Callie talks to Dan Van De Voorde about his experience working in an agile organization, failing fast and moving on and staying on top of your game. Dan, "The Rare Millennial," gives the audience a look at his career thus far and describes how working outside of HR helped him cultivate his unique perspective as an HR pro.
Callie talks to Dan Van De Voorde about his experience working in an agile organization, failing fast and moving on and staying on top of your game. Dan, "The Rare Millennial," gives the audience a look at his career thus far and describes how working outside of HR helped him cultivate his unique perspective as an HR pro.
Callie:
All right. Hi, everybody. I'm Callie. Unfortunately, Deanna won't be joining me on this episode of Honest HR, but we have a great guest, which I'll get to in a moment. So, as a reminder, this is Honest HR, a podcast from SHRM where we get real with HR professionals. We want to create a safe space for people to passionately share their HR stories and insights. And because this is a safe space and because we're passionate, we understand our approach, our topics, and our stories aren't for everyone. So come if you're interested, stay if you like what we're throwing down. We like you and appreciate you either way.
And I'm going to introduce our topic and our speaker for this week. So this week I'm excited to talk with my friend Dan. Dan Van De Voorde is a Senior Manager of People at Strata Decision Technology. But it's funny because Dan and I actually did not meet through HR channels. We actually met through a mutual friend before I even knew he was in HR, and we've stayed in contact through our mutual interest of SHRM. So I caught up with Dan at a recent event and had some conversations about this podcast and about what he's doing in the HR space and I just felt like he'd be a great addition to what we've got going on.
So without further ado, Dan Van De Voorde sits on the Board of Directors for Chicago SHRM and currently serves as Senior Manager of People at Strata Decision Technology in downtown Chicago. Strata's passion is to help heal healthcare by equipping hospitals and healthcare organizations with the data and tools that bend the cost curve in healthcare. Dan is a passionate people person who spends his days making sure the team at Strata is happy, engaged, and has the tools they need to be successful. Dan is a 2012 graduate of the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University in West Lafayette with degrees in communication and industrial psychology.
So, Dan, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing right now with Strata.
Dan Van De Voorde:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for the introduction. And, yeah, it's so ironic how we kind of became connected and then reconnected again through SHRM. So thank you so much for having me today, super excited to chat with you.
So my course started, I am the rare millennial that has been with the same company ever since graduating college. So I know that's super crazy and unheard of these days, but I've had a really fun ride here at Strata. Actually, when I joined the organization fresh out of college, bright eyed and bushy tailed, I actually was a project coordinator for our client services team. So I was actually working to implement our product with our healthcare organizations across the country and had always had an interest in people and how teams work together and what it means to be successful, hence my background in industrial psychology. And so at the time our organization was relatively small, about 60 people. And I raised my hand and said, "Hey, I think I want to be involved in HR somehow," and we really didn't have a formal HR team at the time.
Callie:
That's so important for our listeners to grab onto. We've talked about this in previous episodes, but Dan is a perfect example of somebody who says, "You know what? I want to get my foot in the door somewhere and HR will come to me later." Taking a total side note from our current conversation and what today's topic is, I think that's super cool that you took a leap of faith and ended up doing HR, which hopefully would've been your ultimate goal, right?
Dan Van De Voorde:
Yeah.
Callie:
So anyways, go back to what you were talking about.
Dan Van De Voorde:
Yeah, for sure. And, Callie, I think it's also important... I think actually the experience I had not working in HR within my organization actually gives me a really unique perspective because I have walked the walk of many of the people in our organization. So I kind of understand what they're facing on a daily basis. I've been there, done that, dealt with clients, implemented our product. So in a lot of ways I think it gives me a little bit more clout and lets the team know that, "Hey, I've actually been there. I know what you're talking about. So I'm on the same page as you." So yes, that's a really good call out.
Moving on. I kind of raised my hand and moved into really kind of a full time... At the time, again, we were smaller, so it was more so a lot of just talent acquisition and really was able to continue growing my role, taking on more responsibility, diving in. I'll admit, at the time it was scary as hell because my boss went on maternity leave. So I was really an HR team of one doing something I've never done before in my life really. So it was scary, but it was a leap of faith. And looking back, it was one of the biggest growth times I've had in my career. And I don't think if I had some of that experience, I wouldn't be in the role I am today.
Been continuing building my role, continue building the team. So we've gone from a team of one in the past three years, and now we are a team of 10 full-time recruiters, a full training and development team and all that good stuff. So it's been awesome. It's been fun.
Callie:
I want to switch gears a little bit. It sounds like your organization really identifies people who are meant to succeed and sort of pushes them in that direction. And what we wanted to talk about today is the ability of individuals within those types of organizations to be agile, specifically using the Agile methodology. So it sounds like, and based on our conversation, Dan, and really the reason I wanted you to come on today was to talk about how Strata has implemented Agile across the entire organization. It's typically sort of reserved for tech and engineering, but it sounds like you've sort of implemented it everywhere. So tell us a little bit about how that's changed the way that you guys work day to day.
Dan Van De Voorde:
So you're absolutely right. Typically, when someone hears of Agile scrum, especially folks that work in software development or technology companies tend to know that as it relates to how companies actually build products and services, but we had a crazy idea a few years ago to say, "Hey, if this is working for our product development team, how can we make this work for the rest of the organization?" And so a team of individuals kind of put their heads together and said, "All right, we're going to pilot this with our services team," which is actually the team here at Strata that delivers our products. So our consultants, our project managers, the people here that actually go out and implement our product.
And to our knowledge, Agile had never really been applied as a project management functionality to how organizations are actually serving their clients. And then we are like, "Well, we're going to figure this out." So we piloted it with a small team here at Strata. And as the change curve always goes, things were bumpy at first, but in the true form of Agile, you fail fast, figure out what's wrong and figure out what to do and how to change it, and that's what we did.
And we soon found that it was working. Things were turning around. We were more transparent about where we were on projects. We were able to estimate more how much time things were actually going to take so we could be more realistic about timelines and budgets. So we did a full rollout to our entire client services organization, which makes up about 65% of our team here. And we've had that in place for probably two and a half years now. So then we, as an organization, kind of said, "All right, Agile is how we're going to be. This is how we're going to work. And that's how we're going to stay competitive and stay on top of our game."
And so now every team here at Strata uses Agile in some form or fashion. And the cool thing about Agile is it's really just a set of kind of principles, but it's meant to be adapted based on the team and what the tasks are at hand, how things are organized. And so our people operations team sat down and said, "All right, let's give this a try. Let's see if we can make this work." So about a year ago we say we launched our own form of Agile and how we actually run our people operations team. And it's pretty awesome. It's really cool.
And I know we'll talk about it a little bit more, but it's, again, we're kind of the, to our knowledge, the first of its kind an organization that's adopted it within all teams across the organization, but we pride ourselves on it. Not to say there haven't been bumps along the way and things we've had to figure out, but I think that's par for the course for any sort of teams figuring out how to work together or teams figuring out a new process.
Callie:
And you're right. I haven't heard of this being implemented across an entire organization before, which is why I thought it was such a great idea when you sort of suggested it as a topic. So I do have a question though, and it's probably not one that is a comfortable question, especially with people talking about generations and all of these other things, and this one I'm kind of throwing at you from left field, Dan, but how have both young and more youth challenged individuals in your organization-
Dan Van De Voorde:
Seasoned individuals.
Callie:
Yes, seasoned, experienced individuals, responded to this sort of approach? I know you said fail fast and sort of get back up. And I know I've sat in on a many generational conversations, and it's the younger generations that like the fast pace. But I'm wondering if you're able to deliver more meaningful conversations around your projects and things like that, how everybody can benefit from it.
Dan Van De Voorde:
So, yeah. Good question. I think part of any change management philosophy or change management culture is you have to meet people where they are and then figure out how to get them to where we need to be. I think we are super lucky here at Strata that we hire the type of people here that want to be a part of that organization. We hire against core values, being service-centric, having the growth mindset, rocking impact. Those are really core to who we are at Strata. And we hire people who share those same values. So I think we eliminate a lot of the people digging their heels in when that's just the type of culture we have and the type of people that we bring onto the team that want to be here. We know our organization's not for everybody. We know that not everybody likes to work how we work and that's completely fine, but that's how we are. And that's the type of people that we bring on.
So again, there's bumps along the way. There's uncertainties. There's change management we have to go through. There's getting certain people on board and then piloting it and then getting the rest of the people on board. I mean, there's all of that stuff, right? There's no new process rollout or change that goes without people having questions or people being uncertain. But our approach to that is we do a lot of focus groups. We do a lot of one-on-one coaching. We do a lot of getting the people...
80% of people are always going to be cool, and it's going to be the 20% that are going to be the noisy ones that cause the problems. And so let's target the 20% and talk to them about their concerns, get them on board and then it's smooth sailing from there. So I have to admit and I'm trying not to see things with rose covered glasses, but things have been pretty good and pretty easy when you have a culture that just support that sort of movement and that sort of change.
Callie:
Wow. Yeah, you are definitely lucky. And I know that in some conversations that I've had with individuals sort of trying to get into HR or trying to get into their ideal company, I've mentioned to them that it's so important for them to take a look at the values of the companies. Because to have a culture like that allows for having the right people in the right roles and on board with what the company's doing is just so, so important. So thank you so much for sharing that.
So I have very limited experience in Agile and it's only because I worked for a data technology company in a previous role. But one thing that I remember from the approach was collaboration. When we had used it in our prior role and a prior company, they really wanted to improve the way that departments spoke to each other, but also that team members spoke to each other. So can you sort of elaborate a little bit on how this approach, given that it's company-wide, has improved or maybe hasn't improved the collaboration and inter-department communication?
Dan Van De Voorde:
I think one of the number one things with Agile is it's all about the individuals and interactions over the actual processes and tools. So we aren't just throwing out a whole bunch of tools and telling the teams go use these tools just for the sake of being Agile. It's really all about creating collaborative teams, cohesive environments, and then really making things transparent. And I think that's really the key when it comes to the collaboration.
And the thing with Agile is it just makes things super, super collaborative and transparent. For example, on our team, again the way that we run Agile on people operations is different than how our product development team runs Agile, and that's okay. It's just more about using kind of the same core principles. And so I think transparency is what really increases that collaboration and kind of keeping people on the same page.
We all sit down at the beginning of our sprint and kind of agree on, "Okay, here are the big projects we're going to work on. Here's how we're going to divvy up the work. Here's the estimated amount of time." And then every week we sit down and go through, and we're very transparent about, "Okay, here's how far I've gotten. I'm going to have to shift this. I need somebody to help me with this because we're not going to make this deadline." And so that's where the collaboration and transparency comes into play that I think is super, super valuable. And it kind of creates that team empathy. It's not just, we're all working in silos and you get pissed off because someone doesn't meet a deadline.
It's no, actually, we all saw that coming because we had this other thing hit our plate and we know that project's going to be delayed. So I can't be mad at you for not hitting your project because we knew since day one that that project was probably going to get shift because these other priorities are taking precedence. So that's where the communication, cross team communication and collaboration and transparency comes into play that I think really afford Agile to be a really cool and useful methodology for teams to use.
Callie:
I love that. And I think if you can... You don't have to like everybody you work with, right?
Dan Van De Voorde:
Right.
Callie:
But if you can communicate appropriately and effectively with everybody on the team, such as using this sort of Agile principle, I think that can work wonders, right, in team atmospheres.
Dan Van De Voorde:
Right.
Callie:
Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. And then, so I have one more question for you and I think, this is going to... It's sort of specific to HR. So when you're in an Agile atmosphere, a lot of what you work off of is feedback, right? So you said initially fail fast, but knowing that you've failed or really that you've succeeded in an HR space is dependent upon the feedback that you get from your employees or the feedback that you get from the individuals who are impacted by the decisions or policies or whatever it is that you're implementing. Right?
Dan Van De Voorde:
Yep.
Callie:
So have you guys found, in your people operations space, that you've needed to ask for feedback from your employees in a different way now that you're working in this faster pace environment and how has that sort of shifted to accommodate this Agile mentality?
Dan Van De Voorde:
I would say I think we do a pretty good job of kind of keeping a pulse on our team. We're all obviously employee-first figuring out what's best for our team and feedback is definitely not something that is lacking at Strata. We've created a culture where I would say a majority of people feel pretty comfortable sharing direct feedback in a timely manner. So there's a few things that we do to kind of make sure that we're continuing to hit on that.
One being we do quarterly engagement surveys. I know a lot of organizations do annually, or they might do them a twice a year. We actually do engagement surveys with the team every three months. And we actually then take that data, consolidate it by different teams across the organization, share it with those teams' leaders. And then they take all of that feedback and take it directly back to the team and say, "Okay guys, here's the problems you said. Here are the things you're saying. Let's figure out as a team how to fix it."
I think a lot of times what happens with organizations is when they receive feedback from the organization or the team members, HR feels like it has to take on this burden of fixing everything. And while, yes, we can be a catalyst for change and help create process and programs. The team's the one giving the feedback. So they're the ones who also have to be part of figuring out solutions. So it's really been interesting taking that, giving that feedback back to the teams and really helping, letting them figure out, "Okay, these are the things you said that you'd like to see improved. So how do we do that? What do you guys suggest?"
And it's created kind of an environment where we're gathering constant feedback, but the teams are also kind of shifting in a way that it's like, "Okay, well, let's also figure out..." We're going to give feedback, but we're also going to be solution oriented and think, "Okay, here's a possible solution." Or, "Let's try this," or, "Let's work differently this way." So I think that's one kind of way with the feedback loop that we've really focused on.
Additionally, we're pretty actively engaged. We do constant ongoing feedback. So all managers and team members have weekly coaching and feedback sessions, which is another way that we gather feedback. We do skip level interviews and stay interviews with the team. So the VPs of departments take folks two levels below them out to coffee or out to lunch so we can gather feedback real time there. So we do focus groups. Our CEO does CEO round tables every month where he gathers a group of cross-functional people with the organization and just sits down and says, "Okay, what's going on?"
So there's a lot of things we try to do to make sure that we're constantly keeping a pulse on the team. Our team is very actively involved with team members. So our team's participating in all the sports and giving back opportunities. So we're out with the teams doing stuff. So we're hearing things or getting feedback real time there too.
Callie:
Ugh. I'm so jealous. Your company sounds so amazing, not to say that my SHRM isn't.
Dan Van De Voorde:
Of course, of course.
Callie:
Right. So the reason that I ask that question is because I think without feedback, this sort of Agile mentality doesn't work, right?
Dan Van De Voorde:
Right.
Callie:
And I've worked for companies that the feedback is not there, or we have the feedback, but the solutions oriented piece that you mentioned doesn't partner with that. So we don't have anybody that's willing to say, "Here's what's wrong and here's what I think you should do to fix it." It's just, "Here's what's wrong. Fix it." So I think those two are so key in having a successful organization and a successful team, like you mentioned. So thank you so much for sharing that.
Dan Van De Voorde:
Yeah.
Callie:
I think we've come sort of to the end here, Dan. So is there anything else you wanted to share? Any other suggestions you have for people who are looking to make a change in their HR department or just get into HR in general?
Dan Van De Voorde:
For sure. I think the one thing, especially if you're trying to figure out how to use that feedback and make positive changes is just being... I think an HR department has to be open to change itself. I think a lot of times HR teams can become defensive when they get feedback from the employees. Think of it from the employees' point of view. They're not giving feedback to be malicious. It's feedback so that things that they think could be better.
I'll give you one quick example of one thing that's kind of dictated how we've... it goes in form with Agile, is we receive feedback in one of our engagement surveys that people want more insight into career development and what it means to get promoted or what would even be expected of another role if they wanted to explore another role in the organization. So when we came together as a team for that sprint, we said, "Okay, we are pushing off a couple of these other projects because the team right now needs career development."
So we spent an entire sprint putting together what we call their career lattice. We don't see career development as always getting promoted or moving, I guess, upward. It can be moving side to side, exploring other departments, building skills in a different area. So we spent an entire sprint dictated by the team, putting together a career ladder so that people knew what it meant. Like if you're a consultant, what does it mean if I want to explore being a product manager? And what can I actually do to start setting a path towards that?
And so I think HR teams have to be open to change and also open to the feedback and also pulling the needle for people. I think a lot of times we just assume that, "Oh yeah, I was in the employee engagement survey. So we did this new initiative." But if we don't tie the initiative back to, "We heard this directly from you," a lot of times people just think, "Oh, well I fill out the survey, but then my feedback goes nowhere or no one cares." Because we just assume people thread the needle.
And part of our job in HR, I tell people all the time, 50% of my job is internal PR. It's making sure people understand what we're doing and understand the communication and the messaging that we're sending out and why we do the things we do. And I think so those are a couple of the keys, I think, that I would give to people who are in HR or looking to make a change in HR or looking to be in HR potentially.
Callie:
Awesome. Well, thanks so much. I think my biggest takeaway from our conversation is that we have to be open to change and we have to know that the companies that we're going to be working for speak to who we are as individuals, specifically from a values' perspective. So for all of you listening out there, find that company that allows for you to work the way that you want to, but also the way that is most efficient and effective for your role.
Dan, I just want to say thank you again for chatting with me today. Deanna, we missed you, but Deanna will be back next time around to talk with our next guest. I want to remind everybody that we do have a LinkedIn group for young professionals, or HR professionals rather. So we will be posting conversations out there. We want to hear from you. We will plan to review all of those discussion items, and we will maybe feature them on upcoming podcast episodes. Head on out there. It's SHRM HR Professionals. We'd love to hear from you. And again, Dan, thank you. And we'll talk to y'all next time.
Dan Van De Voorde:
Thank you. Bye.