Turning Constraints into Opportunities: HR's Role in Transformation

CheeTung Leong: [: 00:00:00

With us in the studio today is Selen Turner. Selen is the Global Talent Learning and Organizational Development Director at Cordis. And it's such a pleasure to have you with us in the studio today, Selen, welcome.

Selen Turner: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here

CheeTung Leong: so Selen, tell us a little bit more about what Cordis does and what you do at the organization.

he leader and pioneer in the [: 00:01:00

And I love what Cordis does and what it represents.

CheeTung Leong: Could you talk a little bit more about your role? It's a huge role, like global talent learning or OD it's like you're doing everything.

ing the right talent for the [: 00:02:00

CheeTung Leong: In this particular role, it's very broad and very wide ranging. What is one achievement that you would say you're the most proud of?

Selen Turner: I think in terms of learning and development, I think that's the area that I'm most proud of that we achieved as a team. I think I owe it to the organization's one team mentality for this achievement. The organization really embraced development as one of the priorities.

Setting the tone at the very top, that definitely gave me the, almost the canvas that I was looking for to be able to then do my craft with the team and really make an impact. So development is one of the things that we deem necessary in order for Cordis to achieve its mission, vision and goals.

CheeTung Leong: And when you talk about development in the Cordis context, are you focused more on hard skills or soft skills, leadership skills, or is it balanced?

Selen Turner: [: 00:03:00

And that's one of the things we did at Cordis what is it that we're trying to do is a operations? What is our vision? What is our space? And what are some of the things that we as human resources can help the organization to really undertake those goals and initiatives that they need and then not look at it from or what are HR practices that needs to be put into the organization versus what does the organization is trying to achieve and how can, we design the people's strategy, processes, procedures, or a digital needs.

How can we [: 00:04:00

So that's the approach we took. What is needed? When is needed? What is the right time? And What resources do we have? And combination of all these things gave us the road map of what can we do now that can have the biggest impact to move the organization forward? And we use this phrase very often both among all of our leaders in the organization, but also as human resources professionals ourselves " How can we move the organization forward" it has become our focal point of everything we have done.

And that became for us very [: 00:05:00

And we said, if we're going to be making a difference where the organization needs and what we need to do here, then let's bring the organization together. We need to go for upskilling the entire organization through major change, culture transformation. What do we need to get there? So I think that gave us the L&D strategy when we look through that lens and creating a current state, future state and in between. What do you do?

CheeTung Leong: What that means is you're taking the business objectives first. What does the business need? How do we move the business forward? And then extrapolating from there, we have these amount of resources, what's the learning needs, what are the upskilling needs that we have, and then applying it that way.

When you look at it that way, what is a moonshot goal that you have for next year, what's the one thing that you wish you could do in the organization?

top of mind for me right now [: 00:06:00

CheeTung Leong: And we're going to dig into that in just a moment. But before we do, let's talk about one leadership or HR myth that you wish would just go away.

he midst of all of this. And [: 00:08:00

We are the consultants, the guides, the coaches that we see from outside in what needs to happen to, through our people processes to make sure an organization is more successful. In any change, any transformation, any innovation, right now, transformation is true for many organizations around the world, and HR is in the core of it, and we are not getting in the way, and so I want that myth to go away, that we think as HR professionals getting in the way, that's not the case.

CheeTung Leong: That's a really good point because if you're aligned with the business as you're talking about, like having that business objectives and aligned with that, HR has an important role to play in the organization. And as long as we're always aligned with that business objective, when HR makes an ask, it's not an ask for HR.

tually a way to achieve that [: 00:09:00

So I want to pick up a thread from what you were talking about earlier, which I think can really be an inspiration to a lot of our listeners. When we talk about the kind of resource constraints that you had over the past couple of years and leading the organization through that kind of transformation.

Of course, there was a lot of leadership buy in, but I believe that a lot of that came from good stakeholder management as well from HR. So if you could talk through a little bit about what those resource constraints were and how did you use those constraints to drive strategic choices for HR.

t we're trying to do we done [: 00:10:00

And we are the change management experts through OD lens. And looking at L&D is almost a tool. Which we can deploy to help the organization, but looking at systemically and horizontally and holistically to the organization. And then we said we don't have the resources maybe to do all the things that we were envisioning, but we said, hang on a second.

There is a lot of energy in the organization that wants to help. And that's, I think, comes from Cordis's strength is one team mentality.

that we needed to bring back [: 00:11:00

And we knew that there were a lot of black belts in the organization. We knew that for a fact. So we said, okay, We don't as L&D have all the resources, we don't have the knowledge, but what we have is the know how of how we can impact change, the people side of change, how can we implement these in a more systemic way that will impact the organization in the utmost manner, following the part of the rule, the 80 20.

And so I think that's one of the ways that we turn the constraint into an opportunity and say, hold on a second, maybe we don't have the constraints. Maybe you don't need a bunch of facilitators in the organization because maybe you have them. And this is another way of engaging talent. And if you think about it, it's a retention strategy because people love helping others, being part of organizational initiatives.

ally turned out to be really [: 00:12:00

We had a provider who provided us self paced courses, which we were very lucky about. Initially, right away launched. And so that was one. We then called all the other departments that does L& D and so we said, Hey guys, let's do a different experience. Let's come all together we already have constraints and resources. Let's use one platform. Let's turn that into different academies. And everybody then can come together, different departments from IT to legal and compliance to HR to commercial team that does different training and development activities across the organization.

We can be more strategic, we can leverage each other create a better teammate experience because we know from other organizations that sometimes those departments don't talk to each other. So sometimes they launched initiatives at the same time.

[: 00:13:00

That's how it was born. And as part of the learning academies, there's one academy, professional development and leadership development. Those are the two academies we've done focused on as a chart team to talk to all of our executives, looked at our strategy, looked at our worst of the teammates and said, What is top of top capabilities we need to develop in the organization in the next couple years?

And that's provided us with the focus that we needed.

ment these skill development [: 00:14:00

And so we couldn't take that out of the production line. So that would stop the line and we couldn't produce a product. It's very disruptive to the organization. So we said, okay how can we work with the supervisor?

Because we know that in a systemic thinking, in an organization development, what is most important is, especially when you're drawing a culture transformation, everybody needs to be part of that change. You have to think about how everybody from the floor to all the way to CEO, everybody's rowing in the same direction.

tline supervisors to do once [: 00:15:00

So we started hosting some of the workshops as the production floor allowed us to do continuous improvement workshops. And so we started teaching different tools and techniques and different skill set that we identified and called it Blended Learning Journey.

And we also implemented what's called Learning Thursday. It's a newsletter format that goes out to both billboards on the site as well as emails.

So that's how L&D came about really became key critical organizational engine to help organization to drive culture transformation.

em in together. And then the [: 00:16:00

I want to pick up on a thread that you mentioned earlier about L& D and HR being the engine for change when you're going through transformation is there a way that you've scene that is successful to tie all the efforts that you're doing on the learning side with actual results on the business side?

ement within our HR team who [: 00:17:00

We also quickly one of the things that we've done is with our C. H. R. O. We're quickly on is we got together with our ceo. When I first joined the organization, we said, what are we trying to do here? So it's culture change. A lot of transformation. Okay. So if that's the case, how can we change the culture?

want to be as Cordis. And we [: 00:18:00

CheeTung Leong: Drawing a line from that into the future. Where you're just starting that AI journey starting with building the literacy around AI how did that come to play? And where do you see that taking the organization forward?

eing that consultant out and [: 00:19:00

And so that's also one thing that we keep always top of mind is L&D is. Not just internal need, what's coming from external that we need to quickly introduce to the organization to then propel and maybe quickly advance the change in a much faster fashion than [00:20:00] maybe if we waited. So that's what we're working on as L& D team and figuring out what the roadmap looks like what are some of the things we can start implementing.

In the organization to let our teammates know what are some of the pieces of AI will be critical. What it is, not, what does it mean for Cordis? One of the things that we launched recently is innovation contest. Also AI came about from our own teammates as a top of mind topic and what, how we can leverage it.

And so we wanted to make that a reality and say, okay. Let's talk about it and let's bring all of our experts to showcase what it is and what it isn't.

CheeTung Leong: If you could summarize for our listeners. your approach to strategic L& D, what would that entail if you had some kind of framework or checklist that we can use? What would that be?

out the strategy. I think L& [: 00:21:00

I would turn that corner and then the checklist number step number one. What's your context? What is it that the organization is trying to do? Context is everything in my opinion in both O. D. and L& D space. Without understanding context, solutions that we provide could really fall flat. And so I try to first things first, try to understand the context, try to understand the strategy.

I study the strategy first thing. Looking at what is our mission? What is our vision? Talk to a lot of executives, leaders. What's your pain point? What are you trying to do? What's top of mind? What's happening in the industry? External, internal. It's almost like putting together a SWOT analysis of the business.

siness doesn't do that, some [: 00:22:00

Helping the leaders and helping the teammates as a whole and moving the needle, moving the organization forward. So those are, I think, three steps I would do. Business strategy, SWOT analysis is a must. A lot of interviews, a lot of conversations. Don't rush into decisions. And really make your own decisions once you understand the context, the true needs.

and the constraints or challenges that you will be facing in terms of resources.

ere's so much to unpack from [: 00:23:00

The

Selen Turner: Please do reach out to me on LinkedIn. And please drop me a note. I would be more than happy to to continue the conversation. I'm very passionate about HR talent learning making a big impact in the workplace and changing the world one workplace at a time. I truly believe in our power together.

And so this is one of my passion is to really move the field forward. And I'm so happy that you invited me to this podcast to be able to have a voice in this.

CheeTung Leong: thank you so much for hanging out with us today. And for those of you listening in, thanks for joining us. I hope you enjoyed the show. Make sure to head on over to www. engagerocket. co slash HR impact to this show, the full show notes. and all of the other conversations that we have with top HR leaders around the world.

been such a pleasure having [: 00:24:00