The HR director who established culture-friendly policies for the exclusive Soho House

Have you ever gotten into a Soho House? Neither have we.

This week, though, Lauren Goodman, regional director of people and development at Soho House, gave us an inside look at her job at the members-only club.

Goodman handles HR for two of the private club’s largest operations: California and New York. She joined in 2022, about a year after the company went public during a period of transition, she said. (Last month, it reached a $2.7 billion deal to go private after a multi-year streak of poor stock performance.)

While the company still thinks of itself as a “30-year-old startup,” its public offering necessitated establishing structured HR processes, which were either non-existent or inconsistent, according to Goodman. She was tasked with formalizing processes and policies for background checks, employee form storage, interview guidelines, performance management, and terminations.

Another focus was ensuring that frontline staffers understood the culture and history of Soho House and its importance for long-tenured members.

“Our frontline hourly employees, they make or break our culture. So we have to take so much care of them and listen to them, but also make sure we’re setting them up for success and saying on the first day, ‘These are our values. This is why these are our values,’” she said. “Because, if not, we’re walking them in and we’re setting them to fail, which isn’t fair for anybody.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked?

Changing the perception of HR from being purely administrative to being a partner.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?

That HR just hires and fires people and is there for admin support.

It’s way more than that. Employee engagement, to me, is a big piece…especially knowing that our servers don’t want to be career servers…We know this is a job, and they’re working at Soho House to, hopefully, meet the right connection…[However,] how do we keep them as engaged as possible when they’re at work?

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

Taking care of my team and the employees.

At the beginning of the year in LA, we had the wildfires, and it was a really hard time for a lot of our team…We have Soho Home, which is our retail space, and our head of Soho Home reached out and said, “Hey, we’re able to provide $10,000 to each employee who lost a home once they’re ready to purchase new furniture, and we’ll do it at an employee discount.”

Also, we worked closely with the team on furloughing. We had to do some furloughs for several months for our Malibu location, because there was no way in or out, and a lot of our members lost their homes, too…Just being there and listening and offering our employee assistance programs and our mental health resources through Aetna. And then we also protected our employee hours, so we made sure that everyone would stay at a full-time status for those months, even if their hours weren’t there, so with our ACA audit, so that way it wouldn’t become a detriment to them to lose benefits.

What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why?

I am most optimistic for HR to be a strategic player, have a seat at the table and be part of key decisions. I think HR is integral in an organization and provides an insight on how to motivate the team while minimizing legal risk.

What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why?

I am currently least optimistic about the increasing complexity and pace of employment law changes. In states like California, we’ve been trained to continuously keep an eye out for changes. However, there seems to be pace increasing for local jurisdictions and it can be tough to access the information. In tandem with the employment law changes, the growing polarization in workplace culture—including political, social, and generational divides—is putting a lot of pressure on human resources and the employee’s manager to be culturally sensitive and legally sound. Leading with integrity, empathy, and innovation is going to be key, coupled with understanding how different groups define and will respond to this type of leadership.