Why CIOs Should Embed HR into Their Organizations

by Merv Tarde, VP IT and CIO, Interstate Batteries

As CIO of a growing company, finding great hires for the IT organization has always been a top priority. As tough as some hires continue to be, it’s an easier proposition now than it was at some of the corporations in my past. These include AT&T and the former Bell Labs. In some companies, HR was in a different building, or even a different city. I used to wonder, how could HR possibly know your area and your problems if they didn’t live and breathe what you were doing on a day-to-day basis?

At Interstate our head of HR has instituted a very successful system of HR Business Partners who oversee different departments. Talk about a break from the past! Our HR Business Partner is with our team almost every day on the floor of our company that is devoted to IT. She is on our IT-wide distribution list. She’s on my leadership distribution list.  She comes to our monthly IT team meeting, with 100% of our IT group in attendance. She attends IT management meetings.  And when we are looking for a key person, she and her team research the needs thoroughly so they can minimize the search time to find top-quality candidates.

That kind of embedded thinking in HR is reflected in the way we work in IT. When we have large projects that a line of business wants to do, we take a set of IT people that are going to work on that project and we put them in that area of the business. That’s where those people report to work. They don’t report to IT and work in their office or cubicle down here. They work there, within the business.

HR as Cultural Barometer

One critical value of HR is that they know our culture as well as anybody who’s been here. They can weed out the candidates who, “No Ifs, Ands or Buts,” will not fit at Interstate. I think they’ve also helped us surface a cultural fit in interviewing. My philosophy personally is that I like quite a few people to interview someone, so we do that through group and individual interviews. Someone comes in for the day, we try to ensure they hit as many people as possible so that we can get several people’s input and viewpoints – not only their skill sets but are they a good fit for the company?

We’re very proud of our culture. It’s Number One around here and definitely part of our winning formula. We’re very happy with it and we want to grow it more and strengthen it even further. I believe that will bring in even better talent than we have today. We think hard about the why we’re here, the what we’re going to do, and the how we’re going to do it. Part of this is remembering that the customers that buy our products are just as much our stakeholders as our vendors and buyers.


Merv Tarde is VP IT and CIO for Interstate Batteries. Merv sets the strategic direction for IT at Interstate Batteries and oversees all IT-based networks, systems and resources serving customers throughout the Interstate Batteries System. He is also responsible for Interstate’s office facilities and real estate. Prior to joining Interstate in 1998, he spent over 20 years in Telecom starting with Bell Laboratories and ending up with AT&T Wireless where he held several executive-level positions.