Donovan shares how he deliberately hires business leaders into HR, why TA and retention must operate as a single strategy, and how he's making the case to Millennial and Gen Z employees that staying at one company for a full career can be the best financial decision they make. If you lead a team or manage talent at any level, this episode is full of frameworks you can apply immediately.

Key takeaways

Hire business leaders into HR: Top field leaders and MBAs with no HR background can elevate an HRBP team faster than traditional hiring. Business credibility is teachable on the HR side; leadership instincts are harder to develop from scratch.
TA and retention are one strategy: Filling the top of the funnel while losing people out the back is a losing game. Breaking down silos between TA, L&D, and rewards is what closes the gap.
Teamship over hierarchy: Donovan replaced a siloed COE structure with peer accountability across the full HR team. The result is a function that operates as one unit rather than five separate groups reporting up.
The long-career argument is back: Employee ownership, long-term incentives, and genuine development investment can make staying at one company the smarter financial move, even for employees who have been told job-hopping pays more.
HR lives in the gray: A real-world parental leave disclosure scenario illustrates how the best HR decisions require legal knowledge, business judgment, and employee empathy all at once. Black and white answers rarely exist.
Never lose the human in HR: Donovan's advice for aspiring CHROs is simple: learn the business, but never let that come at the cost of kindness, empathy, and being a genuine employee advocate.

Links

Donovan on LinkedIn

LHH Recruitment Solutions

A Beautiful Working World

A Soundbeam Studios Production