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KK Guess, Chief Human Resources Officer at the American College of Education (ACE), has built and scaled the institution’s HR strategy from the ground up.
After first establishing the foundations of trust, compliance, and consistent policies, Guess has shifted the focus of the department toward more strategic work – with priorities including leadership development, culture strengthening, and data-led decision making.
This has evolved ACE’s HR function from reactive support to proactive in its approach, transforming the employee experience and creating strong alignment across a remote-first workforce.
The CHRO joins the HR Grapevine Podcast to discuss ACE’s HR transformation, including how it has helped the college attract and retain top talent.
Host: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the HR Grapevine Podcast. I'm your host, Benjamin Broomfield, head of content at HR Grapevine, and I'm joined today by K.K. guess, chief human resources officer at the American College of Education, an online university with more than fourteen thousand students and nearly eight hundred faculty and staff, K.K. brings a practitioner's perspective as a leading HR strategy within a fully remote organization, and has spent the last several years focused on a key challenge many HR leaders are navigating today how to design benefits that meaningfully improve retention in a distributed workforce. She's led many initiatives, including paid parental leave, tuition assistance, and flexible remote work policies designed to better support employees while strengthening engagement and retention. And she's also focused on aligning people strategy with organization values and culture to support employees and long term engagement. But today, she joins us to discuss building and scaling the college's HR function from the ground up and driving a mission focused culture across the organization. So a really fascinating conversation for us today. But first and foremost, welcome and thank you for joining us.
Guest: Good morning Benjamin. Yeah. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
Host: Lovely. Well, let's kick off by diving back into the past and that sort of foundational point where you begun that work to build the HR function from the ground up. Where did you begin when you were starting on a journey like that? And where have we got to today?
Guest: Yeah. Interesting question. And I love the ability or the privilege actually, to be able to reflect on this because just over eleven years ago, I had the opportunity to start the HR function for American College of Education, which we call ACE here. Before coming on board, they were outsourcing their HR function and it was very transactional as you can imagine. So, um, me coming in and starting. Everything from the ground was very foundational and very basic. So we were really just focused on compliance and establishing those very, very foundational policies. I think but most importantly, what we focused on is the people. They hadn't had an HR function and they didn't know what that was like. And if you think about what people have the perception of HR, that isn't always a positive thing. And so I really set out to individually meet every employee and get to know them at the very minimum, get to know their name. At the time, we only had maybe just ninety employees or so, so it wasn't that overwhelming. But my goal at the time was for them to see HR as a partner and as somebody that could work alongside of them rather than be a gatekeeper of anything. And so at the very beginning, it really was that just establishing, um, a level of trust and a level of care with the employees while building a foundational function to support employee policies and such. Today, though, HR really is a true strategic partner to the business. Um, we're deeply integrated into everything really, from workforce planning to leadership development to culture and engagement. And that really was just built through out the journey in terms of processes, teams and supporting the organization through growth. So if we kind of think of the analogy of building the plane while flying it, we certainly were doing that at the beginning. And now we're really just optimizing how fast and how far we can go. So hopefully that gives you a good idea of kind of what that was like in the beginning after I realized, oh my goodness, what did I do? What, what, what did I sign up for?
Host: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, throughout that journey, obviously, like you said, when you're trying to to fly the plane was building it, then I guess it's all about knowing what to prioritize and what should, you know, what should be most important? And especially now as well, that's still going to be the case. So how did you go about deciding what to prioritize, which parts to sort of build out first and, and equally now as well? How are you still kind of figuring out, well, you know, what are the most important things for us to, to focus on? How do you prioritize when building that kind of roadmap?
Guest: Sure. At the very beginning, obviously, as I said, it was very foundational and it was very important. Once we established that level of trust throughout the organization, compliance was truly, truly a priority and consistency. Our team really needed to see consistent policies, not just established, but adhered to throughout the organization. And then as we began hiring and growing and doing the onboarding and being fully remote, we needed stability. And so we needed processes and policies that we could not just recreate, but that could we could do over and over again and could be trusted and everything could be felt in the same way. So that way the employee experience from beginning all the way through their journey had the same feeling, meaning they knew it was ACE from recruiting all the way through their journey with their teams. So once we got that foundation in place and, and really prioritized the bones, if you will, getting that strong structure in place, we shifted to more of a strategic work. And that is prioritizing developing our leaders, Strengthening our culture in partnership with our leadership and really using data to guide our decision making. So over time, we evolved from being a reactive HR function and support to being truly proactive. And so really prioritizing our leadership development. And right now we have a true, what we call LDP program, which is leadership development program. So anybody not only interested in being a leader, but those showing potential, they go through a full scale leadership development program. And then alongside our leaders, we help develop and nurture our culture. HR isn't at least HR at ACE, and I would challenge any organization for this, is that HR is not the gatekeeper or the culture keepers. The organization and every employee at the organization really are your culture keepers. And so we established that early on and together with. With every leader and employee, we really cultivate and foster our culture together. And then obviously, we use data to drive our decisions. And that has been a game changer for us and helped us be less of a reactive function and more of a proactive function.
Host: Definitely. And we'll come on to that culture side of things in just a moment. But before we do that, obviously you've spoken about some of the really important structures to have in place there. And I think that's obviously a really important thing that you're trying to to build this function in-house. But also, as you mentioned, ACE has grown fairly substantially in the time that you've been there as well. And the priorities of the HR team obviously have changed and shifted with it. So what are some of the frameworks that you've had to put in place on your HR team to be able to make sure that you can scale up over time, that that you can go out and take that more data driven, proactive approach rather than something that is a bit more, you know, kind of reactive or just sort of bogged down in in structures that don't really work or fit the organization's needs.
Guest: Yeah. And I think some of this may sound or feel a bit elementary, but, you know, we started with a handbook.
Host: Yeah.
Guest: That was something that we really needed and the organization was hungry for because it not only established trust, but it established something to point to and something to guide us. So, you know, and then obviously we've got a really transformational HR system that enables us to automate a lot of things. You know, we've, along with our leadership development planning, we've got succession planning, um, in place. We don't do traditional performance evaluations on an annual basis. We do quarterly conversations that help us not only talk about performance, but also address where do you want to go in your career? What challenges are you identifying? And we through those conversations, we've been able to help employees not just promote up within their division, but also promote up within other divisions. So for instance, we had a marketing professional say, I'm interested in it. So we supported that professional in taking IT courses through our tuition reimbursement program. And that person changed their career path and is now an IT professional. And so just certain things like that has been able has enabled the organization to partner with leaders, but also partner with the employees and invest in our employees to be able to meet them where they are and continue to grow with them. We've also put in place a lot of structure and compliance around multi state living because we have employees all over the country. We're in almost all fifty states and almost eight hundred employees now. So as you can imagine, the compliance behind that and managing multi-state employment laws can be quite complex. So, you know, through our HRIS systems and our handbook that we have kind of automates some of that and that that helps a great deal as well. So being really intentional about those systems and helping to automate and be true partners with us, with the, with the HR team and HR function has helped us to be able to do so.
Host: Absolutely, yeah, I can imagine that that sounds like a bit of a headache to figure out exactly across all those different states. So definitely having those really rigid structures in place as well as the starting point, you can see how that would really help you to, to be a lot more focused than on, on sort of that proactive side, which is, which is fantastic. I suppose the other side of it from that structural element is coming back to the culture side as well. And there's been a lot of work I know to really drive this mission focused culture across ACE. So perhaps you can talk to us a bit more, a little bit about that, how you've gone about sort of, I guess, driving that throughout the business and not having it, something that sits just directly within the HR team, making sure that employees, leaders are helping to shape and build and drive that forward. How have you gone about doing that?
Guest: Yeah, I think for us, it's about making the mission real. And what I mean by that is if you talk to anybody throughout the organization, they will consistently say they love coming to work and supporting our students. They enjoy being able to help somebody further their career. And by that, we mean that our organization is dedicated to creating quality, higher education that's accessible for working adults. They can then use their degree that they get from us and better their career path. So whether they take their degree and get a promotion or they switch career paths or whatever they can do, but we do that at such a low price that they are not incurring debt. So if you are familiar with the student loan debt crisis in the United States, we are not contributing to that. So we don't take student loan money from the government. And so our students pay as they go. And they are able to do that because our price point enables them to do so. So our mission is that we are able to meet working adults, student learners where they are, and enable them to obtain a high quality degree to further their degree or to further their career. So that's making the mission real and tangible for our employees. Many of our employees, including myself, have been working adult learners going to school and, and furthering their career. So it's not just something on our website. It's something that we have all lived and breathed and want to bring forward to others. So really just carry it forward. So we are consistently connecting with our employees, work on the impact and they're making on their student lives. So we've also been intentional about communication and mission alignment with leadership alignment. So when leaders model the mission and talk about it in meaningful ways, it becomes part of how our decisions are made and not just something we say. So, you know, it's again, it's not just something on our website. It's not just something on our walls, in our offices. It's something that we truly live and breathe every day. When executives, when we have our meetings and we're talking about maybe implementing a new policy or implementing a new benefit or whatever the case may be, the question always is, how is this going to impact the student experience? Does it impact the student outcome? And how can we rightfully implement this without impacting the student cost? And so again, if we are making our decisions with the student in mind from the very top, we're asking our leaders to do that throughout the organization. And our employees at every level feel that. So we create opportunities for employees to engage with that mission daily. And whether that's through storytelling or impact initiatives or simply just understanding how their daily work contributes to our students. Walking across the stage at commencement, we're giving every opportunity to do that, and it's a very exciting thing. Our commencement is coming up in July, and we're also very, very excited about it.
Host: Wonderful. Well, best of luck with that when it comes later on in the summer. Fantastic. Well, I wonder if we could talk a little bit about, I suppose, the measurement side of it. You mentioned how important that data is to you in terms of shaping your strategy. I would imagine there's a bunch of different things that you're tracking and looking at there. And hopefully you've seen some, some really great results, especially over the sort of that last few years shifting from, from that really transactional approach to, to the, the really more proactive method that you have now. So what are some of the things that, that you look at when it comes to, I guess, defining some of the success of the work that you're doing? Is it the engagement side, satisfaction, whatever it might be? What sort of things do you look at to, to measure, to determine what's worked well? And perhaps also, you know, what needs to change or what needs to be prioritized moving forward?
Guest: Well, one of the largest data metrics that we look at on an annual basis from an HR perspective, are our engagement survey results. We do this every year in partnership with a third party called Energage, and it provides us with a lot of data, and our employees are extremely engaged in this process. Our participation rate is nearly ninety percent in terms of them responding to the survey. So we're getting a lot of data, and we're not just getting data from answering questions on a scale or a multi answer question. They're providing us a lot of data through comments that we're able to really, really narrow down what the feedback is. And so through that, our engagement from the 2025 surveys at eighty two percent, which is which is really high, again, our participation response rate is almost ninety percent. Our MPs score is forty nine, which is really, really good. Although we obviously there's room for improvement there. We want to see it. We want to see it go up. Our regrettable turnover is less than three percent. So we are not only attracting top talent, but we're keeping that top talent. And then we've been nationally ranked on the top workplaces list for five years in a row. So we aren't just driving culture, we're sustaining it. And I would say that, you know, having those type of results isn't just a one off. If you're able to sustain it year after year and your employees participate in it, that's where the true culture driver and how the culture really can impact your results. Um, and the bottom line comes in, that's a true strategic differentiator between you and, and maybe your competitors or others within the market.
Host: Fantastic. Well, let's talk about what's coming up. And you've obviously mentioned a few things that are always keen on sort of improving and seeing how you can deliver that even, even greater experience for employees. It sounds like obviously just a fantastic amount that you've achieved already, but looking to, to the rest of 2026 and beyond, what are some of the things that are on your agenda as an HR department? What are some of the things you're hoping to drive forward across ACE.
Guest: Yeah, well, um, not unlike any other organization. We're modernizing our technology. We're leaning into AI, we're continuing to elevate our leadership and creating even a more personalized experience for our employees across the United States. We're also becoming more precise in how we operate, again, using data and by automating even more tasks. So for us, it's less of a one size fits all approach. And we're, we're using data to be able to target that and individualize some things while not losing the optimization and the efficiency. So a couple of examples of that are we are updating our HR system, which we're really excited about. And, and that just goes back to being able to leverage AI within the HRIS System and automate even more functions and that's going to free up some of our. Our HR staff to be even more strategic and less transactional. We're also continuing our workforce development through upskilling. Last year, we created a completely separate budget for upskilling initiatives, and we've continued that this year. And so our employees can submit requests to use upskilling budget dollars to be able to focus on really narrowing down and honing in on a skill that they've either wanted to completely learn new or build up over time, and be able to use that skill in their day to day responsibilities. So we're excited to be able to continue that throughout 2026. And so obviously, our priorities have evolved and we've built a strong foundation, but we continue to focus on optimizing that and continuing to strategize and scale for future.
Host: Fantastic. And I just wanted to wrap up by talking about your own role as well, obviously across the journey, you know, the last sort of few years, you've worn a lot of different hats. I'm sure you've had a lot of different projects that you've been working on and achieved a huge amount to, but naturally, I would imagine that the focus of your role has shifted throughout that time as well. So what does it meant for your role? How have you sort of adjusted as an HR leader to sort of meet whatever needs the organization held at that time, and any advice that you would share with other CHROS or other HR leaders about being able to adapt and just develop that skill set over time to hopefully always be on, on that front foot, to be proactive in the way that you've been able to over the last few years.
Guest: I think the biggest thing I can say, or the most important thing, is to be adaptable and don't get hung up on perfection as HR as an industry continues to evolve, you too, as a, as a professional need to evolve and be adaptable. And so as I think about my journey in on the onset of creating this HR function, obviously I was a department of one at first. And now, uh, you know, we have an entire team dedicated to several different functions. And so that wasn't possible without being adaptable, continuously learning. You can't stop learning once you get to a certain level or a certain place. The minute you stop learning is the minute your career becomes stagnant and dare I say, irrelevant. So the biggest lessons as a business leader is you need to think of yourself as a people leader first and then a business leader. Alongside of that, don't forget about the human behind the employee number because you too are the human behind the employee number. So build, test, learn, evolve. Don't be afraid to fail. That's where that don't get caught up in perfection is going to is going to help. I think that was one of my pitfalls. I, I really have such high standards for myself. Um, and I learned the hard way that not everything is going to succeed the first time. And not everything is going to be picture perfect.
Host: Wow. Quite a few gems that to wrap up on. So thank you so much for taking the time to join us on the HR Grapevine podcast. It's been wonderful to hear about the work you've been doing and the approach you've taken at ACE. And, um, certainly with a lot of those results you shared, it sounds like it's just having a fantastic impact. But yeah, lots to look forward to in the months and years to come as well. So a huge thank you again to you for joining us on the podcast and looking forward to, to hearing more about how it goes when we catch up next.
Guest: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.
