Where do HR leaders draw inspiration from? What are their worst nightmares? How did they stand the test of the changing times? In this segment, we will trace your journey to the top. This is your story - a story that is made of extraordinary accomplishments, methods that helped you overcome adversity, innovative programs that you led, and fundamental changes that you brought in. It's your chance to inspire the next generation of leaders.

 

Avigail Dadone serves as Chief People Officer at Diligent. In an exclusive interview with HR.com, Avigail shares her journey in HR, what has been her challenges over the years, where she draws inspiration from and future trends in HR, among others.

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?

Avigail: Having the opportunity to learn from amazing HR and business leaders who have served as my role models over the years has had the most positive impact on my career to date.

I've been in HR since an internship during my junior year in college. My first job was at an energy utility company, working across both industrial and corporate settings. My time there showed me how to work in a long-standing industry with mature HR policies, practices and programs across a diverse and varied workforce.

This provided me with an incredible amount of learning and confidence when I moved on to my next opportunity. Plus, working at a nuclear power plant was pretty cool!

I joined a large technology and media company in 2009. This new role was an incredible experience where I got to learn about a new industry. Nine months in, I was lucky enough to be asked to run the People and Culture component of a large acquisition. From there, I grew into being the global HR leader for the company’s media practice and worked with the COO as head of HR for the Americas for a period of time.  
 

I like to say, I learned all-things-HR in my first role, and I learned how to apply all of that rich learning to new and dynamic situations in my next role. Through networking connections, I was honored to be asked to lead and grow an entire people function and team for the first time by Brian Stafford, Diligent’s CEO. We got to know each other well, and he has been an amazing inspirational leader. Now, I’ve been lucky enough to help scale Diligent from 300 to 2,000 employees over the past almost seven years.

My time so far has been a hallmark of how to grow a company and expand your team, product, and market via organic growth and acquisitions.

Q: What were your challenges during the early days of your career? What are those today?

 Avigail: The challenges during the early days of my career, like many, were centered around establishing credibility through expertise versus age and experience level.
Today, my challenges are also likely relatable to many. In particular, navigating a remote and highly distributed team while maintaining culture and community has been a challenge. At Diligent we faced that challenge head-on and have implemented various policies to encourage balance and engagement among our teams, such as our twice, annual mandatory company-wide week off, ‘Recharge Week’.
 

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

Avigail: Companies are challenged with hybrid work and creating community as some navigate dispersed work for the first time. Stabilizing culture starts with access to opportunities, even without seeing people in the office all the time. Looking ahead, companies are tasked with prioritizing community and being creative, to engage employees in new ways and in areas that connect to a shared purpose. Broadly, remote and hybrid work are here to stay.

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

Avigail:
1.    Be ever curious, trust your instincts to speak up and never stop asking questions.
2.    Maintain relationships with your network, put effort into nurturing relationships and keeping connections alive.
3.    Immerse yourself in the business, as an HR leader this is as important as any other HR learning track and you can never know or understand enough.  

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

Avigail: I draw inspiration from seeing leaders who have successfully navigated from one role to another, leaders who are trying new things, taking risks, and exploring roles outside of their comfort zone.

If you are struggling to find a place in the boardroom, I recommend being an advocate for the business. Have confidence and resolve in your understanding of the business, and don’t be afraid to bubble up important insights and share this information so that it can be transparent to the board.

Sharing information and expertise with your organization is the hallmark of good governance, and an important role HR plays in the boardroom. The better informed you are about the business, the better informed the board is to implement good governance practices.

Q: Where do you draw the line when it comes to work-life balance?

Avigail: For me, sustainable work practices are extremely important, but it can be a challenge to find that as a mom of a two-and-a-half year old at times! As a leader, I know that change often comes from the top.

I find balance by surrounding myself and others with a strong, supportive team. Building a team of incredible people who can rely on each other through times of need is crucial to sustainable work. Your career won’t always be intense, it should ebb and flow. Your flexibility will also ebb and flow, and being a good team member means you reciprocate during times of need.

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

Avigail: I’m proud to have built a global HR team that focuses on helping people succeed across the world. Our team creates engagement programs for our employees, including Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and our Change Agents program. The latter is an annual program identifying 'Change Agents' at Diligent, based on a combination of past performance and future potential to have a material impact on delivery of the company’s strategic plan. This program is an opportunity to recognize, enable, leverage and retain employees who are critical enablers of our strategy and role models for their peers.

I’m also very proud to have been part of creating our robust updated onboarding process for new team members. This process included creating 5-4-3-2-1 Diligent, a podcast we put together with SYPartners to help refresh the entire company on who Diligent is and what we stand for as an organization.

Q: What are some major changes you see affecting HR in the coming years?

Avigail: HR professionals will need to find new ways to create community as hybrid work continues to evolve. With this evolution, the tools and resources for hiring and developing talent will also change, and that’s very exciting. A final change I expect to see over the next few years is the evolution of employees skill sets, and how organizations evolve their hiring practices to accommodate non-traditional experience and skill sets.

 
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