At the end of the two-day Global HR Trends Summit in Toronto, the hosts lined all attendees up at the front of the room and asked us to offer two words to sum up our experience. My words: insightful and inspiring.

Not only is it insightful to hear about the HR strategies of global organizations like Nestle, Johnson and Johnson, Harrods, the Coca Cola company, and many more, it is extremely inspiring to see how these companies are tackling important HR topics such as cultural transformation, talent strategies, people analytics and the approach to a great employee experience to name a few.

I absolutely relished the unique experience to be able to learn from senior leaders at global innovative companies and connect with them personally at the same time. I have pages of personal notes and action items as a result of my experience, however, I wanted to share some key moments that really stood out for me.

Cultural Transformation and How to Integrate It Into Brand Strategy

Martin Lexa, EVP HR & Corporate Communications at Molnlycke Health Care discussed how to make cultural transformation last in organizations. A hard-hitting reminder for me was that our employer brand isn’t what we say it is, it’s what other people say it is, despite what we put out there in the world. Cultural transformation doesn’t happen overnight and I loved the way he ended the conversation that in order to make it work it’s all about starting at the top and that it’s not an “HR thing.”

Culture at Scale: Defining Your Culture & Talent Strategy

Steve Mair, Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Procore Technologies was a dynamic speaker not only showing how to scale culture, but proving great execution. It’s quite rare to see companies at that size with a 4.8 Glassdoor rating.  A few approaches that really stood out to me was that before even defining your EVP, start defining your culture in a simple way that everyone understands it and make it part of the fabric of your company by over-commnuicating it. It can’t be commnuicated enough and allow employees to challenge leadership if the culture isn’t being lived as it was defined.

Breaking Myths With Passion And Agility

First off, I need to welcome Piyush Mathur, Head of Global Workforce Analytics at Johnson and Johnson to Canada.   It was his first time visiting our awesome country.

Given this is a personal passion of mine, it was great to hear a structured approach to uncover great people insights using data. What stood out was his comment about how his CEO identified that an individual has to have analytics experience to be a CHRO today. What will stay with me is the vision of his Workforce Analytics Strategy: “Better business through better people decisions.”  You can notice that there’s no mention of analytics or data there, it’s about leveraging insights to improve people decisions and growth.

The Predictive People Analytics Journey at Nestlé

Laurien Adriaenssens, Lead People Data Scientist at Nestle shared her journey and examples of a predictive analytics approach. Despite also sharing a similar passion of people, numbers, and chocolate, I really loved her comments about ownership being part of the people analytics equation. It’s about giving leaders their own insights on demand – and not just executives, but all leaders and ensuring insights aren’t filtered by HR for the speed and agility of action.  The other key point is that these leaders must be able to engage with the analytics in a simple form which I often see missed in organizations.

Employee Relationship Management and Customer Relationship Management -Two Sides Of The Same Coin

Niall Ryan-Jones, former Head of Employee Experience at Harrods was on point in terms of how the similar focus on our customers need to be translated to employees. I liked how he simplified the approach into three key areas of focus:

  • ERM & CRM – making sure you have a robust Employee Relationship Management system to communicate to employees with as much focus and levels of engagement as you would with customers
  • VOE & VOC – how your voice of customer strategies must be matched by hearing the voice of employees
  • EX & CX – how we must focus on ensuring the employee experience is phenomenal, just as we do for our customers

Beyond all the learning, it was also a great experience as well. There was the ability to network with speakers and attendees, as well as work collectively on exercises on important organizational topics such as diversity and inclusion and harassment in the workplace. Even the venue (Thompson Hotel in downtown Toronto) was fantastic as well as the food!  Yes, two tiramisu desserts in a day… guilty!

Insightful and inspiring. I chose the right words. it’s great to stand on the shoulders of giants and learn from what they are doing and it has inspired change for me personally, and my company and customers.