LV Petroleum’s Chief Talent Officer Stace Anne Benu speaks at CSP and Informa Connect’s Outlook Leadership event. | Jon Mouer Photography
Stace Anne Benu is the chief talent officer at LV Petroleum. But she also describes herself as a disruptor of the status quo.
Mitch Morrison (pictured right), vice president of retailer relations and event content director at Informa Connect, asked Benu (pictured left) about how she defined that at CSP and Informa Connect’s Outlook Leadership event, which was held in August at Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The two took the stage Aug. 6 for a C-Suite in the Hot Seat session.
Benu said she came from the music industry, which makes her “a little rough around the edges and unabashedly genuine.” She’s also worked with a recruiting agency before joining the retail industry—she spent almost nine years with c-store chain MAPCO.
For the past six months, she’s been with LV Petroleum, a Las Vegas-based owner and operator of TravelCenters of America franchises. It operates more than 90 TA, TA Express and Petro Centers, along with more than 30 c-stores and more than 200 quick-service restaurants.
“And now, I’m able to blend all of it, and I love it,” Benu said. “And as a disruptor of the status quo, what I love most is I take corporate recruiting, I mold in the speed, accuracy and strategy of agency recruiting, and then to take it another level. I quantify all of it. So instead of a recruiting department or an HR department being an expense, we monetize it.”
She’s building out a program now at LV Petroleum that will use artificial intelligence to help quantify what an employee is worth over time. It will give employees data to see what they’ve achieved and to see what their plan is for moving forward, Benu said. Executives in the company can see this, too.
At the center of it all though is communication.
If a company clearly communicates a growth plan to an employee and lays out that path in front of them, then “your labor problem is going to fix itself,” Benu said.
One fatal flaw she sees in the industry now is the concentration on retention.
“These new hires, these candidates that come in, they’re not turn and burn. They’re not disposable. They’re people,” Benu said. “They’re humans, and they’re humans with desires. Communicate. Find out actually what they would like to do for their career.”
Gen Z employees want a path lined out for them with all of the steps, she said.
“And adults want to know the ‘why’ of what they’re doing, the ‘why’ behind it. I think we communicate, we put it out there, we’re genuine. And I think that will turn it around,” Benu said.
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