Pamela J. Brown, Head of People & Culture at Crunch Fitness

Show Notes

Episode Summary

In this episode of HR Voices by AllVoices, Emily Fenech sits down with Pamela Brown, Head of People and Culture at Crunch Fitness, to explore how HR leaders can shift from being reactive task managers to strategic business drivers. Pam shares how she uses ruthless prioritization to align people initiatives with top- and bottom-line business goals, and why she considers herself a businessperson first who specializes in people.

Pam also opens up about her personal transformation journey at Crunch—including losing 60 pounds—and how that experience helped her build deeper credibility with frontline teams. From predictive analytics in HR to strengthening manager capability, Pam offers a masterclass in combining authenticity, data, and strategy to amplify culture and results.

Whether you're fighting for a seat at the table or trying to keep up with the rapid pace of AI in HR, this conversation offers practical insights and grounded leadership advice.

Key Timestamps

• [00:34] – Meet Pamela Brown, Head of People and Culture at Crunch Fitness

• [01:02] – The expanding role of HR: culture keeper, change navigator, and strategy partner

• [01:56] – Ruthless prioritization: how Pam decides what matters most

• [03:21] – Tying HR strategy to business growth and executive priorities

• [04:15] – Owning your seat: becoming a business-first HR leader

• [05:22] – Personal transformation: how Pam’s fitness journey built trust and connection

• [07:54] – The rise of predictive analytics in people strategy

• [09:52] – Building strong partnerships with technology experts

• [11:28] – Using AI to interpret engagement data and drive action

• [13:50] – Pam’s leadership philosophy: be a multiplier

Takeaways

• Lead HR with ruthless prioritization to avoid distraction and align with business impact

• Act like a business owner: speak the language of finance, operations, and outcomes

• Build credibility through lived experience, vulnerability, and real connection

• Leverage predictive analytics to proactively address turnover and engagement

• Network with a give-first mindset to build authentic, lasting professional relationships

• Be a culture multiplier by identifying growth opportunities at every level of the organization

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Emily Fenech (00:34)
Welcome to HR Voices by All Voices. Today we've got Pam Brown with us. She is the head of people and culture at Crunch Fitness. Welcome, Pam.

Pamela Brown (00:44)
Thank you so much. I'm so appreciative of being here.

Emily Fenech (00:47)
yes, thank you for joining us. So at HR Voices, we are all about real talk. And so we're just gonna jump right on into it. And I wanted to start by asking you, what is the biggest challenge that people teams like yours are facing in this moment?

Pamela Brown (01:02)
Well, I think that people teams today are. ⁓

being asked to be the culture keepers, the change navigators, and the strategy partners. And that's a lot of asks. And technology is also coming more and more into it. So the challenge is really the work so that it's not just the urgent tasks that we're working on, but also the important tasks. And it could mean choosing to strengthen your manager capability, as one example, before jumping into a big change initiative.

So sometimes it means putting things on the back burner, but I would say that's the biggest challenge.

Emily Fenech (01:40)
Yes, I hear that a lot. I think it's really easy, just the scope of HR is so big that you could keep yourself busy, your entire team busy, just sort of in reactive mode or administrative mode. So how do you sort of navigate that?

Pamela Brown (01:56)
So I try to lead with ruthless prioritization and focus. So it means aligning the team on what good looks like and also saying no sometimes to well-intentioned distractions. You really have to learn. There's a whole book called Yes And. And you really have to learn how to maybe instead of saying no, we say yes and.

this is the timeline that we're looking at if we want to do this. And so as an example, it could mean accelerating the launch of a critical training program ahead of initiative and being unapologetic, a good business partner, but unapologetic about the ruthless prioritization.

Emily Fenech (02:39)
Yes. What are you ruthlessly prioritizing right now? Is there any sort of big projects you have going on that are taking the lead over some of the more distracting back burner tasks?

Pamela Brown (02:51)
So we're always excited about.

top and bottom line growth. So anything that impacts has the biggest, we look for what has the biggest impact on top and bottom line business growth. So it really means listening to your CEO, your president, your COO, your CFO, on what are the priorities and strategies of the company that are gonna help us move the needle the fastest, and then really tying everything we do in people and culture to one of those strategies.

Emily Fenech (03:21)
Awesome. Yeah, so what advice would you have for other HR leaders who are listening to us right now and navigating the exact same challenge? It's sort of one of those easier said than done, What advice do you have to sort of make that shift from being a little bit more maybe reactive or doing things the they've always been done to to getting that strategic alignment? I think I hear also from HR people that sometimes it's hard to get a seat at the table to even sort of...

you know, be a partner in the moment when those decisions are being made. Do you have any advice for folks who might feel that way?

Pamela Brown (03:53)
So I do, I do. I'm very fortunate to work in an organization where I don't have to fight for a seat at the table. I have that. But I've worked for organizations where HR maybe wasn't viewed in the same way. So the best advice that I could give and the way that I've approached my career is that I'm a business person first and I happen to specialize in people and culture.

Emily Fenech (04:15)
Mm-hmm.

Pamela Brown (04:16)
And I think that if you can speak to owning your piece of the business and like an executive or a business owner, I think it makes a huge difference to the leaders around you and your credibility. So you have to be able to speak to the numbers and you have to be able to speak the language of the business. So when I joined Crunch, I had never worked in fitness before. I had a background in financial services followed by insurance. So I dedicated my

to learning the language of the business of fitness and that will sharpen your credibility.

Emily Fenech (04:51)
Did you have any partners in the business that helped you out or did you do that sort of independently?

Pamela Brown (04:55)
I had so many partners in the business. everybody was excited to see me trying. It's kind of like ⁓ sometimes if you go to a foreign country and you speak a little bit of the language, people are going to want to help you. That's been my experience there too, and that's what I did. So I got myself a personal trainer. I got myself to the gym three days a week. I actually have a happy weight loss story that goes along with my professional journey at Crunch.

Emily Fenech (05:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Pamela Brown (05:22)
And the team seeing me make that effort wanted to help me. And so I had help from a sales leader, an operations leader, and many different partners across the company. And...

Sometimes when I go to a gym, I went to a gym in Texas and I post a lot on LinkedIn and on Instagram. So that leader happened to follow my social media and told me it was inspirational. And so getting the front line to believe in you and also your knowledge and impact makes a big difference.

Emily Fenech (05:58)
Yeah, I love that. It sounds like you were leading with like vulnerability and connection, you know, not coming in and saying, you know, I know this area, like teach me about your area of expertise. I love that. Yeah. Was that, yeah, that's great. And then in terms of your personal story, if you don't mind sharing, that sort of coincidental or was that sort of intentional?

Pamela Brown (06:10)
It goes a long way.

So what got me to the gym was wanting to learn the business. And my plan was just to go once a week, work with a personal trainer, and have that complement my 30, 60, 90 day onboarding plan. what I found out and what I've learned is people build connection and community in the gym. And so that was the first thing that hit me, and I wanted to go more than once a

And there's also a special

relationship with the personal trainer. And that was also a lesson learned for me when my first personal trainer moved on in his career to a different company, I fell off the wagon a bit from my...

from my commitment and then I got myself recommitted. I've now been with my trainer Sean for a year and in that year I lost about 60 pounds which is a big number but it's more exciting than that is how much weight I can lift and that I'm still going three days a week, that I still have this commitment, that I'm inspiring. I've had a 25 year career so that I'm inspiring other

people that have had long careers and think they can't just get started, but you can. Thanks.

Emily Fenech (07:49)
Yeah. congratulations. That's awesome. Yeah.

So, are there any sort of trends, shaping the, you know, you've spent a lot of time getting to know your industry and your specific workforce in the gym. Are there any trends that are shaping the future of your industry or your workforce that, ⁓ that you're excited about, or maybe even a little bit unsure of?

Pamela Brown (08:12)
Definitely, I think something that's shaping every, probably every area, not just fitness, but...

if I turned my head backwards towards financial service and insurance where I got my start, technology is accelerating the pace for everybody. It's important that we also focus on the people and I would say that the big trend is really predictive analytics. So if we can predict what our members want and what they're going to do, that could really help us with growth. And of course, as a people leader, my interest is

is also in predictive analytics around retention, for example. So I mentioned the special relationship between our members and their personal trainers, and I gave my own example of how I fell off a bit when there was a change. If you think about the cost of turnover, it's even higher when relationships are at play.

Emily Fenech (09:07)
Yeah, absolutely. So can you tell me a little bit more about how you're leveraging predictive analytics in your team?

Pamela Brown (09:14)
So we're really just getting started, but ⁓ all of the payroll systems now have predictive analytics. And at the touch of a button, we can figure out ⁓ if there's a gym in particular or a district within the country and the world that is having particularly high turnover. And then we can peel the onion back using stay conversations and exit conversations and the pace that it can all be analyzed.

Emily Fenech (09:16)
Okay.

Pamela Brown (09:41)
through technology is just much faster. I remember 20 years ago having to go page by page through surveys and today we have AI.

Emily Fenech (09:51)
Yes. Wow. do you stay at... Technology is moving so fast. I'm in marketing and it's transforming every channel, every process. What advice do you have to stay ahead of technology? How do you sort of understand what's out there and what you should be leveraging? Do you have any advice for other leaders?

Pamela Brown (10:10)
I think that I personally try to find...

Experts in the field, can't be an expert in everything. So it's important to keep your experts close. If you're lucky enough to work for a company that has in-house technology experts, I would find ways to partner with them and find out. I always like to ask myself when I'm networking in general, but also internally, are there things I can offer the person that's the AI wizard?

If there are, my first question is how can I help you?

coming from a people area, are often lots of ways I can help. So maybe they're building their team and they need recruiting help, or maybe their team needs a development plan. And if there are things that I can offer from a people lens, I'll do that before asking for help. And I think that that often drives a great relationship. At least it's a good start. And I keep my experts close. We don't have the in-house expert, so I have found an external expert who is

She's part of my network and has helped me a ton with advice. And now I'm at a stage where I can probably hire her to come in and give the whole company the foundations of AI and also some basic policies so that we're not just writing the rules by ourselves.

Emily Fenech (11:28)
Right.

So with all these expert support and tools that you're trying, does anything sort of stand out as, know, it doesn't have to be a tool or an automation. Sometimes it can be a framework or a process, but is there anything that you're experimenting with or that you've done recently that you'd like to share? Any sort of experimental or discoveries?

Pamela Brown (11:46)
So we did do an engagement survey a couple of years ago, and AI definitely helped parse through all of the data because you're collecting feedback from thousands of people. And you really want to pull out the themes and patterns. And so I started to describe earlier that 20 years ago you were going page by page, by hand. Then came Excel that made things a little bit better and you could at least sort and look for themes that way.

Emily Fenech (11:55)
Mm-hmm.

Pamela Brown (12:13)
Now with AI, can really pull out, here are your positives, here are your areas for development, here are your watch outs, if there are any, and there always are some. And then it could also give you some...

information on what you might want to do next. Also, there are platforms and tools, a lot of different ones, ⁓ that have that technology built in. There are engagement platforms. And the plan next, because we pulled out, we wanted to improve on communication and recognition. And so the next piece of the puzzle is going to be a pulse survey on those two more focused topics as opposed to the big broad survey.

Emily Fenech (12:33)
Okay.

Pamela Brown (12:55)
And we are finding that we've lowered retention by focusing on those things. We're communicating at every company update on what has changed and how we're using that feedback to grow. And lower turnover is great for the bottom line, which is the business language you want to be able to speak to. It's not just the, it is feel good. It is great for our culture. But culture can be a very hidden activator for the PNL.

Emily Fenech (13:21)
Oh, absolutely. Yes, and I like how you're tying that back. Everything that you're doing is tying back to the bottom line, which gets us right back to the beginning of this conversation. That's a nice full circle moment.

Pamela Brown (13:30)
Yes,

definitely.

Emily Fenech (13:33)
So I see just as someone getting to know you a little bit better and chatting with you, it seems like a common thread throughout like your approach to leadership is authenticity and relationships. With every question I asked you, know, it sort of went back to like giving before taking and making sure you're in the field and building the relationship and understanding the business. So I just want to call you out for that. Is there any sort of parting thoughts that sort of sum up your approach to leadership? Any parting words of advice?

Pamela Brown (13:56)
Thank you.

Emily Fenech (14:03)
you want to give to our audience about your career, your experience, and anything to leave us with.

Pamela Brown (14:08)
Definitely. think that ⁓ authenticity, collaboration, and also data-driven decision-making are pillars in my own philosophy. And also, I try to be a multiplier. So to me, a multiplier is somebody that can certainly the top and bottom line of revenue is what we always want to multiply, but also multiplying the culture in finding development opportunities at every level.

is that really strikes engagement and engagement will help your company grow. So it is all tied together. My feedback for people just getting started is probably gonna be networking, networking, networking, because you have to start by getting your foot in the door. so networking...

When I teach, I always get the question, well, how can I network better? That's the hardest thing to do. And I would go back to what can you do for the people that you're networking with? Start there, and then they're going to want to help you.

Emily Fenech (15:05)
Mm-hmm. That's great. Well, thank you so much, Pam. It's been an awesome quick conversation. And all right, take care.

Pamela Brown (15:11)
Excellent. Thank you so much.

Take care.