[Transcript]
Narrator (00:00):
Hello HR professionals. Good news. This episode of the Love your people podcast is valid for 0.5 professional development credits toward SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP, and HRCI recertification. Stay tuned to access your certification code.
John Duisberg (00:22):
Welcome to the Love Your People podcast. I'm your host John Duisberg, and if you're new here, this is the show where we explore how people-first strategies help organizations and their teams flourish. I'm extra excited for today's conversation because we are turning the lens inward. My guest today is Brent Vander Waal, President and CEO of ITA Group. We spend a lot of time on this show talking about how other organizations design their culture, but today you're going to get to hear how we do it right here at ITA Group. Brent shares some incredible stories about how we practice what we preach, including a really unique tradition we call vesting and how we balance the bottom line with taking care of our people. So whether you're a CEO or an HR leader, I think you're going to get a ton of value from Brent's perspective on what ownership mindset means. Let's dive in. Very, very excited. We have our own CEO of ITA Group, Brent Vander Waal joining us today. You get to look at this from two angles. At ITA Group, we get to serve and support clients as they're designing these strategies. And then we also have our own employees that we support when it comes to employee experience and engagement. So we're going to get into all of that today. Just super grateful to have you here, so thank you Brent, and welcome.
Brent Vander Waal (01:41):
Yeah, glad to be here. Excited to be here. Love this topic. So I'm excited to participate and have a good conversation.
John Duisberg (01:51):
Awesome. Okay, well, let's just dive in. The first thing is, for anyone who may not be as familiar with ITA Group, would love directly from the CEO, Brent, to hear just a summary of ITA, but also a little bit about your background, your tenure at ITA Group. And then our first topic is as a CEO. What are some of the things that are most important to you when you're thinking about our people and culture strategy? What are things that kind of bubble up to the surface when you say, "Hey, this is how I want to focus," or this is where you place your priorities when it comes to overall the employee experience strategy.
Brent Vander Waal (02:30):
All right, well, a lot inside that. So quickly, ITA Group. We're an agency that's out there motivating people, rewarding, recognizing people, engaging people, incentivizing different groups to build connections and to drive purposeful change for companies. So what does that mean? And think incentive programs, sales incentive service incentive programs, events, employee reward and recognition programs and employee engagement programs, which is what we're talking about today. And then consumer loyalty type programs. All of those are around engaging people in one form or another. And so motivation engagement is all about what we do and we design those programs, operate them, and execute them for our client to drive business results. I've been at ITA Group for 27 years, grew up with the agency. When I started, I was in the financial area. I started as Controller, continued to evolve over the years and became CEO in 2019.
(03:38):
So since 2019, I've been leading ITA Group. It's been a great privilege of mine, love doing it, got great team members and just it's a lot of fun. Again, like you said, we've got a little bit of an interesting perspective. So again, one of our primary strategies as a company, it is our primary strategy is to take care of our team and we know when we take care of our team, our team will then take care of our clients and the rest will take care of itself. And so not only we would also sell that to a client as well. So we practice what we preach. We drink our own Kool-Aid, if you will, in that we are selling this as services to our clients, but we firmly believe it as well. So today, I hope to talk a little bit about some of the tangible things that we're doing at ITA Group that we've seen success over the years.
(04:33):
So again, it all starts around taking care of your team and now there's a variety of ways that you can do that. I think that the thing that I would start with is that there's no silver bullet. There's no one thing that you can do that's going to solve everything. So it's a variety of things in many different situations, and maybe the most important part of it is the consistency and that you just got to keep chipping away at this thing. You've got to do it consistently day after day, month after month, year after year. And then over time you create this engaged workforce, which is all what we're all after. So there's no really one thing, but we believe you've got to be a variety of things to many people. You never know when people are going to be looking and watching and paying attention.
(05:24):
What matters. What matters to me is different than what matters to you. So you just got to be in a lot of different places a lot of different times. A couple examples of what we're talking about as far as when we're saying taking care of our team members, one of the biggest things that we know all team members want is career advancement opportunities. They want to grow in their career. So one of the things we do is for any promotion opportunity, we look internally first. We know that's a great opportunity to advance people's careers. So 80 to 90% of all promotions within ITA Group are filled with inside people, which is excellent. We know that's great. We know that's what team members want, that's what we want. Another thing we do is we believe in what we sell, and we believe in creating this culture of recognition. We love it.
(06:10):
And so we have our own Be the One platform where we're recognizing team members. On average, we have over 1,100 team members on average. Each team member is recognizing somebody else over 50 times a year, which is just outstanding. And when you do that, even when I get one, when I get one, I read it. And also I just naturally smile. Who doesn't appreciate getting a little bit of recognition and or appreciation for something where they chipped in and help out a team member? So this culture of recognition is one way how we show care for our team members. Another thing that we do is we talk about the people side of our business quite a bit. If you rewind 20 years ago, our primary KPIs, were all financial in nature. We've shifted that over the years. Now we have people metrics as well that we'll talk to our team about how are we doing from an employee satisfaction, pulse surveys, employee retention.
(07:07):
So just raising the visibility on the people side of our business and acknowledging that it's super important and that we're measuring it and we're monitoring it on a daily basis. The other thing that I would say is kind of consistently having a focus on people over profits. So a couple examples that come to mind for me on this is our company was significantly impacted with COVID, as were many organizations, but within our events space, we saw our competition and others around us laying off 80% of their team members during that time period. We did not do that. We took more of a long-term focus and tried to focus more on our people and tried to take a less of a focus on profits during that time. Then on the opposite end of that spectrum, just this past year we had the best year ever in the history of our company, a record breaking year.
(08:04):
We exceeded our goals, had an outstanding year. So just a couple weeks ago at our annual Summit as a way to recognize everybody's participation in that success, we gave all of our team members, no matter how long or how short they've been here, no matter what role they're in, everybody received a thousand points, which is the equivalent of a thousand U.S. dollars just as a nod to taking care of our team and for the efforts they were putting in. So those are a couple of the tangible ways we're trying. There's many, many more. Again, like I said, there's no silver bullet. You just got to be in a lot of places that a lot of times and do it consistently day in, day out, year after year to get the results that you want.
John Duisberg (08:50):
Yeah, no, I love that, Brent. We're getting a lot of heart reactions, a lot high-five reactions, so it's cool. And when I was in the audience at Summit when you were up on stage and you shared that, "Hey, everyone, we had a record-breaking year, everyone we're going to be depositing immediately a thousand dollars," and everyone was in total surprise, no one even knew it was coming. But some of the things that were so cool are that it actually went right back into the Be the One program which then just adds momentum to, "Hey, now I'm going to be recognizing my colleagues more based on living out core values." And so it was a way to just reinforce everything that the culture is about. And so it is taking the people over the profit mindset and saying, "OK, how can we do it in a way that's just going to add momentum, fuel to the fire when it comes to our culture? So I thought that was really cool.
Brent Vander Waal (09:47):
Yeah, it was again, obviously very intentionally to use our own platform to do the recognition versus something in a paycheck. Again, we believe in the science of the points side of it and people going out there and redeeming something with their family or friends potentially. So yeah, super excited to be able to do that. We've gotten great reactions from that and from the team members post annual Summit as well.
John Duisberg (10:12):
Yeah, no, that's amazing. And one other point, just in terms of just the mindset. I know you've talked a lot about this ownership mindset. I know a lot of when I hear different executives, "Hey, how do we get our people to take ownership of the day-to-day? How can you be a CEO in your own role?" And that's
(10:32):
really ultimately where we're going in terms of engagement is caring as an owner. And so that's one of the unique things I think within ITA Group and where my mind is going is, "Hey, how can our audience take some of these ideas into their own organization?" Obviously at ITA Group, we are an ESOP, so we literally are employee owners and we have at three years you get vested and I'm wearing a vest, and so this is just a very tangible reminder that I'm an owner of our company. I literally put this on and it's a physical reminder. So tell me more about just the ownership mindset being vested. Are there any ways that you've seen other organizations do this, even if they're not an actual ESOP? Just wanted to lean into this ownership mindset a little bit, what that means to you.
Brent Vander Waal (11:21):
Yeah, so again, it's huge for us. So again, we have an advantage here at ITA Group because we all are owners. So when we're talking about having this ownership mindset, we got a little bit of advantage over the rest of the world because we are owners. But again, I believe firmly that no matter whether you're an ESOP or not, you can still have an ownership mindset. And so that's again, what we're trying to sell to companies. If you can create an ownership mindset within the team, you're going to get that discretionary effort, which is what we're all, we work really hard to get that engaged team member because we know when we get an engaged team member, they're going to give more than just what their job description asks for. We want them to go over and above and get the discretionary effort from them.
(12:10):
And so how you do that is you got to make them feel like they're part of something bigger. It's more than just a job. And again, how can you get them to feel like their voice and their actions have an impact on the company that they work for and that they're going to drive the results of the company and hopefully they can share in those results. Maybe they can't do a thousand points, but maybe it's through a bonus program or some other way that they can share in the results of the program. And so you got to get them to feel like their ideas, their voice and their actions all matter and that they're part of something bigger. One of the things we do here, and you mentioned a little bit ago, we have an annual Summit, which is a little bit unique. So we have once a year we bring all 1,100 team members to Des Moines, Iowa, which is where our headquarters at, and we meet together for a week.
(12:58):
And again, if you do it just once you get a decent impact, that's good, but if you do it year after year after year and you start stacking those on top of each other, it becomes a difference maker. For us, it's a week where we get to celebrate. It's a week of learning, it's a week of recognition and a week where we can set the vision for the future and we can all be aligned on what we're trying to accomplish and where we're going. And so while it is a large investment for us as a company bringing that many people to Des Moines and doing that for a week, it is without a doubt one of the most valuable things we do as an organization to help create this mindset of ownership at the event. And actually throughout all the year, we're very transparent with all of our business strategies and financials.
(13:51):
That's another way you can kind of build this ownership mindset is being open with the team on how are the financials, what are the business strategies? We've been through several acquisitions the last couple of years. We're very open with the team on what our acquisition strategy is. When you let them in behind the curtain, you're going to get a lot more engagement from those team members. And so those are a few things that we try to do. Like you said, that vest you're awareness is another kind of, it feels like relatively small thing, and it's not about a $30 vest that you're wearing. It's about the intentionality that goes into how we distribute that vest to you. You get it after your three-year anniversary, that's when you become vested in our ESOP. All the shares that you've been accumulating are officially yours at that point.
(14:41):
So again, there's a nice little financial benefit at that three year mark, but we have our executive team walk around the office twice a year and hand out those vests and we make a big deal of it, are taking pictures, their teammates are applauding, there's hugs being given. So it's kind of an aspirational type event that team members look forward to in getting the vest, and then they wear it with pride like you are this afternoon. So it's a cool thing. It's just another little thing that we're trying to do to create just a slightly different culture and different levels of engagement for our team members.
John Duisberg (15:16):
Yeah, no, I love it. I love it, Brent. I mean, if you put, I don't know how much this vest costs, you said $30, maybe a hundred dollars, whatever it is, if that went into my bank account, I would've forgotten about that a long time ago. But now whenever I put this on, it's literally a physical reminder of my ownership and frankly that I'm cared about inside of the organization. So again, as we're speaking to our audience, these are just ideas to reinforce the culture, the values, the mission and that sense of ownership overall. But loved your point about the annual Summit. It's a big investment, but as a CEO, you've seen the impact that we've had from it, and so I love that feedback. It kind of goes into our next topic that I want to get your perspective on. This is just speaking to a lot of different HR leaders and how the role has evolved over time. I just think it's really interesting from your perspective. Hey, what have you seen, what's important to you when you think about our own HR leadership inside of ITA, what is your expectations and how do we continue to move the ball forward, so to say, as an industry when it comes to the HR leader role from your perspective as CEO of ITA?
Brent Vander Waal (16:45):
Yeah, so I've seen a pretty big shift in HR and what the expectations are, what their role is within an organization over my 27 years. Again, I don't know how far you have to go back, but if you go back a little ways, again, HR was compliance, right? It was is payroll getting done on Friday? Are the benefits to getting administered appropriately? It was all around, I'll call it transactional regulations, compliance type stuff, and that's not, today. We've actually changed the name of HR, so if you hear me talking about it, we call it P&C, which is People and Culture, which is a great signal to how HR has shifted. It is way more around culture. Now, HR now has a seat at the table at our business strategy when we're talking about how are we going to grow this company? HR is right there. P&C is right there.
(17:39):
They're talking about people strategies to grow the business. What are the characteristics? What are the traits? What are the skills and talents of our team that our team needs today for us to be successful? Again, certainly we still got to take care of all the payroll and the benefits and all that kind of stuff, but it's way, way, way more than that. And our expectation is that our HR leaders, our people and culture team knows how we make money. They can go and talk to our Sales & Marketing area and know how we go to market, what are the skills that we're looking for in our most successful marketing people, our account executives, and what's really changed is they become more proactive versus reactive. It used to be somebody has a job opening, then they go to HR to fill that job, blah, blah and all that.
(18:28):
Today, our P&C is looking out in front of the business and saying, "I think you have this need" and they're going to the business and recommending, "I think you should create this job or this role with these skills and talents to help us grow. I know what our marketing plan is and we need this in order for us to achieve that." So it's just super exciting to have P&C kind of at the table, if you will, when we're talking business strategy. And then the other part of it that's changed, I would say is that, at least at ITA Group, and I don't think we're alone in this, that companies employers are taking a greater responsibility for the total well-being of employees. So it's beyond just eight to five, and it's beyond just the professional well-being of our team members. We are now, we have a greater role in the personal well-being, the emotional well-being, and the financial well-being of our team members, and we're investing in that.
(19:30):
As an example here, we have a childcare center on the first floor. So we know for some parents and grandparents, having their child right down the first floor is a huge deal that lessens the anxiety level, and it's very comforting for them to know that they can go down there during their lunch hour during a break, or they can take them on a walk outside, or at minimum it could be cutting 60 minutes off their commute of going back and forth to daycare. And so they're spending more time with their family at home. We have an on-site fitness center. For some people, it's being physically fit and in order to be in the right state of mind for work, they want to work out before work, after work, during work. And so having a fitness center onsite is another way where we're trying to help with this total well-being of our team. So again, we're taking a bigger role in some of those other areas of people's lives to take that, what we call them, total well-being beyond just eight to five in their professional well-being.
John Duisberg (20:30):
Yeah, no, so you shared a lot. I want to lean into a couple topics there. So I do want to get back to the total well-being. I think that there's some interesting perspective, I want to tap further, but first just in terms of just the evolution of the HR leadership, you mentioned understanding how we make money. So what I'm thinking about is, hey, for organizations where maybe the exec team, the C-suite aren't there yet in terms of viewing the HR leader as the strategic business partner, right? Well, okay. Well, it sounds like what's important to you is that our own HR leaders, they understand how we earn revenue as a business, and so therefore they're saying as an example, I think we need to start look at recruiting AI expertise in this area of the business because we see it evolving. So is that literally what you're saying when you say understand the business or understand the revenue?
Brent Vander Waal (21:28):
Yeah, I mean that's a part of it. Yeah, absolutely. I expect our HR leaders to know how we go to market, how we sell our services, what our revenues are, what our margins are and what our costs are as a company. And then inside of that, they need to see where the puck is moving to or where it's going, and what are the skills that are needed in the future. They can just as easily as the business identify who some of our most successful team members are and either look to train others to those same competencies or go hire them and look as we're hiring people, look for those competencies and people as we're hiring to make sure that we have the right team for the future. So it's a little bit of this right person, right role, right time, and they're just playing a lot bigger role on that. Again, it's proactive versus reactive as well. Again, it's not every single scenario, but we encourage them to be out in front of it to look where we need, we need people and what's working and what's not working.
John Duisberg (22:32):
I think that that's a great summary because I hear a lot like, "Hey, yeah, we want to have an HR business partner, but in terms of tangibly, what does that mean?" I think you as the CEO just summed it up very concisely in a meaningful way. So I thought that's a takeaway I'm learning from, so I appreciate that, Brent. For sure.
Brent Vander Waal (22:53):
It's not unusual for everybody to say their team, their people are their greatest asset. A lot of companies say that, certainly professional services organizations where you're selling your services are saying your people your greatest asset. So then I kind of tack on, why not invest in them? How are you going to take that investment, that asset and make it even stronger in the future? So all that around investing in your people.
John Duisberg (23:19):
I love it. I love it. All right, so we could keep going. There's so much good stuff in, but I'm going to go to the next topic, which I think is on the minds of a lot of folks, is around the metrics. What are you looking at in terms of, again, putting the CEO perspective in terms of how you're evaluating success of the investments made into the people and culture strategy? So what are the metrics that matter to you?
Brent Vander Waal (23:50):
Well, again, I think of course you got the tried and true, and I saw several of them going through the chat there. We've got employee retention stats, we've got employee satisfaction got, how long does it take to fill an open job. At ITA Group, we even have what we call a pulse survey, which is a monthly survey. It takes about 30 seconds, four questions. So we'll look at the pulse surveys month to month to see if there's any trends or changes there. So I think of course, you've got to look at all the tried-and-true baselines and those are all super important. But I also like reading between the lines. So what I mean by that is I'll not only look at the score on the pulse survey, but I'll look at the response rates. Are people taking the time to answer the survey?
(24:42):
Am I getting that discretionary effort from them? I'll look at what kind of attendance we get at company events, how people are using VTO. So we offer Volunteer Time Off. Every team member gets 20 hours to go spend at their charity organization that they want to, and so we'll look at our people using their VTO, and again, you got to be a little bit careful because any given month or year, it can bounce around a little. But the more people you look at and the longer time period you can see trends in this, are people giving you that discretionary effort? Are they kind of going out of the way? The Be the One program. Are people taking time to recognize other people? Look at how many recognitions people are giving. Those are all good ways of reading between the lines versus just looking at the employee satisfaction score.
(25:33):
Another great one is employee referrals. So we have an employee referral program. Are our team members recommending to their friends and family to come work at ITA Group and we can look at that over years and if that number's going up, that's a great thing. You've got an engaged team here. You're not going to refer someone on to work at your company if you don't like it there. So those are all just great ways and there's more that we're kind of trying to read between the lines to see if there's any trends coming that we should be paying attention to. And again, super important that you don't just look at one month or one of that stats because go to that volunteer time off that I was talking about. You could hit a person where they just had a busy time of their life and maybe their numbers are down for a year or two, and that's fine again, but if you expand out and look over bigger scope of people and over a bigger scope of time, you definitely can see trends in there that are pretty telling to employee engagement, which is what we're all after.
John Duisberg (26:35):
Yeah, it's super interesting. I mean, my mind immediately goes to the lagging metrics turnover or even an employee satisfaction on an annual engagement survey type of thing, but these are the leading metrics, the actual activity that's happening day to day, which is interesting, which I don't hear from in terms of just the measuring the effectiveness of the engagement program overall. So interesting. Okay. Again, we could keep going and I'm so grateful. Brent, I wanted to just one final as we wrap up question here. It is just a little future looking. We're getting to the point where we're starting to think about 2026, which is crazy, but what are some of the things that are high on your radar when you're thinking about next year and we're focusing on the people and culture strategy or how we're navigating different trends, whether it be AI or other things, just want to get your forward looking, take on what's on your priority list for people and culture.
Brent Vander Waal (27:48):
Yeah, again, I think two things come to mind. Hopefully I'll remember to talk about both. One is AI and then one is soft skills. So if I don't hit them both remind me. But again, I think you've got to talk about AI, and so to me it's finding the right balance of AI, with HI being human intelligence. So there's no doubt in my mind that AI can help us, so it can help with the efficiencies, it can streamline processes, it can help with workflows, but to me, the differentiator, the differentiator is still the human intelligence side of it, and so it's finding the right balance of the AI with HI that's going to allow us to serve our clients better and give us the competitive advantage over our clients. AI is a wonderful tool and we all should be using it in a responsible way, but it's the human intelligence that's going to make the difference. It's reading the nonverbal cues in a room that makes a difference. It's being able to answer a question on the fly with a client that resonates with them around how they can have a greater business impact.
(29:03):
It's those kinds of things that the human intelligence is how you're going to differentiate. Human Intelligence is also the key to building relationships, building trust and all that stuff around taking care of people. It takes that HI side of it. That's how you're going to differentiate. That's how you're going to take care of your team, which is how you're going to differentiate with your clients. So again, clearly know that AI is coming and indeed, it's already here. We need to be able to use it in a responsible way, but finding that right balance between AI and HI one big thing. The other thing I would say, the second part of it is just continuing to focus I think on the soft skills, some of the intangible skills are going to be even more important than what they are today. They're already important, but I'm thinking of flexibility, adaptability, resilience, embracing change. Those kind of characteristics are things that we're looking for in our future leaders and our team members. We know that the pace of change is going faster, and I believe it's only going to accelerate. And so those people who not only can navigate through change, but they actually embrace it and kind of thrive in that change are the ones that I believe are going to be super successful in their careers and in the future because the value of those types of characteristics are only going to get more and more important.
John Duisberg (30:29):
Oh, that's great. Yeah. Thank you so much, Brent. Again, just for sharing your insights and just kind of an inside look in terms of how you view our own people and culture strategy and what you look for as CEO that I think we can just learn from. There's a lot of different ideas that you shared that I think could be really helpful. So thank you again, Brent. Really appreciate you sharing with us today. As we wrap up today, remember this, the insights you've gained are only as valuable as the action you take leadership and culture transformation. Start with each of us at ITA Group. We help people and brands thrive together because creating a workplace where people feel seen, valued and inspired is how we drive meaningful change. For more strategies, tools and insights to help you lead with purpose and build people-first organizations, visit itagroup.com/insights. Thank you for joining us, and until next time, keep leading with your heart and making a difference as a people-first leader worth following.
Narrator (31:40):
Thank you for listening to the Love your people podcast. As promised, this episode is valid for 0.5 professional development credits toward your SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP and HRCI recertification. To claim your SHRM credit, please visit itagroup.com/SHRM-podcast. For your HRCI credit, visit itagroup.com/hrci-podcast. Complete the quick form to receive your certification codes. Again, that's itagroup.com/SHRM-podcast and itagroup.com/HRCI-podcast