The first episode of “Switching Lanes” features Lara Simmons, chief quality officer, and Josh Wolfe, senior vice president, inventory management, discussing lateral moves or even steps backward they’ve taken to later propel their careers forward. The second episode, due for release in September with three new guests, focuses on the internal bid process for Medline job openings and how to prepare for interviews. Finholt anticipates a new episode about once a month after that.

“A lot of what’s discussed will definitely be sharing experiences, which is important for people to hear,” she said. “We want real, genuine, authentic stories from those who have made moves and the reason why they’ve made moves, how they’ve approached it, how they’ve spoken with their manager about it, so that other employees can see, ‘I’m not alone. Other people are doing this.’

“There shouldn’t be a taboo around changing directions. We want to keep good people internally at Medline, and if that means, for example, someone starts in HR and goes into finance, so be it. We’ll encourage them.”

The podcast certainly won’t be the end of it. For example, Finholt said her team is working to bring onsite résumé assistance to the distribution and manufacturing centers to help employees identify translatable skills and plan their next internal moves.

Harold Brand (right), vice president, human resources, who joins the group of three in the next episode of “Switching Lanes,” has been down this road himself. Before coming to Medline in 2021, he spent 34 years at McDonald’s – more than half of that in operations, including managing restaurants, before realizing at age 30 that HR was calling to him. He slowed his acceleration and shifted his attention to education and lower-level HR roles where he could build the experience to ultimately get himself where he wanted to be in the company.

Since joining Medline, he has seen field employees in operations segue to roles at the company’s corporate headquarters, and vice versa. Unexpected detours and changes of scenery are good, he said – if for no other reason than to become more rounded.

“Although the internal mobility process at Medline has started to help people think a little bit differently, there’s still some stigma around lateral career moves,” Brand said. “But your job and career path should be more of a journey. If you take the journey and learn other parts of a business outside your current function, it makes you a better leader as you take on different higher-level jobs. And the big win for a company is having an employee who knows more about the company beyond the role they’re in right now.”