Do the Right Thing: Building an Environment of Trust So Employees Can Deliver Excellence

“What makes our homes different, better, and special? It’s really rooted in the people who build our homes—our employees and our trade partners. It’s the fact that we not only encourage, but we expect and we empower them to make sure that we are delivering homes that meet the needs of our consumers,” said Kevin Henry, EVP and chief people officer at PulteGroup.

Henry spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Atlanta conference, discussing the value of decentralized decision making based on trust. At PulteGroup, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, trust is more than a value—it is an operational strategy.

And, by all accounts, it's working. As a company that will deliver over 30,000 new homes in 2024 alone, PulteGroup has found that operational excellence is best achieved by giving decision-making power to those closest to the customer, down to the customer interactions themselves.

Rather than adhering to rigid, top-down policies, PulteGroup enables employees to respond to customer needs in real time. “The flooring that people want, the colors that people want, the landscaping they prefer—we’re not legislating that from our corporate office in Atlanta. We are seeding those decision rights to the people interacting with on a regular basis."

For Henry, trust is not given blindly but cultivated through servant leadership. “Leaders should be other-centered, focused on supporting and advocating for other people so they can be successful. If they’re successful, then we’re successful.” This philosophy is deeply ingrained at PulteGroup and reinforced at all levels of leadership.

He cited Harvard Business School’s service-profit chain model as a guiding principle: “If you take care of your folks, your folks take care of your customers, and your customers take care of you. And then you can invest resources back into taking care of your folks. It creates a virtuous flywheel that keeps the organization thriving,” he said.

Trust also means allowing employees to take calculated risks. “If you don’t have a culture of appropriate risk-taking, then everyone is playing not to lose instead of playing to win. You will rarely experience breakthrough performance.”

The company cultivates a supportive workplace where employees can grow and learn from mistakes with confidence. “Growing up, I played baseball. You can strike out six and a half times out of ten and you’re still going to Cooperstown,” says Henry, referring to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He continues the analogy: “There’s no expectation that you’re going to bat 1,000 because nobody’s going to get everything right all the time. But you have to have a cultural context that says when you strike out, you know, dust your knees off, get back into the batter’s box.”

One of the most significant ways PulteGroup builds trust is by integrating diversity and inclusion into its overall leadership strategy rather than treating it as a separate function. “I have never had a chief diversity officer in any of the organizations, because I have never wanted anyone in any of the organizations that I’ve led to have the ability to abdicate their responsibility for culture.”

Instead, the company focuses on "valuing differences"—a term that extends beyond traditional corporate definitions of diversity. “Differences in background, circumstances, and beliefs are what make a team stronger,” said Henry. “We’ve got the entire organization rallying around a need for us to value differences, because that’s how we are going to be the most respected home builder in America.”

For PulteGroup, trust also means investing in employees’ careers. However, Henry articulates a paradigm shift from the traditional ladder advancement framework. “We’re very intentional about creating career paths, but I don't think about a career ladder, where it's just a vertical path of progression. I think about a career jungle gym,” he said, referring to the lateral movements that modern successful careers often take.

But, while the company leads with empowerment, they also have a perceptive and reactive structure to help amplify the individual needs and ambitions of the employees. “We have well thought-out and developed human resources systems. We have a lot of things that people can do on their own. We can see the salmon that want to swim upstream, and who’s going to invest in their own development.” And, once they identify those self-driven employees? “Then we meet them where they are, and provide them with some intentional focus to help them actualize their career interests,” he said. 

Ultimately, PulteGroup’s success is rooted in its ability to cultivate trust at all levels—from leadership to employees to customers. “You can’t be the most respected home builder if we’re not the most respected employer, because there’s a law of reciprocity between those two things.”

Chris O’Keeffe is a freelance writer with experience across industries. As the founder and creative director of OK Creative: The Language Agency, he has led strategy and storytelling for organizations like MIT, Amazon, and Cirque du Soleil, bringing their stories to life through established and emerging media.