The Employee Ambassador program is a platform to empower everyone who wants to make a difference. It offers a unique opportunity throughout our entire organization to enhance the alignment between people needs and leadership support.
We all heard of “brand ambassadors”, but that is a whole different thing. Brand ambassadors promote certain brands, but Employee Ambassadors promote their own values and the values of the company they work for.
Paolo Emilio Testa on the Employee Ambasssador program
Paolo is Vice President for Human Resources at GlobalLogic, a Hitachi Group Company, responsible for the EMEA region. He is an experienced HR executive with more than 20 years in leadership roles across the Globe. Previously, Paolo has held positions as HR Director for Hewlett Packard and DXC.
He is dedicated to bring the, as he says, very talented European HR Team to be a true´business enabler´.
You can read more about his work and career here.
But to truly enable the business, it’s one needs much more than the usual HR operations. Please meet – the Employee Ambassadors!
1. You invented the Employee Ambassador program. How and where did your idea start?
Ambassadors at Hewlett Packard
The idea came up when I was working at Hewlett Packard 7 or 8 years ago. It was one of the outcomes of the employee survey.
There was a strong request from our colleagues to be heard when it came to decisions that were affecting their engagement. And they gave a very clear message – Thank you for launching such-and-such programs from the global level, but – you know what? That doesn’t fit us, nor our culture. We don’t care.
Of course, it was a little better formulated, but that was their message. The bottomline was – Why don’t you ask us prior to launching programs? Ask what really matters to us, what we want, what we would like. If you are going to invest in something, make sure that that “something” is actually impactful.
And therefore we were really brainstorming at regional level at Hewlett Packard and we launched the idea. We said – OK why don’t we include them more? And this is where the whole idea started.
Ambassadors at DXC
It was even better refined when I came to DXC technology. The same idea, the same concept, the same message coming from our employees bottom up and this is where we structured the Employee Ambassador program for the first time in a very nice way. With the European coordinator, with the country coordinator, with the budget, because our business leaders were very supportive.
So, there are two things that are very important in this program:
- Passion from people who are volunteering to become part of the Employee Ambassador program at any level – regional, subregional, country level. There has to be passion, engagement. Because passion drives results and results drive further engagement from other people.
- The second part is having good blessings and partnership from the business leaders. I managed to get full support from my DXC regional Vice President at that time. He was keen to give us the budget we needed.
The combination of the passion of people who participating in this and the support and empowerment from the top management are the two key elements.
2. Employee Ambassador program from DXC constructed an IT School in Colombia. How was this organized?
Yes, this was one of the ideas that our Employee Ambassadors collected. One of them was very active in the CSR, working with non profit organizations. That person came up with the idea, but also with the way how to translate his idea into practice, into reality.
He connected us with the non profit organization and talked to them. We wanted to be sure that it was a reliable organization. You know, this is risky. You pull the name of the company on strings. But they gave me planty of examples of projects that they did previously in different parts of the world.
Top management enables the program, but doesn’t micromanage it
To be honest, I have always been very careful in taking too much of an active part in driving the Employee Ambassador program.
One of the secrets to make it successful is that the top management and senior management is actually an enabler of the project, but they are not necessarily a sponsor. When you have a sponsor, then you have to go to the sponsor and ask for permission.
When we came to this kind of fantastic idea of building two IT schools in Colombia, they came to me and they checked with me if there were any objections from top leadership. They started working, we met with the people responsible for this organization and then the project launching started.
We started collecting money, and the ambassadors informed everyone. They defined a good communication plan and informed everyone about it. It was launched in October. The peak was reached during Christmas time.
Building an IT school in Colombia
The group of Ambassadors in DXC collected around 12.000 $ and the company matched that amount. The company also funded the plane tickets. This is not a huge amount, but more than enough. We found the materials needed. Two colleagues from the Ambassador program flew to Colombia and stayed there for a couple of weeks on a work permit. Their managers agreed to treat this as normal work time for those employees.
There was an inauguration and our Ambassadors sent us pictures with them inaugurating the new IT schools. It was really something that our colleagues from DXC could touch. They could touch the results, the outcomes of their engagement, passion, work and effort.
We really saw all this young and disadvantaged children in the classroom, sitting with the equipment DXC provided and with the teachers who we educated through our training courses. It was all very well articulated and super successful.
3. What are the high business goals of such a program? What does business want to achieve through it?
Many many large companies are very active in the corporate social responsibility aspects. Why? Well, for 2 reasons.
1. The CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) goals
Large business believe – they are totally convinced – that since they are very successful in their own respective areas, they want to give back. Meaning, they want to play an active role when it comes to social responsibility and to be an active participant. Because they believe this is needed. And we have to champion this kind of support to our environment.
But there is also a sort of immediate return because you see that large companies were leading this kind of programs and initiatives across the globe and they gained lots of visibility from this initiatives. So the first goal you want to achieve is to make an impact on the society. Active players provide an impact on their social environment.
Of course, there is a byproduct to this. There is a lot of press and there are many people who are talking about these initiatives and that also helps the business in terms of customers who more and more now expect to be provided their services by vendors who are active in that area.
So this is how it comes back as also a business enabler, but that is not the main goal, it’s only a byproduct that is nice to have.
2. Most important goal – Employee Engagement
The main goal of the Ambassador program is to make our colleagues feel herd, they are key players, that they are more than welcome to come out with ideas and that they have the feeling that they are a part of the corporate family. It’s very simple.
If you have your family and you have kids, you are there and you are keen to listen what they like doing for you to be able to support them. If they like playing football or participate in a football tournament or going to the cinema, to the movie, you name it – you try to support your kids because you are family and we try to have a similar mentality.
In GlobalLogic, you hear Shashank, Nitesh and Igor (our high level, top management leaders; author’s comment) mentioning this GlobalLogic family concept. They all say “Welcome to the GlobalLogic family” and we want to make it real and tangible. Therefore we want to take care of our colleagues by asking them:
“Vedra, in Croatia – what does matter to you? What do you want to do?”
And you can tell me you want to get together and have movie sessions because Croatian people are very fond of movies, or we want to create a group where people where we discuss some specific topics.
Employee’s wishes matter
For example, our very active Ambassador group in DXC Bulgaria formed a discussion group where they discussed the overall strategy of their company. And they did it for several years. There were very smart middle managers who were keen to understand the strategy. So I connected them with senior executives and they learned, asked questions and had several sessions about the topics they were interested in.
As you can see, the Employee Ambassador program is not an agenda that I want to deploy, it is actually the other way around. I’m here to listen and to help you all to achieve what you want to achieve. And the end result is engagement. If you help your colleagues to do what really matters to them, they will be more engaged. They will contribute with eagerness, excitement and passion.
It takes time, you dont achieve this things and goals in a few months. That takes years. But the final impact is very visible, this is what my experience has taught me.
4. Currently are seven countries in GlobalLogic involved in the Employee Ambassador program. Is the program equally successful in every country?
This is is based on my observation also in other companies and I do see a difference.
The importance of the coordinator
The one who is in charge of country coordination is important. You really need someone who is truly passionate, who really understands what we want to achieve, how to get there, someone very creative. Someone who can really push others and “infect” others to join.
Who is a great leader in the end, maybe not formally, but a genuine, natural leader. This is very much needed. Without that, no matter the culture, it will not fly.
The importance of the culture
The second element is culture because different cultures react differently to similar suggestions. This has been proved so many times. Not only in engagement topics, but all across. The culture plays a pivotal role.
In my experience – and I am just an observer, I’m not a scientist or psychologist – but colleagues who are part of the eastern European culture usually react better to this kind of things.
Western European culture is a little bit colder when it comes to this kind of engagement activities and are working “solo” a little bit more. Those employees are not so keen to socialize with others. The most successful country in my experience was Bulgaria, but then also Poland in GlobalLogic. In GlobalLogic we see great excitement in eastern countries. Western Europe like Sweden, Germany and UK are a little bit colder.
5. What are the most common blockers for implementing the Employee Ambassador program?
Lack of support from leadership
Not always does the leadership understand what is the ultimate goal. Some leaders tend to be a little bit intrusive and play a leadership role wanting to command and control, and this is something you shouldn’t control. You need to overview and have an idea what’s going on and there has to be a sense of purpose.
But this is something I am working on and making sure to achieve it. It is not about middle managers approving or allowing to happen.
Lack of time from the employees
Whatever you do in the Employee Ambassador program goes beyond your regular office duties. That requires passion from employees, to give a little bit more. There needs to be a support from leaders to allow their people to spend a portion of their working time on some other project. This is also important.
6. Have you heard that somebody copies your program?
Ha ha, honestly no. I remember in large companies like Coca-Cola there were similar programs, but not exactly like ours.
This is an idea that was launched in Hewlett Packard, well implemented in DXC and well implemented in GlobalLogic. We still have a long way to go.
Final words
We want to make sure to engage our Ukrainian colleagues, but now you can imagine that they have different priorities. But as soon as we get over this tense situation, we will work to make it even more engaging.
(Interviewer’s comment: This conversation took place before the start of the war. But it is important to mention that Polish and Slovakian Employee Ambassadors played a key role in helping our colleagues from GlobalLogic Ukraine and thus proved their value once again.)
In GlobalLogic, this program depends on the project leader and coordinators who are driving it. This is what really makes a big difference.
Ali Al-Saiedi is doing a fantastic job. He is really driving this program because he really believes in it. It’s not because I asked him to do that or because it is an office goal. You can have goals but with people not fully engaged, not understanding and not supporting from their heart and soul things never happen.
I think people are the ones who are really making a difference when it comes to this kind of projects.
Thank you Paolo for your insights!
