Changing with the times: Bill Allen

Bill Allen, a 1980 Harbert graduate, has seen great change in the HR field over a career that includes stints as chief HR officer at Macy’s, Maersk and Atlas Air.  He says today’s HR professionals have to help their companies build cultures that will attract the people needed to operate successfully.

Transcript

Narrator:

Welcome to the Harbert College of Business podcast with your hosts, Sarah Gascon and Currie Dyess.

Today's guest is Bill Allen, senior partner at CEO.works. Allen, a longtime human resources executive and consultant is a 1980 Harbert graduate.

Sarah Gascon:

War Eagle Bill and welcome to the show.

Bill Allen:

War Eagle Sarah and Currie. How are y'all doing today?

Sarah:

Yeah, we're doing great. We really appreciate you joining us today.

Bill Allen:

You bet. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Sarah:

Tell us a little bit about how you found yourself at Auburn.

Bill Allen:

Arriving at my destination at Auburn was a little bit of a journey. I grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida after living in the northeast Massachusetts and New Jersey for the first five years of my life. And I spent the first two years at a little liberal arts school in DeLand, Florida called Stetson University. And after a couple of years it felt a little bit too much like high school. And so I was looking around for another place to go to school and I had wanted to study human resources called personnel and industrial relations at the time. And Auburn was the school that was closest to home that had a good reputation that my parents would sign up for. And I ended up in Auburn on the 1st of January of 1978, driving right into an ice storm. That was quite the introduction for this Florida kid.

Sarah:

Especially being from Florida. So tell us a little bit more about HR and the complexities of human resources and how it's evolved over time.

Bill Allen:

Human resources has evolved over time. There was no human resource function before World War II essentially. During the depression and during FDR's administration there were a lot of labor laws that were passed, a lot of regulation. And then of course after the world, the GI is coming home and going into the workforce, somebody figured out that we need somebody, we need a function to go ahead and manage all of this. And the human resource function was born in a very simple state back in the forties to ensure that the workforce had what they needed to go to work every day. That evolved over time, I'd say it was probably fairly static and fairly simple through the fifties and sixties and maybe even to some extent during the seventies. A lot of it was labor relations, a lot of it was benefits and compensation and the basic stuff.

But in the eighties, the world started to change and the world became much more globalized. America's post-war, complete dominance of business started to change and American companies started to look at all these markets in different parts of the world, say, geez, there's opportunities to grow there. And that continued on through the rest of the century. And around the beginning of the next century, around the year 2000 things started to change even more because it became the digital age and the knowledge age and the workforce started to change and the human resource function had to change with that. So now we're operating in a digital global environment and now we're experiencing even more change with changing demographics, changing social concerns, changing geopolitics in a very, very big way, which is still playing out and impacting supply chains and a number of other things.

So really we're on the verge of human resources, call it 4.0, and it's going to continue to change. The one thing that does make human resources so interesting is that it's one of the few functions along with finance that really has an enterprise wide view of what's going on with the business, both internally and externally. And it makes it very, very interesting. And because of that and because as a human resource executive, you're responsible for two things. Number one, developing and running and leading a great function that's going to deliver what the business needs. And then you're also responsible for making money and working with the leadership team to make money. So because of those two requirements, it makes it, A very interesting and pretty challenging at times as well. So that's where the evolution of human resource is. I started my human resources career in 1981 right after I graduated from Auburn and was in the corporate world for 35 years.

Grew up essentially at PepsiCo, a great academy company for human resource people, as well as a lot of other functions. And then became the chief human resource officer at three listed companies. One, the biggest airline nobody's ever heard of, Atlas Air Holdings. Number two, the biggest shipping company that everybody's heard of Maersk, which has a great presence on the Auburn campus and the business school in particular. And then number three, the biggest department store that everybody's heard of, which is Macy's Inc. Which includes Macy's, Bloomingdales and Bluemercury. So it was a great career there and retired from corporate career in 2016 and been doing a lot of work in private equity and a lot of consulting and that sort of stuff since then. So it's been a great run and a great position to see a lot of change, not only in the business world, but in the world in general.

Currie Dyess:

Yeah. Bill, your story is really, it's really incredible and we think compelling to our audience, the current students and recent grads. Your career has taken you overseas and you've had the opportunity to be the rockstar of human resources on multiple continents in several countries. And who doesn't like to travel, especially when they're young?

Bill Allen:

Especially when you're young.

Currie:

There's a lot to unpack in your story. And obviously careers like yours, they take time to develop. What are some of the things that sets you on this path from the beginning that are maybe actionable items that our listeners can put to work right now?

Bill Allen:

Well, first and foremost, my dad taught me this. He said, there's only two decisions in life that really dictate how easy or difficult your life might be. The first is who you decide to get into a committed relationship with, who you decide to marry. And the other one is what you decide to do for work. And if you get both those right, things are likely going to be pretty good, barring some sort of tragedy or something. If you don't get them right, then things aren't going to be quite as easy. And fortunately for me, I got both of them really, really right. My wife and I have been very, very happily married for 34 years and we've got two wonderful kids, none of whom went to Auburn unfortunately. And then I had this wonderful career. So loving what you do is important because you got to do it for a long time.

And when you love what you do, you're much more likely to be really, really, really good at it. And that applies to any career that you might choose. Second, I would say, you've got to make some decisions about trade offs in life. So we've moved around quite a bit. We lived in Europe, I lived down in the Caribbean for a period of time. My two sons have lived in 10 cities, which wasn't always easy. And the main reasons for us moving were my career. So you got to decide what you want to sign up for and then figure out what the tradeoffs are that you have to make because there's tradeoffs to everything. Absolutely nothing in this world is perfect and you just got to decide what's most important to you and then make your decisions from there.

Sarah:

How do you know you're building the right type of company culture for the future of your business or organization? And how influential is the human resources department in creating that culture?

Bill Allen:

Great question, Sarah. What I would say is, the first thing is you have to understand your business and you have to understand the kind of people that you need to run your business successfully. And then you have to build a culture that's going to attract those people. Throughout my career, there were ups and downs in the labor force. There was times of very high unemployment and times of very low unemployment. And I think we're here for a period where they'll be very low unemployment. So people are going to be able to be even more choosy than they have been in the past about where they go to work. And the things that are important to them are a couple things at least. Number one, going to work every day with meaningful work on a team in a business that has a plan to win.

Because losing isn't very fun. You guys are athletes, you know that. Losing really sucks to be frank. Well that applies to work as well. If you go to work, you want to be in a place where, you have a winning team. The second thing is you got to have a boss who's going to help you reach your potential. And when you put those two things together in an organization and you create the right culture to attract the kind of people that you need to win, then amazing things happen. I had the good fortune to work for two really, really remarkable companies in my career. Number one was PepsiCo Frito Lay division in particular. And then number two was Maersk the giant shipping and at the time energy company.

And those were companies created a culture where the very, very best people in the field wanted to come to work and did come to work. The other companies I worked for were great companies as well, but those two were the exceptional in terms of the culture that they built to be able to attract the right people to come to work and win every day. So when you're able to do that, it's really, really fun.

Currie:

And who were some of your mentors or role models that really helped shape the career that you've had and your leadership style?

Bill Allen:

There are several mentors probably and role models. The first one was my father who was an HR executive for the RCA Corporation for years and years and years. And I still have a very close relationship with him. He is going to be 94 years old in December. So we talk every week and see each other as much as we can. That was one, I had a number of mentors during my sort of formative years at PepsiCo, including a guy by the name of Dave Lozier, who was my boss, a line boss as well as an HR boss. And then growing through that, one of my mentors was a fellow by the name of Bill Connelly, who was the head of HR at General Electric for quite a long time. And then there's all sorts of business leaders that I really, really enjoyed working with as well.

So it's important to build those relationships because those relationships are ones that, number one, help you learn. But number two, helping get through the tough times. Everybody and their career has sometimes that are great and relatively easy and then sometimes are really, really hard because you're dealing with difficult issues. So those relationships are super important. And it's super important to think about who your kitchen cabinet is of people that you can pick up the phone, say, hey listen, I've got this problem. I'd like to get your point of view as to how you might approach it and any advice you have for me and use that network. Because doing these jobs is hard. You can't do it all by yourself.

Currie:

Just to follow up with that. So you can't do it all by yourself. And we talk about leadership, we talk about mentorship all the time, but to that point, you can't do it all by yourself. If there was one thing that you by yourself could change about the human resource field as a profession, what would be that one thing?

Bill Allen:

Great question. And you're putting me on the spot Currie. What would I change? What I would change is I would across the board encourage the HR professionals to elevate their view of themselves as people who can create impact and create change as opposed to just providing service. We provide service, but we also should be providing leadership across the business. When I say leadership, it's leadership by understanding what we can uniquely do to create impact, to create the teams that are going to help our business leaders win every day. So said another way we shouldn't be shy about what we can do and what we should be able to do to help build winning teams and help build a winning business.

Sarah:

Is the purpose of the HR department also to stay focused on the mission and the vision of the company, while also assisting the employees that are working within the company?

Bill Allen:

The purpose of the HR function is to first and foremost create competitive advantage by working with business leaders. That's number one. In doing that, there are a number of different facets, some of them that are focused on getting the right people in the right jobs and creating a work environment where people can come in and do their best and ensuring that they've got good leaders to work with and leaders that there are standards around what a good leader is and what a good leader isn't and what the consequences are for having bad leadership. So that's part of it. There's also apart of it that is around risk management. Ensuring that a situation that occurs in the workplace is addressed properly so that the risk of number one, sending the wrong cultural messages is addressed. And number two, then any external legal risk or regulatory risk is addressed as well.

Because, nobody wants to see their company in the newspaper for having a bad leader who's done something bad and it's created a problem, an image problem, and a morale problem within the company. You just can't have that. And these days... When I was growing up, people thought they'd keep things secret and you can't keep things secret with everybody walking around with an iPhone these days because it can be recordings, it can be all sorts of things, cat boards et cetera. So really at the end of the day, the reason the shareholders are funding an HR function is to create a competitive advantage, A. But part of that is ensuring that you manage risks to your reputation, to your culture, because you just can't tolerate that, you can't tolerate that. And when you've got a bad leader in the organization, there's only one thing that you must focus on, and that is getting them out and getting them out in a way that minimizes the risk in the organization.

Currie:

One of the things Sarah and I were discussing prior to talking to you was what motivates employees? I'm sure you've seen a huge shift, at least we've been reading a lot about the shift in employee motivation. In that shift or in your experience, do they care more about compelling work or productive work, and how do you ensure that both of those types of employees are fulfilled under one roof?

Bill Allen:

Let me just ask this question. I understand what compelling work is. What do you mean by productive work?

Currie:

I mean, somebody like my dad who worked in a manufacturing plant, it didn't have to be fulfilling. There wasn't any social responsibility to the community or anything like that. Just you go in, you get your hours, you get your paycheck, and that's that. And you stick with your job for 20, 30, 40 years versus I think a more modern way of looking at it is people want to do what makes them feel fulfilled and it's less about the money and it's more about their impact.

Bill Allen:

What I would say Currie is people care about doing work that is fulfilling no matter what role they play in an organization, I think. What I mean by that is the best organizations actually go to great lengths to ensure that everybody understands what they're doing to help the team win. Whether it's on the factory floor or in a call center someplace or in an accounting department someplace, or as a sales rep someplace. I once had a CEO who said, I want everybody to understand what they can do to help us win. And on the factory floor, that's one thing, ensuring that it's safe, ensuring that there's as little waste as possible, ensuring that the product meets the standards.

So I would say that I don't really draw a line between compelling and productive because you got to have both, you got to have people who get things done, but get the right things done and understand that what they're doing is really, really, really important. Anybody comes to work any day thinking that what they're doing is not important, it's because they probably have a leader who hasn't helped them understand what they do is important.

Sarah:

How difficult has the transition into more remote work or hybrid work been for a human resource department?

Bill Allen:

Sarah, I don't know how difficult it's been. I think it depends. I think that it's been a real challenge for leaders everywhere because they are seeing each other in the office and have a conversation in the office, in the hallway, or wherever it might be. Then I think not being in contact with people face to face at least some part of the time makes it really, really challenging. And I think the world in general has not done a good job of teaching leaders how to do their jobs differently in a remote slash hybrid workplace. You've got to be able to connect with people and you've got to ensure that your expectations are clear. People have to be able to give feedback and ask questions, and I think the remote hybrid workplace has made that much more difficult. But I also think that many companies haven't done a good enough job equipping their leaders operate in a new environment.

And that I think is contributing to, not solely, but contributing to the quiet quitting talk that you hear going on, the mass resignation talk. And quite frankly, it's all pretty real. Both of my sons have changed jobs in the past 15 months and they had good jobs. They went to jobs that they thought would be better for them. So I think it's a real issue. I don't think we're ever going back to 40 hours a week or more in the office for the vast majority of the workforce. So it's time to adapt and adjust in an ever changing world.

Currie:

What is it that lights your soul on fire and makes you want to get out of bed and do what you do every day?

Bill Allen:

As I look back in my career, the things that were highly motivating to me were, number one, the opportunity to work with really, really good colleagues in interesting and challenging businesses and make an impact, that and being a good husband and a good father to our two boys were the things that got me excited. Get out of bed early in those dark mornings, particularly in the winter in Denmark, and go to work. And it was great. As I mentioned earlier in the podcast, if you love what you do, there's a very good chance you're going to be good at it and you're going to get a great deal of satisfaction out of it. So I think at the end of the day, it's choices that you make based on the choices that are in front of you. And not everybody has equal choices, but making those choices based on what you think is going to be satisfying to you, most satisfying to you across a number of different criteria is really, really important.

Sarah:

Bill, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today. How can our listeners keep up with your journey and contact you?

Bill Allen:

Hey, I'm on LinkedIn. I've written quite a number of articles and they're not only on my LinkedIn, but they're on CEO Works, which is the place where I'm a senior partner today working with some really, really interesting and cool people and good friends. So that's probably the best way to keep in touch with me. Thank you very, very much for having me. See you guys again. War Eagle.

Sarah:

War Eagle.

Narrator:

Harbert, inspiring business.