Kathleen Weslock, CHRO at Ansys

Show Notes

Summary

Acquisitions are messy unless you have a plan to keep culture, talent, and momentum intact. Kathleen Weslock, former CHRO at Ansys (now part of Synopsys), employment lawyer, and ex-Mercer consultant, shares the playbook her team used to navigate a multibillion-dollar deal with low turnover and high trust.

She explains how to run HR like a Swiss train during M&A, from 1,000+ employee listening sessions to identifying “critical roles” (including hidden gatekeepers) and deploying global equity to retain top engineers. Kathleen details the leadership development her team built for turbulent times resilience, change management, and DISC-informed coaching plus why HR must align every dollar to business outcomes and avoid “shiny AI” distractions.

She also calls out broken talent acquisition practices (ghosting, premature references) and how to fix candidate experience fast, then makes the case for people analytics and labor economics as core CHRO skills.

Expect practical guidance on CEO alignment, speaking in ROI, and protecting culture while accelerating results.

Timestamps

[00:45] – Guest intro and the Ansys/Synopsys acquisition: mission, culture, and CHRO mandate

[05:25] – The M&A playbook: keep HR ops steady; use 1,000+ focus groups to build trust

[06:55] – Protecting critical talent: skills mapping, contingency chains, comp and global equity

[08:30] – Equipping leaders: resilience and change management, “above/below the line” coaching

[10:25] – 2026 outlook: align to business impact; spend wisely; avoid shiny-AI syndrome

[12:35] – Bespoke L&D that scales: HiPo development on a dime and DISC-based change programs

[14:30] – Fix TA first: stop ghosting, elevate candidate experience, and pulse employee sentiment

[16:40] – What trips CHROs up: subject-depth gaps, comp fluency, CEO alignment, and speaking ROI with data

Takeaways

- Run HR like a Swiss train in M&A keep core ops humming while increasing employee listening.

- Map critical roles and skills; create bespoke retention plans using fair comp and global equity.

- Equip managers with resilience, change management, and DISC-informed leadership tools.

- Align every HR investment to business outcomes; skip “shiny” tech unless it solves a defined problem.

- Repair talent acquisition now: end ghosting, treat candidates like customers, and protect your brand.

- Speak the CEO’s language with data build people analytics, labor economics, and compensation expertise to influence decisions.

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Emily Fenech (00:00.829)
Welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Emily Finick. And today I'm chatting with Kathleen Westlock. Kathleen is the former CHRO at Ansys, which is now part of Synopsys, the simulation company that helps engineers build everything from electric cars, next-gen aircraft, spacecraft, life-saving medical devices. Kathleen has also held HR leadership positions at companies like Cisco, Pep Boys. You have a very...

long and impressive career. Kathleen, I'm very honored that you're here talking with me today.

Kathleen Weslock (00:33.422)
Well, thank you, Emily. I really like the name of your company and what you're trying to do. I do think all employees should have all voices. So I'm thrilled to be here today.

Emily Fenech (00:43.523)
that's nice to hear. Thanks, Kathleen. So before we get into the depths of our conversation today, can you start off with some context? Tell us a little bit about Ansys, Synopsys, the acquisition, the people working there, who are they, where are they, what are they working on, and what specifically has your role been as a HR leader in that acquisition process?

Kathleen Weslock (01:07.886)
Sure. So I joined Ansys probably about two and a half years ago and I joined not knowing that we were going to be acquired. When I look back on it, I'm sure I was hired because of my skill set in executive comp. I'm also a lawyer, employment lawyer. And so I'm sure there was, you know, perhaps the idea that this could have happened. So I really brought the full set of HR skills to this organization.

Ansys is one of the best companies I have ever worked for. I call it a purple unicorn because the people who work there are truly rocket scientists. These are some of the smartest, most humble, terrific people I've ever worked with in my career. And our mission was very clear. We were helping to make the world a very different place for our technology and helping companies through simulation get to market faster and really change the world.

So when you have a mission that deep, it has to be ingrained in your culture. And indeed it was. So our culture has won more awards than I can account for just recently. know, our perhaps proudest was being listed as Glassdoor, one of the best 50-run companies. And they choose you, Newsweek, you know, you name it, we've won it. And it was because our leaders through our leadership development, mentoring,

management development and our leadership truly did walk the talk and put our clients and our employees at the forefront. So it's a fabulous company. Synopsys is a Silicon Valley company. based in Pittsburgh and they offer more in the semiconductor, semi-space. And so the power of this company together is really going to bring the silicon to systems.

to life about how everything will have some form of silicon in it. So it's a very, very exciting time for the company. I happened to know the head of HR at Synopsys very, very well. We worked together not once, but two times. So this was the third time that we got to work together. And so I wanted to make sure that she inherited a team that was world-class. Everything was working and really give her a fabulous HR team protocol and strategy.

Kathleen Weslock (03:34.721)
that would really help her growth go even faster.

Emily Fenech (03:38.387)
And Ansys isn't the only one winning awards out there, Kathleen. I noticed you've won a couple of awards last year, CHRO of the year. I saw that in CHRO Superstar, so congrats.

Kathleen Weslock (03:39.597)
Thank

Kathleen Weslock (03:49.282)
Well, thank you. think, you know, the biggest award that I'm most proud of is, you know, and again, is I want to do it for the work. And so the work I had done at Livent, which now is part of Rio Tinto, I negotiated a labor settlement with the mine workers and the construction worker in Argentina in the hills of the Andes. And my school, University, realized

the summer work that I had done in not only in labor relations, but the mining industry and mining something that is, you know, it's a commodity. It's not a commodity at the time. Lithium was the thing without lithium. You can't make electric vehicles. You can't have batteries. So we were actually mining lithium in the supply chain and how that got to market was unbelievable. So when I think back of the many awards to me, that's like my peep saying, you know what kid, you did great. So that's the one I'm most proud of.

Emily Fenech (04:44.785)
Yeah, I'm quickly realizing, Kathleen, you're not the best guest for a 20 minute format, because I feel like you've got lots of stories you could share. We need more time. Yes, but I'd love to know, it sounds like you did the impossible, which is, know, acquisitions are hard. Anyone who's been an employee through an acquisition knows it's hard. Anyone who's tried to lead through an acquisition knows it's hard. Can you tell me sort of what was on your mind as you went into that process? It sounds like you've come out the other end with a culture intact.

Kathleen Weslock (04:49.29)
You

Emily Fenech (05:13.949)
with awards intact, with a workforce that's inspired, that's still on track with their mission. How did you do it?

Kathleen Weslock (05:21.005)
So, you know, one of my mantras through life is read the playbook, make it your own, know all the rules, then rip it up and create your own. And so as an ex-Merser consultant, I had plenty of playbooks for &A, you know, what you need to do, what you need to do post-acquisition, what you need to do pre-acquisition. And so we were well steeped in all of that. So what we wanted to do is first make sure HR operations continue to run, HR

has to be like a Swiss train. Things cannot stop. So the hiring, the employee relations, the performance management, all those things needed to work. And indeed they did. We also had to make sure that we had the best interest of our employees and to keep them engaged in this critical acquisition so that we didn't lose any of our talent. And indeed we didn't. We really had lower turnover rates.

Everyone went into the acquisition, super plugged in, super engaged. And we did that through a very active and very thoughtful program of employee listening. We went out and did probably over a thousand focus groups and our leaders did that. Our CEO would do round tables. We would all just get out there and tell our people, can't tell you everything, but we can tell you what we can tell you. And so that garnered a lot of trust.

We also did a lot of activity in identifying those key skills, critical skills, high potentials, and those people who, if someone left, could start a chain of events that might not be helpful. know, some of these are not your typical working from the org, top on down. This is who has the light switch to the room that everybody needs access to? Who has the key to the front door and what's the plan?

So was not only identifying critical skills and in a tech company, as you can imagine, the AI, ML, cloud, our engineers are fabulous. Didn't want to lose one of them. So it was important to have individual career plans, developmental plans, sit downs with our managers, talking through the acquisition and what we were working on. And really it was staying extremely close to our employees. The other thing we did was heavy on compensation, making sure that people were compensated.

Kathleen Weslock (07:46.21)
fairly and at the right levels. Equity is a very big deal in tech firms. Years ago, I wrote a book on extending stock options globally. And so we really looked at how we extended our, not stock options, but our issues on a global basis to keep our employees in their seats. And we did all that plus so much management development training and leaders, because when you're going through something like this, it's all about leadership.

the teams will look at you and say, how is my leader behaving? Do they believe in this acquisition? And we wanted, and all our leaders were super switched on about what this meant for the combined company. So we went out and did bespoke training in resilience chip training, change management. We taught our leaders how to, you know, going through an acquisition, you can have good days, you can have bad days. You know, as the OD and leadership folks say, you're above the line or below the line on change.

So a lot of change management training and that really settled in well with our teams.

Emily Fenech (08:54.723)
That's a great, I would love to see this playbook in writing. If you ever decide to do it one day. It sounds like you got a lot of things. It sounds like a lot of things have to be right to get something that big, right? But at the core of it, I heard some of the basics too, listening, trust, clarity, right?

Kathleen Weslock (08:58.765)
You

Kathleen Weslock (09:06.093)
Right.

Kathleen Weslock (09:12.829)
Well, that's right. you know, our CEO was very clear on what we had to accomplish. And so the leadership team was very aligned. And there were times where I wanted to do, well, wait a minute, this is an HR thing that I would usually do then. And we had to just say as a leadership team, wait, is this going to further the acquisition? So we were laser focused on what we took on as an HR team. And I will say my HR team was calm, professional.

continues to be that way and really leading from their hearts, which is what employees want to see as you go through a change like this. They want to see their HR people showing up with their hearts and minds.

Emily Fenech (09:56.326)
Absolutely. I want to shift topic a little bit. It's shockingly October. We are all thinking about the year ahead. A lot of us are doing 2026 planning. What is on your mind as you think sort of broadly about HR professionals, the voice of HR, the year ahead, the future? Do you have any sort of what's been on your mind lately?

Kathleen Weslock (10:17.697)
Mm-hmm.

Emily Fenech (10:21.777)
And what sort of advice do you have for HR professionals in terms of what does it mean to find your voice, to share your voice?

Kathleen Weslock (10:27.819)
Yeah, so, you know, luckily I have some experience in this and I've been doing this for a period of time and I haven't seen HR in as challenging a place as it currently is since 2008. And that's when the markets completely fell apart. And at that time I was also working for another tech firm, was called SunGuard at the time. Today it's FIS, a behemoth fintech company. And our CEO at the time, Chris Conde, said to us, spend every dollar like it's...

your last. And so we had to come up with an HR program. Again, these are FinTech people. You know, these are the folks who could figure out the cables between banks and NASDAQ and the stock exchange. We had to keep everybody in place. So every dollar meant something. So we focused a lot on, again, same kind of playbook, taking care of your most important employees. Everyone's important, but you got to know who's running the business and making sure that your HR programs

are truly aligned with the business. This is not a time for HR professionals to be chasing that shiny nickel. Right now, everybody's talking about AI, this AI platform, this, that. All great, but if your business doesn't need it, then don't do it. Do what your business needs and make sure that you have total alignment with your CEO, with your other shareholders, what matters to the business, it's what's really important right now. So at

You know, at SunGuard, for example, when we were going through this, we decided because it was important that we develop leaders. We did a high potential program that was at the time really world class. No one was doing it the way we did. And we partnered with a professor at Cornell, Sam Bachrach, who now leads the backtrack leadership team. And out of those attendees, I'd say about 80 % of them became CEOs and other companies because the training was so terrific and they just took it with them.

was like we were creating the leadership pipeline, not for within the company, because we were private equity owned and we knew, you know, we might not stay the same, but we were creating leadership pipeline for the future. And so, but we did it on a dime, you know, we didn't go with one of the big homes, we did it very bespoke. So I'm a big leader on, I'm a big believer in bespoke learning and development at times like this.

Kathleen Weslock (12:50.623)
So, know, like BackRack was great for leaders. I worked with a company called Growth Space, and they are a skilled development company that uses AI-enabled to help companies be able to deliver really bespoke learning and development programs in the most cost-efficient, effective way. It's all through AI. It's pretty whizzy. I'm super excited about the platform. So it's really finding out, again, one, what's the direction of the company.

What do you need to do as an HR leader to keep people engaged and how do you continue to march that in a very cost efficient manner? I also think it's gonna be turbulent times for a lot of HR executives. And if you haven't gone through this before, it's gonna be tough. And there's two lonely jobs in any organization. The first is the CEO, it's a very lonely job. And the second is the CHRO. You cannot have friends in an organization. Yes, you can have acquaintances.

But this is not the time to have your best friends at work. So I also am a coach for HR executives, cone of silence, just to help think through. Because I really do think this is going to be a battleground for many HR executives like we've never seen before. Not just companies, retrenching, redoing, AI implementation, but the political and geopolitical world and labor and economic world around us.

is really at an all-time turbulent level.

Emily Fenech (14:18.127)
I was going to ask you what topic is causing the most turbulence, but I think you just answered my question, is that it seems like it's the compounding effect of so many at once.

Kathleen Weslock (14:28.991)
I think that's right. many companies just don't know what to do. And as we internally kind of figure out what we're doing, what I see, Emily, is we're really hurting some of the workforces of the future. What do I mean by that? Let's look at talent acquisition for a second. I care deeply about talent acquisition because this is how anyone gets to know your organization. I have heard of more candidates being ghosted, dropped,

offers being extended and then, you know, taken away. I've heard of companies asking candidates for the references before they even interview them. I just sit there and say, what the heck is going on here? What kind of craziness is going on in these organizations? So first and foremost, I would recommend any HR executive look very carefully at your talent acquisition practices, because what you know,

The candidate of today might be a client of tomorrow. So that's number one. Number two is keeping your employee base very grounded. And that's why having the pulse, doing what your firm does, Emily, all employee voices, figuring out what's going on, making sure you know the pulse, the hot points, where people stand. I grew up in labor relations. I could smell a union a mile away if I would walk the floors in certain manufacturing facilities and stuff.

So, you know, and that's not an issue for many companies, you know, for certain ones it is, but you've got to know your employee sentiment. So focus groups, surveys, just keeping the pulse thing close to your employees. And, you know, many HR executives just say, no, I want to work virtual. I don't want to be in the, no, no, you got to come in the office. You got to meet with your people. Those are your clients. So, you know, if you are in all virtual environment, think about how you can stay close to your employees, because at the end of the day, that that's our goal.

Emily Fenech (16:25.255)
What do you see, what's a common mistake you see? You mentioned you coach a lot of other leaders, future leaders, you know, with everything compounding, with all of these challenges, is there a common mistake you see being made that you wish you could just wipe out for people, help them with?

Kathleen Weslock (16:33.101)
and

Kathleen Weslock (16:40.159)
Well, I see several. One is not being steeped in the subject matter of HR. This is complicated stuff. I have my psychology degree. I have a language degree so I can work globally. speak fluent Spanish, French, understand Greek, Italian. So I can work many places in the world and understand what's being said. So not only that, I got my master's in human resources from a wonderful university. And I then did a law degree.

not only am I educated in the field of HR, I've also sat in every seat of HR. So I can sit there and if my compensation person is blowing smoke, I can pretty much figure out pretty quickly when they're blowing smoke. Or, you know, if someone else is telling me something and not getting their hands dirty and really deep in the subject matter, I can tell because I like to lead from the front, the behind and in the middle, depends what the team needs. But again, you've got to meet me.

more than halfway and I need to make sure that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. And I do that from having that deep subject matter expertise. So I think that's critical. And there's no, you again, I do a lot of HR consulting, but I'll also do executive compensation work, which is critical, you know, for acquisitions, IPOs. And I grew up in the comp world. I've done it. And that's another area where I feel a lot of HR executives don't have that skillset. The other area that...

I see a lot happening is CEOs will tell you one thing, this is what they want. But they're not always sure what they want. And HR means a lot of different things to a lot of different CEOs and a lot of different leaders. I have been told, you know, I want you to be the best friend of our people. I've been told I want you to be hated by our employees. And so when someone says to me, no, I'm not your girl. If you want me to be, that's not how I roll. That's not my, you know, brand.

So you and your boss really have to be in sync as to what are his or her expectations for not only you, but the role and to make sure that your team is aligned. So I see a lot of times mistakes happening where HR is chasing that shiny nickel, the new program, the new this, the new that, and the seat is like, okay, but what's my ROI on that? So you've got to really speak the language of the leadership team and the CEO. And when you don't do that,

Kathleen Weslock (19:05.549)
It's really called the paradox of HR, right? We go into HR because we love people, we wanna help, we're mission driven. We don't go into HR to say we wanna have ROI of 15%, we wanna increase margins. So you've gotta learn how to talk both languages.

Emily Fenech (19:22.183)
I think marketers should have coffee more often because I think that's also a common trap for marketers too. Lots of creative people get into the role wanting to be creative. A lot of HR get in, you know, but really the job turns out to be mostly data and mostly data driven decisions. Yeah. And mostly, you know, revenue based decisions. It's not all the.

Kathleen Weslock (19:33.229)
Bye.

That's right.

Kathleen Weslock (19:45.218)
Well, that's right. And so one of the things I did at Ansys is we had a fledgling data analytics team when I started and I had, you know, I still do two brilliant minds, know, Sean Bede and Ken Clark leading that initiative and they're fabulous. And so we just ramped up our capability and data analytics and making decisions through the numbers and creating dashboards. And wow, did that ever make a difference? Because again,

I work with engineers, rocket scientists, computer scientists. It's great to say, here's how I feel or here's how my intuition. They don't want to hear that. Show me the data. Then we can take from there. Show me where we have a problem and what we're going to do to solve it. So just like in marketing, it has to be data-based. And again, I spend a lot of time in the labor economic side of the house doing workforce planning.

really more the economics of business and how workforces fit into that and figuring that all out. So that's also an area where I think if you haven't taken labor economics in a while, highly recommend that you do because it's critically important.

Emily Fenech (20:53.875)
I'd love to ask you if there's any sort of experiments, programs, things that have inspired you lately, whether it's at Ansys or at any other company in your circle, you know, anything that our listeners today could be inspired by, take back into their organizations.

Kathleen Weslock (20:56.013)
Thank

Kathleen Weslock (21:05.516)
clear.

Yeah, yeah.

Kathleen Weslock (21:17.719)
So, you know, when you have a particular challenge, one obvious option is to say, well, let me talk to some consultants to figure this out. And we did that. We talked to Ernst & Young, Deloitte, they're all wonderful companies. But guess what? Nobody knows our workers better than us. So when we were designing our leadership training programs, again, going through and getting ready, you know, for the acquisition, and our leadership team really understood

that we had to teach our leaders how to lead through these turbulent times. And we did. I would sit with my learning and development team, again, another world-class team, say, OK, what can we do? What's option A, B, C, D in terms of learning and development? We presented it to our leadership team and said, what do you want to get out of this training? Because we can design anything for you.

And so we really got the voice of the business helping to design this course. So we did a courageous experiment and we did learning and development and training with our key leaders. And what we did is change management, leadership development. We took their disc profiles and said, here's your ability to lead. Here's where your concerns are for change. And here's how you have to lead your people given their disc profiles. And then we talked about resilience.

and change management, and it was riveting. And at the end of that two to three hour session with our leadership team, I turned to my leadership and development team and said, you guys are going to be living on an airplane for the rest of the time that this acquisition is happening. This training was so powerful and so important, everyone wanted it for their own teams. And they did. They just traveled the world giving this program because it was a game changer.

Emily Fenech (23:08.493)
I love that. Kathleen, as we wrap up today, any sort of final words of wisdom or advice for our HR audience today?

Kathleen Weslock (23:18.059)
Yeah, first of all, you're in the noblest of professions. This is not a job. It's a calling. And you have to love it. And do remember, your role in an organization is really to straddle two worlds that no one else really does. And I was brought up in a time when, you always represented the company, the stakeholders. But if you had to call the ball, if it was once they were all the same, particularly in the employee relation area.

You got to call the ball for the employee. I think we've lost that. And so I really want to encourage HR executives to have the courage and the fortitude to say, what is truly the right answer here? I once worked for this brilliant employment lawyer. She, you know, sadly is no longer with us, Betsy Plevin from CrossCow and she, you know, she represented some heavy people and I'd say, Betsy, you know, how could you have done that? You just, you know, did this or that. said, you know what?

was hired to do a job, I did the job, but then the conversations I had with that leadership team after it all over, they changed because she read them the Riot Act, like here's what you need to do. So never lose your voice. You might not be able to find it right in the moment, but don't lose your voice. I've got scars on my back, I've worked at companies for less than two years sometimes because I couldn't find my voice. And if you can't be true to yourself in the role,

then that's the wrong organization for you. So think long and hard, you know, and that's why an executive coach, someone who has your back can be very helpful. So that's number one. Number two, buckle up. It's going to be rough. Right now, everyone's saying how tired HR is. There are so many things. It's always been like this. I can go back when I started in HR and tell you there was 9-11. Talk about leading through tumultuous times. Try leading and finding your employees in New York City at 9-11.

It wasn't easy. It's never been easy. And so you just have to know that's what you're getting into. Find your balance. As you can see, I have a saddle behind me. I ride. I haven't ridden in a while, but you've got to be firmly in that saddle and grounded before you can lead. So I think my last piece of advice would be make sure you find time to take care of yourself. I know I've been so busy in my career at some points taking so much care of other people. I don't take care of myself.

Kathleen Weslock (25:44.231)
And that you can't lead organizations and you can't lead people unless you come in to work every day with kind of that blank sheet of paper and that mindfulness. And that's what executive coaching has taught me is to bring your whole self into any conversation so that you're present for people.

Emily Fenech (26:04.019)
So it always has been hard. It always will be hard. So take care of yourself.

Kathleen Weslock (26:05.505)
you

That's right. That's right. And that's the beauty of the role. There's no better job.

Emily Fenech (26:13.395)
Well, thank you so much Kathleen. You shared so many great words of wisdom with us today. Thank you.

Kathleen Weslock (26:21.645)
You're welcome, Emily. Keep fighting the good fight. I love your program and I look forward to more. Okay.

Emily Fenech (26:27.005)
Thank you.

Emily Fenech (26:31.804)
All right.

Kathleen Weslock (26:32.332)
Great.