Judy Jackson joined Wunderman last December as the Global Chief Talent Officer to make the company’s vision for talent and culture across the network, a reality.
The Wunderman network consists of over 7,000 employees in 175 offices in 60 countries, with clients such as Best Buy, Citibank, Coca-Cola, Ford, Microsoft, Pfizer, Telefónica, Shell and UnitedHealth.
One of the first things Jackson noticed was the frustration around performance reviews. Reflecting back to personal experience and employee feedback, Jackson came up with the concept of “YOU Time,” which is an overall talent strategy that the company launched in 2016, to support the professional development and personal interests of their employees.
“I thought about what would make people really have a conversation and what if we removed all the barriers in a conversation between a manager and employees,” she told DIVERGE. “That’s how YOU Time started, it was about the concept- how can we create opportunities where people have conversations and it’s not just abut what you did right and what you did wrong.”
The initiative aims to encourage employees to have honest conversations with their mangers out of the office in a relaxed environment, which in turn, allows them to remove barriers and have an honest dialogue.
“We should make the organization more accessible and more inviting to people being their true self so that’s when we started doing lunch time sessions, Zumba classes in offices, massages on premises, and more to show people that work is not just about the performance of the business, its about how to build the performance for a better self,” Jackson explained. “YOU Time started with the concept that conversations matter and evolved in to being all about you.”
After further research and global focus groups, targeting millennials, a big part of the population at Wunderman, Jackson discovered that because of expansion due to acquisition, employees felt a little bit in their silos. To overcome this barrier, the company introduced a pilot retention program called YOU Swap, which allows employees in like jobs swap with someone in a different region/office fore two weeks. The employee is asked to blog about their experience and bring back new ideas to their home office.
The company also celebrates Wunderman Day every December to help employees feel a real sense of community. Wunderman Day is an opportunity for offices to share their unique office traditions from one region to the next by creating ‘day in the life’ videos and trading culture boxes, packages full of goodies that showcase what individual cities have to offer: Danish fairy tales, Middle Eastern art and Memphis barbecue spices are a few examples.
As Jackson continues her work towards the company’s vision, she is looking to introduce several additional initiatives.
Future plans include management training, which will offer on-line and classroom manager skills training for managers, Pass It On, a 2-day empowerment workshop designed for women and about women, Collision training, a work process around collaboration, and mentorship programs.
“People leave managers not companies,” said Jackson. “The better our managers are at developing, growing and communicating with their employees, the more likely they are to stay and do their best work.”
Jackson has also helped put hiring mandates in place to focus on diversity, although she hopes to hire people for who they are as a person, regardless of race, ethnicity, or sex.
“My wish is that there wasn’t a need for diversity and gender, my wish is that there was a need for an agenda of values, an agenda of the kinds of individuals and qualities of the people you want in your workplace and that race, sex, age, all of that is irrelevant,” Jackson said. “That probably won’t exist in my lifetime but that would be my wish, that our focus is on values and we hire people based on those values.”
“I am hoping that our behaviors is what drives our diverse workforce more than anything else,” she added. “Because we all want the same thing- to work at a great company that we are proud of, so make the company that, and make sure you hire the people that embrace that, and I think the rest can come.”
But according to Jackson, this is just the beginning of her vision, which aims to create an environment where people will want to join and stay because ultimately everyone wants the same thing; to work at a place where you are valued and recognized.
