Melanie Najaro

What, what's really important to keep in mind is that, HR can't function in a silo, right?  it is so important that,  all of these things, whether it be diversity, equity, inclusion, pay equity,  how we recruit, there has to be company-wide support for it. There has to be company-wide alignment. If, if only one person is pushing for these things or one team is pushing for these things, they won't work.  and so, so to to your point,  like it, it, it is really important to think about what is the culture that you have, are there misalignments? And if so, how do you get to a place of, of alignment?

Nasser Oudjidane

Hello and welcome to our series of Scaling Stories, a discussion with people, leaders about their lessons building teams at some of the world's fastest growing companies. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Melanie Naranjo, the VP of People at Ethena. Melanie, a huge welcome and thank you for joining us.Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? 

Melanie Najaro

Yes, absolutely. So as you said, my name is Melanie. I've been with Ethena for about a year now.  a little bit on me,  is I've been in HR my whole life and by choice, which is always,  a fun,  thing to be able to brag about cuz I do know that many people,  just fall into hr.But I chose this, I really chose this path all. 

Nasser Oudjidane

And could you share a little bit more about Ethena and its mission and its vision? . 

Melanie Najaro

Yeah, absolutely.  so funny story,  that I tell people and they really don't believe me. They think I'm making it up as a marketing ploy, but it's the truth. I literally joined my company because of our harassment prevention trading, which just so happens to be the product that we put out.so Ethena,  really in a nutshell, our goal is to create more inclusive and ethical workplaces. And the way that we do that is through inclusive, ethical,  compliance trainings that actually work. So we have trainings for harassment prevention, for,   for, for,  inclusive hiring and managing d e I.and the approach is just really exciting. You know, I think typically when people think of a harassment prevention training, they're thinking of something that looks like it was, you know, recorded in the eighties.  the examples really aren't relevant, or the examples are just so egregious that it doesn't actually address the,  issues that you're facing on a day-to-day basis, whether it be a microaggression or something where you're like, was that over the line?I don't know. Should I say something? Should I not? And so Ifda really tackles those issues head on. We're not just focused on what is the bare minimum of the law, but really focusing on what, what do we need to know to really create the kind of culture in the workplace that we want to have? And also, it does not hurt that we do this with, you know, comic strips, videos, lots of jokes, which,  when people think about like jokes, harassment prevention, training, those don't seem like they go well together, but,  we find a way, I promise it's appropriate and it sticks with you.and it's just, it's, it's. It's genuinely such a great training people,  typically,  keep talking about it. And again, I literally joined the company because of how good our training was. So,  that, that's Ethena. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Kudos to your content creation team to make it so engaging and funny. 

Melanie Najaro‍

Absolutely, and can I just give a shout out?

I think part of the key there,  which is an area where I think a lot of people fall short, is the creators that we,  hire both internally and externally for the materials. They re represent a diverse set of people, and so we're able to really better understand the material and then, you know, better understand this joke is appropriate.his joke is not appropriate.  so yeah, it's, it's, it's,  it's, it's pretty cool. I can't stop bragging about it, so I will give you, I will give you the mic. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, let's,  let's circle back and actually perhaps intersect two of the themes that we've, we've actually just fallen upon.So you said that you didn't fall into hr. Yeah.  and we spoke briefly about diversity. What is it about your background? Do you have any lessons that you think,  that you've learned that has influenced your approach to ar  

Melanie Najaro‍

hr? Yeah. Okay. So that's an interesting one. I guess I'll go back and sort of,  introduce myself more explicit or more,  in depth here, because Yeah, if you just look at my background in my resume, you know, I think I follow a pretty typical trajectory, which is went to.Did an internship in hr, then did a job in hr, and now I'm in the career field of hr.  but what that story doesn't tell is all the stuff that happened behind the scenes and that you can't see on my LinkedIn profile on my, on my resume, which is, you know, I come from a low socioeconomic background.  neither of my parents was born in America.English is not their first language, and I'm the first person in my family to graduate from college. Enter the corporate workforce.  and with that, what, what happens is there's some, there's some fascinating sort of things that take place because, you know, the only reason that I was able to get into the college that I got into was because I was fortunate enough to,  get into a program,  seeds,  seeds, access for anyone who wants to look it up.a program that's really focused on,  ending the cycle of poverty and helping,  students from low socioeconomic back. Get access to higher level education that will then open up doors to other opportunities to them, right? So,  so I got into that program, which helped me get into a good college, which also helps me get a good internship, which then had a ripple effect of setting the stage for my career, right?None of that happens if I didn't get into that program, right? Or it might've been 10 times harder for me to make this happen if I hadn't gotten into that program. So, when I think about d ei and I think about myself, and I think about, you know, some of the stories that I take over is, one, you really can only know so much from someone's jumped script, or sorry, from someone's,  from someone's resume, right?The resume doesn't tell the whole story, it just tells, you know, the surface level inform. . And it also doesn't tell you some of the challenges that people have had to overcome or some of the challenges that you may be putting into place for people who are trying to apply for jobs or who have just joined your company, but maybe don't know the norms because you don't realize that they're literally the first person in their family to enter the corporate workforce and they just don't know best practices, norms, how to get ahead, how to advocate for themselves.I could go on and on, but let me pause so that I don't talk for an hour.  cause cause I know we had a pretty interesting discussion about, you know, some of the nuances here. I I wanna give you a chance to, you know, follow up or add your own thoughts.

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, thanks. I mean, how, how do you see transferrable skills, 

Melanie Najaro

Specifically transferrable skills in the sense of like in, in the sense of like my experience and how I apply them in my role in hr.

Nasser Oudjidane

Yes. And assessing candidates that potentially could be a good fit, but follow a non-traditional path into these or may not because they are excluded from actually being hired. 

Melanie Najaro

Got it. Okay. So I'll answer the first one,  pretty briefly,  which is, you know, I think it's always great when you have people on a team who are coming from a di diverse set of life experiences, backgrounds, you know, thinking preferences, because then they can better anticipate the different roadblocks that you may or may not be inadvertently building up for some people.And so that then takes me into following up on your second question, which is, you know, transferrable skills. You know, we had an interesting conversation about the fact. You know, sometimes people,  basically get weeded out of the running for things that truly aren't,  aren't top priority or just shouldn't be blockers.So an example of this, they always see, they always really frustrates me, is, you know, on a job description when it requires a bachelor's degree.  and you know, sometimes I'll ask the hiring manager, you know, why did you put that there? And they say, oh, I don't know. I just copied a template from another job description.That's what it had, , right? And so then you ask, okay, but do you actually need a bachelor's degree to do this job? Well, no. Okay, so let's remove that.  and by the way, like when I say this, I'm like being a little bit like facetious, but I also wanna have empathy, right? For,  the hiring managers who maybe don't have the right support and resources and understanding to realize that like, ooh, that little thing that you did that you didn't realize was a big blocker.It is, right. But like, again, like my point here is. . I'm not upset with these hiring managers. I don't think anyone should be. I think we should all have empathy for the fact that, you know, someone might not know. And so it's, it's everyone else's responsibility to say something if they see something and they know something. but in terms of transferrable skills, you know, that's another one that can come up when you're working with hiring managers, especially if you're working with a group who doesn't have,  representation from, you know,  a background that might then have this information. So, more specific example is, you know,  sometimes,  let, let me reframe it this way.I don't know if you all are aware listeners,  but,  there, there was for a time,  a trend that was going viral on LinkedIn, which was,  basically that. It was show, it was highlighting the fact that people are embarrassed to put their retail experience on their resumes as well, on as on their LinkedIn.And so there are people who have 10 years of experience that you will never see because they just don't put it there because they think it makes them look bad. And I wanna have all the empathy in the world for them because the reality is people have sent them the message that retail experience isn't as valued, isn't what we're looking for.Because when you look at most job descriptions, right? They don't say, Hey, applicable skills, you know, valued. They don't say, Hey, you know, retail experience also valued here. Right? But the reality is, if you're applying for a sales role, if you're applying for a customer success role, even if you're applying for an HR role, there are absolutely transferrable skills that come from, you know, years in the retail world, right?Customer service, having to quickly solve problems on the spot, having to demonstrate empathy, having to,  be adaptable and flexible in the workplace, right? There are tons of transferrable skills that people don't realize are transferrable skills from either side, right? So whether it's a hiring manager who doesn't think to explicitly put that on the job description and value that in the resumes that they're looking at.Or whether it be somewhere on the other side who maybe doesn't have a college degree, who maybe has never worked in the corporate world, but wants to get a foot in the door, but they're not seeing any signals to indicate to them that their val their work has been valued. And so, yeah, it's, it's this interesting thing where there are so many transferrable skill sets, but because,  for so long there has been a lack of,  diverse representation in the corporate workforce in particular.When you get to the leadership level, people don't talk about these things. People don't make these things,  the norm. In fact, they make the reverse the norm, which is, oh, we're only going to look at experience. That reflects the experience that I think about when I think of what success looks like. So as you can imagine, you know, bias leads to bias.Leads to bias, right.

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. It's, it's fascinating as like the, the retail experience that you just referenced,  also can actually exhibit,  Positive,  inclinations towards hiring people that show conscientiousness and have developed soft skills,  during that experience, which is often overlooked as well, because you, you took a job and you've left your ego at the door and you are performing a role providing for you or your family and will work hard.And excluding that actually is also detriment to, to actually who you are as, as a, as a, as a person. And, and, and, yeah. As, as, as a reflection of your character, you've mentioned diversity.  how have you implemented d and i practices into your recruiting strategy? What, what tips or could you share with our audience about that?

Melanie Najaro

Yeah, so it's funny because I, the one thing I always like to start with is dei, in my opinion.  diversity, equity, and inclusion.  I don't think should ever be looked at,  as a, in a silo. So I know a lot of times there's sort of this idea that like, oh, you know, like we're gonna have a D e I initiative, and like, oh, like these are our d EI goals, and we only talk about those things when we're talking about, you know, d ei Or like, oh, no, right now we're talking about performance reviews later we're talking about d ei and not really acknowledging or understanding the.No, no. D e i in order for it to be effective has to be,  woven into every piece of everything you do from recruiting to performance reviews, to comp philosophy, to,  growth structure at the role and at the company, right? D EI is really woven into everything, and so I'm very happy to talk about how we weave d e i into our recruitment process and also just wanna make it clear that.The recruitment all process was always gonna have d ei, right? Because a, an effective recruitment process must be inclusive and equitable and think about diversity.  and so some of the things that we've done to make it effective,  recruitment process, which is diverse, equitable, and inclusive is,  is one on the job description.We proactively acknowledge that we have an understanding of the fact that,  people typically from marginalized communities, weed themselves out of the running.  for anyone who's not familiar with this,  you know, there are stats that show that, for example,  men will apply to roles even when they.Know that they only have 60% of the qualifications that the job description is asking for, whereas women typically won't apply unless they have at least 90% or a hundred percent of the qualifications.  the same is true for,  people of marginalized communities. Whether you wanna think about people from people of color, people from los socioeconomic backgrounds, people with retail experience, right?They're looking,  at every single thing that they don't have, instead of focusing on the things that they do have, and they. Not applying to those jobs because it feels to them like there's no point. Right? And again, I wanna have all the empathy in the world. I have a classic example of this. I actually almost tried to disqualify, disqualify myself from the running of the job that I'm in today. And the reason why is because the job description listed one more year of experience required than what I had at the time. And so when the recruiter reached out, I actually said, oh no, I don't meet the requirement. I don't think it's gonna work. . And so, but like I just thought like, oh, you said it was a requirement.Like I really believed it was a requirement. And as someone, again, with my background who doesn't have. , you know, who didn't grow up with people in the corporate world to tell me, you know, hey, those are just like suggestions or a wishlist. That's not an actual requirement. Those are things that I just didn't know.And so in our job description,  we actually say, Hey, we, one, we're very clear about what's a requirement and what is not.  and so typically we will actually have a label that says Requirement We'll, what makes a great candidate, right?  and what you would do in the role and just changing those headers makes such a difference.additionally, we actually also have, at the end of the job descriptions, we actually say, Hey, if you're excited about this role, but you're not sure that you meet, a hundred percent of the requirements apply anyway, give us both a chance to find out, and then we link to an article that talks about the fact that people from marginalized communities typically weed themselves out and lose out on PO opportunities.just to show that like we are aware that this is a thing.  and then we also do other things, right? Like, for example,   we have all of our salaries listed on our job descriptions, and we did that, you know, long before the New York law went into effect.  in the recruitment process, we are proactively talking about compensation because we know that people are nervous to ask about it.So it's just a lot of different things. We, we ask people's pronouns, we ask their name, pronunciation, just every step of the process we are thinking about. , what are the different identities that could be part of this,  process and how can we be as inclusive as possible to them? 

Nasser Oudjidane

‍Great. And on, in inclusivity, how are you making sure that people are actually seen within the business?So what I mean by that is things that you've done to support and empower the various identities within your company without being performative. 

Melanie Najaro

Yeah, that's such a fascinating question.  because it's really easy to be performative, right? And I, and, and I don't think people do it on purpose again. Like I really, I really do always approach with like assume good intent all the world.

But I think it's really easy to say, okay,  I don't know, it's Black History Month. I better say something about caring, about black history. , and then you don't actually do anything, right? You don't actually,  positively contribute to the community. The makeup of your company doesn't actually reflect the fact that you, you know, are, that you stand by the black community, right?

And so the key to not being performative is to actually do things that better the com that, that, that,  that contribute to the community, not just saying that you care about the community, right? So it's,  the opposite of all talk. No action. I'd love to give some specifics so that people know what, what actions they could take.

 and so some of the things that we do, again, is just like weaving it into every aspect of everything that you do. So as an example,  at Ethena, anytime, you know,  you know, we, we are celebrating a month,  heritage month, for example. We are also making sure that we do something that positively contributes.

So an example of that could be,  organizing a volunteer activity in support of that community.  sometimes what we'll do is we'll give out prizes and they'll be prizes that are owned by companies run by. Veterans. We recently did it for Hispanic Heritage Month, so Hispanic owned businesses.  other things you can do is actually spreading education and giving,  more of a voice and a platform to the people in your workforce who represent those communities, right?

Because part of it isn't just, you know, out in this distant world where that community exists, right? Ideally, the community exists in your own company. And so what are you doing for those people within your own company, right? Maybe you do a q and a where you learn more about the community. Maybe you,  maybe you,  talk more about like, hey, you ask more questions.

Like what are, what if the needs you, you build in a mentorship program? There are lots of things that you could be doing.  and one of my favorites actually is,  I actually don't like to wait for a specific heritage month to think about diversity and equity and inclusion.  I like to be thinking about it always.

And, and so one of the things that you can do is literally, like if you're thinking about. Growth at your company, making sure that people understand how to advocate for themselves and not assuming that everyone knows best practices for managing that, best practices, for asking for a promotion. I actually have a pretty,  I have a, what I think is quite a funny, definitely memorable anecdote here.

 but I can pause if I'm like going on a different tangent. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Oh, no. Please continue. 

Melanie Najaro‍

Please share it. I, I, this is like one moment that really stuck with me. It happened several years ago, but I truly will never forget, and it has impacted the way that I approach training at companies now, which is I was talking to a manager who will remain unnamed, who basically,  explained to me that if someone on their team doesn't,  doesn't chase after a promotion, doesn't sort of like push for it and push for it and say, I want this promotion and here's what I'm gonna do to get it.They will not give that person a promotion ever, because to them that implies that they don't have initiative and that,  you know, they're, they're not ready for a promotion because I could be ready for a promotion. They don't show initiative. And also, like, even hungry for the role. And I remember feeling just so personally attacked by that statement.And the reason why was,  that, you know, based on how you were raised and the community that you grew up in, you may have been told your whole life that the best way to get a promotion is to keep your head down and do a good job. And if it's good enough, right? And if he pushed too hard, you'll, you'll see that make sense, right?It could also just be that you've never been in the workforce, but in the corporate world before and you don't know that these are the expectations. And so the way that that ended up. The way that I teach my training is that I just always,  really leaning towards replace assumptions with expectation setting.If you're going to teach about how to roll in your, you're gonna teach about how to don't start the training assuming that there's always a, there's already a baseline understanding start from scratch. Cause you dunno what biases someone's bringing to the table. You dunno what life experiences someone might be bringing to the table.You don't even know if someone,  might from a different, from a different company where their company culture has different expectations around what is seen as high performance. Right. And so in everything that I do, I'm always really leaning towards the best way to level the playing field is to just set expectations.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

the next part that I'd love to discuss with you are some of the practices and beliefs that you employ to ensure pay equity. So you touched upon growth and I think to some extent there are interlinked, but what are your philosophies around that and perhaps what have you employed to see that that has worked and perhaps not?

Melanie Najaro‍

Yeah, so with pay equity, it's such a funny one because this is such a hot topic right now. Right. In particular because, you know, California's law is going to go into effect. I think Jan, January 1st, new York's law,  on pay transparency just went into effect November 1st. So you're seeing a lot of companies really scrambling to figure this out, to comply with the law.and certainly I imagine that, you know, mistakes are gonna be made and people are gonna change them along the way. People are gonna learn,  smart lessons.  but for us at Ethena, it was really important for us to do this even before the law,  forced us to go transparent with our pay. And, and I promise that ties all into pay equity.So it was really important for us to go public with pay transparency and really share our,  salary bans on our job descriptions, because we do believe that, you know, , one of the biggest,  contributors, contributors to pay gaps is simply the fact that there's a lack of knowledge, right? And so if someone is being given a lower salary, and traditionally this tends to be women in particular, women of color,  if someone is starting at a lower salary point, they don't know, they might not know to ask for more, they might not know that they're being underpaid.They might not know that,  this is not a salary worth applying for, right?  based on what it is that they want to achieve in their lives anyway.  and so, For us, given that our entire mission as a company and behind our product is to build ethical and inclusive workplaces, one of the things that we absolutely wanted to do was get ahead of the pay equity game.And so, going public with our salary bands was what we wanted to aim for. The reason that I say that isn't because that's the only thing we did, but rather because all of the steps that you have to put into place to get to a place where you can publicly list your salary bands, where not only external people but your own employees can see that information, right?The things you have to do to get to that place force you to get into a place of good pay equity. So what does that look like for us? one.  we created a clear comp philosophy and we shared it with the entire company, right? So I'm not telling one person, one thing and another person another thing. We don't have one manager on one team advocating for one thing and another advocating for another.We have one unified company policy that everyone knows about, right? We have educated our team on how salary bands work, on how growth works, so that if someone has a question around their salary, they can just look at the information and have that discussion with their manager, not have a sense of. Am I being paid enough?What is the salary band? Am I on the bottom of the band? Am I on the top of the band? What would it take to get to the top of the band? Right? We have already equipped our employees with all of that information so that they can both advocate for themselves, but also have a clear understanding of where it is that they stand right now.the other thing that you have to do, obviously, is create those salary bans, right? So making sure that you have salary bans and that you stick to them. I, I cannot emphasize this piece enough because what tends to happen is that company at companies is. HR will create a salary band. That doesn't mean people will stick to it, right?Because what will happen is you're recruiting and you find a really shiny, bright candidate and you really want them. So you know what? Salary band out the window, let's pay them whatever they need. Right? Or you have someone internally who's just like such a rockstar. They get an offer from another company, salary band out the window.We're gonna match that offer, right? And listen again, as always, I wanna have all the empathy in the world, right? For the fact that like, yeah, it is really, really tough to walk away from a candidate because they're out of budget. It is really, really tough to say goodbye to an employee because they got offered a higher salary somewhere else.But here's the thing, in my opinion, that people need to keep in mind, which. There is always going to be a higher offer on the table. Always. Right?  we cannot, you know, we're, we're a small startup. We're not trying to com compete with big tech, right? We couldn't possibly, right. Every time Big Tech is going to be able to offer a higher salary than we do, right?What we can do is offer a transparency and consistency, and the employees who are aligned with that and who are interested will apply, right?  and, and for the record,  nobody Minds, right? Like, nobody minds seeing, oh, that's a job description and salary is not aligned with my expectations. Great. I'm glad that I know that before I invested 30 minutes in, in a phone screen, right?Same thing for the recruiter and hiring manager. No one wants to get all the way to the end of an interview process and get excited about a candidate, only to find out, oh, our, our expectations are not aligned on salary. Right. So again, in order to get to a place of patron transparency, you got a set of salary bands.You have to have clear comp philosophy. You have to actually, educate your team on how salary works. Don't make it a secret secret. Tell them the things that you know.  and lastly I'll say is you have to stick to it. And in order to stick to it, you have to have clear plans in place for what you're going to do.When those. Exception leaning things come up, such as when someone tries to negotiate on an offer, when someone gets a competing offer from somewhere else. When someone is really, really excited to grow and get promoted, but actually there isn't a business need for that next level up. What are the things that you do?at Ethena, for example, we have a no negotiation policy. We have chosen as a company never to negotiate on salary offers. Our, our first offer is our file offer, and we do that because we wanna pay people based on what we believe their market to value to be, not based on how good of a negotiator they are, not based on how much money they were making for which therefore influences how much money they think they're worth now.Right. We are making it based on the information that we have, based on data that we've run and based on the information that we have from the interview process about their skills and their experience. And I will add just one more thing when it comes to that particular,  policy, which is. , I know that,  sometimes the fear can be, well, what if your, what if you're wrong in the market?Right? Like, what if you had the wrong market information? And so the salary ban that you put in place is actually below market, for example, right? I wanna be really clear that by the time we make that offer, we have already done all the research that needs to be done. And so what I mean by that is, yeah, we'll start with the salary again.Of course, we're still collecting information as we interview candidates, and so if as we're interviewing candidates, we are learning, ooh, Every time we meet with a candidate, it turns out that like this is actually a little bit lower than what they were hoping for. That's information that we take and we may adjust the band, right?We may make changes to the band, but if we do, all of that happens before an offer is made. By the time we make an offer, it is truly the highest offer that we would be willing to offer someone, which in essence means that people got the highest offer that they could have negotiated. Had we ha had, we allowed negotiation because hiring managers for the record, when you find a candidate that you want, you are doing everything in your power to get that candidate.You love that candidate and so you are not gonna go in with a lower offer knowing that you, there's no takebacks that you can't go higher after this. So hiring managers really do, they are incentivized with this policy to offer the highest offer from the beginning. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. It's also fascinating how

certain behaviors within organizations that you refer to, a couple of them, can also impact culture. So you say that you're gonna do something and for example,  performance reviews and review on pay are gonna happen on a certain date, but perhaps you don't follow through and you don't stick with it.So what's interesting is the,  perhaps compounding effects of some of the decisions that are theoretical or, or, or, or placed to be taken but actually are not followed through with. So, for example, saying that you're gonna conduct performance reviews on a certain date, but make the exception because somebody has that competing offer.and then how that also has implications on the culture of the company and then the politics that ensues thereafter. 

Melanie Najaro‍

Yeah, I, I do think there's something really key about that in particular, the fact that, you know, I'm talking a lot about a lot of things, a lot of things that I stand by, a lot of, you know, policies that, you know, I've helped create and all of that, right?But the, but what, what's really important to keep in mind is that, HR can't function in a silo, right?  it is so important that,  all of these things, whether it be diversity, equity, inclusion, pay equity,  how we recruit, there has to be company-wide support for it. There has to be company-wide alignment.If, if only one person is pushing for these things or one team is pushing for these things, they won't work.  and so, so to to your point,  like it, it, it is really important to think about what is the culture that you have, are there misalignments? And if so, how do you get to a place of, of alignment?

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah, absolutely. I saw some of your LinkedIn posts and that was actually candidly the reason why I reached out. I, I thought your, some of your takes were really interesting and, and one of them, which I'm gonna shout out here, is that you've said that HR leaders are burnt out. Yes. Yes. So down, why is that?Yeah. So why is that, and what do you think can be done to help? 

Melanie Najaro

Yeah. Okay. So I think,  transparently HR leaders are burned to a crisp. To a crisp, okay. We have been left in the oven for far too long.  so, I think there are a couple of reasons. Now. The obvious one is, you know, just the amount of change and worldwide,  challenges that have come up within the last, I wanna say, what is it now, like three years?you're talking about,  worldwide literal pandemic.  having to shift from a, an in-person culture to a re a completely distributed remote culture to now having to navigate whether we're gonna be hybrid.  you also have, you know,   world events happening right there. There have been a lot of social justice movements as there should be.Right? and also that impacts the employees, their mental health, how they feel about the company. questions, right? These new transparency laws that are coming into place, which again, I'm the biggest advocate. I love all this stuff. And also it requires a lot of work. And I think that part of the issue is that until, I wanna say about like five, six years ago, And sometimes this is, in some cases this is still the case, but until about five or six years ago, HR was really just seen as payroll and benefits.You hire a pa like an HR person to get do the admin stuff. They're not strategic. We're not listening to the engagement stuff. That's not revenue producing. That's the thing I hear all the time,  is HR is not revenue producing, which of course it is.  but, but so, you know, it's all these things, like these things were never asked of HR leaders before and now suddenly it, it's all these expectations that were never placed on HR are now placed on hr.All these things that HR has been advocating for, but being ignored on. Now it's like, okay, great, now make it happen tomorrow. And to our earlier point, right? It doesn't just happen tomorrow. And it doesn't just happen because HR says it's gonna happen or commits to making it happen. It needs to be in,  in conjunction with company-wide supporting, company-wide change, leadership support, leadership change, right.That then takes me to what I think is. Currently, in my opinion,  the, the biggest,  reason behind burnout,  for HR leaders, yes, all that stuff is happening in the background. Yes, that is exhausting. And also what is more exhausting is when you are finally given the,  the okay to move forward with these plans.And then you're either expected to do it by yourself with no resources, with no support from leadership, no alignment from leadership. And the reason I say this is not because,  not because I'm trying to build a divide or place blame or anything like that, right? That's not my approach. It's not my philosophy.I don't think it's helpful to, to be divisive in that way, but more to, to sort of like give the context, right? That. If you are having to fight external battles, whether it be navigating pandemics,  social uprisings,  the great resignation, and at the same time you are also having to fight internal battles such as.Getting leadership to, to align,  align on a decision, getting leadership to actually be consistent with the things that you have agreed to do.  even, for example,  getting support from managers, right? Getting managers trained up so that they can function more autonomously rather than having to run damage control all the time, right?You can start to see how all the different pieces on top of each other just add up and add up and add up. And not only is it,  just draining and exhausting from a workload perspective, it's also just demoralizing to be told. You're not revenue producing, you're not the priority. Go do these things, but I'm not gonna give you support.Right? There's a message that gets sent around value and we know that people want to feel valued. We know that people want to have growth opportunities. We know that people want to feel a sense of belonging and those things don't stop being true when you're in hr, right?  hr, you know, our job is to support others and to advocate for others.And we are fo so focused on the betterment of others that what can happen is, and I always say this, there's no HR for hr. There's no HR for hr, there's no hr bp,  business partner that I can go to when I'm struggling with a question. If I'm having an issue with my manager. There's no HR for hr. And so when you start to think about all those different pieces, it's just a recipe for disaster.Now, I do want us, I do feel compelled to make this one quick clarification. I am not speaking from personal experience at Ethena. In fact, I'm speaking from the reverse.  and I wanna say this without, you know,   using any other names, just talking about Ethena, part of what has made this so abundantly clear to me.It's just how great things have been at Ethena and here's why. Our company mission is so HR driven. That my role that the HR team at the HR function is integral, not just to the company as is typical for most companies, is also critical to. Our business strategy to the product that we put in the world.We are in fact directly revenue producing in many ways. Right? And so it's really, it's really exciting to be at a company where my missions are aligned with the company missions, with the product missions, and been just so fascinating to see the difference when you work at a company where there is leadership alignment, where there is,  company-wide,  consistency and support for the HR initiatives that could put out there.It's such a new,  it's such a new experience for me that by contrast it is abundantly clear to me that this is what's causing burnout for most HR professionals is that they don't have unfortunately this level of support alignment.  and, and just like, Drive,  as, as, as they, as, as I, as,  you know, they would at a company where there was that alignment, support and all that stuff.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

What do you recommend, or perhaps are there any tips,  and advice for our audience regardingtechniques to help with leadership alignment and what can be done to help? And I think this is particularly important considering the macro environment at the moment and how more often than not layoffs disproportionately affect HR recruiting teams. Some of the initiatives and resources that may have been available for the last two years may not be.So are there any items perhaps, that you think should be addressed, taken to leadership that should actually help and bridge that, that, that divide? 

Melanie Najaro‍

You know what I have found to be most eye-opening,  at Ethena is. Making sure that there is alignment around what the leadership team and what the company itself is optimizing for.because oftentimes what happens is people are so focused on like their specific thing that they're not thinking about. What, what is important to this other person? What are their priorities and how can, how can my goals help facilitate their priorities, their goals, their strategies? And so I think what's really in what, what's really important and would be helpful and could be helpful is to.Just have a conversation with the leadership team, with your founders, with your ceo,  and, and ask like, what are your priorities at the company, at your, at this company? What is it that we are trying to, to achieve? Okay, great. Now let me tell you how these initiatives are gonna feed into this thing that you're trying to achieve, rather than, right?If you're, if someone doesn't care about, for example, D E I, which of course they should, but if someone doesn't care about D EI and you're just saying, but it's the right thing to do, but look at all these other companies that are doing it, but you know, I feel really upset, but you know, our employees are saying they're not happy about it, right?If you just say those things and that person at the end of the day just doesn't care about those things, you're never going to win them over, right? But what you can do is make the business case for it, right. You are struggling with the fact that, I don't know, I'll make something up. 30% of our engineering team has quit over the last six months.Right? I wonder what could be causing those things. Let me show to you. Let me show you, let me prove to you that these are the things that led to that. And if we change these things right, we would be able to turn that around, right? Let me prove to you with data, right, that,  my initiatives are your initiatives and I'll give, you know, an example of, you know, something specific that you could argue.One of the stats that I actually found to be incredibly,  helpful,  to, to sort of like building the business case, for example,  as to why pay transparency would be,  a thing that we should do from a business case perspective is,  we actually found that,  people were just straight up only,  people were straight up,  choosing not to apply to,  to jobs that didn't list their salary bans.And I learned this because one of the people that we actually hired,  told me this, that. That they only looked at jobs that listed salary bans. And to think this was our top candidate. And had we not had salary bans available on our job description, and again, this was before the New York Law Force people to do that, right?Had we not done that, we would have lost what ended up being our number one choice for this role and the person who ended up joining. Right.  and we see it consistently in,  the feedback that we're getting from applicants. And so that's the kind of thing that if I was struggling to convince my, my CEO or my leadership team, you know, of that we were having issues or that, you know, patron transparency was something that we would invest, that we needed to invest in.How would bring those stats to them? How, how would you show them? Here are all the candidates that we have lost out on by not sharing our salary bans on the job description. So there are lots of ways to sort of build that business case argument with stats. But again, you know, my, my main point here is make sure that you are building a compelling argument by listening to what the priorities of the team are and making it quite clear how your goals feed into those priorities.Yeah. 

Nasser Oudjidane

‍ Love that. Yeah, you've gotta be in the room and that's obviously really important considering how forward thinking Ethena is as a business towards people practices. What piece of advice do you hear often that you think is total bs and it's something that perhaps may not be appropriate for your stage as a business,  but are there any practices that you think, I categorically won't implement this because a actually doesn't belong within a modern people focused company?

Melanie Najaro‍

So, I don't know if this quite falls into the category that, that you're talking about, but, but one thing that I do hear a lot is sort of this,  this pressure to force your employees to have fun and to have fun together and to have fun together at a certain time and place.And, you know, there's, there are different iterations of this, right? It could be everyone needs to work in the office because that's the only way that we're gonna. It could be,  everyone needs to attend the holiday party. You have to be there. It is mandatory. Have fun with us. Right. And listen, again, I wanna have all the empathy in the world.I'm sure there are different company needs and different,  reasons that people might feel one way or the other. What I have found at Ethena anyway is that, , that just doesn't work, right?  people don't wanna be told how to have fun, when to have fun, and who to have fun with, right? What people want is to have the resources and support, to have fun in the ways that they want to have fun when they so choose to have fun.And,  let me be more specific about what I mean. Now, there, does that mean that we, we, you know, don't hold,  virtual happy hours? No, I'm not saying that, you know, everyone should get rid of them and they shouldn't exist, right? There are some people who enjoy that, right? So you should offer it up for the people who enjoy it.But certainly, I don't think that your measurement of success should be how many people came to the happy hour? Oh no, only 30%. Therefore, we are a company that's not engaged personally, that is not my opinion. My opinion is that different people have different fun in different ways. And let me give an example that again, I really mean it when I say inclusivity ties into everything here.You might have working parents who have after school responsibilities with their kids. So you're scheduling a 500 PM happy hour at a time when they are cooking dinner with their kids, or maybe they're doing school pickup or whatever the case may be, and then you are upset that they are not on this call and not having fun with you.Right? That's not going to work, right. In order to be inclusive and actually help people engage and have fun, you need to give them flexibility. For me, that means offering different ways to have fun, which might be a virtual happy hour, but also might be  for example, one of the things that we rolled out, Earlier this year was an in-person bonding per, so what what we do is basically,  every employee at the company can expense up to $100 per month, or they can stock pilot for a big event once a quarter, $300 per quarter to hang out with one or more people who work at Ethena.And so, so far we've had people just do the coolest things. We've had people meet up to go to a Broadway play to go canoeing together.  we're talking about,  setting up,  and escape the room situation. And what's great about that is it's on their own schedule. It's the thing that they chose, they wanted to do also.It was very, it was zero left on our end, right? We said, here's some money. It goes, spend it in the ways that you wanted. Right?  and, and what also happens, They built new connections. They also talked about work just naturally and organically while they were there, right?  they also built FOMO for other employees who now also want to hang out with each other in person, right?And so, so you know, when you start to offer that flexibility, when you give people the freedom to choose how they want to interact with the company, to choose how they want to build connections in the company, you tend to find, or at least we have at Ethena, that it happens at higher rates. Because again, you're not forcing people to do it the way that you wanna do it.And on top of that, you're learning from them, oh, I didn't realize people would enjoy going canoeing together on a Saturday. Cool. Now I know that's a thing, right?  it also was very low lift for us, right? I think sometimes there's this, this pressure to like, oh, we've gotta spend $30,000 on this really intensive virtual happy hour, and it's gonna take, you know, the entire quarter to, to like organize it, right?You don't need all that. You don't, you don't need it. Give people a budget and tell them to choose how to have fun in their own time. Distribute the workload.  so, so that's my answer is basically, you know, I think we need to,  as always, and as we're, we've seen more and more over this, this past couple of years, offer freedom, offer flexibility, and be open to the fact that you probably don't know everything that, that,  that you need to know.And so give your employees the chance to teach you how to do it better. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

I love that initiative and,  we might borrow that because Do it. That 

Melanie Najaro‍

is really great. It's, it's truly, it's truly been great. And actually okay, since, since this isn't gonna go live until after we announce it internally, I'll tell you now a little secret something that we're gonna roll out.we are actually going to extend the a hundred dollars perk to,  to family and friends,  just for the holiday party. And so for anyone who lives in an area where they're not close to someone who works at Ethena, and we do have some employees unfortunately, who, you know, there's nobody for them nearby, we're actually gonna say, you know what?Use that money to go grab dinner with your, your spouse, with your child, with your family friend, and go have a holiday dinner on us.  so they're just like a lot of ways to really,  cater to that flexibility. . 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. That's incredible. Moving on to,  the last question before our closing questions. Do you use any,  tech that you would like to shout out,  that you used to do your job?Are there any products that you'd like to shout out that are delivering bad to you? I 

Melanie Najaro

mean, obviously I have to shout out the Ethena product.  we use our own product in-house and,  it's just, it's just great. And actually, I do wanna make a point here,  which I think would extend to any HR tech that you use, right?Which is, you know, in the HR function, it's really important to remember and keep in mind that everything that you do sends a message, right? The product that you put out, the training that you put out, the performance review process that you create, it's sending a message. Where are you thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion?do you actually prioritize this thing that you're rolling out And more specifically, right. You know, I have been at companies where, you know, the harassment prevention training, it's an afterthought. It's a compliance requirement. Here's this training. It's terrible.  but take it. And also, rah rah, we really do care about harassment prevention, right?But when you put out a bad training, your employees see that Actually, that's not quite true, because if this weren't priority for you, you would've taken the time to find a better training. to really send a clearer message to find something that aligns with your, your company values and the culture that you, that you want to put out there.And so, certainly I can't speak highly enough about the Ethena product and the fact that like, it's great that in every training that we put out, we are reinforcing the values that we have,  that we have stood by as a company and the culture that we want to create.  so once a month people get their training and  or now people can actually do a training once per year, depending on how we wanna set it up.but people get that training and they see everything that we say at the leadership level, at hr, in team meetings. It is just reinforced in this training product that we put out there. So definite shout out for the Ethena product. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes for sure.  seems particularly special considering how awful compliance training is.Traditionally, everything from school actually. Where you were kind of learning about something on a television because you had to, up until our work life is usually seen as an afterthought and something that to almost apologize for despite its importance. 

Melanie Najaro‍

It, it really is. I, I, you know, I, I've talked about this while just,  you know, the fact that,  like management, for example, is so critical cuz they touch so many things and they have such influence, but very few companies invest in real and good management training for whatever reason.This idea of like not having immediate output,  seems to,  give people the impression that, well, it's not worth it, it's a waste of time. You know, if I'm doing a training, I'm taking time away from actually creating revenue for the business. But really, if you invest the time in good training, you know, it's a long-term investment.And, and it really just, I, I certainly wish that more people invested in good high quality training. . 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. Yeah. There's a book called High Output Management,  written by the founder of Intel, which completely puts to bed that notion.  and it's incredible. I also put that in the show notes. 

Melanie Najaro‍

Oh, nice. I'll have to read that.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. What's one piece of advice that you wish you had when you started your people career? 

Melanie Najaro‍

One piece of advice I had,  

Nasser Oudjidane

‍You wish you had.

Melanie Najaro‍

Okay. So I think now granted, my, I'm sure my answer will change three months from now, one year from now, but at this point in time.  and when I think about the context of, you know,  the current landscape of HR and, and just the workforce in general, I wish someone had,  been more,  I. Vocal about the fact that it is so incredibly critical.in the HR world, you create your own community and your own support system because as I mentioned earlier, there's no HR for hr, right? And many companies,  for, you know, a new, a number of reasons, right? It could be,  bandwidth is, or sorry, it could be,  you know, budgetary issues. It could just be, you know, where you are in the growth phase at that point in time.Many companies have very small HR teams, oftentimes a team of one, and it can be very, very lonely. It also can be very easy to get in your own head, and it can also be very easy for you to forget that you also need to advocate for yourself, right?  and so what's really, really helpful,  and I've been doing this,  thanks to, you know, really great push,  from,  leadership at Ethena.And, you know, our two co-founders, they're very, very big on this.  I've been building out my own people community, just networking with different people, people in the world,  with no agenda, right? It's just like, Hey, can we be friends? Hey, can you be a person I reach out to if I'm. , you know,  second guessing a decision that I'm trying, that I, that I'm trying to push forward.it's just so important to have other people that you can lean on,  in the HR space. It, it really is so critical and I, I think it,  can also, you know, really do a lot to help with that, that burnout issue too, right? Because you can lean on other people for support on how better to, how best to advocate for yourself, how to navigate the challenges that you're facing.You know, is this what you should be settling for? Or could there be more out there? You know, are there, are there other opportunities,  that might offer better alignment between you and leadership?  so yeah, the one piece of advice I wish I had been given at the start of,  my HR career is, you know,  find your people, people build your community and lean on them.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

I love that. Do, do you have any plans to formalize it, or is it a network and a community which is more ad hoc when perhaps problems arise and it has, its all, you know, similarities with, with mentorship. Or peer, kind of peer mentorship. 

Melanie Najaro‍

Yeah, so right now I'm just doing it very informally for myself. Just like meeting new people, going to conferences, reaching out to people on LinkedIn, scheduling, recurring check-ins.I actually, I am actually,   working with some, with, with a new, a person who's a little bit newer in the HR world,  and, and,  acting as a mentor for this person, which has been also very eye-opening and educational and, and helpful for me too.  but, but nothing formal. Yeah. It is something that I would like to explore further though.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Last one, what is, if any, a thought, a value, a phrase that you live by, or, you know, like to perhaps reiterate when,  perhaps when times are tough or when times are 

Melanie Najaro‍

good. Okay. Such, such cliches, but they really make all the difference.Always assume good intent and put yourself in the other person's shoes. And it really helps in just every situation, truly. Whether it be, you know, that person slacked me and it sounds like they're mad at me. Are they mad at you? I don't know, assume good intent. Like probably they're not, they were just in a rush and wrote this thing.Or, you know, sometimes we have managers who are sort of like, oh, this feels like tough feedback. Oftentimes,  even managers will, will, will do this. So if they're struggling to give difficult feedback to one of their direct reports, you know, the question I'll ask them is, you know, what, if this was your manager, how would you feel if you knew that your manager was sitting on some feedback for you that could help you grow, but they didn't tell you because they were nervous about how you might react.Right. I'm sure that you would want them to trust you with that feedback, I'm sure that you would wanna know what that feedback was. And so, you know, whether it be because you know, you need to assume a good intent or because you need a confidence booster about what to do, assuming good intent and putting yourself in someone else's shoes, really just,  it just helps in so many,  cases in the workplace and also in personal life.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. Great contact setters. Melanie, this has been awesome. Thank you for your time. 

Melanie Najaro‍

Yeah, thank you. Really glad to be a part of this.