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Welcome to today's podcast on Agile HR. I'm Kate Bravery-- Mercer's talent and insight leader. And today, I'm fortunate to have as my guest Janine Vos, CHRO managing board member at Rabobank. Janine, it's wonderful to have you on the call. I know we had the pleasure of meeting last year at the CRF conference. But thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy schedule to join me for this exciting conversation today.
Yes. Thank you very much. And it was lovely seeing you at the conference. So I'm really looking forward this talk.
Well, one of the things that really impressed me from your session at the conference was just that unwavering commitment. You and your team have had to operate quite differently in HR and to really buck against some of the traditional HR models. And I just knew that some of our listeners would love to hear some insights into your journey and any of the learnings you want to share today. So why don't we kick off? Maybe we can start with a little bit about yourself. How you moved into the role at Rabobank.
Yeah. Thank you, Kate. Yes. I'm Janine. I've been in business roles the first part of my career. And then I was a leader, and then I actually saw what value people bring and what value good leaders bring. And then I was, yeah, empowered to actually think about what does HR do? And then I ran into some roles and then eventually I would get at Telco, an IT company, and I became the director, the CHRO.
And then seven years ago, I was approached by a Dutch bank, a cooperative bank, which is called Rabobank. And a new leader stepped in, and he said, I would like you to take on the role of CHRO. And he said, after a year, I'm going to appoint you in the managing board. So that was, for me, a whole new experience. To be a managing board member. And specifically, think about the role of HR and what people, the role that people play in an organization. And I still love it until today.
That's great to hear. It's so interesting. There's more and more people in the top chair in HR that have come from a business background. I think it's about 30%, 34%. We're seeing global talent trends have that nontraditional HR career. But I think you also come with a lot of passion for the role, having discovered how critical people are. And I love the fact that you're also on the managing board.
So maybe we can come back to that a little bit later. But Janine, since we last caught up, I have had the chance to look at our global talent trends data. And if I had to step back from all the data points, there's one message that's coming through loud and clear this year. And it's that we're going to have to be a lot more agile than we've been in the past, if we're going to thrive in 2024.
And that's a combination of factors. We've got some real caution coming into some of the budgets, which is impacting hiring and that mantra of doing more than less. We've got executives still at the same time forecasting growth and also saying, generative AI is going to give us 30% productivity improvements.
Yeah. You're right. And we are already so agile. If you look at the last 10 years in what we've done in the HR space, it was already that we are thinking, this is the max, what we can do. And each year, it becomes more difficult with all the changes, all the changes around us, but also in terms of global politics, in terms of the way businesses are run. There's shortage, there's inflation, there's talent shortage, there's everything. So we already need to be agile and step up even more.
I agree. It used to be that we come to the beginning of the year, and there were two or three challenges. And now it just feels like every challenge that we have named is all happening at the same time. And I also know, that was one of the things that came up the conference that we are, is that the word agility also to a certain degree has become a dirty word for some of us in HR.
And so how do we make agile-- a more positive word. And how do we keep pivoting? So I'd love to hear maybe how you're defining agility at Rabobank and maybe what was the impetus to make such a radical change in how you operate across the business, but more importantly, within HR.
Yes. I think the journey started in 2016, 2017, when our new CEO said, we need more speed, we need faster decision making, and I would like to improve the customer journey. And for me, in one word, it is also employee journey. So it was speed, faster decision making, customer journey, employee journey.
And then we started in business DevOps. So we put together IT and the business to work in multidisciplinary teams, to work on end-to-end customer journeys or processes. And so it started in IT in combination with the business. And then I thought if this works in the business and IT, why not within HR? And so what we did as from 2020, I think, after the Workday transformation, then we had one data set. We worked global from the process side.
The next phase within HR I thought is looking at what do people need? So it's not only what customers need, but what do people need? So with the needs of people in mind, and what do people say, what is their-- well, what is their need? And do we have data around what people actually expect from us as HR?
So it's not a managers, what managers expect from HR, but what do people need? And so we thought we were going to work around employee journeys. So we actually going to think through what do people need. And that is the basis. So the basis is data. And so what we need is people within an organization, we're still in sometimes we're in 1980.
So if our employees go outside the company, they're in 2024, and they see all the apps they work like digital. And internally, we still have systems that don't go together, if you're onboarding in an organization. You need to go to six or seven departments just to get onboarding correctly.
So then we said, why don't we combine all the departments into one employee journey? So combination of IT, HR, facilities, architecture. We actually combined in multidisciplinary teams to work on employee journeys. And so we started in 2022 by working agile within HR.
Well, we'll come to agile in a moment. Let me just pause there because I think we are in an era where greater employee, advocacy employee listening is an expectation. And I think the firms that are outpacing their competitors do that really well. You've mentioned journey mapping. Did you have consistent journeys for all of your employees or did you have different personas that you were pursuing? Just tell us a little bit about how you embarked on that process.
Yes. First of all, we had different personas. That was the first phase. And then actually, people said, I don't want to be a persona. Every employee is different. So we're going to do that in employee journeys like I'm looking for a job or I would like to join Rabobank. That's also a journey.
Or I now work for three years within this bank or seven years, I would like to have a new role. So we designed first in personas, and now we're just thinking about what movements do you have in your career. So the moment then that you're thinking about a new career, when you enter a bank and when you're in the bank, what do you need within the bank, and what phases do you have in your career? And also a journey leave, for instance. If you leave the bank, how would we like you to leave the bank? So we have 25 journeys--
25?
25. And they have sub-journeys as well, of course, because you have different journeys. And I think that is the next phase within HR. I thinking about five years, we will be working completely in employee journeys. I'm not there yet.
That's a pretty bold statement, but I like it. And it's such a change, I think, to where we have been before, where particularly in HR, we've been very functionally and expert-focused. So tell me a little bit about how you got those agile teams to work together, and what does that mean for an HR professional day-to-day?
Yes. It's a big change, I maybe underestimated the change because we used to have center of expertise, and now what we actually said is that people have to work in multidisciplinary squads on a topic and do run, change, and win. So for people, who used to write policies, for instance, and then give it to someone else who executed the policies. They're now in the same team doing all the work.
So it's not only writing a policies, but it's also thinking about how do I get my policy across? So it's also the marketing communication in your team. It's also the execution towards the HR business partners, what is meant by our policy? What's the why behind your policy. So I must say, that is a really big change.
So I'm curious, how did you start to get your HR team on board? Because it's not probably the roles they've done before, it's maybe not what they have trained for in the past. And you're already introducing a whole new language into HR. So I'm just curious, how did you get them inspired, and was everybody inspired?
No. No. No. Not everybody was inspired. I said, the why of our company is growing a better world together. And in order to do so, we need to digitize more, also as a company. We need to stay transparent. In effect, more control over costs, more philosophy, velocity, faster decision making.
So we said, that also applies to HR. So what is ask of the business, we also need to move faster, decide faster. And it's fun to do so. And if you want to stay relevant in the labor market for the coming years, we as HR also need to be agile. And let's try. It's OK to make mistakes. We're not perfect, but let's do the same as business does and work.
And the big why was that I think it's better for the employees making their life easier, we call it enablement. So it's the productivity side. How can we help our employees to do faster digitization, so they have less time on administration. We help them with that. That's enablement. To have better equipment. So they use, for instance, Microsoft better. That kind of things is enablement.
And the other part is, specifically on the growth of people, people and growth. So how can we help them individually to grow into a better human, but also in terms of skills. And so we said we do this also to be better value creators instead of a cost center. We create value as HR. We enable our employees, but also we help them to grow.
And that is the vision, which I strongly believe that you need to have a vision. But it's not easy because people love their job. And then you're saying, well, I would like you to do things differently. And I must say, I underestimated that. Because, for instance, if you look at performance management, what we now have, before, you have a policy writer who writes a policy around performance management, does that really well. Then it goes to a change or project management group.
And then it goes to the business partners, and then it goes to the business, and the whole project on performance management. Now, you have a squad. And a squad has a product or a service. And they work in multidisciplinary teams. So for instance, there's one person who writes the policy, but also thinks about marketing and communication.
There's a marketing and communication experts, there's a Workday implementation IT expert also involved, and he's thinking or she's thinking about how can I do the performance management better or easier in Workday? And then you have a person who's going to think about what does performance management think about pay? How do we do this differently? How do we do our CLE differently?
So there's a group of people that normally would work in silos and they now work together, actually to enhance their product or service. That's completely different than before.
I love that focus on the outcome, and that collaboration that must come with taking that full end-to-end ownership.
Yes.
I'm curious, what does that mean for the HR professionals? Does that mean that they are flowing to different projects as different project needs change? Or does that mean that they're in a squad because that's the squad they've been ascribed to and they stay there for a while? Give me a feel of what their career journey is--
It's such a nice question. Because my vision or my hope was that you have a flexible workforce that people flow all the time towards what really drives value. And that, for instance, performance management is really you're busy in the first quarter and the last quarter. And that the other two quarters people would be flexible. We're not there yet, because you need stability in teams as well.
So what we saw and what we experienced, and that was a challenge as well. If teams or squads are not stable, then you don't get the outcome you would like, because then people, they come in, they need to do the work again. So you need a stability as well. And when is the squad stable, and when it is too stable. And now, sometimes, I'm in the zone where I think, oh. It's 90%. And we should maybe go for 80%.
So the skills of the people could be used in other squads. So we try that more and more, and we have rituals. So each quarter, you have rituals. You say, this is what we need to deliver from a business perspective. This is what we think as HR we should deliver. And then what we think is the capacity, we plot the capacity to the projects we have.
And so we have QBRs, which we call quarterly business reviews, where we talk about impediments. What kind of impediments do we have? What can we do better? And where do we need extra people? So where do we have to prioritize? And then sometimes, like you said, we say to some squads, well. We love your work, but this quarter, it's not a priority. So we would like you to work on other stuff. I would love to do that to be so flexible. But we're not there yet, to be honest.
And it's interesting because I think we're all learning on this journey. At Mercer, we talk about what role should be fixed, because maybe actually, there's a high risk if they're not fixed. Which roles should be flow to work? Which are these fungible talent pools? And which ones might just be flexible ones where, to your point, 10% or 20% might be the flex. And that gives people the variety and learning, but it also gives them a stable home.
And all of this is great in theory, but it's wonderful to hear people who've been trying with it. What works and what didn't work. I'm curious. Was there some core principles that you needed to embed to make sure that this change didn't just happen, but stuck for the longer term? Yes. I think first of all, we really focused on what is the governance.
And it's not my first thing I like to talk about governance, but that was really important. Hello. So who's responsible for what? Who's accountable for what? And the second part was rituals. Stick to rituals. We said that is really important that you have rituals where you know who's working on what, what's the outcome, what are the impediments. Do we get the speed we would like? Talk about are we still focusing on the definition not done? What needs to be done?
So that you really also, as a team and as a management team, my role has become completely different. I went from giving assignments to giving guidance. I went from telling someone how to do it to giving space. From controlling the task to asking for results. And I think, from explaining to reflecting. I love my craft. And I really would like to say something about the how, but that is not my cup of tea anymore. That's the squads, they do that.
Yeah. But it is the how in terms of your behaviors, because you paint a very different CHRO role than we've probably seen.
That's right.
Who is doing the allocation? So obviously, if you're going to have these rituals, and people are going to find themselves in these different squads, which hopefully appeal to their interests and expertise, who's doing that part of the role? And how does that work with you then providing the coaching and tiller touching?
So you have a squad and a squad as a product owner. And the product owner is a really important role, so to speak, because it determines the priorities and it does the stakeholder management. So the, the product owner says, this is what I can deliver with my team. And if you would like more, I need more people. And I need this and this kind of specific skill set.
And then on the area level, so you have a squad. And the squad is grouped in an area. For instance, performance management is in a group, which is called development people and growth. So that is a squad performance management, but you also have a squad learning, for instance.
And those squads are part of an area. And in the area already, you have priorities, and you have dilemmas on who's working on what. How do we do this? And if the area still have impediments, then it goes through a tribe level, and a tribe consists of, for instance, six to eight areas, And I have two types.
One is people and growth, one is work and health. And if the tribes are not agreeing, then I come in to play. And then I have to decide. But that's at the end of the chain. So I normally-- now after two years, I don't get any impediments, maybe 1 or 2. And before that, my role was all about impediments all day long. It's a sort of flipping the pyramid.
I was just about to say the same. It sounds like flipping the paradigm. But for the right talent, who's thirsty to grow and learn, and we hear that from the-- particularly the youngest population. They are very eager to move to learn new things, but they want a lot of opportunity, responsibility to step up. And this model, I think, would absolutely give them that.
I am curious, though, you shared before some of the things that did work and that didn't work. And you mentioned one of them was absolutely we needed to have a stable backbone. So maybe we were too agile to make that work. Was there any other big learnings, particularly in that first year of implementation that you can share with us?
I think what was really important is that you can focus on structure and focus, but especially the mindset, I think. We were so busy doing this change and doing this change perfectly on paper and designing what kind of areas, what kind of tribes, how does it look like, what's the machinery. Really busy with the machinery. And also, how do we get the employee voice inside of the big machine?
That is really important. How do we do that with data? How do we get everyone-- every HR subject-matter expert in an area or in a squad has to do also the data part. So we were really busy on the content part, but actually it's also a mindset change. It's like, are you willing to reinvent yourself as an HR leader, but also as an HR specialist, for instance?
And we said everybody, gets a chance to do so. And I think in hindsight, I should have been clearer on this is what we ask of you. I should have been clearer, because a lot of people started, but maybe they started just by thinking, I'm not in favor of this change, but I'm also loving this company, and I don't want to leave.
So they're behind the boat. And I think in a big change, if you want to go fast, you need to be clear on what do you expect people? How long do people get the time to learn? And I think I've learned that. And the second thing is, of course, the great thing in our organization is that we as leaders, we were all in favor of simplified skills. So in our managing board, everyone was really focusing on, this is what we need to do as an organization.
So we are now having 25 tribes in our whole organization, 138 areas, and more than 1,100 squads. So actually, more than 8,000 people currently, they work in a simplified skill manner. So that is a big machinery. So it's professionalized. You have scrum masters, you have agile coaches. That helps. So I think if you're alone in an organization and hearing this podcast and think, I want to go agile and you would like, but the rest of your organization, then it's like fighting windmills. So you also need to consider what is your stakeholders. How are they? Are they happy with the change?
And what has been their feedback? Well, I think because the whole organization works this way, they like it. Because, for instance, my impediments are also part of the managing board. So also in the managing board, we talk about the impediments we have in our organization. For instance, if I have a big IT change and then the business says, yeah, but it's not in this quarter because we have this, this, and this, then we talk about it in the managing board. Because then it's my alignment, it's my priority, but maybe in the managing board, it's not.
So then we have a discussion over there. So in terms of HR, I feel I deliver value to the business because we have the same themes and we think about how does it interfere or interact with each other. And I like that. And if you think about numbers, what is actually really important is that our engagement scores in 2019 were 61 on a scale of 100, and now in 2023, it's 86.
So our engagement, like you said, people like working in this method because it gives them autonomy, but freedom within a frame. So that is one of the things I really like. If you think about our engagement scores and more than 30,000 people fill in the forms every quarter, we went from 2019, 70-- my manager inspires me towards 83 now. So that's really good.
My manager inspires or encourages an open dialogue went from 82 to 92. And what I particularly like is the seamless employee journeys. People fill in like, did they think we as HR deliver seamless journeys? Easy to deal with went from 78 to 88.
Wow. That's a big leap.
That is how people rate is HR easy to deal with? Particularly, that score, I love.
Yeah. And it's a tough one when-- so often, the ratings we get in is because the IT has let us down or we got legal governments. Because we're not multi-disciplinary team, we don't have shared accountability and shared responsibility. So I love that. One thing you've mentioned a number of times has been capacity. And no surprise, but this year's global talent trends showed that 83% of people worldwide feel at risk of being burnt out in the next 12 months.
And that's really high. It was before the pandemic down in the '60s, early '60s. So it's a big, big jump. And we haven't gone back. And when we asked people, what are some of the things that are causing you to feel at risk of burnout at work, exhaustion, complexity, are the ones that come up. And certainly, from our informal comments, having the old world of work and the new world of work together just has been a real challenge.
Yes.
So how are you looking at workloads and capacity? Because it sounds like you've done a lot to reduce complexity, but equally, we are all being asked to do more with less. And it sounds from some of your comments that you are looking at, do we have the capacity to do that, and is it the right time to be doing that? Can you share a bit more on it?
Yes. I think we make bolder choices than before. So we prioritize better, I would say. If you would ask our people, do you feel exhausted, they would say yes as well. I think we all feel because it's also what's happening outside our company. It's coming into our company.
I think what we feel the world is like, we call that in the Netherlands, it's trembling. It's shaking. And we feel shaky as well. So I think what happens outside happens also inside companies. So people feel exhausted. And they need to-- I think what we try to do is prioritize work. Working teams do it as a team. And that makes life more easy.
I think at the end of the day, people also feel that we are complex, because in a bank, we have a lot to do with risk and regulations. And the complexity is also rising within our company. So you cannot do things alone. I mean, as a squad, you can deliver, but you need a lot of dialogue with other squads as well or outside with other areas or tribes or other business partners. So I think maybe people don't feel as less complex, but I think this way of working actually reduces complexity. But it doesn't make it simple.
I think the outside world does start to come into the inside world. And we're not going backwards in complexity. So anything we can be doing to battle it in the flow of work, I think, makes a lot of sense.
Yes.
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I was just having a conversation with someone earlier today. And they were saying the biggest challenge with all of their GenAI projects is that everybody is in a different silo. They've got regulation. They've got legal, they've got IT, they've got business sponsors. And their challenge is having not gone through this experience, how do you create that mindset of we've got to collaborate, and we've got to collaborate more intentionally. And HR leader, they're trying to get to grips with all of the AI projects.
But to your point, Kate, I think you're right. I think what helped is that we bring in squads, multidisciplinary teams. So you so you see each other as not a different departments, but as a team. And I think that is the magic. What simplified skill in our organization is. Is that when you have results, then people see that it actually works. And we're not there yet.
But if you think about when people join our bank, they now get a box and it's in a box, so IT in a box. And then the box, there's everything. There's your laptop, there's your phone, there's your description on the values, there's our ESG vision. It is also where you can get your first coffee. It's the first day box. And in that box, it is clear that we work together as different departments.
What employees would like is not that you say, this is HR stuff or this is IT stuff or this is facility or this is architecture or marketing communication. They would like to be serviced, and that's what you do in multidisciplinary teams.
And what a wonderful example of human-centric organizations that are focused on what employees need as opposed to our internal departments. But also, as you said, it's a great way of shaping their mindset on day 1. This is how we work together. It's much more powerful to see it in action than, I think, to read it on a values or a statement. We are coming to them. There's probably just two more errors I'd love to explore. I'm just curious. Many companies that we partner with are on the journey from moving away from fixed jobs and functions to more skills-based organizations.
Yes.
How does a transparency around skills and skills pathways feed into this agile model?
Of course, we also look into skills. First of all, the skill language, we all need to think about what language do you use. And we're doing that. And also the internal job market, we're already working towards skills instead of resumes. But you're right. I think agile and the squads are more based on skill sets. And more and more, if you think about what profiles do you need people talk about skill sets instead of this is what people need to have in terms of craftsmanship. So it's more skills-based more and more. You're right.
And it also unlocks the capacity we have in the organization, as well as people's passions and inspirations. I'm seeing more and more examples of where that is leading to that agility, because you can start to look at tasks and skills together and fantastically helpful when we start to look at generative AI where we might have different tasks more suitable to machines than humans.
Yes. Great. And I think AI can help you actually also in your computer to really think about and just say that AI tells you, what are your skills? Because we as humans are not as good as we think we are in defining our skills or thinking about what is our core skill set. And that is what AI, I think, can help us.
Yeah. Absolutely. I think the idea of skills-based platforms are much better at giving us a kickstart on that, particularly women who sometimes are less confident in saying the skills that I have today could help me do a job or a task or be in a squad that I've never been in tomorrow. It's one of the big differences we saw come through this year.
I love that. And also the battle for talent actually helps us in this department. Because now, we see managers not asking for somebody who's perfect, but more like, what do you think? What skill sets-- what would you like in terms of skill set and not only the resume? And we see that this year, 5,000 people actually got different jobs internally just by looking broader than only specific resumes.
And I love that about the current time, that it's possible to actually go into a different department, but actually help. Because it doesn't matter what your background of study is. What skill sets do you have? Do you like to collaborate, or are you really into complex problem solving? Or really analytical. Then we think too much in departments. You have to think in skills. And actually, that does apply to a lot of different departments.
But you're absolutely right. It is a mindset shift, and it's a whole new set of language, but it's phenomenally exciting. I mean, if I was starting my career today and being able to see this complex web of different places I can go, and even learning some new skills on the side of my current job, I think a lot of the frustration and fatigue that people have felt over the last few years actually can be remedied.
So we are coming to the end of the journey. We are coming to the end of our time. So maybe just one more question. We've got a big year ahead of us this year. Lots of things, as we talked about at the beginning converging. What's going to be critical for HR leaders to get right this year?
I would say start small by solving real issues based on clear KPIs. And that sounds really logic for somebody who's really into the inspiration part, but think real issues. Sometimes in HR, we're busy with HR. But there are real issues in your company, which really contribute to the business. But most importantly, towards employees.
And if you put clear KPIs on that, you can really steer the organization on culture and on productivity. And I think in the end, that is what we're here for. So don't lose. And second thing is focus, because there's so much in the world going on. You can lose yourself in AI, ESG, DEI, reskilling, upskilling, mental health, workforce essentials, strategic workforce planning. You can lose yourself.
But the question is, what is applicable to your company? So what is the focus you are taking? What is your top 3 or top 2? And if you really focus, then you're going to achieve a lot. And that it's also my development area focus, because I love this craft, and I want to do everything at once. But when I started saying, or we started saying as a team, we focus on a great place to be, not only great place to work, but a great place to be.
And a second part is future ready workforce, that is the second thing we focus on. Then if you repeat that over and over again, things will trickle down in the system, and actually people will work on your priorities. And if your focus is diverted or you have too many priorities, people will not pick up your language, not pick up your focus. And they will go nuts because you can do everything in today's world.
And so contain ourselves as HR leaders is also good. And keep repeating ourselves instead of, that's my biggest thing I have to get used of. Don't want everything at once, and do not change too much every year.
It's been wonderful listening to you today. I knew that we were going to hear a lot about how you had taken your lead from the business, and what the business needed to change and adapted it for HR. I didn't know I was going to get a lesson on focus, and I think for me, that's probably been the strongest takeaway.
We really do need to hone on what delivers the biggest impact and the biggest impact in service to employees. So thank you for sharing that. And I finally love the comments about flexibility only comes from stability. We need freedom in a frame. Because I think people also want to belong. And I think marrying agility and belonging, I think, is going to be one of our biggest challenges this year.
Janine, thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts and ideas. I've made lots of notes that I'll be reflecting on as I think about my own team today. And listeners, if you're interested to learn more about HR agility more broadly or any of the topics that we've touched on today, please do visit mercer.com.
You can also see our global talent trends report there. You can also hear from other companies talking about their story in terms of how they're thinking and working differently. Thank you for tuning in. Have a great rest of day. And Janine, thank you again for a really compelling and insightful conversation today. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thank you. Kate. Was lovely.
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