Heather Polivka | SpeakerHub

Personal Details

Bio

Heather Polivka: Where Marketing expertise, HR proficiency and Operations know-how come together to create business success.

Heather founded HeatherP Solutions to work with progressive leaders of small and mid-sized businesses to accelerate revenue growth by creating work environments where people thrive. Her proven methodology focuses on driving business performance through employee performance. She does this by addressing workplace culture, breaking down silos, optimizing ways of working, and improving employee engagement.

A proven global leader, Heather knows the power of a purposeful brand experience that reaches customers, communities, employees, and stakeholders. She has seen the impact it has because she’s led these initiatives for some of the world’s most recognized brands.

Before launching HeatherP Solutions, Heather led the first global marketing division of UnitedHealth Group, a Fortune 6 organization. She was asked to apply her consumer-centric marketing expertise to attracting, retaining, and engaging the people needed to fuel the organization’s success. She discovered her passion for this work, and the results it produced, in the process.

For nearly 12 years, she served as the critical link between Marketing and Human Resources, reporting into the Chief Officers for both. Her work helped to transform their culture, repair their reputation as a place to work, integrate 20+ acquired businesses, and localize their presence in culturally relevant ways. Working with teams around the globe, she continually refined and re-imagined all the ways brand experience can impact people, processes, and profits.

Heather loves to make an impact in everything she does. Outside of work, she contributes to her community as a SCORE mentor and in her work with child abuse prevention, bullying prevention, and anti-racism. She and her husband Paul are Minnesota Twins baseball fans, fur-parents to their Shiba Inu, and lovers of quality wines and fine bourbon.

Learn more about Heather and HeatherP Solutions at: https://www.heatherpsolutions.com

Current position (3)

CEO

HeatherP Solutions

UnitedHealth Group

Sr. Buyer

Target Corp

Achievements (4)

2019 Sitecore Ultimate Experience Award

https://www.sitecore.com/customers/experience-awards

The Sitecore Experience Awards recognize brands that have built truly customer-centric, digital environments using Sitecore technology. Ultimate Experience Award is the pinnacle recognition.

2015 Innovation Award

The Innovation Award is determined by a panel of UnitedHealth Group Executive Innovation Champions and recognizes initiatives leading to new ideas or processes, brought measurable impacts and proven pilot results, and tied closely with strategic priorities.

2017 Supplier Diversity IMPACT Award

Recognizing suppliers and leaders who have provided outstanding contributions in the areas of technological advancement, innovative solutions, cost-effective and responsive solutions and the expansion of relationships with UnitedHealth Group

2019, 2018 & 2017 Online Communications Global Top 3 Ranking

https://www.potentialpark.com/

Potential Park is an independent market research company based in Stockholm, Sweden that conducts annual surveys of over 30,000 users to evaluate all marketing channels related to online talent communications including websites, social media, mobile and appli

Degrees (1)

MBA in Marketing, Operations & Strategic Management

Purdue University

1993 to 1996

Presentations

Presentations (7)

3 Reasons Most Culture & Engagement Fails...and What To Do

What is keeping CEOs, Leaders, Managers and Employees up at night? Employee burnout and trying to keep the best people.

Culture and Employee Engagement has never been more important.

There is a lot of great information around culture and engagement. Leaders and managers understand that their approach to culture and engagement today is the key to retaining great people. Top performing CEOs prioritize culture and engagement. Data shows that culture drives higher returns when considered as part of the investment equity for M&A. Employees want to work at a place that leverages all their skills and experience, in a positive and energizing manner, to make a difference. Study after study shows that strong employee engagement drives higher customer satisfaction, productivity, and profitability.

With all of this great insight and desire at all levels to create great places to work, why do we continue to struggle?

Managers are the Key to High Performing Teams...so What's In the way?

It is said that people leave managers, not jobs. Data shows that managers account for 70% of the variance in engagement between teams within the same company. We know this. It is common sense. Managers are the Key to High Performing Teams.

So what gets in their way? Why is the investment, support, and training for managers the lowest of any employee population? Is being a great people-leader really valued? Like, REALLY?

We will explore what lays at root of attracting, retaining, developing, and engaging your best talent to drive your business performance. And give you tangible next steps.

Po-tay-to, Po-tah to: 3 Ways Small Leadership Differences Hurt Your Business (& what to do about it

As we prepare for a post-pandemic world and a NEW “new normal” than the one we settled into throughout 2020, it is more important than ever that leaders are on the same page, singing from the same song sheet, in the same key to lead your business.

What do your values look like in the NEW, new normal? What do they sound like? Feel like? Are managers expected to manage people or work? Or Both? And How? And Where?

Whether your business is steady, going through high growth, or evolving due to M&A, 2021 will amplify the negative effects on your business if there isn’t a clear, consistent, and tangible vision across all leaders about what it means to work for your company and serve your customers.

What are the 3 ways that small differences hurt your business? And what can you do about it?

3 Ways People Centered Leaders Outperform Their Peers

The top reason employees leave a job? Their manager.
Who accounts for 70% of the variance in team engagement within a company? The Manager.

Managers are, first and foremost, people leaders. They are accountable for attracting, retaining, and engagement talent. They are counted on to produce business outcomes through inspiring, coaching, and developing others. We count on them to cascade important information and to ensure the most critical aspects of our business: caring for our customers.

Study after study shows that great people leadership results in the most coveted of business outcomes: engagement, innovation, growth, productivity, and profitability. So why are only 1 in 3 managers trained? Supported? Coached?

During this session, we will explore the many constraints and ways of operating within companies that inhibit great people leadership, what is rewarded and recognized, and all the ways we get in the way of what we say we want in people leaders.

Employee Burnout: 5 Ways to keep your best people and thrive.

Employee burnout is at an all-time high. We are seeing the signs with our co-workers, friends, and even as we look in the mirror. Exhaustion. Disengagement. Sickness. Isolation. Decreased productivity.

We reward people for grit and perseverance but are we only making it worse? And when burnout is this prevalent, is it even about the grit or perseverance of the individual, or is something more going on?

In this session, we will uncover the 5 stages of burnout. We will explore the primary drivers of burnout and why these drivers are more prevalent than ever. We will seek to understand its contributing factors and why burnout is about the eco-system versus any single individual. We will discover the 5 ways to interrupt the process of burnout, keep your best people, and create a work environment that allows individuals, teams, and entire businesses to thrive.

Why Innovation Does Not Have To Be Hard (…even in remote or hybrid work).

Innovation is a top value among companies. It disrupts industries, transforms business models, creates efficiencies and results in competitive advantage.

As more companies consider remote and hybrid work as an ongoing work practice, one of the key concerns is innovation. Innovation was challenging enough pre-2020 when people were in office. Top leaders wonder, “Will remote or hybrid work will undermine our ability to innovate? Maintain it? Or could we use it to potentially improve it?”

The business impact seems too great to leave the answers to these questions to chance.

In this session, we seek to understand the science of the human brain and how to unleash the potential within. We dive into the four key conditions necessary for insight and innovation. We explore how to cultivate innovation as part of a viable, sustainable work environment.

This webinar is not just theory. You will leave with actions you can take to immediately unleash innovation.

Discover the most effective, overlooked solution to retention and engagment

Companies of all sizes are struggling to keep great talent, employees are experiencing burnout at unprecedented levels and recruiting team cannot keep up with volume of hiring to fill all of the openings.

So what if companies hopped off the merry-go-round of talent and solved for root cause?

While we would never suggest that a single solution will solve for all of a company’s people pain points, there is a solution that begins to address these pain points in an ongoing, sustainable manner. It is the most effective yet overlooked, under-resourced, least supported, and undertrained resource in most companies.

Interested in improving retention? Interested in cultivating high performing teams that people want to be a part of? Interested in slowing down the revolving door of interviews and hiring?

During this session, we will explore the many constraints and ways of operating within companies that inhibit attracting, keeping, and engagement great people. We will talk straight abou

Past talks (4)

Practitioners' Perspectives on Racial and Gender Equity in Construction

AIA Smarter Together Series

Virtual

June 10, 2021

5 Reasons Most Culture & Engagement Work Fails

CAHR 2021 Conference

Virtual / California

May 26, 2021

Pairing Marketing & HR for Business Success

SMEI National Association

Virtual

October 13, 2020

Creating Sustainable Business Performance and Growth Thru People

Employer Branding International

Virtual / Prague

November 3, 2020

All (3)
Videos
Photos (1)
Slides (1)
One sheet (1)

This speaker hasn't uploaded any videos yet.

World EB Day, Prague 2018

5 Reasons Most Culture & Engagement Work Fails

Heather Polivka Speaker Sheet

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Books & Articles (1)

Insert into USA Today: Women Business Owners & the Pandemic

Expertise (25)

Leadership

Business

Clients

American Institute of Architects

California HR Conference

Employer Branding International: Prague, Moscow, Johannesburg, Lisbon

SMEI National Association

NAWBO National (National Association of Women Business Owners)

SMMG National (Sales & Marketing for Medical Device)

Team Women

Small Business Expo: Minneapolis & Chicago

Dreamforce

SocialMedia.org

Forum for Diversity & Inclusion

HR Tech

Reviews

Testimonials (1)

Heather is one of the world's leading practitioners and a highly regarded member of EBI's Global Advisory Board. I love her enthusiasm and passion, Heather has a 'want to be around' personality. We have been fortunate to have Heather present at our International Branding Summits - her ability to engage an audience is first class!
Brett Minchington
Verified