Employee Engagement Expert Series:   This is the first in a series of interview with highly experienced and respected leaders in the field.

Lisa Cummings Penn, recently retired from the Estée Lauder Companies.   She most recently led the efforts of Employee Engagement inside a critical part of the company.  Lisa’s experience and perspective is invaluable to fellow professionals seeking to understand tried and true best practices in this ever-changing field.

When one thinks of Estée Lauder, what comes to mind?  Make-up, skin care, consumer goods, and retail.  But Lisa Cummings Penn actually worked in the IT department of Lauder – an impressive group of 1000 technology professionals.  Her role focused on Employee Engagement which uniquely happened completely inside the IT department.  Her insights reflect 24 years of experience in this important and growing field.  

Jacqueline:   Lisa, please share your work experience and education prior to Estée Lauder and your roles within the company that led to your role in Employee Engagement.

Lisa:  My formal education was in business and creative writing.   After college, I worked in retail and was in the Management Training Program at the Gap.  At the time, formal training and development was in its early years and most companies did not yet have training departments. So people were just doing training ad hoc to their employees. When I was hired at Clinique, a Brand owned by Estée Lauder in 2000, it was the first time I was exposed to a true Education department within a company. It was there that I worked as a Director of Education, developing sales, service and event curriculum for over 20,000 Clinique Consultants worldwide.

A few years later I went over to our Global Retail Channel where I led the Education team for the 500 brick and mortar stores owned by Estée Lauder, e.g., Origins, MAC, Jo Malone, Aveda, etc. This education was focused on store operations, as in making sure the stores were following policy and procedure which enabled them to focus on driving sales and customer service

From there, I was asked to join the IT department as a Business Relationship Manager, or BRM. In this role, I acted as a connector between IT and the Brands, understanding their business needs, and ensuring that IT solutions were aligned with the Brand’s strategic goals and objectives.   

One of our projects started out developing a learning platform for a single brand. With a global brand you have thousands of employees you need to educate. This quickly spread into multiple brands being interested in the platform, which ultimately led to a large-scale project to roll out to multiple brands, eventually building a learning platform for thousands of people across multiple brands worldwide. 

After working as a BRM for 10 years, an official role was created inside of IT in Employee Engagement.  Our CIO really believed in EE and we were the only business unit in the company to have our own Employee Engagement team.  

Jacqueline: Reflecting on your experience in Employee Engagement and looking out at the greater field of HR, what is the biggest change you’ve seen?  

Lisa: As I alluded to earlier, in 2000, there were not a lot of companies who had Education departments.   And when training was being done, it was usually an additional responsibility for someone in another department, like Marketing. Someone who wasn’t skilled in content development or facilitation.

 The world has changed so much so you have to constantly be reevaluating what’s happening and how it’s affecting your employees. We really should be referring to this role as Employee Fulfillment.   Many different things are important to employees than 24 years ago.  DE & I, for example has become a main focal point – far more than ever before. 

Finally, the demographic of an employee has shifted and with that, behavior.  We work differently today. 20+ years ago, no one would ever think about taking out a phone in a meeting (Or a Blackberry as the case might have been!)  But now we understand how different demographics work and influence and we have to take that into account. Technology in general has changed the way we operate.

Jacqueline:  What is the Mission of the Employee Engagement organization

Lisa:  The Mission should be to create moments that matter throughout the employee journey. It’s about creating employee fulfillment, not just employee satisfaction.  And that journey actually begins before an employee even starts working; it starts during recruitment to onboarding and continues all the way through their departure.  On the back end, when an employee moves on internally or externally, we need to learn from their feedback and use that feedback to improve.

Jacqueline:   Do you recall an example at Estée Lauder of how you used the feedback you received from a departing employee?

Lisa:  Yes, actually.   For our Summer University Internship program, we brought in a group of interns, rising seniors, to which we included them in our onboarding program for other full time new hires just starting with the company. At the end of the internship program, many interns are offered full time employment after graduation. And when they begin, they go through the full Onboarding program. One of the interns who was hired and then left a year later shared feedback of frustration of having to repeat some of the same material in the Onboarding Program that she had gone through before. It felt repetitive and after interning for a Summer she already knew some of which was being reshared. 

This was great feedback for us because it helped us look at the program with a different set of eyes and make updates to the way in which we onboarded new hires who had interned with us, removing the redundancy. 

Jacqueline:  Let’s turn to the world of Employee Engagement – what areas did this encompass in your role at Estée Lauder

Lisa: Employee Engagement at ELC IT was focused on four strategic pillars: 

1. Talent recruitment – Attracting and converting top talent to support the vision of being an IT Employer of Choice. Think internship programs, recruiting
2. Education – Creating a L&D roadmap to support the upskilling and career growth of our people. For example, education through curated learning paths, robust Oboarding programs, etc.
3. Culture – Creating a deep sense of community, purpose and belonging. IT Day of Service, Tech Day of Pink to raise money for breast cancer research and awareness, and employee recognition.
4. Connecting – Connecting employee contribution and business outcomes to create a sense of purpose – help employees connect to the strategy and see how their work is impacting the business and contributing to the success of the organization.

Jacqueline:   Do you have a perspective on how your role differed as compared to your peers in other companies?

Lisa:  The fact that I operated inside of IT was totally unique. Most companies have one Employee Engagement department that works across the enterprise. And those roles are focused mainly on employee culture. 

Jacqueline:  Can you call out some Cultural Touchstones that were well-received?

Lisa:   The ones that really stand out were the IT Day of Service, The Tech Day of Pink -for breast cancer research, and the Hackathon.    These events really bring people together while doing good for others.

Jacqueline:   Did the emphasis on each of these areas change over the last five or so years and if so, how did you spend/divide your time?

Lisa:  Certain programs were predictable at different times of the year.  For example, as soon as the Summer Interns walked out the door in August, we were already accepting applications for the next year’s program.    In the bigger picture, we had placed significant focus on the IT Learning programs which took considerable time and effort to get up and running.  The Pandemic also forced us to re-prioritize and figure out how to accomplish our goals remotely.  Generally speaking, we had to stay nimble and be able to change with the environment while keeping our goals in mind.

Jacqueline: What where some of your favorite tools to accomplish your objectives?

Lisa: What we are always striving for is fulfilment and some of that takes place informally – the “water cooler moments.”   Any time you can talk to people becomes important.  Sometimes it can be in surveys, but survey fatigue does set in.  Our special events, as mentioned earlier really fill an important role in creating these moments.   We also had great success doing speed networking, coffee chats, and “ask me anything” sessions with senior leaders and small groups vs. large town halls. Large town hall meetings were also successful, but the smaller formats allowed for more personalized interactions and being able to dig a bit deeper below the surface.

Jacqueline: What were your operating principles in approaching your role?

Lisa:  It was evident to me that one size does not fit all.  You have to meet people where they are.  People learn differently. People experience things differently.  So, you have to have multiple approaches to make an impact on large groups of people. For example, when cascading new information to teams, some people will read a newsletter – others will join a town hall. Some want small format team meetings. So you need an multi-faceted approach to meet people where they are. This became even more evident during Covid when we were working remotely for two years and all of a sudden completely missed out on those in person moments where we used to check in with one another.   You’ll never be able to make everyone happy all of the time, but you can do your best to bring people along on the journey by meeting them where they are.

Jacqueline: In terms of feedback, how did you get it and what learning really stands out?

Lisa:   There are so many messages being thrown at people, it’s critical to help people relate the messaging that applies to the work they are doing.  To better understand the big picture, we would meet weekly as leadership team from across the department to talk about anything – supply chain issues for example, and how to use our own resources to get things done.   We’d find out how people from other groups are feeling and what they are hearing and get feedback from HR’s regular conversations with the business units.   Not all leaders cascade the message the same way, so we used this time to try to align our messaging so that the teams could hear more consistently from us.  What worked best was continuous check throughout the employee life cycle to be able to manage things as they came up.

Jacqueline: What is your advice to people entering this field today?

Lisa:  Be curious.  Learn, ask questions, meet people where they’re at, and open your eyes to the way people show up and evolve on the journey. Your goal is to be with people along the journey. So first and foremost, understand the journey, what it means for you and for them.  In the end, it’s about creating moments that matter.  In terms of skillsets – communication, relationship building and cultivating relationships for the long term. The way you speak to people and engage with them is so critical.   In this role, you have to create and become the safe space.

Jacqueline: What is your advice to people entering this field today?

Lisa:  Be curious.  Learn, ask questions, meet people where they’re at, and open your eyes to the way people show up and evolve on the journey. Your goal is to be with people along the journey. So first and foremost, understand the journey, what it means for you and for them.  In the end, it’s about creating moments that matter.  In terms of skillsets – communication, relationship building and cultivating relationships for the long term. The way you speak to people and engage with them is so critical.   In this role, you have to create and become the safe space.