Ask an HR Executive – Paula Sacks, CHRO of Atlantic Aviation

In our second installment of Ask an HR Executive, we had the pleasure of speaking with Paula Sacks, CHRO of Atlantic Aviation. Here’s what she had to say.

How did you get your start in HR?

I was one of the people who realized early, as I started college at Georgia State University, that I had a love for the people and management side of the business. I had the opportunity to concentrate in human resources in school. I was so blessed and fortunate to have gotten a position right out of school with Arthur Andersen in recruiting. I started in recruiting, so recruiting will always be my first love. I always say I have my recruiting hat on no matter what I’m doing. I’m always thinking about how to position opportunities and market and sell the company. I think that goes back to so much of my recruiting experience in the early days.

Then I went to Southern Company. That’s where I started to branch out in the energy space. I’ve spent almost my whole career in all things around power and energy. I was always in roles that were supporting the business from HR. Then, I had the unique opportunity to leave HR for six years while at Georgia Power Company. I was in a management role in the commercial and industrial call center. From the beginning, I said I would bring my HR and people leadership to the business every day. When I returned to HR, I said I would use my business and customer service experience and apply it to HR daily. It was such a pivotal part of my career. It was the first time leading HR as a business leader became crystal clear to me. From that point forward, I’ve been in progressive roles in HR, mainly in the energy space. I had the opportunity to come to Atlantic Aviation in 2021, where I currently serve as CHRO.

How is your team structured?

Our team has about 21 or 22 people. It covers the functional areas of HR, including employee relations and those that partner with each region daily. We lead end-to-end HR as part of the corporate function. We are highly operational here, knowing that we have such a distributed workforce. We have so many people in the field, so we must be highly operational in supporting them. That’s what our team does every day.

What trends in HR are you seeing today that have your attention?

I don’t like to think of it as a trend, but more of something critical to our business, and that is building our organization’s manager and leadership effectiveness. We call it “Building Better Leaders.” It is building better leaders from both a technical and operations lens and a people and culture lens. We are so focused on helping our front-line leaders to be upskilled and giving them training and development to be the best leaders possible for their teams. It is important to create a culture where people come to grow and thrive. I also want to have a group of employees who are highly engaged and connected to Atlantic Aviation. It has been so great to be a part of that every day. I love that it’s not only industry-focused, but my CEO and I are so aligned on working together to build better leaders throughout the organization. It’s been an important effort for us.

Another thing we have on the horizon that may be interesting is our employees’ holistic well-being. Everyone thinks about well-being in terms of health and wellness, but we are also thinking about it in 3 additional ways. One of those is mental well-being. We are trying to think beyond offering just the EAP services and how we can better provide resources to meet employees where they are regarding mental and financial well-being. If you think about our workforce, we have a highly hourly workforce. Some employees often have financial needs. We are trying to think about ways we can potentially offer early wage access. We are looking into financial coaching. Lastly, we are looking into better supporting our employees in an emergency.

Are there any roles in demand or challenges your team is facing?

We are so focused on how our customers experience Atlantic Aviation. I mean how they experience leadership and the work environment every day. Our employee relations team is so central to that. We want to immediately address any issues in the field, whatever they may be. We are putting a lot of dedicated resources around the employee relations experience. I think that is the number 1 elevation we are doing to have greater expectations. We have a leader in employee relations that you recruited for us. We have a team of 4 on her team.

What does your organization do to support learning and development, career progression, and overall professional development?

We want employees to come to Atlantic Aviation, stay here, and grow their careers here. Seeing how many of our employees have advanced within their roles is amazing. Over the past year or so, we have defined career paths for our front-line employees and those at the front desk. We are creating a path for them so they can have more visibility into growing their careers here through a defined career path. That has been great and long overdue. We are happy we had the opportunity to develop that. Over the year, a hundred employees have been promoted to higher-level roles. It’s great to be able to show that growth and progression.

What do you want to accomplish personally or professionally in the next couple of years?

I’d love to be on a board at some point. I want to bring my people and culture leadership expertise to a company board. That is a personal objective of mine. I love to spend time with family and travel when possible. Those things bring me a lot of joy.

What would your dream job be if you weren’t doing this job?

Without a doubt, I would be a high school business teacher. I say that because I had such great high school teachers who greatly influenced me, especially being from a low-income family. I want teachers who would encourage and guide students to things they will see in the future. If I were not doing HR, or maybe in my retirement, I’d love to be a teacher to help shape the early career experiences of students thinking about their career options.

If you are looking for an HR or Marketing leader to fill any gaps on your teams, contact us today.