Changing Employees’ Lives for the Better with Christopher Shryock, SVP and Chief People Officer at Sam’s Club
12/07/22 • 35 min
This episode features an interview with Christopher Shryock, SVP and Chief People Officer at Sam’s Club, a chain of membership-only retail warehouses. They have 600 clubs nationwide and another 200 internationally. Christopher heads all things HR-related for the over 100,000 Sam’s Club Employees. Before Sam’s Club, he spent about 14 years at PepsiCo serving in global HR leadership roles. And on this episode, Christopher talks about why you should rethink hiring based on interviews, how to simplify employee processes, and the real reason why it pays to have a diverse workforce.
Quotes
*”Having one system is not sufficient to create a great employee experience, but it is a necessity. Because if you don't even know where your associates are, if you can't even have and track basic detail and information about them, how are you ever going to provide them with something that's going to be personalized and relevant?”
*”I want to make sure that my team is interacting with the business on areas that matter. And that's about identifying and developing talent, building organizational capability, and holistically solving associate problems. So it's not about automating away communication between HR and the business. But we want to make that much simpler, more relevant, and that we are communicating on things that really matter.”
*”We're trying to understand who's likely to stay with us and who's likely to perform better. So understanding and assessing simple, basic cognitive ability, what preferences and experiences people have, and a little bit of situational judgment... And part of why we do that is because we hire people that perform better and stay longer. But the other reason we really do that is trying to remove as much bias from the system as early as we possibly can.”
*”When you have a diverse associate population that feels included, they collaborate more, they come up with better ideas, and they have more ownership, not only for their work, but for the outcomes of the company.”
Time Stamps
*[4:54] The Flight Plan: Get to know Sam’s Club
*[7:58] First Class: Best EX practices at Sam’s Club
*[24:19] Turbulence: EX lessons learned
*[33:17] The keys to a first class employee experience
Links
Connect with Christopher on LinkedIn
Thanks to our friends
This episode is brought to you by Firstup, the company that is redefining the digital employee experience to put people first and lift companies up by connecting every worker, everywhere with the information that helps them do their best work. Firstup has helped over 40% of the Fortune 100 companies like Amazon, AB InBev, Ford and Pfizer stay agile and keep transforming. Learn more at firstup.io
This episode features an interview with Christopher Shryock, SVP and Chief People Officer at Sam’s Club, a chain of membership-only retail warehouses. They have 600 clubs nationwide and another 200 internationally. Christopher heads all things HR-related for the over 100,000 Sam’s Club Employees. Before Sam’s Club, he spent about 14 years at PepsiCo serving in global HR leadership roles. And on this episode, Christopher talks about why you should rethink hiring based on interviews, how to simplify employee processes, and the real reason why it pays to have a diverse workforce.
Quotes
*”Having one system is not sufficient to create a great employee experience, but it is a necessity. Because if you don't even know where your associates are, if you can't even have and track basic detail and information about them, how are you ever going to provide them with something that's going to be personalized and relevant?”
*”I want to make sure that my team is interacting with the business on areas that matter. And that's about identifying and developing talent, building organizational capability, and holistically solving associate problems. So it's not about automating away communication between HR and the business. But we want to make that much simpler, more relevant, and that we are communicating on things that really matter.”
*”We're trying to understand who's likely to stay with us and who's likely to perform better. So understanding and assessing simple, basic cognitive ability, what preferences and experiences people have, and a little bit of situational judgment... And part of why we do that is because we hire people that perform better and stay longer. But the other reason we really do that is trying to remove as much bias from the system as early as we possibly can.”
*”When you have a diverse associate population that feels included, they collaborate more, they come up with better ideas, and they have more ownership, not only for their work, but for the outcomes of the company.”
Time Stamps
*[4:54] The Flight Plan: Get to know Sam’s Club
*[7:58] First Class: Best EX practices at Sam’s Club
*[24:19] Turbulence: EX lessons learned
*[33:17] The keys to a first class employee experience
Links
Connect with Christopher on LinkedIn
Thanks to our friends
This episode is brought to you by Firstup, the company that is redefining the digital employee experience to put people first and lift companies up by connecting every worker, everywhere with the information that helps them do their best work. Firstup has helped over 40% of the Fortune 100 companies like Amazon, AB InBev, Ford and Pfizer stay agile and keep transforming. Learn more at firstup.io
Previous Episode
How to Enable Your Employees From Desk to Horseback, an interview with Nadine Huggins, CHRO for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
This episode features an interview with Nadine Huggins, Chief Human Resources Officer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada’s national police service. Nadine spent 20 years in public service before joining the RCMP in March of 2020 as Executive Director of Policies, Strategies and Programs. On this episode, Nadine shares with us how she enables employees even in the most remote regions of Canada, how she addresses the mental health risks of policing, and she even dispels myths about the iconic mountie.
Quotes
*”The very nature of policing as an occupation impacts an individual's overall health and wellbeing. So we can buy the proper shoes, we can ensure that the members have access to physical activity, and we can encourage them to eat well. They're still going out every day and having these interactions that, while 90% of them are not necessarily violent altercations, the other 10% can get more cantankerous. There are experiences, even when they're not aggressive, that wear on an individual.”
*”How do you lead from behind? In a time of crisis, sometimes that's exactly what you need to do. The folks who work with me saw right from the beginning [of the pandemic] that I validated what they knew, that I relied on them, that I asked questions, and I had the humility to know that they were the trusted source of information for their employees.”
*"If you want a positive employee experience, you really want to make sure that there's good leadership, good communication, and good feedback.“
Time Stamps
*[6:19] The Flight Plan: Get to know the RCMP
*[11:56] Dispelling myths about the RCMP
*[14:29] First Class: Best EX practices at the RCMP
*[22:23] About the RCMP's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy
*[33:49] Turbulence: EX lessons learned
Links
Connect with Nadine on LinkedIn
Thanks to our friends
This episode is brought to you by Firstup, the company that is redefining the digital employee experience to put people first and lift companies up by connecting every worker, everywhere with the information that helps them do their best work. Firstup has helped over 40% of the Fortune 100 companies like Amazon, AB InBev, Ford and Pfizer stay agile and keep transforming. Learn more at firstup.io
Next Episode
Cruising Through Our 2022 Year in Review
2022 was a year of exploring new heights on Cruising Altitude. So we wanted to share some highlights with you. In this episode, we’re looking back on our conversations with leaders at companies like Sony, Lockheed Martin, Sam’s Club, and more. And celebrating what we’ve learned from them about supporting a world class employee experience.
Quotes
*“I don't think experience is something that can be worked on. I think it's a fluid living, breathing entity. And I like to ask a question from our core team in HR and marketing, ‘What will bring more life to the employee experience?’” - Marija Zivanovic-Smith, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at NCR
*”When you are implementing improvement in your employee experience, the process never ends. So employees keep on raising the bar, and you are always working to do better. So you are doing something, you are doing better, but then you need to keep on doing better is something that never finishes.” - Quique Huerta, Global Employee Experience Officer at Liberty Mutual Insurance
*”When we operate in so many countries, there are multiple language barriers, which you need to go through. So how do you ensure that what you communicate lands appropriately so that everyone can act on the communication that is being said? One of the big challenges we have as an organization is thinking as one global organization. The headquarters is all about coming up with a framework on how you approach things in a way in which every country in which we operate can take the framework and apply the framework that suits the needs of the respective country's operations.” - Bala Sathyanarayanan, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Greif, Incorporated
Links
Connect with:
Thanks to our friends
This episode is brought to you by Firstup, the company that is redefining the digital employee experience to put people first and lift companies up by connecting every worker, everywhere with the information that helps them do their best work. Firstup has helped over 40% of the Fortune 100 companies like Amazon, AB InBev, Ford and Pfizer stay agile and keep transforming. Learn more at firstup.io
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