Heather Polivka
Heather Polivka is an internationally trusted business advisor accelerating the growth and success of progressive SMBs and their leaders through practical leadership, employee performance, and thriving workplace cultures. Heather’s methodology unites over a decade’s worth of experience across marketing, HR and, operations to transforming people, processes, and profits of Fortune 10 organizations, 20+ acquired businesses, and SMBs of all sizes.
Business is all about relationships. Creating a thriving business starts with creating a healthy work culture and developing leaders who know how to cultivate high-performing teams.
Heather Polivka is an internationally trusted business advisor accelerating the growth and success of progressive SMBs and their leaders through practical leadership, employee performance, and thriving workplace cultures.
Heather’s methodology has been masterfully crafted with over a decade’s worth of experience transforming people, processes, and profits of Fortune 10 organizations and businesses of all sizes. She unites marketing, HR, technology, and operations expertise to address workplace culture, breaking down silos, optimizing ways of working, improving employee engagement, and developing strong people leadership.
Heather recently created a new online manager training program, Awesome People Leaders (APL), to address the prevalent gap in employee retention and engagement at companies of all sizes across multiple industries: a lack of training and development for new and first-time managers. APL provides a series of micro-learnings and actions for real-world management scenarios to cultivate high-performance team building, and an online private community to collaborate, share, receive feedback, and learn from others’ experiences.
For 12 years, she served as a Fortune 6 organization’s critical link between marketing and human resources to transform their culture, repair their reputation as a place to work, integrate 20+ acquired businesses, and localize their presence in culturally relevant ways. She developed purposeful brand experiences that created a lasting impact at every level of a company: employees, owners, stakeholders, customers, and communities. Some of her results include a 21% increase in productivity, 22% increase in profitability, 10% higher customer satisfaction, and 52% increase in employee creativity, innovation, and problem-solving.
Heather always ensures a positive impact goes beyond the workplace. She is an active SCORE mentor, working with child abuse prevention, bullying prevention, and anti-racism.
Creating Sustainable Business Performance Through Your Employees
Addressing the Gap that Stops Most Businesses (& Workplaces) From Thriving
3 Critical Aspects to Employee Engagement
Po-tay-to, Po-Tah-to: How Small Differences Create Big Business Problems
Why People-centric Managers Outperform Their Peers in every way
3 Reasons Why Most Culture & Employee Engagement Work Fails
The most effective, overlooked solution to employee retention & engagement
“Heather is one of the world's leading practitioners and a highly regarded member of EBI's Global Advisory Board. I love her enthusiasm and passion, Heather has a 'want to be around' personality. We have been fortunate to have Heather present at our International Branding Summits - her ability to engage an audience is first class!”
Brett Minchington
Chairman, CEO of Employer Brand International
"Heather was our speaker for one of our first hybrid events this summer. We returned to our favorite country club venue, but minutes before we went “live," the internet went down and we lost Wi-Fi. Thankfully, my mobile “hotspot” worked and we connected our virtual attendees through my phone. While this situation would throw off most speakers, Heather rolled with it and helped create a sense of ease for all of the event attendees, both in the room and online. Even more impressive is how engaged all of our attendees were, despite the glitches, as demonstrated during the Q&A that would have continued had we not run out of time. Heather identified the culture and engagement pain points in a way that resonated for people and offered tangible, actionable takeaways to address them. Her energy, expertise and engagement with our members was top-notch and we would gladly invite her back."
Katy Burke
Executive Director of Team Women
"Heather created and presented a great learning experience for our NAWBO-MN members as part of our Learning Lab Series. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it and found it very beneficial for their businesses. Heather has a great style and is very engaging with the participants. Heather presented relevant and important information in a fun presentation. People found it useful both personally and professionally. Her program attracted people not only from our state chapter but other chapters nationally. She received great scores and feedback on the follow-up survey. I would highly recommend Heather for a speaking engagement or program in the future and would welcome the opportunity to chat with anyone who may have questions or like more information."
Jackie Engmark
Executive Director, NAWBO