Episode 347: Facing Global Challenges With Good Intent With Nikki Salenetri, VP of People at Gympass

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Episode 347: Facing Global Challenges With Good Intent With Nikki Salenetri, VP of People at Gympass

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Welcome to the Workology Podcast, a podcast for the disruptive workplace leader. Join host Jessica Miller-Merrell, founder of Workology.com, as she sits down and gets to the bottom of trends, tools, and case studies for the business leader, HR, and recruiting professional who is tired of the status quo. Now, here’s Jessica with this episode of Workology.

Episode 347: Facing Global Challenges With Good Intent With Nikki Salenetri, VP of People at Gympass

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:00:25.65] Welcome to the Workology Podcast sponsored by WorkologyCouncil.com. This podcast is part of a series on the Workology Podcast that is focused on the responsibilities of the Chief Human Resources Officer, or the CHRO. The CHRO sometimes called the VP of People or the Chief People Officer is an executive-level, C-level position, and that deals with managing human resources as well as organizational development and implementing policies of change to improve the overall efficiency of the company. This CHRO podcast series is something that we have kept doing. It’s 2 years+ and counting. I started during the pandemic and we are continuing to talk to and interview heads of HR. It’s important because I want aspiring CHROs to know about the types of skills and experiences they need in order to promote into that future head of HR role. Plus, I want other CHROs to hear from each other and think and talk together about skills and experiences we need in order to better partner and collaborate with our executive peers and support our organizations. Today, I’m joined by Nikki Salenetri. She’s the Vice President of People at Gympass. With more than a decade’s experience in HR, Nikki has worked in areas such as employee relations, leadership development and training, talent management, and recruitment. She holds a Talent Acquisition Strategist Certification from Human Capital Institute and Behavioral Interviewing Certification from ZERORISK HR, Inc. Previously, she’s worked in a variety of different roles at companies like Rodale Inc, which is a global health and wellness content company, and she’s also worked at Equinox. Nikki graduated from New York University with a master’s degree in Industrial & Organizational Psychology and received her bachelor’s from Franklin & Marshall College in Biological Foundations of Behavior. Nikki, welcome to the Workology Podcast.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:02:31.65] Thank you so much for having me, Jessica. I’m super excited to be here.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:02:35.04] I love hearing about all these different backgrounds of how individuals fell into human resources, and yours is no exception. I just, I just think it’s really intriguing and fascinating.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:02:46.59] Yeah, absolutely. I also find these stories interesting. I think a lot of us have kind of fallen into it by chance, but have ended up loving it and staying. So the stories are super interesting to me as well.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:02:58.98] Well, you’ve worked in HR leadership in the health and wellness space for, for nearly ten years. Let’s talk about how your early experience led you to your current role.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:03:08.43] Yeah, absolutely. From an HR perspective, throughout my career, I’ve always known that I wanted to grow in a role where I was leading the HR function. And so from the time I started my career in HR, I focused on trying to get as broad experience as possible. And so, for me, this has looked like always just putting my hand up to work on any new initiative or project that came up, regardless of if it was an area that I already had experience in or was even interested in learning. I felt that no matter what the project was, there was always something for me to learn and a new skill set for me to develop that would help serve me well in the future. So I always tried to pursue those options. And as far as working in the health and wellness space, I’ve been an athlete my entire life and so it’s something I’m personally passionate about and I was lucky enough to make that transition into the industry at my role at Equinox. And so since then, I’ve made it a priority to continue to pursue roles in this space, as I just really love having the ability to marry what my personal passion is with my career. It’s really fulfilling and it’s something that I think I’ll continue doing for as long as I’m working in HR.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:04:17.76] I love that and I love that you’re able to do your passion and then your profession all in the same. I mean, that’s, I think, the dream that we all want.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:04:27.33] Totally. I love being able to work in an environment where just yesterday I had to block my calendar because I had a pilates session at 11:30 in the morning. And it was very well received when I told someone, Sorry, I have a hard stop, I got to go do my Pilates session. And they see that as living the mission versus, you know, skipping out of work. So it’s been a real pleasure to be able to work at companies like this.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:04:49.14] As someone who also loves pilates, I just love that for a number of different reasons. So good, good for you. And what a great culture and organization to work for that supports you being able to do those kind of things.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:05:02.27] Definitely.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:05:03.32] Let’s talk a little bit about the skills and experience that you believe are absolute requirements for a CHRO role. I always like to ask this question because it’s different for everybody. But with your experience and, and what you know and what you love about HR and the work that you do, what’s the most critical or absolute skill or experience maybe for somebody who is just getting started in this industry? Or they’re thinking like, Hey, I’d really like to have a Chief HR role sometime in my career.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:05:35.33] Yeah, absolutely. I think for me, in order to be an effective CHRO, people need to have a really strong understanding of the businesses that they’re working for and a point of view on it. They need to have a seat at the table and to be able to offer their perspective in a way that it’s received well by the other leadership that they’re working with. I think they need to have the ability to produce business results across the organization through strategically aligning all of the HR drivers like development, total rewards, engagement. And I think they also really need to be able to help develop and refine a company culture. And of course, a huge part of that is being able to influence and leverage, leverage leadership to shape that culture as well. And so I think advice for someone starting out in HR that wants to grow into a role like this, in addition to what I said previously about getting as much different HR experience as you can, I think a really good area to focus on as well is developing your understanding of the businesses that you support and making sure that you’re thinking with that business-focused mindset and developing your analytical skills as well to help set you up for future successes of being able to really influence and have a seat at the table.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:06:49.88] I’m finding that more true now than ever that HR is leading conversations with executives and they’re asking more questions about the business and how HR can, can help support the organization differently. You need to understand the business so you can speak the language and be able to collaborate and support each other.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:07:08.51] Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite things is when I hear from the people on my team and they say, Oh, I’m working with this new manager, and they tell me that they’ve never worked with HR like this before. And we really understand the business and we’re a true partner for them. To me, that’s like one of the biggest compliments that we can get, and it’s something I’ve focused on trying to develop with my team so they can grow in their roles as well.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:07:30.90] Can you talk about what working during a global pandemic has been like for you, your company, and your team?

Nikki Salenetri: [00:07:38.85] Yeah, absolutely. I think like every HR leader and every person I know that works in HR, it’s definitely been a challenging time, to say the least. I think sometimes it feels like the hits just keep on coming, as they say, and we’re all trying to navigate this really nebulous world where we’re always facing a new challenge and we don’t have any precedent for it, and we need to kind of figure out how to do it as we go along. And as difficult as this has been, I do think that it’s given HR the chance to really come to the forefront and lead organizations like we never have been able to in the past. And I think my team has appreciated being able to step into that role as well and really support our employees. But again, it’s definitely been super stressful for everyone and I think burnout is a real concern that we should be looking at on our teams, not only HR but across the organization. But across our whole organization, I think, again, like HR, there’s been good and bad, but for me it’s been really amazing to see how quickly we were able to pivot our business from a more traditional brick and mortar fitness facility type of a business to one that has digital classes and has a more holistic wellness offering, including mental health, which, as we all know, has been something so many people have been struggling with during the pandemic. And so I’ve been so proud to be able to see what they’ve achieved to, to manage through such a difficult time and to be able to bring these solutions to our clients and our users and really help them be able to take care of their employees as well.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:09:12.44] I feel like we’ve all had to be really nimble and flexible and we’re recording this right now. I don’t know about you, but I’m awaiting the Supreme Court decision regarding workplace vaccinations. And I feel like yet again, whatever the decision is going to be, we have to be prepared for multiple different scenarios to support the business.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:09:31.40] Oh, absolutely. Just a couple of weeks ago, I spent a lot of time writing a vaccine policy for our New York office and a vaccine policy for everywhere other than New York. And so it’s, it’s definitely kept us on our toes. But, you know, I think it’s making us all better professionals as well.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:09:48.53] I think so, too. And, and for, for you, it’s not just US based. A lot of the work that you have been involved in is global expansion. So I want to kind of focus in that area and I know a lot of our leaders more every single day are looking at global expansion for their companies for a number of different reasons. And, and this is something that you have experienced with Gympass. I wanted to ask if you could share what you think are the most important considerations for HR when it comes to expanding from the US to other countries?

Nikki Salenetri: [00:10:22.31] Sure, I’d be happy to, and in my experience we’ve actually kind of had the reverse in a lot of cases. So we started in Brazil and that’s still where our biggest presence is today and then expanded to different countries and to the US back in 2017. So there were definitely a lot of lessons learned, I think both ways for the Brazilians and people from other places coming to the US to manage American employees and also for our American employees with primarily Brazilian leadership which they hadn’t experienced before. So a lot of bumps along the way. But I think the biggest key that we found to success here is to assume good intent. And so what I mean by that is like, you know, it’s really easy for things to get a little bit lost in translation and for people to say things differently or do things differently. But if we’re all assuming that the person on the other end of the conversation is trying to do their jobs to the best of their ability, trying to empower each other and trying to make Gympass a better place, it really helps to kind of ease those conversations or any tensions that might be happening. And so a lot of things I recommend are taking the time to get to know your team, their personalities, their workplace preferences. It really goes a long way.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:11:37.85] I think it’s important to make sure that, especially for leadership roles, you’re selecting people to join the organization who are open-minded and flexible, and they do have this ability to adapt their style depending on the people that they’re leading and how you know, how they like their leaders to be depending on their culture. And at Gympass, I think the perspective of our leaders is to be open to learning what they should or shouldn’t do and new cultures and geographies. And that has been so helpful and I’m very thankful for that. The attitude across the board is really openness to feedback and wanting to learn, and I think that’s helped us to be successful. And from a more technical perspective, I think what we’ve learned that there are certain roles and functions, that it doesn’t matter where in the world you sit or what your experience is, you’re, you’re going to be successful in it. However, it’s certainly not the case for all roles. So I think it’s really important to map out which roles require local knowledge, make sure that you know before you’re expanding somewhere else, what those critical roles are, who it’s important to hire first to have them in place, making sure they’re open-minded and that they’ll feel comfortable working cross-culturally and then empowering to do their, empowering them to do their jobs.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:12:49.25] Perfect.

Break: [00:12:50.70] Let’s take a reset. This is Jessica Miller-Merrell, and you were listening to the Workology Podcast. We’re talking about the role of the CHRO with Nikki Salenetri. She’s the Vice President of People at Gympass. The CHRO podcast series on Workology is powered and sponsored by WorkologyCouncil.com.

Break: [00:13:10.83] The Workology Council is a mastermind community for HR leaders. We are a group of HR professionals with a common goal to succeed by leveraging the influence, resources, and expertise of others on an annual basis. This will be the HR business tribe that you’ve wanted to be a part of for your entire career. Learn more and apply at WorkologyCouncil.com.

Helping Employees Focus On Their Own Health

 

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:13:37.67] You kind of already shared a little bit about this when you talked about your Pilates class. But I also wanted to know, like, overall as an organization, as a health and wellness company, how does Gympass make sure its employees are focused on their own health from your perspective in HR?

Nikki Salenetri: [00:13:53.03] Yeah, I love this question. So one of the great but also very challenging things that we experienced about working in an environment where we’re focused on well-being is that our employees really do push us and hold us accountable for living the mission and making sure that we’re providing these tools for them to do the same. And so over time, we’ve been focusing on making our culture one in which employees know that taking care of their health and well-being is something that we expect for them. So we’ve reinforced this through a lot of different initiatives, like creating group workouts, where everyone can come together and have kind of a more social and interactive way to take time to take care of themselves. Having different challenges that are focused on everything from meditation to fitness to nutrition. And another important one, I think, is making sure that our leaders are modeling the behavior we expect from our employees. By doing that, they’re making it okay for employees to take care of their health as well. And so over time, these activities have helped to create a culture where our employees feel empowered to do things like block their calendar and go for a workout like I mentioned. Or, you know, sometimes we’ll agree, like instead of a zoom call, let’s do this as audio only and we’ll both go for a walk at the same time. And so it’s been really great to see people kind of embrace that and feel like they can take advantage of the benefits that we’re offering them. And so by no means are we perfect. We want to keep refining this moving forward, especially around mental health, which as I mentioned before, it’s been a challenge for a lot of people and it’s something we really want to make sure our employees are taking care of as well. But I really have enjoyed working in an environment where people value this and I think it’s been super helpful for our employees as well.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:15:29.06] I love that. And one of the things I’m noticing too is because all of us are on Zoom, we’re recording this on Zoom, is that there’s sort of this new expectation that we all should be on camera all the time. And long before Zoom, we had this thing called conference calls where maybe we did go for a walk while we were on our call. And I love that you’re encouraging the okness of, of these type of things. We need to do that more, not just for our own personal health and well-being but mental health too. Like there’s a lot of stress when you have to be able to look good for the camera, even if it’s just a team call.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:16:07.58] Oh, absolutely, for sure. I always joke with the team and say, like, I might have a sweater on from the waist up, but you can know that I’m always wearing sweatpants or leggings, so I’m half-dressed for this call. But I completely agree it is stressful and I think also having to look at yourself as silly as that sounds like seeing yourself on video all day certainly has, you know, some sort of psychological implications that I’m not sure are great for all of us. So we definitely try to empower people to do whatever works best for them.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:16:38.09] I’m sure we’ll have some sort of study in about 15 years that’s going to come out about that. I always tell people that I’m not camera ready and that’s okay. It’s, I think just showing up and being yourself is, is a really important part of of a good organizational culture, so. One of the HR topics that comes up a lot lately is compensation structure for employees who are working remotely and in different geographic areas. I wanted to ask how you guys are handling this?

Nikki Salenetri: [00:17:10.07] Yeah. So even before we had this situation and we had more of a remote work movement, we brought on a really great head of Total Rewards globally, and he revamped our compensation strategy. And so with this we established some really clear salary bands which we base on the function, the location, and the grade, what we call grade or the level within the organization. And so we had these really nice boundaries and clear guidelines that we’ve shared with our employees, which I think was super helpful for us, because when people began to move to new locations where we operate. Like, for example, we had an employee who was in New York, and her family was in Texas so she made the decision to relocate back to Texas, which she was able to do with her job. We made the decision to not adjust compensation at the time that people were moving. However, we communicated to them that their compensation reviews moving forward and promotions and things like that would all be within the context of their new salary bands. And so obviously we would continue to review them like we would any other employee, but we set the expectation that they might not be receiving as large of increases as maybe they would be if they were still in their previous location, as they were just now really well-placed in their bands, depending on where they moved. And so I think that was helpful because it really helped our employees to understand exactly what they could expect moving forward. And it did it within the context of the salary and compensation philosophy that we had, we had already created. And I think they’ve been super grateful for the ability to move around in the cases that it makes sense for the business and for them.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:18:48.96] I’m so glad and that you’re willing to share this because the kind of this question came about because I’m seeing a lot more organizations, Google comes to mind, and I’ll link to a particular Vox article in the show notes of this podcast, where they are now adjusting salary based on location. So I think that it’s one size or one strategy doesn’t fit all. But the really important thing is you were mentioning is clear communication.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:19:19.03] Yeah, I really think our employees have appreciated that because again, it was already within the context of something they understood, as we’ve been talking about this framework for quite a while now, and they really had all the information that they needed to decide if they wanted to relocate or not. And I think it’s been very well received. I think people perceive it as much more fair that we’re not changing their salaries as soon as they need to move to a new location. But they also understand that, you know, for internal equity purposes and for the sustainability of their business, it’s important that we look at them within the context of where they’re now located versus where they were previously.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:19:55.30] I am always fascinated by the cost of living adjustment because I come, my, a lot of my HR background is in retail, so that was really common. Like you moved into a new metro area or you had a new store location that you’re responsible for. Your salary would change according to the cost of living. But for tech and for a lot of organizations maybe that have just located and maybe the Bay Area or other popular kind of metro tech areas, the cost of living adjustments are not something that that industry is particularly used to.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:20:29.20] Yeah, absolutely. And I think we all know how difficult it is to retain and to get new talent, and, you know, if this is a strategy that we need to pursue in order to make sure we are bringing in the best talent for our business, it made sense for us to continue to invest in that way.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:20:43.18] Agreed, agreed. And in our initial call, you mentioned a five-year plan for DEI. Can you talk a little bit about what this looks like and your expected outcomes?

Nikki Salenetri: [00:20:55.75] Yeah, I would love to. So we did recently introduce this five-year plan to our organization and it was met with really positive feedback. I think our culture is one where our employees really care about DEI and are pushing for it, which again, like wellness has been nice as an HR leader to feel like you do have that support from the organization. So when we announced it, we made a point to tell the whole team that in order to achieve this, we need to be in it together and we really want their thoughts, their feedback, and their input on it from all employees, but of course, from our employees that do come from diverse backgrounds as well, we want to understand what’s important to them, what we could be doing better and what their feedback is. And so our goal is to make a plan that everyone could contribute to in order to, you know, really shape the workforce that we want to create. And so we have the plan to have key milestones and KPIs that will review every six months to make sure that we’re, you know, continually moving towards this goal. And the focus of our plan has been to improve diversity in a few areas. So we wanted to focus mostly on gender, sexual orientation, and race and ethnicity. And so our plan is to do this through a number of different commitments and initiatives across selection, development, and retention. So our very initial commitments, you know, for the first six months, part of it, one is to make sure that we’re improving our ability to report on diversity metrics in order to ensure that we are able to, you know, properly measure what we’re actually putting in place and know that we’re making progress and whether or not we’re we’re actually achieving success, which is so critical.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:22:30.70] And then secondly, for the commitments, we also announced that we want to prioritize partnering with external vendors, partners, or stakeholders who have established DEI principles, because we want to make sure that we’re helping other companies that have this shared vision, you know, move forward as well. And then as far as the three pillars go, this is kind of how we plan to tackle it. So through talent acquisition, we’re focused on increasing the diversity of our teams over the next five years until we reach the society-wide distribution levels. And this is particularly in leadership roles and on our board of directors as well. And so then once we have these folks on board, we want to achieve even more by supporting their growth through development programs. So things such as diversity-focused internships where we can have them, mentoring programs, and other career development opportunities. And then finally, the third piece of the puzzle is making sure that we’re able to retain this talent once we have them in place through fair and transparent compensation and benefits strategies, making sure that we have employee resource groups available, we already do have them, but making sure that they really, you know, have a good place within the organization and can be effective. And we want to make sure we’re creating an inclusive environment for everyone by training all of our employees annually on unconscious bias and having a zero-tolerance policy for any sort of disrespect or discrimination. And so we hope that together these efforts help us to bring in talented employees of different backgrounds and then fuel their development and growth to become future leaders of our organization.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:24:07.51] Thank you for sharing. I feel like this is the highlight of our conversation. I just want to pop it out and, and shine a spotlight on it because it was really succinct. It’s not going to be perfect, but it’s a solid five-year plan that you’re working with the executive team, your HR team, and the rest of the employees to accomplish that is really thought out and it sounds like very organized.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:24:37.74] Yeah, I think being able to go back to our employees and just admit the fact that it’s not going to be perfect right away and ask them for their help and for their feedback has gone a long way in helping them feel invested in it. And I think the way that we’ve broken it down really kind of puts it into digestible pieces where we’re able to share with them exactly what we plan to do in each area and then how that affects our overall goal and or how we assume it will be able to impact us reaching our overall goal. So I’m super excited to see how it continues to evolve over the next few years and really excited to see where we’ll end up.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:25:14.61] What’s the employee headcount at Gympass?

Nikki Salenetri: [00:25:16.80] So we’re about probably a little bit more than 1200 right now. Like I said before, Brazil is where we have the majority of our employees, probably about 900 or so, and then the rest are split evenly between the US and Europe.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:25:35.85] So a good-sized organization and you are in a global organization in multiple countries.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:25:43.41] Yeah. And that actually in terms of diversity has been a challenge for us too, because diversity means so many different things depending on where you are in the world. And the way that we’re able to approach it is so different based on where people are. So as you might know, in Europe, for example, in a lot of countries, we can’t even really track some of the metrics. So it makes it a really big challenge for us to see how we’re doing and make progress. In Brazil, there’s a lot more flexibility in being able to even specifically say for this job, we would like someone who is a trans person or someone who comes from this particular background, which, as you know, you would never be able to do that in the US. So it’s that’s also something we communicated to our employees that this is going to look a little bit different depending on where you sit in the world because of local compliance. But we’re making sure that we’re putting these efforts in everywhere because we want to make this a global movement and be able to improve our diversity everywhere.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:26:40.86] I love the transparency, the communication. It’s, hopefully employees have access to these resources and information and they’re hearing it multiple times because I know and you probably also experience that sometimes it takes three, five, seven times being communicated about a topic or a program or initiative or something like DEI before. It might finally not necessarily make sense, but they might become and recognize and understand the, how, what exactly is, is entailed and recognize that it is a DEI initiative.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:27:19.54] Yeah, absolutely. I think we try to take as many opportunities as we can to kind of check back in on the progress or, you know, even brand initiatives. So, you know, one thing that we do is like for International Women’s Month, we do like a week of programming where we have different women across the organization and external guests come in and speak on their experiences. And when we do things like that, we always make sure that it’s branded properly with our belonging team. So people recognize, you know, that it’s something that contributes to this overall mission. And I think, you know, we do so many different little things throughout the year. It’s nice to recognize in that moment that it’s focused on diversity and belonging, but then also to be able to kind of talk about it at such a high level and show everything that we have done and everything will continue to do.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:28:08.20] I didn’t realize when I got into HR that we were really comms experts to internal branding and marketing experts.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:28:15.04] Yeah, we’re definitely Jacks and Jills of all trades, I think for sure.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:28:20.05] I know that we’re in the middle of a pandemic and I feel like it was, we thought it was going to be open and now we’re like, maybe not. But I wanted to ask like, in this moment, right this second, what does return-to-office look like for you and your company right now?

Nikki Salenetri: [00:28:34.79] So right now we’re still in a strictly voluntary return to the office phase. We know that for some people it’s important to them to go into the office. They feel more productive doing that, as for other people, they would again still prefer to be at home. And so we have the offices open and available to people, of course, with limited capacity and social distancing measures in place. We’ve partnered with a really great booking tool where we’re able to kind of restrict where people are sitting or the number of people who are able to book desks. And that has been super helpful for us to keep track of everything. And so like I said, you can come in if you want. You don’t necessarily need to. But once we make the decision to have a more formal return overall, we plan to do it in a, in a hybrid work environment with people going to the office, probably not more than 2 to 3 times per week. You know, if we have people who want to be there every day, we certainly won’t restrict them. But in general, we’d expect people to only go in a few times because we found that our employees really value flexibility that comes with a hybrid work environment. And so we’ve made the decision to empower them to continue working in that capacity if it’s what’s best for them.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:29:43.40] Wonderful. Well, you know, Nikki, I appreciate you taking the time to, to share with us. I don’t know if you have any job openings in HR, but let’s say somebody listen and they’re like, wow, this sounds like a great place, I want to work with Nikki and her team. Where would they go to maybe apply for an opening or learn more about the company?

Nikki Salenetri: [00:30:02.87] Yeah. So we have, of course, we have our LinkedIn pages where you can learn a lot. Another place that I recommend is this really cool website called Comparably, and on that you’ll be able to see reviews from our own employees. So it’s kind of similar to a Glassdoor, but people actually do have to be certified, active employees. And you can see there a lot of people’s thoughts on the organization. And of course, we have our career site which is just Gympass.com/careers.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:30:30.77] Perfect. Well, it’s so funny because when I was googling before, before the interview, Comparably came right up, and a lot of really great information and resources for those who are one of the creep on maybe a prospective company that they’d like to work for.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:30:47.06] Always important to creep. I highly recommend it, so.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:30:51.23] Thank you again for your time. I really appreciate it.

Nikki Salenetri: [00:30:53.57] Absolutely. It was so lovely speaking with you and thank you for having me.

Jessica Miller-Merrell: [00:30:57.44] It is really interesting to delve into the role of the CHRO. I love hearing stories like Nikki’s about how our experience connects us to the strategy and operations of the overall business, and in this case, for Gympass, a global business. The CHRO or VP of People doesn’t just lead HR within the company as we’ve seen. The company depends on this leadership role to set standards and benchmarks on a whole host of things, which I am so thankful for Nikki taking the time to talk with us about today, everything from manager training to company culture to employee engagement and connection. I appreciate Nikki chatting with us today and sharing her time and expertise. I also want to thank you for taking your time to join the Workology Podcast, which is sponsored and powered by WorkologyCouncil.com. This podcast is for the disruptive workplace leader who’s tired of the status quo. My name is Jessica Miller-Merrell, I’m your host, and until next time, visit Workology.com to listen to all our episodes of the Workology Podcast.

Connect with Nikki Salenetri.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

 

– Nikki Salenetri on LinkedIn

– CHRO Job Description

– Google’s plan to cut pay for remote workers who relocate is a bad idea

– Episode 345: The Role of the CHRO in a Not-for-Profit Organization With Paul LaLonde

– Episode 338: Creating a Candid Culture and Experience at the Workplace With Nicole Roberts

– Episode 331: The CHRO and Talent Leadership With Deb Hill, VP of HR, FM:Systems

 

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