Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: The people function is your business function. The more you can see that they're the same, then the better off you will be.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Welcome to a new episode of the what Works podcast series. In this episode, Kathy and Daris sits down with Dara Engel, the Chro at Oryx Corporation usa. Dara shares her insights on the pivotal role of HR in shaping organizational strategy and driving transformation. Together they explore how Oryx is leveraging HR to build resilient cultures, the impact of technology on workforce dynamics, and effective strategies for managing change in today's fast paced environment. Let's get to it.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: Dara, thank you so much and welcome to the what Works podcast. I'm thrilled to have you as my guest.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here as well. Looking forward to it.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: Awesome. Well, as we get started, Dara, tell us a little bit about first your company and then also your own role as Chro there at olex.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Definitely.
So I have been the Chro here for two years and it's crazy how quickly two years can go when there's a lot of work to be done. But a little bit about the company. So we are a US subsidiary of a global organization based in Tokyo, Oryx Corporation. So our division, if you will, is Oryx Corp. USA and we are roughly 13, 1400 employees. Our corporate office is Dallas, so we have our back office and some of our front lines of business here in Dallas. And then we've got another annex, if you will, in New York City of another group of a hundred or so employees. And then we've got Orcs Corp. As a subsidiary is also a parent company of three other subsidiaries. So one of them is a company called Lumen in real estate mortgage financing. Another is Boston Financial which is Low Income Tax Solutions, basically based in in Boston. And then another is NXT which is based in Chicago, a private credit solutions organization. And each of those are subsidiaries that were acquired over the last five to seven years before, before I got here. And the parent company, Orcs Corpusa, is really the back office engine and the enterprise solutions behind these different subsidiaries. So it's fairly complex in that it's organic growth over a long period of time as well as acquisition growth. And in the acquisition growth, one of our key challenges is those companies were acquired under more of a private equity model where you acquire businesses with the intention of growing value and selling. But over time, due to the pandemic, due to the economic downturn and the market conditions, these subsidiaries have maintained their position on the balance sheet, if you will. And as A result, they're part of the fabric of the company, but yet did not receive full integration when they were acquired. So we have a lot of HR opportunities. You might say you've been there for two years.
[00:03:33] Speaker C: Tell us a little bit more about your trajectory and how you came to be the CHR role at Oryx.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: You know, it's very interesting. So I was the Chief People officer before my tenure here at Oryx of the Howard Hughes Corporation. And with that company, I was there. It was 13 years when I left and I built the HR team. I grew the HR team and just kept growing and growing with the role, with the company, with myself, with my skills. And about four or five years before I left, I was appointed chief People Officer and held that title. Then when I left that company, I came back to Dallas. And in doing so, ironically, it was through workday. Folks at workday just said, hey, do you know this company? They're in Dallas. They're really needing some HR leadership and you'd be willing to meet with them. And over six, seven months, I mean, it was a pretty long period of time. I just started having conversations with cfo, the Chief Operating officer, and then, you know, that expanded and ultimately they had the need for a chro. They were transitioning from their prior person appointed in that role. And I was there at the time. I was no longer with Howard Hughes. And it was a challenge and I like challenges. So I ended up taking the the opportunity and that's how I got here.
[00:05:00] Speaker C: What a story. And I want to hear more about what happened before Howard Hughes and all of that, but let's dive into your current job a little bit. And what are you working on? What's your priorities right now and what do you see coming as priorities maybe in the future?
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Being here now two years, I'm at my point in the journey where I'm able to reconcile with what the priorities should be versus what they are. And I say that because what they are I'm now adjusting to, number one, the maturity of the organization and where we are as an organization, the level of complexity and new things that can be consumed by our leaders and managers, and then also having to level set my expectations of what I know all of the more mature HR organizations are doing today versus what I can really do because of where this organization is at. I'd love to say there are these latest, greatest, exciting things, but in truth, one of my priorities is automation of job requisition and offers. So we're actually as an HR leadership team, getting together and doing a recalibration of what we set out to do for the fiscal year. So what we set out at the beginning of the fiscal year to say, okay, wait a minute, what did we do? What were the deliverables? Did we meet what we said? And now what's left? Is that realistic? Is that, you know, value add or do we move that, fill it with something else?
[00:06:32] Speaker C: As you're talking about needing to do some of the basic blocking and tackling. Without that, I know we can move forward to maybe the more exciting, the more sexy, the more interesting things. Right?
[00:06:44] Speaker A: We're first getting employee survey implemented. We don't even have baseline employee sentiment data to say what we could should do about the vision and values for the organization. So it's a little bit of a humbling moment. But like you said, you have to start somewhere for sure and you have.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: To make traction in the right direction. Right. And set the foundation and then keep moving forward.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: When I first started here, one of my first meetings to the executive committee, I had sort of like a map, a potential of my strategy. And I remember one of the executives said to me, you know, that sounds like a lot of HR speak. And I was like, oh, okay, you know, okay, let me, let me go back at this. Right. And I was glad he said it because I kind of had to sit back and say, wait a minute, you know, they don't even know what I'm talking about. I need to kind of bring it down to their. Where their thinking is and then to. To kind of add to the equation. We are a subsidiary of the Tokyo based parent company.
And so there's some cultural challenges too.
There's that as well that I think factored into the response that I got.
[00:08:01] Speaker C: So you went back and then you basically said, okay, let me start this again, or maybe de hrize it if you want.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: You had to dhrize it. And I still am doing that.
[00:08:14] Speaker C: Taking a business lens and a more elementary lens to things, I think is always good for sure. That's great advice. Well, let's step back a little bit and see how you got where you are today. And walk us through kind of who is Dera and how did you get there, where you are today?
[00:08:30] Speaker A: Getting into hr, Sometimes it's like, okay, how do people do that? Right? So I was in the business school at Florida State and I was a business major. I think I was doing marketing and there was a new major that got introduced for human resources management. It was at that time where it wasn't even a major, but it was in the business school and there was a professor recruiting to bring people out of the different concentrations into that one. So I graduated in HR from business school. And then when I went to find a job, I was like, well, I'm an HR major, so I guess I should get a job in hr. And so I actually relocated. I. I grew up in South Florida, but I had moved to Dallas, which is where my husband is from. And I ended up getting like a human resources assistant role at a mortgage company. And it grew. And ultimately my first year or so were little like HR assistant roles that I translated those skills or transferred those skills to my first kind of, I would call real job, which was an HR manager at Blockbuster Entertainment. So I was at Blockbuster for several years as an HR manager. Then I became a district HR manager, which was essentially just being today's HR bp. And through relocation, because I relocated during one of those times for my husband's job, I ended up translating those skills and getting a new opportunity at Best Buy. And I was a district HR manager. So it was the same thing like HR BP for the store position, but it was at larger scale, those stores were bigger. And believe it or not, we called the whole like new store experience in hr. We called it HR in a box. And it was physically a box. Like we had a cardboard box with all new hire forms, direct deposit, i9 there were no apps, there was no phones, there was, you know, maybe a green screen. But so it was HR in a box that we literally carried in the store and people came and did their forms and, you know, so it was a training that is not even available today. I ended up leaving Best Buy after a good five year run. So it was a, it was a really good experience. I left and really took those skills and experience and created my own consulting company. And I really just knew people that had needs and they were all across the board. So it was like payroll conversion, benefit administration, in some cases, more strategic consulting. But it was little things that people just did not have the resources to do.
And I did it. So as a result, I picked up skills that a chief people officer would ordinarily, I think in today's world, not ever do, you know. So I built different things that have really contributed to my knowledge.
Fast forward. In 2010, I was still doing my consulting thing. Like I'd already had my third child, they were getting older, and I got a phone call to join Howard Youth.
[00:11:45] Speaker C: So you really know many of the things from the ground up, right? Because you had done that when you had experienced them. So, you know that some of many of these complexities that other people that have not been there probably don't even appreciate. Right?
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that it created a level of credibility that, you know, a lot. I think a lot of leaders don't always have in HR because they haven't done all that.
[00:12:09] Speaker C: Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. I mean, we see that some don't even have any job background. Right. They come from kind of a business area and they. I think a lot of times they go into HR in a very naive way. They're like, how hard could it be? Right. I know how to lead people, I know how to manage. I know how to deal with performance issues. And then I think they come into HR and they're like, oh, whoa. I had no idea of the complexity of what that is. Yeah.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: I would say what's been really challenging, particularly in my current role, is the cultural nuances that I find present itself to where things that make sense to everyone else in the HR world, like, don't resonate. And, you know, an example is our company does not have a mission and vision and values yet. We're working on it, but even in those conversations, it's like, this seems like a lot of work. Why are we doing this? Like, I. We just need to make more money and like, the complete disconnection of the people business to the business, as if they were two different things.
Today, I would say that is a very big challenge.
[00:13:26] Speaker C: How do you deal with that? I mean, what's, what's your advice for people to counter that?
[00:13:32] Speaker A: When I first got here, I was really struggling and I was like, this doesn't make sense. What's the strategy? What, you know, what are we doing? Like, how do we make decisions? What's the operating system? You know, And a colleague of mine from one of the big consultant companies that's very familiar with this company said to me, you just have to level set your expectations and keep them in check with what you can do at this company. And she referred to it as a prayer of, like, serenity now.
Which I was kind of like, wow, that sounds really defeating. But I will say over, like, she told me that when I first got here, over the two years, I would say that's been very helpful to me to be able to say that, you know, whether it's serenity now or, you know, okay, I'm going to level check myself just so that I don't get frustrated. Otherwise, you drive yourself crazy.
[00:14:33] Speaker C: Well, it's such a good advice because you're going to start where you're at, not. Not where other people think you should be or where you think you might want to be as an organization, right?
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it can be. To me, it's almost like in the day of social media, right? Like, everything looks like it's amazing. Like somebody's looking like they're having the best day of their life when meanwhile, they're miserable. Right. You hope they're not. But, I mean, this is reality. And it's almost the same thing. I think. You see all these, like, white papers and everyone's doing all the right things, and how can I still be automating job requisitions? But I. I think not everybody. Like, it might look like they are so beyond, but not everybody is.
[00:15:17] Speaker C: Well, you don't hear the struggles and the stories of where people got stuck, right? And, like, those are not the people that stand in a conference and say, hey, I really had a hard time, and we're still not there yet after two years. Nobody tells you those stories. As you said, it's only the beautiful things that you see and what's under the covers and all the things that they tried that didn't work. You don't get them to talk about that. Of course. No.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: But, you know, maybe they should, because I think that then maybe it would help a large part of the people sitting in the audience that feel like, okay, I'm not alone. Right. Like, I don't feel like I'm the only person that's trying to, like, stand out. The most elementary of tasks.
[00:15:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I know. It's. It's so. It's so interesting because we struggle with that, too. How aspirational do you get? Because you want people kind of to see where they could be going, but too far ahead. And people get like, well, we'll never get there because these are, like 20 years in front of us. We'll never catch up. So I think you want to be a little bit ahead, but not too much ahead.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: No. I said to one of my employees today after I was watching, like, all of the AI for workday, the Illuminate or whatever they were calling it, I was like, you know, by the time we get there, it'll be like a Z. You know, we laughed because it's like, if you don't laugh, you know, you'll.
[00:16:32] Speaker C: You're going to laugh at some point now. It's true. It's true. Well, this is so fantastic. I mean, I know we had so many more things that I wanted to talk about with You. But I know we're almost out of time, so maybe I'll just ask you what advice you have for current chros to be more effective. Maybe to aspiring chros or HR leaders that want to get to the chro role and then maybe to CEOs on how to work better with the chro. So for those three audiences, yeah, I.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Would say for the CEO, the people function is your business function. And the more you can see that they're the same, then the better off you will be. And that is one of my current challenges in my business today is that they're looked at as like, oh, that's that people think over there, you go do that over there, we'll be over here making money, you know, So I, I think that would be my biggest advice to CEOs is to figure out how, how to make that connection for chros that are currently in the role. Continue being courageous.
I'm oftentimes the one saying things that nobody's willing to say or even think about at all. I'm at the point in my career, what are they going to do? You know, like, I'm going to, I'm here. They, they want me here to do something. I'm not just going to be complacent and not say things. So be courageous and say things, you know, respectfully. But that can be meaningful. And then people aspiring to be chro try to learn all the different aspects within each CoE and HRVP. Like, do it all, even if a little bit, so that you understand the connection points and that you, you're not stuck in a, in a silo, like, for example, compensation. Well, we do this over here and then we pass it off to ta. If you can connect the two and then connect that to, okay, now they're an employee and the onboarding and then they have to have an experience. The list goes on. Right. Connecting all those things in a way that you did on your, you know, journey within HR is easier than just trying to connect it for connecting it sake.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: So I love that. That's kind of what we talk about as full stack HR capabilities. Right. To make sure that you have at least some insight into all of the different domains of HR so you can have.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that's why I love that research that you have, because I believe in that. I really do.
[00:19:04] Speaker C: And you've lived it, right? You've lived it. That's been your career as well. So I think that's fantastic. Well, what a great note to end on. Thank you so much, Dara. It was such a great conversation. I can't thank you enough for joining us.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Thank you Kanathy. I look forward to our next conversation. Thank you.
[00:19:21] Speaker C: Me too.
So there you have it. Dara Engel, the Chro of Oryx, joined us in our Chro Profile series of the what Works podcast. Dara took us on the journey of what we call a career Chro, somebody who worked in different companies to make it to the top HR positions. Her story shows the importance of adjusting the leadership style and ambitions to the current reality of the organization and the need for adaptability and strategic alignment in a multinational context. She also shared her views of the evolving role of the Chro to go beyond leading the HR function to coaching and influencing the entire C Suite. If you found this episode valuable, stay stay tuned for more stories from leaders transforming the HR landscape. Until next time, keep exploring what works in your world. Thanks for listening.
