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Joey Peritore oversees the 8 Colleague Resource Groups at H&M, and began working with Verbate in early 2024 to support and champion their 24 CRG Leaders.

Joey sat down with us to share a bit about why Verbate is a fit for their needs, how he thought strategically about enrolling 24 Leaders with vastly different schedule and workplace considerations, and the impact he’s seen from H&M’s CRG Leaders participating in Verbate’s Foundational Training & Community.

Why did you choose Verbate?

Hi, I'm Joey Peritore. My pronouns are he/him and I am the Talent Engagement specialist for H&M overseeing the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. And my main responsibility here at H&M is overseeing the eight colleague resource groups that we have.

The collaboration with Verbate was like a no brainer for me because it was a way to really get back leadership and development to our CRG Leads.

And with the program, Verbate has really been very helpful for people to understand how they could organize themselves, how they can create impact and engagement within their organization and how they could really have a voice and how to use that voice.

You enrolled all 24 of your CRG Leaders in 2024 - how did you think about enrolling them into Verbate’s Foundational Training cohorts?

When we first joined in partnership with Verbate, we only had seven CRGs.

So we had 21 leads, each of our CRGs has three... we call them chairs, and now we have 24. 

As we know, all of our leads are pretty much voluntary. So we want them to have a clear mind that when they're going through this, obviously they still have work, but there's always ebbs and flows and peak periods for different departments. 

And the way we put them in the cohort is having them look at their schedules and what was best for their business. So we were able to be flexible with you and move people in different cohorts, but then also  business ebbs and flows, right? So we have a lot of chairs that they're working in stores and sometimes there's a peak without you realizing it. They're not able to make some of the schedules. So, we were able to take them out of cohorts that they were scheduled for and put them in upcoming cohorts. 

You've always been great in saying, "sure, whatever is needed for the CRGs." 

What are some of the impacts you've seen on your Leaders?

I see a renewed energy every time one of my leads finishes the cohort. They have gotten some really good ideas for different programming and different resources that they can hand out from listening to other ERG Leads.  They've also had ideas on different topics that now they want to present that's relevant to their CRG or even potential speakers. 

But another thing, it boosted their confidence because they were able to see that in some areas they are ahead of other CRGs. So where I think a lot of ERG Leads or even companies feel like, "Oh, I'm a little bit behind," or, "Maybe I'm not doing the best thing." You're able to actually see, "Oh, actually I'm a little bit ahead." So I think it's good to see that people are in the same boat, but there's other solutions that we could still reach and engage our people. That's what the Leads are really sharing with me. 

They're getting great ideas and they also feel really good about where they are at in their Leadership as a CRG.