Organizations communicate their true culture not through mission statements, but through the body language of everyday behaviors, emotions, and moments that employees constantly observe and interpret to understand what working there really means.
Her Story
About Natae'
Natae' Hayman is a people-focused professional growing her expertise in employee experience and workplace culture. Natae’s career has been defined by intentional growth, resilience, and a passion for helping people thrive at work. With a strong foundation in human resources and a growing focus on organizational culture, talent development, and employee experience, she has built a career centered on understanding the connection between people, performance, and workplace success. Natae' is known for her ability to bridge the gap between organizational goals and employee needs, creating environments where individuals feel valued, supported, and empowered to do their best work. Currently serving as an Executive Assistant at Cencora, Natae' operates at the intersection of executive leadership, human resources, and legal operations. In her role, she provides strategic support to senior leaders, coordinating complex projects, driving cross-functional initiatives, and ensuring the successful execution of key business priorities.
Her professional background includes extensive experience in HR operations, employee relations, onboarding, engagement, and process improvement. During her tenure with Prime Healthcare, she contributed to measurable improvements in employee experience and satisfaction through innovative onboarding and engagement initiatives. Her long-term vision remains focused on advancing employee experience, talent development, and workplace culture. Natae's professional journey is a testament to determination and continuous learning. Beginning her career in retail, she steadily worked her way into increasingly influential roles by identifying where her strengths, passions, and purpose aligned. Through experience, mentorship, and a commitment to personal growth, she earned opportunities to sit at leadership tables and contribute to meaningful organizational change. Today, she is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Psychology with a concentration in Organizational Behavior at Colorado Technical University, with plans to apply industrial-organizational psychology principles to create healthier, more engaging workplace experiences. She is also the creator of The Unspoken Experience, a newsletter dedicated to exploring workplace culture, career transitions, and personal growth. Guided by the belief that exceptional employee experiences are intentionally designed, Natae' continues to inspire professionals and organizations to build cultures where both people and businesses can flourish.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Natae'
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to determination, adaptability, and having a clear vision for the life I want to create. Determination opened the door, but intentionality kept me moving forward.
My journey hasn’t been a straight line; I started in retail management, transitioned into Human Resources, and now support executive leadership while building a future in organizational psychology and people strategy. it’s about being intentional. It’s knowing where I want to go, creating a plan to get there, and staying committed even when the path changes.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve received was twofold. First, I was told to stop questioning whether I belonged in the room and start focusing on why I was invited into it. That advice helped me overcome imposter syndrome and recognize that my perspective, experiences, and contributions have value.
The second lesson was that no one is more responsible for my career than I am. Managers, mentors, and leaders can support your growth, but they cannot create your vision for you. Once I understood that I held the keys to my own future, I became much more intentional about seeking opportunities, building relationships, and creating a career that aligned with my goals rather than waiting for someone else to map it out for me.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don’t put pressure on yourself to have your entire career figured out from day one. Start by getting in the room, learning as much as you can, and paying attention to what energizes you.
The areas that excite you, challenge you, and continue to occupy your mind after the workday ends often point toward your purpose. Give yourself permission to explore different paths before choosing a specialty. Every role teaches you something valuable, and sometimes the fastest way to discover where you belong is by first learning where you don’t.
Most importantly, advocate for yourself. Your career is not something that happens to you, it’s something you actively create.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think one of the biggest opportunities in my field is shifting the conversation from managing employees to designing experiences. For years, organizations have focused on productivity, but the future belongs to organizations that understand performance is often a byproduct of trust, belonging, development, and purpose.
Technology will continue to change how we work, but it won’t change what people need. People want to feel valued. They want opportunities to grow. They want leaders who communicate with transparency and cultures that allow them to bring their best selves to work.
The organizations that win won’t necessarily be the ones with the newest technology. They’ll be the ones that successfully combine innovation with a genuine investment in people.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values that guide both my personal and professional life are integrity, compassion, resilience, and intentionality.
Integrity is the foundation of everything I do. I believe trust is built through honesty, consistency, and following through on commitments. Compassion shapes how I interact with others because everyone is carrying experiences and challenges we may not fully see.
Resilience has been a defining part of my journey. As a young mother who built her career through determination and perseverance, I’ve learned that setbacks don’t have to define your future. They can become part of the story that strengthens it.
Above all, I value intentionality. Whether I’m supporting leaders, developing people, building relationships, or planning my next goal, I believe meaningful results come from making deliberate choices that align with your purpose and values.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Natae'
The Workplace Has a Body Language
How Organizations Communicate Through Signals, Emotions, and the Everyday Moments That Shape Culture
Organizations spend enormous time deciding what they want employees to hear.
Mission statements are carefully crafted. Leaders rehearse town hall messages. Core values are printed on office walls and woven into onboarding presentations. Communication plans are built with intention, and words are chosen with care.
Yet employees rarely experience an organization through its words alone.
They experience it through its signals.
Like People, Organizations Have Body Language
It communicates constantly through behaviors, reactions, routines, and moments that rarely make it into a presentation deck. Long before employees fully understand an organization's strategy, they begin interpreting this language.
Like any language, they become fluent over time.
Just as we instinctively read a person's posture, tone, or facial expressions, employees learn to read organizations. They notice whose ideas receive attention and whose are quietly passed over. They observe whether mistakes become learning opportunities or reasons to stay silent. They recognize who gets invited into important conversations, who receives grace after setbacks, and how leaders respond when plans suddenly change.
These moments may seem insignificant on their own, but together they become the language of culture.
Most employees aren't intentionally studying their workplace, but they are always adapting to it, often subconsciously.
Human beings are wired to search for patterns. It's one of the ways we create safety in uncertain environments. Every interaction provides another clue about how to navigate the organization.
- Is it safe to ask questions?
- Can people disagree without consequences?
- Will effort be recognized?
- Does trust actually exist here?
Employees rarely receive direct answers to these questions. Instead, they gather evidence through observation. Eventually, those observations become expectations, and those expectations shape how they participate.
Culture, then, isn't simply what organizations say they value. It's what employees learn to expect.
One of the things I've found most fascinating about organizations is that emotions rarely stay with the person who first experiences them.
Unlike a difficult conversation between two people, workplace emotions have a way of traveling. They move through meetings, interactions, decisions, and relationships, often reaching people who were never part of the original moment.
The Emotional Supply Chain
As I began thinking about why certain workplace experiences can feel so pervasive, I kept coming back to one idea: emotions move through organizations much like resources move through a supply chain. One person's frustration, uncertainty, or optimism is rarely contained. It gets passed along, often unintentionally, through everyday interactions.
I think of this as the emotional supply chain.
A senior leader enters a meeting visibly frustrated. Nothing is said about it. The vice president becomes less patient. A director rushes through conversations. A manager cancels a one-on-one. An employee leaves at the end of the day wondering whether they've done something wrong.
The emotion has moved through the organization, even though its origin may never be known by the people who felt its effects.
The same is true in the opposite direction.
Calm spreads.
Curiosity spreads.
Recognition spreads.
Psychological safety spreads.
Every interaction sends something to the next person.
This isn't about assigning blame to leaders. It's about recognizing influence. The emotional tone of an organization is often communicated less through policies than through the ordinary moments people have with one another.
The Gap Between Intention and Experience
Perhaps the greatest challenge is that intention and experience are not always the same.
A leader believes they're encouraging independence, but an employee experiences isolation.
A manager believes they're moving quickly, but the team experiences indifference.
Someone believes they're being direct, but another person experiences dismissal.
Neither perspective is necessarily wrong. But the gap between intention and experience is where culture quietly takes shape.
Organizations often evaluate communication by asking whether the message was delivered.
Employees evaluate communication by asking a different question:
What did this interaction tell me about working here?
That answer isn't formed by a single conversation or one difficult meeting.
It's built through hundreds of ordinary moments that accumulate over time.
Every delayed response.
Every interruption.
Every acknowledgment.
Every reaction.
Each one adds another word to the organization's body language.
We often say that actions speak louder than words. In organizations, they don't just speak louder—they become the language employees trust most.
Because culture isn't only communicated.
It's observed, interpreted, and eventually repeated.
Once people learn a workplace's body language, they rarely forget what it has taught them.
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