From Lawyer to Employer: Season 4, Episode 9 | Beyond HR: How Expanding Your Role Can Transform Your Impact

Daniel Schwartz: So that's our focus today, sort of the mindset, the skills, the practical moves that make more than HR sort of a win for the organization.

And, uh, you know, in talking with you, Jeanine, it really brought an interesting perspective that I thought we'd share. So before we get into it, can you share a little bit of your, your background?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Sure. So I consider myself an operationally focused HR executive. I've been doing this type of work for more than 30 years.

I've had the pleasure to work in several different industries, both profit, not profit, across all of the functional areas of HR. And then I'd say sort of mid-career I expanded into areas outside of the traditional HR realm.

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah. So you've gone from HR to operations. Can you describe like some of the differences that you see between the two?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Yeah, so when I was working strictly in HR, it allowed me to build my expertise in that area, which was a fairly common thing to do, right? Go to all of the functional areas and learn a little bit about them. But then when I had areas outside of HR it required me to really think about how the HR decisions I made as an HR leader impacted everyday operations and finance.

Those were things that didn't necessarily always come up, but when I got these outside areas, it really forced me to look differently at things.

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah, so it's gotta be very different as someone who has the HR background that you have - you sort of, you get familiar with it, right? You, you sort of know the rhythms of it, and like now you're owning more than HR.

So what goes through your mind then?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Fear, absolute fear. Honestly, I wasn't a content expert in any of these new areas. I had HR and all of the things that come along with that. And then I got facilities, engineering, food and nutrition, marketing, public relations like a whole bunch of other areas, and it pushed me to think about the enterprise first.

Right? So I couldn't just worry about perfecting my HR, I had to connect those dots across the entire business.

Daniel Schwartz: So, how do you sort of do that to, to, you know, make that shift, to connect really the, the people you know that are, are HR to the operations side of things.

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Well, uh, to be honest with you, Dan, it, it involved a lot of listening.

I did a lot of listening. I met all of the frontline line leaders in all of the new functional areas that I had. I mapped their pain points. I came to all of their standup meetings or all hands meetings. I had to, for those of the groups that owned a P&L, I had to get kind of a quick lesson on what that is and what that looked like.

And there were others that had really were driven by KPIs around quality and some other things. And I really had to figure out which were those KPIs were the most important and would really move the needle.

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah, we'll talk about a P&L, the profit and loss, you know, and talking with business people, you know, sort of owning that is, is an issue.

But, you know, when we were talking, uh, beforehand, you said, uh, you know, the biggest identity shift was from sort of like a functional expert, right? You, you become this sort of expert in how to manage people and, and processes, and then you're trying to integrate this into a larger enterprise. What does that sort of look like on a day-to-day basis?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: You know it's really using your HR experience, but connecting choices across the functions to outcomes like retention, productivity, customer experience. So, if I were to give you an example, a technology rollout isn't just an IT project. It's really about engagement and an adoption challenge. The facilities design isn't just what real estate, what building, what department are you fixing - it really affects how employees collaborate and retention.

Operational scheduling isn't just about efficiency. It shapes culture. It helps with burnout risk if you're doing it right and the integrator and you has to ask what's the combined effect and how do we line up people, process and the technology to get at it?

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah. It, it is a different perspective, and I guess the, the lawyer in me is the, the analytical type, but the integrator has to think about like lots of different factors there. Can you give me, I mean you, you, you spent a number of years there. Can you gimme like an example that really hit this home for you.

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Yeah, sure. So I'll give you one example for a time when, when I worked in the manufacturing space. So, we reduced manufacturing downtime, which is a huge thing in a production facility. It was causing customer delays, burnout of frontline supervisors. There was obviously margin compression because we weren't getting things out the door on time.

So, by training, using the technology to train operators on some basic equipment diagnostics, there was lots of confusion between what was production and what was maintenance. We clarified the accountability between those two teams. We created champions on each shift, and really this resulted in a change.

You know, operators could detect issues earlier. Maintenance becomes proactive and all of that increases engagement on the floor, which again, then in turn reduces the manufacturing downtime. So that's just one simple example of using the people, process and technology to get it all.

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah and sort of thinking out loud here, when you do that, I suspect you solve some of the HR issues, right?

Because you, yes, you take care of the people and some of the disputes, the, the daily grind that that happens, right? That diminishes as well, right?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Yeah. So when you have, you know, just using that same example when you have downtime in a production facility it’s never a good thing, right? Right - 'cause it causes all these problems and it cause angst and burnout for the supervisors because they feel like they can't control things.

And so, yes, it allowed me to not only introduce these new things to solve these problems, but I in effect, solved many of the people problems that come along with that supervisor burnout and all the other things that are normally the purview of the HR person.

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah and you know, there are HR people who listen to this or other business owners and they're trying to increase their presence, their visibility here, and, and you at least have the perspective as someone who is going through HR, like, how do people grow?

How do we wanna give them opportunities? So how did you adjust your executive presence? Uh, going from like just a more limited role to a more operations side?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Yeah, so that, I mean, that's a great question, Dan, and you know, you have to really become more comfortable talking about outcomes in business terms.

So instead of saying, you know, things like, we'll increase training, you'd have to say, we'll reduce time to proficiency by 20%. Or another example is -lifting quality scores by 2%. So again, when I worked in the healthcare world, there's a lot of quality KPIs that are super important to the organization. And outsiders look at that and decide whether they wanna come to your facility or not, based on your quality scores.

So, you have to tailor your message. You talk to the CFO about reliability and return. The CFO always wants to know what's in it for us. Why would I spend money on this? What return am I gonna get? Operations want speed. They want clarity. And the CEO who, you know, I reported to directly in, you know, most of my roles, they want alignment across all of these functional areas, and they want their risk managed.

So being able to be clear, concise, grounded in the numbers, builds your trust across the functions. And so that's kind of what you have - that's the shift you have to make this talk. Talk a little differently than you might have and present yourself a little differently with, you know, facts and figures than you might have not done before.

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah. What sort of things help with those competing priorities? I mean, you've got the CEO, the CFO a COO, right? And everyone's, everyone's trying to improve things, but there are just differences be between the two. Were there things that, that made a difference for you?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Yeah, so for me, going from having, uh, you know, again, I don't want to denigrate the importance of the CHR role, it's a critically vital, vital role in an organization. But when you expand your scope from one day to the next, you really, really have to have a strong HR team underneath you. If you don't, all you're doing is getting more stuff on your plate and you're not able to kind of handle it all. So first thing, having a strong HR team allowed me the ability to spend time outside of the areas of HR.

Certainly in the beginning when I first got these other areas and it was all brand new to me. So having a strong team underneath you in the HR realm is super, super important. Otherwise, it's just going to be a nightmare. Um, so that was really one of the best things that I did. I didn't have an HR director at my first place that this happened to me, and I ended up hiring somebody because I needed somebody who would be the everyday person - otherwise, it would've been quite disastrous.

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah, I think some companies, sometimes the HR is like one of the last hires, right? They don't wanna necessarily have that, but I think it's fair to say, having come up through the HR ranks, then gone to operations, you sort of see the role that HR can play a little more clearly, right?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Absolutely 100%. And like I said, you know, I'm, I've, I've had a long career. When I first started my career, HR did not, that proverbial have a seat at the table, qnd I believe that's completely different now. So in and of itself, HR is usually very closely aligned and I have been extremely closely aligned with all the CEOs I've worked with, and I think that's really important.

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah, I, you know, I wanna touch on one thing quickly, because you mentioned P&L and I think sometimes HR leaders who are trying to expand, get, you know, worry, they need to be really finance experts there. So, what did you do to get sort of like just enough financial literacy to know what you're talking about without getting too mired down in the, in the weeds on it?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Yeah, well at first I panicked a little bit about that, and then I got a kind of little reality check and I thought to myself, well, I'm never gonna be a finance expert. That's not something that I grew up doing. I didn't have education and experience in that. So you don't need to be the CFO, but you do need to read a, be able to read a P&L, right?

You have to understand things like gross margin drivers. You have to be able to connect people investments to productivity improvements. And so again, there's a couple things that you can do that really helps you out of the gate.

Daniel Schwartz: What is a metric that either an HR leader or someone else should put on their dashboard?

So, things like, uh, dealing with employees. Is there anything to be gained there by looking at that?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Yeah, so for sure you wanna have on your executive dashboard things like regrettable turnover in critical roles. So again, turnover is, is part of life. People come in and out of organizations and it's not necessarily a bad thing, but when you have regrettable turnover, when you have people that are serious content experts and they're in very critical roles in your organization and they leave - you wanna be exploring that and being able to understand that and measure that over time. You wanna look at things like the cost of vacancy. People think it's no big deal. Even, you know, the statistic goes if you have somebody in a $50,000 a year job and they leave, it costs you $75,000 to replace them - in terms of the recruiting piece, the lost time with nobody in the role, all of that stuff is really important. So cost of vacancy and time to productivity, which would be like, you know, number 1, 2 and 3. So there's some key, key real key metrics that need to be on there.

Daniel Schwartz: So what derails a CHRO, an HR person from stepping into a broader role?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: I think outside of the fear factor, having to be perfect is a big one. If you insist on mastering every detail, you'll, you'll never get there. Right? Overreach is another, changing too much, too fast without listening. Again, I cannot emphasize enough to listen to your people. Listen to the people in the other functional areas - they know best, and bandwidth is real, right?

Having a bandwidth problem, I mean, in my first job that this happened to me, I overnight, doubled or almost tripled my responsibility. So new scope without really strong functional leaders underneath you will not work. So that was, that was really big to not get too mired, not get too worried about learning everything so fast and not having strong, functional leaders - are, are really things that will kind of derail and sidetrack you.

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah. Is there anything that sort of keeps you on track that, you know, in looking back in hindsight, you did right. Or wish you did right?

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Yeah. Well, some of this I did right? And some of this I didn't. But as I look back and reflect, I think, you know, planning is a big thing. So having a 90-day plan that prioritizes maybe two or three enterprise outcomes and parts the rest.

Again, you can get really overwhelmed because every department and functional area that you work with tells you 15 different things that are wrong and what they wanna change and how can I help? And so prioritizing two or three is best. Second is - clear swim lanes with your new functional heads. So you set the strategy, but they run the business. They run the playbook. You don't get in their way. Again, they've been doing this their whole life. It would be the same thing as if a non HR person came into HR and all of a sudden decided they knew everything. It, it doesn't go over well. So, and then the third thing is getting some visible wins, right?

Something measurable that builds confidence. Things like cutting onboarding times, stabilizing a tough shift by scheduling tweaks, doing things like that and getting some wins really helps not only build your confidence, but the people's confidence in you. Because again, you are the HR lady who's now taking over their areas and they don't understand, what could you possibly know? And so, so I think doing those three things is super helpful and could make for a success.

Daniel Schwartz: Yeah, really interesting and, and I think for, for companies that are, you know, really putting together this jigsaw puzzle of, of people and, and places and things and all the things trying to come together - having someone with HR experience brings a different perspective to operations that I think sometimes the operations, you know, you, you were talking about the finance people having financial literacy. They may have that, but they may not have the people literacy skills either.

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Correct.

Daniel Schwartz: Well look, we're gonna run out time here. So is there anything else that you want people to know as they sort of think about this? And then I'm gonna ask you where they can find you afterwards for more information.

Jeanine Reckdenwald: So, yeah, I think, first of all, it was really rewarding to me. I really enjoyed it. Not only did I learn a tremendous amount, but I think it really expanded my leadership in HR, right? I became a much better HR leader when I had all of this. So I think, you know, being able to move from your own functional area to enterprise thinking, operational fluency, measurable outcomes. That's all really, all what you want when you're running a business. And so for me, that's been a really amazing career pivot, I would say. And, um, I would encourage others to do the same. Raise your hand if, if, if you want more. I didn't ask for this. I got it in my first job. And like I said, I was scared as hell, but once I got into it and I had the right team behind me and set up it, it was really a, an amazing experience.

Daniel Schwartz: Well, Jeanine, thanks so much for joining us. This was really, uh, something different for us and I really enjoyed the conversation. If people want to reach out to you, given your background, they can find you on either LinkedIn or an email.

Jeanine Reckdenwald: Yes, so I am on LinkedIn, but you can also find me at Jreckdenwald@gmail.com, I'm happy to talk to anybody.

Daniel Schwartz: Well, that's great. I hope they do really, again, enjoy the conversation. So that'll wrap up another episode of From Lawyer to Employer. We'll have a new one coming out soon. In the meantime, uh, as always, you can subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts, uh, from, whether it's Apple Podcast, Spotify, or one of the other sites as well.

And if you wanna leave a review for us. That always helps others know about this podcast. And if you have an idea for an upcoming presentation, an upcoming podcast episode, uh, feel free to drop me a line at dschwartz@goodwin com. Until then, we'll see you on another episode. Take care.

Host: Thank you for joining us on this episode of From Lawyer to Employer, a Shipman podcast.

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