Shannon Johnston leads the Human Resources function as Vice President, HR for Avet Pharmaceuticals, a generic pharmaceutical company located in East Brunswick, NJ.
She has worked as an HR professional for over 20 years and has been successful in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. Shannon has led the HR function for both private and public companies and has worked across various industries.
In her last role as Head of HR and in her current position, Shannon has been responsible for building out the Human Resources function for two high growth companies. Her approach has been both practical and innovative as she uses her global experience as an HR leader and “lessons learned” along her journey to further refine her work. Shannon believes in a logical, reality-based approach to managing talent. She is an advisor, coach, organizational change agent, and workplace-wellness advocate.
Shannon holds a BA in Psychology from Georgian Court University and an MS in Organizational Leadership from Quinnipiac University.
More from Shannon…
All HR professionals know that running a department is a lot of work. There’s a plethora of things that go into ensuring that the workplace experience meets the expectations of company executives and employees.
Anyone with an HR background who has managed to master his/her craft can jump into an organization and immediately hit the ground running.
But what about if a company has no HR department at all? It takes an even deeper wealth of knowledge to be able to build an HR department from the ground up. Johnston has this experience. Going from 0-100 is a completely different mindset than just jumping into something new.
So what goes into building an HR department from scratch?
Johnston tells us her experience and process:
“I believe it starts with setting expectations. So if you’re going to take on this kind of role, it starts with setting expectations for yourself, your boss, the organization, the employees of that organization, your team, because I think, if you’re going to take this on, you’re going to go to a company that’s likely had little or no HR function. So they [potentially] don’t know what it even looks like.
As someone who’s going to be a leader of that function, I think you need to be really clear on what’s reasonable. You need to understand what their expectations are upfront. What’s the timeline of if it’s a cultural initiative? Is it building our infrastructure? What do they have in place already? You really have to do your homework when you’re interviewing, and I think be pretty straightforward and helping start guide what they’re looking for, even during the interview and negotiation process, because they don’t really know maybe even the questions to ask.
And if you’ve built your career to the point where you’re ready to take on this type of role, it’s really up to you to help them understand through discussions early on, what it’s going to look like, what do they expect, what’s realistic, and so forth.
I think, along with that, you need to understand what you have in terms of resources, People, it means an actual budget. Do you have [a budget] because, again, you’re talking to people who’ve never had an HR function, who don’t know what maybe a system costs, or what it costs to advertise positions on something like LinkedIn. So they may not want to spend money or think that what they’re going to give you is enough. And you might have to make it work. But then again, you got to go back to setting those expectations.
And then, generally speaking, do not assume that people know what you’re there to do. They have never had this function before. So it’s up to you, as an HR leader, to help educate people and provide the business case and the rationale as you move along your pathway of building the department. Help people understand why these things are important.
The other thing, and it sounds so obvious, but you have to keep in mind if you’re going to go build your HR function, it is likely the company’s growing. They say, ‘hey, we’re at a certain point, we’re growing.’ I will bet like 100%, they’re bringing in other executives to build other functions. So what you have to remember is everyone is building their own function. So you’re not building HR in a bubble. You’re building HR while everybody else is building their own function and dealing with their own challenges. So your colleagues might not be ready for everything you want to do. The organization might not be ready, you have to really kind of check yourself in terms of where’s the organization, who of my colleagues, department heads, are ready for what I want to implement? And not everyone will be. Some might be. Some could be your ambassadors, your champions, your pilot groups.
But I thought going into it the first time, you know, how hard can this be? I mean, I’ve kind of rebuilt one department that was much, much bigger. But that was in a steady state organization. When you’re talking about a company that’s in high growth mode, it is a completely different story.”
In our full conversation with Johnston, she talks more about building HR departments from scratch, the importance of automation in HR, and a medical diagnosis she received 20 years ago that gave her a new outlook on life.
