Leading Through Change: Lessons from Experian Employer Services

Leading Through Change: Lessons from Experian Employer Services

Hosts: Steve Boese & Trish Steed

Guest: Michele Bodda, President of Experian Employer Services

In our latest episode, Steve and Trish met with Michele Bodda to discuss the importance of leadership through change, particularly in the context of organizational mergers and acquisitions. They looked at the role of culture in driving employee engagement and the need for clear, consistent communication from leadership. Michele emphasized the significance of maintaining a high “say-do” ratio to build trust and the importance of respecting the cultures of acquired companies.

The group also talked about the impact of external factors on employee mental health and the role of Employee Resource Groups in providing support. The conversation continued to highlight the need for empathy, communication, and community in navigating organizational change. Listen in to learn more!

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Transcript follows:

Steve 0:00
Welcome to the HR Happy Hour podcast, the longest running and top downloaded HR podcast for 15 Incredible Years, whether you are a regular listener or just joining us for the first time, welcome. We’re glad you’re here. And yeah, remember to subscribe and stay tuned to everything we’ve got happening as we finish out 2024 and we head into 2025 My name is Steve Boese. I’m joined by Trish Steed, Trish, good afternoon. How are you today?

Trish 0:41
I am absolutely fantastic. And can I just say energized? We for the listeners, we just did our big like getaway for annual strategy and planning. And the best part of all was I got to spend some time with some Highland mini cows hugging.

Steve 0:58
I heard about that. I saw some photos that was wonderful. Now we’ve got some show announcements, so we’re have to make soon. We’re not ready to make them yet, but they’re coming up a couple things so quick, I will announce and share our 2025 Workplace Trends Report is out on h3hr.com we encourage folks to check that out. Just a free download, 55 odd pages of trends and thoughts and helping you get prepared for the year ahead as an HR business leader, and then Trish. Last week, I compiled one of my favorite things to do each year. I did the best of the HR Happy Hour Media Network post, which is also on h3hr.com where I run back through about 20 or so of the various shows that we did during the course of the year to resurface some of them and maybe call some attention to some of our favorite conversations of the year. Do you have one that stands out for you? Trish, for 2024 you remember? Hey, man, that was a really good one. Folks should go back there and check it out.

Trish 1:53
You know, I’m going to go with the menopause show, just because I learned so much personally, and I know that whether you are, you know, going through it yourself, or you are an employer who has women in your workplace, anyone age 35 to roughly 60, you should probably listen to that show.

Steve 2:11
We did a couple shows on that topic this year, and I would, I would encourage folks to check that out. So, okay, good stuff, and let’s get to it’s get to it. We’ve got a great show today. We are so thrilled to be working with our friends at Experian Employer Services again this year, and with us today from Experian Employer Services. Michele Bodda. Michele is the President, that’s pretty cool, the President of Experian Employer Services, verification solutions and housing. She’s an entrepreneur within the larger organization with repeated success, establishing new businesses, focusing on the consumer and empowering high performing teams. She’s a committed champion of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and she’s an executive member of the experience power of you Council, as well as the executive sponsor for the Experian North American pride network, and a member if you’re watching this on YouTube, of Team sparkle. Michele, welcome to the show. How are you today?

Michele Bodda 3:07
Hi, Steve. I’m great. Thanks. Thanks for that. Team sparkle, all the way today. That’s right, that was a little game my teams just played together and and we won.

Steve 3:20
So we’re going to dig into culture a lot today on the show, Michele, so that’s good that you sort of tease that out. You you were doing a meeting slash team building kind of thing right before the show, and you guys were heavily into it, which is great. But before we dive into some of the things we wanted to talk to you about, really, all about leadership through change, change management and the importance of culture, and particularly as we head into what’s probably going to be a super busy year, maybe we’ll slake, let’s learn a little bit more about you, and then, of course, give us maybe 90 seconds on Experian Employer Services as well.

Michele Bodda 3:53
Thank you. Well, first of all, I’m super excited to be here with you and Trish. I’ve been so grateful to get to know both of you a little bit the last several months and everything. So thank you for inviting me here. My name is Michele Bodda. I am I do lead some of the newer businesses here at Experian, including our employer services business, our business that supports verification solutions of verification of income, employment, assets, and then our business that supports the housing industry as well all businesses that are five years old or younger. So I get to be a bit of an entrepreneur inside of a larger company, which I think is the best gig at the entire company. I get to create new things, and I don’t have to worry about making payroll. So that’s a big benefit to being an entrepreneur inside of a of a larger organization, Experian Employer Services is a division that we built within the last four years. We offer a full suite of HR, payroll and tax solutions to more than 3500 employers and their 30 million employees. We’ve got a team of experts that we believe have built a new approach, together with our clients and our alliance partners taking in that feedback to bring really deep expertise and really help employers manage cost and workforce compliance challenges, very, very much grounded in a client first approach, going along with all the way through to an employee experience an employee first approach, just really highly valuing an employer’s relationship with their employees and bringing the power of experience, the security, the resources and everything else of experience to that side of the table. So yeah, I’m really happy to be here with you.

Steve 5:44
Thank you, Michele.

Trish 5:45
We’re excited. You know what? I just want to say, too. I think when we were thinking about doing a show with you, the most impactful thing, I think, is that you’re bringing solutions to HR leaders and other leaders, but especially in HR, where these are things that we don’t have time to stay on top of quite often, right? These are the the I nines. These are the Work Opportunity Tax Credits. These are, like, all the things when I was sitting with that HR hat on that I really, really needed a partner to help me with. So I’m super excited about just what you’re doing in general, and then also the fact that you’re going to be telling us how we can navigate through change while maybe dealing with some of these very, very issues. So super excited to have you on the show.

Michele Bodda 6:31
Thank you. Yeah, we want to help do everything we can to free up HR professionals from you know, having to manage the day to day compliance of that stuff and the operational elements of it, so they can focus on their employees, like, right, like, right.

Steve 6:49
So Michele, we wanted to talk a little bit about change and leading through change, and your perspective, and some of this is certainly coming from the experience, experience so far, where you’re building a brand new business by really bringing together multiple companies that had their own distinctive cultures, right? That you’re trying to bring into a larger organization like you mentioned, and have that all sort of work, really challenging work for leaders. I’d love for you to maybe, let’s just start with, Hey, how do you look at helping people navigate through these big changes that happen in an organization, whether it’s a merger, whether it’s a strategic direction change, maybe even it’s a return to office kind of a thing, which is a big change a lot of companies are looking at next year. So maybe we’ll start there.

Michele Bodda 7:39
You know, I think, I think as a leader in any type of function that you’re in, the culture that you build within your team is really what drives people’s connection it. You know you need to understand why people are here to do this job, what’s their reason behind it, and if you know that, and you can connect it to the work that you’re doing. Then leading through change becomes a little bit easier, right? I mean, there’s, there’s nothing easy about it and and changing com in all the different forms that you just mentioned, Steve, but, but having a connection to the purpose of what you’re trying to achieve together gives something for everybody to kind of grab on to.

Trish 8:23
Yeah, that’s often a hard one, too. I think, you know, I’ve been in situations where I was doing many acquisitions from the HR side, you know, like six or seven a year, for example. And that is, it’s, it’s the one thing you need to get right from the start, right from those first meetings, where you’re even just thinking about making those, those team connections. I like that. You call that out, though, because even in all the ones I’ve done, I think I got to that point where I knew that’s what I was doing, but I don’t think I was really maybe mature enough in my career to understand that would have been, what kind of the guiding star should be. What would you say to maybe someone who’s maybe been through some mergers or acquisitions, and maybe the ones who haven’t, what are beyond just sort of the idea of making those connections, any like practical tips that you’ve actually tried and true in terms of making those connections.

Michele Bodda 9:17
So when we formed Employer Services at Experian a few years ago. It was formed through four acquisitions that took place in about an 18 month period during COVID. So there was a little bit of a or a lot of a complicating factor to that process of, how do you bring folks together when you can’t meet anybody and you can’t do site visits and everything else for a fairly long, extended period of time. For us, the number one criteria for the companies that we were going to bring together had to be a unifying connection between their cultures and what it. Ended up being as we surveyed the market and the companies that were out there and who was doing what, where we landed was a very, very clear focus on customer service. So all four companies that we bought led with service, led with delivering service through experts and bringing that expertise to the employers that they were working with. It’s how they won. When we went out and surveyed employers about who the players were in the space, those were the words that came up repeatedly with regard to these four entities. We did look at some other companies, and we actually ended up not bringing them into our portfolio, because it wasn’t necessarily that same kind of connection point. When you are bringing multiple companies together, whether it’s one company that a bigger company or another company is acquiring, or multiple at the same time that you have to merge into one unit, like we did, plus merge to Experian. I think having something that’s common that people already connect to inside of the company that they chose to work for is is really, really critical for us. It was the tie to high quality service.

Trish 11:19
Yeah, thank you. That makes sense. And I think being very mindful of that as you’re going into even discussions with a potential, you know, partner in an acquisition, I think, is very important. So yeah, sometimes HR doesn’t get that seat at the table right away, though, you know, I think sometimes these are more financial discussions. So yes, as soon as HR is involved, and hopefully it’s with the rest of the rest of the C suite, right? Hopefully everyone’s culture focused. But if not, I think that’s maybe that secret sauce that we can bring into those conversations. It’s just a reminder this is extremely important for the longevity of the success, right? So yeah, makes complete for us.

Michele Bodda 11:56
As we were, like I said, as we were surveying the market, it was something that came up a lot with all the employers, ie, the customers that we would be working with going forward. And then as we got to know folks at each of the companies, it was the unifying thing that came up consistently with them as well. So you start to hear stuff like that, and it’s something that can kind of bind you together with what you’re doing for your end user, for your client, then it’s probably going to be a lot stickier. Has to be something that can fit within your environment too, though. So you can’t be a company, the acquiring company can’t be in a culture that’s opposite of what you’re uniting together, right?

Trish 12:44
I think you’re right on that. And even in the case of, I mean, mergers are a little bit different. But even in the case of acquiring a company, right, it’s not truly you bringing them into your culture. You have to also respect the culture they bring. And they might have some really interesting traditions or other things they do that make them feel connected to the company to begin with. So I remember there was one that I did where it was a small thing, but they had this tradition of, anytime they had a big, big win, they would take a bottle of champagne and saber the top off of it, right? Have you ever done that? So I flew out to San Francisco. I’ll never forget this. I you know, I was in my probably mid 30s at the time, and they said, you all are acquiring us, but we want to celebrate this acquisition, this big moment, right? And Trish, you’re going to be the one to take the saber and saber off the top of the champagne. It was the most fun thing, but it really stuck with me to, if nothing else, try and find meaningful traditions that you can bring along into your organization, right as well. It’s not just them, it’s not just making those employees like do it your way, right? It’s a true blending.

Michele Bodda 13:55
I think, well, no, you’re, you’re acquiring them for a reason, right? Because they do something that you don’t do. And so, you know, I think having a very high degree of respect for that, and what made them attractive to become part of your organization to begin with, is something that you can’t lose sight of, right? You have to, you have to remember that and pay attention to that.

Steve 14:18
Michele, change is just hard, right? And many people don’t embrace it, and that’s understandable, both in their personal lives and in their professional lives. It is somewhat comforting. I’ll even, I’ll just admit this, I kind of eat the same breakfast every day, you know? I don’t know. I just do every single day in the same order and it’s around the same time, right? And if I had to eat differently on a given day, it’s a little it’s fine, I can do it, but, you know, got to think about it some, right? And that’s a silly Adobe example, but it’s true. And I just wonder, in general, as you whether it’s navigating or building a new company from the series of acquisitions. Or just those other kinds of more, you know, fundamental kinds of changes that are inevitable in organizations. We’re introducing a new technology. We’ve got new policies and procedures. Maybe a new leader has come in, right? There’s been some shuffling around in the leadership ranks of the organization and or that. What are some of the things that are work for you as you sort of help your teams and the people in your organizations just get more comfortable with change and maybe help them navigate their way through change.

Michele Bodda 15:30
I believe in my soul that you have to be really thoughtful in the communication and what you say as leadership in any of these scenarios, whether you’re building a company or division from employee one, two and three, or you’re bringing other folks together, or you’re going through a major change in how you approach the market or leadership, or whatever it is. We all say this all the time, but obviously communication is key, and communicating more than you think you need to, and repeating yourself a lot so that people can hear it and then start to believe it and then trust it. And I was in some and I wish I could remember who did it, but I was in some training a couple of years ago, and it was about effective organizational communication. And the advice was with every as a leader, with every communication that you do, be it verbal or written or recorded or whatever it is, what do you want your audience to think? What do you want them to feel and what do you want them to know, right? And I have that written on my wall behind you like it’s behind my screen. I have those three words taped up on the wall because I’m the businesses I’m responsible for, and I get the pleasure of getting to lead at Experian, are all new, and so they are all in the constant state of change, like that’s just kind of the ambiguity of newness and where you fit. And navigating those markets is something all three of my organizations live with all day, every day. And so what do you want people to think? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to know from everything you say? I like that. You have to plan it.

Trish 17:29
That’s a good framework, too. Because I think again, when we when we’re sort of just operating on the fly and not sort of having some sort of a guide, right things, it just is a snowball effect. And I think that, you know, again, I’m sitting here thinking about ones I’ve I’ve been through myself. It’s like people resist when they’re uncertain. And so I think what you just gave us is that example it leads to, it might it be full certainty, right? We’re never going to be fully certain of what we’re doing, but it seems like you’re trying to provide as much certainty as you can in any given moment. And then as time goes on, they’ll see that consistency, right? If you’re always operating under what they think, they feel, and they know.

Michele Bodda 18:10
Yeah, I had a leader here at Experian, and he was my boss for a while, and he would talk about people’s say, do ratio, like, what’s your ratio between what you say you’re going to do and what you actually follow through on? I love that. Yeah, I do too. I’ve taken it forward, and in leading through change, you have to have an impeccably high say do ratio, right? You say you’re going to have something happen, you have to follow through on it. As an example, when we brought these four companies together, we didn’t have there wasn’t there wasn’t. Well, companies often refer to as an efficiency plate. We weren’t going to be laying people off. We were buying for companies who essentially did the same thing. And so there was a lot of duplication in skill sets and responsibilities and everything. But we were entering a market Experian was not in at all. We had zero expertise in nobody around like the core of Experian that had been here for a while could have led this effort in terms of how we serve clients and markets. And so our business cases didn’t account for reducing any staff. It actually accounted they all actually accounted for investing in it. But when you buy a company, people who were at the acquired company come in assuming that there will be a jobs eliminated, and things along those lines. And so we had about 500 people who were waiting for this to happen, making the assumption that it would happen. And I personally was saying from day one, that’s not the plan. That’s not the plan, but people don’t necessarily believe you. It takes time, right?

Steve 19:57
And they didn’t know, right? They didn’t know you yet? Michele, personally know me yet?

Michele Bodda 20:03
We didn’t. We hadn’t established trust. And so that really high say, do ratio is what establishes trust. And quite frankly, time, yeah, time.

Trish 20:13
I think too, when you’re on a leadership team that’s maybe making some of these business transformation changes you’re talking about it for months often, right? It’s you, you’ve you have the opportunity to get comfortable with it, at least to some degree, and to everyone else that like, so you’re comfortable, and then everyone else that’s like, brand new. So there’s a little bit of a balance, right there. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, have you had any instances, you know, where maybe people from different teams have come to you and like, I’m just, I’m still needing more time. I’m not quite feeling secure yet. Like, how do you handle those conversations?

Michele Bodda 20:54
I just, I don’t know that that ever goes away. I mean, this is work, right? And, look, we come to work to contribute to the world, to feed our families and live the life we want to live and earn money to be able to do that. You’re always worried about what change might bring and how that might affect you, personally, and companies, organization, the external environment, the competitive market, etc, are always evolving and always changing, and people know that. So I think as a leader, you have to give people the opportunity to say whatever it is they need to if they’re willing to do that, and if they give you the gift of doing that until they feel heard, even if it doesn’t necessarily go the way they would personally like it to if people feel like they were listened to and heard, it makes a really big difference, and that is quite a time investment on the leaders end. But quite frankly, I personally believe it’s what we’re here for. Right is to empower and enable people to bring their best self to whatever role they’re in and the aspirations that they have. It takes time you have to be willing to do it.

Steve 22:17
Michele, I think the one of the last things I wanted to maybe talk about with you today is without getting into like, some of the specifics, right? But 2024 is ending. There’s a lot going on in the world, lot going on outside of workplaces. We in our 2025 trends report, we talk a lot about mental health care giving. Employees have caregiving responsibilities outside work, many employees are struggling with those things and even their financial well being. Quite frankly, like there’s a very high number of employees struggling there for various reasons. Are there some things, whether they’re more formal, that, say, work through some of the councils or employee resource groups you may have an experience, or maybe the less formal, just things you’re working on with your leadership team, and then, you know, your teams, your broader teams, about, hey, going into 2025, here’s what we’re thinking about here, to make sure we’re creating a great environment for employees to succeed and sort of demonstrate some of that, some of that care that we’ve talked about a lot this year on this show.

Michele Bodda 23:19
Yeah, about 7000 things came to mind try and figure out how to narrow it down. Okay, the three teams that I’m responsible for at Experian all went through massive external, kind of disruptive factors in the last 12 months, 2024, especially the first few months of 2024 were, in all honesty, some of the hardest I’ve ever managed through. And so my three teams are in a space now where we’re heading into 2025 just hoping for, you know, and planning for a little bit of stability so we can just really focus on what we’re here to do and and bringing the best service we possibly can to our clients? Yeah, in terms of the broader question that you asked this, I don’t think there’s any escaping it. This is something companies have to pay attention to and invest in, and managers as continual learners, need to put personal time and investment into educating themselves about and getting better at because our team’s mental health is affected by everything that’s going around outside, whether it be environmental or or otherwise whatever, it might be I do. I do an awful lot of work with our power of you committee as as you mentioned in the intro, I lead our pride group here at Experian. I’m very active with our black professionals group and our Aspire group, which is the mental health and care good. Group and women in Experian and all of those communities have had something disruptive or worrisome or even scary taking place in the last 12 months, right whether it be political or legislative, or, you know, environmental or whatever, our Employee Resource Groups aim very much to provide a safe place of community for employees to have to voice their opinion, find out where the company stands on things, feel secure that the company has got their back and that it’s not just talk about bring your whole self to work, or that we value diversity, but what’s the action behind it?

Michele Bodda 25:50
And so I think there’s a few things that for our employees, mental health, we can do as employers, we can create a space that’s safe, that opens up literally an hour or two of like just talking and airing things out. Obviously, experience, like many employers, I don’t know if it’s obvious, but we we provide mental health services as part of the benefits package and everything for when that’s needed and when a big event happens. We make sure that we’re reminding people of that. The other thing that the employee resource groups do, I believe, at this point, for us anyway, is show that we mean more than just like it’s going to celebrate, you know, Lunar New Year, or pride, or whatever it might be, and we’re going to carry it forward with how we approach consumers and bring those voices, that diversity of voice, into how we then show up. So for example, with pride group, we were the first and only credit bureau that eliminates transgender consumers dead names from their credit report, which is a really big issue for that community, but those were voices that came in from our ERG that brought this up as a problem and something to be addressed, and it is a way for the company to show folks that we’re listening to them and carrying it forward and how we go to market. And there’s a whole bunch of examples of that with work you do with HBCUs, historically black colleges and universities, with the black community and everything else. So we it shows up in multiple ways, but those voices come in, and when people feel like they have a voice that’s being heard, then they feel safer. Yeah, right. That might have been a little bit of a long answer.

Steve 27:39
No, Michele, I appreciate you diving into that and your thoughtfulness as well as it’s encouraging you here, I often found like, you know, Experian, you think of experience like rock solid data security, very serious business, right? And some of the payroll companies we work with as well, right? And that kind of business. But yet, the level of personal, personal sort of cultural, culture touch points and how they care about their employees and their communities. It’s remarkable, right? On the one hand, your business is as serious as it gets, right when what you’re providing and the services, but on the other hand, the care and culture building and community involvement, etc, etc, that happens in these companies is remarkable. So yeah, I appreciate your your thoughtfulness there.

Michele Bodda 28:27
Thank you.

Trish 28:28
I think too, what you were describing, I’m imagining, if I’m, you know, an acquired company. What a great way to start getting involved in some of these communities with my new colleagues, right? We’re all sort of coming in either not at the same time, maybe the same time, but maybe close, close, within a couple years. And yeah, it’s a good way to bring new ideas to those communities as well, not just to the, you know, the product or the service or the end user, right, the end client. It kind of accomplishes both. And I wonder, my last question, I think, for you, would be, how do you think about managing change for yourself as a leader? Because often what we’re asked to be champions of can be something that we’re all so nervous about. Do you have any kind of tips or tricks for how you approach changes that come your way that you have to sort of assimilate into first before being a very positive champion for that.

Michele Bodda 29:28
Yeah, I I don’t know if I’m a fair example in this, because I like change. I hold myself back and let things play out the way they are for a little bit longer. It’s why I’m in the job I’m in here, why I I’ve been spending my last 10 or 12 years incubating new businesses for us, because I really, really love those initial three months of not feeling like I speak the language. Of whatever the industry is, not knowing what the acronyms stand for, who the stakeholders are, and learning all of that. So I’m not sure that I’m personally the best example, but what I would say is change we all know is inevitable. It’s you know, ambiguity and change and just the uncertain is probably the only real constant in life, and so I think as a leader, it’s our responsibility to be aware of that, to be aware of the fact that we have no visibility and no understanding of what degree of change or ambiguity our employees might be experiencing in their own personal world at any given time and have empathy and understanding that that’s part of what they’re bringing to the table, whether they’re talking about it or not. And like I said, just being willing to invest the time to get to know people and help with their connection with these acquisitions, one of the things that we had to constantly remember. And I’ve been talking to folks who do this a lot. You know when, when you get hired at a company, you get to choose, you’re choosing where you work, just as much as they’re choosing to hire you, except when your company is acquired, the only time that you’re not choosing to work for the employer that’s going to be giving you your paycheck. And from day one on after the acquisition, you’re deciding whether you want to stay there. And so, you know, finding out how to help people connect to the company that acquired the one that they chose to work for, is a really essential part of leading through that type of change.

Trish 31:48
That’s true in any any relationship, right? You have to continue to choose that relationship every day, right? So give them, give them reasons to continue to choose, right?

Michele Bodda 31:58
Yeah, exactly.

Steve 31:59
Michele, this has been super fun. And like I Trish said at the top, we’d love to have the opportunity for our listeners to get to know some of the people behind these great organizations that do such great work, and really kind of put a face and a kind of human connection to what’s happening there. So you did a wonderful job at that. Quite frankly, I’m so impressed by both you, but also what our friends at Experian have been doing, building this business, really from parts, and putting it together and now just doing remarkable things. And you can even I will encourage folks to look at our YouTube channel as well for a couple of videos I’ve done with the team and experience over a couple events over the summer, showcasing some of the tools, right, the technologies in place, I nines and the compliance library, which want to want a big award at HR tech this year. But, yeah, they did, of course. Yeah, it was exciting. But on top of that, again, just getting to know a little bit more about the brand, getting number about more about you, Michelle, and some of these important ways that you’re working with your customers, you’re working with your employees, and kind of standing out so Michele, thank you for spending some time with us today. It’s been a pleasure.

Michele Bodda 33:12
Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Steve and Trish, I appreciate it.

Steve 33:16
We’ll encourage folks to check out Experian Employer Services. We’ll put links to the websites as well as some of these videos in the show notes as well. And Michele, as we’re winding down the year, the show will post before the holiday. So I’ll leave with happy holidays and enjoy. Hopefully you’ll get a little downtime at the end of the year to relax and recharge for next year.

Michele Bodda 33:35
Happy holidays everybody.

Steve 33:37
Awesome, great stuff. Trish. I love getting to spend some time with our friends at Experian. All right, this is exciting again. We encourage folks to check out the best of the HR Happy Hour network, the 2025 Workplace Trends Report all h3hr.com. Subscribe to the show. For us, we love that. We’re heading into loads of great new plans for 2025 we’re so excited about so we’ll leave it at that. For our guest, Michele Bodda, for Trish Steed, my name is Steve Boese. Thank you so much for listening. We will see you next time, and bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai