Why Fast Growth Hurts Culture & How to Fix It
In this episode of HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Amy Reichanadter, Chief People Officer at Databricks, to discuss how leadership, culture, and AI-driven insights are shaping the future of HR.
Amy shares her journey from psychology to HR leadership, how she built Databricks' people strategy from the ground up, and why transparency, leadership development, and data-driven decision-making are key to maintaining culture in a hyper-growth environment.
🎓 In this episode, Amy discusses:
How to maintain culture while scaling rapidly
Why managers play a critical role in workplace wellbeing
Why leadership development is key to organizational success
How AI is transforming HR decision-making and workforce planning
The power of transparency in leadership and employee engagement
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Amy Reichanadter 0:00
I've always had a bias during my whole career that leadership is a set of skills that can be taught that doesn't necessarily differentiate, like extraordinary leaders from great leaders, but almost anyone can develop the skills to be good at the job. I think the role has changed. I mean, certainly during COVID and hybrid work and all the things that have happened in the world around us, and employees expect companies to care about them now. I mean, they don't see the separation between their personal life and work. And during COVID, all that went away anyway, and that piece of it hasn't really shifted. Like people expect the company to care about them, they expect their company to care about what their needs are, wants are and so things are evolving, and so managers and their own skills have to change and evolve as well. You
Chris Rainey 1:03
Hey, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me seeing you. I feel like you've got the you got the gold medal for the most organized bookshelf for the show. Like you, if you take away anything, conversation is that you got, what's your favorite book? I'm just going straight in with that question. You
Amy Reichanadter 1:21
know, I these days I'm more podcast than book, just because, okay, and I love the podcast required, nice, yeah, I just think the stories the hosts are amazing. So it's been one of my favorites. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 1:35
is that also for convenience as well? So you can, like, consume on the move.
Amy Reichanadter 1:39
I'm usually, like, walking the dog or doing something else. That's kind
Chris Rainey 1:43
of how I got into it as well. Like, I had an hour commute every day, and I'll just listen on the way there and the way back, and then the same thing, if I'm in the gym, like, I'm a strange person, like, people feel like, you listen to podcasts in the gym, like, like, for me, it works. I don't need music all the time. Like, kind of a sad one, but I also have a speaker in the shower, and I listen to podcasts in the shower. Then my wife's like, do you kind of just so in the morning, in the evening, it's just never ending. Like, I've like, have you know, like, Blinkist, have you heard that before? Yeah, where it condenses, like a whole book into, like, 10 minutes. So I'm obsessed with that right now. Like, it's the easy way to just like, actionable parts of the books that you can go and implement straight away. And then I go to the work next day, I'm like, Just go straight in to implement it as well. As much as my team, every Monday, my team's like, Oh my God, what's Chris gonna bring in? Exactly, but before we jump in, tell everyone a bit more about you personally and sort of the journey to where we are now at Databricks,
Amy Reichanadter 2:43
yeah, I have kind of a different background. I started actually as a clinical psychologist, and actually was like 12 the first time I said I wanted to be a psychologist,
Chris Rainey 2:53
really. What did your psychologist say about that? There's
Amy Reichanadter 2:59
something wrong with that? Yeah, it's always kind of the person that people came to with their problems. So somehow I interpreted that as being, you know, that that was my destiny. But I went straight through university to Masters, a PhD, all in psychology, and then got to the end and realized that I didn't actually want to be a therapist, and so I kind of fell into HR after that, and really fell in love with it, to be honest. I love the variety the work and the fact that it was so solution focused. And so I had a series of jobs where I came in as the HR leader long after the company needed to have the people function stood up and was always the one to kind of build it from the ground up, and that, you know, I actually went to work day prior to Databricks through an acquisition, and then had a girlfriend that joined Databricks, and so I had learned a lot about the company through her experience, all of which were positive. And then she shared with me that they were looking for new HR leader, and I wasn't interested. I was actually going to take some time off after my work day experience. And and then, as she was describing to me that they couldn't find somebody that they liked, I had offered to talk to the CEO to help with the search and figure out, you know, if I could help a network. And then I met AI, got see our CEO, and I really was, like, blown away by the conversation. And it was everything from like these seven academics who took this crazy leap of faith to start a company all the way through he had this unbelievable clarity of vision around the kind of company want to build. And I thought it was extraordinary. So three weeks later, I accepted a job, and when I started at Databricks, we were just 500 people, so quite small, and it was exactly the same situation where there was like almost nothing on the HR side. And I thought, you know, it was an amazing opportunity to once again build it from the ground up, but at a different pace. In scale than what I had seen before, because we were growing well, well over 100% and have almost every year over the six years that I've been here. Wow. So it's an amazing journey. I probably learned more here in the last six years than I have in the 20 before that, just because of the growth over this that time period.
Chris Rainey 5:19
Sometimes life works like that, right? It just puts things in front of you and opportunities when you least expect it, you know, and the combination of all of that experience that you had prepared you for that moment, you know,
Amy Reichanadter 5:32
it's so true. I think it's so true. And you know, sometimes when you come into an organization, you don't really know what the you know what the trajectory is going to be. And this has been, certainly an extraordinary experience. And, you know, I feel really blessed to have been a part of of getting to build this amazing
Chris Rainey 5:49
company. Yeah, tell everyone a little bit more about the company, in case they aren't aware of Databricks.
Amy Reichanadter 5:53
Yeah, Databricks, it's in the AI data space, and it's kind of, I would say, in a class of one, to be honest, that we've been in the AI space for over 10 years. But you know, certainly the market opportunities become huge. And so now we have about 8000 employees, and still growing 60% year over year, on top of over a $2 billion revenue number. And so it's been an extraordinary ride and an adventure, to be honest. So and we have, we're really interesting company, because we still have five active founders, so interesting, yeah, yeah. And so it definitely creates a really unique environment in terms of the culture and how decisions are made. And I'm sure we can get into that some of that over the next hour, but it's definitely has created a really unique environment there. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 6:46
is one of them a CEO, or they have, like, they equal work. Like, how do they navigate that?
Amy Reichanadter 6:55
He, he actually was not the original CEO. One of the other founders was, but has been in the CEO seat for a number of years. And then there's still four active founders, amazing, all of whom are in, you know, really critical, influential positions in their own right. But they very much support AI in all of this sort of thinking about strategy, people, you name it. They have an incredible influence on the direction of the companies,
Chris Rainey 7:21
yeah, one of the things I'm really interested to hear from you is how, and you sounds like you've done this multiple times. How have you maintained the company culture whilst hyper scaling, right? Yeah, it's tough to keep that special. What made the business successful as you, as you grow so fast, it's difficult to keep that, you know? It's
Amy Reichanadter 7:47
so true. You know, I'll answer in two ways. One is just a little bit about how we defined our culture principles at Databricks, which was in kind of a unique way. Okay, so the last time we sort of revisited them. Was coming out of COVID because we had hired 1000s of people during that time, all of whom were working from home. And so myself and the founders came together, and we basically did sort of a study of the behavior of people who had been really successful at Databricks and also those who had struggled. And then we took that data and correlated it back to times when we've done our most important work, whether that was for customers or innovation in the product. And so our culture principles are just a description of the behavior of people who perform really well here. And if you think about what culture is, it's just a set of behavioral norms in a company. And so ours is very descriptive about what's important. And so because of that, it's allowed us to be really intentional about how we've scaled culture, and that we think about it as a teaching mechanism to help people understand what's important here and and you know what that looks like in action. And our biggest bet we've made has been through our leaders, because, for the most part, we're largely at home still, and so we we need the leaders to, like, really understand what's important in terms of our culture, our leadership principles as well. And then they're sort of the translator for how to bring that to life. And then we've also really intentional about, like, how do we bring these mechanisms to life in the way that we lead as a executive team and in the transparency that we provide for the employees, and we have a number of things that we do to help make sure that the culture principles are really activated in every part of the employee experience. Here,
Chris Rainey 9:35
what are some of those key principles that popped up during the conversations? Yeah,
Amy Reichanadter 9:39
it was very clear, and sometimes some there's some tension between some of them, but I think that certainly customer obsession was the first and foremost, and we think of it differently. What does
Chris Rainey 9:51
that mean? Yeah, because customer accept that means different things and different people that I speak to, it means something different for us here at HR leaders. Yeah. That's
Amy Reichanadter 10:00
exactly right, I And it's funny, because whenever I say that and I or I explain it to employees, you know, there isn't a company that's going to be like, we don't care about our customers. So of course, it's critical, but for us it means, you know, we're often doing things that have never been done before because we're in such an innovative space. And so for us, it was always more like customers led the way, and that we needed to deeply understand their needs so that we could help understand how to best meet them. And so for us, that's been sort of our orientation around it. It's really around that partnership and understanding their needs so that we can understand how to best, you know, drive innovation within the product and in the way that we provide our services to them. So that's been really critical for us, and we often have to explain that because, you know, all companies say that customers are important, but we need under we need our employees to understand exactly why it's important here. But the other ones, they sort of come from our academic roots, because our founders were all PhDs from Berkeley. And so there is a sense of something that's different here. And so things like first principles, thinking and being true seeking are really an important part of how people operate successfully at Databricks. And oftentimes we have to kind of teach them what that means here. They aren't used to thinking from first principles or true seeking can mean a lot of different things, but here it means transparency and also being really data driven in the way we do our work, and so we have to help them understand exactly what that looks like.
Chris Rainey 11:31
How do you first say, I love that and I love how do you translate that into action? Right? How do you translate those principles into those showing up in the flow of work that's showing up in the product that's showing up in the way you manage your managers lead in the business. How have you translated that, especially when you've got our hybrid team and people operating remotely, that makes it a little bit more challenging to do that as well. Yeah, yeah.
Amy Reichanadter 11:59
I mean, I'll give you two examples. So you know, one is in terms of truth seeking, the way we role model that in the organization is that there is unbelievable amount of transparency in the way we operate as a team. And so things like, we hold an all hands meeting for the entire company every week. But for that meeting, any employee at any time can ask a question, they're not curated, they're visible for all all questions get answered. And so it just role models the fact that, like we're really every single week, every week, wow, yeah. And
Chris Rainey 12:32
then we How long you been doing that for every week, pretty
Amy Reichanadter 12:35
much since I got here? Wow, yeah. Wow, yeah. It's just about keeping people connected to the mission, vision, to the product, to our customers. And another example is like, we have, we use Slack as an organization, but we have a Ask Me Anything CEO of Slack channel, and any, oh, that's cool. Ai question anytime he answers them all the same day. And there's no question that's off the table. And so it's just kind of an indication of, like, how we want to operate, that we does that,
Chris Rainey 13:04
so does the reply and the question, does the reply appear to everyone? Yeah? Wow. Interesting. That's, that's, yeah. How'd you organize? How do you organize the questions people ask them? And then it's just that transparent. He just replies back in the feed, and everyone in the feed can just see it exactly. That's really radical transparency right there. Yeah,
Amy Reichanadter 13:27
that's, that's kind of who we are, and that's our employees now kind of expected, and we want them to, because our belief is like, the more context they have, the better decisions. Have you
Chris Rainey 13:38
had uncomfortable conversation in there, though, because it's always, not always going to be, you know, transparency comes both ways. It's not always going to be positive, yeah, it's going to come with sharing. Hey, this is what we can do, and, by the way, this is what we can't do. And why, right? So have you had that as well? Oh,
Amy Reichanadter 13:55
absolutely, for sure. I mean, if you're going to have that kind of radical transparency, you're going to have both sides the equations, for sure. Yeah. But no, I think that. I think that it's, to me, like transparency equals trust, yeah. You know, the outcome is trust, yeah? And, you know, when we do our engagement survey every year, I mean, it's, it's the number one thing that comes out is that the amount of like, trust and respect people have for the executive team, and it's not that they have to always like what's said, but they do know they're going to get the truth.
Chris Rainey 14:26
Yeah, no, I love that. Like I one of my friends, Lindsay Bridges, if you're listening Lindsay, Hey, she's a HR executive at DHL, and she started a podcast. And on the podcast, sometimes there's not always positive conversations. And I remember speaking to someone who worked there and said they said that one of the reasons they joined is they had heard one of the podcasts because they make them publicly available. And and she said that I want to work at a company like that, and that was the reason. And they applied, because this radical transparency, you know, not just doing a podcast episode about every great thing, but also being transparent in the challenges, you know, because that's, that's, that's, that's real right there, like, you know, says a lot about an organization.
Amy Reichanadter 15:17
It's so true. It's probably the number one thing I hear from employees when they join is that they they often say the same eight words to me, which is, I've never worked at a company like Databricks, and that's the first thing that they always mention is like, you know, you just don't know what's going to come out of all these mouth or you don't know what questions people are going to ask, but somehow there's this incredible, like, respect that comes out of it. Yeah, and do think it's something that's really special about the experience.
Chris Rainey 15:43
I love that. So you got the all hands meetings, you got the Ask Me Anything Slack channel, any other areas in terms of, like the training and upskilling side,
Amy Reichanadter 15:50
yeah. I mean, so those are just examples of kind of how we role model, that I love, that we you know, one of the things that's been like a passion project for me here is that we created a leadership development program called leadership, and it's really custom made, and we think of it as leaders teaching leaders. And the idea behind it is that we're trying to help leaders understand how to operate under years of extended, hyper growth. It's very different, and because the context is always changing. And so how you have to think about talent on your team, how you have to think about, you know, constant change and evolution. And you know, it's something that we've really put a lot of time and investment, and it's very, there's very little in it about sort of standard leadership skills, and it's really custom made to help leaders be successful here and and so that's been a big investment that we've made in terms of how to help leaders feel supported when they're in an environment that's growing and changing all the time. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 16:51
no, definitely. It's interesting, because you want to maintain what the DNA of what makes the business special. But there's also, you know, the saying of what got us here won't get us there, so you need to be evolving. What's the structure of that? How does it work?
Amy Reichanadter 17:10
Yeah, there's three levels of it. So the first is for new managers. So we do a separate course for them to help them understand the shift into leadership. There's a annual conference that we do for all leaders across the world, where they go through, regardless of level, they go through a program, and that's really in many ways, taught by our founders about our culture, our leadership essentials, and kind of how to work in this context. And then we have a program for our more senior leaders and highest potential leaders, that is an additional investment in them as well. That's a combination of both classroom and coaching experience.
Chris Rainey 17:46
Is that all in house, or you bring in an external coaches. We only
Amy Reichanadter 17:51
use external for the senior leader program, but everything else is custom made, and it's the programs developed by my team, but it's very much taught by a combination of my team, as well as the founders of the company.
Chris Rainey 18:06
Love that. Yeah. And have you found that any challenges around scaling that? Because that sometimes can be a challenge, right? Yeah.
Amy Reichanadter 18:12
I mean, it's, it's such an important investment for us, so it has definitely been an effort to scale it. But we, this year, we took it to 22 cities around the world. And, you know, the in person experience, I think, is really important, and that is the
Chris Rainey 18:29
investment, and that's where a lot of companies are cutting, yeah, like, you're like, it's not cheap to get to be in 22 different countries and get the leaders together. But I agree with you, it, you can't replace that.
Amy Reichanadter 18:39
And the thing is, is that our we ask so much of our leaders. I mean, when I think about, you know, some of the most common things that I hear myself say that, you know, regardless of what's going on, whether it's an external political issue or, you know, something internally, the most common thing we say is like, please talk to your manager. And so on the other side of that, you have to support them and enable them to understand, you know, what's expected of them and you know, and how they should, how they should be leading their teams. And so to me, like it's probably the most important investment we make each year, is doing this conference and helping the leaders understand what success looks like. Love that,
Chris Rainey 19:17
and it's, it's also it's something to be said that people don't talk about enough, in my opinion, is the relationship. Relationships and the bond that they build face to face outside of the classroom or the workshop or the sessions, that is. And the trust is built there, you know, and the cross pollination of diversity of thought and perspective and probably meeting people different departments and part organizations you'd never normally meet, that in itself, is just as valuable, even if, in my opinion, if not more than the training itself, because they now have that that group around them, and they can build that trust and the relationships with each
Amy Reichanadter 19:56
other. And you know, the one of the things that's been so in. Interesting about being in this kind of extended period of hyper growth is that the there are not very many people that understand what you're going through. And so when you get together with leaders other departments or other cities, that there is this kind of connection automatically that happens of like, oh, actually, regardless of the fact that I'm in HR, you're in a you're in engineering, like we're still actually facing a lot of the same leadership challenges. And so creating those connections and helping them understand that they have support inherently in in the community within the company, has been really powerful. It's
Chris Rainey 20:36
nice to know you're not alone. You know even that in itself can be huge to have someone to lean on. I remember, like, when I was a manager early, you know, 20 years ago, it was kind of pretty lonely. I was just kind of just thrusted into that role. Just because I was a high performing sales executive doesn't mean I'm going to be a good manager, and there was no network or no training, and it was just like, I'm kind of drowning right now, and I don't know what to and I don't know I don't know what to do. I was reading all the manager books that I could, but it didn't really help me that much, because I was like, am I is this normal? Is it normal to be this overwhelmed, right as well? So just having that group around you is huge. I love to talk more about the leading with first principles. So I first came across that through people like Elon Musk, who talks about a lot in any interviews you hear, or people like Ray Dalio and many others. And it's something that I think is really interesting, but maybe people listening aren't as aware of that. Could you talk about what it is and what it is, and what does it mean to you? And also, how do you then apply that in Databricks,
Amy Reichanadter 21:45
for sure? Yeah. I mean, to me, the simplest way I think about it is from two standpoints. One is just kind of starting with why and and then the other one is that it's really about operating in context. And, you know, we hire, I think, you know, the best and brightest in every role, that's part of our how we think about hiring for the organization. And I think there's always this interesting contrast for the but with the fact that we hire the best and brightest, and then we actually ask them to, like, set aside everything they've ever known and only think in context about what we need at Databricks. And it's hard for people. I mean, I made the same mistake when I first joined. I was building our like review process for the first time, and I just took like, a mash up of other best practices that I thought might work. I never talked to anybody about it. I just figured, you know, I'm the expert and so and what I think will work well here and, and, you know, of course, it didn't work at all. And so I had to, like, take a step back and really start asking questions about what we're trying to accomplish, what was important here. How did we think about talent? And, you know, those are kind of the way that we think about first principles, like, what, what problem are we trying to solve? And then coming up with a, you know, with a solution that's uniquely suited for Databricks, and that's going to look very different than what might work great at other organizations. And that, to me, is the art of it trying, and also the fun, to be honest, that's the creativity and building something that's uniquely suited for our company, and also is what makes us special?
Chris Rainey 23:22
Well, what practically, how do you bring that to life? Because that's, that's the challenge, right? Like, how, how does that? How do you embed that in the culture? Because it is quite different way of, way of thinking as well.
Amy Reichanadter 23:35
I mean, I think there's, there's a few things that we think about. One is, as I talked about with the leaders, like helping them understand, helping them understand what it means, so that they can help their employees operate that way. And and then we do a lot of you know, sort of talking about it within the organization and and also, you know whether it's helpful or not, but people learn it pretty quickly, because when they to come in with like, whatever worked at their last company, it doesn't work. And so they learn quickly to, you know, take a step back and to operate, you know, from first principles, and to start asking about what's you know, what's best for our company, what's going to support our vision and mission, etc. So I think, you know, we don't want it to be that you learn the hard way, but if you don't learn it through, you know, sort of your your leadership in your own function, or through the way that we talk about as an organization, people will typically learn it like I did, which is like, okay, you don't have to tell me twice. I got it's
Chris Rainey 24:36
part of the language of the business. And I'm sure, like, I mean, even just in me and you speaking, I can tell that in meetings, in conversations, that's the you, you're giving people the language to then have the conversation, right, right? And they understand, okay, that's what that means. So if so, they'll pick it up pretty quickly, because it's part of the DNA of the way the business operates, right? And. And I'm sure that's going to show up in those all hands meetings, going to show up in one to one meetings. And you know, they're throughout the business as well. So it's super interesting that kind of like, have you brought in that, those same principles into your own team? And if so, how has that shaped your HR team?
Amy Reichanadter 25:19
Yeah. I mean, you have to here, because there is no lift and shift from other companies. And so the context of whatever you think is the right solution probably isn't. And so first and foremost, you know, one of the things that we talk about in the mission for the people function is that we're building for something that's uniquely suited for Databricks. I mean, that's in our mission statement. You know, we're going to build for what's best for the company, and so it starts there. But in everything we're doing, we're always asking, like, are we operating from first principles? We're asking those questions about why we're doing it this way, or why not other ways that might be
Chris Rainey 26:00
can you give me example of, like, a time where you thought about something and then, actually, after reflecting on it through that lens, said, Actually, we're gonna go this direction. Yeah,
Amy Reichanadter 26:09
every day here. But even, you know, I'll give you an example of, you know, when we think about our talent philosophy, I mean, we similar to Amazon, we use the term raise the bar, although it isn't exactly translated the way it is there, but we use the same terminology. And so we've had to really think about like, what does it mean to be a bar raising leader, and how do we explain that? And then what are the expectations? And how do we build that into all of our processes, whether it's career ladders or reviews or promotion evaluations, things like that. But we've gone a lot of different directions with it. You know, we started using, you know, different language originally, and and testing that, and then realizing that we weren't in exactly the right place. And, you know, and some of it comes from starting to use it. And, you know, like, if the if the terminology you're using doesn't take hold, you're probably not, you know, not in the right place with that. And so, you know, it just requires a lot of agility. And you know, it's probably one of the things I've learned the most in working in this environment over this time period, is like, look, change is constant. I mean, I actually say to my team all the time, it was like, Look, things are in three states. They're either, you know, breaking, they're about to break, or they're broken whatever we built before. And so you have to be open to just understanding, like, things are always going to evolve. And it requires you to always be asking those questions along the way. There is no constant state here.
Chris Rainey 27:41
How did that? How did you adapt to this personally? Because it couldn't have been easy, because it's quite a big shift, maybe from other companies that you worked in yourself. Is it very much running the hard way, or
Amy Reichanadter 27:56
probably a couple of things. I mean, I I love the ambiguity of being in a startup. I know 8000 people isn't really a startup anymore, but that's my whole background. And so I think for me, like I was always comfortable in kind of the greatness of life, and I am, you know, absolutely fine in that state. And so that's probably helped me, personally. But the other one is just like, I I think it takes a lot of humility to be in a place where things, you know, may look like they're broken, you know, I sometimes I think about like leaders that do well here can build from broken pieces, because that's a lot of what it is when you're growing at this pace, like something's always going to be, you know, in a state of evolution, and whatever state it was in before probably isn't going to scale at the pace we needed. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 28:44
I didn't realize how important that's that skill was until probably years into my career, because in my last company, I was a sales manager, and there was like 15 sales managers and like couple of 100 sales executives, and I became, for some reason, the person that when someone was having challenges and the company was thinking about letting that employee go, they would give them one more chance on my team. And it became like this, sort of like Chris, Chris and his team and his training will be like the last thing, and a lot of them, we turn them around. In fact, there's a couple of people like Omri, who's, if he's, I don't know if he's ever gonna listen to this, but he was someone that the business is about to let go. He'd be, you know, been struggling in sales for almost like six months, and actually ended up being the, the number one sales person in the company's history a few months later. And all that was holding him back is that no one actually had taken the chance to say, are you okay? You know, because you know, I'm looking at your KPIs, and they're through the roof, but there's no sales, so there's something not matching here. You're doing the most calls, the most pitches, all the work, but then there's no deals, right? So I was like, There's something wrong, because it's not work ethic. Yeah. As well. And what we realized was he was having some personal challenges outside of the organization, which was leading to a lack of confidence of just asking for the deal. So he was doing all of this work, right, and then not, then just not asking for the deal, right? So we wrote a pitch for him, gave him some training, and I was like, Listen, no matter how you feel, right, like after obviously helping support him outside the business, but I want you just to read the script, and just even if it feels hard to ask the question, you know, for the deal, which is, do it and it game changer, literally. And you can see the confidence in him grow, and he became a manager in the business and left and actually started his own business who competed with us, right? Yeah, right. And I told you that story not to, like, pat myself on the back, but I used to see that at the time, was like, Oh, this is really frustrating. I'm getting all these people coming to my team. But I realized that to your point earlier, like that's probably now, whenever we're in chaos or things aren't going well, it's kind of like taught me to look at what is the root cause of it and look kind of a little bit deeper, and whereas before, I just didn't do that as well, and it kind of built a level of resilience in us, in the team, and curiosity. Yeah, that isn't always what it seems on the surface level, and if you just dig a few layers deeper, you'll be amazed at what you find. If that makes sense, I probably didn't say that really well, but that's trying to get
Amy Reichanadter 31:39
at. No, I think that's absolutely right. And I do think that kind of intellectual curiosity is really important, and that it for people that need to feel sort of mastery over things, and they're looking for things to get into some kind of static state. If they're, they would never be comfortable here. And it's that constant sort of orientation towards continuous improvement, and the curiosity it's interesting to build is, I think, part of what makes you know, bricksters, that's what we call our employees breakfast.
Chris Rainey 32:11
Of course, you do. I should have asked you that earlier. I knew that's going to be a name. So Shane. So my co founder, Shane is the opposite of what you're describing. So he is the solid foundation structure, you know, and I am the person going off into the headwind, breaking things constantly, trying to challenge the status quo. So we have a good balance, yeah, of that, because I think if we were all me, it would just be chaos, and if it was all Shane, would be, probably be out of business, because we haven't really evolved as well. So very lucky that we have each other from that perspective as well, which is really interesting. You made me think about that. How do you how do you feel about sorry, how do you leverage you're in AI, right? You're like, leading the way as a business. How are you then using that internally? Because you're servicing customers externally, I'm sure you're leveraging those tools internally. Yeah, I'd love to learn a bit more about about that must be fascinating.
Amy Reichanadter 33:14
Yeah? I mean, we use it in every function in the business. I'll give you an example from my own team. So we have our own HR data lake, and we one of the things that's been really important for us since we've been, in this case, extended hyper growth, is thinking about how we build the healthiest organizations. And you know, and that includes things like, we want a healthy level of non regretted attrition. We want to ensure that we're taking care of our top performers, and so we built a, I'll talk about non regretted attrition. We built a predictive model so that we could predict basically down to the person each quarter, exactly who, where we were going to land, in terms of people that might leave the organization. And then we actually feed that data back and to our TA function so that they have that and you know, they're responsible for meeting a head count number with the highest level of quality. So the the ability to understand exactly where that moving target is going to land for them has allowed us to be able to create this kind of closed loop process from the data to to meet our head count numbers, pretty much to the number each quarter. And so it's been really helpful to have that kind of accuracy and precision around this. And then, you know, it allows the team, both teams, to be successful in terms of the organization around us, and then my TA team in terms of meeting their their responsibilities to the business. I
Chris Rainey 34:41
feel like we could do a whole show on this. So I'm trying my best not to ask so many questions. It's like, just blew my I'm actually not sure if you've seen but I'm doing a weekly global well being series, a podcast, yeah. So every week I interviewed a Glo every week, for the last 12 weeks, I've interviewed a global head of well being. So I've had like, you know, Microsoft, Unilever. You name it, AI global heads of well being sharing case studies every single week. We post them on LinkedIn every week. So this is really close to me, to my heart as well. And oh, where do I even start? You just You just opened my mind with so many questions, where, what are some of the data sources that you're drawing the insights from? Yeah, that's the first question of many. So
Amy Reichanadter 35:24
we it's a combination of things like our performance review data, our we use HR acuity for performance management cases, our work day data. So it's a combination of multiple factors that come into our data lake that help us that feed the model that we're using. Do
Chris Rainey 35:42
you have anything like, any well being solutions or partners, like a like a well hub, or, you know, any other platforms like that, yeah, assistance programs, things like that, yeah.
Amy Reichanadter 35:53
We use modern health is great. Yeah, modern health is great, and then. But we also are really we try to be very supportive. So we have, like, a very generous fitness type and for employees, along with that, and as well as, employees get a certain amount of money each year for their own employee development, so they can pursue things that are of interest to them. And so it's a combination of multiple factors, so some programmatic and some kind of financial support to help employees be the best version,
Chris Rainey 36:22
must be great for your team. Then are you now in the place where you got enough data to start, obviously, you mentioned the predictive side, but to start putting in place some preventative measures as because I think a lot of companies, when they think about well being, is kind of just reacting rather than preventing. If that makes sense, kind of just putting like a band aid on the problem, as opposed to trying to solve the root cause.
Amy Reichanadter 36:44
Yeah, that's definitely true. I mean, and we can see certain factors that are likely to cause attrition, whether it's, you know, multiple manager changes or other factors. But yeah, it's not, I mean, you can start to see the patterns of what does contribute to, you know, to regrow the nutrition, so we also look at that as well.
Chris Rainey 37:06
Yeah, what would you say is the number one sort of activity or practice you put in place, from well being perspective, has had the most impact over the years?
Amy Reichanadter 37:17
Yeah, that's great question. I mean, I think, to be honest, I think the thing that has helped employees the most has been rather than something that's programmatic, because we do offer kind of the same things that other companies offer, whether it's, you know, modern health or EAP of some form, or fitness benefits like that, like, I don't think those are really differentiators. To me, the thing that helps support employees the most is really how you lead the organization. Yep, you're getting the support they need. And you know, I always come down to like, there's two things that people really want at work, you know, one is that they want to feel like they're making an impact, and the other one is that they want to, you know, care about and respect the people that they work with. Yeah, and so we try to focus on those factors. And of course, you have to do the others. Are kind of necessary, but not sufficient. And but when you really think about what makes people, you know, do their best work, it really comes down to those factors. And if those pieces are in the right place, and they have the other kind of necessary support, then that's typically when you see people do really extraordinary work.
Chris Rainey 38:17
Yeah, I think you're 100% right, and the data supports it, right? The relationship with their managers the most important differentiating, differentiator or predictor of well being, because that's who they're interacting with. And we all know what it's like to have a manager that sucks. Hopefully, unfortunately, I had a few, you know? I'm sure if you had a few over the years, right? So, like, we all know what that feels like, right? So the I love the fact that, even from beginning this conversation that you started with Chris, the importance of the investment in our managers and our leaders as the first thing that stood out to me
Amy Reichanadter 38:55
for sure. And if you think about the other side of what you just said, I mean, I think, you know, everyone's had a manager that they didn't feel like was a good fit for them, or didn't get the support they needed, and then if you flip the switch. I mean, if you think about the managers you've had that have really invested in you, taken chances on you, and helped you be successful. I mean, they're game changers, and so that's what we want to create, is those managers across the company that can help employ kids feel like they're doing their best work.
Chris Rainey 39:22
Yeah? And to your point, I believe that a lot of those managers I had just didn't have the investment, yeah, and didn't have the support that they needed. Do I think that they wanted, they wanted to do that and wanting to make, I don't believe anyone you know wakes up in the morning wanting to like, they just don't have the support or skills or do they need to do that. So it goes both ways. You can't expect people just to turn up and all of a sudden understand how to be an incredible leader. That's something that takes time. Yeah, some some are more, you know, naturally good at it, and others and kind of drift away. And some are not right as well. So I do think that that's a big and companies have to take ownership. Above that, and it's different now, right? What it means to lead now has also changed dramatically with hybrid working and well being and the resilience requirement that you need. You know, if you look at the leadership competencies from when I was a manager, none of them were in the list of the top five right of what you needed to be. No one said leading with empathy was going to be really important to me when I was growing, you know, when I was when I was a manager.
Amy Reichanadter 40:27
So true, you know. And I mean, I've always had a bias through my whole career that leadership is a set of skills that can be taught. Yeah, that doesn't necessarily differentiate, like, extraordinary leaders from great leaders. But, you know, almost anyone can develop the skills to be good at the job. And like you said, I think the role has changed. I mean, certainly during COVID and, you know, hybrid work and all the things that have happened in the world around us, and employees expect companies to care about them now. I mean, they don't see the separation between their personal life and work and during COVID, all that went away anyway, and that piece of it hasn't really shifted. Like people expect the company to care about them. They expect their company to care about what their needs are, wants are. And so things are evolving, and so managers and their own skills have to change and evolve as well. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 41:19
I agree, like, even, even in interviews that I'm having now, the type of questions I'm getting are so different. Like, you know, salary is not the number one question anymore. You know, it's around the culture the well being. You know, our focus on creating that a workplace that where they feel like they can really belong, yeah, be part of that, and they're not. And also, the flexibility, of course, is another huge part of the interview process. Now the flexibility is that's no longer nice to have, if it's and it's not, I don't even like the work life balance, and for me, it's blend. Yeah, I don't think because balance says that you have to be on one end or the other, right? Like, cause, like, a scale, almost, whereas I feel like it's blend, you know, my I go home, I spend time with my daughter, and I go back to work, and it's all one, yeah, it's all you're mixed again, yeah, I'm not jumping from one to the other kind of, it's a blend above and that in, that in itself, fundamentally, you have to change your processes, your the way you lead, your culture, everything in the way you upskill re, skill reward people. It's forcing companies to radically re, rethink everything almost. Yeah, that's exactly right. I'm gonna go on upwards. Listen, I could talk to you forever, but I know you gotta go at some point before I let you go. What be your parting piece of advice for those HR leaders of tomorrow that are going to be sitting in your seat one day? Or did you wish you knew? Did you know now?
Amy Reichanadter 42:55
I think the thing that I think the most about now is just how to operate effectively at all the floors of the building. You know, you have to work at different altitudes all the time. And so the ability to flex between having the most strategic conversations to being really, you know, hands on in the work when needed, is something that I think is really important. And the ability to context switch between that is, I think, for people who are in this role, one of the things that is a really important skill set to have, and is the differentiator between, you know, whether people can really excel in the role or struggle and that so that would be my advice. Is just, you know, working on that skill of being able to work at different altitudes as quickly as possible, as something that I love that too.
Chris Rainey 43:44
Yeah, I try and think of that sometimes, and even talk to my wife actually, really strangely through this lens of sprints as well. So, like, I'll let my wife know, hey, I'm in a sprint right now. So next few weeks gonna be a little bit crazy. I know, you know, we kind of like adjust with our family and our daughter, like, and it's like a conversation, and kind of similar to what you're trying to say, like, I'm a different attitudes in different places, but being able to communicate that is also important to your team, to your team, to your partner, whoever that may be. I didn't do that in the past. Sometimes I sort of just suffered in silence, yeah, and there's no accident, and they didn't know why, right? Or I even, personally, didn't know what altitude I was at at certain points. That even makes sense.
Amy Reichanadter 44:27
No, it does. It makes perfect sense. And I love that concept of, like, working in sprints, because, yeah, that's life. And some of
Chris Rainey 44:34
my coach helped me out a lot. He was like, Chris, you have to know when you are in in a sprint and you're not, and you also need to adjust your life, because I would get, I would burn out, you know, I would, you know, start, stop sleeping. I would stop, stop exercising, not start, you know, eating unhealthy, then mess up my sleep. And I'm like, just, you know, it's not sustainable. So knowing that, hey, I'm going to be in the sprint, and now I've got to prepare myself. You. For it, and knowing that if it's a continuous sprint, it's no longer a sprint, there's something wrong. So, yeah, I fooled myself into I'm in a sprint, whereas I'm actually in a crisis. That's right. I love that advice. Well, listen, where can people connect you, with you if they want to reach out and say hi LinkedIn, probably Yeah,
Amy Reichanadter 45:21
feel free to reach out on LinkedIn and Yeah, happy to connect amazing.
Chris Rainey 45:26
Well, listen, I appreciate you taking the time to come on show. I love the journey. I don't know, I don't know how long you can keep calling yourself a startup for
Amy Reichanadter 45:35
giving up on it. And really enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thanks a lot. Okay, we'll talk soon. Bye.
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