Talking HR Strategy with Stephanie Luftensteiner, Senior Director People, Culture & Organisation at DHL Express Austria

When Stephanie Luftensteiner started her career in an executive search firm, she knew little about Human Resources. A few months in, she realised how much she loves matching organisations with the right talent. Since then, Stephanie has held different HR roles at Red Bull, ProSiebenSat.1 Media, adidas, and kununu. Now, she’s the Senior Director People, Culture & Organisation at DHL Express Austria, a company that has repeatedly been recognised as a Great Place to Work. 

Stephanie is also a trusted expert and one of Julia Reis Consulting’s most loyal clients.
She let us pick her brain about HR strategy, and we’re happy to share these insights with you:

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Charlotte: Let’s start with why: Is an HR strategy essential for an organisation's success? What happens if you don’t have one?

Stephanie: Without an HR strategy for your business, you leave many things up to chance. Fundamental questions like “How do you recruit?” or “How do you onboard?” will largely depend on the managers and if they’re good or not. There’s a lot lost if you don’t have an HR strategy.

But I also believe you don’t need the most sophisticated HR strategy just for the sake of strategy. For me, it’s always critical to understand the business goals. What problems is the business facing? What are the business targets – and how can the right people at the right place and time support them?

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What are the core principles of an effective HR strategy? 

It boils down to one thing: You really need to understand your business. You must be integrated into business strategy building and understand the target and the obstacles. Only on that basis can you build a relevant HR strategy.

Some organisations struggle with that and that’s maybe why HR doesn’t have the best reputation. Some organisations put up HR processes just to have them. But sometimes, you don’t need the full suite. Sometimes recruiting is the most important thing for the moment, sometimes it’s a talent management strategy and sometimes it might even be an exit management strategy. 

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So, what to do first to build an HR strategy?

Understanding the CEO's vision is central: Where do they want to take the company? Then, I’d look at the mission and vision of the departments: Where does the product team want to go? Where does sales wish to go? Based on that, you can analyse the current state of the business.

If you’re looking for a holistic HR strategy, it always starts with culture. It always starts with answering the fundamental questions: Who are we? What do we stand for? Who are the people we need? 

When it comes to culture, I don’t like trying to find the next cultural fit and bringing on board many “mini-mes.” It’s more important to understand the company's aspirations and what the culture needs to look like to be successful in the future. That should be the starting point. 

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From there, you look at the full employee lifecycle: Take the values and principles and boil them down into a recruiting strategy, a talent strategy, a Learning & Development strategy… but also into an exit strategy if necessary. I firmly believe we need to manage an exit as well as an onboarding process. 

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You’ve been working on HR strategies for quite a long time. How have they evolved over the last couple of years?

When I started my career, HR was basically HR Operations. Our role was to ensure the right admin set-up, pay salaries on time and answer questions related to labour law. It was a bit like heating – when it worked, nobody cared, but if it didn’t, everyone complained. 

At that time, the main discussion was, “How can we get a seat at the table? How can we get involved in the discussions and the decision-making?” 

Today, more and more companies have realised the importance of investing in their most significant cost factor – their people. We need to manage this field properly and see how to use it best.

I also see that in the start-up and scale-up scene. Look at where VCs invest; they’re now really looking into companies and asking, “What does your people function look like, and have you invested in it?” They weren’t talking about that ten years ago.

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Some HR professionals still don’t feel they have a seat at the table. How can they get it?

I recommend learning how to talk business and identifying what’s most relevant. Maybe start with something small but fundamental to the CEO. Look at recruiting, for example: How can you save costs? How can you reduce time to hire? How can you build a robust onboarding process so that the costs of the hire go down?

That might be your way into other areas like culture, which some consider as a softer topic. But let’s be clear: Many change projects are unsuccessful because their cultural dimensions have been ignored. The issue with culture is that you don’t see results so quickly. A culture shift is difficult, and HR isn’t the sole one responsible for culture. 

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If you want a seat at the table, you can't be afraid of difficult conversations. HR is a conflict role – you always have to discuss with people and bring different opinions together. If you don’t want that conflict or shy away from these discussions, you’re in a very tough spot in HR.

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How can we determine whether HR strategies are effective? What indicators show that you’re moving in the right direction, and how can success be measured?

Of course there are the classic KPIs like turnover rate or turnover during probation. A strong organisation has the highest turnover in the probation period because that’s the time to assess if the collaboration works or not. 

I also recommend looking at the inner works of an organisation and analyse if it’s lean, what the hire costs are, how the personnel costs develop, etc. 

You have to measure enough to be taken seriously, for example by your finance colleagues, but you can’t have numbers for everything. Let’s think about leadership training: How do you measure if it’s been successful? Of course, better managers reduce turnover, are better in recruiting and developing their people and the whole organisation will be more performant. But putting one KPI behind that isn’t easy. That’s where you really need to have conversations and make exchanging with and listening to your teams a priority. 

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How do we get from having an HR strategy to implementing it?

Start with people – make sure you have the right people in place to execute the strategy with you. Then, take the key strategic levers you identified and translate them into priorities. I find working with OKRs extremely helpful for this.

One of the hardest parts of being an HR professional is saying “no” and filtering out what really moves the needle. As a leader, standing in front of your team and giving them the time to focus is important. But of course, it’s also essential to stay flexible when business priorities change. That’s why I’m such a fan of agile priorities in HR: They allow you to adapt quickly to a changing environment.

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Moving a step away from HR strategy, what trends do you currently observe that will shape the future of HR?

I think in People Ops, there’s a lot of potential in further digitalisation, automation and AI as systems become smarter in taking on repetitive work and in making the employee experience more seamless. This will speed things up considerably. 

Analytics and really knowing and understanding your HR data will also become more and more important.

Ultimately, I think investing in your leadership will remain a key to business success. It’s more essential than ever to support leaders in embracing their responsibilities, power and influence and in gaining the skills to bravely navigate a world where they can never have all the answers. 

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I’m a bit surprised you didn’t mention GenZ.

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I don’t believe in generations. For me, it’s more a discussion about age.

When you’re young, you just see the world differently – you’re at a different stage in life, you’re independent, want to see the world and maybe not work so much. Of course, the world has changed and we need to take that into account, but I don’t think we’re doing ourselves a favor if we put people born around a certain time in one box. 

My only advice is to be smart about which employer you choose and pick one that can cater to your needs. It’s a talent market. The war for talent is long over, talent has won a long time ago – no matter what generation.

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We’ve been lucky to support you and your teams on various projects. How can an external people & org consultant make a difference?

When you bring a consultant with such specific expertise, you broaden your horizon and get new input. I’m always full of ideas, and my team sometimes feels that I’m too many steps ahead. Julia has been an invaluable sparring and implementation partner to me. She helped me to understand where I wanted to go and how to translate that into a manageable and executable plan. This external view has been especially helpful when tackling new and complex projects. She’s been closely integrated with my team so we were able to benefit from the outsider and insider perspectives.

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Thanks so much for all these insights! Do you have any recommendations for those who’d like to dig deeper into these topics?

My main reading recommendations are the books Radical Candor by Kim Scott and Measure What Matters by John Doerr. Speaking to other HR leaders and CEOs and attending conferences are other great sources of inspiration.