Why Being ‘People-Focused’ Means More Now Than Ever

It is not new that we speak about being ‘people focused’ or ‘people centricity’, but with the pandemic, this has become even more important to me as a leader. The character of any business stems from the uniqueness of its people and how we treat them.

For Rockwell Automation, just like many other organizations in our industry and in other sectors, this past year has been both a test of our collective resolve and an opportunity to show that we care about our people.

So how do we do that? As a leadership team, our priority has been to keep our colleagues safe, motivated, and productive. The series of lockdowns in countries across Europe, Middle East, and Africa highlighted that uncertainty is now a given in our working lives. To deal with this uncertainty we have taken a culture-led approach, using an ingrained set of principles to guide how we act day to day, regardless of the external context.

These principles have acted as ground-rules to make sure we do not undermine our commitment to putting our people first. Here are my top 3 thoughts on how to help:

1. Be flexible to employee needs

In a global organization it is all-too easy for staff to find themselves covering multiple time zones or working on a geographically dispersed team. Operating in a largely virtual environment makes it harder to log off and walk away than it is in a physical office environment. There is no longer time to decompress during commuting time in the car, train, or on a plane.

My goal has been to help our employees to do their best work. Digital burn-out is a real concern, so we to have continually emphasized the need to work smarter and focus on outputs over inputs. Encouraging balance has helped staff to think creatively about how they approach tasks and understand there is more to peak productivity than just screen time.

Not everyone is productive at the same time of the day, so I am a strong believer of being flexible on when you get your job done whenever possible and schedule your workload accordingly.

Flexibility can also mean where you work from. This year, several colleagues have made personal decisions on moving and relocating within and across countries to be closer to families, in houses with more space, or to their secondary home outside of a city.

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2. Be compassionate about individual challenges

This past year has affected different people in different ways. Individual employees have a host of new responsibilities and challenges they perhaps did not have a year ago, such as having to juggle work and childcare, or not being able to spend time with friends and family. This blurring of the lines between work and personal lives has reminded us all that we are only human and that achieving satisfaction in our work reflects the choices we make.

We need to make sure that employees are protecting their health and wellbeing, as well as those around them, and disconnecting from work to stay mentally focused and stress-free. You must find recovery times during the day and the week.

I also trust that my team gets things done, and has the flexibility to take a longer pause, help a child with home school, or run to help their parents when they need to.

3. Be practical about the reintegration process

As we see vaccinations accelerating across the world, I have reflected more lately on what does “back-to-normal” mean, and what does this mean for those of us working remotely?

It is important to recognize that different people have different levels of readiness and/or appetite to go back to an office environment full time. We cannot rush the process, and we need to be prudent in how people get reintroduced, both to shared offices and to external meetings and customer site visits.

Most companies have protocols in place to guide decisions on the cases where it is better for people to work from an office versus working from home, as well as levels of office occupancy. It is likely this will be a staggered process where we combine face-to-face with video conferencing for a significant period as staff reacclimatize to physical interactions and that, as much as possible, people have an option on when and how fast they return.

Battling Through the Crisis

Rockwell Automation Plant in Twinsburg, Ohio | August 2017

Article

Battling Through the Crisis

Susana Gonzalez, Rockwell Automation’s first female EMEA president, tells of her experience in successfully steering the company through the pandemic, having only just taken up her leadership position.

Putting people at the center

This past year has questioned our perceptions of what we mean by doing business. For us to fulfil our corporate mission we need to continue serving customers to the very best of our abilities, whatever the situation.

To do that, we need our people to be at their best. When our customers choose to work with us, they are choosing to work with our talent.

We are aware of the risks the current environment can pose for individual productivity and wellbeing and see it as our responsibility to make sure we get through it together, with optimism, resolve and a dedicated focus on our workforce.

You can learn more about the importance of your people, and how we can all be more productive through a better work-life balance, in our Management Perspectives thought-leadership program.

Published May 19, 2021

Susana Gonzalez

President, EMEA Region, Rockwell Automation

Susana is the President, Europe, Middle East and Africa. She joined Rockwell Automation in 2017 as subregional VP of sales and took her current role in 2019. She brings over 20 years of experience in a variety of industries and functions. Her role is to drive the strategy and execution in the region to achieve our global goals of bringing the Connected Enterprise to life.

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