What is a CHRO?
How does a chief human resources officer manage a company's culture? Here's how.
Gia Gane started his career in HR in engineering school. Untypical place for human rescources.
"I pursued a degree in engineering, but I have always enjoyed working with people," said Gane, VP of People and Culture at Atlanta-based healthtech company Florence Healthcare.
Gane believes that a background in product engineering is actually quite helpful for HR leaders.
CHRO stands for chief human resources officer. It is a C-suite level leader responsible for leading a company's talents and culture strategies. They collaborate with the CEO and CFO to establish hiring budgets, performance review cycles, benefits packages, and to foster employee engagement and empowerment. "All of my past experiences have helped me in my current role," said Gane.
The role of an HR leader is to find strategic solutions to big issues, much like an engineering lead. But instead of coming up with bug fixes and launching products, chief human resource officers are responsible for managing something more ambiguous: employee morale. Here is an overview of what they do and how they build company culture from the ground up.
A company needs a satisfied workforce to be successful, and that is the chief human resource officer's responsibility. According to Jennifer Farrgeru, if a company's head of product delivers results to an external customer base, then the CHRO is responsible for supporting the company's internal clients, who are the employees.
"The chief product officer is responsible for managing the growth and health of the product, while the [CHRO] is responsible for managing the growth and health of the organization."
HR budgets can often be the biggest investment a company makes, so the Chief Human Resources Officer needs to work closely with the Chief Finance Officer to determine how much can be spent on hiring, onboarding, salaries and benefits packages.
SKILLS REQUIRED FOR A CHRO ROLE
Aspiring CHROs should build up their experience in HR in order to prepare for the role. "Most executives need a depth of experience to be successful," Farrgeru said. "I often tell people my superpower is predicting the future, because I have been exposed to patterns of what it takes to grow a company."
According to Farrgeru, hard skills like tech savvy, financial know-how, legal competency and time management are crucial for CHROs to know. But in the HR world, soft skills are just as important as hard skills. People leaders need strong communication, peer mediation, empathy and listening skills in order to effectively manage and support employees. They also need to be able to craft a vision, and show employees how they fit into it.
"It is important for CHROs to be great storytellers," she said. "A former manager and mentor of mine taught me that part of being a great leader is being able to connect people to purpose. You do this not just by making the story compelling, but [by showing] each employee their part in the story."
Challenges and rewards
"A company's culture will always evolve as the company grows and changes goals. This is one of the biggest issues a CHRO will face," Farrgeru said.
Last year, our team saw significant growth which required us to fill in gaps in talent to maintain our momentum. There was a lot of pressure to hire fast, but I wanted to make sure we were hiring the right people. Striking a balance was tough.
"I had to wear many hats in my previous organization, serving as both the business leader who filled demand for clients and the CHRO who ensured the organization remained healthy and viable. To solve our talent capacity problem, we built our own training academy to give our own talent the skills they needed most. This not only solved our talent problem, but also kept the organization's integrity in check."
Having to rapidly adapt to high-stakes changes is daunting, but it's also what makes the role of CHRO exciting.
"There are always interesting and challenging problems to solve," she said. "People solutions aren't one size fits all. We need to always be innovating and evolving our approach to ensure solutions we have are scalable, equitable and actually resonate."
Chief human resource officers need to understand employment law, benefits management, and conflict resolution to be successful; however, this is only part of what is required in the role. A good CHRO also needs to have a passion for people, Gane said.
"HR's transformation is significant - it's not only about compliance and administration," she said. "This role is also about setting the right tone for culture and helping people grow. You need to have a passion for people to do that."
