Frances Kloes Talks Human Resources
Frances Kloes has been a Director of Human Resources at a series of high-growth companies: from Okta and Optimizely to Neustar and Salesforce. In February she spoke to the Women in Leadership class to share her tricks of the trade, noting first, “I did not plan on going into HR. It wasn’t something that I even knew about when I was in college.”
While working as a tech writer, Ms. Kloes explained, she noticed her company hired a consultant for HR duties. “I was just curious about what she was doing. I wanted to learn. And I also was cognizant of the fact that we were cutting her a really big check every month, and I wanted to save the company some money!” The consultant was happy to train her, and she began to take over the HR work for the company.
After that, Ms. Kloes spent time moving from job to job — “wherever the opportunities took me. It wasn’t about wanting to go into any particular area. What I was very intent on was learning everything I possibly could and every single role, and really just being a sponge.” Finally, once the recession hit in 2008, she moved back into the HR game.
HR is fundamentally about working with people, so one of the first skills Ms. Kloes had to master was how to make people want to listen. “Early in my career it was more of a struggle,” she said. “I’m an introvert — [but] I can definitely extrovert for work. You have to, in order to be heard. I think the times when I had the most challenge being part of the conversation was when I was pushing HR. Whereas HR [should be] about meeting the business where they are.”
As an example, Ms. Kloes explained that one of the teams in her current organization is changing their model of operations. “I’m interested in talking with them about ‘What are the drivers to move to this model in the first place? How are we going to move our vendors?’ And when leaders hear that, when leaders know that you’re not just listening out for the ‘people things’, like what kind of training you need or how many more headcount, then they will engage with you. To the point where they’re asking for my opinion! Where, had I only been pushing the ‘people strategies’ down their throats, it would be a very different situation.”
And this form of respect goes both ways: It can be much more fulfilling to work at a company where HR is valued as a strategic thought partner. The key indicator, Ms. Kloes explained, is what department HR reports to. “Does it roll up to Legal? Does it roll up to Finance? Does it roll up to the CEO? When HR rolls to the CEO, you know that it’s an important contribution to the company.”
The role of HR varies with every organization, and has changed a lot over the years. It used to be more task-driven, Ms. Kloes said — focused on individual duties like administering benefits, recording demographic changes, and updating addresses. These days, however, “I find that we are a fabric of the company strategy. [We] were brought in to elevate the strategic thinking of the business partner team. They’re relying on us for observations on how their teams are working together. They’re looking to us for feedback on their leadership; to help set the ‘people strategy’; to help them be more aligned with other parts of the organization.”
One important change, Ms. Kloes said, is having other teams, not HR, take on things like internal investigations. “It takes you away from being viewed as HR police, to an HR partner.
“You know,” she reflected, “I think what has also made HR different these days is we don’t go in rules-and-regulations first — ‘well, you can’t do that, because we’ll get sued.’ It’s more about, what are the possibilities? Be curious.”
For more information on the program, please visit Women in Leadership Program, CBE.
