Three Strategies to Create a Winning CEO-HR Partnership

by Kendall Colman, Columnist for Colorado Bankers Journal, www.colmancoaching.com.

Old business school skeptics, start your engines. If there was ever a time to be paying attention to keeping your best employees, it is now.

As you might have heard, the street has spoken, and the challenging outlook for banks is not in your imagination. However, a different view is in sight at Wells Fargo.

While serving one in three households in America, Wells Fargo is known for its well-defined and rigorous approach to recruiting, developing and retaining its best and the brightest team members.

The difference at Wells Fargo boils down to one thing: the view held at the top that managing talent is a leadership issue, and HR is seen as the partner to deliver.

Public banks face unrelenting pressure from the capital markets to grow as fast as possible. If you combine that with a media environment that is intensively focused on banks, and the fact that families are indeed struggling, you can see how the need to keep team members engaged, informed and proud to be bankers is critical.

Company stories and symbols can save the day during times like these, as employees and customers seek legacy, tradition, and companies where they can put their faith.

The symbol for Wells Fargo that leaves us optimistic that ethics and capitalism can work in tandem, is the iconic image of the Wells Fargo stagecoach.

Just walking through the lobby in downtown Denver at 17th and Broadway, surrounded by pioneering memorabilia, you can’t help but become immersed in the fearlessness required to face life during the Wild West. You may even find yourself unabashedly singing, “o-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin’ down the street, oh please let it be for me…”

Today, it’s easy to see why team members here in Colorado continue to get on board quickly at Wells Fargo.  Under the leadership of Tom Honig, regional president for the Mountain Midwest Region since 2000, Wells Fargo has continued to grow deposit market share in the state, remained the top lender to small business, and annually donates more than $4 million to Colorado nonprofits.

Tom, an avid reader of history, realized early in his career at Norwest (a Wells Fargo predecessor), that the best leaders have a solid allegiance with the person assisting, advising, and developing employees.

Tom believes when you choose your team wisely the benefits to the environment are clear: a diverse group combining all the best qualities: intellectual, analytical, open-minded, and fun.

One person in particular stood out to Tom many years ago, Connie Kehmeier. She talked about HR in a way that went way beyond hiring and firing.

Connie learned early about the importance of values and performance in her first job as a first grade school teacher in Iowa. “I loved teaching but struggled with the “system”, so I left education and went into HR”. She started at Empire Savings, went onto United Bank which then became Norwest, where she began working with Tom.

Sitting in a top floor office of the Cash Register Building it is obvious the two of them together have significantly influenced HR’s role in maximizing performance and profitability at Wells Fargo.

According to Tom, “Connie stayed one step ahead of me on the people side of our business and I couldn’t be nearly effective enough without her thought partnership. If you don’t have that in your HR partner you simply can’t succeed.”

With her internal stakeholders, Connie is highly regarded and known as forward –looking, analytical, one who thinks strategically and knows exactly what’s happening on the ground day to day.

Having been fortunate to work with Connie over the years, I can attest that she is no intellectual slouch, reminding us all of the management process, the need for well thought out strategy, communication and messaging.

While sharing an irreverent humor, Connie and Tom are known for a welcoming exchange and banter that even makes topics such as succession planning inviting.

Something else you notice about these two, which comes from years working together, is that they trust each other. Tom said of Connie, “when I am not in the room, the conversation is going to end up the same way as if I was having the conversation.”

Tom knows the bottom line benefit to having HR at the table all too well –  banks with the greatest application of HR practices that reinforce performance had the highest market value per employee, and are critical in determining the market value of corporations.

The top three ideas a small bank can implement immediately for the greatest return:

“On recruitment, Connie helps me know which candidates have an interest, making sure people have open minds, a depth to the talent pool, and acting behind the scenes.”

“On interpersonal needs on the team, Tom said, “stuff happens when you are dealing with people.  Team members get sick, get angry, and have life changing events. I am frequently asking Connie about upcoming organizational changes, and then we have a lot of discussion.”

Tom went on to say, “One change management initiative Connie brought to me a few years ago was related to having stronger visibility within the company by launching a Town Hall teleconference.”

“We called it Live Talk! and it is a perfect example of HR right there connecting me to team members. Connie reminds me of the important question on everyone’s mind. What’s the message now? So, we do this quarterly. It was hard for me to change at first, but Connie got me around the idea.”

Tom said, “as you grow, you need a strategic HR presence beyond recruitment and employee law. Connie has developed a process that supports those initiatives. You have to become much more strategic, and understand what your people are thinking. Decisions can be complicated.  You can see great resistance to change.  There were certain times that Connie had to tell me the hard truth.”

So, what do you do if you are a CEO and find yourself stuck in the current soup of pessimism and are suffering from a surplus of Wall Street doom and dread?  According to Tom and Connie, it’s time to completely reset your vision, retool and recruit HR as a stronger internal ally.

Tom reflected on the importance of having an ally with strong intellectual capacity, competence, and exceptional judgment. Connie seconded this with, “if you don’t have that partnership, and you don’t have someone who is willing to have ideas both ways, it won’t work.  The HR leader also has to know the data, know the numbers, and always be asking, who is key for us? What are the management processes needed, how will we communicate and send messages, and how can we leverage the many different venues to reach employees. You also put it back to the CEO, with an openness to hear what he or she is going to say, and be willing to talk about it.

She went on, “So many human resources leaders are still not confident about their value they bring to the company. You have to have the courage to be honest with your CEO, whether he/she is going to like it or not, so having candid frank conversations are so important, and humor helps.”

When I asked them both about bankers who are perpetuating the long-held, status-quo viewpoint against using HR in this way, they both looked at me blankly, and after a minute couldn’t recall when it was any other way, it had been so long.

However they knew exactly what they would do first if they were starting from scratch:

1). Define the Process:  Before you do anything else define the process, and ensure everyone involved has role clarity. Then, define what, as a CEO, you need to know: What do my customers think? What do my team –members think? In running my business, what do I want to be known for as a company?

2). Incorporate Talent Management: This will allow you to prepare, plan, and prepare some more. Understand that some of your leaders will be resistant at first because they think HR is going to make decisions for them, which is not true. Having them know that HR is their partner, and in time folks will come to see the value. Not everyone grasps the idea that two heads are better than one.

3). Monitor Performance Management and Role Clarity: Be clear about who can play different roles, and have performance management processes that include accountability. Realize that some employees will be race horses, a group in the middle and then those that lag behind so have a compensation management process too.

In this market climate you can start with the fundamentals of mapping the end-to-end employee experience, improving even slightly, no matter what your size bank.

When leaving meetings with Tom and Connie, one is motivated by the experience, reminded of the saying, ”banking will be made better, not one by one, but two by two.”

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