Cisco’s Kelly Jones on Making Hybrid Work Successful

Roula Amire
2024-01-09T02:00:29-05:00
Cisco’s Kelly Jones on Making Hybrid Work Successful
Great Place To Work

“People need flexibility and choice. It's crucial to employee engagement, particularly during times of change, which we're all kind of living in all the time.”

On this episode of the Better podcast, Kelly Jones, chief people officer at Cisco, shares what's on her mind as we start a new year. (Hint: trust.)

We also dive into new research around remote and hybrid work, and the impact mandates have.

And, she shares the five questions people managers at Cisco ask in every check-in, including what did you loathe about your week?

She also reveals the secret behind making the Fortune 100 Companies To Work For? List for 26 years.

On navigating hybrid work successfully:

We don't have a mandate. We were very flexible even before flexible work became a thing. It's been a differentiator for us in how we attract and retain talent.

People need flexibility and choice, it's crucial to employee engagement, particularly during times of change, which we're all kind of living in all the time. What we learned wasn’t that people don't want to come in. They just don't want to come in and work asynchronously. What doesn't work is just saying, "Come in these two days because I want to see you."

The types of things that work that we've seen are aligned to learning, collaboration, and different moments and innovation cycles for brainstorming and celebrations.

On why HR and culture leaders should prioritize trust:

One of the things that is really on my mind is trust. It's the most valuable currency that we have with our employees. Trust followed by time — the amount of time that our leaders spend with our teams.

How we navigate in an increasingly complex world and ensure that our teams always understand the why behind any decisions that we make is really important. One of the things I've noticed is whether your employees always agree with you or not on decisions that you're making — if they trust you and they know that you're doing it with their best interests in mind, and they have a history of knowing that you show up for them, that trust is a very valuable currency for organizations.

Attend our annual company culture conference May 7-9, 2024

On what questions people managers ask in weekly check-ins:

We have kind of a ritualized weekly check-in with our leaders and teams. We ask them to check in and answer a few top-line questions that end up driving a conversation.

1. Did you get the opportunity to use your strengths every day this week? One to five.

2. Were you able to provide great value this week? One to five.

3. How do you feel about the value that you provided?

4. What did you love that happened this week?

5. What did you loathe that happened?

“Loathe” is intentionally a divisive word because what we're trying to find out is are our employees working in their strengths? And when leaders understand when they're truly leveraging the strengths of their employees, they can better direct them to the type of work where we're going to get the best outcome.

On the secret to making the Fortune 100 Companies to Work For? List:

Cisco is a big company and I think there's this misperception that there's this huge financial engine. It's not it at all. What is at the center of everything is understanding the experiences of all of our employees.

We have a powerful team in our employee listening space, and one of the things we do at Cisco is we put that at the center of all of our employee design. We've learned that when you design with a community not for a community — even if that community is your entire ecosystem — you are going to get better results.

We are not an organization that sits around as a people team and says, "Gosh, this is a good idea, let's go do it." We don't incubate like that. We incubate through the voices of all of our employees and understanding that becomes incredibly important. That's very much woven into the fabric of our people team and how we go about our work.

I think sometimes you look at talent programs and you assume there's a smart person making decisions about the talent programs. The smart people making our decisions are our employees. They're guiding how we make these choices.

Listen to all episodes

Subscribe to Better wherever podcasts are available so you don't miss an episode.