Summit Recap: How Great Workplaces Focus on People Amid Uncertainty in the Market

Ted Kitterman
2025-04-10T18:00:14-04:00
Summit Recap: How Great Workplaces Focus on People Amid Uncertainty in the Market
Great Place To Work

Top leaders from Edward Jones, World Wide Technology, Marriott International, and others spoke about the path forward despite whipsawing results on the stock market.

The stock market and the impact of tariffs have been top of mind for many business leaders this week.

The markets were down April 3, with the S&P 500 losing more than 4% over the course of the day due to concerns over tariffs and their impact on global trade. When a 90-day pause was announced on many of those tariffs, markets soared with the S&P 500 gaining more than 9%, and then sank again.

What are leaders to make of this kind of volatility?

For the CEOs speaking at the For All Summit, the answer comes down to people.

Consider Edward Jones, with 54,000 employees helping 9 million customers make a sound financial plan. Penny Pennington, managing partner of Edward Jones, shared her assessment of a turbulent market, including the four “worst words” you can hear in the investment world: “This time it’s different.”

Having led seven generations of clients through volatility, crises, and geopolitical turmoil, Pennington sees a crisis that is urgent, but very familiar. “A good plan is better than a bad prediction every time,” she shared with Summit attendees.

For Edward Jones, that good plan is investing in people. It starts with purpose, which Pennington identifies as clearly articulated values that guide the organization. Those values inform culture, which guides strategy and empowers execution. “When all of that comes together, it creates an enduring institution,” she says.

Great Place To Work research supports this, where high-trust companies not only outperform their peers during economic downturns, but see outsized market performance that continues well into the future.

Empowering employees to excel

Great workplaces know that empowered employees deliver exceptional experiences for customers.

For leaders like Jim Kavanaugh, co-founder and CEO at World Wide Technology, the experience customers and partners have working with his employees is a source of deep pride. “The amount of feedback I get from our partners on how much they enjoy working with our employees is amazing,” he says.

Jim Kavanaugh, CEO of World Wide Technology speaks at the For All Summit.

At the heart of their strategy are their values – principles that guide the organization through all the disruption happening in the technology sector. “The one thing that I think is a constant are your values and your culture,” he says. “If you have a really strong set of values that you commit to, it’s amazing how that culture helps navigate through challenging times … and present opportunities.

One of those values? The importance of everyone to embrace a growth mindset and pursue lifelong learning. “You need to learn how to embrace constructive input,” Kavanaugh advises, a lesson he learned as an Olympic soccer player. “You don’t get better as a player if you think you all have the answers.”

The rise of AI demands agility

One of the things driving the rapid change and disruption in the marketplace is the rise of generative AI. Company values are crucial touchstones for how this technology can be used to innovate and uplevel the impact of every employee.

Leaders like Anthony Capuano, president and CEO of Marriott International, are looking for efficiencies that increase human capacity.

“All of us have had that unfortunate day of travel,” he shared as an example. The flights were delayed. The weather was miserable. Luggage was lost. The potential of AI to allow a desk clerk at a hotel to quickly check-in a traveler and have 120 seconds of extra capacity to offer a warm welcome make all the difference.

“We’re using AI everywhere,” he shared. “We want to use it to create capacity for better more impactful human interactions.”

Pennington puts it another way: “Automate the ordinary to humanize the extraordinary.”

“Our business is a people business,” she says. “It’s a business built on trust.” That trust enables people to grow and develop, from adopting new AI tools to exploring new ways of serving customers.

How great workplaces build a better world

The impact of workplace culture isn’t confined to the marketplace. How employees feel about their work follows them home, a sacred responsibility that leaders like John Pearson, CEO of DHL Express take very seriously.

Leaders from DHL join Michael C Bush, CEO at Great Place To Work at the For All Summit in Las Vegas.

“The biggest part of my job is to send people home happier than they arrived in the morning,” he shared from the mainstage at Summit. The reason why? “When people leave work unhappy, they take it out on the people they find at home.”

For Pearson, creating a great workplace is his way of preventing domestic violence, alcoholism, and child neglect. And an organization at the scale of DHL, with operations in 220 countries, the impact is enormous.

“I like to think people are right in the middle of everything we do,” he says. His aspiration: Be a great place to work, not for some or for many, but for all.

That doesn’t mean it’s an easy task, but it’s an essential part of DHL’s business strategy: People plus quality equals growth.

The hard road of collaboration

The closing keynote featured Jon M. Chu, Hollywood director behind hit films like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Wicked.”

His final message to attendees was about the real work required to create a truly inclusive and collaborative workplace.

“When I started working on studio films, it was really hard to work with an editor,” he shared. “I just wanted to do it myself.” However, collaboration is what is required to create a truly great workplace that is more than the sum of its parts.

Hollywood director Jon M. Chu speaks with Ellen McGirt at the For All Summit in Las Vegas.

Great Place To Work? research found that the likelihood that employees will give extra effort at work jumps 720% when they feel they have a cooperative, collaborative workplace, according to a survey of 1.3 million employees.

The secret to collaboration? Chu says it is all about communication. “I’m not just a storyteller when I release my movie,” he says. “I’m a storyteller at every step of the process.”

And it’s still hard to open the door to collaboration and let outsiders into the process. “People start to run you over,” Chu says. However, he believes this difficult, demanding collaboration is the future of great work.

“If you have a great place to work, but the final result isn’t what you wanted, I don’t know if that is where I want to work,” he says. “You have to create great things.”

When you do great work, you earn the next opportunity, and open the door wider for others to come behind you and build a better world.

The For All Summit will return to Las Vegas in 2026! Get early tickets now.