Imagine for a moment that you’re the chief minion officer at Gru Labs, tasked with cultivating a culture of evil on behalf of your boss, Gru.

That’s kind of what chief people officer Katherine Parente does at software developer Pegasystems—minus the evil. Since joining the almost-40-year-old company nine months ago, she’s worked with founder and CEO Alan Trefler to maintain culture and engage the company’s 6,200 employees, especially since embracing a hybrid-work model.

Parente and Trefler explained to HR Brew how their working relationship took shape and what other HR leaders can learn from it.

Growing impact. Over the past two and a half years, Trefler has, like many CEOs, leaned on HR to navigate challenges such as hybrid work and turnover. In doing so, he realized that HR is about more than hiring, paperwork, and employees’ interpersonal issues and is, in fact, key to driving consistent communication across an organization.

In 2021, for example, when he wanted to bring employees back to their Massachusetts offices as part of a hybrid arrangement after being fully remote since 2020, he looked to Parente to spearhead the effort. “The office should be a magnet, not a mandate,” he said.

On culture. Executives are key to shaping a company’s culture, and a company’s culture is key to keeping employees. Trefler said he works closely with Parente to ensure Pegasystems’ culture and values are consistent throughout the organization and that employees are engaged in it.

But both Trefler and Parente agreed that there’s no better way to set the tone for a company’s culture than by modeling the behavior that they want to see in employees. Keep reading here.—KP

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @Kris10Parisi on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristen for her number on Signal.

Welcome to our regular HR advice column, Ask a Resourceful Human. Here to answer all of your burning questions is Erin Grau, the co-founder and COO of Charter, a media and services company that aims to transform the workplace. Erin has over 15 years of experience at the intersection of talent and operations in global organizations and startups, including the New York Times and Away. You can sign up for the free Charter newsletter about the future of work here.

Nearly 40% of US employers have expanded their mental health benefits since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. If your company was part of that cohort, but few employees have chosen to use the benefits, you may be wondering: What can HR do about it?

Know that you’re not alone! Though one-fifth of US adults experience mental illness, just 8% of employees who have access to mental health counseling through an employee assistance plan actually use it, according to the Wall Street Journal. This can create a critical retention problem, especially among younger workers, who are more likely to leave a job for mental health reasons.

Read on for four ways to promote your mental health benefits.—EG

Have ideas for improving mental health at your organization? Let us know at [email protected]. Anonymity is assured.

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Chipotle employees who use the company’s college-tuition benefit are seven times more likely to advance into management than their colleagues who do not, according to CFO Jack Hartung. (CNBC)

Quote: “If an employee is in the wrong place long enough, it can have real tax implications for the company as well as the individual.”—Steve Black, co-founder and chief strategy officer at talent-management platform Topia, on the problems that can arise when employees live abroad in “secret” (Vice)

Read: The approval process for work visas is massively backlogged. Attorneys share how to manage the delays. (Bloomberg Law)

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