Imagine getting paid to be a taste-tester in the Taco Bell test kitchen. More cheese in your Crunchwrap Supreme? Absolutely. Extra-flaming fire sauce? Coming soon (we hope).
Now, take that concept and make it for your wildest dreams of HR tools. That’s one of the benefits that Edweena Stratton, chief people officer at Culture Amp, gets to experience in her role. After joining the company a little over a year ago, she shared what it’s like being “customer zero” at an HR tech company, how to lead a global HR team, and plans for 2023.
How do you recommend HR professionals manage global teams?
Invest in spending time on the ground. If I reflect on my experience managing in Asia Pacific, I spent a ton of time in both India and Singapore, Hong Kong, wherever it needed to be.
The second thing that I would recommend is, be really curious. So, ask a ton of questions [and] do your research. Your experiences are not necessarily right…there’s no right and wrong. It’s just different. So, it’s appreciating different perspectives. I learned a ton [by] understanding and appreciating those differences versus trying to force what I considered my norms or perspectives on others.
I would also encourage people to make sure that they had strong leadership on the ground. You need really strong leadership—somebody who you can partner with and trust.
So, I remember one of the first hires I made in India, I had to convince my CEO at the time that actually, I need somebody who is more senior. I need to be hiring for what the future looks like, not what we are today. And invest time in that relationship.
Now that you’re now doing the HR function within a company that is driven by HR, how do you deploy your own services?
It is both a blessing and a challenge. We have the opportunity to be what we call “customer zero.” So, we get to experiment and road-test a lot of the product features functionality and also input what’s on the dream list for what we would love included in some of the employee experience platforms.
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When I joined Culture Amp, Didier [Elzinga], the CEO, and I had a long conversation about what it might be like. And he said, “Edweena, you are driving a really cool car, but you have 1,000 backseat drivers.” And so there are no shortages of commentary, opinion, and feedback.
Where has your focus been since joining Culture Amp?
My initial focus was really on my own team. So, I’m a huge believer in making sure that you fit your own oxygen mask first. And having the right team structure, making sure that we were organized in the right way, was a big focus. And super important to me when I first joined.
One of the big focuses last year where I spent a ton of time was thinking through our ways of working. I know this is a question that many of my peers and other organizations are trying to figure out…Some of the things that we really wanted to optimize for were connection, flexibility, productivity, and opportunity. I spent a lot of time embedding and working through what that looks like for us as an organization.
What are you looking forward to throughout 2023?
I think there’s a real opportunity for us at Culture Amp to be that customer zero. So, what are those close connection points into our product team? What is the opportunity for us to enable all of our [employees] to be able to tell stories around how they use the platform and how it’s creating impact for them? And a really great opportunity for us to create some blueprints around how we do culture-first leadership.—KP