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HR2IT Trailblazer: CATIC’s Damon Carter Answers the Call, Joins Board
by Dan Roberts
Damon Carter is a powerhouse. He was one of the key people we had in mind as we created HR2IT. If you’re building an organization for forward-thinking, innovative HR leaders, a great starting point is, “What would Damon Carter want from such an organization?”
As senior vice president and chief human resources officer for Connecticut Attorneys Title Insurance Company (CATIC), the largest Bar-Related title insurance underwriter in the United States, he brings more than two decades of experience with such Fortune 50 giants as DaimlerChrysler, United Technologies Corporation, General Electric, Express Scripts and Aetna, as well as an apt educational background: an M.A. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology.
Having served CATIC in the CHRO role since late 2017, he recently received an additional honor: Starting in September, he’ll serve a three-year term on CATIC’s board of directors. It’s another example of Damon being tapped on the shoulder for a next-level role, and that’s where our conversation began: with those moments when you receive a call like that.
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| Q: Tell me about the moment when you got “the call” — the opportunity to step up to the level you’re at now, and take your seat at the table.
I wasn’t actively looking at the time, but a recruiter who had placed me in a job about 15 years earlier approached me regarding this role. We stayed in touch throughout my career and, given my background, she thought this opportunity at CATIC would be a great fit for me. I had an initial meeting with Jim Czapiga, the CEO, and we immediately connected very well.
Q: What made the unexpected opportunity so irresistible after that initial conversation with Jim?
His vision for what he was striving to accomplish here — transforming the organization, changing the culture, bringing in new talent and growing the business exponentially — was very intriguing to me. The company didn’t have a fully established HR function, so he wanted someone who had extensive HR experience in large organizations with diverse industry experience, who could build the appropriate infrastructure to strategically support the organization as it scaled up in size. I felt this was a great opportunity to apply what I’ve accomplished in the past, to build something great.
Jim Czapiga, CATIC CEO, shares his sentiments about Damon
“Since joining my senior leadership team in 2017, Damon has been instrumental in helping to shape our positive corporate culture, vision, and mission. He has been a strategic thought partner as we continue to grow quite rapidly over the last few years. Damon’s insight, skill set, and all-around business sense have been a huge asset to CATIC and to me personally. I love bouncing ideas off him. Also, his creativity and thoughtfulness as a problem solver is one of his greatest strengths, which has been critical in addressing day-to-day issues, as they arise.”
Q: How did you prepare yourself for such an opportunity? One thing that strikes me is maintaining that relationship with the recruiter across 15 years.
Staying connected through professional networking can definitely lead to career development opportunities. However, I believe that consistently delivering results and demonstrating professional growth is paramount. I probably would not have been contacted by the recruiter if she didn't believe that I could successfully deliver on what I set out to accomplish professionally. If people can see that you have a reliable brand, then they are more likely to reach out when the right opportunity presents itself.
I’ve been fortunate to have some really unique professional experiences, and I’ve worked to make the most of those development opportunities through hard work, perseverance and always being willing to learn from each experience regardless of the outcome.
Q: Let’s talk about how you established yourself in your new C-level role. Can you talk more about coming in, building relationships, building trust and credibility quickly and selling a new vision of HR?
I knew that establishing myself in this new role while finding a way to immediately deliver value to the company would be an interesting challenge. Within the first two weeks, I developed my key HR strategic plan for the coming year and presented it in a way that was very clear to not just the senior leadership team, but the board of directors as well. I quickly redefined the HR function and how it would operate to support the business moving forward, including cultivating a high performance culture, preparing the company for future growth and striving to become an employer of choice.
I had to come up with the right way to present my vision and then repeat the message accordingly. I also held myself accountable during monthly senior staff meetings and board meetings by providing frequent updates throughout the year and adjusting my approach as necessary. That's one example of how I was able to initially earn credibility with both the senior staff and the board.
Q: Tell me about your approach to workforce strategy. I know it to be more holistic, more data driven.
In previous leadership roles, I’ve had an opportunity to create strategic workforce plans designed to address various talent issues and drive key strategic objectives as part of the annual talent management process. In doing so, I took a holistic approach by developing a comprehensive strategy that maximized the company’s current talent review processes, introduced new workforce analytics and changed the tone of the talent conversation amongst the leadership team. This approach better enabled leaders to proactively make informed talent decisions to help address future business needs.
I also think that it is important to apply a standardized approach to strategic workforce planning and effectively utilizing workforce analytics is absolutely critical to future success — relevant and reliable data that leaders can use to proactively make talent decisions. It’s also important to create forums for leaders to come together and simply talk talent strategy, including employee development programs, high potential talent, succession planning and alternative recruiting tactics for hard to fill roles. I try to avoid packing talent discussions into either once or twice-a-year initiatives. It has been my experience that talent discussions need to be facilitated with business leaders on a more frequent basis to be truly impactful for the organization.
Q: A unique factor about your approach is your Lean and Six Sigma background. Is that something that shapes how you optimize the impact of HR?
Continuous improvement (i.e., LEAN methodology or Six Sigma) has increasingly become an integral part of my HR toolkit throughout my career. I know that this is a bit unique and I've found tremendous value in being able to effectively apply continuous improvement practices in various workplace settings. I think there’s a real opportunity for HR to leverage continuous improvement methodologies to achieve the following:
First, it's a great framework for driving employee engagement because it encourages employees to play an active role in improving productivity, driving process efficiency and helping to make their jobs easier.
Secondly, organizations that fully embrace continuous improvement understand how to regularly adapt to change because they are constantly evolving. Ultimately, it provides them with a consistent construct to execute change management effectively.
Lastly, it promotes inclusion because management regularly encourages employees to identify new ideas that have the potential to create value for the organization. Employees are invited to speak up at all times and they can clearly see that their opinions matter, which directly contributes to building an inclusive workplace culture.
Q: Speaking of inclusion, let’s talk about the importance of diversity and inclusion to your whole workforce strategy and the fight for talent.
I firmly believe that there is tremendous value in leveraging diverse talent to address complex business issues. The more complex your business issues, the more diverse your team needs to be in order to successfully address them. It’s very important for leaders to not just acknowledge ethnicity, race and gender, but to also fully acknowledge the many other dimensions of diversity that help shape our personal experiences and ultimately, provide us with our unique perspectives in the workplace. Consequently, those unique perspectives position us to create value in a way that nobody else can deliver to the organization.
In my opinion, inclusion is a key component to an effective workforce strategy because leaders have to build a workplace culture that fully embraces employees for who they are as individuals and truly value what they bring to the organization. With respect to diverse talent, you have to create a workplace environment that clearly conveys throughout the entire talent management cycle (i.e., recruitment, development, advancement and retention) that their contributions matter and add value to the organization. Successfully doing so drives employee engagement and improves the retention of diverse talent because they’ve discovered a safe place to grow professionally.
I believe that thoughtfully engaging all employees and purposefully releasing untapped potential that may exist amongst diverse talent is a key driver for cultivating an innovative and progressive workplace culture, which will ultimately have a positive impact on the company’s bottom-line results.
Q: Speaking with Damon, post Memorial Day weekend, it reminded me of how he is a very big proponent of getting veterans plugged into the workforce. I asked, why is this part of your workforce strategy?
Veterans represent a highly skilled group of resources. They are uniquely prepared to demonstrate leadership, accountability, and other key attributes that can be applied to many different professions. In my experience, it's all about effectively translating their military experiences into what you are looking for in the available role and then providing them with various tools and resources to support their transition into private industry. Veterans represent a very rich talent pool that is well equipped to address many different human capital needs and should be considered an integral part of a progressive workforce planning strategy.
Q: Can you talk about the journey that you've been on with HR2IT and the importance of having a community directly related to what you do?
Due to the advent of digital transformation and drastic technology shifts in the workplace, we're at an interesting inflection point right now and I think it’s a great idea to pull together this targeted group of forward-thinking HR professionals. We are well positioned as a function to deliver a totally different level of value to the organization. Employee Experience is now front and center, which opens the door for HR to bring forward new ideas, technologies and human capital strategies to significantly enhance the Employee Experience through digital solutions.
The HR2IT community will create great opportunities for us to talk about how we can best position ourselves to not only strategically support, but also drive key elements of the latest transformational shift in the workplace — because it's going to occur very quickly. Collectively, we can all learn from each other in real time and have a positive impact on our respective organizations through this unique networking opportunity.
If you’re going to bring people together to network and learn, Damon’s someone you want in the center of the room. In addition to his “day job,” he’s an Adjunct Research Analyst for IDC, writing on HR best practices in IT and a member of the Board of Directors for Nutmeg Big Brothers Big Sisters (Connecticut chapter). He’s deeply passionate about his practice, and will be a tremendous contributor to our community, and I’m looking forward to many great conversations. |
| | | HR2IT is an exclusive community of HR executives sharing resources and best practices for supporting the unique needs of IT. Read what other HR2IT Trailblazers have to say about the their dynamic roles, companies and the HR2IT community. |
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