When Dean Carter met Guild Education’s CEO, Rachel Romer, at her education benefits company’s summit in October, the former head of people and culture at Patagonia was asked if he knew of anyone who might be interested in being her chief people officer. After getting to know Romer and other members of the Guild team, Carter realized he did know someone for the job: himself.
On December 12, Guild announced Carter as its new chief people officer, and he sat down with us to discuss the evolution of HR and how he plans to approach his brand new job.
What made the CHRO opportunity at Guild so attractive to you?
Things that were important to me were [working at] a B Corp—after working for Patagonia as a B Corp, it’s important to me to do that again. I knew that was a high bar that was going to be difficult, but I really wanted to do that.
Second is [to] work with a company with a purpose that really aligned with my purpose and value. I don’t know how you could be more in alignment with a company [than where] the business is what I do…Elevating people in their career, it’s a big part of what I do as a head of HR…The third thing was [to] work with an inspiring, founder-led CEO and [I] found that in Rachel who is just really on fire and doing some great things to change the world.
Based on your experiences at Patagonia, what are the best ways HR leaders tie the employee experience to the company’s mission and broader social impact?
If you have a company that has a strong purpose and values, the role of the chief people officer is to drive that in big and wild ways. Look at every single moment of the experience. What is the hiring experience like? What does onboarding look like? What does the café look like? What does the front desk look like?
Every single thing should just scream the values in big ways. You can’t whisper it and it can’t [just] be on a plaque or on the career website. It has to be crisp. That’s the job of the chief people officer, [having] an eye out for every single employee moment…I think the other role is to drive change and not be afraid of that.
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Given all of the changes afoot, how should HR departments look structurally different than before?
You’re gonna have someone who’s the head of…diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, justice, anti-racism. You’re gonna need to have a really strong leader in that. The part that has to do with people should report to you, the part that has to do with a broad structure of this should report to the CEO.
The second thing is that you’ll have someone who’s highly involved in strategy on your team…I think you’re going to have a strategic partner around that connection to the business. I think the head of analytics should report directly to the head of HR…We’ve gotten to the point where we can write a report and create a dashboard all day long. I think we need to get a lot better at the insights that are behind those, and you need a really killer analytics team to do that.
Is there any HR practice from Patagonia that you are thinking about implementing at Guild?
We did put in an innovative four-day/five-day workweek [at Patagonia], where we close the business every other Friday…[We] said we’ll do a four-day workweek where you work nine hours a [day], you still work the same amount of hours. We close on Fridays completely, because if you leave it open, [people will still work].
So, that gave people 26 three-day weekends a year…What [employees] said as a result was, “I have a better relationship with my spouse, “I spend more time with my children, “I have the ability to go to the doctor and dentist”…people mentioned better healthcare, feeling more productive in life, the ability to get outside more often, the ability just to go to places and buy healthy food and prepare that for their families…it’s a favorite benefit at Patagonia.