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Jacqueline Coca of Black & Decker speaks at HR Connections
Black & Decker relies on HR for change management
2008 was a banner year for Black & Decker’s Latin America and Caribbean operations.
“There was not a compelling reason for change,” recalled Jacqueline Coca, Human Resources Director for the region, at WorldCity’s HR Connections meeting last week. As she later said, “Business was good and everyone was in their comfort zone.”
And yet, change is what the new president of the region, Jaime Ramirez wanted.
As he saw it, “This is not real. If you want sustainable and profitable growth, you have to change,” the way Black & Decker was running its business, Coca said in characterizing his opinion during her presentation about bringing substantial change to an organization.
HR Connections is one of six event series hosted by WorldCity for the Miami area’s multinational community. It has been sponsored by the University of Miami School of Business Executive Education Center since its 2008 inception and is now sponsored by Aflac as well, which joined as a sponsor at the September event.
For Black & Decker, a multinational operating in 100 countries around the world including 16 nations in Latin America, step one was to do an assessment, she said, “to identify the gap” between “where we are, where we want to be.”
What was initially unclear to Coca, brought in from the human resources consulting firm Towers Perrin, was why HR would play such a key role.
It became clear at the meeting of the seven general managers for the region, brought in for the assessment. “What was going on two years ago? What’s going on now? What will be going on in two years? We just talked about changes. We didn’t talk about numbers.
“A lot of what they brought was about market share and numbers,” she said. “But once we started talking, 80 percent was about people.”
“Why would HR drive change?” Coca had asked rhetorically at the beginning of the HR Connections meeting, a question she had asked herself in early discussions with Ramirez. “Because people drive change.”
One of the steps was improving communications, through emails, printed newsletters and sit-down meetings not only with direct reports but with the rank-and-file employees.
“When I go to the countries, I don’t talk to the general managers — well, I do — but I spend time with the employees and make sure they know what’s going on,” she said.
The message she tries to deliver: “It’s not HR — it’s you guys making the change. Human Resources is the facilitator.”
Ramirez, the head of the office for Latin America and the Caribbean, also wanted to change the culture in symbolic ways. “It’s not Senior Jaime. It’s Jaime,” she said. “We don’t have that hierarchy. We want to … reward based or contribution, not on title, years with company.”
Cisco’s Enrique Martin
Said Cisco System’s manager of Human Resources, Enrique Martin, “It seems like to me, for the better, you are turning the company upside down.”
A number of other companies were represented, including Odebrecht, Cushman Wakefield, Terremark, LAN, Club Med, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, ADP, Burger King, Assurant, Transatlantic Reinsurance, Applica, Western Union, Benetton, Baxter, ACC Insurance Brokers, World Fuel Services and Diageo.
Coca agreed with Martin’s point, then acknowledged it is not always smooth sailing in changing the chemistry of an organization.
“There are people on board and helping,” she said, “and some not. One of these people (who is resisting the changes) is really key.”
It gets complicated when the rank-and-file employee is getting mixed signals: “What am I supposed to do — what you say or what (the supervisor resisting change) says?”
Another challenge is not what most people would immediately describe as a challenge. “People join Black & Decker and don’t leave Black & Decker,” she said. “That’s a good thing in many ways but it can be a bad thing.”
The good news, Coca believes, is that all the communication and effort is paying off. “The good news is that they’re speaking up now. At least three issues have popped up (from the discussions).”
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