HR’s Crucial Role of Cultivating a Strong and Enduring Company Culture With Kirstie Eustace

SPEAKERS

Kirstie Eustace, Douglas Heikkinen

 

Douglas Heikkinen  00:03

This is Advisorpedia's Power Your Advice podcast and I'm Doug Heikkinen. We're joined by Kirstie Eustace, the Chief Human Resource Officer at Steward Partners Global Advisory. Steward Partners is an employee owned full service partnership that caters to family, institutional, and multi generational investors. Welcome.

 

Kirstie Eustace  00:28

Thank you very much, Doug.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  00:30

You've been a human resource professional in the UK and the US. How would you describe the job today, and why it's essential.

 

Kirstie Eustace  00:40

The role of Human Resources has evolved tremendously in the past couple of decades. And we've moved so much further from where we traditionally would have thought about human resources. And it's sort of core tenants of you know, how you pay people, how you hire people, how you train people, and moved a lot further down the line of real strategic partners and how we think about organizations have run holistically, the way that we think about how a leadership team comes together, how they work together, and critically, how culture is a central focus of organizations. And I think Human Resources has become the standard bearer for culture. And it's become something certainly from my perspective at steward partners, that's something I've really embraced and tried to champion. So I would say that evolution has really shifted this profession, you know, to my gratification, much more from sort of, you know, that very responsive, reactive type of tactical processes and procedures to much more strategic and forward looking.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  01:42

So why steward partners? When they approached you be to become their leader in this area, what did you observe about the firm that said, yeah, I'm going to do this.

 

Kirstie Eustace  01:52

I love that question. Because it's something that I have the ability to talk about with people who are considering steward partners as a place to take their career, and really watched your partners represented to me joining was a chance to take a bet on myself, it was a chance to take everything that I learned in my career, up through that point, and put it into practice, and actually rely on the skills taught the tools, knowledge, resources that they had built, and actually put that into real play in somewhere that I could meaningfully make an impact and make a difference, have a voice, set direction, make my own decisions. And that has been the most rewarding part of the experience here at Steward Partners,

 

Douglas Heikkinen  02:35

Often the package and the wrapping isn't exactly what you get when you come here and open it. Has that come to fruition? Is it? Did you get what you thought you'd get?

 

Kirstie Eustace  02:46

I got exactly what I thought I would get actually. The thing that Jim and Hy did a really, really good job of was explaining exactly who Steward Partners was exactly, who Steward Partners wasn't, where we were, where we were going. And I have to say that I got exactly what I was expecting. And something that I just even this morning, having a conversation with an individual who hasn't been in the organization particularly long is that that now stands true even today. So I've been with the firm six years. So even people that we're bringing in today, they said, You know what Kirstie, everything that I heard, as I was thinking about joining, and I was considering Steward Partners, everything's come true. Everything that you said would be or everything that people who I spoke to, along my journey said would be is what it is, I've yet to find the sort of the shoe dropping. And that's been a consistent experience for a lot of people. So for me, knowing exactly what you're getting into, and being able to paint that picture very, very clearly for people considering it's been really, really important because I want people to know who we are, who we're not and what the opportunities are here.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  03:59

And the job in six, just six years has changed. Now you're 550 people, you have advisors everywhere, you have a management team, you have a board. So what exactly is the job now?

 

Kirstie Eustace  04:12

My job?

 

Douglas Heikkinen  04:13

Yeah.

 

Kirstie Eustace  04:14

So I was HR department of one when I joined. So I would do everything from the very first headcount report that was ever run at the firm, I would do that. I would do offer letters for interns, I would onboard them and key them onto the system answered benefit questions. And then on the other side of things, I would work with our board of directors and the compensation committee and sort of set policy and things. So it really was something that I would go back to friends and former colleagues and say, I can't believe what I'm doing each day. And it really spread that range from I'm writing offer letters for interns, and I'm talking to Janet Robinson.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  04:49

Who's fantastic.

 

Kirstie Eustace  04:50

She's phenomenal. So, you know, the the job has changed tremendously as well for myself because, you know, as we we have had the opportunity, many of us when we joined the organization early on, we put our hands on most things and we mourn wore multiple hats unnecessarily, we have evolved beyond that, and allow sort of specialties and focus to come through which is critical, we have to make sure that we are bringing in a broad range of talent, resources and experience in order to help this firm go where it needs to go. So a lot of the work that I do now is less on this sort of foundation. I have a great team that really helps with that, but more sort of how do we how do we look forward? How do we position the firm going forward? What is the next thing that we need to be be prepared for? How do we how do we resource for that? How do we manage talent.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  05:38

So culture is incredibly important to a firm that spans the country? How does the management team ensure that transcends through everyone, and it's not just a word?

 

Kirstie Eustace  05:53

It is, it's something that we hold very dear to our hearts, because it makes us special, it sets us apart, it really is a differentiator. And you hear this said so often, and it's so difficult not to become a little cynical with hearing that. And to some degree, you have to see it to believe it. There was a great meeting that I facilitated a few months ago, we bought a group of our management team together and the list in this group of individuals spanned tenure from six weeks to six years. And we did a whole session around culture. And I sort of split them up into different groups, depending on how long they've been here. And the six week group, as well as the six year groups had exactly the same things. In terms of who we are what we're about. That was deeply gratifying, because what that tells me is not only do we keep our culture strong from sort of the very core from the beginning, it's, it's coming through all the way to the people that are here. So one of the things that we find, particularly important through our management team, which is a very new team, I think about management as being really anybody at the firm that doesn't act as US financial advisor, or a South support member of this their team. And so that varies anybody from finance to compliance to technology. And what we sort of instituted is a feedback process that is centered and anchored around what we believe our core values to be at the firm. So that we can really continue to embody what it means to be a steward partner, so people can be able to access feedback and set guidance and direction about what does it mean to show up as a partner, we want the experience for everybody to be anytime that you interact with somebody for the first time, you should know what to expect from them, because you know that they embody the values of the firm.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  07:44

So the founders had a culture, there was a culture when you were here six years ago. Can culture evolve to a better place than where it started?

 

Kirstie Eustace  07:53

I do believe it can, I do believe it can. And we were very fortunate to have a very powerful Foundation, our culture was anchored to centered on this concept of partnership with ownership. And those are two incredibly important characteristics that follow through to this day. So that stayed core, along with some of the values, but we've evolved through those as well, we've evolved on our understanding about what does it mean when we think about excellence? What does it mean, when we think about respect or accountability? How does that look now that we are 500 plus strong versus when we were 150. So I do believe culture can evolve. And fortunately, we are very, very much anchored to what sort of founded us and where we are grounded to which is this concept of partnership and ownership.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  08:46

Talk to me about the future of the firm? What are the things that you are paying attention to? What are the things you're excited about, what maybe some worries you have?

 

Kirstie Eustace  08:56

So culture, let's stay on that topic for a moment. The most important thing is preserving that and the most important thing is making sure that anybody who comes in six months or six years time, has a similar understanding of those who came in the six to 10 years sort of prior to that. So it's really, really important that we preserve this and we can only do that by continuing to articulate it talk about it. We did a great thing at this conference here today we showed a great video about who we sort of are as a firm and I joke about you know, in the early days this is what you would expect to see from you know the leadership and what have you and actually was nice still shots of exactly those things playing out. So culture is something is when I say it's a concern, I'm not concerned about it, but it's something for us to remain remain truly very focused on. The you know, where are we going is continued growth and the need for the firm to be able to scale is critical. We have built a really, really important infrastructure. And we need to be able to scale that now to make sure that we can stay sort of in touch. And in line with the evolving business models of the firm, we continue to, you know, think about new ways in which to bring advisors in. And we have to respond differently. So making sure that this organization stays nimble, which is something that we have always been. But when you get bigger, necessarily, you have to have more rigor, and some processes and procedures that you may have been able to get away with in the prior years. So that's something that we have to make sure that we can, you know, hurry up, not slow down. And I have a group of phenomenal colleagues who are very focused on that they are very tuned into the need to be efficient. We're a  partnership, every dollar that any of us spend is $1, or potentially away from the partnership and every dollar that we make as $1 back to the partnership, so we think about that very, very carefully.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  11:01

Thinking about your job now, and what it was when you were doing everything, are you having a good time?

 

Kirstie Eustace  11:06

Oh, I love it. I genuinely have never had more fun. It is, it's been a career opportunity that I can't explain just how gratifying it's been. Muscles that I either didn't know I had or atrophied in, in sort of previous iterations of my career I've realized are there and strong and ready. The the ability to learn the willingness of those around me to try something new, to take a chance, to be creative, to say, Hey, listen, we believe in you. You make that decision, you know, we got you we got your back you, you know what's best for the firm go for it is a really, really exciting place to be as a professional, particularly when you are in the seat that I am as Chief Human Resources Officer, it's important to be able to show that that's possible for everybody in the firm. So you know, that's why I'm wearing sneakers with rhinestones on today because I wanted to show that it's perfectly okay. When you're in Vegas and you've got to walk three miles from your hotel room to your conference suite. It's perfectly okay to be in flat shoes. But so so it's important to make sure that people see that we're we're real. We're very human, and we've already accessible and I've never had a more gratifying and fun time and it career.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  12:29

Kirstie has been delightful. Thank you so much for joining us.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  12:33

My pleasure. Thank you.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  12:34

To learn more about Steward Partners, please visit steward partners.com Please follow us for timely updates on X, LinkedIn and Facebook all Advisorpedia. For everyone at Advisorpedia, our producer Julia Smollen, our engineer Tory Miller and the Power Your Advice podcast team. This is Doug Heikkinen.