David Hawthorne, Chief People Officer at Anchor Point Management Group, LLC

Show Notes

Episode Summary

What does it take to lead people strategy for nearly 12,000 employees across 11 brands and 500 locations?

In this episode of HR Voices, host Emily Fenech sits down with David Hawthorne, Chief People Officer at Anchor Point Management Group, the operator behind major franchises like Taco Bell and Buffalo Wild Wings.

With over two decades at the company, David shares how leadership has evolved through massive growth and what it really means to upskill thousands of managers in a high-turnover, frontline industry.

From the lingering impacts of COVID on talent to leveraging skills-based hiring and experimenting with AI in HR, David offers real-world insights into managing scale without losing a people-first mindset. You’ll hear how Anchor Point is reducing turnover, building a skills inventory, and creating a culture of accountability plus, why the best leadership development still happens shoulder to shoulder.

Key Timestamps

• [00:35] – Meet David Hawthorne and Anchor Point’s massive multi-brand footprint

• [01:43] – The challenge of staying agile as a “small company in a big body”

• [02:29] – Top leadership challenges post-COVID and bridging generational skill gaps

• [03:16] – Why getting “back to basics” works: communication, accountability, and feedback

• [05:30] – The power of role modeling over traditional training

• [06:33] – Skills-first hiring and building an internal skills inventory

• [08:55] – Where AI fits into HR workflows and where it doesn’t (yet)

• [10:51] – Using HCM data to predict and prevent employee turnover

• [12:00] – David’s career advice: Don’t wait to be developed—own your growth

Takeaways

• Return to leadership fundamentals, strong communication and accountability still move the needle

• Upskilling starts with role modeling, the most effective training is seeing great leadership in action

• Build a skills inventory know what your people are good at beyond job titles

• AI can aid but not replace human judgment, especially when it comes to sensitive HR issues

• Use HCM data for retention, spot flight risks and take proactive steps to retain talent

  Own your development, resources are everywhere, but initiative is up to you

Sponsor

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What is HR Voices?

HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call.

Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time.

There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.

HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”

Emily Fenech (00:35)
Welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Emily Fenech and I'm joined today by David Hawthorne, the Chief People Officer at Anchor Point Management Group. Welcome, David. Thanks for being here.

David Hawthorne (00:45)
Thanks for having me, Emily.

Emily Fenech (00:46)
Yeah, so Anchor Point might not be a household name for everyone listening today, but the franchises that operate under Anchor Point definitely are. You've got about 400 plus restaurant and beauty services locations, including Taco Bell, one of my favorites, and Buffalo Wild Wings, to name a few. You're setting people strategy for over 12,000 employees. That's a lot of businesses and a lot of people. So my first question is,

What is it like leading at that sort of scale?

David Hawthorne (01:15)
It's incredible actually and the funny thing is I've been with the company 23 years. When I joined the company we had 60 Taco Bells in three states with about 1200 employees and today we've grown tenfold and we have about 11 different brands we operate with close to 500 locations since my bio has been updated that you read off of. So it's been pretty incredible. think the big

Emily Fenech (01:40)
Yeah.

David Hawthorne (01:43)
change for us is really, you we try to still be that nimble, entrepreneurial, small company, but we're not small anymore. So, you know, it's trying on your patience to make the changes that you could make 10 years ago very quickly that now, you know, it's turning the battleship. So it's still a blast. We still move pretty quickly compared to most companies our size, we think. So still having fun with it.

Emily Fenech (02:10)
Yeah. What's your go-to Taco Bell order?

David Hawthorne (02:13)
Gosh, you know, I'm just a traditional tacos nachos chicken quesadilla kind of guy. So it's usually what I get when I go My my kids are much the same. So

Emily Fenech (02:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, love that. So what is the biggest challenge in your opinion that's facing you and your workforce today?

David Hawthorne (02:29)
Really, it's all around leadership and leadership development. You know, we are still experiencing a bit of a COVID hangover. You know, the industry was impacted pretty significantly, especially on the Buffalo Wild Wings side of our business during COVID. And a lot of people left the industry. You know, so we're still dealing with, you know, new people in the industry. We lost a lot of that institutional knowledge.

Emily Fenech (02:38)
Yeah.

David Hawthorne (02:55)
that we had and you just look at a younger generation of people who were coming up with different social skills than we may have had or than some of the leaders who are trying to train and develop them have had. And so really trying to bridge those generational gaps and those skill gaps and get people on board has been a challenge that we continue to face.

Emily Fenech (03:14)
Yeah, so how are you navigating this?

David Hawthorne (03:16)
You know, a lot of it really is around just going back to basics. know, really a lot of effective leaders are great communicators. They're very adaptable and they're great at holding people accountable, both praising all the good things they do as well as providing that constructive and impactful feedback when people need to do something different. So really trying to focus on those skill sets with folks has been the most impactful for us and really trying to drive home

the little things that you can do to make people be better at their jobs and to be ready for the next jobs.

Emily Fenech (03:47)
Yeah, too much of the positive reinforcement, you end up with like a rah-rah culture that doesn't really help anybody.

David Hawthorne (03:53)
Exactly, because everyone makes mistakes. mean, that's the one thing you learn in human resources is everybody's human, right? So there are people that are going to make mistakes. And being able to have those conversations with them that, hey, probably shouldn't have done it this way. And how would we do it differently going forward? And one of the messages we try to send is being clear to people is actually showing them kindness and compassion so that they don't put themselves in a situation again where they're in a bad place or they make a poor decision.

and they're able to learn from the decisions that they make. And those are hard conversations to have even when you know you're trying to be compassionate. It's still difficult to sit across the table from somebody and say, hey, that didn't work out quite like it should have. What do we do differently next time?

Emily Fenech (04:32)
⁓

Yeah, and you're in such a face-to-face people industry. When you go to a restaurant, the people are the brand. The experience, the conversation is the brand. So that's gotta be a big challenge.

David Hawthorne (04:42)
They are, absolutely.

It is, I you look at close to 500 locations and we have anywhere, depending on the brand, have anywhere from three to 10 managers at any given location. So you're looking at thousands of supervisors across the country with all different skill levels and really trying to impact them. So it's a challenge. Hurting cats is the classic analogy, but sometimes it does feel that way.

Emily Fenech (05:11)
Yeah. So with that sort of management layer, right, what do you think are some of the most effective ways for other folks who are in similar sort of frontline industries, what are some of the most effective ways to upskill those managers so that they are better at giving feedback and better at developing their employees in the stores and in the restaurants?

David Hawthorne (05:30)
The most effective that we found is simply role modeling it. So really when you look at, you know, 2000 managers that are reporting to another, you know, 150, 200 regional managers at some level and they're reporting to other regional managers at a higher level. It's really just role modeling that all the way down and making sure those interpersonal interactions happen. You can throw books at people and throw courses at people all day long, but until they see it and they see it work.

It's really not as impactful as having that boss that comes in with you and role models the conversation or sits in with you to practice. Hey, before you have this conversation, let's role play and see how this works. Those are the most impactful ways to do it. They're also the hardest to implement, just with geography and scale and all those things. So it's a challenge. We continue to put books and courses in front of people to have an idea of what the basics are.

But really it comes down to their manager having that face to face, shoulder to shoulder time with them to show them how to do it.

Emily Fenech (06:33)
Yeah, because do as I say, not as I do doesn't really work. What trends are you seeing shaping the future of work, particularly in your industry?

David Hawthorne (06:36)
It never does, no.

You know, a lot of what we see is really skills-based jobs instead of those traditional job descriptions. You know, I need somebody that can do this particular skill to be effective in this job, and that may not be something that comes with whatever the job description, you know, entails. You know, for example, you look at an assets protection person who may have traditionally been in law prevention departments and other careers.

or may have come from finance and accounting, it's internal auditors and other careers. But instead of pigeonholing yourself into I need a financial analyst or I need a loss prevention person, I just need somebody that's got the skills to be able to say I know how to track down losses, I know how to do the numbers and I can make that happen. And so really being able to kind of leverage those skills and the hard part of that is really building that skills inventory. Who do I have in the company that knows how to do A, B or C?

so that when A, B, or C comes up as a need for us, I know who to go out and find. So those are the things that we're trying to do, and I think as we continue to build that skills inventory within the company, we'll have a much better feel for, when something needs to be done, these are the 10 or 12 people I have to go resource and say, who's the best person to go do it?

Emily Fenech (07:57)
Yeah, I love that. Not your traditional job description or role, but what are you good at? That could work for people outside of your industry. That could work anywhere.

David Hawthorne (08:05)
Absolutely. And I think, for us, that's something that makes us nimble, right? As opposed to saying, hey, I hired an asset protection person, but they're missing the skill set that I need in my company because of the way that we're built. You know, we operate 11 different brands on three different payroll cycles with, you know, 12,000 plus employees. So it's complex. So a traditional asset protection manager or traditional financial analyst, even a traditional payroll specialist.

Emily Fenech (08:09)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

David Hawthorne (08:33)
doesn't necessarily have all the skills that I need to be successful at Anchor Point. So, you know, we really go out and look for those skills and say, you know, hey, if we can't find somebody with those skills, how do we teach those skills to the people that we already have in the organization?

Emily Fenech (08:46)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I hate to be one of those people that makes everything about AI, but is that anything that you're experimenting with or just when I think of

David Hawthorne (08:55)
We're playing with

AI, we're in the early stages right now. It's a little scary, and mostly from an HR perspective, it's scary around the data privacy piece. I'm scared to have a manager go hit AI and say, hey, John Doe did this, how do I do a reprimand for them? And then that becomes part of the public domain, so that gets a little iffy for us.

Emily Fenech (08:58)
Mm-hmm.

sure.

David Hawthorne (09:18)
Really being able to use it as a platform for brainstorming or just a platform to validate this is the idea I have. We've recently begun having managers practice prompts where, hey, I have a manager who needs help with communication. I'd like to put a three-month development plan together. Here's how I define communication. Please help.

and then have it put together a three month plan with some ideas and we can say, hey, some of those sound good, some of these don't, but let's, it gives us a good base starting point without having to necessarily, hey, did we ever do this for anybody before? Is there an old document out there somewhere? No, we can kind of brainstorm with AI and kind of play with it. Again, as long as we leave the data privacy piece in a good place.

we're kind of good to use that. So that's a lot of what we're doing with AI right now. I'm sure that'll grow as AI continues to flourish. And as soon as there are more data guardrails around it, I think it'll be even bigger for HR.

Emily Fenech (10:13)
Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned earlier, right, about practicing conversations, difficult conversations, and that's one of my favorite use cases is you can really play the whole conversation out to the end and get every perspective, every possible outcome, it'll lay it out there for you.

David Hawthorne (10:24)
As app? Exactly.

Yeah,

my employee is reluctant to talk and they're quiet, but they're also very confrontational and I'm getting ready to tell them this, so give me a practice script, right? And so those are some prompts we've seen some folks use as well.

Emily Fenech (10:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, incredibly helpful. What is something that you've experimented with recently? Could be a tool, could be a framework, just something in your space that got you excited.

David Hawthorne (10:51)
Really for us, we've been looking at our human capital management system and how it leverages all the data that we have on our employee base, where they're from, what their experience level is, their applications and resumes, those sorts of pieces. Part of that is that building, that skills inventory that we chatted about earlier. But part of that is really just trying to also understand, we have a high turnover industry, right?

who are the people most at risk for leaving? And being able to leverage some of the data analysis that comes with those new HCM tools that are out there has been phenomenal. we've really, in the last two years, we've seen turnover drop pretty significantly at all of our brands. And so we feel like we're having an impact in some of the things we're doing both around leadership development, because that's really one of the primary causes of turnover in our industry, as well as just around

being able to track, here are high performers that may be at risk for some reason. And what can we do to save them?

Emily Fenech (11:47)
Yeah, that's great. Do you have any sort of parting, closing thoughts or words of wisdom? We have a lot of folks who are more maybe junior in their career. Any sort of words of wisdom or advice on navigating some of the challenges we talked about today?

David Hawthorne (12:00)
You know, I think that one of the things that I see with a lot of people, especially when you look at our support center, our restaurant support center is where, you know, kind of our finance and HR and accounting teams and all those folks that outside of the operations teams. And when I look at folks in those, I see a lot of folks who traditionally are looking for, know, hey, my manager's not developing me or a manager's not training me on this and whatever. And I really, you know, I inspire my team the same way.

I'm happy to give you all the resources that you need, but I can't do your training and development for you. You know, so at some point you've got to go out and kind of find it. I tell people the story. I've been a chief people officer for 10 years and when I got into this role, guess what? I had never been a chief people officer before. And so for me, there was a lot of, okay, how do I do this job? You know, I've got an HR background. I've got a leadership background. I know the nuts and bolts, but I've never done it before.

And so I really felt like it took a couple of years before I was in the swing of things to feel like, hey, I'm actually being successful at this role. And I think people need to understand that's true with any job. And it's really on you to kind of go out and find that development, find the resources, find the books, the audio books, the people you want to talk to, whatever that is, that are going to help you get better. And that's on you to kind of take that initiative and do it. Don't wait for somebody to hand it to you.

Emily Fenech (13:18)
Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you so much for talking with us today, David. I really enjoyed our conversation. ⁓ Enjoy the Red Bull events this weekend. Okay.

David Hawthorne (13:24)
Absolutely.

absolutely shall thanks emily