[Transcript]
Narrator (00:00):
Hello, HR professionals. Good news. For a limited time, this episode of the Love Your People podcast is valid for 0.5 professional development credits towards SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP, and HRCI recertification. Stay tuned to access your certification code.
John Duisberg (00:25):
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. How do you bridge the gap between FinTech innovation and high touch human connection at a scale of over 7,000 associates? In this episode of the Love Your People Podcast, Holly Novak shares her journey of leading the one Jack Henry culture transformation and exploring how putting people first can drive business success. She unpacks practical strategies and real life examples that demonstrate how swarm teams and the Jack Henry Way create a consistent experience for both leaders and clients. Whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey, this conversation will leave you inspired and equipped with actionable takeaways. Welcome everyone to another episode of Love Your People Podcast. We're so glad you're here and I'm super excited for our guest, Holly Novak.
(01:31):
And so we're going to dive in, but Holly, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Love Your People Podcast Show today.
Holly Novak (01:38):
Yeah, thanks, John. Really happy to be here.
John Duisberg (01:40):
All right. Well, before we dive in, Holly, to the interview itself, maybe just give our audience just a little kind of flyover, the scope of leadership that you have. And for anyone who may not be as familiar with Jack Henry, just a little kind of background on the organization itself, just to give that context for our audience.
Holly Novak (01:58):
Yeah, absolutely. So Jack Henry is publicly traded company. We have about 7,300 associates, as you mentioned. We provide technology for MIGS and credit unions. And so if you're not in the banking credit union space, you probably haven't heard of Jack Henry, but if you are, you probably know us fairly well. So we're kind of all throughout the US. We have eight different hub locations, but all of our employees are just in the US. We're not global. And then our HR team is made up of about 87 amazingly smart professionals, of course. And I oversee all the normal parts of HR, plus also our people technology team, analytics, and our HCM analyst team. So yeah. Yeah. Fun time.
John Duisberg (02:40):
Awesome. Well, welcome. We are so grateful for you to join us and to just be sharing with this community, so thank you for that. And so let's just dive in. So just to kick us off in terms of just hearing from you, Holly, leading up to our time today, one of the topics that you mentioned was this focus on having just a strong, consistent customer experience. And the way to do that, one of the ways to do that is to make sure that you're having a strong, positive, consistent manager or leader experience. And I hear from leaders that oftentimes people are not necessarily leaving companies, they're leaving managers. And so having this intentionality to support managers, being proactive with managers and creating that consistency really resonated with me. So you coined this or branded this the Jack Henry Way. So tell us about what this is.
(03:40):
How did you get here? What does it look like in practice? What are some of the lessons learned as you've now rolled this out across the organization?
Holly Novak (03:48):
Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's really the heart of what we do. And so when we're thinking through, we've been on this journey, which I think we'll talk about in a little bit more One Jack Henry journey for about the past four years. And what we discovered along the way is that we had a lot of what we kind of call artifacts that are out there. So you just mentioned our philosophy, which is do the right thing, do whatever it takes and have fun. Really important to us. All of our 50 years that we've been around in existence. But we also had our CEO coined the Four Tenets, which are transparency, consistency, collaboration, and communication. We also had a leadership framework. We also had just all these different things that we really felt passionate about, but we realized along the way that it was a little confusing to our leaders and to our people too.
(04:37):
They're like, "Hey, do I focus on the four tenants or do I focus on the philosophy? Do I focus on the leadership framework? What is it? " And so we realized the need to have that consistent language that we can all just point to and say, "Hey, this is how we lead our people. This is how we serve our clients." And that was the goal of the Jet Henry way. And so it's been one of the big OKRs for our people and culture team this year. So we just actually rolled it out a few months ago and it's been really phenomenal to work with the business on the service side as well. And so we have one Jack Henry in the middle, if you just imagine it like a circle, one Jack Henry in the middle, and then we have people, service, and results around that.
(05:20):
And then a lot of those artifacts that I just mentioned are embedded into what we do. But really, I think the goal of it, and hopefully we'll see it come to fruition, is to have that really consistent language on the way that we lead our people, and then also the way that we serve our clients. And once we have that intentionality behind it, I think it's really important. It kind of helps. We have a great culture already, but it helps shape our internal culture even more, which will of course help us to be successful with our clients.
John Duisberg (05:53):
Yeah, no, I love that. And so you mentioned something that my ears picked up, so you mentioned OKRs. So are you tracking how leaders are caring for the Jack Henry way? Tell us a little more about the OKR. How are you managing that? What does that look like today?
Holly Novak (06:15):
Yeah. So what we're doing now, and I'll tell you that perfectly transparent, we're still in our journey. We're still in- We all are. Yeah, four-year journey of OneJack Henry. But I think the way that we want to track this is really understanding our manager effectiveness. And so we're going to talk about Swarm teams in a minute, but we have a Swarm team that kind of came together to help us think through what does manager effectiveness look like? So is that the questions that we have on engagement score? Is it just feedback from our associates when we do things like skip levels? How is it that we want to measure that? And so we're on that journey now to really kind of ascertain what does that look like for us? What I think it is for the most part, at least for now, is we do a continuous listening strategy. So we have surveys coming in all throughout the year on people's anniversary dates. And so we can take some of those questions specifically related to how our managers are doing, and then we can see how that trends over the year.
(07:17):
And that gives us some good idea, but I think a lot of it is just the way that we feel just listening to our people and understanding if they're truly feeling seen and heard by their leaders. And that's one of the biggest things that I feel like we should focus on to see if we're successful there, if that makes sense.
John Duisberg (07:36):
Got it. Yeah, no, I love it. And just to make sure I follow on that last comment. So you actually, in addition to whatever engagement survey cycle, you'll actually send an individual survey to someone on their work anniversary as well?
Holly Novak (07:49):
We do. Yeah. It's shorter, so it's only like 15 questions, but I love it because it gives us, like I said, that constant stream of data in and helps us to really focus on understanding if something weird is happening in that data, we can look at it right then and maybe dig into it and see what business unit is struggling or whatever that looks like so we can understand what's going on. Yeah. It's been really nice. We've done it now for four years probably, maybe five, so a while. Yeah.
John Duisberg (08:21):
Okay. Yeah. I always love hearing the various tactics in terms of how you're managing. So that's interesting. Okay. So you referenced early one, Jack Henry, and so probably like many people who joined us in the audience today, they're navigating acquisitions, just growing through mergers, M&A, which is great, but it's also a lot of change management. It's a huge lift when it comes to that. And so the idea of when you bring on a new organization, they have their own unique culture, their nuances. And so my understanding is that the one Jack Henry is how you bring all of these brands together in kind of one banner, one sense of community and culture. But tell us a little bit more about what that looks like. What have you found? Is there any kind of insights you can share on that?
Holly Novak (09:25):
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, as you mentioned, Jack Henry has built over the past 50 years. We're actually celebrating our 50th anniversary this next year, and we've had about 50 acquisitions through that time. And we're really picky about our acquisitions and the way that we pick what companies we choose to acquire because they have to be a good culture fit. But no matter what, there's that change management lift that you have to work through and bringing different cultures together and what that looks like. And I feel like I mentioned we've been on this one Jack Henry journey for about four years. And the way that we started it is by truly taking a step back and saying, "Hey, what is it that we truly believe in? What's our purpose?" And we did a huge effort to pull together all of our people related to our one purpose, and that was huge.
(10:18):
And I think it's just trying to get the buy-in. And we did fun things like if you sign our purpose pledge, you get this cool t-shirt and all kinds of things to really get people engaged in the purpose. And then that was about four years ago. And so we've kind of continued on that journey and what that looks like over time because you can't just roll out something and say, "Okay, now we're done. We rolled out One Jack Henry and we can stop." And so it's been something that we've really focused on. And I think from a people and culture standpoint, it's been really interesting to understand how do we, as a people and culture team, focus our efforts on not just going day-to-day like we normally have, but really focusing on how do we understand truly what the problems that we're trying to solve, how can we be more consultative, how can we focus more on solutions?
(11:09):
And so that's where the past couple of years we've really focused on being more solution driven or I'm a huge Josh Bersin nerd. And so he calls it systemic HR, but really trying to figure out how do we understand the problems that we're trying to solve and then bring together teams that can really focus on those problems and then move on to the next problem instead of just being in our little silos. And so I think one of the biggest things that we encourage our people and culture team to do is when something comes up, if it's a problem or just a challenge, stop and say, "Hey, who else does this impact? What other functions might be impacted by this? And then who else might I need to get information from?" But a lot of times, and I do it too, we're so focused on, we just want to solve this problem and move on to the next one.
(11:59):
And I think that's where we really are trying to make that critical mind shift with our team to say, "Hey, hold on before you just try to solve the problem on your own, who else needs to be included?" And that's been a huge shift for us, but it's been really fun to see it transition over the past couple years.
John Duisberg (12:19):
Okay. So you shared a lot of wisdom nuggets there. I want to uncover Unpack a little bit more. The first one was, tell me more about this purpose pledge. So you actually created a pledge that people sign. We did. Tell me about that. Did people feel comfortable with that? Was there a pushback? Was there an inspiration from that? Tell us a little more about that.
Holly Novak (12:42):
Yeah. No, I think one of the biggest things when we developed our new purpose as a company, number one, we had a whole team that came together to do that, but it's really focused on financial wellness because we provide technology for banks and credit unions. And so one of the things is focusing on our purpose on helping our clients win and also helping their clients be financially well and stable. And then we also want that for our people. And so the purpose pledge was really kind of around that. Do you buy into this goal of helping people be financially well? And so that's what we did. And so like I said, we did a pledge and then we had everybody sign it. They didn't have to, but if they signed it, they got a really cool t-shirt. And who doesn't want a Jack Henry T-shirt?
John Duisberg (13:33):
Everyone wants a cool T-shirt.
Holly Novak (13:34):
Right? I mean, of course you need those. I have about 500 Jack Hendry T-shirts, which is great. And so yeah, that's what we did. And I think it's just lots of other things too. We had lots of videos and we still do. We still have one Jack Henry information out all the time. But I think it's just one of the biggest things around change management is a lot of times we're just like, okay, we communicated it, we talked about it a few times and then we're done. And you have to realize that you have to, number one, help people to understand a buy-in to what it is that you're trying to accomplish and then help them find their value in that. How do they fit into it and how does that look to them? And then helping them, I think with the Purpose Pledge was a great way to do that because it helped them truly like, "Hey, this is how I can contribute to that and to OneJack Henry overall." So yeah.
John Duisberg (14:24):
Interesting. Okay. So another thing I wanted to just learn more about was, so you mentioned thought leader in the space, Josh Bersin so the HR operating system. So tell a little more about that. What does that look like specifically for Jack Henry? Love to just learn a little bit more on that.
Holly Novak (14:45):
Yeah. So I think one of the biggest goals that I had was just trying to get us, again, to think beyond just our individual teams, our COEs within HR, and really separating out those silos. So one of the things that we did, we got our whole team together for our HR summit and we separated everybody into groups intentionally away from their normal teams, and then we gave them each a problem to solve. And it was like a business problem. It could be, how do you do this acquisition playbook or how do you solve this problem related to standard manager expectations? And we had them work together really in that solution. And we gave them some frameworks around decision making and how you determine how to do that. But I think that was our aha moment for a lot of our people because they realized, "Hey, I didn't realize sometimes what some of these other people do or the knowledge that they have or the skills that they have.
(15:45):
"And so it helped them to realize the benefit of getting out of their own little mindset and their silos into that collaborative environment of solving problems. And so that's what our goal has been over the past couple of years is to really focus on how do we, number one, identify the problems that we're trying to solve and then bring people together within what we call swarm teams to really to solve those problems quickly and then move on to the next one. And so that has been our goal for the past couple of years. And it's been really successful, I think still on our journey of figuring it out, but it's been really beneficial to the team.
John Duisberg (16:26):
Very cool. Very cool. And I think I heard you mention you have your own HR summit, your own team you're bringing together. Is that like a kind of event that you do?
Holly Novak (16:35):
Yeah, we try to get together at least, I mean, ideally every year, but every other year, if not, depending on budget, everybody has budget. So yeah.
John Duisberg (16:44):
And 80 something professionals, right? I know it's a lot. Yeah. Okay, got it. Okay, that's awesome. Well, so Holly, you mentioned swarm teams and I just was fascinated when we were collaborating around this concept. So for me professionally, I have a product management background. So I've kind of lived in this software development world and we would follow an agile software development methodology. We would have sprints where we're saying, okay, for the next X number of weeks, this is what we're focused on and we're tracking to that. I've never heard it used in HR practice. So you are the first, you're coining this. So tell us what is HR Swarm teams, what do we need to know? What's the benefit? What are maybe some of the things that you didn't go as planned? Would love to just learn all things HR Swarm teams here.
Holly Novak (17:39):
Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So we started this, as I mentioned about two years ago. And so over the past two years, we've had about 20 different swarm teams. We have a couple going right now. And so like I said, what it is, it's just a cross-functional group that gets together. The goal is for them to come together just like you're agile. So self-managed teams where they come together for a short period of time, ideally no more than six weeks, they have a problem that they're trying to solve and then they come together and solve that problem and then they disband and then move on to the next one. And I think one of, like I've mentioned, one of the biggest things is number one, just the benefit of that cross-collaboration, learning from each other, getting outside of their teams a little bit, understanding different perspectives.
(18:25):
Sometimes we have people from the business that join those short teams as well. And I think some examples of them, so we did an AI chatbot, our AI chatbot, that was one of our swarm teams. We did some standard leadership expectations. We redid an acquisition playbook. That was one of our swarm teams. We did a recognition program. We modernized our recognition program. So lots of different just things. And the goal is to have all of our people recognize when there's a need for a swarm team and then let us know. We have a forum of course that they fill out and then we bring the team together. And so I think one of the biggest aha moments, like I mentioned, was when we all got together and did it, but we're able to solve these problems where a lot of times you're like, "Oh, we'll have a meeting and then we'll have another meeting in two weeks or we'll have another meeting in a month." And so it just extends it out where we're really able to just come together in a short period of time and say, "Hey, what does the business need?
(19:28):
How do we solve it together and how does this fit within my function? And then how does this fit across the organization?" And it's been really fun and successful for us. Yeah.
John Duisberg (19:41):
So on this note, I just want to dig into it a little bit further. So are you as the executive leader identifying potential opportunities for a swarm team or is other HR leaders from your team kind of raising their hand saying, "Hey, this could be a good opportunity." How do you decide what you're going to focus on in terms of allocating a swarm team?
Holly Novak (20:03):
Yeah, all of those things. So some of them, I'm like, "Hey, I feel like this is something we need to work on. " Some of it is maybe an individual contributor from throughout the team. Some of it's maybe one of my direct reports that realizes it. So yeah, lots of different ways that we get them. And we have a form that anybody can fill out and say, "Hey, I think this is a good idea for a swarm team." Sometimes we need to remind everybody, "Hey, remember to fill out the swarm team," because a lot of times we get how it feels good to solve problems. And so a lot of times you see a problem and you're like, "Oh, I can solve that on my own without collaborating with other people. " But really reminding people that, "Hey, we work better together when we have a good sense of that cross collaboration, utilizing other skills and mindset." And so yeah, there's lots of different ways that we've gotten the ideas and then we come together and people volunteer.
(21:00):
A lot of times we voluntell people to be on certain SWAM teams based on their skillset and what we want to accomplish for the team. But yeah, it's voluntary for the most part. Yeah.
John Duisberg (21:11):
Got it. Got it. I mean, I love the concept of maybe there's a need, a business need that kind of falls out of the regular, we'll call it day-to-day role. So it's like, okay, how are we going to tackle this? And instead of just, okay, putting it on someone's plate, we're bringing together multiple people to basically create a mini project team with a very specific purpose. And I also, I think what I heard you say is you'll pull people in from the business as well to be part of that. Is that right?
Holly Novak (21:45):
Yeah, every once in a while. So especially sometimes we'll pull in maybe a project manager, sometimes we'll pull in maybe somebody from the marketing team if that is a need from our IT team. So yeah, it just kind of depends on what the goal is and what the problem is that we're trying to solve. And if we need to, we'll pull other people in.
John Duisberg (22:05):
Yeah. Got it. Got it. Okay. And for our audience, please, we're going to be coming up in a few minutes on our Q&A. So if you have questions you want to make sure you get the opportunity to ask Holly, please go ahead and start submitting those. Don't forget. And Holly, you just mentioned an AI chatbot. And that's on everyone's mind in terms of how we're starting to use technology to enable more insights with the goal of having more meaningful interactions, for example, with managers, with their teams. And so we talked a little bit about this idea of leaning into technology and the AI chatbot experience, which I would love to hear more about, but not losing the human element at the same time and kind of this empathetic leadership, but doing it at a scale because you have technology to support you. So tell us a little bit about this journey you've been on and where are you now? What are some of the things that maybe you found that could be helpful for our audience on this?
Holly Novak (23:19):
I love this question because I think it just hits so much where the intersection, I guess, of where HR is heading. And so I feel like the core philosophy of this all is that we have these high tech tools, we have AI, we can't have a conversation without talking about AI right now. And so it should, like you said, enhance, not replace our human connection. And we talk about that a lot, but I feel like we have to view innovation and AI as a tool to help solve those people challenges, not at end and itself. So like you mentioned, data is powerful, right? I feel like data is our superpower tool in HR because it really helps us provide the clarity that we need for that practical empathy. And when you think of practical empathy, I did some thinking about this and I actually used AI a little bit to help me think through this.
(24:17):
And I love it because it's like when you think about emotional empathy, it's about maybe catching someone's vibe or catching someone's emotions, but that the cognitive empathy is about understanding their perspective. But when you think of practical empathy, it's really about empathy with a toolkit. And I feel like our toolkit is our technology. And so it gives us a way to really offer insight that we wouldn't have before. So when think of data in that way as our superpower, it offers that insight to like, how can we spot that burnout before it becomes a problem? How can we build an engagement gap in a certain area before it becomes kind of a crisis? And so instead of reacting to problems, we can get ahead of them and that's where we can truly care for our people. My favorite word lately is agency. And I feel like we can't truly impact with AI without agency and helping people really understand, hey, you're in charge of your future, you're in charge of your career, your path. And without really diving in and understanding how you can use these tools, like our empathy with the toolkit, you're going to fall behind. And so really helping people understand, hey, take charge and dig into the data, dig into AI, understand how to use it, and that's what's really going to be impactful. And you mentioned our AI chatbot. So I feel like that's small. A lot of people are doing that. We just implemented Visier, which is a really great AI Forward platform to help us connect all that data together and really get to the more predictive standpoint so we can be more proactive instead of just reacting all the time. Yeah.
John Duisberg (26:11):
So the superpower, data is the superpower.
Holly Novak (26:15):
Yeah, it's a superpower. Yeah.
John Duisberg (26:17):
Agency. You're giving me all kinds of good stuff to keep going on. But Holly, this has been wonderful. So appreciative of you taking time to just share your experience from a leadership perspective as you've navigated these different strategies. So as we kind of wrap up the interview, always love to have a practical takeaway for our audience or a key lesson learned that you'd want to leave us with. And so just wanted to give you that opportunity to share as we wrap up here today. But thank you again.
Holly Novak (26:51):
Yeah, absolutely. It's been really fun. I think I'll go back to agency. I think that we as HR professionals, we have to give ourselves permission and time and that white space to experiment and to be curious. When we're just going through our day-to-day, I guess you just want to focus on getting through all your emails and getting through your day and accomplishing tasks and checking things off a checklist. And I fall into that too. But if you don't give yourself that time to truly understand, hey, what does the future look like? How do I prepare myself for that and do that experimentation, you're going to fall short. And so that's my number one advice I think is to just take that time and understand what that looks like to you and focus your time on that. Yeah. I
John Duisberg (27:45):
Love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Holly. 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 itgroup.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 (28:35):
Thank you for listening to the Love Your People Podcast. As promised for a limited time, 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 itgroup.com/shrm-podcast. That's itagroup.com/shrm-podcast. For your HRCI credit, visit itagroup.com/hrci-podcast. Again, that's itagroup.com/hrci-podcast. Complete the quick forum to receive your certification codes.