How People Analytics is Shaping HR
In this episode of the HR Leaders podcast, Kathy Cullen-Cote, Chief People Officer at Teradata, shares her extensive experience and innovative strategies in human resources. Kathy discusses the crucial role of evolving company culture to enhance diversity and inclusivity within the workforce.
Join us in today’s episode of the HR Leaders podcast as we welcome Kathy Cullen-Cote, Chief People Officer at Teradata.
Kathy shares her extensive experience and innovative strategies in human resources, discussing the crucial role of evolving company culture to enhance diversity and inclusivity within the workforce.
🎓 In this episode, Kathy discusses:
Teradata's initiatives for enhancing employee well-being
How to integrate holistic practices into the corporate culture
Key strategies for creating cultural shifts that embrace diversity
How evolving company culture can attract and retain a diverse workforce
How to align employee performance with business outcomes using analytics
Discover what emotional salary means – and how you can motivate employees beyond pay.
Great recognition is more than just a thank you program. By leveraging frequent and meaningful recognition, Achievers drives business results that matter to organizations like retention, productivity, and engagement. Our platform makes it easy for employees to recognize each other anywhere, whether in-office, remote, or on-the-go.
The Achievers Workforce Institute reveals that two-thirds of employees have one foot out the door in 2024. The top reason for job hunting? Better compensation. But money isn’t the whole story. Employees are seeking not only monetary salary, but emotional salary too.
Kathy Cullen-Cote 0:00
What value do you believe that you bring to your organization today, no matter what role you're in, you could be the personnel Secretary like I was. And you can think how am I adding value to this company, and then take joy and pleasure from what you do. You can get one person to appreciate and see your value by doing what needs to be done by identifying things that they're not thinking about. They're always think about threats and opportunities. What's happening? How can I help you Chris did Yeah, I heard yesterday about this. I'm gonna tell Chris about that, because he needs to understand that his organization or that one person at a time, maybe there's 12 people at a table and you only have three people who are your champions, but next year, you'll have four but just keep doing what you're doing and believe what you're doing is making a difference. Lastly, if your organization truly does not align with your values, then you need to find another place to work. If you're working in an organization that aligns with your values, you will be able to influence that company and drive success with a smile on your face. It just might take you a little bit of time.
Chris Rainey 0:58
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the HR leaders podcast. On today's episode, I'm joined by Caffee Cullen Coates, who's the Chief People Officer at Teradata. During the episode Kathy shares how organizations can change their culture to attract and hire diverse talent, how to promote holistic well being how Teradata is using people analytics to drive business outcomes. And she also says how to move to a skills based development approach. As always, before we jump into the podcast, make sure you hit the subscribe button. Turn on notification bell, unfollow on your favorite podcast platform. But that being said, let's jump in.
Kathy, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm great, Chris. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. I'm great. How are you? I'm alright. I'm good.
It feels like the year is just flying by. Like, I cannot believe it's March already.
Yeah, this is a good thing or a bad thing. To be honest. I think I've been working so hard. That's why it's also flown by. Do you get that feeling? Yeah, also, I think as we get older,
Kathy Cullen-Cote 2:02
my parents when they said it? No, it's me saying oh my gosh, I can't believe it's q1 already. Yeah, before we jump in, tell everyone a little bit more about you personally, and your journey to where we are now. I am the head of HR for Teradata. And my journey has been a long one. I've been working in human resources since 1985. And I started as a call then personnel, so personnel
member.
Yeah. And yeah, from there, I just worked my way into different organizations within human resources. So the first one with benefits and then into a generalist. And then into like setting up a shared service center inside the human resource function. And then it just kept somebody liked me and kept giving me opportunities to learn and grow. And I was very lucky.
Chris Rainey 3:00
Amazing. So it sounds like you've touched on a core areas and functions underneath.
Kathy Cullen-Cote 3:06
Probably annoying for my team, because I feel like I know, everything that they're doing, you know, I own the recruiting, I've owned it. I've owned every function at some point. So I have all these outdated opinions and think I'm right, so probably very frustrating.
Chris Rainey 3:19
Yeah, you're thinking well, I know it. I've lived and breathed that you like this and you knew it a long time ago. Technology now a bit more about the business people that may not be aware of the company. Yeah, so
Kathy Cullen-Cote 3:37
Teradata is a technology company. And we are data warehousing is what we really started in, and were so well known. In that area of all the banks that you know, and healthcare, they utilize and say the data on our technology, because they can trust it. And now we're breaking into AI and really offering solutions around trusted AI in the data. And it's a great company to 7000 people that are working really hard and have such a sense of pride during COVID. I'll tell you this, I joined COVID When you would see the graphs that were showing that the health agencies were utilizing that was our technology behind it. So there's a great sense of pride from our employees that what we offer can save lives. Wow,
Chris Rainey 4:28
that's so interesting. So yeah, it's one of those organizations where people probably interact with the technology, see it on TV, but just don't know the brand of the handset?
Kathy Cullen-Cote 4:36
Yes, yes. Yeah, they don't they don't know the brand because we're behind the scenes. How
Chris Rainey 4:41
do you contend with that as an HR leader attainments from an employer brand perspective?
Kathy Cullen-Cote 4:47
I think that we share with them exactly some of our customer stories, some of the stories that they can relate to so that they wouldn't get on an elevator and they want to tell their friends or their adults cocktail party, you know what their company does, and how you've interacted with them. They can share a couple of stories and anecdotes, and then it resonates. And then once you're in here, you know, because you're working on it. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 5:12
It must be a fascinating time then for you, because obviously, there's so much attention on AI and security and compliance. And so I'm sure all of your customers are running to you right now with questions of
Kathy Cullen-Cote 5:26
every function and every company is thinking about AI. And I know you've talked about this with other participants in your podcast, but everyone needs to plan for everyone needs to start it now. And be in a company that you can actually trust makes it us really a good solution for everybody. Because you can trust us with the data, which is like you just said security issues. They're frightening. And we are well known for being trusted. That's one thing no matter what dinner party I go to, and I say Teradata, and I'm like, Oh, I don't think I know that company. And then when I named Oh, to go to Bank of America, Oh, yeah. Okay. You know, we can manage their data. And if they do know the target company of Teradata, though, and I felt like oh, my gosh, you are so trusted, we work with you, Thank gosh, we have you at our company, you know, we trust you so much with that data, because that is trusting someone with your data. So important.
Chris Rainey 6:24
Yeah. In order to do that, and this kind of leads us to our conversation, you have to shape a culture like to supports that. And another big focus for you is making sure that you create a culture that attracts and diverse talent, and is also inclusive musical kind of walk us through one the thought process behind that, and to sort of the journey that you've been on, we
Kathy Cullen-Cote 6:48
are companies transforming, transforming to be from an on prem to SaaS company, which is really hard to do, many companies are doing it, but it's hard. And it's hard to bring your employees along that journey. And I joined 30 to 40 years ago to actually help transform the culture to bring them along that journey. So what I will start with is that even a cultural transformation has to start with data. Even that it because I can share with my employees that we're going to transform our culture. But if you are an employee who has been there before two years, all you're thinking is Why do you want to change our culture, you don't even know our culture, you just started here, though, what I can do is go back to employee survey data or accidentally view data and say, here's a sentiment, here's what I'm seeing around the sentiment. And then I can also break that data down to say, and hear how it how that feels, if you are an underrepresented minority. And now we can see where there's gaps in the sentiment. And now we can build programs that will help address the gaps and also transform my company. I think the first step is understanding how the employees themselves feel, how do we feel? How do we feel the company is doing? And one of the ways to do that is to do stop, stop continue exercises where we actually say, what are we doing really well today? What do we need to stop doing what we need to continue? And then that continue bucket where everything falls into? So it started with creating a core principles? What do we need to focus on, we focused on being market and customer driven, being agile and execution and being accountable to each other? And that encompasses everything that I built? So now I build how I hire people that how do I hire diaper? How do I hire the people? And how do I make certain that there's good governance around the processes to eliminate bias in that process. And I don't do that only for recruiting talent. I do that for every program and process that we run, I need to make certain that I'm tracking the data, so that if there is something that is discriminatory, I can eliminate it. Because it happens.
Chris Rainey 9:03
Where are you on this journey? How long did you start? And kind of?
Kathy Cullen-Cote 9:08
I would say you've been on the drink before years. And where are we we are we making significant progress our survey data has some of the questions have gone up 18 points, like a sense of belonging at the company to a significant improvement. But we're not done especially when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. Because that is such a complex issue. And we have to constantly watch it and build the programs and you can't do them all at once. But I'll tell you one thing that we did that I think was really extraordinary and accelerating our success is we build a diversity equity inclusion board that is cross functional people that are all levels of the organization. So it's not just the leaders it's all levels all We'll locations and regions. And we shared our probe programs or projects or data with them. And they're helping us identify what we should work on in the roadmap for the timing of that. That in the beginning was really just totally transparent, what's really clunky, it was hard in the beginning, in the beginning, it was hard. And I had a myself get comfortable with sharing that kind of data with my own people. And trusting them with that to do the right things with the data. And I will tell you, and I will tell anybody who's listening, you can trust your teams, people want to help if they have a passion around, they want to help you. And they have certainly accelerated they are, they are seen as trusted people inside the organization. And it's not human resources or people organization, it is my friend, Bob, Bob's on the board. And Bob understands, I don't think the hiring process is free from bias. So I'm gonna go talk to Bob. And then Bob's gonna say, oh, but it is free, because we make certain that the pipeline has diverse candidates, and we follow this governance, and we have a process around how we hire and we talk about that. I wouldn't say that accelerate our success, the work is never going to end. And I'm proud of where we are, but we have a lot more work to do. But I love it.
Chris Rainey 11:23
What would you say is the sort of the program that you've done, or change that you've made has had the biggest impact in terms of hiring the best. And I
Kathy Cullen-Cote 11:32
would say the biggest impact is that every one of our managers, people, leaders have understood the how and why we're going to hire people from now on that the importance of having a diverse pipeline of candidates. So that if you actually have more diversity in who you're interviewing, you're more likely to hire someone who was diverse, I think the governance on how we are interviewing itself making certain that we ask the same people the same questions, because it's human behavior. And I'm sure you can,
Chris Rainey 12:04
leaving those managers what sort of the key here are the questions to make sure you've got consistency? How's that work? Yeah.
Kathy Cullen-Cote 12:11
So if Yeah, if I'm doing a if I'm doing hiring somebody, and I might say, Hey, Chris, will you be part of my interview team? And then I will say to you, here's the questions I want you to ask, okay, then, then then. So you ask those questions, and then you rate everybody on those questions on a scale of one to five, how are you doing it? Then you meet as a group. So if you're part of my team, all of us get together. And then we talk about the candidates based on how we rated them and the questions that we asked. So there's consistency. But what we do know is that when people find themselves being familiar with someone or you're like me, my questions are easier for you. Oh, Chris, you started in sales, selling to trade show the nature? I used to do that? So I know, you know, the answer this question. And you start filling in the blanks, because there's this familiarity, this eliminate that process. And that has really, truly made a huge difference. We our executive team is more women than men,
Chris Rainey 13:10
especially in your industry. And I think people listening maybe realize that right? In our industry, that's especially even more of a challenge for my understanding. Is that correct? Yeah, it's
Kathy Cullen-Cote 13:19
very well, yeah, it's a challenge. But it's not impossible. It's
Chris Rainey 13:24
not impossible. But I know in your industry, it's a bigger challenge. How have you. So it sounds like also, you've kind of looked at the employee lifecycle end to end, and looked at sort of all of those moments that matter, but also those moments where bias can creep in, etc? How do you solve that? Is it through technologies for a partner that you've brought on board? What's been your approach for that? Well, we
Kathy Cullen-Cote 13:46
use our own technology, which is amazing, and the envy when it's one thing when I joined, and I was able to see the dashboards that our own technology can build, oh, wow, I know, crazy. And I show it to my friends. Oh, my God. So on my phone at a point in time, I can pull up a dashboard, and I can tell you what the turnover is and India in a certain function, just pick it up. It's really amazing. But I would say that the the if so say you want to talk about compensation, and do I have bias in my bonus payments? I'm curious, right? So my team comes to me, and they say, here are the bonus payments. And here is how it looks over gender to gender. And then if I see the discrepancy, and they say to me, Oh, we're not concerned about that discrepancy, because more men were rated the highest level than the woman. Well, now I need to say, well, maybe that's where the bias is. Maybe it's back on the performance rating, when they're actually assessing the talent that they're more inclined to give the exceeds expectation which happens to be our highest to the male and the female. So I think the more you review every program that you Ron, then the more likely you are to say, oh, but let's verify this. So now when I do urine performance reviews, I then look at all the ratings and I look for bias there so that I don't wait until it's time for a merit increases or bonuses to be paid to understand, is there some bias and how we're operating? So I think the answer to your question is always learning and seeing something else know full lifecycle exit interviews, we know we do exit interviews, is there bias there? Can I look at my exit interviews and, and identify if those people leaving during their quarterly surveys were disengaged? Like what question? Are they managers bad? Are they do they not feel a sense of belonging? And then just peeling back that onion, but everything who opens the emails? Who's opening their emails? And my female employees never opening emails? Because they don't have time?
Chris Rainey 15:55
Yeah, how would you like to see how are you collecting the exit interview data? That's something that I was speaking about with someone recently. Yeah, so
Kathy Cullen-Cote 16:02
we went, and we, and we send it to them to their own personal email, that hopefully, they're more likely to do an exit interview in person, not on everyone, but on many people, if necessary, but then we utilize went to, it's all in one tool. And then Glen has amazing dashboards. So they, they do have dashboards to pull all that data for you. And you can actually look at the demographic than we did for our last survey. So we did a glint survey just a few months ago, where we asked our employees for their diversity, information, mental health, everything you can think of religion, anything that anything that they want to talk about that diverse. And we did that because we know and workday, people don't want to tell us, because there's a lot of fear that I might trust you, Kathy, to share with you my sexual orientation, but I might not want that information to get out to my boss, or to my coworker, based on my country. That's how,
Chris Rainey 17:04
how do you know that? How do you know that? That's the case? Just just
Kathy Cullen-Cote 17:13
conversations, obviously. Yeah, we actually, you know, we asked our employees, I think we did ask a question, Would you be willing to share? And we got sentiment? So we did we start with a survey question, Would you be willing to share your diversity data? And you know, with an open ended, why wouldn't do and it's fair, it's you know, and we don't know what their personal circumstances are. So then we ran it through glint. And they were very forthcoming, I think, at just under 80% of our employee population participated in it. I think that there was a lot of understanding of this so many levels to diversity that I didn't even think about, there are so many things that can make me diverse. Like, mental health, you know, do you suffer anxiety? Oh, my gosh, that, Oh, I didn't think about that religion. We don't, you know, that was things that people said, yeah, yeah, that I do see myself recognize myself and this term. But we took that data in wherever you utilize that data, we have no idea who it came from. So we didn't do any cuts that even helped me narrow it down. But then we were to assess that those groups against our engagement data, and really identify the gaps, like where do I have gaps in belonging, for example, which is a really important one, and like feeling a sense of belonging. And now that's what we're doing with the Diversity Equity inclusion board I told you about is they're doing design thinking, to understand all this data and so much that we want to address what do we address now? And then what's the roadmap to address the rest in the future? And then we're going to share with all of our employees, thank you for sharing with us. What you personally are experiencing, here's we're going to focus on and help us do it.
Chris Rainey 19:15
There's two things I want to highlight day one, is the fact that I loved it, you just said that you share it with employees. And say, frankly, this is what we're going to focus on. Because a lot of times you in companies I hate and doing the surveys and they just never give any feedback. And then they wonder why people don't engage the next time as well. Right? And just being very honest, that, hey, this is where we're going to focus on and this is where we're not going to focus on as well. And that just means that okay, you hear me and you're actually doing something about it. So I feel like some companies, the ones I see do really, really well within that communication after we hear you and this is what we're doing. The other thing I wanted to ask you is how are you presenting that data to those leaders? Is it sharing a glint dashboard with them? Is it putting it because sometimes you can overwhelm people with data, like what have you found is the most effective way to deliver that data to them
Kathy Cullen-Cote 20:14
than the regular one, surveys go dashboards to the managers, they have that access to it at all time, this particular data has not been shared with the executive team only. And then, broadly by maybe regions, it really depends on what specific countries. And then we'll do an all employee, not mandatory session, but a session where we'll talk through, here's what it looked like. And here's the gaps that we see in our organization and just sharing with them and like a PowerPoint slide not in the dashboard that they need to discern what they're looking at and what it means. But that conversation, then actually, we're going to incorporate the board. And to also talking about it. There was the brilliant board that was did the standard deviations for me, I'm in human resources, I'm not grading standard deviations.
Chris Rainey 21:09
away the fact that we're even talking about standard deviations. Anyone would understood when we started. So that's, I think it's important because I think it's the like you said, from the very beginning, just conversations around telling the stories. Remember, I asked you about how do people know about the business, you said, it's for storytelling. And it's the same thing in talese for telling stories where it's an employee story, an example of that, that's what people were, as human beings, stories are passed down through generations, they're the things that we really connect with, right as well. And I love the fact that you're getting the ball together, whether it's on an all hands, you know, on a team score, where people can ask questions and address it directly. That's also where you're building the trust, where people are well, not they're not just sending the server they actually have, we have an hour of an opportunity to actually ask questions and get answers and be part of it. And people will feel so much more engaged. And part of something, as opposed to as opposed to just getting an email in your inbox when you click a few buttons and write a few things you never hear from ever again. I love that. Yeah, so. So the manager side, they're getting a glint dashboard, where they can see their own team or every diversity,
Kathy Cullen-Cote 22:21
no one got the diversity. One that was we told our employee, this is going to be private, really private. So they managers don't have access to that. It's the it's me, very bored. Very few people have access to that. But what the managers will be invited to as well as employees, is what we've learned from that now, how do we how did we take that information? And what are we doing with that? We're building programs to help. Nice.
Chris Rainey 22:49
What about from I know another focus for you is around the holistic well being of employees, obviously, something this has been really pushed to the forefront during the pandemic, and I think continues, we kind of continue to understand a knock on effects, what's been the focus within the team around that space.
Kathy Cullen-Cote 23:07
So forever, I've been, you know, there's all different types of HR leaders that I know you know, that Chris, but forever. For me, you know, I am the the caring HR leader, that's what I want to do. And and I think that when you care about your employees, and you take care of their basic needs, then they can thrive, and the company can be more successful. One thing that we have committed to is that we are fully flexible when not backing down from that, and that is also another challenge for technology companies and CEOs. But as the ELT and CEO we support that our employees want the choice of where they should be working from. And we do trust them based on what the outputs and what are the outcomes of the work that they're doing that we can be successful. That is actually the number one comment if I was to walk into any office, from my employees is please don't take away the flexible work environment. And it's not only for women, everybody's like, Oh, is it the working moms it is and it's from the dads, they go home and making bracelets with their
Chris Rainey 24:15
Yeah, they want to spend time with their kids to do something even I realized during the pandemic that I was like, Wow, I'm getting all this amazing quality time with Robin when I wouldn't normally see her see her for a few hours in the morning. And then I'll see her for a few hours before she goes to bed. Yeah, and it wasn't real quality time. So I even said to Shane, my co founder when we say I want to work at least two days from home a week just gonna have some time and I don't want to give that up because I've realized what how great it was
Kathy Cullen-Cote 24:46
great and you don't get that time back with your child. They grow so fast as you know she's five now and it goes so quickly. And everyone feels that way and it not only for your children, it could be for your dog. It could be for you Elderly Parent, it could be for your neighbor, it could be for your own personnel. I'm an introvert and I just basically want to work at my desk one day, a week, whatever that is. So that is one of the huge things, then Reese most recently, we changed our parental leave around the globe that everybody gets 14 weeks of parental leave, we change our bereavement leave to be much more generous, and also on to include loss of a pregnancy as well as loss of a pet. And we have a tool like everybody, but a wellness tool that is an app that you can also share with five friends and family. Because they allow challenges. And every morning I wake up and it says, Kathy, do you want to do your five minute meditation this morning? And I'm not gonna lie a lot of times I say not today.
Chris Rainey 25:51
Can ask are you using? Because again, like one of the challenges for audiences, they're inundated with different apps? And
Kathy Cullen-Cote 25:56
yeah, yeah. Wellness Coach, wellness
Chris Rainey 26:00
coach, is that the name of the company as well? Have you renamed it? It's always interesting, because you can rebrand them sometimes. Oh, we
Kathy Cullen-Cote 26:09
didn't rebrand it.
Chris Rainey 26:11
Okay, cool. Thank you for letting us know, really great. You're
Kathy Cullen-Cote 26:13
gonna get us I can get yoga classes off there. I can stream on to my TV. Everything? No, no, it's no job. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 26:21
I want to go back to your point. You mentioned about the hybrid because it all sounds good in practice, but it's not easy. Right? And I can only imagine there's a company like yours, which is highly regulated and highly. You know, you're dealing with sensitive data, literally, you're working with banks and governments. And you name it. How did that? How did you? How did you navigate that? It couldn't have been easy.
Kathy Cullen-Cote 26:46
I think we all navigate it when it was wind COVID hit. If you had asked me before 2020. If my company couldn't be working from home, I would have said no, I would have that too. I think I know everything because I've been working on resources for so long. And then we all appreciated because we had to do it and 2020 the complexity around is really the equity, the equity for those who are in the office and those who are not in the office? And what's that experience? And how do we make certain that there isn't bias? Because I'm a manager and two people I see every day and six people I do not. That's the part that you have to work on, remind people about and track with data and that it wasn't Did
Chris Rainey 27:32
you see any of that? By the way? Did you see that? Like, have you seen in the data that people are more so being promoted? Or in the office or things like that? Have you seen in security? No, no? Nothing?
Kathy Cullen-Cote 27:43
Okay, great. And then in the beginning, I think everybody, it goes back to you talked about employees want to be trusted and feel trusted and empower and what empowering to believe that your boss knows you're doing your job, I would never put a tool in that track their time. I know.
Chris Rainey 28:04
I know quite a few companies that are doing that it drives me crazy.
Kathy Cullen-Cote 28:06
But is there it's so we're adult, nobody comes to work has a job and wants to do the wrong thing or do nothing. You know, we might have one day that we all want to, you know, be on Amazon for a day and
we have wellness days to it. And we have a wellness day every quarter, nice and a half day summers. But I think taking care of our employees is meeting them where they are, and what are they're needing and they're telling us what you need from you is flexibility and trust. And we were giving them out.
Chris Rainey 28:45
How was that? How did that go down with your customers? Because your costs I'm sure your customers are used to seeing a lot of your employees in face to face meeting with them. Now all of a sudden, they're doing it remote. How was that?
Kathy Cullen-Cote 29:00
For customers, if a customer wants to see face to face, we will go in face to face we will do what we need to do with my an employee that my if I am the my employees to come into the office, I'm going to say Hey, can you come into the office? If there's a business need for you to show up? And I don't have any employees to say I don't want to go to that. I don't want to do that if they
Chris Rainey 29:21
are adults and trusting people, right? Yeah. What do we need? Yeah, amazing. And you mentioned before technology, when you talk about the people and Lakeside is that also managed within that same topology that you and the team developed as well?
Kathy Cullen-Cote 29:33
Yeah, it's vice presidents in the bar right now that have that ability to look at it that that their fingertips as well. But
Chris Rainey 29:41
again, know yourself. That's a real advantage.
Kathy Cullen-Cote 29:45
I know. I know. You should be a customer of ours, anybody who has technology in house they can.
Chris Rainey 29:53
They can have this too, but have you built that like specifically for your HR team? That's not a product you offer? Right? You're a people analytics solution.
Kathy Cullen-Cote 30:01
We don't have a, if you have a software, you can build that on in your company.
Chris Rainey 30:06
Yeah. So you've written out. Okay, so you've basically, you've got all different components, you need it to be able to build that together within the platform to draw all the data that you need
Kathy Cullen-Cote 30:18
100% Yes, you have the data there. If you have our technology, you can create this dashboard yourselves. People can help you create this, that these dashboards
Chris Rainey 30:28
cool. This is interesting. Never forget, when we first spoke, I never really came to mind that that would be something that you could do. But how does it make you feel as an HR leader that you have that?
Kathy Cullen-Cote 30:38
Oh, my gosh, I have the worst memory in the world. Number one, I love it. Because every HR leader goes to a board meeting and gets asked a question about data that they didn't prepare for, even if they have a notebook full of all the things that they're going to be asked. There's always a data question that they don't have about their teams. And I just had to pick up my phone and I'm like, Oh, well, let me just find that number. Also, when managers make stuff up, right, managers may step up and they say, my turnover is 55%, you have no idea and I go, Oh, that's really high. I'm surprised I remember that. I want to take a peek.
Chris Rainey 31:18
is hilarious that you have a so I can see the smile. If anyone's not only listening right now there's a big smile. You just didn't have that before, did you? Right, so you kind of had to go on people's words. And now you're like a truly data driven, and the fact that you could be in a meeting and just go, okay, one second. Pull it up? How do you think that's impacted? The, the, the way HR is viewed by the executive team in your organization, the
Kathy Cullen-Cote 31:50
executive team was great. And my organization and I know they valued human resources. With or without the data, I just want to answer that because I think that every, every every email I get from somebody trying to get people to come to, sorry, trade show or something all day, get a seat at the table. And, you know, human resources adds value to the business and drives success of our strategy. And we do that with if we have dashboards or if we don't have dashboards, a little bit of a tangent, but I just needed to stay
Chris Rainey 32:29
with you with you. Like, I'm so surprised when I see those emails to this day. I'm like, I haven't seen those emails for 20 years. Like, seriously, so talking about this?
Kathy Cullen-Cote 32:41
I don't I don't even I don't even know how to reply. It's okay. Because I think that some people still, I just love to help all those people who think that they, I'd love to help everybody. I'd love to help everybody. If they really struggle with that. What message
Chris Rainey 32:57
would you give to a person or people who's in that position where they don't have a team, like yours, and so called seat at the table? What would you say to them? If you front of them right now?
Kathy Cullen-Cote 33:07
I would say what value do you believe that you bring to your organization today? No matter what role you're in, you could be the personnel Secretary like I was, and you can think how am I adding value to this company? How are they adding value to the company, and then take joy and pleasure from what you do? If you can get one person to appreciate and see your value, by doing what needs to be done by identifying things, that they're not thinking about threats and opportunity, they're always thinking about threats and opportunity. It's what's happening? How can I help you, Chris? Did you I heard yesterday about this, I'm going to tell Chris about that, because he needs to understand that his organization, and then build it, build it one person at a time, maybe this 12 People at a table and you only have three people who are your champions. But next year, you'll have four or five. Just keep doing what you're doing and believe what you're doing is making a difference. Lastly, if if your organization truly does not align with your values, then you need to find another place to work. If you're working in an organization that aligns with your values, you will be able to influence that company and drive success with a smile on your face. It just might take you a little bit of time.
Chris Rainey 34:20
I love that message. I'm so happy. I asked you that question. And I know for someone like you, you wouldn't be there if that wasn't the case. I can already tell. Yeah. Yeah. How long have you been with the company now? It's four years. Yeah. Nice. Sounds like you're enjoying every bit every bit of it. And you're like we I asked you a question earlier about how far are you in the journey? The truth is the journey never ends, isn't it? You know, it never ends. There's no such thing as a culture change for two months. It doesn't work that way. Abortion late. It's just an ongoing evolving, right Would you agree with that? Yeah.
Kathy Cullen-Cote 35:02
But I really believe that I really believe that I hope that hope that I can make a difference, I hope that I hope that I can have, I am so blessed to have the ability to run a people organization and to be able to create a culture and create programs and good governance around what we offer. So that we can be an environment where everyone can thrive, and that we are actually free from discrimination. Like, Wouldn't we like to do that for the entire world? I can't do the entire world. But I can, I can do it for my company. I'm Teradata, I have that ability, and and I hire people that work for me, who also feel that way. And I love my job. So I am just blessed and lucky. Lucky to be here. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 35:51
it sounds like you're truly living your your purpose helps them. Yeah, there's and before I let you go, very last question for someone who's kind of on this journey, a culture change and, you know, building a an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive to your point, having been and gone and still on this journey? What advice would you give to someone who's perhaps at the beginning of that,
Kathy Cullen-Cote 36:14
so one is get, you're going to need data. So find something find a survey question because your employer is going to want to see improvement. If it's a one point improvement, and a baseline is really good. So don't worry about the results in the beginning, because you can improve. Number two, you need to create something that you are going to hold your hat on. So your values don't need to recreate your values, but threes, you know, no, no 10 values. Three is a really good number. And people retain it, then articulate what you're doing the why you're going to do it. Clear communication never stopped communicating. It has to be lived. You talked about the storytelling, we tell it every quarterly meeting, we have three or four column changemakers come and share their story about how they were role modeling our core principles, and how it was transforming a company, not me talking about it, it's our employees all around the world. And this last one is going to be maybe controversial, but you you need buy in from your culture change does not happen top down or bottoms up, it happens all the way, top down, bottoms and across, you have to have that and you need buy in, especially from your leaders. And if you have blockers, if you have people who will pocket veto everything you're trying to do, you have to remove them, you have to do and that will signal to your entire organization that we mean it. We mean we're going to hold ourselves accountable. And when someone doesn't do it, there's a consequence to that, because we meant it. And that is a signal to people believing they mean at this time, because they know the whole change grow how it works. You're gonna get more people in there if they actually see some of that change. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 38:05
we're not just talking to talk, you're walking the walk and demonstrate as well. Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. And Gaby, where can people reach out to you if they want to say hi, and connect.
Kathy Cullen-Cote 38:18
Please reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd be happy to hear from anyone. Amazing.
Chris Rainey 38:22
Listen, I wish you the best of next week. And yeah, thanks so much. Appreciate you. Nice to meet you. Thank you
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Richard Letzelter, CHRO at Acino.