DoorDash’s chief people officer says HR is becoming a corporate laboratory—and that’s a good thing (2024)

HR teams are under increasing pressure to fix their company’s many talent troubles, from worker shortages, to demands for better employee benefits, and guiding workers through the AI revolution.

In the past, figuring out a solution to these issues would have meant blindly investing in a costly or time-intensive initiative, rolling it out to all workers, crossing one’s fingers and hoping for the best. In other words, throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

But what if HR operated more like a research and development lab, by testing out new benefits or talent development programs like product pilots? DoorDash’s chief people officer Mariana Garavaglia, says it’s a new style of operating that she’s seeing gain traction within the HR community.

“One of the things that’s super interesting about the people function is that more and more you’re starting to see the function operate, which I think is super exciting, in very similar ways as a product function does,” Garavaglia tells Fortune. That involves experimenting with a new initiative like a training program or mentoring groups by launching it among a small number of employees, analyzing feedback, and scrutinizing any pain points that teams are experiencing before launching it on a larger scale.

She acknowledges that this can be challenging, especially when there’s not a direct correlation between testing a program and scaling it to the whole company. But she adds that employers should open their minds about the other insights that can be gained from experimenting with different initiatives.

“You hear a lot of folks say, ‘Well, we can’t do that, because we can’t do it for everybody,’” she adds. “Yeah, maybe in the way that we’re testing and piloting right now, we can’t do it. But we learn some really interesting preferences for our employee base that actually help us make a scalable solution more impactful and more relevant to our people.”

For example, DoorDash piloted some programs that have since been expanded, including its global coaching program, a leadership development initiative for corporate employees to which managers can nominate their workers. The program was first piloted in 2021 with 20 to 30 employees, then piloted again with 100 workers last year, and now has expanded internationally to accommodate 200 employees.

Other pilots, like DoorDash’s manager training program for frontline leaders at its DashMart convenience stores (called NVEST), aren’t likely to scale to the whole company, she says, because of the niche populations that they serve. But components of these pilots can be applicable to other programs. For example, with the NVEST program, some of the leadership training and skills development elements of the program, like knowing how to communicate with a team and build relationships with colleagues in other functions, have been useful for training corporate managers and individual contributors looking to grow their own careers.

“We just wouldn’t have gotten those learnings if we’d gone big, with the big bang, like everyone’s getting this training all at once versus testing things that are not scalable, but allow us to actually build something more efficient on an ongoing basis,” she says.

Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion

Today’s edition was curated by Emma Burleigh.

Around the Table

A round-up of the most important HR headlines.

- Under Armour announced it would fire a slew of workers and restructure after the company predicted sales would plummet 10% this fiscal year. Wall Street Journal

- Several businesses have pledged to collectively bring 15,000 local jobs to “California Forever”—a new city proposed and backed by billionaires, based right outside of San Francisco. Bloomberg

- The German government will investigate Mercedes-Benzover allegations ofunion-busting an Alabama plant’s efforts to organize, saying the company’s actions are a “human rights violation.” Quartz

Watercooler

Everything you need to know from Fortune.

Fear factor. Jeff Bezos says the key to Amazon’s success was telling employees early on to “wake up terrified every morning” about letting customers down. —Chloe Berger

Overbearing. Dell is color coding its staffers based on how they comply with in-office attendance policies, giving a “red flag” to employees who fall short on expectations. —Orianna Rosa Royle

Distressing. Nearly half of Amazon’s warehouse workers say they’ve experienced food or housing insecurity in the past three months, with a third relying on government-funded living assistance. —Matt Day, Bloomberg