UNLEASH America: How to transform an enterprise

As one of the biggest food companies in the world, any move Nestlé makes for its employees is going to have a big impact. 

Nestlé recently completed a HR transformation that impacted 260,000 people. Gregory Pilano, head of HR technology (Zone North America) at Nestlé, spoke at UNLEASH America about this undertaking in his region.

Speaking about monitoring the happiness of employees while implementing change, Pilano previously told UNLEASH: “The goal was to constantly check what was going on, where the needs were, and how we could adjust what we were delivering, zone by zone, market by market, to address the actual needs of the businesses and their employees.”

Standardizing practices

During his UNLEASH America presentation, Pilano revealed the importance of standardization as part of Nestlé’s digital transformation program: “We agreed to have a standardized job catalog across the world.”

As a large enterprise, “when you move from one country to another or across functions, we want to have clarity,” noted Pilano.  

On top of that standardization can have a benefit when it comes to moving forward: “It’s important to know where you’re going, what you will be doing.” Pilano believes that having jobs and needs standardized aids business priorities.

To standardize effectively “we have assembled a team that included some people from finance and other functions because what we wanted to have was a clear understanding of how the organization wanted to look at employees.”

Pilano summarized that to go forward it is important to have the right foundation. Otherwise, tools can fall through the cracks and employee experiences can vary.

However, not everyone is always happy with their role and technology being standardized. On the back of this, Pilano commented on the need for managers to illustrate why the process is important and focus on the long-term benefits.

While discussing employees, Pilano also stressed the need for technology to serve staff and businesses.

He noted that technology should come last in a transformation. Reasoning change in work and the organization is the constant that technology then supports.

This perspective enables employers to put people first, and build their tools and investments around them. If elements like pay, roles, and technology are then standardized these evolutions can then be rolled out on a wider scale more simply.

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