UniFirst is a North American leader in the supply and servicing of uniform and workwear programs, facility service products, as well as first aid and safety supplies and services. With more than 270 service locations, over 300,000 customer locations, and 16,000-plus employee Team Partners, the company outfits more than 2 million workers every day.
In this episode, Catalina Dongo, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at UniFirst, shares her 20-year journey from administrative assistant to HR executive, and how the company’s values, structure, and leadership principles have scaled right alongside its business.
Catalina explains:
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[00:00:00] Catalina Dongo: I don't believe you can ever get more responsibility unless you are knocking it out of the park with whatever little responsibility you have.
[00:00:10] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent today? I'm Dave Travers, President of ZipRecruiter, and on Talent All Stars, we shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businesses.
Here on Talent All-Stars, we often spotlight the organizations that keep other businesses moving. The behind-the-scenes operators that make the modern economy run. UniFirst is exactly that type of company. They provide the uniforms, protective apparel, and facility services that help thousands of businesses keep their teams clean, safe, and ready to work.
To do that, they need a lot of people over 16,000, and our guest today is one of the leaders responsible for attracting and retaining them. Her name is Catalina Dongo. She's the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at UniFirst, and she joins us now to share her path from administrative assistant to senior leader, the benefits of a flat org chart, and a common mistake firms make when defining their values and leadership principles.
Catalina Dongo, welcome to Talent All Stars.
[00:01:13] Catalina Dongo: Dave, thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here.
[00:01:16] Dave Travers: So excited to have you here. You've got such a cool background and such a cool story that I think people will love to hear and learn from, given how you've risen through the ranks. But first, before you rose through the ranks, I would love to hear about when human resources and being a people team leader, all of a sudden, you thought, this might not just be the thing I'm doing right now.
It might be the thing that I do in my career. When did that penny drop? Was there a moment? Was there something someone said to you? Was there a meeting? How did that happen?
[00:01:50] Catalina Dongo: You know, there wasn't a particular moment. It was a collection and an accumulation of little moments that led up to all of a sudden me looking around and realizing. I think I've built a career here. I was specifically looking to land somewhere where I could build a career. I was a very young mother. I had stayed home with my daughter for the first five years of her life, so that kind of put me behind a little bit on studying my career.
And when I did go back to work, school, and then work, I knew I wanted to go work someplace that would afford me opportunities. And that's exactly what UniFirst did for me. And so I was not specifically looking for a career in human resources. I was just looking to be able to grow a career, and I found a home in human resources and have never left. Fell in love with it.
[00:02:42] Dave Travers: So one of the things I, you said there that I, that's super interesting is that you, you took a break and you felt like you were behind. And I wonder how does that affect you now as a leader? When people are applying for jobs or looking for their next promotion or whatever, like how do you view career breaks?
That's something, you know, people always think like, oh, that would be so great if I could take a career break, but you know, I don't know if I can for my career, and then I'll be behind. How do you feel about that now as a leader who in a position to decide? Uh, how, which opportunities other people get.
[00:03:16] Catalina Dongo: Yeah. So what I've learned is I've had a very unusual path, right? Not your typical, you graduate high school, you go to college, you get married, you have babies, you grow a career. That was not my path in life at all. And so what that has taught me is that there is no right or wrong path, and taking different detours, trying different career paths, is perfectly normal in my world and in my view of the world.
And so I bring that to the table anytime I'm having a conversation with a hiring manager, with our recruiting teams, is to learn to look at resumes beyond what you would typically look for and try and find maybe unusual candidates who have the competencies that you're looking for without necessarily the typical trajectory, if you will.
[00:04:04] Dave Travers: And so how, as a candidate who feels like they're coming off a career break 'cause they had caretaking responsibilities or whatever that is, what advice do you give to someone to get back into the game and do it with the confidence or with the sophistication? How do you, as the person, you know, feeling like I'm not the traditional candidate, how do you give yourself the best shot at being considered?
[00:04:29] Catalina Dongo: So Dave, for me, what worked is that I was willing to start from scratch, and unfortunately, that's a concept that not everybody's comfortable with. I walked into UniFirst taking a position as the most entry-level job in human resources, but look at how that turned out for me.
Right? So I think people shouldn't be discouraged by more junior-level roles, especially when they've had a break in their career, and hiring managers may be a little bit skeptical. I think if you're a talented person and you're willing to come in and show your value in the right environment, you will make up for that quote-unquote lost time, professionally very quickly.
[00:05:11] Dave Travers: I think, honestly, that applies to those of us who are in the midst of their career too. Like if you, if you approach every day, like I'm willing to start at the ground floor today with whatever crisis comes up, and you know, it turns out somebody's gotta go make the copies or whatever, like no matter what level you're at.
I think that's a great way to approach not just returning from a career break. I think that's a wise approach to life.
[00:05:32] Catalina Dongo: And I did very literally have to make copies the first job. Yes.
[00:05:38] Dave Travers: Yeah, I believe it. And I think that there's a lesson to be learned there for all of us. How do you think now about, as you coach others to become leaders themselves, how do you get them to see, based on the path you've had, how do you get them to see the capability in themselves, not just to overcome whatever the non-traditional part of their background is, but to get to see themselves as, as leaders, as, as you've become?
[00:06:04] Catalina Dongo: So somebody believed in me along the way and that I was capable of doing more than I even thought I was capable of doing, and I try to replicate that.
[00:06:15] Dave Travers: Ooh, tell us about that. Who believed in you? How did that manifest itself?
[00:06:18] Catalina Dongo: So a couple of people believed in me, uh, not just one, a few people along the way because you don't grow a career without some people taking a chance on you, right? That's hard to do. So I've had a few mentors. There was a director of human resources when I started working for Uni. First, he really took a chance, started giving me larger assignments, well above my title. Early on in my career, and then after he transitioned out of the organization, the head of hr, she was the executive vice president.
[00:06:49] Catalina Dongo: Actually, the daughter of our company's founder has always believed that I can do way more than sometimes I think I can do. And I'm very grateful for those few individuals who have. Believed in me so much and taking a chance and giving me opportunities to do things that I certainly was not ready to do.
And so I tried to do that within my own team and with my leaders is giving them projects, assignments, jobs, titles that I literally just had that conversation with someone in my team this morning, and I said to her, we're talking about her taking on more responsibility. And what I said to her was, I think this is kind of like deciding to have a baby.
You're never ready. Just go for it, and I'll be here to support you along the way. This was a literal conversation this morning with someone on my team.
[00:07:37] Dave Travers: Wow. I love that when you're having a conversation like that with someone, as the person listening to this, who would love to be on the receiving end of this thing, where the founder of the company's daughter who's the head of HR or the current head of hr, whomever, like to pick them out and say, Hey, I, I believe in you. I see something.
I know no one's ever ready to take the next step. Let's just go for it, and we'll figure it out as we go. How do you put yourself in a position? As an up-and-coming person who has ambition and would love to be picked like that, how do you put yourself in a position to be the one who Catalina has that conversation with?
[00:08:13] Catalina Dongo: So I don't believe you can ever get more responsibility unless you are knocking it out of the park with whatever little responsibility you have, whatever small project you have, going above and beyond. And people sometimes don't like to hear. I've had this conversation with different people, and then they get into, well, I'm not gonna do more than what I'm being compensated for.
And that's kind of a fair argument. It's never worked for me, and I've never seen it really work great in real life. Seen work really, really great is people who truly do go above and beyond and tend to see the larger picture in every little thing that they do. So like one of my first assignments when I was an administrator was I was handed the COBRA program, which is a health insurance continuation program for people who leave the company.
And I could have just taken that and executed on the process I was handed, right? That's what I was hired to do: execute this process that we built a hundred years ago. Here you go. Continue doing it. Took it and revamped it, automated, it took a class on what COBRA was, 'cause I had no idea, and gained a ton of efficiencies to the point that I no longer had to do that task because it was so fully automated, and I did that.
Right. So I think that's what it really takes, is you take what it is, however small the project is, however small the opportunity, and you knock it out of the park, people will notice, and you will start to get more responsibility, and eventually that turns into a thriving career.
[00:09:49] Dave Travers: I think that is so true. Everybody in every role has the opportunity to say, what's the, what's something? I'm in charge of that. People are just going through the motions, and you can check the box that I did that, and what would it look like if I took that from a Yep. We accomplished that to an unbelievable job. Oftentimes, it can be something very little that just shows you cared and wanted to see it through or whatever.
Okay, so now you're, you're a leader. You've been called upon to not just be the HR person who started at the bottom and is now at the top. Now you're an executive at a big company, 16,000 people plus, I believe. What is that like now, where your responsibility isn't just the HR world, but now you're an executive who's interacting with other executives?
You have to advocate for resources. You have to say, Hey, we're, we need to consider this other angle that's HR related to this. Business problem. How did you get the confidence to do that coming up through the HR ranks, and now you need to interact with finance and legal and and operations, et cetera. How do you do that?
[00:10:48] Catalina Dongo: Yeah, so it's been an evolution, and I would say transitioning. There have been a few things that I've learned along the way. The first difficult transition was going from individual contributor to now leading people, and it's not for everybody. People who need to be on the spotlight and who are rock stars may not enjoy being a leader because you need to take a backseat.
It's not about you, it's about your people and what they do. And that can be hard. So that was the first transition, and I don't think you've ever stopped learning to do that, right? We're all collectively reading a book as we speak, with all my HR leaders to help us evolve even more. And so. You always continue to learn that it's how do I empower my people?
So that was one learning lesson or one evolution, if you will. The second one was what you just talked about, which is I can't just show up as an HR professional. I need to show up as a business professional and understanding what the business needs are, and what is it that our business leaders are trying to accomplish, and how do I play a role in that?
What's helped me a lot is having great partners on the business side who embrace me and bring me into their world, and that helps me break out of my. HR bubble, if you will, when you don't have that, because I've also been on the opposite end, where I don't have great business leaders as partners. And it's harder because you're knocking on every door and every window to try and get a peek inside the business, and what's going on, and how is it that what I do connects to the business.
But when you do have those great business partners, and they bring you in. It's so natural to transition into seeing the larger picture and what it is that they are talking about and what keeps them up at night, and you just, it's so easy to leave HR policy and compliance behind because you're focusing on actual business outcomes and business drivers, and how do I help them be successful?
[00:12:55] Dave Travers: I love that. I think that is so true. It requires partners in the business who treat you like that. But part of that, I think, maybe that you're possibly underselling, is that you have to be a person who's earned that. And so going in and saying, Listen. I hear where you wanna do this, but HR needs this.
Here's the requirement. That's not going to get you invited in as a business partner going in in your first interaction, saying, Hey, what's the best, just so you know, for my background, you know, like what's the best business partner you've ever had from somebody in HR or other, you know, like vertical.
How did that partnership work that worked so well? Learning how they work a little bit and then saying, Okay, what's the business problem we're trying to solve now? And how do I help you do that? Rather than getting straight to the. Compliance foot fault. That's really, you know, the impetus for the conversation in the first place.
[00:13:43] Catalina Dongo: Yeah, that's exactly right, Dave. You really cannot show up with agendas or your own goals necessarily, because there is no such thing. There are only business goals, and HR is there to help enable and support the business with those goals. So you have to start from that perspective, and I think my natural disposition is to want to help our business leaders be successful, and so if I show up that way, my team will show up that way, and it's just gonna be a cascading effect.
Right now, our current chief operating officer and I have an incredibly fantastic relationship, and I think that my team and her team both benefit from seeing how the two of us work together, and I see it so organically cascading throughout the organization. It's wonderful.
[00:14:37] Dave Travers: Okay, so now you're at this company universe that has this great historical legacy and is a major player in the uniform space. And in doing so much for lots of companies and lots of frontline workers with lots of workers yourself, how do you as a people leader, as a culture setter, approach?
Being a category leader and at the same time that is in the modern business world, with all the pressures and everything that you face of being a big company in the modern business world, and stay connected to the fact that you're a family-founded business.
Like, what makes that different? What makes that unique? What are the unique challenges of juggling those two things? Or are they even, do they have even have to be juggled?
[00:15:21] Catalina Dongo: They do have to be juggled. And so, like you said, universe is pretty unique. We started as a small family business in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
Our founder, Aldo Croatti, was literally washing overalls himself physically. That's how the business started, and it grew to what we are today, over 16,000, over $2.4 billion in revenues, uh, global organization. But the reality is that the family culture is still very much alive. I think it runs deep throughout the organization.
Our founder's daughter, Cynthia Croatti, that leader who believed in me, we talked about earlier, she still sits on our board of directors. She still serves as a leadership advisor to our senior leadership team. And so I think through her and other family members, there is. Still a direct connection back to our founder, her father, Aldo, and the values that he believed in.
Uh, you know, we talk about our integrity, our work, genuinely caring for our people. That is still very much alive. The reality, however, is that for any values stated to be meaningful. Our senior leadership team has to be fully and genuinely committed to them. I've seen situations of what happens when they're not, and then the true magic that happens when they are and with such a large geographically distributed workforce.
Having those leaders truly committed is crucial. If they're not, it's just not going to happen. We're a relatively flat organization for how geographically distributed we are. The way we're organized, I think, lends itself for the way we cascade communication. It's very simple. I think we have this neatly built in just organic systems, where we have our CEO, our COO, and then we're broken out into geographies with only like 10 senior leaders at the top for the entire organization.
So it's easy if that group is aligned for everyone else underneath to get aligned. I will say that I'm pretty proud of our group. We spent about two years working on developing leadership principles that were real. We didn't just open a book and said, we'd like these, uh, six leadership principles, let's pick them.
We actually spent two years workshopping through what was important to us, and we developed. The set of leadership principles and have spent the past few years cascading those. And it's not just the words we actually wrote out, and when I say we, I mean our CEO, our executive vice presidents wrote out what does it mean to have integrity at universe, if that's one of our stated principles.
And what are some reporting behaviors. What do they look like? What are some hindering behaviors, and what do they look like? And then, like I said, over the past few years, we've spent time embedding those into our interview questions, into our trainings, into our performance evaluations. We're still not there.
They're still quite a long way to go to have them be fully organic. People are responding to them very quickly.
[00:18:32] Dave Travers: Awesome. Okay, so I love the leadership principles that aren't just posters on the wall but actually seen in action and embodied. And I think a lot of people listening to this, that sounds like a dream where you get two years, you get total engagement from all the way the top down, to really think this through, what this means for us.
What would your advice be? To a people leader who's charged with, you know, refreshing or just reprinting the old posters with something that's like on the walls, but isn't necessarily embodied. How would you start the process if you have some interest from leadership but haven't, but don't have that level of buy-in?
How do you start the process of developing leadership principles that are that powerful at your company? What would your advice be?
[00:19:17] Catalina Dongo: So first, you need genuine commitment. The very top of the organization needs to be really committed to making these principles and the culture be meaningful. I know it's cliche to say HR does not own culture.
We all say it, and it's true. We say it because it's true. So you need to make sure that you may be a conduit, you may be a driver in helping drive those conversations. They need to be leading the conversation. We cannot care in HR more than they do. So we just talked about how HR is a support function, an enabling function for the business.
It's the same for culture. We will support it, we'll enable it, but we cannot drive it, and we cannot care more than they do. So once you have support from the top leader in the organization, let's call that person the CEO, then it's easier to get everybody else aligned behind it, and I would say go through the process.
So the way we did it was we envisioned what the universe could be 10 years from now, and we went through this exercise where we literally envisioned what do the hallways look like. What does it sound like what's on the news about the universe? What are we doing? And if for that to be a reality, what kind of leaders do we need to have in place to make that a reality?
And that's how we backed into those leadership principles is in order for that to happen, what needs to be true about our leaders today?
[00:20:48] Dave Travers: I think that is rather than starting a process where you're defining company values or leadership principles or whatever they are in your organization, where you start from a really tangible example where we wanna be and what leaders we wanna attract and retain and grow, as opposed to thinking, like starting with the end of just saying, okay, what should our leadership principles be?
I remember when we went through ZipRecruiter, defining our company values. The process we took was we said, Who are the five people in the company that most embody the company's values and what we want it to be?
And then we said, let's describe those people. Why are they so great? And then all of a sudden, the company values came out of that, out of a living, breathing example rather than a hypothetical. And think about what other companies have good values we wanna borrow, or something like that.
[00:21:39] Catalina Dongo: I love that. That was a great approach.
[00:21:40] Dave Travers: Yeah, it was fun too. And it's fun to be able to, a lot of those people are still here five plus years later, and it's great to be able to tell. You know, these aren't just company values. We were thinking of you specifically, as we thought about that. Okay. So as a talent leader, you are always thinking about ways to grow your team more intelligently, thinking about what sort of skills you need for the future that beyond just what you need today that embody your leadership principles, et cetera.
But we're in a world where technology and AI specifically are the watchword everywhere. So you're at a, you know, family, a business with strong historical family roots, where the founding family's still very much involved. You have these strong leadership principles. Where do you marry in and bring in technology and AI into your processes, and where do, say, how do you decide where you're gonna keep your current processes and current principles? What do you decide to adapt and what do you decide to keep the same? How do you do that?
[00:22:40] Catalina Dongo: Yeah, so I embrace technology. I think that it sounds scary, and it can be scary. Sometimes I see what's going on in the world outside of my universe bubble, and I brace myself for what it may be 10 years from now, even just in our personal lives.
Not even just from a professional perspective, but you have to embrace technology. So for now, I want to stay very optimistic and think that AI will help us be better. It will help us be more effective. It will help us be more efficient. The reality in our industry and our companies that we're a little bit behind when it comes to technology.
So we can't afford to be afraid of it right now. We need to embrace it. We cannot stay behind from, even just from a competitive perspective. So we are going through some different projects to create more automation, to create more technology that's going to, I think, enhance our people's jobs. When I look at some of the technologies we're implementing and the impact to our people right now, I think it's going to be a very welcomed impact because it will take somebody from maybe just a task or a doer to an analyst, right?
It's gonna have to be different skills that the person needs to learn, but it will be a welcomed tool, I believe, for our people. When you think about our operations, we're an industrial laundry. I'm oversimplifying it, but that's what we are, right?
We're in industrial laundry. And when we look at the industrial laundries, let's say in Europe, they're more advanced with the automation and the actual plans than most of us are in the United States. So I think there's a significant opportunity, and I think being behind is going to serve us well because it's going to give us an opportunity to implement technologies where we had completely manual processes, but now we're gonna be implementing technologies that have AI built in. Everything you purchased in terms of business systems has AI built in.
[00:24:45] Dave Travers: I love that. So first of all, one of the things I love about that is labeling that we're a little bit behind, because this taps into one of my foundational beliefs about where we are in the world right now.
There are two types of companies. There are those that are behind, and there are those that don't realize they're behind because the technology is evolving so rapidly. No one is like, oh, yep, we're up on all the latest stuff. We've got it. Don't need to implement anything new. We're on rails. You know, like that does not exist at the rate at which underlying technology is changing.
And so that's a very uncomfortable and unnatural thing to say sometimes. But the good news is you have good company. Everyone else is in the exact same. You may be at different stages of that journey, but trust me, you're behind. And so I think that's a great place to start, and it makes it much less likely that as you approach things, you're gonna say, well, you know, we don't really need to do that, or whatever the case may be, the world's changing fas,t and we have to embrace technology.
So I think that's great. And it's so true that the benefit of having waited to make some technology changes is like the stuff you would've adopted two years ago isn't nearly as good as the stuff you're gonna adopt right now. So embrace the benefit of that. You know, there you have competitors or other people out there that are using stuff that they think they're ahead, but they're actually already behind, 'cause that's 18 months old.
[00:26:03] Catalina Dongo: Yeah, that's exactly right. It's been quite a while since I've actually recruited myself. And I remember the days of the different job sites, and I used to physically manage those, our different contracts with different career builder monster back in the day. Right. And I go in and take a peek with what we're about to do with the new HCM, and it's really mind-blowing. The job of the sourcer, the recruiter. It's just completely different. The tools at their disposal.
[00:26:33] Dave Travers: Yeah. The technology at their disposal is completely different. That's exactly right. And if you're, if you're doing it the old way, you're not doing it right. There's no doubt about that. Okay. We always, in these episodes, with a rapid-fire round, and I think it's so helpful. Lots of people who listen to this find it so helpful because they've never had, or they get maybe so far in their career, one interaction with somebody senior at their company. So it's great to, for somebody who's comfortable and in this position all the time, hearing them role play a little bit, how do they handle interactions with these people who can seem, until you get to know them, seem these untouchable or, or.
You know, nervous making people to talk to so you talked about how you have a great relationship with the COO. Let's role-play and do the rapid-fire round as if I'm the COO, who you know super well, and the COO comes up and says, Catalina, you're the expert recruiter, interviewer, you've done this as a career.
You manage that team. What is your best advice? For me, I spend a bunch of my time interviewing. What's your single best piece of advice on how to become a better interviewer?
[00:27:35] Catalina Dongo: Listen more. Listen more than you speak. Try to go beyond the resume, and if you have the opportunity to spend time with that candidate in an unusual setting, a coffee shop, the cafeteria of the building, do it. Get to know the person beyond what's on the resume.
[00:27:54] Dave Travers: I love that. The environment is a very powerful way of breaking down the like super structured feeling of the interview, and I'm putting on my interview persona and getting to really know someone, and then listening to what happens. I love that. Okay, second rapid fire, exact same circumstance.
COO says, you know, I was thinking about the talent we need today versus what we needed two years ago and what we're gonna need two years from now, and how that might change. What do you think is like the best way to measure the talent team and the recruiting team today? Like, how should we measure them over the next year in terms of how well we're doing?
[00:28:34] Catalina Dongo: I think the measurement does not. Different than what it is today, which is, are we keeping great people? Are we building strong leaders? That's it. If you have strong leaders, everything else will follow. Safety will follow. Customer retention will follow, profitability will follow. So those would be the two top metrics is are we keeping our highest potential, greater performance, and are we keeping strong leaders?
[00:29:04] Dave Travers: Catalina Dongo. It is so clear why you're a Talent All-Star. Thanks so much for taking the time with us today.
[00:29:09] Catalina Dongo: Thank you so much, Dave. I enjoyed our time together.
[00:29:16] Dave Travers: That was Catalina Dongo, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at UniFirst. We'll drop her LinkedIn profile in the episode description. If you enjoyed this episode, tap follow in your favorite podcast app and consider leaving us a five-star rating and a review. Thanks for listening to Talent All Stars. We'll see you right back here. Next week.