Workday Podcast: Integrity’s People-First Approach to Large-Scale Growth

Brett Shores: A strong, unified culture at an organization contributes to business success, but it’s not always clear how companies can achieve that goal. At Integrity, an insurance provider for life, health, and wealth, leaders understand the secret sauce: embracing technology and data insights helps them create a cohesive culture across business units. So how exactly do they do it? Our guest today will shed light on this.

I am Brett Shores, Vice President of Product Specialist Sales North America at Workday. Today, we're recording this podcast in Dallas, Texas on Workday's Forever Forward Bus, which has been crisscrossing the United States and visiting customers since June. I'm excited to be speaking with our guest, Rachelle McReynolds, Chief People and Cultural Officer at Integrity. She's been instrumental in change management and integrity, and she'll share her insights with us. Rachelle, thank you for doing this, and it's great to see you again.

Rachelle McReynolds: Thank you. I'm very excited to be here.

Shores: And again, we've had a chance to meet before, so this isn't the first time we're meeting, so I'm happy to be here with you. And you've always said, "Please come to Dallas." And I did. And now we're on a bus. So we'll see how that goes.

McReynolds: I know. And I'm honored. And whenever I found out you were going to be the person in the podcast with me, I got more excited.

Shores: [laughter] All right. Let's jump in here. So can you walk me through your background as well as your current role at Integrity?

McReynolds: Sure. I'd love to. So I've been at Integrity for four years now. And I had never heard of Integrity. It's kind of the biggest company that no one's ever heard about. And so when the recruiter reached out to me, they were talking about Integrity being in kind of financial services, insurance, and looking for somebody that had hospitality experience. And I'm like, "Well, I don't have any of that."

Shores: Interesting.

McReynolds: Yeah, I grew up in industrials, chemicals, oil and gas. And I'm like, "I don't know if I'm the right person." And so a few weeks later, the recruiter called me back and was like, "Just meet the CEO because I think you guys would have a lot in common." And so I get on the call, and I met Bryan Adams. We hit it off immediately. And just everything he was looking for-- and it didn't feel like an interview. It was absolutely an interview, but it was just more getting to know you. We talked about our big 12 backgrounds. We talked about service and everything that I had done with a prior foundation that I was a part of, and then just the different types of HR work that I've done. So meeting him, I then came into the office and met the leadership team, and I'm like, "Are you kidding me? These people are awesome." Very collaborative, a lot of fun, great backgrounds, and were just really wanting to be a part of setting up an HR organization. And then meeting with the board members, I was even more blown away because everything they said about the CEO, the leadership team, and the company was like, "I really, really want to be a part of this." So, so much, I accepted the offer, and I'm so glad I did, and came in as a chief human resources officer, but very quickly asked the CEO if I could change my title to be Chief People and Culture Officer. And that was important because we live through our core values. I mean, similar to Workday. You have them right up here on the wall. Ours are also on our wall.

Shores: I saw. It was great. Yeah.

McReynolds: Yeah. And so from training, from compliance, from emails that we send out, everything is rooted in our core values and everything is rooted in people. So coming from an industrials background, I'm used to making product, and selling some sort of product that you can touch, hold, or even see. And this is insurance, financial services, wealth management, annuities. So you can't actually place it in your hand. So really, what we have is our people. And people say it all the time, "Our people are our biggest asset. Our people are our only asset." And we are in the people business. And as our CEO says, "Without people, we don't have business."

Shores: Strong culture is rare at companies that are big, one, and being able to hold the culture as you grow, which you guys have done a lot of. Well, back to what you guys do. So Integrity calls itself a broker for life, health, and wealth. What are some of the biggest challenges within this space and the HR function overall?

McReynolds: So I think, really, our biggest challenge at Integrity, which is an opportunity, is that we had phenomenal growth, similar to what you talked about at Workday over the last eight years. So over my four years, even whenever I was in the interview process, Integrity at that point in time were 800 employees. And then by the time I started, which wasn't that much longer, we were at 1,000. And then from there, we are currently at 5,400. And again, I haven't been here for 8 years, 9 years, 10 years. And it was challenging in that we had to build up the department, so what the People and Culture Department was going to be. Because when you're 800 employees, that looks a little different than when you're 5,400. And through all of this, we're growing through mainly acquisition, but we're also having to hire to support all of the acquisition activity. And it was just more of how do you put in the processes while still, hey, showing up next week at somebody's doorstep saying, "You're part of the Integrity family." And it was challenging, but it was really great because we hired people that-- we told them. We were upfront to say, "If you're looking for an organization that we have it all together, no. If you're looking for an organization where you get to put your thumbprint on it, come on in." And we roll up our sleeves, we get work done, and we celebrate everything. [laughter] So we'll at least make it fun. And we found the type of people that want to do that. And it's been really great because those folks have grown here, and they've taken on more responsibilities, and lead bigger teams now. And I just look at everyone, and I'm so proud of each and every one of them, and so thankful because there's no way I could do it on my own. And that's why I really think each one of us know that we are the stewards of the culture, and we've seen it when it was wild and crazy. And then now we're seeing it as we more kind of standardize it and professionalize the work that we do.

Shores: Interesting. And as you've gone through that change, have there been any significant trends that you've seen or can you point out that-- I mean, obviously, hiring the right people is important, but any other trends that kind of come to mind that you've seen over this growth?

McReynolds: A really interesting trend, which I believe is pretty unique to us, is the retention after we would acquire a company. We were around 95% retention rates. So that means we show up, we tell people, "The business has been bought. You're now a part of the Integrity family." And people stayed. And they believed in our story, and they believed in us. And it was a great thing because we didn't make it like, "Oh, okay, we're this big corporate monster and we're coming in and taking over everything." We made it about, "We're now going to be partners and have a partnership." And then on that very day when you found out your company was being sold, they became a shareholder of Integrity. And so we gave everybody stock and had champagne toasts and give out the swag. We always give out swag, similar to Workday. It's very important. And we were able to retain most people.

Shores: That's great. And that's hard to do. In my role, I accept a lot of the acquisitions we pick up, and it takes a lot of work from just an HR side culture. But it's hard to keep-- you want to keep their culture as much as you can, but you also need it to be our culture, right? But the important part is keeping them happy. So that's good to hear.

McReynolds: Right. Right. And so our mantra still to this day, but specifically because we were doing so much M&A with no break in pay or benefits because we need trust immediately, and if we mess up somebody's paycheck or they go to a doctor and something's not working, then we've lost them.

Shores: Yeah. Then we had lost their trust and off they go, right?

McReynolds: Mm-hmm. So it didn't matter what role you had in the People and Culture Department. You cared about payroll and benefits for every individual.

Shores: Awesome. All right. So moving on to some more of the technology side because again, people, process, technology, you need that to drive business. And again, culture is a big part of that, obviously. But what role have you played in implementing technology within your organization that helps maintain a strong and consistent company culture? So there's keeping the culture, driving the culture, but then using technology to help you keep it going.

McReynolds: Yeah. Well, and starting at Integrity, again, so much growth in buying businesses or partnering with businesses that had their own processes, and their own systems, and their own technology. It's an interesting balance. And then also whenever you're doing that much acquisition and to implement new technology is not easy. So we were very thoughtful around the timing of it and what type of technology we would bring in place because we all know for everyone, especially on an HR platform, to be on the same technology and to really only have to go to one place--

Shores: Oh, that's huge.

McReynolds: It's important. And I always watch social media memes because I follow HR stuff. And they always make jokes about all of these weird HR sites that you go to get your paycheck or to log your PTO or your time or your benefits. And I'm like, "No, we want to make this simple. We want to make it human. We want to make it just-- it's easy, and I know exactly what to do and where to go." And so that's where we actually found Workday.

Shores: Well, and it's clear that you value the technology, but also the partnership between you and the vendors you work with or partners with [inaudible]. Having met you a couple of times now in person out in California when you've invested in your time, your team's time to come out and learn from what we're doing with our own technology, hearing from different products, bringing complex scenarios to us. The fact that you have invested so much time and brought your team, and giving your team the opportunity to do that really, to me, helps you drive that through the culture, right? Because it's not just about turning on a system and hoping it works, right? You've got to evolve it. And look, no software is perfect. It's how it's implemented. It's the process you put around it. But I'd just say, I appreciate the fact that you've invested so heavily in that because I have the opportunity to meet a lot of customers, and not everybody really leans in that way. And the ones that do, you can tell how their culture is within their HR organization and also just how the employees view that technology. So your passion shines through, which is great. So I just want to give you a little kudos.

McReynolds: And I will tell you, visiting both times, every one of us leave inspired and with so many ideas.

Shores: All right. So what are some of the specific examples of how Workday technology has helped your organization, especially over those 200 business partners you've got?

McReynolds: Yeah. And again, like I mentioned, the single platform. And really, for us as a whole, with having so many different partners, this is the one system that every one of our businesses are on. And we're kind of the leaders on, "This is how you do it," and it doesn't happen overnight. There's a lot of change management in that, and a lot of training, and a lot of just kind of being at the front and center, but it was really, really amazing. And we've continued to bring on different modules or turn them on sometimes just when we're like, "Okay, now we're ready. Now we're ready." And every time, we're like, "We're so glad we somehow thought ahead." [laughter] I'm sure it was planned, and we knew everything that was going to happen in the future.

Shores: Yeah. Luck, skill, intent.

McReynolds: But it was really great to have that and for everyone to be able to use a simple system. And I'm constantly talking about Workday, and I'll be in a meeting, and somebody will say, "What department are they in, or who's their manager?" And I will say first, "Hold on. Let me open my Workday app."

Shores: [laughter] A little advertising real quick. "Hey, it works here. Let me show you it works."

McReynolds: You also have access to these org charts. Isn't that cool?

Shores: Yeah. One of my favorite parts are [inaudible]. Yes, for sure.

McReynolds: Yeah. And then when it comes to benefits, I'm like, "Look, I can enroll on my phone while I'm sitting on my couch on a Saturday. See how easy this is." I'm probably the biggest cheerleader on the Workday app.

Shores: It's super helpful to be able to do things on your phone. It's changed so much even in these last few years, of how much you can do and do, do mobilly, right? And if you can do simple tasks quickly, they get done. When they're hard, they sit on the list on the side.

McReynolds: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Shores: So moving forward, how do you envision Workday technology continuing to drive objectives that you have at Integrity?

McReynolds: Well, and this is definitely-- like you said, we've been out to the Workday headquarters twice now. And I'm not lying when I say we've been inspired both times. And this last time, we kind of had an, "Aha," as a leadership team. And we said, "We at Integrity, we develop software, and we develop it for agents to help others plan for health, life, and wealth needs." And so we said, "But really, isn't Workday our people center?" So we have Medicare CENTER, LifeCENTER, things like that.

Shores: I remember you saying that. Yeah.

McReynolds: WealthCENTER. I was like, "Isn't this truly our people center?" So it's an internal. Of course, it's powered by Workday, but everything we invest in it and the ideas that we have, we know that as we grow, Workday's going to be able to catch us, right? It's not like we're going to outgrow Workday or the tools that you guys have. And so we've even talked about how do we get more tech adoption. So our people center, our Workday tech adoption, how do we design around that? So that's kind of all of our 2025 thinking. So we have five core values, if you don't mind me listing them because we're very proud of our core values.

Shores: Let's hear them. Yeah, please.

McReynolds: Integrity, which I believe is one of your core values.

Shores: It is. We share a value. Yeah.

McReynolds: Service. We say we're not a sales organization. We're a service organization. We serve others. Family. I know that can sometimes sound cliché, but we have partnered with and acquired family-owned businesses. And so we are a family, and we want everyone to feel that way. Respect, obvious one. And then partnership. And partnership, for us, is many different meanings. One is like I said, the reason why we've had so much retention with acquisition is because we make them partners and employee-owners. But we also treat Workday as a partner. We never want you guys to feel like you're not a part of Integrity. We want you to feel like, "Oh, when you see our name or you hear about Integrity, you're like, 'Oh, yeah, I'm with Integrity. I know Integrity.'" And that's why I think this relationship has been so great because you guys act that way too, that we're a part of Workday, and we feel that way.

Shores: [laughter] So as Integrity grows and adopts new technologies, how do you make sure you're maintaining and encouraging a positive workplace culture and also building a sustaining inclusive team?

McReynolds: So culture is just what we insist on. And that starts at the top. That's our CEO. Anything we do or any sort of change or if we're going to do something different, we can't impact the culture. So very similar to the Workday story.

Shores: Sounds familiar.

McReynolds: And so with that, every sort of process, even if it's just a mundane work process like compliance training. I mean, who loves compliance training? Well, we make it a whole month and we make it fun.

Shores: Okay. I'd like to hear more about that someday.

McReynolds: Every week, we're doing some sort of an event around it. We're getting some sort of swag around it, some sort of competition. And it's just kind of like that's what we want to do. And maybe fun should be our core value, but--

Shores: I think it's the foundation and all of the pillars on top, right?

McReynolds: It's the foundation, yeah. Yeah. And right now, we're in the fourth quarter, and so we call that game time because like most businesses, the fourth quarter is the most important. You've got to make sure you hit your numbers. So we do have three different segments in our business: health, life, and wealth. So obviously important for all of them, but specific to the health segment, this is when seniors are doing their annual enrollment period. We serve 14 million Americans in their health needs, so it's critical for them to find the right product. And we know there are long days, long nights, long weekends over an eight-week period. And so during this time of game time, we make sure people can have a chance to lift up. So that's whenever we really have a lot of fun.

Shores: All right. So something was interesting you've told us about before, about how Integrity has launched a Leadership Academy last year. In our marketing department, we've started something called the CMO School with the goal of striving to train future leaders. Can you tell us a little bit about Integrity's Leadership Academy and what the goals are?

McReynolds: Yes. I'm actually excited. This is one of my favorite things we've done since I've been at Integrity, was to create our own customized leadership training. And we did it in partnership with the Zig Ziglar Corporation. So if you're a salesperson, everybody knows Zig, right? And his trainings still live on today. And while he's no longer with us, Tom Zigler, his son, still runs Zigler Inc. And so they have rolled out several different leadership programs with many different companies. And Tom Zigler actually, during COVID, wrote a book about leading with virtue. And so we contacted him. And I think, honestly, he and his team didn't know what they were getting into working with us. And we said, "No, we want to use and teach from your virtues, but then embed in our core values. And we want to customize it all." And customize we did because we have an amazing marketing team.

Shores: Yeah, I bet.

McReynolds: And I mean, it is Integrity through and through. Everything. Even Tom Ziegler stuff is Integrity.

Shores: Really? Yeah?

McReynolds: It feels like the same voice and the same teachings. And we rolled it out. In year one, we brought 500 leaders into Dallas to go through the program. In year two, this year, we brought another 100 in to go through a three-and-a-half-day program. And then we took it on the road, similar to the Workday tour bus. We didn't have a cool bus. We kind of flew in and flew out. But we met with another-- gosh, so that was 600 people we brought to Dallas, and then I think we met with another 1,200 people to talk about Integrity leadership and what that means to us through our core values and the 10 virtues. And it was so impactful such that we actually-- another nod to Workday in being prepped that way is that we used the Workday Learning System to launch--

Shores: Oh,okay.

McReynolds: --to launch a lot of the videos and the learnings to every employee, because that was the thing. We said, "Everybody's a leader, and we want to make sure everybody has access." And so there's still more that we're continuing to put out there. But I think we taped over 100 videos of three to five-minute videos of just teachings from whether it be Tom Ziegler or Bryan or other guest appearances to really talk about leadership and fun things like setting goals and achieving goals. And we continue that throughout, and tying it to our performance management process, our self-assessments, everything like that.

Shores: That's amazing. Clearly, you care about your people and you invest in them, which is fantastic. And to drive culture, it's not just an event. It has to be ongoing, purposeful. You have to evolve everything, which is impressive.

Shores: Well, excellent. So this concludes our podcast. Is there anything else you'd like to let the listeners know about? About Integrity, about yourself, about the team?

McReynolds: Oh, gosh. I wasn't prepared for that one. No. Integrity is, like I said, it's the biggest company nobody's ever heard of. And it's kind of a blessing a little bit because we get to kind of sneak by. But we are so proud of our brand and what we do because we do take care of millions of Americans. And because we are service parts, so our job as people in culture is to take care of all of the employees that serve the agents that serve the beneficiaries, serve the customers. And it's just something amazing to be a part of and to know that that culture doesn't end here at the Shared Services office. It's with any one of the 5,400 employees that you could run into where I think it would help people know that they can sleep well at night that we're taking care of families. And I just love being a part of the journey.

Shores: Rachelle, thank you for being here. Appreciate your time and the insights you've shared. We've been speaking with Rachelle McReynolds at Integrity. Remember to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And remember, you can find our entire catalog at workday.com/podcasts. I'm your host, Brett Shores, and I hope you have a great workday.