It's tough, right? Most of the People Ops teams that you speak with have gone through some sort of layoff or downsizing event. Or they’re told to "Do more with less and watch your resources" and in a preventative way.?

So I think the big trends that I'm seeing and the pressure points that I'm seeing for People Operations is: how do we take employees along the journey with us in a very healthy and productive fashion. We still have work to do and need to care about our team, so how do we take care of them??

This means there is a trend that is focused around holistic health. Not only just as a wellness program or supporting physical aptitude, but also focusing on how we are taking care of people mentally? How are we to be supportive and also infuse resiliency, adaptability.

There is this heavier lean on the coaching side of leadership more so than ever.

You mentioned a focus on coaching leaders. What are some of your favorite strategies for developing leaders and organizations?

I think developing leaders in an organization is a two prong approach. What I mean by that is, there's the framework and there's the resources, the tool belt that the leadership team is getting.

That two prong approach is really the process of how we do leadership here. A lot of times leadership is tied to a core value or multiple core values. This is how we approach people leadership at our organization and how we provide the tools and resources that leaders can use.?

Another way of supporting our management team and our people leaders, honestly just to get out of their way and allow them to do their best work. The real question to ask is: how are we showing up for our people leaders? Are we having regular check-ins with them? Are we providing learning tools and knowledge to them to have these leadership conversations?

And of course, another strategy is to encourage learning and growth. Think of it as you’re providing them with a toolkit and here is how they can infuse their own leadership style within the framework of what the company is doing.

How can company leaders and employees best support People Ops folks and enable happy, healthy organizations?

Great question. During a layoff People Ops teams are also directly impacted. After the event has happened they have to continue to carry the team along with them and keep on a brave face.?

So that extra support for People Ops teams is just as important. I like to ask the key question of, What kind of toolkits are you providing your managers with to have these tough conversations post stressful events? How are they dealing with that? How are we supporting each other as a profession?

I think through communities like Safe Space or Amplify Academy, there's tons of communities out there where people have been supporting and uplifting each other.

There seems to be a lot of similarities between PX and CX. How does this support aspect show up in your experience?

If things are operating pretty smoothly, People Ops can feel like an internal CX for sure. We measure employee net promoter scores, which is a CX type of thing in a lot of organizations. But what I really think is the best way to look at it is to visualize how people are often running alongside with the leadership team.

Think of it as if they’re running a race and we’re their cheerleaders and their support team. We should be asking them about what resources they need? How can we support them??

?Do you have a favorite People program initiative or project that you've worked on throughout your career?

I had the opportunity to join a startup a few years ago and one of the challenges that we had was that we were small, growing very quickly, and using a technology that hadn't quite been used before.

So everything at the startup was new and we had a group of very ambitious, eager individuals who had joined the organization. They were just dying for growth opportunities, but we were, as they say, building the plane as we fly it.

I partnered with our clients and we built a career development program for that company. We knew we weren’t ready for career paths and we weren't even sure what the organization was going to look like in the future. But what we did know is that in order to get people engaged in moving forward in our organization we had to provide some sort of program that allowed for the intentionality around growth in the organization.

We gave every individual in the organization a career development plan. Every leadership team member knew how to have a really good growth conversation with their team and to come up with goals. And so once I implemented that program I’ve taken that career growth mindset to every other organization and pushed for an intentional career development process.

You want your employees to be able to dust off their shoulders and continue to grow outside of the company and move on. Your past employees are the biggest promoters of your brand and hopefully you'll be able to find your next future employees because they said, "Yep, I learned a lot at that organization."

Thanks for reading Yen's Newsletter.

I’m Yen, co-founder at Kona. My goal is to help every manager be a great leader. You might be managing a team yourself, or supporting better managers at your organization. Hopefully, this newsletter helps you look at the ever-changing landscape of leadership in a new way.

Since late 2019, I’ve interviewed 1500+ remote managers, People Ops leaders, and tech executives to learn how they lead teams and design incredible distributed company cultures. While every company’s different, everyone’s trying to answer the same big question: “How do you enable amazing people to do amazing work, while remote?”

That’s the great thing about big questions, they bring people together. Learning is sharing, and I’ve always looked to share everything we know as soon as we learn it. That's the goal for this newsletter: capture and synthesize all of our remote management learnings in a neat and shareable archive.

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