Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to Lang Talent, the podcast by multilingual media where we highlight the human side of the language industry and the future of work. My name is Eddie Arrieta. I'm the CEO here. And today we are joined by Stephanie Voorhees. She's the Chief Human Resources Officer at propio. We're going to be talking about what people's first HR looks like in practice and. And why the language industry depends on more than just technology and strategy to thrive. We'll explore how HR can empower growth, engagement, and purpose while shaping careers that make a difference. Stephanie, welcome and thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: That is great. And you are in Kansas City. I was just mentioning I studied in Missouri. So how's Kansas these days?
[00:00:53] Speaker A: It is nice in summer weather and everybody just wants to talk about Taylor and Travis, and they're big news. So the city is here for it.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Fantastic. Fantastic. And of course, we're here also to talk about human resources, about the future of work, and we'd love to get your perspective and get to understand more about what your experience at propio has been like. And you've said that HR isn't about rules or paperwork, it's about people.
How has that perspective shaped your work at Propriet, what you're doing right now?
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you. So at Pro, I really try to approach HR with the mindset that our role is here to elevate our people. We're not just here to manage the process. And so by making people first, I think we've been able to shape HR as a true business partner within the organization. You know what, we are the business partner that's driving culture and engagement performance rather than just simply here to enforce rules. And I really think this has influenced the way we've approached a lot of things. You know, proprio has grown through acquisition, I'm sure, as all of us know. And, you know, we use this mindset to approach it as we don't welcome people day one with just a bunch of paperwork saying, we want to get to know you. We want to know how your business works instead of overwhelming them on this. You know, here's a new handbook. Here's a stack of paperwork to fill out. That's not. That's not what we're doing. And we've also been really able to, you know, help with, you know, using that mindset is helping with, you know, initiatives around employee experience, around performance to help drive the business forward.
And by doing that, I think that has been what has enabled the HR being a strategic function here at Proprio. And you know, it allows our employees to feel valued and supported and it's driving the company's success at the end of the day.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: And of course Propio has been making some acquisitions. It's a huge company and, you know, great people, I think look very similar across many different companies when you look at the top performers that they will always have similar traits. From your experience, what are some of the qualities that you think make someone a great fit for the language industry? But yeah, for someone at Propio and for someone to thrive in our industry.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I think no matter what their has to, you know, no matter what industry it is, somebody has to have a passion around it. They have to have a why to, you know, be on that high growth trajectory. And so why people are in the language services is usually personal to them. But then if I take, you know, take away the why, we just assume everybody here, you know, has that why. I really think that language services has set this crossroads of culture and communication for many years and now we've added a third crossroad of technology.
So again, assuming the passion is there, I think folks that have adaptability, curiosity, resilience are really going to be the ones that are most successful. Especially here at Burios. Language services is an ever changing, you know, evolving industry.
And I tell every single person I've interviewed at Proprio, you can ask any of them is, if you don't like change, this isn't the place for you. Because, you know, especially Proprio, we're on this rocket ship to lead the industry and you know, in order to do that, we as a business have to evolve and you know, people in the industry have to evolve and, you know, be resilient to those changes as they come to us.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: And that evolution, of course allows Propio to get into places where others don't go and you are in the middle of it. Helping talent at Propio also navigate this because even if you have the inclination to be adaptive to all these changes, you need some help. Could you tell us a little bit about the support that you give your team members, the coaching that happens within propio, especially to carry forward a culture of engagement and inclusion.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Yeah. So we can kind of separate that a little bit into two buckets. But, you know, focus on the how do we drive that engagement culture? I think we had to make the conscious decision, you know, we can all get bogged down in our, you know, our little to do list that we check off every day. And you know, that that could take up all of our day if we wanted it to. But we really made the conscious decision that we wanted to drive culture. We wanted to, you know, really focus on engagement. And I kind of compare it to, you know, if you want to lose 10 pounds or 5 pounds or however many, you can't just say, oh, I want to lose 10 pounds. And it just happens you have to make the conscience decision to eat better, work out, you know, whatever it is for you. And so for us, we made that conscious decision to invest in engagement and invest in our culture and invest in our people. We even took a step, step further and hired a dedicated engagement specialist. So I've got somebody within my team that their sole role is engagement.
And so they are looking at it from every aspect that we can. And I remind my entire team every day, what is the experience? How's an employee interacting with this? And so with our leaders, I've always felt if you make it easy, they will do it. And so how can we make engagement easier, easy for our leaders? How can we provide them with resources to engage their teams? How can we, you know, shape our engagement initiatives to fit their lives? And so by proprio taking this time to make engagement easy, the leaders participate at a higher rate. And then, you know, as, as we've said, Burberry has grown through acquisition pretty heavily and we've had to shift to having a lot more of a remote culture, a lot bigger global footprint. And we've had to, you know, shift the mindset from we weren't a small Kansas City based company anymore. You know, we are now a leader in this industry and we've got employees all over the world. How do we engage them, how do we make them feel that way? And so again, the, you know, my team and, you know, our executive team really took the time to provide them a playbook. Here's how you do it, here's things that you do. You know, have you thought about this?
And when they're not thinking about it, we're thinking about it for them and trying to make those employees always feel special, whether they're here in our office or around the world.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: And Stephanie, if you can allow me to go rogue here a little bit.
A big focus of our listeners is also to consider companies like Propio, like the place where they like to work. And they're always curious to understand what are the roles that are available, what functions are growing. And sometimes those functions are not growing right now and the roles are not available right now, but they might be available in the future. Is there something you can tell us about the functions and the roles that might become available or that are available right now at Propio that our listeners can say, hey, you know that that might be a global company that I want to be part of.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Purview's middle name is growth. It has been since the day I walked in. And so we really are growing across the organization. So the way that our recruiting has a lot of times gone is when one function's growing, the other ones aren't quite right now. But our client teams are booming at the moment. Our tech teams are just, gosh, growing like gangbusters. I really feel like tech and client facing roles, the opportunity to impact those clients are where Proprio's biggest growth is today.
On the corporate side of things, obviously our interpreter and translator pools are always growing and that team is always having their hands full. But really on the corporate side, I think our CS and our technology groups are the ones that are seeing the largest growth right now.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: That is great to hear. And of course HR is so similar to me in a specific sense that it's very similar to the language industry. HR is one of those functions that when it's not done right, you can really feel the pain and when it's done right, you almost don't see it. It's very similar to the language industry.
I think the companies that are going to grow the fastest and in the best pace in our industry are those that are taking HR seriously.
Where do you see HR's role heading in the next five to 10 years, especially in our industry, which is at the intersection of people and technology?
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. HR has been in this, this industry shift for, I mean, really since COVID You know, once Covid happened, it became, oh my gosh, we, nobody knew what to do. How can we, you know, help each other? And so we started seeing that shift during COVID and I think you'll see it even more over the next, you know, five plus years is, you know, moving away from being seen at this, you know, compliance or transactional function. I think we are starting to be seen and it'll become more, you know, prevalent that we are going to be this strategic enabler of growth. We are going to help organizations more, you know, with workforce design and, you know, how do these workplaces thrive in a highly tech driven global marketplace? And I think the biggest question for all the workforce right now is around AI. You know, that's every conversation I think I have right now is around AI. But you know, at Proprio, we truly believe that AI makes people better. It's not better than people. And so when we kind of, you know, made that mindset of AI is here and it is going to help enable our people, my mind instantly went to how can HR help shift this workplace to enable our employees to understand it and utilize it? And how can we help drive optimization? You know, for the last probably three to five years, I really started to see my role within businesses and HR's role within businesses being more about human capital versus human resources. And I think that will become a more utilized term in the industry as we're shifting is because we are able to help optimize human capital, which is a business, business, business's biggest asset. And we are the ones that can help lead that change.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: And I think that that change is happening so rapidly that for those that are not careful in my, for certain companies destroyed even the fabric of how they operate. And you are mentioning as well that, you know, there is, there is a lot of change that it's happening. I presume that in your own function, hr, there is also a lot of change, but there are also a lot of misunderstandings, a lot of misconceptions about what you actually do. If there is, if there is one misconception that you could shift or a misconception that people have about hr, what would that misconception be?
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Can I pick three?
[00:11:31] Speaker B: Yes, please.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Okay. So I think the top three that I always, I always hear and it's, it's things that I've been battling my entire career are HR is the compliance admin, you know, transactional function, HR is the bad guy, or HR is the party planner. And those are not true.
We are truly so much more than that. I mean, every decision a business makes has a human impact, whether we think it in the moment or not. It does. And when you have the right HR partnership with you, it can really help unlock the business business's success. And you know, I always say like, yes, do we have compliance as part of our job description? Absolutely. Do we have party planning?
Yes. Ish. You know, and I can assure you that no HR person enjoys sitting in a room when we have to let somebody go. That's not why we're here.
That's not, you know, what drives us as individuals. And so I really feel like strong HR leaders show up every single day to enable the business success again through its human capital. And so if I anybody's like, oh, you're in hr, that's rough. Well, it's actually a lot of fun if you're doing it right. And so luckily at Proprio, you know, our leadership team has supported us doing it right and we've been able to. Been able to do it the right way.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Stephanie, and you've mentioned a few of these of the values that you look for and I don't want to put you on the spot, but could you tell us a little bit about the core values of Propio so that those that are listening could get a sense of what are some of the things that the propio team strives for that you look for when you are looking to hire someone, Those that you work for while you are at the company. These are the things that you push for every day to make sure that your culture, you know, grows and also that you give your, your, your team members the right environment to, to thrive.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So I was just looking over here. I've got our wheel of values. So right around the time I joined, we actually launched 10 values, which first seemed like a lot and then I just realized how much Proprio is doing and the fact that we are living all 10 of these things. I'm okay with the 10. At first I wasn't sure, um, but I am okay with the 10. And, you know, we've got them up in our states. We provide them to all of our new team members. We're talking about them through all of our engagement initiatives. It's, you know, how does our engagement actually tie back to one of these? And you know, a couple of my favorite values here at Proprio, one of them is hands on. And I really like this one because we believe even on the executive level, you need to be hands on in the business. And so Proprio is not an environment where we've got, you know, managers, managing managers, manages that. That's not who we are. And so we really want to be hands on in the business. And we feel like as long as everybody has a pulse on the industry, has a pulse on what Proprio is doing, we're all able to come up with a better idea. You know, idea one is usually not the game winner. It's usually the iteration of idea one. And so I really love hands on. And then a lot of the values that I mentioned earlier around what made success, you know, successful person in the industry are, you know, around resilience and adaptability. So I really feel like Proprio invested the time to align our 10 core values to what somebody in this industry is going to be successful with.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Stephanie, for sharing those. And I'm Sure. We can find a link to the Wheel of Values so that we can put it in the description of our podcast. And of course, for those that are listening, you might know that we do a Lang talent event, a lifelong talent event, a few times a year. And Stephanie is one of our invited guests for our future panels on the future of growth. So if you've enjoyed this conversation, we're going to have the pleasure to have Stephanie with us again in the future, if that's okay, Stephanie, of course, I assume it is. Great. And you know, just to finish the conversation before we close up, you talked a little bit about the why and you know that purpose and purpose driven organizations are the ones that we are really attracted to. And that's why we want to talk to you. I want to talk to Appa, to the propio team for your specific path. Stephanie, what has driven your success as a professional and what is your why, if I may ask?
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Yeah, my why is the easiest thing. It's my husband and my son. I always valued a career. I always wanted to be a working mom. And that's exactly what I've been able to do. I didn't necessarily fall into HR like most people did. I actually actively worked towards this and I really saw how important people were to businesses. And I, you know, at the time, you know, 15 years ago, I thought, wow, this is such an under recognized power that a business could unlock. And when I saw businesses that were doing it, they were the most successful ones. And I said, I want to enable that within businesses. And so I really, you know, leaned in and been fortunate to work in very high growth, fast paced, you know, organizations that I've been able to make a lot of change and a lot of growth within these businesses. And, you know, seeing people that, you know, I hired as interns that are, you know, now into senior leadership roles, that's so exciting for me because I knew that, you know, the business, the things that we put in place within the business is what got them there today.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: No, thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. And of course, we look forward to the comments from our audience to the comments from the propio team on this interview. Stephanie, once again, you're welcome to our live event that is going to happen in a month or a couple of months. And of course, are there any final thoughts that you might have today before we go?
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we're all good. We've covered it.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: And thank you everyone for tuning in into Lang Talent. A huge thank you to Stephanie Voorhees, chief Human resources Officer at Propio. And thank you everyone for sharing those that are sharing our episodes. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe to Lang Talent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. Lang Talent is part of Multilingual Media's mission to highlight careers, talent and the future of work in the language industry. Once again, my name is Eddie Arrieta, CEO here at Multilingual Media. Until next time, goodbye.
