Elena Martinella discusses company-wide talent development, collaboration, and mission to elevate the role of HR
Collaboration across a global business and elevating HR’s role to that of a key cog in the business is a source of pride and motivation for Elena Martinella.
“Relationship building is key and making informed decisions together is what really drives us as a company, so making sure that people aren't just making individual decisions is something we pride ourselves on,” says the Chief People Officer at global engineering consulting firm Hatch.
Martinella is a chartered accountant and has worked in finance roles for much of her career, but she found the passion for HR half-way through her journey.
From a business role into HR
She spent over 17 years at EY, working in tax consulting and expat mobility — until Hatch called and intrigued her. “I thought, there's no way I'm ever leaving EY, but I'm going to take this interview because who are these Hatch people?" she says. “And, as they say, the rest is history. It was love at first sight.”
Martinella joined Hatch in 2015 as mobility director under the umbrella of HR, and her background in professional services and financial operations became her secret weapon, she says.
“Because I had all the financial background and the business acumen from the client service world, the empire started to grow — I took on compensation and payroll,” she says. “I was able to say, ‘Let's focus on all things people and HR and bring that into the world of engineering,’ where I could talk the business speak."
In late 2023, Martinella became the first-ever Chief People Officer at Hatch — and the first HR leader to sit on the board, which was a significant move for the company, she says.
Melding business experience with people practices
For Martinella, it was a natural evolution to meld the people and talent side of things with her business experience. “It really helped to validate HR's purpose in the organization, and I like to think that I had a personal hand in helping to elevate the role and the value that HR brings into the business,” she says.
She says her journey from a business-oriented role to becoming a key cog in Hatch’s people and business leadership has taught her a key lesson for HR leaders: “We need to understand the business, we need to understand our clients, we need to understand what drives the business, and who the stakeholders are,” she says. “You have to understand the external factors before you can really help the internal factors to bring value.”
At Hatch, a firm of more than 10,000 professionals, investing in young talent is a core strategy, says Martinella. “We hire over 800 students annually across the world, usually after second-year university,” she says. “And we hope that they stay with us throughout their entire career.”
Unifying talent development across the global business
Martinella describes Hatch’s Professional Development Program as dividing young talent into cohorts: students, zero to three years, and four to 10 years, each with their own building blocks reflecting the stage in their career. All operate within the same four-pillar framework — technical prominence, nurturing the Hatch culture, managing the business, and winning work, she says, adding that quarterly events connect young professionals with senior leadership and every global board meeting includes a young professional event.
“Our board members truly do believe that they're the future," she says. “They’re encouraged to get many mentors around the organization globally.”
In recent years, Martinella has built on this global focus on development with a learning and development practice that’s been integrated into HR, where every employee goes through core programs: “We call it ‘people development’ because we're focused on leadership programs and, for everyone across the organization, we're trying to create a sense of being flat and connected,” she says. “Everyone takes the same sort of training, but customized for your level, so that we're all singing from the same song sheet, from the student all the way to the senior executive.”
Martinella names one fundamental program that everyone takes across the firm — Manifesto-Driven Leadership. “We call ourselves manifesto-driven leaders — we put everybody through the manifesto-driven leadership course and we hold people accountable to those values,” she says. “You're encouraged to call people out if you're not seeing people demonstrating manifesto-driven behavior.”
A flat and connected organization
This uniform talent development and focus on the firm’s manifesto reinforces the collaborative aspect of Hatch’s business and culture strategy across all of its global offices, according to Martinella. “We have a very strong governance model at Hatch and no decision is made in a silo,” she says. “We are a matrixed organization, we're flat and connected, and decisions are made collaboratively.”
Martinella’s HR team reflects the overall global structure of Hatch, with 16 people reporting directly to her as part of an umbrella of global practice directors, global HR sector leads, and regional HR directors.
Martinella's approach to future-proofing talent is practical: expand the firm’s geographic footprint and build technical centres where Hatch can access broader global talent.
“The world and the business is always changing and there are always challenges, no matter where you turn,” she says. “I like to stay optimistic on this front because we’re a global company and talent can come from anywhere, but finding the right talent is the key — so we're talking about expanding where we draw talent from, and I think that's how you have to future-proof from the constant change in the world.”
HR’s value to business goals
Despite running HR across a global firm, Martinella says she stays connected in simple ways. “My door is always open and I make an effort to speak to as many people as possible in a day,” she says. “Staying connected is key.”
As for keeping motivated, Martinella points to the company purpose statement pasted on her wall: “We're passionately committed to the pursuit of a better world through positive change in what we do in our consulting for our clients... like trying to decarbonize the world — that’s pretty amazing,” she says. “And just being given the opportunity to be a part of the Hatch family is something I’m truly grateful for, each and every day. This is an amazing place and I’m honoured to lead the People function in this era.”
