Meet Alex Genetti is the Head of People at Enable, a venture-backed ($156M) SaaS solution for B2B rebate management that's growing at a rapid pace (with almost 550 employees across 5 countries and counting). Alex has extensive experience in managing every facet of the employee lifecycle, including designing and implementing employee onboarding programs, benefits and total compensation management, policy development, payroll management, HRIS configuration and employee relations.
As Head of People at Enable, she spearheads all things people-related including development, engagement, benefits, and HR administration matters. Prior to Enable, Alex comes from the mental health space, where she was People Operations at Two Chairs. Prior to Two Chairs, she held the same role at Scout RFP (acquired by Workday) and Livongo.
Q: Tell us a bit about your background in the HR space and your current role.
I’ve been lucky enough to work for some amazing HR leaders throughout the last decade, through every stage of company growth. I’ve been employee #29, and employee #26557. My sweet spot is that 50 – 2000 employee space where everything is constantly being rebuilt to account for hyper growth and unexpected ‘start-up’ challenges. My current role as Head of People at Enable encompasses each piece of the employee life cycle. My teams manage onboarding/offboarding, compensation and benefits, performance management, employee recognition and belonging, to name a few of our programs, as well as anything that has to do with someone’s physical office experience. It’s my job to make sure the employee journey at Enable is excellent, while helping the business to build our organization for the future.
Q: If you have to use three words to describe the role of a Head of People in a company, what would those be?
“The Core Element”, “The Human Element”, “The People Heartbeat”.
Q: How are you helping to create a company culture and an employee experience across four offices globally?
Two (not-so-secret) weapons: An aligned Executive team, and an aligned People Business Partnership team.
With different languages, cultures, and labor law, it’s impossible to make each experience the exact same. But the way we show up, what we get excited about, how we honor and reward our people can all be applied through the same shared languages. Enable’s executive team is very tight knit – we make 10 minutes for each other every day, even with 560 employees – we are always in lock step with each other to ensure we’re talking about the same concepts, cascading the right information, and applying our policy and goals consistently across each region. The People Business Partners are all embedded locally and are responsible for having their fingers on the pulse of each of their business units in the same way an Executive is. By being intentional from the top (Exec team) and intentional from the bottom (People Business Partners) our office locations are taken care of in a 360 degree manner.
Q: Have you had any obstacles in your role and how did you overcome them?
Oh, tons. Sometimes our roles in People functions can become really personal. We handle terminations, sensitive employee issues, and have loads of tough conversations. Being able to separate my own emotions and stay as objective as possible in any scenario was a hard skill for me to learn. Over the last 10 years, I’ve gathered that if I’ve built the right programs and put the right policies in place, it’s much easier to remain an objective contributor and do my job without taking it home with me every day.
Q: What's your advice to someone starting out in the HR field?
Do absolutely everything you can to become the expert in either your function or theirs. If you’re a Sales HRBP – take some sales classes. If you’re a benefits administrator, sign up for every political and legal newsletter you can. Becoming the expert in your domain will build trust with your stakeholders and help you organically build a reputation of solid support, which is what HR is all about.
Q: Who is your role model? And why?
I have so many – there are so many great female leaders in the Tech space I look up to. Specifically, Patty McCord’s work at Netflix really inspires me. And, personally, Ashley Goldsmith at Workday really showed me what it means to be a great People leader.
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