Andrew Pryor is the Chief Human Resources Officer at ECI Software Solutions. Andrew joined ECI in 2015, bringing more than 35 years of HR expertise to his role of ensuring ECI employees are building strong careers and working in an engaging environment. Before joining ECI, Andrew worked at Anago, TECHNOL Medical Products, Nokia, Bell Helicopter, and Berylhealth. He also served as president of the Fort Worth SHRM Association and was named HR Executive of the Year by the Dallas HR Association. In 2018, Andrew was named Human Resources Executive of the Year by the International Business Awards. Under his leadership, ECI has been certified as a Great Place to Work from 2017 to 2025 and named one of the 50 Most Engaged Workplaces for six consecutive years.

In an exclusive interview, Pryor discusses the evolving landscape of HR, strategies for fostering employee engagement, and the importance of aligning organizational culture with business goals in a rapidly changing work environment.

Excerpts from the interview:

Q: What has your HR journey been like, and what influenced you the most to have a positive impact on your career?

Pryor: I began college wanting to be the world’s best accountant. In my junior year at university, I landed a part-time job working in the “Personnel Department” at a retail store. When we extended a job offer, I got to see the joy in the people’s faces who truly needed a job. I watched as employees were promoted and given raises. I saw how our training team helped employees to be successful and efficient in their jobs. In the back of my mind, a thought occurred...human resources (HR) has the ability to help people build stronger careers for themselves, and that helps them build better lives for their families. I was hooked!

Q: What is your biggest challenge at this moment? How do you plan to address it?

Pryor: During the global quarantine, our company moved to remote status. On any given day, 80% of our company works fully remotely. We have to ensure those who never come into an office feel just as engaged as those who do. Remote workers need to feel part of our culture, recognized and valued, and that they have the ability to celebrate others for their contributions. This requires new tools for onboarding, new ways of training, new tools for manager recognition, and new ways for remote employees to connect with others.
 

Q: How do you see workplace culture evolving over the years?

Pryor: Interesting question. My daughter just graduated from college, and one of her professors told her class they should never have an expectation of working in an office. I do not agree and feel he set those graduating seniors up for disappointment. While I support remote work, I see value, especially for new hires, those starting careers, and those changing careers to be in an office setting for mentoring.

You learn the art of workplace dynamics (office politics) by watching more senior colleagues navigate difficult situations and by having water-cooler conversations. Those are missed when you are 100% remote. I predict more tools for remote mentoring, greater access to employee development, and a much larger focus on connections with distant co-workers.

I also feel we, HR, can do a better job of preparing our leaders to manage remote colleagues. The software industry lends itself to remote work, so for ECI, I do not predict a return to office policy in our future, but we have to plan better for remote leadership.

Q: Can you share the top three learnings from the challenges you faced?

Pryor:
1. I was blessed to work for Nokia for 10 years, from a start-up in the United States to a manufacturing center with over 5,000 employees. At Nokia, our core values were king. We never made any decisions that were not vetted against our core values. I quickly learned that HR had to be the passionate owner, defender, and trainer of those Core Values to keep our culture strong.

I also learned core values have to be short and memorable, consisting of no more than four short statements that employees and leaders can remember. Core values that are too wordy, verbose, and grand are quickly forgotten as “MBA Speak.”

At ECI, our core values are: Crave Greatness (Innovation), Own the Outcome (Accountability), Deliver Awesome (Performance), and Embrace Community (Harmony). Every program we establish in HR has to support one of the core values. If it does not, we stop. We are a highly acquisitive company, so new hires from acquisitions and new hires through our talent acquisition recruitment team all have to go through training on our core values and fully understand the programs that support each.

2. If you want employees to be engaged in your business, allow them to participate in a bonus or gainshare program. You need to set goals and publish them on a poster every year. Leaders need to give updates in public Town Hall Meetings on how we are trending toward our goals. Employees must know how their actions impact the goals, and new hires need to be trained on how their jobs fit into a bonus structure. At ECI, 100% of our employees participate in a variable plan, and our most recent engagement survey indicates that 89% of employees understand how their individual actions impact the company goals.

3. Culture is a triangle. At the top is the mission statement– it is why you do what you do (the heart of an organization). The bottom right is the core values – how you treat each other and how you treat your customers (the working hands of an organization). On the bottom left side sits the company goals – how you define a successful business (the financial targets of an organization). You cannot have a culture without including the finances – a company has a responsibility to be an asset and not a liability to its investors. Without financial success, you do not get to do all the other fun stuff.

Q: Where do you draw inspiration from? What do you say to those struggling to find a place in the boardroom?

Pryor: My best days, favorite days, are those when we promote someone internally. I draw encouragement from the knowledge that our training tools help to better prepare employees for internal promotions. We not only post every job internally, but we actually publish a bi-weekly newsletter called “Career Connections,” where we share open roles and encourage employees to apply for internal opportunities. Nothing is better than seeing an employee get an offer letter for a promotion – a new job, new opportunities, and additional money to build a better life for their families.

For those HR professionals who do not feel like they have a seat at the table, I would challenge them to ensure they have a partnership with the CEO. If you do not, leave. Your company culture, no matter how hard you try, will not thrive if the CEO is not supportive of your programs. I am blessed, truly blessed, to work for a CEO who understands the culture at ECI is a reflection of himself. He sets the tone for everything. His behavior becomes the behavior of all leaders, and he understands great leadership cascades throughout our organization.

If you do not have an engaged CEO, how do you make an impact? Show the CEO the value you bring in three key areas of culture, including HR’s alignment with the mission statement, HR’s passionate ownership of the core values, and HR’s ownership in the creation of corporate goals. Consider communications around those goals, training employees so they are aligned with the goals, and taking the lead when it comes to the process of giving employees updates so they know if their actions are making a difference.

Q: How do you draw the line to achieve work-life balance?

Pryor: This is an area where I would not call myself a role model. I think some roles are just bigger and require more time, especially if there is an international component. Prior to my children being born, I worked for Nokia and had a huge global team of 70,000 employees. I was on-call 24/7 because our manufacturing plant ran 24/7. After my children were born, I made the difficult decision to move to a local company and achieve a sense of equilibrium in my life. Over the next 8 years, I took one business trip a year, allowing me to be a dad and be a part of their lives. As the kids aged, they did not need their dad as much. When they entered high school, I moved back to an international company, where you truly are required to put in more hours due to time zone constraints.

On a personal level, I have found the cell phone is not a great tool for work-life balance. It is too easy to check in and then get sucked into an email exchange—all the time, your spouse is staring at you across the table. I have had to train myself to ignore my phone and put it away between the hours of 6:00 and 9:00 PM. That time belongs to my family. After 9:00 PM, I check in with our offices as the day closes on the West Coast and opens in Australia. Early mornings (prior to 8:00 AM) are dedicated to the offices in Europe. Everything has a compartment.

The best advice I can give is to hire good people, give them ownership of key areas of the business and then get out of their way. If you allow people to take some ownership, they should only need you for key strategy guidance and tiebreakers.

Q: What fundamental change(s) (in terms of culture) have you brought into your company?

Pryor: I think the most powerful tool I have implemented is our reward and recognition system, HIGH5. Every employee in our company is given $10 per month to recognize their co-workers for the contributions they are making to our business. Each recognition is then tied to our mission statement, core values or corporate goals, and in 2024, our employees recognized each other over 100,000 times.

In fact, 89% of our employees recognize their peers every month, and 73% of our employees receive at least one recognition each month, with the average employee being recognized 2.3 times. The program has been especially crucial with our remote workforce. Those employees who are fully remote still have the ability to recognize their peers and to be recognized – which sends the message, “I see your work and it is valued. You are valued. Thank you!”

Q: What are the major trends you see affecting HR in the next few years?

Pryor: As stated earlier, I think none of us can predict the future of remote vs. in-office work, but HR has to be on the leading edge of having the necessary tools to recruit, develop, engage, and retain a remote workforce.

 
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