Beginning her career path in accounting for a small up-and-coming company, Kristy saw her career grow as the business grew, “the company continued to grow the need for Human Resources services, all the basics became necessary and I sort of fell into it naturally.”
During that time, she acquired her Master’s in Business Administration, and watched her career continue to expand, “it grew from there and throughout my career I’ve progressively moved into larger, more strategic roles and found it was a natural fit for me overall and something I really enjoyed.”
“I don’t believe in traditional Human Resources”, says Kristy, “it used to be that you’d see Human Resources come in, and it’d mean someone is getting written up or being dismissed, it always has a bad connotation, and we want to change that.”
On how to change that perception, Kristy said “one of my goals is always to build a team of expert thought leaders and functional knowledge masters that can really go out there and help support anybody in the organization on any need they may have, because ultimately that’s why we exist.”
What led you to Mazzella Companies?
Believing that talent and teamwork ultimately make a business successful, Kristy Andrews left her last role at another manufacturing firm to come to Mazzella Companies after doing research in the recruitment process and finding a lot of similarities between their values and her own. “When I came and met the team, everything clicked. The leadership team here that I met with were all fantastic and I could kind of see that there was a unity that I was missing in my current role.”
How do you stay up to date on laws and regulations in Human Resources?
Kristy says that she stays up to date on the latest by reading a lot of publications, typically using a partner called Gartner, “to keep me up to speed on anything changing, any regulations being discussed, trends to benchmark, what other folks in your industry in the area and across the country are doing. I like to keep up in that way, read the articles and watch the videos.”
What is an example of an initiative you’ve spearheaded at Mazzella Companies since starting?
Explaining that her and her team are currently working on a project right now, “I can’t say that we’ve completed it, but we’re in the middle of a pretty big implementation of a system that will involve payroll, training, learning and development, and performance, providing workflows, notifications and things that happen automatically.”
Hoping to take the manual out of the Human Resource function, help move the company into the future, and support the goals of the business at all the locations is a top priority, “with over 40 locations, we want to make sure everyone is in sync and consistent and will hopefully be 100% complete by the end of 2023.”
Another initiative her team has taken on is scaling the growth Mazzella Companies has experienced over the last three years by building a framework of how they work together interdepartmentally, “right now, we’re investing in and growing those functions in order to build shared service teams that can help the business meet all of its goal as it grows.”
Kristy went on to explain that like a lot of private companies, over time, some of the fundamentals in Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology tend to fall to the wayside and have to play catch up as the company grows. “We’ve had a tremendous amount of growth and that’s translated to a lot of opportunities to bring new and engaging things to our people to help them grow and helping people grow in their career.”
Related: How Can I Advance My Career at Mazzella Companies?
What’s a time something didn’t go as planned and how did you handle it?
Sharing that in the world of Human Resources, things often don’t go according to plan, Kristy said that working on the fly with a lot of alternatives lined up and taking the time to make sure it’s right are key. “When you’re changing people’s environments or changing the way they work, we always want to be really careful and that means being flexible and understanding that to be successful is to do something right rather than fast.”
How do you manage stress?
Kristy shared that keeping life in perspective is something she practices daily, “what we all went through in the past two to three years brought a lot more to the surface in terms of how to manage stress and anxiety in our lives. I’m a huge believer in taking care of yourself, talking to people, meditating – looking to find moments for ourselves as much as we can.”
How do you stay connected with team members?
As an enthusiastic proponent of engagement, Kristy shares that you need to first understand what the engagement levels are today before you can look forward. “One of the first things we’re going to do is an engagement survey where it’s completely anonymous and every team member can answer questions on how they feel about the company, their manager, compensation, benefits, things like that, but also questions about what opportunities they’re given and if they have all the tools they need to do their job.”
She went on to share that when people feel connected to what it is they’re doing and who they’re working for, that translates into engagement, “we want to know where we start first and then look at where we can make improvements.”
In addition to taking the pulse of the company through a team member survey, Kristy is keenly focused on further promoting communication across the country, across all business units, and across all team member roles, “whether they’re on the floor or here in the office, that they’re all getting the same message all the time. Feedback loops through that process.”
In every undertaking like this, empirical evidence is key, with Kristy sharing, “it’s typically a two-to-three-year ongoing thing, and we’re measuring ourselves year over year. A lot of projects come out of that to make sure we can find ways to increase engagement and participation in those surveys because the voice of the team member is really what matters.”
What advice would you give someone looking to start a career in Human Resources?
In addition to keeping an open mind, Kristy shared that making sure to take each day as it comes without expectations will help you field inevitable curveballs. “After 25 years I still will have something come up that I’ve never seen before. And some days you have to roll up your sleeves and get tactical, in the weeds a little bit, and so you have to be a lifelong learner and be looking for opportunities to reinvent how you attack problems.”
Finding the Human Side
Kristy shared that a successful career in Human Resources really comes down to making sure to find the good in people – the human side of who we are and what we do. “In my mind, we can make sure that we’re being honest with ourselves, who we are, and be sure we’re not dismissive to those around us and their opinions they bring to the table.”
