Article • 5 min read
Inside Dutch Bros HR: Embracing failure to redefine employee service
Mike Buzan, VP of People Strategy and Operations, shares how the beloved coffee brand is empowering employees and preparing for the next era of work.
What does it take to be one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S.? It’s more than hard work—it takes innovation, bold decisions, and the right technology.
Dutch Bros Coffee has scaled to 1,000 stores with over 30,000 employees. Amidst this rapid growth, they’re also redefining employee service: achieving a 212% productivity boost and setting the stage for future growth.
At Zendesk Relate, Mike Buzan, VP of People Strategy and Operations at Dutch Bros Coffee, shared how he and his team are scaling HR operations, empowering employees, and preparing for the next era of work. Here are his tips for transforming employee service as your company scales.
1. Embrace failure
Dutch Bros faced myriad challenges scaling their HR operations in response to their rapid growth. Among them, Mike knew things needed to change—starting with how he and his team tackled problems.
“Problems are treasures,” Mike said. “We don’t need to sweep them under the rug or be wary of talking about them.”
“Failure means you’re winning because you’re identifying better ways to do the work.”
– Mike Buzan, VP of People Strategy and Operations at Dutch Bros Coffee
His advice? As a manager, focus more on the process of reaching the outcome versus the outcome itself. Work to identify the things that are getting in your team’s way—and celebrate those discoveries. Those obstacles are where breakthroughs happen.
2. Build a culture of trust
In order to foster this new mindset around failure, Mike had to win over the trust of his team.
“Change is easy when you’re the one making the change,” Mike said. “But it’s not so easy for your team, so it was important to me that they felt supported. I spent time with each team member reinforcing that they matter, the work they do matters—and here’s the connection between them, their work, and why things are changing. And ultimately, it was about why we exist—which is to provide a service to our employees.”
“In the beginning, my team maintained that failure is taboo, and I wanted to move them from the notion of being perfect to being better,” shared Mike. “This would be a huge mindset shift. I had to create psychological safety that it was okay to fail, it was okay to identify things that aren’t going well, and to surface those problems in order to make better decisions.”
Mike stood by his word. He welcomed mistakes; he celebrated what they unveiled about existing HR processes. And as the team responded in kind, together they built a foundation to transform the way they operated going forward.
“In the end, we only changed as fast as the team could consume it and understand it. We wanted to ensure people understood what and why we were changing processes—and be engaged with that transformation.”
3. Automate routine steps
As a result of the company’s rapid growth, the HR team was overwhelmed. Their workloads? Neverending. Their HR processes, policies, and technologies? All over the map.
“I wanted to standardize how HR operated so they didn’t have to solve the same problems every day. Instead, they could focus their efforts on solving new problems.”
– Mike Buzan, VP of People Strategy and Operations at Dutch Bros Coffee
To do this, Mike’s team leveraged Zendesk to automate routine steps and adopt a one-piece flow model. The result? They drastically reduced task resolution times, cutting HR inquiry resolution from 23 hours to just 1.3 minutes.
They also created a centralized knowledge hub in Zendesk Guide, which stores comprehensive process guides, company policies, and state and federal regulations, ensuring consistent and accessible information.
4. Measure employee service efficiency
Once the team established these new HR processes, they needed data to track and optimize them. By integrating Zendesk and capturing ticket data, they gained visibility into performance metrics and identified bottlenecks. In particular, the HR team leveraged Zendesk to level-load—a practice of ensuring workload is evenly distributed amongst them.
This enabled Mike’s team to achieve an impressive 212% increase in productivity—and better showcase their contributions to leadership.
5. Focus on process over people
When it comes to results and accountability, the HR team has a rigorous system in place. They have daily stand-ups, as well as weekly and monthly reviews of their data. But instead of using those results to measure performance, results are used to identify the problems they want to solve.
When things do go wrong, Mike encourages his team to look at the process first.
“I like to start by asking: ‘What prevented an employee from doing what they were supposed to? Did they have the right resources and tools to do the job?’ And if the answer is no, then as a management team, we failed that employee because they weren’t set up to do their job.”
Mike believes that when you look at the process first, you can identify where the roadblocks are and what needs to change.
“We’re maniacal about our standards. Any deviation from the standard shows us where we need to improve.”
– Mike Buzan, VP of People Strategy and Operations at Dutch Bros Coffee
“In this case, a team member had to deviate from the standard to get the job done—so let’s find out why and what we can do better next time.”
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[Watch Relate on-demand]
