Episode 11: How To Build a High-Performing Company of World-Changing Millennials with Former Chief People Officer of WE, Victoria MacDonald
One Canadian organization that has made one of the greatest global impacts is WE. We have the honour of hearing from Victoria MacDonald, their former Chief People Officer today for a brilliant discussion of millennials, translating values into actions & leading a team in a hyper-growth mode!
Victoria is a 20-year veteran HR professional who is known for building cultures of alignment, accountability and high levels of engagement without pool tables, beer fridges or free food.
Some questions Tynan asks:
How do you come into a company as a new executive to bring change in a well-established, already world-class company culture?
WE has an incredibly diverse set of roles in their 1000+ person organization. How do you hire so that across the organization, in the variety of roles & the types of people each require, to still hire aligned to your values?
How do leaders, many of whom are struggling with this, translate their values into behaviours people know how to demonstrate at school?
Are there tools & technology to help reinforce core values?
What are some key learnings you’ve found that millennials need to thrive in the workplace?
“Working with a purpose” is incredible, WE may even have it more easy than most, sometimes work still gets monotonous… how do you keep your workplace invigorated?
In this episode, you will learn:
Heading into a major growth-period that involves maturing as a company is highly complex. Adding a more diverse workforce (in WE’s case, adding more tenured employees bringing the average age from 24 to 30 years old). Most elements of your people programs much change including your offer letters, performance management processes, the way you set goals, even your career development conversations.
WE sets out to always continuously improve, Co-Founders Marc & Craig Kielburger never let themselves think they’re “done.”
WE doesn’t see their quarterly employee engagement surveys as a way to figure out whether people are “happy at work.” Rather, they use their surveys to find out:
what is working, so they can do better at those
what needs to be tweaked or changed > create plans against these things
When Victoria created her detailed HR Roadmap, every item on this plan is directly related to something that has come out of their surveys.
Hiring for core values such as “we move for purpose & positivity,” guide their interviews. 3 Day Orientation is also integral to having people understanding how to display values at work, this achieves cultural cohesion. Because this occurs in all offices around the world, there’s a similar employee experience across-the-board.
What’s rarely discussed is that millennials go to work everyday to create a sense of community and to be with their friends. Nurturing that and giving people the opportunity to work with their friends is really important.
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