Paycor’s Story: Creating Visionary Leaders in a Rapidly Expanding Organization

Background

Paycor is a growing organization specializing in streamlining human resources (HR) and payroll solutions. Its software modernizes people management, including recruiting, building teams, designing benefits, and tracking compliance, with the main goal of creating great places to work.

Paycor at a glance:

• Serves more than 40K businesses and over 2.5 million users
• 30+ years of experience in the HR space
• Employs over 3,000 workers nationwide

Challenge

Paycor is a rapidly expanding organization with a vigorous growth curve.

“Paycor is scaling to a billion-dollar company from a founder-led private company, so our trajectory over the last three years has been aggressive. Scaling with that type of growth requires great leadership.”

— Martin McCarthy, Director, Talent Management and Learning at Paycor

With its expansion from around 750 employees to over 3,000 nationwide, the organization recognized a learning opportunity for its leaders at the director level and above. Paycor believed these leaders were crucial to the company’s ongoing growth and success and wanted to equip them to evolve alongside the organization.

To properly develop these leaders, Paycor wanted to design a program that would align with its values and organizational strategy, as well as the guiding principles of their internal leadership model:

• Own the Experience
• Crush Silos
• Develop Leaders
• Envision the Future
• Decide Quickly
• Make It Happen
• Scale for Growth
• Be Inclusive
• Be Courageous

To achieve these ambitious goals Paycor created an Executive Development Program. The program was designed to help participants discover and explore the following three questions:

• Who am I as a leader?
• What is my Bold Vision for myself moving forward?
• What do I need to do to achieve my Bold Vision?

Phase One – Assessments

To help participants answer “Who am I as a leader?” Paycor utilized three different in-depth assessments:

• Proprietary 360 Assessment
• Herman Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI)
• BlueEQ

The proprietary assessment evaluated skills based upon Paycor’s leadership model in areas such as crushing silos, communicating broadly, and being courageous. The HBDI was used to understand how each leader thinks, communicates, and works at their best. Lastly, the BlueEQ pinpointed strengths and weaknesses across several emotional intelligence dimensions to find areas for improvement.

Phase Two – Development Plans

Based on the results of the assessments, Paycor then created group reports to highlight key development areas and held a debrief session with each participant to review their individual results. This debrief then led into a visioning workshop where participants set their goals for where they want to go and what they want to achieve.

Following this, Paycor sought a partner to execute phase three — “How do I get there?” — through a series of learning experiences to address growth areas and opportunities found in phases one and two.

“We knew that we wanted a customized solution, and not just a boilerplate leadership development program. We wanted something that could leverage our own assessments by taking the group report data and customizing a solution for each cohort, which was a big differentiator for us.”

— Martin McCarthy

Phase Three – Bluepoint’s Partnership

Paycor understood what it needed as a next step in its leadership development program, but needed a strategic partner who could seamlessly integrate with the first two established phases of the program. Paycor chose Bluepoint as its partner in this initiative because of Bluepoint’s ability to customize and design a solution that would best serve the participants based on the assessment data, as well as the current internal and external challenges Paycor was facing.

“The cohorts knew this program was based on our Paycor strategy, our guiding principles, and our leadership model, but also customized for them as individuals.”

— Martin McCarthy

 

Workshops

Bluepoint chose relevant topics from its workshop content library and tailored the learning precisely to each cohort’s specific needs.

While the series of workshops were unique to each group, topic themes arose across cohorts. Each topic was explored in an experiential manner, requiring participants to be reflective on current practices and try new approaches in real time.

Shared leadership themes for all cohorts included:

• Emotional Intelligence: Participants explored topics that helped them to learn about themselves and their unique qualities including personal emotions, triggers, and responses. They used this information to discover how they could personally respond to these emotions in ways that enhance their leadership, become aware of the emotions of others, and be a positive, energizing force within their organization.
• Coaching: During the coaching workshops, leaders explored how to become positive influences and catalysts for high performance and career growth within their teams, as well as discovering how to become the type of leader that others genuinely want to receive coaching from. This was accomplished by working through immediately applicable approaches to coaching and creating personal development plans.
• Communication: The cohorts explored the challenges of communication and learned strategies to overcome them, enabling them to convey their messages effectively in different situations, build trust, and connect with others. They then practiced various messaging techniques to craft impactful and influential messages that create an immediate positive effect.

Learning Application Trios

As part of the design of the workshop, Bluepoint incorporated Learning Application Trios, selected by Paycor, into the learning experience. Trios met periodically to discuss challenges, learnings and commitments to help build support, accountability, and strong connections with each other.

1:1 Coaching Engagements

Participants worked closely with a Bluepoint Leadership Coach to explore their aspirations as leaders based on their “bold visions.”

Coaches had the chance to review the assessment data beforehand, which helped them familiarize themselves with each participant before their first session. This enabled coaches to empower the leaders to recognize their gifts and developmental needs identified in the assessments as well as help them make intentional growth decisions and craft and execute personalized action plans aligned with the goals of the leadership program.

“The 1:1 coaching was terrific. Having someone outside of Paycor to provide practical, nonbiased coaching and guidance was so helpful and eye-opening. I felt like I had someone in my corner coaching me to get to my desired outcomes!”

— 2023 Cohort participant

 

Graduation

Following the completion of the Executive Development Program, each cohort took part in an event titled “Making Great Leadership a Habit.” This capstone workshop provides a framework for participants to plan how they will continue toward their bold vision moving forward.

Cohort Customizations

Paycor and Bluepoint work closely to intentionally design each year’s program based on each cohort’s specific needs, including the topics, the timing, and the format. This is based on the aggregate data from the assessments, current business needs, environmental factors, and feedback from the participants.

2022 Cohort

The first cohort took place in 2022 when businesses were still feeling the after-effects of the pandemic. Due to this, participants in this cohort focused on topics such as communication, collaboration, and resilience, which were all pain points during this time of virtual work and uncertainty. These topics were delivered during seven interactive virtual workshop sessions.

2022 Workshops included:

• The Leader Within
• Making Your Bold Vision a Reality
• Leader As Coach Part 1, 2 & 3
• Leading Innovation
• Collaboration At Paycor

“Bluepoint was very flexible in terms of the structure of the learning based on what we needed for that year.”

— Martin McCarthy

 

2023 Cohort

Due to feedback from the 2022 cohort, 2023 continued to utilize a shorter workshop format, for quick bursts of learning. This allowed easier scheduling for busy leaders and more digestible learning. Additionally, the workshop “Living Your Bold Vision with Passion and Purpose” was introduced in this year’s cohort, which taught participants the importance of having a sense of meaning and investment in their work through tactics such as collaboration and developing connections.

2023 Workshops included:

• Living Your Bold Vision With Passion & Purpose
• Leader As Coach Part 1, 2, & 3
• Communication & Influence Part 1 & 2

2024 Cohort

For the 2024 cohort Paycor wanted to incorporate in-person workshops. Bluepoint created a two-day on-site workshop on coaching skills, an improvement area identified for this cohort. This new format created a bonding environment where the leaders could practice skills in person with their peers, while building connections.

2023 Workshops included:

• Living Your Bold Vision With Passion & Purpose: Communication & Influence
• Living Your Bold Vision With Passion & Purpose: Communication, Coaching, & Making Great Leadership A Habit

Results

Paycor has been thrilled to see tremendous growth within its leaders, both professionally and personally. The program has successfully completed three cohorts over three years, with increasing demand for future cohorts.

Specific achievements have included:

• Employee retention: 85% of all cohorts
• Promotions: 35% overall
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Overall score of 92%
• Overall rating for the program: A rating of 9/10

Paycor has also heard great feedback from participants, including “It was life changing. I really feel like I’m a different leader after the training and sessions” and “I’m better at empathy, self-awareness, and overall perspective.”

Overall, Paycor’s Executive Development program has achieved desired outcomes such as:

• Increasing self-insight and awareness
• Strengthening relationships and broadening influence through cross-functional learning
• Developing executive leadership capabilities
• Progressing on individual development goals through coaching and customized application

The Executive Development program has been a great success in developing leaders, and Paycor plans to continue it indefinitely. The demand for the program continues to grow, with requests for development for this group’s direct reports and other levels within the organization.