Kelly Mendez-Scheib is one of those rare HR professionals who studied the field in college. With an undergraduate degree in labor and industrial relations and a graduate degree in HR from Penn State, the “sticky-fingered generalist at heart” realized she was unable to “stay in my lane” and made “a really poor specialist.” But that proved beneficial as she grew her career and moved into HR leadership roles.
Mendez-Scheib transitioned to the tech world from manufacturing in 2020 when she joined Proterra as its VP of HR before moving to Crunchbase last summer. At Crunchbase, she’s focused on implementing what she described as a “growth-focused” department, writing her own rules and tackling projects and policies that meet her employees’ needs.
“I fundamentally believe that I am here and I get the privilege to be of service to our employees through the most fundamental part of their life journey, which is work,” she said.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You joined Crunchbase and began transforming the team into a “growth-focused” department. What does a growth-focused HR department look like to you?
Often in HR, what you have is a lot of HR professionals use what I like to refer to as prescriptive HR. Prescriptive HR is the playbook; they hand you the playbook, and…as long as you do the things that are in the playbook, you win. That’s not how I approach HR…I always wanted to be the team that wrote the story. I didn’t want to be the team that read the story...We were going to do things the Crunchbase way.
One of the pillars of our organization—and I think [it’s] very different than most organizations—is the wild, radical transparency that we have as a culture. [It’s] very different than any other organization I’ve ever been a part of. I would say that we also do benefits very differently…always looking to iterate on what our employees can do with the dollar versus prescribing for them what they can do with their dollar.
What does“the Crunchbase way” look like in practice?
I think we do that in a lot of different ways. One, by not being prescriptive in our benefits and our total rewards approach to our employees. Being very open to doing it differently. Maintaining a remote stance and an asynchronous stance when…every other organization in the entire world is calling their employees back to work…Crunchbase has been very open to considering how work works for our people. So, while we’re remote first, I actually think it’s also very important to know that we have two office spaces where if employees want to go in—in New York and in San Francisco—they can and those are available to them. We also allow our wellness budget to be used for WeWork spaces…I think it’s about being more flexible than most HR organizations have traditionally been and being very open to just doing things differently.
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Crunchbase went through a round of layoffs this summer. How did you manage that the Crunchbase way?
We did have a restructuring this past summer and even the way that was handled was very different than the way most organizations handle layoffs. We offered every employee within our organization the opportunity to take a voluntary layoff. That is very different than most organizations would do, and we were taking risks with that.
The first thing we did was honestly go in and just tell the business: If this isn’t where your heart is, in this model—because it was a strategic change for us…we were shifting the business—if…you want to tap out, we’re gonna give you the opportunity to tap out with a very good [severance] package…and then just being very transparent on timing. Our employees knew exactly when things would happen, the day things would happen, the way they would happen, and they knew that well in advance.
You also mentioned your approach to employee benefits looks different now too, how are you overseeing their implementation?
We have a very iterative rewards approach, because what our employees need is different…We take a much more holistic approach to meeting people where they are. So, I would say that from our very generous parental leave policy to our…support [for] our employees with mental health issues…but I don’t think there’s a limit.
It’s always iterative, and I’m always going to want to explore different ways to be able to serve our workforce that’s most meaningful for them. I always like to say that the prescriptive HR approach only benefits the prescriber…Those benefits couldn’t be further from necessarily what all of the employees want.