Cardinal Health CHRO Ola Snow doesn’t think there’s a secret formula or a right path for becoming a chief people executive, but she does credit her broad range of experience and roles at Cardinal Health that have included both different types of customers and business models. In this episode of People and Strategy, Snow joins host Tony Lee to discuss topics including the new importance of organizational listening as key to succeeding in competitive talent landscapes and reframing perspectives on hybrid/remote work.
Cardinal Health CHRO Ola Snow doesn’t think there’s a secret formula or a right path for becoming a chief people executive, but she does credit her broad range of experience and roles at Cardinal Health that have included both different types of customers and business models. In this episode of People and Strategy, Snow joins host Tony Lee to discuss topics including the new importance of organizational listening as key to succeeding in competitive talent landscapes and reframing perspectives on hybrid/remote work.
This episode of People and Strategy is sponsored by BambooHR.
Speaker 1:
SHRMs People and Strategy Podcast is sponsored by BambooHR. BambooHR is easy to use HR software that helps your employees know they can count on you. Whether it's through on time, every time payroll, or asking for unflinchingly authentic feedback, go to bamboohr.com/storytellers for a free demo.
Tony Lee:
Welcome to today's People and Strategy Podcast. I'm Tony Lee, Vice President of Content for the Society for Human Resource Management, and the SHRM Executive Network, which is the premier network of executives and thought leaders in the field of human resources. I'm excited to speak today with Ola Snow, Chief Human Resources Officer at Cardinal Health in Dublin, Ohio. Ola has spent over 20 years at Cardinal Health, where she currently is responsible for oversight of the company's human resources, environmental health and safety, security, real estate, facilities and aviation organizations. Ola, welcome to the People and Strategy Podcast.
Ola Snow:
Thank you, Tony. I am really excited to be with you today.
Tony Lee:
Thank you. You sure have a lot of responsibilities there. I'm very impressed.
Ola Snow:
Well, it's an awesome job. As I think practitioners, we love having every aspect, and I really get to help shape what I call the employee and the customer experience. And so I'm in charge of things that, beyond HR, that I think makes this a great place to grow and thrive as an organization.
Tony Lee:
Well, that's great. And you bring up an interesting point. Unlike many CHROs, you've held a range of progressively more important HR roles at Cardinal Health over your career. Do you think rising through the ranks at one company is a smarter or a better approach as a way to learn the profession and gain greater responsibility than moving, say from one company to another, which a lot of HR people do?
Ola Snow:
Tony, it's been a question I think that's been asked at me for several years, and I'm not sure there's a secret formula or right path to becoming a CHRO. I think everybody has their own journey. For me, I think it has helped me understand Cardinal's culture, both understanding the business, and advocate for its people. I've had an opportunity to work with a lot of different businesses within our organization, with different types of customers and even business models. So it's also allowed me to stay authentic to the type of leader I am and create an impact for the company. So I'm just really fortunate to have had this really rich career here with a lot of challenges and exciting things along the way, but I'm not sure there's one approach that's probably better than the other.
Tony Lee:
Yeah, no, it makes sense. And looking at your background, each different position you've had at Cardinal, there have been different responsibility. It's almost like you've gotten a new job, right?
Ola Snow:
It is. And I think it's that challenge of learning something different. I spent a lot of time with our business leaders in my career as a business partner, and then moving into a leadership role leading all of our centers of excellence in HR, I really became a student of the business and really had to know a lot about a lot more things than just those business partner roles that I had done. So I do think it's great for us as leaders, especially those on a journey to be a CHRO, to have different experiences along your career path. Be humble and realize you don't know every single thing, and then both learning new skills, but also new leadership opportunities along the way as well.
Tony Lee:
Yeah, learning something new every day. Well, so speaking of which, HR is facing a lot of critical challenges at the moment, so let's walk through some of those right now, if you don't mind. So most pressing, we think, at least SHRM research seems to show, is the war for talent. So what are you and your team doing to attract and retain the top talent that Cardinal needs?
Ola Snow:
That term talent for war or war for talent's been around a long time, but I don't think it's ever more clear than it is right now. And so we step back at this organization and really think about building a strong employment brand both outside and inside of our organization. And I'll talk a little bit about how we do that. First, diligently, we are focused on a culture where employees can bring a hundred percent of themselves to work. When they're bringing their best, they can perform their best, and we get our best business results. And I also think organizations and we are trying to meet our employees where they are in their life's continuum. And I think you have to think about that. Again, that may mean a different way of thinking or providing appropriate resources to reduce burdens at work, but also burdens outside of work as well.
I mentioned that employee brand. So I love the fact that potential candidates and potential employees care deeply about where they work. We know through research that employees are not just looking for jobs, they're looking for organizations and then looking for jobs. And so making sure that your recruitment team understands the mission of the organization, but also really important work, whether it's around ESG, climate, DNI, mental health, all of those things help build that brand. And then listening to your employees, you're going to hear that theme from me a lot throughout this podcast, but making sure that we have an ear of what's going on in our organization and outside of our organization.
We talk to our employees and listen to our employees a lot. And I do not only think that helps build our business strategy, but it helps build our human capital strategy as well. So those are some of the things that I think we're doing, but making that greater connection sense of belonging for employees, does retain that best talent. And being in healthcare, we just have this absolutely awesome mission. So everybody gets up every single day with that mission in mind. It's a pretty cool place to be as well.
Tony Lee:
So when you communicate that messaging, that employer brand, and you succeed and you recruit new employees in, you're then pressed with engagement and making sure that they feel like they're a part of the team and that they want to stick around. But we're in a position now where we're dealing with the great resignation and we're dealing with quiet quitting, and unfortunately, a disengaged workforce at a lot of places. So what's your guidance on boosting employee engagement?
Ola Snow:
Well, first and foremost, it's back to that listening to your employees. And we have what we call a comprehensive listening strategy. And it's multifaceted. It's pulse surveys, it's focus groups, it's full engagement surveys, a lot of what practitioners are out there doing today. But I think you have to start with the understanding about what will help your employees thrive and what barriers are keeping them from thriving, both professionally as well as personally. I think it's so important that you deliver on the promises that you make to employees. Nothing erodes trust and promotes disengagement more than asking for feedback from your employees and doing nothing at all about it. And then I think you need to listen to those employees around new ways of thinking. We know that we're in an environment now where hybrid work and flexibility is in a state of flux, and we're looking to see what the next normal is.
But for the other thing I will tell you I think has been key for us around engaging employees and ultimately retaining great talent, has been transparency and access. Giving them opportunities to talk with me directly, making sure that we're transparent about how we're doing, whether it's in equity, DNI, pay transparency, but also what are those opportunities that we are developing and up skilling our employees as well. So we talk and listen to our employees a lot, and again, making sure that our managers have those capabilities along the way to have those conversations, not just our HR team, but equipping managers to have those relationships as well. So it's a complex issue. There's not one silver bullet by any means, but leaders have to know what's happening in their organization as well as what's going on around them. And just making sure that employees know that we care as their managers and as their organizations and leaders as well. So having that dialogue with employees, I think has really helped shape how we think about engagement at Cardinal.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. You bring up a very interesting point. There's so much that HR can do, but it ends up falling on the line managers, the people managers, more than anyone else. What do you do to help train those people managers so that they understand the messaging you're trying to get across and then actually implement it?
Ola Snow:
Well, I mean, I think it's absolutely a robust training and development program for your managers. We think about manager capability in the employee lifecycle along the way. So making sure that our managers understand the responsibility and quite frankly, privilege that they have, as managers and helping not only direct work, but helping our employees thrive in that environment. So lots of training, lots of opportunities. We have a robust training and development team. And then again, along the way, making sure that our managers understand the business, how do we teach the business? So it's certainly a partnership with my team and our 4,000 or so managers, that help make this a great place to work.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. So you talk about environment, many of your employees worked in person throughout the pandemic in frankly very stressful circumstances. So what's HRs role in caring for frontline workers in a situation we've had?
Ola Snow:
Well, I got the privilege to lead our pandemic team, and I have to tell you, I think we all probably thought that that was going to be several weeks or maybe months, and it lasted a really long time. First and foremost, we set two north stars that helped us make decisions about every single thing, and that was two simple premises. We wanted to make sure that our employees were safe, and that was the first goal. And goal seems like a silly word, we must just do everything to keep our employees safe. But we also had a critical role in the healthcare continuum and system. So we needed to provide support products, services that were saving people's lives across the world. So making sure that we could keep the healthcare system going. So early on, our team thought about safety first and foremost, and that went from everything from contact tracing, which I didn't even know what that really was, and teaching our leaders and our HR teams, but also making sure that our employees were safe at home.
I remember a Friday night, I made a decision when there was some PPE shortages across the country that in New York City, we sent all of our employees home with mask for their whole entire family, to keep them safe. There was so much uncertainty at the time, but I do think we quickly focused on physical safety and then really started thinking about mental wellbeing and how we could help our employees in that facet. We knew there was challenges in childcare, so we did increase our benefits in childcare, especially to our frontline workers. And then we really started to think about mental health. I will still go back to that mission of the company though, Tony, is we did make sure that every single employee that was coming to work every day knew that they had an important part in the critical service to our customers, and that they were helping save lives every single day. So we made sure that they were safe, their families were safe, and made sure to know how appreciated and how their work was connected in helping our nation as well.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. What an experience that must have been for everyone at Cardinal. So now we're returning to physical workplaces, or at least a lot of employers are, but there is a lot of push back from some employees about working full-time in a physical location. So is hybrid the answer for those who, in your case, not dealing directly with patients, or is providing greater flexibility and autonomy really the way to go?
Ola Snow:
Well, as you said, there is a lot of push back. I call it this tug of war a little bit. And I think for us, some of our employees, as you said, never went home. The work we do is essential, and our frontline workers continue to show up every single day. However, I will tell you that our relationship with the office has changed somewhat. And through our conversations in listening to our employees and listening to them, we learned that a lot of employees preferred to have flexibility in where they worked. And for that, we morphed to more of a hybrid environment for many of our employees. Now, again, we are less focused on where employees are getting their work done, but rather focused on helping employees create environments where they can be successful, whether that's at home or in the office. We also created this concept called moments that matter.
And moments that matter really are about when are the times that are critical for us to be together? And that could be welcoming new teammates, mentoring sessions, it could be meetings with customers obviously. So there'll always be times that we come together as an organization, but also times where people can do work from really anywhere. I'll say this, even to our workforce that's coming to work every single day and has been, we're thinking about flexibility in that environment. We know that that environment and those employees want as much flexibility as they can have. So we've been thoughtful around thinking through different shifts. So we're thinking through what works for those employees. And I've loved to hear some of their ideas as we have implemented many of those away. But I think flexibility is here to stay, and I think that's exciting as we think about hybrid work and what comes next.
Tony Lee:
Yeah, it's a new workplace for a lot of people. So speaking of that, a lot has been said and implemented in recent years by employers that are eager to create a more inclusive work environment. Do you think those efforts are working?
Ola Snow:
I'm an optimist, and I do think they're working. And let me talk you through a little bit. I think that employers, and I love to say that I'm proud of the work that we've done here to foster a more inclusive environment, but we always know that there's work that needs to be done. So we've worked hard here to really form that sense of belonging, taking it from inclusion, now to belonging. And we've worked hard to uncover biases, unconscious biases, having courageous conversations, and really building that trustful relationship with our organization. I mentioned transparency before, and I will tell you, when we started to be more transparent, both internally and externally around our data, whether it was representation or promotions, there was just great things that came about from that.
And we have publicized our goals. In our last year's corporate citizenship report. We've rolled out a tremendous amount of training to our managers, where I've learned things along the way around that as well. So I do think as we've pulsed our employees, first of all, very proud that our culture is one of the things that keeps people here, and it attracts people to come to our organization. And again, it is coming back to that every single person coming to work, thriving, bringing that a hundred percent of themselves to work every day, that makes our culture very special.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. No, that's a great challenge and a tough one to overcome, but it seems like you guys are certainly making progress. So the other thing that's really changed is the role of the CHRO. There was always the debate, "Is the CEO really taking me as seriously as he is, or she is the CFO or other leaders?" But the pandemic seems to have changed that a little, don't you think?
Ola Snow:
I could not agree with you more. I know that it's changed it. I still believe that the role of CHRO has been one of those critical business partners that sit at the table. But I do think the role is viewed a little bit differently, and some of those perceptions have changed because of some of those challenges. I think COVID has quite frankly changed that. And we had most CHROs play a very important role in the safety of their employees throughout the pandemic. But also, I would tell you is, we think about some of the challenges of workforce of tomorrow. What does work even look like? Managing risk. We've seen labor shortages have caused businesses to not meet the expectations of their shareholders. So I get to not only sit beside my CEO talking about how our culture enhances and enables the best business results, but also how we're working to upscale what are those things that we need to do today, but what are the things that we need to do five years to meet our business and customer needs?
I spent a lot of time over the last year or so with our board of directors, again, talking about human capital risk, how our culture is enhancing our business results. And that has definitely changed over the last five or six years. And you see both CHROs joining more public boards. You see the word culture show up in every single board deck, and you see CEOs, I think, finally seeing CHROs as business leaders, not just functional leaders, as well. And I will tell you, I spend a huge amount of time with my CFO, who is now my CEO. So that partnership, not only with the CEO, but also with the CFO, I think is critically important as we think about the future as well.
Tony Lee:
Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. Well, Ola, we have run out of time, but thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today. We really appreciate it. You can follow the People and Strategy Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can learn more about the SHRM Executive Network at shrm.org/executive. Also, listener reviews have a real impact on a podcast visibility. So if you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to leave a review and help others find the show. Finally, you can find all of our episodes on our website at shrm.org/podcast. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
Speaker 1:
People and Strategy is sponsored by BambooHR. BambooHR is HR software that lets you hear your employees' stories, how they're performing, how they're growing, and how they're working together to accomplish a shared vision. Its intuitive design helps connect everyone in your organization and build trust. Whether it's through on time, every time, payroll, or asking employees for unflinchingly authentic feedback. Visit bamboo hr.com/storytellers to book a free demo.