HR Influencer: Brian Schipper

In some companies, HR is a competitive weapon. In others, it's a place where the administrivia is bundled and sorted. There appears to be some correlation with the organization's core role. If the operation makes things, HR tends to be procedural. If the operation makes ideas, it's a strategic tool.

The degree to which it is possible to wield HR as an instrument of strategy is at the heart of this difference. Where the organization's output is less tangible, the contribution of people to the bottom line is higher. Farm workers can make an incremental difference in product quality. Knowledge workers can often cause exponential change.

There are rich variations in the structure and content of HR organizations. Interestingly, there is more variety in the largest companies than there is in mid sized operations. Huge companies (the Fortune 100) have distinct cultures and competitive niches. When HR is exercised as a market discriminator in these entities, the execution of basic policy becomes a reflection of underlying values.

Brian (Skip) Schipper is the CHRO at Cisco. His organization supports Cisco’s workforce of more than 65,000 employees. They develop products and support customers in more than 200 countries, all working to execute the company vision of changing the way the world works, lives, plays, and learns.

Built on the bedrock of strong employee culture, Cisco is always ranked in the top 10 places to work in nearly every country that evaluates employers. Most recently rated #1 in Fortune Magazine’s Most Admired Companies in the network communications category, the company was also ranked #6 in the Best Companies to Work for list. Cisco was also on the 2008 World’s Most Ethical Companies list. It has garnered recognition throughout the world for its employment, diversity, inclusion, and workplace flexibility practices.

Schipper talks about these accomplishments with a good deal of pride and ownership.

Cisco is pioneering new forms of organizational governance. Management of the firm is executed through a series of interdisciplinary boards and cross-functional committees. The company is successfully demonstrating how one operates with a non-hierarchical structure. They do it using their own technologies and are busy learning what it takes to practice what they preach.

Reliance on top-down authority, the hallmark of industrial era companies is the antithesis of work at Cisco. CEO John Chambers has a robust vision for the future of work (collaborative) and organizational governance (accomplishment focused and critique dependent). According to Skip, this is the heart of Cisco's culture.

The nature of the role at Cisco forces him to reinvent the profession. Since Cisco is dependent on resellers and channel partners for revenue, their definition of HR extends to activities throughout the ecosystem (the entire range of companies under the Cisco operating and delivery umbrella). One segment of the department is devoted exclusively to HR in ecosystem companies.

We talked about the trends that are shaping HR:

"I see three major threads driving the evolution of the industry:

Technology is profoundly changing the way we work - Life itself has become virtualized—work is a thing we do, not a place we go.  Work is entwined with all other activities, and globalization often necessitates 24x7 accessibility.  Because of this—and because the best, most salient information is often closest to customers and furthest away from the top of the organization—the old models of organizational governance are breaking down in favor of new ways to organize the enterprise around collaboration.

Leaders in emerging markets need to be developed - The business is simply growing faster than management and leadership talent can be developed; in some markets, the educational infrastructure is not oriented towards building leaders, whether for business, education or government.

Inclusion and diversity is fundamental in a globalized workforce - The discussion about diversity solely around workforce representation is incomplete, and being replaced with the recognition that it is absolutely critical that every employee at Cisco has the opportunity to be fully engaged and to fully contribute to the success of the company.  We cannot afford to have a member of our team who is limited in his/her opportunity to drive change, solve a customer problem, or contribute intellectual property to the next generation of products. 

We moved on to discuss the products and services Schipper is following:

"Doing HR well first means executing reliably on those 'traditional' products and services associated with staffing, compensation & benefits, training, labor relations & compliance.  And HR needs to deal with several areas that are impacting employee engagement, such as:

Support for globalization - That which has most profoundly changed the workplace has been globalization of talent.  Regardless of industry, the old model of a company led from a single-country headquarters with “international” sites is increasingly rare.  Global companies align and engage talent across cultural dimensions in a shared mission to build products and solve customer problems.  Globalization is also the thing that poses big challenges to political and economic systems in nearly every region of the world.

Talent development - Probably the human capital initiative that has really changed the role and impact of HR.  In most companies, it's also the area with the greatest opportunity for a more positive return on the investment in management time and resources.  In particular, HR needs to lead a shift to actionable outcomes--putting the right leader in the right role vs. serial evaluation of talent.

The impact of technology on workplace flexibility - Demographics and technology are increasingly impacting employee satisfaction around work/life balance.  In fact, I think the notion of work/life balance is rapidly becoming obsolete.  With the virtualization of work, employees are empowered to collaborate and engage in new ways that can and should be deeply satisfying.  Technology enables access to resources and talent, and frees people from the confines of the workplace.  But that same technology can be seen also as intrusive, creating an “always on” expectation.  We need a new framework for how we define balance going forward.  And the burden is shifting from companies to employees having to define and create work/life integration on their own terms in a way that is satisfying for them. Working in a virtual world means that there will be almost limitless differences in how people work in the future.  And those differences will be far greater than any company’s ability to craft policies to support balance.  So it will be up to all of us to be our most productive and determine how we can have the greatest impact while achieving satisfaction on our own terms and in our own way.

The impact of technology on collaboration - Evolving the business practices and culture at Cisco to support large numbers of high-achievement employees working collaboratively is hugely challenging, but ultimately rewarding.  Cisco executives have the opportunity to impact business strategy beyond their functional accountabilities, and what’s really satisfying is to see how execution is actually accelerated."

Schipper is transforming HR by tailoring it to the needs of the enterprise at Cisco. The company is devoted to the idea of using their own tools to demonstrate the future. Schipper fits right into that mold.

As part of John Sumser’s ongoing Top 100 Influencers project, in which the key influencers working in recruiting, staffing, HR, HCM and HR technology are identified and profiled, John shares additional perspectives and compelling insights from those who are profiled here in Salary.com HR Voice each Friday.

John Sumser is a member of the Salary.com Board of Directors as well as the founder and president of Two Color Hat, Inc. Contributions to Salary.com HR Voice and this Website reflect the opinions of the authors and are not an official opinion of Salary.com, Inc., or any of its subsidiary or affiliated entities.