Episode 240: HR as the Architect of Opportunity - Alana Brandes, Chief People Officer at Guild

Absolutely.

Thank you, Cecilia.

I'm so honored to be here today.

I love to kind of think about and talk about and ponder ways in which we as, um, part of corporations and especially in the HR practice can really drive social change for the world around us.

It's what got me into HR in the first place.

It's a deep personal passion of mine, and I feel incredibly privileged to work for a company like Guild, where our mission is to drive economic and career mobility to those around us, to the employees of large organizations across the US and, uh, increasingly across the world.

So it feels very humbling and special that I, um, I get to work for an organization where we do that at scale.

Yes, I can hear the passion in your voice already.

It's so lovely to listen to you, Alana.

Well, let's dive in.

We have five questions for you.

Our regular listeners know them very well, and we start big and bold with asking you the question, as an HR leader whose influence is creating social change, what do you feel has been your biggest impact to date?

This is a great question.

Um, it is quite a bold one to start with, and I think maybe I'll start by just sharing my personal philosophy and my personal MO, um, which is that I deeply, inherently believe that every single person has a superpower, has zones of genius, and has really limitless potential to learn and to develop and to grow.

And at our core, I really believe that HR practitioners are ultimately responsible for creating the conditions that those superpowers are ultimately unlocked in ways that drive the most impact for organizations and ultimately for the world around us that we operate in.

And that has been a philosophy that I've really carried with me from early in my career.

And again, as I mentioned, it's just, it's so kismet that I now have an opportunity to bring that both internally to an organization like where we are really every day working to drive more and more impact for the organizations around us to do this for their own employees.

And I, when I think about the most important thing that HR can do to truly change the world, I think it is really moving, uh, moving HR from a support function to one that sees itself and tasks itself with driving opportunity at scale in the ecosystems in which we engage, and ideally more broadly than that.

You know, we have a...

Even by having conversations like this, there is just an opportunity to share those perspectives and those practices with those around us in this space.

I think there are so many systems that we are, you know, have to actively fight against that prevent, um, you know, talent mobility and recognition of where talent might be hidden within an organization.

And I really see it as our jobs to look at those structures and actually action on creating systems, creating structures, creating programs, creating cultures where that talent is both seen and recognized and given the opportunity to grow and learn and have greater impacts.

And I think ultimately that has such a rippling effect on the economy, generations, on the ability to create wealth for one's family.

Um, I think there is just a monumental change that can come from organizations' role in really thinking about that mobility.

Yeah.