The best strategic decision is putting people first. Cole Carroll, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Mansfield Energy, has used this principle throughout her career to help businesses and coworkers thrive. Having experienced both great and not-so-great leaders, she’s guided by Theodore Roosevelt’s saying, “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
“At Mansfield, the Mission is to Build Relationships that Matter. My approach is that we listen to those we respect and who’ve taken the time to build relationships with us. After all, we represent Human Resources, and we should be both human and an actual resource for others,” Carroll offers. This approach helped her steer through challenging times, including protecting employee jobs through lean years, improving morale and retention, and earning Mansfield recognition from Newsweek and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a top workplace.
“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” – Theodore Roosevelt.
Transforming Business by Empowering Employees
Having begun her career in operations, Cole Carroll brings a business-first lens to human resources. After leading sales teams, she moved into HR, realizing she could expand her impact by getting to the root of problems and fixing them.
From talent acquisition and management to total rewards and learning and development, she has helped scale and improve the employee experience across Mansfield’s many business units. Cole traces the evolution in HR strategy, from covering only basic tasks like hiring and payroll to being more proactive and comprehensive.
Today, HR has led paradigm shifts among leadership, changing leader viewpoints from “employees are lucky to have a job” to “we’re lucky to have our employees.”
This paradigm shift is reflected in Mansfield’s broader decision to prioritize culture before business results and growth—leading to improved compensation, benefits, flexibility, and empowerment. As a result, retention has improved by 15% and held for three years, while Mansfield’s Glassdoor climbed to a consistent 4.5 out of 5 stars. “When you take care of your employees first, they will take care of your customers, and profits will follow. Making your people a core part of your overarching strategy may be the most important thing you can do as a business leader,” Cole observes.
Redefining Success in HR Leadership
Cole’s definition of success shifted from a focus on individual achievement to helping and empowering others to grow. She’s motivated by the organization’s ability to meet its operational goals through strategic hiring, placing individuals in the right roles, and supporting their career progression. “Once you realize it’s about helping other people with a servant heart, results come back to you tenfold,” she reflects.
For example, to help with payroll projects, Mansfield’s HR team hired a summer intern who graduated in December and accepted a full-time role as a Payroll and Benefits Specialist. Two years later, he was promoted, contributing impressive improvements in the way Mansfield utilized technology and dashboards to tell the people story.
Cole notes that HR today must be engaged in the business. Her early days in sales yielded business expertise that ultimately helped her find her calling and passion. “We’re considered a business owner, leader, and operator, working alongside operational teams. We don’t take orders – we collaborate and negotiate,” she states. “Leaders value that I bring both HR and business experience. My HR hat advises one way, sometimes my business hat another, and marrying the two has worked well. It’s fun to be part of those conversations and help determine the path forward.”
Throughout her HR career, one of Cole’s biggest challenges has been finding ways to get others to care as deeply as she does. She’s learned to tap into individual motivators to help facilitate those interests or guide employees towards alternative career paths. She has often carried the weight of doing twice the work, contributing to her development as a resilient and effective leader. “When I go into a board room, I know which way they’re going to vote, because I come in 120% prepared.”
Mansfield’s strategy has three pillars: people, operational excellence, and growth through customer success. The people pillar enables all other business objectives. “Without a great team in place, nothing happens, so we continuously align with senior leaders on company objectives to ensure our work directly enables their success. For example, when we experienced driver shortages across the country, we found new ways to attract, retain, and better train our driver workforce to prioritize safety,” she explains.
Driving Workforce Engagement, Recognition, and Growth
In 2023, Cole worked with the Talent Acquisition and Marketing teams to create Mansfield’s Value Proposition: “Join the Family, Grow with Us, Lead the Change.” Cole’s team delivered a Leader Playbook resource that increased leader capability and accessibility of key information. The company also introduced the Marketplace Chaplain program into its holistic wellness initiatives, enhancing support for the workforce and their families across North America during times of stress, frustration, or crisis. Cole’s team created and delivered total reward statements to provide pay transparency and a better understanding of overall compensation.
Mansfield added safety bonuses, employee referral opportunities, driver appreciation events, and personal recognition. These efforts led to a driver winning Mansfield’s 2024 Servant Heart Award for Customer Service, earning him an all-expense paid vacation.
Cole’s other achievements include facilitating a move to Gallup Q12 surveys to track and action on employee engagement, achieving a 15:1 engagement ratio in 2025.
Cole’s personal values align with the company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. She believes in casting as wide a net as possible to find the most talented, qualified people for a job, regardless of what they look like, what language they speak, and where they call home. “As long as you come with a great work ethic and drive value, you’re going to be successful in this organization.”
Driving Change Through Core Values
Several years ago, faced with rising market competition, the Mansfield team initiated cultural changes beginning at the leadership level. They reaffirmed their core values, showing how those principles would show up in daily behaviors. Leaders unable to adapt or maintain higher standards were transitioned out of the organization.
Mansfield affirmed its commitment through employee-centric decisions, with recognition serving as a key driver of business success. Catching people doing the right thing and sharing their stories gained momentum, both internally and across social media platforms, leading employees to publish over 3,000 individual recognitions each year. Building and demonstrating an intentional culture resulted in improved retention, saving millions in turnover. Carroll reflects, “Approaching each day with intention and a people-first culture attracted more candidates to our job postings, helping us hire talented individuals driven to make meaningful impacts.”
“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.” – Karen Kaiser Clark
Defining Guardrails in Crisis
Cole recalls how the COVID-19 pandemic tested the organization’s leadership moxie, teaching them when to pick their battles and how to define their guardrails in advance. When a new executive asked how she handled the last pandemic, Cole laughed and replied that there had not been a modern-day pandemic, so there was no playbook. They would use their expertise and agility to navigate as the challenge unfolded.
A few weeks into the pandemic, Cole was asked to reevaluate the directive requiring masks in the office as mandated by the CDC. She stood her ground and explained why it mattered to keep everyone safe, informed, and employed. “As a privately-owned company, we could have reversed the decision to require masks in our office, but we chose not to take that chance with our people. It was unpopular, but there was no better alternative. I recommended we move forward as directed by CDC guidelines, and after some consideration, we did.”
Empowering Teams for Work-Life Integration
To maintain healthy work-life integration, Cole hires and develops a team that is recognized by organizational leaders for their abilities. She supports their decision-making skills, preparing them to make informed and thoughtful decisions when she is not present.
Outside of the office, Cole prioritizes her hobbies, passions, and personal relationships. “When you go on vacation, go on vacation with the confidence that your team is ready to step up. Debrief upon your return, coach, and praise progress. When I’m at work, I’m at work. When I’m home, I’m home, and strive to be present in the moment as much as possible.”
Breaking Down Silos and Building Trust
Cole describes how Mansfield began its efforts to improve employee engagement by conducting an employee survey. “If you ask someone for their opinion, you’d better listen to it, learn from it, and then do something tangible with what they shared,” she observes. The initial findings highlighted three primary areas for improvement: departmental silos, ineffective communication, and a lack of standardized onboarding to support new employees.
In her first year, Cole spent time with leaders across the organization, working to break down silos and build bridges across business units. She organized happy hours, lunch-and-learns, and arranged for leaders to greet teams around the office each morning. Using an existing monthly forum, she connected with managers nationwide and frequently hosted these meetings, providing transparency and support consistently.
Cole was intentional about sharing news with leaders so they could address team questions confidently and build trust throughout the company. She and her team developed customizable eight-week onboarding templates and made sure hiring managers were ready to welcome new hires with clear plans and success criteria.
Keeping HR Aligned and Future-Ready
Cole maintains HR’s role as a strategic partner to the Mansfield enterprise in supporting organizational growth by consistently providing input for leadership plans and aligning them with broader initiatives. She organizes an HR team strategy offsite twice a year to monitor progress, plan for upcoming objectives, collect results, and share updates with leaders. Leaders are invited to discuss HR’s work, offer feedback, and confirm alignment with evolving priorities. These sessions help facilitate collaboration between HR and leadership, contributing solutions to key business challenges.
Cole consistently monitors workforce developments and emerging trends by reviewing current headlines and conducting research pertinent to Mansfield and its employees. As a member of the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), she frequently consults articles from Harvard Business Review and values O.C. Tanner’s insights on organizational culture. She uses their annual report to inform decisions about initiatives that will yield the greatest impact.
As the workforce grows increasingly proficient with technology, leveraging those advancements to expand business operations remains a dynamic and ongoing priority. With self-service and on-demand intuitive platforms becoming table stakes, Mansfield’s first internal AI Chatbot will soon launch to help employees get accurate answers about their medical, dental, mental health, and financial benefits 24/7.
“A vision without execution is just a hallucination.” – Thomas Edison.
Developing Talent as a Business Differentiator
Cole is passionate about employee development, and Mansfield has enabled a comprehensive roster of opportunities to grow its workforce capabilities. They offer early career programs, rotational programs, sales-focused training, product training, new manager training, leadership development programs, and a host of external partners to ensure small group and one-off needs are met. The results of Mansfield’s robust annual talent review process provide the roadmap for the targeted development of high-potential employees. They identify single points of failure, and align on low performers and plans to address those areas of opportunity.
Cole explains, “All of this work is done to ensure we know our talent, we move and promote talent across the organization, and we plan for future gaps and opportunities.”
She takes pride in having coached and supported numerous employees as they have advanced to higher levels of responsibility within the organization. In 2024, Mansfield promoted 10% of its workforce on average. She also appreciates the leadership team’s dedication to making difficult decisions that foster positive change and uphold a commitment to creating a better work environment.
In a business as complex as Mansfield, being able to grow talent in-house and optimize practices based on employee feedback is a business differentiator that builds trust. Cole adds, “HR offers the opportunity to be strategic and positively impact so many talented people.”
Leading Through Service
Cole notes how people today are obsessed with being influencers, focused on likes, followers, selfies, and self-promotion. In contrast, she believes in the adage: “If serving is beneath you, then leading is beyond you.” She hopes to use her influence to help others understand that we’re here to take care of one another and make a positive impact by leaving things better than we found them. “I take great pride and personal satisfaction in knowing we are absolutely making a difference in the lives of one another,” she emphasizes.
Cole recalls numerous instances of service-driven leadership. Among these, Mansfield’s wellness campaigns have achieved notable participation, contributing to healthier and more fulfilling lives for participants. Initiatives range from financial wellness programs that enable first-time homeownership through values-based budgeting to fitness facilitated by an in-house personal trainer. Mansfield’s commitment to employee well-being was recognized with the Cigna Healthy Workforce Gold level designation, underscoring the significant efforts of the Total Rewards team.
Cole remains optimistic about life, the future, and the opportunity ahead of her. “I’m looking forward to one day teaching HR classes to graduate-level students, working on a board or two to connect with other leaders, putting Mansfield’s entire people journey together in a formal presentation or white paper, and sharing via speaking engagements to inspire others to create a best-in-class culture,” she says.
Cole’s sage advice to aspiring HR professionals is this: Say yes. Do everything you can to gain as much practical experience across your business as possible. It’s no longer about climbing straight up the proverbial ladder; it’s about gaining as many experiences as you can to learn from and apply to real challenges. Be intentional about cultivating your professional network and always be ready to share the fact-based impacts you and your team are making in the business and why they matter to the bottom line.
“If serving is beneath you, then leading is beyond you.”
Conclusion
Cole Carroll’s journey reflects the power of people-centered leadership in shaping both culture and business outcomes. Her story reminds us that leadership begins with care, service, and a commitment to lifting others. By empowering people, fostering growth, and staying rooted in values, she continues to leave every place better than she found it.