For ThreeFlow's Anitra St. Hilaire, the secret to leadership is putting people first

Anitra St. Hilaire has been an HR leader for over 20 years, but she has never stopped searching for new ways to connect with the people she serves.  

As the VP of ThreeFlow, a benefits placement system, St. Hilaire has taken part in company-wide initiatives to help support both executive leadership and employees. She's been focused on ensuring hiring remains strategic and thoughtful amid an unsteady labor market, while finding ways to nurture the relationships between employees and leadership in an all-remote setting. 

"In the beginning of my career, my decisions were based on what management wanted and whether employees would take it or leave it," she says. "Now it's a more nuanced integration of what's going to be inclusive, what's going to be meaningful, what's going to afford development and growth for both individuals and the company itself." 

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St. Hilaire recently led a careful evaluation of the benefits ThreeFlow offers to better understand what employees actually want and need. She oversaw a major change to their PTO policy, choosing to make their parental leave as robust and flexible as possible. The old policy allotted 12 weeks of paid maternity leave and three weeks for paternity leave. The new policy made those paid 12 weeks applicable to any type of "new parent" including those who went through the adoption process. ThreeFlow also added a two week paid "ramp up" period where employees can work part time when they come back.

As at any organization, change and expansion has its limits — and that was communicated to employees, too. 

"We weren't able to change too much but we wanted to be thoughtful about the things that we did," she says. "We're aiming for an equitable and inclusive benefits package and sometimes that means we may focus on certain populations versus others."

She's worked on making sure the culture is inclusive too — especially for ThreeFlow's entirely remote 115 employees. In 2022 she and her team implemented virtual monthly employee brunches and monthly employee events during work hours, such as painting classes and ice breaker games, to foster inclusion and belonging for ThreeFlow's entirely remote workforce. 

"There's this notion that socializing time is not part of work," St. Hilaire says. "We think it's important that we collaborate enthusiastically and that we grow together — and some of that is being social and not being too focused on work. It's important to spend this time together as a team during the workday." 

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And even in the hard times St. Hilaire and her team have done what they can with what they had to put the employees first. Even when layoffs became inevitable and the company was forced to let go of 20% of their workforce earlier this year, St. Hilaire ensured that the communication between leadership and employees never faltered, she was transparent about the realities the company was facing and what that would mean for the employees and provided as much information as she could in the moment. 

Because that's what being a good people leader is all about, according to St. Hilaire. It's about supporting as many people as you can with the resources that you have. 

"We are human first before we come to work," she says. "Focusing on how we can serve and help the humans that work here at ThreeFlow at any given time is who we are. Asking ourselves, "How can we help make this an environment where every employee can do the best work of their lives while they're here?" is important. It's why I come to work every day."