Why 80% of HR Teams Are Doing Strategic Work Wrong
We spend all our time fixing business workflows, so why is HRs own workflow still broken?
In the most recent HR Leaders Podcast episode, I had an inspiring conversation with Jeffrey Schmitz, Former Chief People Officer at Zebra Technologies.
He explains how his team successfully restructured their entire HR operating model by separating daily tactical operations from long-term talent strategy. By replacing fragmented, manual support with a centralised service hub and self-service workflows, Zebra built a scalable foundation for digital transformation while keeping culture at the centre.
5 things you’ll learn from this episode:
The structural model shift that allowed Zebra to transition from 60 HR Business Partners down to 8
The simple "start at the centre" rule that turned daily support tickets into an operational data goldmine
The non-negotiable tech stack foundation HR teams must build before attempting to deploy AI tools
The single candidate trait Zebra looks for that matters far more than rare technical AI expertise
The culture stewardship strategy Zebra used to navigate a massive M&A carve-out and hybrid work shift
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With Arist, AI agents become a way to close skills gaps faster, improve performance, and help employees get the right learning before the business has already moved on.
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There's a lot of things that are changing.
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When I think about the companies I've worked for over the years, I think culture
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and the investment in culture is important.
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And when I think about one of the learnings I've had as I've moved into HR, by the
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way, we don't even call it HR anymore because I think it's kind of a cold way of
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thinking about managing. We call it the people team, and my title is the chief
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people officer, and I think it's a little bit more human than
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HR, and is a little more personable.
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But culture's
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critical, and while the culture needs to be owned and exist in
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everyone, it's got to be stewarded by the people team or
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the HR team. And I think it never goes out of style.
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When people feel like they're part of the culture, they'll stay, and they'll do
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great work, and they'll be engaged, and you can never stop investing in it.
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Jeff, welcome to the show, my friend. How are you?
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Good. Thanks for having me, Chris.
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Yeah. Well, first and foremost, you've got one of the most interesting backgrounds
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so far of the episode, as
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a big fan of many of the things you've got behind you and shows
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on there. So I love the fact that you have them on display to bring a bit of
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yourself to the office. What's your favorite
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thing on the shelf behind you?
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Well, there's lots of good things up there, but I'll hit on two.
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One is, and it's partially a business and a passion, I
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love American football. I'm a Bears fan, which means I've
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had a frustrating few decades.
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But
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Zebra's actually the official player tracker of the NFL, so we have chips in the
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ball.
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Oh, nice.
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In the pads of the players at every NFL
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game, and have so for a good 10 seasons.
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And so that's an exciting thing. So, that's representative of my passion for
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football and also Zebra's interaction and what we do with the NFL.
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And "The Mandalorian," I
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guess I don't like to think of myself as
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a "Star Wars" lover, but I think I'm wrong.
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I think I am, so I-
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Oh, you're in denial. You're one of the people in denial. Okay. I like it.
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I'm denying my love of "Star Wars," but I love "The Mandalorian," and
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a friend of mine sent me this Mandalorian helmet, so that's
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probably the second favorite thing back there.
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Yeah. In my little man cave in my house, I have all of the different
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similar size helmets all the way across the wall.
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Really?
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Yeah. And they all light up. So I was like
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collecting them, and I was like, "Oh, I can just put them all the way across the
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wall now." So when I saw that, I was like, kind of feels like a little bit home
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right there.
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It's very good to have the physical...
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Like when you watch a "Star Wars" episode, the-
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Yes
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... precursor is all the helmets going by.
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And that was my idea. That was my idea exactly.
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Most people wouldn't even understand it if I said that, but you get it.
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So I had that. I have a black wall, like a charcoal wall, and then I have all of
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the helmets with a backlight all the way.
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I never thought I'd say that on the show, but there we go.
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And I never no idea that you had the technology in
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the footballs and the tracking because I've known about your company, a
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long time ago when I used to actually run one of the world's largest supply chain
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and logistics summits. So I used to bring together over 10,000 chief
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supply chain officers.
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Yeah.
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And you guys were one of our sponsors
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back then. This is a long time ago. And a lot of the products and solutions
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that you offer now, when I was looking on the website over the last couple of days,
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I was like, "Wow, how cool it is that the company's evolved since
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I interacted with the business." It's almost night and day.
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So my co-founder,
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he worked with me in the same company.
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He was like, "Oh my God, Zebra Technologies, like the barcode."
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Right.
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So let's get into it anyway.
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Yeah.
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I was geeking out a little bit on that.
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Yeah. So tell everyone a little bit more about your background and your journey to
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where we are now because, like many others, I know you kind of found HR along the
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way
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to-
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Right. Yeah, I don't think if you would've asked me when I graduated college
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way back in 1985, "Hey, are you interested in running
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HR?" I don't think I would've had that on my list of things, but I started out
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as a computer scientist and a computer engineer, and I started my
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career writing code. And I think probably we'll get
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through more of the story and some key learnings along the way, but I started
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there. My curiosity led me to eventually go into product
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management, eventually into marketing.
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I've been a general manager running a P&L.
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I came to Zebra in 2016 to be chief marketing officer,
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and at some point along the way, I asked for, and at some point I got, and there's
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a longer story there, to run HR, and I was running both for a while, and I had a
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choice.
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And they asked me, "Do you want to run marketing? Do you want to run HR?
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You're doing both, but you got to pick one." And I picked HR.
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Yeah. It's so interesting because all three
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areas of your background is really
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the most important aspects of being a HR leader.
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You've got the technical side, which many HR leaders are catching up
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with the age of AI and-
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Mm-hmm
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... and just the overall technological transformation we've been on for the
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last 20 years. The
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way in which
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marketing and HR,
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there's so much crossover, right? That we're seeing there now.
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Especially, I think emerged a lot more during the pandemic when there was a lot
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more communication, personalization in the way we
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already approach marketing for our customers that was looking at it through the
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lens of our employees, that it almost felt like you was meant to be in this role
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to bring it all together.
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Yeah, Chris, you're right. There's definitely some overlap.
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That's the one I point to the most is communications.
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The one that I think I would add to your list is running a business.
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I think running HR
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And understanding that HR is here to support the strategic interest of the
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business, and the most important asset any CEO will tell you they have
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is their people. And so I think having an understanding
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of our business and the impact that people have on the
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business is also important, and I think it's a good backdrop
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to say what HR is doing is about affecting the business.
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It's not HR for HR or the science of HR.
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It's actually to put the right talent in the right places
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to drive the business.
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Yeah.
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And that's the right background.
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I completely agree. My good friend, Dave Ulrich, would always say, "HR is the
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business, and the business is HR."
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Yeah.
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Right. And you have to focus on the business.
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Otherwise, there is no HR, and there is no people.
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There's no company, right?
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Yeah.
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As well. So
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during the transformations, obviously, you've gone through significant digital
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transformation, operational transformation.
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How has the HR function had to evolve in
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tandem to keep up with these constant shifts?
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Yeah. I'll tell you, one of the things that I noticed as a person
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who was in engineering for a while, I was in complex
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engineering processes, is the process related to product
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development is pretty substantial and has grown over the
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years. And it's an orchestration of everyone from manufacturing to
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engineering, to the mechanical engineering, if it's hardware, to the
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software engineering, to the firmware, to the design for manufacturing.
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It includes a lot of people, and it's very complex.
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And one of the things I recognized when I came to HR
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was... And by the way, we were running what I would consider, since you mentioned
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Dave Ulrich, I haven't met
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him, but we were running a classic Ulrich model,
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which with a lot of HR business partners, which you'd think would connect
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us to business, and there's lots of goodness there.
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But what I recognized is
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we were not running in the most effective and
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efficient way. Because by having HR business partners in
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the business, and we had a third of our team doing that, we
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were catering to the needs of individuals, and we weren't always
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sensing what the aggregate needs were because the HR business partners,
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depending on their skills, would do different things at the desire of those
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executives when they were embedded in the business.
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And what I found is we ended up being very reactive.
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We would respond to stimulus, but we weren't proactive.
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We did a lot of things manually, so we put a lot of
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HRBPs, and they did a lot of the work versus the COEs, and we
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also delivered a very inconsistent level of service.
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And so those are some of the problems that I saw with our
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version of the Ulrich model that we were running.
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And
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this is going to be a relatively long answer, but I think it's really important.
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So one of the things I did is I started with a hypothesis.
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We brought in some external help, and we said, my hypothesis was we're
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getting pretty good results, but we're just working way too hard to get it.
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Yeah.
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And we're spending too much of our resources on the transactional, and we're not
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doing enough of the proactive strategic elements of HR,
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and we need to do something different about that.
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And when we benchmarked it out, that's exactly what we found.
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I also had a hypothesis that we weren't spending enough in HR.
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That turned out to be wrong. So it wasn't completely right.
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But it was wrong. And so-
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It was where you were allocating that money.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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And so we
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took on a transformation journey ourselves to say, "Hey, look,
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we want to be guided by a North Star.
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And the North Star has to be how do we have a better manager and employee
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experience? That's got to be our North Star.
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But along the way, we have to find a way to create room to be more strategic
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without spending more money." And what that means is
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we need to be really good at the transactional so that that doesn't take our best
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people to do. We need to be able to sense and listen from
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when we see the different cases coming in. We need to be able to learn from that.
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We need to be able to modify what we're doing. We need to get really good.
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We need to make sure that our technology stack, our organization,
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and our processes are set up to optimize the transactional
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but create room for the strategic, so we can get really
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proactive. We can sense what's happening in the business, and we can start thinking
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about
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what is the workforce we need six months from now, 12 months from now, or
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24 months from now? Where I don't think we spend enough, we haven't spent as much
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time in that. And by the way, I would argue, we also have to teach our
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leaders
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to be more attentive to that. Because the first discussion I had about workforce
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planning with even some of our own leaders in the business that say, "Look, the
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workforce planning I need is you to fill my reqs."
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Right? And that is important.
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Sure.
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But what are the skills we need six months from now?
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That's short-term thinking. Yeah,
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100%. Oh, man, that was so much to take in. I don't even know where to start.
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Okay.
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In a good way. Could you share some practical examples
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of some of the things that you identified
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during that process, and then that you've now changed?
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Yeah. I can pick probably a lot.
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Maybe I'll pick
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a couple for you that I think will be helpful.
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So one of the things that we always had service centers, and we're
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global, and we had service centers around the world.
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But I think what we weren't doing with the service centers is we were doing
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some basic tasks, and I don't think we ever really thought about
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optimizing that function. As part of trying to get
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better at the transactional components, one of the things we did is,
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and this is a huge cultural shift, is we said, "Look, we know most people in the
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business know where their HR business partner is.
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They go to their office from everything from a transaction to a therapy.
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But what we want you to do is we want you to start at what we call start at the
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center. Create a case."
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And I want a case to go to the service center, even if they can't resolve it,
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because I want to see, and I want to sense the trends, and I want to have an early
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indication of what are the kinds of problems our employees are having, and I want a
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record of that. I'd got no record of that if it went to the HR business partners.
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So a huge cultural shift of changing where the first point of
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entry is into HR, and then getting really good at making sure that The service
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center could answer more questions.
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The ones they couldn't, we had a way of tracking and escalating.
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We knew how quickly we were responding.
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I could manage and set an SLA of how responsive I wanted to
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be. That was a huge transformation, and it wasn't just in HR.
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It was also how everybody in the business engages with HR.
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That's one gigantic change, and I would say that that involved everything
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from technology to people to process.
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So that probably covered all. Another one we may talk about later is we
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wanted to relook at the onboarding process.
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And I think for every group, if you looked at Gartner data, you'd find attrition
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for most companies is higher in the first few years, and it stabilizes
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after that. Why is that?
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And some of it's the onboarding process, and it's everything from how you treat
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the candidates, to how they onboard, to how they integrate, to how they feel they
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belong, to the tasks they get. How do we optimize that better?
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And so we did a whole journey mapping of what that looked like
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today versus what we want it to look like, and we, again, applied new process,
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new technology to improve that. So those are a couple-
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Yeah
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... wildly different examples.
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No. I love that because what it also does is it
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also frees up your HR business partners to focus on more value-add
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tasks,
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rather than being order takers. Because that kind of ends up what's happening,
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right? And to your point, it's fragmented feedback,
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whereas now you have one source of truth.
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You could start to look at the data and then really then make strategic
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investments based on that, as opposed to it being spread
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everywhere and not being able to do that.
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What
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feedback did you get from your HR team now?
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Because they're going to have to work very differently as well, right?
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Themselves.
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Look, this is one of the things I always point to is
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the hardest thing for humans to do is change,
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right? And that's why it's
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somebody who's been up and down in weight, or people who struggle
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with, "I want to stop smoking." It's really hard.
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It's really hard because you need sustained change.
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And so change management is critical.
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So I would say that we did a couple things that I thought were really
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important.
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One is, and it's the input we got from Gartner early on, is co-creation.
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We're going to change fundamentally the job of the HR business partners.
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By the way, we went from
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60 down to under 10 HR business partners as part of
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this.
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And so one of the things we recognized is we had the team to come along.
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We needed them to come along with us.
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Yeah.
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And
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the idea of co-creation was important. So we brought people into the process.
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By the way, there was both good and bad to this.
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I think
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the good news is it gave people
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a hand in what we were doing and why we were doing it, and I think we communicated
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a lot, and they had a lot of say in how this happened.
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So it wasn't something I
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hope they don't feel was imposed upon them.
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They feel like they were part of it.
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The bad news on that is it meant they saw it coming along the way, and so
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for some people, it wasn't going fast enough, or for some people, they thought it
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wasn't real because it took time to do that.
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But I think that was one of the most important things that we
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did to help people transition. The other thing we did
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is some of it was forced, right? By implementing tools or by changing
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the organizational structure, we forced some change.
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And I'll give you another good example of a decision I think is really
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good. Throughout my career, didn't matter what job I've had, what I've
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always found is when you have a leader, and I'm not saying it's impossible, it's
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just hard,
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who owns both strategic and tactical things, it's really hard for
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humans. What I find is you're attracted to probably one or the other,
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but most of us under pressure will work on the tactical urgent-
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Yeah
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... and ignore the things that take longer, or are harder, or require more
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collaboration. So what we tried to do is actually separate them
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organizationally, and I think this has been really
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helpful, and it's just playing out, so we'll see.
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But one of our key roles of our leaders is what we call talent.
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This is what I call the strategic things. So what do they own?
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They own
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talent acquisition, really strategic.
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They own what we call TML, so talent management, learning and development.
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How do you develop people?
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They also own what we call TSPs now, what was HR business
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partners or talent strategy partners.
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So these are the people engaged at the highest level, the ELT and their staff.
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These are the only HRBP functions we have left, effectively,
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and they manage the strategic engagement with them.
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That's their primary mission. So they own the strategic.
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And the tactical, the other key group, and we have COEs in some other groups, but
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on the tactical, they own the service center.
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But they also own, and amongst other things, they own the HRIS stack.
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Now, you might say, "Boy, that's weird."
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The reason I think this is important is we're moving from few
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things going through the service center to everything at least starting there.
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Secondarily, what I want to see movement is I want to see more of
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these transactional elements go from being done
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by somebody in the service center to being self-service.
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So we created a lot of knowledge articles now that we didn't have before, so people
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could self-serve. And eventually, I'd like to automate some
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of those capabilities. And so having the HRIS stack
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and the service center together is really, really important because it allows one
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leader to own the transition of largely manual tasks,
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adding the knowledge management, doing the self-service, moving to
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automation, and creating the infrastructure for AI.
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So without those other components, you can't just point AI
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at the wind and hope-
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Yeah, you've got the foundation that you've built.
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So I think those are some of the important decisions and learnings
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along the way. And it's still playing out.
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So-
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Yeah. I honestly love this because
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Shane, who's my co-founder, and I split our roles as founders into those two
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areas ... strategic and tactical.
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So I'm focused mainly on all the strategic tasks in the organization as a
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co-founder, and him on the tactical.
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And whereas before we were both doing a bit of both when we first started the
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business, maybe in the first five years.
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The year that we did that, we 3X'd our revenue. Just that one year.
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Wow.
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Just by me focusing on...
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And also, it was the areas that I excelled in, and also the areas that
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he excelled in that gave him energy, and we just broke down each task, each work,
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all of the
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operational, strategic, everything into those two buckets
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that you described. So when you were saying it, I was literally like, "That's us."
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Yeah.
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That's literally how we run our business.
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And it was a game changer, absolute game changer,
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for us to look through those two lenses.
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So I'm responsible for hiring. On that side, I do the
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sales. I drive our sales, the vision of the organization,
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whilst Shane's delivering on all of my crazy ideas, as he would always describe,
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and bringing them into life and managing our finance and operations and stuff
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like that. Right. And I'm just out there really trying to challenge the status
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quo, breaking things,
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building out. We've just released our own
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Atlas Copilot, the world's first AI copilot for HR executives, which
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is now being used at companies like Netflix and J&J, and HelloFresh, and
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Hyundai to upskill and reskill their HR leaders and their teams.
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I never would've had that capability to do that if we didn't set things up
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the way we
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have it right now.
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So really interesting to have that approach.
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What were some of the key insights, and maybe surprises, once you
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centralized that, that surfaced, that perhaps you and the team didn't
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expect
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along the way?
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Well, let me tell you, the number one thing I was expecting that
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I would-- I'm still in shock that this hasn't happened.
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So we projected as we made this big change, right?
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And it was last year, in North America and Latin America, we said, "Boom, here we
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go. Everybody, we've changed the organization.
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Now we have fewer HR business partners, now called TSPs.
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Start at the center. Everybody come make your cases." The first thing I thought was
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going to happen is
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my phone was going to be ringing off the hook.
396
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Yeah.
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That is actually what I anticipated.
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Some of the consultants we used said, "Get ready.
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It's going to get bumpy." Some of the other CHROs I talked to who have been through
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this and are ahead of me
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on this journey said, "Get ready. It's going to be bumpy.
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Stick with it. Get some things done." And shockingly, and
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I think part of us going slowly, which is not my
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normal mode of operation, but going slowly, doing the co-creation,
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really planning, having the team do a great job, I think, of
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preparing.
407
00:21:03.676 --> 00:21:06.976
I got few of them. In fact, I got more people saying...
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I always find it interesting. Some employees said, "I wanted to test the new
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system, so I gave them a trick question, and it worked okay." I got emails like
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that. I got more positives and very
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few
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people complaining. And we track very closely.
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We built an SLA, how quickly we'd respond to issues.
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We've had really good results, like well above
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90% meeting SLAs.
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So I have to tell you, I've been more surprised by the lack of
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bumpiness, and I think that's a good execution by the team.
418
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Yeah.
419
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And good planning by the team. I've been more surprised by that than anything
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else.
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Based on what you said, I'm not surprised because you did the critical step that
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most companies miss, is that you brought people on the journey.
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So it's not something that's being done to them, right?
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They're part of the journey. They understand this is what it means for Chris
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on the journey, and you have to constantly communicate that.
426
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That's not a one-time thing, right?
427
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And you're still going to have to do it now, and continue to do so.
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That's one of the main things. If you do that correctly and you communicate that
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effectively and often, and do a good job of
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communicating that through your frontline managers and ensuring that they're really
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driving those conversations, the technology part is not the
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challenge. It's the cultural shift and the mindset shift
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that happens along the way. And we're seeing the same thing right now with AI,
434
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right?
435
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Yeah.
436
00:22:30.836 --> 00:22:32.896
And that's kind of where you're going next, right?
437
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Having an AI agent that can answer all those questions.
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It is coming, right?
439
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Right.
440
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Yeah.
441
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We need to put ourselves in the position to be able to leverage
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AI, right? So we had some foundational work to do
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to be able to leverage AI. So-
444
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Yeah.
445
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Hope it helps
446
00:22:49.976 --> 00:22:53.896
How has this made you reassess the skills and capabilities that you need
447
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now in your own HR team?
448
00:22:57.936 --> 00:23:01.476
Well, maybe the way to start is probably another thing we expected is,
449
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talking to a lot of CHROs, that we'd have some people opting out of
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the organization. We've had very little of that.
451
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And again,
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I don't think we've done everything right, so I'm kind of painting a pretty rosy
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picture, but I thought we were going to be a lot more attrition.
454
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But I will tell you that I kind of feel the same way I feel about...
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Let's talk about AI for a second.
456
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Sure.
457
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And skills we might need in HR.
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I've been to a lot of seminars, and there's a lot of great things with
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AI, and I think AI is going to change
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business and HR fundamentally.
461
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But you have to start with the foundational elements where we're at.
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And I would say in terms of skills of people, the same thing applies to HR that
463
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applies to the rest of the business.
464
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So I've seen some studies, both internally and externally, about the people who
465
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are looking at AI and using it. So we've done like a lot of companies.
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We have a safe sandbox. We have a set of tools people have access
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to. And I think it's important for HR to do a couple things to help.
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One is we've been engaging with IT on making sure that we're
469
00:24:05.356 --> 00:24:07.916
promoting and training people on AI.
470
00:24:07.926 --> 00:24:11.916
And what we've found is roughly half the people we
471
00:24:11.956 --> 00:24:15.186
have engage with those tools, and they're interested and they're
472
00:24:15.276 --> 00:24:17.976
curious about AI, and that's awesome.
473
00:24:18.716 --> 00:24:22.175
But there's another half that either, for one reason or another, either
474
00:24:22.236 --> 00:24:24.136
apathy or fear
475
00:24:25.816 --> 00:24:27.956
Of replacing the job, don't engage.
476
00:24:28.776 --> 00:24:30.096
And I think that's a skill.
477
00:24:31.896 --> 00:24:35.796
AI skills, but curiosity of AI are important.
478
00:24:35.866 --> 00:24:39.446
And I think one of the things that I've been noodling on, and we haven't acted on
479
00:24:39.496 --> 00:24:43.416
yet, is how do we make sure that, yes, we train our existing employees, we
480
00:24:43.456 --> 00:24:47.216
give them the tools, and we encourage, but also as we're continuing to do talent
481
00:24:47.256 --> 00:24:50.776
acquisition, how do we make sure that we're hiring those half of the population
482
00:24:50.796 --> 00:24:54.036
that's curious, the half of the population who's played with AI?
483
00:24:54.676 --> 00:24:58.436
There's not enough AI experts out there, but the difference of being curious and
484
00:24:58.516 --> 00:25:00.206
open to how it can help you do your job-
485
00:25:00.456 --> 00:25:00.676
Yeah
486
00:25:00.686 --> 00:25:04.665
... is going to be a big skill because the people who are resistant, the
487
00:25:04.676 --> 00:25:06.276
people who don't want to
488
00:25:07.256 --> 00:25:10.656
engage, that's going to be a problem for any organization, in HR or any other
489
00:25:10.696 --> 00:25:10.976
function.
490
00:25:11.416 --> 00:25:15.256
Yeah. No, you're right. One of the big requests we're getting right now is
491
00:25:15.276 --> 00:25:18.966
actually from our partners, to your point, is to help them build AI onboarding
492
00:25:19.056 --> 00:25:19.536
agents.
493
00:25:20.636 --> 00:25:24.616
And as part of that, they have the data as well to see
494
00:25:25.816 --> 00:25:27.826
when they're onboarding candidate, even pre-boarding,
495
00:25:28.976 --> 00:25:32.806
their competency and their AI literacy that
496
00:25:32.836 --> 00:25:36.716
they have, to do that. And that's going to become a very important data
497
00:25:36.796 --> 00:25:37.036
point
498
00:25:37.896 --> 00:25:41.356
moving forward. And the onboarding
499
00:25:41.436 --> 00:25:45.376
process with our agent then leads directly into
500
00:25:45.416 --> 00:25:48.656
their learning academies that they
501
00:25:48.756 --> 00:25:52.526
have from... So basically, the entire life cycle, all the way through.
502
00:25:52.896 --> 00:25:56.696
And that shows up within their communication tools, whether it's Teams or
503
00:25:56.816 --> 00:25:59.516
Slacks, that there has to be learning in the flow of work.
504
00:26:00.296 --> 00:26:00.676
Mm-hmm.
505
00:26:01.126 --> 00:26:03.236
And the agent has to have the context
506
00:26:04.136 --> 00:26:06.896
of the business strategy, your culture, your values,
507
00:26:07.796 --> 00:26:08.556
all of your
508
00:26:10.436 --> 00:26:13.826
policies and processes, so that when it's interacting with those
509
00:26:14.116 --> 00:26:16.896
employees in the early days, they can get instant answers to their questions.
510
00:26:16.916 --> 00:26:20.896
They maybe didn't want to ask their manager on the first week
511
00:26:20.916 --> 00:26:22.076
these questions, right?
512
00:26:22.086 --> 00:26:22.086
Right.
513
00:26:22.096 --> 00:26:22.876
But they can just ask
514
00:26:23.996 --> 00:26:25.996
an assistant, and they get the answer they need.
515
00:26:26.056 --> 00:26:29.236
And just remove any friction, or uncertainty, or
516
00:26:29.376 --> 00:26:33.276
fear that they may have, but all of the answers are within
517
00:26:33.296 --> 00:26:36.996
the context of your organization that match your culture, your values.
518
00:26:37.036 --> 00:26:39.716
And so, that's taken us a bit of time to build that out.
519
00:26:39.736 --> 00:26:39.885
We're
520
00:26:41.836 --> 00:26:43.856
already starting to see that that's having a massive
521
00:26:43.956 --> 00:26:47.116
increase in the retention of
522
00:26:48.116 --> 00:26:50.276
people leaving early. But back to your point-
523
00:26:50.656 --> 00:26:50.665
Yeah
524
00:26:50.665 --> 00:26:52.005
... of within that first year,
525
00:26:52.896 --> 00:26:56.336
or even earlier than that, we're seeing in the first six months, there's a big
526
00:26:56.416 --> 00:26:59.756
drop-off. And that's costing companies millions
527
00:27:01.216 --> 00:27:04.356
right as they do that. So it's interesting that if you start that from the
528
00:27:04.416 --> 00:27:08.316
pre-boarding stage all the way through and map out those, really those
529
00:27:08.336 --> 00:27:12.036
moments that matter within the context of your organization, not just a
530
00:27:12.076 --> 00:27:13.716
general AI, that doesn't really...
531
00:27:14.536 --> 00:27:18.196
It has to understand who they are, their role, their responsibilities, align that
532
00:27:18.216 --> 00:27:21.445
with the business, the culture, the values, and of course, your policies and
533
00:27:21.516 --> 00:27:24.396
processes and everything. You bring that all together.
534
00:27:24.436 --> 00:27:28.396
It's something we could only dream of, quite frankly, a few years ago to
535
00:27:28.436 --> 00:27:31.676
be able to do that customized to the individual.
536
00:27:31.686 --> 00:27:32.896
The impact of that could be huge, right?
537
00:27:32.956 --> 00:27:36.616
Like you said, think about people are just used to that higher attrition in the
538
00:27:36.656 --> 00:27:39.606
first six months, 12 months, even 24 months.
539
00:27:40.556 --> 00:27:44.516
But there's an incredible cost, not just to TA and the HR
540
00:27:44.576 --> 00:27:48.505
team, but to the business itself because you're cycling people through,
541
00:27:48.536 --> 00:27:50.636
you're spending management time interviewing.
542
00:27:50.736 --> 00:27:51.026
Mm-hmm.
543
00:27:51.076 --> 00:27:54.976
It's an untold, gigantic cost, and I totally agree with
544
00:27:55.036 --> 00:27:58.476
you. The process has to start early of selection.
545
00:27:58.536 --> 00:28:02.096
Are you selecting the people properly?
546
00:28:02.136 --> 00:28:04.005
Are you setting the right expectation?
547
00:28:04.076 --> 00:28:07.556
Because you have to believe that some of those people are leaving, and it's hard to
548
00:28:07.596 --> 00:28:10.956
get good data from exit interviews because people are always kind.
549
00:28:11.356 --> 00:28:12.616
And they don't want to burn the bridge.
550
00:28:12.656 --> 00:28:16.556
And so either personal or some career thing, but somehow there's
551
00:28:16.596 --> 00:28:19.076
not a good match, or they didn't feel like they belonged, and that
552
00:28:21.076 --> 00:28:21.626
needs to be
553
00:28:23.016 --> 00:28:25.316
solved, and that needs to be solved starting with the interview.
554
00:28:25.516 --> 00:28:26.576
You've got to select the right people.
555
00:28:26.636 --> 00:28:30.496
You have to set the right expectation, and then you have to follow through before
556
00:28:30.536 --> 00:28:32.376
their first day and through their first few months.
557
00:28:32.516 --> 00:28:35.476
Yeah. One of the things that we have to do a whole other conversation on this, one
558
00:28:35.516 --> 00:28:38.186
of the data points we was looking at with the team the other day was fascinating
559
00:28:38.256 --> 00:28:41.886
across all of our partners, is we can now aggregate all that data and
560
00:28:41.956 --> 00:28:45.896
see, here are all the top questions and challenges that they're
561
00:28:45.956 --> 00:28:49.856
asking the agent. So we can say, literally, of these
562
00:28:50.056 --> 00:28:53.836
X thousand employees that joined in at this stage of their onboarding,
563
00:28:53.936 --> 00:28:55.456
these are the questions they're asking.
564
00:28:56.436 --> 00:28:59.736
And it's fascinating to see. It's basic stuff,
565
00:29:00.256 --> 00:29:04.006
really basic stuff. One of the most commonly
566
00:29:04.116 --> 00:29:07.526
asked questions in one of our agents for one of the companies was like, "What's the
567
00:29:07.656 --> 00:29:10.796
menu for the canteen food?"
568
00:29:13.616 --> 00:29:17.286
That was one of them. And so now they just embedded
569
00:29:17.286 --> 00:29:20.226
the menu into the agent because-
570
00:29:20.346 --> 00:29:20.346
Wow
571
00:29:20.346 --> 00:29:24.256
... it's such a... I was talking about it sounds trivial,
572
00:29:24.276 --> 00:29:24.836
but people,
573
00:29:26.156 --> 00:29:29.876
it's a way if you can get them using the agent and then give them an excuse to keep
574
00:29:29.916 --> 00:29:32.376
coming back, why not have that information in there?
575
00:29:32.696 --> 00:29:35.326
Because there's another touch point that means that they're going to use it every
576
00:29:35.416 --> 00:29:35.656
day.
577
00:29:36.496 --> 00:29:36.846
Right. Yeah.
578
00:29:36.876 --> 00:29:39.236
And whilst they're in there, they may see a learning pathway.
579
00:29:39.596 --> 00:29:42.896
They may see some content. So it's like
580
00:29:43.616 --> 00:29:47.456
that's the number one way that you're driving... That was actually Nestle.
581
00:29:47.556 --> 00:29:51.156
Gio and Carlo won't mind me saying that because it was on our podcast anyway.
582
00:29:51.196 --> 00:29:54.856
So Nestle have their agent that they rolled out to, was it over
583
00:29:54.936 --> 00:29:58.716
100,000 employees? And the number one question in their agent
584
00:29:58.756 --> 00:30:01.316
is, "What's on the menu today?"
585
00:30:01.336 --> 00:30:02.896
Yeah. They certainly weren't expecting that.
586
00:30:03.036 --> 00:30:04.076
Yeah. I
587
00:30:06.696 --> 00:30:09.356
love the fact you're building this foundation that you've already built, and you're
588
00:30:09.376 --> 00:30:12.716
on the journey. How are you now leveraging that data to look at
589
00:30:13.836 --> 00:30:16.736
personalizing the employee experience and
590
00:30:17.196 --> 00:30:20.376
meet more diverse needs of your employees?
591
00:30:21.516 --> 00:30:23.556
Yeah. I think that when it comes to
592
00:30:24.516 --> 00:30:25.516
personalization
593
00:30:26.484 --> 00:30:28.304
And this is a good overlap with marketing, as you said.
594
00:30:28.904 --> 00:30:32.204
Marketing is becoming more about personal
595
00:30:33.144 --> 00:30:36.244
components of the offer that you're looking for.
596
00:30:37.004 --> 00:30:39.164
You're right to say that the data is
597
00:30:39.984 --> 00:30:43.924
now starting to become available where perhaps we can start to focus on
598
00:30:43.964 --> 00:30:46.984
that personalization. But the starting point for that,
599
00:30:47.844 --> 00:30:51.784
before I can personalize, is I have to make sure that the basic transactions
600
00:30:51.844 --> 00:30:55.434
can be satisfied, and then we can start working
601
00:30:55.504 --> 00:30:59.444
on more of the personalization. So we haven't started, to
602
00:30:59.464 --> 00:31:01.564
be honest with you, trying to personalize the offer.
603
00:31:01.604 --> 00:31:05.494
What I've been trying to do is take all the disparate personal ways that we did
604
00:31:05.564 --> 00:31:08.844
things with humans and said, "How do I answer all the basic questions?" Whether
605
00:31:08.854 --> 00:31:12.733
that's about the canteen food, or it's about what are my benefits,
606
00:31:13.144 --> 00:31:16.664
how do I find a way to get them the information they
607
00:31:16.724 --> 00:31:20.664
need that's transactional as easy as possible to free me up to
608
00:31:20.704 --> 00:31:24.654
start looking at that data, combing through that data, and then
609
00:31:24.724 --> 00:31:26.744
starting to make more personalized offers.
610
00:31:26.784 --> 00:31:30.184
So I think that's a future step for us
611
00:31:31.004 --> 00:31:31.604
at this point.
612
00:31:31.904 --> 00:31:35.584
Yeah. Well, we've spoken about this a little bit already,
613
00:31:35.644 --> 00:31:39.104
but looking ahead, what do you think are the
614
00:31:39.124 --> 00:31:42.964
skills and mindset, and maybe cultural traits, are going to be most
615
00:31:43.004 --> 00:31:46.974
important? Because it feels like we're moving at a pace that I
616
00:31:47.024 --> 00:31:50.784
haven't seen before. Only, what, six months
617
00:31:50.824 --> 00:31:53.464
ago, the role of prompt engineer
618
00:31:54.644 --> 00:31:57.823
was booming. Right? They don't exist anymore because the
619
00:31:58.744 --> 00:32:02.344
LLMs have got so advanced now that you don't need the prompt engineer.
620
00:32:03.144 --> 00:32:03.284
So
621
00:32:04.124 --> 00:32:07.624
I've never seen a skill set and a role come and go so quickly.
622
00:32:07.704 --> 00:32:09.704
So how are you looking at this?
623
00:32:10.584 --> 00:32:11.694
Yeah. I think
624
00:32:13.024 --> 00:32:16.864
this is interesting feedback. So you talk a little bit about what the company
625
00:32:16.904 --> 00:32:19.124
does, what Zebra does, and how it's changing.
626
00:32:19.164 --> 00:32:22.924
And just for the audience, I'll say, you probably see Zebra every day
627
00:32:22.984 --> 00:32:25.104
because if you're in a retail environment or you see-
628
00:32:25.124 --> 00:32:25.714
Yeah, scanners
629
00:32:25.714 --> 00:32:27.924
... one of our scanners or our
630
00:32:28.784 --> 00:32:32.354
biggest product that many people don't think about, if you go to a retail outlet or
631
00:32:32.404 --> 00:32:36.084
you have somebody drop something off at your desk or you're in a United States
632
00:32:36.124 --> 00:32:40.064
postal carrier, you're carrying one of our devices, or if you're signing for your
633
00:32:40.124 --> 00:32:42.524
wine, you're probably signing on a Zebra device, you don't know that.
634
00:32:42.944 --> 00:32:45.184
So when it comes to scanning barcodes, printing barcodes,
635
00:32:47.144 --> 00:32:51.044
or giving a frontline worker a mobile computer so they can better communicate
636
00:32:51.104 --> 00:32:51.404
with
637
00:32:52.384 --> 00:32:53.304
the rest of the staff,
638
00:32:54.184 --> 00:32:56.244
that's normal stuff for Zebra. But
639
00:32:57.204 --> 00:33:00.944
as we think about our why, and I'm a big Simon Sinek fan, yeah, we sit in the
640
00:33:02.864 --> 00:33:06.604
hands of frontline workers today, but when I think about our
641
00:33:06.664 --> 00:33:10.384
why, well, the reason that we exist and our why is how do we really
642
00:33:10.404 --> 00:33:14.224
improve that front line of any business, whether
643
00:33:14.244 --> 00:33:18.014
it's healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, logistics, or retail, our
644
00:33:18.064 --> 00:33:18.654
biggest segment.
645
00:33:19.524 --> 00:33:22.124
How do we make that experience at the frontline better?
646
00:33:22.544 --> 00:33:26.004
We've started getting into different areas, and this has led to different kinds of
647
00:33:26.044 --> 00:33:29.444
talent. So now we are in robotics in
648
00:33:29.484 --> 00:33:33.404
warehouses. We own retail software capabilities that can help
649
00:33:33.444 --> 00:33:37.273
you manage both your inventory and your workforce, so the two biggest
650
00:33:37.304 --> 00:33:40.864
costs for retailers. We're now into machine vision and
651
00:33:40.924 --> 00:33:44.884
manufacturing. So view it as advanced
652
00:33:45.224 --> 00:33:49.204
machine vision or processing of is that
653
00:33:49.244 --> 00:33:51.784
bottle full or has that part been stamped correctly?
654
00:33:52.124 --> 00:33:55.014
So view it as inspection through
655
00:33:56.704 --> 00:33:57.704
video or machine vision.
656
00:33:59.224 --> 00:34:03.144
So what's happened is we've evolved into that satisfying that why
657
00:34:03.204 --> 00:34:07.064
through different methods. I would say we've
658
00:34:07.104 --> 00:34:09.924
learned that there's different talents that pop up as hot talents, just like you
659
00:34:09.944 --> 00:34:12.745
said. Maybe a prompt engineer is something that's really important.
660
00:34:12.765 --> 00:34:16.205
For us, a few years ago, all of a sudden we need robotics engineers, and they were
661
00:34:16.265 --> 00:34:19.995
very much in demand, and they were hard to find, and they were in
662
00:34:20.044 --> 00:34:23.024
certain geos, and they demanded a certain
663
00:34:23.064 --> 00:34:26.455
compensation. And we went, and we worked on that, and we figured out how to solve
664
00:34:26.504 --> 00:34:28.324
that because a robotics engineer may
665
00:34:29.265 --> 00:34:32.754
not think of Zebra. So how do we attract them? How do we build our EVP around them?
666
00:34:33.015 --> 00:34:34.444
How do we have the right compensation?
667
00:34:34.484 --> 00:34:35.194
How do we have the right
668
00:34:36.384 --> 00:34:38.824
way to attract and keep those people was important.
669
00:34:39.205 --> 00:34:42.553
And then as we got into software, cloud native engineers became
670
00:34:42.944 --> 00:34:46.324
really, really important, and someone who'd say, "If I'm a cloud engineer, maybe I
671
00:34:46.384 --> 00:34:50.104
should work for Microsoft Azure, or maybe I should work for Google, or maybe I work
672
00:34:50.165 --> 00:34:53.705
for Amazon. But maybe I'm not thinking about working for a company like Zebra
673
00:34:53.745 --> 00:34:57.714
that's got really cool technology doing really cool stuff." And now
674
00:34:57.764 --> 00:35:01.744
guess what? It's AI, and it's the same problem.
675
00:35:01.824 --> 00:35:03.024
So one of the things that we've
676
00:35:03.964 --> 00:35:05.414
started to work on now is
677
00:35:06.584 --> 00:35:10.244
after we've seen this movie a few times, what's our playbook for what the next-- I
678
00:35:10.284 --> 00:35:13.834
don't know what the next one is going to be, but I know it's going to happen, and I
679
00:35:13.844 --> 00:35:17.614
don't want to relearn that from, or hope that all the people are still around, and
680
00:35:17.644 --> 00:35:19.204
we have the artifacts of what we learned.
681
00:35:19.224 --> 00:35:22.844
We need to start building a playbook around this, and it's something we started to
682
00:35:22.904 --> 00:35:25.484
do. When the next hot thing comes along, what's that playbook?
683
00:35:25.524 --> 00:35:28.394
What have we learned? How do we have a place where we can document those learnings
684
00:35:28.394 --> 00:35:31.264
so we continuously improve when the next big skill comes along?
685
00:35:31.544 --> 00:35:35.524
So I think we've got to start thinking about being more agile and more adaptable
686
00:35:35.604 --> 00:35:39.324
because AI's going to be around for a while. I'm not denying that.
687
00:35:39.364 --> 00:35:43.324
And I'm a huge fan of AI, and I try to use it to my
688
00:35:43.364 --> 00:35:46.024
advantage. But there's going to be the next hot thing-
689
00:35:46.484 --> 00:35:46.494
Yeah
690
00:35:46.494 --> 00:35:49.384
... and the next hot skill. And rather than trying to predict what it is, I want to
691
00:35:49.424 --> 00:35:51.204
be ready no matter what it is.
692
00:35:51.924 --> 00:35:54.884
Yeah, I agree. We all fought the same thing around the internet.
693
00:35:54.924 --> 00:35:57.924
We fought the same thing around social media.
694
00:35:58.344 --> 00:36:02.164
And now AI, I feel like this will
695
00:36:02.264 --> 00:36:03.764
be bigger than both, to be honest-
696
00:36:03.984 --> 00:36:03.994
Yeah
697
00:36:03.994 --> 00:36:05.844
... in terms of the way it fundamentally changes
698
00:36:06.804 --> 00:36:10.484
everything. The way in which work gets done, the way we work, how we work.
699
00:36:11.544 --> 00:36:12.844
I was thinking about this the other day.
700
00:36:12.884 --> 00:36:16.664
My daughter's seven years old, and I can imagine when she's older, she's going to
701
00:36:16.704 --> 00:36:20.544
be like, "So Daddy, you used to go to a place to do work?"
702
00:36:21.496 --> 00:36:21.676
Right?
703
00:36:22.796 --> 00:36:26.516
Or you used to write this down and do
704
00:36:27.316 --> 00:36:30.936
this manually, which is now what we can do with AI, but just by voice.
705
00:36:31.256 --> 00:36:35.236
We're seeing now the trend of, even in our own app,
706
00:36:35.316 --> 00:36:37.916
most people are just talking to our agent now via voice.
707
00:36:38.296 --> 00:36:39.956
It's getting higher every single month.
708
00:36:40.236 --> 00:36:43.756
So people are getting comfortable now just having a conversation
709
00:36:44.336 --> 00:36:48.296
with AI. So by the time she's older, she's probably going to look at what we do now
710
00:36:49.206 --> 00:36:50.236
and find it pretty funny
711
00:36:51.436 --> 00:36:52.536
that we used to do it that way.
712
00:36:52.856 --> 00:36:56.736
It's funny, a good friend of mine, I borrowed some
713
00:36:56.796 --> 00:37:00.536
of his ideas in the past. He did a whole presentation on, and in my
714
00:37:00.596 --> 00:37:03.556
era, I don't know if you're familiar with this cartoon, "The Jetsons."
715
00:37:03.736 --> 00:37:05.696
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
716
00:37:06.316 --> 00:37:09.345
And he did a whole presentation on all the things that were in "The Jetsons" that
717
00:37:09.376 --> 00:37:13.036
have come true. And if you start thinking about this, I think you're
718
00:37:13.076 --> 00:37:16.036
right that you look at natural language processing,
719
00:37:16.756 --> 00:37:18.596
AI, and where it's leading. I
720
00:37:19.696 --> 00:37:23.656
used to watch "Star Trek" before there was something cool like "Star Wars," and the
721
00:37:23.676 --> 00:37:27.256
idea of the computer being all around us, and it's not something
722
00:37:27.696 --> 00:37:31.616
that is necessarily a physical reality, and having
723
00:37:31.656 --> 00:37:35.536
a natural language interaction with them, and then being able to
724
00:37:35.576 --> 00:37:38.936
do agentic things like, "Okay, now that we've had the discussion, go do this,"
725
00:37:40.396 --> 00:37:41.256
we're pretty close.
726
00:37:41.616 --> 00:37:42.256
Yeah.
727
00:37:42.266 --> 00:37:42.266
Close.
728
00:37:42.316 --> 00:37:46.016
Or even I was watching "Iron Man" the other day, and I was
729
00:37:46.076 --> 00:37:48.296
like, "Jarvis is here."
730
00:37:51.336 --> 00:37:53.016
We already have it as well.
731
00:37:53.236 --> 00:37:55.236
All the pieces are here, right?
732
00:37:55.296 --> 00:37:59.256
I know. It's pretty scary. We haven't got flying cars yet, but we'll see.
733
00:37:59.476 --> 00:38:02.716
We're nearly there. They're nearly there. They're working on it.
734
00:38:03.396 --> 00:38:04.736
Listen, Jeff, I could talk to you forever.
735
00:38:04.836 --> 00:38:08.336
Before I let you go, is there anything we missed that you really want to
736
00:38:09.116 --> 00:38:10.896
share that we maybe didn't touch upon?
737
00:38:11.606 --> 00:38:11.746
Well,
738
00:38:13.876 --> 00:38:17.356
boy, we had lots of topics- ... that we didn't get to.
739
00:38:17.536 --> 00:38:21.366
I think I want to hit one, and maybe this is an old world idea,
740
00:38:21.456 --> 00:38:22.156
but I think it's
741
00:38:23.596 --> 00:38:26.416
kind of evergreen, and that's the idea of culture.
742
00:38:27.296 --> 00:38:31.235
And there's a lot of things that are changing how we work, et cetera, and
743
00:38:31.356 --> 00:38:31.365
I
744
00:38:32.276 --> 00:38:35.426
do think when I think about the companies I've worked for over the years, I think
745
00:38:35.456 --> 00:38:38.156
culture and the investment in culture is important.
746
00:38:38.176 --> 00:38:41.585
And when I think about one of the learnings I've had as I've moved into HR,
747
00:38:42.396 --> 00:38:45.036
by the way, we don't even call it HR anymore because I think it's kind of a cold
748
00:38:45.076 --> 00:38:48.876
way of thinking about managing. We call it the people team, and my title is the
749
00:38:48.896 --> 00:38:52.136
chief people officer, and I think it's a little bit more human
750
00:38:52.856 --> 00:38:56.596
than HR and is a little more personable.
751
00:38:57.956 --> 00:39:01.816
But culture's critical. And while the culture
752
00:39:01.836 --> 00:39:05.756
needs to be owned and exist in everyone, it's got to
753
00:39:05.776 --> 00:39:09.716
be stewarded by the people team or the HR team,
754
00:39:09.876 --> 00:39:12.256
and I think it never goes out of style.
755
00:39:12.616 --> 00:39:16.196
I think when people feel like they're part of the
756
00:39:16.256 --> 00:39:16.616
culture,
757
00:39:17.636 --> 00:39:21.596
they'll stay and they'll do great work and they'll be engaged, and you can
758
00:39:21.616 --> 00:39:23.676
never stop investing in it. And
759
00:39:24.736 --> 00:39:24.996
if you
760
00:39:25.856 --> 00:39:28.716
want, I'll give you a little bit of a story if you have a minute.
761
00:39:28.796 --> 00:39:29.256
Yeah, go for it.
762
00:39:30.016 --> 00:39:34.006
In 2014, Little Zebra, that was a barcode printing company at
763
00:39:34.036 --> 00:39:36.646
the time, that started in 1969,
764
00:39:37.876 --> 00:39:40.436
did the hardest kind of M&A you can do, which is a carve-out.
765
00:39:40.476 --> 00:39:43.696
So when you buy a complete company, it's hard, and culture's always the biggest
766
00:39:43.736 --> 00:39:47.256
issue. But when you carve a piece out of a company and you've got to
767
00:39:47.396 --> 00:39:51.156
rip all the interconnections of that other company out and take it on, it's doubly
768
00:39:51.196 --> 00:39:55.076
hard. And in this case, Little Zebra, a billion-dollar revenue
769
00:39:55.176 --> 00:39:59.136
company, did a carve-out of Motorola of their enterprise business that was
770
00:39:59.196 --> 00:40:02.986
two and a half times its size. And I have to give credit to our
771
00:40:03.036 --> 00:40:05.156
CEO at the time, who's now chairman of the board, Anders
772
00:40:05.996 --> 00:40:09.716
Gustafsson, who said he recognized that culture was an issue, and he said, "We're
773
00:40:09.736 --> 00:40:12.276
going to invest in culture. We're going to define our culture.
774
00:40:12.596 --> 00:40:13.836
We're going to define the values,
775
00:40:14.996 --> 00:40:18.256
and we're going to train everybody on it, and we're going to get everyone to do a
776
00:40:18.296 --> 00:40:20.696
face-to-face session on it. We're going to define what our new culture is, because
777
00:40:20.736 --> 00:40:24.576
we have Little Zebra that runs like a much smaller company, and we have people who
778
00:40:24.616 --> 00:40:28.156
are coming out of a gigantic company, and we need to find a way to build our own
779
00:40:28.196 --> 00:40:30.116
culture." And he did that in
780
00:40:32.636 --> 00:40:36.756
2014,
781
00:40:36.816 --> 00:40:40.465
when the acquisition happened. And subsequently, coming out of
782
00:40:40.496 --> 00:40:44.456
COVID, when we realized in 2020, everyone
783
00:40:44.656 --> 00:40:48.006
went home at a snap of a finger, and all of a sudden, a few years later, we started
784
00:40:48.006 --> 00:40:51.996
trying to get people back in the office, and we were never going back to
785
00:40:52.236 --> 00:40:54.376
what we had before. We were in a hybrid environment.
786
00:40:54.776 --> 00:40:58.096
Half the people who had been through the culture training, just through attrition
787
00:40:58.136 --> 00:41:00.426
and growth, weren't here anymore.
788
00:41:00.446 --> 00:41:04.396
The culture needed a reinvigoration, and our new CEO, Bill Burns, when
789
00:41:04.416 --> 00:41:07.286
he came in in 2023, said, "We need to reinvigorate this culture,
790
00:41:08.156 --> 00:41:08.756
and we need to
791
00:41:09.956 --> 00:41:13.796
relook at our values." We had one word, what I call virtues.
792
00:41:14.016 --> 00:41:17.476
How do we turn that into something that's more exciting, and
793
00:41:18.156 --> 00:41:20.756
how do we build the things into it that didn't exist before?
794
00:41:20.796 --> 00:41:23.476
How do we give back to the community? How does that become part of our culture?
795
00:41:23.956 --> 00:41:27.416
How does the customer who didn't exist, how do we bring the customer to life in our
796
00:41:27.456 --> 00:41:29.476
culture? We relooked at our values.
797
00:41:29.736 --> 00:41:32.436
We came up with our real first
798
00:41:33.096 --> 00:41:36.876
stated purpose statement to really define new ways of
799
00:41:36.916 --> 00:41:37.276
working,
800
00:41:38.356 --> 00:41:42.056
and we rolled that out to everybody, and to reinvigorate the
801
00:41:42.136 --> 00:41:43.356
culture. So I would say that
802
00:41:44.876 --> 00:41:46.276
culture is something that
803
00:41:47.476 --> 00:41:50.496
has to be owned by everybody. I define it
804
00:41:51.666 --> 00:41:54.686
in the most organic way possible, which is it's how we treat each other around
805
00:41:54.736 --> 00:41:58.216
here, how we get things done around here, how we treat our customers.
806
00:41:58.236 --> 00:41:59.706
It's got to live and breathe in everyone.
807
00:41:59.716 --> 00:42:03.036
It's not a poster on the wall, and everyone needs to have a common language, and
808
00:42:03.096 --> 00:42:06.996
you really need to invest in it. And the HR or people team
809
00:42:07.056 --> 00:42:10.836
needs to feel the steward of it. And everything we do, whether it's onboarding,
810
00:42:11.056 --> 00:42:14.696
off-boarding, anything in the lifecycle, changes the way people feel about the
811
00:42:14.736 --> 00:42:17.376
company and how we treat each other, and it sets the bar for that.
812
00:42:17.776 --> 00:42:21.556
And so I think culture is the ultimate reason people
813
00:42:21.656 --> 00:42:21.916
stay-
814
00:42:22.436 --> 00:42:22.536
Yeah
815
00:42:22.576 --> 00:42:23.936
... at Zebra, and probably any company.
816
00:42:23.956 --> 00:42:24.056
And
817
00:42:25.676 --> 00:42:28.576
the human resources people need to feel they own it and steward it-
818
00:42:29.468 --> 00:42:33.308
And invest in it, and I just think it's foundational to a great company.
819
00:42:33.388 --> 00:42:34.968
Yeah. I'm so happy you shared that.
820
00:42:35.288 --> 00:42:38.548
I think that's a perfect way to wrap things up, and I completely agree.
821
00:42:38.628 --> 00:42:41.588
I was at my first company from 17 years
822
00:42:41.648 --> 00:42:45.588
old to 27, so for 10 years.
823
00:42:45.688 --> 00:42:45.938
And
824
00:42:46.808 --> 00:42:50.068
I'd never been to school, so I just went straight into work.
825
00:42:50.108 --> 00:42:53.768
And people always ask me, "Why did you stay for 10 years?" Because I had
826
00:42:53.868 --> 00:42:57.668
recruiters calling me every year trying to offer me more money and offer
827
00:42:57.708 --> 00:42:59.768
opportunities. But it was the culture, it was the team.
828
00:42:59.828 --> 00:43:03.428
I really enjoyed going to work and the people that was
829
00:43:03.508 --> 00:43:04.848
around me, and
830
00:43:06.008 --> 00:43:09.808
that was more important to me than an extra few thousand pounds
831
00:43:10.268 --> 00:43:14.068
right? And I'd also built my
832
00:43:14.108 --> 00:43:17.918
own credibility and network and relationships, everything
833
00:43:17.948 --> 00:43:21.708
around that. There's a lot of intangibles, actually,
834
00:43:22.468 --> 00:43:26.288
that you can't really put a name to it, and that's what
835
00:43:26.328 --> 00:43:27.908
kept me there for so long.
836
00:43:29.048 --> 00:43:31.628
And it's quite rare, actually, you see that actually
837
00:43:32.608 --> 00:43:36.428
now. Back when I was younger, it was quite common for people to stay at a
838
00:43:36.488 --> 00:43:40.088
company for 10 years, like the GEs or the Unilevers
839
00:43:40.248 --> 00:43:40.808
or-
840
00:43:40.888 --> 00:43:41.128
Yeah
841
00:43:41.138 --> 00:43:41.138
...
842
00:43:42.508 --> 00:43:46.458
et cetera. Now it's like two years is
843
00:43:46.608 --> 00:43:48.318
a long time, right?
844
00:43:48.828 --> 00:43:49.378
It is. And
845
00:43:50.668 --> 00:43:52.888
that's why I think culture is actually even more important-
846
00:43:52.928 --> 00:43:53.048
Yes
847
00:43:53.068 --> 00:43:54.788
... because there were more obstacles to building it.
848
00:43:55.128 --> 00:43:59.028
How many people have their best friend at work anymore if they're virtual or they
849
00:43:59.048 --> 00:44:02.718
don't come in the office every day? How do you make those connections?
850
00:44:02.728 --> 00:44:05.808
Because I think if work becomes a transaction, if we're all going to just be
851
00:44:05.848 --> 00:44:09.618
contractors and it's just a fee for service, I'm not sure
852
00:44:10.248 --> 00:44:14.188
that's going to be as-- We can talk about engaged employees.
853
00:44:14.248 --> 00:44:16.568
How engaging is it if it's just a transaction?
854
00:44:16.688 --> 00:44:18.748
There's nothing wrong with transactions, but by golly-
855
00:44:19.388 --> 00:44:19.468
Yeah
856
00:44:19.508 --> 00:44:19.808
... you know?
857
00:44:20.428 --> 00:44:22.508
It's one of the reasons why I choose to come in.
858
00:44:23.448 --> 00:44:26.688
We have a remote policy here, but I choose to come in every day
859
00:44:27.508 --> 00:44:29.068
because I just love being around the team.
860
00:44:29.798 --> 00:44:29.798
Me too.
861
00:44:30.288 --> 00:44:33.188
And people, "Oh, well, you're the CEO, you found it.
862
00:44:33.248 --> 00:44:36.108
Why don't you do..." I'm like, "No, that's the opposite." I want to be surrounded
863
00:44:36.148 --> 00:44:39.548
by curious minds. I want to help solve
864
00:44:39.668 --> 00:44:42.887
challenges. I want to be challenged, actually.
865
00:44:43.078 --> 00:44:46.888
It's part of one of the reasons why I come in every day as well.
866
00:44:47.008 --> 00:44:50.988
So listen, we could talk forever, and I really
867
00:44:50.998 --> 00:44:54.648
appreciate what you're doing. And as someone who came across the company very early
868
00:44:54.688 --> 00:44:58.248
in my career when I was in the supply chain world, it's actually incredible,
869
00:44:58.438 --> 00:45:01.728
honestly, what you and the team have achieved to see where you are now.
870
00:45:01.768 --> 00:45:05.668
And I was so surprised when you were sharing examples of where you are now
871
00:45:05.768 --> 00:45:09.508
and where you're heading. Constantly, you clearly have this culture of
872
00:45:09.568 --> 00:45:13.328
curiosity and this innovation and
873
00:45:13.388 --> 00:45:16.037
ability to fail forward and seek disruption.
874
00:45:16.348 --> 00:45:19.658
And part of that, you have to have the people element and the culture and
875
00:45:19.708 --> 00:45:22.428
everything you just described. So congrats to you and the team, and I appreciate
876
00:45:22.448 --> 00:45:24.288
you taking the time to come on.
877
00:45:24.308 --> 00:45:25.688
Thanks for having me, Chris. Really enjoyed it.
878
00:45:25.988 --> 00:45:26.308
It was fun.
Jeffrey Schmitz, Former Chief People Officer at Zebra Technologies