Her Stories in Housing with Heather Breidenthal: Part 1

In this episode Heather shares #HerStory as the Chief Human Resources Officer at Tri Pointe Homes.  

Heather’s expertise includes strategic planning and implementation, total rewards and benefit program design, M&A activities, workforce/succession planning, leadership and talent development, organizational health, and talent acquisition.

Prior to joining Tri Pointe Homes, Heather served as Senior Vice President of Human Resources for CalAtlantic Group and Standard Pacific Homes, where she oversaw all facets of the HR organization for over 17 years.

She is a former advisory board member for Chapman University’s Leadership Services and Extended Education division, and an active member of the National Human Resources Association. Heather received her B.S. in Business Administration from California State University Long Beach.

Connect with Heather and Tri Pointe Homes

Many thanks to our partners at the University of Denver for their assistance in post-production.

The University of Denver Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management, teaches the full life cycle of the built environment. From integrated project leadership skills to a cohesive understanding of the built environment ––experience the only school of its kind!

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Transcript

Eric Holt (00:05):

You're listening to the housing innovation Alliance podcast in partnership with the university of Denver's Franklin L burn school of real estate and construction management. The housing innovation Alliance is a nationwide community of game changers driving the future of home delivery through out accelerated innovation. We represent thought leaders from dirt to dwellers with a focus on the production builders business environment.

Alexandria (00:29):

Thanks for joining us. I'm Alexandria, a student at the university of Denver school of real estate and construction management. This is episode one in a two-part series that features Heather bral, the chief human resources officer for try point homes tune in to hear about Heather's background and experience as an HR personnel in the home building industry. Part two of this interview will cover topics such as recruitment plus talent needs and expectations. Listen, in as our own Betsy Scott executive director of programs and engagement chats with Heather.

Betsy (01:10):

Hi, I'm Betsy Scott. I'm here today with Heather bride. Andal the chief human resources officer for try point homes. Hi, Heather. Great to have you with us today.

Heather (01:19):

Hi, Betsy. Nice to meet you.

Betsy (01:21):

Nice to meet you too. So you've spent nearly 25 years in the home building industry. You've seen a lot of things over the course of your career, and you have a lot of varying expertise that I think gives you a really unique perspective. You've been in strategic planning and implementation, certainly as part of HR leadership and talent development workforce and succession planning, total, including compensation, benefits, and recognition and rewards programs, mergers and acquisitions, organizational culture, and health team member engagement and talent, acquisition, and retention. That's a whole lot of stuff that you've been focused on. Yeah,

Heather (01:58):

That's a lot that, that was a long sentence. So

Betsy (02:00):

<Laugh>, I would like to focus on a few things with you that really, I think will align with the folks in the Alliance network where you can share some really great insights. I think there are a lot more opportunities for women in the industry than people initially would think. So. I'd love to get your opinion on that front first, let's start with your, her story. There's so much history. We, we need some more her stories. So can you tell us a bit about your journey? You started out your career in a much different behind the scenes role, from what I could gather, helping insurance providers package certain benefit off offerings for their customers, is that right?

Heather (02:37):

Yeah, that's, that's pretty accurate. I actually started out my career in an HR outsourcing firm. So I was in some accounting. I was doing some HR and I was in school. I went to night school for I know it sounds crazy, but about 10 years because I switched my major multiple times, I was in the mush pod of this HR outsourcing firm and got exposed in nearly every aspect of their people side of the business. So they had people that were doing employee relations, phone calls for smaller companies. They had people doing benefits, compensation work. It was kind of cool because it was aligning with just my interest in people. I'm just simply fascinated by people. What makes them kick, what helps them work better together? What motivates them and how people come together in teams. And mm-hmm, <affirmative> kind of create something really amazing that outsourcing firm actually got acquired.

Heather (03:37):

And the acquiring company was a company called ADP. They're still around today. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and they offered me a job in Florida and I'm here, I'm a California native born and raised. I love it here. So I'm like you know, I'm, I, I wanna stay here. I live in San Clemente. And so I started going out and interviewing basically companies and interviewing me of course, and trying to figure out, well, where did I wanna go? And actually one of the very first interviews I had was with an HR director that had just started with standard Pacific homes. This was a long time ago. This was like in 1998. And Santa Pacific was fairly small. They were a regional builder. They had about 350 team members in kind of five division, six divisions and just were bringing HR in house. They had really never had HR.

Heather (04:35):

I was six months away from getting my degree at that point. So I came in as the number two person, and that just had my hands and everything working with the director to help her. I was just super curious because when I joined, I thought that home builders like actually built the homes. I thought that, you know, we would have all these people that are out there carrying hammers. And, you know, I was very naive. I was in my twenties and I, I was excited. I didn't bright item, bushy tailed. And when I got there, I was super curious about, wait, what, what do we do? We sub out all the labor. Wow. We have all these professional positions that, you know, I just, I didn't imagine the, the complexity of the process that exists in this industry. So, and I've always been super curious.

Heather (05:22):

I'm, I'm probably one of those annoying people that in my twenties was walking around going, what do we do? Why do we do that? Who's that? What do you do? Explain to me how this all works. <Laugh> <laugh> and so, you know, I, that was I was really lucky as the way I view it of, of sort of finding a, a great company with a great culture, wonderful set of leaders and a good mentor that brought me in and really wrapped my, their arms around me to, to develop me. And I got to sit again in the mush pot of something that was being created from scratch a year or so later, we did our first acquisition. And I think we did almost one acquisition a year if you averaged it out over my career there for 20 years. So,

Betsy (06:10):

Oh, wow. I've seen the impact of those with, with some of our members and our not network. They're, they're complicated enough when they're at the smaller level and you're acquiring another regional builder, and then you've also experienced, and we'll talk about it a bit later. You've experienced being standard PO Pacific combining with Ryland homes. So like two bohemoth people. And at that point you had all of your system and everything in place, and there were so such greater complexities of combining those two entities together and looking at, you know, what that does from an operational perspective and what it does from a staffing perspective and what it does, you know who leads what, and, and there's just, so any complexities that you had to deal with there it's a good kind of trial by fire situation, but at least you had the little ones to lead up to it.

Heather (07:05):

That one was the behemoth. One of you, as you described it, it was two companies coming together with two completely different leadership teams different cultures, different philosophies, like you said, a two of everything. And in some cases more than two, cuz maybe we hadn't standardized certain things. So it really forced us because we wanted to, to genuinely be a merger of equals to look at everything we were doing and pick the best of. But when we did that, it meant everybody had to in some way or another mm-hmm <affirmative> because we didn't just pick one stack and say, you know, sorry, you know, Santa Pacific folks are sorry, Ryan team, you're going with this way. We've really tried to pick the best of both worlds and and also use it as a way to accelerate the effectiveness of our a company overall. So, and, and when you think about that too, you got these, these two teams coming together and we're all getting to know each other, we're building relationships. We're trying to redefine what is the culture we want going forward. So it certainly required an open mind and a lot of rolling up your sleeves and list. And mm-hmm, <affirmative> doing work lots and lots of work

Betsy (08:23):

Though. You weren't really attracted to the housing industry in general, you kind of came to it by accident.

Heather (08:30):

I fell into it and I think that's, what's interesting is a lot of people do and what's, what's different. I think from when I fell into it is at the time there were a lot of sort of mom and pop builders, a lot of small regional, or even, maybe even just local builders. And so it as an industry there, weren't these big fortune 500 companies that existed out there back then. And it was really the beginning of when I, I would say the housing industry started to get more sophisticated and started to do all the M and a work. And you saw these, these brands that maybe were local or regional, really grow into national brands that became highly competitive with each other. And at the same time, it still feels today kind of like it did back then of just, you know, most of the cultures are very family focused.

Heather (09:25):

You feel like you're at a small company, even when you're in a really large one, like you're at TriPoint where, where, where I work now, I think there's these big brands that people recognize across the nation mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I think what we have to do is make sure we're leveraging those brands and that people really understand the jobs in the industry and the fact that we're a professional management company, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative>, and we're not, you know, we're not out there just employing the folks that are swinging the hand AMS and building homes. We actually, you know, contract out with our trade partners. So we, we really need to do a better job. I think, as an industry and me personally, it's something that's on my kind of, to do list of how do we engage with the universities that are out there and even at the high school level to really start getting a word out about what jobs are in the industry, because it was full luck with me.

Betsy (10:19):

Yeah. And that's something that we're working on. We are connected heavily with the university of Denver. They're integral to some of the programming that we're doing. We have a working group focused on talent and housing. And, but we're talking about one of the biggest needs is kind of flipping the script on what it means to be in the housing industry and what career paths are like. And as you said, the complexity and the level of opportunity and the level and different types of skills that you can employ and really the longevity and the, the benefit that you can get. And I think you said it, you love people. I find that our, that the housing industry, people are genuinely trying to do the right thing. The there are these really big companies, but they're really good, genuinely nice people. And it's the single most important product that you can deliver to anyone. You know, once you go housing, you'll never go back. Oh

Heather (11:11):

Yeah. I tell people all the time, it's, it's in my blood. In fact, when I was leave being Cal Atlantic because of the Lenar merger, it was like, what merger number 19 for me. And I was on the other side of it that time. I was interviewing her with Doug Bower and Tom Mitchell at try point. And Tom asked me, okay, so what, what are you, are you, are you an HR person or are you a home builder? I'm like, is this a trick question? He's like, I'll give you the answer. You're a home builder. I can tell by the way you talk, <laugh> it gets in your blood. It gets in your DNA. And it's hard to imagine once you've really the, the home building bug has big you, you know, working in any other industry because it really is a life changing industry.

Heather (12:02):

I mean, there's not very many industries where you can go and see such a tangible product in the experience that is so emotional for our customers and our home buyers that we deliver. You know, from the point you go can see a piece of dirt that, you know, you have to develop, you then have to figure out, well, how do you create a sense of place? You have to go through the whole placemaking process, where we engage all of our team members to sort of think about how do we put a vision together. Other of who's gonna live here, how are they gonna live? You know, how do you create that lifestyle for them? And like you said, it's the most important purchase you're ever gonna make. So how do we really envision how to make it the best experience that we possibly can for them?

Heather (12:49):

So, you know, the design that goes into building the homes, the folks who have to put their blood, sweat, and tears into constructing it. So there's quality built behind the walls that, you know, some people like me, I, I wouldn't even know unless you pointed it out. I do now cause I'm in home building. So I know what to look for prior to that, I would've been like, looks good, has walls, all good to go. The design process, the fact that we feel really passionate about, you know, really enabling and supporting our customers through the process of personalizing their home and our design studios. So we have, you know, designers that work with you to actually customize, what is this gonna look like for you? And then all the while we're trying to figure out along the way, how do we get better, faster and smarter at doing all of that? Especially when technology is moving at the speed of light and the way people buy things. Now, the way people research, what they wanna buy and even the personalization that they do, a lot of it is virtual or online. And so how do we still create an amazing experience? As I sit here and look at you on zoom, right? There's not very many products that you live in that need to stand the test of time over, you know, 30, 40, 50 years and more,

Betsy (14:09):

There's constantly the opportunity to be creative in many different ways and the various roles, the various skill sets that you've developed and roles that you've played. You're not just HR. You're thinking about the bigger picture as a home builder within that entity. It allows you, the creativity that if you know that you know that the products of interest to you and that you like the people, it allows you the flexibility to kind of dig in and find different paths that you could take. So wanna get back to the original questions I had for you for a moment to make sure I'm capturing this. Are the mergers, the biggest challenge that you faced in your career in housing? Is there a bigger challenge that you've had to deal with?

Heather (14:52):

You know, I, I don't think there's any one challenge. I know this is gonna sound kind of geeky, but I think the biggest challenge that I've faced was actually myself, no matter what we were going through, I think my mindset early on when I first started working was just, okay, we work. This is how I, it gets done and it not much changes. And I learned very quickly that change is the only constant. And whether it's the M and a deals that I've been involved in, or whether it's the cycles in the industry I've been through, or whether it's a pandemic or, you know, a potential war or whatever, it's, it's like, you just have to roll with the punches and you have to find the silver lining in everything mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I think when I say my mindset, you just, you can't ever get too comfortable when you get comfortable.

Heather (15:45):

You get lazy. I think so. And I know that's so awful, but it's like, you always have to be challenging yourself. Am I making the most of the current situation and the environment by doing everything that I need to do to help with whatever situation is going on so that it's successful even the day to day stuff that comes up and in HR, there's a lot of funky stuff that comes up with people. That's part of why I love it is popular, unpredictable. And so you, you kind of have an issue almost every day and you think, okay, what's the best way to try to help the people work through the issue? How do you figure out the root cause? And what's the path of least resistance to, to get to whatever outcome you're looking for. I've had to learn to be nimble. And what's funny is I'm a total control freak. I cannot control anything. I can influence things, but I don't control

Betsy (16:37):

Anything. Absolutely. So it's been great getting insights from you on, on multiple levels. What's the best thing about working at try point from your perspective, and then if there's one last thought you would wanna leave people of how to think differently about HR,

Heather (16:56):

The absolute best thing about try point and working here is our people. And I, I know that sounds cheesy cuz I'm the HR person, but it is. And it's, and I'm not the only one that thinks that our team members, that was the number one thing of what, when they were asked, what makes this a great place to work? They said our people, our team members, it really feels like family here. Family is one of the most common words that they use to describe our culture. And I think we also have some very unique values. We are all bundled up in an acronym called heart. So, you know, heart for us is all about humility and empowerment, being authentic results oriented and, and all about the team at the end of the day were nothing without the team. So when we rebranded a few years ago, we had six brands originally and we all came together under the TriPoint umbrella a little over a year ago.

Heather (17:52):

And we, we recrafted our values based on what our team members shared in our engagement surveys of what made us special. So it really was all of them that, that sort of create this really unique culture that you feel when you come here. And we were recently certified is a great place to work last year. So we partnered with the great place to work Institute. And what's really interesting is, you know, they kind of, not everybody gets certified. You, you actually do have to have a really great place to work. So 90% of our team members said that TriPoint is a great place to work and that's compared to 57% of employees at a typical us based company. So pretty incredible difference. And you know, we have a lot of great information on the great place to work Institute's website about what our people had to say about working here.

Heather (18:45):

So it certainly helps us with recruiting and retention that's for sure. So how should people think differently about HR? I would say HR people are your people, people, you know, don't think of it as the, you know, 30 years ago, the personnel department where you just go to them when there's an issue, right? Think about how you really leverage your people, people to build ability across your business. And you know, we're doing that today. We've actually, we're reorganizing the HR department a little bit in the field. We're adding more team members because our division presidents see the value of having an HR business partner sitting at the table with them as they talk about business issues. So, you know, if you don't involve your HR people in the business they're gonna be disconnected. And I think that's the difference is they need to have a seat at the table, but at the same time, if you're an HR person and you're not curious, and you're not learning the business, you'll lose your seat.

Heather (19:44):

So what I tell HR people is respect your seat and make sure that you're adding value to the bus and, and not just dealing with issues when they pop up, you, you need to be out in front. You need to be thinking proactively of where are we taking the business over the next three years and how do I help you get there? What needs to change? What's changing in the environment. So that's what I would say. And remain curious. You know, I still will ask questions to this day of what is that acronym when I'm sitting in meetings and I, I might sound stupid cuz I've been in the industry for 20 plus years, but I, if I don't know it, there's probably somebody else sitting in the room that doesn't know what, what the heck it is either. So there are a lot of not be afraid to ask questions

Eric Holt (20:31):

On behalf of the housing innovation Alliance and the university of Denver. This is Dr. Eric hold. Thank you for being part of our journey. This is where innovation calls home.