Motivating Your Workforce with HR Leaders SVP Gena Romano and VP Zelna McGee of Centerfield | builders podcast

0:00From a return on investment standpoint, McKinsey and company did a study recently that showed that people who feel they have more meaningful meaningful meaningful work. has an increased performance by 33%.

0:20One of the biggest goals that any leader or business owner has is higher productivity or better results from your workforce. And a lot of that comes down to factors like motivation. So today I speak with two HR leaders, Gina Romano and Zelna McGee, about a motivation framework that you can put to practice in your workplace. There's a ton of actionable advice in this episode. And as always, our weekly segment with Editor-in-Chief Marty Beckerman, we discussed this week Burger King's facial recognition app that detects hangovers, that's not a joke, and the origin story of Abercrombie & Finch.

1:03today's podcast is sponsored by adobe whether you're going paperless or just want to tidy up your digital files you need the right tools for the job when it comes to document management there's no bigger name than adobe and that's for good reason adobe acrobat which i use all the time makes it easy to create edit share scan and sign digital documents all in one centralized place Whether you're sending an invoice or proposing a contract to be signed, Adobe makes it as simple as the click of a button. Never search frantically through your computer for that important document again. I've done that before.

1:39See why businesses trust Adobe Acrobat with billions of documents each year when you sign up for a seven-day free trial. Visit adobe.com backslash Acrobat to get started today.

1:59It's always fun to be in person with Marty Beckerman. He's the editor-in-chief of the Bee newsletter. We talk each week about what he and his team are covering in the newsletter. And the first one I think is really funny to me. Sometimes we wake up in the morning and maybe we've had a little bit too much to drink the night before, partied a little bit too hard, and we wish someone would just give us a break. One company is doing just that. Can you tell us about it, Marty? Burger King in Brazil, not the US, maybe someday, but in Brazil released an app, facial recognition app, that would scan people's faces.

2:40And if it looked like they had a hangover, it would give them a discount on a Whopper. And depending on how hungover you were, it determined how much of a discount you got. Oh, really? So if you looked just totally terrible in the morning, maybe you get an extra free Whopper. And, you know, if you just had one too many, maybe not too much of a coupon. Wow. And the facial recognition app, it was designed just for this. Do you have any details on what it's looking for? They had a little video on eye bagginess. and I feel like they must need a, you know, a control picture of what you normally look like.

3:21Yeah, right. Because some people might just look like they're hungover all the time, but that's just their face. Yeah. Or maybe they're just hungover every day. Yeah, right. Right. Okay, well, it's nice to see that AI is being used for important purposes after all. Well, we said in our article on this is, remember when Heinz Ketchup was trying to promote itself for marathon runners? As a vegetable? Right, that it was going to help you, your fitness, that you're going to have ketchup and it's going to turn you in an athlete. And it didn't resonate with people because it's not true. They were making this up.

3:56But a Whopper actually is hangover food. They know what they are. Yes. They know who their customers are. That's right. It's a lesson for marketers everywhere. One of my other favorite recurring bits, not bits the wrong way to say it, but columns in the newsletter is origin stories. And we've covered some of the origin stories here on this podcast about M &Ms and the slinky. You've got one with a clothing retailer that I guess at the very beginning wasn't really a clothing retailer after all. Right. We're talking about Abercrombie & Fitch, which not too many years ago was voted the most hated retailer in America.

4:37Really? Because they had this CEO who got in all kinds of trouble and said all kinds of outrageous things. And I think he's being investigated for possibly some very not legal activities. So this guy was very controversial and the brand itself was very controversial, seen as very, you know, exclusive. They've now rebranded and they're making tons of money again. But originally, they didn't sell clothing at all. They were an outdoor goods shop. They sold tents and shotguns, fishing rods, all kinds of stuff, almost like an REI kind of store. that changed in 1988 when they were sold to the limited owner of victoria's secret and rebranded them as this teen fashion preppy uh thing was a total rebrand and um they they strayed from their uh fishing rod origins right on how often do you write about origin story in the newsletter i will do one of those a week every other week right on but you know uh if if the b newsletter or it doesn't work out.

5:44I was actually planning to become an Abercrombie model myself. I can see that. Yeah. Got the t-shirt going on today. They're looking for a 41-year-old. The winning smile. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Well, if you want to join the quarter million people that get the B newsletter a couple times a week, you can sign up for free at business.com.

6:11Any leader or business owner's goal includes or should include higher productivity and better results from your employees in your workforce. And a lot of that comes down to factors like motivation, incentives, opportunities for career growth. And I'm really excited to talk about a framework for motivation today, packed with data and experiences from two HR and people leaders that I respect a ton, Gina Romano and Zelna McGee. How are you doing? Good to see you both. Hey, John. Good to see you. Thanks for having us. Yeah, pumped you're on. So, Zelna, first question for you. You've worked in organizations as large as GE and L 'Oreal and smaller organizations like Centerfield, maybe I'd like to ask you, how do you define motivation and maybe the different types of motivation that exists for employees?

7:04Yeah, absolutely. Quite a big topic of conversation, as you can imagine, especially as we talk about leadership and the way that we lead our teams and motivate our teams. I think the two schools of thought here, or the way that I would describe but it's really motivation extrinsic versus intrinsic, right? So extrinsic meaning that you are really motivated by something that comes from the outside. So for example, you are motivated to do your job or complete a task in return for something such as a bonus or a pay rise or some kind of financial or non-financial incentive versus intrinsic. more comes with within and you are motivated to do your job or complete a task by really the joy of doing it is the best way I can I can describe it so it gives you that sense of fulfillment and that sense of purpose and I think you know when I think about coaching our leaders in terms of like well what do you use extrinsic versus intrinsic I actually think there's a place for both Um, extrinsic, we tend to use for more shorter term types of tasks and intrinsic motivators.

8:15We tend to use for more longer term goals, um, growth, career growth types of, of initiatives. Yeah. I, uh, I hadn't really thought about it in those two different ways. You know, one is I get more money or I get more, I get this thing, this title or whatever, and then things that bring me happiness. Now, question for you, Gina, on the days that I'm feeling most motivated, I also feel that I'm probably the most productive. Are there any studies, are there any data that confirms that, or is that just more of a feeling that I have? There absolutely are. And I think it is common sense, right? If employees are motivated, they're likely going to be more engaged.

8:58But there was a recent study done by SHRM that proved a strong connection, which is that highly engaged employees are 17 % more productive than their less engaged counterparts. So the more we can motivate our employees in the various ways, the more engaged they are, which means the more productive they are, the more efficient they are. And we really want an engaged workforce at the end of the day. That data point is kind of staggering because anybody would, any organization would really strive for double digit improvement in productivity or efficiency. And then also when people are motivated, they walk around the office with a smile on their face, which is probably has this other this other benefit to it.

9:46We talked off air, the three of us, about different like factors that go into motivation. And I wanted to try to dive into each of those. I think they're they're each really interesting and different when you try to peel back the onion. And the first one I wanted to talk about was purpose. purpose and I think you actually even used that phrase a couple minutes ago, Zelna, like what does it mean for someone to have a purpose at work? What is a purpose? And then if you have it, is it like related in some way to business outcomes that a leader or a business owner could get excited about? Yeah, absolutely.

10:25So first off, if you haven't done too much research around purpose and the topic. Daniel Pink's book called Drive really dives deep into purpose as a motivator. So purpose, of course, is an intrinsic motivator. And it's really about working towards something bigger, right? Feeling that we have a purpose, we have meaning, we do meaningful work. And there's actually been quite a lot of studies done on this whole notion of purpose at work. and knowing what the impact of our work is. But I think more and more, the desire for meaningful work is becoming a requirement, right? And that's what people want.

11:09In fact, I think it was last year, Harvard released a study and it said something like nine out of 10 Americans would take a pay cut in exchange to work somewhere where they feel that their work is more meaningful. so people are looking for that they want to feel that they add value that they make a difference from a return on investment standpoint McKinsey and company did a study recently that showed that people who feel that they have more meaningful work has increased performance by 33 percent so it definitely has an impact people coming to work and knowing that they come to work for a reason.

11:54And so what I would say here for as a tip and for leaders is think about how you can make that connection for your people, right? That you come to work and what you do impacts our company goals, has purpose, has meaning, and like making that connection for your teams. I went through a really interesting exercise with you, Zelna, maybe three months ago. So I think so, about my motivations as my career has progressed, like now and in the past, maybe you could describe the exercise. And it wasn't just with me, it was with a broader team. Why did you have us do that exercise? And what did you learn about us?

12:35Sure. So for context, this was the center field leadership team. And what I did is I gave the team basically a list of the most 20 common motivators in the workplace. And I asked each leader to say, today, if I had to pick one thing, my biggest motivator, what would that be? And then reflecting back 20 years ago, if I then had to pick my motivator, like, what was that? And so I did this exercise for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to illustrate that we're all motivated by different things, right? And that's clearly what came out. Like, every leader by themselves had to pick what motivates them.

13:15And And when those results came back, it was different because we're all motivated by different things. The second thing is we could clearly see a difference between, you know, earlier in your career, what you were motivated by versus today. And the big learning there for us as leaders, too, is that just because your employee is motivated by this thing today doesn't mean that that may motivate them two years from now. And so as a leader, it's really important for you to keep that close connection with your team members and at any given moment, know what it is that motivates them so you can put that into practice.

13:51In terms of what I learned from the team, I think most of the Centerfield leadership team ended up being motivated by intrinsic motivators, which is kind of like what we want to see, especially as the leaders of our organization. Yeah, that was definitely true for me. Because I answered the question before I knew the difference between these types of things. And mine went from extrinsic to intrinsic. But I also feel like if I remember the one that I chose, there was more of a team spirit, I think, to the one that I chose. It wasn't as much about me. It was as much about collectively achieving something, which I thought was really interesting.

14:37I think, John, too, something interesting there to think about as leaders is knowing where your employees are within their career lifecycle. So if they're early on in their career, they may be more motivated by a new title, a shiny new title or some more money compared to those who may be a little farther along in their career. And they would prefer working on a project that's going to have significant impact and they're going to be able to see and feel the result of that. So I think that's a good tip for leaders to think about where their employees are. I agree with that. And I actually want to piggyback on that.

15:12You just talked about making an impact. Maybe, Gina, we can dive deeper on that topic. Like, you know, do you feel, you know, you, Gina, you feel like you have an ability to make an impact at your job and why did you ever feel like you didn't? And and, you know, what can we learn about about why that's important if you're if you're thinking about, you know, employee happiness, employee productivity or just business outcomes? Yeah, that's a great question. I think I do feel like what I do makes an impact. And I'm really motivated by that, being able to feel and see employees grow in their career.

15:52And the work that I've done that allows that to happen is extremely rewarding. I think throughout my entire career, I've been able to find little nuggets where I have made impact. Even if I was early on in my career as a contracting tech recruiter, doing high volume recruiting and talking with 20 people a day, I still was able to see that what I did made an impact. And I think that that kind of is within. And you have to find that within yourself, that no matter what you're doing, it is making an impact. And that's really important. I think it's one of the amazing things about Centerfield that we do is we clearly articulate how what all of our employees do makes a direct impact on our organization, whether it's within a specific department or towards our company's vision, mission, goals.

16:48We have put really concerted effort towards making sure our employees can kind of draw the line between what they're doing and the impact they're making within Centerfield. I think we've done that through a couple of ways. One is transparency. So being very clear about what our company's goals are. And two, through helping our leaders articulate those goals down to every level so that they can work one on one with their employees to help them set their goals in place and put dashboards together so that they can tangibly see the evidence of their work kind of moving towards those targets. And that's really important.

17:27That's something that we have come a long way in, John, because I think you'll remember just a few years ago or six years ago when we started, we didn't have that. So now that we have more transparency, communication around goals, that piece has really improved. And through that, it has allowed the employees to see how their purpose is at center field and the impact that has, which, again, goes back to a highly engaged workforce. They're more motivated to reach those goals. And all of that is really connected and important and goes to our broader cultural goals, too. You know, I was going to ask what leaders in HR teams can do, let's say, for a function like engineering, which you may not know much about.

18:12And I think you articulated that for me because leaders across the organization, any organization, have different abilities to communicate and organize goals, to ladder things up. And so it's not about an HR people operations group explaining engineering, but kind of coalescing common goals and putting those in the hands of leaders to do even better work. I may have relayed this story to you one time, Gina, but I wonder how it relates to this. So about 20 years ago, I was at a previous company and I went into the office on a weekend. I had this idea. I wrote this like three or four page paper.

18:53say about, about an idea I had for the company. And probably the idea was crap, who knows. But, but the thing is, I sent it to like five or six people leaders throughout the company. And nobody, nobody actually ever responded to me with, with, with like, even acknowledged that I had sent it. And from that point on, I was like, you know, I'm not leaving tomorrow, but I am believing, you know? And, and so it's like, it's like, I think, I think beyond, I think there has to be the, the, the responsiveness of, of leaders to take anything, even, even a crap idea. And, and, you know, showing someone, acknowledging that someone's done something.

19:38Totally. You hit on such an important piece of how this kind of is all connected again, which is, you know, if we can set these clear goals and as leaders, we can help them work towards it. And then we can recognize and reward them as they hit these milestones. That is giving them the sense of purpose that, you know, will continue to grow as they hear like, OK, this very specific thing that I did made an impact on the company in a positive way. And I'm being rewarded and recognized for it. I'm feeling really good on the inside. I'm seeing the impact of my work. It's like it's all interconnected.

20:15And it's just amazing how when you can put these programs into place, you can really see the difference in your workforce. Talking about putting programs into place, maybe I can ask you a question, Zelda, about career growth and how companies can appropriately invest in that. I mean, obviously, with an unlimited budget, send everybody to school and let everybody invest in how they want. I'm sure that would be great. But in terms of career growth initiatives, what's your philosophy on that? What have you seen work? What doesn't work? And so on. Yeah, for sure. And I actually don't think you need a huge budget to be able to help your people grow and invest in your people.

20:58but if I would say if you were going to invest in your people and you want to see results I would have three tips I think the first one is just offer a variety of ways ways in which people can grow I think sometimes the the thought is oh we'll just we'll do a workshop or we'll go to school right but there are so many different ways in which people can learn in fact on the job learning is probably one of the most impactful ways, right? As long as it's intentional, I think learning on the job, shadowing other people is like a really good way to learn. But my number one point would still be like, have a variety of ways in which you can learn, whether it's on the job learning, mentoring programs.

21:42We offer e-learning to all of our employees, right? So if you feel like, hey, I would like to brush up on XYZ skills, like you can tap into LinkedIn Learning in your own time, complete a course. So have this variety of options available. The second one is I would say make every learning experience that you put employees through, personalize it, right? So I think having employees work with their manager to say, what are your career goals or what are the skills you want to build? Let's figure out what that is. And then let's identify the right learning initiative to help you build these skills? Because again, it may not be a workshop.

22:21It may not be going back to school. It may be something as simple as shadowing a colleague or having a mentor or having a coach. And so by personalizing this, we make sure that we identify what the skill is that this person needs to build or would like to build, and then make sure we have the right learning experience to help them build that. And then my final tip would be make sure to measure the outcomes, right? Be clear about what is the skill that this employee needs to build and how are they going to apply it? How are they going to show you that they are using that skill in practice? But those are going to be my three tips for whether you have a big budget or not.

23:01I think if you can keep the intention and the personalization at the front of your mind, I think there are some creative ways that we can help our people grow and learn. Yeah, it makes so much sense to me because we all learn in different ways, too. I mean, for some folks that I know and work with, they want to sit and watch an eight hour class on whatever. And for others, they could never sit through it in a million years. One of the ones that I wish I had done earlier is, or I had the opportunity to do, is kind of like on the job shadowing. So that people that I really respected, I was like, how do they make decisions like this?

23:41How do they organize their day? that, um, that I could have taken advantage of. I think that's a really good idea. Gina, I don't know if you have any other thoughts on career growth, but I wanted to also ask about the topic, one that we, we talk about, which is belonging. And how do you feel, not just like you have an ability to make an impact or, or you can grow in your career, but you actually belong at the place that you work. And what does that mean? Can that be defined? And then how in your mind, does that relate to performance? All of these topics are so clearly connected to me, your purpose, your impact, how you're motivated, your career trajectory and the growth along the way.

24:23But I think what brings it together and kind of the cherry on top is this idea of belonging. And there is a difference between inclusion and belonging. And I think, you know, inclusion was a hot, hot word for a long time. And everybody kind of understands what it means to be included. But the difference between inclusion and belonging would be, you know, the analogy of inclusion is you're invited to the dance. But belonging is you can dance like nobody's watching and you have no fear of being judged. So you can do the cha-cha slide or the Macarena and everybody loves you just for who you are. So belonging, I think, at work is that idea of being seen, valued, supported in your most authentic self.

25:11Um, it's this feeling that you can bring your whole self to work with all of your unique traits and, and perspectives and ideas and opinions. And everyone's going to appreciate those differences and make you feel heard for those, those differences. So it's the connectivity, really. And I think it's something that we do really good at Centerfield is creating this sense of belonging and connectedness within each other, within our teams. And I think that's cultivated through a few things. I think first, our leaders, any leadership team really has to have an open door policy and focus on active listening, creating environments that are safe for employees to make mistakes.

25:59and they're not going to be reprimanded, but instead, you know, they're going to be maybe just course corrected and pushed in a different direction. I think that's really important. We are really big advocates at Centerfield of if you make mistakes, it's OK. We don't repeat mistakes, but we make mistakes fast and we move on. So I think the leadership has a big part in helping their teams feel like they belong. And then I also think it's up to the employees as well, getting involved and encouraging each other to be involved and bringing your counterparts in. And we put a lot of programs in place to help create that sense of belonging here.

26:33And we know there's a direct connection between this sense of belonging and higher engagement. So there was a study by Qualtrics that said 91 % of employees who feel like they belong are also highly engaged on the engagement spectrum compared to only 20 % of those who don't feel like they belong. So that's three and a half times an increase in engagement if you can get your employees to have this sense of belonging. So again, it's all connected. If you can get them to be motivated and engaged, they see their impact on work, they feel like they belong, you're just creating a perfect a perfect environment for employees to thrive and feel really good at work, which is what it's all about at the end of the day.

27:24Totally. Do you have any perspectives on how to measure this? I know it's not probably the easiest thing to measure, but if I saw a data point that said, you know, 80 % of my colleagues feel like they belong, is that good? Is that bad? You know, what's really what's really the way for someone to step in and say, what should I be doing? Yeah, I think, you know, what we use at Centerfield, which most companies use, is a survey, right? So survey the population and ask them questions with the idea of belonging and get a baseline measurement and see if, you know, 60 % of your workforce feel like they belong, then I would work to put some programs in place that create a stronger sense of belonging and hope to increase that year over year.