Strategic HR Leadership: Inclusive Cultures, Performance Management, and AI
Show notes
In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff hosts Katie Evans Reber, a distinguished leader in HR, currently serving as Chief People Officer at Gladly. Katie shares her journey from working in financial services during the 2008 crisis to influential roles in startups like Gusto and Winolo.
She emphasizes the importance of employee experience and performance review systems, recounting both successes and lessons learned, such as the implementation of the ‘Align’ framework at Winolo. Katie also discusses her leadership philosophy, the challenges of moving between industries, managing imposter syndrome, and the role of companies in influencing policy. She advocates for leveraging AI tools in HR and concludes with a call for companies to consider their broader responsibilities.
Timecodes
[00:01:04] Katie’s Career Highlights and Personal Background
[00:01:59] Pivotal Moments in Katie’s Career
[00:03:56] Personal Connection to Work and Its Meaning
[00:05:18] Transitioning into Leadership Roles
[00:09:19] Advice to Younger Self and Early Career Mistakes
[00:10:25] Dealing with Imposter Syndrome and Professional Growth
[00:13:11] Career Transitions Between Industries and Roles
[00:17:15] Role as a Chief People Officer and Business Strategy
[00:19:31] Career Accomplishments and Policy Changes
[00:20:03] Learning from Mistakes in Performance Management
[00:24:32] Developing the ALIGN Framework for Performance Management
[00:26:58] Details of the ALIGN Framework: Accountability, Leadership, Intellect, Growth, and Norms
[00:30:01] Establishing Company Norms and Culture
[00:31:06] Importance of a Growth Mindset and Feedback
[00:33:12] Challenges and Alternatives to Traditional Rating Systems
[00:37:12] Calibration and Compensation Linked to Performance
[00:40:07] Integrating AI Tools to Enhance Productivity
[00:44:13] Katie’s Question for the Next Guest About Company Roles in Policy and Change
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Connect with Katies Evans-Reber: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevansreber/
Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/
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Transcription
[00:00:30] Adriaan Kolff: All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Leaders in Talent podcast. And I’m very excited to have Katie Evans here with me, Katie Evans-Reber. She’s a distinguished leader in the HR space. She boasts over decades of impactful contribution to startups, including influential roles at Gusto and Wonolo, and currently as a Chief People Officer at Gladly. She continues to shape organizational success through her strategic HR leadership and Katie’s commitment to fostering inclusive and innovative workplace cultures truly sets her apart.
[00:01:04] Adriaan Kolff: Beyond her professional achievements, Katie finds joy in family life, sharing a fulfilling journey with her wife and now 11-year-old son. And our expertise coupled with a genuine passion for people and progress defines Katie as a driving force in a dynamic intersection of HR and technology. Katie, welcome.
[00:01:23] Katie Evans-Reber: Thank you so much, Adriaan. I’m so happy to be here. This is amazing.
[00:01:28] Adriaan Kolff: Great. So Katie, let’s dive right in because your bio explains the tip of the iceberg, but you’ve already had a phenomenal career. You’ve made some interesting transitions from actually basing freight, big container ships to Gusto, for example, and now in your last role as the CPO at Gladly, a fast-growing SaaS customer service software company. What has been a pivotal moment in your career?
[00:01:59] Katie Evans-Reber: I think that the most influential moment in my life and career was the moment that I realized that I am really interested in thinking about how we spend our lives at work. And this happened pretty early on in my career. I was working for a financial REIT in 2008 when the financial crisis happened and at that company, we went from, you know, almost a thousand employees down to 80 employees over the course of 18 months.
[00:02:32] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah. And which was hard, but also a recurring theme in my career where I kind of happened to be in the right moment at the right time to experience a lot of the ups and downs of the market since then. But really that moment when I realized this problem is so interesting and I probably can spend the rest of my life thinking about it and thinking about sort of all the permutations of employee experience and how we show up at work and how we’re evaluated at work and like what work means to us.
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[00:03:43] Katie Evans-Reber: As human beings, it really has set me up for everything that I’ve done. Going forward into this day and keeps me excited and keeps me interested and keeps me coming back for more.
[00:03:56] Adriaan Kolff: That is a very strong and deep insight. If I can ask you the question and maybe putting you on the spot here a little bit, like what does work mean for you then now, also being on this journey for over a decade.
[00:04:11] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah, so work for me is a really integral and huge part of how I identify as a person. It is where I spend the majority almost of not only my actual time, but my brain time too. So we’re not at work, but we’re thinking about work, and, for me, it’s thinking about like the philosophical and meaning behind those questions.
[00:04:40] Katie Evans-Reber: What does work mean to you? And so for me, it’s a really big part of my self-worth and how I measure whether I think that I’m being successful, or doing what I need to be doing, and like how I’m doing at work really influences like how I feel about myself on an ongoing basis.
[00:05:02] Katie Evans-Reber: And so like the problem that I’m interested in thinking about is like, why does that happen? And is that the right thing to happen? But I also think that it is because if we’re spending our time not really caring about what we’re doing, what are we actually really doing?
[00:05:18] Adriaan Kolff: Yeah, we agree, right? We spend more time with our colleagues than we often do with our partner, right? Which is the reality, whether we liked it or not. I think we’re going to touch upon this theme a little bit later. Tell me about the time when you first transitioned into a leadership role.
[00:05:35] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah. Well, listen, I’m the oldest of three siblings. So I’ve been in a leadership role since early childhood.
[00:05:45] Adriaan Kolff: Yeah. And siblings? Younger sisters? Younger brother?
[00:05:48] Katie Evans-Reber: I have a younger sister and a younger brother. I’m seven years older than my sister and ten years older than my brother. So I’ve been in a leadership role, honestly, since I was seven years old.
[00:05:59] Katie Evans-Reber: But I’ve always thought of myself as a leader. And I think that’s a really important message for folks out there who are not in a people manager role yet, or a leadership role yet. It’s really about how you think about yourself. And I’ve always thought of myself as a leader. And I mean, my first job was at McDonald’s.
[00:06:20] Katie Evans-Reber: You know, I lived in a small town. I grew up in Sonoma. There’s not a lot of job opportunities for like a 15 and a half year old who just got their work permit. My first job was at McDonald’s and you know, fast forward eight months. And I was the manager of the McDonald’s at 16 years old.
[00:06:38] Katie Evans-Reber: And I also graduated high school when I was 16. Yeah. But also lots of other, whatever. And then, I spent my early twenties and late teens in a band and being a musician and touring and really being the leader in that situation. And then when I transferred into working life, you know, after my early days ended.
[00:07:03] Katie Evans-Reber: I realized like really quickly that just doing, just being taught to do something and being told to do something in a certain way, never sat and doesn’t sit quite right with me ever. And that’s like a leadership skill. So like I learned quickly in my earlier career where I wasn’t in charge or the leader, that ultimate role for me was not the right role.
[00:07:31] Katie Evans-Reber: And I found much greater success, you know, later on in my career, when I was able to take that leadership role. And that’s because I just have a vision and I just want to be creative and I just, I don’t want to do things the way that they’ve always been done. And I’m not always going to be right.
[00:07:52] Katie Evans-Reber: And I’ve learned so many lessons throughout this journey. And in fact, learned such an awesome lesson about coming to finding employee experience. Oh gosh. I’m going to connect you. Samantha Gadd comes out of New Zealand. She has founded two companies, humankind and Excellent, is becoming like the foremost employee experience design school in the world.
[00:08:20] Katie Evans-Reber: She’s amazing. You should have her on your podcast. I should totally connect you. But she said listen, we as professionals and leaders think that we know what the right thing to do is all the time, but especially in the people profession. What you’re doing is designing somebody else’s experience. And it is like tantamount that you actually involve them in your process and in your thinking.
[00:08:49] Katie Evans-Reber: You’re designing for them. It’s like a product-led design philosophy. It’s really cool. I guess the answer to your question is I’ve always thought of myself as a leader.
[00:08:57] Adriaan Kolff: Wow. And running a McDonald’s at 16, that’s pretty impressive.
[00:09:03] Katie Evans-Reber: But sure. Yeah.
[00:09:04] Adriaan Kolff: Yeah. But at a very young age, and I do know how operationally and how hectic McDonald’s can be as a customer. If you look back, you’ve been in a variety of different leadership roles and a variety of different sizes of companies.
[00:09:19] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah.
[00:09:19] Adriaan Kolff: Especially in those younger years when you, in a professional work environment, you know, in the people space, when you just started managing, looking back now, what advice would you give your younger self with some of the lessons that you now have under your belt?
[00:09:35] Katie Evans-Reber: I probably would tell myself that it was okay for me to feel out over my skis. I would go back and give myself permission actually for the things that I did, knowing I was way out over my skis and just figuring it out and I would actually relax into that moment a little bit more and not stress me out as much.
[00:10:01] Katie Evans-Reber: Because what I know today to be true is that if I’m really comfortable, then I’m not in that growth and learning mode. Like I’m, all right, everything is working and it’s fine, but probably it’s not fine and probably not be better and probably like just take the leap and feel uncomfortable and you know, continue to grow and develop.
[00:10:25] Katie Evans-Reber: I probably would just give myself a little bit of grace earlier in my career.
[00:10:30] Adriaan Kolff: So interesting, right? So where do you feel now? Because you’re now CPO of Gladly, right?
[00:10:38] Adriaan Kolff: Are there areas where you feel now still that you’re over your skis, are you able to sit with it? Tell me a little bit more.
[00:10:45] Katie Evans-Reber: Totally, and some days still way out over my skis. So one thing about being a chief people officer that’s different from any other role on the people team, the thing that has actually surprised me the most about being a chief people officer is that I spend the majority of my time actually thinking about the business and participating from a business perspective at the executive team level. The majority of my time is spent being a member of the executive team versus being the one person for everybody to come to, or who knows, or leads all the projects or does all the things on the people team.
[00:11:28] Katie Evans-Reber: And I spend the majority of my time being a member of the executive team. So I didn’t go to college. And I’m completely self-taught. I have not had very many mentors. You know, I’m a songwriter. When I’m writing music, I don’t listen to outside music because I want it to come from me.
[00:11:52] Katie Evans-Reber: It’s kind of been my perspective in my career that I don’t want a mentor or need a mentor because I want to have like first principles thinking process about everything that I’m building and thinking about. Because that’s just what excites me. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong. Honestly, that’s just been like my journey and what I want to ensure that what I’m doing is creative and original and comes from me thinking about the problems versus me internalizing what everybody else is doing about it.
[00:12:27] Adriaan Kolff: That is interesting. That’s fascinating. So let’s unpack that a little bit because I would like to dive a little bit deeper there. Maybe also because I’m the opposite. I try to get as much input and mentors and people I can bounce off. Literally also one of the reasons to start this podcast to learn from people like yourself.
[00:12:46] Adriaan Kolff: So, how do you then look at stepping into a new role in a new industry where you have no experience into a new role that you haven’t done before, right? How do you then become comfortable in that new environment being fully self-taught and letting your intuition feel right? Tell me a little bit more about that process.
[00:13:11] Katie Evans-Reber: I mean, it’s not easy stepping into Gladly from Wonolo as an example.
[00:13:20] Adriaan Kolff: Explain to our listeners a little bit what Wonolo is and what Gladly is so they understand where you came from, right?
[00:13:25] Katie Evans-Reber: I actually think that one of the cool things about being on the people team is that to some extent your industry product is agnostic. But as we get more senior, we know that’s not true. So Wonolo as an example, is a B2B talent staffing, 1099 shift work marketplace. So as an example, a customer like Nordstrom, they have a warehouse, they use Wonolo. If you’re a Wonolo worker, somebody who works on the platform, then you have downloaded the app, you’ve onboarded, whatever, and you can go on and you just accept a shift and you show up.
[00:14:17] Katie Evans-Reber: Right. And so the mission is really about helping the folks that need this type of work be able to put food on the table, pay their rent, do what they need to do for their kids. It’s supplemental income for folks that are predominantly underemployed or not employed. But B2B marketplace, right?
[00:14:43] Katie Evans-Reber: So moving into Gladly where we’re an enterprise SaaS company, developing really cutting-edge tools to improve your experience as a customer of brands that demand and want and require brand loyalty to keep you connected. And we’re approaching that in a very different way than legacy tools like a Zendesk or a Salesforce. We’re disrupting that industry by creating one conversation, a lifetime conversation between you and whatever brand you’re interacting with.
[00:15:18] Katie Evans-Reber: So that’s kind of two things. Very different kind of industries. One is very mission-driven. And when you’re creating a culture that has its basis in a mission that everyone can get aligned with, it’s actually really easy to create an awesome, amazing culture. The hardest thing is to create an amazing engaging culture at a company that doesn’t have a world-saving mission. The economy is world-saving. I mean, we require the economy. So if we’re contributing to making the economy easier, we all benefit from that.
[00:16:05] Katie Evans-Reber: But to make that transition, you just first have to remind yourself that you actually don’t know everything. I actually don’t. And you have to just take that time to learn. Every company has different acronyms. Every company describes revenue in a different way. A marketplace company from an organizational perspective is not set up the same way as an enterprise SaaS company.
[00:16:36] Katie Evans-Reber: And so you have to learn or relearn the different functions of each team. A marketing org in a marketplace company is vastly different in how it’s organized and set up and the outcomes that it’s expected to achieve than an enterprise SaaS company as an example. So we have to just continually learn through experiences the right way to really be that HRBP, which is as a chief people officer, the majority of your time is if you distilled it down, you’re just a really senior HRBP.
[00:17:15] Adriaan Kolff: And is it over time that just your confidence in your own ability has grown, that you’re able to sit with that uncomfortableness? Is that basically what happened?
[00:17:25] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah. I mean, I think what we’re talking about right now is imposter syndrome.
[00:17:31] Adriaan Kolff: That could be right. Yeah, I think it is.
[00:17:33] Katie Evans-Reber: I kind of think it is. And does my, yeah, there was a point in my career where I, Oh, I actually know what I’m talking about versus, versus I’m just saying what I think. And there was a point in my career where I was like, Oh, okay, cool. What I thought and what I’ve done and the result and the experiential knowledge that I’ve gained doing this over this, actually I’m kind of qualified to do this. And actually I’m really good at this and actually this is supposed to be doing.
[00:18:08] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:18:10] Adriaan Kolff: Do you remember when that all of a sudden that, that feeling, you know, what’s that? What’s that? That Gusto or, even earlier or did it come, there have been moments in my career where I’m like, okay, that was cool. And, an example is at Gusto and to me, this is like kind of a career accomplishment moment, you know, at Gusto.
[00:18:38] Katie Evans-Reber: So I was able to convince California insurance companies to cover fertility benefits for folks who were not diagnosed as infertile. And so what that meant was that it opened up fertility benefits for LGBTQIA couples in California. I did that at Gusto and then it actually got picked up by one of the district supervisors in San Francisco who was running that year and made it part of his platform.
[00:19:17] Katie Evans-Reber: And now like all San Francisco workers have access to that healthcare. So there’s been moments in my career where I’ve done things that are really cool that I’m proud of.
[00:19:31] Katie Evans-Reber: But what I will say is that it’s more about learning from my mistakes than anything else. Like I’ve made so many mistakes.
[00:19:41] Adriaan Kolff: All right. Let’s hear it. Let’s hear it. So, what are some of those mistakes where you’re like, in the moment, you’re why did I do this?
[00:19:50] Katie Evans-Reber: Let’s leave it as a moment though. It was like later. Okay. Tell me. It was like later as my thinking has evolved. That I realized, oh, that thing you did was not that awesome.
[00:20:03] Katie Evans-Reber: So like one thing I’ll say is I moved into startups about 12 years ago, a little bit longer. I moved into startups from publicly traded companies. Like you mentioned, I worked at a container leasing company, which by the way, is really interesting. If you ever actually want to know the mechanics of getting something shipped to the US from China and the economics of that happening, it’s pretty cool. But, and then obviously a REIT before that, but I moved into startups because I felt like, all right, this is like a brave new world, you know? And it was like in the heyday, like it’s different. Startups are different now. And we can talk about that. But 12 years ago it was awesome.
[00:20:50] Katie Evans-Reber: And you could do whatever you wanted, have your own original ideas. Nothing was set in stone. Like you had the freedom to just build and grow. I went to Gusto and created from first principles thinking, which now I’m embarrassed about because my thinking was not evolved, but created from scratch. First principles thinking around performance management, like a performance review process.
[00:21:18] Katie Evans-Reber: And I, by the way, I’m obsessed with thinking about how we best like review, what does performance mean? How do we review it? Like I’m obsessed with this thinking and create something so much cooler now, but whatever.
[00:21:34] Adriaan Kolff: We definitely want to hear from what you thought was a true, but like what you do now, right, so let’s hear it.
[00:21:39] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah. Well, you know, originally in, so at Gusto, I partnered with, who’s still my very good dear friend, Annie Wickman. Look her up on LinkedIn. You should also connect with her. She’s amazing.
[00:21:56] Katie Evans-Reber: We created a performance review process and you know what? It wasn’t revolutionary. It was a non-anonymous peer feedback, non-anonymous peer feedback. It was a self-reflection. It was a manager reflection and then it was a calibration and then it came out with a rating, you know, these improvement, good, strong rating, whatever that is.
[00:22:27] Katie Evans-Reber: And so we rolled that out, which you know, okay, not great. But then at the same time we also rolled out or I rolled out radical candor.
[00:22:46] Adriaan Kolff: Yes.
[00:22:47] Katie Evans-Reber: I mean, radical candor with a new performance review system that is not great with non-anonymous peer feedback. I mean, people were leaving crying from their reviews, like just crying. You’re like, what in the world? Oh, no. Yeah, I know. Disaster. Like in my opinion, to be fair, Gusto still uses Gustify to this day.
[00:23:16] Katie Evans-Reber: They still use it, you know, and they’re thousands of employees now. And I’m sure it’s changed since when we rolled it out.
[00:23:25] Adriaan Kolff: Cushioned a little bit.
[00:23:26] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah. But they still, they’re still doing it. And I mean, it scales, I guess I’ll say that.
[00:23:42] Adriaan Kolff: All right. I mean, something that scales, but just weaponized like weapon performance reviews so bad. So on the flip side, tell me where are you now? So what’s happening at Gladly in terms of performance reviews that, yes, I would love to hear that.
[00:23:50] Katie Evans-Reber: Totally. So actually it started out at Wonolo. I got the opportunity at Wonolo. You know, I was employee like 35 at Wonolo and left when we were like almost 700 people. And I got to build the world from a cultural perspective in the way that I wanted it to be. You know what I mean? Like I just got to build this amazing world and it was awesome. And I loved it. Included in that is thinking, really, taking those lessons. Everything that didn’t work, all the reasons why it was demotivating versus motivating and just start over.
[00:24:32] Katie Evans-Reber: And so I like really was able to ask myself like, what is the through line of performance or experience or what does it mean? And what do you need as an employee, as somebody who works at a company to feel really connected, really valued, you know what’s going on. Nothing’s going to be a surprise like that. We’re all pulling together to make everyone successful because that’s the ultimate goal, right? It’s not to evaluate somebody’s performance. The ultimate goal is to make sure that the right people are in the right seat at the right time to make the company successful. That’s the ultimate goal from a business perspective.
[00:25:21] Katie Evans-Reber: From an employee perspective. It’s a wait. How do I spend my time? Where should I spend my time? Is this fulfilling to me? Am I growing? Am I learning? Am I developing in my career? So how do we design something that satisfies those two? They’re not opposites. They’re aligned because they’re totally aligned. Those two needs of the business and of the employee, they’re super aligned. So how do we create like something that is like a through line throughout the whole thing? Well, first of all, what makes somebody successful at a company or in their career? It has, it’s math, right? Like we can boil it down to a couple of things.
[00:26:09] Katie Evans-Reber: And so I’ve created my methodology framework program, whatever it is, it’s called ALIGN. ALIGN stands for five competencies, accountability, leadership, intellect, growth, and norms. And norms.
[00:26:38] Adriaan Kolff: So when we talk about accountability, understanding that a line is a structured interview process. Also, it’s career tracks and how we level you and pay you. And then also it’s how we evaluate your ongoing development performance reviews. When we talk about accountability, we’re talking about, if you were, say you’re like a level two, maybe this is your second job out of college and you’ve chosen to be like a marketer. As an example, as a level two in the aligned framework and accountability, you’re just expected, you’re receiving tasks.
[00:27:07] Katie Evans-Reber: And you are signing up for those tasks and it’s how you’ve held yourself accountable to making sure that happens. As you get further along in your career and become a leader, it’s about how you hold your team accountable and yourself accountable. And then way later as an executive, it’s how do you set goals and strategy for the company and hold the company. When we talk about leadership, we’re talking about our ability to 10X ourself. How do we get more work done and feel better and have better results? As an IC going back to that level two marketer example, it’s maybe you gave me this task, but I’m going to take 30 extra minutes to think about this and I’m going to figure out a way to automate it so that I can move on to something else.
[00:27:57] Katie Evans-Reber: And as a leader, obviously it’s 10Xing yourself through your team. I is the subject matter, is intellect. It’s your subject matter expertise in the role, in the profession you’ve chosen to have. And so you can see how that carries through all career tracks. And then G is growth. It’s a question.
[00:28:21] Adriaan Kolff: Do you define the intellect, the expertise per level? I’ll come to be very clear. Hey, this is what we expect from you in at this level.
[00:28:32] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah. You know, what’s cool about this framework and enrolling it out at a company, if you’ve ever tried to create career tracks and drive that project across an organization, it’s a hard project. It’s like a really hard project, but when you do that through a line and all the functional manager or the department head or functional leader has to do is actually fill out the subject matter expertise of what makes this role progress and everything else across the company is the same and consistent.
[00:29:11] Katie Evans-Reber: It makes the project really easy. And then you can roll out an update to an ask to update every six months and it makes it really easy. And then we have these great conversations on a people manager perspective of like how we should be developing and training leaders and then the competencies in A.L.G.N. Change or how do we want our Company to operate as a whole. And those are the norms, you know, it’s not the cultural values. That’s different. Like the cultural values are the one thing, but it’s the norms that are really important. Here’s how this specific company gets work done.
[00:29:56] Adriaan Kolff: So give me an example, right? So we’ll break that down for me. What the N and then from a practical point of view means.
[00:30:01] Katie Evans-Reber: Totally. And at Gladly as an example, is that we do a really good job of making every document, every project plan accessible to everybody. So there’s a company norm. We use the tool Notion, shout out to Marion. We use Notion, but we also use Google, but like we’re really vigilant about making sure that when you create a doc that’s meant to be shared, it’s like in the right place. We can find it later. That’s just like a norm of how we work. Another norm is that we’re just really direct with each other.
[00:30:44] Katie Evans-Reber: We’re all here for the same thing. We’re really direct and it’s okay for you to be really direct. Another norm would be like, if you don’t need it in this meeting, drop.
[00:31:06] Adriaan Kolff: That’s a norm, you know, different than our values. Like our values are really important, of course, but like just the norms of how we work. Yeah. We skipped the G. What about the G? Yeah.
[00:31:06] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah. So the G is all about growth mindset. It’s all about, as somebody who’s more junior in their career, your ability to take feedback, your beginning ability to give feedback. And then also your scope of role. So the scope of role that you have will change over time going into being a leader. That’s a huge step in G and we spend a lot of time, teaching how to make that step in growth because all of a sudden your success is not measured on what you do in a day. It doesn’t even actually have anything to do with you. It’s just all about what your team did and making sure that they’re successful and all the shine goes to them.
[00:32:06] Adriaan Kolff: Is this abbreviation because it seems really crystal clear is also the power because it’s crystal clear if the entire organization speaks the same language, speaks the same language. So when we go into the end of the quarter, we say it’s a line time we have, we’ve built, my people team is amazing.
[00:32:26] Katie Evans-Reber: They’ve built tools on the backend that just work. I mean, Google Sheets and Google scripts and Slack integrations. And so we run this whole process that we built from the ground up through Google and Google APIs. And it’s become, you know, the language of the company. And so we talk about it when we’re in the interview process, you know, this is our leadership interview and here’s what I’m going to ask you.
[00:32:57] Katie Evans-Reber: And it’s same questions, you know, and each interviewer is trained in discerning the competency that they’re looking for within the line framework.
[00:33:12] Adriaan Kolff: And do people get a score per abbreviation per letter or is it below on par above, or is it one to five or one to 10? Is there a rating?
[00:33:24] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah. So I hate ratings. I just hate ratings. Like I just really philosophically don’t understand how it makes anybody feel good about what they’re doing to talk about the difference between something like meeting expectations, strongly meeting expectations, exceeding expectations. I just, I feel like no matter where you are, unless you’re at the very top and you’re there a hundred percent of the time, it’s not motivating.
[00:33:58] Katie Evans-Reber: And the ROI it takes to calibrate somebody’s. What is one manager’s meeting expectations versus another manager’s exceeding expectations is the wrong conversation to be having. It’s just a waste. It’s a waste of time.
[00:34:16] Adriaan Kolff: It is. Yeah. So how do you do it? I mean, what is valuable to know is, you know, who are the top performers who do we require retaining to make this work?
[00:34:34] Katie Evans-Reber: Who is like everybody else in the middle, which is rad place to be, you know, you’re working, you’re developing, you’re growing. There’s no judgment on you to grow faster. You know, we love that middle bucket, but then who is on the bottom as a people team, I’m not already in a conversation with or as a manager, I’m prompting you to think about, you know, so it’s really that top, middle, bottom, and those are not the right words because those words don’t make anybody feel good.
[00:35:07] Katie Evans-Reber: Like top, bottom, those are not the right words either. But in reality, like from a business perspective, like that’s what you really need to know. We do as part of the align calibration, we do two calibrations a year, you know, normal, and we talk about everybody in the organization. And I ask, but I think what is what I’ve AB tested sort of over the years and actually what just got an iteration in the last time I did it. So always learning, always growing.
[00:35:38] Adriaan Kolff: But.
[00:35:41] Katie Evans-Reber: I ask a certain set of questions. So I ask, you know, what is this person’s top areas of strength? What are they doing really well right now or over the last six months? What are their development areas? Like, where do they need to grow? What are we talking about in terms of this person’s career development to make sure we’re always having those conversations? And then I ask, knowing everything that you know about the role you have today, would you rehire this person?
[00:36:13] Katie Evans-Reber: And I’m looking for the answer from two and I say this to them, but I’m looking for the answer from two different lenses. Lens number one is obviously like a performance lens. You know, would you, how’s this person do it? Would you rehire them? But number two is from an organizational design perspective to help managers understand that their team is theirs to grow. And if it’s not the right thing, if it’s not the thing that you as a manager or people leader, functional leader, whatever is the right thing to make the business successful, you have permission to think about that. And I want you to think about it from an organizational design perspective and a performance perspective.
[00:37:06] Katie Evans-Reber: And then I ask, is this person crushing it? That is the proxy for ratings question.
[00:37:14] Adriaan Kolff: And is that a yes, no. Is that a maybe, or
[00:37:16] Katie Evans-Reber: it is a granular deep response that I get from managers. It’s everything from absolutely this person’s crushing it. If they left, we’d be, it would suck. Yeah. It would suck to, you know what? This person’s awesome, but they’re not quite crushing it yet. They’re working through their level. They’re getting there. They’re doing great. No, I would not rehire. No, this person is not crushing it. And from those granular answers, if you have to have a rating system, which is people love a rating system. It’s really hard to get around when you tie it to comp, people want you to have a this, then that thing to happen.
[00:38:09] Adriaan Kolff: Yeah, okay. And you know, we can transcribe those crushing it questions and the hiring rehiring question into a rating. Great, good, needs improvement, but it does not have to be more granular than that.
[00:38:26] Adriaan Kolff: And, but, so those are the three kind of
[00:38:32] Katie Evans-Reber: I mean, yes. And I understand you don’t want to touch it, almost touch it, but that’s how you capture the reality is when you have an agile performance alignment process like Align is, you have to eventually tie it to comp and you have to be able to say to people like why something happened.
[00:38:52] Katie Evans-Reber: You know, why did you get a X percent versus a Y percent or and the manager, no matter how experienced they are, not experienced, they are has to be equipped to be able to have that conversation. And so it’s our job as the people team, I think on one hand, it’s our job to make that really easy for them. On the other hand, I want them to have that learning experience of how to have this hard conversation. So like I want them to have all of the information and I want it to be fair and equitable.
[00:39:23] Adriaan Kolff: Yup.
[00:39:24] Katie Evans-Reber: So in that sense, like I asked the two questions, they’re really granular. We have really good conversations around them. Ultimately they distill down to a something that creates a something compensation increase and that’s what works the best for them. And that’s what I learned.
[00:39:43] Katie Evans-Reber: That’s what I learned from Sam is you’re designing employee experience design for them.
[00:39:48] Adriaan Kolff: And what has the feedback been and how have you incorporated that?
[00:39:54] Katie Evans-Reber: We’re actually about to just release this process, but what we’ve done is had a number of focus groups, people manager focus groups to get feedback. And we have designed this process for them. So we’ll see.
[00:40:08] Adriaan Kolff: So good. So good. Yeah. Katie time flies. This was so good. This was fascinating. I am going to ask you two more questions. So Gladly is heavy on AI. There are some more platform for, if I say this correctly for basically helping customer service agents to do better work for their clients. Am I saying that correctly?
[00:40:35] Katie Evans-Reber: You are. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a, yeah, totally. Yeah. Customer service platform that focuses on the lifetime conversation with the customer. So if you’ve ever returned anything to REI or Nordstrom or Warby Parker or Ulta. Every communication you have with that brand is going into a single profile in a single lifetime conversation. That’s our, that’s how we’re different than the other companies that are out there right now.
[00:41:04] Adriaan Kolff: AI plays a big role there. I always find it fascinating of people leaders that work with a heavily AI embedded software, a separate company in terms of what do you see happening on the AI front? For example, what you’re using your own software and what’s being translated now towards your people organization.
[00:41:23] Katie Evans-Reber: Yeah. I think a really interesting project for us as a people team that needs to find its way into our people team roadmap this year, is really figuring out which tools from an whole organization standpoint, if that can happen, or is it individual teams? Like the people team, I need to lead an initiative at the company to bring in AI to make all of our jobs easier. It’s kind of a big project. Like it’s kind of a, you know, we have SOC 2 compliance. So bringing in different like tools is like hard for us to, as it is with most companies, but I do think that like people leaders who are not actively going and looking at these tools and at least facilitating an exploration of these tools for your organization. I mean, you’re, we’re going to fall behind in terms of productivity if we don’t do this.
[00:42:31] Adriaan Kolff: Anything concrete that you’ve already done, or is it still in the evaluation?
[00:42:41] Katie Evans-Reber: No, we’re still evaluating. I mean, you know, the, there’s been a massive amount of VC funding that’s been pent up and held back from growth companies just funneled into AI companies. And so there are so many tools out there. And honestly, all of them are year, 18 months, maybe summer 20, maybe summer longer because they have something coming, but like every tool out there right now is just a baby. We don’t know. And none of them work exactly the way that in our minds it will work, will be a reality, but like none of them are actually ready yet.
[00:43:22] Katie Evans-Reber: So it’s just the exploration, continued commitment to investment in understanding these tools. That is really important for people leaders to think about for their organizations. And you’re going to try a bunch of stuff. Nothing is perfect right now, but like in the trying, I think we will all as consumers of AI come to understand how AI can best serve us.
[00:43:53] Katie Evans-Reber: And in that the AI company, AI companies will be able to monetize what they’re doing. Which is a problem for them.
[00:44:02] Adriaan Kolff: Not our problem. Not our problem. Katie, this was so good. Time flies when we’re having fun. What is the question that you would like me to ask our next guest?
[00:44:13] Katie Evans-Reber: I love that. I love that. So I would like you to ask your next guest what they think the role and responsibility of a company is in the coming years. How do they influence policy and change? Or should they? That’s what that is.
[00:44:47] Adriaan Kolff: That is not what’s your favorite book. I love it, Katie. It’s deep and it will strike a very, interesting conversation. Kitty, I am so grateful. What is the best way for people to connect with you?
[00:44:58] Katie Evans-Reber: I’m on LinkedIn. Just come find me.
[00:45:01] Adriaan Kolff: Great. I will put it in the show notes and thank you so much for listening to the Leaders in Talent podcast.
[00:45:08] Katie Evans-Reber: Thank you.
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