PepsiCo Europe CPO: Don’t get complacent on employee experience

Last September, Dannii Portsmouth stepped into the Chief People Role at PepsiCo Europe.

At UNLEASH World 2024, where Portsmouth spoke about the $91.5 billion food and beverage giant’s commitment to social impact, the Editorial team had the pleasure of sitting down with her to reflect on the past year.

There were a few things that Portsmouth pulled out as proud moments in her first year at the HR helm.

A core part is the People Function itself – “they’re doing tremendous work on some really cutting-edge things”, Portsmouth explains.

However, “I have the benefit of seeing everybody’s work, and a lot of it is very similar, it’s been done somewhere before, so we’ve worked as a People function to come together to say, what do we want to work on together?”

“How do we get the benefit of scale, and how do we enable people in different countries to have an impact on things that are going on across Europe, or across a few countries?”

Portsmouth adds that “we’ve done a really good job of building a community” for the HR team – “we call it home club”.

HR is a tricky job – you often spend most of your time with other people’s teams, and it can be quite lonely. It leaves you feeling which team am I part of?” says Portsmouth.

Home club is where the HR team finds its community – “somebody will tell you ‘great job’ even if your business partners didn’t tell you what a great impact you had”.

Dannii Portsmouth on stage at UNLEASH World 2024.

Portsmouth on PepsiCo’s people-first agenda

Looking beyond the People function itself, Portsmouth is proud that the PepsiCo positive agenda – an “end to end business transformation” started three years ago across the entire food and beverage giant – isn’t just about the planet; it also puts people “at the heart of what we do”.

“We would be forgiven for using a PepsiCo positive agenda to only think about sustainability”, but “what we’ve done really well in the last 12 months is to bring the people element really to the forefront”.

For Portsmouth and the wider PepsiCo leadership team, there is a real focus on every single of its 320,000 people worldwide (including 40,000 in Europe), and what they each get from being employed by the food and drinks giant.

Part of this is ensuring that they can bring their “full, outrageous selves” to work.

“What can be tricky in organizations is you come in, you learn how the culture works, and you fit into the culture, and sometimes that means you present a slightly diluted version of you”.

Another element of being people-first at PepsiCo is “helping people move through careers that maybe they didn’t think possible”.

During her session at UNLEASH World, Portsmouth shared the example of a lady called Layla, “who joined us a receptionist in 2008…and now runs one of our biggest plants in Leicester”.

Every organization has a Layla” – the next question is “how do you systemize that?”

PepsiCo tries to help employees see what career opportunities are available – while tech plays a key role, for Portsmouth, ”the community, the culture, the trust, the leadership is such an important component”.

“You can have all the skills you want, if you don’t believe in yourself and click the link”, opportunities are going to pass employees by.

PepsiCo, social impact and the TENT Partnership for Refugees

A third thing that Portsmouth called out as a point of pride from her time at the helm of PepsiCo Europe is the relationship the food and drinks company has with the TENT Partnership for Refugees.

The pair have worked together since 2021 – the partnership began in the Netherlands with an individuals’ passion, and has expanded to Belgium, Spain and Poland.

Across Europe, PepsiCo has committed to mentor 50 refugee women by 2025, as well as train and hire 500 refugees by 2026.

Portsmouth shares that the mentors learn a lot from the opportunity, and that in some circumstances PepsiCo offered learning opportunities, even if there wasn’t a permanent role.

“I love this idea of reinvesting in humanity and creating opportunity”, she adds.

The other side of the coin is that working with TENT “is not just [about] being a good person”, but there is a real business advantage.

“The truth is we’re probably surprised at just how enriching it was for our talent pool” – “the tapestry of our talent mix is critical – it is helping us achieve things that we didn’t know, that leads to connection somewhere else, a different idea, and, in fact, that sometimes leads to a different consumer need”.

“Where we grew up in the world has an influence on what we like to taste”, so having employees from all over the world provides “a real consumer insight there as well”.

In fact, the relationship with TENT has been so successful in the Europe “that our US team are also now working on their refugee program”, notes Portsmouth.

Dannii Portsmouth on stage at UNLEASH World 2024.

‘We can’t be complacent’ on employee experience

The conversation turned to Portsmouth’s plans for the future of HR at PepsiCo in Europe over the next year.

“The top of my to-do list is always employee experience.

“You often hear me saying, this morning I woke up and I decided I was going to give my hours to PepsiCo.

“Tomorrow, I can wake up and decide I am going to give my hours to somebody else, because that’s more fulfilling, more meaningful, to me.

“We can’t be complacent.”

Portsmouth shares a quick story with UNLEASH about visiting a factory in Romania – “I said to the plant manager, these are the most comfortable safety shoes”, and he replied: “Of course, our people are standing in them for eight hours a day, they have to be comfortable.”

“That’s employee experience; “it’s the small and the big things”.

Another priority for Portsmouth is to “continuing to build a people function that’s best in class”.

I don’t mind if you’re in the People function for two or 20 years, as you long as you can say I learned, I belonged, I had fun and my time is meaningful” – “those are the things that we continue to focus”, concludes Portsmouth.

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