“Why Business Acumen is the Capability You Control” Rose Velez-Smith, CHRO, DoubleVerify

Since joining DV, our focus has been on creating bigger impact and better outcomes for our people.

We've really centered our strategy around three priorities within HR, and that is, first, establishing DV as the employer of choice so we can attract and retain exceptional talent.

Secondly, delivering an exceptional employee experience that really helps our people to thrive and to do their best work.

And then third, really preparing our organization for the future by building the capabilities, leadership, and culture we'll need as the business continues to grow and evolve.

As you can imagine, in earlier stages of growth, HR often focused on execution, things like hiring or onboarding, benefits, employee relations.

So those things are important, but as the company grew and, as you said, became public, we had to shift toward organizational enablement more.

We invested heavily in creating infrastructure that would scale with the business because we were growing at such a fast rate when I started four and a half years ago.

So we built a more integrated technology ecosystem.

We introduced autom- automation and self-service.

We formalized talent reviews and succession planning, and we strengthened our leadership development.

By creating more consistent Employee experiences globally as well, it really helped us to refine what type of culture we wanted within the organization.

But the biggest shift wasn't technology, I always say this.

It was about mindset.

We moved from asking, "How do we support the business?" to asking, "How do we help the business grow faster, more effectively, and more sustainably?" And so our evolution that we've been on went from HR as a support function to HR as a driver of organizational enablement, to now being focused on HR as a driver for organizational transformation, and that's where I believe HR creates the real value.

Yeah, I love that, and I think that's so important, that shift of supporting the business to what I call is shaping the business, and it's kind of from business partner to business builder.

Like, we have to move forward.

Like, we've, we've had a really good run of 30 years of thinking about this idea of supporting the business, but the world has changed, the business has changed, and CEOs, and I'm sure DV's CEO, is expecting more from HR.

And there's more we can do, and I love the idea of enabling culture, enabling performance.

And even that one question you said, that's just a big shift.

Like, it changes how you think about doing your job.

And, and that idea of having business acumen, thinking about what DV or what the organization needs is something I know you're passionate about.

But sometimes when we talk about business acumen, sometimes people think, "Well, only HR business partners need to have business acumen.

They're close to the business.

They're working with the business." But you actually don't think that's the case.

You think we need to know the business.

Since joining DV, our focus has been on creating bigger impact and better outcomes for our people.

We've really centered our strategy around three priorities within HR, and that is, first, establishing DV as the employer of choice so we can attract and retain exceptional talent.

Secondly, delivering an exceptional employee experience that really helps our people to thrive and to do their best work.

And then third, really preparing our organization for the future by building the capabilities, leadership, and culture we'll need as the business continues to grow and evolve.

As you can imagine, in earlier stages of growth, HR often focused on execution, things like hiring or onboarding, benefits, employee relations.

So those things are important, but as the company grew and, as you said, became public, we had to shift toward organizational enablement more.

We invested heavily in creating infrastructure that would scale with the business because we were growing at such a fast rate when I started four and a half years ago.

So we built a more integrated technology ecosystem.

We introduced autom- automation and self-service.

We formalized talent reviews and succession planning, and we strengthened our leadership development.

By creating more consistent Employee experiences globally as well, it really helped us to refine what type of culture we wanted within the organization.

But the biggest shift wasn't technology, I always say this.

It was about mindset.

We moved from asking, "How do we support the business?" to asking, "How do we help the business grow faster, more effectively, and more sustainably?" And so our evolution that we've been on went from HR as a support function to HR as a driver of organizational enablement, to now being focused on HR as a driver for organizational transformation, and that's where I believe HR creates the real value.

Yeah, I love that, and I think that's so important, that shift of supporting the business to what I call is shaping the business, and it's kind of from business partner to business builder.

Like, we have to move forward.

Like, we've, we've had a really good run of 30 years of thinking about this idea of supporting the business, but the world has changed, the business has changed, and CEOs, and I'm sure DV's CEO, is expecting more from HR.

And there's more we can do, and I love the idea of enabling culture, enabling performance.

And even that one question you said, that's just a big shift.

Like, it changes how you think about doing your job.

And, and that idea of having business acumen, thinking about what DV or what the organization needs is something I know you're passionate about.

But sometimes when we talk about business acumen, sometimes people think, "Well, only HR business partners need to have business acumen.

They're close to the business.

They're working with the business." But you actually don't think that's the case.

You think we need to know the business.